Movie – Avatar (2009)

Believe it or not I’ve finally come to the end of my Movies with Interracial Relationships category.  And what better way to end than with a relationship that’s not only interracial, but also interspecies and interstellar?  I think just about every person on the planet has heard of the movie Avatar and odds are not bad that they have seen it, too.  It became the highest grossing film in both U.S. and world history (in today’s money; adjusted for inflation it still gets beaten by earlier films such as Gone With the Wind.)  Just about everyone agrees that it raised the bar on movie visuals.  Most everyone also agrees that this is pretty much the reason to see it.

Movie – Live and Become (2005)

Live and Become has a curious mixture of nationalities behind it.  It’s co-written and directed by Radu Mihaileanu – a Romanian man.  It’s the story of a black Christian boy pretending to be an Ethiopian Jew growing up in Israel, being raised by adoptive Moroccan Jews who speak French.  Anyone who thinks Jews are a specific race as opposed to simply being followers of a religion will probably have problems with this film.  As the opening narration explains there have been black Jews in Ethiopia for thousands of years.  In 1985 (when the movie starts) Israel is conducting rescue missions to save as many of them as they can and to bring them to Israel.  Will the people there welcome them, though?

Hike – Champlain Mountain, Huguenot Head, Beachcroft Trail, Champlain North Ridge Trail

The Thrumcap as seen from Champlain Mountain

This post describes a loop hike that traverses Champlain Mountain from west to north, with a walk back along part of the Park Loop Road.  In my opinion, on a clear, sunny day there is no better place to be in Acadia National Park than atop Champlain Mountain with its views of the ocean and surrounding area.

Hike – Four Summits, Bald Peak, Parkman Mountain, Gilmore Peak, and Sargent Mountain via Hadlock Brook Trail, Bald Peak Trail, Bald-Parkman Connector, Parkman Mountain Trail, Grandgent Trail, Sargent South Ridge Trail, Maple Spring Trail

The first three peaks summited (all in foreground)

This post describes a loop hike that summits four of the mountains west of Jordan Pond, including Sargent Mountain (the second highest peak in Acadia National Park), and then ends with a beautiful walk alongside a stream.

Directions: Take Routes 3 and 198 north out of Northeast Harbor.  Just after passing the end of Upper Hadlock Pond, which will be on the right, there will be a small parking area on the left off the side of the road.  Since this is the trailhead for several trails to Parkman Mountain, Bald Peak, Norumbega Mountain, and others, there may be cars also lined up along the side of the road.  The trailhead for this hike is across the highway from the north end of the lot.  Take care crossing since traffic will be going fast.

Hike – Norumbega Mountain, Goat Trail, Norumbega Mountain Trail, Hadlock Ponds Trail, Norumbega Connector

View from the summit of Norumbega Mountain

This post describes a loop hike that traverses Norumbega Mountain, which hugs the east side of Somes Sound in Acadia National Park.  This hike provides a physical challenge at the start, and varied conditions along the way, but the views are in short supply compared to other mountains in the park.

Directions: Take Routes 3 and 198 north out of Northeast Harbor.  Just after passing the end of Upper Hadlock Pond, which will be on the right, there will be a small parking area on the left off the side of the road.  Since this is also the trailhead for several trails to Parkman Mountain, Bald Peak, and others, there may be cars also lined up along the side of the road.  The trailhead for Norumbega is on the same side as the parking, at the north end of the lot.

The hike starts on The Goat Trail.  You will soon see that it is aptly named.  It rises 600 feet in a quarter of a mile.  In fact, almost all the elevation gain for this part of the hike is achieved in just this short starting section.  If you are part mountain goat it will help you to get up over the many steps and switchbacks.  In fact, at one point I passed a mountain goat that had stopped and was sucking wind.

Hike – Cadillac Mountain Summit to Summit Loop Hike Using the South Ridge Trail, Canon Brook Trail, A. Murray Young Trail, and Gorge Path

Looking southwest from Cadillac Mountain

There are four major ways to summit Cadillac Mountain on foot.  I have done all of them and you can find my posts for them here: North Ridge Trail, South Ridge Trail, West Face Trail, Gorge Path (east approach).  They all have one thing in common: they start at a lower elevation, summit Cadillac, then eventually return to their start.  Cadillac Mountain has an auto road to the top of it, so I decided to take advantage of that to do a different kind of hike.  For this one I would start at the summit of Cadillac, descend on the South Ridge Trail, loop back up between Cadillac and Dorr Mountain on the Canon Brook and A. Murray Young Trails, then return to the summit of Cadillac on the Gorge Path.

Here are the Unofficial Changes for the 2014 Edition of the 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Believe it or not I was finally going to post a movie review again tonight, but when I checked email I saw that a comment had been left on the Books section I maintain on the 1,001 Movies wiki.  Lo and behold an anonymous commenter (Sep 20 edit: the person who deserves credit for the first notice is Andy Stout;  see his comment below) left what he or she said were the upcoming changes for the 2014 edition which they had gotten from the official site.  The book doesn’t officially come out for two more months, so I was slightly skeptical, but very intrigued.

I went out to the official site and did not find anything listing changes, but I noticed that the list of the current entries did include one of the new ones – 12 Years a Slave.  I tend to discount the list on the official site since whenever I had looked at it in the past it was always a few years out of date.  In this case though, I checked and several of the films I was told were added were indeed in the list at the site, and several of the ones I was told were removed were indeed not on this list.

July Movie Status

This post is a day late.  I went to see Guardians of the Galaxy last night instead.  Marvel delivers another real winner.  Unless you hate fun, entertaining movies you should go see it.  Trust me.

I saw 28 new movies in the month of July.  After some months of watching very few films because I was working on my book, I got back into the swing of things a little in July.

For whatever reason I didn’t have much interest at the beginning of the month in working on my remaining Oscar Best Picture nominees.  I decided to concentrate on the They Shoot Pictures Don’t They list.  I got the 2014 version of the Top 1,000 movies and went through it.  There’s a lot of volatility from year to year, but my overall totals seen for both the 2013 and 2014 lists were very close. 

I decided to see if I could knock off the remaining films I had not yet seen that were in the Top 500 of these lists.  I didn’t quite make it.  I was one short on the 2014 list and three short on the 2013 version.  I’m just under 850 seen on both lists.  I did manage to knock off a few of the very longest remaining entries.  I’ve still got 8 titles that are at least three hours long on the 2014 list, 3 of which are at least 6 hours long, and 1 of those is the TV miniseries Heimat which is almost 16 hours long.  The 2013 list has all of those remaining, plus four others, for a total of 12 entries at least three hours long.

Here are the 28 new movies I saw in July.  Highlighted films are ones to which I would give at least three stars out of five.