Comedy, Movies

License to Wed

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One of the big ironies of modern society is that we require people to obtain licenses for important and trivial tasks before we let them lose onto the world. I remember being told in my late teens. The of two most important decisions in life about choosing the right job and the right wife. For image [Read More]
Drama, Movies

Road to Perdition

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This dark, prohibition era, film is a bit hard to swallow.  By design it is unlike The Untouchables where good triumphs over evil.  Human life does not count for much in a Mafia-ruled Midwestern town. The film has a number of technical flaws that disturb the attentive viewer. The most intriguing feature of the film image [Read More]
Movies, Phantasy

The Invisible

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High School Movie. Not long until graduation. Boy wants to become a writer in New York, escaping his controlling widow mother. Girl, after losing her mother, is angry and assumes the role of a violent troublemaker and gang leader. Girl kills boy, smacking him once too hard on the head. But there is a twist. image [Read More]
Diary

A Short Primer on Conservatism for Liberals

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David Brooks articulates the intellectual conservatism that will give any Democrat and Republican food for thought: The Republican Collapse Modern conservatism begins with Edmund Burke. What Burke articulated was not an ideology or a creed, but a disposition, a reverence for tradition, a suspicion of radical change. When conservatism came to America, it became creedal. Free market image [Read More]
Movies, Phantasy

Ratatouille

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Brad Bird (writer, director) and Pixar have done it again. I continue to stand in awe of the dazzling imagination this team is bringing to the movies. Visually and conceptually Ratatouille is exquisitely pleasing. You don’t feel that this new film is a tiny bit repetitive of their previous effort The Incredibles. Guenter Grass selected image [Read More]
Movies, Phantasy

Next

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The film invents a skill that no human has ever possessed: to see for two seconds reliably into the future. Such a capability comes in handy. You can win against the Casino, you can prevent a robber from killing two people, and more.Yet our hero (Nicolas Cage) is ambivalent about his skill. It helps him image [Read More]
Drama, Movies

Ocean’s 13

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Ocean’s 11 struck me as sterile. The third episode of the George Clooney’s star vehicle has considerable charm. An old friend of Ocean (Clooney) gets screwed by a ruthless Vegas casino owner (Al Pacino). Ocean rounds up his gang of thieves to rectify this injustice. I loved the final sentence when George Clooney and Matt image [Read More]