tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18684626991918106882024-02-22T09:36:55.734-08:00Eastbound R. SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-32977771758934173562022-10-18T02:18:00.006-07:002022-10-18T02:24:07.683-07:00Bluebeard, Amélie Nothomb <p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #404040;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: 17px; text-align: center;"><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #404040;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGCItxTNqegKuoCut3wVS_zFoK7zE0371BDwRrErewgjeODGG4xK-R8OeGz8C0KO_rimL0h7cWTJzuB5l9uOz6CdNM9pIJiMXDG5zZaoTEMzOe94wzvv2VM9t_8Zf16rNDV6uEk0XxpXbx38ORHRJ9IFdVm11FN-vE14h6awuiq--td9KTQC20rX7MIg/s647/screenshot_2022-08-27-22-39-36-01.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" data-original-height="647" data-original-width="647" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGCItxTNqegKuoCut3wVS_zFoK7zE0371BDwRrErewgjeODGG4xK-R8OeGz8C0KO_rimL0h7cWTJzuB5l9uOz6CdNM9pIJiMXDG5zZaoTEMzOe94wzvv2VM9t_8Zf16rNDV6uEk0XxpXbx38ORHRJ9IFdVm11FN-vE14h6awuiq--td9KTQC20rX7MIg/w297-h297/screenshot_2022-08-27-22-39-36-01.jpeg" width="297" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #404040;"><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="color: #404040; font-size: 17px;">Here’s an updated version of Perrault’s 1697</span><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="color: #404040; font-size: 17px;"> </span><em style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Bluebeard.</em><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="color: #404040; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="color: #404040; font-size: 17px;">In the original Bluebeard, a rich nobleman, marries a young girl. She’s initially terrified because the guy’s eight previous wives have all disappeared. He tells her that she’s allowed everywhere in their Castle except for one mysterious room.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #404040;"><i style="font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"><br /></i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #404040;"><i style="font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">“You should not enter that room, if you were to enter it you would sadly have to face my just ire and resentment”.</i><span style="font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px;"> She obviously will enter the room</span><i style="font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">.</i></span></div><p></p><p data-adtags-visited="true" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Perrault’s tale is a favourite among American feminist academics. Bluebeard’s will is a symbol of the Patriarchy’s rigid structure. The girl’s decision to disobey is a woman’s rebellious act in pursuit of her freedom of choice.</p><p data-adtags-visited="true" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">In Amelie Nothomb’s Bluebeard, Saturnine is a young woman from Belgium who works as a substitute teacher at L’École du Louvre. She’s also going through a nightmarish search for a place to stay in Paris. She suddenly finds a dream opportunity: A luxurious 40m2 room with ensuite bath for just 500 euros. </p><p data-adtags-visited="true" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Even if she finds a long queue of candidates (all female, btw), she gets the room straight away. Only to discover that the owner has had eight previous women as tenants, all of which have mysteriously disappeared. </p><p data-adtags-visited="true" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Elemirio Nibal y Mílcar is a slightly weird fortysomething aristocrat who lives in his magnificent mansion like some sort of Philip II locked up in El Escorial. Reading theology or mystical books, enjoying its dark aesthetics. </p><p data-adtags-visited="true" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Nothomb’s approach is somewhat different from that of feminist academics. Individualistic rather than collectivist. Saturnine seems to defend Elemirio’s right to have his own secrets. As a consequence, she’s ok with respecting the forbidden chamber. But she’s also dragged, human as she is, by a strong wish to know. </p><p data-adtags-visited="true" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">They have dinner together every evening. She introduces the ascetic aristocrat to the pleasures of obscenely expensive champagnes. They share culinary delicacies.They reflect on aesthetics and chromatic miracles. Saturnine tries to dig up his sinister secrets while he displays his peculiar somewhat twisted wit.</p><p data-adtags-visited="true" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Bluebeard flows nicely like some creepy romcom. An elegant dark narration and a very quick read: I devoured it in just a few hours.