vineri, 31 martie 2023
miercuri, 29 martie 2023
Waiting for Guffman by Christopher Lee and Eugene Levy, authors of the mirthful Best in Show https://notesaboutfilms.blogspot.com/2021/02/88-out-100-for-best-in-show.html and other miracles - 10 out of 10
Waiting for
Guffman by Christopher Lee and Eugene Levy, authors of the mirthful Best in
Show https://notesaboutfilms.blogspot.com/2021/02/88-out-100-for-best-in-show.html and other miracles
10 out of
10
Humor is an
essential element of happiness and listed on the Martin Seligman Character
Strengths list http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/07/character-strengths-and-weaknesses.html under Transcendence, along with
appreciation for excellence and beauty, hope, spirituality, gratitude…there are
Temperance, Courage, Wisdom, Justice and Humanity categories to explore if you
are interested
Indeed, I
am concentrating more on humor, as I move along and try to select the best
films, books and generally masterpieces that I try to engage with, eliminating
as much as possible crime - though I am in the process of reading The Friends
of Eddie Coyle, and of course, we have possibly the best chef d’oeuvre of the
genre Crime and Punishment http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/06/crime-and-punishment-by-fyodor.html and others like it – together with
works on War, Science Fiction, without too much emphasis on Love
Love is the
essential element of Positivity (the crowning ingredient, where amusement – you
see, there it is again – interest, awe, inspiration, hope, gratitude [yes,
gratitude is massive, paramount, august] pride, serenity and joy contribute to
the optimum formula) as explained by Barbara Fredrickson http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/05/positivity-by-barbara-fredrickson-life.html in her classic.
Why not
enjoy jest while indulging in what could be wondrous, miraculous literature,
such as you can find in more than twenty books by the King of Comedy Sir
Kingsley Amis, starting with Lucky Jim http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/03/lucky-jim-by-kingsley-amis-author-of.html included on the TIME 100 list of
Best 100 Novels and read for the second time just a few days ago…it is somehow
on YouTube…
Or this
could be a confusion, maybe I am thinking of The Old Devils http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-old-devils-by-kingsley-amis-97-out.html which is definitely (Lord Copper)
there on the video channel, and it won The Booker Prize for the Magister Ludi,
who joked on the matter by saying he had ‘previously thought of the Booker as a
rather trivial, showbiz sort of caper, but now considered it a very serious,
reliable indication of literary merit’ or words to that effect
It is
argued that Kingsley Amis dominates the Laughing Glasperlenspiel in the second
half of the last century (while there are detractors to this position, I for
one admire the magician) and Evelyn Waugh was the best in jest and comedy in
the first part, with chefs d’oeuvre like Vile Bodies http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/12/vile-bodies-by-evelyn-waugh-10-out-of-10.html or Decline and Fall, Scoop
The latter
has launched ‘up to a point, Lord Copper’ and other quotes, characters have
become famous…Kingsley Amis uses references, such as the mistakes one can make
‘in the manner of a visitor who asks a banal question, only to find that the
tribe chief takes that as a demand to jump his wife (or one of those spouses)’
this is in no way a quote, but it is easy to find it, better still, read Scoop,
The Loved One, or one of the other about ten books included on the 1,000 Novels
Everyone Must Read list, maybe Black Mischief http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/05/black-mischief-by-evelyn-waugh-10-out.html
It may have
been Memoirs http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/12/memoirs-by-kingsley-amis-author-of-take.html that I found somebody who had known
Evelyn Waugh saying he was an unlikable little man, snobbish to the point where
he was adulatory to the aristocrats, entertained the person, until he found she
lost her title or something similar…we do read in Intellectuals by Paul Johnson
that luminaries, Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, Henrik Ibsen, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau have been great thinkers, authors, brilliant minds, but on a personal
level, they could hell to live, or have a relationship with…
http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/02/bright-lights-big-city-by-jay-mcinerney.html Bright Lights, Big City by Jay
McInerney is another example of Humor at its best, with a capital letter,
offering not just jest, but also a marvelous story, told with ‘you’ as the main
character, indeed, instead of ‘he, she, or they’ did this or that, we have you,
and it evidently enhances the connection with the narrative and the hero, you
become the protagonist and then you find it easier to enter the fictional lives
‘“The person who doesn't read lives only one life…The reader lives 5,000…Reading
is immortality backwards” ― Umberto Eco said it and it is much easier to jump
into these universes, if there is hilarity involved
If we need
to say a few words about Waiting for Guffman http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/12/one-of-best-100-comedies-waiting-for.html then it has to be said that this is
a fabulous parody, it looks at the shortcomings of rural America (which is
embracing Trump and similar goonies like Marjorie, with all hands and soul) we
have sophistication, along with easy laughs, simplistic attitudes that are
