“The movie was made with a minimal script; it is a mood piece exploring people, the city, and a concept: a longing for and love of life, existence, reality. Peter Falk wasn’t meant to be a sketch artist until Wenders discovered Falk’s talent. Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander were cast because they were old friends, who had known each other for decades. Solveig Dommartin was Wenders’ actress girlfriend; although the circus part required extensive and risky acrobatics, she was able to learn the trapeze and rope moves in only eight weeks, and did all the work herself, with no stunt doubles and without a net.”
“The demands placed upon publicly held companies — more profits, a higher stock price — cannot easily be reconciled with the demands of quality journalism, which needs more people and higher salaries than a cut-rate alternative. When newspapers faced any kind of challenge, whether from the Internet or higher newsprint costs, the answer has long been to cut costs, which leads inevitably to lower-quality journalism.”
— Bryan Burrough, reviewing James O’Shea’s book excoriating the owners that presided over the decline of American newspapers.
Lee of Overthinking It examines a potential new trend in movies:
The 40 Year Old Virgin and Larry Crowne present non-car personal transportation modes as positive choices in contrast to the dominant cultural attitude that these things are second-rate compared to cars. Outside of movies, challenging that notion is a relatively new phenomenon…. Americans are slow to accept the counter-intuitive truth that they are trapped by their automobiles, the vaunted symbol of American independence and freedom of movement. Rising gas prices have chipped away at this reluctance, but not to the point where adults are commonly presented as choosing bikes, scooters, or public transportation instead of cars in movies and TV.
Somehow I doubt, though, that Larry Crowne will be “a tipping point in our national discourse on cars.”
