Happy St. Valentine's Day!

"What the world needs now..."

"With Love and Kisses

Evoking images of sweet and ardent affection, the stamp features a Hershey's Kisses chocolate and a red heart that form mirror images of one another. Written on the heart is "Love" while "Kisses" appears on the plume that extends from the top of the chocolate treat. The unmistakable shape of Hershey's Kisses chocolates has not changed since The Hershey Company introduced this milk-chocolate candy to the nation in 1907. Wrapped by hand until the process was automated in 1921, Kisses chocolates have been available year round for 100 years with only one exception. Production ceased from 1942 to 1949, when silver foil was rationed during the war effort. Kisses chocolates wrapped in red and silver foil were introduced in 1986 in honor of Valentine's Day. The Postal Service began issuing its popular Love stamps in 1973. Over the years these stamps have featured a delightful assortment of designs including heart motifs, colorful flowers and the word "LOVE" itself. Award-winning illustrator José Ortega of New York City and Toronto, who designed the With Love and Kisses stamp, previously designed the Salsa stamp, one of four stamps that appeared as part of the 2005 Let's Dance/Bailemos issuance."

IRAN: The Truth Will Out

"I read the news today, oh boy"
There were 6 articles on Iran in the NYT
links and commentary to follow...

PIFF: Avenue Montaigne (2/13)

Someone should have warned me this was a "comedy"...(to be continued)

Misc Random? Coincidences

The universe conspires to shower me with random coincidences...(to be continued)

Lecture: Scarab Amulets (2/11)

Special Lecture:
Scarabs in the Collection of the Portland Art Museum
Sunday, February 11, 2 pm
Whitsell Auditorium
Join Egyptologist John Sarr for a discussion of the Museum’s rich and varied collection of over 1,300 scarabs. Discover the history of this significant collection assembled by the Englishman Major R. G. Gayer-Anderson between 1907 and 1917 in Egypt, and learn the meaning of the Egyptian scarab amulets and seals.

Major coolness!
More dung!!!
(to be continued)

Film: Notes on a Scandal (2/3)

This film was loads of fun...(to be continued)

Film: The Good German (2/1)

This film should have been so much more fun...(to be continued)

Film: Little Children (1/31)

Wow. I REALLY did not like this film.

And it saddens me to say that because I love Kate Winslet (and I rather like Patrick Wilson, who was in the HBO Angels in America, and Jennifer Connelly), and Todd Field, the director, has always struck me as a thoughtful young man.

Afterwards I checked the blurbs on metacritic and was surprised by how much people did like it, people whose opinions I genuinely esteem.

Oh, yes, I laughed; I cried; it was impeccably well crafted. I even liked the dry voiceover narration, though it seemed to disappear after the beginning only to pop up at the end. I'm going to continue by being specific here, so if you haven't seen it and plan to and don't want to know too much, then wait till you've seen it to read this and agree/argue with me.

First of all, and even more so say with "American Beauty" (coincidentally or not directed by Kate's husband Sam Mendes), I just have very little patience with people making fun of suburbanites--they're just too easy of a target for one thing, but furthermore they seem so ridiculously reductionistic and condescending toward these people, and I just think life is more complicated, and in the end everyone's just trying to make it through the day in one piece. Maybe I live a sheltered life and these people all are living caricatures, but I just tend to subscribe to the the-only-normal-people-are-the-ones-you-don't-know-well school of thought. Sure I was young once and sneered "bourgeois" accusations at the drop of a hat with the best of them, but I grew a little bit older and a little bit wiser and learned to love and embrace my inner bourgeoise, and yes, I do endorse age-appropriate behavior. I think at some point I looked around and realized no proles were condemning that life--it's sort of like when people of a particular identity group are able to get away with using terms that are slurs when used by people outside the group--sort of, but not really.

[I couldn't help but to go dig up this old quote from a Phil Levine interview from his book "Don't Ask":
--At twenty I wanted to kill hundreds of rich, superior, disdainful m*****f*****s. Oh, how they rode above it all.
--You don't anymore?
--No. I don't want to kill anyone. First, money doesn't have to make you an a**h***. It just usually does. But I've met people born of money who had soul, and I've met poor people who were as cold as ice. It's not as easy as I once thought. And I don't want to be a killer. There are hateful people who are just begging for it. I'd like to see the whole Nixon clan working for the rest of their lives in children's hospitals in Vietnam attending to the wounds they inflicted in the name of the free world.
--Did you get involved in the antiwar thing?
--Yep.
--No more to say?
--I could say I stopped the war with my little poems, I turned this country right around and now it's beautiful. But I won't.
--What about the poems you wrote then?
--Will you look at that rain.]
(He was in town last spring, as lovely and as funny as ever, reading from his new book, "Breath.")

Second of all, I have never in my life witnessed a mother with as little natural affection for her child as Kate Winslet's character--last I heard there were actually hormones or something that made you occasionally like your kid. Again maybe I'm sheltered, but I just couldn't believe it for a minute. Now, I know some mothers feel overwhelmed at times by the demands of the role, annoyed at times, and even some are happy having someone else do most of the work--but I don't recall them once showing Kate's character liking her kid, it was just so absurdly extreme.

OK, so I thought the Emma Bovary bookclub scene was pretty funny, but then Kate's character, who is so superior to everyone else because she was an English major, is going on about Emma's lack of choices--well, great, that explains Emma, what's your excuse, b****? Give me a break. No one forced you to marry some weenie and have a kid you don't like for chrissakes. English majors are not this insensitive--I personally take offense--what? you're so sensitive to Emma's plight but you have not a shred of recognizably human regard for your own child, puh-leeze, what is this garbage.

Finally, you know I could probably offer some serious feminist indictments of the portrayal and imaging of women (objectification, male gaze, and all that) in the last four films I wrote about here: Perfume, Casino Royale, Inland Empire, and Piano Tuner, but the Bond film actually was going for a more modern feminist Bond girl with Eva Green's character, and the other three were blatantly freaky, which is to say maybe these people have issues but at least they're not sanctimonious and smug and superior and think they know better than and about everyone. They all have elements of fantasy, whereas I frankly thought this film, appearing to be based on reality (though none I've ever seen), was far more insidiously misogynistic and offensive, and if it's going to deal with social issues, then it should be judged with regard to those. Not speaking from experience, but as far as I can tell one of the basic realities that all women with young kids face these days is what balance to strike between work in and out of the home and the economics of these choices, and this film boiled it down to three options. You can either be (a) a fulltime homemaker, and like it, and if so, you're a Stepford wife braindead suburban caricature, or (b) a fulltime homemaker, and hate it, and hate your kid, and feel trapped (Kate's character), or (c) work and be the sole income provider and be a castrating shrew and wind up cuckolded by (b). But hey, so much for nuance and reality. Hey 21st century women, damned if you do and damned if you don't--oh you want to be liberated, do you, well here, hope you enjoy it. But then we're supposed to care that this woman gets a clue in the end?--I repeat, puh-leeze. Not that the film is any less ungenerous with the men, and no doubt they're as confused as anyone by the redefinition of gender roles, but I'm sorry if I'm a little less sympathetic to them given the liberties they have historically bestowed upon themselves.

The one bit I liked was the perverts-are-people-too scenes with the guy and his mom, and then I found out why. So I go to the Charlie Rose episodes on google video to watch the segment with Todd Field (1/3/2007), like I said, a guy I am disposed to like. Mind you he wrote the screenplay with the guy who wrote the novel this was based on. (I liked one review that referred to the two main characters as escapees from a New Yorker story.) So he's talking about how his wife is very involved collaboratively in all aspects of the filmmaking process and then he says that the key scene with the creep and his ma wasn't even in the original screenplay, that his wife stuck it in there because "she said you're missing something here." Yeah like maybe just the slightest shred of human decency? Next time just let her make the film, buddy. (OK I still think he comes across as a very thoughtful guy and I will probably continue seeing his films; I haven't given up on him.)

