British Actor Stephen Fry performs Greek Myths with a Storyteller’s Perspective: Homer’s The Odyssey Part 2

Posted on July 20, 2026 by Ralph Hanson

NOTE: This is the second of three blog posts taking a look at modern translations/retellings of Homer’s The Odyssey – each in more-or-less a different medium – Emily Wilson’s book with a new translation from Ancient Greek, Stephen Fry’s audiobooks presenting the Greek myths from the creation of the world though Odysseus’ long journey home, and Christopher Nolan‘s epic IMAX film taking us back to the era of the Trojan War and its aftermath. Each of these stories takes advantage of their specific medium and gives a distinct take on Western culture’s most famous and lasting story.

Stephen Fry’s interpretation of Homer’s The Odyssey. For links to purchase both this and the other three books in Fry’s Mythos series, click on the image.

Stephen Fry is a popular British comedian/ actor / author who is perhaps best know for the Jeeves and Wooster series on the BBC and PBS, based on the stories of P.G. Woodhouse, and the BBC sketch comedy series A Bit of Fry and Laurie. But he has also been in a number of dramas such as V For Vendetta.

Fry writes in his book Mythos that he was introduced to the Greek myths and Homeric epics with the book Tales from Ancient Greece when he was a boy. He writes, “The energy, humor, passion, particularity, and believable detail of their world held me enthralled from the very first.” He eventually assembled four collections of stories:

  • Mythos – The origin stories of the Greek gods,
  • Heroes – The story of the demigods (generally children with a human mother and a god for a father, such as Heracles and Orpheus),
  • Troy – An interpretation of Homer’s epic poem The Iliad, which is the story of the Trojan war, and…
  • Odyssey – An interpretation of Homer’s The Odyssey, about the end of the Trojan war and the aftermath and consequences of the Greek sacking the great city of Troy, told heavily from the point of view of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca.

Unlike Emily Wilson, Fry is not a translator of these stories but rather an interpreter, giving us context, implications, and connections between these myths originally told over an extended period of time. He views himself as first and foremost a storyteller for the modern reader:

“I am only concerned with telling the stories, not with explaining them or investigating there human truths and psychological insights that may lie behind them. The myths are fascinating enough in all their disturbing, surprising, romantic, comic, tragic, violent, and enchanting detail to stand on their own as stories.”

Fry’s retellings would certainly make for good reading, but what I have enjoyed over the last year is listening to Fry’s audiobook editions of these stories. Remember that the Greek myths all started out as oral traditions. Homer, if he actually existed as a single human being, was almost certainly not literate. (We discuss this in the first of these posts.)

Fry discusses how he came up with the idea of presenting his accounts of the Greek myths and stories as a series of three one-man shows in collaboration with theater director Tim Carroll at the end of the book Heroes. This trilogy  was presented in 2018 at the Shaw Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake. These plays then got expanded into the full-length books we have now, but I believe they are best heard, rather than read, with Fry’s wonderful vocal performances. With the audiobooks, you can imagine that you are sitting around a fire at night listening to this fantastic take on the origins of so many of our great stories today.

Over the course of these posts, I’m trying to look at how both the medium being used (book, audio, movie) and the person doing the telling make a big difference in how we may react to the story of The Odyssey. And just as I think that Dr. Emily Wilson’s recent translation matters in part because it was the first done by a woman, so does it also matter that Fry’s version is told by a gay man.

If you read a version of the Greek myths and Homeric epics that have not been “cleaned up” for public school use, you will quickly realize that there was a lot of queer culture in ancient Greece. Characters in these stories will have both same-sex and opposite-sex lovers over the course of their lives. And Fry thinks this matters. At a live broadcast of the digital Hay Festival, Fry said that queer relationships were considered ordinary by the ancient Greeks:

“We are aware that Hollywood is unlikely to spend too much time over the nature of things, and yes that is a pity, but on the other hand, the beauty of Greek culture is that it didn’t make anything particularly special about LGBT+ relationships… What was special was love – physical love and spiritual loveliness, all the different types of Greek word for love. But it didn’t make them ‘the story’…”

Stephen Fry gives a one hour presentation on the story of Troy

From Empire World History – Stephen Fry discusses how much of the Illiad and the Odyssey is real? (And what do we mean by “real”? Real stories, real beliefs, or things that could have been observed at one time actually happening?)

Have you read or listened to Fry’s books of Greek myths? If so, what did you think of them? Do you think it’s different to listen to these stories than to read them in print? Tell us about it in the comments.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story? – Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ Part 1

Posted on July 15, 2026 by Ralph Hanson

“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
Illustration of Homer from the NY Times. Click on image for link to an essay on how our stories, like The Odyssey, tell us who we are.

My favorite line from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical Hamilton: An American Musical comes near the end of the show when George Washington asks the question: “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” That inquiry can be applied to so much of our art and literature – especially with all the various adaptations of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey.

