Labour productivity growth in the euro area and the United States: short and long-term developments
Labour productivity growth in the euro area and the United States: short and long-term developments – Technology Today – EIN Presswire
Apocalypse wow: Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is a messy masterpiece of movie mania
Open this photo in gallery:Adam Driver as Cesar Catilina and Nathalie Emmanuel as Julia in Megalopolis.LionsgateMegalopolisWritten and directed by Francis Ford CoppolaStarring Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel and Shia LaBeoufClassification 14A; 138 minutesOpens in theatres Sept. 27In a near-future city called New Rome, the architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) is blessed with the sight of a god. Not only does the beloved urbanist possess a crystal-clear vision of how cities shape people and vice versa, a talent that has made him one of the most important figures in the Manhattan-esque burgh, but he can also seemingly control space and time, stopping reality at a whim. It is a gift that audiences of Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-in-the-making new film might wish they had, too.There are so many moments throughout the fantastical and overwhelming Megalopolis begging to be freeze-framed and pixel-by-pixel analyzed that it would take a thousand Cesar Catilinas hundreds of years to properly parse. Giant concrete statues come alive and collapse, as if briefly and tragically inhabited by the crushed spirits of Apollo and Bacchus. Skies rain down blood-red fire, the extinction-level destruction depicted with a morbid shadow play that feels both charmingly antiquated and terrifying. There is even one moment in which Coppola smashes the fourth wall like a Criterion Collection-swilling Kool-Aid Man, inviting moviegoer participation in a neo-vaudevillian attempt to shock audiences out of their senses.This is audacious, rule-breaking filmmaking that absolutely no one who didn’t make The Godfather and Apocalypse Now and a dozen other touchstones could get away with today.Yet even the deepest, most generous of studies into Megalopolis will fail to come to a conclusion all that different from the one experienced upon the very impression. Megalopolis might be Coppola’s decades-in-the-making passion project, an epic of ambition and imagination, but it is also a magnificent mess of a masterpiece, as irredeemably silly as it is sincerely sublime.The director’s first film in 13 years – after the maligned 2011 drama Twixt, which hasn’t quite gained the critical reappraisal that has become de rigueur for artists of the director’s stature – Megalopolis erects a big tent of ideas to form something of an homage to the Coppola canon. A heady blend of science fiction, Shakespearean drama, political thriller, and social farce, the film traces the backroom battle between two of New Rome’s would-be saviours.In one corner is Cesar, who is destroying the decaying city block by blighted block in order to build a utopia built not with brick and mortar but Megalon, a mysterious substance he’s invented (or perhaps simply discovered), which bends reality around itself. Opposing such untested and perhaps dangerous progression is New Rome’s Mayor Frank Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who is clinging to tradition just as his daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) finds herself being pulled into Cesar’s forward-thinking orbit.On the fringes of this tension are side characters so eccentrically sketched and named that they threaten to become flattened into 2D cartoons. There is Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), a sex-pot television reporter who seduces the decades-older banking titan Hamilton Crassus (Jon Voight), uncle to Cesar and father to the Trumpian sociopath Clodio (Shia LaBeouf).But that’s not all. There are copious Coppola relatives (nephew Jason Schwartzman as a mayoral aide, sister Talia Shire as Cesar’s mother, granddaughter Romy Mars as a star-struck teen journalist), a grab-bag collection of Hollywood icons (Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Fishburne), never-given-their-proper-due character actors (James Remar, D.B. Sweeney, Balthazar Getty), and fresh faces (Chloe Fineman, Grace VanderWaal). The disparate group of performers mix together uneasily, though it is clear that Coppola delights in choreographing the friction between the old and the new, the idolized and the problematic. He knows, like everyone else in the industry and audience, that he will never get another chance to command such an army of talent.Which makes the whole endeavour feel like that much more of a missed opportunity. Coppola allows his self-funded sense of autonomy to override any directorial discipline, letting the actors indulge their very worst instincts. Almost everyone here plays to the rafters with unrestrained goofiness. Only Driver, as disciplined as ever, and the meticulously controlled Esposito are able to rein themselves in. Playing opposing forces of the future, both actors add layers of empathy and complication to what might be stock embodiments of liberal and conservative ideologies.There is also a decent case, though, to be made that Coppola knew exactly what he was doing by hiring, and then letting the leash off, LaBeouf. His bloodthirsty and incestuous tyrant Clodio might only come alive as a character during the film’s final half-hour, but for those late-game moments, the actor taps into his off-screen notoriety with a hundred-degree intensity that burns the screen to ash – the kind of raw work that has the tendency to poison personal lives, too. (What Coppola was thinking in enlisting Voight, who delivers his overstuffed dialogue with the vigour of a hospiced hound dog, is anyone’s guess.)Once the film cycles through its various melodramas and big-question philosophizing, though, it becomes clear that Coppola has absolutely exhausted himself past the point of coherence. Which is of course admirable – there are few filmmakers willing to let themselves so blatantly bleed out on-screen, even if it becomes something of a chore to listen to every dying breath.Through sheer force of will, Megalopolis will stand as a stubborn achievement of art, radical and unwavering. But it is not so sturdily constructed to avoid being chipped away over time. Which is of course the film’s own great joke on itself. Just as Cesar is so intently focused on demolishing the old to make way for the new, Francis Ford Coppola is destroying himself to make way for someone else to take on his uncompromising vision. We should all be glad he found a way to stop time, even if for one hell of a messy moment.