God, I probably sound like the clueless suburbanite who didn't like Emma B. Maybe I just don't get the "satire." Maybe I've gone soft in my old age. If anyone sees this and wants to enlighten me as to its great merits, I'd be more than happy to hear it, but until then all I can say is ick, ick, ick and more ick!!!

[but seriously, Pardis, tell us how you really feel...]

[this train of thought continues in Notes on a Scandal, which I did like]

And just in case anyone is concerned that I'm letting David Lynch and those guys off the hook too easily, here's what Jonathan Rosenbaum had to say (ouch--harsh!):

"Many of my colleagues believe Lynch's best early feature is Blue Velvet (1986), which I regard as a gripping but limited piece of designer porn. Like his more offensive Wild at Heart and his more charming TV series Twin Peaks (both 1990), Blue Velvet offers a vivid illustration of how a man can turn his most lurid puritanical obsessions into clout and big money -- and get an audience to wallow in those obsessions without thinking about them very hard. It has little of the meditative integrity and private intensity of Eraserhead, but then little in his work before Inland Empire did. The exception was Mulholland Drive (2001), which also had a bone or two to pick with the Hollywood studio system and hinted that Lynch might be returning to his formal and poetic roots.

Writing about Wild at Heart in 1990, I suggested that Lynch's career seemed to dispute William Butler Yeats's memorable formulation In dreams begin responsibilities. He seemed to be in determined denial about the implications of the violence he trafficked in, with a child's view of good and evil, a formalist attitude toward images and sounds, a solipsistic desire to remain politically disengaged, and a lack of interest in understanding or addressing how the grown-up world works. "To claim that Lynch is ideologically innocent and naive about his neofascist fun seems fair enough," I wrote. "But to claim that he's ideologically neutral is to succumb to that same innocence and naivete."

Lynch's attitude doesn't seem to have changed much since then except in one crucial area -- the impact Hollywood has on artists struggling to keep their freedom and autonomy. In his new book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity..."

Film: The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (1/30)

The local weekly referred to this film as "a disturbed cousin to Tom Tykwer's recent 'Perfume,'" and the daily said the Quay Brothers "make David Lynch look like Ron Howard," so honestly, how could I not make the time to go see this?

By now is there anything more to say about The Brothers Quay and their films than that they're strange; they're beautiful; their sui generis (that's Latin for totally freaky); you know them; you love them; or you don't and you don't and that's OK too?

Guy Maddin named this film as number one of the second five in his top ten for 2006--remember him from the entry for "Inland Empire," the number one of the first five in his top ten. OK, so he named this film number six, but I liked the symmetry with Inland in the more convoluted original phrasing of that. Please see the Inland entry for the significance of Guy Maddin including a film in his top ten, namely that he's a big freak!

What better way to give you a sense of their strangeness than this random filmgoer review of their previous feature, "Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life", which I came across at imdb:

"User Comments:
2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful:-
Icily faultless, splendidly null, 25 August 2000
Author: GPeoples-2
If this has a meaning beyond the one on the surface, which carries no conviction, it's one of the classic horror films. But so far I can't see that it does. The authoritarian, sexually perverse world it depicts seems the creation of someone who has never experienced oppression or obsession at first hand and has nothing to say about it. This is a totally artificial and hermetic work. On the other hand, its distance from reality and purpose allows its manufacturers to take as much time as they please to refine and distill its essence, as in a bottle. But what is it they're distilling? Whatever it is, it gives off a lovely scent. One exquisite shot follows another; the actors are perfectly cast. Alice Krige I suppose can be called a cult figure now (I'm one of the cult), and in this she has finally found the ideal environment. The film is never uninteresting but should have been disturbing, and some day I hope to find something inside it."

Do you know the Brothers each have their own entry on imdb?--that just doesn't seem right. They're identical twins you know and they do everything together, at least everything that would be of concern to the imdb. Talk about a couple of freaks! But seriously, this film was fabulously strange and beautiful; I know, I already said that. I recommend it if you're at least moderately deranged.

How about this--another Benjamenta commentator:

"User Comments:
10 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
A unique experience, a work of exceeding beauty, 27 January 1999
Author: August-4 from London, England
Institute Benjamenta is an oddity. Let me say that first, get it out of the way. Part of me hesitates from revealing here that it is one of my favourite films of all time because I know I'll make some people reading this mini-review approach it from the wrong angle. A film like this should never become required viewing. You should stumble across it at a repertory cinema somewhere or be beguiled by the video-box art showing the striking visage of Alice Krige as she paces before her blackboard, deerfoot staff in hand. You should find one evening that its the only thing that sounds interesting on TV, or peer at a still alongside a mention in your TV guide and wonder what on earth the picture is supposed to depict. Contained between main and end credits here is a world so visually ravishing and technically abstruse that you are only in the film while you are watching; the rules of the outside do not apply. You peer into the dreamy, foggy black-and-white and what you can't identify for certain your imagination fills out. These are the most special special effects because you wonder 'what' and 'why' by never 'how.' The Institute of the title is a school for servants, the lessons they are taught bizarre and repetitive to the point of making 'deja-vu' a permanent state of being. Is the repetition the point of it all or has the teacher lost the plot? If she has, how come we care? None of this is vaguely like real life. None of it, that is, bar the characters emotions. Or is the whole thing like real life, like Life with a capital 'L?' In the end does this sort of pondering make for a good movie? I won't answer that because I'm terribly biased. Remember the title and look it up sometime. It's the cinematic equivalent of a stunning old-fashioned magician's trick. A monochrome bouquet, a sad smile. There are images, scenes that may make the hairs on the back of your neck think they're a cornfield with a twister on the way. I tried to warn you as quietly as I could."

Wow, to quote the Barkays: "Freakshow, baby, baby, on the dancefloor, it's just a freakshow!"

Would someone just please explain to me the difference between life with a small 'l' and Life with a capital 'L?' What is it about the Brothers?--even their imdb comments are strange and beautiful. Enough said.

I'll leave you with one about Piano Tuner:

"User Comments:
5 out of 9 people found the following comment useful:-
Man's Machine, God's Tune, 17 October 2006
Author: tedg (tedg@FilmsFolded.com) from Virginia Beach
Its a matter of abstraction. Always has been, in everything I suppose. But especially in film. The business is one of sharpening some edges and making others recede so as to cut us in some way. Its a dangerous business for all concerned and if it ever seems too competent, you know the blood is fake.
The Quays, like Maddin and Greenaway go into forbidden visual zones. They do let me down sometimes when I sense fear, but never when they stumble because stumbling is what shows the risk.
These guys already have earned a place on my short list of films you really must see before you die. I only allow two in any year, so it is something that their incredibly short "Are We Still Married?" is there. But there it is, something that is so rich and open, yet haunting, it will change your dreams permanently.
That short is entirely animated in their preferred style. They are Victorian in nature, both in the junk they assemble to create their worlds, but also in the cosmology they lean on. Its one where explicable means are all broken. Humanity escapes logic. Its the other side of the Holmes syndrome. Its where most of us live.
That's that and this is this, something more ambitious, the long form. That means you must support the long arc, a stretch across the cosmology longer than we can retain in our short memory. What they've done is rely on something we've seen before: a man-god who captures life in a life within life fold. We are sometimes in and sometimes out. The "in" is one of seven "automata," complex mechanical devices that sing life.
The tuner believes himself to be assisting in the maintenance of the machines from the outside but finds himself to be part of the mechanism. The existence of the machines allows the Quays to insert animated sequences that are supposed to merge with the live action. That live action is mostly dream space and when not, is a pseudodream world of Victorian frames and hues.
Its all just too lovely and risky and dangerous to be denied a place in your soul. Sure, it comes dangerously close to the banal. Sure, you can see a few seams and we all wish the budget for the final "performance" was bigger. But if you allow yourself to be swept in this as you routinely do for other science fiction worlds, you will find a sort of psychic sexual release in some long sequences.
In reading about this, some cite Svankmejer as an influence. You need to understand this. Svankmeyer is a Czech animator, a good one. He's an influence in just being there and surviving. But his world is organic and bleak. It is the stuff that comes from repeatedly beaten innocents. The Quays are more mechanical in their images, more episodic in the small. And leagues more optimistic. Their world is one where the sun shines, but just over the edge of a place in which we are stuck.
It makes all the difference. One you would bring children to, in hopes that they would remain children in the edges and so make you wise. The Czech, no. That's where you go to die or try.
I'm putting this as a four for the time being. It may be bumped. 2005 was a very bad year for film. But I haven't yet seen "Cache" or "History of Violence."
Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this."

