Search Results for: Time

“Can I Get You a Nice Chianti?”

Anthony Hopkins & Jodie Foster during Anthony Hopkins being honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame at Hollywood Blvd. (Photo by Gregg DeGuire/WireImage)

It’s been 30 years since The Silence of the Lambs was released, a film that introduced us to Hannibal Lector,  a cannibal who became the archetype of a serial killer. The plot is based around his relationship with trainee FBI agent, Clarice Starling, sent to delve into Lecter’s mind in an attempt to find another murderer named Buffalo Bill. I rewatched it a few weeks ago, and was as gripped and chilled as the first time I saw it (as a teenager, clutching a pillow to hide behind).

In this fascinating interview with Tananarive Due for Vanity Fair the two stars — Jodi Foster and Anthony Hopkins — explain what it is that makes the film so powerful, even though “there’s really no blood and gore,” and Hopkins portrays Lecter as “a gentleman. He has finesse.” Their pride in the film is evident, and even decades later when still teased with one of the film’s most famous lines — about a certain type of wine and some liver — they don’t mind “because it’s just such a damn good movie.”

You talk about the relationship between Lecter and Clarice as a kind of courtship. One of the elements is revelation and honesty: “Okay, tell me your worst childhood story, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

HOPKINS: I’ve never admitted this publicly, but when I was in the Royal Academy, there was a teacher we had, a Stanislavsky method teacher, and he was lethal. He was very charismatic, and he was deadly. He would rip you apart. He would just take you apart intellectually. He’d just smirk, and he’d say, “No. Do it again.” His name is Christopher Fettes. He’s retired now. You’d do a piece, and he’d say, “Do it again. No.” I based it on him: “No, Clarice.”

This teacher had stayed in my conscience all my life. I got a phone call afterwards: “Tony, it’s a wonderful performance. Did you base that on me, by any chance?”

[Laughter.]

FOSTER: Lecter needs, wants, to be seen as human. And if you don’t see him as human, you’re going to get eaten. So I think there’s something really beautiful about the fact that they relate to each other’s humanity. When Lecter takes in Clarice’s pain, when he breathes it in, or he hears her story about the lambs, it’s not because it’s a story that’s filled with blood and gore. It’s a tiny story of pain. And to him, that’s what connection is.

HOPKINS: The only physical connection that Clarice and Lecter have is when she takes the case file and they touch fingers. That’s a talisman of some kind—of relationship, of love, romance, whatever, had it been a different world.

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Graded by an Algorithm

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Exam results were a big topic in my family last summer — with my nephew attempting to get the grades he needed to go to university. Like everything in 2020, things had changed due to Covid-19, and instead of sitting exams, British students were told that their results, and futures, were being decided by an algorithm. For some, including my nephew, this led to grades they were not expecting. 

For The Guardian, Tom Lamont explores the drama that unfolded on results day in August 2020, when perhaps the first algorithm in the history of computer science was “condemned on the front page of every major British newspaper.” Algorithms surround us in all parts of life, “influencing what interest rates we’re offered, how long we’ll wait for hip surgery, when’s ideal for the next Justin Bieber album to drop,” but they had not previously graded students on this scale. The attempt was an unmitigated disaster, and in the wake of “bright students in historically low-achieving schools tumbling, sometimes in great, cliff-edge drops of two or three grades” it was only a few days before the government revoked the whole system, asking teachers to grade their pupils instead.

For some seeking university places it was too late, and Lamont exposes the people damned by the code in the agonizing journey of Josiah Elleston-Burrell — who is fighting for his place to study architecture at UCL. Josiah’s dedication to his dream is inspiring, and this article immerses you in his personal grades drama — and makes you fully invested in the outcome.

I was curious what would happen to this ambitious, dead-set young man, and we met up several times in 2019, usually before he began a shift at the Waitrose supermarket where he worked. One day, just off the Croydon train, Elleston-Burrell confessed to a daydream: switching platforms instead and carrying on into London in the direction of UCL’s architecture building. He could see the backpack he would carry. His outfit. The dangling lanyard with his shiny undergraduate ID.

On 16 August, after Roger Taylor acknowledged “a situation that was rapidly getting out of control”, a decision was made that the Approach-1 algorithm was by now so tarnished it would be better if they abandoned it. Elleston-Burrell was at work the next day, on 17 August, when he heard. Ofqual and the government had decided that every student in England would now receive the grades that were predicted by their teachers back in June. For some, this was good news. (In Oxford, that talented young English student got her A* after all.) Others were left stranded, their grades a lot better, but their places at university gone. When I got through to Elleston-Burrell that day, he was trying to brave it out, but he sounded glum. He kept repeating, dazedly, “I don’t even know, man.”

