№ 840. Field of Dreams

 

I first saw 

 

I first saw Field of Dreams on 25 December 1993, on ITV. My father had died on 11 January 1992. If you want to, you can stop reading now, because you don’t have to be a psychologist to work out why Field of Dreams made me cry.

№ 821. The Odyssey

rahalarts

 

№ 816. Lessons from Lord of the Rings

 

 

A Harvard University Law professor stood at a podium last week and told the graduating class that their credentials were not their qualification. He did it without saying the sentence. He picked a hobbit instead.

The story most people will tell about Benjamin Sachs’s last lecture is that a professor surprised his audience by quoting Tolkien instead of Rawls. That is the charming version. The actual version is that a senior labor scholar at Harvard Law School chose, in front of the next generation of corporate attorneys, to hand them the smallest character in the trilogy as their model. He could have given them Aragorn. He gave them Frodo. The choice was the whole sermon.

 

№ 808. The Sound of Music

 

 

№ 756. Friends

Screenrant

It was on a night out in 1995 in Los Angeles that Friends writer Adam Chase realised the show had become a phenomenon. Out for dinner, while he was writing season two, he overheard a conversation. People weren’t just talking about Friends: they were quoting it. “It became a constant,” he says. “You would go out and you would hear at least one or two people quoting our jokes, arguing about whether they were a ‘Rachel’ or a ‘Monica’.”

That was just the start. Launched 30 years ago this month, the sitcom – which followed six twentysomethings living in New York, largely hanging out in the fictional coffee shop Central Perk – would become a cultural touchpoint for a generation. At its height, it was broadcast in 60 countries, each episode watched by 22 million viewers, all bewitched by sarcastic roommates Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Joey (Matt LeBlanc), uptight siblings Ross (David Schwimmer) and Monica (Courteney Cox), spoiled-but-sweet Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), and kooky Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow).

№ 724. “Omnia ex scrineis praeter stilum”

 

№ 695. Movies Killed the Radio Star

 

 

    The movies are, once again, not dead. Art forms are more like viruses than animal species: They don’t become extinct; they mutate, recombine, go dormant and spread out again in new, sometimes unrecognizable ways, which carry memories of older selves encoded in their DNA. 

№ 593. Merry Little Christmas

One Christmas classic we watched just before December was Meet Me in St. Louis. 

 

Meet Me in St. Louis is a 1944 American Christmas musical film made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Divided into a series of seasonal vignettes, starting with Summer 1903, it relates the story of a year in the life of the Smith family in St. Louis, leading up to the opening of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (more commonly referred to as the World's Fair) in the spring of 1904.

 

№ 537. Second Chances

Pictures in History

 

"As the future star charmed a judge throughout the ordeal, he told (Tim) Allen that he expected him to 'be a very successful comedian.' Fortunately in the comedy world, being a snitch isn’t a dealbreaker....

'When I went to jail, reality hit so hard that it took my breath away, took my stance away, took my strength away,' Allen later told Esquire.

'I was put in a holding cell with twenty other guys — we had to crap in the same crapper in the middle of the room — and I just told myself, I can’t do this for seven and a half years. I want to kill myself.'

Amazingly, that’s when the comic in him began to grow. Before long, he was able to make some of the toughest prisoners and even guards laugh.

 

№ 424. The Crown

What, exactly, is the point of the royal family? Why, in a time of boisterous populism and expanding social consciousness, do the British continue to tolerate this emblem of entitlement and reaction? No one seems to know the answer, least of all the royals themselves, and herein lies the fundamental irony of Morgan’s show, which returns Nov. 17 for a third season. Constitutionally, the role of the monarch is to keep his or her mouth shut, to abjure what Elizabeth, in “The Queen,” calls “the sheer joy of being partial.” This sphinxlike silence is, in turn, conducive to a second, more intangible function: to serve as a conduit for mass emotion, a projection screen for national yearning or catharsis. In other words, the royals are celebrities. For about a thousand years, they were the only celebrities. As that began to change, around the midpoint of the last century, the House of Windsor found itself fumbling for a fresh raison d’être.

№ 418. Ad Astra

When we dream about
our future, we plunder scenes,
plots and peoples. Like

mobius loops wrung taut,
we fuse words, knives and prayers.
We build sand castles,

kites plastered on sticks,
and tin men to slay terrors.
Then wake up consumed.


