Copyright 2012 Thomas Hibbs Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:40:03 -0500 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Thomas Hibbs :: Writings http://www.thomashibbs.org tshibbs@aol.com (Thomas Hibbs) webmaster@pundicity.com en-us http://www.thomashibbs.org/11132/young-adult Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:00:00 EST The new film Young Adult, the latest from the writer/director team of Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody of Juno fame, features Charlize Theron as Mavis Gary, a writer of young adult fiction living in the Twin Cities who returns to the small town of Mercury,... http://www.thomashibbs.org/11131/oscar-nominations-sentimental-populism Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:00:00 EST What an unusual list of Oscar nominees for Best Picture — sentimental and populist. Among the nominated films, there are no movies with big social or political statements, nor are there the usual films with dark themes. There is nothing to rival... http://www.thomashibbs.org/9935/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-part-2 Fri, 15 Jul 2011 09:00:00 EST There has never been anything quite like J. K Rowling's Harry Potter, the hero of a hugely popular series of seven books followed by a successful set of eight movies. The decision to split the last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, into two... http://www.thomashibbs.org/10025/tree-of-life Tue, 5 Jul 2011 09:00:00 EST A young son in Terrence Malick's Tree of Life asks his mother, "Tell us a story from before we can remember." Malick begins his story even earlier by telling the story from before we can remember. With visually arresting imagery and a mesmerizing musical... http://www.thomashibbs.org/9796/midnight-in-paris Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:00:00 EST Woody Allen's new film, Midnight in Paris, is a marked improvement over recent failures such as Whatever Works and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which Allen indulged in strident liberal politics and incoherent nihilistic musings. Although its... http://www.thomashibbs.org/8981/of-gods-and-men Fri, 18 Mar 2011 09:00:00 EST Xavier Beauvois's Of Gods and Men is a French-language film based on the true story of the martyrdom of Catholic monks in Algiers in the 1990s. The Cistercian monks, who had lived peaceably serving a mostly Muslim community, became trapped in the battle... http://www.thomashibbs.org/8980/the-adjustment-bureau Fri, 4 Mar 2011 09:00:00 EST The new film The Adjustment Bureau, written and directed by George Nolfi, features Matt Damon as David Norris, a politician whose chance encounter with Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt) complicates not only his career ambitions but his naïve assumptions about... http://www.thomashibbs.org/8488/the-tempest Thu, 16 Dec 2010 09:00:00 EST More famous for her Broadway productions of The Lion King and the upcoming Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark than for films such as Titus, Frida, and Across the Universe, Julie Taymor has brought a new version of Shakespeare's The Tempest to the screen. As... http://www.thomashibbs.org/8046/stanley-cavell-philosophical-improvisations Sun, 10 Oct 2010 09:00:00 EST In God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition, the latest in a number of recent books critical of the modern research university, the influential Irish-born philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre argues that... http://www.thomashibbs.org/7902/caravaggio-sacramental-realism Sat, 1 Aug 2010 09:00:00 EST In the 1986 film Caravaggio, the director Derek Jarman takes the turbulent life of a gifted artist as an occasion to reinvent him as a lascivious, romantic-existentialist anti-hero. An irascible man, whose public fortune waxed and waned, who spent much... http://www.thomashibbs.org/7212/avatar Thu, 22 Apr 2010 09:00:00 EST James Cameron's record-shattering film Avatar is being released on DVD today. Today is not a Tuesday, the day DVDs normally hit the stores, but a Thursday, to coincide with the 40th annual Earth Day: Avatar highlights the threats posed by an advanced,... http://www.thomashibbs.org/7188/between-athens-and-jerusalem Thu, 8 Apr 2010 09:00:00 EST In a 1932 letter Leo Strauss wrote, "I cannot believe and . . . therefore I search for a possibility to live without faith." That search, which began in the 1920s, led him from contemporary theological debates and the modern liberal critique of religion... http://www.thomashibbs.org/7187/ralph-mcinerny-1929-2010 Wed, 1 Apr 2010 09:00:00 EST According to Aristotle, is the performance of virtuous acts with ease and delight. On that basis, as well as others, Ralph McInerny was a remarkably virtuous man. One of Ralph's most beautiful books is entitled The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain: A... http://www.thomashibbs.org/7186/oscars-parochial-world Mon, 8 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST In a scene in the Oscar-nominated film An Education, an older British man with designs on a precocious teenage girl concocts a story for her parents about how he is taking her to visit his old professor, C.S. Lewis. Although Lewis does not figure further... http://www.thomashibbs.org/7185/children-of-lesser-gods Wed, 3 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST Woody Allen's Whatever Works, a serious contender for worst movie of 2009, is noteworthy mostly as a disastrous attempt to channel Allen's humor through the caustic verbiage of the increasingly unfunny Larry David. But the problem is deeper than casting....