Brown Motion

We watched 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty' over the long Memorial Holiday weekend in the US.  Then we bookended the weekend with an old spy film called 'The Good Shepherd' directed by Robert De Niro. This weekend we remember the soldiers that lost lives over the many wars America fought.   Rightly it is about honoring the unquestionable courage and sacrifice that men and women provided in serving their country.  Another blog might perhaps cover the nuances of whether all wars were worth fighting, but as Dr. Fredericks in 'The Good Shepherd' tells Wilson (Matt Damon), "we are all bootmakers to the kings". Another quote from De Niro's character says, "After all is said and done we are all clerks too".  All these embedded lines in movies sometimes highlight the real world a lot of us live in where we do not get a chance to explore the unknown or speak freely of our ideas, however democratic our institutions might appear to be - marriag...

Watched a WWII era movie about a motley crew of artists, sculptors et al going into the war zone against the Nazi machine and steal back stolen art. The entire cast is top notch but the 'Everything George Clooney' production unfortunately fell flat for me.  That it was a quiet evening with nothing much going on other than people clamoring over the highways to head out to a place that is worth a traffic jam for the Memorial Day holiday. Side note - what jam goes well with 3 day weekends?  Traffic (not apricot you idiot). So about this movie called MONUMNETS MEN - while it again purports to be based on a true story it did little to really sit up and take notice.  We all know Hitler was a crazy psychopath and he fostered other lesser psychos that worked for him (there are some certain parallels in corporate cutlure today).  But beyond that underlying craziness and the motivation of a gang of odd balls that get aligned behind their commander the movie did...