Culture! Here's how to get some....

Greetings everyone. I'm doing something a little different today. I don't want to break my record of 37 straight posts, so we will begin with:

The Best Part of Today #37:

Realizing I was wearing Christmas colors without even planning it.

It's true. I dressed in a green shirt and red shirt completely unintentionally (towards Christmas that is. It was done with the intention of providing optimal warmth on this freezing day.) But it just goes to show how ready for break I am, that I'm preparing for it subconsciously.

With only eight days until break, I wonder if any of us have considered what we are going to do with the time that, unlike Thanksgiving Break, is undisturbed by work. This brings us around to what's different about this post. It's going to be a little longer than usual, so click Read More to find out why...


I decided to provide you with some ways to spend your break! 


First of all, you could read a book! Like this one:

This is by the author of one of my favorite blogs, 1000 Awesome Things. Much like my blog, it serves as a daily reminder of all the things one should be thankful for in life.


The next thing you could do is go see the new Harry Potter movie!
          As avid Harry Potter fans, my sister and I had attended a midnight premier of every Harry Potter movie except the very first. We were too young to see The Sorcerer’s Stone in the wee hours of the morning, but otherwise, we had grown up with Harry and the gang. We had a significant emotional investment in the enterprise, and after several mediocre films, we approached this second-to-last installment of the epic series with due trepidation. We were not disappointed.

This last film is the first in which the famous trio does not return to Hogwarts at the opening of the story. Instead, Harry, Ron, and Hermione set out to destroy the remaining Horcruxes, ordinary objects that contain fragments of the Dark Lord Voldemort’s soul. After learning that Voldemort’s followers, the Death Eaters, have taken over the wizarding world’s government, the Ministry of Magic, Harry, Ron and Hermione go on the run. Just like in the book, they live out of Hermione’s Mary-Poppinesque purse containing everything from a full-size tent to a veritable library of magical books.

During the whole two and a half hours of the film, however, there are things that the filmmakers did not include. The trio of magical objects that makes up title of the film, The Deathly Hallows, is ultimately the most important thing, not the Horcruxes. Having all three of the Deathly Hallows, the Resurrection Stone, the Elder Wand and Death’s Invisibility cloak, supposedly makes one the master of death. Harry later learns about these powerful objects in discovering Dumbledore’s adolescent friendship with the Gellert Grindelwald. This dark wizard was best known for his defeat in a duel with Dumbledore later in life. Less known was that as students, Grindelwald and Dumbledore shared a friendship bound by a desire to find the Deathly Hallows. This information is crucial to Harry’s understanding of both Dumbledore and the means by which he can finally defeat Voldemort. Harry, Ron and Hermione learn the fable behind the Deathly Hallows near the end of the film, though none of this important back-story is included.

Despite this, everything that was included was done spectacularly well. I believe that film is an industry that should bring books to life in a way print cannot, and this movie certainly succeeded. When Harry, Ron and Hermione read “The Deathly Hallows” from The Tales of Beedle the Bard, the films cuts to a masterfully done animated sequence of tale, narrated by Hermione. And the locket, the Horcrux that dominates the first half of Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s search, is brought to life in unsettling detail. When it’s opened, shadowy figures of Harry and Hermione emerge and taunt Ron with his insecurities. Fortunately, Ron overcomes the locket’s illusions and impressively smashes it with the sword of Gryffindor. These are things that the reader could only see in his or her imagination, brought to life onscreen.

One of J.K. Rowling’s strengths as a writer is that every detail in her books is significant. But Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow: Part One is not a book; it’s a film. To include every detail from the book in both films would make each more than twice the length of Ben-Hur. The audience has to trust the filmmaker’s judgment on what to include. Everything that was included in the film solicited a deep emotional reaction from me, and everything that wasn’t did not make it feel incomplete. In its entirety, this film is the one of the best book-to-movie translations I have ever seen. I’d say it was worth the $10.50, and perhaps a little more. 

Another way would be a to go see a play! Check this out:

Thirteen Graves Found in Basement of Elderly Women’s Lodging House

       The play Arsenic and Old Lace revolves around Mortimer Brewster, a dramatic critic. While visiting his Aunts Abby and Martha in their Brooklyn home, he falls in love with their neighbour, Elaine Harper. But with Mortimer’s family composed of his brothers Teddy, who thinks he’s President Roosevelt, and Jonathan, a maniac killer who looks like Boris Karloff, plus his sweetly homicidal aunts, Mortimer has to decide if marrying a Brewster is really a safe decision for the woman he loves.

         The play was originally conceived as a serious drama, but Kesselring changed it to a black comedy when a friend of his, reading a half-finished draft, found it extremely amusing. Kesselring drew part of the idea for the plot from reports of an old woman who ran a boarding house in Windsor, CT. She poisoned her lodgers in order to gain their pensions for herself. Abby and Martha, however, are the most selfless and unreservedly hospitable hostesses, and only want their lodgers to find peace and comfort, whatever that takes.

         The original Broadway show ran 1,444 performances until it finally closed in 1944. Far from leaving the public eye, it gained its most renown that year when it was made into a film directed by Frank Capra and starring Cary Grant as Mortimer. This year, Uconn’s student-run, non-major theatre organization Dramatic PAWS took on Kesselring’s masterpiece with a batch of very talented actors and a pair of directors as witty as the material they direct. Sophomores Chris and Nick Wasko familiarized themselves with the show as Officers Brophy and Klein in an independent production in 2009. Knowing all the show’s ins and outs as actors has given them valuable insight as directors.

Post other ideas for spending your time over break!