It’s hard for me to come up with anything that makes this movie special. Ben Kingsley won an Oscar for his performance, but I have to suspect it’s at least partly due to the contrast between the crass, swearing character of Don Logan and other Kingsley roles such as Ghandi. All the acting is good,…

This book was given to me by a man who’d been touring the world by bicycle for 10 years while I was on my own little ride around the country. I expected a book about adventurous explorers, and there is some of that, but I quickly learned that most of the exploration of the shorter…

Having done some desert hiking last summer, we really related to the three half-caste aboriginal girls who escape a white reculturation camp to walk home through hundreds of miles of desert while being pursued by trackers and police. Based on a true story, it doesn’t seem to be over-dramatized. It’s definitely critical of the whites…

I’ve been looking forward to this concert for months. The first half, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra playing Sibelius’ Finlandia and Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, was an excellent primer. Jeffrey Kahane, the conductor, gave a really fine introduction, without notes, and seemed to revel in the performance. I had heard Finlandia before, but it…

I was looking forward to seeing the university’s “mighty Wurlitzer” organ played, and Kevin Utter did not disappoint. Blind from birth, Kevin’s seeing eye dog waited patiently beside the giant organ console during the entire show. Both Kevin Utter and his saxophone accompanyist Harry “Doc Fergy” Ferguson are really good at educating the audience while…

A fairly standard story of escape from vengeful gangsters is the format for a lot cinematography that seems progressive for the time, and interludes of sincere philosophical conversation between all the characters, good guys and bad.

To me this is a retelling of the fable of Prince Gautama’s early forays from the castle – young men venture out into the world for the first time and encounter human suffering there. The scenes on the road are irresistable to me. The earth is a character, and the they become lost in it…

This movie makes you think that just following Roberto Benigni around on the street would be exhaustingly funny. We had to take a break halfway through this farcical tale of mistaken identity and sexual perversion, but I sure wouldn’t want to miss the closing scene…

I thought I’d had enough film noir for a while, but wanted to get this one last classic in. Well worth it. Best of all, the sound track is mostly guitar instead of orchestra. The reparte may not be as snappy as a Dashiell Hammet story, but there’s also less melodrama here, which makes for…

We seem to be catching on to controversial 70’s movies lately. This one would be good just as a drug bust movie, but it’s excellent as a scathing attack on the war on drugs. Like Dog Day Afternoon was revealing of Al Pacino’s early career, here Gene Hackman shines 10 years after his debut. It’s…