</p><p class="inline-ad-slot" data-adtags-visited="true" data-adtags-width="761" id="inline-ad-0" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 17px; height: auto; margin: 0px auto 1.5em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; width: 728px;"></p><div class="ata-controls" id="inline-ad-0__controls" style="box-sizing: inherit; height: 10px; line-height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 728px;"><br /></div>SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-69122271454400223952022-01-15T12:44:00.002-08:002022-01-15T12:52:23.237-08:00Bid Time Return (1974). Richard Matheson <p><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg6Aa7F4j1phIkLuZEc6H0u_kzV85JjJanj1nmab3RY72orN_9l2-lqQbJ7B8Y4p5deQdVWeDt0tIeiMyg6xzqkxGSooqlrocawzLbkXGp-z6uMmZOelq-5yM9o3KTSHkcVTj9oPN7HX3qnnjrE18Zk40rGC1-LWxi7RQvgFkp5wCU9eZKhGi_lCeLpNQ=s499" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="306" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg6Aa7F4j1phIkLuZEc6H0u_kzV85JjJanj1nmab3RY72orN_9l2-lqQbJ7B8Y4p5deQdVWeDt0tIeiMyg6xzqkxGSooqlrocawzLbkXGp-z6uMmZOelq-5yM9o3KTSHkcVTj9oPN7HX3qnnjrE18Zk40rGC1-LWxi7RQvgFkp5wCU9eZKhGi_lCeLpNQ=s320" width="196" /></a></span></div><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;"><br />Richard Collier, 36, has a brain tumour, and only a few months to live. Out of despair, he decides to dump it all. Determined to live his last weeks without a care, with the sole company of his imagination and dying dreams, he leaves home. He drops a coin, and drives off northward, along the west coast.</span><p></p><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">He reaches Coronado, near San Diego, where he finds an elegant hotel, perhaps one century-old, neatly reminiscent of a time past. He checks in. There he comes across a 1896 photo of a gorgeous theatre actress, famous back in the day, who played in this same Coronado hotel.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">He becomes obsessed with the woman, furiously dragged by the past. Probably because the present is a nightmare. He develops a maddening wish to travel back in time and meet, in the flesh, his beloved ghost. Meet Elise McKenna.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">With a titanic effort of self suggestion (and carefully following the instructions of a JB Priestley book*), with the sole aid of his mind, he manages to travel back in time. From 1971 to 1896.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">Really? Or was it all just an hallucinatory effect of his brain tumour? Matheson won't let us know. Up to us to decide.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">Anyway this is one of the most subtle time travel novels ever written. (I believe Henry James left one* unfinished also on the topic, btw).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">With precision and literary skill, Matheson describes the psychological experience of being transplanted (and adjusted) into another century. What would it be like to actually find yourself in the 1890s? Time travelling was never so close and tangible for the reader.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">The 1980 movie version is way cheesier in my view. The novel is undoubtedly better and more complex.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">(More on this novel and its conception on the Maude Adams post).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">*Man And Time, 1964. JB Priestley</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">*The Sense of The Past, 1917. Henry James (Posthumous and unfinished).</span>SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-1304989429678210962021-12-20T10:53:00.005-08:002021-12-21T09:58:38.332-08:00Dying Of The Light (1977) - George RR Martin<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgtj_evEN_4Sca_vLJ1kNc-ImPo3qDq6A2GHylxEMM2WkJRlo4N90Pyaw1TrVuT0QD2Qp1IETpzHYcx72RkzNraaIzg6IaVfohEyN4-WXa0B8N8J3JVIw-oCZVSrNF9VTZaLW7577lxcZuwA9axJQwEl9MpWXQ13TenHt6OU__gcmpsW5frbL3IgHfAVw=s471" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="391" data-original-width="471" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgtj_evEN_4Sca_vLJ1kNc-ImPo3qDq6A2GHylxEMM2WkJRlo4N90Pyaw1TrVuT0QD2Qp1IETpzHYcx72RkzNraaIzg6IaVfohEyN4-WXa0B8N8J3JVIw-oCZVSrNF9VTZaLW7577lxcZuwA9axJQwEl9MpWXQ13TenHt6OU__gcmpsW5frbL3IgHfAVw=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: arial; font-size: 14px;">There was a time when GRRM was not a world famous author, but just an obscure cult writer.</span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">In Spain, DOTL was a hidden gem for years, even if it was translated as early as 1979. Talked about and referred to as a favorite, few had actually read it.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">The title was audaciously picked from Dylan Thomas (Rage, rage against the Dying of the Light).