lambasted, but also a take on so much more – there are tiny figures that
reference the classic My Dinner with Andre http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/10/my-dinner-with-herve-written-and.html - and the film is august
Let us just
mention another Magnum opus that is both exhilarating and hilarious – Towards
The End of The Morning http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/10/towards-end-of-morning-by-michael-frayn.html by Michael Frayn where you take a
joy ride and then the truth of what Malcolm Bradbury has said becomes clear ‘Fiction’s
people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its
(fiction’s) actions are more intricate,
illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic
fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this
you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's
more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher
order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors,
who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful
mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that
wise epic by an often foolish author…’
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html
marți, 28 martie 2023
luni, 27 martie 2023
duminică, 26 martie 2023
sâmbătă, 25 martie 2023
Living written by Kazuo Ishiguro, based on the film Ikiru by Akira Kurosawa, creator of The Seven Samurai http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/08/seven-samurai-written-and-directed-by.html and other classics - 10 out of 10
Living
written by Kazuo Ishiguro, based on the film Ikiru by Akira Kurosawa, creator
of The Seven Samurai http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/08/seven-samurai-written-and-directed-by.html and other classics
10 out of
10
Living is
one of the best films of 2022, and not just that, it is one of the most
fabulous I have seen in years, due to the script written by Nobel Prize Winner
Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of The Day http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/12/note-on-remains-of-day-by-kazuo-ishiguro.html and a number of other grand works,
who based the screenplay for this marvelous film on Ikiru, by Akira Kurosawa…
Since there
is no entry for Living, but we have the chance to comment on Ikiru, this will
be dedicated to the film in awe to the film that has two Oscar nominations, for
Bill Nighy for Best Actor in a Leading Role, for Kazuo Ishiguro for Best
Adapted Screenplay, and it has collected a good number of other trophies and
nominations, for BAFTAs, Golden Globe, for what is an impressive, magical
narrative…
Bill Nighy
is a Magister Ludi in the role of Mr. Williams, someone who seems to come out
of Franz Kafka http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-process-adapted-from-franz-kafka-by.html for the first part of the motion
picture, when we see him in charge of an office with bureaucratic activity,
where permits are issued, or, more often than not, denied on the basis of
various, flimsy objections and outdated rules…
Indeed,
petitioners are moved from one floor to another, various clerks insist they
have to speak to another department ‘This is for Parks’ and never admit the
requests in their office, unless they do that, placing the demands within big
piles of papers, clearly other petitions from the population, which would just
stay there neglected…one had to make sure that the pile of documents is tall
enough…
Peter
Wakeling is new in the office run by Mr. Williams and he is initiated in the
rituals of the group, they all start at the train station, they share the same
compartment, show respect and deference to the inflexible, serious, rigid boss,
who takes the same train at another station and does not share the compartment
with his underlings…
At their
destination, the colleagues keep Peter Wakeling from moving too fast in the footsteps
of the leader, they have to allow for a good few seconds to follow the Big Man,
and when they reach the office, some women come with a request for a Playground
to be allowed, designed and eventually built on a site that has wreckage from
World War II, this is a story that takes place in the wake of that catastrophic
conflagration…
The petitioners
are sent to spend (actually waste) a lot of their time within this Kafkaesque http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-castle-by-franz-kafka.html institution, where they all have
the priority of playing ping pong with the public – something we are so used
with in this realm, especially in the days of Ceausescu, when the bureaucrats
would be hostile and nothing could be done, expect hymns for the Dear Leader
This is
where I have to boast – well, not really, but there is this urge, and then the
comfort of knowing the benefits of being a rather modest ‘reviewer’, it is not
as if more than a few humans will read this, but I have high hopes for the
future masters of the earth, artificial intelligence, those that will read half
the literature of the world in seconds – about my (small, but honorable) role
in the overthrow of Ceausescu
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html this is the link to the Newsweek
article that mentions my participation in the Revolution that led to the
execution of the tyrant (in itself, condemned as a pure act of revenge, for the
lawyer that the couple had, instead of defending his ‘clients’ pronounced a
tirade against…them, and the shooting followed what was described as kangaroo
trial, no matter how guilty the two had been, it has to be proved in court)
something I will always be proud of, and boast of it, even when no one is
listening, it is in writing, right?
