http://bryanfarrell.com Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:24:08 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/129 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/129#comments Sun, 25 May 2008 04:42:54 +0000 Bryan Farrell http://bryanfarrell.com/?p=129 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/129/feed http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/128 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/128#comments Sun, 25 May 2008 03:30:01 +0000 Bryan Farrell http://bryanfarrell.com/?p=128 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/128/feed http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/86 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/86#comments Wed, 07 May 2008 07:36:36 +0000 Bryan Farrell http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/86 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 [...]]]> http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/86/feed http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/131 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/131#comments Sun, 27 Apr 2008 05:36:41 +0000 Bryan Farrell http://bryanfarrell.com/?p=131 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/131/feed http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/116 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/116#comments Sun, 27 Apr 2008 02:34:44 +0000 Bryan Farrell http://bryanfarrell.com/?p=116 Published by Foreign Policy In Focus Standing in the student section of Penn State’s Beaver Stadium during football season always felt like witnessing a war unfold before your eyes. First the band would enter, marching in military-like formation and literally drumming up support from the crowd, while the cheerleaders would start up the most boastfully imposing chant in all of college sports: “We Are…Penn State.” Then our four-star general, Coach Joe Paterno would run on the field flanked by his army of All-American linebackers and various other defensive backs, ends, and tackles because offense was always second to a strong defense in JoePa’s book. Even as a student, during perhaps the bleakest years of an otherwise dominating half-century of college football, I knew Pennsylvania State University was just as likely to be called “Linebacker U” as Penn State. Yet, upon recently returning to my alma mater four years after my graduation, I noticed that Beaver Stadium isn’t the only building on campus where a strong defense is revered. Just down the street from my old college house is a nondescript industrial park that is home to The Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies (INLDT)-one of the fastest-growing departments under the umbrella of Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratories (ARL). Despite the generic name, ARL is one of the U.S. Navy’s top civilian research facilities, as well as Penn State’s single largest research unit with well over 1,000 employees (including students). It was founded in 1945 to advance Navy technology in areas such as acoustics and vibration control, hydrodynamics, propulsors, torpedo defense, and other naval related paraphernalia. While this sort of research is still being conducted, there’s little doubt that the focus has shifted to non-lethal weaponry [...]]]> http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/116/feed http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/85 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/85#comments Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:27:25 +0000 Bryan Farrell http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/85 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/85/feed http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/82 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/82#comments Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:31:57 +0000 Bryan Farrell http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/82 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/82/feed http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/81 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/81#comments Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:14:57 +0000 Bryan Farrell http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/81 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/81/feed http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/79 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/79#comments Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:07:07 +0000 Bryan Farrell http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/79 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/79/feed http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/77 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/77#comments Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:39:42 +0000 Bryan Farrell http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/77 http://bryanfarrell.com/archives/77/feed