PT Media Review

M
ovies

The Hulk's Human Side

Computers combine acting and graphics in "The Hulk" to produce an
emotive monster

Last winter, "The Two Towers" broke new ground by combining live
acting with computer-generated images to create the otherworldly Gollum.
The creature's body, wracked by dueling personalities, was crafted first
by mapping actor Andy Serkis' movements on a computer, then programming
the image to mimic his acting. The outcome: a more realistic
depiction.

June 20 brings another impossible physique to the screen: the
15-foot-tall, one-ton Hulk. Director Ang Lee took a step beyond Gollum by
directing the computer generated Hulk as if it were a live actor. The
monster's performance is based in part on actor Eric Bana's harnessing of
the Hulk's swirling emotions. Bana plays the Hulk's alter ego, Bruce
Banner, whose flawed experiment causes his anger-induced
transformation.

Lee emphasizes character over the action-hero component, exploring
issues of anger expression and inherent rage, as well as the Hulk's
struggle for acceptance in society.

Soldier's Girl

Director: Frank Pierson

A gut-wrenching and provocative work, "Soldier's Girl" chronicles
the true story of the 1999 murder of Barry Winchell (actor Troy Garity),
an Army soldier fatally bludgeoned by his barracks mates for his
relationship with a transgendered nightclub performer. Garity's
performance, uncannily reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock
in The Graduate, is so strong that it's nearly impossible to react
without sympathy, regardless of your thoughts on homosexuality and the
Army's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. It doesn't hurt that his lover,
Calpernia Addams (played by Lee Pace), is so disarming, or that their
sincere love is disrupted by outside dissenters as well as Addams'
struggle with the sense that he/she is a "freak."

Most affecting are the soldiers' interactions and distinct
personalities as they navigate shared work and living quarters. These
infantrymen--still boys, for all practical purposes--one day may die for
their country, but they have yet to acquire the life experience necessary
to understand the weightiness of mortality. This adolescent temperament,
reactionary and uninformed, is the genesis of Winchell's murder. And
unfortunately, as history reminds us, it's a mind-set not everyone
outgrows.

Envy

Director: Barry Levinson

Synopsis: Tim (Ben Stiller) and Nick (Jack Black) are best friends
in every way. The two neighbors even work side by side at the same
company. But their relationship changes drastically and for the worse
when Tim passes up one of Nick's many get-rich-quick schemes. Called the
Vapoorizer, Nick's invention makes dog poop evaporate into thin air. But
when the gadget hits the big time, Nick becomes stinking rich as Tim
looks on with growing envy.

As the movie portrays, wealth and envy can cause people to lose
control. "We act stupidly when emotion is high. A little envy is
interesting, but too much is stupid," says clinical psychologist Robert
Markman, Ph.D. "Envy is 'magical thinking.' After Tim passes on Nick's
venture, he thinks, 'I should have [gotten in on it].' He then creates a
fantasy world that drives him crazy."

Sweet Sixteen

Director: Ken Loach

Review: Just one year shy of the legal driving age, Liam (Martin
Composton) is preparing to support his mother (Michelle Coulter), who is
scheduled for release from prison on his 16th birthday. To earn money, he
begins dealing drugs, and soon shares his mom's fate.

The movie confronts the pattern of multiple incarcerations within
families. Justice Department figures show that in 2002, 47 percent of
inmates in state prisons had a parent or relative behind bars. True to
life, Liam's good but misguided intentions further break apart his
family.

Radio

The Infinite Mind

Radio's award-winning weekly show "The Infinite Mind" tackles
complex topics, from gambling addiction to the nature of courage,
broadcasting from a studio packed with psychology's luminaries. But this
is not academia for the airwaves. A recent show on domestic abuse
featured musician Suzanne Vega's related hit, Luca; and an episode on
handedness linked lefties Leonardo da Vinci and Oprah Winfrey. Future
episodes will look at the funding crisis in community mental health
programs and unequal public access to quality care. For local schedules,
go to www.theinfinitemind.com.

The Web

Wired for Health

You've heard the tale: A woman walks out of surgery, only to later
return complaining of inexplicable pain. The culprit? Her surgeon's
clamp, left behind during the procedure. Disturbingly, similar errors
happen all too often: A New England Journal of Medicine study recently
found that doctors leave medical instruments inside 1,500 patients each
year. And the Institute of Medicine reports that medical blunders in U.S.
hospitals are the country's eighth leading cause of death.

Even more distressing, doctors' fears of liability may keep them
from discussing errors and thus prevention techniques, suggests a recent
Journal of the American Medical Association study. Clearly, being an
informed patient is vital, and the Internet is a great resource. So to
become a "cyberchondriac" and join the 80 percent of Americans who scour
the Web for health information, click here for the latest:

www.webmm.ahrq.gov

(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)

www.aorn.org

(Association of periOperative Registered Nurses. Or call
866-285-5209).

Television

Real Dangers

Reality TV may appear harmless, but some experts worry that it can
be psychologically damaging. Randall Flanery, a St. Louis University
professor, suggests that shows such as ABC's "Are You Hot?" might
encourage eating disorders through the implication that appearance is
more important than personality.