Samantha Koon Jones: A timely satire about Southern book-banning
Two of my great literary loves — banned books and Little Free Libraries — are at the heart of Kirsten Miller’s aptly titled “Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books,” and yet I still managed to underestimate this excellent story. Through this warmhearted satire set in small-town Georgia, Miller introduces us to a multifaceted cast of characters who are all in some way negatively affected by censorship.
It all starts when a couple of angels go down to Georgia to teach our titular villain, the holier-than-thou Lula Dean, a lesson about book banning. Lula Dean has been all hopped up on righteous anger ever since she found a book on erotic cake baking at the local library. Some high school kids stuck it there as a prank, but that’s all the reason Lula Dean needs to kick off a censorship campaign in hopes of getting Troy, Georgia, back on the path of the straight and narrow.“When you have everything, the only luxury left is taking things away from others. It was an indulgence that Lula Dean certainly seemed to relish,” Miller writes.
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Samantha Koon Jones
Lula Dean places a free book box in her yard, offering up exclusively the titles she deems appropriate — things like Southern etiquette guides, kid detective novels and Confederate history books. But angels — or someone — start wrapping banned and challenged books in dust jackets from Lula Dean’s collection. The story unfolds as the books move through the community, finding the right hearts to touch along the way.A copy of Anne Frank’s “Diary of a Young Girl” finds its way to Dawn, the mother of a young man with a budding interest in White supremacy, just as her son is caught drawing a swastika on the door of a Jewish neighbor, Mr. Stempel.“[Dawn] knew the Nazis were bad, but they were villains from a story so far removed from her own life it might as well have been Star Wars,” Miller writes. Dawn is touched by Frank’s diary, then utterly horrified to see antisemitism promoted by her son’s own hand.“Hate is a disease, Dawn,” Mr. Stempel explains, adding that “truth” is the cure. “It won’t work on everyone. But maybe your son isn’t too far gone,” he says.While it’s alarming that a grown woman might not know who Anne Frank is — and worse yet, ask an elderly Jewish man to explain the abrupt ending of her diary — the fact remains that we don’t know what we don’t know.“Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books” is a satire, and one that, as evidenced by the above dialogue, inches into cheesy territory to prove a point from time to time. Miller offers up reading a potential solution to all of society’s ills. While that’s quite an oversimplification, reading diverse stories is not a bad place to start one’s journey to tolerance and loving one’s neighbor.
WILLIAM MORROW
My favorite vignette occurs when a boy named Beau picks up a copy of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” disguised as another title from Lula Dean’s library. Beau’s mother, who is under the impression that her eldest son came out as gay because of a book he read, is horrified to learn her son is reading Judy Blume’s 50-year-old middle-grade masterpiece. Beau learns some very basic facts about menstruation from Blume’s iconic but frequently challenged novel; it is eventually revealed that nearly every woman in Troy — including those seeking to remove the title from the library — had read the book at some point in their adolescences.“‘[Getting your period] is just part of being a girl. That’s what I learned from the book. I also found out that girls can be funny. Underneath it all, they’re just regular people,” Beau explains to his mother. And just like that, Troy gained another feminist.Tensions are high when Troy’s mayor steps down after a scandal. Lula Dean seeks to fill his seat, but her longtime rival, Beverly Underwood, enters the race as well, fearing for the town’s future with Lula Dean at the helm. By this point, the political conversation has expanded to include discussion of taking down a statue in Troy commemorating a local Confederate general.The town is gearing up for an epic showdown between the two mayoral hopefuls, Southern-style.“Would Beverly and Lula both attend services at First Baptist Church? If so, would their showdown take place before the sermon, after the sermon, or (as some clearly hoped) during the sermon? If it came to blows (an unlikely outcome but one that could not be dismissed entirely), who would prevail, Lula or Beverly? And — most important — whose side would Jesus take?” Miller writes.
