Commentary - All

It began as an exercise in nostalgia, a quest for the innocence that was youth, a tug at the heart strings, perhaps even a desperate bid to touch the boy who is no more---as if somehow the imperfect man could roll back life's relentless clock and miraculously become once again the child of guileless faith and wondrous dreams.
It became a passion born of a father's love for his young sons---a father who reached back to grasp a gentler time, and who sought to preserve the values and joys of a long lost childhood for the two marvelous energies he was entrusting to a world often cruel and ever fickle.
Through the verses and poetry of his youthful fancy, he sought to nurture their visions of life. The treasure he compiled would endure, even beyond the grave. Or so he hoped.
The hours stretched into days, the days into weeks, the weeks into months as he sat at his computer and faithfully transferred the works he had so admired into a glossary of thoughts to live by; all the while confidant that his sons would share the adventure, understand the fervor and know the love in the works of the literary masters or an era so much favored by the father.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a majestic epic, fascinating in its virtue and extraordinary in its execution. It’s lifted from a 40-page short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald and transformed into a nearly 3-hour, multi-decade spanning epic by Oscar winner Eric Roth (Forrest Gump). It’s personified in equal parts by director David Fincher and his favorite celluloid subject Brad Pitt, each trampolining from a career of films trendy and cool (Se7en and Fight Club, collaboratively) into something grander, more classical, and more Oscar worthy. It’s a film about life and death, love and understanding, pulled through the prism of a story about a man who aged backwards. It’s an adventure, and in it’s heart, a crowd pleaser. It’s Mom’s comfort food, with a 5 star presentation.

Directed by Ron Howard and adapted from his own Tony-winning play by Peter Morgan, Frost/Nixon is a brilliantly tempered account of the drama surrounding the post-Watergate interviews between our deposed president and a British/Australian talk show host. Historically reminiscent and insightful, it often comes off as a History Channel program, with the same detail-labored pacing and dawdle. But what appears at first to be simple and slow is in actuality an expertly choreographed showdown, a fight night featuring an aged champ and the snappy newcomer challenging his crown. Frost/Nixon fits the mold of every great boxing flick, complete with trainers, training, rounds, corners, bobs, weaves and uppercuts. Only the weapons are not fists, but wits and words. It’s a battle of wills, a series of jibs and jabs exchanged along the way to a powerful K.O. In the end, it’s as much a sports movie as The Wrestler.

Every so often a film comes around that is so un-inspirational in its quality, so middlingly good, that it is difficult to find an argument either for or against, and therefore troubling to review because we don’t really feel one way or another about them.  Generally a critic will send these films off with a shrug.  I myself have probably labeled them as films that are “just there.”  But when said film is a buzz-generating, award-gathering film like Milk, “just there” becomes the heart of the argument.
  Milk is the winner of at least eighteen 2008 film awards, and is the source of numerous Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Director (Gus Van Sant), Actor (Sean Penn, as title character Harvey Milk), Supporting Actor (Josh Brolin, as Harvey’s closeted, struggling political opponent) and Original Screenplay (the true story was arranged for the screen by Dustin Lance Black).  Is it good?  Sure.  But is it great?  It’s obvious by now that I don’t think so.

I did not support Barack Obama in his bid for the Presidency. I considered the campaign long and hard, given the so many attractive reasons for supporting the youthful senator from Illinois, but in the end I had to remain loyal to John McCain, a man who had earned my respect during a lifetime of service and sacrifice for his nation.
Now, after what can only be seen as one of the most audacious paths ever undertaken to the White House, Barack Obama is (as McCain himself put it) my President. Seemingly unprepared and untested for the immense responsibilities of the Presidency, Mr. Obama must have sensed a restiveness in the land that told him his time was now. That has most certainly been the case and now, nearly a century and a half after Abraham Lincoln gave his life for a cause rooted in the core of a national psyche, Mr. Obama has emerged as the symbol of a new American dawn.

What a time to be an American! Did you watch on Tuesday, have you ever seen anything like that? Well some of you have I am sure and there are some of you who probably are not quite as thrilled as some of the rest of us are, but all in all a great day for our country nonetheless.

The special New Hampshire political season known as “Annual Meeting Agony” is just around the corner. Starting in February we’ll all have the chance to attend budget hearings, deliberative sessions, board meetings and finally the Annual Town and School District meetings.
There will be many stimulating letters to the editor. Signs will be printed and attached to most every telephone pole. Most will be easy to read and understand. “Vote Yes” or “Vote No” would only suffer from further explanation.
If the issues are important and/or the dollar costs are high, there may even be home-made publications offering a variety of reasons for how people should vote. The successors of Tom Paine will sign their epistles. Others treatises will be unsigned. These will lead to anguished cries of “Who?” from the opponents and activate the area’s private eyes and newspaper reporters. There will be a dozen different people blamed and honored as suspected authors. Not one will actually be responsible.

Seldom does a Hollywood heavyweight depart the scene with less pomp and more circumstance than did Paul Newman last week when he succumbed to cancer at age 83. The blue-eyed heart-throb of the 50s and 60s was an instant hit and became a mega star who extended a smoldering rebel personna career throughout a half century of memorable film performances. Starring vehicles such as "Hud", "Cool Hand Luke", "The Verdict", "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", "Somebody Up There Likes Me", "The Hustler", "Sweet Bird of Youth" and "Long Hot Summer" will delight movie goers for decades to come. His elderly turn as a mob kingpin in 2002's "Road to Perdition" was a fitting bow to a storied career that ranked him alongside film legends John Wayne and James Stewart. And, like them, he was able to disassociate his spectacular career from his private life.

A man touched by greatness lost the American Presidency Tuesday just as another man presented with an opportunity to achieve greatness strode confidently to the front door of the White House. And a nation showed the world----and proved to itself----that it had the capability to call upon its truer lights to shed its haunted past in order to forge a brighter tomorrow.
Barack Obama completed his rags to riches personal saga to become President Elect before hundreds of thousands of beguiled supporters and a nation demonstrably eager to bestow upon him the leadership mantle which can lead him to historical heights on a storied governing path. Obama has been presented a mandate for change. He possesses the magnetic charisma to accomplish a new direction so longed for by an electorate thirsting for an end to partisan posturing. If he delivers that change he will climb to the pantheon occupied by the likes of Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, the Roosevelts and Reagan. Already he has accomplished a feat Americans could scarcely have imagined a generation ago.