oldsmiley.blogspot.com
Old Smiley: Casablanca
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Films, books, current events, my life and times. Friday, August 07, 2015. 1942; dir. Michael Curtiz) Thursday evening at the local arts cinema, Athens Ciné. It was the final film in the summer film series. The showing was a sell out—every seat was filled, and almost everyone in the audience had seen the film multiple times. As famous scenes and lines came along, you could feel—sense, hear, see—ripples of emotion and reaction run through the audience. Sustained applause accompanied the closing credits.
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Old Smiley: Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee
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Films, books, current events, my life and times. Friday, July 17, 2015. Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee. It’s possible to read Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman. As a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. 8212;it’s set some fifteen years later, many of the same characters appear, others are mentioned, and there’s a continuity in characterization of people like Atticus Finch and Jean Louise (Scout). There are a few inconsistencies in plot—the major one being that in Watchman. As a failed first novel. It is too d...
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Old Smiley: October 2014
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Films, books, current events, my life and times. Monday, October 20, 2014. 2013; dir. Pawel Pawlikowski) is understated and neutral. Filmed in beautiful black and white, it is set in the early 1960s in Poland. It thereby avoids the settings and situations and clichés one might expect in a more contemporary film. Even though the black and white cinematography is beautiful, it is understated. We’re not asked to believe that anything or anyone in this film is extraordinary. Will she change them? Balanced ag...
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Old Smiley: August 2015
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Films, books, current events, my life and times. Friday, August 14, 2015. What the Best College Teachers Do , by Ken Bain. What the Best College Teachers Do. Harvard, 2004) by Ken Bain argues that effective teaching should be defined by the learning it enables. Covering everything from body language to class assignments to group discussions to academic standards, Bain attempts to show how these teachers have succeeded in bringing about significant learning among their students. As an argument for a teach...
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Old Smiley: March 2015
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Films, books, current events, my life and times. Tuesday, March 31, 2015. The Theory of Everything. The Theory of Everything. 2014; dir. James Marsh) is a good film, not a great one. . Its virtue is the acting of Eddie Redmayne, who portrays Stephen Hawking. . The title is misleading—the film is not about Hawking’s work as a physicist. . We learn a bit about his work, but not much. . Nor do we learn, or are we given hints, about the roots of Hawking’s genius. . It’s there when we first meet him.
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Old Smiley: February 2015
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Films, books, current events, my life and times. Wednesday, February 25, 2015. Skeleton Road, by Val McDermid. Well written, with a three-dimensional and richly detailed exposition, embedded in the historical milieu of the Serbo-Croatian war of the 1990s, concerned with issues of mass murder, ethnic cleansing, sectional hostilities, with an interesting parallel between Scotland and Serbia, by all reckoning. 2014; Val McDermid) should be a successful novel. . It left me cold. . But it lacked something.
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Old Smiley: April 2015
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Films, books, current events, my life and times. Thursday, April 30, 2015. Selected Stories, 1968-1994, by Alice Munroe. Rarely in Alice Munroe’s stories does she ever seem to lose the pace of the narrative. . Her focus may wander back and forth in time and place, or from one character to another, but she is always in control. . That is to say, her stories command the reader’s attention. . Place figures prominently in her work, mostly Canada as a place, especially outlying towns and areas. . There...
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Old Smiley: December 2014
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Films, books, current events, my life and times. Wednesday, December 31, 2014. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. 2014; dir. Peter Jackson) preserves many of the major plot points, it diverges significantly from the latter portion of Tolkien’s novel in tone and nuance. . He doubts the loyalty of the other dwarves and orders that Bilbo be thrown over the walls when he learns that he had taken the Arkenstone. . The film overlooks his importance. He was f...
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Old Smiley: September 2014
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Films, books, current events, my life and times. Thursday, September 18, 2014. It’s difficult to imagine a mystery more earthshaking than the mystery of one’s parents. When we hear of the travails and scandals and secret knowledge of other people’s mothers and fathers, they seem to us conventional and banal. When they belong to our own mother and father, they cut to the core of our being. Our parents gave us birth, existence, identity, life. Of all we are. Perhaps the father wasn’t especially aware...
