When the great death called delusionmistaking the body and its associate connections such as members of the family for the selfis conquered, one becomes fit to attain that state of immortality, says Sri Adi Sankaracharya in the Vivekachoodamani.

One method adopted by Vedanta is to condemn something that we have to withdraw our attention from. We pay attention to something because we think it gives us joy, it is eternal and it is real.

For these reasons, we identify with our own body and believe it to be real and suffer as a result.

So what is the physical body made up of? Though we know the contents well, the naturally well-packaged body, seamlessly covered by the skin, will never make us experience the true identity.

So the Acharya spells out its contentsskin, flesh, blood, nerve strings, fat, marrow and bones. The mixture of all these is filled and tightened with excretory matter.

The body is a result of the mixing of five elements in a mathematical formula called quintuplication or Pancheekaranam.

The shape, size, colour and health of the body we get is dependent on our past actions. This gross body is an abode or a counter for different experiences of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, thoughts and feelings. It is able to have the various experiences of perception in the waking state.

Through the help of the sense organs, the gross body comes in contact with gross objects such as garlands, sandalwood paste, other human bodies and objects of various sizes and shapes.

The individual consciousness considers this body to be the self and it has a variety of experiences in the waking state.

Just as a house gives shelter to the one who lives in the house, the body gives shelter to the individual who lives in the body, occupying it.

The special characteristics of the body arising out of its gross nature are that it is subject to old age and death.

It has many qualities such as being fat or thin. It goes through various states such as being a toddler, a little child and growing up.

There are many disciplines that the body is subject to such as living in the Varnashrama. The several other experiences are that the body is sometimes worshipped, some time belittled and at other time it is given many gifts and presents.

In this body are situated the organs of perception (eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin), the organs of action (mouth, hands and legs) and the organs of excretion and reproduction.

While the sense organs of perception help us understand the different objects, beings and situations around us, the organs of action helps us in expressing in this world through our actions.

The writer is Sevika, Chinmaya Mission, Coimbatore (www.chinmayamission.com); email: brni.sharanyachaitanya@gmail.com

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The state of immortality - The New Indian Express

Riccardo Montolivo hasnt played a Serie A match for 18 months.

For some, hearing that a 34-year-old midfielder failed to get much game time in the final few years of his AC Milan career, with plenty of competition for places, isnt perhaps too surprising.

But for the former Italy international who announced his retirement from football on Wednesday after being released from his contract by Milan at the end of last season its the principle of how his career ended thats left a bad taste.

I will continue to live in Milan with my family, he told Corriere dello Sport.

What Ill do now, I dont know. I have to think about it.

You could say [Milan] forced me to stop playing. I didnt even get the chance to say goodbye to the fans after seven years.

But few Milan fans will care too much about his departure or subsequent retirement; nor willthe fans of his former club Fiorentina, for that matter.

The midfielder spent seven seasons at Fiorentina, even captaining the side, before joining Milan on a free transfer in 2012.

And the general feeling in Florence following his retirement is what goes around, comes around, with fans believing he traded immortality for mediocrity when he moved to their rivals.

In an open letter to supporters after leaving the club to much controversy, he wrote: In life and in professions, relationships can break down and not always in an understandable and painless way for everyone.

Although some see me as an enemy, I can only wish joy and satisfaction to Fiorentina, Florence, to my former comrades and all the people who work every day in the club with passion and dedication.

An apology, of sorts, but not one fans were willing to accept.

At Milan, he had the world at his feet.

Following his role in Italys route to the final of Euro 2012, his arrival to the San Siro was met with much optimism.

Of course, he was booed mercilessly by the Florentines upon his first visit back to the Artemio Franchi Stadium in 2013, but silenced them temporarily with a great goal and an assist in a swashbuckling 2-2 draw.

But the beginning of his Rossoneri spell coincided with the clubs firm fall from grace, which has included a lack of Champions League football in the last six seasons and no league title since the 2010/11 campaign.

In fact, Montolivios only honour in the colours of Milan is the Supercoppa Italiana in 2016, which is Italys equivalent of the Community Shield.

Whats worse is that his time at the club especially the last four years have been blighted by a lack of form, problems with injuries, and controversy.

When club legend Clarence Seedorf was appointed as manager mid-way through the 2013/14 season with Milan just four points above the relegation places at the time he begun by benching some of the senior players who werent performing.

Montolivo was one of them and reportedly led to the captain leading a mutiny against the Dutchman, ultimately leading to his sacking just four months into his tenure.

With Seedorf, there wasnt much harmony, the decision to sack him was for the good of Milan, Montolivo told the media afterwards.

If going against Seedorf wasnt enough to irk the fans, then his string of mediocre performances certainly were taking their toll.

But much to the fans dismay, he signed a contract extension in 2015 just a month before his 31st birthday the same age that Andrea Pirlo was when he was told he couldnt have a renewal.

Getty Images - Getty

The same player / manager strong-arming occurred with Gennaro Gattuso, another Milan hero, who coached the team between 2017 and 2019.

It appears Gattuso was harder on the midfielder than previous regimes, and the two seemingly fell out behind the scenes.

I was marginalised, answers were never given. But I dont hold a grudge, Montolivo said, hinting at Gattusos term.

Those who have been wrong with me, those who have disrespected me, repeatedly, will probably come to terms with their conscience.

EPA

Montolivo also lost the Milan captaincy to Leonardo Bonucci upon the defenders arrival from Juventus in 2017, a decision that came with very little prior warning.

I didnt deliver [the armband] to him, he said.

They told me that [then owner] Li Yonghong had decided the armband would be passed to one of the new signings.

When they told me about it, I explained that I found it unfair, that they were making a big mistake because there are hierarchies in the locker room that should always be respected.

He then didnt make a single appearance for Milan last season, despite being named on the bench 17 times in the Serie A.

He ultimately described his final year-and-a-half at the club as an ordeal.

As a free agent, Montolivo clearly struggled to find a new club and his decision to retire prematurely will be met with a shrug by much of his former clubs fan base.

He finishes his career with a reputation as one of Italys most stylish deep-lying playmakers in recent times, a nearly-man whose injuries overshadowed his promising early-years, and a captain who lacked leadership qualities that polarised his fans.

Read this article:
Why Riccardo Montolivos premature retirement is a lesson in trading immortality for mediocrity - Dream Team FC

Its very easy to overlook Alexis Bledel as she does play a lot of roles that are either not quite as pronounced given that the movies shes in dont get as much attention, or because she plays a good number of extra and supporting roles that arent noticed for the same reason. She does have a good deal of talent which makes it hard to think that her mother encouraged her to get into acting to combat her shyness, but her delivery is on point and she can fit into just about any role that shes given. Whether or not shes going to get any bigger when it comes to her career is hard to say since at this point one might think that she should have hit her stride and really kicked it up a notch, but it could be that shes one of many that has realized that no matter how big she might be able to get her place is still assured in show business as shes proven herself on more than one occasion. Sometimes just being there is great enough since it means that one is part of the show so long as they want to be.

