Crazy Heart
I will always remember Easter 2010 as the Crazy Heart weekend. Aside from Avatar a few weeks ago, this is my favorite film in a long time. I knew before walking into the cinema that the film followed at country singer who had seen better days. Critics also raved about Jeff Bridges performance. Yes, his performance deserved an Oscar. But the most amazing person connected with the film is the first-time director Scott Cooper. Cooper was trained as an actor but never became a superstar. We are all better off for it because the man as a poetic sensibility that is put to better used as a writer and director. Every detail about the film is right. Cooper refused to shoot in Canada to save costs because he knew that original scenes in the Southwest would please our eyes and fit much better to country music. When I reviewed Walk the Line, I confessed that I could not relate to the music because country was foreign to my ears.
Sherlock Holmes
Guy Richie took some liberties in wooing young audiences to see his version of Sherlock Holmes. The historical—but let us not forget fictional—19th century character invented by the writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is quite meticulous with his personal hygiene and does not seem to have any constitutional interest in the opposite sex. Richie’s Sherlock only puts drops of water on his body when it is absolutely necessary. One could mistake his Sherlock for a homeless street bum. Richie’s Sherlock could also pass for a Don Giovanni who is merely between affairs rather than an incurable bachelor. Richie cast Sherlock Holmes in the genre an action movie, putting it closer in the tradition of James Bond or Jason Bourne films. Yet in one way Richie stayed faithful to the character in the Conan Doyle books. Sherlock Holmes is one hell of a detective. His powers of reasoning are peerless.
The Hurt Locker
A few years ago I was staying for a night in a motel in the vicinity of the Washington airport. Breakfast included. USA Today placed before my door as is customary for this kind of American establishment. I read this snapshot of American life at the breakfast table. Next to me sits a man in his early 30. He is looking for conversation and connection. After training in Texas he is being shipped out to Iraq via this airport. The politicians make the decisions. We just hope that we are doing the right thing. His IQ is in the lower ranges. I come to share the trace of fearfulness about his future that has enveloped his being. “Can I have your email address so that I can write from Iraq,” he asks me. How can I say ‘no’. I never heard from him again. There are two possibilities: Everything went so well that he didn’t feel the need to write. Or he simply got himself killed soon after he arrived in Iraq.
New Moon
The sequel to Twilight is a big disappointment for the adult mind. Only teenage girls with a crush on Robert Pattison will enjoy this film. Nothing new happens. Bella’s vampire boyfriend, Edward (Robert Pattison), leaves her so she can be safe. Bella is crushed and becomes depressed. She spends a lot of time with Jake, who develops a big crush on her and now competes with Edward for Bella’s love. Jake also moonlights as a werewolf. Edward, believing that Bella died, wants to commit suicide. But Bella finds him in Italy just in time to prevent his suicide. They promise each other to stay together forever. The End. We are ready for the next episode, Eclipse, coming out in June.
David Brooks takes off his hat but fears for the worst
David Brooks columns are always interesting. Today he takes the reader back to his democratic youth, acknolwedges the success of the Democratic Party, but warns that America will follow Rome into oblivion. At least nobody can say that he did not warn us.
The Democrats Rejoice
Parties come to embody causes. For the past 90 years or so, the Republican Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of personal freedom and economic dynamism. For a similar period, the Democratic Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of fairness and family security. Over the past century, they have built a welfare system, brick by brick, to guard against the injuries of fate.
Continue Reading
Historic Health Care Bill passes after 48 Hours of Drama
This was a roller coaster. I am sure there will be lawsuits challenging the bill, but it looks like that America is becoming a modern country when it comes to providing health care. Watch this short video summary of the past 48 hours. Obama delivered in the end.
NY Times 3 min Video on the Battle to Come
Continue ReadingFiction: The Use of Poetry
After watching the film “Atonement”, the name “Ian McEwan” is burned into my mind. His recent story in the New Yorker starts out very strong and was a pleasure to read.
It surprised no one to learn that Michael Beard had been an only child, and he would have been the first to concede that he’d never quite got the hang of brotherly feeling. His mother, Angela, was an angular beauty who doted on him, and the medium of her love was food. She bottle-fed him with passion, surplus to demand. Some four decades before he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, he came top in the Cold Norton and District Baby Competition, birth-to-six-months class.
Continue ReadingGetting Obama Right
DAVID BROOKS (NY Times) responds the last week’s column by Frank Rich and explains why it is so difficult for Obama to create on overarching narrative. The poltical odds seem to have changed. Right now the money is on health care passing.
Who is Barack Obama?
If you ask a conservative Republican, you are likely to hear that Obama is a skilled politician who campaigned as a centrist but is governing as a big-government liberal. He plays by ruthless, Chicago politics rules. He is arrogant toward foes, condescending toward allies and runs a partisan political machine.
The Up-or-Down Vote on Obama’s Presidency
The money in Washington is on Health Care legislation not passing this year. FRANK RICH is hedging his bets on this issue. But he articulates forcefully that Obama needs to create an overarching narrative before it is too late for his presidency.
WEDNESDAY’S health care rally was one of President Obama’s finest hours. It was so fine it couldn’t be blighted even by his preposterous backdrop, a cohort of white-jacketed medical workers large enough to staff a hospital in one of the daytime soaps that refused to be pre-empted by the White House show.
Obama’s urgent script didn’t need such cheesy theatrics. At last he took ownership of what he called “my proposal,” stating concisely three concrete ways the bill would improve America’s broken health care system. At last he pushed for a majority-rule, up-or-down vote in Congress. At last he conceded that bipartisan agreement between two parties with “honest and substantial differences” on fundamental principles wasn’t happening. At last he mobilized his rhetoric against a villain everyone could hiss—insurance companies. In a brief address, he mentioned these malefactors of great greed 13 times.
© 2026 Peter Murmann. Powered by ExpressionEngine.
