Ok – just a few quick hit topics that have been floating around for me.
Africa’s U2 Album
Ok – this isn’t really new news, but I finally got the album, In the Name of Love: Africa Celebrates U2. Its been out for nearly a year now, but I finally got around to ordering it (Amazon mp3 store of course). If you are a U2 fan, this is a must purchase. I heard a few tracks from it via my friend Jeff and realized that it needed to be added to my U2 collection. Its a stunning series of covers of U2 songs by African musicians. They put their own styles, rhythms, and sound to twelve classic U2 songs. Proceeds from the album go to African aid causes. The covers of Pride by the Soweto Gospel Choir and Love is Blindness by Waldemar Bastos are especially amazing.
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“Green” Football
My alma mater (Univ of Colorado) and the surrounding city (Boulder, CO) often get a bad rap for the goofiness that goes along with the People’s Republic of Boulder. Some of it is deserved (such as the funeral for the tree that was cut down because of a road expansion) and some of it is not (the fact that Boulder is amazing in its forward-thinking about environmental causes and healthy living). So, its not a surprise that Boulder and the Univ of Colorado are trying something that no other college has attempted.
If you have ever seen a stadium after a major sporting event, you know the insane amount of waste that is produced during that time. Well, CU is attempting to recycle 90% of the waste that is generated at each CU home game this season.
I will be curious how this turns out. I think its a great idea, but I wonder about things that simply cannot be recycled – dirty diapers for example. Of course, who in their right mind would bring a diaper wearing infant or toddler to a major college football game?
Anyway, for a University and a football program that has gotten some really bad press in the last few years, its great to see something like this. Now, the team needs to just get some big wins this season too!
A Few Final Thoughts on The Dark Knight
After thinking more about the film over the last week, I have decided that a second viewing of TDK is not going to happen. I haven’t changed any of my thoughts about the performances, story, quality of the moviemaking, etc. The thing I keep getting stuck on is the violence in the film. The violence in the film is without purpose in any way. I know there’s the whole thing that is referred to (rather obliquely) in the film about Batman’s code of not killing anyone and how the Joker keeps trying to make Batman break this code. But the violence brought out by the Joker is just so over the top that it is sadistic. I know that was the point of the writers to make the Joker a totally sadistic villian. But the more that I see the sadistic forms of violence that we humans put upon others in real life (Darfur, Bosnia, shootings, wars, etc) the harder and harder time that I am having witnessing fictional sadistic violence in film.
I think there is a place for darkness in film. There is a place to explore the darker sides of life – the realities of pain, suffering, trial, etc that are a part of life. Film enables us to enter into places that need exploration, need light to be revealed, and so forth. In a movie like Hotel Rwanda, one witnesses horrific, sadistic violence that humans have brought upon other humans. But the difference is that the film is calling us to something different – it is call to action for those who were outside Rwanda at that time and virtually ignored what was taking place (as we continue to do with so much taking place in the world). What is The Dark Knight calling us to?
Not so sure.
