Joe's View

I love The New York Times as much as the next journalist, but I get a little nauseated every January when they do their highly dubious “The Oscars” section.
You might think that a package of feature stories and columns devoted to the annual awards given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would run on the Sunday of the ceremony — February 22 — but that would be too late to reap a harvest of movie studio ads touting films for “Oscar consideration.”
Of course, The Times readership includes lots of industry folks and Academy voters, so there was considerable money to be made from full-page ads for “Milk” (left) and “Revolutionary Road” and “Gran Torino” in the section published last Sunday, a full seven weeks before ABC telecasts the awards ceremony.
What at first glance appears to be a news section about the annual Academy Awards always turns out to be a pretty tacky over-sized promotional pamphlet.
In the addition to the pleading ads, the section is filled with feature stories that are the equivalent of Oscar campaign stump speeches by the actors and filmmakers who are lusting for nominations.
Once the ballots are in next week, it is unlikely that major Oscar contenders such as Anne Hathaway and Frank Langella would be so eager to spend so much time talking with print feature writers.
The section demonstrates the weird way that important film writers and critics have come to take the Oscars seriously as an artistic competition.
All three of the major Times critics — A.O. Scott, Manohla Dargis and Stephen Holden — presented their five nomination suggestions in every major category.
Scott and Dargis also wrote long essays about “Milk” and “Synecdoche, New York” that appeared to be pleas for the Academy voters to include the writers’ favorite 2008 movies among the nominees.
What Scott, Dargis and Holden did for the Times on Sunday was closer to press agentry than criticism.

On Sunday at a preview performance of “Becky Shaw” at Second Stage in Manhattan, an elderly theatergoer sitting near me couldn’t contain her frustration when the lights came up for the intermission.
“I don’t know where this play is going! Do you?,” she asked her companion, who remained silent.
Although it was clear the woman was unhappy, I couldn’t help but think that she was paying playwright Gina Gionfriddo a huge compliment.
Too often at the theater, plays lack that most elemental aspect of good storytelling — not knowing what is going to come next. Or, having a good reason to return to your seat for Act Two.
“Becky Shaw” brings five characters to life, but they are revealed slowly and in an even-handed manner that allows us the freedom to keep shifting our alliances as the tale of family and money and trust unfolds.
In a move that is typical of this tricky comedy-drama, the title character isn’t the true protagonist. Becky Shaw (Annie Parisse) doesn’t enter the action until rather late in Act One and at first she behaves like a minor character.
The play centers on Suzanna (Emily Bergl), a young woman who has always depended on her father and her adopted brother Max (David Wilson Barnes) for emotional and financial support.
The long first scene shows us Suzanna and Max meeting in a New York hotel to settle the financial affairs of their father who died four months earlier. Max is a Manhattan financial whiz who tells Suzanna and her mother Susan (Kelly Bishop) the bad news that dad’s business had been failing for years and there is very little left to inherit.
Susan has already taken up with a much younger man — Suzanna calls him a “rentboy” — and has an almost brutally realistic view of life and family relationships. Max is even more tough-minded than his stepmother — a “realist” who sees romantic love as a myth and has never had a relationship last more than three months.
“Becky Shaw” moves forward several months for the next scene with Suzanna hastily married to the nurturing Andrew (Thomas Sadoski).
Andrew’s optimism has kept Suzanna’s head together during the first year after her father’s death.
Just when we’ve forgotten the name of the play, Becky Shaw (Annie Parisse) finally enters the action — she is a seemingly meek co-worker of Andrew’s who is thrilled to be set up on a blind date with Max.
It is at this point that Gionfriddo starts working her quite amazing theatrical magic, as the blind date is interrupted by a street crime and the delusional Becky believes this unexpected event will bind her closer to Max. What she doesn’t know is that Max is insulted by the fact that Suzanna and Andrew would set him up with a woman he believes is not worth his time and he has no intention of ever calling her again.
What happens between Max and Becky throws a harsh light on all of the relationships in the play. What starts out looking like a casual social comedy turns into a rather brutal examination of the role of money in both romantic and familial “love” and the delicate balance of power in any intimate relationship.
“Becky Shaw” managed to move and shock me and two days after leaving the theater I am still thinking about the implications of what happened between the five characters.
It’s a terrific play with a great ensemble of actors who allow us the freedom to come to our own conclusions about the people they play.
(“Becky Shaw” is set to run through Feb. 1 at Second Stage which is at 307 West 43rd St. in Manhattan. For ticket information call 212-246-4422 or go online to www.2st.com.)

