Movie Review: Gran Torino

2008. Starring Clint Eastwood, Ahney Her, Bee Vang. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Clint Eastwood has become of those actors whom you cannot pretend is a character not named Clint Eastwood. It happened to John Wayne and Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart. But a good role can overcome that curse. As Walt Kowalski, the perfectly-named working-class bigot next door, Eastwood more or less succeeds in creating a believable character through his trademark squint and a variety of grunts. Walt Kowalski lives in a modest house in a changing neighborhood that used to be his, having retired from an auto industry that …

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In My Day: The Young Pup and Air Conditioning

On my birthday this year, a slightly older lady referred to me as a “young pup,” which proves that everything is relative. However young a pup I might be, I fight the urge every day to proclaim that the best days are behind us. It seems that the effort and time required by nearly everything in the past has taken on a golden glow as I look back through the filter of 48 years. All that’s keeping me from geezerhood is the lack of someone who’ll listen to my observations. That’s, in part, why I blog. The NYT has an …

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Passings: Walter Cronkite

I am sad to learn of Walter Cronkite’s passing this evening. He lived to be 92 — quite an achievement — but he seems like the last of a dying breed. When I was growing up, he was the voice of authority. Hard to imagine in these hyper-partisan days, but he was an anchorman whose outlook you didn’t question — if he said so, it was so. The assassination of President Kennedy was bad enough until Walter took off his glasses to announce his death, then you couldn’t do anything but lose it. Because it was so. 1968 probably changed …

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