Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Well, the Oscars have been awarded, and you can see the winners here. In this latest news-and-comedy bit from “Real Time,” Bill Maher argues that the Oscars have finally succeeded, through both social pressure, appeals to reason, and changes in Academy rules, in making their awards so diverse that one can no longer argue that Oscars are biased towards white people. The Awards last night make that pretty clear, but dissents are welcome in the comments.
Maher’s point is not just the attainment of equity, but also that historically the Oscars have messed up in who or what gets awards. For example, he lists historical cases in which great films have lost to “much more forgettable, trifling sentimental stuff” (an example he gives: “Citizen Kane” lost to “How Green was my Valley”). He also lists directors who never won a directing Oscar, including Bergman, Fellini, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Terantino, Rob Reiner, and Kurosawa. In his diatribe about “wrong” Oscars, Maher also gives examples of actors who were overlooked in great movies and then awarded a “consolation” Oscar for a forgettable movie (example: Al Pacino). Finally, he singles out aspects of movies that bias choices, like characters with handicaps, actors who gain or lose weight, actors who make themselves ugly, actors who play admirable characters (“Gandhi”), and actors who may die before they get another chance (e.g., John Wayne in “True Grit”).
In the last week I’ve finished watching an excellent movie and reading a mediocre book, both of which were recommended by readers or friends. I rely a lot on such recommendations because, after all, life is short and critics can help guide us through the arts.
The good news is that the movie, “Hamnet,” turned out to be great. I had read the eponymous book by Maggie O’Farrell in 2022 (see my short take here), and was enthralled, saying this:
I loved the book and recommend it highly, just a notch in quality behind All the Light We Cannot See, but I still give it an A. I’m surprised that it hasn’t been made into a movie, for it would lend itself well to drama. I see now that in fact a feature-length movie is in the works, and I hope they get good actors and a great screenwriter.
They did. Now the movie is out, and it’s nearly as good as the book. Since the book is superb, the movie is close to superb. That is, it’s excellent but perhaps not an all-time classic, though it will always be worth watching. Author O’Farrell co-wrote the screenplay with director Chloé Zhao, guaranteeing that the movie wouldn’t stray too far from the book. As you may remember, the book centers on Agnes, another name for Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway, a woman who is somewhat of a seer (the book has a bit of magical realism). And the story covers the period from the meeting of Shakespeare and Agnes until Shakespeare writes and performs “Hamlet,” a play that O’Farrell sees as based on the death from plague of their only son Hamnet (another name for Hamlet; apparently names were variable in England). I won’t give away the plot of the book or movie, which are the same, save to say that the movie differs in having a bit less magic and a little more of Shakespeare’s presence. (He hardly shows up in the book.)
The movie suffers a bit from overemotionality; in fact, there’s basically no time in the movie when someone is not suffering or in a state of high anxiety. But that is a quibble. The performances, with Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as Shakespeare, are terrific. Buckley’s is, in fact, Oscar-worthy, and I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t win a Best Actress Oscar this year. The last ten minutes of the movie focuses on her face as she watches the first performance of “Hamlet” in London’s Globe theater, and the gamut of emotions she expresses just from a close shot of her face is a story in itself. Go see this movie (bring some Kleenex for the end), but also read the book. Here’s the trailer:
On to the book. Well, it was tedious and boring, though as I recall Mother Mary Comes to Me,by Indian author Arundhati Roy, was highly praised. Roy’s first novel, The God of Small Things, won the Booker Prize and I loved it; her second, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, was not as good. I read Mother Mary simply because I liked her first book and try to read all highly-touted fiction from India, as I’ve been there many times, I love to read about the country, and Indian novelists are often very good.
Sadly, Mother Mary was disappointing. There’s no doubt that Roy had a tumultuous and diverse live, and the autobiography centers around her relationship with her mother (Mary, of course), a teacher in the Indian state of Kerala. The two have a tumultuous connection that, no matter how many times Roy flees from Kerala, is always on her mind. It persists during Roy’s tenure in architectural school, her marriage to a rich man (they had no children), and her later discovery of writing as well as her entry into Indian politics, including a time spent with Marxist guerrillas and campaigning for peaceful treatment of Kashmiris.
The book failed to engage me for two reasons. First, Mother Mary was a horrible person, capable of being lovable to her schoolchildren at one second and a horrible, nasty witch at the next. She was never nice to her daughter, and the book failed to explain (to me, at least) why the daughter loved such a hateful mother. There’s plenty of introspection, but nothing convincing. Since the central message of the novel seems to be this abiding mother/daughter relationship, I was left cold.