This summer’s biggest non-kids movie will undoubtedly be Christopher Nolan’s epic production of  The Odyssey, which also promises lots of criticism from people who have yet to see it; though given The Odyssey’s history, that can hardly come as a surprise. People have been getting bent out of shape about a recent translation of the classic by Dr. Emily Wilson; been entertained by British comedian and actor Stephen Fry retelling of a range of Greek myths, combined with current commentary and a queer perspective; and been upset about Black actress Lupita Nyong’o playing Helen of Troy along with trans actor Elliot Page reportedly playing the Greek trickster Sinon (who is portrayed in Virgil’s Aeneid as allowing himself to be captured by the Trojans to convince them that the Greeks have all departed from Troy and left the Trojan Horse behind as a gift).

So instead of wallowing in internet twaddle surrounding all this, let’s find out a bit more about how who re-tells this classic story of Western culture affects how we perceive it.

Perhaps the hardest thing here is knowing where to start. So let’s start with Homer himself.

Click to purchase Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey.

You’ve likely been taught somewhere along the way that Homer was a blind, illiterate poet who composed The Illiad, about the decade of fighting over the city of Troy; and The Odyssey, concerning primarily the hero/king/warrior Odysseus’s attempts to get home after the sacking of Troy. Wilson, with her translation published in 2017, starts off with an extended introductory essay explaining what we know of the origins of these two epics:

“This takes us to what is known as the Homeric Question, which is really a whole cluster of questions about the composition of The Iliad and The Odyssey. The Question is given a capital Q, because scholars still disagree on some crucial issues even after a couple of centuries of discussion. How exactly did the Homeric poems as we have them emerge from the oral tradition that preceded them? Who was Homer? Was there a single author of The Odyssey, or several? Did the same person produce The Iliad and The Odyssey? When exactly did the poems get written down, and how? Can we trace earlier and later parts of the poems, or tie particular passages to different geographical locations? And to what extent do the poems reflect real historical events, cultures, and peoples—a real Trojan War, or the real Mycenean civilization of late Bronze Age Greece (which existed from the sixteenth to the twelfth centuries BCE)? Most generally, how exactly did multiple people over hundreds of years across the Greek-speaking world work together to create this magnificent, challenging, and coherent work of poetic storytelling? Design “by committee” has a very bad name, and yet The Odyssey seems like an unexpected success. How was it done?”

Wilson doesn’t supply us with easy answers to these questions, but does note that our modern understanding of these epics is drawn from medieval manuscripts. Before that, where did these stories originate? It’s too complex to go into in depth here, but Wilson says there is a strong consensus that The Odyssey is a “written text based on an oral tradition.” Perhaps an oral poet worked with a literate scribe to compose the work.  Wilson thinks it is most likely that the Illiad and Odyssey were written by multiple people over an extended period of time. As to when The Odyssey was written down is just as problematic, with the best estimate being something between the eighth and seventh century BC (or BCE – Before Common Era as scholars would typically put it).

In an essay for The New Yorker published in 2017, Wilson writes that people expected her to portray Odysseus’ wife Penelope in a more heroic light, as “an empowered woman.” But instead she instead portrays female characters in what she describes as a more realistic light, dealing with the limited choices women of the era had. While Odysseus had many affairs and fathered multiple children while he spent 10 years trying to get home, and he expected no criticism for his behavior; the ever-constant Penelope had only the options of either staying true to her missing husband or marrying one of her suitors. She did not have the agency to make any other decisions.

Wilson gives as an extend example how the slave women in Odysseus’ household are portrayed. A number of these “house maids,” as they are often called in previous translations, are presented as disloyal “sluts” or “whores” for having sex with some of the suitors of Penelope. Previous translations show them as being “disloyal servants” to their master. Wilson, portrays them as slaves who have little control over their lives and who are victimized a second time when they are all hanged for the crime of being raped.

Wilson has also been criticized for having the characters in her translation speak in modern English rather than some 18th or 19th century version of the language. Wilson points out that English didn’t even exist as a language when The Odyssey was being composed, so a modern translation is no less authentic of a presentation. While the original Greek text was written in  dactylic hexameter, as was expected for poetry of the time, Wilson’s translation is written in iambic pentameter, the meter that Shakespeare and much of English poetry is composed in. So while she has changed the meter from the original, she has created a translation that feels like poetry to English readers.

For myself, I’m a little over halfway through Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, and I find it eminently readable and enjoyable. And the more modern take on the language and meter makes it easier to read and allows it to maintain the spirit of the Ancient Greek original.

You can read more about what Wilson has to say about her translation in the following articles.

Emily Wilson on why she has done new translations of Homer

Emily Wilson reads from her new translation of The Odyssey, in Greek and English:

Which translation of Homer’s The Odyssey have you read? Tell us about it in the comments.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Is your phone listening to you and serving up ads based on what it hears?

