Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 874

Katie Couric Wants to Conquer the Internet

After spending nearly two decades on television, entering your home on broadcast news, Katie Couric is planning to depart for the Internet. AllThingsD reports Katie Couric officially has a new job, and a new show with Yahoo!, where she'll abandon the world of network television for a digital frontier. The deal will likely be announced on Monday

On Friday, The Hollywood Reporter said Couric was negotiating an exit package with ABC News that would end her deal, which included a wide-range of roles for Couric and a boatload of cash, after slightly less than three years. Previously Couric, one of the most charming, recognizable faces in news, did time with NBC and CBS too. At Yahoo! she'll be the "global news anchor," whatever that means, with a regular talk show that will only be found on the Yahoo! front page. The New York Times ' Bill Carter says it's an "as-yet-undefined" role. Couric's title sounds as bloated and meaningless as whatever Alicia Keys did for Blackberry. 

The New York Daily News points out Couric already has a side deal with Yahoo! to air clips from Katie, her almost-certainly doomed daytime talk show concluding its second season soon, on the site. ABC executives will evaluate the show in December and decide whether it's worth continuing. If Katie does get cancelled, Couric for the first time will have no role on television. She'll be exclusively available online. 

The move is a bold one for Couric. She's been a stalwart on the broadcast news scene for over 20 years. Seeing her decamp for the Internet, where advertisers fight for attention from younger users, is a little surprising. Internet TV isn't exactly a tried and true medium, and Couric's name doesn't carry any digital weight. But Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer successfully convinced the veteran broadcaster the show can work with the company's expanding digital efforts. We'll see how it goes.

       

Students Running Pro-Soup Platform Win Harvard Class Election

AP

If you needed more convincing that young people are either, depending on your outlook, awesome or completely useless and shouldn't have the right to vote, look no further than Harvard's most recent undergraduate election. The winning ticket pledged to resign immediately after learning they won. The school must now organize another election before students go home for the holidays.

The Harvard Crimson reports the most recent undergraduate election was won by two kids promising thicker toilet paper and more frequent servings of their favorite soup at school cafeterias. Samuel Clark and Gus Mayopoulos, president-elect and vice-president-elect respectively, earned 155 more votes than the next pair option. Their campaign platforms had some noticeable, significant differences: 

Throughout the campaign, Clark and Mayopoulos ran on a platform focused on making tomato basil ravioli soup available at all meals and increasing the thickness of toilet paper, emphasizing that their lack of experience on the UC made them more qualified for the positions.

Conversely, [the losing tickets] have all spent time on the Council, with both tickets claiming to have the most experience.

“It saddens me to see that despite endorsements of so many student organizations and student leaders, students decided to vote for a ticket touting soup and toilet paper, when Sietse and I were trying to address student needs,”  C.C. Gong, the runner-up, told the Crimson after the results were announced. 

What Clark and Mayopoulos had over the other campaigns was high engagement. In a low engagement world. That was enough to set them apart from the pack, hilarious platform and all. Their Facebook group had more activity than the other campaigns put together. Meanwhile, the election has a low turnout — only 47 percent of the student body participated. Clark and Mayopoulos even had rivals gushing over their strategy before students went to the polls:  “They’re a meta-satire, which is the coolest thing. It’s the most hilarious joke. I am a huge fan. I am not voting for them, but I think they’re awesome,” Stephen Turban, Gong's campaign managers, told the Crimson earlier this week. 

Their victory inspired op-eds in the student paper calling the election a referendum on the people who normally run for student government — straight-laced overachievers looking to pad a resume. They need to take this as a sign: "All we really want is more soup," as John Koscis so accurately put it. 

Unfortunately, Clark and Mayopoulos won't follow through on their promises. The two promised to resign as soon as the rules allow it. That makes them no different from any elected official, really, but at least they admit their campaign was a joke. 

       

What the (Possibly Very Close) Nuclear Deal with Iran Looks Like

AP

Nuclear negotiations in Geneva between major world powers and Iran picked up again Saturday morning, with all signs pointing towards a deal that would limit Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanction relief that's close to completion.

