Most people, I'm guessing, don't remember who their college commencement speakers were. If they do remember, it's a good bet that they don't remember anything in the speech. Due to my freakish memory, I remember both my speaker and what she said (and your birthday and what you said to me in second grade, if I knew you back then). Her name was Linda Wertheimer, senior correspondent for National Public Radio and former host of the much-loved radio newsmagazine, All Things Considered. She told me that women have the power to do great things, and must go out there and do them!
Anyway, if I had been a graduating student at Fordham University this year, I surely would never have forgotten Tom Brokaw's commencement speech.
Here is a passage I found particularly inspiring:
You’ll not solve global warming by hitting the delete button; you’ll not eliminate reckless avarice by hitting backspace; you’ll not make society more just by cutting and pasting. And do not surrender the essence of the human experience to 146 characters on a Twitter or a Facebook, however seductive the temptation.
You’ll not get a Google alert when you fall in love. You may be guided by the unending effort of poets and artists, biologists and psychiatrists to describe that irreplaceable and still mysterious emotion so essential to the human condition but all the search engines in the universe cannot replace the first kiss.
In short, it will do us little good to wire the world, if we short circuit our souls.
Nice kicker, Tom!
May 22, 2009
May 17, 2009
In My Queue
Since RM and I consider ourselves cheap and willfully ignorant of the bliss of DVR, we get doofily (yes, it's a word in MY dictionary) excited every time we find a little blue envelope in our mailbox from Blockbuster.com. (Note, I'm not endorsing BB over Netflix or any other mail-order video rental service--they all have the same effect on us, as far as we're concerned).
There have been some good flicks (and some so-so flicks) passing through the queue these days, and I thought I'd make a record of them here.
Let the Right One In: My first thought was, "A weird Swedish vampire flick? Really?", but after I swished it around in my brain a bit, it has quickly become one of the more intriguing films I've seen lately. The American version is slightly inaccurate, as there was some issue of changing the meaning slightly in the subtitles for no apparent reason, but I don't think it mars the message of this thoughtful film. It's based on a book that actually translates to "Let Me In," which falls more in line with the whole vampire-can't-cross-the-threshold thing. Though I haven't read the book, and heard that it is more graphic and emotional, I suspect that this film is a decent, if not outright good adaptation.
The story basically centers around a young, socially ostracized boy and a mysterious child that moves into his apartment complex. As the two form a bond, mysterious vampirical happenings ensue around them. What starts as an awkward, impossible relationship, blossoms into something strangely like true love.
JCVD: I'm going to be honest here. I didn't think Jean Claude Van Damme had a chance in hell of pulling any role off that wasn't as a big, dumb, pseudo-affected killing machine. Turns out, he has a bit of skill in playing a role that makes fun of his typecast career. Ultimate irony? Not really, but close. This indie casts the "Muscle from Brussels" as a version of himself, a washed up B-movie action hero who has lost a custody battle for his kid. Broken in bank and in spirit, he goes back to his hometown in Brussels (the film is in French) to get his head straight. He vanishes into a bank, which two minutes later is taken under seige and Van Damme is the prime suspect.
The film is surprisingly good. Van Damme turns in a great performance—so great, in fact, that even though the movie references him as Van Damme every three seconds, you actually forget that it's Jean Claude Van Damme. The plot and performances are funny but equally serious, and Van Damme's monologue toward the end made my jaw hang open for a bit. The movie does have an indie feel, and unless you understand French, you'll be reading subtitles (I don't believe in dubbing).
Birds of America: Since I was honest with the last two films, I'll be honest here. I didn't get this movie. At all. The only reason I rented it was because I worked on this film, and saw myself in the trailer. Matthew Perry leads what one could conceivably call an "all-star" cast, including Ginnifer Goodwin, Hilary Swank and Lauren Graham.
It seemed like the movie was trying too hard to be "indie," which means a mix of forced writing and forced acting. But maybe that's because I didn't get it, as I'm willing to admit. RM didn't get it either, and he's the one who explains stuff to me when I don't get it. The plot, as far as I could tell, was that Matthew Perry plays a severely repressed 40-year-old who was stuck raising his emotionally unstable brother and sister at age 18 when his parents died. He's up for tenure at the university where he teaches physics, but his status is only guaranteed if he can suck up to his obnoxious neighbor, who's on the board. His crazy siblings descend on him and jeopardize his chances. Meanwhile, he hasn't taken a crap in months. The plot is all about finding that "release." Even though I just shat on this movie, the ending is pretty hilarious, for what it is.
And I was in it:
There have been some good flicks (and some so-so flicks) passing through the queue these days, and I thought I'd make a record of them here.
Let the Right One In: My first thought was, "A weird Swedish vampire flick? Really?", but after I swished it around in my brain a bit, it has quickly become one of the more intriguing films I've seen lately. The American version is slightly inaccurate, as there was some issue of changing the meaning slightly in the subtitles for no apparent reason, but I don't think it mars the message of this thoughtful film. It's based on a book that actually translates to "Let Me In," which falls more in line with the whole vampire-can't-cross-the-threshold thing. Though I haven't read the book, and heard that it is more graphic and emotional, I suspect that this film is a decent, if not outright good adaptation.
The story basically centers around a young, socially ostracized boy and a mysterious child that moves into his apartment complex. As the two form a bond, mysterious vampirical happenings ensue around them. What starts as an awkward, impossible relationship, blossoms into something strangely like true love.
