Coffee Break [16/3/20]

16/3/20 Hannibal 27

It can be a struggle to get through the second half of the day.

Want to pick up some extra cash and celebrate St. Patrick’s Day while self isolating? Career resource site Zippia is offering one would be movie critic $1000 to watch ten Irish movies this St. Paddy’s Day.

After viewing the following movies you’ll be required to write a thousand words on Irish culture.

  • My Left Foot
  • The Crying Game
  • Far and Away
  • Circle of Friends
  • Hunger
  • The Departed
  • Leprechaun
  • Waking Ned Devine
  • Angela’s Ashes
  • The Wind That Shakes The Barley

Applications are being accepted until 5 pm MST today. What else are you gonna do? Can’t hit the bars, it’s a dirty old world.

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27 Comments

    • Definitely The Commitments! I would have also chosen Into the West and The Secret of Roan Inish. But what do I know? I’m not even Irish.

      I’ve never seen The Guard, I know what I’m watching tomorrow, thanks!

      • The Van and The Snapper are good followups to The Commitments (though not sequels). Colm Meany is good as always in them.

        The Secret of Kells is a very well done animated movie about the Book of Kells.

        The Playboys with Aidan Quinn, Albert Finney and Ribin Wright is another good one.

        I never saw Michael Collins, which is supposed to be Liam Neeson doing some prime neesoning.

  3. I made an emergency trip to the liquor store yesterday, just in case. It turned out to be an error, because then I felt free to drink a bit more than I should have, but I still count it as prudent planning, not panic buying. Things I am planning to do include getting off the couch to walk the dogs, working on the dollhouse I am making in a drawer, trying to figure out how to fix the pants I am making without a pattern (could have been a brilliant idea, but doesn’t seem to be in actual fact) painting the bathroom and the laundry area, stifling the chihuahua in a pillowcase if he doesn’t SHUT UP about me getting off the couch, and eating some more chocoate. Possibly going to get more chocolate, even.

  5. I love Irish people, but Jaysus, I hate St Patrick’s Day. It was always the worst day of the year in Chicago, with the weather lousy and drunken amateurs filling the streets with puke and discarded green hats. I hope they cancel it entirely.

    • I like doing it up at home. When my daughter was young I baked scones for breakfast put green food color in her milk. Dinner was usually salmon with dill sauce and colcannon. And many cups of Irish Coffee. This year I think it will just be lots of Irish Coffee.

      • A friend of mine in LA always makes green velvet cupcakes with creme de menthe icing. I was going to say they’re McScrumptious – but is that being anti Irish? I’ve lost my sense of PCness.

  6. I for one welcome not being punished by the inescapable stench of corned beef with cabbage everywhere. Why that of all dishes has become the obligatory St Patrick’s day offering escapes me. Give me rabbit stew.

    • I wouldn’t eat rabbit stew, and I don’t eat lamb. No judgement on people who do, I have so many issues with food. My St Paddy’s Day food is mostly soda bread.

  7. I have seen one movie from that list: Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley. It was very good. I’ll try to see the other recs. But unlike Hannibal, I won’t be seeing them soon!

    from wiki:

    The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a 2006 war drama film directed by Ken Loach, set during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) and the Irish Civil War (1922–1923). Written by long-time Loach collaborator Paul Laverty, this drama tells the fictional story of two County Cork brothers, Damien O’Donovan (Cillian Murphy) and Teddy O’Donovan (Pádraic Delaney), who join the Irish Republican Army to fight for Irish independence from the United Kingdom.

    The film takes its title from Robert Dwyer Joyce’s “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”, a song set during the 1798 rebellion in Ireland and featured early in the film. The film is heavily influenced by Walter Macken’s 1964 novel The Scorching Wind.

    Widely praised, the film won the Palme d’Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.[4] Loach’s biggest box office success to date,[5] the film did well around the world and set a record in Ireland as the highest-grossing Irish-made independent film, until surpassed by The Guard.[6]

    and

    Kenneth Charles Loach (born 17 June 1936) is an English filmmaker. His socially critical directing style and socialist ideals are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as poverty (Poor Cow, 1967), homelessness (Cathy Come Home, 1966), and labour rights (Riff-Raff, 1991, and The Navigators, 2001).

    Loach’s film Kes (1969) was voted the seventh greatest British film of the 20th century in a poll by the British Film Institute. Two of his films, The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) and I, Daniel Blake (2016), received the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, making him the ninth filmmaker to win the award twice.[1]

    Loach, a social campaigner for most of his career, believes the current criteria for claiming benefits in the UK are “a Kafka-esque, Catch-22 situation designed to frustrate and humiliate the claimant to such an extent that they drop out of the system and stop pursuing their right to ask for support if necessary”.[2]

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