 I want to talk about Shawshank Redemption. So I got to see Shawshank. Thank you, Nicolas Navarro. Thank you for the contribution. I saw Shawshank Redemption again last night in preparation for doing the show today. As I said, Dave Goodman paid me $500 to do it. And I have to say, after watching it, again, maybe the third or fourth time in my life that I've seen and saw when it first came out, that the Shawshank Redemption, I think, based on my knowledge of movies, Shawshank Redemption is a really good movie. And it's really good in many, many, many dimensions. Indeed, I would argue that Shawshank Redemption is one of the best movies made in the last 40 years. It's a movie. If you haven't seen it, I'd say definitely go watch it. You know, I think it's supremely enjoyable. It's a movie that was made in 1994. So for many of you, it's like a classic from a long time ago, a classic. But this is a terrific movie in every aspect. It's beautifully acted, just beautifully. I mean, it's Tim Robbins by far. Tim Robbins plays the main character. Tim Robbins by far best performance. But I also think it's Morgan Friedman's best performance. Morgan Friedman is excellent in it. You know, the acting is superb. I think in every aspect of the movie making way, the cinematography is beautiful and amazing. The things that the cinematographer chooses to focus on versus things that it doesn't focus on, the way it lays out the prison, the way it creates that claustrophobic sense of what's going on there, the things that it chooses to show you and the things that it chooses not to show you, for example, it doesn't choose to show you the extreme horrific violence that is involved in the movie. You don't need to see it, including sexual violence. You don't need to see it. But it's there and it's got a presence. It's got this mechanism of narration that doesn't always work in many movies doesn't because it kind of distances you from what's going on. I think it shows your redemption. It actually works really, really well. I think it lays out the story. It gives you the highlights. It gives you the things that you need to know in order to understand what's going, what's happening, what's going on. And it gives you an intimate connection with the character of Morgan Friedman who is doing the narration. You get to learn about him as much as you get to learn about the plot. You get to learn about his character and what kind of person he is. And that is all good. It's a movie that manages to handle some difficult topics, topics that have to do with redemption, topics that have to do with criminals. These are criminals with exception of the lead character. Everybody in the movie is a criminal. They're all murderers, most of them are murderers. Not all of them. Morgan Friedman. We never know what exactly crime he committed, but it sounds like he murdered somebody. And it is a movie about redemption and about rehabilitating oneself and what that means. And I think it's quite effective in doing that. It also, I think, deeply psychologically interesting movie in the sense of the kind of psychology of developing prison and how difficult it is for prisoners to leave prison and how they associate their life with prison and they can't tolerate life outside. I think that was really interesting and I think, again, important for all of this, for the theme of the movie. But the most interesting thing about the movie is its lead character, Tim Robbins, who plays Andy Dupri. It's set in Massachusetts. Andy Dupri is falsely accused of murdering his wife and her lover. It's not a crazy accusation. There's lots of evidence to suggest that he actually did it. But I think we all, as viewers know from the beginning, that he did not. We don't know who did at the beginning, but we know it wasn't him. Again, even that feature of it is that when the discovery about who is the murderer comes through, it's a very clever, I think, plot twist, plot device that is used. Andy Dupri is a banker. One of the few positive, not just positive, heroic portrayals of a banker ever in all of moviemaking, just that would get Shawshank Redemption high on my list of favorite movies. But he is a smart banker. And one of the themes of the movie, and ultimately the theme of the movie, is that, if you will, redemption, success, and even hope, and hope is this mixed term, even hope because hope requires reason, requires thinking, requires using your mind, requires engagement, thinking, focus. And the beautiful thing about this movie, which is so rare in movies, particularly prison movies, is just the way in which Andy Dupri survives prison and ultimately gets out of prison. I'm going to try not to give too many spoilers. It's out of prison. Through the use of his own mind. You know, he's in a real, for a variety of reasons, he's in a really bad situation in his prison. Things are not going well for him. But there's a scene in which he overhears one of the gods talking about a tax thing that he has. And he basically goes up to God and says, I can solve this for you. I mean, the God almost kills him because how did he talk to him? But he basically provides a solution for this God's tax problem, which then turns his whole life around in prison because he becomes a tax advisor to all the prison gods and he starts doing the fraudulent accounting of the prison warden and his relationship to all of that changes dramatically. And yet, even when he's doing that, even when he's writing high, even when it seems like he's got a lot to lose, the thing I love about Andy Duprey, not just the fact that he's using his mind, using his reason, is that he never loses his love of life. Here's another lesson for all of you. Never loses his love of life. Never loses his love of beauty. My favorite scene in Shorshakh Redemption, my favorite scene in Shorshakh Redemption since Chills Down, is Andy Duprey is just he's running the library. That's one of the better jobs that he's gotten because he's helping out the gods and the warden with all this money stuff. But he gets a batch of new records for the library. And he's playing around with the records. He's looking at the records. And he takes out a record of Mozart's, oh God, what was it? Anyway, one of Mozart's operas. And he puts it on the record player in the office. And the god has gone to the bathroom. He locks the god in the bathroom. And he turns it on. He turns it on. And he starts, marriage a figaro. Thank you, Thomas. He turns it on. And he starts listening to it. And wow, he's having a good time. He's enjoying it. And the god in the bathroom starts hearing this. He goes, he starts yelling, what's going on there? And