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">Its scenario is ominous, also impressive. Dirk t’Larien and Gwen Delvano, two ex lovers, meet on a rogue planet, Worlorn. What's a rogue planet? One not orbiting any star, but lost in deep space, except when temporarily approaching a star’s proximity.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">Rogue planets are not fiction. They exist in reality, and many have already been identified (btw none back in 1977, when DOTL was first published).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">Dirk travels to Worlorn, to reunite with Gwen, years after their love story was over. The planet had capriciously been terraformed, just to hold a big Festival of Cultures: those of all 14 outer planets (all inhabited by humans and their rich and different cultures).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">The terraforming took advantage of the fact that Worlorn was to be, for just a few decades, within the proximity of a group of stars, thus receiving daylight. Now the Festival is over, and light is dying out. Cities abandoned; ice, decay and death spreading over.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">This is the bleak place Dirk is asked by Gwen to travel to. After years of not hearing a word from her.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">DOTL is a love story, sure. With such titles, we could perfectly come up with a new subgenre: Romantic Sf. But it is also adventure, violence and an anthropological feast.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">The DOTL universe is populated by humans, all originated from Old Earth. Human condition remains unchanged, though (no genetic improvement here). Larteyn, the city in Worlorn modeled after High Kavalaan, with its virile culture of the medieval type, of clashing clans and ancient codes of honor, might give the reader an early taste of Game of Thrones.</span></span>SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-79479004374525140982021-09-18T04:32:00.006-07:002021-09-18T04:34:11.908-07:00Kindred (1979), by Octavia E Butler<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitE7wmSF7OHP2AAty_Q70dKyw6RE4xvuOa6-V3KuqIEGOf0_9ygxFoNyVWJCVZZuh1aL8ZuM-OjroSkHXkmgcoyyyCGTncJhMW-4H27o52omiR__jhG2Qut6hca_h2yqxq3QvzReDIFoBm/s499/51E-UIeSb2L._SX335_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="337" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitE7wmSF7OHP2AAty_Q70dKyw6RE4xvuOa6-V3KuqIEGOf0_9ygxFoNyVWJCVZZuh1aL8ZuM-OjroSkHXkmgcoyyyCGTncJhMW-4H27o52omiR__jhG2Qut6hca_h2yqxq3QvzReDIFoBm/w186-h275/51E-UIeSb2L._SX335_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="186" /></a></div><br /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">Dana is a black young woman, living in 1976 California. She’s achieved her dream: becoming a writer. Just moved to her new apartment with Kevin (her white husband). Also a writer, a successful one at that.</span><p></p><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">They’re busy placing their many books, when suddenly Dana feels unwell, experiencing some sort of dizziness. To his astonishment, Kevin sees her dissolving before his very eyes. To magically materialize again a few minutes later.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">Dana appears to be deeply shocked; and what she tells Kevin is quite weird.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">While vanishing, she lost sight of the room, only to find herself in a natural setting, with trees and grass all around. And a river, where a white redheaded boy seemed to be drowning. Still dazed and confused, she rushes to save him.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">What happened? Well, a disturbance of spacetime. And where she ended up, she finds out, is not California, but somewhere in Maryland: like 3000 miles away. And most of all, it was not 1976, but 1819!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">The redhead's name is Rufus, who happens to be her ancestor (probably through the rape of a slave black woman?). The spacetime disturbance repeats itself; Dana comes to understand that there's now a strange connection between her and Rufus.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">Everytime Rufus is in trouble, or in a life threatening situation, Dana is pushed back in time. To the early 1800s Maryland plantation of the boy’s family or whereabouts; where black slaves live, work and die.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">On every occasion Dana is sent back to antebellum Maryland, she spends more time there. From hours to months; she will have to learn how to survive on the plantation. Also make a sense of the experience, as a free woman of the future.