Am I completely behind in knowing that there is a movie in production based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”?
I was browsing a few websites, looking for new books to review and found a new edition of Fitzgerald stories is being released in August and it’s because there is a movie based on “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” coming out this Christmas starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.
For those not familiar with the story, it is one of Fitzgerald’s less common fantasy stories. The idea for the story originated from a comment that Mark Twain once made about it being a shame that the best part of life was at the beginning and the worst part the end. So the story is part joke, yet melodramatic as it tells the story of a man who is born old and grows younger and younger. He falls in love but while she ages normally, he continues to get younger.
I think it’s going to be strange, creepy, and fascinating. More than that, I think it’s a great opportunity for those less familiar with Fitzgerald’s work to give the new edition of short stories a chance. While I was searching for the trailer I even found a website where you can read the story (and other stories from Tales of the Jazz Age) in it’s entirety.
What do you think? Will it be good, bad? Maybe you don’t care; what movie are you looking forward to?
I’ve actually been meaning to write about the water crisis for several months, but have put it off repeatedly. Today I found this video on Virb°, it’s a public service announcement from Charity:Water, that puts everyday Americans in the situation (to an extent, that is) that many in Africa face daily; it pushed me to make this Multimedia Monday’s post on water. (If you’re viewing this post in a feed reader, click over to see the video.)
Other videos, photos, and media on the Charity:Water website are worth your time as well.
One of the things that I wanted to post when I originally decided to post about the water crisis was this photo essay from TIME, which includes photographs from the book Blue Planet Run: The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World. Right now you can download the book for free, in pdf form, from that Amazon page. Though, if you can afford to, you can purchase the book from Charity:Water and $70 of the purchase goes to the charity.
While Charity:Water is a great organization, I know more, and feel more strongly about giving to Blood:Water Mission (yes, the charity started by members of Jars of Clay). Blood:Water exists to provide sustainable water sources in Africa by building wells with emphasis on reducing the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Check out the site for information on what they’ve already done, what they’re doing now, and how you can help.
Our people went to America because that was the place to go then. It had been a good country and we had made a bloody mess of it and I would go, now, somewhere else as we had always had the right to go somewhere else and as we had always gone. You could always come back. Let the others come to America who did not know that they had come too late. Our people had seen it at its best and fought for it when it was well worth fighting for. Now I would go somewhere else.
Sometimes when some new thing comes about, be it a movie, band, tv show, or in this case a book, and everyone is talking about how great it is supposed to be I tend to ignore it. I can’t really explain why, and it isn’t with everything; I haven’t pinpointed the filter in my brain quite yet, but it needs to stop.
I’m currently reading a book I should have read when it first came out, Freakonomics. If you ever wonder why I’m not as talkative as everyone else you know, this is the answer. Questions like the ones presented in this book are going through my head constantly; this is how I think, I just don’t have the hard data that they did to come to a definitive answer.
I think a major problem people who want to read non-fiction books face when they actually set out to do it is that while the facts may be interesting, the author(s) doesn’t present them in an interesting way. Freakonomics does not have that problem, it is the epitome of interestingness. For example, “Why do crack dealers still live with their moms?” this is a question everyone thinks about and the authors of Freakonomics step up to answer it. If you haven’t read this book yet you’re missing out.
1. Finish up and email my articles (need to do that today actually) 2. Read for fun, not because I want to pass my classes. Starting Tropic of Cancer today.
3. Relax, if that’s at all possible.
4. Start my Lit. paper or at least decide on a topic.
5. Publish this post that’s been sitting in drafts for months.
6. Shopping maybe?
7. Look for new job? I had been thinking about getting a second job just for the summer, but now my job is changing in a way that means $20 less every week, so now I need a new job altogether.
8. Sun.
9. Remember what I’m forgetting. 10. Wii! 11. Clean out my reading queue. 12. Taxes, ugh.
13. List stuff on ebay.