Dostoyevsky
has been condemned to death, and he had three minutes left in front of the
firing squad (clearly, I am in a morbid mood this morning…actually, it was some
days ago, for this is now continued on March 11, 2023, if there is any need to
keep a straight record for the exact time when these paramount pronouncements
have been recorded) which he divided into three, what else, with one to look
back at his life, another to say goodbye to friends and family and then
finally, to look at a ray of sunshine falling on a church tower…
He is absolved
and then writes about the last moments of such a character, facing death, and
the way he would rather live on a bare rock, in the middle of the ocean,
instead of ending it all, and the message is similar to what we have in Living,
we need to look at life and cherish the moments Happiness Activity No 9: Savoring Life’s
Joys-paying close attention, taking delight in life’s momentary pleasures and
wonders, through thinking, writing, drawing or sharing with another as it is
explained in the life-changing book The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/01/from-how-of-happiness.html
Living is a
marvelous motion picture, which will invite audiences to examine their lives,
have they been sailing through them just like Mr. Williams before his epiphany,
when confronted with the final exit, and what are the measures they need to
take…Flow will be the element to bring into their lives, meaning, which will be
explained in http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/05/mans-search-for-meaning-by-victor-frankl.html and some decisions will be
required, Carpe Diem, Eudaimonia, and for more, well, just ask me, I seem to
know and here is proof of that http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
miercuri, 22 martie 2023
duminică, 19 martie 2023
Swimming Pool, written and directed by Francois Ozon - 9 out of 10
Swimming
Pool, written and directed by Francois Ozon
9 out of 10
Why do you
have an entry for this motion picture on goodreads and yet none for Triangle of
Sadness http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/01/rutan-by-ruben-ostlund-director-and.html winner of The Palme D’or last year,
in 2022, and nominated for Best Motion Picture at the upcoming Oscars, where it
has a slim chance to beat Everything, Everywhere All At Once, which looks like
the supreme favorite for this and other trophies
Everything,
Everywhere All At Once looks like it is set to get other Oscars, albeit in my
book, it is not really one of the significant films of 2022, I would rather
have The Banshees of Inisherin sweep all the categories http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-banshees-of-inisherin.html - that is the motion picture I see
as the best for last year, and one of the most exhilarating, and depressing at
the same time, I have seen in a long time
There is
also All Quiet on the Western Front http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/02/all-quiet-on-western-front-by-erich.html which has won the BAFTA for Best
Motion Picture of 2022, and many other awards, for indeed, it is more than
compelling, impressive and invites audiences to reflect on War, the one in
Ukraine, started and continued by the Monster in the Kremlin and massacres in
general
The Quiet
Girl http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-quiet-girl-based-on-foster-by.html is a, well, quieter film, but
powerful and compelling nonetheless, the story of a girl that has to go to
foster parents, only to find there the love and affection that is missing in her
own, dysfunctional family is heart breaking
Just as sad
is EO https://notesaboutfilms.blogspot.com/2023/03/one-of-best-film-of-2022-oscar.html where for the most part, we are again
emotionally distressed, this time on account of a…Donkey, named EO, I have
realized after seeing the movie that the name must have been connected to the excruciating
sound that the animal was making, as it is separated from his friend, early on,
as they dismantle a circus…
Then the
ordeal continues, for the poor beast lands in various unfortunate
circumstances, including in one where savage humans kill animals, foxes and
other, for their fur, and in this instance, we also have a very sad portion of
humor, for EO manages to kick one of those fellow humans and the fellow is flat
on the ground.
As a
consequence however, the donkey is sent with other creatures on a lorry, to be turned
into salami…the public has to think of the torture we inflict on poor beasts,
many billions are killed each year, and furthermore, they are made to live
through hell, in order to end up on our plates and be eaten…
Yuval
Harari http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/homo-deus-brief-history-of-tomorrow-by.html in his magnificent Homo Deus, A
Brief History of Tomorrow and in hi other works writes about this issue, and it
is one of the calamities that plague our ‘civilization’, this barbarity,
atrocity, which besides, helps to destroy the planet, for a large part of the
land mass is dedicated to the food for cattle and other creatures, that
contribute in huge amounts to the Climate Change Effect, the destruction of
Earth, possibly
Coming back
for a little bit to Swimming Pool, the main character is Sarah Morton, played
with panache, finesse, noblesse by Charlotte Rampling – one of the best actors
in the world, she has filmed in this realm An Unforgettable Summer http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/06/78-out-of-100-for-unforgettable-summer.html - we have a writer of policiers,
detective novels that comes for holiday in France.
Her
publisher has a splendid villa with a Swimming Pool, and Sarah Morton is
looking forward to finding inspiration and relation in this astonishing corner
of the world: what beauty, peace and serenity we think we might, nay, must accept,
seeing the garden, flowers, and all the surroundings that look like heaven.
