MarkFord.net
The open-for-inspection half-way home for my writing…
Another Parent Thrown Out of a School Board Meeting in Florida
You may have seen something like this before. It’s happening in primary schools across the country. A parent comes to the podium at a PTA meeting and proceeds to read from a book that has been ordered for the school library. “I just want to read what is in this book,” they say. And then…
Click here.
How Reese Witherspoon Became a Billionaire
A fascinating explanation of how Reese Witherspoon made gazillions of dollars. Not from acting, although she’s done well with that, but from her book club.
The woman doing the explaining sounds like a true marketing expert. I don’t know why she seems resentful of Witherspoon for her business strategy. I think it’s smart and impressive. But you decide!
Click here.
Despite What You Think You Know:
The Facts About the Transgender Therapy Suicide Argument
One of the common arguments made on behalf of those that support gender transition “therapy” for young people is that, unless you give them the hormones and surgery, you increase the odds that they will be suicidal. That’s a very scary argument. One can understand how compelling it would be to parents. But the facts are otherwise.
Click here.
Patrice O’Neal: Elephant in the Room
Last week, on a walk to give my new fake knee a workout, he began quoting what seemed to be from a movie. He had me laughing.
“What movie is that from?” I asked.
“It’s from Elephant in the Room,” he said. “And it’s not a movie. It’s a stand-up comedy routine by Patrice O’Neal.”
“Who’s Patrice O’Neal?” I asked.
“How old are you?” he said.
That night, he sent me this link to the performance.
It was very funny. As you’ll see if you watch it, O’Neal was one of those comedians, like George Carlin and Richard Pryor (whom he admired) that can get into difficult, potentially divisive material in a way that is unifying and affirming.
Elephant in the Room was one of O’Neal’s last performances. He died of a stroke in 2012, less than a year later.
This Documentary Made Me Proud
Click here to watch a film that documents the history and journey of the first 25 years of Rancho Santana.
Watching TV vs. Everything Else –And a Recommended Docuseries
I didn’t watch a ton of TV as a child. I’m sure I would have if I could have, but my parents preferred their children to spend their spare hours reading books.
When I left home, I was, in theory at least, free to binge-watch TV day and night. But I didn’t. By then, I had absorbed my parents’ disdain for the “boob tube.” And when K and I had children, we passed it on to them.
The thing is, it was a lot easier to stay away from TV when I was a kid – and even when our children were young – than it is today. And that’s because there are so many more things to watch. Hundreds more. And a fair percentage of them are GOOD.
Here’s an example…
I’m not a nature guy. I much prefer to vacation in a city than in the mountains. And I carried this prejudice into my TV viewing habits. I don’t think I ever watched a show about nature till just last week. What changed that was giving a Netflix documentary series called Our Planet a try. Within minutes of watching episode one of the first season, I was enthralled.
What makes the series so appealing to me is how amazingly well it’s produced. From the script to the informational content to the photography and the narration, it’s a constantly rewarding way to spend some of my down time.
I watched the first two episodes of Our Planet II tonight. Two in a row. That’s not something I normally do. The last time I did it was at least 10 years ago. I binge-watched 24. (Remember that series with Kiefer Sutherland?)
The episode I just finished is titled “Following the Sun.” The motif is the relationship between the rotation of the sun, which causes significant temperature changes all over the world, and the migration of animals. It’s a topic I’ve never given much thought to. And a topic I probably don’t really need to know much about.
But I watched it. And I learned some marvelous things.
Did you know that many animals – thousands of species – migrate as the seasons change? That would include most four-legged mammals, all sorts of birds, many fish, and many creatures smaller than fish. They migrate because of necessity. If they don’t get to a warmer climate in time, they die. That’s easy enough to understand. What’s surprising, though, is how they migrate.
The episode followed dozens of creatures on their long and super-challenging trips, often traveling thousands of miles populated with predators eager and able to consume them.
Some animals, like lions, don’t move. They just stay where they are and wait for the animals they feast on to migrate their way.
Some sharks travel and some don’t. When it’s time for albatross to migrate, the local sharks hang out along the coastline where the chicks mature into adults and then attack them as they try to lift themselves above the water. This life-and-death fight is amazing to watch. You can’t help but root for the albatross.
Did you know that bees migrate? They do. They migrate when there are just too many of them. A single hive can accommodate 100,000 bees. When it gets overcrowded, a small number of bees act as “scouts” to search out better living quarters, with just the right amount of sun and shade, and of a size that could accommodate a new tribe. The details of how they spread the news of what they’ve found are mesmerizing.
The migration habits of Snow Geese are equally remarkable. Snow Geese lay eggs only once a year, in the arctic summer. The females lay the eggs and keep them warm, while the males protect them from the foxes… and then the bears. Just eight weeks after hatching, the little goslings must make their first flight all the way to the warmth of the Gulf of Mexico.
The stories are fantastic. So, too, is the photography. I have no idea how they managed to get close-ups of, for example, the inside a new bees’ nest as it formed… or lions hiding in the grass as wildebeests passed by, hoping to feed themselves or die.
You can watch the trailer for Our Planet here.
And the trailer for Our Planet II here.
