This is a must watch video. I sincerely hope he gets reelected, for the good of the country as well as of our family:
Friday, March 16, 2012
The Tree of Life
Terrence Malick is a very talented director whose output is extremely limited (5 movies in almost 40 years!!) and often so artistically overworked, he’s inexorably misunderstood. Alas, I count myself in the column of those who did not “get” his latest effort.
Synopsis: The Tree of Life is woven with what I guess are multiple storylines that converge in some way into a common resolution. At the center, we have a very ordinary family that deals with their daily ups and downs until a terrible event shakes it to the core.
While that short description wouldn’t seem too complex or out of the ordinary, The Tree of Life is constructed in such a way that the main story I mentioned above is often interspersed with some of the most magnificent and obscure images I’ve ever seen. Malick, undisputedly, is a master at crafting the most striking images that ever graced the silver screen, but unfortunately those images in this movie have nothing to do with the advancement of the story per se. Or rather, since many viewers must have found some meaning in those images, I didn’t find any relation whatsoever between the main story and that magnificent padding.
A movie, at its core, tells a story. A screenplay lays it out, the actors put it in play, and a director orchestrates the whole thing. If there’s something on the screen that seems to have no relation to the story the filmmaker is trying to tell, then they shouldn’t be there. It’s pretty simple. Now, again, I’m sure the people who “got” the meaning of those images would beg to disagree with me, but for me they were too esoteric and basically detracted from the final product.
The screenplay, by Malick, was another puzzle. While long parts of the movie have no spoken words (and I don’t have a problem with that), other parts have words that are faded out and indiscernible, bringing me to wonder if Malick’s goal was to tip the balance heavily in favor of what you see versus what you hear. Again, puzzling.
The Bottom Line: The man is undoubtedly enormously talented. Every image on screen, whether computer generated or not, is perfectly constructed and would look amazing in an art gallery. The conceptual story is gripping and makes for great drama. And the actors all give excellent performances, especially Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. But for me, ultimately, this movie was less than the sum of its parts and felt like a drama mixed up with a documentary (or several), which brought the overall grade way lower than I wanted to assign.
Grade: 4
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Carbs are killing you
A former chiropractor of mine linked to this picture in his latest newsletter. Food for thought:
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Brokeback Mountain & Adele
A match made in heaven. Get your tissues ready:
Seeing this montage, I’m reminded once again of how bitter Brokeback Mountain’s loss was in the Best Picture Oscar race to the mediocre Crash.
I wonder how many Academy voters would change their vote now if they could go back.
Thursday, March 08, 2012
The Moon helped sink the Titanic
That’s the conclusions a group of scientists have come to after studying the lunar cycles around the time of the infamous liner’s sinking:
"But the lunar connection may explain how an unusually large number of icebergs got into the path of the Titanic," said Donald Olson, a Texas State University physicist whose team of forensic astronomers examined the moon's role.
Ever since the Titanic sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912, killing 1,517 people, researchers have puzzled over Captain Edward Smith's seeming disregard of warnings that icebergs were in the area where the ship was sailing.
Smith was the most experienced captain in the White Star Line and had sailed the North Atlantic sea lanes on numerous occasions. He had been assigned to the maiden voyage of the Titanic because he was a knowledgeable and careful seaman.
Greenland icebergs of the type that the Titanic struck generally become stuck in the shallow waters off Labrador and Newfoundland, and cannot resume moving southward until they have melted enough to re-float or a high tide frees them, Olson said.
[…] Olson said a "once-in-many-lifetimes" event occurred on January 4, 1912, when the moon and sun lined up in such a way that their gravitational pulls enhanced each other. At the same time, the moon's closest approach to earth that January was the closest in 1,400 years, and the point of closest approach occurred within six minutes of the full moon. On top of that, the Earth's closest approach to the sun in a year had happened just the previous day.
"This configuration maximized the moon's tide-raising forces on the Earth's oceans," Olson said. "That's remarkable."
His research determined that to reach the shipping lanes by mid-April, the iceberg that the Titanic struck must have broken off from Greenland in January 1912. The high tide caused by the bizarre combination of astronomical events would have been enough to dislodge icebergs and give them enough buoyancy to reach the shipping lanes by April, he said.
[…] The team's Titanic research may have vindicated Captain Smith - albeit a century too late - by showing that he had a good excuse to react so casually to a report of ice in the ship's path. He had no reason at the time to believe that the bergs he was facing were as numerous or as large as they turned out to be, Olson said.
When empathy wins the day
Via Towleroad, an uplifting video of regular beachgoers who promptly come to the rescue of a group of dolphins who had suddenly beached themselves, saving them all from certain death:
This is when I feel proud of my fellow human beings.
Oscar Winners - Best Original Score (2010-present)
And finally, the current decade:
Credits: Winduct.
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