Author Kirsten Miller was born in the mountains of North Carolina but lives in Brooklyn, New York, today.
KIRSTEN MILLER
The ending is complicated but generally positive, with the flawed townspeople realizing the dangers of censorship and bigotry. I can’t speak to why the citizens of Troy were so wholly disinterested in diverse voices at the start of the novel, but if Lula Dean had succeeded in her book-banning endeavor, the community might never have the means to lift itself out of ignorance.The banned books in Lula Dean’s library “had opened eyes, granted courage and exposed terrible crimes. That’s why they were dangerous, why so many people wanted to hide them,” Miller writes.I think “Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books” is a fantastic work of contemporary fiction, one that lays bare many of the social problems prevalent in the South, but also one that holds space for hope, change and a happy ending — if we want one.
Samantha Koon Jones is a book critic for The Daily Progress. A longtime Charlottesville resident, she graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in English and previously worked for The Daily Progress as a news reporter. A prolific reader of both fiction and nonfiction, Jones has a special interest in translated literature, speculative fiction and celebrity memoirs. She can be found on Instagram at @_bookstasam.
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Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize Won by Elena Wicker for U.S. Military Dictionaries Collection
In addition to the main prize five honorable mentions of $250 each were also made:* Emily Chauvin, an artist and writer from New Milford, Connecticut, for Theory/Practice: A Meta-Aesthetics Collection focusing on books of art-about-art, ranging from William Blake to Yoko Ono* Elena Ganzevoort, of Durham, North Carolina, a former book editor, for Under the Peacock’s Feathers: Discovering Literature through Art Nouveau, a collection of Art Nouveau publishers’ bindings, including examples by celebrated fin-de-siècle book designers Albert Angus Turbayne and Hugh Thomson* Kirin Gupta, a doctoral candidate and teacher in Alexandria, Virginia, for Femmes Fatales: The Violence and Power of Women Against Empire, books by and about women insurgents, guerrillas, and revolutionaries, exploring how gendered expectations shape the way that women’s long-standing participation in political violence is received* Donna Sanders, 23, of New York City, a recent master’s graduate in English, for From The Red and the Black to The Man Without Qualities: 101 Texts in 101 Years, one reprint of one work of Western literature for every year between 1830 and 1930 to create a three-dimensional mosaic of the long 19th century* Amelia Soth, a freelance writer and editor from Madison, Wisconsin, for Infinite Fiction: Novels of Classification, a collection of “books that play – in a vast range of ways – with the format of the reference work: the dictionary, the encyclopedia, the catalog, the travel guide, the textbook, the atlas.” Her collection ranges from established classics like Gustave Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas, Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, and Jorge Luis Borges’s Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius to more recent works by Milorad Pavić, Sophie Calle, and Roberto Bolaño. [embedded content]
The 1994 flop that became the US’s most-loved film
AlamyWhen The Shawshank Redemption came out 30 years ago this week, it seemed to have all the ingredients of a box-office smash.
La Rue: Fall back in love with books with ‘Summer Fridays,’ more
Diane LaRue, special to The Citizen
Summer is officially over, and now it’s the season to fall in love with books. This month’s Book Report takes us to three different eras from the past with books that have flown under the radar.If you just can’t let go of summer, Suzanne Rindell’s sweet “Summer Fridays” will keep the summer vibe going. The novel takes place in 1999 New York City, when AOL was the hot thing.Sawyer works as an assistant at a publishing house and is planning a wedding to her live-in college boyfriend, Charles, who is beginning his career as a lawyer. She is not so much planning a wedding as allowing her future mother-in-law to completely take over the wedding planning.Charles is working long hours with his attractive colleague Kendra. This doesn’t really bother Sawyer until Kendra’s boyfriend Nick sends her an email insinuating that Charles and Kendra are having an affair.
