Posts tagged Berlin
Flagler professor, veteran journalist and Forum founder Ostrowidzki dies
Apr 10th
Ostrowidzki, 80, was a veteran journalist who had served as a White House reporter during the Reagan administration and covered health-care issues in the Clinton era. He also reported on every presidential election from 1964-1988.
He joined the faculty of Flagler College in 1997, and went on to found the Forum on Government and Public Policy, which brings in journalists and other experts to speak about current issues. The Forum has brought to the college names such as Robert Novak, David Broder, Joe Klein, Anne Coulter, Pat Buchanan and Chris Matthews.
Ostrowidzki taught Campaigns and Elections for our Humanities department and Media Power in Politics for Communication.
He was a native of Poland, and during the Soviet Union Occupation of Poland (1939-1941), Ostrowidzki’s father, a high-ranking Polish government official, was captured as a prisoner of war. At this time, Ostrowidzki’s mother, brother and grandfather were deported to Siberia while he was on vacation visiting his aunt. He survived both the Soviet Union and German occupation of Poland and was later re-united with his family in England in 1948. Two years later he moved with his family to the United States.
Ostrowidzki started working for the Hearst paper, the Times Union in Albany, New York, as a copy boy in 1953. He graduated from Siena College in 1954 and served in the United States Army from 1954-1957. During his military career he aided Hungarian refugees escaping from the country in the midst of a revolt against the Soviets.
In 1957, Ostrowidzki started working for the Times Union as a reporter. He was promoted to Capitol Hill bureau chief in 1960. In 1961 he was recalled to active duty for the Berlin and Cuba crisis, as an interpreter. After he completed his active duty, he earned a Master of Arts from Siena College and started covering Washington D.C. for Hearst Newspapers.
At Hearst, he served as White House, National, Foreign, War and Congressional Correspondent and Chief Political Writer. Ostrowidzki covered every presidential campaign for Hearst from 1968 until his retirement in 1997.
He is survived by his wife, Sharon; three children; two step-children; six grandchildren; four step-grandchildren; and a brother.
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Flagler College is an independent, four-year, comprehensive baccalaureate college located in St. Augustine, Fla. The college offers 24 majors, 29 minors and two pre-professional programs, the largest majors being business, education and communication. Small by intent, Flagler College has an enrollment of about 2,500 students, as well as a satellite campus at Tallahassee Community College in Tallahassee, Fla. U.S. News & World Report and The Princeton Review regularly feature Flagler as a college that offers quality education at a relatively low cost; tuition is $22,500, including room and board. A relatively young institution (founded in 1968), Flagler College is also noted for the historic beauty of its campus. The main building is Ponce de Leon Hall, built in 1887 as a luxury resort by Henry Flagler, who co-founded the Standard Oil Company with John D. Rockefeller.
For more on Flagler College, visit www.flagler.edu. from Read Media
“Hanna” Bad Premise, Worse Execution
May 12th
(“Bad Premise, Worse Execution”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Hanna is one of those movies whose filmmakers believe they are being clever by making the movie come full circle from beginning to end, just as they must have believed they could make the story more interesting by omitting important details.
And the premise is so simple that the one-sentence pitch to studio executives could easily have been “Sixteen-year-old girl as James Bond.”
Then just to turn the story on its head even more, the Bad Guys in this movie are usually the Good Guys in a James Bond film.
Hanna is played by Saoirse Ronan, who received an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of the “evil sister” in the 2007 Atonement.
When we first see Hanna, she is living with her father, played by Eric Bana, in a cabin in the wilds of northern Finland, where they have been living for 15 years and he is training her for some sort of life-or-death mission.
In fact, he tells her, “She won’t stop until you’re dead. Or she is.”
“She” is Marissa Wiebling, played by Cate Blanchett using a Texas accent that is so phony it is laughable, and Hanna’s father and Marissa have a history that we get only a glimpse of in one flashback.
We eventually learn that Hanna’s father used to be a CIA agent until something went wrong, and that is why he and Hanna are hiding out in northern Finland, because Marissa and her fellow CIA agents are still searching for them.
However, when Hanna believes she is ready, she activates a signal that identifies her location to Marissa, and Hanna’s father then takes off after confirming with Hanna where they will meet in Berlin.
So, Hanna is captured, and then the movie gets even more ridiculous.
Hanna escapes from Marissa in a gruesome and unbelievable scene, but she discovers that she is in Morocco, and she must somehow get to Berlin without any money.
In other words, the movie becomes an absurd chase movie.
As a matter of fact, the movie goes from the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous and then to be so ridiculous that it is laughable and finally forgettable.
The premise is bad, and the execution is worse.
Hanna is a quite elaborate rendition of a simple story made more complicated by the omission of significant details.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Brothers Bloom” Not the Perfect Con
Jun 3rd
Not the Perfect Con
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE BROTHERS BLOOM is one of those movies that feel better to talk about than to actually see.
By that, I mean that it has very good ingredients, but when they are all mixed together, you can end up feeling cheated, because you didn’t enjoy it as much as you thought you would.
Written and directed by Rian Johnson, whose first film was the much- acclaimed 2006 BRICK, this film is about two brothers who have been con artists all their lives.
The film begins when they are kids after they have been through 38 foster homes and Stephen devises a con designed to allow his younger brother Bloom to get the girl in school that he pines for.
The plan doesn’t end the way they had hoped it would, but that doesn’t stop them, as we see 25 years later in Berlin and the conclusion of their most recent con.
Stephen, now played by Mark Ruffalo, and Bloom, now played by Adrian Brody, are successful, but Bloom wants out of the game and tells his brother, “I want an unwritten life.”
Bloom says he is going to take off where Stephen and their colleague, an Oriental woman named Bang Bang, can never find him.
Well, naturally, they can, and three months later Stephen and Bang Bang show up in Montenegro, where Bloom is living. Stephen outlines what he says will be their last con together, and the mark is Penelope Stamp, played by Rachel Weisz, even though their rule has always been “No women.”
Penelope lives alone in the largest private estate on the East Coast of America and is incredibly rich, and at this point you will probably guess the ending, but you would be only half right.
Stephen has designed an elaborate step to get Bloom to meet Penelope, and to say that it doesn’t go exactly as planned would be the understatement of all understatements.
However, the first part of the con works, and Penelope accompanies them on a steamer to Greece, and at this point you might conclude that the only ones being conned are the audience.
We are told that the perfect con is the one in which everyone involved gets just the thing they wanted.
THE BROTHERS BLOOM is not the perfect con, because the audience doesn’t get the enjoyment they wanted.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”