Film: Inland Empire (1/28)

Greetings from the dark side of Neptune...

And the award for best actress goes to Laura Dern!

I didn't even know Jeremy Irons was in this film--he's so perfectly smarmy in the part of the expat Brit film director--an unexpected treat, not unlike Jeffrey Wright showing up in Casino Royale.

Now is as good a time as any to discuss the theory of expectations. The theory of expectations, an idea you may be familiar with, if not by the name I give it, says that if you've heard a film is brilliant, your expectations may be so high that you can come out of it disappointed, wondering what all the fuss was about, even though you might have found it perfectly fine otherwise, i.e., the disappointment has more to do with the expectations than with the quality of the film. Conversely, if you think something's going to be shite [the e is not a typo], you might come out of it pleasantly surprised.

Here's what the local weekly said: "None of which makes Inland Empire a bad movie. It doesn't make it a good movie. It doesn't make it, strictly speaking, a movie." Huh?

And even The Oregonian's Shawn Levy was baffled: "I like to think I'm not easily confused. I have read James Joyce's "Ulysses" and the "Cantos" of Ezra Pound several times each. I find relaxation and pleasure in the densest works of Federico Fellini and Jean-Luc Godard. But I am here to tell you that David Lynch's "Inland Empire" left me grasping for the merest crumbs of comprehension. It's not that I didn't like it. Lynch is so singular a talent and so pure a filmmaker that he almost can't help but produce moments that rattle your preconceptions of what a movie can be, and that's always a treat. But for nearly three hours, "Inland Empire" nagged me with the sense it was designed solely for the purpose of the viewer's stupefaction and was delighting in his success."

So I went into Inland Empire expecting it to be an incomprehensible meaningless mess, and I spent the entire time delightedly wondering what film they were writing about. Of course, it is pretty much on the experimental end of the range, so I would have to say: if you like David Lynch, by all means see this film; if you don't, then you probably shouldn't. Also, if you don't know who David Lynch is, you probably shouldn't, and if you're not sure whether you like him (or know him), you may want to err on the side of caution, however you choose to define that.

Mulholland Drive's evil twin lives at Hollywood and Vine. (For the record, I wrote that in my notes after seeing the film and before I read the "evil twin" phrase in the NYTimes review of Inland--maybe mom was right and I should get a job with the Times, but you just know the reviews wouldn't be nearly as much fun or personal [I believe the technical term is gonzo] as they are here on my blog; besides, like I told her at the time, I think the position's already taken.) I saw Mulholland with the two original film buffs in my family, my mom and her sister Sima, and my ninety year old grandma came too, because what were we going to do, leave her home alone sitting around getting bored. I gotta give props to grandma, as cryptic as that film was, and with her minimal familiarity with the English language, she totally got it. We walked out of the film and she turns to me and says in Farsi, "she killed herself because she felt bad for what she did to her friend." I was all like, grandma, you are so awesome, you so totally nailed it! I was pretty impressed, but she's sharp as a tack, that one. Maybe we'll all just have to sit around and watch Inland next time she and Sima are visiting from Iran just to get some expert analysis.

I once read something Robert Altman (God rest his soul in heaven) said about how the first time you see a film it doesn't count, because the first time you're just putting the pieces together and figuring out what's going on, and it's only in repeated viewings, once you know it in its entirety, that you can start thinking about it and appreciating it. This was similar to when a poetry teacher said that if the reading assignment was a couple pages of poetry, it was not his intention that the assignment should take five minutes, and that there was no such thing as reading poetry, there was only re-reading poetry. This goes a long way toward explaining why my blog entries are so frivolous and why I haven't spent much time writing about films despite the encouragement to do so and my obvious interest in them--namely that, for me, if I'm going to write seriously, and on the occasions I have done so when taking classes, it really requires having a copy for home re-viewing and close reading, and I barely manage to find the time to see some of the films I want to see even once. I have to say that watching this film, all I kept thinking was how much I wanted to go into film student mode, go back and watch Lynch's entire oeuvre and take notes on all the motifs and write a really long paper. He just has so much fun with all his little fixations. Wasn't that the robin from Blue Velvet that shows up briefly in a painting on the wall in Inland? Or this random bit from a salon.com analysis of Mulholland: "Also, speaking of "Blue Velvet," Dorothy Vallens lived in the Deep River apartments. Betty is from Deep River, Ontario." Amy Taubin wrote a nice piece on Inland in the new Film Comment (and named it her number two film of the year in the same issue--not sure her number one really counts, since Army of Shadows was made in 1969; Guy Maddin named it his number one--doesn't that just about say it all? ['No, Pardis,' you say 'that says nothing to me because I haven't the faintest idea who Guy Maddin is.' to which I reply, 'Guy Maddin, a Canadian director, and no doubt pride of Winnipeg, is like the biggest freak in the world! But hey, don't take my word for it, get a copy of 'The Saddest Music in the World' or anything else he's done and see for yourself, if you don't believe me. Or not even, just go to imdb and read the titles of his films. Now do you believe me? And when I say freak, of course, I mean that as a compliment of the highest order.]), of course she had the luxury to see it more than once: "I've seen Inland Empire three times, and after every screening, what people seemed most perplexed by are the rabbits."

The NYTimes said Inland was dark, and naturally I thought they were speaking figuratively, but no, it's literally dark, deliciously so--for now we see through a glass darkly, indeed. For all the charges of obscurantism, it's not Joyce's Ulysses you'd want to reference but Finnegans Wake, the book of the night. I kept thinking of what Stuart Gilbert said, here related from The Cambridge Introduction to James Joyce: "During the revision process, Joyce sometimes intentionally complicated individual passages and once added Samoyed words when a passage was 'not obscure enough.'" Inland too seeks the opposite of Goethe's purported last words (Mehr Licht) with its call instead for more dark, for the journey inland, to the interior, the dreamscape, the heart of darkness. I came across this wonderfully apposite passage in Google Book Search from the introduction to the Penguin edition: "It is even possible to argue, with this same logic, that Finnegans Wake may be more accessible to the common reader than Ulysses--or, for that matter, War and Peace or Remembrance of Things Past--since one doesn't need to comprehend it as a totality to profit from it or enjoy it. Students of literature in particular, accustomed as they are to understanding most words in every sentence of every prose work they read, are apt to experience frustration in reading a text constructed along these lines, where it can sometimes seem that one is doing extremely well if one makes sense of only a sentence or two on a single page. If, however, one surrenders the need to be master of everything--or even most things--in this strange and magnificent book, it will pour forth lots of rewards." I imagine that with any book that begins with "riverrun," it would be a good idea not to push the river and just go with the flow, and that's equally good advice for watching this film go upriver.

