New Year, New Stuff?

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I miss 2007 already.

The Saturday before New Year’s Eve: watched Charlie Wilson’s War at the the Park Slope Pavilion. Movie’s directed by Mike Nichols, co-produced and starred by Tom Hanks, and written by Aaron Sorkin. It was an entertaining movie; classic Sorkin moments (excessive politician who does some womanizing, drinking, and drugging who learns to do more with what power he does have; the walking and talking in the halls of power, such as when Congressman Wilson (Hanks) is talking politics with the committee chair in Congress – a la Sorkin’s tv show, “West Wing”; and ideas to prevail to do good).

Ironic moments – in the sense that the movie tries real hard not to wonder who Congressman Wilson’s helping in sending money and equipment to Afghanistan via the CIA (since guess who became America’s problem by 2001, even when we didn’t realize it in the 1980’s), and the people Wilson met in Pakistan (the military dictatorship who disposed of Benazir Bhutto’s father; much too eerie to think of now that she herself is gone; timing can suck). Some silly raunchy, nude moments at the beginning of the movie (which I didn’t think was necessary, but oh well).

Is the movie Oscar worthy? I don’t know, but Hanks was good as usual as the man who didn’t want to care, until he did (and who was able to cash in his political chips very well, until he had to deal with Republicans and Democrats who stopped caring); Philip Seymour Hoffman was amusing as the CIA agent who’s frustrated by the bureaucracy; and Julia Roberts did well as the Texan socialite who cajoles Wilson to end Communism (he didn’t do it for her, but he got her point).

New Year’s Eve – dinner at Oven in Brooklyn Heights; tasty stuffed portobella mushroom appetizer, lovely eggplant pizza, and chocolate fondue! Reviews said it was pretty good; I’ll agree. Not bad pricing, either.

New Year’s Day – well, ok, got too lazy. But, what else is a day off for? Anyway, way cool New Year’s thing to watch: Winter Classic NHL – Buffalo Sabres v. Pittsburgh Penguins, playing hockey – outdoors, in the cold and snow. Apparently, after the Bills v. Giants game last week, they installed the rink in the football stadium – and more than 70,000 people came out to see the hockey game! Looked really exciting, not to mention insane; what a watch on the big screen HD TV. It’s amazing that this was the first time in the US that they did this. Bob Costas got a little silly, and Doc Emeric looked cold; everyone just seemed to have fun.

Just in time for Bowl season: an interesting story on an APA and the U of Hawaii, as their football team heads to the Sugar Bowl, along with their graduate assistant, Brian Kajiyama, who’s not only working on his Phd. in special education but also happens to have cerebral palsy.

I had Prof. Eric Foner back in college for American Radical History; in this NY Times op-ed, “Forgotten Step Toward Freedom,” he provides food for thought about a Jan. 1 upon which importation of slaves ended.

More history:a trip to Asia, and the early Kodak pictures from them – 100 years ago – with William Taft (the future President and US Supreme Ct. Chief Justice), Alice Roosevelt (the then President’s daughter), and others – discovered in one man’s old family albums:

The old photo albums were such a familiar part of the Woods family’s Adirondack camp that no one paid them much notice. But when the 21-year-old James T. Stever took a closer look at the nearly 1,000 rare photographs that his great-great-grandfather Harry Fowler Woods had taken a century ago, he saw them with fresh eyes.

The sepia-toned black-and-white pictures showed candid moments from a groundbreaking diplomatic mission to the Far East, which William Howard Taft and a large entourage of congressmen, senators, businessmen and others made in 1905 at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt. Mr. Woods, an amateur photographer and businessman who was a friend of Taft’s from their native Cincinnati, captured the heady atmosphere of the three-month trip with the new hand-held cameras that had just come on the market.

When Mr. Stever came across the pictures in 2004, along with Mr. Woods’s neatly typed captions, he was unaware that they documented a pivotal time in America’s diplomatic past, a moment when the country was beginning to flex its imperialist muscles. [….]

Members of the large Woods family agreed to part with the albums to save them. Margo T. Stever, Mr. Stever’s mother, who is not only Mr. Woods’s great-granddaughter but also distantly related to Taft, stepped in to direct the project.

Ms. Stever, a poet who lives in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., organized a team of curators, designers and writers (including Mr. Stever, who is now a 24-year-old graduate student in history at Brown University). She also worked with Friends of the William Howard Taft Birthplace in Cincinnati to raise more than $100,000 to make digital scans of the century-old prints and produce explanatory material.

A result is a traveling show, “Looking East: William Howard Taft and the 1905 Mission to Asia,” that will go on view Jan. 17 at the Nippon Club in Manhattan and run through Feb. 8. The rescue project also produced a Web site, ohiohistory.org/tafttrip; a museum catalog, which will be available free at the Nippon Club; and a teacher’s guide for middle school and high school students.

During the holidays (or making just dealing with regular life), things are sounding rather uncomfortable in Hollywood, with striking writers and the entertainment executives bumping into each other.

Some tv stuff:

The late night shows are about to be back (with guests? who knows…), even though the writers’ strike is still on. At least David Letterman got a deal with the writers, so he’ll be back with writers. Can’t the networks/studio/production companies come to a settlement already? Let’s be creative; at least, I thought that’s the nature of your industry. Negotiations take some kind of thought. Think about it.

Say goodbye to CourtTV, which is re-branding itself as TruTV. I saw the commercial promoting its new identity – “It’s Not Reality; It’s Actuality.” There’s such a word as “actuality”? Apparently, they wanted to get away from the bad connotations of the phrase “reality tv.” Forget that; unless you’re showing documentaries (what I’d call non-fiction programming, at the least), you’re still “reality tv” (which may not mean you’ve elevated your level of quality). Plus, what will happen to all those legal-ish shows that Court TV used to do…? Oh, well. Guess they’re trying to stay on the air and make a buck.

If you don’t have cable or you’ve an old tv, got to get that transmitter to make your tv digital ready by Feb. 2009. Coupons from the feds to get you going, so says Yahoo/Associated Press.