Skip to main content

Month: June 2023

The Whale–- Moby Dick Revisited

The Whale is an  adaptation of  Sam Hunter’s play, directed by Darren Aronofsky (“Requiem for a Dream”, “Black Swan”, and “mother!”). The  opening scene zooms in on a middle-aged, morbidly obese professor, Charlie (the Academy-Award winning role for Brendan Fraser) sitting in front of a computer in his claustrophobic, dark apartment in a small town in Idaho.  He teaches creative writing online to aspiring college students.   His face is blocked out by the camera, revealing nothing of his physical condition.   Now terminally ill with congestive...

Continue reading

A Man Called Otto–A Warm Kiss for the Soul

In this Netflix movie we see a retelling of the bestselling Frederick Backman novel, A Man Called Ove,  set in Pittsburgh instead of Sweden and with cultural shifts in narrative. Themes of aging,  loneliness and depression from  the loss of one’s soulmate,  isolation and feelings of irrelevance from forced retirement all play front and center […]

Continue reading

Stranger (Season 1)–Let the sleuthing begin

Stranger is a Korean crime thriller in two seasons (2017-2020) and  was included  on the New York Times 2017 list of Best TV Shows.  Prosecutor Hwang Si-mok (Cho Seung-woo) underwent surgery as a child removing part of his cerebral cortex so that he would not suffer from the excruciating pain of hearing high-frequency sounds.  However, the postoperative result was an extreme absence of empathy, a lack of social skills similar to autism spectrum disorder and its associated lack of communication, difficulty in expressing emotion through facial expressions, and lack...

Continue reading

Subscribe to my Newsletter

* indicates required
May0 Posts
Jun0 Posts
Jul0 Posts
Aug0 Posts
Sep0 Posts
Oct0 Posts
Nov0 Posts
Dec0 Posts
Jan0 Posts
Feb0 Posts
Mar0 Posts
Apr0 Posts
May0 Posts
Jun0 Posts
Jul0 Posts
Aug0 Posts
Sep0 Posts
Oct0 Posts