Shortly before I saw Inland, I had read a two-part piece Zadie Smith wrote in the Guardian about readers and writers ('Fail better' and 'Read better'), which also came to mind as I watched the film. "7. Do writers have duties?...By this measure the duty of writers is to please readers and to be eager to do so, and this duty has various subsets: the duty to be clear; to be interesting and intelligent but never wilfully obscure; to write with the average reader in mind; to be in good taste. Above all, the modern writer has a duty to entertain. Writers who stray from these obligations risk tiny readerships and critical ridicule....Personally, I have no objection to books that entertain and please, that are clear and interesting and intelligent, that are in good taste and are not wilfully obscure - but neither do these qualities seem to me in any way essential to the central experience of fiction, and if they should be missing, this in no way rules out the possibility that the novel I am reading will yet fulfil the only literary duty I care about. For writers have only one duty, as I see it: the duty to express accurately their way of being in the world. If that sounds woolly and imprecise, I apologise. Writing is not a science, and I am speaking to you in the only terms I have to describe what it is I persistently aim for (yet fail to achieve) when I sit in front of my computer." (http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,1989004,00.html) Substitute filmmaker for writer, and Lynch fulfills the only duty that matters with flying colors every time. All I know is I came out of that film and the world seemed a stranger place for it and I was grateful for that. So until such time as I write my uberwork on Lynch, or at least see this one again, that's all I have to say.

So, not like anyone has the time to read my blog, but I'm trying to be a little more disciplined, and thus merciful to the hypothetical reader, by saving totally random digressions for the end of the entry, instead of trying said reader's patience by erratically inserting them in the text at such point as they appear in my head.

Random digression #1: When I went back to read the salon.com article on Mulholland, I spotted this link to a Neil Gaiman interview on the Well, which seemed so random because I had just mentioned him in the random digression at the end of the Casino Royale entry: http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/292/Neil-Gaiman-Fragile-Things-page01.html. More fun Gaimania can be found in his wikipedia entry.

Random digression #2: Talk about random? Ever browse random passages in the middle of books using Google Book Search? It's way wicked fun. I know you're thinking: "Pardis, I don't even have the time to read your blog, where would I find the time to play with Google Book Search? Only people like you with no lives spend all their time sitting around watching shadows on a screen and websurfing obscurantia." So I found the coolest book in Google Book Search! It's called "Alchemy and Finnegans Wake" by Barbara DiBernard. You will recall [yes, that's an instruction, not an invitation] we began our discussion of alchemy in the Perfume entry, and discussed the subject of referring to the Perfume entry in the Casino Royale entry.

I love this book already; here are the names of the chapters:
The Excremental Vision: Spiritual and Physical Alchemy
"As Above, So Below," and Death and Rebirth
Number Symbolism
Colors and Forgery
Ingredients and Equipment
Shem the "Alshemist"

and how could you possibly resist a book that begins:
"Finnegans Wake" is a rubbish heap. In spite of all the controversy and confusion concerning this book, that fact at least remains muddily clear. It is "the muddest thick that was ever heard dump."

Forget about the $700 coffret (see [what else?] Perfume blog entry), for less than a tenth of that, someone just get me this book for my birthday! Please? More mud!

Film: Casino Royale (1/25)

I love Daniel Craig.
I have always loved Daniel Craig.
I most likely will always love Daniel Craig.

I will not, however, go so far as to insist that he marry me and father my children, as some nutter inserted into his wikipedia entry [hey it's not a perfect system, but what is? and more to the point, what price perfection? besides, democracy is messy], as my love, lest there be any doubt about it, is purely of an aesthetic, and certainly not of an irrationally personal nature.

When they scoffed at him being picked to play Bond, I just thought: "Fools! But no matter; in time, they'll see."

I loved him as Francis Bacon's lover in "Love is the Devil" and as Ted Hughes in "Sylvia" and as Paul Newman's son in Sam Mendes' "The Road to Perdition" and as the murderous monk with his sights on Cate Blanchett in "Elizabeth" and as Werner Heisenberg (yes, that Werner Heisenberg) uncertainly meeting with Stephen Rea and Francesca Annis' Niels and Margrethe Bohr in Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" on telly--and I loved him in all of these, not really even knowing it was him, until I saw the deeply twisted "The Mother" and fell madly in love with him and wondered where he had been all my life and realized he had been right there before my eyes all along. You too may have watched all these and not have known you were watching him, because he's just that good--even when he has a lead role, he's still a character actor. Needless to say, I loved him in "Munich," but by then I knew who he was. Note to self: watch "Infamous" (the other Truman Capote film) when it's out on DVD (Daniel plays the Perry Smith role). I didn't even know he was in "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" until I saw his filmography on imdb, but I'm not sure I'll be checking it out anytime soon--hard as it may be to believe, I can assure you that there are, after all, limits to the greatness of my love. ["Copenhagen" has its own entry in wikipedia?!--brave new world, indeed.]

I haven't see him in "Enduring Love" because I haven't read Ian McEwan's book yet; it's in queue along with Harry Potter (see "Perfume" blog entry). I couldn't be bothered to see him in "Layer Cake" because I can't stand Sienna Miller, but I was sick in bed last week, so I checked it out on telly (mercifully, Sienna had almost no screen time). They despised him for Bond even with this on his c.v.? What more could they possibly want? And all the rubbish about a blond Bond, not that he needed to for Bond, but Ted Hughes wasn't bloody blond, and I think they managed to dye his hair in that if not some of the other roles I saw. Anyway, I had no idea "Layer Cake" had such a brilliant cast (Sienna notwithstanding): Daniel, Kenneth Cranham, Michael Gambon, Colm Meaney, Dexter Fletcher, young Ben Whishaw (again, see "Perfume" blog entry), and that's just the list of those I was familiar with before seeing the film. Add it to the Faust reference list in wikipedia (yet again, see "Perfume" blog entry), Gambon says: "Opera tonight, 'The Damnation of Faust,' man sells his soul to the devil, all ends in tears; these arrangements usually do." At the end, Gambon, the uber-gangstah, explains to DC the facts of life: "You're born; you take shit. Get out in the world; you take more shit. Climb a little higher; take less shit--till one day you're up in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake, son." Great fun! He looks buffer in the action films ("Layer Cake," "Casino"), and I think I preferred him looking more dissipated in "The Mother," but it's been a while since I saw it, and for all I know he looked exactly the same, and it was just the acting that affected my impression.

No one I know even goes to the movies, so I became increasingly impatient as everyone I talked to seemed to have seen "Casino Royale," but I consoled myself: no matter, in time, you too will see. I loved James Bond films in my youth (chiefly the Connery period, and then some Roger Moore), so every time a new one comes out I consider seeing it for a little dumb fun, but in the end I can never be bothered. I don't often go to blockbusters, but when I do, I seem to enjoy them even more than their target audience--it wasn't very crowded of course, because everyone had already seen it, but even so, I was the only one shrieking or gasping loudly during the tenser action moments and laughing hysterically whenever James said something particularly witty. The whole action sequence at the beginning, as I imagine these things often are, went so over the top that at times I couldn't even figure out the logistics of the space, which kind of lessens the effect, and somehow I didn't really buy the whole great love of his life thing (she was a bit cold, no?). But yeah, it was some dumb fun--Daniel was lovely, Judi Dench was great, and Jeffrey Wright is always a treat. I just looked Jeffrey up on imdb--his mini-bio begins: "Quite possibly the most underrated and underexposed actor of his caliber and generation, Jeffrey Wright's undeniable talent and ability to successfully bring to life any role he undertakes is on a par with the most praised and revered A-list actors in the business." That is so sweet. I'm not surprised to read he studied political science at Amherst because his performances do exude such intelligence. I'll just very quickly add, he won the Tony award for the role he played in "Angels in America," and reprised in Mike Nichols' HBO film, and I just wanted to include that so I could say for a fourth time, here with reference to Angels (please, see "Perfume" blog entry), because apparently if you write a blog entry as long and as digressive as the Perfume entry was, it's quite easy to find endless occasions to refer to it.

I did have an overwhelming sense of the enterprise as industrial product, just watching it thinking of all the time and expenditure and effort that went into making such a sleek commodity, very impressive but to what end, oh that's right, silly me, it's to make more money (one hopes than it cost to make), but hey, that's entertainment, and the industry thereof, right? (See "Inland Empire"--the film, that is, not the blog entry.)

File under 'Who knew?': The local paper in a blurb for the very fun recent film "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" states: "The title phrase was originally an Italian critic's summation of James Bond, but critic Pauline Kael added that it summed up the basic appeal of a huge number of movies. She used it as a 1968 book title. And the song 'Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' was written for 1965's 'Thunderball.'"