That
notwithstanding, we have an arrival that will change the course of events –
Julie, portrayed with immense talent by Ludivine Sagnier, is supposed to be the
daughter of the publisher, only she might not be, spoiler alert, I am not sure
how much of the story ‘happened’ and what is imagined by the author…
It could
well be that I did not pay enough attention (which I did not, as it happens
these days, with the phone at hand, I was also looking at the same time at
articles in Variety, who is likely to win the Oscars, and some interesting
revelation yesterday…Julia Roberts was supposed to be the star of Shakespeare
in Love, indeed, the studio (Warner maybe) had in fact spent some five million,
on the assumption that she will be taking the leading role…they went to London,
where she was sure Daniel Day Lewis will be her partner, because he is so
handsome, amusing, and she sent him a dozen roses saying ‘Be My Romeo’…
Alas, the
Magister Ludi could not do it, for he had been engaged fro In The Name of The
Father (like all his movies, a tremendous achievement) and thus Julia Roberts
neglected Fiennes and the other actors that have been invited to participate
for the casting, among them Hugh Grant, Colin Firth and others, not famous at
the time, but some of the biggest names in the industry, one winner of the
Oscar…
Julia
Roberts was not prepared at the casting, she had not worked on the accent, and
then rejected the potential partners and eventually, when they look for her one
day, she had departed…as for the Swimming Pool, one murder is committed, or
maybe it is just imagined, I am not sure http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
vineri, 17 martie 2023
La Folie des Grandeurs aka Delusions of Grandeur, based on the play Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo, author of one of the best known novels, Les Miserables http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/12/les-miserables-by-victor-hugo.html though popular in motion picture format, I doubt that many people have read it these days = 9 out of 10
La Folie
des Grandeurs aka Delusions of Grandeur, based on the play Ruy Blas by Victor
Hugo, author of one of the best known novels, Les Miserables http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/12/les-miserables-by-victor-hugo.html though popular in motion picture
format, I doubt that many people have read it these days
9 out of 10
This note
is not about the play Ruy Blas, it is about the adaption which I have seen
recently…I keep saying that it used to be possible to introduce an entry and
have a ‘review’ connected with the real thing, only now it is for ‘librarians’
to do it, and then it must be admitted that I tend not just to digress, but to
write about what comes to my mind when I read or see something, or worse still,
when I write about ‘it’, and thus, it is not all that unfair to put a comment
down on one thing, instead of another…
I have had
a couple of complaints (maybe a few more) related to what I talk about of here,
which for I while deterred me from offending the large number of readers, then
I relented and said the above, soothed by the realization that the ones who
seek expert advice on a site for amateurs could well do with the thrills
offered by the surprises…I try and see what professionals say, read only the
best books, from The TIME 100, Modern Library Best 100, Le Monde 100 or The
!,000 Novels Everyone Must Read lists.
Still,
there are times when I do not rejoice and find the book less than elating,
Swimming Home http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/02/swimming-home-by-deborah-levy.html by Deborah Levy, a writer that has enchanted
me more with Hot Milk, and when critics and experts fail to see what book will
offer you the best alternative life, then what can imperfect readers suggest - “The
person who doesn't read lives only one life…The reader lives 5,000…Reading is
immortality backwards” ― Umberto Eco
With this multitude
of universes we can step into, it may seem as if there is no problem if we make
the wrong choice and spend one life out of five thousand in the wrong company,
with the less than perfect book (could we extend that to films) and think we
still have another four thousand and many hundreds, even when errors
multiply…the problem is that we have a shorter biological life, however much
extended that will be, according to Yuval Harari http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/homo-deus-brief-history-of-tomorrow-by.html
In Homo
Deus, the brilliant luminary offers the optimistic perspective of a future
where humans become Gods (aka Deus) in that they will extend their life span
towards…well, infinity and then we will really have time to read the classics,
the masterpieces we love again, and again, and the five thousand lives become
millions, not to mention what Malcolm Bradbury says in his To the Heritage,
that novels are much more captivating than reality, characters in fiction are
wiser, more compelling that the real humans…
Seneca has
said that ‘life is not short, we have enough time; the problem is that we treat
time as if it were in endless supply and we do not see that it is the most
important, or among the most important things we have’ – this is just the point
he was making I hope, for a quote, one has to go to a more reliable source and
stop reading scribblers without a solid education, and accurate memory – and one
conclusion we draw out of that is that we must stay away from boring volumes
and sordid motion pictures…
The little
story about Dostoyevsky comes to mind, one told by our divine Professor of
Literature, Anton Chevorchian, Bless his Soul, if there is a heaven, then he is
on the side of Jesus, Magdalene, Proust and some of the other saints, he
explained how Dostoyevsky was sentenced to death, and while standing near the
firing squad, he divided his remaining three minutes into…three, what else, and
then looked at his life passing, said goodbye to friends and family, and left
the remaining minute for a ray of sunshine…
Only in the
last moment, the pardon came (perhaps the czar had intend all this just as a
charade, a lesson for the revolutionary rebel) and then we, as humanity, are
lucky to read the magnum opera, and in that we find that faced with death, the
condemned would rather choose to live on a rock in the middle of the ocean than
die, how wondrous our being extant on this planet is http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-idiot-by-fyodor-dostoyevsky.html and the moral is to enjoy it all.