The P5+1 countries — China, Russia, France, U.K., U.S. and Germany — reconvened early Saturday morning to continue working on a deal.  Deputies and staffers have handled negotiations over the last few days. But Saturday morning, Secretary of State John Kerry, on his second Geneva visit in two weeks, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and the other top diplomats joined the fray . Many see Kerry and Lavrov's attendance as a likely sign a deal is near completion, if not imminent. 

"We are not here because things are necessarily finished," British foreign minister William Hague told reporters. "There is a huge amount of agreement...(But) the remaining gaps are important and we will be turning our attention to those over coming hours. They remain very difficult negotiations."

We already know the deal to come out of Geneva will be a short-term commitment, designed to appease both sides enough to facilitate an opportunity for a larger, expanded deal down the road. Iran seemingly wants this deal to happen. After making a deal with U.N. nuclear inspectors for increased access to (some) of the country's nuclear facilities, the country also removed an anti-American billboard campaign in Tehran. Small steps  designed to show the west it's ready to make a deal. According to this report in The New York Times, Iran is being asked to: 

Cap uranium enrichment at 3.5 percent enrichment and dilute or eliminate its existing stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium.  Delay construction on the Arak heavy-water reactor, which could potentially produce plutonium when finished, for six months.  Hold off installation of advanced centrifuges that could, in theory, expedite the construction of a nuclear weapon. 

In exchange for those nuclear rollbacks, The New York Times separately reports Iran will gain access to a frozen $3.6 billion in oil revenue currently held in foreign banks. Additionally, some relief from crippling sanctions that will boost the Iranian economy: 

The other calculation is that if Tehran is allowed to sell some petrochemicals, its second-largest export at roughly $11 billion last year, and to build autos from kits brought into the country, the Iranian economy will begin to create new jobs.

Iran will gain roughly $10 billion in economic stimulus if this deal is agreed upon. Nothing is set in stone yet, and all points are fluid. But many think they're close and that this is the skeleton of a deal that could actually be signed by all countries. Not everyone will be happy with the results. Israel, for instance, opposes any deal that allows Iran to continue enriching uranium. But the major powers are pushing for this piece meal deal with the intent of negotiating larger rollbacks to Iran's nuclear program further down the road. Something even Israel would think is a good idea. 

       

Of Course Selfies Are Narcissistic. So What?

A new phenomenon? An unidentified woman takes an early selfie circa 1900, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Oxford Dictionaries' recent crowning of "Selfie" as word of the year has thrust the Instagrammatic art form into the spotlight, sparking feverish debates about the limits of online narcissism and millennial shallowness. But the critiques are misplaced; selfies are only the latest trendy medium for a brand of self-absorption that's flourished well past our grandparents' generation. Today, Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig came to the form's defense. "When I'm on Instagram and I see that somebody took a picture of themselves, I'm like, 'Thank you,'" he told Rolling Stone, inviting "everybody" to take selfies at his funeral. "I don't need to see a picture of the sky, the trees, plants. There's only one you."

Koenig's right. Sure, selfies are narcissistic. But so what? They're plenty more interesting than the billionth sepia-toned sunset, and any self-depiction—online or otherwise—can be harrumphed about in the same crude terms. Millennials, despite their hysterical media depiction, didn't invent narcissism—they've just been given increasingly public channels for it. As Nathan Jurgenson incisively points out in a recent New Inquiry piece, "identity theater is older than Zuckerberg," and the very sort of narcissism that feeds selfies has similarly been thriving well before the Internet.

AP

The form, really, isn't so new. Selfies have been around long before Instagram—and well before 2002, which Oxford reports as the word's birthdate. Here, for instance, is a magnificent five-person selfie that was taken in 1920. Up above, via Wikipedia, is a mirror selfie, taken by an Edwardian woman more than a century ago. Surely the general public would have latched onto the form had the technology been there for it. And what about painted self-portraits (at right, Van Gogh's), which came to prominence in the mid-15th century—is it not self-absorbed enough to spend weeks or months perfecting an image of oneself? Bookstores, too, have an entire section for narcissism—the biography, or "literary selfie," as it might as well be renamed to generate tween interest.