Posted on July 2, 2026 by Ralph Hanson

While I was visiting my older sister over the weekend, she maintained, as so many people do, that her phone listens to her and then serves up ads based on what she was just talking about.

As is typical with these cases, Big Sis claims she hadn’t been doing any searching on the particular topic, but had talked about it. Then Flash! Presto! that topic starts showing up in her ads. “What else could it be?” she asks.

Is your phone listening to you? CBS News

Tech journalist David Pogue asked 20 people whether they had ever noticed this phenomenon, and 18 of them said yes. “We were talking about coconut, and this ad popped up about coconut!” an undergrad told me. “This particular company was selling coconuts and the ad popped up. I mean, it was so random.”

So Pogue dug into this question for CBS Sunday Morning, and among the people he interviewed was Northeastern University professor David Choffnes who conducted a study to see if our phones were listening to us.  Pogue emphasizes Choffnes is no apologist for the online advertising industry, noting how the apps on our phones often play fast and loose with the privacy setting we agree to (especially on Android phones).

Pogue himself also conducted a simple, non-scientific test – He put his phone on the table in front of him, talked for 10 minutes about men’s cologne, something he has never dealt with online, and had no ads for cologne show up. He goes on to note that another researcher says that phones just don’t have the capacity for that level of surveillance. “The idea of listening to every conversation around the world, and interpreting them and looking for certain words, and then matching them to the ads, is impossible” researcher Ari Paparo says. “It’s just not feasible.”

So if your phone is not listening to you to serve up ads, what is it doing?

  • Your phone’s operating system (Android or iOS) does listen for its digital assistant trigger words such as Hey Siri or OK Google which tell it you are asking the assistant a question. And once in a while those services will be accidentally triggered. But individual apps are not allowed to listen to you – they are blocked by your phone maker.  Nelson Aguilar, writing for CNET in 2025, also notes that covert listening to you by your phone would violate the federal Wiretap Act.
  • The apps on your phone do pay attention to your demographics, everything you search for, everything you share on social media, and where you are throughout the day. They also pay attention to every ad that’s been served up to you.
  • The actual answer may be more sinister – your phone and its apps already know so much about you there is no need for it to listen to you. They know an incredible amount about you, including your spending habits, travel habits, viewing habits, etc.  Joanna Stern, writing for the Wall Street Journal back in 2019, found with a review of 80 different iPhone apps that all but one had multiple trackers operating within them.
  • Given how many ads we are exposed to in a day, which can be as many as 10,000, we cannot possibly notice them all. So the ads we pay attention to are the ones the feature what we have been just talking about. So in other words, we are choosing to attend to ads that are relevant to what we’ve just been talking about. So the conversation triggers us, not our phones.

So, in the end, your phone doesn’t listen to you to serve up ads because it would be too difficult and it doesn’t need to. Which is not really comforting.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Discovering David Hockney’s “Grand Canyon”

Posted on June 23, 2026 by Ralph Hanson

Editor’s Note: British artist David Hockney, famous  for his vivid paintings of brief moments in southern California life, died June 11, 2026 at the age of 88. He was best known for his work “A Bigger Splash,” depicting the instant after a person dove into a residential swimming pool with the splash still in the air and no one visible. Hockney was a rare artist to become both honored and immensely wealthy while still alive.  His obituary from the Washington Post says:

“Mr. Hockney’s art, which earned him international renown and a colossal fortune, encompassed paintings of azure swimming pools and the artist’s gay friends; kaleidoscopic portraits collaged together from dozes of cocktail-napkin-size Polaroids; room-size installations using computer-controlled theatrical light fixtures; and, in later years, garish landscapes “drawn” with fingers on an iPad.”

“A Bigger Splash,” 1967, David Hockney, appearing in the Washington Post.

Prior to the summer of 1998, I had never heard of British painter David Hockney, famed for his vivid colors and depiction of upscale, southern California gay life. If I had given his work any thought, I would have likely dismissed him as depicting a brightly colored fantasy of a modern idealized world. I personally preferred the dark drama of Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” or the pastoral yearning of Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World.”

But then I saw an article in the Sunday Washington Post, dated June 27, 1998, about a giant set of 60 canvases with the title “A Bigger Grand Canyon” by Hockney that was being exhibited in the National Museum of American Art. Style section writer Henry Allen described the 24-foot wide collection of 60 sizable canvases arrayed in a grid as something that needed to be experienced, not just seen.

In the late ’80s/early 90s, Dear Wife and I resided in northern Arizona about an hour-and-a-half from the canyon, and we visited it multiple times. After all, when you live in Flagstaff you can say, “Want to go to the Grand Canyon this afternoon?” By 1998, when I saw the article about the Hockney’s painting, we lived in West Virginia, about four hours from Washington, D.C. and the Museum of American Art.

Entrance to the Magic of Myth exhibition.

