Cheeps and Chirps for Aug. 27, 2016

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Aug. 27, 2016

Some Twitter for you!

• Comedy!

Prove it, buster.

@thejamietighe https://t.co/61hu397DiB

— Matt Milliken | masks on for safety | mostly @HOME (@memomoment) August 26, 2016

My child looks up from his textbook.

‘What side did you fight with in the Great Twitter War of 2016, daddy?’

I clench my fists in fury.

— Matt Milliken | masks on for safety | mostly @HOME (@memomoment) August 25, 2016

No, Angela, I didn't 'fuck up' at making popcorn; I heroically succeeded in creating charcoal!

— Matt Milliken | masks on for safety | mostly @HOME (@memomoment) August 22, 2016

A flashy but deeply flawed hero saves lives with ‘Schindler’s List’

At the start of World War II, a flashy businessman named Oskar Schindler detected the scent of something precious: opportunity.

In the fall of 1939, Schindler, a German living in occupied Krakow, Poland, was wining and dining Nazi officials and looking for a way to make money. After learning of a recently bankrupted factory, he tracked down its former accountant and quizzed him on the business’ fundaments. The suspicious accountant, Itzhak Stern, throws in with Schindler’s decidedly unorthodox business plan. Thus was born an unlikely, and nearly miraculous, partnership that wound up saving some 1,100 Jews from the Nazi death machine.

The story of that alliance is at the heart of Schindler’s List, American director Steven Spielberg’s 1993 outing. (Actually, it was his second picture that year, released after Jurassic Park.) Spielberg is perhaps the most successful director of all time. His credits include influential blockbusters such as Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and the Indiana Jones movies; other adventure movies such as A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, War of the Worlds and The Adventures of Tintin; and more serious dramas such as The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Amistad and Munich.

Having said all that, and without having viewed many of Spielberg’s acclaimed pictures, I’m prepared to argue that Schindler’s List is one of Spielberg’s most powerful features. Spielberg presents this story of the Holocaust in straightforward fashion, showing atrocious deeds with minimal moralizing or mawkishness. The film also brings forth some fascinating characters — Schindler himself, who has more substance than his outer flash would suggest, as well as the mostly stoic Stern and Schindler’s other crucial business partner, a vicious Nazi officer named Amon Goeth.