Tell Matt to stop being so presumptuous
This Matt Yglesias tweet (discussing The Talented Mr. Ripley) caught my eye:
Matt should speak for himself. I knew this film was a masterpiece when I first saw it in 1999.
PS. For those who don’t get the joke, Yglesias frequently complains about annoying news headlines of the form:
X is not what you think it is
Matt is very smart, and generally knows what X is before being told by some stupid young reporter than he doesn’t know what they know.
PPS. You guys don’t know this, but the earlier French version with Alain Delon is roughly as good. (It’s the plot that makes these two films so good.) But at a cocktail party you should tell people that the French version is much better, because it’s the original and because . . . well, because it’s French. That’ll impress them.
PPPS. And don’t forget to preface your observation with, “You probably don’t know this, but . . . “
Tags:
18. April 2022 at 11:09
Does anybody want to tell us what this movie even is?
18. April 2022 at 11:11
I added the movie name to the post.
18. April 2022 at 11:27
It really is a good movie. A great portrayal of the way things can snow-ball out of control, one lie begetting another.
18. April 2022 at 11:43
Haven’t seen Purple Moon yet, but I recall enjoying Ripley’s Game too (in spite of the imdb rating).
18. April 2022 at 12:01
John, Yeah, all the Ripley movies are good. Check out The American Friend. Also Strangers on a Train.
18. April 2022 at 16:47
The books are also worth consuming.
> A great portrayal of the way things can snow-ball out of control, one lie begetting another.
You forgot the most important aspect: the villain wins. The lies don’t collapse.
18. April 2022 at 18:17
its a meh movie, totally missing highsmith’s main points, which were better said in any event in the Iliad.
all that said, PSH steals the movie, for whatever meh it is.
18. April 2022 at 21:25
Matthias, Yes, I’ve been meaning to read them. Maybe next year.
Agrippa, I have zero interest if a movie is faithful to a book (which is usually the artistic kiss of death.)
And all the films of Ripley novels are very entertaining. (At least the 5 I’ve seen.)
19. April 2022 at 07:37
“PS. For those who don’t get the joke, Yglesias frequently complains…”
I can’t believe you get paid for these takes.
19. April 2022 at 08:44
Anon/portly, You have good reason for not believing I get paid. I don’t. Have you noticed that I didn’t set up one of those by subscription Substacks? I know the market value of my posts.
19. April 2022 at 12:03
“Anon/portly, You have good reason for not believing I get paid. I don’t.”
Of course I know that. But whereas Yglesias does find headlines of the “x is not what you think it is” form somewhat annoying, as this post says, I’d say the thing he finds most annoying is idiots responding to his tweets with replies along the lines of “I can’t believe you get paid for these takes.”
It seems to me that about once a week he points out that one, he doesn’t get paid for tweeting, and two, if anyone doesn’t like his tweets, they don’t have to read them (or follow him).
Anyway, I thought I’d throw that out and see what the response was – was going for some “meta” humor there.
19. April 2022 at 15:57
Anon/portly, Wait, are you saying he’d find this post annoying? Don’t you think he has a sense of humor?
Your comments can be hard to read sometimes.
19. April 2022 at 16:01
economist manque and torrid film reviewer flaneur sumner: “i care not if a film adapting a novel is faithful to the novel.” Maybe he should retitle his “film reviews” posts as “a new hermeneutics
of film through the eyes of an economist dilletante pretending to be neither”
21. April 2022 at 06:03
My wife and I are reading through the novels now. We love the style, but are struggling with how the plots resolve. Does Highsmith intend the plots to be a little absurd, or are we overestimating the effectiveness of 1950’s European police work?
21. April 2022 at 06:04
I really enjoyed the first novel b/c it gives some additional background on Ripley’s life in NY and lets you get more inside his head. It was at least as good as the films, if not better.
For me the series drops off a fair bit after the first and a lot after the second. I think you’ll get the 80/20 benefit from just Talented.
22. April 2022 at 09:00
There is a YouTube channel that’s called Not What You Think. I bet Matt Yglesias would love it. It has 1.67 million subscribers so I think that makes it a popular one. For most of the videos the thumbnail asks some question then replies with “Not What You Think”. The question is generally some arcana of military technology or strategy (because that’s what the channel is actually about), so the idea of whether the answer is what I think or not is entirely meaningless. Then in the actual video the host almost always completely forgets his promise that he would deviate from what I think – providing conventionally informative content on the topic instead of the trolling that you might expect based on the thumbnail