Amid the bad news—and the Senate is reportedly assembling to approve the largest spending package in American history, a disgraceful piece of legislation—including hundreds of thousands out of work, I was predisposed for a light picture show. The vacuous He’s Just Not That Into You hit the spot. The romantic comedy, featuring an ensemble cast led by Ginnifer Goodwin and Justin Long, is a plotless, interconnected affair. Relatively young people do scenes in mini-monologues—several to the camera, breaking the wall—about relationships. Though it is trite, cloying and a pinch brighter than an episode of Love, American Style, it beats watching Congress and the White House decimate what’s left of American capitalism.
The multiple member cast includes Goodwin as a desperate female who learns from barkeep Long that men mean what they say (hence the title). The most involving couples are played by these two, Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck and, showing self, home and marriage as works in progress, Jennifer Connelly (nicely spinning her Little Children character) and Bradley Cooper. This trivial movie represents what might be called imitation romanticism and there is no excuse for some of the script’s trash but some of it’s insightful and—despite what pompous Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert says—the happy endings are plausible. One, in particular, delivers a Valentine’s Day reminder that happiness can be found in being alone. I found things to like here, with an old-fashioned, big city feel (the setting is Baltimore, Maryland) made of cubicles, coffeehouses, and gigantic neon signs for American business.
Of course, as soon as I heard that Scarlett Johansson was in the picture, I knew her voluptuous body would be featured in half the movie (it is), and I brought ear plugs in case she’d successfully negotiated a contract in which Warner Bros. was required to let her sing (see my post about her album on 22 August 2008). Thank goodness this was not permitted, though she has a singing scene in which her voice is not heard (or I blocked it out). But they sent the soundtrack and I am sorry to say she won that battle, hacking up Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye” and sending children and dogs running for cover. The rest of the CD, with tunes by The Black Crowes, R.E.M. and a smattering of mid-range artists I’ve never heard of, is mediocre and the best tracks—The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” and Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”—have been around for a while. Most songs from the movie are forgettable.
A better buy is a new paperback from Lexington Books, Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed, which I’m reading in spots. The 270-page edition includes 32 interviews with Ayn Rand (1905-1982), a 1999 radio interview with Leonard Peikoff as an epilogue and an index. Between 1962 and 1966, she conducted a series of radio broadcast interviews for Columbia University on certain subjects and these are especially interesting, particularly her thoughts on the American Constitution and law. Here, at last, are transcripts from her two 1967 appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson—a glimpse of the author of Atlas Shrugged at her peak—and interviews by CBS News’ Mike Wallace, NBC News journalist Edwin Newman and the late financial reporter Louis Rukeyser. Now if only someone will publish her interviews on NBC’s Today Show, with Tomorrow’s Tom Snyder and with talk show host Phil Donahue. Reading what the self-proclaimed radical for capitalism had to say is more captivating, and urgently relevant, than ever.
