Category: Poseur Alert

"I consider myself a philosophe engagé, a philosopher who gets involved. I like to think I manage to change things. Like any successful intellectual, I reckon I’m 99 percent misunderstood and 1 percent understood. That’s quite good. For instance, I think I helped to persuade Jacques Chirac to bomb the Serb positions around Sarajevo and thus stop a massacre.

I’ll let you into a secret: I never, never eat at home. I know it’s odd, but I find the idea of eating at home repugnant.

I don’t cook, and my wife doesn’t cook either. The only time I would serve food at home would be if I had to meet someone as discreetly as possible. That happens once a year at most, and even then I don’t eat," – Bernard-Henri Levy, in the Sunday Times Magazine.

Is this the winning 2007 Poseur Alert? Don’t Forget To Vote Here!

"How Nikki and the other characters wind up in these rooms ‚Äî how, for instance, the pampered blonde ends up talking trash in a spooky, B-movie office ‚Äî is less important than what happens inside these spaces. In ‘Inland Empire,’ the classic hero’s journey has been supplanted by a series of jarringly discordant scenes, situations and setups that reflect one another much like the repeating images in the splintered hall of mirrors at the end of Orson Welles‚Äôs ‘Lady From Shanghai.’ The spaces in ‘Inland Empire’ function as way stations, holding pens, states of minds (Nikki’s, Susan’s, Mr. Lynch’s), sites of revelation and negotiation, of violence and intimacy. They are cinematic spaces in which images flower and fester, and stories are born.

Each new space also serves as a stage on which dramatic entrances and exits are continually being made. The theatricality of these entrances and exits underscores the mounting tension and frustrates any sense that the film is unfolding with the usual linear logic. Like characters rushing in and out of the same hallway doors in a slapstick comedy, Nikki/Susan keeps changing position, yet, for long stretches, doesn‚Äôt seem as if she were going anywhere new. For the most part, this strategy works (if nothing else, it’s truer to everyday life than most films), even if there are about 20 minutes in this admirably ambitious 179-minute film that feel superfluous. ‘Inland Empire’ has the power of nightmares and at times the more prosaic letdown of self-indulgence," – Manohla Dargis, on David Lynch’s new movie, New York Times. (Hat tip: JPod.)

"It begins with familiar-seeming mild flu-like symptoms (mild in my case, more severe in others), but then tails off into a long, etiolated fugue state in which something more than flu-like lethargy, lassitude and inanition paralyzes you. It’s not just a neutral world weariness, it’s Weltschmerz‚Äîworld-historical sadness: Some mournful, emotional, deeply despairing, unremittingly sad and despondent sense of life seizes you and won‚Äôt let go for at least a week afterward," – Ron Rosenbaum on the flu.

Dude, get some Nyquil.

"In the canon of great American duos, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo Рbetter known as hip-hop’s paragons of icy minimalism, the Neptunes Рrank somewhere between Laurel & Hardy and Hall & Oates," РSean Fennessey, Pitchfork Media.

"Soccer is the perfect game for the post-modern world. It’s the quintessential expression of the nihilism that prevails in many cultures, which doubtlessly accounts for its wild popularity in Europe," – Frank Cannon and Richard Lessner in the Weekly Standard. Alex Massie roasts these tossers here.

"It’s a bizarre phenomenon, the blogosphere. It radiates democracy’s dream of full participation but practices democracy’s nightmare of populist crudity, character-assassination, and emotional stupefaction. It’s hard fascism with a Microsoft face," – Lee Siegel, TNR. Not soft fascism with a Mac face?

"Before one can go further, mention must be made of her body – the most amazing feat of engineering since the Golden Gate Bridge. When she unveiled it, you couldn’t take your eyes off it – not as a thing of beauty but as an object of sheer, sinewy significance," – Lina Das, Daily Mail.

"I’m talking to Basil Walter, the architect who seven years ago started designing the space for the Vanity Fair party. For the dinner he has used cherrywood panels to create walls in which are embedded 13 TVs so that 160 dinner guests can watch the awards. We just finished dining on burrata with a salad of red and yellow tomatoes (which at our table Aaron Sorkin has been eating off Maureen Dowd’s plate since quickly clearing his), New York strip steak, thyme-crusted tuna or buttered squash ravioli, and apple tart with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce. In a few minutes the party will begin.

As Basil walks me through the transformed parking lot, he explains what I see:

As the dinner comes to an end there’s a drape that opens straight into a vestibule made of topiary where there is a cigar bar. The lounge is 7000 square feet, dotted throughout by 17 TVs, and beginning with a large open area that doubles as a dance floor. The main feature of the space is an undulating ceiling like the interior of a cave. It has lights above (designed by Patrick Woodroffe) and couches all around — a warm and cozy place to spend the rest of the evening after the Oscars.

He forgot to mention the carpet — soft enough for barefeet, as Laurie David and I found out, having quickly shed our high heels." – Arianna Huffington – who else? – HuffPost today.

"I still don’t think there’s reason to despair of this country. No matter how many derangements, dysfunctions, driftings there may be … no matter how fragmented the political and social space may be; despite this nihilist hypertrophy of petty antiquarian memory; despite this hyperobesity – increasingly less metaphorical – of the great social bodies that form the invisible edifice of the country; despite the utter misery of the ghettos … I can’t manage to convince myself of the collapse, heralded in Europe, of the American model," – Bernard-Henri Levy, as quoted in the New York Times.

"I believe [Sarah] Silverman is a comedian of amazing structural acrobatics rather than a theoretician of content, a fact easily missed given the associational intensity of the words she uses to fill in those gravity-defying blanks. Her gifts come precisely from her ability to understand the ways in which our motivations get conveyed in tone and facial expression rather than a strict dictionary unspooling of our words. Silverman’s genius is that she creates isometric tension in meaning, where the actual words completely betray her inflection, something akin to making high-pitched "poochy poochy" sounds to get your dog to come close enough to swat it with a rolled magazine." – Terry Sawyer, Pop Matters.

(For an Award Glossary, click here.)