Dial Press recently sent me the movie tie-in edition of Sophie Kinsella’s 2000 blockbuster novel, “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” which will finally reach the screen Feb. 13 starring Isla Fisher and Hugh Dancy (left).
I picked up the book wondering if this turn-of-the-century tale of consumerism gone mad would now seem hopelessly dated, dooming the movie version to box-office failure. I assumed “Confessions” was another of those dizzy chick lit odes to designer frocks and shoes made passe by this New Depression we are all in.
Single career gals in their 20s — in urban areas all over the globe — are now lucky if they can make their rent, let alone use a maxed-out credit card for a $500 pair of Manolos.
I thought the book would read like a time capsule, but was surprised to learn that Kinsella’s story might be even more relevant now than it was eight years ago.
Who knows if the movie version will be faithful to the novel, but the time does seem to be right for a cautionary tale about a young woman whose shopping addiction is ruining her life (not to mention her credit rating). It is easy to imagine Suze Orman cheering the painful lessons Kinsella teaches to her hapless heroine.
The book opens with three letters from the fictional Endwich Bank, the first one offering the recent English college graduate Rebecca Bloomwood 2,000 pounds’ worth of credit in July of 1997 and then fast-forwarding to the increasingly threatening demands for payment that start arriving two years later.
“Confessions of a Shopaholic” serves up the screwball comedy and star-crossed romance that young female readers expect from chick lit, but Kinsella’s portrait of a charming young magazine journalist drowning in debt is strangely up to the minute.
If the movie captures the anxiety of suffering the consequences of spending without thinking it could strike a chord with millions of female moviegoers.

The incredibly prolific — and remarkably enduring — novelist and screenwriter Donald E. Westlake died New Year’s Eve in Mexico at the age of 75.
Westlake started as a pulp writer in the 1960s, putting out more than 100 books under several different names — most notably “Richard Stark” (a pseudonym he retained even after he became a famous and highly successful crime writer).
When Westlake began writing in 1960, publishers looked askance at the idea of one writer putting out as many as four books a year, so Westlake came up with other names such as Tucker Coe and Edwin West (these days, many romance writers do the same thing).
Grand Central Publishing recently reissued an early Westlake pulp novel, “Somebody Owes Me Money,” with a terrifically sleazy new cover (above) that paid homage to the paperback cover artists who worked on the writer’s books when he was just starting out.
Later in life, the Brooklyn native became a superb screenwriter, penning two of the best thrillers of the modern era — “The Grifters” (1990), which earned Westlake an Oscar nomination, and “The Stepfather” (1987).
About a dozen Westlake books were turned into movies. His Richard Stark novel, “The Hunter” was adapted twice — as “Point Blank” in 1967 with Lee Marvin, and then as “Payback” in 1999 with Mel Gibson.
On January 9, Manhattan’s Film Forum will host the official U.S. commerical debut of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Made in U.S.A.” (1966) which was loosely adapted from Westlake’s “The Jugger.” Because Godard used the book without authorization, Westlake successfully sued to prevent the distribution of the film in this country.
“Made in U.S.A.” has been shown at a few museums and film festivals in this country since 1966, but now that an agreement was made with Westlake’s management, the picture will finally be available for regular theatrical bookings (and presumably will be released on DVD here as well).
Despite his heavy workload, Westlake was one of the most collegial crime writers, often attending gatherings like the international mystery writers’ convention, the Bouchercon, and regional gatherings such as the now sadly defunct Mid-Atlantic Mystery Writers Conference in Philadelphia where I heard him speak in the early 1990s.
Westlake knew the vagaries of the publishing industry as well as anyone and I observed him offering wise and very down-to-earth advice to more than one aspiring crime novelist.
Six years ago, when an interviewer for the bookreporter.com site asked Westlake how he maintained “the quality” of his work for so many years and in so many novels, the writer replied:
“I don’t do anything about maintaining quality, I just try to tell a story in such a way as to interest myself. I leave questions of quality to others.”