Hollywood

Frank Miller has a rant about Occupy Wall Street that’s going around this morning. It’s not a real shock—Miller has been on the side of law and order since The Dark Knight Returns and earlier this year he published a graphic novel, Holy Terror, about the clash of Islam and the West. So he’s been a closet-fascist for a long time.

Did the Obama administration compromise intelligence and sensitive military information by giving a Hollywood director high level access to details of the killing of Osama bin Laden? That’s what Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, wants to investigate.

Like most Americans, I suspect, I have no strong feelings in any direction on the subject of Charlie Sheen. I am neither a fan nor habitual detractor.

On January 18, MTV premiered “Skins,” an egregiously semi-pornographic television show featuring underage kids engaging in drug deals, sex, and sex talk of every sort, while consistently outsmarting their enraged and clueless parents.

Last April, when I was in Sarajevo, the Bosnian metropolis, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt happened to make a quick tour of the country, coming by private plane from Venice, where Jolie was filming The Tourist, a mystery pic with Johnny Depp.

Buzz

Don't miss contributing editor David Gelernter's thoughts on the future of the Internet. A lot is going on in his 35-paragraph essay, but I was struck by this observation in particular:

Nowness is one of the most important cultural phenomena of the modern age: the western world's attention shifted gradually from the deep but narrow domain of one family or village and its history to the (broader but shallower) domains of the larger community, the nation, the world. The cult of celebrity, the importance of opinion polls, the decline in the teaching and learning of history, the uniformity of opinions and attitudes in academia and other educated elites — they are all part of one phenomenon. Nowness ignores all other moments but this. In the ultimate Internet culture, flooded in nowness like a piazza flooded in sea water, drenched in a tropical downpour of nowness, everyone talks alike, dresses alike, thinks alike.

This is exactly how I felt during the hour or so I spent watching the Oscars on Sunday. Hollywood seemed so small. Not geographically or financially. But in terms of cultural hegemony. The only real "star" on the scene -- in the sense that Cary Grant or Bette Davis were "stars" -- was Meryl Streep. And she lost. Of the nominees for Best Picture, Avatar was the only cultural experience in which the entire world participated. It lost, too.

The Young Victoria

Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée

Irving Thalberg