Posts in the "movies & tv" category - Chris Hardie

You should watch the film Life In a Day.  It's a crowd-sourced documentary assembled by the folks at National Geographic and YouTube, where folks from around the world sent in 4,500 hours of video footage of their lives as recorded on July 24th, 2010.  (Don't worry, the film itself is only an hour and a half.) Life In a Day weaves together moments of joy and sadness, frivolity and struggle, plainness and great beauty into a wonderful fabric of the human experience.  It at once shows the ways...

I recently received my DVD copy of local filmmaker Zack Parker's latest film, Scalene.  This is my review (partly of the film and partly of the making of the film), which doesn't contain any plot spoilers but may still affect your own viewing experience if you read it first. Scalene is a dark thriller that tells a story of a mother, her son, and the son's caretaker as they interact around some events that change their lives significantly.  The film shows the perspectives of each of the three...

I saw the movie The Social Network tonight, here are my spoiler-free comments. The movie was incredibly well made.  Aaron Sorkin's writing was as good as the best days of The West Wing, each member of the cast seemed to just nail their role, the editing was some of the best I've seen, and so on. Perhaps most enjoyably, this is a mainstream movie that is at least in part about the culture and goings-on in the modern world of Internet entrepreneurship, I believe the first of its kind. It fully...

Let's see, how am I doing on my target of blogging three times per week in 2010?  FAIL.  Actually, January and February were pretty good, but March has been sorely lacking.  I will for now use the excuse of "I was busy" and throw in some specifics like "I was planning an open house" and "I was writing a new vacation policy for my staff," but I don't expect you to be any more forgiving as a result.  Let's see if I can start to get back on track. In the meantime, as a distraction, here are some...

For over a year now, I've been living well without cable or broadcast television in my life.  I thought I would share some thoughts on how that transition has gone, and some pointers to tools and technologies you might be interested in if you're on a similar path. (Disclaimer: I'm not here to tell you how to live, but my general sense is that the world would be a better place if people didn't spend their time watching television.  Period.  That said, and the reality of TV watching as a cultural...

I've been consuming a lot of information, and I'm here to tell you, briefly, what I've learned: Book, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz: a great little book, a quick read full of wisdom that seems like it should just be common sense.  To find happiness, be impeccable with your word, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions, and always do your best. Book, Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor: moving reflections on a life devoted to ministry...

I'm retroactively (for 2009) and proactively (for 2010) spreading the word about the Phantoscope Film Festival that just concluded its third year here in Richmond at the Art Museum.  It's an event that is just absolutely phenomenal to be happening right here in town, but that is sadly under-promoted and under-appreciated locally. Every year, high school students around Indiana are encouraged to submit their films for judging and showing at the festival.  The top ten or so films are selected...

This is a triple header movie review post, hold on tight.  No overt spoilers, but if you like going into movies without any preconceived notions, I hope you'll stop now and come back later when you've seen them for yourself. The Reader is one of those films that haunts my thoughts and dreams for some time after I've seen it - in part because of the subject matter, and in part because of how beautifully and authentically it was rendered.  Director Stephen Daldry rightly relied heavily on the amazing...

About five years ago, it was one of those deals where the cable company gave you a nine hour window in which they would have someone out there to do the installation, and you just sat around and hoped that they showed up at all. I was apparently favored by the cable installer gods that day because the guy showed up within the first hour of the window, AND he was in a really great mood. "Hey, how ya doin, ready to get this all set up for ya..." and so on. "This will be fun," I thought. "Hey,...

The folks at Magnolia Pictures were kind enough to send me a reviewer's copy of the new movie about Hunter S. Thompson before it came out earlier this month, but I only recently had a chance to watch it. I kept putting it off partly because I didn't know enough about Thompson's life to get excited about the film over other ways to spend my time, but I'm glad that I got around to watching it. Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is part documentary, part tribute, and part lamentation...