Here are the five best movies from her career.

The idea that one garment can bring people closer together in this manner is kind of an odd premise and one that might need to be understood from the point of view of the young women that share the pants. As it goes the movie takes the viewer into the mindset of each of the women, with Lena, who is played by Alexis, finding out that the young man she is falling in love with belongs to a family that her own family has been feuding with for a long, long time. After she is able to convince her family to let her say goodbye to the young man after professing her love the pants are transferred to the next friend, whereupon the story continues.

So many people think that immortality is a great thing, until they realize the sense of loss that comes with it and the fragility of the human mind when it comes to dealing with said loss. When Winnie meets Jesse and his family they kidnap her to keep the secret of the life-giving spring that they drink from, but upon being found out by a man that wants to sell the water to others they end up killing the man and are forced to run. After escaping the law Jesse asks Winnie to go with him, but she remembers what hes already said about immortality being more trouble than its worth sometimes, and she stays to live out her life as a mortal.

The assassination of President Lincoln was a mess of such epic proportions that it divided a great many people after his passing, and as a result some people even thought that all hed built would eventually crumble to dust. The ongoing trial that came after in this movie however did take some liberties but still managed to show just what mindset people were in during this time and how the north and south still hadnt managed to dampen any real hostilities between each other no matter all that had come to pass. As a historical drama this was one that didnt get a lot of attention but was still pretty important.

The point here is that even after going through the grueling years of college and thinking that you know exactly what you want, a lot of post graduates still dont have a clue what its really going to take to make it on the outside or what they really want to do. Ryden is a perfect example of someone that can see the end result they want but forgets that they have a lot of work in between to get to that point since A doesnt exactly connect to Z just by wishing it could be that easy. By the end of the movie shes managed to figure out whats most important in her life and the dream job she wanted wasnt all it was cracked up to be.

There are things you just dont do in Sin City, and turning on the ladies of Old Town is one of those things that can get a person more than roughed up, it can get them killed in a hurry. Becky should have known more than anyone since shes one of the ladies when shes introduced, but of course preying on someones weaknesses is one of the favorite tools of the mob, and as a result Becky decides that shed rather be at the right side of the devil than in his path, so to speak.

She seems to be where shell do the most good, but seeing her in more prominent roles would be nice.

View post:
The Five Best Alexis Bledel Movies of Her Career - TVOvermind

JUSSI HALLA-AHO, the chairperson of the Finns Party, has drawn attention to the judgement delivered yesterday in a case related to the expulsion of an Iraqi asylum seeker by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Unfortunately Finland cant guarantee immortality to the people removed from here, not even to the people here, he stated in the Finnish Parliament on Thursday.

The ECHR on Thursday ruled that the expulsion violated articles two and three of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Finnish authorities, it said, failed to adequately assess the risks the expulsion presented to the middle-aged man, especially the risks arisingfrom tensions between Shia and Sunni Muslims.

The Sunni man was killed shortly after returning voluntarily to Iraq.

Halla-aho reminded that the criteria for granting international protection is set forth in both domestic and international legislation. He added that although it is regrettable that there is violence in Iraq, the country will not become any less violent by relocating its residents to Finland.

Is the foreigners security taking precedence over that of Finns, he asked Maria Ohisalo (Greens), the Finnish Minister of the Interior.

The question is difficult in a number of ways, Ohisalo replied, expressing her reluctance to juxtapose a population group with another. We live in a rule-of-law state. You can apply for asylum from a rule-of-law state. A rule-of-law state must safeguard the basic rights of every human being.

Also Veronika Honkasalo (Left Alliance) asked how the government intends to ensure it no longer infringes the non-refoulement principle.

The judgement is shameful for Finland, replied Ohisalo. Its the first time and hopefully also the last time.

Aleksi Teivainen HTSource: Uusi Suomi

Read more from the original source:
Halla-aho: Is foreigners' security taking precedence over that of Finns? - Helsinki Times

House speaker Nancy Pelosihas thrown some serious shade at Donald Trump over the impeachment inquiry.

Previously, Speaker Pelosihas clapped back at Trump with withering irony at his State of the Union address and dismissed him as "not worth" impeaching. Until his quid pro quo call with Ukraine came to light and changed her mind, that is.

Giving a press conference on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Pelosiwas asked about the mounting evidence against Trump and commented:

If the president has something that is exculpatory - Mr President, that means you have anything that shows your innocence - then he should make that known, and that's part of the inquiry.

So far we haven't seen that but we welcome it.

Trump does claimhis favourite book is his own ghost-written business manual The Art of the Dealso it's entirely possible he doesn't know the meaning of the word.

Pelosi also said during the conference that Trumps alleged wrongdoings make what Nixon did look almost small" - referring to the Watergate scandal - and went further responding to the first public day of impeachment testimony from acting Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor and George Kent of the State Department:

The devastating testimony corroborated evidence of bribery uncovered in the inquiry and that the president abused power.

The 79-year-old has been on fire in recent weeks and her contemptuous tone here had plenty of fans.

One person who was less taken with her droll remark was Trump himself, who tweeted angrily on Friday ahead of Marie Yovanovitch'simpeachment testimony:

Nervous Nancy Pelosi, who should be home cleaning up the dangerous & disgusting Slum she is making of her District in San Francisco, where even thefilth pouring into the Pacific Ocean is rapidly becoming an environmental hazard, is getting NOTHING DONE.

She is a Do Nothing Democrat as Speaker, and will hopefully not be in that position very long.

The speaker clearly struck a nerve.

The rest is here:
Nancy Pelosi mocks Trump by explaining the meaning of a word to him - indy100

BHOPAL: We adults always try to relive our childhood. But we do not give children, the right to be children. Gandhiji attained greatness and immortality only because he did not allow the child within him to die, said writer and poet Udyan Vajpayee, while addressing the participants of the Illustration Camp on Child Rights here on Saturday.

He said that children are much more imaginative than the adults and their curiosity knows no bounds.

Senior artiste Devilal Patidar said that children should be allowed to think beyond what they are taught in schools.

Art teachers, young illustrators and fine arts students of schools will take part in the three-day camp to mark the 30th years of the signing of the UN Child Rights Charter at the Tribal Museum.

The event is being organised jointly by the Child Rights Observatory, Art Design Teachers Forum and Tribal Museum, in collaboration with UNICEF, Bhopal.

Inaugurating the event, Nirmala Buch, chairperson of the Child Rights Laboratory said that the idea behind organising the event is to hone the creativity of the children and to give them an opportunity to express themselves.

Anil Gulati, communication specialist of UNICEF expressed the hope that the children would give expression to their creativity through their works.

Link:
Bhopal: Children are much more imaginative than adults - Free Press Journal

Nov 14, 2019

Greg WyshynskiESPN

Wayne Gretzky is a total Hockey Hall of Fame nerd, to the point that he would wear a disguise to walk through its exhibits and marinate in its antiquity. Considering that half the stuff there used to be in Wayne's bedroom, I'm sure it's a little like Elvis touring Graceland. But that doesn't matter. Even when you're The Great One, you want to feel that weight of history and that joy of discovery.

