As could be expected, Sean Astin is approached often by strangers. What may be surprising, however, is that not all of them want to talk about the actor’s roles in the epic “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy or his early work on the ’80s classic “The Goonies.” Instead, many want to discuss his very public mother, Patty Duke, and her very public battle with bipolar disorder. From a clerk at an airport gift shop to a makeup artist hired for a series of appearances in Salt Lake City, they say they have been affected in some way by the mental illness. “Everywhere I go, people say that they’ve been touched by it,” the 35-year-old Astin said, stopping in Utah as part of a public-awareness campaign about bipolar disorder, also called manic depression. “People are whispering less about it.” [More]
Day: August 12, 2006
The Raynor Memorial Libraries’ Department of Special Collections and Archives will host a lecture by Tolkien scholar Eduardo Segura, Professor of Aesthetics, Philosophy of Language, and Literature at the Institutio De Filosofia Edith Sten (Granada, Spain) at 3:00 p.m. on September 26th in the Raynor Library, 1355 W. Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee. Professor Segura’s presentation, “Tolkien, Lewis, and Hollywood: What Images Cannot Say,” will center on differences between literature and cinema as artistic means, particularly from J.R.R. Tolkien’s and C.S. Lewis’ outlook. Dr. Segura will discuss Tolkien’s passion for inventing languages, and the immense difficulty of communicating metaphorical meaning on film—even those brilliant scenes that Hollywood has recently released. A question and answer session will follow. [More]