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Netflix and Anna Delvey: The Race to Secure the Story of New York’s ‘Fake Heiress’

Longreads Pick

“Over time, payments from Netflix to Sorokin would rise to $320,000. And for the first time in almost 20 years, they triggered a controversial New York law, designed to stop convicted criminals from profiting from their crime.”

Source: BBC
Published: Feb 20, 2021
Length: 11 minutes (2,937 words)

“People are dying waiting”

TORRENCE, CA - DECEMBER 29: Hospital doctors and nurses treat Covid-19 patients in a makeshift ICU wing on the West Oeste at Harbor UCLA Medical Center on Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020 in Torrence, CA. The hospital has no open beds for incoming patients and have worked tirelessly to create additional beds for the influx of Covid-19 patients. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

At ProPublica, reporters David Armstrong and Marshall Allen tell the story of 53-year-old Miguel Fernandez, a Latino man from California who contracted the virus last fall. The center of a tight-knit, multigenerational family, Miguel fought for his life in hospital as his loved ones pushed to get him life-saving extracorporeal membrane oxygenation treatment — a specialized therapy that doctors are now in the horrific position of having to reserve for younger patients with the best chance of surviving, as critically ill COVID-19 patients overwhelm a healthcare system stretched far beyond usual limits.

But starting in early November, the daily number of COVID-19 hospitalizations surged in Los Angeles County, rising eightfold between then and the wave’s crest, which arrived just after New Year’s Day. Within weeks, overflowing hospitals faced exactly the types of care-rationing decisions experts had feared. Hospitals set up tents to increase capacity, and ambulances circled for hours as they waited for beds to open. By early January, Los Angeles County emergency medical personnel were directed to conserve supplemental oxygen by only administering it to the neediest patients, and to stop transporting to hospitals cardiac arrest patients who couldn’t be revived in the field. State officials dispatched refrigerated trucks and thousands of body bags to the region.

Miguel didn’t want to go to the hospital. He knew people like him were dying. Latino Angelenos have suffered the highest COVID-19 death rate in Los Angeles County — almost twice the rate of Blacks and about three times the rate for whites.

The separation was especially difficult for Alejandrina, who had been married to Miguel since 1991. Miguel liked to tease her when she watched her Mexican telenovelas: Why do you watch those shows when you have me? On Mother’s Day earlier in the year, Miguel had surprised her by buying a pair of rings, getting down on one knee and proposing again. The couple made plans to renew their vows on their 30th wedding anniversary this summer. When he became sick with COVID-19, Miguel assured Alejandrina he would get better so they could get married again. She promised she would wait for him.

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The Charming Billie Eilish

Longreads Pick

“In the last year, Billie Eilish scored five Grammys, went multiplatinum eight times, released the new Bond theme, and had to cancel a world tour. Then, she turned 19.”

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Jan 25, 2021
Length: 23 minutes (5,967 words)

“Addiction is a thief of your goodbyes”

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In this moving essay at The Rumpus, Heather Stokes recounts what addiction has stolen from her and her mother. A bother and uncle addicted to crack stole not only possessions from the family house, but most importantly Heather and her mom’s personal safety and any chance at stability. Eventually, a boyfriend’s coke addiction costs Heather her freedom, after she embezzles from her job to help feed his habit.

Her pause snapped me back into the conversation. I disinterestedly responded, “I’m sorry, can you ask the question again?”

“What do you feel addiction has stolen from you?”

I knew that she was more than likely referring to my own addictions, but I did not want to talk about those. Instead, I went back in time, back to a time before I knew that substances and people were not meant to be abused. The many years my uncle, brother, and father spent in and out of prison, leaving my mother and I alone—years that robbed me of having a father, of having a stable male presence in our family. Years that morphed into the “I’ll just do it myself” attitude that haunts my relationships to this day. I thought about the shame I felt as I walked past the neighborhood bodega, eyes fixed to the ground, to avoid making eye contact with my brother who stood outside, shaking in the middle of three-day crack cocaine binge.

These were the silent losses. The things that are not talked about in the glamorization of addiction played out on your favorite television shows. Things left unspoken between family. Like opening the kitchen cabinet to find a little corner ripped off the roll of aluminum foil—my uncle used them to construct his aspirin bottle crack pipes. Cut-off straws that were useless to drink your Pepsi with made the perfect suction for inhaling poison; I would often find them discarded under the crab apple tree in front of our house. Some mornings, I would even find my uncle discarded there with them, his disheveled body wrapped around the tree, surrounded by rotten crab apples as if the poison had seeped into them, too.