As Koenig points out, old people are no less self-absorbed: "I've been in nursing homes, where my grandma is. I've seen some of the most selfish people on the planet in there." Baby boomers, meanwhile, have been bemoaning the apex of youth narcissism the same week they're breathlessly recounting where they were when they learned JFK was assassinated—in other words, reframing a far grander historical event to talk about their own lives. And good for them; history-themed selfies are great, too. I took plenty when I traveled the country visiting presidential sites for a research project, occasionally snapping pictures of myself in front of Calvin Coolidge's birth site or Jefferson's Monticello.

And who doesn't want to be part of a historical moment, even if there's a gratuitous dose of self-obsession involved? Four or five decades from now, I won't have a particularly interesting story about the time I voted for the country's first black president mere weeks after my 18th birthday. But I'll have a selfie, taken in front of a mirror in my parents' house that day in 2008, featuring an "I Voted" sticker.

       

How Far Does Michelle Obama Have to Lean In to Be a Feminist?

Associated Press

Apparently Michelle Obama, an Ivy League-educated lawyer, mother of two, and America's only black first lady, is a "feminist nightmare." So says Michelle Cottle, in a Politico magazine piece that seems to deem anything short of "Angry Black Woman" Michelle as a catastrophic setback to Gloria Steinem's good work. Cottle manages to downplay the race lines Obama toes while also creating a stricter feminist standard for her than for (mainly white) women who "lean in" like Hillary Clinton and Sheryl Sandberg.

Last week Obama became the ambassador to the "North Star" program that will hopefully increase the percentage of Americans going to college, focusing especially on lower-income communities. "Here, finally, was an issue worthy of the Ivy-educated, blue-chip law firm-trained first lady, a departure from the safely, soothingly domestic causes she had previously embraced," Cottle writes. "Gardening? Tending wounded soldiers? Reading to children?" Linda Hirshman, the feminist author, guffaws to Cottle that Obama "essentially became the English lady of the manor, Tory Party, circa 1830s,” she said.  

Cottle, and the FLOTUS-detracting feminists she interviews, have three complaints. First that Michelle has always been too traditional. As Cottle wrote way back in 2008 for The New Republic, Michelle is familiar because she knows how to relate to housewives. She made jokes about her husband and got a baby sitter when he couldn't help her out around the house. Cottle called her a traditionalist wrapped in the modern exterior, which was good for Barack's campaign, but meant she wasn't "a mold-shattering new breed of First Lady, or even the fierce symbol of feminism that was Hillary Rodham Clinton circa 1992."

Second, Michelle isn't making a difference. Feminists hoped she would "at least lean in and speak out on a variety of tough issues," but she hasn't given a major speech on abortion just yet. "As President Obama claws his way through a second term, the sense of urgency for his well-educated wife to do more — to make a difference — may well be mounting. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen," Cottle writes. As the saying goes, kids are not our future. The last complaint is that Michelle is too busy playing mom. Cottle described a recent appearance by the first lady with this: "There was the first lady in full mom mode, lecturing students about nothing more politically controversial than the need to do their homework." Encouraging kids to go to school isn't controversial, so it's not worth the time of a true feminist. If she'd drafted a law demanding that kids do their homework, however, that might be a different story.  

The New Yorker. 

Of course, it's not until the 18th paragraph that Cottle acknowledges that the image of a militant first lady might be represent an obstacle to reaching a post-racial, post-gender-roles utopia. Then she calls on Hirshman, who is white, to completely invalidate that. Hirschman argues that Michelle managed to “stay out of the range of fire for six years” (ha ha ha)  even though she was standing at the "intersection of race and gender," representing "both of the scariest threats to the straight white male establishment in one person." But then she says, "The way she did that was to give, for all intents and purposes, an almost music-hall-level imitation of a warm-and-fuzzy, unthreatening, bucolic female from some imaginary era from the past.”

What does it mean to be a good feminist first lady? It's a difficult job, as first ladies have a lot of fame and very little power. There haven't been many feminist first ladies — perhaps Hillary Clinton was the only one, but it's worth noting that she has that reputation largely despite what she did as first lady: Clinton wrote a book called It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us, as well as Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets. And that Clinton's signature policy initiative back then was Hillarycare, which failed rather spectacularly. Just saying.