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">Dana experiences the brutality of the 1820s, a time when a set of people owned the lives of another set of people. This gives the past a rough, more aggressive turn. As if 1819 felt more real and tangible than (comparatively) easy going 1976.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">The reader experiences the same shock. The immersion in 1819 is quite realistic. Along with Dana, you sense 1819 as well.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-size: 14px;">Kindred was first published in 1979. But to me this is the finding of the year, or the decade.</span>SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-55449277072856068762021-02-13T04:00:00.002-08:002021-02-13T04:07:33.163-08:00The Invisible Man, by HG Wells<br /><p><br /></p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEMbfjKvLWD0cc3defXlQEJcBqy3vS-7seu_Qcuftdb4skY4e5Ll_6Ie1JTqGcKP0LUEw-chwjjOGd8rvl3Jza5T87kEFmUf9gR8uBGlgtABJXyYO8EKp45AS7p21MzYj-XwtLJ8CC426n/s510/IMG_20201202_145642_777.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="503" data-original-width="510" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEMbfjKvLWD0cc3defXlQEJcBqy3vS-7seu_Qcuftdb4skY4e5Ll_6Ie1JTqGcKP0LUEw-chwjjOGd8rvl3Jza5T87kEFmUf9gR8uBGlgtABJXyYO8EKp45AS7p21MzYj-XwtLJ8CC426n/s320/IMG_20201202_145642_777.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div><i><br />The invisible Man </i>is one of the author’s best narrations, the ones he wrote in his youthful years. The “fantasias of possibility”, as he called them, which he published between 1895 and 1901. The Invisible Man is a tale of solitude and alienation. A tale of an ambition wrongly (wickedly) directed. <p></p><p>It is also, one fiction work that clearly casts a shadow on Science.</p><p>By the late 19th century, Science was a positive force, linked to progress and improvement of life. The treatment of Science in literature or papers was almost unanimously positive. Let’s recall Jules Verne, for instance: a positivist feast, and Science and Technology as radiant deities. That was the norm. </p><p>From 1945 on, however, the thing was to change dramatically, even if there were some previous warnings, like Huxley’s 1932 Brave New World. Hiroshima and nuclear devastation was to damage the social image of Science since the mid 20th century onwards. And novels and movies were invariably to provide scenarios of Apocalypse.</p><p>But when The Invisible Man was published (1897), the suggestion of Science as evil was still rare. </p><p>In the novel, Griffith, a chemist, discovers a way to make matter invisible, through a scientific process that Wells does not explain in the same technical detail as Verne used to. The author is more concerned with the social and moral implications of Science. Griffith is, like Victor Frankenstein, a guy who’s passionate for the wonders of the natural world. He researches tiressly, determined to pull out secrets from matter.</p><p>He applies his technique to himself and so becomes invisible, except when dressed, or after lunch. But he can't properly manage his new power, as a result he abandons all moral constriction. And knowledge without morality, science without conscience, leads to disaster. The topic has now become a cliché. But it was not in 1897.</p><p>The Invisible Man also makes us wonder if our morality could not just come from the fact that we are being watched at all times. By the others, by Society, by the State. Un uneasy thought. But if our morality truly depends on that, let us not worry too much. We cannot certainly complain of not being monitorized enough these days.</p>SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-16993893125811403662021-01-24T13:00:00.006-08:002021-01-24T13:14:15.119-08:00The Night Land (1912), by WH Hodgson <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRDgc361NfEVqmzjT8pJvZtfR_tT0AJ9r6FnB_LOhto6Z3UNWwfv-rfUVPXQHeYnyQj_i7Tq__i25n3gs1OrcicRCthe-uCOMAhOrhk9rGZdiP4aT0qWAZSdBFxNQh8adiHbKQqDgcTkBT/s535/IMG_20201105_203716_756.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="535" data-original-width="535" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRDgc361NfEVqmzjT8pJvZtfR_tT0AJ9r6FnB_LOhto6Z3UNWwfv-rfUVPXQHeYnyQj_i7Tq__i25n3gs1OrcicRCthe-uCOMAhOrhk9rGZdiP4aT0qWAZSdBFxNQh8adiHbKQqDgcTkBT/s320/IMG_20201105_203716_756.jpg" /></a></div><br />William Hope Hogdson (1877-1918) was praised by Lovecraft, and that’s no easy praise. Such works as House On the Borderland or The Night Land were proclaimed “impossible to forget by any reader” by the author of Providence. And we should not rule out the possibility that WP Hogdson’s visions could be even more powerful. <div><br /></div><div> Hogdson’s literary style is a bit harsh, or cumbersome, as Lovecraft himself pointed out. In The Night Land, for example, this might be something of an obstacle for a