Thursday, July 10, 2008

Grace is Gone

I saw the film, 'Grace is Gone' recently and I felt compelled to write about it.
John Cusack stars in this film. I had never heard of it until I saw it recently. It showed up on some Top Films of the Year lists for last year and I thought I would give it a try. It is a film about the wife of John Cusack's character, Grace, going off to war in Iraq. He is left with two pre-teen daughters to take care of and works at a home improvement store as some kind of manager.
He is leaving for work one morning when two U.S. Army officers show up to inform him of his wife Grace's death. He takes it about how you would expect. He is kind of in shock. He sits in his daughters room all day until they come home from school. He tries to figure out how to tell them but can't do it. The bulk of the film is then spent with the three of them going on a road trip on the way to an amusement park somewhere far away and John Cusack's character suffering about how to tell his girls their Mother is dead.
I won't give away any more but this film was powerful for me. If you see it and aren't sobbing like a little girl by the last scene then you have no heart or you are a democrat, take your pick.
The reality of a Father, or anyone for that matter, having to tell their children that one of their parents was dead hit me like a brick. It was intense and real and of course very heart wrenching.
This is a sad movie to be sure, but I think it important for the majority of us that only hear about Mom's and Dad's dying in the war by little snippets on the evening news etc. to understand the cold heart splitting reality.
Intellectually I know and have known that since 9/11 thousands of families have had to have that abrupt conversation. Until I watched 'Grace is Gone' it hadn't sunk into my soul.
I won't go into the other emotions this film invoked right now. I might do so soon however. I'm sure I will invoke some flaming comments etc. if I do.
Until then, if you are struggling to find something decent to watch these long summer evenings, I recommend 'Grace is Gone'.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Sign of the times


This new App called FREEDOM is one of those things that make you go, "of course, why didn't I think of that?"
In the connected times that we live I guess it does make sense that we have an option to 'disconnect' for a specific period of time by force. That is what FREEDOM does. You tell the app how long you want to be 'unplugged', no internet, no email, no twitter etc. and it will shut off your connection for that period of time.
Isn't it interesting that in this day and age we are so connected that we need a specific application to force us to be 'un-connected'?
I know that we have always had the capability to turn off our email and close our browsers and IM apps etc. manually but having a one button function for all of this is convenient don't you think?
I wonder how long it will be before we have a specific Operating System function to do this for us.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Cameras sawn in half


Saw THIS article surfing today. Pretty cool. Cameras sawn in half. Check out more pics at the link.