A Beautiful Mind Movie Review

The other day, I had the privilege of watching one of the most heartwarming movies I have seen in quite sometime. I still find myself confused as to why a few days ago was the first time that I had ever seen, A Beautiful Mind.

A Beautiful Mind is the story of a man named John Nash, who genius intellect and exquisite mind is clouded by what we call schizophrenia.

The film begins as the audience is introduced to cast of characters attending Princeton University. Among the many smart cookies we meet, we meet John Nash who appears to be awkward,lacks common social skills and has a hard time with regular interaction with people. We meet John's roommate Charles who also learns about Nash's social awkwardness when John informs him that he isn't too much of a people person. Through John's journey to achieve the unthinkable at Princeton he makes friends, and realizes there is an art form to hitting on women. That includes NOT telling them you want to have intercourse with them within the first sentence of meeting them.

After graduating from Princeton, John soon meets his future wife, Alicia. Alicia and John click instantly and before we know it, the audience is watching the two get married and have a baby. Not long after marriage, John's obsession with breaking codes becomes more intense,and he fears the government is after him. The viewers watch as John becomes increasingly more paranoid, and even begins to push the love of his life away. Soon John is admitted to the hospital and is diagnosed with schizophrenia. From this point on the movie then focuses on John and Alicia's struggle to cope with his diseases as well as remain a happily married couple. Eventually John learns that in order to over come his problem he must ignore the imaginary faces he's become a custom to, such as his good friend Charles and the imaginary government that finds him a threat. At the end of the movie, the audience sees that John finally learns to control his problem and becomes one of the most successful men in history. To make things even better, Alicia remains with John through everything, making this a perfect love story.

With an amazing cast of characters, beautiful script and cinematography this movie is a true masterpiece that keeps me believing that the impossible is nothing.

Mad Men.

             I have never really been a huge television watcher. Occasionally, I will watch a movie on FX or maybe even SpongeBob or Seinfeld while I’m eating dinner, but it has occurred to me that I’ve never really had a specific television show that I looked forward to watching on the regular. With that being said, I went to the nearest movie rental store, and picked out Mad Men season one. So far I have watched the first episode, and I have to admit I am pretty excited to watch the remainder of the season when I find the time.

                From what I understood from the first episode, the show basically describes the ideal life of a businessman working in an advertising business in the 1960s. It shows the lives of a few main characters including some women roles. Not only does it focuses completely on the lives of men, but clearly defines the roles of women in the sixties. With the stereotypical housewife, mass amount of alcohol, tobacco, affaires, and common workplace conflicts I find this show will be beneficial in teaching me the history of the sixties, as well as introducing me to different alcoholic beverages that I’ll be sure to try when I come of age.

                 Seeing that I have only seen one episode it is rather hard for me to choose one character to be my favorite. So far I would have to say I find Pete Campbell ‘s character the most intriguing. He’s young and fresh in the business world, and seems to have no shame when it comes to putting women in their proper place. After being insulted by a co-worker and seeing how work is really done in the office, at the end of the first episode the viewer is introduced to his softer/lower self-esteem side as he confronts a woman he insulted earlier in the day. I am excited to see how their relationship grows as I continue to get farther into the season.

March Madness

              For this blog post, I decided to watch the video titled Money and March Madness. This video focused on what is called “March Madness’ which is “the period of the annual NCAA college basketball tournament, with the majority of the competition set in March”. (Dictionary.com) After watching this short video I am able to say with complete confidence that “March Madness” is completely media driven. The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) claims that 90% of its revenue comes from all the media and ticket sales from men’s basketball sales. In total, it produces about 700 million dollars a year.

                Sonny Vaccaro was an American sports marking executive. Originally Sonny set up a deal with Nike persuading college coaches to encourage their players to wear Nike attire, and in return they would be compensated for it. Although Sonny’s thoughts about the industry contradicted with his morals, he continued with his work anyway. Vaccaro believed that players would often get short changed, and that everyone seemed to be making money, but the actual players. With this being a true fact, Sonny eventually quit his job, and decided to fight against the industry. Today, Vaccaro’s thoughts remain the same. Basically college athletics are a commercial enterprise and players do not receive all the benefits that they should be. One athlete found out that years after his basketball career in school his image was placed in a video game. He was not asked permission or paid for the use of his image, and this is purely wrong.

Currently Sonny Vaccaro is working with top lawyer students to sue the NCAA. They believe the documents college athletes are forced to sign deny them of crucial rights, and scam them into a lifetime of not being recognized when they clearly should be. I personally am not a college basketball fan. I know very little of them game, and pay even less attention to media surrounding it. After being informed of the issues at hand, I stand strong next to Sonny’s decision to sue the NCCA and hope for the best. On the other hand, this is a media driven society, so I’m really not surprised that this is happening.