So Obama actually has very few role models for turning a feminist cause into a first lady success. Obama's girly causes like childhood obesity and gardening might seem trivial on the surface. But Cottle and all the disappointed feminists — including one who argued that Michelle should work on issues that "disproportionately impact the black community, such as AIDS and out-of-wedlock births" — ignore the fact that childhood obesity disproportionately affects minority children. They also seem to be unaware of and/or unimpressed by the fact that poor, often minority-heavy neighborhoods have less access to healthy produce. But more than that, they seem to act as if Michelle and Barack run a dictatorship, as if their endorsement of a program that helps low income families and minorities will wish a bill into law, instead of being perceived by detractors as government handouts to welfare queens. Controversy has been unavoidable — little Malia wore her hair in twists and the racists of the internet reared their ugly heads of straight hair.

But Michelle's efforts haven't been good enough and are easily forgotten by real feminists. When Cottle argues that Michelle "is not going to let loose suddenly with some straight talk about abortion rights or Obamacare or the Common Core curriculum debate," she's probably ignoring the first lady's Yahoo Shine article encouraging mothers to embrace the Affordable Care Act. Yes, Yahoo Shine is a little girly, but if it's good enough for Marissa Meyer then why not Michelle? Because she called herself the "mom-in-chief" and meant it, that's why.

"So enough already with the pining for a Michelle Obama who simply doesn’t exist," Cottle argues. "The woman is not going to morph into an edgier, more activist first lady. The 2012 election did not set her free." Which is kind of the exact opposite of what Cottle said in June in a piece for The Daily Beast: 

And as we noted earlier this year, Obama spoke at Harper High School, a predominantly black school in Chicago that made headlines after a This American Life story highlighted the toll gun violence has taken at the school. She talked to them about completing their educations. The speech, plus her "teary plea," doesn't seem like something an English lady of the manor would commit to. Obama used her position as someone who grew up in Chicago and went on to go to college to influence kids, while drawing more attention to a gun control effort that eventually failed in Congress.

So if being a feminist first lady is not about policy, maybe it's about style. That would be fitting, given the job's limitations. Hillary Clinton infamously said in 1992, "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas." If feminism at it's most basic core is the idea that men and women should be treated equally, then can real feminists criticize a woman for calling herself mom-in-chief? Or for choosing causes over policy (while also belittling and ignoring her achievements)?

Mikki Kendall, the writer who brought feminism's marginalization of minorities to the forefront with the #solidarityisforwhitewomen Twitter hashtag, argues that Cottle's piece, and the MObama dissenters, aren't feminist at all. The solidarity hashtag was a chance for feminists of color to air the grievances with mainstream feminism, which tends to favor the needs of middle class, white feminists. In this case, solidarity is only for political women who talk about abortion, who don't waste their time with silly chores like childhood obesity, or ignore the political ramifications of being tough, black and female:

I know this is a hard concept for some folks, but black mothers love their children. So @FLOTUS is taking care of her kids? Good.

— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) November 22, 2013

It's not feminist to attack black mothers for being active parents, it's not feminist to demand that @FLOTUS make a choice that hurts her

— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) November 22, 2013

It's not feminist to demand that @FLOTUS sacrifice her family to appease the egos of people who can't handle motherhood as a choice.

— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) November 22, 2013

Maybe the feminist nightmare isn't Michelle Obama, who is happy with her role as a mother and her work helping young people. Maybe it's the fact that, even now in 2013, feminists and "feminists" think it's okay to penalize her for that. Maybe it's the fact that feminism, which should really only be about "The Patriarchy" versus "Everything Else," tends to define its battle lines much less broadly. 

       

Insurers in Florida, Texas and Ohio Can Now Enroll People Directly

Florida Blue

The Obama administration announced on Friday a new pilot program launching in Florida, Ohio and Texas that will allow insurers to enroll shoppers into Affordable Care Act plans directly. Insurers have been calling for this for a while, but this might not be the fix they're looking for: applications will still be routed through Healthcare.gov to check for eligibility and sent through the system's Data Services Hub to check for subsidy eligibility. 

Earlier this month, White House officials acknowledged that there were plans to work with insurers to create additional avenues for enrollment, though they weren't willing to let insurers handle private tax information. In today's blog post, however, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokeswoman Julia Bataille wrote that direct enrollment has always been an option, but the website sucked too much. Now it sucks less:

The option of direct enrollment has been there from the start, and although some issuers have already begun using this option, it has been limited by recent problems with the website.  However, we recently announced that we have put in place fixes for more than two-thirds of the high priority bugs related to the website.

