Saw the new Ryan Gosling/Bradley Cooper movie, The Place Beyond the Pines. It has ambitions as a Seriously Meaningful film, which it mostly lives up to. It’s a gritty flick, about what gets handed down from father to son – which isn’t always pretty – and the way actions echo across time. I give Gosling and Cooper credit for using their considerable star power to make a film that’s several notches more challenging than most Hollywood fare. Worth seeing. googlee666293b5d15d815.html
A bright spot in political humor: Every Sunday the New York Times runs The Strip, by Brian McFadden. Mordant, brilliant, and well drawn, this insightful bit of political commentary is almost always worth checking out. Here's the title panel from this week's 8-panel strip about the many failures of our legislative branch.
Great show: Agamemnon, the 2,500-year old Greek play, put on in a barn in B-Burg. This play has it all: family love, complex characters, crazed rage, lust, hubris, poetry, blind prophecy, timeless questions. The shows also runs Saturday and Sunday, 8 PM, 2351 Glade Rd. Major kudos to to Aaron Horst, Amy Splitt and cast!
One of my favorite lines from the show: "Man grows wise against his will." Ain't that the truth!