Category: Film

A Question about a Film

The call commands us bear the burden of our neighbor and it elects us to shoulder our responsibilities for another, through the minute details of living everyday in the world.—Ira F. Stone, A Responsible Life:…

Liam Nesson in “Taken,” For Instance

If you think of something you wouldn’t want to happen to you, or to someone you love, then you’ll have thought of something worth staging or filming.–Keith Johnstone, Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre In Defense…

Dear Barista

There’s a scene in Woody Allen’s movie, Stardust Memories, where Martians come to earth, and Woody Allen’s character, Sandy Bates, seeks their wisdom about the meaning of life, and he has this exchange with them:…

Present Moment Only Moment

Harold: This is real nice. Makes me want to do somersaults.Maude: Well, why don’t you?Harold: I’d feel stupid.Maude: Harold, everyone has the right to make an ass out of themselves.You just can’t let the world…

Greta

Garbo had a stand-in who was identical to her, and who was said to have ‘everything that Garbo has except whatever it is Garbo has’. What Garbo had was a body that transmitted and received. It…

“The Duality of Man”

No wonder, as Martin, Dianne and I have been making our way through Anatoli Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel, that a phrase that I first heard in 1987 has…

Breakdown Precedes Breakthrough

 You’ve made the right choice. Believe me, today is a good day for you. These are tough decisions, I know. But we intellectuals, and I say we because I consider you such, must remain lucid…