I cannot say enough about this movie! It reminds me of Babel, but in a less circular mannner. For the plot you have to take one huge leap of faith, but from that point on you are well seated for a good ride. This film chronicles the life of down and out professor ( haven’t we all had a few of those!) whose reason to live has disappeared after the death of his wife.  The Professor (Richard Jenkins, from Six Feet Under) is asked to go to conference where he finds some squatters, Tarek and Zainab, the unfortunate victims of scam.

The decision to allow them to stay changes the course of his life forever.  The movie is not a quicked paced movie, and it never claims to be. I don’t think that that this film would have worked if has been cut down any more. For me, I felt as i I was connected with professor, and his emotion changed slowly. In turn, so did mine.  The Visitor would not be the same if it had not been for Tarek’s mother played by Hiam Abass (from the Syrian Bride [another great film you should see!])  . You feel her energy wanted to push through, but she hides it all behind her eyes.  I think her energy mixes nicely with that of Jenkins slow contemplated-ness (I am not sure if that it is a word but I just made it nonetheless!). We cannot forget the music though, which to me is the driving force of the film. The music director of this film must have had great taste because he takes two different worlds, classical and AfroPop drumming, and mixes them so seamingly you make the tranisition clearly. The music most prominetly featured in the film is that of Kela Futi. His rythmns and tamber push the scenes forward.  I think the best way to describe is image a boat surrounded by frozen water, and then it slowly starts to push this icey lake that is what the music does for this film.  The film takes a sudden twist near the end with Tarek’s arrest, as undocumented alien. To much more than this is spoiler so that is all I shay say about this great film! I hope that you all enjoy it as much as I did, and if you didn’t let me know why!

Even though this movie has perhaps one of the cheesiest tag lines I have ever heard (one moment you can change your life forever). This movie is number one on Yahoo! Movies and debuted at number one on Amazon.  This suburb film is directed by Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, he gives the film a movie feeling like a river. Each scene drifts together better than any other movie I have ever scene, yet the movie doesn’t feel frantic or rushed with all this changing of scenery it feels fluid. The story follows a young women, Nina (Tammy Blanchard),  who gets pregnant and then soon after looses her job due to morning sickness. Jose (Eduardo Verastegui), the head chef,  is heart broken by his brother’s heartless firing of Nina, and decides to help her out. From their meet-up we learn a great tale of his loss, and the pain that his brought him. The great thing about this film is that is does it all with such an elegant view that the viewer is never lost for feeling, yet we don’t feel rushed.  I think that this is one of the greatest movies that I have seen in the past five years. I am sure why this movie hasn’t gotten more attention or why I only picked it up Blockbuster. This movie deserve to be on everyone’s best movies of the year list!  Roger Ebert gives the movie a classic  tagline “a love story that doesn’t tug to hard.”  Jose the bearded lead doesn’t come a across as a crazy anarchist with is dark long hair, and even longer beard. Yet, his smile and kind words quick draw the audience in to him. This makes Jose and Nina’s story all the more beautiful. I never thought that a story about an unborn child could be more beautiful, and more heartfelt. I hope that you all see this movie, and find it quite amazing. 

Tammy Blanchard

Even though this movie has perhaps one of the cheesiest tag lines I have ever heard (one moment you can change your life forever). This movie is number one on Yahoo! Movies and debuted at number one on Amazon.  This suburb film is directed by Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, he gives the film a movie feeling like a river. Each scene drifts together better than any other movie I have ever scene, yet the movie doesn’t feel frantic or rushed with all this changing of scenery it feels fluid. The story follows a young women, Nina (Tammy Blanchard),  who gets pregnant and then soon after looses her job due to morning sickness. Jose (Eduardo Verastegui), the head chef,  is heart broken by his brother’s heartless firing of Nina, and decides to help her out. From their meet-up we learn a great tale of his loss, and the pain that his brought him. The great thing about this film is that is does it all with such an elegant view that the viewer is never lost for feeling, yet we don’t feel rushed.  I think that this is one of the greatest movies that I have seen in the past five years. I am sure why this movie hasn’t gotten more attention or why I only picked it up Blockbuster. This movie deserve to be on everyone’s best movies of the year list!  Roger Ebert gives the movie a classic  tagline “a love story that doesn’t tug to hard.”  Jose the bearded lead doesn’t come a across as a crazy anarchist with is dark long hair, and even longer beard. Yet, his smile and kind words quick draw the audience in to him. This makes Jose and Nina’s story all the more beautiful. I never thought that a story about an unborn child could be more beautiful, and more heartfelt. I hope that you all see this movie, and find it quite amazing. 