Further, there’s a lot of moralizing and proselytizing, which is simply tedious. Although Roy avows herself as self-effacting, she comes off as a hidebound and rather pompous moralist, something that takes the sheen off a fascinating life. Granted, there are good bits, but overall the writing is bland. I would not recommend this book.
Two thumbs down for this one:
Of course I write these small reviews to encourage readers to tell us what books and/or movies they’ve encountered lately, and whether or not they liked them. I get a lot of good recommendations from these posts; in fact, it was from a reader that I found out about Hamnet.
Robert Redford is one of those people who seem immortal, or at least had the charisma to startle you when he dies. And he just did die. He wasn’t young—89 years old. Still, I considered him the handsomest movie star ever, and I’ve said that if I could switch place with any man, it would be Redford (Paul Newman would be a close second). Here’s the announcement from the Washington Post (click to read h/t Matthew):
An excerpt:
Robert Redford, an actor whose beach-god looks and subtle magnetism in films such as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men” made him one of the biggest movie stars of all time, but who forged an even more profound legacy in cinema as a patron saint of American independent film, died Sept. 16 at his home near Provo, Utah. He was 89.
His death was announced in a statement by publicist Cindi Berger, who did not cite a cause.
Since 1981, Mr. Redford had been president and founder of the Sundance Institute in Park City, Utah. He said his arts colony was not about “insurgents coming down from the mountain to attack the mainstream” but about broadening the very concept of mainstream. Sundance provided a vital platform for two generations of outside-the-system filmmakers — from Quentin Tarantino to Ava DuVernay — who were embraced by ticketbuyers and studios and helped enlarge the definition of commercial fare in a risk-averse industry.
My two favorite movies of his are Out of Africa, starring Meryl Streep as Karen Blixen, and The Way We Were, costarring Barbra Streisand (both women are my eternal heartthrobs). Here are two scenes from the first movie and one from the second. movie. In the first bit, Redford, who plays Denys Finch Hatton, a big-game guide and Blixen’s lover, encounters Blixen’s husband.
Below is the final scene from the movie, in which Blixen leaves Africa. It features Finch-Hatton’s funeral after he died in a plane crash, as well as Blixen’s farewell to her favorite helper, and, most moving, a report of lions resting on Finch-Hatton’s grave. All the words are genuine, taken from Blixen’s book Out of Africa. The prose is stunningly beautiful, and I can’t hold back tears at the lion bit. But they truncated the words a bit. The real excerpt from the book is better, as it has a final paragraph:
After I had left Africa, Gustav Mohr wrote to me of a strange thing that had happened by Denys’ grave, the like of which I have never heard. “The Masai,” he wrote, “have reported to the District Commissioner at Ngong, that many times, at sunrise and sunset, they have seen lions on Finch-Hatton’s grave in the Hills. A lion and a lioness have come there, and stood, or lain, on the grave for a long time. Some of the Indians who have passed the place in their lorries on the way to Kajado have also seen them. After you went away, the ground round the grave was levelled out, into a sort of big terrace, I suppose that the level place makes a good site for the lions, from there they can have a view over the plain, and the cattle and game on it.”
It was fit and decorous that the lions should come to Denys’s grave and make him an African monument. “And renowned be thy grave.” Lord Nelson himself, I have reflected, in Trafalgar Square, has his lions made only out of stone.
Redford is not in this clip, but his presence is palpable:
. . . and the heartbreaking farewell scene from “The Way We Were,” after the pair, having broken up years ago, meet by accident and have a bittersweet final farewell:
Reader Enrico sent me a link to this video called “Blind Spot“, a 2024 movie that’s 95 minutes long. The topic is antisemitism on American college campuses.
The YouTube notes:
“Blind Spot” is the only current film focused exclusively on campus antisemitism. Featuring never-before-seen interviews with students before and after October 7th, along with testimony before Congress and insights from officials, journalists, and university staff, it reveals how antisemitism on campus didn’t appear overnight—and what can be done about it. Described as “like nothing I’ve ever seen” and “a fire alarm ringing,” the film highlights the resilience of Jewish students and the urgent need for change.
It begins with the infamous conflict between Rep. Elise Stefanik and the Presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT. The Presidents’ answers about the rules were correct, but the Presidents of Penn and Harvard later resigned, largely because of the hypocrisy of their answers: free speech is indeed within the colleges’ ambit, but they enforced it erratically and hypocritically.