comfortable read, mainly if English is not your first language. Hogdson’s writing here is some kind of pretended 17th century style which can prove hard to swallow. </div><div><br /></div><div> Perhaps it’s not an overstatement to say that WHH is more readable in translations, as translators usually “fail” to reproduce this obscure style. Then you have the brilliantly gloomy plot and mise en scène created by Hogdson, but you avoid the harshness of his original writing. </div><div><br /></div><div> The Night Land is an impressive description of a horrid world. The sun has died out, and it is now millions of years in the future. The Earth is frozen and resignedly keeps revolving around her star. (In 1912, when TNL was published, star evolution was not as well understood as today). The whole surface of our planet is in darkness. </div><div><br /></div><div>The remains of humanity live in the Redoubt. This is a huge pyramidal construction that holds all men and women surviving in this half-dead world. Away from the Redoubt, and sorrounding it, are the deep shadows, the Night Land. A full mysterious geography: paths, valleys, mountains. Also monstrosities wandering by: lovecraftian creatures whose origins, nature or purpose are unknown. </div><div><br /></div><div>A man from the past transports his mind into this distant dark future. He will inhabit the Redoubt. One day he hears a woman’s voice by telepathy, and this voice reveals that there is a second Redoubt, also inhabited by people. The mysterious narrator, who traveled through the ages into this horrible time, will now venture onto the Night Land, in search of that second pyramid. </div><div><br /></div><div> One must agree with Lovecraft. Few other times has human imagination conjured up such a terrifying scenario, fascinating in its weird originality. </div>SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-49418601360059100072020-12-19T09:25:00.001-08:002021-01-25T09:29:12.084-08:00Borges, drawing the world<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDqVrlQnNTsRbFJXS1mSgMYOQLaEidLUQv-7tWtY6a2B-zJIaeaC40U7v7WvtoSpWJ1Q2IoG_4BaLd9lg_jXEGxjGLiZ2hWhG8YCDjS0VdYE0VqYKGdTKl6ZuaiPhC57GIz2l3W3v-r5aP/s533/IMG_20201217_170115_909.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="533" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDqVrlQnNTsRbFJXS1mSgMYOQLaEidLUQv-7tWtY6a2B-zJIaeaC40U7v7WvtoSpWJ1Q2IoG_4BaLd9lg_jXEGxjGLiZ2hWhG8YCDjS0VdYE0VqYKGdTKl6ZuaiPhC57GIz2l3W3v-r5aP/s320/IMG_20201217_170115_909.jpg" /></a></div><p>"A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face."</p><p></p><p>Yes, we built up our reality, and we do so with all objects, physical or spiritual, we encounter on our way and which we process. Borges is truly a literature of thoughts, smart speculations, impeccable imaginary constructions. With a flavor of truth, he invented historical or literary figures so perfectly recreated one would swear they must have existed. </p><p>He famously stated that "writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes." Borges was not a very "prolific" author. The number of pages he produced was not huge. He never wrote a novel. (Maybe the story The Congress, quite long for borgesian standards, was the closest he ever was). </p><p>He basically wrote short stories and essays, interestingly with a blurred line between the two. Stories looking like essays and essays you could hardly differentiate from stories. Also poems that could be read as short narrations. </p><p>But if we consider his richness, the complex fascinating ideas with which he constantly fills his texts (a full volum could be forged out of many of the ideas he “wasted” for just a 10-page narration), then Borges is among the most "prolific" authors in all Literature. A vast author, a sea of infinitude. </p><p>He also reframed a language, reverting a literary tradition. The narrative of Castile started off with some sort of magnificent psychedelic road novel, but ever since one would have considered Castilian only valid for a dry realism. Borges turned it into a key to a splendid intellectual and aesthetic universe.Those colorful supernatural realms of contemporary Latin American literature would be unthinkable without the argentine’s luminous prose.</p>SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-26257711845755095142018-05-08T03:25:00.022-07:002021-01-25T09:32:29.784-08:00Coherence (2013), by James Ward Byrkit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5azDkFNSJzBIhVMVPQsWkeTSYnseRV1n4Of_3xEbLt-UUIN_U2AKwjDsXhlVu59lEcOzlzrt8_GOrD_mdLxpfUt0nGoTJS66Ut-6NyiEd37qiUCarj2xo_adJNyD2foLYgs5WgRJmRfI4/s1145/IMG_20210124_223414.