Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
APRIL 15, 2023 – I’m amazed by what people do. I speak here not of the bad stuff, though granted, we do a lot of that too. No, I refer here to the extraordinary feats of creative, curious and determined minds that produce works of wonder. My astonishment exceeds ever so slightly my ignorance of …
JANUARY 8, 2023 – Movies, filled with dramatic distortions, embellishments and exaggerations, are often an unreliable source of historical information. Just as often, however, despite the lack of factual reliability, a film will stir the viewer’s curiosity and prompt further investigation of the historical record. That was the case when I stumbled across the 2014 …
DECEMBER 26, 2022 – I’m well into that paradoxical stage of life when the more I learn, the more I learn I haven’t. This is particularly true of my knowledge of history; not just what’s “fascinating” but what’s necessary for an understanding of the world and essential to counter repetition of its darkest moments. Some …
NOVEMBER 13, 2022 – Yesterday, heading out on my walk, I encountered our neighbors Kate and Dave across the alley. We hadn’t chatted in a while, so I stopped to talk. They’re smart, bright, articulate, well-informed and invariably have something worthwhile to hear. Among yesterday’s takes-away was a film recommendation: Don’t Look Up, on Netflix. …
JANUARY 17, 2022 – As a photography hobbyist, I target scenes. As a cancer patient, I’m targeted by new perspectives. On Saturday evening, the film, A Hidden Life, 2019 masterpiece by American filmmaker Terrance Malick (Amazon Prime)—struck the bull’s eye. It probes as deeply as a Mahler symphony and explores the soul as far as …
JANUARY 14, 2022 – Our DNA evolved to accommodate “fight” when our ancestors dropped from the trees of Africa. The word still describes a central element of our personalities—individual and societal. “Fight,” some argue, is as essential to our survival as is “flight.” I harbor hope, however, that we’ll evolve enough socially and emotionally to …
JANUARY 2, 2022 – While the mercury flirted with zero-Fahrenheit outside, I binged-watched the eight-episode PBS Masterpiece Theater production, Atlantic Crossing. My executive summary: it’s a . . . masterpiece. The story’s about the Norwegian Royals (King Haakon VII, (a widower after Queen Maud died in 1938); Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Märtha (Olav’s …
DECEMBER 30, 2021 – Lately, for mental health, I’ve pursued various diversions. The motivation isn’t vacant distraction but a compulsive search for perspective. Trouble is, I’m not sure if “perspective” means getting or giving. At my current juncture in the journey of finite existence, do I strive to impart perspective to loved ones or do …
DECEMBER 29, 2021 – For three evenings of distraction this week, my wife and I watched The Beatles: Get Back. It’s a recently released film about the lead-up to the Beatles’ 1970 album, Let it Be and their last public performance—a 42-minute show on January 30, 1969 atop their Apple Corps headquarters in central London. …
DECEMBER 21, 2021 – I wish that I’d been more attentive, more “in tune,” as it were, with the humanitarian genius with whom I was breaking bread and sharing stories. I’m not much sure of the details, except that Yo-Yo Ma was in town performing with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and given my sister/brother-in-law’s …
DECEMBER 14, 2021 – One of the biggest Wow! moments occurred aboard a city bus in the Siberian city of Irkutsk. After buying a ticket for two kopecks, I boarded the bus, handed the driver my ticket, and stepped down the aisle to an empty seat a few rows back. As I turned and faced …
DECEMBER 11, 2021 – As part of yesterday’s distraction from The Cough [cough, sputter, cough], I watched the 1994 film, Wyatt Earp, starring Mr. West Man, Kevin Costner. I didn’t catch all of the three-hour movie, despite the production having won an Oscar for Best Cinematography. Nevertheless, I drew perspective from a chapter of America’s …
DECEMBER 2, 2021 – Before getting down to business recently, a client and I chit-chatted about movies and TV shows/series we’d watched lately. My client had landed, as it were, on old episodes of the TV show, Twelve O’Clock High, a take-off of the 1949 movie starring Gregory Peck. My client said it was his …