There are other reasons to lament the rise of reality programming:
Its improvisational nature and low production costs are driving droves of
actors and writers into anxious unemployment. And show participants, such
as those on the Sci-Fi Channel's "Scare Tactics," who are unwittingly
subjected to fear-inducing pranks, may actually suffer real-life trauma.
In fact, at least one woman has already sued the Sci-Fi station: She
contends that witnessing a supposed extraterrestrial murder was so
traumatizing she had to be hospitalized.

Still think TV doesn't affect your reality? Consider this:

• People tend to be more depressed after watching
television.

• An Italian study found that 39 percent of television
viewers reported apathy, compared with only 4 percent of those engaged in
arts and hobbies.

• Alzheimer's patients watched significantly more television
when younger than did their healthy friends.

• Adolescents who spend three or more hours a day in front of
the TV are much more likely to engage in violent behavior as
adults.

Documentary

Flag Wars

The flags are rainbow-colored, the symbol of gay pride. They are
considered an affront in the run-down, historically black section of
Columbus, Ohio, where affluent gay men are buying up decaying homes and
gentrifying the neighborhood. Although filmmakers Linda Goode Bryant and
Laura Poitras focus primarily on the black homeowners, they don't take
sides. There are no interviews, no narration--only candid views of city
residents, including a white homophobic street preacher, a black woman
living in a decrepit mansion on $6,000 a year and members of the local Ku
Klux Klan. Similar housing conflicts are probably unfolding in a town
near you.

Music

Don't Play It Again, Sam

Do songs resonate relentlessly in your head? Don't blame the
deejay: A new University of Cincinnati study suggests a mental sound
track may indicate slightly neurotic tendencies. James Kellaris, Ph.D.,
had 559 people complete personality surveys and asked if they suffered
from this phenomenon. He found that participants were more likely to
repeat the first song heard playing on morning radio or the last one
heard in the car. Kellaris doesn't have the solution, but he advises
singing the entire song or engaging in a distracting activity.

Books

The Unnecessary Sex

Are males becoming obsolete?

Y: The Descent Of Men;

Revealing The Mysteries Of Maleness

By Steve Jones (Houghton Mifflin, 2003)

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. But what, precisely, is
that? Fight duels for a lady's favor? Attack Iraq? Urinate while standing
up? And what makes such nonessential activities seem so vital to members
of the sterner sex, when their sisters are generally just as happy to
forgo them?

With the rising interest in evolutionary psychology, it has become
fashionable among scientists to explain people's behaviors according to
their genes' best interests. Both genders benefit when their offspring
survive to reproduce, the argument goes--or at least their genes benefit
by surviving into the next generation. But a woman invests much more in
her child, nourishing it for months within her body and years without.
Man's contribution, on the other hand, may be as limited as a brief
squirt of cells, and even that could soon prove superfluous.

As author Steve Jones, a geneticist at University College, London,
puts it: "Man himself may in the end become redundant, for his sperm can
be grown in animal testes, and in mice at least an egg can be fertilized
with a body cell from another female, which cuts out the opposite sex
completely. Males are, in many ways, parasites upon their partners. Their
interests are to persuade the other party to invest in reproduction,
while doing as little as they can themselves." To evolutionary
psychologists, the inequality of investment in offspring is the key to
everything from men's innate sense of direction (useful, some say, for
tracking down additional women to impregnate) to their penis size (the
longer the organ, perhaps, the closer the sperm are to the egg, and the
better their chance of beating out a rival man's seed).

Y is less a single sustained argument than a series of lyrical
essays. The fourth chapter, for example, "Hydraulics for Boys," begins
with pumps and valves and ends with Viagra.The fifth, "Man Mutilated,"
berates circumcision. But throughout runs the common thread of
evolution.

Unlike many scientists who write on the subject, Jones sees the
limits of evolutionary psychology as it's often practiced, with
hypotheses that are difficult to test--for example, that men's violent
urges share biological causes with those of our cousins the chimps. "The
problem," he writes, "is to know when to stop--when to recognize when
hypothesis becomes speculation (or, worse, advocacy)." His restraint
makes the book more of an honest inquiry into how our species evolved and
less an effort to justify the ways of man to woman.

The X in Sex: How the X Chromosome Controls Our Lives

By David Bainbridge (Harvard University Press, 2003)

Move over chromosome Y: X is seizing the genetic throne. Or so says
British biologist David Bainbridge in this comprehensive examination of
the female chromosome's role in human life and well-being. Culling past
and current scientific research, the book explores X's history and future
in a quest to explain why the genetic scrap is the more powerful of the
two sex chromosomes. Along the way, Bainbridge addresses such topics as
sex-linked diseases and the cellular similarity of identical twins, all
the while keeping an unbiased scientific view of why males and females
differ.

Handbook of Psychology

(John Wiley & Sons, 2003)

This is psychology's answer to the Encyclopedia Britannica: a
12-volume reference for clinicians and laymen alike. The first volume,
History of Psychology, details how Hermann Rorschach parlayed his
fondness for a turn-of-the-century parlor game--reading inkblots--into a
benchmark of personality testing. The final volume on industrial and
organizational psychology tackles issues such as how best to motivate
customer service representatives. In between are 9,000 pages penned by
leading psychologists that give perhaps the most comprehensive overview
of the discipline to date. The series appears destined to perch alongside
the profession's other bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, in
many a professional or academic office. But Editor in Chief Irving B.
Weiner, Ph.D., promises that "virtually every chapter in every volume
could be read with understanding and profit by a reasonably intelligent
person interested in the topic."