Cartoon life.

"[Ryan] Gosling created a breakout role that engaged audiences and served as a refreshing reset button when the film became oversaturated with milquetoast feminism."

"Whether [Greta] Gerwig intended it or not, Gosling’s performance as Ken proved more memorable and entertaining than anything [Margot] Robbie could’ve produced with the material she had to work with. Compared to Barbie’s pretty standard character arc, Ken’s story made audiences ponder the complexities of the male experience in a world that penalizes their inherent maleness.... Compared to nominees Emma Stone, who portrayed Bella Baxter in 'Poor Things'... or Lily Gladstone as Mollie Burkhart in 'Killers of a Flower Moon'... Robbie’s heartfelt performance as Barbie proved not 'Kenough' for the Academy...."

Writes Elise McCue in "Don’t Blame The Patriarchy For Ryan Gosling’s ‘Barbie’ Oscar Nomination" (The Federalist)(Gosling got nominated, and the female director and lead actress did not).

I saw "Barbie" and blogged about it (here): "Last night, we actually watched 'Barbie,' which just started streaming on Max. 'Barbie' is one of those movies where I had one favorite line (and one favorite character)...." The line is in this Ken highlights reel:

"To be honest, when I found out the patriarchy wasn't about horses, I lost interest anyway."

"At one point in his show, he said the real divide in the country was not between rich and poor, Democratic or Republican, but between 'the insane' and 'the insufferable.'"

"The insane include the people who stormed the capitol. He calls them nuts, before adding: 'but fun.' Then he grew more animated describing the insufferable by their 'NPR tote-bag energy' and 'hall monitor' tendencies.... Minhaj... repositions him[self] less as a righteous political comic than a more self-questioning, personal comic, a move he had already begun to make; this scandal may have accelerated the shift...."

Writes Jason Zinoman, in "Was a Scandal the Best Thing to Happen to Hasan Minhaj? At the Beacon, the comic took a different tack after posting a video rebutting a New Yorker article on fabrications in his work. The crowd went wild" (NYT).

Zinoman likes that Minaj isn't "playing the victim," like "seemingly everyone" these days, including Elon Musk and Taylor Swift. And Zinoman, in a sidetrack, praises the filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli, and gives a tip about a new movie I might want to see:

Maybe people don't want to relate to real human beings anymore, and we're consuming these movies to help us adjust to the "uncanny valley," so we can settle down there someday soon.

I'm reading "Male Stars Are Too Buff Now," by E. Alex Jung (in New York Magazine).

... Zac Efron’s body displays a muscularity I can only describe as “deeply uncomfortable.” The actor told Men’s Fitness that he wanted to “drop the last bit of body fat” for Baywatch and he seems to have meant that literally... Zac Efron does not look like a swimmer. His action-figure physique is much bulkier than you’d see at an Olympic pool...

In 2011’s Crazy Stupid Love, Emma Stone’s character said that Ryan Gosling’s body looked like it had been “photoshopped.” The joke seems practically quaint now.... Stars like Zac Efron and Hugh Jackman have simply been forced to go even further to separate themselves from the pack, to the point where their bodies look truly unreal. We’ve entered a reverse uncanny valley where the real looks unreal: Flesh and blood human celebrities now sport the vein-popping, skintight muscles comic-book artists could once only conjure in their imaginations....

Everything is so fake now. It's not just male actors, it's "female actors" too. Maybe we like fake. That's a lateral thinking explanation that makes sense, being simple. Maybe people don't want to relate to real human beings anymore, and we're consuming these movies to help us adjust to the "uncanny valley" as we move ever closer to the time when we'll be happy to satisfy our sexual and emotional needs with robots.

Here's the above-mentioned scene. (Warning, Emma Stone will shout "Fuck!" before "It's like you're photoshopped.")

Cass Sunstein picks "The Best Films of 2016 (for Behavioral Economists)."

Sunstein likes "The Jungle Book" because it shows the concept of fairness...

"For the strength of the pack is the wolf and the strength of the wolf is the pack.")

"Weiner" because you can think about the 2 kinds of thinking which are System 1 ("automatic and impulsive") and System 2 ("deliberative and calculative")....

Behavioral economists like to distinguish between two families of cognitive operations in the human mind: System 1, which is automatic and impulsive, and System 2, which is deliberative and calculative.... Beset by a sexting scandal, former congressman Anthony Weiner resigned and then decided to run for mayor -- only to be laid low by another sexting scandal (or two). Does he even have a System 2?

Ryan Gosling because of "norm theory"...

"La La Land" is full of... counterfactual thinking: dreams abandoned, dreams deferred and connections lost....

Isabelle Huppert because of the "control premium" ("many people will pay an extra amount to retain control over a situation... others actually want to give up control")....

Isabelle Huppert [in "Elle"] understands what it means to take control and to lose it.

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” because "as an empirical matter, most people display unrealistic optimism"....

Is our band of rebels unrealistically optimistic?... [W]hen all seems lost, they give themselves the greatest gift, which is the feeling of hope.

"Sadly, the creator of Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal has died."

"Happily, Ryan Gosling does the best tribute evar," I found out at Metafilter.

Here's the original "Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal" (from a couple years ago):



And here's the tribute:



More detail at "Know Your Meme," including the name of the man who made the original videos, Ryan McHenry, and the cause of death, bone cancer. McHenry died on May 3rd, and "On May 4th, Ryan Gosling launched his first personal Vine, which consisted of himself eating cereal." There aren't many things that are simultaneously so funny, sad, sweet, and internet.

"Ultra-violent, demented, plotless, creepy, meat-headed and boring, this is nothing more than a depraved travesty of abstract expression..."

"... that wastes the film it’s printed on. Get to the point, you say. What is it about? Absolutely nothing, really."

Ryan Gosling, looking dangerously anaesthetized, is an American thug who runs a brutal boxing club that doubles as a drug den in the slums of Bangkok. When his sub-mental brother rapes and slaughters a teenage whore, her father slices his head off.... 

I'll slice off the rest of the plot line and go right to:

What on earth is going on here? Was Drive a fluke, or is [Nicolas Winding] Refn just another no-talent from the Lars von Trier school of Something Rotten in Denmark flummery?

Years ago, it used to seem necessary to take in these Danish movies. Life is so much easier now.

Journalist "thinking about... birth control and the importance of reproductive freedom" steps in front of a moving car, is saved by Ryan Gosling...

... and is now annoyed that — after she tweeted about her encounter with the cinematic dreamboat — people are going on about his being such a hero, thus casting her in the retrograde role of damsel in distress.

[A]s a feminist, a writer, and a gentlewoman of fortune, I refuse to be cast in any sort of boring supporting female role, even though I have occasional trouble crossing the road, and even though I did swoon the teeniest tiniest bit when I realized it was him. I think that's lazy storytelling, and I'm sure Ryan Gosling would agree with me.

Why did the feminist cross the road? To swoon into the arms of a movie star, tweet about it, inspire intense envy, and then to hit those already slammed by envy a second time with the news that they are antifeminist for seeing her as a damsel in distress when she was really thinking deep thoughts about feminism.