Finally, may I just add (and really, who's to stop me?), not that I take the awards shows seriously, but our Daniel just won best actor at the Evening Standard British Film Awards last week. It isn't saying much, but let's face it, they usually give out these things for "serious" work in "serious" movies, so for someone to win one for playing Bond really speaks volumes. Interestingly, Judi won as well--no not for M (Bond's boss)--but for her wicked brilliance in "Notes on a Scandal," no doubt much to the surprise of everyone who thought Helen Mirren was going to win best actress in every award show this year, even though everyone's been saying how brilliant the Notes performance was.

OK, I know that last paragraph was supposed to be final (somebody, please, for the love of God, just turn off my laptop), but I was curious about Matthew Vaughn, the director of "Layer Cake." Imdb shows he produced (aside from his two kids with Claudia Schiffer) the two Guy Ritchie gangster films ("Lock Stock..." and "Snatch") and Cake was his first time directing, but for his follow up he's written the screenplay for and directing "Stardust," some kind of fantasy story from a Neil Gaiman novel with a cast that includes anyone and everyone, principally Claire Danes, Robert DeNiro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sienna (ugh), and also Peter O'Toole, Ian McKellan, Ricky Gervais, Rupert Everett, Dexter Fletcher, and, drumroll please, Billie Whitelaw?! Billie Whitelaw's name might not ring a bell, though you might recognize her if you saw her; as wikipedia notes: "Meeting in 1963, Whitelaw and famed Irish playwright Samuel Beckett enjoyed an intense professional relationship until his death in 1989. They collaborated and performed plays such as Play, Eh Joe, Krapp's Last Tape, Not I, Footfalls and Rockaby for both stage and screen. Whitelaw is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works." Of course, she's also in a film out this spring called "Hot Fuzz" (with Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent, and Timothy Dalton) by the team that brought you the zombie comedy "Shaun of the Dead," so she's not so exclusive. And I'll end abruptly on that random note, with the last sentence arguably relevant to this movie review in referencing a prior Bond (fair enough?). Boy, it's a good thing no one actually has the time to read my blog, so I can be as loopy as I want to be. This reminds me of doing college radio on the night shift; no one was awake to listen so it didn't matter what you played--good times!

Lecture: Tess Castleman (1/19)

As I wrote to some of you last year, I finally went to an Oregon Friends of Jung lecture back in November 2005 when Rick Tarnas was speaking, and the next thing I knew I was in Bali a year later for 10 days for a workshop with him and Darby Costello. So when I saw Rick was invited back by them to speak this Spring, I decided to become a member and go to some of their other lectures. This decision was also likely influenced by the fact that their first three lectures this year all included some discussion of film (www.ofj.org).

I love the Jungians; they are so soulful and heal-thy. I'll let you check out the link if you want to find out more and have the time. This evening's lecture was titled: "Creativity: The Holy Other as Transcendent Healer in Analysis, Community and Culture," and included comments on the life and art of Kurosawa, but the speaker Tess Castleman spoke a good deal of her own particular choice of creative outlet, namely writing. She also discussed this in the larger context of the importance of having creative activity in our lives, and the broad range of things this could cover, the essential element being expression and manifestation, bringing forth something where nothing had been before. She said a lot of other inspiring things and I manifested a few pages of notes to show for it. It made me more committed to keeping up this blog--going ahead and putting forth what Darby said, as a Gemini moon like her, was the ongoing dialogue I have with the twin inside me. Although the last film I reviewed here was three weeks ago, the night before I went to her lecture, in the meantime I have been busy seeing some and gathering my thoughts, and I'm finally getting around to posting them. So consider this my manifesto, or mamafesta, as Joyce would have it in the Wake.

Rotterdam 2007: Tehran

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is one of the more interesting film festivals with its focus on cutting-edge and experimental fare. Apparently every year they have a hotspots section focusing on some cool happening place(s)--this year it's Bucharest and Tehran. The funny thing is our address when I lived in Tehran in the mid-70s was Bucharest Avenue, and as far as my pre-teen sensibilities were concerned, it was a pretty cool/hot spot.

"From 30 January through 2 February, it’s Tehran’s turn. The capital of one of the youngest countries in the world: more than seventy percent of the population is under thirty. In spite of - or thanks to - its isolated international position and the religious restrictions of the past decades, Iran has an enormous creative energy and an urge to express identity. The Hot Spots programme places films such as Offside, It’s Winter and Looking Through among a host of short films and music videos. Graphic designer and Prins Claus award-winner Reza Abedini will be showing (and talking about) his work. In addition, innovative artists such as Mohsen Namjoo, who makes very modern blues music combined with traditional Iranian influences, and the stunning Farsi rapper Reveal. The performance by Abjeez, two young women who play Farsi reggae and ragga, promises to provide a real spectacle. With this glimpse of a (youth) culture that is undeniably modern, but non-Western, Hot Spots aims to present an impression of Iran different from that normally given in the media."

Get more details and dig all the crazy grooviness from my homies: http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/eng/programme/programme_sections_2007/hot_spots/tehran.aspx

Nazanin Fatehi Free At Last

The Face of Love

On January 31st Nazanin Fatehi was finally freed from prison after karmically blessed Member of Canadian Parliament Belinda Stronach, who my cousin Nazanin first got interested in this case, paid the $10,000 they still needed for her bail.

from www.helpnazanin.com:
A few days later, Nazanin was released from prison and had an emotional reunion with her family. While she could hardly speak and in tears of happiness , she said: "The only thing I can say now is that I am extremely happy. It is as if I am born again. I want to thank everyone who helped make my freedom possible and I want to say that I love you all from the bottom of my heart".

The crazy thing I learned from the documentary they made about this was that my cousin got involved because an Iranian in Paris who did a web search on "Nazanin", to try to find more information on her case, came across my cousin's website, and seeing that she was a public figure contacted her to see if there was anything she could do to bring attention to this case, and then Nini contacted Amnesty and it went from there. Random? There are no accidents. You know there were angelic powers at work and in the 21st century they go online to get the job done. What can I say?--I love the internet!

You can find out more about this, including how Belinda Stronach got involved, in the half-hour documentary, The Tale of Two Nazanins, streaming at http://www.bodog.tv/.

You can also check out a short clip of my cousin discussing the case at:
http://www.bodog.tv/spotlight/?play=naz-makingfatehi

Please be advised that both this clip and the documentary have some disturbing images, but then they are dealing with human rights abuses and capital punishment so it's a very disturbing subject.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. "
-Margaret Mead

Sunday NYT Mag: Whose Iran?

There is a lengthy article in the recent Sunday NYTimes about Iran:

"President Ahmadinejad may not be all that popular. And the tension between theocracy and democracy may be reaching a crisis."

Try the link below or go to their main page and look for the magazine. I believe articles are accessible online for at least one week for non-subscribers, but you may have to register. If you have problems or get there too late and still want to read it, let me know and I can probably email it to you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28iran.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

Expatriate Iranians Denounce...

From the NYTimes 1/24/7:
More than 100 Iranian artists and intellectuals signed a statement condemning a Holocaust conference, largely given over to Holocaust deniers, that was sponsored by the Iranian government in Tehran in December. The statement, which appears in the forthcoming issue of The New York Review of Books and on its Web site (nybooks.com), begins by acknowledging “our diverse views on the Israeli-Palestinian question.” It condemns the conference’s “attempt to falsify history” and pays “homage to the memory of the millions of Jewish and non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust,’’ as well as “other victims of crimes against humanity across the world.” Azar Nafisi, the author of “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” who helped to create the statement with Roya and Ladan Boroumand, the founders of a human-rights group in Iran, said in a telephone interview that many people could not voice their objections to the conference inside Iran for fear of reprisals, but that “we felt that as Iranians, we should make a statement” that the conference “should not come out in our names.”

Read the full text of the statement and view signatories at:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19831

Film: Perfume (1/18)

What a very strange very odd film indeed.

