Across Difficult Country

Dear ADC, What movie(s) should I see this weekend? Since you asked, here are some Brief Reviews of Movies I haven’t Seen . Sin City : This is a movie based on the ‘graphic novel’ of the same name (‘graphic novel’ is a euphemism for ‘lengthy comic book’). The movie supposedly looks like ‘a comic book brought to life’. How many times have I said to myself, “If only someone would make a movie that looked like a comic book brought to life”? Right, zero times. If you are reading ADC on the Interweb (as most of my readers do) there is a good chance you will go see this movie no matter what anyone tells you, because (I hate to be the one to break this to you, but someone must) you’re a bit of a nerd. Which is fine, but after you see it please don’t try to tell me that the movie is some sort of artistic breakthrough. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner : I don’t know, who? Ashton Kutcher? And Bernie Mac? In the same movie? No, seriously, who’s coming to dinner? You are serious? This is the most popu...

Uranus is is unusually close !

Study of Velvet Crab Ruskin, John (draughtsman), drawing: Watercolour and bodycolour over graphite on blue-grey paper: 245 x 315 mm Oxford: Ashmolean Museum Provenance: Presented by John Ruskin to the Ruskin Drawing School (University of Oxford), 1875; transferred from the Ruskin Drawing School to the Ashmolean Museum, c.1949. "Ruskin's upbringing, so beautifully remembered in his fragmentary autobiography, Praeterita (Shakespeare's "things past," Proust's temps retrouve), was a careful and loving education in piety, character, and intellectual curiosity. His parents hoped he would be a clergyman; Ruskin was all for being a geologist. He was a brilliant child. He was taken around England in comfortable coaches, and on European tours to see paintings and cathedrals. He fell in love with crystals, glaciers, alpine valleys, landscape painting, poetry, Greek and Latin, Gothic architecture, a daughter of the Domecq family (the wine business's French c...

"When he has operated upon you, you would not for worlds have foregone it. You have been ennobled by that familiarity with sorrow. You have been, as it were, sent through the fire and purged of so much of your dross. For a time, at least, you have been free from the mundane touch of that beef and ale with which novelists of a meaner school will certainly bring you in contact. No one will feel himself ennobled at once by having read one of my novels. But Hawthorne, when you have studied him, will be very precious to you. He will have plunged you into melancholy, he will have overshadowed you with black forebodings, he will almost have crushed you with imaginary sorrows; but he will have enabled you to feel yourself an inch taller during the process. Something of the sublimity of the transcendent, something of the mystery of the unfathomable, something of the brightness of the celestial, will have attached itself to you, and you will all but think that you too might live to be subli...

"Let's face it: People once laughed at acupuncture, and they weren't quite sure what to make of feng shui, either. Still, while Chinese face reading lags far behind its ancient Chinese cousins in terms of earning Western mainstream acceptance, at least 18 women considered it worth examining in Jean Haner-Dowsett's Lake Forest Park living room yesterday. It was her former mother-in-law who introduced her to face reading and feng shui (which teaches that location of one's home and placement of furnishings inside can promote success in the home) when she married into a Chinese family 25 years ago, and now Haner-Dowsett leads international workshops. Chinese face reading, she says, allows someone to detect personal qualities and foibles from another's facial features. Last fall, for instance, it was presidential candidate Wesley Clark's strong jaw that told her he was the only Democrat who could have won the election. Filmmaker Michael Moore's hooked nose ,...

Unrest in Kyrgyzstan : Opposition supporters in Kyrgyzstan today seized the airport building in Osh, the second largest city in the former Soviet republic, as thousands of protesters continued rioting against the recent parliamentary election results...The protesters yesterday seized parts of the nearby town of Jalal-Abad in southern Kyrgyztan, dominated by ethnic-Uzbeks. About 10,000 people besieged and then set on fire the police station in the town and blocked the airport’s runway to prevent the government rushing in reinforcements. Meanwhile, all is tranquil in Kyrgyzstan's northern neighbor, Kazakhstan. It seems that the giant glass pyramid of Astana is already causing peace, even though it hasn't been built yet .

"On the afternoon of Monday the 4th, between the hours of three and four, I witnessed a very extraordinary sight in the heavens. I have not heard of any one hereabout having seen it. The facts are as follow: -- At the time above mentioned I was passing by the Mill by the Water-works Reservoir. On the gallery I noticed the miller uttering exclamations of surprise, and looking earnestly towards the west. On inquiring what took his attention so much, he said, "Look, sir, I never saw such a sight in my life!" On turning in the direction towards which he was looking, the west, I also was astounded -- numberless black discs in groups and scattered were passing rapidly through the air. He said his attention was directed to them by his little girl, who called to him in the Mill, saying, "Look, father, here are a lot of balloons coming!" They continued for more than twenty minutes, the time I stayed. In passing in front of the sun they appeared like large cannon shot. S...