by Bobby Finger

Lived-In

A failed engagement leads Ben (Bradley Cooper) to quit his job as an analyst at a NYC hedge fund and retire early in a small town upstate. He buys a fixer-upper and begins to find a place among the town’s kooky residents, including the town’s unlikely plumber, Jess (Kristen Wiig). It isn’t long, however, before both his ex boss (Jeff Bridges) and fiancee (Rose Byrne) attempt to bring him back to his old life.
Music: Vampire Weekend — “Ya Hey” (4:19)
Placement During Trailer: End

Lean In

After an ex-boyfriend steals her idea and suddenly makes a fortune, Audrey (Kerry Washington) decides to start from scratch. Fed up with the scarcity of powerful women in tech and the men who steal their thunder, she and her closest, most intelligent lady friends found a startup that quickly becomes the talk of Silicon Valley. But just when she finally makes it to the top, the appearance of a mysterious new investor (Hugh Dancy) threatens to burst her bubble. Based on the bestselling book by Sheryl Sandberg.
Music: Robin Thicke ft. Pharrell — “Blurred Lines” (:50)
Placement During Trailer: Middle

It’s Official

In this sequel to It’s Complicated, Jane (Meryl Streep), now engaged to Adam (Steve Martin), decides to have a bachelorette party in LA with her best friends (Rita Wilson, Mary Kay Place, and Alexandra Wentworth). When one of the women disappears after being wooed by a famous actor (George Clooney as himself), it’s up to the others to make their way through Hollywood’s hottest spots to find their friend.
Music: Daft Punk — “Get Lucky” (1:40)
Placement During Trailer: End

Kelly: I Can Handle This

http://player.vimeo.com/video/61636576?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=c9ff23

From Oscar-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple (Harlan County USA; Shut Up and Sing) comes this intimate look into a single year in the life of Kelly Rowland — former member of Destiny’s Child — as she records a solo album and attempts to flee the shadow of her former group member, Beyoncé Knowles. Kelly: I Can Handle This is a raw, heartfelt, and occasionally devastating examination of celebrity, pride, and family.
Music: Kelly Rowland — “Kisses Down Low” (1:08)
Placement During Trailer: End

Les Jeunes Cœurs (Young Hearts)

http://player.vimeo.com/video/61974804?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=c9ff23

After the sudden death of her only child, 89-year-old widow Marion (Emmanuelle Riva) decides to move from the southern French village where her family has lived for generations to the big city of Paris. Displeased with the assisted living facility, she spends her days roaming the city and eventually befriends an eccentric, failed actress, Jolie (Juliette Binoche), who teaches her that it’s never too late to follow your heart — even if everyone is telling you otherwise.
Music: Bastille — “Pompeii” (2:45)
Placement During Trailer: End

Under the Cloud

After saving the life of William (Idris Elba) on a subway platform during his trip to New York City, Angela (Gabrielle Union) gives him her number and hops on her train, but William drops and shatters his phone before it saves. Five years later, they have another chance encounter. But this time, they’re both in London…and they’re both married. The two couples quickly become friends, and never reveal their New York incident to their spouses. But it has to come out sometime — the only question is when.
Music: Justin Timberlake — “Mirrors” (3:43)
Placement During Trailer: End

Down and In

Lindsey (Jennifer Lawrence) is a young professional in San Francisco with a rising career and expensive social life. But after being laid off, the debts accrued from her formerly excessive lifestyle force her to move back in with her college professor mother, Em (Meryl Streep), in Berkeley. While working minimum wage jobs to repay her debts, Lindsey and Em attempt to confront their past, adapt to their present, and build a better future.
Music: The National — “Pink Rabbits” (3:30)
Placement During Trailer: End

We Used To Work Together

Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, and Rupert Grint all play dramatized versions of themselves in this coming-of-age drama that follows a group of former child stars as they deal with life after a successful movie franchise. They struggle to find work and resist the temptations that come with immense wealth and fame — and eventually losing touch. After five years apart, they reconnect at the funeral of an older beloved costar, and promise to support each other’s comebacks. But that’s much easier said than done.
Music: Miley Cyrus– “We Can’t Stop” (2:11)
Placement During Trailer: End

#Beautiful

This, but for 90 minutes.
Music: Miguel & Mariah Carey — “#Beautiful”
Placement During Trailer: Throughout

Bobby Finger might also be interested in a movie with Ciara’s “I’m Out.”

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Belmont Overture (Poem of Eight A.M.)

It’s about settling down and settling in
and trying not to settle for,

about three miles from the urban core,
where the not-quite-wild bald turkey, looking so lost

and inquisitive next to the stop for the 74,
peers into the roseless rosebush, up at the pointless oar

hung above one townhouse’s swept steps, and the U.S.
and floral and nautical flags flaunt their calm semaphore.