 

№ 377. The Secret Life of Old Songs

This song about rediscovering our old selves and lovers made me smile. I paid no attention to it before until I watched "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" again, this time on Netflix. I actually liked how the movie tied up a lot of almost unrelated elements. Iceland, Greenland and Afghanistan were beautifully shot in wide panoramic format which just underscored the theme of a closeted traveler finally unmoored from the desk job and let loose to the chaos of the elements.

I didn't appreciate the movie the first time I watched it. I probably missed out on the many cultural references and the really stunning landscapes. But seeing it again in high definition and on a very big 70-inch or so screen made such a difference.

Escape (The Piña Colada Song)

№ 374. Retiro X

Chungking Express Art

She lip-reads her swift murders,
In urban-drenched neon monologues,
Fractured day dream sequences.

She sketches boarding passes on a tissue paper
Later thrown away, unread,
Melting in the midnight monsoon.

She sleepwalks in vindaloo alleys,
Concealed and armed by wigs and stilettos,
Tipsy with chaos, solitary and morbid deadlines.

Like the poisoned city she breathes,
She is livid, resigned and, cruel.

№ 373. Love You for 10,000 Years

In his essay “Time Pieces: Wong Kar-Wai and the Persistence of Memory,” critic Chuck Stevens summarizes Wong Kar-Wai’s approach to film-making perfectly: “Passionate about ideas, possessed by the errant flashes of whimsy and misfortune that haunt modern loves, [Wong Kar-Wai] transforms emotional free-fall into infectious rhymes and deliberate coincidences, willfully missed signals and capricious possibilities for romance.”

№ 369. A Dictator is an Artist

Guilt is petite bourgeois crap. An artist creates his own moral universe. Ergo, fuck guilt! Fuck guilt and all its moral trappings. Be your own kind of dictator. Build your own ethical constructs. Be free from the fetters woven by those who came before you. Consolidate your own moral realm. You gotta do what you gotta do.

Does this mean President Duterte is an artist?! That makes Trump a Picasso.

№ 368. Saturday Fun Machine

I started downloading gems again since last Saturday. For a time, Pirate Bay was down and, also, life got a little busy and under the weather.

I wonder how the Game of Thrones would turn out if it were translated into a Wes Anderson stop motion film! For now, Isle of Dogs is enough. More than enough, really. 

№ 172. Me, My Selfie and I

Who are these millenials hiding inside Gen X suits? 

The world is in capable hands, no? These kids will inherit the earth.

They like selfies, traveling and social networks. Their lives are dipped deep in tech and indulgent ecology. Yes, they swim in it like prehistoric life in the primordial soup.

Are these accurate and fair descriptions? Does it matter?

1. Self-centered,
2. tech driven and savvy,
3. unafraid to explore the physical and virtual realities and the spaces in between,
4. sexually fluid and less inhibited,
5. very visual or aural or make that sensual.

№ 122. Hobbits-es....

Peregrin Took asks a question. I ask, can I explore those drums? They all look too rested.

Legolas is back. But I can't remember him ever in that book. Hmmm..... time to review for the next installment.

Mirkwood is overrated. Yes, giant spiders and woods are spooky. But Mirkwood is like a marshmallow brand compared to the name MORDOR. The name's cadence and inflection alone already give you a sense of doom. Give me Mordor!

And, OMG, Peter Jackson is a hobbit.

№ 114. Oscars: Best Short Animation

I was looking for Guacamole, but this isn't bad either.

 

№ 82.God of Carnage

"In America, it has been, for so long now, the belief that guns designed to kill people indifferently and in great numbers can be widely available and not have it end with people being killed, indifferently and in great numbers." The New Yorker

 

All huddle in midnight vigil.
They wait for paid violence to awake.

Dark menace finally rises up
To uncoil out of the silver pages.

Then bullets litter the air.
Special effects, they think.

Fire metals pierce
Flesh, bones and fiction.

Cellphones ring unanswered
In the pockets of dead children.

Popcorn kernels litter the exodus
While Gotham reels empty after the carnage.

Pilgrims welcome the refuge outside.
Almighty Bruce redeems his masses back to reality.

Bento Box: 

"It is the implicit bargain every moviegoer makes. You buy your ticket, you go into an auditorium full of people you don't know, you look toward the front of the room, the lights go down -- and in the darkness, you are safe. The movies promise us a happy ending, a return to the familiar world we know" (When it's not 'only a movie'). 

Alas, no more of that fiction beyond the film.