The real hurdle here — besides increasing enrollment in three states with governments that vehemently opposed Obamacare — might be convincing conservatives that this fix is legal. As a few lawsuits have pointed out, the Affordable Care Act allows subsidies to be given to people who apply through exchanges set up by the state. Obviously the government didn't intend for most of the country to not be eligible for subsidies, but a DC judge recently refused to dismiss the case. And now, even though applications will be routed through the federal exchange, dissenters are calling foul again:

Reminder: You can’t get subsidies if you enroll outside an exchange http://t.co/mVxnaWZhBt

— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) November 22, 2013

And the law says? RT @philipaklein: HHS announces a direct enrollment pilot program in Florida, Texas, and Ohio http://t.co/IwihN4ljV4

— رسان (@cbrecluse) November 22, 2013

Of course, this is possibly the same political demographic that never thought Obamacare was legal in the first place. We're not sure this complaint will gain much traction. 

       

The Pakistani Doctor Who Helped the U.S. Find Bin Laden Is Charged with Murder

Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA track down Osama bin Laden, was charged with murder this week. The charge stems from a 2006 surgery he performed, after which his teenage patient died. The murder charge is in response to accusations from the teenager's mother, Naseeba Gul, who alleges that Afridi was not qualified to perform surgery on her son. The teenager had appendicitis, and died from complications following the operation. She filed the complaint a month ago. Afridi's lawyer told the AP that the case was too old to be tried, and therefore had no legal merit in Pakistan. 

The new set of charges will no doubt do little to ease tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan over the issue of Afridi's freedom. He's already in jail, thanks to a separate May 2012 charge of "conspiring against the state."  That charge doesn't pertain to his role in catching Osama bin Laden. Instead, Afridi is accused of providing medical care and supplies to members of banned militant groups. He's awaiting a retrial, after a judicial officer overturned his initial 33-year sentence. 

The U.S. wants Afridi out of jail, and considers him a hero for running a fake vaccination program in Abbottabad in order to collect DNA samples and confirm the identity of those in bin Laden's compound. Many in Pakistan, however, consider Afridi a traitor, and interpret the May 2011 American mission to kill Osama bin Laden as infuriating and embarrassing for the country. 

       

'Ja'mie' and 'Getting On' Are Sunday Successes

HBO

Before the new year rolls in and Girls returns to get everyone upset about nudity, and Looking horrifies/delights all of gay America, HBO is premiering two new comedies that aren't likely to get much attention. Or as much, at least. Which is a shame! Because both series, Ja'mie: Private School Girl and Getting On , are charming shows well worth a watch. Though, for very different reasons.

Those familiar with Chris Lilley's earlier series Summer Heights High will of course recognize Ja'mie, the vain and hilariously self-serving teenage girl (played by Lilley) who, in Summer Heights High, switched from a posh private school in Sydney to a local public school as some sort of anthropological excuse to brag about the fabulousness of private school. As the title of Lilley's new series would suggest, Ja'mie is now back at the tony Hillford school for girls, reigning as the senior queen bee and chasing a cute rugby player from the boys school down the road. Once again, Lilley nails the cadence and dialect of a certain type of teenage girl, giving Ja'mie just enough truth to keep her mostly out of cartoon territory. The world around Ja'mie is also nicely textured and real-seeming, both adults and actual teenagers all giving performances that hardly seem like acting. Lilley is good at striking the balance between high comedy and naturalism, and at its best moments Ja'mie hums with the same harmony of silliness and believability that was so delightfully present in Summer Heights High.

Ja'mie is still an inferior effort, though. I miss the culture clash between Ja'mie and the public school bogans she so condescendingly despised and dismissed. Now that she's on her own turf, her meanness seems less a terrible allergic reaction to a culture not her own and more like downright villainy. Lilley takes Ja'mie's awfulness a bit too far here, especially in interactions with her mother. I just don't believe, no matter how spoiled she may be, that Ja'mie's cruelty toward this poor lady would be tolerated the way that it is. It also helped that SHH had two other main characters balancing out the tone. At a point, spending all of our time with Ja'mie gets to be a bit much. Lilley's teen satire is still wonderfully sharp and observant, but with so much new space to fill, he tends to stray into exaggeration at times. Still, Private School Girl is a breezily entertaining, decidedly oddball (the sight of Lilley, a nearly 40-year-old man, playing a teenage girl flirting with a teenage boy is so peculiar that it's both hysterical and disturbing) lark. 