I was too tired to do much else, and I was sick of being snowed in all week, and it was the last night it was playing (I'm guessing the reason this only played for two weeks is that not a lot of people who saw it ran off to tell everyone they knew that they just HAD to see this film, or even that they might want to consider it--the full title is Perfume: The Story of a Murderer), and I liked Tom Tykwer's other films well enough for their visual inventiveness and hopeless romanticism (you would know them if you saw Run, Lola, Run, and liked it well enough to then see Winter Sleepers or The Princess and the Warrior or Heaven, as I did), and I couldn't remember the last time I saw Alan Rickman in anything (I just checked imdb--looks like he's been busy working on the Harry Potter films, which I haven't seen because I want to read the books first--Perfume, the novel by Patrick Suskind, was supposed to be quite good, though alas I did not have the pleasure of reading it before seeing the film), and I was wondering what Dustin Hoffman was doing in the middle of the largely Anglo/Euro cast (I still am--I'm wondering if they thought his wavering between all manner of accents was OK because he was playing an Italian living in Paris, as opposed to the French characters, who all had British accents appropriate to their class--and it would be too silly to think they did it just because he was playing a Nose and he has such a distinctive one: "To qualify as a Nose, the prospective candidate must be able to recant all of the elements that comprises the essential elements within a fragrance before the sprayed droplets reach the floor." http://www.theperfumehouse.com/heritage.htm), so I went.

I spent the first two hours wondering what the point of it was. The film begins with the murderer locked up about to be sentenced, and proceeds with lavish epic period (18th century) detail (imdb says it's the most expensive German film ever made--surely they could have afforded a speech coach for Dustin; they had ten people alone listed in the credits as "Dirt Services Crew," presumably to ensure that Paris was adequately authentically filthy) to narrate (thank you John Hurt) the story of his birth and how he comes to be a sociopath and proceeds to murder a number of young women (not bloody or grisly, mind you, just a clean blow to the head, for the most part not depicted, although the naked abandoned corpses as they are discovered are shown) in order that he may fulfill his mission in life to preserve their scent forever and make the world's most intoxicatingly paradisial perfume. And you're just sitting there thinking this is so creepy, and I don't like seeing bodies of dead naked young woman, and so what, what is the story, what is the point, and then suddenly the film just takes off into the land of pure parable--the penultimate scene was so unforgettably delirious (spoiler: picture epic 18th c mob scene on instant ecstasy) it was worth the price of admission alone, and followed by a suitably Faustian ending.

Wikipedia shares with us the following (and also lists appearances of the Faust story in the following media: drama, opera, classical music, popular music, poetry, prose, film, musicals, anime/manga, videogames, comicbooks, nonfiction, and television--not sure it's very surprising how many there are, so much as how many of them one knows--at least in the high culture categories--but doesn't necessarily think of all at once as being related http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust):

"Faust or Faustus is the protagonist of a popular German tale of a pact with the Devil, assumed to be based on the figure of the German magician and alchemist Dr. Johann Georg Faust (approximately 1480–1540).

The story concerns the fate of a learned scholar named Faust, who in his quest for the true essence of life ("was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhaelt"), summons the Devil (represented by Mephistopheles), who offers to serve him as long as Faust lives. Mephistopheles may receive Faust's soul, but only when Faust has attained the zenith of human happiness. In the second Part of the Faust tragedy (Faust 2), Faust really does have the pleasure to experience the latter, however, Mephisto, trying to grab Faust's soul when the protagonist dies, is burnt down by the empowering force of love. Faust deserves to go to heaven, because of his unquenchable thirst for knowledge and understanding ("man must strive and err") that exceeds the limits set for human beings.

The name of "Faust" has since become attached to any number of legendary tales about a charlatan alchemist (some claim "astrologer and necromancer"), whose pride, vanity, and vile hucksterism would inevitably lead to his doom. "

So our Faust here is literally seeking the essence of life through alchemical means, too blinded by his quest (blame it on his troubled childhood) to see that without the life, the essence is for naught, and sadly there is no empowering force of love to save the day (though it would seem more fitting to Tykwer's sensibilities), and Suskind (I assume) chooses instead to end it on a more nihilistic, while at the same time, moral note. The story actually cuts out the deal with the devil part by just having him born with no soul--the trailer voiceover pronounces: "the soul of a being is their scent," something the murderer/perfumer eventually comes to realize he curiously does not have.

I would say that despite my doubts as to where it was all going, I was surprised to look at my watch and see that two hours had passed so quickly (with another twenty minutes to go) without feeling restless, though it starts with the expected stylistic inventiveness before settling into more straightforward narrative--I suppose it helps if you really like perfume (and I do so, as you might imagine with all the Taurus in me), as there is quite a bit of time spent discussing the philosophy and techniques of its creation. Only afterwards did I realize how much this was also a credit to Ben Whishaw's extraordinary breakthrough performance in the lead role--the character is just so odd and unsympathetic and intense that it's really something that he pulls it off so flawlessly when it could have so easily seemed ridiculous. I was curious to see if there's anything else interesting he may have done, but the imdb just lists a number of minor roles including a credit for playing Keith Richards in a film from 2005 that I somehow missed called Stoned--I can totally see it! Something tells me we will be seeing a bit more of him in future, if we're lucky.

Everyone says the book had long been considered unfilmable, because the one of the five senses it engages most with can not be filmed, but this seems silly because a book smells no more than a film, and clearly the imagination fills in the rest. Though I can imagine Tykwer was intrigued by the challenge and he has a lot of fun with it, and I dare say it's doubtful you'll come across anything else with so much cutting on the scent. I can never think of the notion of smells without recalling this passage from Tony Kushner's Angels in America (the ellipses are the text's not mine):

"Louis: Smell is...an incredibly complex and underappreciated physical phenomenon. Inextricably bound up with sex. It is. The nose is really a sexual organ. Smelling. Is desiring. We have five senses, but only two that go beyond the boundaries...of ourselves. When you look at someone, it's just bouncing light, or when you hear them, it's just sound waves, vibrating air, or touch is just nerve endings tingling. Know what a smell is? It's made of the molecules of what you're smelling. Some part of you, where you meet the air, is airborne. (He goes up to Joe, close) Little molecules of Joe...(He inhales deeply) Up my nose. Mmmm...Nice. Try it."

(Just something to think about next time you're riding the bus. Sorry.)

One final note about the film--I was checking out the official website (I know by now you all know that you can get links to official websites, trailers, etc at www.imdb.com) and we're all familiar with merchandising tie-ins, but I have to say I have never seen anything quite so odd. It appears that for $700 you can purchase a limited edition coffret with scents exclusively designed by Thierry Mugler to capture the mood of various moments in the story. Now if you were to visit me and enter the room otherwise known as the Temple of Venus (where I go for hair and makeup), you would see one corner of the counter exclusively devoted to Thierry Mugler perfumes, while the other corner has everyone else's, so Lord knows I only think the highest of Thierry, but really, I'm just not sure what to think of this, although if anyone is at a loss what to get me for my next birthday, I'd be happy to try it out and report back. ("This treasure trove of 15 scents in a beautiful red velvet presentation case reveals the fragrant nature of the book and brings to life key moments and atmospheres from the book and film including: Baby, Paris 1738, Atelier Grimal, Virgin No. 1, Boutique Baldini, Amor & Psyché, Nuit Napolitaine, Ermite, Salon Rouge, Human Existence, Absolu Jasmin, Sea, Noblesse, Orgie and Aura." https://thierrymuglerusa.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=TMUSA&Category_Code=TMP)

One final note digressing from the film--all I ever knew about alchemy was that it was about turning lead into gold, but a while ago I picked up a few books from a lovely series called Wooden Books, including one named The Alchemist's Kitchen, Extraordinary Potions & Curious Notions, which includes a number of little instructional appendices including one on incenses and perfumes. The whole book has lots of illustrations reminiscent of the film. I just randomly opened it to this passage: "The individual essence of a plant--its soul--is found in its essential oil." There's also a section titled As Above So Below:

"However pigments and potions are mixed, they will not be truly alchemical unless they are made at the right moments. timing is crucial to maximize planetary resonances, and this requires an understanding of the heavenly movements....Internally the seven [sun, moon, and five visible to the eye] planets represent seven specific modes of the soul that the alchemist must develop to progress in the Great Work, while the Zodiac corresponds to twelve processes that the soul must cyclically endure on the path of return to the Absolute....Tied to this, the vegetable realm, as the most immediately solar-dependent kingdom, flourishes and recedes with the solar year, while the monthly waxing and waning of the Moon controls its juices, drawing the sap to the upper parts and back down to the roots. The herbal alchemist is therefore compelled to heed the injunctions of Parcelsus that he: '...should know the innate nature of the Stars, their complexion and property, as well as a physician understands the nature of a patient, and also the concordance of the Stars, how they stand in relation to...all things that grow and spring from the matrices of the Elements....Medicine is without value if it is not from Heaven.'"