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Nick and Sawyer strike up an online email friendship, which leads to Nick joining Sawyer on her summer Friday lunches in a local park. Sawyer and Nick have a platonic relationship, but could it be more? Does Sawyer have more in common with Nick than Charles? You’ll have to read “Summer Fridays” to find out. Fans of the movie “You’ve Got Mail” will be delighted.I liked the New York City setting here, and the characters are interesting. I read Suzanne Rindell’s historical novel “The Other Typist” and loved it, and “Summer Fridays” is very different from that book but just as wonderful.Madeline Martin takes the reader to World War II England in “The Booklover’s Library.” In Nottingham, England, Emma is a young widow with a 7-year-old daughter, Olivia. The war against Germany is just ramping up, and Emma is having a difficult time finding a job, as widows and married women are discouraged from working.While Emma is able to secure a position at the booklover’s library in a chemist shop, she must hide the fact that she has a child. They live in an apartment building, and we meet some of the other tenants, including a grumpy older man and an older widow who is willing to care for Olivia part-time.As Germany begins to bomb England, a program begins where people are encouraged to send their children to the countryside because it is thought they will be safer from the bombing that is happening in the cities.Since Emma must work at her job to support herself and Olivia, she makes the difficult decision to send Olivia to the countryside to a family she doesn’t know. Olivia sends Emma letters begging to come home, and Emma struggles with the decision she made.Martin does an incredible job putting readers in the shoes of Emma. As we read, we wonder what would we have done in Emma’s place. The author also paints such a vivid picture of life during war in England.The author did a great deal of research into the lending libraries found in chemist shops at this time. I was fascinated by Emma’s job and found myself wanting to learn even more about them than I found in the author’s notes at the end of the book. If you like historical fiction, “The Booklover’s Library” is one you will definitely want to read.For the nonfiction fan, Scott G. Shea’s “All the Leaves Are Brown” shares the true story of the rise and fall of the 1960s super group The Mamas and The Papas.
Diane LaRue
Shea traces the beginnings of the group, starting with a detailed biography of the group’s leader and songwriter, John Phillips. We follow John’s story from his childhood as the son of a military man, through his troubled teen years, and his love of music.Along the way, John (who was already married) falls in love with a much younger Michelle Gilliam, and eventually they end up with Canadian folk singer Denny Doherty and the vivacious and amazing singer Cass Elliot to become the Mamas and the Papas.Shea shares the ups and downs, the love triangles, the rampant drug use (that part just astonished me — so many drugs!), the talent and the incredible music they made during the last part of the 1960s. The Monterey Pop Festival that John Phillips created with others is described in great detail, and I found that very interesting.After reading “All the Leaves Are Brown,” I immediately put on a Mamas and Papas playlist and wow, they were fantastic. This one is for fans of 1960s music, Fleetwood Mac and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “Daisy Jones & the Six.”If you readBOOK: “Summer Fridays” by Suzanne Rindell GRADE: A PUBLISHER: Dutton COST: Trade paperback, $18 LENGTH: 432 pages BOOK: “The Booklover’s Library” by Madeline Martin GRADE: A PUBLISHER: Hanover Square Press COST: Trade paperback, $18.99 LENGTH: 432 pages BOOK: “All the Leaves Are Brown” by Scott G. Shea GRADE: A- PUBLISHER: Backbeat COST: Hardcover, $32.95 LENGTH: 422 pages
Diane LaRue is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and blogs about books at http://bookchickdi.blogspot.com. She is president of the Friends of Webster Library and manages the Book Cellar, a nonprofit used bookstore that benefits branch libraries of the New York Public Library in New York City.
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Psychology author to talk new book at Auburn church
The Citizen staff
A retired Cayuga Community College psychology professor and author will discuss his new book at an event Sunday, Sept. 29.Dr. Victor Garlock will discuss topics from the book, “The Gift of Psychology: Shining the Light of Psychology on the Things in Life That Matter,” at 10:30 that morning at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Auburn, 607 N. Seward Ave., Auburn. The book features columns he wrote for publication in The Citizen, where he continues to write.Garlock is also the author of “Your Genius Within: Understanding Hypnosis, Sleep and Dreams.” Along with teaching at Cayuga for 30 years he supervised an outpatient mental health treatment program in Miami, Florida. Since returning to Auburn in 2015 he has been offering personal counseling and hypnosis consultations part-time at The Center for Wellness at 1 Hoffman St. in the city.Copies of Garlock’s books will be available for purchase and signing at the event. Admission is free and open to the public.
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For more information, visit thecenter4wellness.com.
