I take your point that some of Moehringer's piece was cheesy. I still thought the entire thing was salutatory for anyone thinking of being a writer, a ghost writer, or even a journalist. He's been all three, and is highly regarded, he's what we ordinary people would call both high achieving and successful. Yet, his failures, humiliations, insecurities, and vanities are shared, and this was the carefully considered, prettied-up version. Being a writer, who would roll those dice, hey?
I thought this warranted being further up in your list.
Lane must have seen a different cut of Air than the rest of us. The film depicts Nike at a time when they were at the bottom of the heap, not a little bit at the bottom, a lot of bottom. His implication that Nike was a 'rise and rise' story is dumb, as is his statement that "rise and fall is always more gripping, and more morally provoking, than rise and rise". On those terms, Air is both gripping and morally provoking, the story itself and the postscripts. I enjoyed the film, more than I expected to, great acting, great script, inspiring and moving, and more than enough to make the rest of us feel like tiny little people who have achieved nothing and will leave no mark, so quite humbling in that regard. The nostalgia was also pretty cool, the framing of the era.
Lane made the Blackberry film sound uninteresting. He gave no hint of his moral learnings. If you're going to make that claim, then the reviewer should at least add some hints, some color and movement, which might inspire an urge to view the film. Lane gave jack-shit.
I take your point that some of Moehringer's piece was cheesy. I still thought the entire thing was salutatory for anyone thinking of being a writer, a ghost writer, or even a journalist. He's been all three, and is highly regarded, he's what we ordinary people would call both high achieving and successful. Yet, his failures, humiliations, insecurities, and vanities are shared, and this was the carefully considered, prettied-up version. Being a writer, who would roll those dice, hey?
I thought this warranted being further up in your list.
Traffic is a good book title, but there it ends. Trite review, trite book. A history with genuine understanding and insights has yet to be written.
Lane must have seen a different cut of Air than the rest of us. The film depicts Nike at a time when they were at the bottom of the heap, not a little bit at the bottom, a lot of bottom. His implication that Nike was a 'rise and rise' story is dumb, as is his statement that "rise and fall is always more gripping, and more morally provoking, than rise and rise". On those terms, Air is both gripping and morally provoking, the story itself and the postscripts. I enjoyed the film, more than I expected to, great acting, great script, inspiring and moving, and more than enough to make the rest of us feel like tiny little people who have achieved nothing and will leave no mark, so quite humbling in that regard. The nostalgia was also pretty cool, the framing of the era.
Lane made the Blackberry film sound uninteresting. He gave no hint of his moral learnings. If you're going to make that claim, then the reviewer should at least add some hints, some color and movement, which might inspire an urge to view the film. Lane gave jack-shit.