Get Inspired By Movies Life Lessons From Movies For A Better You

The history of cinema is short, just over one hundred years old. But, in these hundred-odd years, movies have influenced life in a big way. Movies make you laugh, cry, shout, and dance. But, • Are movies all about entertainment? • Can movies be a source of inspiration? • What are the lessons you can learn from movies? • How can you use the medium of movies to become a better you? You will find answers to these questions in this book.

After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, a professor shares the lessons he's learned—about living in the present, building a legacy, and taking full advantage of the time you have—in this life-changing classic. "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." —Randy Pausch A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull over the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy? When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"—wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have . . . and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living. In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

A tribute to one of the fathers of deconstruction as well as an extended essay on memory, death, and friendship.

The New York Times bestseller that gives readers a paradigm-shattering new way to think about motivation from the author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose-and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.

"An earlier edition of this work was published in Great Britain in 2015."--Title page verso.

Essays on small art films and big-budget blockbusters, including Antonia's Line, American Beauty, Schindler's List, and The Passion of the Christ, that view films as life lessons, enlarging our sense of human possibilities. For Alan Stone, a one-time Freudian analyst and former president of the American Psychiatric Society, movies are the great modern, democratic medium for exploring our individual and collective lives. They provide occasions for reflecting on what he calls “the moral adventure of life”: the choices people make—beyond the limits of their character and circumstances—in response to life's challenges. The quality of these choices is, for him, the measure of a life well lived. In this collection of his film essays, Stone reads films as life texts. He is engaged more by their ideas than their visual presentation, more by their power to move us than by their commercial success. Stone writes about both art films and big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. And he commands an extraordinary range of historical, literary, cultural, and scientific reference that reflects his impressive personal history: professor of law and medicine, football player at Harvard in the late 1940s, director of medical training at McLean Hospital, and advisor to Attorney General Janet Reno on behavioral science. In the end, Stone's enthusiasms run particularly to films that embrace the sheer complexity of life, and in doing so enlarge our sense of human possibilities: in Antonia's Line, he sees an emotionally vivid picture of a world beyond patriarchy; in Thirteen Conversations about One Thing, the power of sheer contingency in human life; and in American Beauty, how beauty in ordinary experience draws us outside ourselves, and how beauty and justice are distinct goods, with no intrinsic connection. Other films discussed in these essays (written between 1993 and 2006 for Boston Review) include Un Coeur en Hiver, Schindler's List, Pulp Fiction, Thirteen Days, the 1997 version of Lolita, The Battle of Algiers, The Passion of the Christ, Persuasion, and Water.

Being a teenager is hard work. Thanks to a combination of hormone overload, peer pressure, and social beliefs, teens and even preteens often feel misunderstood or alienated and are treated as unimportant or an outcast. These feelings are a combination of many things but generally come down to trying to figure out your place in the world from under your parent's thumb. Sports and video games sometimes help you escape the pressures of life for a little while. but they are not solutions. You need answers that can help you get a clearer picture of where you're going in life and what you want to be like when you get there. Through movies, we can see the best and worst in ourselves. These studies will help you as a young adult (ages eleven to sixteen) to see beyond the movie's storyline and into the heart of the feelings and issues the characters are dealing with. If you haven't had to deal with some of these issues yet, hang on. They're coming. You need to give serious thought now about how you will choose to deal with these issues when they do come up. No one can do it for you. Going through these questions is a good way to get started thinking. The world is ever-changing, but we have the one thing that will never change--God's Word. Living in this world can be rough, but you can be the one to make it better. Not all of the movies are rated to be seen by someone your age, but they don't have to be. You don't have to see the movies to do this study. The questions will guide you through the scenes so you can focus on the issues without dealing with the emotions that accompany visual images. Despite this, some topics may still be too sensitive for some people. For this reason, movies that focus solely on death or evil are noted with an asterisk on the "Contents" page because viewer discretion is advised.

"The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions," said the existentiallist thinker Albert Camus. And no less a philosopher than Woody Allen has wondered:"How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?" "Movies and the Meaning of Life" looks at popular and cult movies, examining their assumptions and insights on meaning-of-life questions: What is reality and how can I know it? (The Truman Show, Contact, Waking Life); How do I find myself and my true identity? (Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, Boys Don't Cry, Memento); How do I find meaning from my interactions with others? (Pulp Fiction, Shadowlands, Chasing Amy); What is the chief purpose in life? (American Beauty, Life is Beautiful, The Shawshank Redemption); and How ought I live my life? (Pleasantville, Spiderman, Minority Report, Groundhog Day).