Day: January 5, 2005

Then and now

Nearly a month ago NewMexiKen watched the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate. Today I watched the 2004 version starring Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep.

While the modern film is more visual and the acting fine, the 1962 version is crisper and less cluttered. The Laurence Harvey portrayal of Raymond Shaw is a much spookier character than the one played by Liev Schreiber, and Frank Sinatra a less melodramatic Ben Marco than Denzel Washington. Streep seems as unlikable but less evil than Angela Lansbury as the mother (Lansbury got an Oscar nomination).

If it had been me, I would have remade the first screenplay and left the film set in the 1950s.

See both films and enjoy the comparison.

Is this an analogy or a metaphor?

From Sideline Chatter —

The NFL’s haves and have-nots, wrote Greg Cote of the Miami Herald, fit nicely into an airplane analogy.

“The 12 playoff teams will be seated in first class, sipping champagne,” Cote wrote. “The 20 eliminated teams will trudge ashamedly past them into coach, carrying a bawling infant and rolling a suitcase that won’t fit into the overhead bin, and headed for an assigned middle seat between an old lady complaining of nausea and a snoring 473-pound man in a tank-top.”

Umberto Eco …

was born in Alessandria, Italy, on this date in 1932. Look here for an interesting web site devoted to Eco.

“But why doesn’t the Gospel ever say that Christ laughed?” I asked, for no good reason. “Is Jorge right?”

“Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn’t interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave. . . .”

The Name of the Rose

The Google 2004 Zeitgeist

From Google —

Based on billions of searches conducted by Google users around the world, the 2004 Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year’s major events and trends. We hope you enjoy this aggregate look at what people wanted to know more about this [past] year.

Zeitgeist Explained
zeit geist | Pronunciation: ‘tsIt-“gIst, ‘zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era

Check it out.

The $5 day

As The New York Times reported, on this date in 1914 —

Henry Ford, head of the Ford Motor Company, announced…one of the most remarkable business moves of his entire remarkable career. In brief it is:

To give to the employees of the company $10,000,000 of the profits of the 1914 business, the payments to be made semi-monthly and added to the pay checks.

To run the factory continuously instead of only eighteen hours a day, giving employment to several thousand more men by employing three shifts of eight hours each, instead of only two nine-hour shifts, as at present.

To establish a minimum wage scale of $5 per day. Even the boy who sweeps up the floors will get that much.

Before any man in any department of the company who does not seem to be doing good work shall be discharged, an opportunity will be given to him to try to make good in every other department. No man shall be discharged except for proved unfaithfulness or irremediable inefficiency.

Read the complete Times article.

Twelfth day of Christmas

Though advertisers and merchants would have us believe that the Christmas season begins at Thanksgiving (or possibly Halloween), liturgically it begins on Christmas Eve and extends until Twelfth Night, the eve of the Epiphany. The Twelve Days of Christmas are Christmas through January 5th.