I'm also a Hall of Fame nerd, but in a transactional sense: I've long been obsessed with who gets in and who doesn't.

Some kids grow up dreaming about scoring the winning goal in the Stanley Cup Final. I used to dream about being in the room where the Hall of Fame decisions happen, spilling scotch on hockey legends as we engage in mouth-frothing debates about who is or is not worthy of immortality. And it would be incredible ... right up until the point when I learn it's entirely arbitrary and personal. "Hey, that guy's not getting my vote. He owes me $20 ..."

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The Hall of Fame is as frustrating as it is hallowed. The lack of transparency in the selection process leaves us baffled as to the criteria for enshrinement. Why did Mark Howe and Dino Ciccarelli wait 13 years? Why is Daniel Alfredsson still waiting? How did Gary Bettman get in now? Why didn't Pat Burns get in until it was posthumously? And so on.

There are a few players eligible in 2020 who should be locks. Jarome Iginla is going to be a first-ballot guy given his 625 career goals. Marian Hossa has the numbers (1,134 points, despite starting his career during the trap years), the prestige (three Stanley Cups) and the hipster cred as one of the best 200-foot wingers of his era. The only question about Henrik Sedin and Daniel Sedin (eligible in 2021) is whether they'll be featured on the same plaque. Goalies are rarely enshrined in the Hall of Fame, but Roberto Luongo will buck that trend when he's eligible in 2022. On the women's side, Finnish hockey legend Riikka Sallinen called it a career this year; Meredith Foster explains why she has a very strong Hall case to be the rare European women's star to get consideration.

There are a few players in the purgatory of eligibility who have very strong cases, too. Three in particular come to mind:

Alexander Mogilny. There's so much support for his candidacy these days, and for good reason. Mogilny's 473 goals ranks him 53rd all time, and he was a model of consistency with a 1.04 points-per-game average. A Triple Gold Club member, and an important part of hockey history as the first Soviet defection to the NHL. He's been knocking on the door for 11 years, and it's time he knocked it down.

Daniel Alfredsson. Unless he's been confined to the "Hall of Very Good," the former Ottawa Senators captain should get the call. Alfredsson has 444 goals and 1,157 points, and he won Olympic gold and silver for Sweden as well as the Calder Trophy. But also just an awesome ambassador for the game, and the kind of individual you want representing it in the Hall.

Curtis Joseph. There have been just five goalies elected to the Hall in the past 25 years, which is absurd. CuJo, it could be argued, is the best goalie not in the Hall. (Well, male goalie, as Sweden's Kim Martin and Canada's Kim St-Pierre are very much Hall-worthy.) He's fifth in career wins (454) and sixth in games played (943), but he never won a Vezina Trophy (despite being in the top four five times) or a Stanley Cup. To date, Ed Giacomin is the only Hall of Fame goalie not to have won a Cup. CuJo will probably continue to be penalized for playing on underwhelming teams, which is a shame, because he's an all-timer in our opinion.

Then there's Don Cherry ... and that's a conversation for another day. Or year. There's an obvious case for Grapes as a builder, and there are many who believe he should already be in the Hall of Fame. But this decision is going to require some distance from his unceremonious dismissal from "Hockey Night in Canada" this week.

What about players who haven't hung up the skates yet?

There are two players who aren't in the NHL but are still playing who are going to make the Hall: Kladno's Jaromir Jagr, the 47-year-old who might have been the NHL's leading career scorer were it not for work stoppages and a KHL sabbatical; and Pavel Datsyuk, 41, who is playing in Russia and is very much one of the best two-centers in the history of the sport.

As for players currently in the NHL who are destined for immortality, here are the top 10 current players destined for the Hall of Fame, in order of stone-cold locks:

10. Patrice Bergeron, C, Boston Bruins. Four Selke Trophies and a seven-time finalist (so far), plus that Stanley Cup and international success. Anecdotally, he might be the most admired NHL forward outside of Crosby in his generation. The Bruins are going to end up sending a few players to the Hall from their decadelong run of contention.

9. Duncan Keith, D, Chicago Blackhawks. Tough call here between Keith, Drew Doughty and Victor Hedman, who projects to be one of the greats of his generation. But Keith had two Norris Trophies, a Conn Smythe, three Stanley Cups and two gold medals, to go along with offensive output that ranks him sixth among defensemen in points over the past 20 years.

8. Patrick Kane, RW, Chicago Blackhawks. Kane's got the hardware, with three Stanley Cups, a Hart, a Conn Smythe, a Calder and a scoring title. He's got 364 goals in 920 games as a 31-year-old. He's going to finish his career as one of the most dominating American-born players in NHL history, but not one without significant baggage from earlier in his career.

7. Erik Karlsson, D, San Jose Sharks. Karlsson already has a Hall of Fame case with that run from 2011 through 2017, when he collected two Norris Trophies, was a finalist four times and had that incredible 82 points in 82 games as a defenseman. He's seventh in NHL history among defensemen with 0.83 points per game (minimum 657 games, aka the Orr Cutoff). Undoubtedly, somebody will claim he never played defense. That person will be summarily ignored.

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6. Evgeni Malkin, C, Pittsburgh Penguins. An absolute force of nature whose 1.175 points per game ranks him 14th in NHL history. Playing in the shadow of Sidney Crosby has its benefits (three Stanley Cups) and drawbacks (everyone focusing on Sidney Crosby at all times). The only things that concern us about his slam-dunk immortality are his health and the fact that some of the same people on the selection committee are the ones who inexplicably kept him off the NHL 100 list. But he'll get in, for sure.

5. Henrik Lundqvist, G, New York Rangers. The King is sixth in career wins (453) and 11th in save percentage (.918). He won the Vezina in 2012 and was a five-time finalist. He might not have a Stanley Cup ring, but he does have a gold medal. Also, he looks like Henrik Lundqvist.

4. Zdeno Chara, D, Boston Bruins. Unless it involves a strand of his hair and an aggressive human cloning program, there will never be another Zdeno Chara. He's 6-foot-9, a Stanley Cup champ and a Norris winner and is fourth in scoring for a defenseman (640) over the past 20 years. Luckily, the Hall of Fame has high ceilings.

3. Joe Thornton, C, San Jose Sharks. He's 16 points from becoming the 14th player in NHL history to hit 1,500. He has a scoring title and a Hart Trophy and is generally considered to be one of the finest passers in NHL history. He just doesn't have that elusive Stanley Cup win. Honestly, all we care about is that legendary beard getting etched on a plaque.

2. Alex Ovechkin, LW, Washington Capitals. At 34 years old, Ovechkin is within 223 goals of Wayne Gretzky's NHL career record, which is less than his goal total from 2014-15 to 2018-19 (236). Thank the Hockey Gods that Ovechkin finally captured his Stanley Cup -- and won the Conn Smythe in the process -- to eliminate any possible detraction from his legendary offensive career.

