The Latest(ish)
As we all know from the movies, if you’re going to clone something, clone something worthwhile: So, for example, don’t clone dangerous dinosaurs, and don’t clone Adolf Hitler. That’s good advice. Unfortunately, Michael Bay, the director of “The Island,” hasn’t taken it. His new film may not exactly be a clone, but it certainly appears to have borrowed (there’s some controversy about this) its central conceit from “Parts: The Clonus Horror,” a low-budget, high concept fiasco from 1979 best known these days as a victim of the sarcastic nerds at “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” That’s a shame. An intelligent film [...]
A Package of Spare Parts
July 22, 2005
The Island; published originally in The New York Sun
In this time of Dolly, stem cells, and decoded genomes, it should be no surprise that Hollywood has sent in the clones. “The Island,” the new genes-and-screams blockbuster that opens this week, may be trite, slight, and none too bright, but the appearance of a big-budget movie premised, however feebly, on the medical promise and moral contradictions of human cloning, is yet another reminder that Xeroxed people are now icons of social, scientific, and cultural unease. In just the last few months, Kazuo Ishiguro has published the clammy and claustrophobic “Never Let Me Go,” a novel that covers very similar [...]
Hollywood’s Hideous Progeny
July 22, 2005
Clones and The Movies; published originally in The New York Sun
Look, I’m not Hemingway, Marco Polo, or Lewis or bloody Clark. I don’t kayak, hike, or bike, but I do know I’m not the only traveler in Mongolia to have gone through a moment of despair, regret (what was so wrong with Cancún anyway?), and panic. And why not? We were somewhere remote in the country that defines remote and our guide’s “short cut” had more than a touch of the Donner Party about it. Were those really vultures, dark, enormous, and optimistic, circling over our dusty and exhausted bus as it bounced, creaked, juddered, and shuddered along the unpaved [...]
Easy Riders
July 18, 2005
Tt’s enough to make you choke on your fava beans. In bookstore new-fiction aisles, this was meant to be the summer of Hannibal Lecter: aesthete, Renaissance scholar, and serial killer. Instead he has had to share the limelight with Harry Potter, the schoolboy hero of a series of British children’s books. The second of these, The Chamber of Secrets, was released in the U.S. at about the same time as Thomas Harris’s Hannibal. On September 19, more than three months later, it was Number Three on the New York Times bestseller list, five places ahead of the unfortunate Dr. Lecter. [...]
It’s Witchcraft
July 15, 2005
Harry Potter: The Camber of Secrets, by J.K. Rowling; published originally in National Review Online
Once, on a gray hangover Sunday morning quite a few years ago now, I saw Johnny Depp. He was stumbling along Sixth Avenue on the way to that flea market in the 20s, and so was I. He was a wan, disheveled wreck, and so was I. But he had Kate Moss in tow, and I, well … I did not. Even back then Johnny Depp was a star, a Cary Grant for our ragamuffin times, a tatterdemalion Tom Cruise, James Dean without the car crash, a charmer, an enigma, a talent to watch – even if, judging by the [...]
The Return of Novelty Boy
July 8, 2005
Johnny Depp; published originally in The New York Sun