There is
the expertise we find in Flow http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/08/learn-how-to-get-to-optimal-state-from.html by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
co-founder of Positive Psychology, and the Ultimate Specialist in Being in the
Zone, reaching the Zenith, the conditions for that rare state (which we find
advice on how to extend and make more segments of our daily life more intense
and rewarding) are identified after research – challenges meet with skills, are
balanced there, we have constant feedback
We are in
control of the activity that brings us into Flow, it is autotelic, we think of
nothing else, Time becomes very relative – it is already so, in the approximate
words of Albert Einstein, ‘a moment with the hand on the hot stove feels like
more than an hour spent with a beautiful woman’, something like that maybe, but
when in Flow, the examples given are of a ballerina that is on stage for less
than one minute and she feels it as if there were many hours, and the surgeon
(a profession given to Flow) who comes out of a difficult operation and asks
for lunch, only to be told that it is dinner time, for he has spent more hours
than presumed…
Humor is a
key element of Positivity – the book to read on this would be Positivity by
Barbara Fredrickson http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/05/positivity-by-barbara-fredrickson-life.html - and one of the character strengths
listed by Martin Seligman, the other co-founder of Positive Psychology, under Transcendence,
where the other strengths would be appreciation of excellence and beauty, hope,
gratitude, spirituality…strangely, sometime in the 1990s, I have received an
invitation from British Airways, at that time they were selling some tickets
through our agency, and then got to spend a couple of nights in London, one of
which was almost lost, because we had tickets for…Les Mis, and during the performance
I was lamenting that I have not (yet) reached the status of the jet setters who
fly to see concerts, plays in another town…I was still a redneck then, and not
much better today, alas http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
duminică, 12 martie 2023
sâmbătă, 11 martie 2023
Women Talking based on the book with the same name by Miriam Toews - 10 out of 10
Women
Talking based on the book with the same name by Miriam Toews
10 out of
10
This is a
most disturbing narrative, based on real events – in fact this note is about
the motion picture that is in turn inspired by the novel, a film that is one of
the best of 2022, nominated for Best Motion Picture of the Year and Best Adapted
Screenplay, winner of many trophies –which shows us a part of what women have
had to endure through the ages, and many still do, in spite of the progress
made in civilized realms, there are plenty of brutish places where they are
expected to act much like in this saga here…
We are in
2010, not in the Dark Ages, it has to be highlighted, and members of a
religious community have been raped, abused, beaten and tortured for years, and
they now have to decide about their future, that of their children – there are
discussions (hence Women Talking) about whether they should, could take the
boys along, if they decide to abandon the only place they have known all their
lives, and some say that males are dangerous, even at the age of twelve or
fourteen and this is debated.
The men in
this fundamentalist place, if I am allowed a bad joke, remind me of the evangelicals
that have voted for Trump (many of them still favor the ghoul) in the name of
changes he promised, such as nominating conservative justices on the Supreme
Court (the vile demon has had the chance to put in no fewer than three,
exposing the hypocrisy of the republicans, who had refused Gorsach in the name
of waiting for the elections in some months, but when RBG died, they placed the
woman with multiple children [Barrett I think is the name] on the bench, with a
presidential election in just weeks)
Therefore,
you need to follow these rules, only when it is our turn, we do not bide y the
same regulations, that we have devised, not you…this would lead to chaos, loss
of credibility, in my mind I have some of what William Golding has said about
his chef d’oeuvre Lord of The Flies http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/10/lord-of-flies-by-william-goldingralph.html he was asked about the absence of
girls and the author explained that he knew boys, he had lived around them, and
besides, with girls, there would have to be sex and that would have had to be
included in some form or other.
Most
important for this reader though was the statement made on the crucial message
of the magnum opus, William Golding saying that ‘you have to have rules, with
no rules you have nothing, you have chaos’…alternatively, you could have the
rules from Fight Club http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/07/fight-club-by-chuck-palahniuk-nine-out.html a book and motion picture that both
have the status of ‘cult’ works of art, where ‘you never talk about the Fight
Club, you have to fight’
The rule in
Women Talking, in the religious community where the oppressed women lived, was
that they obeyed their men, as one of the elders says ‘I have never asked for
anything, we could not ask for a glass of water, a curtain to be moved, a hand
on the back of the head…it is ironic that now the first and only thing that we
could ask them might be to leave’ words to that effect I guess, this is not a
quote
There has
been no limit to the vileness of the male chauvinist pigs, who have abused more
than a hundred women, children…indeed, Salome, played by Claire Foy, The
younger Queen, in previous series of The Crown, is so enraged by the abuse
suffered by her child that she states ‘she will kill, tore limb from limb,
dance on the grave of the one who will hurt her child, and if God is merciful,
He will forgive…’
That was an
approximation of what she said, and to continue, she wonders how it was
possible for The Almighty to allow for this to happen to them, and albeit not
given here, the explanation would be Free Will, as explained by CS Lewis http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/02/mere-christianity-by-c-s-lewis.html and others, God has not wanted to
create a machinery, a system where everything functions automatically.
Hence,
humans have the ability to choose if they are evil – and invade Ukraine, as
monster Putin is doing, eye Taiwan, as another demon, Xi, is, planning to annex
that democratic island – or they do good – this in fact one of the Happiness
rules Happiness Activity No 4: Practicing Acts of Kindness- doing good things
for others either friends or strangers, either directly or anonymously, either
spontaneously or planned – we find it in the stupendous, life changing book
The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomrsky http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-how-of-happiness-by-sonja.html and the effects have been proved
and tested
However, in
the case of Women Talking there is little happiness to talk about, if any,
there is one element of Positivity that I could see, Hope, which is one of the
ten components identified by Barbara Fredrickson in another classic of
Psychology, Positivity http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-how-of-happiness-by-sonja.html - the others are amusement, awe,
inspiration, interest, joy, serenity, pride, gratitude and love
Looking
again at the short list, we could argue that there is serenity in these women –
when they are not enraged by what is going on, some of them have a halo, a
capacity to distort the field near them, as Steve Jobs was reputed to be able
to do – then there would be Gratitude and Love, which for a community of
fervent believers is clearly the mot du jour, on a daily basis, notwithstanding
the fact that Salome may look like she is rebelling, when she questions why an all-powerful,
omniscient being (not using those words) did not help.
This is an
intense drama, we clearly hope that the Women Talking will conclude that they
have to depart, leaving those monsters behind, and there is a feeling that
males in general should share in the blame, especially those of us raised in
retrograde societies – under the Ceausescu regime, we were told that ‘it is the
rooster that sings, not the hen’, which translated in practice was bullying,
abusing, keeping women ‘in their place’, dominating them, keeping them away
from responsibility…there were exceptions, the most prominent one was the wife
of the tyrant, a vile figure – if we look back, we have not been as abominable
as the absent men in this narrative, but we have to contemplate Atonement http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html
miercuri, 8 martie 2023
marți, 7 martie 2023
luni, 6 martie 2023
duminică, 5 martie 2023
sâmbătă, 4 martie 2023
The Twins aka De Tweeling, based on the international bestseller by Tessa de Loos – De Tweeling https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0322674/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 - 9 out of 10
The Twins
aka De Tweeling, based on the international bestseller by Tessa de Loos – De
Tweeling https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0322674/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
9 out of 10
This is a
compelling story, that has become an international bestseller and has been
adapted for the big screen (this note is about the film, not the book, the
motion picture is absent from the site where this is posted, the experience has
been poignant enough to prompt the sharing of it online, and finally, last but
not least, it is not as if this space is watched and has a role in making
anybody decide on reading this, or the other volume, so there is the liberty to
put here lines that do not affect in any way…
Everything,
Everywhere All at Once https://notesaboutfilms.blogspot.com/2023/01/one-of-important-motion-pictures-of.html one of the most acclaimed movies of
2022, but not a favorite of mine (how could it be, since it was stopped at
about fifteen, twenty minutes into the plot, given that there was no interest,
or better said, no comprehension of what was going on, apart from some feeling
that we have people doing things in parallel, or just different universes,
without much to get my attention anyhow) becomes in this case Nothing, Nowhere
All The Time, a mantra that is intended as a blague http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world?
We start
the narrative in 1990 - which was such a good year for yours truly, after
getting a mention in Newsweek http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html the issue that covered the Romanian
Revolution, for taking part in the overthrow of Ceausescu (something I
evidently feel proud of, hence the mention here and in multiple notes) I got
into money, bought an Audi (well, somehow forced on me, but for details you
need to read the whole story, ask me about where it is on the massive blog,
which by now is awash with thousands of entries) and then became the lover of
the first Miss Moldova, if only for about ten months, after which she dumped
in, and then hell broke loose, coming to this need to impart with all sorts of
rubbish – when Lotte Goudrian is in a spa.