Walking past them, today, with our stroller, we note as we pass
the wreath of real twigs on our next-door neighbor’s door

and beside it another, not sold in any store,
made of pipecleaners and plastic oak leaves. It looks like a nest,

something Nathan could put together, with the rest
of his preschool class.

When we go out, we have learned to bring sunscreen,
and insect repellent, and pretzel sticks, and Aquafor,

in case all the shrubs scratch the kids. We mean
it when we say we like it; we feel sure

it’s a safe place, and once we feel safe, it’s our nature
to say we’re unsatisfied, and pretend to seek more.

Kendall Square in the Rain

What we can’t say openly
we say in poetry,

speaking about another as myself.

Who has the right
to say who has the right?

Where else but in the negative
space of the empty de facto amphitheater,
the shade of the pre-stressed concrete or the shadow
of the Hatch Shell, shall I go
to register a complaint?

Speak to the flat grass, Midas,
about your ass’s ears,
about your wish to embarrass
your friends with a ribbon and bow.

Speak out against self-pity
during the playground games,
bouncing a loud rubber ball. See how that goes.

You could have been the king, and now you are.

There is a promise in compromise,
and two I’s in disguise,
and a series of curtains the downpour pulls up
over the flat black grates
that keep the water from clambering into the building,
the building where you might work; they protect it from floods,
precipitation hammering childish channels
into the packed-down flotsam, the wadded-up
mud like forgetfulness, driving the new twigs home.

Stephen Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Belmont, his latest book of poems, is just out from Graywolf; he’s also the author, most recently, of The Art of the Sonnet, with David Mikics (Harvard UP, 2010), and Why I Am Not a Toddler and Other Poems by Cooper Bennett Burt (Rain Taxi Editions, 2011).

Well of course we have more poems, we would be much of a Poetry Section without them. Here they are! You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

“A hashtag is the Greek chorus of the Internet. It tells everyone what the theme is, but it doesn’t do it very well. It’s the laugh-track-gone-concerned on an ’80s sitcom’s Very Special Episode — that hushed ‘ooh’when something bad (yet solvable!) is about to happen. It’s what you mutter to someone in line next to you — who’s not listening. It’s lazy writing. It’s tell, don’t show. It’s a group of backup singers, lip-syncing.”

by Brendan O’Connor

Captains of industry, restaurateurs, and members of the New York City Council gathered on the steps of City Hall yesterday in protest. Councilmember Lewis Fidler has a bill, introduced yesterday and supported by Mayor Bloomberg, that would ban the use of polystyrene foam food service products — takeout containers, cups and plates, mostly.

This brave team of polystyrene advocates has strong support. Put A Lid On It NYC, who are sharing facts about the environmental benefits of polystyrene, is funded by the American Chemistry Council, whose mission is “to deliver business value through exceptional advocacy.” There, you can learn that the proposed ban would cost the city $100 million a year, a nice round number. The polystyrene enthusiasts are getting great pick-up: Crain’s, for just one instance, has run their messaging almost verbatim.

This ban, said Norman Edward Brown, the Legislative Director of the New York State Council of Machinists, would eradicate 1500 jobs and would actually cost the city more than $100 million, possibly as much as $200 million! “I haven’t read the study myself,” he said when asked what might bring the total to $200 million. “We’ll be glad to go with the hundred million dollars.”

“The only businessman to lead New York is leading a charge against the marketplace,” said Brown. According to Brown, the market has determined that polystyrene — which is prohibited in Antarctica, and more than a hundred U.S. cities — is an objectively superior material. “The mayor is going out of his way to crush what the market has demanded be done,” he said.

James Reilly, President of Middletown, NY’s Genpak — a food packaging manufacturer — praised polystyrene foam’s functionality and value. “Foam costs less because it uses less energy and less material,” he said. “Heck, it’s 90% air,” he said. “We sell air.”

“The reason people attack foam is because it’s so popular,” Reilly told me after the press conference.

Its “airiness,” not its popularity, is one reason why polystyrene foam is not being considered as a recyclable product. There are only a few plants in the United States that have the capacity to recycle it, and none of them are near New York City. “The transport and processing is expensive, unsustainable, and not environmentally friendly,” says the city. Polystyrene foam already increases the cost of recycling for New Yorkers by as much as $20 per ton, according to the Mayor.

Edward W. Rider, Jr., the VP of engineering at Genpak, told me that shipping costs of the pulp products necessary to manufacture biodegradable material, instead of polystyrene, would be exorbitantly expensive. “More energy costs money, and more energy means more greenhouse gas emissions,” said Rider. “The energy it takes to get that pulp to us, not to speak of how the pulp gets made, is greater than the petroleum we’re using.”

“I mean, we sell air,” said Rider, echoing his boss. “That’s what we’re selling.”

The petroleum products they use now cost Genpak a $.80 per pound. Pulp, according to Rider, would cost between $.85 and $1 per pound.

