Men wearing brassieres

What Would Don Draper Do?

(Via Jessica)

On your toes

A piece on "Mad Men at the Movies" quotes..."Ed Park"?

Ed Park at the Village Voice notices how "it keeps its edges with on-your-toes dialogue and a fine-tuned critique of corporate culture."

That's from Birmingham's Black & White City Paper...but (obviously) I did not write about Mad Men for the PTSNBN! What is going on here? Another "Not Me"?

The article starts with various critics weighing in on Mad Men...then reveals that the quotes were actually taken from reviews of earlier films....Ah! That's what I said about The Apartment, back in 2002. The argument being that "there is nothing new under the sun"...(Don't know if it's really the dialogue that I like about MM...?)

I do like that brilliant bit of assigning by Dzyd Dennis—two workplace movies, a forgettable Hugh Grant–Sandra Bullock offering (all I remember is H.G. beaning S.B. with a tennis ball, or was it the other way around) and the Wilder classic.

Annnyway....haven't thought about that piece in a while.....zzzzz....

January jones

It's Betty, not Don, who lands on the psychiatrist's couch, and who gradually realizes that her life and marriage are an elaborate lie; as she reaches a desperate clarity by season's end, she begins to evoke the tragic and resolute April Wheeler of Richard Yates's 1961 masterpiece Revolutionary Road. (And when she strolls onto her lawn one weekday afternoon with a rifle—clad in nightgown and shades, cigarette dangling from her lip—and starts shooting at her neighbor's pigeons, she looks like she's just walked out of an A.M. Homes story.) —Jessica Winter on Mad Men, at Moving Image Source

Three times in one week = trend

I came across these three mentions last week:

1. As he sat on the bed, I stayed in the doorway and pointed. "I read that." The book was Atlas Shrugged.
"It's interesting, but it's way too long," he said.
"Yeah, I wouldn't say it was my favorite."
—Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife

2. "A utopia is a perfect civilization, which generally means there isn't a government to interfere with the lives of its citizens. This, of course, is an impossible dream. There is, however, an extremely long book called Atlas Shrugged that's about what would happen if all of the most brilliant individuals in the world separated themselves frm the flotsam and jetsam of society and built a utopia. Rebecca, you should read this book. You'd probably relate to it, especially if you're interested in trains."
—Chuck Klosterman, Downtown Owl

3. "Have you read her? Rand, Atlas Shrugged. That's the one...Take $1.99 out of that $2,500 and buy yourself a copy."
—Mad Men (season 1, ep. 9)

On tap

Mad Men comes to The Invisible Library!