And a little diagram lists the alchemical zodiacal correspondences:
Aries * Calcination * action of fire on minerals in air
Taurus * Congelation * thickening by cooling
Gemini * Fixation * trapping a volatile as a solid or liquid
Cancer * Solution * dissolutions or reactions of substances
Leo * Digestion * prolonged continuous gentle warming
Virgo * Distillation * ascent and descent of a liquid
Libra * Sublimation * ascent and descent of a solid
Scorpio * Separation * isolation of insoluble from soluble
Saggittarius * Ceration * softening hard material
Capricorn * Fermentation * biological animation of a substance
Aquarius * Multiplication * increasing the potency of the Stone
Pisces * Projection * the mysterious action of the Stone

About the books:
"Small Books, Big Ideas
Historically, in all known cultures on Earth, wise men and women studied the four great unchanging liberal arts —numbers, music, geometry and cosmology—and used them to inform the practical and decorative arts like medicine, pottery, agriculture and building. At one time, the metaphysical fields of the liberal arts were considered utterly universal, even placed above physics and religion."

You can check out the series including their lovely cover illustrations at the link below. They're really beautifully designed, recycled paper, and $10 a pop--not sure you could ask for more.
http://www.walkerbooks.com/books/series/index.php?name=woodenbooks

OK, break's over, get back to work!

The Dream Lives On

"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

April 3, 1968

Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Jan 15 1929 - Apr 4 1968)

http://www.mlkonline.net/promised.html

Film: Peter Whitehead (1/14)

coming soon...

Film: Peter Whitehead (1/13)

coming soon...

The Iranian Incident

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/world/middleeast/13strategy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

NEWSFLASH

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20070111-0648-iraq.html

U.S.-led forces detain Iranians in Iraq

By Qassim Abdul-Zahra
ASSOCIATED PRESS
6:48 a.m. January 11, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S.-led multinational forces detained six Iranians Thursday at Tehran's diplomatic mission in the northern city of Irbil, Iraqi officials said, as President Bush accused Iran and Syria of aiding militants and promised to “interrupt” the flow of support as part of his new war strategy.

The U.S. military said it had taken six people into custody in the Irbil region but made no mention of a raid on the Iranian consulate....

In Tehran, Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned the Iraqi and Swiss ambassadors and “demanded an explanation” about the incident. Switzerland represents American interests in Iran, where there is no U.S. Embassy.

I left my heart in SF

1,000 People Spell Out "IMPEACH!" In Pelosi's District

http://publish.indymedia.org/en/2007/01/878050.shtml

Poem: To Whom It May Concern

'To Whom It May Concern'

I was run over by the truth one day.
Ever since the accident I've walked this way
So stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Heard the alarm clock screaming with pain,
Couldn't find myself so I went back to sleep again
So fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Every time I shut my eyes all I see is flames.
Made a marble phone book and I carved out all the names
So coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

I smell something burning, hope it's just my brains.
They're only dropping peppermints and daisy-chains
So stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Where were you at the time of the crime?
Down by the Cenotaph drinking slime
So chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out,
You take the human being and you twist it all about
So scrub my skin with women
Chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

-- Adrian Mitchell

NYT: "The Real Disaster"

from the New York Times editorial 1/11/7:

President Bush told Americans last night that failure in Iraq would be a disaster. The disaster is Mr. Bush's war, and he has already failed. Last night was his last chance to stop offering more fog and be honest with the nation, and he did not take it....In any case, Mr. Bush's excuses were tragically inadequate....What it certainly did not need were more of Mr. Bush's open-ended threats to Iran and Syria....Without a real plan to bring it to a close...There is nothing ahead but even greater disaster in Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/opinion/11thu1.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials&oref=slogin

Girl Blogger from Baghdad

Have you ever read riverbend? If you're going to read a blog, read hers, not mine. It is both riveting and chilling to read her accounts of life in Iraq and a political opinion from someone living through this hell.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com

Guantanamo FIVE YEARS

Sad Anniversary.

Go to http://www.amnestyusa.org/ to send a letter to the Resident.

I did and got a charming reply telling me that "the President is committed to continuing our economic progress, defending our freedom, and upholding our Nation's deepest values." I could tell you what I would like to tell him he can do with his commitments, but like I said, this is a family publication.

Film: Peter Whitehead (1/11)

coming soon...

Film: Peter Whitehead (1/10)

coming soon...

Film: Peter Whitehead (1/9)

coming soon...

2006 Word of the Year: Plutoed

The American Dialect Society has announced that "plutoed" is the Word of the Year for 2006.

"To pluto is to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet."

Something tells me Pluto is having the last laugh.

Click for press release, which includes winners and runners up in a number of categories as well as prior year winners (if you really have nothing better to do) :

http://www.americandialect.org/Word-of-the-Year_2006.pdf

I had no idea there even was an American Dialect Society and that they were so busy making such thoughtful judgments in these matters, and I have never actually heard anyone use this word to date, but who am I to argue with the good people at the ADS. Find out more about them than you knew you wanted to know here: http://www.americandialect.org/.

Film: Peter Whitehead (1/7)

coming soon...

Film: The Fountain (1/4)

I had heard this film was an exquisite mess, but I loved Pi and was disappointed by Requiem for a Dream, so I had to see what was next.

I LOVED THIS FILM!

That neither means that I would say it was a great film, nor that I would recommend it. (It is generally being referred to as a “you’ll love it or hate it with no in between".)

I love Darren Aronofsky for the courage of his convictions, and I really love what this man does with an extreme closeup.

I love Rachel Weisz for reasons that are probably not worth trying to put into words; you just have to see her to understand—and bollocks to the reviewers who said, oh yes, she does a good job of standing around looking lovely; excuse me, but I think she does a little more than that.

And how about that Hugh Jackman? Not that I ever had any doubts about him. And how glad are we that Brad Pitt did not do this with Cate Blanchett as originally planned? Sorry, I just can not see it, and I had enough of them in Babel.

Ohmigod, I just came across this article from Wired that explains, among other things, that no CGI was used in this film. Damn. And how they did it is pretty cool, check it out.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/outsider_pr.html

I love seeing a film that shows me images I have never seen before and could never have imagined, where I do not know what is going on or where it is going, the sheer luxury of being treated to a unique vision. A lot of the time I sat there with my mouth open, either in awe of the visuals or just baffled by his chutzpah and wondering what was going on (oh my god, dude, you’re insane!). There are some images in this film that are among the most stunningly breathtakingly beautiful I have ever seen. No doubt a lot of people will find this all to be overheated ridiculously pretentious dreck, so that is why I would hesitate to recommend it. There was also a lot to take in, so I would really need to see it again and try to figure it all out, before making any definitive conclusions about its ultimate merit as a work.