Coming in at a much quieter frequency is Getting On, a new comedy set in an extended care facility in Los Angeles, specifically the elderly women's floor. The series stars TV comedy vets Niecy Nash and Alex Borstein as nurses and Laurie Metcalf as the reluctant medical director of the floor. The series, based on a British sitcom of the same name, traffics in a soft-spoken kind of comedy that I'm tempted to call "gentle," but that would belie the series's finely honed edge. The comedy, while played at a low pitch, can nonetheless be pretty blue — in the second episode, the delightful June Squibb says just about every non-PC thing a person can say, but the show gets away with it because it's operating so smartly and subtly with both head and heart, even when things get a bit raunchy. There's a current of sensitivity running through Getting On (and a wistfulness -- we are dealing with ailing old people here, after all) that's remarkably appealing. 

The writing is terrific (the series was adapted for U.S. television by writing partners/husbands Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer, taking a big left turn from Big Love here) and the performances are, across the board, marvelous. Nash, whose character is new to the job, exudes good-natured decency; she's a wry observer of the dumb stuff happening around her but is never cruel, or all that judgmental, even. Metcalf is, well, Laurie Metcalf. Playing a tightly wound, ambitious but thwarted doctor seemingly holding onto her sanity by only a few threads, Metcalf is a wonder of pained expressions and loaded delivery. And she's pretty convincing as a doctor! Her curt, efficient bedside manner looks and sounds just right. The real surprise here, for me anyway, is Borstein, the MadTV and Family Guy staple who turns in a deeply shaded, thoroughly human performance as a nurse who's fallen on hard emotional times. She's the "saddest" character on the show in the way that sad women are often played for comedy, but in Borstein's hands, she's entirely credible, and thus sympathetic. All three actresses do deft and delicate work together, creating an easy flow that gives Getting On the same lived-in feel as the British The Office had in its best episodes.

I'd urge you to watch both series when they premiere on Sunday night, but if you can only watch one, I think you should go with Getting On. Coming in just under the wire, it's one of my favorite shows this year. 

       

A Viewer’s Guide to Weekend Movies: 'Philomena,' 'Fast 6,' and a Small Film About Hunger Games

The Weinstein Company

With the weekend upon us, the temptation is there to be responsible. Thanksgiving is but a scant few days away. Turkeys need to be bought and brined. Guest rooms must be prepared for returning loved ones and other tolerated familials. The place-settings, my God, the place-settings! You haven't even thought about those yet, have you? But it's time to forget all that, because there are just far too many movies to be seen instead. Holiday weekends almost always mean an uptick in the cinematic options at your disposal, and Thanksgiving is certainly no exception. Accept this guidance, then, and allow us to guide you through the weekend's options.

  In Theaters

Oh, just a little thing called the 75th annual Hunger Games. Director Francis Lawrence steps behind the camera for this second installment, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and the critical consensus is that he delivers a film that's an improvement on the original in every way. "While Catching Fire may be lacking a certain nuance or artistry," says our own Richard Lawson in his review, "it's a competent, thoughtfully constructed film, a nerve-jangling political-ish action picture that also plays like decent science fiction."

Also in theaters this weekend, Vince Vaughn fathered a crap-ton of children via sperm-bankery and now wants to be a father to all of them, in Delivery Man, which writer/director Ken Scott adapted from his own Canadian film Starbuck, even though this film seems like it was thought up one night in Kevin James's furnished garage.

And if you live in an area that doesn't get the good limited-release movies right away, now may be your chance to get a look at Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto and their awards-buzzy performances in Dallas Buyers Club, which is expanding significantly this weekend.