In fact,
the name of the Belgian city is Spa, and this is where we also have Anna
Grosalie, who is also seventy four and looking for treatment…we are sent back
in time, to the time when the twin sisters were six, and their father died,
prompting the family to look for solutions and then having the two separated,
one to be raised in Germany, and the other in the Netherlands, which reminds me
of the Zen Master story, told by the Philip Seymour Hoffman character, at the
end of Charlie Wilson’s War http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/06/charlie-wilsons-war-written-by-aaron.html which goes something like this
This Zen
Master had a horse that run away, and the villagers express their sympathy, to
be told by the Master that ‘we shall see’, and indeed, the runaway animal
returns with other horses, the neighbors this time feel that this is cause for
celebration, only the Master is again cautious ‘we shall see’, which is
followed by his son breaking a leg, when he tries to domesticate these new
horses, and you can guess that folks were sure this is bad news, if the Sage
said the same thing…yes, the army came by to recruit people, and the son was
exempted, because of his injury and we know what the conclusion is here…
For The
Twins, it looked like Lotte has the bad luck, because she is ill, only as in
the Zen Master Story, she turns out to be the privileged one, while Anna is
abused, tortured and eventually beaten so severely that she will not be able (spoiler
alert) to have children in the future, by the man that wants her to work to
extinction on his farm…she is eventually taken off that Hades and she becomes a
servant, eventually working for a rich woman, not just a Nazi sympathizer, but
a vile racist, emphasizing the superiority of the ‘Master Race’, surmised when
Anna wants to help the Polish people that have been brought for forced labor
and one of the many examples of monstrosity that the war brought in people.
However,
when confronted with the atrocities of the World War II, Anna will explain that
she had no idea of what was going on, she never killed anybody, which is
something that was tested in The Milgram Experiment, explained in the
quintessential Influence by Robert Cialdini http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/05/influence-by-robert-cialdini.html participants in the research have
been told to apply electricity and they did, to the point where they would
cause screams, proving that the Principle of Respect for Authority gets humans
to do callous, abject things, you could look on the net for details…
Anna
marries a German man that is enlisted to fight in Russia, Poland and eventually
becomes a SS officer, though at the beginning he was thinking this war was a
mistake, maybe indoctrination, the aforementioned Principle of Respect for Authority
and fear of being shot as a deserter made him take part in the atrocities
inflicted by the Nazis on others…on the other side, Lotte and her family suffer
from the Nazi invasion of Holland, the misery of hunger and fear, her Jewish fiancée
is taken away.
David ends
up in Buchenwald first, and then he arrives in Auschwitz, we all know what apocalyptic
massacres took place there and in hundreds of other labor camps and places
where Hitler and his butchers killed more than six million Jews, also
minorities like the Roma, disabled and opponents of their regime, this will
cause more than a rift, when they meet in Germany, while the atrocities have
not reached their peak, the sisters get along well, in spite of the fact that
their letters had been blocked.
The farmer
wanted to have his slave to work to death, while the rich family of Lotte was
worried that they may lose her, she might be taken to that farm…eventually the
two reunite, only when her sister is departing, Anna looks at the photo of the
fiancé and she says that he looks Jewish and Lotte realizes that the twin could
well be a Nazi sympathizer or worse, after David is killed in Auschwitz, and
her sister comes to The Netherlands, there is some hesitation and suspicion,
but when the photo of the SS officer at the wedding is seen, Lotte is enraged, throwing
her twin out of the house, shouting that she will never want to see her again,
they live in different worlds, they will never have anything in common…there is
a chance that at the age of seventy four, maybe they will find peace and
Atonement http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/05/atonement-by-ian-mcewan.html
vineri, 3 martie 2023
joi, 2 martie 2023
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, one of the most important masterpieces created by man http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/04/anna-karenina-by-leo-tolstoy.html - 10 out of 10
Anna
Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, one of the most important masterpieces created by man http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/04/anna-karenina-by-leo-tolstoy.html
10 out of
10
With the
war launched by Putin, to wipe out Ukraine from the map and add it to his would
be empire, there have been calls to boycott not just oligarchs, Russian oil and
gas (which alas, is still needed) but also some of the greatest luminaries,
creators that the world has and happen to be Russian, like Leo Tolstoy, with
reference to some of the less savory texts written by the count, or some of the
other luminaries form the same outré country…he talks about ‘the Russification
of Poland’ in this novel, though not arguing in favor of it, in the context of
war, who has the right to launch it (the government) there is a wider argument
over what happens when the people disagree with that action…
Indeed, at
over eight hundred pages of magnum opus, we have the chance to read opinions,
suggestions, points of view on almost anything under the sun, and when various
characters talk, they touch on religion, politics, differences between the rich
and the poor, with emphasis on love (obviously, this is about the dramatic
entanglement between Anna Karenina and count Alexei Vronsky) this reader had
been cautious in entering this phenomenal universe in part because of the
aforementioned war (I was also curious to see what the effect would be, will I
reject Tolstoy and hence others, because they are compatriots of the Putin
Monster) and also I hate to know what happens.