Tammy Blanchard

This movie despite the critics low ratings hits the mark. In this sequel, the sons of Adam and Eve return to Narnia 1,300 years later to find their lands in tatters. The story follows the young Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) fight to tack back his throne from the evil King Miraz (Sergio Castellitto). This movie features the same fantasy features of the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. I think it is great what Disney has done with C.S. Lewis’ greatest stories.  In Disney’s classic style, the story works seameasly with the graphics. I never once found my self saying “oh, that lives action with bad green screen work.” Here, we see must less of the beloved Aslan.  The story is a great one of faith for children, we can see High King’s Peters stuggle to figure out how to lead his people, and Lucy ability to keep pointing at what he should but never actually saying it. This is quite hard to translate onto screen from Lewis’ book. Disney does so almost seamlessly. To fill out this all star cast from the first movie we have the addition of Ken Scott as the cute Trufflehunter, and the great Eddie Izzard as the Reepicheep the most honorable of all mice.  

Over All Score (3.5 / 4.0)

To: JCHS Class of 2008

From:  Patrick Class of 06

I am not sure what has made me think that I have the right to sit down and right this letter, but I have nonetheless decided to do it. It is not so much because I have advice to give, but because I have something that I would like to share. I have little to share in actuality, as I have only placed the longest hair of my big toe into the pool of life (I am, of course, no Aggie Schell). In September 2006, United States District Court Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow came to visit Knox College for Convacation. While at Knox, she spoke about citizenship and the role it must play in our generation’s life. What she said has sat and molded its self in the back of my mind for almost two years.  Judge Lefkow stated that our generation has the highest rates of volunteerism ever seen, yet the lowest amounts of political involvement, perhaps because we “see [the] polarized jockeying for power at the highest levels and a sense that neither major political party is dedicated to the common good…[yet] as important as community volunteerism is, I submit to you that it does nothing to affect policy choices that truly change lives.”

Furthermore we are likely to believe that we have little power to effect change in our government, but please let me share with you a fact, “according to the 2000 Census, more people under the age of 25 live in America than people 45 or older.” It is now our time to stand up and vote.  We have a responsibility to stand up and vote in November or sit down and shut-up for the next four years. This land is your land, and don’t ever forget it.

This coming November, the highest of all civic duties is coming, and you must all stand up for what you believe in: Immigration?  The environment? Sexism?  Economic equality? Ending the War?  Protecting our soldiers?  You have the right as a citizen to not only know what you believe, but also to hear your elected officials’ opinions on these issues. Ask them, and they will answer. In 50 years, how do you want your American government to be?

Our Che Guerra t-shirt wearing generation must take a stand against political grandstanding; we need to take the reigns of this country and realize the power that we hold.  If I have not yet convinced you to vote, then perhaps Abraham Lincoln can:

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history…The dogmas of the quiet past are Inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we will save our country.”

[Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862]

Nonetheless, our DotNet generation must never forget the opposing side in our march to take back this country. Part of being a good citizen is respect, and we must always listen, learn from our parents (oh wow does that hurt), and most importantly, reach agreements. In Lincoln’s second inaugural address, with the end of Civil War near he echoed these very thoughts:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

[Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865]

DAVID SEDARIS

Is one crazy ass person. I have never written about him about on the blog, but he is perhaps one of the reasons why I still love listening to the radio. The idea the spoken word can quite literally have me on the ground rolling in fits of laughter is just….welll. COOL. So, if you haven’t heard of David Sedaris I will attempt to tell you just a little bit about him. He is an openly gay man (sorry Christian Zealots, he’s not for your kids [dumbasses]) that has homes in both London and Paris with his lover Hugh.  He can be regulary seen on TV,The New Yorker,  and more importantly on this This American Life. If you don’t listen. You should.  I am attemting to put some links to some of his stuff below. I hope they work. 

He has recently published a new book When You Engulfed in Flames continuing his ability to take the inane details of life and turn them into hilarious essays. 