JCVD: I'm going to be honest here. I didn't think Jean Claude Van Damme had a chance in hell of pulling any role off that wasn't as a big, dumb, pseudo-affected killing machine. Turns out, he has a bit of skill in playing a role that makes fun of his typecast career. Ultimate irony? Not really, but close. This indie casts the "Muscle from Brussels" as a version of himself, a washed up B-movie action hero who has lost a custody battle for his kid. Broken in bank and in spirit, he goes back to his hometown in Brussels (the film is in French) to get his head straight. He vanishes into a bank, which two minutes later is taken under seige and Van Damme is the prime suspect.
The film is surprisingly good. Van Damme turns in a great performance—so great, in fact, that even though the movie references him as Van Damme every three seconds, you actually forget that it's Jean Claude Van Damme. The plot and performances are funny but equally serious, and Van Damme's monologue toward the end made my jaw hang open for a bit. The movie does have an indie feel, and unless you understand French, you'll be reading subtitles (I don't believe in dubbing).
Birds of America: Since I was honest with the last two films, I'll be honest here. I didn't get this movie. At all. The only reason I rented it was because I worked on this film, and saw myself in the trailer. Matthew Perry leads what one could conceivably call an "all-star" cast, including Ginnifer Goodwin, Hilary Swank and Lauren Graham.
It seemed like the movie was trying too hard to be "indie," which means a mix of forced writing and forced acting. But maybe that's because I didn't get it, as I'm willing to admit. RM didn't get it either, and he's the one who explains stuff to me when I don't get it. The plot, as far as I could tell, was that Matthew Perry plays a severely repressed 40-year-old who was stuck raising his emotionally unstable brother and sister at age 18 when his parents died. He's up for tenure at the university where he teaches physics, but his status is only guaranteed if he can suck up to his obnoxious neighbor, who's on the board. His crazy siblings descend on him and jeopardize his chances. Meanwhile, he hasn't taken a crap in months. The plot is all about finding that "release." Even though I just shat on this movie, the ending is pretty hilarious, for what it is.
And I was in it:
May 11, 2009
Six Million Thoughts
I'm reading a very interesting book at the moment that has had me thinking quite a bit about the Holocaust. (A bit of light reading, as they say...) It's actually a fascinating story about one man's quest to know what happened to his Jewish great uncle's family during World War II. I haven't finished it yet, so I don't know what happens, but that which I have read raises an interesting question...
I've wondered about this now and again in the last decade or so, as I came of age and learned more about that period in history. What was in the minds of the Jewish population in America while 6 million were slaughtered half a world away?
Daniel Mendelsohn, the wordy but poignant author of this book, entitled Lost: the Search for Six of Six Million, explores the myriad of possible answers to this question that range from the obvious—news didn't travel so far and so fast back in those days—to the painful thought that a dispute between family members estranged them overseas, or to the less obvious and more gut-wrenching reality that perhaps American Jews could do nothing to save their European brethren, and they had to sit safe but helpless an ocean away in agony.
It makes me regret with a blameless sadness that my Jewish relatives who lived in that era died before I could ask them that question. How can we learn from history if we don't know?
I came across this piece in the Times today, about the war crime trial of an 89-year-old former Nazi accused of being a "living cog in a killing factory" at a death camp in Poland during World War II. A Holocaust survivor is interviewed in the piece and makes a good point that it's not so important that the old man be punished, but that the world hears his testimony. Not that we need to avenge what happened, but that we be able to recognize that it happened.
Maybe prove to a younger, more distant generation that the human race is capable of some ugly things...
I've wondered about this now and again in the last decade or so, as I came of age and learned more about that period in history. What was in the minds of the Jewish population in America while 6 million were slaughtered half a world away?
Daniel Mendelsohn, the wordy but poignant author of this book, entitled Lost: the Search for Six of Six Million, explores the myriad of possible answers to this question that range from the obvious—news didn't travel so far and so fast back in those days—to the painful thought that a dispute between family members estranged them overseas, or to the less obvious and more gut-wrenching reality that perhaps American Jews could do nothing to save their European brethren, and they had to sit safe but helpless an ocean away in agony.
It makes me regret with a blameless sadness that my Jewish relatives who lived in that era died before I could ask them that question. How can we learn from history if we don't know?
I came across this piece in the Times today, about the war crime trial of an 89-year-old former Nazi accused of being a "living cog in a killing factory" at a death camp in Poland during World War II. A Holocaust survivor is interviewed in the piece and makes a good point that it's not so important that the old man be punished, but that the world hears his testimony. Not that we need to avenge what happened, but that we be able to recognize that it happened.
Maybe prove to a younger, more distant generation that the human race is capable of some ugly things...
May 2, 2009
Swine Flu Special!
On sale now, for a limited time only! Beat the media hype!
I couldn't resist sneaking a photo while RM and I visited the drug store down the street from our apartment.
You know I like a good media scare, but this is re-donk. I'd buy one of these though, if only to protect my sensitive nose from the horrid smells I have to endure while cleaning out the cat litter.
And here are two very serious questions that demand answers in these frightening times. Click on each to find the answer you seek:
Do I have pig flu?
Do I have swine flu?
I couldn't resist sneaking a photo while RM and I visited the drug store down the street from our apartment.
You know I like a good media scare, but this is re-donk. I'd buy one of these though, if only to protect my sensitive nose from the horrid smells I have to endure while cleaning out the cat litter.
And here are two very serious questions that demand answers in these frightening times. Click on each to find the answer you seek:
Do I have pig flu?
Do I have swine flu?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)