1. Sidney Crosby, C, Pittsburgh Penguins. The very definition of a generational talent, from the moment they changed the draft lottery rules in anticipation of his arrival through his last stretch of a Hart Trophy, two Stanley Cups and two Conn Smythes in the span of three years. He's sixth in NHL history in points per game (1.284), has won almost everything one can win and is a better player today than he was yesterday. He's not just first-ballot good. He's "waive the waiting period" good.

Then there's Jonathan Toews, Nicklas Backstrom, Brent Burns, Patrick Marleau, Steven Stamkos, Ilya Kovalchuk and John Tavares. Then there's Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews, Nathan MacKinnon and Nikita Kucherov. Then there's the generation after that.

The Hall will be waiting. If not for their inductions, then at least for the debates about them.

May the Force be with this Ottawa Senators Jersey Foul:

This is a reference to Sheev Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious, aka Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and Emperor of the Galactic Empire. The number is a reference to command Order 66, the command that Palpatine gave to the Republic's clone army that authorized them to hunt down the Jedi in "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith."

I'm an American. My relationship with Don Cherry is nothing like what my Canadian friends and colleagues have experienced. I knew him growing up as the guy in the loud suits clutching a dog in beer commercials, and the guy shouting "Hit somebody!" on those "Rock'em Sock'em" VHS highlight tapes my parents used to rent for me at Video Plus.

Canadians, meanwhile, invited him into their living room once a week to explain the game and make them laugh and set a conversation that they'd still be talking about at work on Monday. And it was families across every community and every demographic. Barry Melrose told me the ex-jocks back in Saskatchewan watched Cherry. Jonathan Cheechoo told me about members of his Cree First Nations tribe in Moose Factory, Ontario, crowding around the television on Saturday nights, mesmerized. Cherry spoke the sports language of a country.

So I appreciate the complicated emotions tied up with Cherry's dismissal for Canadians. This was the poppy that broke the camel's back.

What did Grapes in? It's what had buoyed him years: business. The sponsors turned on him. The economics at Sportsnet changed, and not in his favor. And it was bigger than that. Don Cherry was swimming against the current on the inclusiveness and diversity that has become a cherished part of Canada's identity. Rants about "you people" and the multicultural assemblage of young fans who watched the Raptors win the NBA title can't coexist in the same sports town. This was the moment when it was starkly apparent that Cherry was oblivious, or willfully ignorant, to the way the world, the sport and his own city had changed.

One of our most popular episodes to date. In the wake of Don Cherry's firing, we spoke with our ESPN colleague Barry Melrose as well as Sean McIndoe, aka Down Goes Brown of The Athletic, about the broadcaster's legacy. Plus, Ed Belfour joined us to discuss his Hall of Fame career and his new passion as a whiskey maker. Grab it on iTunes here.

Winner: That Avalanche jersey

A lot of the reaction to the Colorado Avalanche Stadium Series jersey was negative, which is weird. Look at that beauty: Great use of negative space, an echo of their traditional sweater, and I bet it looks absolutely killer in an outdoor game. We approve.

Loser: The Ilya Kovalchuk era

What a bust. Kovalchuk returned to the NHL last season with the Los Angeles Kings, claiming he was chasing the Stanley Cup before realizing he was on a team that was cratering. He had 34 points in 64 games but has been terrible this season: three goals and six assists in 17 games, including just a goal and an assist in his past 13. The Kings have effectively benched him. A trade after his $5.3 million bonus payment on Dec. 15 is likely, as long as Kovy waives his no-move. Not Rob Blake's finest moment.

From mascot to meme to megastar: How Gritty took over the world The struggle is real: Why hockey butts and jeans don't mix The NHL's love affair with hair The definitive NHL mascot rankings

More NHL content

Winner: San Jose Sharks

Hey, look who has a pulse. The Sharks won four in a row and are four points out of the wild card. They put six goals up against the Wild and Oilers, plus won closer games against the Blackhawks and Predators. Getting defenseman Radim Simek back from injury had helped, but getting a stretch at the Shark Tank helped more.

Loser: Buffalo Sabres

Two losses to the Lightning overseas after three winless games stateside. Jeff Skinner goes four games without a point, and Sabres lose four straight games. Probably not a coincidence.

Winner: Cale Makar

The Avalanche defenseman, my preseason Calder pick, has opened up a six-point lead among rookies and is scoring video game goals.

Loser: Ice cream innocence

Please tell me you saw this:

We wanted to believe in the great ice cream theft at a Carolina Hurricanes' game this week, especially after the team told ESPN that it hadn't set it up. Others felt it was totally a hoax. As Sara Civian of The Athletic discovered, the truth was somewhere in between: The cone holder and the cone thief are friends, but they claim this wasn't premeditated. Which is fine, but not as great as, say, a complete stranger swiping some dude's soft serve.

An all-transgender hockey team played a historic scrimmage in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a matchup that blended pro and amateur players.

The Carolina Hurricanes celebrate World Kindness Day by saying nice things about every NHL team ... except one.

Taking a critical look at what the Dallas Stars and Nashville Predators are wearing at the Winter Classic.

Emily Kaplan and Greg Wyshynski take you around the NHL with the latest news, big questions and special guests every episode. Listen here

"Emilie Castonguay has created a buzz as one of the NHL's rare female certified player agents because she has something that the men don't: Alexis Lafreniere, the likely No. 1 pick in the 2020 NHL draft."

Which goal songs are the favorites among NHL stars? Ben Bishop with the best answer: "As a goalie, none of them. Check that. Dallas. I love that one. It means we scored."

How NHL players reacted to the Don Cherry firing. Said John Tavares: "I think it is disappointing on many fronts, the comments, but certainly the way his tenure ended. There was so many good things that he did through his commitment to the game. I think everybody would wish something like this never happened."

Hockey tl;dr (too long; didn't read)

A good look at how individual coaches are using the coach's challenge. Interesting to see that some first-year coaches are a little shy about asking for one. ($)

In case you missed this from your friends at ESPN

Absolutely loved doing this piece: When players synonymous with one NHL jersey end up wearing another one. Think Bobby Orr as a Chicago Blackhawk.

Read more:
Wysh List - Which current NHL players will make the Hockey Hall of Fame? - ESPN

Thats all folks (Wikipedia)

Bugs Bunny got me thinking about mortality. At the end of each episode, while munching on a piece of juicy carrot, the adorable Bugs would say, Thats all folks. These words can there be a more poker-faced admission about the finiteness of life? I learnt later, are etched on the tombstone of Mel Blanc, the man who gave Bugs his inimitable voice.

But it wasnt Bugs Bunny alone who was on my mind early in November on the occasion of National Write Your Own Epitaph Day. I sat thinking of Ebenezer Scrooge as well. In an epiphanic moment in A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens made Scrooge catch a glimpse of his own gravestone. Scrooge, terrified at the prospect of his annihilation and anonymity, promptly turns over a new leaf.

Interestingly, epitaphs have the uncanny ability of bringing fiction close to fact. For in real life too, writers have been tied to the tombstone, in a manner of speaking, on account of their desire for immortality.

Some of them Ben Jonson is one example made it a point to let the world know even from across the Styx that there was no other like them. Fittingly, the words emblazoned on Jonsons tomb read, O Rare Ben Jonson.

W.B. Yeats, presumably, would have none of Jonsons immodesty. The poet requested the Horseman to cast a cold eye on both life and death and then pass by. Was Yeats referring to the futility of the all-too-human craving for permanence?

Death and its prospect of erasure have proved to be irresistible for some others. Martin Luther King Jr. rejoiced at the prospect of tasting the freedom brought by death. Why else would his tombstone exclaim Free at last? The epitaph of Oscar Wilde, who had endured both infamy and fame, is suggestive of the playwrights recognition of his own alienation. Mourners, it says movingly, are outcast men and that the outcast always mourn. Come to think of it, both King and Wilde, two men separated by time and settings, may have been hinting at suffering a life of prejudice even in death.

Meanwhile, Keats remained lyrical in both death and life. Few other headstones can claim the haunting beauty of this inscription: Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.

I realized on Write Your Own Epitaph Day that morbid souls searching for a bit of inspiration are, mercifully, spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing the words that would adorn their own tombstones.

Given my own aversion to, not obscurity but, untidiness my beloved condition is called Ataxophobia I decided to go with Dorothy Parker, who, it is believed, chose this concise but profound message.

Excuse my dust.

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Epitaphs have the uncanny ability of bringing fiction close to fact - Telegraph India

Churchills 'few', the heroic RAF fighter pilots of the Battle of Britain who displayed indomitable bravery and skill over three frenetic months in the summer of 1940, would scarcely have imagined the immortality their deeds would bestow.

From the Dambusters raid deep in the heart of Nazi Germany, to the early exploits of the SAS and those countless stories of acts of self-sacrifice by both military personnel and civilians, all live long in the memory and imagination.

One group of four or five war medals may seem much like another, but research can uncover the hidden stories of those that received them, writes Nigel Kirk .

The huge collection of militaria and medals currently awaiting sale at The Auction House includes the group of Flight Lieutenant William Alfred Doherty of the RAF.

With them is a splendid 1940s photograph of the handsome young pilot proudly wearing medal ribbons on his chest; Brylcreemed hair and the slightly awkward prop of a pipe, complete the classic portrait of an archetypal WWII British pilot.

Putting a face to the name engraved on the medals personalises them, but of more significance are the four volumes of the Pilots Flying Log Books. They constitute an unbroken record documenting thousands of flying hours in what appears to be every type of aircraft in service with the RAF, from his earliest days as a cadet in March 1938 to April 1948, by which time he was a decorated officer.

His role was to test-fly new or repaired aircraft to ensure they were ready for active service. Not all were, and crashes on take-off and other scary mishaps are logged without further comment.

In 1942 he was in the air many times a day, usually for periods of 25 or 30 minutes putting the latest batch of Spitfires through their paces and test-firing the planes machine guns or canons.

The entry for 16 November 1942, is typical - when he flew six new Spitfires.

In June 1945 he was decorated with the Air Force Cross. The award was reserved for acts of exemplary gallantry in the air when on non-operational missions and meritorious service in flying duties.

A relatively scarce award, only 2,605 were gazetted. The group with his log books is estimated at 2,000-3,000.

Until recent times people in this country, those of Dohertys generation and the next, would speak not of war but 'the War'.

This year the Royal British Legions Poppy Appeal and the nations annual collective act of remembrance of war dead - including those of the 21st century - marks the 80th anniversary of the start of World War Two.

Buying a paper poppy raises money for veterans and their families. Wearing one, whether red or white, is a matter of deeper significance known only to the wearer. It may be a token of respect or thankfulness for the sacrifice of others whether ancestor or unknown, a memorial to the inevitable innocent victims or most profoundly, a commitment to peace.

Politicians and other public figures are amongst the first to be seen sporting a poppy each year. The poppy is a symbol that has become a tradition or an institution, such as the Christmas broadcast of the Queen or the Popes homily.

The fusion of message spoken or unspoken and symbol is powerful, but what of the effect? Millennials are seldom to be seen wearing a poppy. For many of them the wars of the 20th century are either historical facts or dim-remembered events spoken of, if at all, by aged relatives.

Their parents experienced the fear of living under the threat of nuclear war. The Cold War's sudden and unexpecting ending was also celebrated last week on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Effective and probably new means of teaching the veterans impassioned plea of never again to a society that no longer has any filial connection with veterans or victims, as did their great grandparents, is vitally important in an ever more unfamiliar world.

That will require imagination, dedication and expertise. I can hardly think of a more important subject for the school curriculum.

Two rare and tiny English pewter tankards of indeterminate age sold for a surprising 800 at The Auction House at the end of last month.

The larger of the two, which was about 6cm high, had a charming engraved depiction of a swan on the lid in a manner known as wrigglework. In addition, the front was engraved with the initials of the original owner I T and date 1662.

The bidders clearly thought one or both did indeed date from the era of the diarist Samuel Pepys and Charles II.

Miniature furniture or objects in silver or pewter such as these were known as toys. The concept of childrens toys as we know them is relatively modern, children being given much simpler and inexpensive dolls and games, or more likely making their own play things.

These were destined for the mistress of the house, fancies for display and conversation with friends over that new and costly beverage tea.

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Medals of pilot who tested Spitfires before they returned to the war are going up for sale - Nottinghamshire Live

Duane Michals/DC Moore Gallery, New YorkDuane Michals: The Illuminated Man, 1968

Months before he turns eighty-eight, the photographer Duane Michals is in the full throes of a remarkable old-age efflorescence. Evidence to that effect fairly leaps off the brightly colored walls of his fascinating new exhibition, Illusions of the Photographer, at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. Michals has long been renowned for three great innovations: his hauntingly atmospheric, teasingly Surrealistic, almost cinematic sequences of pictorial narratives; his use of handwritten texts on small-scale black-and-white silver gelatin prints (the antithesis of the current rage for billboard-sized digitized color images); and his celebratory normalization of homoerotic male beauty, years before Robert Mapplethorpes freak-show fetishism and Bruce Webers consumer-culture beefcake. Yet, unlike artists who hit upon a commercially lucrative formula and then crank out endless fungible reiterations, Michals is something of a superannuated Huck Finn, an incorrigibly subversive and inimitably American scamp always lighting out for new creative territories.

