Caitlin Flanagan's essay-review on Alec Baldwin's book about divorce (A Promise to Ourselves) has some witty, whiplash insights and a chewy center. Flanagan reports that the book "proceeds from a double-pronged thesis: that American divorce laws are deeply flawed, and that Kim Basinger is a crazy bitch," adding, "I would have liked to hear more about the latter..." As he made clear in the interviews he gave at the time it was published, Baldwin's book is intended as a serious examination of the toll that divorce can take--"this," writes Flanagan, "is the go-to book if you’re thinking of ending a two-movie-star marriage"--with a special emphasis on the way the legal system, particularly as it relates to child custody, can exacerbate unfairness and human suffering. However, his own experience may be more specialized than he cares to realize. Flanagan claims to "have a fair grasp of the way contested-custody decisions are made in California, and it’s not too difficult to read between the lines of Baldwin’s book and get a sense of what has probably been taking place over the years. Baldwin’s fury at the system emanates from his belief that the institution is reflexively anti-father. Yet he also admits to having a terrible temper, and to having displayed this protean force in front of the very people authorized to decide his fate. Family court is charged with protecting the physical and emotional safety of children, and if you tend to rave during depositions, you’re not going to like the custody orders you get."

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In The Atlantic, James Parker sings the praises of "that most misunderstood of genres," the slasher flick. Actually, Parker doesn't really make a case for the genre being misunderstood so much as boldly step up to declare that he watches them voluntarily, and he can quote Ted Hughes (“Its mishmash of scripture and physics, / With here, brains in hands, for example, / And there, legs in a treetop.” ) and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, which, though a fine rendering of a classic work, does not include an appearance by a naked Angelina Jolie in flesh high heels. "The classic slasher flick," he writes, "is produced at high speed, on a squeaker of a budget, and bows briefly for an anointing of critical scorn before going on to make piles of money. With a bit of luck, that critical scorn will be amplified into cultural censure—1980’s rape-revenge slasher, I Spit on Your Grave, for instance, was widely and windily reviled, to the enduring profit of its makers. 'The more the film was attacked,' writer-director Meir Zarchi confided to Variety last year, 'the more money shot into my pocket.'” He must have done pretty damn well. I'm not sure that I've ever actually seen I Spit on Your Grave, but I remember, as if it were yesterday, the 1981 "special" episode of Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel's old syndicated movie-reviews TV show Sneal Previews that was set aside for the purpose of heaping scorn and disgust on what were then just beginning to be called slasher (or "splatter") films, with I Spit on Your Grave a prime target. Watching a clip from the movie, in which a bunch of scuzzball louts swaggered around the fallen body of a violated young woman, sandwiched between the TV showmen clucking and posturing about the death of civilization, one felt much as one does at a screening of Freddy vs. Jason: it's not clear who you should root for, but you'd settle for checking off the box marked "None of the Above."

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In The Atlantic, Benjamin Schwarz uses the excuse of sort-of-almost-as-an-afterthought reviewing what sounds like a pretty lame book (Richard Torregrossa’s Cary Grant: A Celebration of Style) to compose a love poem to the star of His Girl Friday and North by Northwest. The impoverished Cockney Archie Leach took the name "Cary Grant" when he signed to a Hollywood contract in his late twenties, but it wasn't until he was past thirty, with twenty pictures under his belt, that he became Cary Grant.

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