I had promised my then eight-year-old son that I would take him to DC to see the Star Wars: The Magic of Myth exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. The year before I had taken him to see the theatrical screenings of the special editions of the original trilogy, and he had been quite impressed by the spectacle. So I thought I could stretch my luck, taking an eight-year-old boy to two art exhibits in one day. Unsurprisingly, he loved the  Star Wars exhibit, with props and costumes from Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, along with the magnificent art-decoish original concept art by Ralph McQuarrie.

Oldest son was then patient with his father’s insistence on spending time with the Hockney painting that had little relevance to him, despite the fact that he had been born in Arizona.

Photo of Hockney’s “A Bigger Grand Canyon” by Nathalie Matan from its permanent home at the National Gallery of Australia.

Hockney’s image of the canyon captures both the scope and grandeur of the Grand Canyon. He started with creating a panoramic view of the canyon by shooting an array of Polaroids about an hour after dawn, extending 5 images vertically and 12 horizontally, for a mosaic of 60 photos. He then painted “A Bigger Grand Canyon” in bright, more-vivid-than-life colors. In his review, Allen writes:

“[T]his [panoramic] view of the Grand Canyon has always been dismissed as impossible to paint. It is too big to paint in one-point perspective, where everything is drawn so it recedes to a single, hypothetical vanishing point where all of the receding lines would meet. Even three- or four-point perspective wouldn’t work without distorting the view until it lost the postcard quality this picture retains.”

Instead, Hockney creates a multifaceted portrait of the canyon, with 60 separate one-point perspective paintings that give the viewer a sense of being at the canyon itself. I am not an art scholar and am not qualified to give any sort of critique of Hockney’s giant collection of paintings, but seeing that work is one of the most memorable art experiences I’ve been to, along with small collection of Van Gogh’s at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, a show at the Vancouver Art Gallery focusing on Picasso’s relationships with the six most important women in his life, and a show at the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth on the friendship between Picasso and Matisse.

Please, do not think that I am putting Hockney in the same class as Van Gogh, Picasso and Matisse; I’m only talking about the impact these particular shows had on me upon seeing them in person.

If there is one lesson to take away from these exhibit visits, it’s the importance of getting to see original art in person. Reproductions and photos are all well and good, but there is no substitute for seeing the real thing.

Now, I really need to get the Art Institute of Chicago to see Hopper’s “Nighthawks.”

Whose art would you most like to see in person. Tell us in the comments.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ralph’s Current Media: Disclosure Day, Postmodern Jukebox, Quick Deductions, and Edward Abbey

Posted on June 19, 2026 by Ralph Hanson

Lots of fun items in my media diet this summer including movies, music, video games and old books. Here’s what I’ve been paying particular attention to lately:

  • Emily Blunt in Stephen Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day.”

    Steven Spielberg’s new contemporary science fiction movie Disclosure Day is an intriguing and exciting — if somewhat derivative — speculative look at the question of how and why the government might have been hiding UFOs, especially the stereotypical “grey aliens.” (You know, the slight-bodied, aliens with grey skin, big heads and giant eyes that show up in all the standard alien encounters.)

    I really enjoyed this movie starring Emily Blunt as a Kansas City TV weather woman who suddenly finds herself speaking in an alien clicking language on the air. It also stars Josh O’Connor as an Edward Snowdon-like government whistleblower who has a strange connection with Blunt’s character (You probably saw O’Connor recently as the priest in the third Knives Out movie); Coleman Domingo (who seems to be this year’s Pedro Pascal, showing up everywhere), and Colin Firth as a the head of a mysterious tech agency. (Also, am I the only one who thinks that Firth’s character looks and sounds a lot like a somewhat younger Ridley Scott?)

    I noted at the beginning that though I really enjoyed Disclosure Day, I thought it was quite derivative. It, of course, referenced a host of Spielberg films in including Close Encounters, ET, and Minority Report, but also a bit less obviously The Post (the central importance of journalists holding the government to account) and The Fablemans (looking back at where director Steven Spielberg comes from). There are also clear references to individuals having unexplained mental connections to aliens as with M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs and attempts to recreate one’s past as in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. Finally, it deals with questions of how meeting aliens affects people of faith, as with both Contact and Prometheus.

  • Quirky video game Quick Deduction Short Mysteries
    Short Mysteries would seem to be a video game from a genre with only one entry. This odd little gem gives the player a single non-moving image with a single question such as “Who is the killer?” or “What was the murder weapon?” You then use a detective-style magnifying glass to point to the answer to the question within the image. This deceptively simple Japanese game has you scouring the image trying to find the sometimes subtle clue of guilt. It could have easily also been a series in a puzzle magazine – it’s that simple. There are 39 individual  mysteries in this game, and determined player could likely complete it in under an hour. But that’s not really the point. Pick it up when you have a few minutes and solve two or three of them, and then come back to it another day. You can purchase it as a digital download for about $4 from the Nintendo download store.

  • Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire”

    Edward Abbey’s southwestern classic Desert Solitaire
    I have read or listened to Edward Abbey’s account of his time working as a seasonal park ranger for Arches National Monument more times than I can count. Lately I’ve been given to reading it every summer. In it, Abbey talks about working at Arches in the late 1950s before the world discovered the awesome national parks and monuments in Utah. (In fairness, many of us initially discovered these parks through Desert Solitaire.) I suppose one would consider the book non-fiction, but it might have more in common with Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with its gonzo combination of journalism and fantasy than with typical environmental non-fiction. It’s best not to ask yourself how much of the book deals with things that actually happened. Instead, look at it as book that is all true.

Audio excerpts from Desert Solitaire
Editor’s Note: This is available as an audio book on Amazon/Audible.

  • And finally – Postmodern Jukebox’s 2001: Tap Odyssey featuring Demi Remnick
    Scott Bradlee’s retro-chic Postmodern Jukebox reimagines a wide range of pop music with vintage-style covers.  This instrumental medley of science fiction movie and TV themes provides the accompaniment for tap dancer Demi Remnick. While the tap dancing is clearly the star here, the jazz combo music is excellent, too, reminding me of Ron Carter’s old album Empire Jazz featuring music from John Williams’ The Empire Strikes Back score.

    Be careful. Once you go to the PMJ YouTube page you can find that you’ve lost an entire afternoon watching “just one more video.” Highly recommend your checking out their current tour. Dear Wife and I saw their Christmas show five or six years ago and had a great time.

What are are you reading/watching/playing this summer?
Let us know in the comments.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ralph’s Current Media: Disclosure Day, Postmodern Jukebox, Quick Deductions, and Edward Abbey

Everyone’s Gone To the Movies: Christopher Nolan’s early, popular and weird films

Posted on June 3, 2026 by Ralph Hanson

Christopher Nolan in 2024

I would be hard pressed to name a more interesting activet film director than Christopher Nolan. His upcoming adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey is the most anticipated movie of the summer, and with Oppenheimer, he managed to turn a historical science drama dealing with anti-semitism and quantum mechanics and having no digital effects into a summer blockbuster.

To me, the most fascinating thing about Nolan is what a varied library of films he’s produced over his nearly 30-year career so far.

I would never try to name his best film or try to rank his works from best to worst. But I will discuss my favorites of the dozen feature films so far in his filmography.

Favorite Early Film – The Prestige 

The Prestige was one of two Victorian-era magician films to come out in 2006 (along with Neil Burger’s The Illusionist), both of which, in my view, were excellent. But The Prestige stood out for its imaginative storytelling. It is the tale of two competing magicians played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale (who has been in a number of Nolan’s films, including his Dark Knight trilogy) with Michael Caine (another Nolan regular) playing an ingénieur (or magic trick engineer). But the most notable performance is from David Bowie playing a fictionalized version of the enigmatic electrical engineer Nikola Tesla.

The movie’s title, as Caine explains, is part of the structure of a magic trick: The pledge, the turn, and the prestige. And the movie’s screenplay (co-written by Christopher and his brother Jonathan) follows that same structure. (There’s a great explanation of this from Michael Caine in the trailer below.)

The Presige, despite coming after Nolan’s massive success of Batman Begins, qualifies in my mind as the last of his early films, being a relatively small-budget production of unfamiliar material.

If you have not seen it yet, do no research on the movie or the book. Just sit down in a darkened room and be prepared to be transported into a world of magic, competition and revenge.

Favorite Blockbuster – Dunkirk

Nolan has made so many acclaimed blockbusters – his multi-Oscar winning Oppenheimer; his genre-defining The Dark Knight with Heath Ledger’s astonishing turn as the Joker; or his time-bending science-fiction epic Interstellar that has been compared to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – all of which were financially, artistically, and dramatically successful. But it was the smallest of his “big” films (with a budget of $100 million), Dunkirk, that has left the strongest impression on me.

Dunkirk tells the story of the small-boats rescue flotilla sent out to bring home the British troops trapped on the beaches of France in 1940. The movie, shot primarily on IMAX 70mm film, tells the story over three timelines:

  • Over one week from the point of view of the soldiers trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk;
  • Over one day from the point of view of one of the small boats sent in to rescue the troops;
  • And over one hour, from the point of view of a fighter pilot trying to protect the troops.

The three narratives are woven together throughout the film, and though three timelines could be a mess, instead they show a converging story where the three narratives all end at the same point. Dunkirk could easily be compared to Kubrick’s 2001 because it has very little dialog, telling the story instead primarily through cinematography, sound effects, and a stunning score by Hans Zimmer.  (I’m not generally a huge Zimmer fan, but his score brilliantly advanced the tension within Dunkirk.)

I was fortunate enough to see Dunkirk during its initial IMAX run, but it is worth seeing under whatever format you have available. But like so many of Nolan’s films, it calls for watching with your full attention in a darkened room.

