Driven out of his chair in modern history at Oxford by "boredom", Norman Stone, whose fondness for drink and tobacco is nearly as famous as his disdain for leftwing shibboleths, might well take the comparison as a compliment.
This scenario may seem like an episode of "The Twilight Zone," but for Jacobs, whose boredom with "regular" atlases cannot be measured in miles, it is very real.
The action is slick with blood, vomit, urine, milk, and the lusty pawings of lonely men, whose boredom and solitude on long rides through uninhabited country drive them to self-delusion, vain revelry, and antic resignation.
"Alice Falling" gives us maps and pictures, as well as cars and yachts, glasses of wine, steak au poivre, chatter and quips and come-ons, rough sex and a slippery pharmacopoeia: all the trappings of an affluent group of friends whose boredom and despair are about to combust into tragedy.
Sara Paxton, a budding veteran of the genre, really comes into her own as Claire, an adorable, gawky and neurotic slacker, whose boredom and obsession with ghosts -- to put it mildly -- lead to eerie and perilous consequences.
Mr. Grohl and his tastes may be the only carbon-based link between the Boredoms and Tom Petty, whose "Breakdown" the Foo Fighters played during a dudely lull.
That ghosts roam the audit booths surprises none of Wallace's characters; they even sit through lectures on the etymology of the word "boredom" given by spirits whose voices slip into and out of audibility against the Examination Center's monotonous background hum.
Matt Dillon makes his film debut as the "bad kid" who influences the more sensible Michael Kramer, who tries to navigate the minefield of adolescence in an increasingly brutal landscape, populated by unsupervised, privileged kids whose level of boredom and ennui boils over into one of the most stunning climaxes of teen anarchy ever photographed.
The rest of "Tuxedo," which opens nationwide today, is about stopping a plot by the mad bottled-water magnate Diedrich Banning Ritchie Costerr, whose childish hostile boredom is at least amusing because it suggests he has read the script).
