Humor, People

The Terminator of Speech

by:
“The doctor then told me that I should not do any events for three days and also said to me I should not speak for three days. My wife said, ‘Make it seven.’” Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Governor, after cutting his lip in a motorcycle crash in Los Angeles. Postscript: July 7, 2006 Schwarzenegger Finally Gets a License By image [Read More]
Drama, Movies

Syriana

by:
It is customary at many opera productions to hand out notes to the audience about what is happening in the different acts of the musical work, often because the opera is sung in a foreign language. Most critics and moviegoers have remarked the plot of Syriana is jumping to so many places and to so image [Read More]
Astute Observations, Diary

Happiness Through the Ages

by:
What makes it so difficult to interpret how people in former times have thought about the human condition is that words change their meanings over time, sometimes morphing into the exact opposite of what they originally meant. As I just learned by reading in ‘The Economist’ a review of “Happiness: A History, ” the word image image [Read More]
Movies, Phantasy

Match Point

by:
I buried Woody Allen tonight. The first 90 minutes of Match Point were entirely repetitive of his previous films,  with the exception the location:  the film takes place in London and not Manhattan. I wished I had stayed home and not wasted time on such a trivial movie. Allen’s final mission in life seems to image [Read More]
Drama, Movies

Brokeback Mountain

by:
Just as in The Sound of Music the most impressive character in the Ang Lee’s cowboy movie are beautiful mountains. Whenever the camera shows pictures of the arresting Wyoming landscape, one’s soul takes in a deep breath. As a piece of drama the film falls flat: forty years ago a story of two cowboys in image [Read More]
Europe, Travel

High above the Pyrenees

by:
The Pyrenees Mountains form a natural border between France and Spain. From the window of my aircraft the eye catches a spectacular sight. In the row next to me sits a woman with a small dog in her arms, holding and caressing it as if it were a human baby. She puts the head of image [Read More]