The main aspect of his personality that I appreciated most from the book was his analytical skills and his genuine interest in using them. This relates to the second most important facet, his tendency for self-reflection. Based on these, his drive for social justice and helping upward mobility, storytelling voice, made him an appealing and pleasant person in my eyes.

The first third of the book, titled origins deals with his background and upbringing. It details the emotional struggles he faced coming to terms with his father, heritage and race. The second third tells his experiences as a community organizer in Chicago. In this section there his friends and family were barely mentioned, probably because they were not there with him. Finally, the last third is the narrative of his Kenyan vacation and how he discovered his family and deeper roots there. Being such a self-reflective person I would have appreciated one more concluding chapter, where he could have described how he integrated what he learned in Kenya about himself and the world, into his work. Without that piece the book’s three sections felt a bit disjointed to me. As if one (work) would have no influence on the other (family), while this interaction seemed to be one of the intended focal points of this work.

As this book has shown, he is truly a global citizen, having brought up as a biracial person in Hawaii, having lived in Indonesia, having visited Kenya. As such, I hope and believe, he will be better prepared to handle the challenges of his new job. I am glad I enjoyed an emotional and political autobiography, because I may have a better understanding of the forces in the “leader of the free world.” Not to mention it was an enjoyable read, mixture of stories, political thoughts, and emotional self-discovery.

There is not much more to tell about the movie, the actors, the story, the directing – none of them are out of the ordinary. The movie touches on the deeper issue of infertility, but doesn’t dwell too deep or long on it. If anything it discredits doctors working in this area, which I felt was not fair. But they were sold down for a cheap shot of humor, like everything else. There were a few funny one-liners and situation, but by now I forgot them, despite having seen the movie only 4 days ago. If you have the time to have forgettable fun, go for it.

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But the power of the movie is that instead of being propagandistic it dwells in the description of the people. That’s where French director, Louis Malle, shines, even if the people he shows are not shiny. They are just average people who fight their daily lives, their own pasts and demons. And this is the second thing I liked about the movie, how each character is s full person, not just a caricature, like in so many modern movies, where the viewer only sees a limited fraction of their human experience.

Atlantic City decided to legalize gambling in 1977 and the movie was made in 1980. It shows the early years of the transformation with its growing pains. The long walks on the boardwalk are necessary, because everything else is either demolished or getting built. The walks also represent movement, the people are trying to go from one place to another in their life, just like the city. Again, some are more successful than others, but the real learning is in the why and how of how people fail and/or succeed.

It is a personal, quiet little movie, with both likable and despicable personalities. Watching it was perfect experience for a fall night.

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This is a top 1000 movie.

David Brin’s Kiln people

The basic concept is fascinating: in the not too distant future a new technology allows people to create limited clones of themselves. These copies are made of clay, similarly to the original golem. Unlike the original though these can be imprinted with a custome combination of one’s mind, skill and memory. I have to refrain using the word “soul” for two reasons: it is not clearly defined in the first part of the book and in the later part it gets it own meaning, which does not entirely coincide the usual understanding.

Another major difference between the golem of the past and the golem of the future is that the latter (usually) expires within a day. People can opt to upload the golem’s memories and experiences to their own body, thus allowing having more experiences in a single lifetime and some of these are from places and conditions that the human body would not survive.

I was surprised to see to the extent the author thought through the social implication of a world, where every single human can have several copies of her or himself running around. The social changes were convincing enough for me. If the measure of good science fiction is that its universe is coherent, including the newly invented laws and newly implemented ideas, than this book passes my muster. Its outlook is unexpectedly positive with contained wars (9-5, in predetermined areas only), omnipresent free time, and access to the technology for everyone. But the utopia is balanced with free-ranging capitalism and all its problems.

I was less impressed by how the ethical, psychological and philosophical implications of this brave new world were covered in the book. The basic idea was so terrific that I think it would have deserved a more thorough explication in these areas. How does it change the human psyche, what kind of new problems might arise, what it means being human in this new world, what the definition of life is. All these areas were touched upon the book, but for my taste not dealt with satisfactorily.