In Limited Release

Dame Judi Dench stars in a film from director Stephen Frears and co-written by (and co-starring) Steve Coogan. That's quite the pedigree, so it's no wonder that The Weinstein Company is grooming Philomena for an awards run as a heartwarming dramady from across the pond. It's opening in New York (at the Paris and Landmark Sunshine Theaters) and Los Angeles (at the Landmark) only this weekend, with an eye towards expanding down the line.

Also opening early this weekend is the Disney holiday offering, Frozen. It's really just a sneak preview, before going wide on Wednesday, for those fortunate enough to live in Los Angeles and pay a premium for a blowout spectacular at the El Capitan theater.  According to Deadline, "Special themed events planned for the exclusive run include ice carving performances and appearances by film characters Anna and Elsa."

Video On Demand

VOD services are positively brimming with new movies this weekend, with lots to recommend. We confess that good word-of-mouth (and great box-office) for We're the Millers (iTunes link) took us by surprise, so if you avoided it because it looked like a dozen other junky comedies, now you have a chance to see if you were misguided in your dismissal.

Meanwhile, this weekend marks the DirecTV premiere of festival hit G.B.F. (DirecTV link), from Jawbreaker director Darren Stein. Like Stein's previous film, G.B.F. looks at the cutthroat world of high-school politics, but this time, it's through the lens of openly (and not so openly) gay students, trying to navigate the waters that manage to remain treacherous even while "acceptance" is on the rise.

Also on the comedic side, Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost are together again with The World's End (iTunes link), a story of pubs and mates and other English terminology that's relatively easy to figure out given context clues. Also Aubrey Plaza tries to lose her v-card before college in The To-Do List (iTunes link).

Finally, and with the strongest recommendation we can muster: see Fast and Furious 6 (iTunes link). Actually, first see Fast Five, if you haven't already. WAIT, actually … okay, this sounds crazy, but see all the Fast & the Furious movies, in order. Yes, even 2 Fast 2 Furious, which is absolutely the worst one and which by all rights should have killed the series. And then see Tokyo Drift, even though it's only marginally interesting, because it introduces Han, and Han is the goddamn best. And then see Fast and Furious, even though it's mostly two great set pieces with a bunch of boring stuff in the middle, because it sets up a major plot point for 6. And THEN watch Fast Five, because it's super fantastic and brings back the best characters (also Tyrese) from all the movies and then adds The Rock, just to put it over the top. And then rent Fast and Furious 6, because it is somehow even better, and it makes you do super crazy things like root for couples in the middle of a car-racing movie.

Streaming Online

Okay, the Netflix recommendations are slightly less rosy this week. Pretty much nobody liked Nicolas Winding-Refn's Only God Forgives, even the folks who liked his stylishly violent and violently stylish Drive. Not even the Ryan Gosling meme-rs could work up much enthusiasm for it. Then there's Bridegroom, which has won a bunch of audience awards at film festivals but which never does quite enough to justify its existence as a documentary, beyond how incredibly sad it is when beautiful young people die of tragic accidents. It's heart-wrenching, and the subjects are very likeable, but it's not quite a movie.

The better bet here is Crystal Fairy, which follows, among other young actors, Michael Cera on a road trip to South America, in order to get high off of a hallucinogenic cactus. Come for the drugs, but definitely stay for the triumphant return of Gaby Hoffman (Sleepless in Seattle; Now and Then), as a free spirit whose punch-line status is systematically shed in some really interesting ways.

Movies on TV

HBO's Saturday night premiere is the monster box-office performer of the first quarter of this year, Identity Thief. If you only see one Melissa McCarthy comedy from 2013 … get your hands on the BluRay for The Heat. That movie is excellent. 

       

Brighten Someone's Christmas with This Ornament George W. Bush Made

George W. Bush is now mixing his two favorite things, painting and capitalism. For only $29.98, you can get a swell Christmas tree ornament depicting a painting he made of a cardinal, a painting Bush hopes "meets [your] expectations."

Here's The Dallas Morning News' Bush Presidential Library The original was painted for a friend of Bush’s, Warren Tichenor, a San Antonio media executive and investor who was an ambassador in the Bush administration. Bush said his wife, Laura, liked the painting’s red and green hues.

He said that in this YouTube video, in fact, titled, "The Artist Behind the 2013 Bush Center Ornament." (Which is Bush!)

I'm flattered, and I hope my painting meets expectations.

You can buy the ornament