NOVEMBER 12, 2021 – Star Media, the Russian TV/film production company, delivers again. Yesterday, I finished watching its 12-episode-series, Sorge: Master Spy—a superb work, even if you’re not interested in WW II. That conflagration unfolds only as backdrop; the entire setting is Tokyo (before being fire-bombed by American aircraft) with intermittent trips to Stalin’s Kremlin …
NOVEMBER 5, 2021 – Nine hundred days was the duration of the German siege of Leningrad during World War II. More precisely, it was 872 days—September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944—but after such mass-scale, civilian suffering, Leningraders (now St. Petersburgers) and historians rounded up—as did American Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Harrison Salisbury, whose 635-page, …
OCTOBER 16, 2021 – I recently finished viewing yet another Russian TV series—Vlasik: The Shadow of Loneliness. It’s about Nikolai Sedonovich Vlasik, who rose from obscurity to become Stalin’s head of personal security in the 1930s and through WW II (“The Great Patriotic War”). As I’ve found with other productions by Epic Media (and its …
SEPTEMBER 23, 2021 – Netflix, Schmetflix. For entertainment, I binge on (YouTube) series by Star Media and Epic Media, Russian film-production companies. My list includes Kill Stalin and Zhukov—reviews are buried among my 855 prior posts—and I’m impressed by story lines, casting, acting, direction, costuming, music, staging, and set-and-prop detail. The latest: The Attackers, a …
SEPTEMBER 8, 2021 – While hiking recently on our “back 40” I encountered a patch of wild strawberries. It reminded me of Wild Strawberries by famous Swedish filmmaker, Ingmar Bergman. I first “experienced” Bergman’s films while I was a student at Interlochen Arts Academy—by name and curricula, an “artsy-fartsy” establishment. It was attended by many students …
JULY 7, 2021 – Amidst the latest heatwave in Minnesota, I sought relief by watching movies with extreme-winter scenes. Over the years, I’ve seen many films that feature ice, snow, and cold. Much of the snow was artificial—crushed marble in Dr. Zhivago, for example, and cornflakes painted white in It’s a Wonderful Life. For snowy …
JUNE 11, 2021 – Years ago while browsing the shelves of an independent bookstore, I encountered a tome called, Empire of the Czars by Marquis de Custine, a French nobleman who spent three months in Russia in 1839. His acerbic insights endured as a companion to the discerning examination of the United States by his …
APRIL 25, 2021 – Last night we watched Stowaway on Netflix. The estimated cost: $6 billion. No, not our Texas-style “bundled” cable/internet subscription for April because of cold weather without regulation of utilities. And no, not the actual production budget for the film. Six billion is the estimated cost (according to the internet) of sending …
MARCH 25, 2021 – “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” I got that from a 2016 Smithsonian article quoting Wiliam Faulkner in a fascinating story behind the film, Free State of Jones, written and directed by Gary Ross (Hunger Games; Seabiscuit), and starring Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club – Best Actor). The …
MARCH 18, 2021 – As I lifted the receiver and started dialing home, Barbie S_________ (don’t worry; by fifth grade she’d become “Barb” and “Barbara”) interrupted me. She was one of my party group and consistently the smartest, most aware kid in our class. “We’re not leaving in the middle of the movie, are we?!” …
MARCH 17, 2021 – Often I play a mind game involving conversations with people of my past, including myself; past—as opposed to future—is only natural, given that “my movie,” you might say, is well past intermission. Speaking of “intermission,” I remember clearly my introduction to the word. The occasion was my eighth birthday party, or …
FEBRUARY 25, 2021 – After practicing law all day, what did I do yesterday evening? I watched Nuremberg, the 2000 mini-series starring Alec Baldwin. This cinematic experience was the inevitable sequel to my having watched Tokyo Trial. (See my 2/23/21 post.) Despite some historical inaccuracies, Nuremberg provides a reasonably satisfactory overview of the proceedings against …