The DU Lounge
Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsIf you ever need a recommendation for a great movie,
The Professor and the Madman fits the bill.
I don't like Mel Gibson as a person, but he and Sean Penn, especially Sean Penn make this movie extraordinary in my opinion.
Captain Zero
(8,996 posts)Response to JMCKUSICK (Original post)
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JMCKUSICK
(6,977 posts)It's on an app called Fawesome and free.
On a side note, that app also has Sid and Nancy, a cult classic about the Sex Pistols.
IcyPeas
(26,040 posts)Also one of my favorite movies. It's a bleak, sad, crazed, drug fueled love story. I know a lot of people won't watch it because ... Sid Vicious... but it's a good movie of its time.
Also, Nancy's mother wrote a really good book about her:
And I Don't Want to Live This Life: A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder
Deborah Spungen
Response to JMCKUSICK (Reply #3)
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sarisataka
(23,228 posts)You spent 3 hours watching a movie you only heard about 2 hours ago?
IcyPeas
(26,040 posts)It's amazing to me that a story about the making of a dictionary could be so captivating and interesting. But it is.
The Professor and the Madman, masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary -- and literary history. The compilation of the OED, begun in 1857, was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, discovered that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand. ....
JMCKUSICK
(6,977 posts)Brother Buzz
(40,707 posts)Brother Buzz
(40,707 posts)The movie kinda glossed over his early years, and how Dr. William Chester Minor, a man with high morals and ethics, was driven insane by the atrocities of the Civil War. Ordered to brand a D on the cheeks of Irishmen who deserted and were captured, pushed him over the edge.
Dr. William Chester Minor was born and raised in Sri Lanka by US missionary parents, and returned to the US for college. A boatload of the words he submitted to OED originated in Sri Lanka. One word I remember was serendipity, possible the most pleasing word in the English language.