then Andy, to pray, has this great idea. He takes the microphone that projects into all of the cells and all of the prison. And he turns it on. And he starts transmitting this aria. Sui aria, it's a duet, two female voices from the marriage a figaro, into the prison. And everybody stops. I mean, I'm getting goosebumps just telling you about it. Everybody stops. All these hardened criminals stop. Beauty, beauty in its most, in a sense, most abstract form, but most immediately emotional form is projected into their lives. And Andy, to pray, the warden now has come. Everybody wants him to turn this off. He's going to get into massive problems of this. He's going to be beaten up. He's going to be sent into isolation. It's all worth it for this moment of beauty. It's all worth it to feel alive, to feel free, and to share that moment with all these other people. It's just a beautiful, beautiful little piece of the movie. It's just a few minutes. But it's just so stunning in its emotional impact on you, the viewer, on the emotional impact it's having on the prisoners. And so it's an amazing, amazing scene. And it's truly beautiful. And it shows the thing about Andy to pray is he's a man of reason who loves life. The best line in the movie, the best line in the movie which I think, in a sense, captures the whole movie, is the line, let's see if I get it right, because I have to get it right, right? Maybe some of you will correct me if I get it wrong. Get busy living or get busy dying. In a sense, that's the only alternative in life. This could be a, are you wrongs, rules for life. Get busy living or get busy dying. That is the only alternative in life. If you're not busy living, if you're not busy living, which means acting, which means doing, which means thinking, which means focusing on your life to make it better in every aspect possible available to you, if you're not doing that, then basically you're getting busy dying. So you either live with a capital L or you're slowly diminishing yourself and you're slowly dying. Pursue values. And that's the thing about this movie. In every point of this movie, Andy Dupre is pursuing values. And it turns out that every point in this story, Andy Dupre is pursuing his freedom, because freedom is a value. This movie is about the pursuit of values in every dimension. And in many respects, what he's teaching, the Morgan Friedman character, and the redemption is really not Andy Dupre's. The redemption is the Morgan Freedom's redemption. And in a sense, anybody that Andy Dupre touches in the movie, he's teaching them to be valueers. There's a young kid who comes in, a little thug who keeps getting caught stealing stuff. Andy Dupre at some point says, you know, you're not very good at the stuff. You can be caught, you might want to think about doing something else with your life. But the point is, he teaches the kids to value his life. He gets enrolled and pursue a, what do you call it, a high school degree. Morgan Friedman goes from just, in a sense, accepting his lot, living his life, to starting to think as a valuer. So the redemption as everybody else is not, Andy Dupre, Andy Dupre never needed redemption. Andy Dupre facilitates everybody else's redemption by teaching them to value, by teaching them to get busy living, get busy living. And in that sense, it's such a powerful good movie with good values. How rare is that? With a fantastic hero, there's nothing wrong with Andy Dupre. I mean, he clearly makes a mistake early on in the movie, but morally, this guy is perfect. He's rational, he's willing to fight for his values. His hope doesn't come from empty hope because hope can be something completely empty. His hope doesn't come from emptiness. His hope comes from his values, from the fact that he knows how to achieve them. His hope comes from his constant busyness around living. He is busy living. So I think the movie's excellent. I loved it. I think everybody should watch it. I think it will inspire you. I mean, if you don't have the biggest smile ever on your face when it's over and that, I guess I'm giving away a little bit, but that's okay, then I don't know what's wrong with you. I mean, I love Andy Dupre. I love Morgan Friedman. They are just fantastic characters that people you fall in love with and you wanna embrace and you want them to win and you want them to be successful and you watch every step and you're anxious, particularly, first time you watch the movie, you're anxious about what's gonna happen. Is this gonna be one of those dark prison movies? Is gonna end in tragedy? Is it all gonna be horrible? So I've taken a little bit of that anxiety away, but how it evolves, I'm gonna tell you, cause there's too many spoilers and I think there's too many cool twists. The warden is evil. Evil is evil. Good is good. How much better does it get than that? Evil is evil and good is good. So go see. You can rent it on Prime. You can rent it on Apple TV. You can get it on anywhere you want. It's easy to watch and it is a truly, truly fantastic movie and fun to watch. Don't you miss movies that are fun to watch? I mean, put aside Game of Thrones and all these other way, everybody's being slaughtered and you have to watch every little trickle of blood and brain splattered all over the world and over the place. Here's a movie that's well written, well produced, well directed. The music is terrific. I don't know who wrote the music but the music is terrific. Oh, based by the way on a Stephen King novel, a short story actually, short novel by Stephen King. Stephen King's a great storyteller. Director is Frank Darabont. I think this is the best movie he made but he did do some Indiana Jones movies and other popular movies but this is I think the movie he made. It's in every respect of the movie making profession I think this is well done, well made. It stands the test of time. What is it? 28 years ago was made. The fact that I'm telling you the word in is bad is not a spoiler. The fact that he's corrupt I don't think is a spoiler. No, I don't think any of those are spoilers. I mean, the only thing I said was a spoiler was that you're gonna end the movie with a smile on your face. That's the only spoiler I think but I'm not gonna tell you what the rest is. So I encourage you to watch this movie. Really encourage you. I think of all the movies I've reviewed this is, well, I mean, this is the most enjoyable of all of them and probably in many respects the best as a whole. It just stands as a whole. Just a good integrated work of art. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. 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