Every week, With a Little Help from Our Friends highlights the best pieces of writing on film, television, and literature published around the Internet. Check out the links, and feel free to share more good stories in the comment section.
For your reading enjoyment …
“The Scourge of ‘Relatability’” by Rebecca Mead
“Perhaps that’s no surprise, because relatability—a logism so neo that it’s not even recognized by the 2008 iteration of Microsoft Word with which these words are being written—has become widely and unthinkingly accepted as a criterion of value, even by people who might be expected to have more sophisticated critical tools at their disposal. What was remarkable about Glass’s tweet wasn’t so much his judgment of Shakespeare’s merit but the fact that the Bard of Public Radio expressed himself like a resentful millennial filling out a teacher evaluation.”
“Rip Torn and the Indignities of Product Placement” by Vadim Rizov
“15 years after ‘Freaks and Geeks’ began, I never expected to see the once-nervously-endearing Jason Segal repeatedly singing the praises of the iPad, but that’s easily the most substantive component of ‘Sex Tape,’ whose dialogue makes sure to spell out the consumer benefits of higher-resolution display screens.”
“His Own Godfather” by Nelson George
“Depicting James Brown on screen has always been a seductive proposition. As one of the greatest stage performers of the 20th century, he has inspired documentarians, playwrights, comedians and other artists who see the outlines of his greatness. But capturing the man inside, and the meaning of his life, is a tricky business.”
“Like Huston and Hawks, Soderbergh has no biases — he works where and whenever he can, across genre. His career as a major filmmaker began exactly 25 years ago this week, with the release of ‘Sex, Lies, and Videotape.’ And unlike his films, his career is better when you step back to consider it. If you do, you see one of the most generous and inventive artists of the last two decades.”
“The Enduring Uncoolness of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” by Nick Schager
“The Turtles are a joke taken too far, first by the entertainment industry and then by consumers who wanted their action-comedy as gratingly juvenile and Archie Comics–style milquetoast as possible. Their story is one of unlikely triumph over their own fundamental lameness. And with the birth of a fresh round of Turtle-mania courtesy of Michael Bay’s new reboot, out today, it’s one that needs to end. Because the Turtles are neither awesome nor gnarly nor radical. They are the very definition of uncool.”
“The Resurrection of Lauryn Hill” by Basim Usmani
“Roxbury, noted for its large African-Muslim and Haitian population, is home to people who have been derogatorily been referred to as “Fugees” or “Refugees” longer than Lauryn Hill probably has been. In a sense, it was a welcome home party for the multiplatinum artist, with die-hard fans monitoring her twitter timeline to plot how far she was from arriving.”
“’Guardians of the Galaxy’ and the rise of post-plot cinema” by Steven Zeitchik
“For me, from the first moment a Yondu was dropped and a Ronan was feared and a Thanos was intoned — all of them playing Very Important Roles to the people in the movie but, it seemed, amounting to little more than a mythic mishmash to those of us outside it — I was turning up my hands.”
“Why Are There So Many Women in Public Relations?” by Olga Khazan
“But the feminization of PR isn’t a product of some sort of mass hysteria (sorry) by female liberal arts majors. It’s very rational. Jobs for public relations specialists are growing at 12 percent a year—about the same rate at which jobs for reporter are shrinking each year. PR people now outnumber journalists three to one.”
“Steven Van Zandt ‘Finally’ Cooks Up Star-Studded Darlene Love Album” by Kory Grow
“’I’m writing,’ he says. ‘Elvis Costello’s writing. I’ve talked to Bruce [Springsteen] about a song.’ Additionally, Van Zandt says he’s been in touch with the songwriting team of Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann – who wrote the Spector-popularized hits ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’’ and ‘Walking in the Rain,’ among others – as well as Mike Stoller, coauthor of early rock hits like ‘Hound Dog’ and ‘Jailhouse Rock,’ and singer-songwriter Carole King.”
“Muppet Performers Share What It Was Like To Work For Jim Henson” by Elizabeth Hyde Stevens
“One of the images that I think we all have of Jim that we’ve seen repeatedly is Jim standing in the studio with his hand in the air and a puppet and he’s laughing uncontrollably. Everything has come to a complete stop, and that kind of infectious enthusiasm kind of spread through all casts and crews, and Jim balanced that with a desire to do the work as well as possible. So you were working at the top of your form, but you were also having as much fun as possible, and I think that was very infectious.”
