10 Movies That I Want to Watch Before 2012 Ends

The Dark Knight Rises. The Avengers. Looper. 2012’s been a pretty good year for movies. But if you think there are no more good movies coming out then think again! Here are ten movies that I hope to watch before the end of the year.

Argo

Starring: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine), John Goodman (Monster's Inc)

Director: Ben Affleck (Gone Baby Gone, The Town)

Release Date: OUT NOW

Say what you will about Ben Affleck’s acting skills, there’s no denying that he’s a talented director. I really enjoyed Gone Baby Gone and The Town but I think Argo tops both of them. 

Argo is based on a real-life story set during the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis. It was a tumultuous period in US-Iranian relations with Iranian militants storming the US embassy and kidnapping most of the American staff. However, a small group of six US diplomats managed to escape and secretly hid away in the home of the Canadian ambassador. In comes Ben Affleck as CIA agent Tony Mendez to extract the diplomats from Iran. He concocts a crazy scheme: to create a cover story that the six diplomats are Canadian filmmakers scouting in Iran for exotic locations to shoot the science fiction film Argo. 

The Starfish Story

I came across this short story the other day in the Melbourne newspaper the MX. It's an inspiring tale which will hopefully remind you that even the tiniest action can make a huge difference to one person.

One day, an old man was walking along a beach that was littered with thousands of starfish that had been washed ashore by the high tide. As he walked, he came upon a young boy who was eagerly throwing the starfish back into the ocean, one by one.

Puzzled, the man looked at the boy and asked what he was doing. The boy replied, "I'm saving these starfish. The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.".

The old man chuckled. "There are thousands of starfish and only one of you. What difference can you make?"

The boy picked up a starfish, gently tossed it into the water and turning to the man, said, "It made a difference to that one." 

Courtesy of The Starfish Project

Why I Run

Jack Sparrow running from a tribe of cannibals in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Some of my friends don’t understand why I like to go for a 20 min run several times a week. I guess I can see where they are coming from: when you run for a long time, your legs start to feel like jelly and your lungs scream for you to stop. When they ask me why I run, I always respond with 'I don’t know'. Although that’s not entirely true. I do know why I run. It’s just that there are so many reasons why that I don’t really know where to begin. But I will at least make an attempt: