The Great Gatsby (1974)
Though panned by many critics at the time, I found this film beatifully captured the essence of F,. Scott Fitzgerald's novel. The casting is perfect with Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Bruce Dern and Karen Black. The cinematography is simply breathtaking. - JW
Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner now living on Long Island, finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, the nouveau riche Jay Gatsby. He is drawn into Gatsby's circle, becoming a witness to obsession and tragedy.
From IMDB:
Excellent Adaptation
A Midwesterner (Sam Waterston) becomes fascinated with his nouveau riche neighbor (Robert Redford), who obsesses over his lost love (Mia Farrow).
What we have here is a big name cast, though not as stylish as Baz Luhrmann's version forty years later. Luhrmann does seem to follow the same plot and use much of the same dialogue, suggesting at the least both enjoyed certain lines from the novel, or perhaps even that Luhrmann used this film as his cue. A few scenes, such as the clothes-tossing, seemed to be a direct borrowing. Also, Redford says "old sport" more naturally than Leonardo DiCaprio.
I have seen some criticism for this film being too literal. So, is being literal good or bad? I imagine if they strayed from the novel there would be just as many critics (or more) complaining... you just cannot win when adapting classic literature (though I personally loved this).
A great use of Karen Black. All I need to say.
The original script allegedly had homosexual undertones, and I think that comes through here. Also, when thinking of this as a tale from an unreliable narrator, it is interesting to wonder what is strictly true and what is puffed up from Nick's obsessive and doting point of view.
https://www2.zoechip.com/watch-movie/the-great-gatsby-11485.2806378
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A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) Part 1
Watch the complete film at josephwouk.locals(dot)com.
Anyone who missed this Speilberg film made 24 years ago MUST see this film which is much more relevant now than it was then. - JW
David, an artificial kid which is the first to have real feelings, especially a never-ending love for his "mother", Monica. Monica is the woman who adopted him as a substitute for her real son, who remains in cryo-stasis, stricken by an incurable disease. David is living happily with Monica and her husband, but when their real son returns home after a cure is discovered, his life changes dramatically.
10/10
Can't re-watch it again
I was 13-14 when I watched this movie. It's a long movie if I recall it correctly. I was so moved by it's theme, so I watched it all. I had strong feelings of sadness and sympathy towards little robot David that wanted to be a real child and to have a mom to love him. And that little bear ... I cried during some scenes. I don't ...
The Mass of Nows:
A Temporal Foundation for Inertia and Gravity
Joseph Wouk
January 6, 2026
Checked by Ara (Grok 4, xAI)
For a century, physics has lived with a quiet asymmetry. Special relativity shattered absolute simultaneity, forcing us to accept that "now" is observer-dependent—an infinite stack of "now-slices" foliating the four-dimensional block universe.
Yet when we turned to dynamics, to the origin of mass and force, we continued to treat space and time as a smooth, empty stage on which particles play. Inertia and gravity were described with exquisite mathematics, but their common cause remained mysterious. The equivalence principle told us they feel the same, but never why they are the same.
The Mass of Nows proposes a simple, radical answer: the stage is not empty. Between the infinite now-slices lies a dense plenum—the zero-point fields of every possible now, permeated by the four-dimensional extent of every particle's wave function.
Mass is not a property particles possess; it is the ...