It took me nearly an hour and a half to work my way through the single large gallery in which Michals and the Morgans astute photography curator, Joel Smith, have assembled nearly a hundred works by him and other artists (including Carlo Galli Bibiena, William Blake, and Egon Schiele, as well as the photographers Lewis Carroll, Eugne Atget, and Irving Penn), along with literary artifacts such as Voltaires red leather portfolio, Goethes quill pen, and an origami-like paper boat folded by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in a kaleidoscopic mash-up that is part mini-retrospective and part artists choice survey. The latter format has become increasingly popular at museums with deep storage that can be raided for neglected holdings to illuminate the guest artists own body of work. Here, Smith combed through the Morgans quarter of a million objects and discovered an array of treasures that perfectly resonate with Michalss quirky sensibility. The photographer in turn made the final selection, and even added items from his personal collection, including Victorian illustrated childrens books of the sort that beguiled the Surrealists. The collaborators then grouped their finds under ten rubrics that reflect the subjects major concerns: Death, Illusion, Image and Word, Immortality, Love and Desire, Nature, Playtime, Reflection, Theater, and Time.

Among the many surprises are sixteen short color films (with running times from under two to over twelve minutes) that Michals has produced and directed since 2015, all of which will be screened at the Morgan during the run of the show. They range from a scatological one-liner (Trickle Down, 2018, in which Michals urinates on a Rolls Royce, his commentary on conspicuous consumption) and a tense domestic drama (Interruptus, 2018, features a women walking in on her husband as he puts the moves on another man), and from topical political protest (Deport Trump, 2016) to an enigmatic fantasy that blends Commedia dellArte, Cocteau, and Sixties psychedelia (YORT, 2019). Also on view are several other late-life Michals enthusiasms, including the anonymous nineteenth-century tintypes that he overpaints with abstract motifs inspired by his favorite modern art movement, Cubism. There are also examples of his postmillennial fan-shaped color photos inspired by nineteenth-century Japonisme and epitomized by a lyrical quartet of views of his upstate New York garden in all four seasons.

I came away from this physically compactyet psychically enlargingdisplay with a feeling of utter exhilaration that I havent often had in recent years of gallery going. It also occurred to me, after this latest time-out-of-mind immersion in the personal universe that the photography critic Andy Grundberg has called Duanes World that Michals might be best described as a magusa sorcerer who uses means beyond our ken to explain mysteries of existence that normally elude us.

Always industrious, Michals has been especially productive since the death, two years ago, of his life partner, the architect Fred Gorre, with whom hed lived since 1960 and married in 2011. Gorre suffered from Alzheimers and Parkinsons Disease during his last seven years, when the photographer attentively cared for him in their townhouse in the Gramercy Park neighborhood. Michalswho, like writers including Joan Didion and Nora Ephron, considers everything that happens to him potential subject mattercollected Gorres random utterances during his dementia and included some of them in his 2014 book ABCDuane: A Duane Michals Primer. Those pronouncements could be as Surrealistic as some of Michalss photographyI wonder what Marco Polos doing now?or like rays of light piercing through a dense cloud cover, as when Gorre suddenly declared, Why are we here? To help each other. Whether Michalss new burst of creative energy is attributable to losing himself in cathartic activity after his bereavementa not uncommon and often effective remedy for griefor perhaps because of an increased sense that times wingd chariot is bearing down on him I do not know, but it is inspiring to witness such renewed vigor at his age, whatever the reason.

As a child of the Great Depressionhe grew up just outside Pittsburgh, where his father was a steelworker and his mother a salesclerkMichals has always had a strong work ethic and was never ashamed to accept commercial assignments that have funded his parallel art career. Although the Morgan exhibition includes no examples of his advertising images (which were always unattributed on the page, unlike the present-day practice of naming celebrity photographers), it could have incorporated them without any taint of the marketplace. Still implanted in my minds eye is the breathtaking double-page-spread he did in 1991 for the launch of Este Lauders latest perfume, Spellbound. His tight black-and-white head shot of a man and a woman facing each other in profile has the iconic power of the legendary cinematographer Sven Nykvists very similar use of black and white close-ups in Ingmar Bergmans psychological drama Persona (1966). There is no need to apologize for work of this quality, and indeed when some self-righteous young photographer rudely told him, Ill never sell out, Michals coolly replied, Youve got nothing to sell.

The spheres of commerce and art have intersected for Michals when, for example, hes been commissioned to photograph cultural luminaries because of his uncanny ability to capture an aura of their work through his insightful portraits of the artists. This was never more evident than in his justly celebrated 1965 series on Rn Magritte, at home in Brussels. The shoot occasioned an unforgettable channeling of the Belgian masters spirit through a double exposure image of the bowler-hatted artist sitting in front of a blank canvas and appearing to simultaneously morph into the picture plane and vanish from the room. Im hard-pressed to name any other photograph of an artist more evocative than this one.

Magritte tops Michalss personal artistic pantheon (along with [t]hree people I met [who] intimidated me to the point of being speechless: Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Frank, and Saul Steinberg), as he tells Smith in their uncommonly informative catalog interview. Their probing interchange also offers a great deal of otherwise fresh personal information about its subject, who, though hardly closeted by any possible definition, has always been extremely discreet about his private life, in the same way that countless other high-achieving gay men in the postwar New York art and design world were. Yet it comes as news when he talks to Smith about the invariably beautiful young men whom he recruited for his art photography over the years and admits that, I got involved with my modelsI fell in love with my modelsbut my models were always straight.

Although death and immortality are recurrent motifs in Michalss artWhenever some magazine does an article on life after death I get a call, he once told mehis increasing defense against actuarial reality is another of his major themes: humor. One wall label in the photographers distinctively rangy pen-and-ink script reads, I decided what I wanted engraved on my tombstone: Having a wonderful time, wish you were here.

Although Michals in old age can be as avuncular as his great avatar Walt Whitmanthe Good Gray Gay Poet (to slightly tweak the famous nickname conferred by Whitmans great friend, William Douglas OConnor)there is also a restless persistence that underlies his explorations into metacognition: thinking about thinking, or knowing about knowing. The conclusion that comes across so clearly in his thought-provoking Illusions of the Photographer is that whatever we know, attempt to know, or cant possibly know, we are all winding up at the same destination. But that inevitability does not dampen this philosophical explorers determination to make some sense of what hes rightly called questions without answersthe Big Things in Lifeand his curiosity and vision remain undaunted and undimmed as he heads toward his tenth decade.

Illusions of the Photographer: Duane Michals at the Morgan is on view until February 2, 2020. A catalog is published by the Morgan Duane Michals: Mischievous Eye, and an exhibition of Michalss most recent work will be on view at the D.C. Moore Gallery in New York City from November 15 to December 21, 2019.

An earlier version of this article misidentified the Este Lauderperfume advertisement that Duane Michals photographed as Beautiful from 1985. It was Spellbound in 1991.

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The Ceaseless Innovation of Duane Michals | by Martin Filler | NYR Daily - The New York Review of Books

Now that F*ck Fifty serum is out in the world, City Pages chatted with the two about how they met, why they decided to venture into the skincare world, and how many formulas it took until they landed on their final product.

City Pages: The serum isnt just for people 50 and up, right? What skin types is it best for?

Susan Griak: The serum is for every age, race, gender, and skin type.... We want people to feel liberated by who they are, and not constantly feel like they have to change something about themselves in order to look the part. Why cant a 20-year-old have gray hair? Why cant a 50-year-old wear a tube top? I mean, really, wear what you want, be what you want, just so long as you take care of yourself and feel great.

