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A new adaptation of Anna Karenina written by Tom Stoppard, directed by Joe Wright, starring Keira Knightley. We had to see it. We wanted to like it.

Much of the movie happens in a theatre. Proscenium, curtains, rigging, the works. Characters step off the stage, walk into the auditorium, talk backstage among the ropes. There’s a lot of choreography, as if we were watching a musical without the dancing.

Say Anna’s brother Stiva (Matthew MacFadyen) is leaving the office. He walks across the room without stopping or slowing down. In those few seconds someone takes off his coat, someone else puts another coat on him, he twirls, puts on his hat, someone opens the door and he walks out. It’s a lot of movement, and he’s only going to lunch.

The staging evokes the forms, rituals and artifice of high society in Imperial Russia. Hmmm, ingenious. They’re phonies, we get it. The ball where the dashing Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) ditches Kitty (Alicia Vikander) for Anna features some very odd dancing—a waltz crossed with ballet. Everything is stylized. And even if the location is obviously a stage set, the production design and costumes are sumptuous. (It’s jarring when the characters occasionally wind up on a real location. What, they forgot to bring their theatre?) Plus that train keeps turning up like a built-in spoiler.

Here’s the problem. The theatricality has a detaching effect on the viewer. We’re told that what we see isn’t real. So when Anna falls in love with Vronsky and eventually leaves her exalted husband (Jude Law) and beloved child to be with him, how are we supposed to feel? Ingenuity has trumped passion.

After a while the staging comes off as cute, and if there’s anything Anna Karenina is not, it’s cute. Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass) is too young to play Vronsky, and when their relationship starts cracking we’re not convinced of his pain. Keira Knightley seems to be playing the same character she played in Atonement and A Dangerous Method, although she doesn’t do her impression of the Alien from Alien.

On the plus side, Jude Law is an effective Karenin—virtuous, morally superior, smug yet sympathetic. This adaptation pays proper attention to the Kitty-Levin story, and Dohmnall Gleeson is compelling as the idealist Levin. (Confession: When we read Anna Karenina we skimmed through the parts about agriculture.) Their story isn’t the most passionate and exciting romance, but that’s the point: real love isn’t about flying sparks and grand gestures. It’s not that you can’t live without each other; but that you can live with each other.

We know some of you are reading the novel to prepare for the movie. Watch it anyway—it’s beautiful to look at, and it may point you to other ways of thinking about Anna Karenina.

According to the article, fame is like Aztec human sacrifice. To quote our favorite review of one of the later Star Wars, “Break me a fucking give.”

VICE has called Esquire’s interview with Megan Fox The Worst Thing Ever Written. Yup, it’s drivel. But is it sincere drivel, or is it meant to be a joke? Come on, Aztecs, leprechauns, Bigfoot…

Deep in her house, Megan Fox and I are discussing human sacrifice. I tell her about an Aztec ritual practiced five hundred years ago in ancient Mexico during the feast of Toxcatl, when the Aztecs picked a perfect youth to live among them as a god. He was a paragon, beautiful and fit and healthy, with ideal proportions.

Megan Fox will not go willingly to have her heart cut out.

Keep reading this drivel.

This breathless bad prose is grammatically correct, unlike many magazine articles we have read.

Sweet Tooth is available at National Bookstores. Hardcover, Php995.

With his latest novel Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan revisits scenes of his former triumphs. Sweet Tooth is set in the world of espionage, like The Innocent, and is ultimately about writing, like Atonement. It is clever, diverting, it just zips along—the ideal book for a longish commute. However, it is glib and flimsy.

This novel does not offer the cold sweat excitement of The Innocent (the part in The Innocent where Leonard is lugging that suitcase across Berlin is so nerve-wracking, we began to chew on the pages) or let us into the protagonist’s dread, guilt and paranoia. It does not have the scale, invention, ambition or emotional wallop of Atonement. (Even if you feel that you were tricked by that book, you can’t deny the sense of having lived through something.)

We don’t feel much for Sweet Tooth or its heroine Serena, an entry-level employee of British Intelligence assigned to recruit a writer for their secret propaganda efforts. She’s just not that interesting. Fine, she’s 23 and callow, but Briony in Atonement is 13 and the novel is propelled by the things the child doesn’t know. (Sweet Tooth has a gimmicky explanation for this which we do not find amusing.) The love affairs which set Serena’s story in motion are disposable, and there’s really not a lot at stake. The last-minute mention of Operation Mincemeat reminds us that there are many terrific spy stories out there, but not in here.

What we find really worrisome is the prose. This is a novel by Ian McEwan, who can give us whiplash with a sentence. Bits of Sweet Tooth sound like Facebook updates by a high school classmate you wish you could un-friend. (Yeah there’s an explanation for this, no we’re not buying it.)

If someone else had written this at the start of their career, we’d call it promising. Recommended: The Innocent and Atonement by Ian McEwan. If you want a great spy novel in the same dreary early 70s London setting, there’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John LeCarré.

