Michael Keaton is good, but was too over-the-top. Trying too hard for Best Actor. I didn’t believe in his persona. Aside from one or two quieter scenes, it looked too much like acting.
It’s an ambitious film. I liked the magic realism. And was impressed by the continuous long take hand held camera shots.
(The director did not know whether the technique would be successful however, describing it as “almost suicidal”, and faced resistance from “huge” and “important” people.)
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is a 2014 American black comedy–drama film …
Keaton plays a faded Hollywood actor famous for his superhero role struggling to mount a Broadway adaptation of a Raymond Carver story. …
… the 87th Academy Awards, Birdman received nine nominations, joint most for the ceremony (with The Grand Budapest Hotel), including Best Picture, Best Director, and acting nominations for Keaton, Norton and Stone. Additional Oscar honors included nominations for cinematography, sound editing, sound mixing, and writing for an original screenplay. …
Birdman received widespread critical acclaim. At Rotten Tomatoes, it has a rating of 92% based on 251 reviews, with an average rating of 8.5/10. …
… the first book to feature the character Jack Reacher. …
Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher is a drifter. He’s just passing through Margrave, Georgia, and in less than an hour, he’s arrested for murder.
Not much of a welcome. All Jack knows is that he didn’t kill anybody. At least not here. Not lately. But he doesn’t stand a chance of convincing anyone. not in Margrave, Georgia. Not a chance in hell.
It’s Hemingway brusk. Simple. No Nobel Prize winner.
But the plot, while not perfect, was engaging and entertaining. It kept me going as a good thriller should.
I’ve already downloaded Die Trying, the second novel in the Jack Reacher series. There are already 19 books in that series. If I get hooked, I’ll be reading Reacher revenge stories for a long, long time. 🙂
Jim Grant (born 29 October 1954), better known by his pen name Lee Child, is a British thriller writer …
In 2012, his novel One Shot was adapted into Jack Reacher; an American thriller film starring Tom Cruise. Grant has a cameo appearance as a police desk sergeant in the film. …
If he had it all to do over again, he wouldn’t have carried a loaded firearm in his vehicle. 😦
Jordan Russell Davis, a 17-year-old African American high school student, was fatally shot by Michael David Dunn, a 45-year-old software developer from Brevard County who was visiting the city for a wedding.
The incident began when Dunn asked Davis and his companions to turn down the loud music that was being played in the vehicle in which Davis was a passenger …
After Dunn shot up the teen’s car, he ordered pizza. Did not call the police. 😦
The film is getting good reviews. I definitely want to see it.
It is based on Chris Kyle’s autobiography American Sniper …
The film stars Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller …
I’ve enjoyed all the Clint Eastwood directed movies, so assumed I’d like this one.
I did. Most people do.
It wasn’t as good as Unforgiven (1992) or Million Dollar Baby (2004), but I’d recommend you see it. Unless you have an aversion to violent films.
American Sniper received positive response from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a “Certified Fresh” rating of 73%, based on 203 reviews from critics …
The highlight by far was Bradley Cooper. His performance is subtle and nuanced, unlike the movie which is very Eastwood. Too many cliche lines and story points.
It’s a Hollywood moviebased on a true story. Not a documentary.
I don’t find the criticism I’ve read at all valid.
(It is fair to point out that Kyle was inspired after terrorists from Yemen and Saudi Arabia attacked the USA. Yet he was sent instead to fight in Iraq. Saddam Hussein didn’t want anything to do with Bin Laden.)
War is Hell. I’m against war. I wish Kyle had stayed home. If he had been Canadian, he would have. Canada did not join in the coalition of the willing, one of the smartest decisions ever for my nation.
If you don’t like snipers. Don’t like war. Blame Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, not Chris Kyle. He was simply following the orders of his President.
American Sniper is as much an anti-war film as one glorifying war.
I did find it surprising that Eastwood included one scene: Kyle pointing an (unloaded) gun at his wife, in jest. And then setting the weapon carelessly on a ledge with his children in the room. To me it foreshadowed something was going to happen.
Perhaps that scene was in the script. But Eastwood didn’t change it. It seemed unlikely to me that a firearms expert like Chris Kyle would be so nonchalant with weapons in his family home.
__
I wasn’t surprised to learn that the real Chris Kyle suffered mentally. I wasn’t surprised to learn he had died from gun fire.
“Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
If you spend enough time around firearms, you stand a higher percentage chance of accident, suicide or murder than if you don’t.
Eddie Ray Routh, then 25, shot and killed Chris Kyle, 38, and his friend Chad Littlefield on Feb. 2, 2013, at a shooting range in Erath County, Texas. Kyle often took veterans, such as Routh, out on shooting ranges to work with them and help them cope with PTSD and related problems.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi – torture and detention without charge 😦
On or about Sept. 11, 2001, American character changed.
What Americans had proudly flaunted as “our highest values” were now judged to be luxuries that in a new time of peril the country could ill afford.
Justice, and its cardinal principle of innocent until proven guilty, became a risk, its indulgence a weakness.
Asked recently about an innocent man who had been tortured to death in an American “black site” in Afghanistan, former Vice President Dick Cheney did not hesitate.
“I’m more concerned,” he said, “with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent.”
In this new era in which all would be sacrificed to protect the country, torture and even murder of the innocent must be counted simply “collateral damage.”
“Guantánamo Diary” is the most profound account yet written of what it is like to be that collateral damage. …
I visited Vietnam for the first time in 2014, almost 50 years after the end of the American War.
The nation is thriving. Tourists love the country. 🙂
The Fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People’s Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (also known as the Việt Cộng) on April 30, 1975. The event marked the end of the Vietnam War …
The city was renamed Hồ Chí Minh City, after the Democratic Republic’s President Hồ Chí Minh. …
The fall of the city was preceded by the evacuation of almost all the American civilian and military personnel in Saigon, along with tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians associated with the southern regime. The evacuation culminated in Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation in history. …
Evacuation of CIA station personnel by Air America on the rooftop of 22 Gia Long Street in Saigon on April 29, 1975. Photo: Hubert van Es / UPI
Academy Award®-winner for Best Documentary Feature, THE FOG OF WAR is the story of America as seen through the eyes of the former Secretary of Defense under President Kennedy and President Johnson, Robert S. McNamara.
The title derives from the military concept of the “fog of war” depicting the difficulty of making decisions in the midst of conflict.
Robert McNamara’s 11 lessons from Vietnam
From Robert McNamara’s 1995 book “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam“:
We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.
We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.
We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.
Our misjudgments of friend and foe, alike, reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.
We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces, and doctrine. We failed, as well, to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.
We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.
After the action got under way, and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening, and why we were doing what we did.
We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people’s or country’s best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.
We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.
Underlying many of these errors lay our failure to organize the top echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with the extraordinarily complex range of political and military issues.
The USA lost the Vietnam war. It was un-winnable from the start.
I’d argue that they’ve lost the wars in the Middle East since. None of McNamara’s lessons were learned.
G.W. Bush is most to blame for the stupidity and waste of military action.
I’m disappointed Obama did not do more to reverse the damage wrought during the Bush years.
Fargo … is inspired by the 1996 film of the same name written and directed by the Coen brothers, who serve as executive producers on the series. It premiered on April 15, 2014, on FX. Future seasons will follow an anthology format with each season being set in a different era along with a different story, cast and set of characters.
The first season, starring Billy Bob Thornton, Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, and Martin Freeman, was met with considerable acclaim. It won the Emmy Awards for Outstanding Miniseries and Outstanding Directing, and received fifteen additional nominations including Outstanding Writing, another Outstanding Directing nomination, and acting nominations for Thornton, Tolman, Hanks, and Freeman. It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film for its first season.
On July 21, 2014, FX renewed Fargo for a ten-episode second season to premiere in fall 2015. …
Billy Bob Thornton as Lorne Malvo was crazy scary. Of course Billy Bob is always scary. He won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Movie or Miniseries.
Similar to the original film, each episode begins with the superimposed text:
“This is a true story. The events depicted took place in Minnesota in 2006. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.”
However, like the film, this claim is completely fictional …
Honor Diaries is a 2013 documentary film by producer Paula Kweskin. Honor Diaries explores violence against women in honor-based societies, with particular focus on female genital mutilation (FGM), honor violence and honor killings, early and forced marriage, and lack of access to education. The film profiles nine women’s rights activists with origins in the Muslim (and non-Muslim) world, and follows their efforts to effect change, both within their communities and beyond …
The film stars Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal and Charlotte Le Bon and tells the story of a feud between two adjacent restaurants: one operated by a recently relocated Indian family and the other managed by a Michelin-starred French chef (Mirren). …
