Pagan Sphinx Entertainment Highlight

This is a film to savor. It stars Christopher Plummer, James McAvoy...ummm...now I've lost my train of thought ;-)...where was I...oh, and Helen Mirren.  Directed by Michael Hoffman.

Highly recommended. *****

The Last Station is a love story set during the last year of the life of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. As his health deteriorates, Tolstoy (Plummer) is tended to by his wife Sofya (Mirren), daughter Sasha (Duff) and devoted disciple Valentin Bulgakov (McAvoy)

However, having rejected his title and embraced an ascetic lifestyle, Tolstoy finds himself increasingly at odds with Sofya. As he considers signing a new will leaving the rights to his work to the Russian people rather than his family, the conflict between husband and wife grows to breaking point.

Music for Sunday - King of the Beats: Jack Kerouac

 Note to readers:  I have this all wrong!  The documentary that the featured song comes from is not King of the Beats; it's something else I'm not able to find quickly and I's got stuff to do! This will have to do.  In any event, at least the whole post is connected around Jack Kerouac, albeit loosely.
Sorry 'bout that.


 A song by Ben Gibbard (Deathcab for Cutie) and Jay Farrar (Son Volt).

If the end of the video clip were not cut off, the narrator would have gone on to say that this song is from the DVD documentary King of the Beats, about the life and work of author, poet and painter Jack Kerouac (1922-1969).
 

The link above will take you to the documentary in its entirety, I believe. It's slightly over an hour long but well worth it if you're a Jack Kerouac fan or if you have nothing better to do.  ;-)  I watched the whole thing not for lack of other things to do (which I have too many of) but because I like to learn the stories of creative people, particularly those with an immigrant background. Jack Kerouac was the son of French-Canadian immigrant parents and grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts. But honestly, I started to read On the Road when I was in high school in the mid-seventies and I never finished it. He's on my list for Nova Scotia summer reading in 2010.

Happy Sunday

Love,

Pagan Sphinx

Goodbye Studs Terkel

1912-2008

The Life and Work of Studs Terkel

The legendary radio broadcaster, writer and oral historian Studs Terkel has died at the age of 96 in Chicago.

Studs Terkel worked as an activist, a civil servant, a labor organizer, an ad writer, a television actor, and a radio DJ, among many other occupations. But since the 1960s, he was particularly well-known as a world-class interviewer, a writer and radio personality who drew celebrities and, far more often, average citizens into sharing their oral histories. Read more...