Infrequent updates, selective recounts and biased commentary on life inside the belly of the beast

I just came upon a lost gem of a movie–recommended by my dad–called Mindwalk. It was released in 1990, but has never made its way to dvd. After watching it, I’m not surprised, given that–as the Washington Post described it at the time–the “film has virtually no action, no drama and no narrative.” With that sort of criteria, a film would have to be some sort of touchstone French new wave art house classic from the ’60s to get released on dvd. But really, it’s a wonder that Mindwalk ever got released in the first place.

The film is essentially a two-hour conversation between three characters: a politician (played by Sam Waterston), a physicist (Liv Ullman) and a poet (John Heard). The setting is the medieval island of Mont Saint-Michel, where all three characters have converged to escape from their respective midlife crisis. But what this movie lacks in Hollywood elements, it makes up for with an intense existential dialogue on the very meaning of life–but more than just that, it’s the clashing of two distinct ways of seeing life.

Although it is structured like a dialogue, the movie is in large part a monologue or–perhaps more accurately–a forum for the physicist to espouse her new world views upon a reluctant old world politician (described as a conservative democrat) and his generally open-minded poet friend. This approach definitely comes off as a bit too didactic at times, but I’m willing to forgive the filmmakers because it’s clear they too were aware of this pitfall and attempted to compensate by inserting a daughter character, who periodically pops in to remind her mom that no one wants to hear her crazy boring ideas about how the world should work.

Nevertheless, the physicist–whose withdrawl to the island stems from the realization that her work was being fed to the U.S. Defense Department–begins her lecture by telling the politician that he suffers from a mechanistic view of life that dates all the way back to Descartes [...]

I attended a rather lackluster debate on Wednesday night between former NY Times Middle East correspondent Chris Hedges–who was promoting his new book I Don’t Believe In Atheists–and writer/communist Sunsara Taylor–who was representing Communist party leader Bob Avakian and his book Away With All Gods!–on the provocative topic of “Atheism, God and Morality in a [...]

I’m not sure how to preface this, so here it is: I like a Nickelback song. Yes, I’m talking about the band that sounds (and looks) like all the worst elements of the grunge era were dumped into Pro-Tools and produced by the CEO of Warner Music himself. I discovered this rather shocking truth [...]

One question has been coming up a lot–although, perhaps not explicitly–on this blog recently: How should the antiwar movement engage in the 2008 election?
I’ve danced around this question–essentially saying that we need to push Democratic candidates to take a harder stance against the war and military spending. But my message could certainly be more articulate [...]

Yesterday was the annual Good Friday Way of the Cross march through midtown Manhattan, sponsored by Pax Christi–a leading group in the Catholic peace movement. The several hundred who participated–including myself–walked from 47th and 2nd to Times Square, stopping at fifteen symbolically-significant places along the way to reflect on the suffering and injustices going on [...]

Yesterday’s entry received quite a response over at the Huffington Post–which happened to pick it up. By and large the consensus seemed to be: “You have a point about Obama’s shortcomings, but now is not the time to bring them up.” Some thought I put too much emphasis on the little bit that was wrong [...]

A Massachusetts middle school has embarked on a project that will land them in the Guinness Book of World Records by making a book of their own–the largest book, in fact, to ever be created. But what topic could possibly fill the pages of a book measuring 12 feet tall and 10 feet wide and [...]

Facebook recently found itself in some hot water when Jewish settlers in the West Bank noticed that they were being listed as residents of “Palestine.” After receiving accusations of having “a political agenda” from the settlers, Facebook cowed to pressure and now allows users to choose between being listed as residents of Israel or [...]

It took me a while to appreciate the political undertones of The Wire because the writers throw so much at you that metaphors and allusions take a back seat to basic story comprehension. But after viewing the final episode and reading some of Wire creator David Simon’s recent comments, I have come to realize that [...]

Another 10 Palestinians were killed by Israeli raids and bomb strikes in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, bringing the death count to 115 (a third of which were children) in just four days. On the Israeli side one civilian and two soldiers were killed. Nevertheless, a senior Israeli official warned that Palestinians firing rockets from [...]