127 Hours

December 2, 2010

Sometimes a director is the right person to tell a story. Such was the case with Danny Boyle’s last film, “Slumdog Millionaire," winner of eight Academy Awards, but unfortunately not with his current offering, “127 Hours.”

The movie is based upon the real-life experience of Aron Ralston (recounted in a 2004 memoir with the groan-inducing title Between a Rock and a Hard Place). Hiking alone in Utah’s Blue John Canyon, he fell into a crevasse. His right hand was pinned between the canyon wall and a large immovable boulder. After winching himself into place, he survived for five days with almost no food or water, until he…let’s just say he did some creative surgery on himself, got free, and staggered to safety.

Fair Game

 November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving!

Last weekend, while the hoards lined up around the block for the latest Harry Potter, I took a chance on a movie that received considerably less attention, “Fair Game.”

Starring an over-the-top Sean Penn and a more restrained Naomi Watts, the film tells the story of Valerie Plame, a veteran CIA covert operative who was outed by Robert Novak in The New York Times not long after her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote an op ed piece in which he denied the Bush administration’s assertion that the African nation of Niger sold yellow cake uranium to Iraq for the manufacture of those phantom WMDs that provided the justification for invading Iraq.

The Finish Line--or Why I Miss my Typewriter

November 21, 2010

This past week, I helped a good friend update her resume. We exchanged numerous emails, and I suggested ways she might tailor her impressive talents to the kind of job she’s seeking.

A couple of days ago, I sent her a list of organizational and wording changes, though she wasn’t able to incorporate them in time for an interview she had scheduled. But that was okay, she wrote, because, “a resume is NEVER done.”

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

November 18, 2010

The last installment of the immensely popular Millennium trilogy, the Swedish-language version of Steig Larsson’s novel, continues the tale of Lisbeth Salander, computer hacker extraordinaire, and Mikail Blomkvist, the reporter who loves her. These days, their relationship is strictly platonic.

Lisbeth is the daughter of a Soviet defector who fed information to a secret arm of the police called the Section that now needs to keep her silent by maintaining the fiction that she’s incompetent and ought to be institutionalized for the rest of her life. That conspiracy is the “Hornet’s Nest” of the title.

Ziplining

November 15, 2010

This 2 1/2 hour adventure offers nature lovers and thrill seekers alike the opportunity to zip through the treetops on a network of cables and skybridges suspended high above the forest floor, overlooking a cave, rock cliffs, and the Hocking River.

--from the Canopy Tours brochure

I’m standing on a platform about twenty-five feet above the ground. I look across at the suspension bridge and dirt path that led me to this awful place and think seriously about admitting what a wimp I am and hiking back to the safety of the snack bar.

I’m tethered to a wire, waiting my turn to zip across the cable suspended from our tree to another one that looks to be about a mile away. We have two guides, one who goes ahead to wait for us at the next platform and one who stays behind. This is a “bunny” run, the stay-behind guide announces.

The Tillman Story

November 12, 2010

Who was Pat Tillman? That’s a good question to ask around Veteran’s Day. Too bad this documentary doesn’t provide a better answer.

Not long after 9-11, Pat Tillman, a standout NFL defensive back for the Arizona Cardinals, gave up his lucrative career and, along with his younger brother Kevin, enlisted in the Army Rangers. During his second tour of duty, while he was on patrol in a rocky valley in Afghanistan, he was shot to death.

Hello Again!

November 6, 2010

It’s been 3 ½ weeks since my last post. Why did I let so much time go by without putting a single word down on paper?

No crises of conscience, no reconsidering my life choices, no births or deaths. Just a weeklong trip to visit a great good friend, followed by various and sundry routine medical appointments AND the arrival of a new laptop that meant I had to overhaul my home network. Afterwards, I did battle with a stubborn printer, resulting in a seventy-five minute online chat with a technical support person, probably somewhere in India, judging by his or her name (and the darned thing still isn’t 100% right).