Information, Answers & Reviews

There are several things that make Animal Kingdom a great crime drama. Have a list:

1. Is there a better title for a movie about a crime family slowly tearing itself apart than Animal Kingdom? Truthfully? If you can think of any I would be very curious to hear them.

1. Guy Pearce is still making movies! Just back in Australia! And surprise, surprise they're the best movies he's been in since Memento!

How important is the cover of a book? Will romantic new covers and bonus quizzes like "Are you destined for a love like Catherine and Heathcliff's?" be enough to appeal to young adult readers? HarperTeen thinks so. They have recently rereleased several classic books including Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, and Romeo and Juliet with covers no doubt reminding teen girls of the Twilight series.
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Yesterday I watched, “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial.” This is a documentary about the Dover, Pennsylvania’s public school system and its legal battle over whether or not to teach “Intelligent Design” alongside evolution. Of course there are two sides to every story, but one would not expect a small public school system to be in federal court on constitutional challenges to the first amendment.

On one side are the public school science teachers who prefer to only teach evolution in their classrooms because they believe that “Intelligent Design” is the same thing as biblical creationism. On the other side you have parents and a couple members of the school board who believe that evolution is a theory and that “intelligent Design” is just another alternative theory that should at least have some honorable mention.

Normally such matters would be resolved locally but this case makes it all the way to a federal courtroom to prove either that Intelligent Design is science, or that Intelligent Design is a cover for biblical creationism.

It’s a tense documentary but a good one.

The seasons are turning again, and it's almost time for our 2011 One Book One Bloomington selection--Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin. Set in 1974, this National Book Award winner chronicles the day Philippe Petit tightroped across the space between the two World Trade Towers. In masterful prose, McCann chronicles how various strangers reacted to this event. It's a book about the interrelationships between the residents of a great city, and how one man's quest for adventure brings hope, fear, and wonder to the people standing below. Jonathan Mahler of the New York Times called it "one of the most electric, profound novels I have read in years."
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