Sedaris Bares Body and Soul

#mce_temp_url# (This American Life, I cannot it to put the title)

#mce_temp_url# (This American Life)

Yeah. It’s bad. So if you want to stop reading I will completely understand, and there will be no hurt feelings. The movie is sort of like the 21st Century version of the Blair Witch Project. If you get nausea very easily then you might not want to watch this movie.  The movie takes place in the “former” Central Park in the great NYC.  It is really quite unreal the whole movie. The movie suffers from Abrams inability to let people die. I mean people die, people die you don’t think are going to die. The normal Sci-Fi doesn’t show images of things that say  ”Dam, you gotta be dead you’ve had a piece of rebar stuck through you heat” then not only is she alive, but she can manage to spit the distance of the city, and not be in any pain. If that didn’t happen I think that this movie could have gotten easily an 80% good rating, perhaps loosing points for lack of originality, and poor audio. The later is a complaint that is new to me. I have never had trouble hearing and understanding people in film, but this film. I had to stop go back and re-listen at least three times because it is so muttered. Perhaps, this supposed to be a part of the aesthetic of the movie. I didn’t work for me. Cloverfield aside from a few flaws is basically a good film, it is with out a doubt a huge step over the Blair Witch Project which I found tedious.

Overal Score: 3.5 out of 5   

A Quick Yahoo! Movie search of this film has yielded that this movie is supposedly a “D+” I cannot disagree more completely with these ideas. The performance that Streep gives is perhaps one of the greatest that she has given in years. The movie is dull as many of the critics complain or lifeless, but instead has what I would call rhythm. The movie is basically a threefold story that takes places over just about one hour.  Sort of like vantage point, but a whole different level. The movie doesn’t seem to quite so repetitive as with vantage point because here none of the characters are related at all except that they are all telling the same story. 

Streep’s character is a high-powered TV news persona who is in a meeting with another equally high powered US Senator.  She skillfully demonstrates the emotions that they many in the new media must at least think about when the government feeds them a line. How much do I believe what is that I do with information. How do I decided whether to take the story and run with it? How do I decided how much analysis should I do before I but this story on the air? I don’t I think I know enough is her final conclusion with slightly stronger ambition.  

Cruise plays the high powered US senator who is trying to feed Steep the line of bull, Cruise here does what he does best which is his “A Few Good Men”  you cannot handle the truth line type stuff. To me this character is washed up for Cruise and it would be have been to see one else in the role, but he plays it just right nonetheless with all the right smoozy winks and nods in just the right place! Cruise demonstrates clearly what the life of two-faced senator must be like! I mean he takes a story that no one can believe especially after Streep shows how this is just a 21st century version of Vietnam, and just plays it from every angle. Is this what the goverment looks like? Is this how their decision making process must happen? I don’t know. I wish that I knew. 

Redford plays the quintessential liberal arts college.  We see him in just on place for the whole movie, and his owns. His eyes peer right through the camera, and out at you. You can feel his presences as he bullishly ask the fresh 20-something some tough questions about life. I cannot say how important it is for us to really stop and take a look at what is important here to see that the question he brings out about adulthood are not just for our pre-teen little selves but for everyone. Anyone who cares about this country should see through his questions for they are all pointing at. Where do we take this country next? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows. I wish that I new. I wish that we all knew.

I am not sure what the critics didn’t like about the movie. I think that Roger Ebert got it the most right by saying it is good movie that just doesn’t quite make it full circle. It should nonetheless not be blown off. It is good. Streep deserves an oscar that she won’t get. 

So as you can tell…I have just finished my finals!!!!! Well, I finished them yesterday.  God am I happy to be done! This term was crazy for me! I felt like I was on a roller coaster for most of just trying to get things done, and then never ever really being able to do much! 

Tonight is the senior “Tour of Galesburg” it is going to be amazing on so many different levels! I will post pictures don’t you worry!

Do you know what that means though? I have to start looking for applications for graduate. I have to organized about that shit. OH.  I don’t really want to do it though because of all the other associated work that I have to do along with it! 

Last night I watched the movie Dazed and Confused, and well I will write a review of it, but first I have to get my senses back first.  Does anyone know what happened to CCR??? I have been listening to their music so much lately. They have such a great sound! Wow that just made me sound like the Jazz muscian that I am…

Also, Pandora is hiring! WOOT! I wish that I was a CS major. It would be awesome to just sit around do some code, and listen to freak’in awesome music all day. 

I need some.  I want some. I wish that I was Hermione Granger, and had a time stop. Oooh. I would go back to all those times that I have been able to sleep in.  Argh. Bio finals.