Month: May 2023

bookspolar exploration

The Last Viking by Stephen R. Brown

This is a fine biography of Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian polar explorer (b. 1872) who won several trophies in the heroic age of polar exploration, including the famed race to the south Pole in 1912, the first to navigate the Northwest passage, and the first to cross the Arctic by air. Amundsen learned a great deal from some early failures. He and his brother undertook a skiing expedition in Norway’s North for no particular reason but to prove their bravado; the journey nearly killed them both. Amundsen quickly realized the folly of slapdash preparation and he seldom made the same…

persian cinema

A Time for Drunken Horses

Unlike most Persian films, there’s no metaphor in this story. Some Kurdish children at the Iraqi border have it really, really tough. This film about four children – two sisters, an older sister bartered away for marriage, and their severely developmentally disabled older brother Madi is incredibly difficult to watch – the harrowing scenes of the care the siblings lavish on Madi will stay in your minds for a long time. There’s no question of CGI or elaborate sets – most what happened in the film almost certainly actually happened: the long dangerous treks over the border, the mules given…