Global
Filmmaker Andrzej Wajda was to Poland what Sergei Eisenstein was to the USSR - and, arguably, what Carl Yastrzemski was to the Boston Red Sox. Along with Roman Polanski’s early work, Wajda’s famed 1950s World War II-era trilogy about Polish partisans battling the Nazis - A Generation, Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds - put Poland on the world cinema map. He won an Honorary Oscar in 2000 and died last October at age 90 after making movies for more than 60 years.
Like “Yaz,” Afterimage hits a homerun. Poland’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film to the 89th Academy Awards is a biopic about that Eastern European nation’s greatest 20th century painter Władysław Strzemiński (Boguslaw Linda), a constructivist contemporary of Malevich, Kandinsky and Chagall. With this talent, Wajda found a subject through which he could express his credo as an artiste - and criticism of Stalinism.
Washington, D.C., and much of the rest of the United States, is full of war monuments, with many more under construction and being planned. Most of them glorify wars. Many of them were erected during later wars and sought to improve the images of past wars for present purposes. Almost none of them teach any lessons from mistakes made. The very best of them mourn the loss of a tiny fraction — the U.S. fraction — of the wars’ victims.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- When the U.S.-Vietnam War ended on April 30,
1975, a Central Intelligence Agency officer's two best military
sources committed suicide and an American diplomat endangered the
lives of escaping staff and CIA personnel, according to James Parker
the last CIA officer to evacuate Vietnam.
Earlier, off the coast of Danang, South Vietnamese who evacuated
onto a U.S. ship shot, stabbed, raped, trampled and executed each
other during onboard revenge attacks and panic, Mr. Parker, 73, said.
"As for my experiences back in Vietnam at the end, the absolute
chickenshit character of the men in the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, how
they were so petty and self-indulgent, so pedantic and so distant from
the fighting," contributed to the U.S. war's failure and chaotic end,
Mr. Parker said in an interview.
"Their pusillanimity disrespected the men, American and Asian, I
had known who died fighting the good fight.
"I'm speaking about all the Americans at the U.S. Embassy in
Saigon, though this does not include the Americans from the CIA that
So far, the Trump administration has been every bit the worst case scenario we feared. And while some of the agendas of his underlings have been thwarted by just how outlandishly villainous they are, others are more likely to slip under the radar of the average American. One of the latter is the very idea of an open internet.
Under President Barack Obama’s FCC, the internet was ruled to be a public utility, in recognition of the importance it plays in the lives of everyone from Netflix bingers to homeless people using smartphones to look for work. This let the FCC regulate internet service providers, and they used that to put in place privacy protections and maintain net neutrality – the principle that all internet traffic, no matter if you’re visiting Facebook or your friend’s obscure blog, must be given the same access.
Trump’s FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, has already dismantled our privacy protections, letting our ISPs spy on us so they can sell our data for even more profit. Now he’s looking to kill net neutrality. Get ready for your favorite sites to be held ransom, throttled unless you (or they) pay a premium.
A gay football player. Even today it seems to be something very rare in the game.
Growing up, football was always my outlet to get out whatever I had built up inside me. When those pads came on, I felt at home. I started playing football in third grade, and I still fall more in love with the game every year I play.
I grew up in a very small town called Richwood, Ohio, and graduated with a class size of barely 100 students. In high school I never had a problem with standing out. I made friends with everyone and tried to stay positive and nice to every kid in the school.
My coming-out story is a little different from many others you see today. Freshmen and sophomore year of high school I knew I was gay, but the thought of anyone knowing that part of me was single-handedly the most terrifying thought in my head, especially growing up with a family full of farmers who weren’t really exposed to that kind of thing yet.
I was always terrified with the locker room talk that went on about gays and how gross they are and how wrong being gay is. Yes, that talk was there. It just pushed me further into the back of the closet.
As 'mental health' issues gain more attention, sympathetic and
otherwise, in a wide variety of contexts and countries around the world,
the opportunity for inaccurate perceptions of what causes these issues,
and how to treat them, are likewise expanded.
So if you or someone you know is supposed to have a 'mental illness'
such as anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive
disorder (OCD), bipolar disorder, anorexia nervosa or post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD), I would like to give you the opportunity to
consider an explanation and a way forward that you are unlikely to have
come across.
My first suggestion is that you ignore any label that you have been
given. These labels are an inaccurate and unhelpful way of labeling the
appropriate, diverse and complex emotional responses that a normal human
being will have to emotionally disturbing events. It is inaccurate
because words such as these imply a 'disorder' that a normal individual
should not have in response to emotionally challenging events in their
Let me now also extend my deep and heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of the distinguished heads of state who made this journey here today. You greatly honor us with your presence, and I send the warmest regards from my country to yours. I know that our time together will bring many blessings to both your people and mine.
Top Russian officials are concerned that a bill passed by the US Congress will do more than increase sanctions on North Korea. Moscow claims H.R. 1644 violates its sovereignty and constitutes an “act of war.”
Peter Brook directed the 1960s stage and screen versions of Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade, which is arguably the 20th century’s best post-Brecht political play. Marat/Sade left an indelible impression on me - I can still remember some of the drama’s searing dialogue and its depiction of French Revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat as the totally devoted “friend of the people” remains very moving. Around the same time I saw Marat/ Sade I also viewed and was greatly influenced by Spanish surrealist director Luis Bunuel’s Belle de Jour, written by his frequent collaborator Jean-Claude Carrière. (The fact that this recipient of 2014’s Lifetime Achievement Academy Award does not receive a blurb in Battlefield’s program is a woefully grievous omission.)