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Jane Fonda on climate activism, 2024 election: “We can’t lose another 4 years”
She may be an actor on screen, but she’s an activist at heart. Between calling for an end to the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, rallying with the women’s movement, and fighting for Indigenous rights, Jane Fonda has marched and protested nearly her entire life. But five years ago, as she walked under a hazy…
Girl pens book about kindness after witnessing bullying
With her mother and older sister becoming authors in the last several years, it was only natural for eight-year-old Lowe Sound Primary School student Aleah Storr to want to follow in their footsteps.And that she did.Aleah, troubled by friends who were being mean to others, decided to show them a different way of doing things through the written word.“Well, most of my friends in my class were not being kind,” said Aleah, who is now nine. “They were often mean to others, for example, they called them names, saying bad words to them, and they don’t share with others if they have more than enough to.“I wanted to change that by writing my book about kindness, so that when they buy the book, they will know how to be kind to others.”Aleah’s 10-page book, entitled “Friends with Kindness”, follows the journey of a dog and cat, who became friends and helped each other out.Along their journey, they met other animals, who also helped them.The book was published last year.“After my sister wrote her book, I wanted to write a book of my own,” Aleah said. “Also, because I wanted to be a part of what my family was doing. I saw how successful their books were, and I wanted to be included in that success as well.“Once I figured out what I wanted my book to be about, it only took me about two weeks to write the story. I was excited about the characters that I chose and what I would make them do and say in my book. That made it fun to write.”While Aleah said the process of writing her book has sparked a greater interest in writing, she wants to eventually become a chef.A little over four years ago, Aleah’s mother, Aleisha Storr, wrote her own book “Rising From Victim to Victor: Discovering Who You Are”, in which she shared her journey from victim to victor.Reflecting on her daughter’s decision to follow in her footsteps, Aleisha said, “As a single mother, I am often worried about a number of things. One of the most concerning was how I’d raise my girls. I wrote my book shortly after a divorce. At that point, I had already thought I’d fail to an extent. After publishing my book and later finding out that my eldest daughter wanted to do the same, it made me feel proud that something birthed from that experience inspired my daughter to write.“To then find out that my eldest daughter chose to write her book from the same angle [her experiences in life] and used it to help others was honestly an indescribable feeling.“Aleah wrote her book shortly after her sister did and again, I was just so excited, so proud of their accomplishments and willingness to stretch themselves beyond their comfort zones to share their thoughts and ideas with the world. I’ve often told my kids that they can be and do anything they make their minds up to do. And that they should know that it requires work, but they have to be willing to put in the work.”Aleah said she did not ask her mother or sister for help.“Well, only with publishing it,” she added. “Writing it was all on me, but I did not have a clue on how to get it into an actual book.”Aleah’s sister, Lavaria, 12, has self-published her own book, “A Quilt Called Life”, in which she addresses her various life challenges and the ways in which she overcame them.
First look at Call the Midwife star’s new movie
We’ve got the first-look images for Call the Midwife star Natalie Quarry’s new British movie, which has just finished filming.Written and directed by Richard Hawkins, Think of England is set in the run-up to the Allied invasion of France when two British movie projects are commissioned – but they couldn’t be more different.One is Laurence Olivier’s lavish production of William Shakespeare’s Henry V and the other is a pornographic movie to build morale for the boys at the front.So a former movie star, a German director, an aspiring actress, an Etonian captain, an alcoholic hair and makeup artist and an innocent young lad all arrive on a remote Orkney island to carry out their secret (and steamy) mission.Vianney Le CaerVianney Le CaerRelated: Call the Midwife confirms return to filmingThink of England stars Quarry alongside Jack Bandeira, John McCrea, Ronni Ancona, Ben Bela Böhm, Ollie Maddigan and Oscar Hoppe. It is produced by Nick O’Hagan and Poppy O’Hagan of Giant Films.Filming took place at Shinfield Studios in Reading and on location on Anglesey, with principal photography now wrapped on the satirical drama.”No matter how tough indie filmmaking can get, we would always remind ourselves what a privilege it is to bring such unique stories to life,” said Poppy O’Hagan.Hawkins added: “Very excited to have completed principle photography on Think of England. 7 extraordinary narratives, 4 cinematic grammars, 3 different media, 2 aspect ratios, 1 entire film! All in the can!”Vianney Le CaerRelated: Call the Midwife shares cast photo in series 14 updateQuarry made her Call the Midwife debut in the most recent series as one of the new midwives, Rosalind Clifford.The long-running BBC show returns this Christmas for a new special, before series 14 airs next year. Filming resumed on the next series earlier this month.Think of England does not yet have a release date.Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.