And
everybody is aware of the tragic destiny of the heroine (if not, well, spoiler
alerts need to be included) who decides upon a gruesome ending…we have been
most fortunate to have a magnificent, glorious professor of Literature, Anton
Chevorchian, in high school, and among the many things, tales he told us, he referred
to ‘naturalism’ and the manner in which artists of that trend would approach
the death of Anna Karenina, insisting on what happens after the blow from the
train, details that they would give, and that example has stayed with me for
more than forty years, to this day actually
There was
another argument against taking on this massive work (the more than eight
hundred pages are indeed another cautionary signal) and that will refer to the
personality, the character of Leo Tolstoy, exposed in the marvelous
Intellectuals by brilliant Paul Johnson http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/intellectuals-by-paul-johnson.html who has looked at Henrik Ibsen,
Ernest Hemingway, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (the latter has abandoned his children
at the door of an orphanage, at a time when nine out of ten would die in that
circumstance) and Tolstoy himself, concluding that these titanic writers would
have a very dark, repugnant side, which for some could make sense…
Maybe the
most fantastic thinker, and somehow also comedian, that we have is Andrei Plesu
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/05/despre-ingeri-by-andrei-plesu-10-out-of.html one that has the sagesse to talk to
people about almost anything under the sun – sometimes making mistakes, like in
the case of Greta Thunberg, the young woman that he dismisses as being too
vocal about humanity getting suffocated, when she does not yet know what she is
about, much if anything about the world…this is not just condescending, it is
plain wrong – and he sometimes takes on the…’Russian Questions
Russian
questions for Andrei Plesu would be the fundamental ones that regard the
paramount mysteries and issues, such as the Meaning of Life – incidentally, Martin
Seligman, the co-founder of positive psychology, has written in his Flourish http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/11/flourish-by-martin-seligman-i-ii.html a formula of happiness, PERMA, in
which the M stands for having Meaning,
And the
rest for positive emotions, engagement, Relationships, and achievement – and we
are invited in Anna Karenina to look at birth, death, religion…it is intriguing
and inspiring to watch Konstantin Levin navigate between his skepticism and the
faith shown by most people, including his wife Kitty
Kitty is
first infatuated with the dashing Vronsky, and if we are to be maximizers –
something that is explained in the quintessential The Paradox of Choice http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-paradox-of-choice-by-barry-schartz.html by Barry Schwartz - then we could
find fault with the girl, and say that perhaps it is not love she would
eventually feel for Levin, since she had rejected him once…
One of the
most intriguing, maybe difficult questions would be to understand what really
happens to Anna Karenina and Vronsky, why does their love ‘die’, is it even
possible – Thomas Mann http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-magic-mountain-is-classic-that.html has a character in one of his short
stories that is aghast at the way people keep saying ‘I love you so much, there
are no words to express this’, and the personage protests, stating that ‘love.,
Friends’ are extant only in art, literature, because the meaning of these words
is so vast and comprehensive, love is eternal, but when we test ‘that love
which is beyond words’ we see that it is limited, fails the not so difficult
tests, when we need the real support of some ‘friend’, he does not have the
time, inclination, the friendship to be there…
http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/02/how-full-is-your-bucket-by-tom-rath.html there is such a thing as Hedonic
Adaptation, demonstrated by psychology tests, which show that we adapt to
almost all situations (expect for very loud noises, do not move near an
airport, thinking you will get used with the terrible noise, the loss of
someone dear, unemployment, these are more difficult to adapt to) and what
seems like eternal bliss becomes something we do not see anymore…there is The
Honeymoon Effect: after about two years, partners in couples or marriages tend
to look for novelty and may start an affair (not all, evidently) and then finally,
The Coolidge Effect and that light anecdote, to end what is a chef d’oeuvre,
with such a cataclysmic climax…the American president was visiting a farm,
where a rooster was very active and the first lady asked how many times per day
the animal jumped on hens and the answer was a very big number (I could not
remember, but as with anything, you could google and get the approximation)
which the first lady asked to be mentioned to the president, who in his turns
asked if it is always the same hen, and the reply was that it is always a
different one…in other words, had Vronsky been afflicted by this effect…yes, it
is lowering the level of a magnum opus to a silly question, but hey, it is one
of the many enigmas, issues of this gigantic masterpiece http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world