Owlwise's Replies


Ginsberg was certainly drawn to young men, including willing teenaged boys, but that's not the same as being a pedophile. And he's celebrated because he's one of the major poets & cultural forces of the American 20th Century. An excellent observation! And I'm delighted to see both Viktor Frankl & Epictetus evoked in your post. IAWL is a masterful midlife story, showing what happens when a man has done what he feels to be right all his life, sacrificing for the greater good, and has reached the point of looking back & asking, "What did it all mean? What now?" And the memories of forsaken dreams come flooding back in a sudden moment of despair, as his world is suddenly empty & meaningless, even to his own loving family. What does any of it mean at that moment? Indeed, one could even see the benign Clarence & the hellish vision of Pottersville as what flashes through his mind as he's about to drown, coming in an instant of clarity & crucial choice for him. I think the original is better, and don't think of it as "dated" at all. In fact, it's closer in time to the events of the novel than the remake, and more in touch with its sensibility. Nor do I find Tyrone Power to be wooden, as some other posters do—it's a different style of acting, to be sure, but he seems to have a proper detachment for his character, still aware of & living in the everyday world, but also standing outside of it somewhat. And still searching, still growing, even at the end of the film. Like Tyrone Power, Bill Murray <i>really</i> wanted to play Larry Darrell—Power was a returning WWII veteran & the role spoke deeply to him, just as John Belushi's death spoke deeply to Bill Murray. But Murray didn't quite have the tone needed for Larry at that point, balancing humor & seriousness just so. By the time he did <i>Groundhog Day</i>, he'd found that balance; that's when he should have played Larry. The original has more scope & richness, with the feel of a novel. Just my own take, of course! Loved <i>Who Came First</i> when it first came out, and it remains one of my favorite albums to this day. A joyful & reflective album, almost a singer-songwriter album in fact, something very personal for him. Absolutely! When watching, I don't know the specific answers to some questions, but with some general knowledge & a hint in the right general direction provided, I can often make a fairly good guess as to the answer. As can many viewers, and of course all of the players. For anyone, that requires quick critical & logical thinking, e.g., "that cutoff date indicates such-and such a period, who was the leading political figure/artist/scientist in that place & time?" Quite true, and thanks for pointing that out. :) It refers to the familiar phrase "finding your place in the sun", i.e., a favored place in society & the world Agreed. I quite enjoy 2010 when taking it on its own terms, which is as a solid, well-made sequel to Clarke's novel. But 2001 is one of the finest films ever made, a true artistic masterpiece that's complete in itself & needs no sequel or further explication. We might even look at 2010 as an attempt by limited human minds to comprehend the Transcendent that is 2001, and of course failing to do so despite every effort. Agreed. I don't think he's simply trolling, it's issues of some sort. For some reason, he does seem to want to call everyone a sociopath. More to be pitied, I think. You really don't understand anything beyond your literalism, do you? For some reason, you're determined to see Hawkeye as a sociopath, even though there's nothing to support that. So, I leave you to your obsession. You're being far too literal & missing the forest for the trees. There was no "breeding like a farm animal" here. Hawkeye had a healthy sex drive, as did many of the personnel, both male & female. Further, sex involved closeness, intimacy, warmth, temporary shelter & escape from the war. Just as Hawkeye's excessive drinking. Nobody's calling him a saint, he was a compassionate individual who did his best for his patients while trying to remain human & humane in an ongoing nightmare of blood & death. TV shows are not reality, but exaggerations of it in service to the overall tone & emphasis of each show. In the case of MASH, it was all about the means doctors go to in order to maintain some measure of sanity in an insane & brutal situation that didn't seem to have any end in sight. And to highlight the horror & horrible waste of war. Hawkeye was ashamed of himself after doing that surgery, which no sociopath would ever be. Even recognizing the intense emotional rawness & crushing pressures of seeing death on a daily basis didn't excuse what he did, and he knew it. Not a sociopath. Trying to personally steer the outcome of US involvement in Korea was an act of frustration, rage, despair, all of it at the horrible cost of war that was maiming & killing thousands of young men, while officials higher up argued about the shape of the bargaining table. Not sociopathic in the least, but the desperate, pain-driven act of a humane man who couldn't bear to see so much needless death. Well said. The OP is also failing to take into account the social mores that shaped a man of Hawkeye's generation, taking him out of context to his times. Absolutely not. Hawkeye demonstrated his compassion & empathy on countless occasions. He was so open & vulnerable to the suffering of others that he had periods of burnout, leading up to his breakdown in the final episode. Well said. Part of the film's strength is precisely that its tone shifts from time to time, as the tone of our own lives will shift from time to time, with fear right next to a moment of peaceful memory, etc. The film is like being awake in a never-ending dream that encompasses all emotions—after all, the Strangers want to understand the human soul, so they'd naturally explore all aspects of human feeling & experience. For me, this question always comes down to, "What is the meaning of <b>my</b> life?" And in the end, I think that meaning is something we must find find or else make for ourselves. Well, people have been known to trip & fall at home, and they're killed because of how they hit the edge of a bathtub or a table.