Did I campaign for my titles? Yes, I’ll be honest, because, as anyone who’s ever read my blog, Goop, which is a combination of “good” and “poop,” will tell you, I’m a firm believer in hard work and discipline. So, when I first heard rumors about the possibility of a People cover, I did start a whispering campaign. 

In this week’s Shouts & Murmurs column, Paul Rudnick imagines Gwyneth Paltrow’s response to being named both the Most Hated Celebrity and World’s Most Beautiful Woman: http://nyr.kr/16APZya

(Source: newyorker.com)

“Pines” is supposed to be about turbulent male relationships through the generations—what fathers and sons give to one another and withhold from one another. I’m all in favor of experimental narrative forms and deep thematic undercurrents, but this movie feels patchy and underdone.

David Denby reviews Derek Cianfrance’s “The Place Beyond the Pines,” and Antoine Fuqua’s “Olympus Has Fallen”: http://nyr.kr/13g0Vkb

(Source: newyorker.com)

Betsy Morais on Audrey Tautou’s evolution as an actress and her role in the new film “Thérèse Desqueyroux”: http://nyr.kr/WtvgJb

(Source: newyorker.com)

In this clip, Richard Brody discusses his DVD-of-the-Week, Terence Davies’s “The Deep Blue Sea,” starring Rachel Weisz. Watch the clip, and click-through for more from Brody on the film: http://nyr.kr/12uyOgP

(Source: newyorker.com)

Sasha Weiss considers why people find Anne Hathaway, Hollywood’s “happy girl,” to be so annoying: “Little girls learn very quickly to modulate their excitement if they want to be acceptable… Anne has somehow managed to retain that bright look, and many people would like to wipe it off her face.”

Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/XFpWAi

Photograph by Jason Merritt/Getty.

(Source: newyorker.com)

In this week’s issue, John Colapinto writes about Dr. Zeitels, who’s performed vocal chord surgery on Adele, Roger Daltrey, and other notable singers. Here, Colapinto considers the claim by many that Adele has “seemed a little restrained” in her recent performances at the Oscars and the Grammys, and writes, 

I wonder whether Daltrey and others who have detected tentativeness are not projecting their own anxieties onto Adele, knowing that those extraordinary vocal cords were once laid open by the surgeon’s scalpel, and knowing that Adele knows it… That we see, or think we see, restraint or fear makes me understand why singers keep vocal problems a secret. 

Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/Y16RVj 

“Anne Hathaway: C+” Michael Schulman grades the Oscar acceptance speeches: http://nyr.kr/W8FSgy

…and, read David Denby on the First Lady at the Awards (“Not good, Academy. Pleaes don’t do it again”), and the night’s highs and lows: http://nyr.kr/15KxxRx

and Claire Hoffman on Seth MacFarlane, creepy imitator and Oscars host: http://nyr.kr/13iytgx

Though I’m a great admirer of the First Lady, I found Michelle Obama’s appearance… wildly inappropriate in its affirmation of the hard power behind the soft power—the connection of real politics to the representational politics of the movies, of the peculiar and long-standing symbiosis of Washington and Hollywood… 

Richard Brody reviews the 2013 Oscars: http://nyr.kr/139DkAK

Katniss Wins! Sasha Weiss grades last night’s Oscar fashion: http://nyr.kr/13a9eNu

John Cassidy asks, “Is it rational to watch the Oscars?” http://nyr.kr/YwjPua

1. Photograph by Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty. 2. Photograph by Jason Merritt/Getty. 3. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza.

(Source: newyorker.com)

(Source: newyorker.com)

A Silver Linings Encore: Richard Brody, who disliked “Silver Linings Playbook” the first time around, takes a second look: http://nyr.kr/UDrTr6