A long long time ago, when I was in High School, we had to read The World of Sophy for our course on Philosophy. I refused to read the book then, because I couldn get past page 10 because it annoyed me. I couldn’t really pinpoint why.

A few months ago I renewed my interest in Philosophy and figured I should try this book again. My high school self was a big of an egghead after all, with her classes in ancient Greek and having read Plato in the original language and all that. I figured I probably felt too good for this book and it was probably pretty okay.

But no, my teenage self was spot on, cause this book still annoys the hell out of me. However now I can also pinpoint why. First off, the lead character at the start of the book, Sophy, is annoying and inconsistent. She switches from overly polite to rude without a cause. The story itself is slow and not believable at all. And the worst of it is, if you’ve maanged to struggle through half of it… Suddenly the maincharacter switches and you have to read a recap of the whole thing again!!

It sucks. Don’t read it.

Kung Fu Panda in a nutshell: very pretty animation, but just not that funny. Laughed 3 times, sorta smiled twice.

Two things I found very interesting about this movie which was made in 1961. The first is that it shows the trail from both sides. It discusses the topic of the ‘wir haben es nicht gewust’ argument.

What I found most interesting though is that, at the end, this movie’s moral lessons aren’t really about the world war and the genocide, but about the cold war and how german nazi prisoners were released too hastily to gain support in Germany for the US side.

On the one hand I find this kinda manipulative, to use the genocide to make a point about dirty politics. On the other hand this does interests me a lot. The period after the war is a really interesting time, when lines are drawn again and people are trying to forget to move on. I found this movie an interesting view into those times.

You can’t really say it’s not an original concept. And it’s always nice to look at Brad Pitt (when he’s not covered in make-up of course). But the story, in my opinion, is just a little bit too slow. I liked the first half or so, seeing the conflicts between the young mind and the old body. But after about half an hour of that, you kind of get the drill…

Oscar winners tend to bore me. I could not get past the first 20 minutes of No Country for Old Men. Million Dollar Baby was very predictable. And I don’t even want to mention Titanic.

Slumdog Millionaire is a nice exception though in my dislike of Oscars. The chase scene at the start drew me in right away, by the great visuals but mostly the fantastic soundtrack. I loved the setup, telling his story by the questions on who wants to be a millionaire.

The story is unpolished. There’s some ends of it that aren’t worked out in detail. The relationship of the two brothers, what exactly happened to Latika… Sometimes that kind of stuff bothers me in movies, but in this case I actually liked it. In life you don’t get all the answers anyway. And it leaves some stuff up to the imagination. Two hours well spend.

I watched this movie on a plane. I finished watching it mostly because I didn’t have anything more interesting to do. It seems like a story that could be very interesting. A vision of the future, underground city, power failures… But the plot just doesn’t keep you hanging on. There are characters and things in the movie that just have you going ‘what’s the point of this?’. Poppy, the little sister, is cute, but except from turning a key at some stage she seems to have no real purpose. Also all of a sudden there is some kind of giant mole which is clearly just created to be able to put in a chase scene of some sort.

The main characters also find traces of a giant bug. So there’s giant bugs and moles living above ground. We get this info, but except for the giant mole chase, there’s no point to us knowing this, cause the movie end with the kinds reaching the surface and being pretty happy (no giant creatures in sight).

I agree with the below entry: a good story painfully told.

The first time I tried to watch In Her Shoes I was on an airplane and fell asleep. So all I really remembered about it was that it was a good sleeping pill. Today I was on an airplane again and got another shot at this movie. The first half didn’t really do much for me. The plot was predictable and pretty unoriginal.

There were a few moments that kept me watching though. The combination of wild sister Magie in a retirement home were entertaining at times. But what I really liked was a poem that Magie reads calles One Art (The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster…). That poem is beautiful, and getting to know it for me was worth watching the movie.

