Month: July 2009

Mid-July Stuff

Okay, I’m slightly behind, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s still the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 and the moon landing. Great Time article about the astronauts.

Saw “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” on Sunday at the Cobble Hill theater. It was a decent adaptation. It’s not going to satisfy everybody, but it was good enough. (well, I had mixed feelings about the book in the first place, which was sad and left me really unsure about Dumbledore).

Alan Rickman – he was priceless as ever as Prof. Snape (but was barely on-screen). Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter is improving his acting chops – and I think he and Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley could be the future Hugh Dancy or Hugh Grant, if they dare want to pursue romantic comedies (which I wouldn’t necessarily recommend if they do want to go down that route of a British acting career; they might want to consult with Damian Lewis or the current King of British actors in America, Hugh Laurie). Emma Watson as Hermione Granger was also very solid. I liked Michael Gambon – I kind of resented what Dumbledore did in Book 6, but Gambon played the humanity of Dumbledore very well. (and if you’re looking for the great tragedy of Book 6 to be exactly in the movie – well, don’t. Just don’t do it; adaptations are just that: they’re adaptations).

I did enjoy the trailer for the Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey, Jr., as Holmes. It just looked really good – even if it might not be a great movie, it looks like silly fun (well, okay, I am fond of silly Holmes movies – now there are tons of adaptations of that stuff!). Guess we got to wait until Christmas for this one.

The passing of Frank McCourt, author of “Angela’s Ashes” – and a memorable teacher who wrote (or writer who taught) – with a lasting impact for what he did for others.

Weekend

Summer in the city.

A look at a life of a Chinese immigrant in 1923 – fascinating stuff!

Imagine if it were Yoda dealing with the confirmation hearings; now, you don’t have to, because a law professor does it for you; hilarious posting on the Balkinization blog.

The passing of Walter Cronkite; they really don’t make anchor people like him, the model. Cronkite was well before my time (I still miss Peter Jennings), but he was tv’s way to witness history: especially with the moving way he handled announcing the assassination of Kennedy.

The tributes written are rather eloquent. Slate’s John Dickerson was especially poignant – since he has a personal element to it (his family was a news family, and his mother was one of the early newswomen of tv) and he notes:

By the time I made it upstairs, the kids wanted to know why I’d disappeared. I had been watching the Cronkite tributes when I should have been upstairs for bedtime prayers. I told them why he was important and that he’d worked with their grandmother. They wanted to know how old he was and how he died. They just wanted the facts. It was a little hard to convey to a 5- and 6-year-old what had happened, but there is one way in which Cronkite is a part of their nightly ritual. It’s his voice I try to imitate when I’m reading to them.

NY Times’ Alessandra Stanley and Time’s James Poniewozik make the tv critic’s perspective of the Cronkite career – and in a way, they touch on how the American media was different than it was in Cronkite’s prime. Is he the last of a breed, as this Washington Post appraisal asks; well, I’d say he was one of the first of the breed, of the pioneers who made the national television nightly news become part of a generation, rather than say whether he was the last (Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings took the torch; that the media industry became what it is – well, I’d rather not blame it on Dan/Tom/Peter than on the networks’ managements or the American masses’ own shabby tastes).