The rest of the video consists of short interviews and statements and scenes of anti-Israel demonstrations from many schools, including the University of Chicago. As we already know, anti-Semitism is pervasive at many of these schools. What impresses me is the resilience and determination of the Jewish students. Compared to the angry, shouty, ace-covered advocates of Palestine, they seem eminently rational. I found it both depressing and heartening.
This film was made last year, but I can’t say things have gotten palpably better in the last year. As Hamas continues to lose in Gaza, the intensity of Jew hatred has only grown.
BTW, my Belgian colleague Maarten Boudry, a philosopher with whom I’ve published (and an atheist), just published an article in Quillette detailing his impressions of his first trip to Israel.
There’s a new series of short films about evolution, all of them part of a larger project, “The closer you look, the more you see.” I’m boosting it because it not only involves work at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), where I got my Ph.D., but also stars my friend Andrew Berry, who’s a great presenter. And, of course, it’ll teach you about the evidence for evolution.
Here are the details from the site:
Evolution is the most powerful, revealing, transformative, inevitable truth that humans have ever discovered. Andrew Berry, Lecturer in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, takes you behind the scenes to explore groundbreaking research in evolutionary biology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, a renowned research center not open to the public. Harvard scientists reveal the inner workings of the evolutionary process and ponder challenging questions about who we are and where we came from. The film demonstrates the rewards of patient, rigorous, detailed observation. The closer you look, the more you see.
The film’s twelve captivating episodes give a clear understanding of how evolution works and why we know it’s true.
It’s free, and the episodes (on Vimeo) range from 3 to 17 minutes long, most running around 6 minutes. (Click on the screenshot below to go to them.) That means you can pick one or two per day, and get an education in evolution in a week or less. There are some very cool things shown, including butterflies collected by Vladimir Nabokov, who worked at the MCZ.
But start at the beginning with episode 1, “Taxonomy”.
The main news is that Israel invaded Lebanon after a few preliminary forays, but for a day or two we’ll have lighter stuff. That includes this contest submitted by mirandaga. His challenge is indented:
Here’s a little game you might share with the troops to lighten things up a bit. Think of a movie actor and movie character that are so inseparably linked that you can’t imagine anyone else playing that role. Here are five that come to mind (I can’t think of any female actors/roles, but perhaps others can):
Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in “Gone with the Wind”
Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in “To Kill A Mockingbird”
Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs”
Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey in “It’s A Wonderful Life”
Gary Cooper as Will Kane in “High Noon”
Dan Akroyd and John Belushi in “Blues Brothers” (And yes, my age is showing.)
I’ll add these as my own choices. I’ll show a scene from each:
Marlon Brando in “The Godfather” series. The opening scene:
Sean Connery as James Bond (none of the other six actors who played Bond held a candle to him; they hadn’t the suavité).
Jack Nicholson in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I can’t imagine another actor doing that part.
Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca”. No comment needed.
Woody Allen in “Annie Hall” (I love this scene!)
James Cagney in “Yankee Doodle Dandy” (when I was a kid I used to watch this every Fourth of July, and this was my favorite scene). Cagney was a great dancer. Sadly, it’s no longer shown:
Another great scene from that movie: Cagney dances down the White House stairs after getting a medal from Franklin Roosevelt and then joins a war parade playing a song he wrote: “Over There”.
George C. Scott in “Patton”. Who can forget this scene?:
This article just appeared in Spiked (click headline below to read), but you can see a similar piece in the Times of Israel. The upshot is that the BBC, which has long bridled at using the word “terrorists” for Hamas, is now bridling again when the Beeb itself shows a documentary about the Nova Music Festival. I haven’t seen the film yet (it’s has the great title “We Will Dance Again”), but the trailer is below. And, of course, the Nova festival is where the butchery of October 7 began. Yes, the butchery was largely by Hamas, and Hamas are, for anyone with two neurons to rub together, TERRORISTS. But not to the Beeb, so the word “terrorist” has been expunged from the film.
It’s not clear whether that bowdlerization was at the request of the BBC, or whether the filmmakers were just cowed by the BBC’s long-standing refusal to apply the “t-word” to Hamas, but either way it’s a blot on the BBC, though the network at least partly redeems itself by showing the film. But really, a film on terrorism that won’t use the “t-word”???
I’ll give excerpts from the Spiked piece below.