Dunkirk has an ensemble cast including Fionn Whitehead, Harry Styles, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance and Tom Hardy. But this is not a story of stars or celebs – it’s the visual storytelling that matters.

Favorite “weird” film – Tenet

It is only fair to note that many of Nolan’s films could fall into a range of categories. For example, his debut commercial film Memento would fall into both the “weird” category and “early” category; and Interstellar, with its strongly non-linear and time-bending structure, could be both a “blockbuster” and “weird” film. But I will hold up his COVID pandemic release of Tenet as my favorite of his weird films.

Tenet is the only one of Nolan’s films that could potentially be considered a flop, having been released in the fall 0f 2020, when theaters were just beginning to reopen from the pandemic lockdown. As I wrote at the time:

The release has not gone particularly well.  Made on a budget of $200 million, Tenet has made $45 million in the US and $262 million internationally. And it’s not because people aren’t interested in seeing it – they’re just not ready, at least in most of the US, to go out to the movies.

I went to see Tenet at my local theater last Sunday at a 1 p.m. matinee.  I figured it would be reasonably safe given that I was expecting only sparse attendance at that time for a movie that had been in theaters for a month.  I was correct.  There were about 7 people total at the screening in a mid-sized theater at my local multiplex.

It was great fun to go see my first movie in a theater since probably February of this year.  Popcorn, a Diet Pepsi, and a darkened theater with a bigger than life movie.  Admittedly, it was not the same as going to Council Bluffs to see the latest Nolan release at the IMAX as I had been hoping to back in December, but it was still a lot of fun.

(Tenet ended up earning $58 million in the US and a total of $365 million globally.)

But Tenet was also a challenging film. It was an action thriller that moved in two temporal directions at once. Guns fired ammo that moved back in time, cars drove backwards down the road and through time, commando teams attacked a single target in a “temporal pincer move.” Don’t try to make sense of you. You won’t be able to. It’s a hoot to watch as long as you don’t really try to make sense of it. Most of Nolan’s films play around with timelines to some degree, but for Tenet, the screwy timeline was the central point.

For me, I think Nolan was trying to get back to the level of weirdness he was allowed to have when he made low-budget movies. But it was a bit too much for a big budget pandemic-era movie to carry.

Following – The freshman film that tells you exactly who Nolan will be as a director

Following was Nolan’s first movie, shot in black & white on 16 mm film, that he  self-financed with mostly friends and relatives as actors. It’s a neo-noir crime thriller that is told out of sequence where you are never quite sure what’s going on until the final reel. It’s a surprisingly good movie given it was shot on weekends over a several-month period where the film was being paid for each week out of Nolan’s day-job paycheck.

The amazing thing about Following is that you can see in it almost every central characteristic of Nolan’s subsequent films. It’s a tight 70-minute flick, and is well worth a view on the library-connected Kanopy streaming service. (Kanopy is a free movie and TV streaming service connected the e-book and audiobook library service Libby/OverDrive. You log in using your credential from your local public or academic library.)

So, what are your favorite Christopher Nolan films? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Everyone’s Gone To the Movies: Christopher Nolan’s early, popular and weird films

Fun with Mando and Baby Yoda

Posted on May 30, 2026 by Ralph Hanson

Poster for Star Wars: The Mandalorian and GroguI went to see director Jon Favreau’s  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu at The Grand Theater in downtown Lincoln, NE Thursday at 9:40 a.m. with my Dear Wife. That may be the earliest screening either of us have seen at a movie theater. I had been looking forward to M&G quite a bit as I had enjoyed the Disney+ series chronicling the adventures of Mando and Baby Yoda.

The Grand is a great place to see a movie, especially on the Ultra DLX screen. It’s not quite IMAX size, and it follows normal widescreen format; but otherwise, it’s nearly the equal of the iconic giant screen experience. And the Grand is only two hours away from home for us out here on the prairie. On the other hand, when I go to the Twin Cities to visit my 98-year-old dad, the IMAX is only 5 minutes away…

So, the critics have been relatively ‘meh’ on the film, giving it a “it’s fine” rating of 62%, making it neither “Rotten” or “Fresh” at review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. David Sims’ Atlantic review is pretty typical with the uninspiring headline “A Star Wars Movie to Fall Asleep to.” He writes:

“Compared with the most recent Star Wars films, which prompted fierce debate, The Mandalorian and Grogu seems unlikely to truly offend anyone; it is neither a confusing mess nor so offbeat as to divide the fan base. Instead, it’s content to be a nothing burger, two dutiful hours of laser blasts and flat dialogue that will do just enough to keep toys stacked on shelves.”

