Jim Carrey
Unforgettable
It's often said that smell is the sense most closely tied to memory. This is nonsense. Yes, a scent may on occasion provoke an emphatic, unmediated recollection, but it is typically an imprecise one--a general period in one's life rather than a particular moment. Our specific memories, by contrast, are primarily visual and auditory, not unlike a movie playing in the mind's eye. It's hardly surprising, then, that cinema has often been described as a kind of synthetic memory. As John Malkovich, playing director F.W. READ MORE >>
Along Went Ben
Ben Stiller has the rare distinction of starring in two of the funniest American films of the last decade, the Farrelly brothers' There's Something About Mary and David O. Russell's lesser known Flirting with Disaster. Stiller also has the rather more common distinction of starring in a lot of utter rubbish. It will probably come as no surprise that Along Came Polly, out on video this week, falls into the latter category. READ MORE >>
Sandramandered
Poor Justice O'Connor! For the past three years, she's struggled ineffectually to split the difference between four liberal Justices, who think that the Constitution doesn't prevent the states from drawing voting districts on the basis of race, and four conservative Justices, who think it does. But last week, in striking down majority black congressional districts in Texas and North Carolina, she found an ingenious solution to her dilemma. READ MORE >>
