Pictureland

Love is all around us:  Droid love, Galaxy love, iPhone love; lots and lots of iPhone love.  These relationships have given rise to a particular kind of 21st-century double date you may have observed at coffee shops, bars and restaurants.  On one side of the table, a man, let us say.  Opposite him a woman, or another man.  The two human beings are ostensibly out together.  But really, it's the little screen, the beloved device clutched in the palm of one hand that commands the unwavering gaze and attention of each person.  A man and his phone, a woman and her phone:  Ah, L'amour.... With his latest feature, Her , Spike Jonze brings us another sort of love story between man and machine.  And much as we see early examples of technology - for all its power and ubiquity - mainly highlighting the isolation of the film's main character, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), Her transcends a mere critique of the dubious uses of technology t...

As has become a dubious trend in the past year or so, films use a vintage studio logo (the recent Nebraska ), a period title font, or both ( Argo ), to signify the work as something of substance, timelessness, or at least one belonging to another era.  David O. Russell's American Hustle  also employs a vintage font to spell out its opening titles.  But among the film's late-70's trappings, deep as the deepest shag, American Hustle uses what has become cinema's most blaring indicator of the past:  HAIR.  Hair permed, hair curled, hair affixed... hair that is incontrovertibly bad. We see con man Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) going about his coiffure as American Hustle begins.  Irving has to work harder than most, try as he does to cover the largely bare top of his head.  So he combs up hair from behind, borrows from a side wall, as it were, to help patch the roof.  A small toupee is affixed to the crown of the head and the reserves of n...

David O. Russel's The Fighter answers the opening bell like a boxer whose fight it is to win, but who comes out so pulsating with adrenaline that you're afraid he's going to punch himself out in the early rounds.   Christian Bale's eyes bulge as Dicky Eklund, the troubled, crack-addicted brother of "Irish" Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg).   Melissa Leo struts around manically in high heels, tight clothes, a square helmet of frosted hair, her lower lip pushed up in so resolute a frown that it verges on the comic.  And then there are the sisters.   The seven female siblings of Dicky and Micky are ostensibly seven individuals, each with a nickname more colorful than the last  - Tar, Red Dog and Beaver, to name but a few - but speaking fiercely as one beneath their gravity-defying coifs of Irish fair hair.   They're scary.    With a family and entourage - mom is the manager; Dicky is the trainer whenever he can pry himself away fr...