An excerpt:
The BBC has reached a new low. It has tumbled further down the well of moral relativism. This week, it will broadcast a new documentary about Hamas’s massacre at the Nova music festival on 7 October last year. But according to the doc’s director, the version the Beeb is showing ‘won’t describe Hamas as terrorists’. If this is true, if the BBC can’t even park its weird aversion to calling Hamas terrorists when it is airing a film about Hamas’s butchery of the young at a festival in the desert, then that shames Britain.
We Will Dance Again tells the story of what the pogromists of Hamas did when they happened upon the Nova festival in the Negev desert during their invasion of Israel on 7 October 2023. Combining harrowing testimony from survivors with graphic footage of Hamas’s barbarism, it paints a grim picture of arguably the worst event of the pogrom: 364 people were slaughtered at Nova. Yet according to the director, Yariv Mozer, one thing will be missing from the version us Brits will see: the T-word.
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter on ‘what they kept’ and ‘what they cut’ from their disturbing film, Mozer says ‘the version [the BBC will] air won’t describe Hamas as terrorists’. Hinting at his irritation at this alleged omission, Mozer says ‘it was a price I was willing to pay so that the British public will be able to see these atrocities’. Then Brits can decide for themselves, he says, ‘if this is a terrorist organisation or not’. Some of us have already decided, of course. The BBC might be reluctant to call the mass murderers of Jews ‘terrorists’, but others are more than happy to do so.
It is not clear from the interview with Mozer if the BBC explicitly instructed him to take out the word terrorist, or if Mozer and his team pre-empted the Beeb’s odd concern about that word and decided to take it out themselves for an easier life. The Jerusalem Postassumes it’s the former: the BBC ‘told director’ to ‘not describe Hamas as “terrorists”’, it says. Yet even if it’s the latter, even if there are tellers of Israelis’ stories out there who get the vibe that you shouldn’t call Hamas ‘terrorists’ if you want to appear on the BBC, then that’s still epically embarrassing for Britain.
If this was self-censorship, it’s understandable. After all, for the past year, ever since Hamas visited its racist terror on Israel, the BBC has been pathologically resistant to calling Hamas ‘terrorists’. Even though that’s what they are. There was a storm in the aftermath of the pogrom over the BBC’s linguistic cowardice. Just four days after the pogrom, Beeb big gun John Simpson offered a thin explanation for the corporation’s dodging of the T-word. ‘We don’t take sides’, he said. ‘We don’t use loaded words like “evil” or “cowardly”. We don’t talk about “terrorists”.’
And yet O’Neill points out how the BBC has no hesitancy about applying the term “terrorist” to “far-right terrorists”! It’s only when the terrorists kill Jews that the Beeb pulls back. (“Terrorism” is commonly used to refer to illegal and deliberate killing or intimidation of civilians in pursuit of political aims, so of course Hamas is a terrorist organization and the Nova festival is an example of terrorism.)
The Time of Israel is a little bit more forthcoming, as its article is called “BBC airs Nova massacre film after insisting references to Hamas as terrorists removed”, and also says this:
“We Will Dance Again,” a full-length documentary film about the Hamas massacre of over 360 people at the Supernova music festival during the terror group’s October 7, 2023 assault on southern Israel last year, aired on Britain’s BBC2 on Thursday evening, though only after filmmakers agreed not to refer to Hamas as terrorists.
The word “insisting”, as well as the notion that there was an “agreement”, both imply that the BBC demanded that the word not be used. Well, it doesn’t matter: what matters is the BBC’s craven historical reluctance to use the word “terrorist” to refer to Hamas. Of that O’Neill says this:
One year after 364 young Jews were murdered by anti-Semitic terrorists – yes, terrorists – Britain’s public broadcaster won’t call their killers by their proper name. You couldn’t ask for better proof of how Israelophobia rots the brain and warps the soul.
Does anyone doubt that the BBC has an anti-Semitic slant?
Well, the ToI says a bit about the movie:
Mozer, Zirinsky and others have stressed that the film is apolitical. An opening title of the film notes, “The human cost of the Hamas massacre in Israel and the war that followed in Gaza has been catastrophic for both Israelis and Palestinians,” adding: “This film cannot tell everyone’s story.”
Nevertheless, similar efforts to tell the story of the attack on the Nova festival have been protested against, including a New York exhibit of personal artifacts from the festival that drew expressions of open support for Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as chants endorsing the attack.
Here is the trailer (there’s also a 32-minute video that includes interviews with the director and producers).
