Across The Universe

Across The Universe

Did you grow up in the '60s? Do you like the Beatles? Have I left anybody out? If you answered no to both questions, skip to your next activity.

For the rest of you survivors, make a date to see Across the Universe, Julie Taymore's wonderful fantasy musical weaving of a '60s love story using the songs of the Beatles. This isn't a particularly complex story -- sort of like Romeo and Juliet mixed with Hippies, Greenwich Village, Viet Nam, 1968 Columbia Student Revolt, and the Beatles.

If you are like me, you may want to try to sit away from others in the theater so that you can enjoy yourself and hum along. The actors themselves do all of the singing of the songs and their performances are really good. Shows you how wonderful the Beatles song are. This is the type of film that you can see more than once -- in the same sense that you can see a Shakespeare play more than once or listen to a music album more than once.

Clearly an Oscar contender. Marsha and I loved it -- especially seeing it Saturday night in the Harvard Square Theater where I also saw Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Review in the 1970s...

Movies that have been recommended to me

Stranger Than Fiction

Munich

Munich

We rented Munich from NetFlix and enjoyed it. Again, like the Sleeper Cell series on ShowTime, this film shows the mistakes, messy botched operations that must go on all of the time in covert operations.

This is the story of what happened after the 1972 Munich Olympic Terrorist attack on the Israeli Olympic Team. There were 11 terrorists identified by the Mosad who had a primary role in the hostage taking. Israel wanted all 11 assassinated and this movie is the story of that operation that spanned over the next 5 years.

This picture leaves you with a lot of questions about what went on, whether it was justified, and wondering what would happen in the future to the assassins.

Sleeper Cell

Sleeper Cell

As those of you who know me, I am a big fan of espionage stories -- but since the fall of the Soviet Union and 9/11, there has been quite a shift in stories of that genre. I can find occasional TV series like MI-5 and I know about, but have never watched the popular Alias TV series and its excuse for looking at Jennifer Garner...

Recently, I started viewing Sleeper Cell on ShowTime and I like it a lot. It's timely, informative and scary. Timely as in you occasionally hear about the concept of a sleeper cell in the USA -- usually from some of the more alarmist news outlets. Informative in the sense that in addition to intrigue there is a lot of background on the motivation behind terrorist attacks. Scary in that it isn't too hard to imagine something like this happening. Of course it is a bit over the top, and that is to be expected for any television drama.

One of the things I also liked is that it is messy -- i.e., it is like real life. Not everything works out. The operations frequently fall apart as they would in real life.

In any case, if you get a chance to view this, give it a shot.

Dexter

Dexter

This was the first series I committed to watching on ShowTime. It turns out that ShowTime (owned by CBS) is a pretty good cable channel.

When I describe this to people, they must wonder about me... Dexter is a serial killer who works for the Miami Police CSI Unit. The series tells the story in three time periods -- when Dexter was a young boy, when he was a teenager and now, when he is in his late 20's early 30's.

When he was a young boy, his father Harry, a Miami police officer who had adopted him, recognized certain traits relating to killing animals that he understood were the precursors of the profiles of serial killers. Harry worked to instill into Dexter a code of behavior so that Dexter could channel his obsession to result in as little harm as possible.

As a result, Dexter has become a Blood Spatter expert for the Miami CSI for his day job. In his spare time, he pursues his avocations by making sure that criminals he encounters in his day job who might otherwise escape capture and punishment do not get away... Thus the channeling his obsession to do good (for some value of good...).

Of course he is always vulnerable to getting caught so this adds to the suspense. In addition, there are several other suspense generating mechanisms in play.

Once you get by the blood, this is an excellent television series. There have been two seasons which you can still see and there is another season planned for the future.

Finally, here is an interview with the author, Jeff Lindsay.

We Are Marshall

We Are Marshall

I am not ashamed to say I had to wipe away the tears during this emotional, moving film. It was, in fact, a reaffirmation to me that I still had empathy for people in pain and grief. After all of the outrageous language and accusations that have gone on in the last 6 years, I sometimes wondered if the outrage had made me uncaring for others. Glad to say my sensitivity is still intact.

In any case, back to the film. First, it is a true story: they are always better. The acting is excellent too: nothing glamorized. Matthew McConaughey is charming, unwilling to give up and unshaven. Matthew Fox is believable as the brooding assistant coach who missed the plane that crashed. And David Strathairn fits the image of a small town college president.

This is a great picture for parents to see with their kids.