These increased costs would trickle-down, apparently, to people like Jonny Falcones, who owns La Nueva Estrella el Castillo in Crown Heights. “The product we’re using is very well-liked by our customers,” Falcone said. “Raising the price would mean disaster.” He claimed to be speaking for 1000 other restaurant owners in New York. “Most likely” he would just go out of business, he said, echoing a talking point of lobbyists who opposed the Affordable Care Act.

“Small businesses are the backbone of New York,” said Councilman Robert Jackson (Morningside Heights, West Harlem), with a soda — not a Big Gulp! — in hand. “Let’s not hurt the backbone, because we won’t be able to stand up straight.”

Richard Master, CEO of Easton, Pennsylvania’s MCS Industries Inc — “the largest manufacturer of picture frames and framed mirrors in the United States” — said that his company uses 12 million pounds of recycled polystyrene every year. 40% of that — so, about 5 million pounds — comes from polystyrene foam. “We cannot get enough of it,” he said. “We would like it to be 50%, 60%, 80%.”

.5% of all New York City waste is polystyrene. (Fun fact: carpets and rugs make up 1.5% of New York City’s waste.) According to NYC’s “PlaNYC 2030” document, the official number on total city waste production is 14 million tons a year; about half of that is recycled. Unfortunately, we can’t extrapolate how many pounds of polystyrene the city jettisons each year. After all, it’s mostly made of air.

Master brought a gift for the Mayor: a framed picture of Bloomberg himself, made of 98% recycled materials “and not enough styrofoam to suit our appetite.” Mayor Bloomberg was not in attendance, so it’s unclear what became of the photograph, or what the other 2% was.

“I’m an environmentalist,” said Council Member Peter F. Vallone Jr, who hates graffiti, pit bulls, water flouridation and awls, in that order. He had some other claims. “I’m also a reasonable person and a business person,” he said.

Anyway! Fidler addressed claims that polystyrene would be better recycled than banned. “That would be great,” he said, “except none of the recycling plants in the city think it’s possible.”

“The substitute materials that will be used instead of foam, you cannot recycle. This legislation will ban the recyclable product but it will permit the non-recyclable substitute,” said Brown. “Go figure why any environmentalist would do that.”

In 2009, the city of Seattle passed a law banning polystyrene foam. Since July of 2010, all “one-time use food service containers” — of polystyrene or any other non-recyclable material — have been replaced with products that are either compostable or recyclable. Here is a list of those alternatives — everything from bags, bakery boxes and bowls to straws and utensils.

Included on that list? Genpak’s very own “Harvest” line of corn-based containers.

MCS Industries’ Master believes his company and others like it would be able to use absolutely all of the polystyrene foam produced by New York on an annual basis. “I hear that it’s close to 50 million pounds at this moment and I think that’s a blip in the overall requirement for polystyrene,” he said.

When asked how many times polystyrene material can be recycled into other products, Master looked to Reilly, the president of GenPak. “Almost infinitely,” Reilly said.

“Yes,” Master said. “Almost an infinite amount of times.”

Brendan O’Connor is an Awl summer reporter.

You know what? Someday you’re going to get old and talk about the stuff in your house with the same intensity you used to talk about art too. It’s just part of life. Deal with it.

“We are THRILLED AND TICKLED BEYOND BELIEF to announce the launch of Lizzie Skurnick Books, your gateway to the best YA from the 1930s through the 1970s. Get ready: Starting this fall, we’ll be publishing a novel a month for your pleasure, delectation, and book-collecting needs. For Fall 2013, join us in wel­coming back novels from seven pio­neers in the field: Y.A. greats Lois Duncan, M.E. Kerr, Ellen Conford, Lila Perl, Sandra Scoppettone and Berthe Amoss, and MacArthur ‘genius’ award-winner Ernest J. Gaines. “
 — Do this or I won’t like you anymore.

Is it too cynical to suggest that if Pier Paolo Pasolini were alive today he would have mellowed to such an extent that he would be making rom-coms with titles like Mussolini’s Gay Island? Probably. Had he survived I bet he’d be making short clips for Italian Funny or Die.

“Forget abandoning carbohydrates or detoxing. The new dieting craze sweeping Britain and taking off in the United States lets people eat whatever they like — but only five days a week.”
 — People, please. I had plans to make a fortune on my one simple diet tip, but because I can’t stand to see you all grasping at these ridiculous gimmicks — and because I can’t figure how to pad it out to book length — I will share this amazing diet secret with the world: Before you are about to eat anything, ask yourself, “Am I going to enjoy this?” If the answer is “yes,” find something else. That’s it. You’re welcome.

“’I don’t know who comes to the boardwalk and says, ‘Let’s go to the boardwalk and find out how many asses we can see.’”
 — Wildwood mayor Ernest Troiano clearly hangs out with different people than you do.