There are two recent movies involving the US Central Intelligence Agency and claiming to be based on actual events. Ben Affleck’s Argo is about the daring rescue of US Embassy personnel hiding out in Tehran during the Iranian revolution. Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty is about the decade-long manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, culminating in the raid at Abbottabad.

It is useful to measure movies by their aspirations. Argo is a superb entertainment. We liked Argo—we do not mind that it futzes with the facts (the rescue proceeded without a hitch, no last-minute chase on the runway). If it stuck to actual events, it wouldn’t be as much fun. There are no moral dilemmas: who’s going to argue against saving the refugees? When the mission is accomplished, we feel good. Everything is going to be okay.

Zero Dark Thirty is a taut and rigorous examination of America after 9/11. It is very entertaining, but that’s not all it wants. This is not a movie we’re supposed to love, and its handling of the facts has incurred the ire of both the right (American politicians hotly deny that information gained from torture led to the capture of Bin Laden) and the left (Critics condemn the movie for not condemning torture). It demands more than our approval: it presents us with a moral dilemma that will not go away when the credits roll. When the mission is accomplished, we don’t celebrate. Everything is not going to be okay. In the heroes’ quest to punish the enemy, this is what they have become. Was it worth it?

ZD30 is now in theatres.

Rating: * * * * *

Read The Cost of Getting Bin Laden, our review at InterAksyon.com.

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The Academy has a long history of being wrong. Kathryn Bigelow was not nominated for Best Director—given the controversy, we saw that coming. Argo got a slew of nominations but apparently directed itself—whatever. But Matthew McConaughey not getting a Best Supporting Actor nod for Magic Mike—that’s just cruel.

The Limited Edition Print + Digital Combo of Avengers Vs. X-Men will be available at National Bookstores.

Poor Cyclops. In some story arcs he’s an orphan, in others his parents don’t understand him (It’s not heat vision, it’s concussive force!) He can’t take off his glasses. He’s the teacher’s pet, but not the sharpest knife in the drawer. His leadership of the X-Men is always being questioned. His relationship with his brother Havok isn’t great. His great love Jean Grey is dead, not dead, dead, not dead…His current girlfriend Emma Frost is a bitch. His powers disappear, reappear, disappear…The Scarlet Witch depowers the mutants with a sentence fragment. And in Avengers Vs. X-Men he gets to be the most powerful mutant of all— and turns into Magneto Lite.

On the other hand Cyclops isn’t goody two-shoes anymore.

The Phoenix Force returns yet again (that’s why it’s called the Phoenix), but instead of possessing the mutant “messiah” Hope Summers it splits five ways and inhabits five X-Men including Cyclops. Captain America and the Avengers view the Phoenix as a threat that must be destroyed; Cyclops insists that its power can be used to change the world for the better (and rebuild the mutant population). It’s what might’ve happened if the Fellowship of the Ring had decided to hold on to the One Ring and try to wield it for good: They can’t.

The Avengers get their asses kicked. Cyclops gets more and more psychotic and as reported in the media, kills a major character who’s already died a few times before. The series is highly entertaining, but a bit weak on story, and it doesn’t hold a candle to the original Dark Phoenix saga by Chris Claremont. (We want Dazzler to save the world with her disco powers!)

AVX has AR (Augmented Reality) content you can access by downloading the free Marvel app. We thought that if we trained our camera at a picture of Iron Man a hologram of Robert Downey, Jr would appear and we would discuss Weird Science, and if we pointed at Thor Chris Hemsworth would build us a treehouse. Nope, but we got lots, lots, lots of features and interviews with Marvel writers and artists. The book also has a print version of the digital Infinite Comics, which does not have all the features of the digital version you can download from the app.

The hardcover AVX also contains Versus, which answers the eternal question: If Superhero A fought with Superhero X, who would win? As expected, Iron Man battles Magneto, Thing and Colossus clobber each other, Russians Black Widow and Illyana Rasputin fight, and ex-spouses Storm and Black Panther ditch their marriage counselor. The other match-ups we don’t get, among them Thing vs Namor, Captain America vs Gambit, and Thor vs Emma Frost. Why Thor vs Emma Frost, are they fighting over who has the better conditioner?

We started watching Holy Motors by Leos Carax out of curiosity, because it’s on so many year-end lists. We had no intention of watching the whole movie because our copy doesn’t have English subtitles.

First we were confused. Then we were weirded out. Then we were riveted. Then we were repelled. Then we were laughing. Then we were fascinated. Then we were moved. Then we were exhilarated. Then the movie was finished.

We still can’t tell you what it is exactly, but it’s amazing. It stars the indescribable Denis Lavant (The Lovers on the Bridge), Edith Scob (Eyes Without A Face), Eva Mendes who doesn’t say a word and doesn’t have to, and a soulful Kylie Minogue. Who knew?

2012: Year of the White Stretch Limos. The protagonist of David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis also rides around in one.