Tag: movies

History coming to the big screen next year

Nathaniel Philbrick is one of my favorite historians.  I especially love his superb maritime history books.  And it turns out that one of his books is being made into a movie.  Heart of the Sea is based on his book In the Heart of the Sea, in which Philbrick recounts the story of the Essex, a whaleship that was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820, far out in the Pacific Ocean.  Its crew was stranded in small boats for several months until they were rescued and in the meantime they had been forced to commit cannibalism.  The disaster served as inspiration for Herman Melville, who used it and his own experience on a whaler to help him create the novel Moby Dick.

The film, directed by Ron Howard, is set to be released sometime in 2014.   And there are at least three actors from Game of Thrones that are also in this film: Joseph Mawle (Benjen Stark); Donald Sumpter (Maester Luwin); and Jamie Sives (Jory Cassel).  Good Northmen all, and all dead, sadly.*  So that frees them up to be in this film.  I am looking forward to it.

-Geoff

*Technically, Benjen Stark is missing, but let’s just say that it isn’t looking good for him to be alive at this point.

Boston Strong

It’s been a little over a week since downtown blew up and everything went to hell, but since then Boston Strong has become the catchphrase for how we’ve all held up.  The whole tough New Englander attitude, some would say “crusty”, is well known.  We’re tough people and down through generations we’ve been through a lot.

I have no idea who it was who coined the phrase.  I hope it wasn’t some marketing VP somewhere who’s made a mint from it.  It has helped, and it has spawned Watertown Strong and Collier Strong, on their own indications of what we’ve been through separately and together and how we’ll persevere.

Check out some of the images, below the cut, that have come up in the last week plus that I’ve liked the best or that I think are the funniest representation of Boston Strong.

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Kittens + geeks = this

The internet really doesn’t have enough cats yet.  And since we already have videos of cats doing all sorts of things, it was only a matter of time until someone made a video of cats (or kittehs, if you will) fighting with lightsabers.

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Nick Flynn, Ty Burr, Amanda Palmer, & Neil Gaiman

Regular readers around here know that Geoff and I are huge fans of The Bloggess.  We also happen to think that Neil Gaiman is pretty awesome and that Amanda Palmer is pretty cool.

I signed up to work an event featuring Nick Flynn and Ty Burr and who was more surprised than me when Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman showed up?  Bloggess?  This is for you.

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The sound of poverty

Most of us think of the sound of poverty, or of being poor, as the voice of the homeless guy who sings out his need for spare change near the subway station or the bark of the homeless dog seeking scraps for supper.  For many of us this noise fades into the background of every day life.

For American the fear of poverty inches closer every day with some of the impending financial decisions our government has to make in the next few days to stave off some serious cuts that will destroy the lives of many of the poorest and many of the middle class in the country.  But that’s an American problem.

Then there’s the rest of the world.

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One of my favorite holiday movies is getting a sequel

There are a lot of holiday movies out there, and even more if you count pseudo-holiday movies that are set during the holidays but not necessarily about the holidays.  The first Die Hard movie is a good example of that.  It’s hardly a movie that Grandma will sit down to watch with the grandkids, but it is set during the holidays.  Frankly, there aren’t a whole lot of them I like, but I do have a few favorites.  And there are two that I watch every holiday season because I love them that much.  The first is Love, Actually, which is not just a great holiday movie, it’s a great movie, period.  Lots of big names in it and the movie is just so well done.  The second is a somewhat obscure comedy that has become a cult classic.  No, I don’t mean A Christmas Story.  I mean The Hebrew Hammer. 

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Work and modern pop culture

There is a bit of a running joke about the subway vent in the King’s Chapel Burial Ground.  Tourists ask about it on a fairly frequent basis.  And one response that is sometimes given (but not by me) is that it is a zombie pit.  It certainly does look as if someone is trying to keep everyone out, because they are.  Or perhaps… keep something in.  Heh, heh, heh.

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The unstudied aspects of the Civil War

I know that to some people, the idea that there is anything left to study about the Civil War is doubtful.  Estimates are that some 50,000 books have been written about the Civil War.  And yet, much to my own frustration, many topics remain unstudied.   The one that has frustrated me more than any other in recent years is civilian casualties of the war.

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Just don’t look like a seal, buddy

Every summer one of the rituals we go through here in the Greater Boston area is the appearance of everyone’s favorite apex predator, carcharadon carcharius,  or the Great White shark, off Cape Cod.  I was just a kid when they filmed Jaws on Martha’s Vineyard but I do remember seeing all the references to the movie the next time my family went to the island.  And apparently there are a lot of people (besides me) who still think about the movie and its relationship to the island, including the author of this new book that I very much would like to acquire.

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