As murder mystery go this was well-written. It had plenty of twists; the readers’ idea of whodunit shifted often enough to make it a page-turner. It was an exciting noel, with novel ideas, although I found none of the characters likeable enough to really care. Also, there was not much change in them. They were introduced in a certain way and by the end of the book they have not learned anything, had no real reason to change. In short it was not about character development, but about storytelling. The story was told fine though.

There were plenty of direct references to the original golem story. There the rabbi who created the clay-man who could move, but had no soul or words was called Maharal, here the scientist who invented the clay-cloning technology was called Maharal. The duplicating machine in the novel is called tetragramatron, which is a technical term for the sacred; four letter word known as G-d’s name. Obviously the idea, that limited, but functioning copies of humans can be made from clay is the basic connecting element.

There are significant differences though. The word “emet” (truth in Hebrew) was important in the original story as writing this world on the golem’s forehead made it alive. The word shows up in the novel as well, but only three times (one of those being the subtitle of chapter 57) and not fully integrated into the story line. In the old Prague version of the story the Jewish community and the Maharal’s daughter needed to be saved from evil outsiders, here the community and his daughter needed to be saved from him. There the reason for the existence of the single golem was protection. Here the reason for the millions of golems was money and convenience.

I liked more elements of the book than not. The repurposing of the golem concept, the connection to the original story, the frantic murder-mystery were all to my liking. However the lack of deeper investigation of the new ethical landscape, the lack of people I could care for, the lack of learnable lessons made the book far from perfect. Just like golems are far from perfect of humans.

It is a sweet little, predictably story, colorfully executed. Nim lives with her scientist father on an exotic island. He disappears and Nim asks help from the adventure writer she adores, played by Foster. Foster overcomes her extreme claustrophobia and rushes to help her. From that point on the story charges on towards its unavoidable happy end.

The high point of the movie for me was the imagined and the tropical scenery and their mix. With every movie she makes, though, it is getting harder t o imagine Foster playing a light character in a comedy. Even in this kid movie she managed to grab a role with multiple phobias. Thus her happiness at the end does not seem genuine enough in my eyes. Other than that it was it was fun, light entertainment.

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The story is simple enough: it is the life story of Alfie, a man who uses women as he wishes, without ever committing himself to one. He seems emotionless; he is guarded to the extreme. There are only three scenes where we can detect unwanted reactions from him: when he plays with his son (whom he wanted nothing to do with), when he runs after the first woman, who ever left him (and not the other way around) and when he encounters an aborted fetus in his kitchen. But even these scenes are tainted. During the first one he keeps talking about his attachment and we do not actually hear him talking with/to the child. In the second scene he only runs after the woman after he smelled the cake she left for him in the oven; only this made him realize what he would miss if she left permanently. And in the third he manages to have a decent thought (”I am a murderer”) but this does not stop him, abandoning the woman, who just aborted.

Besides the obviously engaging story-line, the movie has great writing, acting and clever camerawork. The overhead shots of running around in nondescript 1960’s English suburbs, the barfight accompanied with live music, the puppy love, were all well-orchestrated. Their unusual angles provided additional meaning. The music, i.e. Sonny Rollins improvised saxophone solos, show a free attitude similar to the protagonist’s.

All in all he provided the anti-role model for me. His motto, “You got to look after yourself in this life,” is too limiting for me. It is true, but not enough, not altruistic enough for my taste. I found Alfie’s use of the belittling “bird” term for woman outraged me. He said “I don’t want no bird’s respect - I wouldn’t know what to do with it.” I am just the opposite, I like being liked and respected. I thank the film for reminding me what I do not want to be.

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This is a top 1000 movie.

It is a brutally honest movie about a 20something guy falling in love with a woman who identifies herself as a lesbian. Their budding relationship and his conflict over her with his best friend and roommate is in the focus. By brutally honest I mean that the characters speak their mind from the heart; they are having exactly the kind of conversation we were having at the same age. The script contains some of the most cleverly intimate dialogs I ever heard. IMDB keeps a “memorable quotes” page for most movies. This one has the longest page from the movies I encountered and rightfully so. Just reading them through is a lesson on gender stereotypes, male and female coping mechanisms, pent-up and let-down emotions. These are the themes that the movie explores in a refreshingly straightforward way. I think this should be shown for high school students. It would help them to encounter their own fears, misconceptions and install sincerity in them.

