Drama, Movies

Syriana

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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]
Humor, People

In Heaven we are all Celebrities

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I personally think that heaven will be like being at the comedy club all day long.  But I seem to be alone in that belief. Barbara Walters interviewed big and small people about what they think is going to happen after death. Here is what they said: By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN (NYT) ‘Heaven Yes – to cut to the [Read More]
Astute Observations, Diary

Transfixed in the Cineplex

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DANIEL MARK EPSTEIN explains in the WSJ review of “The Power of Movies” what happens when we are at the movies. Seduced, disturbed, beguiled—something strange and compelling happens when we watch a movie: When my daughter was four years old, we took her to see “The Wizard of Oz.” She emerged from the darkness transformed: [Read More]
Drama, Movies

A Good Woman

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For all you fans of Oscar Wilde, here is a movie that you will enjoy. Wilde’s successful play “Lady’s Windermere’s Fan” (1892) was recently turned into a motion picture with Scarlet Johansson and Helen Hunt in the leading role. Not having read Wilde for over a decade, I ravished listening to witty dialogs about marriage image [Read More]