I'm in meetings for two days this week, so I might not have time to post anything of substance on my lunch break. However, I wanted to connect some people with some cool documents floating around the interweb.

Two are from Psychology Today. They were written years ago but I think they're relevant and fascinating reading:

"Why I Hate Beauty"
"A Nation of Wimps"

I listened to these remarks from Barack Obama's Call To Renewal address a couple months ago, but my buddy Justin found what I think is more or less a transcript of that address at Sojourners. This is Obama talking about faith & politics, and regardless of your political stance I think there are important thoughts in here. The address is still available on his podcast through iTunes, but if you like reading here is the written version:

"One Nation... Under God?"

While I'm here, for one reason or another I've seen four movies in the last three days:

The Break-Up: This was billed to me as an anti-romantic comedy, which led me to believe it was going to be a dark comedy. Then I realized it was Jennifer Aniston, who, while a good actress, hasn't pushed the limits of comedy lately, so I though maybe it's a romantic comedy disguised as an anti-romantic comedy. Turns out it is a sort of dark (dusk?) character study disguised as a romantic comedy disguised as an anti-romantic comedy. There are funny moments to be sure, and I didn't hate it, but it felt like I spent time and money to watch two people yell at each other and tear each other apart in an honest and lifelike way... which, to me, isn't exactly entertainment. Jason Bateman & Jon Favreau are pretty funny and I'm not sure how Vince & Jen ended up dating after filming this, so that's interesting enough, but I wouldn't recommend anyone renting this.

Over the Hedge: I like most of the CGI comedies coming out lately, even the non-Pixar ones, and this is one of the better ones. Lots of fun and creative characters and they make the cliches and predictable parts pretty exciting. I really enjoyed watching it, just a well-made movie.

Thank You For Smoking: I wasn't sure if I'd like this, and it gets a little dark, but I ended up really enjoying it. It's not something I need to watch over and over, but it's funny, poignant, well written and well acted. Worth seeing.

The Departed. If you don't like violence, just stay away. Otherwise I think this is as good a movie as Scorsese's made (he's one of my favorite story tellers and one of the bigger reasons why I wanted to be a filmmaker growing up). I just plain enjoyed the heck out of this movie. Well-paced, well-acted, great banter and dialogue, tons of twists, I didn't know what was going to happen next at any given point in the movie. This is right up there with Goodfellas for me, maybe even better. And to give you something to weigh it against, I pretty much like every Scorsese movie I've seen (which isn't all of them, but includes Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Gangs of New York, The Aviator and various others). Mark Whalberg and Alec Baldwin make every attempt to steal the show, but in the end, Leo DiCaprio is De Niro-esque, Matt Damon has a less meaty part but is great in it, and Jack Nicholson keeps his near-perfect streak alive. But again, really, really, really, really violent.

Back to meetings. Feel free to leave comments.

Labels: Other