CP: You two are friends. How did you meet?

Griak: I was walking [my youngest child] around Lake of the Isles with my dog and heard a loud, Hey, lady with a baby! You have a baby, I have a baby! You have a doodle, I have a doodle! Lets be friends! And so our friendship began.

CP: How did the idea for F*ck Fifty come about?

Griak: Zelda is always brewing up something, whether its a delicious and healthy meal or a magical mixture for your body. She started giving friends face oil, and when she was interested in coming up with branding, she sent me a text late one night. Literally the first thing that popped into my head was fuck fifty, even though I worried it was maybe a little polarizing. It turns out lots of people loved it.

CP: How did you start formulating?

Curti: I was determined to research and make my own skin- and body-care product. I wanted the ingredients to come from nature. I also wanted to know what the beauties of all time used on their skin, so I researched Cleopatra, geishas, the Princess of Nerola, Italywhere the neroli scent we use in our serum is from.

CP: How many tries did it take until you got it right?

Griak: We tested the product on ourselves first, then on our spousesI think my husband uses it more than I doand then friends. No animals. How many tries? Too many to count. Way more than 50.

CP: Tell us about the blend you created for the Glow Infusion serum. How did you land on those ingredients?

Curti: As a former English teacher, I couldnt help thinking of the line from Shakespeares Macbeth Double, double toil and trouble. Fire burn, and cauldron bubbleas we were brewing this infusion. We added some of the most powerful skin-enhancing plants into our cauldron: Reishi mushroom, for example, which is called the mushroom of immortality.

CP: Will you branch out into other products?

Curti: We are already concocting a couple of super great body products with the top CBD manufacturer in Colorado, because we just love the effects of it on the muscles and joints. At the end of the day we just want you to use our products and look in the mirror and say, Fuck aging. I feel and look great!

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Meet F*ck Fifty, a MN-made face oil brought to you by two business- and beauty-savvy friends - City Pages

(Photo via Dante or Die Theatre on Facebook)

To actor Terry ODonovan, a coffee shop isnt just a less-expensive WeWork or a Tinder date option. A coffee shop is one of the many places we humans go to be alone together. And in his site-specific play User Not Found, a coffee shop becomes a place where you might suddenly learn that your ex-partner has died, that before he died he made you his digital executor, and now you have to decide whether to delete or preserve all his social media accounts.

Since User Not Found debuted in 2018, ODonovan, the co-creator of the one-man show, has performed it over 120 times, including its most recent 10-day run at the Greene Grape Annex in Brooklyn, as part of BAMs Next Wave 2019. Throughout the immersive performance, Terry (as played by ODonovan) walks, dances, slithers, and weeps between the coffee shops tables as he scrolls through old tweets of the lover who left him twicefirst with a breakup, then with a premature death. At times, hes so close to audience members that you can smell the poppy-seed muffin as he stress-eats it.

Upon arriving at the show, stage assistants hand every audience member (each of whom passively assumes the role of coffee shop patron) a set of headphones and a smartphone. On the phones screen, you see what Terry sees: incoming text messages filled with shallow condolences, and old tweets and Facebook posts of his now-deceased ex-partner Luka. Reading along with him felt like a violation. I was more voyeur than audience member, and I couldnt look away.

With each performance, ODonovan pushes the audience members seated at the cafe tables around him to consider or reconsider their digital afterlives. As you watch Terry debate whether to delete or keep his deceased ex-partners social media accounts, youre confronted with the reality of your own internet mortalityor immortality as the case may be: Do you want your Facebook to become an online gravesite of sorts, with folks leaving posts on your wall in lieu of flowers? Or is there a loved onea digital executoryou trust to make this decision for you after you die?

On opening night, I sat down with ODonovan before the show to pick his brain on community, death, and how social media is shaping both. At first I was a bit confused by his decision to meet up at the Greene Grape Annex, where hed be performing in a few hours. The tables were so close that I could read the Google doc of the person sitting next to me had I felt curious enough. And the 80s music in the background played too softly to offer our conversation any walls of privacy. But a few minutes into our back-and-forth, I realized that was sorta the point. In User Not Found, Terry pokes holes in our separate concepts of public and private, revealing how they spill into each other whether we like it or not.

So why set the show in a coffee shop? ODonovan answered by looking around the room. So what if that person there got a text message and found out that their partner was dead? he asked me. Would they reach out and ask us for help? Would they just sit there alone? If I saw someone crying would I reach out to them or not?

You get the feeling he would. ODonovan wore a diagonally striped sweater that looked like Banana Republics take on a 90s sitcom outfit. His face is kindslightly tired in a comforting new-dad kinda way. He bathed his answers to my questions in high-stakes words like connection, comfort, touch, humanize. User Not Found aims to humanize buildings and phones but ultimately convey that neither are fair trade-offs for the fleshy real stuff.

Despite us having these phones and laptops, we come to these communal spaces because people need people to get through the hard things in life, ODonovan said. Theres something about sharing that air and that space thats very important.

Sappy (though true) as that sounds, ODonovan told me more than once that he isnt sentimentalnot when it comes to life and death and the artifacts that linger on. We all have a friend whos died and their Instagram profile is still there, he said. You dont really want to unfollow that friend, he tells me, but you also dont want to carry around this reminder of their death in an app that stays in your pocket, that sleeps next to you each night. In large part, ODonovan created this play with his creative partner Daphna Attias to interrogate this tension. They wanted to know, Does social media help or hinder the grieving process?

ODonovan did his research on this question as he worked with director Attias and writer Chris Goode to create User Not Found. They talked to hospice workers, picked the brain of an expert at the Center for Death and Society at the University of Bath, and interviewed a woman who obsessively curates her Facebook page with the plan of giving it to her daughter as a gift once she dies.

There are a couple different types of people, ODonovan told me: keepers and deleters. In other words, those who want their Facebook page to be memorialized once they die, and those who go into their account settings and click delete after death. And there is a third type of course: those who dont want to decidelike Luka. They are the people who would rather let a designated loved one (a legacy contact) choose for them. As Terry says in User Not Found, Death is a story told by the living.

I asked ODonovan whether hes a keeper or deleter. The question doesnt really exist, because you cant get rid of anything, he said, but still answered anyway: Im definitely a deleter. It didnt make me happy to look at Facebook, and he imagines his Facebook page wouldnt make the loved ones who survive him that happy either.

His answer didnt come as that big of a surprise. After all, ODonovan is the same man who cherishes the tangible, creating site-specific plays set in swimming pools, anchored boats, hotel rooms, and storage containers so that audience members can touch everything the actors can touch. The digital world just isnt enough for him, dead or alive.

Touch is so important to being human, ODonovan told me right at the beginning of our interview. When we have a baby, its all about comfort, touch, making sure they feel secure you know?

