Music forms a tapestry that serves as a backdrop of life. Of all the minutia that composes the composite of modern human identity, music often reveals much regarding a person’s history, character and personal disposition. Music has a unique way of touching the human soul, imprinting on the psyche association with other people, places, times…
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Movie review: Trumbo
A little slow down over the holiday this past week gave me and a few friends the opportunity to take in a feature presentation at Tulsa’s Circle Cinema in historic Whittier Square. Showing on Screen 2 on Thanksgiving Night was director Jay Roach’s biopic Trumbo, a dramatization of the life, work and struggles of blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter…
Continue ReadingMovie review: The Stanford Prison Experiment
You only deserve as much abuse as you are willing to tolerate. That has become one of my personal credos over the years. Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez validated this for me once again in his docudrama The Stanford Prison Experiment. I attended a matinee showing of this film at Circle Cinema in Whittier Square this…
Continue ReadingMovie review: The Water Diviner
War is definitely the gift that keeps on giving. It was appropriate that The Water Diviner, a fictional post-World War I historical drama, opened the day before the 100th anniversary of the start of the military campaign which inspired it. Russell Crowe directs and acts in the lead role and seems to gain a measure of redemption…
Continue ReadingDocumentary Film Review: Children of the Civil Rights
President Harry Truman once said, “The only thing new in this world is the history that you don’t know.” On this fiftieth anniversary commemoration of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Circle Cinema held a special showing of the documentary film Children of the Civil Rights. It was indeed a celebration of a piece of not so much…
Continue ReadingMovie Review: Selma
When you undertake telling a story like Selma you are taking something down from altar and you had better do it justice. This historic drama directed by Ava DuVernay did exactly that. The intriguing thing about the final polished product is that it was done using British talent in most of the lead roles. Indeed, British actors David Oyelowo and Carmen Ejogo delivered excellent…
Continue ReadingMovie Review: American Sniper
Clint Eastwood’s work, both directing and acting, has been something I have long admired and enjoyed from Dirty Harry to the spaghetti Westerns and most of the other pictures since. At the end of the day my all time favorite movie is still one in which he both acted and directed, The Outlaw Josey Wales. In…
Continue ReadingMovie Review: The Imitation Game
Among the Holiday Season new releases is the fourth film by Norwegian director Morten Tyldum, The Imitation Game. It is based on the true story of British mathematician and cryptanalyst Alan Turing and his body of work inventing a countermeasure device to the German Enigma machine. This story appeals to the intellect, to crossword puzzle fans and…
Continue ReadingMovie Review: Unbroken
I will state for the record that I have never been a big fan of Angelina Jolie but in her directorial debut she really knocked it out of the park! Unbroken is a pull-no-punches story of survival and service to the nation under the most difficult of circumstances. It is the true account of the war…
Continue ReadingWhen North Korea says “Jump!” who asks “How high?”
This week’s cyber-hacking of Sony Pictures by agents of the government of North Korea has brought multiple issues to the attention of our nation. Among them the focus of investing resources preparing for the next conflict instead of the last one. We’ve known about nature of future hostile actions against our nation for some time and now here it…
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