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Showing posts with the label Paul Giamatti

Giamatti: "The Holdovers"

 "The Holdovers" has some nice moments. A bully steals a younger kid's glove, and throws it in an icy river. An observer points out that it's the irritating uselessness of the one remaining glove that makes this so cruel. That's the art of bullying. A teen goes on a "house tour" with a girl he has just met. The girl leads him to a crafting area, where little kids are making ornaments. (It's a Christmas party.) This invites eye-rolling--but the girl defends her family's tradition, and soon the two teenagers are chatting about Picasso and "Guernica." It's surprising, and it seems true to life. In another scene, a teen gets frustrated about a pinball game. Someone has claimed a spot in line--without doing the work of standing and waiting. The teen is sort of dumb and entitled, and he doesn't recognize that he is in a fight with a Vietnam vet. His discomfort takes the unfortunate form of a bad joke: "We can be a team, I'll ...

Table Manners

How to set the table. Brace yourself. We're not great at this one. Here's what I'll say to you, Joshua. Let's imagine you've been home with your husband for one full month: You're both on paternity leave. Let's say you're both a bit anxious. This means your conversations might begin to resemble the following: DADDY: Do you think it's safe to take a family trip to the beach? PAPA: Do you think the night nurse will murder our baby? In this context, you're maybe going to need an intermission from conversation. So dinner maybe doesn't need to be a Victorian affair, with salad forks and swan-shape napkin-folding. No. Dinner needs to be a hasty moment of carnage, and it needs to occur with the Paul Giamatti soap opera BILLIONS playing in the background. You're sitting on a couch with a paper plate, and maybe--MAYBE--one item of silverware is involved. Or maybe you're using your fingers. Your spouse believes that the dog can be ...