User Not Found explores what it means when that security is gone. Its about how we grieve, he said. Weve always grieved and now weve added this new thing into the grieving process. If youve got all these photos and all these videos, are they helping us or hindering us to grieve? Because humans need to forget and move on in order to carry on in life. We cant remember everything because otherwise wed go crazy.

During a climactic moment of User Not Found, Terry is flooded with memories of his ex-partner. Suddenly, after scrolling through some of Lukas 30,000+ tweets, he remembers his former lover dancing around their home, reading from his iPad, sleeping next to him in bed. It overwhelms Terry. He crumbles a cookie in his hand, letting the crumbs fall to the floor before belting out: Do not go gentle, says Dylan Thomas. Horseshit! say I. I will take gentle at the end, that much I know for sure. But I cant figure out what is the more gentle thingto push the button or not to push the button.

Jenna Barnett (@jennacbarnett)is a writer and editor currently pursuing her Masters in Journalism at NYU, where shes studying Literary Reportage. She has published her work in McSweeneys, Sojourners, and the Belladonna.

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In an Immersive Play, Scrolling Through Grief at the Coffee Shop - Bedford + Bowery

By Shreyan JainNov. 13, 2019

Doctor SleepDirected by Mike FlanaganScreenplay by Mike FlanaganStarring Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Cliff CurtisRated R, Now Playing

Its an old tale that Stephen King had no special love for The Shining, Stanley Kubricks much-acclaimed 1980 film adaptation of Kings own bestselling horror novel. Infinitely more interested in probing the darkness within the human mind than the more fantastical horrors of the supernatural, The Shining simply took one too many creative liberties for Kings personal liking. Fortunately, it appears that the question of whether Kubrick erred in wandering from his source material has finally been settled once and for all. If the box office numbers for Mike Flanagans recently released sequel, Doctor Sleep, are any indication, Kubrick got it right all along.

Doctor Sleep begins by taking us backwards in time to pick up where The Shining left off. Now safely back at home with his mother, young Danny (Roger Dale Floyd) remains traumatized by his memories of the insidious Overlook Hotel, whose demons still haunt his waking and sleeping hours. But when Danny (Ewan McGregor) shines and reconnects with Dick Halloran (Carl Lumbly) or more accurately, his ghost he learns how to use the same psychic power that attracts these ghastly apparitions to protect himself from their predatory presence. The demons go away, but the nightmares dont stop, and as Danny grows older he learns to take a page out of his fathers book, finding his daily refuge by literally drinking his sorrows away. Meanwhile, were also introduced to the mysterious and seductive Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), the ringleader of a cult that use their shining abilities to sniff out and prey on similarly gifted children, whose essence (or steam) sustains their state of near-immortality. During a frenzied (and graphically over-indulgent) feeding session, Rose senses the presence of a child named Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a veritable white whale of psychic energy that her followers could live off for centuries. From this point, the film proceeds in predictable fashion towards a conclusion that King has surely dreamed of for decades.

Torn between literary integrity and gratuitous homage, Doctor Sleep unfortunately never quite finds its own footing. By deciding to split the difference between Kubrick and King, Flanagan ends up with a final version thats neither a successful standalone piece nor an authentic continuation of the story in the spirit of The Shining. Take the films opening scene, for instance, which just like its predecessor presents us with a sweeping overhead shot of an expanse of greenery, evoking the iconic scenic drive through the Colorado wilderness that frames Jacks trip to the Overlook. We expect a similar effect here, but instead the camera zooms in to reveal a strange, hitherto unseen campsite where a young child unknowingly wanders into a trap set by Rose. Ultimately, the birds-eye shot is nothing more than an unintended and empty MacGuffin, an aesthetic similarity without any narrative or thematic basis.

If Flanagan were less preoccupied with impersonating Kubrick a daunting task for even the most accomplished filmmaker his curiosity about the supernatural forces at the heart of Kings novel could have made for an intriguing narrative. Despite the title, Dannys shining ability was simply a supporting element in The Shining, an additional layer of mystery that both foreshadowed the films sinister turns and added to the uncertainty of the ending. In Doctor Sleep, Kings mythology takes center stage, as we witness the fullest extents of Roses, Abras, and ultimately Dannys own psychic powers. Although the films desire to provide explication on its predecessors supernatural elements is respectable, Flanagans decision to force-feed us visual references and allusions to The Shining detracts from the experience. What made Kubricks film so terrifying and unsettling was not the fantasy elements themselves but rather how much was left unsaid about them, the inherent ambiguity that forced us to question how much of what we saw was actually real. By constantly revisiting and rereading elements such as the Overlook Hotel, Flanagan tries too hard to fill in the essential narrative gaps within The Shining rather than create his own distinct story, resulting in a jumbled mess of a film that feels thematically and narratively incoherent.

Even for those who are unfamiliar with The Shining and wont try to measure up Doctor Sleep against it, the film suffers from several issues that undermine the overall viewing experience, not the least of which is its highly questionable pacing. The first hour of the film consists of a series of flash forwards as we watch Danny transform from terrified child into amoral alcoholic drifter into the titular hospice caretaker over the span of four decades. Unfortunately, all of this character development takes place off screen, keeping Dannys character completely at bay and preventing us from feeling any genuine empathy or identification with him. Once Danny decides to go to his first AA meeting, for example, the film immediately jumps forward eight years, as if his slow upward climb back to sobriety was as effortless and instant as his stumbling descent into substance abuse.

Even when the film gives itself time to linger over important moments of character development, the scenes ultimately ring hollow. The child Danny may be haunted by his time at the Overlook, but Sheila whose experience was nothing short of horrifyingly traumatic displays no signs of PTSD. When Abra realizes her father has been slain by Roses followers, she reacts with something between quiet acceptance and indifference. Whether due to a failure in acting or in writing, the characters are stripped of basic emotions, finding themselves remarkably placid and straight-faced in the face of tragedy. The exception is the scene in which Danny finally confronts the spirit whose presence (or, more accurately, absence) looms over almost the entire film: his father, Jack Torrance. In that moment, Flanagan finally finds his groove and gives us a powerful and nuanced treatment of alcoholism and the disintegration of family, the thematic undercurrent of both of Kings novels. Unfortunately, the moment comes too late to redeem the rest of the film.

Ultimately, the biggest disappointment of Doctor Sleep is its failure as a horror film. Flanagan unabashedly lifts the most terrifying images from The Shining and throws them at his audience time and time again until theyve completely lost any shock value. Around the third time we see the same naked old lady emerge from behind an ominous bathtub curtain, the visual feels more comically absurd than scary. So, of course, Flanagan decides to revisit the image two more times before the end. The most terrifying thing about the film is just how much it detracts from the terrors of The Shining, which wont feel anything like the timeless horror masterpiece it was once youve watched Doctor Sleep, a sequel in name but nothing else. Flanagan might have succeeded in making a film that Stephen King can finally appreciate, but I wouldnt be surprised if the ghost of Kubrick comes back to haunt him for it.

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'Doctor Sleep' might just put you to bed - The Tech