I was very moved by this movie. It deals with being different. In particular with Phoebe being different. She can’t control what she says or does, except when she gets very focused on something, like starring in an Alice in Wonderland play at her school. I think what the movie does very well is not only show how confusing this is to Phoebe but also to her family, in particular her mother (which is a brilliant role by Felicity Huffman).

Phoebe at some point says something along the lines: ‘Shouldn’t I have hope?’ I thought this was very moving. It must be so confusing for children to feel so hopeless, because they feel they can’t control themselves and no adult seems capable to help them. Watching this movie made me understand these things a little better, on an emotional level.

Kudos for Danial Barnz for weaving a complicated storyline with strong characters into a beautiful film.

I don’t know a lot about the whole Watergate Business I have to admit. And I’ve never seen the original interviews, so I can’t really judge how good of an immitation it was. But i quite liked this movie. Especially because of the final bit, where Nixon admits he was involved. I was glued to my screen for that.

I felt sorry for him. Even though he lied and cheated and bribed, at the end of the day he was still a human being. I think that’s a good thing to keep in mind, that someone who you think is the lowest of the low, still goes home at the end of the day to a family, feeds his dog or waters the neighbours plants or something. A bad leader is not necessarily a bad person. We forget to make that distinction sometimes.

I’m very dubious about this book. The story is about a nine year old boy, Bruno, who in 1942 moves with his family to a place he calles Out With where his father is Commandant. He is bored because there is no one to play with, but out the window he sees fences and behind the fences he sees a lot of people, so one day he goes exploring along the fence and he meets a boy names Shmuel, which he becomes friends with.

The story is told from the boys point of view (sort of) so we see the world through a 9 year olds eyes. I think this is an interesting perspective. In times the repetitiveness of certain remarks gets a bit tiresome, but in general I think the tone of the story is interesting and unique. It gives the story a sort of fairy tale feel, a myth. In some ways it reminded me of Pan’s Labyrinth (which I adore).

There’s a catch though. Or actually there’s two. The first is a knowledge thing. Some settings I just know to be wrong, or at least highly unlikely. Most children were gassed on arrival. And the ones that did remain were there either to work or be experimented upon. Shmuel however sits with Bruno at the edge of the fence almost every afternoon. It feels as if Auschwitz Birkenau is merely a place where people were confined and sat around, but we know this is not the case. Besides this there’s also many small incosistencies, like Shmuel gets away with stealing from the Commandant.

Now, all of this I think I could overlook, since the tone of the story is that of a myth and it’s told from a boy who doesn’t grasp what Auschwitz is about. However, where it gets itchy for me, is that I don’t really believe either Bruno or Shmuels perspective. Bruno seems completely innocent and unaware. It’s hard for us grown ups to remember what the world looked like at nine. But around that time, I do remember organising some events in school to help people in Afrika. So I think this is the age when you start to slowly become aware of the bigger picture. And even if you’re a late bloomer, what impacts children at a very young age is the feeling of a place, the athmosphere. For instance, when I was 6, my grandfather died very suddenly. I don’t remember much about that day itself. But thinking back on that, even more than 20 years later, still makes me sad. I think a 9 year old, living that close to a death camp, would have felt that something was very wrong about this place. Also, Shmuel at some point can’t find his father anymore. He wants to go look for him. Even Anne Frank who was in hiding in Amsterdam had heard the rumours about the crematoria. I just don’t believe that a boy who lives only a few hundred miles from those crematoria, who can smell it, who breathes in the ashes, does not understand what’s going on.

The writing is simple so it’s a very easy book to read. I finished it in a few days. And the story is definitely worth the little effort it takes to read. But I think my conclusion would have to be that storytelling wise it’s a little stuck. It should have either been set up as a real myth, so with no reference to Hitler or Auschwitz. But because that reference is there, I feel the author should have been more carefull about the details. I get the feeling he’s never been to Auschwitz Birkenau. I think that if he had been, he would have written a very different story.