What we have to do now,” DiCaprio says, “is convince the parent company of this large, diversified management-consulting organization, with its range of IT services, that their ten-year business-development plan comes from the five-year plan their own internal consulting group has developed.”
Watanabe looks confused, which allows DiCaprio to explain the superfluous intricacies of the plot to the audience. “You mean,” Watanabe says, “that in the time it takes to construct a five-year plan one consultancy deep, we’ll be able to develop a ten-year plan two levels down?”
DiCaprio looks into the middle distance. “Yes,” he says, “as long as our methodology is proprietary enough. I’ve outsourced it to a subcontractor in a mossy basement in Bangalore. And, in the end, our own consulting firm will only need to charge eleven billable hours. We just need to make sure that we time the project milestones to be achieved so that we don’t end up trapped three or four levels deep in management consultation.” S.E.C. agents disguised as dolphins swim past the window outside.
—
Who said the plot of Inception lacked dramatic depth? If only they had been consultants.
From the NY. Courtesy of AF.
The Italian male, the head or heir of the family, is justly famous the world over for his manliness. He jealously defends his independence. No woman submits him to her will. His pride is clearly visible. Watch him promenade down the corso of any small town at sunset, or on Sunday morning after mass. How cocky he looks, how close fitting are his clothes, how triumphantly he sweeps his eyes about, how condescendingly he glances at pretty girls from the corner of his lowered eyelids! He is visibly the master of creation.
—
Luigi Barzini, The Italians.
Courtesy of EVM. Chapeau.
I will no longer be carrying around photo ID. Know why? People should know who I am.
—
Sue Sylvester, surely the best new character in American television.

In brief, Columbia Pictures has worked hard to establish a female equivalent to the “Bourne” franchise. (The end of the movie all but sells popcorn for a sequel.) The formula is similar: Jolie’s character, Evelyn Salt, is an insider (a C.I.A. agent) who is also a hunted outsider (a possible Russian mole and assassin). Salt is always on the move—she dashes through the bowels of buildings she has never entered before and escapes innumerable encounters with fully armed security agents, who obligingly present tender parts of their bodies for her to attack. Heroic inexorability is, of course, a movie staple, going back to the silent serials, and there’s no reason that women shouldn’t be super-studs, too.
—
Salt opens. Why, oh, why? Jut wait for the sequel.
Why do we need sequels? Stand-alone movies can be good, too.
Mr Cameron ends a tumultuous political season buoyed by opinion polls that appear to fly in the face of logic: this is a leader who has just embarked on the UK’s biggest austerity drive for a generation, and yet his approval ratings have risen since he entered Downing Street on May 11. His aides say he is “loving” the job. “What looked a little like arrogance in opposition works really well as prime minister,” says one.
— David Cameron, wonder boy. At least for the polls. At least for now. Image is stronger than austerity.