I can’t disagree with Sims’ review in principle, but I must admit that I did enjoy M&G. The movie was a fun visit to Star Wars friends with a great score, a dose of humor, and a storyline that didn’t demand a master’s degree in Star Warsology. Would I have liked something more? Of course! Did that keep me from having a good time and a smile on my face leaving the theater? Nope? (My Dear Wife enjoyed being out on an out-of-town date, but was not as generous in her response to the movie.)

Louis Chilton, writing for Britain’s The Independent, had what I think is the most fair critical reaction to the film, which pretty much matches my own feelings. With a $165-million world opening weekend, M&G had the lowest modern opening for a Star Wars movie, even less than the financially disappointing Solo: A Star Wars Story. What Chilton says doesn’t get mentioned nearly as much, is that M&G cost only a little more than half of what Solo did, so even with a fairly modest opening (and we are seriously calling $165 million “modest”?) it is still going to make lots of money for The Mouse. It also keeps the adorable Grogu/Baby Yoda in the cultural forefront, it gives a fun family movie experience, and it isn’t weighed down by the enormous level of lore that helped sink 2019’s Episode 9 – The Rise of Skywalker. (Critically sink it… the ninth outing of the original series made more than $1 billion globally.) Perhaps even more importantly, after a host of announced and cancelled Star Wars films, this one made it out the door.

Chilton also is unreserved in his praise for Ludwig Göransson’s score. It’s an impossible task for any composer to live up to the legacy of the John Williams’ nine scores for the Skywalker-themed stories, but he has created a new, gorgeous collection of themes to move the franchise forward. (Göransson is best known for scoring Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther movies along with last-year’s standout Sinners.)

So, would I have liked this to have been a better movie? Sure, why not? But Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu gave me movie joy at the start of the summer. I fell in love with the original Star Wars back when it was initially released back in 1977 when I infamously went to see it every weekend at my local theater in central Iowa. (Yes, I saw it 13 times in its initial release…. This was before home video, and I really liked it…) And now that the franchise is approaching 50 years old, I’m not looking for it to provide the thrills it gave me as a 17-year-old. (Though the Disney+ series Andor has absolutely breathed new life into a franchise that has in many way played out.)

Meanwhile, I can’t wait for Christopher Nolan‘s July release of The Odyssey. I’m going to have a lot to say about both Nolan and his Odyssey as the summer progresses, but you can’t accuse the British auteur of making the same movie over and over again. Apart from his excellent Dark Knight trilogy, all of  his films have been unique and individual.

What did you think of Mando and Baby Yoda? And what are you looking forward to this summer?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Fun with Mando and Baby Yoda

Did no one pay attention to what the creation of Skynet led to?

Posted on May 21, 2026 by Ralph Hanson

Image of The TerminatorArtificial Intelligence, AI, especially in its generative AI large language model form, has taken front and center lately in the discussion of contemporary culture. There are all of the awful AI-generated political memes out there, deepfake nude images, faulty legal briefs with “hallucinated” citations, student essays and online discussion board posts created by ChatGPT and its various relations, and endless social media posts with dubious connections with reality created by bots.

There’s even a name for all this stuff – AI Slop. And it’s showing up everywhere in online culture and in our classrooms.

This is an AI-generated image of President Trump as a Jesus-like figure healing a man. After the president was criticized for sharing the image, he told CBS News, ““I viewed that as a picture of me being a doctor in fixing — you had the Red Cross right there, you had, you know, medical people surrounding me,” he said. “And I was like the doctor, you know, as a little fun playing the doctor and making people better. So that’s what it was viewed as. That’s what most people thought.”

President Donald Trump is fond of sharing AI images of himself looking incredibly buff in rather extreme situations, but he did generate some rare criticism from his supporters when he posted an image depicting him as Jesus healing a sick man. The president’s social media team soon took the image down, and Mr. Trump said he thought the image was just depicting him as a doctor helping people get healthy.

I saw a discussion on one of the microblogging services (X, Threads, Bluesky, etc.) earlier this week asking whether teachers still thought there was any point in having online discussion boards when a goodly percentage of students just feed the prompt into ChatGPT and get something that looks like academic writing. (The discussion actually led to some really good ideas being shared to help steer students away from the world of AI.)

I found it discouraging over the last year to see how many of my students tried to use generative AI to complete their homework. If a student does nothing more than feed the assignment prompt into the AI model and use directly what is generated, it’s pretty easy to recognize that it is not authentic student work. And while I recognize that being able to use AI in a work environment may be an important skill going forward, that was not among the skills I was teaching in my communication law, comm and society, and media literacy classes.

There’s been a huge amount of AI in the news as of late – here’s a sampling of recent stories worth paying attention to:

And finally…

Do any of you remember watching James Cameron’s 1984 film The Terminator about a relentless killer robot (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) powered by a self-aware AI network called Skynet? No particular reason for asking…

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Did no one pay attention to what the creation of Skynet led to?

