Caleb's Social Corner

"True courage is not knowing when to take a life, but when to spare one", Gandalf quietly says to Bilbo Baggins as he hands him Bilbo's first sword in Peter Jackson's return to Middle Earth. The movie is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.    I really had no expectation for the film or any real vigor to go and see it, but as a fan and student of films why not go see the latest from arguably one of the best directors in the modern era.    After all the hype, the changing of directors, and extensive waiting period, Peter Jackson delivers a fun, thrilling, beautiful, and CGI happy return to New Zealand, I mean, Middle Earth.   The story is previous to the LOTR trilogy, so if you want to go see this movie and haven't seen any of those, you in all probability will be lost.    It begins explaining how the dwarf city of Erebor was lost to a dragon, and how the dwarves have been looking for a home since. We then go and follow Bilbo Baggins writing his book ...

   It's funny how literally all people who are geniuses, tycoons, true innovators all have their eccentricities.          How they can have so much brain power, but are lacking in another area. This was no exception for the great Howard Hughes in Martin Scorsese's biopic, The Aviator.    The story follows a young and wealthy man who is making a picture about airplanes named Howard Hughes.  He needs more, more, more to make this picture come to fruition in his mind.  The film is eventually finished, but he can't settle.  He wants a reshoot. He wants the talking picture. This man made go big or go home a life motto.    As the film moves along, we transfer from this to his love and obsession with aviation.  With his team, they create the fastest plane ever built at the time and they build TWA.  But others are standing in his way.    Pan Am Airlines partners with a US Senator named Brewster in orde...

   Remember that moment as a kid when you saw that first magic trick, before all the cynicism trying to prove the magician’s trick wasn’t real? It was incredible! For that brief moment in time, magic was real. The romanticism of the world was really something.  The world was such a cool place, something that was so awesome.  This is how the girl, Alice, feels in Sylvain Chomet’s animated film, The Illusionist.    The film is about a magician who travels the British Isles, doing shows for any kind of money he can find.  This job so to speak, lands him in Scotland where he meets a young girl, Alice. She is captivated my his magic, and cannot believe what he can do.  One day she comes in, and he takes something she gives him, and whoof, something new has appeared.  Eventually, he does this with her shoes, getting her a brand new pair.  Taken by this magician, she wants to leave with him to travel the world and see mor...