The Small Picture
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Which genius gets drunk faster?
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Music Box: Sia's "This Is Acting" (2016)
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Sia's latest album tackles the things our culture forces us to struggle with
Read MoreHere's My Future (4)
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In Here’s My Future I’m talking about my transfer from a traditional school after seven years to an integrated, more alternative school and all the changes that this change brings for my profession.
A student recently told me something that I found astounding, not because it was a revolutionary insight, but because a 7th grader expressed it, showing an emotional depth and openness that most adults couldn’t even imagine having. We talked about some exercise and then he said: “I’ve always thought if you’re bad at something, you’ll always be bad at it. But now I see that you can actually get better! You don’t have to stay bad.” Having a kid realize that change, especially personal change, is possible, is more gratifying than you can imagine. This is still representative for my experiences at this school.
Read MoreComics Are for Everyone: Less Capitalism, More Telepathy Please
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Recently, I dived back into reading comics (thereby neglecting my movie watching) and my collection of comic examples has become crazy huge, so today I’ll celebrate my 300th blog post (seriously, 300! 280,000 words! But who’s counting?) with an extra-long comic edition. And if you think “I can skip this one, I don’t care about comics”, please give it try anyway, maybe you’ll see that it doesn’t always have to be about superheroes.
Read MoreSpotlight (2015)
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(minor spoilers)
Spotlight is not your typical Best Picture Oscar-winner because it is not flashy or fancy, neither in its filmmaking nor its acting, but it is a really good and important movie. The performances are all great, nuanced and authentic with not one overpowering the others but simply being believable. Tom McCarthy is a director who doesn’t get enough credit for his style. There are scenes where the camera and the editing do very subtle things that are incredibly effective. The movie certainly takes its time but is never boring for a second because every scene has a purpose and adds to the overall picture and message. Some people call it “boring” or “old-fashioned”, which is not true in either case. It is a compelling piece of cinema that does exactly what it needs to do. I highly recommend it.
Read MoreHere's My Future (3)
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In Here’s My Future I’m talking about my transfer from a traditional school after seven years to an integrated, more alternative school and all the changes that this change brings for my profession.
I’m sitting at my new school now, at my desk, in my room. It’s the end of my third week and I feel both exhilarated and exhausted. It has been quite a ride, so much has happened, I’ve learned and saw a lot and even if I sometimes feel frustrated, my overall feelings definitely lean more to the positive side. Here’s why.
Read MoreHere's My Future (2)
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In Here’s My Future I’m talking about my transfer from a traditional school after seven years to an integrated, more alternative school and all the changes that this change brings for my profession.
I’m sitting at my school right now, as the minutes tick down to my grandiose, silly goodbye ceremony that I agreed upon for some obscure need for closure. It’s the kind of thing I tend to hate (and used to skip in the past), in part done by people I’m happy to never see again. But this is the end, my friend, and for some reason I feel like going through with it until it’s over. But it’s also the beginning.
Read MoreHere's My Future (1)
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In Here’s My Future I’m talking about my transfer from a traditional school after seven years to an integrated, more alternative school and all the changes that this change brings for my profession.
This is something I had wanted to do for a while and couldn’t because it wasn’t official, but now I don’t know how to start. I have been writing critically about school very often and made it clear that I have some issues with the school I am working at right now. So, after spending a lot of (too much) time considering my situation, I decided to leave my school and find something else. This will happen soon now and I thought this is a good opportunity to first talk about the whys and whats and to continually document the changes and challenges I will encounter in the coming weeks and months, if only to process myself what is happening now. But maybe this is interesting to others to, so join me in taking a leap of faith into new territory.
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The Surface Is a Warm Blanket
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I made the stupid mistake of taking all the exams I had written in my classes into the holidays for correcting. Normally, I try to get them done as fast as possible and to not take too much with me in the holidays, but this time there was just no other way. Getting through those four piles of exams, I couldn’t help but notice some patterns and have some thoughts that are partially troubling to me. Here they are.
Read MoreThe Problem
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What’s the problem? So, you tell us Kant said that we should neither be too lazy to use our own minds, nor too scared to question authority. And that Rousseau said that we shouldn’t teach children to try to be reasonable, that school teaches us useless knowledge and that teachers just think of themselves. We get it, really, but, you know, so what? Where’s the problem?
Read MoreRevolutionary Road (2008)
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(no real spoilers)
Revolutionary Road is the adaptation of a great novel by Richard Yates that I read many years ago and dearly loved as an amazingly early criticism of our culture. The movie achieves to portray the problems from the novel in a very effective way. I don’t want to compare both of them too much, because I think the movie is its own thing that works well. It features great performances, especially by Kate Winslet and Michael Shannon, but really, all the actors are great. It’s beautifully directed and shot, with a great Thomas Newman score. Director Sam Mendes treads very similar territory as in his American Beauty, but the movies are very different in their tone.
Read MoreDid I Like This? (Walking With a Panther)
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Finally, an episode of Did I Like This? that no one has been waiting for! Well, I know not many people come to my blog to read this, but I hate leaving things unfinished, so I decided to explore another past hip-hop album and plan on doing all of them eventually. Today, I pick the other end of the spectrum, far away from the gangsta rap of previous albums: LL Cool J’s third album Walking With a Panther, released in 1989 by Def Jam.
Read MoreWhy the State of the Union Doesn't Matter
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I’m not a fan of President Obama, but I’m not a fan of any American president (or any president, I guess). So when his State of the Union address hits the news, I’m somewhat baffled. Even before I have heard or read it, I know it contains nothing newsworthy. Why would it? Politicians aren’t out to accomplish anything, to see change or only occasionally. And what does it matter, if Obama says the U.S. is still great and will only be better? (which I’ll assume will be the message because it always is). None of what he says will make any difference. It will be cheered by his fans, attacked by his political enemies (but not for content but out of principle) and everyone else will have forgotten it instantly. Still, because it is considered newsworthy, I thought I could take a look at it to see what kinds of things Obama (or whoever wrote the speech) actually is saying. You can read the whole speech here or watch it here. But I’ll work with quotes, so you don’t have to.
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