Tag: coppola

My dream of working from home started with this ad for IBM and Coppola’s Thinkpad (publish those visions you have)

The computer above, and the ad it is, came out in the mid 90s.

It was possible to work from home then, but it was not easy. I used to have a luggable computer that weighed 40 pounds and which I would …lug… home every day one summer to work from home. What I dreamed for, though, was to work from home with a small laptop like Coppola’s. A laptop where I could work from home daily, be it at a desk or in a beautiful kitchen like the one above.

It eventually happened. The laptops got better, the networks got better, and eventually the work cultures got better and I could do this. My kitchen wasn’t as nice, but everything else was nice.

Creative people, keep putting out your visions for a better world. You never know what dreams people will have. It might be as simple as a dream of working on a laptop in a kitchen. A dream that becomes more achievable once people can envision it.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather is 50

Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece, The Godfather, was released fifty years ago. While now everyone raves about it and the sequel (though not the third film), this was not always the case. Some insightful critics like Roger Ebert wrote positively on it,  here. Others did not. For example, read this review of  The Godfather from 1972 in The New York Times.

Since then, the Times has comes around. 🙂 Here’s two recent pieces, one long and one short, that reflect on the film:

I was glad to come across Ebert’s piece. It mirrors what I wrote about it some time ago: For fans of The Godfather, with a few minor thoughts | Smart People I Know.

If you haven’t seen it or haven’t seen it in awhile, I recommend you do. I can watch the film or even clips from the film any day, even the deleted scenes, such as this one, when Michael and the Don reunite. You can find many such clips on Youtube. But watch the whole film too. You won’t regret it. How can you refuse with an offer like that?