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Trump Hotel Employees Reveal What It Was Really Like Catering to the Right Wing Elite

Longreads Pick

“Four years’ worth of stories about VIP visits and grooming protocols, palm-greasing, rotten vegetables, and that time they lost Steve Mnuchin’s coat.”

Source: Washingtonian
Published: Feb 19, 2021
Length: 13 minutes (3,290 words)

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 17: During the coronavirus pandeimic a covid positive patient lays prone on his stomack to help his oxigene levels inside the ICU at Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital on Thursday, Dec. 17, 020 in Los Angeles, CA. ICU availability in Southern California at 0% amid deluge of COVID-19 patients. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

This week, we’re sharing stories from David Armstrong and Marshall Allen, Jesselyn Cook, Jason Sheehan, Tom Lamont, and Heather Stokes.

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1. Dying on the Waitlist

David Armstrong, Marshall Allen | ProPublica | February 18, 2021 | 22 minutes (5,663 words)

“In Los Angeles County and around the country, doctors have had to decide who gets a lifesaving COVID-19 treatment and who doesn’t.”

2. ‘I Miss My Mom’: Children Of QAnon Believers Are Desperately Trying To Deradicalize Their Own Parents

Jesselyn Cook | HuffPost | January 11, 2021 | 24 minutes (6,000 words)

“What it’s like to lose the person who raised you to a far-right cult.”

3. Remnants on a South Philly Stoop

Jason Sheehan | Philadelphia Magazine | October 1, 2020 | 22 minutes (5,600 words)

Chef Omar Tate caught the attention of the food world with a pop-up celebrating the Black American food experience. He was right on the verge of blowing up. But instead, everything else did.

4. The Student and the Algorithm: How the Exam Results Fiasco Threatened One Pupil’s Future

Tom Lamont | The Guardian | Febuary 18, 2021 | 27 minutes (6,759 words)

“Bright students in historically low-achieving schools were tumbling, sometimes in great, cliff-edge drops of two or three grades, because of institutional records they had nothing to do with.”

5. Voices on Addiction: A Thief in the Night

Heather Stokes | The Rumpus | February 16, 2021 | 9 minutes (2,303 words)

Heather Stokes recounts what addiction has taken from her and her mother. To feed crack addictions, her bother and uncle stole not just possessions from the family house, they robbed the women of personal safety and any chance at stability.

“The Internet Is Inside Us”: Patricia Lockwood on the Portal, Twitter, and Her New Novel

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Reading poet, essayist, and novelist Patricia Lockwood on our internet lives is a bit like falling down a rabbit hole and losing your mind. Lockwood’s musings and observations on what it’s like to be extremely online in our digital and social media age are incomparable. Her essays and lectures — like “The Communal Mind” from 2019 and her coronavirus diary from last summer — are hilarious, absurd, pure, and human. In a conversation with Gabriella Paiella at GQ, Lockwood talks about her debut novel No One Is Talking About This, the strange experience of following current events on Twitter, and how the internet is “no longer an externality” — it’s inside us.

Your London Review of Books talk “The Communal Mind” is excerpted from your book. Do you remember the turning point when you started to think of the internet as a “communal mind” and, as you put it then, “a place we can never leave”?

It did start to feel like we were locked in there. I think, honestly, it probably was 2012. It had to take a political turn. It became the place where we were imbibing the news. The point in which it turned from a communal free space of play to a place where we were getting our information was probably the difference.

We were starting out with a very bare bones, text-based version. There weren’t images. You couldn’t embed video. Ultimately, I think what changed it was the quote tweet, because that meant that as soon as you went into the portal, you were experiencing an argument first thing. You didn’t even know what these people were talking about, and immediately you were faced with the discourse. That to me was the full evolution into hell as we are experiencing it now.

I do think it’s healthy to be pulling away from Twitter at this time. But in times like this, you’re like, “Okay, I’m jumping into the portal, and I’m seeing what’s happening because it is a million eyes.” It’s the only way you can experience all sides of it. The absurd sides and the tragic sides. It’s not like it was this completely hilarious event, obviously. It’s not like it was entirely tragic either. And the portal has really evolved into a place that we can experience all those sides—the only place that you can do that.

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The Student and the Algorithm: How the Exam Results Fiasco Threatened One Pupil’s Future

Longreads Pick

Bright students in historically low-achieving schools were tumbling, sometimes in great, cliff-edge drops of two or three grades, because of institutional records they had nothing to do with.”

Author: Tom Lamont
Source: The Guardian
Published: Feb 18, 2021
Length: 27 minutes (6,759 words)