Winter’s Bone, co-written and directed by Debra Granik, starring Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes, viewed at the Wilton Town Hall Theater on September 4, 2010.
Teaching high school students, I have occasionally been asked whether I believe in God, and I’ve developed an answer that gets me off the hook. I explain that there are plenty of ideas of God I can’t accept (and in relation to which I would unabashedly call myself an atheist), but there are other ideas of God that give me pause, ideas for which I keep an open mind if not necessarily full-fledged belief. Continue »
I just completed reading a very engaging book on the evolution of the capacity for language in human beings, Adam’s Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans, by linguist Derek Bickerton (published by Hill and Wang, 2009). I’ll attempt a brief summary of his thesis here, but I hope to follow up with more detailed comments in later posts. Bottom line: this is a highly informative, provocative, and entertaining book — I recommend it highly.
We watched Lars von Trier’s Dogville this week (on DVD). I don’t quite know what to say about it. For starters, it is provocative, arresting, and puzzling. Continue »
It’s Complicated, written and directed by Nancy Meyers (2009), starring Meryl Streep, viewed at the Wilton Town Hall Theatre on January 15, 2010.
This is not a great movie. It’s not even the best movie I’ve seen in the past few weeks. But it is a very entertaining way to spend a few hours. And Meryl Streep is excellent. Continue »
(Pending)
Summer Hours, directed by Olivier Assayas (2009, in French, with English subtitles), viewed at the Wilton Town Hall Theatre on July 10, 2009.
I found Summer Hours to be very engaging — not everyone’s cup of tea, perhaps, but for me an extremely compelling film. Continue »