I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life & Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal (2006, Documentary)

The almost unbearably moving story of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, I Have Never Forgotten You takes us from his shtetl childhood to his 90th birthday party at Vienna's Hotel Imperial, where Hitler once kept a suite.

Inspirational documentary about a heroic, courageous man who never gave up his quest for justice. His hunt for Nazi war criminals began within weeks of his rescue from the Austrian concentration camp, Mauthausen, near Vienna. Working with little money and wavering support, Simon Weisenthal could not rest until the most egregious war criminals were found and brought to the attention of the world. This is a very fine documentary about a truly admirable man.

Recalling A Buddha: Memories of the Sixteenth Karmapa (Movie, 2009)

This is a movie about the life and death of an awakened being, the Sixteenth Karmapa, who was the leader of one of Tibetan Buddhism's four major schools of spiritual teachings: the Kagyu lineage. How he lived and how he died gives us the example of an awakened being, a person with a noble heart.

It is a magnificent presentation of the life of His Holiness the 16th Karmapa. This is a wonderful production filled with amazing photographs and interviews of eminent meditation masters from across the Tibetan pantheon.

It is a beautifully presented story of an incredible and inspiring person. And this is the first time I felt so close to His Holiness.

Facing the Giants (2006, Movie)

Facing the Giants feels like an overly earnest church sketch of the type many evangelical congregations use as a teaching tool on Sunday between the worship music and pastor's message.

Another excellent inspirational movie by Alex Kendrick, who not only directed and wrote, but starred in it. It's for people who loved Fireproof, definitely will want to add this one to their queue.

Taken (2008, Movie)

"Taken" shows Mills as a one-man rescue squad, a master of every skill, a laser-eyed, sharpshooting, pursuit-driving, pocket-picking, impersonating, knife-fighting, torturing, karate-fighting killing machine who can cleverly turn over a petrol tank with one pass in his car and strategically ignite it with another. Oh, yes, and it turns out that he's a former CIA agent.

How this man and his daughter could hope to leave France on a commercial flight doesn't speak highly of the French police. On the one hand, it's preposterous. On the other hand, it's very well-made.

The movie proves two things. (1) Liam Neeson can bring undeserved credibility to most roles just by playing them, and (2) Luc Besson, the co-writer, whose actioner-assembly line produced this film, turns out high-quality trash.

It's not great, but it's great fun.

Half Day at Huntington Library

This time we visited 'Drawn to Satire: John Sloan’s Illustrations for the Novels of Charles Paul de Kock' and 'The Color Explosion: Nineteenth Century American Lithography from the Jay T. Last Collection'.

From 1903 to 1905, American artist John Sloan created 53 etchings to illustrate comic novels by French author Charles Paul de Kock. The books—satires of French society in the first half of the 19th century, full of slapstick violence—were a perfect subject for Sloan’s lively etching style of short, expressive lines and loose cross-hatching. The project also seemed to inspire Sloan to look at 20th-century New Yorkers with the same satirical eye that de Kock trained on Parisians of the previous century. In the years that followed, Sloan produced a number of etchings featuring humorous vignettes of life in the busy metropolis. A selection of Sloan’s etchings as well as related prints, drawings, and books will be on view, inviting close study of Sloan’s working methods as he was becoming a prominent member of the band of urban realists known as the Ashcan school.

When a young German playwright named Alois Senefelder developed a new printmaking process in the 1790s, little did he know that his discovery would start a communication revolution. Lithography, or flat-surface printing, transformed the exchange of information and the behavior of everyday life for the next century and beyond. This technique brought art, literature, music, and science to the masses; gave rise to product advertising and consumer culture; educated a growing middle class; and turned commercial printing from a craft into an industry. Lithography also colorized a predominantly black-and-white print world.

The Color Explosion presents more than 200 examples of 19th-century American lithography from The Huntington’s Jay T. Last Collection of Lithographic and Social History. Advertising posters, art prints, calendars, certificates, children’s books, color-plate illustrations, historical views, product labels, sales catalogs, sheet music, toys & games, and trade cards are just some of the artifacts included in this comprehensive exhibition.