Culture Briefs

Nolan in utero

“You can certainly see the seeds of Christopher Nolan’s later work in his 1998 debut feature ’Following’ … Already in ’Following’ you see Nolan’s affinity for convoluted chronological structure and the final twist, in which all the jigsaw plot pieces snap into place and you finally see the whole picture (along with the main character). You may wonder just how necessary/integral they are, but they help make the film fun to watch, even if they don’t necessarily add up to a whole lot.

“It begins with an interrogation/confession. A young man named Bill (Jeremy Theobald, who brings a halting, naturalistic freshness to his voiceover and dialog) is being questioned by an older man (John Nolan) about his habit of following people just to see what they do and where they go … ’After a while I became hooked,’ he admits. ’I had to start making up rules just to try to keep it under control’ Now we’re really getting into Nolan’s favorite zone: Having characters explain ’rules’ they’ve made for themselves (or he as screenwriter-director has made for them).

“Some are common sense, like don’t follow women down dark alleys late at night. But the one that eventually gets him in trouble is the first one he breaks: Don’t follow the same person twice. ’When it stopped being random,’ he says, ’that’s when it started to go wrong.’”

— Jim Emerson, writing on “Following: Nolan in a nutshell,” on July 22 at his Chicago Sun Times blog Scanners

Good talkers

“Consider conversation. How many times have you been in a restaurant and victimized by the loud guy at the next table dominating the conversation without the benefit of being entertaining? It seems somewhat common that people who are neither alien nor Asperger syndrome types have no conversation skills. Indeed, it appears that many so-called normal people don’t even understand the concept of a conversation.

“A conversation, like dancing, has some rules, although I’ve never seen them stated anywhere. The objective of conversation is to entertain or inform the other person while not using up all of the talking time. A big part of how you entertain another person is by listening and giving your attention. Ideally, your own enjoyment from conversation comes from the other person doing his or her job of being interesting. If you are entertaining yourself at the other person’s expense, you’re doing it wrong.

“You might think that everyone on earth understands what a conversation is and how to engage in one. My observation is that no more than a quarter of the population has that understanding. … Three-quarters of the people reading this post just thought ’Uh-oh. I didn’t know conversation had rules.’”

— Scott Adams, writing on “Conversation,” at his self-titled blog at the Dilbert site

Conventional wisdom

“If you follow the news closely enough, you might have caught a small item recently about Meg Ryan canceling a scheduled appearance at a film festival in Jerusalem to protest Israeli policy. This was significant not because anyone should care what the nose-crinkling movie star thinks about the Mideast but precisely because no one does. Ryan, a conventional Hollywood Democrat, is a barometer of celebrity politics. That sort of sheeplike, liberal opinion once reflexively favored Israel. Now it’s dabbling in the repellant idea of shunning the entire country.

“Support for the Israeli cultural boycott has been growing in surprising places lately. After the Gaza flotilla incident last month, rock bands, including the Pixies, canceled performances at a music festival in Tel Aviv. Elvis Costello announced in May that he was canceling two upcoming performances to protest the treatment of Palestinians.”

— Jacob Weisberg, writing on “Et Tu, Elvis,” on July 23 at Slate