Questions Worth Asking (Maybe): Perfect transcript, Perfect Jeopardy player, Imperfect corporate retreat, Perfect novelist

Posted on May 17, 2026 by Ralph Hanson
  • Why should every student should get their first “B” as soon as possible? (Atlantic gift Link)
    As a long-time college professor, one of my biggest frustrations was having students who were desperate to maintain their perfect 4.0 GPA. I had one of my best students ever avoid taking a statistics class because they were afraid they might get a B in it. Years later, once they were a prominent college professor, they admitted that had been a big mistake. The Atlantic just ran a recent article discussing the grade inflation crisis at Harvard University where students feel entitled to a perfect GPA when they are spending so much money on their education.One of the biggest problems I see looking back at higher ed these days is that too many people think education is about building a perfect resume or getting the best paying job rather than being about becoming a well-rounded, educated person. Building resumes and setting up great careers are both important. But so is getting a good education.
  • Why does everyone love Jeopardy champ Jamie Ding? (NY Times gift Link)
    Dear Wife and I are die-hard daily Jeopardy fans, and we love seeing someone go on an extended run on the show. But it is easy to start getting annoyed with a player whose streak has gone on too long.Except when that player is the unfailing nice Jamie Ding.

    Ding described himself as a “faceless bureaucrat and law student” in his nightly introduction, but the realty that he downplayed was that his day job is providing affordable housing to people in New Jersey. He charmingly always dressed with an orange item of clothing, he unfailingly applauded good plays by his opponents, and he never seemed to have an ego problem. At a time where we seem to be celebrating performative cruelty in our country, Jamie Ding was an incredible breath of fresh air.

  • Why don’t you want to model your corporate retreat on a reality show competition? (WSJ gift link)
    When our second son was nearing delivery, I told my Dear Wife that she should plan on giving birth on a specific day so I could miss a day-long departmental retreat. When the day arrived, she woke up at 5 a.m. and told me I would not have to go to the event.Now, the retreat I was trying to avoid was just a day of endless meetings on campus, but sometimes work retreats can go horribly wrong. And sometimes those horrid outcomes could have been easily predicted.

    In 2017, the tech company Plex planned a $500,000 retreat at a beach-front hotel  in Honduras with a Survivor reality show theme. What could possibly go wrong?  Well, hiring an ex-Navy SEAL to run physical challenges for out-of-shape tech employees might have been the first mistake. Hiring a hotel to host that was going through management changes and had no idea how to serve a big group event was likely the second.

    The Wall Street Journal link tells a horror story of alligators, fire ants, and food poisoning.  But at least some of the participants report nearly ten years later that the retreat was a great bonding experience and “one of the most fun trips ever.” Sure… I’m just glad I avoided my retreat and got a great kid instead.

  • And finally – Why do I love Florida writer Carl Hiaasen? (The Atlantic gift link)
    If you have never read Carl Hiaasen, start with Skinny Dip and then move on to Basket Case. Or just pick up whichever title you find at your public library. You can thank me later.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Questions Worth Asking (Maybe): Perfect transcript, Perfect Jeopardy player, Imperfect corporate retreat, Perfect novelist

Welcome to the next phase of Living in a Media World

Posted on May 12, 2026 by Ralph Hanson
Marquee for The World Theatre with Ralph Hanson pictured. Text: HAPPY RETIREMENT RALPH HANSON, CASABLANCA, TUESDAY 700, FREE ADMISSION

On Tuesday, May 12, 2026, I’m celebrating my retirement from UNK by hosting a 7 p.m. showing of the movie Casablanca at The World Theatre here in Kearney. Everyone is invited.

So, it’s been awhile…

Posts here over the last year have been rather erratic as I’ve had a busy time finishing up my 38-year career as a journalism and communication professor. For the last 18 years I’ve been a teacher and administrator here at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Before that, I worked for 15 years at West Virginia University and five-and-a-half years at Northern Arizona University. But as of last Friday, I’m now retired, at least from teaching at the university.

But that doesn’t mean my career is over. I’m now going to finally have time to write again on a scheduled basis, so you can expect to start seeing posts here much more frequently. Here is some of what I have planned going forward:

  • I will, as always, have details about the news in the mass communication industry. These posts will be the first drafts of the updates for the next edition of my textbook Mass Communication: Living in a Media World.
  • Talk about what I’m watching, reading, listening to, and playing. (Yes, more time for video games is definitely on my agenda.)
  • Back during the lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, I started a series discussing the more than 200 movies we watched at home while we were all cooped up.  But life interfered with the series, and it never got very far. I want to restart and complete it.
  • Examine some of the trends of how we interact with media.
  • Write about current events that don’t necessarily connect to media (though they almost always do…)
  • Write about my travels by motorcycle.

I already have a list of more than 20 blog posts I want to write about, ranging from examining whether your phone is listening to you to building a lightweight adventure touring motorcycle.

Feel free to comment to join in on the conversation!

Hope you all stick around.

Ralph

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Welcome to the next phase of Living in a Media World