Justin Cecil's Blog

  I came across an opinion article the other day from a concerned mother. It was titled “I raised my kids on Pixar – and it has ruined classic cinema for them.” In the article the writer and concerned mother states, “Pixar has ruined this generation: they have no attention span and zero tolerance for mild amusement.” No. Just… no. One could rightfully claim that other factors in our modern day society have contributed to a fair amount of people with short attention spans. The influence of cell phones and the Internet, while they have brought a lot of good in the world (like me being able to write this blog!), has probably without a doubt done this as a side effect. However, Pixar is not at fault here. And the company itself has not “ruined” classic cinema for younger generations. In the article the writer states that she tried to entertain her children with movies that she grew up with. Do you know what movies she mentioned that she tried to show them? “Beavis and Butt-Head” a

  “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” - Leonardo da Vinci           I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of the Renaissance man or woman, a person who strives to do multiple things in a variety of fields, to do whatever interests them. Most people think of Leonardo da Vinci and others of the actual Renaissance period, or perhaps of Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson. Rarely do we think of people in our own time as potential Renaissance people; more often we look towards specialists in modern times.  There are actually many examples of modern day Renaissance people, and I’ve written a couple of previous blog posts about them. Here are five more that I’ve thought of. Dennis Hopper –  The late Dennis Hopper was best known as an actor and filmmaker for his work in films such as “Easy Rider” and “Blue Velvet.” However, he was also a prolific photographer and