Little Talks

The Greatest Showman  was one of the greatest movies of the last few years. The catchy tunes, the exploration of the human condition, and the message of self-love were enough to propel the movie to a spot of lasting fame and notoriety among fans and the entertainment industry alike. Besides, it had a pretty solid cast of familiar faces and a few breakout performers. It was fascinating to hear, as the movie quickly gained traction, that this was a story which Hugh Jackman had hoped to tell for a long time. I wondered while watching it what had so intrigued him about P.T. Barnum that he wanted to immortalize the man on screen—why did he want to tell Barnum's life story? Something special It is clear from this film that Barnum was unique. His mind worked in such a different way than the rest of the people around him. While the movie depicts this through his particular brand of imagination and inventive thinking as a child leading to an illustrious career, in reality he was a tr

The story of Frankenstein is one that has been told and retold so many times and in so many ways. When I heard the title of this particular rendition, I was interested by the fact that this more than any other acknowledges that the story is more about the character of Victor than it ever was about the monster. If you know the original novel, then you know that the story is about a young man whose mother passes away just before he moves to university. Having always been interested with alchemy, science, and the occult, Victor dives into his obsessions and, fed by his depression, he seeks a way to overcome death (but by creating life rather than undoing death). His life is subsequently ruined by his own actions and inability to cope with his mother's death when he creates a monster that despises him for giving it life and leaving it to fend for itself. Thus when I heard about Victor Frankenstein , I thought the movie might explore more of the main character's emotional develo

[Warning: contains some spoilers] It's been over a year since I actually finished reading this book (yes, I am very behind on all of the things I wanted to write about), but in all that time I have never managed to come up with something clear to say about the novel. The main reason for this, I believe, is that the book is so conceptual in nature; while there is a narrative, the bulk of the book is taken up with internal monologues and interrogation discussions surrounding ideas about the morality and contradictory nature of the Soviet Union's actions. In an interesting coincidence, however, I find myself sitting down to write this after having recently gone through a personal experience that has helped me to look at this book in a somewhat new light. See, someone thought it would be funny to convince me that something was a joke when, in actuality, everything they were telling me was true. While I had originally questioned the truth of their claims, I became convinced th