Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. ~~Mark Twain
Riggan Thomas, once known quite well to movie theater goers as an iconic super hero called “The Birdman” had recently turned down a third installment of the franchise. Now washed up, he attempts to reinvent himself as a director by staging a new retelling of a classic Broadway dramatic play called “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. We saw this last weekend, and it was an interesting movie..
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This was a very interesting documentary filmed in Angola Prison in Louisiana. It was released in 2011, and is the story of reforms which helped take Angola Prison off the top slot and the most violent prison in the U.S. The Warden came to realize that he a large number of inmates serving sentences of life without parole, and older inmates with sentences so long, they would most likely die in prison. Actor Forest Whitaker narrates the story of a group of inmate volunteers who staff their own hospice inside a maximum security prison in Louisiana where the average sentence is more than 90 years.
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In America, we define ourselves in the superlative: we are the biggest, strongest, fastest country in the world. Is it any wonder that so many of our heroes are on performance enhancing drugs? Director Christopher Bell explores America’s win-at-all-cost culture by examining how his two brothers became members of the steroid-subculture in an effort to realize their American dream.
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As part of the first wave in the War on Terror, First Lieutenant Mike Scotti (awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with Combat “V”) served on the front lines during the 21 day advance to Baghdad. His experiences in Afghanistan as well as Iraq put him face to face with the sobering realities of war on a daily basis. Severe Clear offers an unflinching look at life on the battlefield through the eyes of someone who was there.
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One of the hosts of perhaps the funniest show on any medium, Tom Magliozzi, of Car Talk on National Public Radio (NPR) died earlier this week from complications associate with Alzheimer’s Disease. I was fortunate to come across National Public Radio very many years ago, somewhere around the early ’80s. Tom and his brother Ray had done a car repair call in show on the Boston NPR station for about 10 years, and then I first them as they started doing a brief regular segment on NPR’s Weekend Edition each week. The show went on NPR nationally in 1987 and was on Saturday mornings.
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