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The story is simple: a police station, which is about to be closed down comes under siege by criminals with only a few people, mixture of officers, civilians and jailbirds, being there to protect it and themselves. What makes this movie great is not the story, but the desolate atmosphere. The going back and forth between no background music and stripped sound of a few keys on a Yamaha synthesizer support the creepy feel of the liminal space. Liminal in the sense, that the police station is halfway packed up; it is here and not here at the same time. Same applies to the people. The prison bus that had to make an unplanned stop here for medical reasons; the lieutenant who got the gig of overseeing the move on his first day on the job after returning from a break; the assistants, who worked there for five years and now ready to move on; the father whose daughter was shot down, went after the killers and then escaped into the station … All of the characters were just passing by when they were forced to make a stand. That they did and Carpenter was kill-happy to show us the carnage of the siege. BTW: At one point “The siege” was the title of the movie. First it was intended to be “The Anderson Alamo,” but at the end the distributor changed it “Assault on Precinct 13,” despite that in the movie itself the location is referred to as precinct 9, division 13.

If you are looking for social commentary I guess you can find it in the representation senseless violence of youth culture from the Los Angeles wastelands. Particularly the shooting of the young girl with ice-cream in her hand. The wordless execution scene could be an emblem of the era and its problems. Not being familiar first hand with this subculture, but having read about the periodic waves the “adult” society tries to keep teenagers in control (think back of reactions against garish comics, rock music, punk aesthetic…) I cannot stop thinking that it might be exaggerated here as well. Maybe the kind of violence shown here is not as frequent as one would think. We know that John Carpenter, who directed this film soon after he finished school, became the master of gloomy horror/suspense movies; i.e. he was predisposed to see the darker side of life. If you want see it too and not opposed to violence, check out this early, tense masterpiece.

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This is a top 1000 movie

I think the aim of the movie and its release right before the next, i.e. current, election is the same: hoping that it would influence those people to vote, who would otherwise note. If that is the goal, then I think there is very little chance that this movie can accomplish it. It does not give any good reasons. Showing one excited person after the other, getting caught up in the spirit of voting en mass could have been influential, but here they just seemed flat to me. My wife and mother-in-law watched the whole movie and they appreciated some of the musicians playing their songs and seeing them out there. If that’s the best the movie has to offer, then why not just watch those (or your favorite) artists on their own.

Instead of watching this movie, why don’t you convince a few more people to vote. That would be time better spent.

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Second, in my eyes it was a colonialist movie. France and the French were painted (often literally) as a backdrop of the American soldier’s post-war adventures in an exotic country. Exotic meant not just that it was distinctly not American in terms of the indoor and outdoor places, but also that the locals do not have to be treated with the same respect as you would a fellow compatriot. I am aware, that it is just romantic movie, but the underlying, dare I say ethnocentric, attitude was too glaring for me to omit.

There, now I feel better and can go on all the things I liked in the movie. The songs and the dance were fun(ny), the colors are extremely vivid, almost cartoonlike. The last 20 minute of the movie there is not a single word said, it is all one interconnecting dance sequence leading to the unavoidable happy end. At times this segment felt too long while watching. Had I switched my mental mode to “ballet watching” from regular feature film I know I would have been fine. The painted (in vulgarized impressionist style) stage-like prop Paris was eve more surreal than the studio mock-up Paris, where most of the movie was shot. I like this kind of surreal, where the background has diminished role, so we could focus on the people, who were minutely choreographed.

I don’t have the time to write about individual scenes, but there were plenty memorable ones. Gene Kelly’s dances are classics and as I hear he directed some of his own scenes as the director, Vincent Minnelli was growing through his divorce from Judy Garland. But major kudos (and an almost Oscar) goes to the director, whose vision, precision and stage background made this movie special. I was an “almost” Oscar, because he was nominated for directing the movie, but did not get the price, while the movie got 6 other Oscars: best set/art-direction, cinematography, costume, music, picture and writing.

I am ready to rewatch this movie any time I want to tune out and immerse myself in a full music-color experience. You could too, if you can hang up your disbelief.

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This is a top 1000 movie.