I liked this from an online interview:
“A Love Poem to Death”: One of my personal favorite descriptions of The Fountain is something Aronofsky says his producer came up with. “I think that’s a pretty good description," agreed Aronofsky. "I also like the ‘psychedelic love story’ or even better, actually, I think ‘a psychedelic fairy tale’ because I think it very much is a fairy tale. It’s an adult fairy tale and I think that’s what the word psychedelic does, it makes it more adult. But, yeah, I do like a love poem to death.”
http://movies.about.com/od/thefountain/a/fountain101906.htm

I was also particularly amused by the title of the review in Time online:
I Admit It: I Liked The Fountain
Richard Corliss risks expulsion from the movie critics' guild with this review of a woozy romantic epic
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1562575,00.htm

Speaking of Cate, she was on Charlie Rose the other night, discussing her departure from film work, as she and her playwright husband have been named co-artistic directors for the next three years of the Sydney Theatre Company*, where they have both directed plays, and she had many award-winning performances before getting into film. So Charlie asks her if she also sees herself directing films in the future, as many major film actors do these days. She replies that if she had a brilliant cinematographer and a compelling project, she might possibly consider it, but that in general she is not inclined that way, because as a stage actress she feels she has a strong understanding of the space on a stage and how to use it effectively, but she does not feel that she has the same mastery of the cinematic medium. I could not help thinking of this repeatedly when I watched The Fountain—that regardless of what you think of his endeavor, inspired or foolish, you can not but acknowledge that you are in the hands of someone who has such a mastery of the medium and is interested in exploring it in an intelligent and creative manner, and I found this deeply satisfying.

*How cool is this?:
Apart from promises of passion and commitment, the only concrete plan articulated by the pair was to make the STC "green". "We intend to initiate discussions with companies with the aim of making the building self-sufficient, to green the building. We are talking solar panels, rainwater, the works," Upton said. "This would ideally generate enough power to do a whole season off the grid. This would be the first theatre company in the world to do that."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/blanchett-theatre-job-no-dalliance/2006/11/10/1162661876275.html

(Note to non-residents) we take these things seriously in Portland:
For 2006, Sustainlane.com ranked Portland as number one in the nation for overall sustainability, and cities around the world have long looked our way for benchmarks of community planning and sustainable development. Read about our sustainable theater here: http://www.pcs.org/armorySustainability.html

Cate Blanchett (and Richard Eyre) on Charlie Rose (streaming):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=915718704972830448&q=owner%3ACharlie_Rose

Film: The History Boys (1/3)

This is a film made of an Alan Bennett play that Nicholas Hytner, the artistic director of the Royal National Theatre since 2003 (succeeding Sirs Trevor Nunn, Richard Eyre, Peter Hall and Olivier), originally directed for that stage (as was The Madness of King George), which went on to be much lauded on Broadway, so I was curious to see what all the fuss was about. Films of plays are often problematic, and I suppose the main motivation for making them usually is just to give a larger audience access to the work. Chris Doyle (cinematographer extraordinaire for Wong Kar-Wai and many other, mostly Asian, directors you can review at imdb, see link below) was visiting the Film Center last year and argued that whatever makes a good film, it is not the script, and defended this notion by rhetorically asking if there has ever been a good film made of a Shakespeare play (a subject I will leave for further consideration).

One of the problems is that we accept the theater as an artificial stylized construct where people are going to speak in a more formal literary manner, and that always seems so odd and flat in a naturalistic film context, though clearly not so much in older black and white studio films that lean more towards the stylized character of theater. I can imagine that this play would have been more effective in the theater because the cinematic flatness diminishes the emotional impact. Even though on the one hand you have the realism of cinema contrasting with the artifice of theater—i.e., film can suggest that it is portraying a reality that just happened to be documented on celluloid, while theater takes place in the blatantly artificial context of the stage—in a way, theater can have such a more real sense in terms of emotional impact, because the character appears before you in flesh and blood, even as much as you know you are watching an actor, it is an actual human being standing there having the experience. Also a quick scan of the blurbs on metacritic revealed, courtesy of Rolling Stone, that nearly an hour was cut in the transition from stage to screen, which further explains why it felt a little thin and a little shy of all the fuss.

That said, it is very intelligently written, with interesting issues raised about education, history, poetry, etc. (ooh, Hector would scold me for throwing in that "etc."—inside joke you will get if you see the film) and beautifully performed by the original London/Broadway cast. Needless to say, it is the type of production I would no doubt take much nostalgic pleasure in from my London theatergoing days and I was delightfully entertained, though now I am curious to read the play, because I still want to know what all the fuss was about. In short: I laughed; I cried (I know, I am such a big baby). I can not really wholeheartedly praise the film as a cinematic endeavor, and it was a letdown as a document of a play since a third of it was cut, but I have a soft spot for it nonetheless. If literary English theater is your cup of tea, and you are the type of person who, like I, would find witticisms regarding the subjunctive tense exceedingly droll, by all means rent the DVD when it comes out for a couple hours passing amusement and reflection.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0236313/ (Ooh look, Chris Doyle is a Taurus--YESSSSSSSS!)

http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/historyboys (what the professionals had to say)

Photo Caption Contest

Does this entry really need a comment from me? Just curious what Maria's facial expression is conveying to you, because I have a few thoughts floating around my head, but I am not sure it would appropriate to print them in a family publication. It is hard to imagine that someone did not deliberately pick this of all the photos available, but hey, maybe she had that expression in all the photos, maybe that is how she looks when she is filled with pride and love. This was more of a rhetorical question, but if you do want to post a comment, keep it clean, and remember, I have the power to delete anything I want to.

Introduction to my Blog (postscript)

And yes, if there was any lingering doubt about it before, I believe I am now officially one of Time magazine's Person(s) of the Year for 2006. Like the cover says, welcome to my world.

Introduction to my Blog

I am still not quite sure exactly what I am doing here, but no doubt time will tell. Some of you have gotten mass distribution emails with similar content, so it will be something like that, only instead, I hope it will be a little every few days, instead of months all at once and then long periods of silence. Also this way I do not have to decide who to include on the distribution or wonder who really wants to get the email; it is instead your decision whether you want to read it or not, and therefore one less thing for me to think about. I imagine it will be an assembly of random notes on anything I have come across or am thinking about and feel like sharing.

As most of you know, I am quite fond of the cinema and I get people bugging me to write about it all the time, so that will likely be a significant part of this—not that I will be diving into the really serious writing that people are encouraging (there, that is a nicer word than bugging) me to do, but at least I will be getting my feet wet. I imagine it will an odd hybrid sort of film notes, a little serious criticism, a little populist fluff, part notes to myself after seeing a film, and part what I would say if one of you asked me what I thought of a film, and that in part if you were asking me with an eye to deciding whether you wanted to invest or waste, as the case may be, a few moments of your limited and precious lifespan watching it. Needless to say, but I will anyway, you all have very busy lives, but to the extent that you actually get around to reading one of my entries, I would heartily encourage (there is that nice word again, notice I am not bugging) you to post a comment, and who knows, we may even get some interesting discussions going. Although you do not need to write an elaborate comment, even something simple would be nice just so I know occasionally someone out there is bothering to read this—personal reply emails would also work, if you do not feel like sharing your thoughts with the public at large, such as it may be. Here, for example, are some suggestions for how you could reply briefly, given the demanding time constraints of your existence:

1) Hi Pardis, I liked this film too.
2) I hated this film. What is wrong with you? I’m never reading your stupid blog again.
3) Clive Owen is so HOT!!!

While you will be able to read the current entries on the main page, if you want to comment on an entry, you need to go to its own page by clicking on the title in the list on the right-hand side of the main page. Rest assured that failure to read my blog, let alone post a comment, will neither be seen as a reflection of your love for me, or lack thereof, nor will it diminish my affection for you. But then you should at least bookmark it in your Favorites as a token gesture.

I do not think I am going to restrict access with a password, because that seems too self-importantly paranoid even for me (do I really need to lock a gate assuredly almost no one will walk through? I think not), but if things start getting unruly in the discussion forum, by golly, there will be a clampdown!

OK, I think that covers everything for now, so without further ado…