Cops Get Education on Constitutional Law
This is a new genre of video that is popping up here and there on social media. Citizens challenging police officers that are bullying citizens just because they think they can.
I like this one in particular because the guy doing the challenging is big and intimidating, and because he clearly knows what he’s talking about.
Click here.
Written and directed by Christopher Nolan
Based on the book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, and Kenneth Branagh
Release date (US): July 21, 2023
K and I saw Oppenheimer on a big screen. When we left the theater, I judged it “good.” Even “quite good.” But since then, it’s tumbled in my estimation.
The Robert Oppenheimer story is a fascinating one, worthy of many tellings. And, indeed, there have been many, in book form and on film. (Last night, I saw the 1989 movie Fat Man and Little Boy, starring Paul Newman.) The challenge is how to tell it. It could be presented as an action movie, a psychological thriller, a biography, a war story, or a documentary, of which there could be countless approaches.
After thinking about it, the reason my opinion of the movie dropped so precipitously is the fault of Christopher Nolan, the director. Among all the many options open to him, he chose to present the story as an action thriller. Nolan’s Oppenheimer was big on physical and emotional tension, big on sound and visuals. But it was weak on looking into Oppenheimer himself – his astonishing intelligence, his undeniable ambition, his attraction to communism, and his addictive infidelities. Nor does it teach the viewer much about the science behind the story, which is probably the most interesting thing.
Oppenheimer should not have been the big, artsy, intensely dramatic portrayal of a big historic moment that Nolan produced. Because however tempting it may have been to produce that movie, it doesn’t work very well because most of the most important action in the Oppenheimer story takes place inside the protagonist’s head.
The Plot (in short)
During World War II, Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. appoints physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to work on the top-secret Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer and a team of scientists spend years developing and designing the atomic bomb. Their work comes to fruition on July 16, 1945, as they witness the world’s first nuclear explosion, forever changing the course of history.
Critical Reception
Reviews have been mostly positive. But in addition to giving praise where praise was due, every one that I read pointed out Oppenheimer’s many flaws.
* “Despite being overlong and unevenly paced, Oppenheimer contains moments of greatness and features one of the most compelling lead performances (by Cillian Murphy) in recent memory.” (James Berardinelli, ReelViews)
* “With its everyone-and-the-kitchen-sink casting, alternating between color and black and white, fit-for-Imax spectacle and Ludwig Göransson’s pounding musical score, Oppenheimer seeks to overwhelm the audience, an approach that works to an extent.” (Brian Lowry, CNN)
* “For all we learn about the creation and execution of the atomic bomb and its aftermath, the story could and should be told in a more digestible form. Instead, we have an overlong narrative that isn’t revelatory or surprising.” (Leonard Maltin)
* “Nolan has set out to make a moral epic, and he succeeds for the most part, or, rather, for the first two-thirds of Oppenheimer.” (Ty Burr)
* “Inevitably, it falls short of its ambitions. But it’s bracing to see a studio movie these days, particularly one with such huge scope, that at least attempts to serve up more than recycled goods.” (Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor)
You can watch the trailer here.
The Quiet Girl
Written and directed by Colm Bairéad
Based on the book by Claire Keegan
Starring Carrie Crowley, Andrew Bennett, Catherine Clinch, Michael Patric, and Kate Nic Chonaonaigh
Release date (US): Dec. 16, 2022
My sister gave me a copy of Foster by Claire Keegan for Christmas. It was very good, and so I read another book by Keegan, The Quiet Girl. That was excellent, too. So when I saw that it had been made into a movie, I put it on my shortlist.
The Plot
It is the summer of 1981. Nine-year-old Cait, a shy child who struggles to fit in at school, lives with her over-crowded, dysfunctional, and impoverished family in rural Ireland. When her mother gets pregnant again, it’s decided that she should spend the remaining months of the pregnancy with distant relatives – an older, childless couple. In their care, she blossoms, experiencing love for perhaps the first time in her life.
What I Liked About It
* The Quiet Girl is an Irish-language film (Irish title An Cailín Ciúin) – with 95% of the dialogue in Irish, and English words peppered in only occasionally. (There are subtitles for both.)
* It’s beautifully shot.
* It’s well-acted.
* The musical score is effective.
* It gives a different, quieter impression of Irish families and what it’s like to grow up in a small town in a rural countryside.
Critical Reception
The Quiet Girl broke box office records for the opening weekend of an Irish-language film and became the highest-grossing Irish-language film of all time. It received 11 nominations at the 18th Irish Film & Television Awards (IFTAs) in March 2022, and won in seven categories. On January 24, 2023, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, becoming the first Irish film to be nominated in the category’s history. A milestone.
“There’s been a tendency in our cinema to pander to something that’s expected of us,” said writer/director Colm Bairéad in an interview with the NYT. But a recent wave of Irish films feel “very sure of themselves in terms of their identity. They’re coming from the inside out, rather than the outside in.”
* “A quiet film. A whisper of a film, really. And its unassuming nature makes it all the more effective.” (Adam Graham, Detroit News)
* “As beautiful as it is devastating.” (Odie Henderson, Boston Globe)
* “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that conveyed with such vividness and precision the helplessness of childhood.” (Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle)
You can watch the trailer here.