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1145" data-original-width="958" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5azDkFNSJzBIhVMVPQsWkeTSYnseRV1n4Of_3xEbLt-UUIN_U2AKwjDsXhlVu59lEcOzlzrt8_GOrD_mdLxpfUt0nGoTJS66Ut-6NyiEd37qiUCarj2xo_adJNyD2foLYgs5WgRJmRfI4/w168-h200/IMG_20210124_223414.jpg" width="168" /></a></div><br />A dinner party is being held, and eight friends of the young professional type gather for a presumably nice evening of food & drink and conversation. But that night something out of the ordinary -and from outer space- will appear to disturb the party: the passing of a comet in the proximity of Earth. And during the time of the passing, some unexpected things will happen to the very structure of space-time. At first in a discreet unnoticeable way, more visibly later.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />So at some point at dinner, and even before it, you'll have mobile screens cracking, lights going out or wifi going down -which leads to sudden incomunication and not little alarm for these (sub)urban individuals of the 2010s. First thing they ask themselves: are these disturbances somehow related to the passing of the comet? Unease increases as they go through the evening. During their meetup, they talk over their drinks and dishes, and we learn of their lives, their past relationships, their vital goals or little frustrations, and we can start to figure out what's their psychological makeup, or how they are going to behave -each of them- in the face of this approaching disruption of the universe.<br />
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And what is happening to the houses nearby? Are they through the same thing, the same aforementioned weird events, lights going out, wifi going down? Those taking place over there as well? Some of the friends decide to venture outside and try to find out, and they end up by doing a disturbing discovery: <i>the other houses around are inhabited by people who look exactly like them.</i> People who are propably <i>them! </i>There appears to be, by their place, some sort of an unlimited wheel of <i>houses </i>like their own, containing the same lot...of themselves! And the film turns into some sort of quantum version of Buñuel's <i>The Exterminating Angel. </i></div>
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<b>A wheel of universes </b><br />
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They will reach a conclusion. The comet has produced some kind of damage or disturbance in the fabric of the universe. How could that be? Wait, <i>why could not that be? </i>Let's not forget after all that the Universe at work is in itself deeply weird, as quantum mechanics has revealed to us and still reveals constantly. Ours is a world, which is in a way nonsensical at first sight, and even the mere existence of any given being is quite <i>unbelievable</i> as it is extremely unlikely, if you think of it. <i>Why is there something instead of nothing?</i> is quite a (first) question. And yes, particles only come into existence when observed, says quantum physics. And one of possible states emerges just when the system is observed. So why couldn't it be possible that alternative universes exist, like those defined by Hugh Everett III?<br />
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Why could there not be un unexpected event -the passing of a comet or anything of the sort- that suddenly alters the universe, so that it will reveal hidden (so far) aspects of its nature? The famous <i>Schrödinger cat </i>thought experiment had been thrown in during the dinner as a key idea to understand what might be happening. To try to explain this unexpected wheel of parallel universes: of parallel houses each containing the full identical lot of them. So here we are, deep into the evening-night, this initially nice gathering disrupted, a menace of unconceivable nature pending over the house. The Everett universes stressing out the (sub)urban friends, A science-fiction scenario set up for good old <i>human nature </i>to display. How are these characters going to react to the quantum challenge?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMEbnDz6uZzVwizhIjGt_IXN9YfthucKG7VfpoMZxkOfkrm76VYtSUoRVlkMkPoi2cKKfGqfMpiNylCmpToWK5V0eUaTgKAYyFuBwaWzn3iaucPAWACY5Uavg1vG4T9CDHfhSsxDB9PZMV/s1196/Coherence-2013.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="545" data-original-width="1196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMEbnDz6uZzVwizhIjGt_IXN9YfthucKG7VfpoMZxkOfkrm76VYtSUoRVlkMkPoi2cKKfGqfMpiNylCmpToWK5V0eUaTgKAYyFuBwaWzn3iaucPAWACY5Uavg1vG4T9CDHfhSsxDB9PZMV/s320/Coherence-2013.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b> G</b><b>oing for it </b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sometimes (or yet more often than sometimes) we feel miserable in our lifes, and we start fantasizing about the idea that, had we done things in a slightly different manner, the outcome would have been hugely different. Hapiness and satisfaction, which we sense so far from us in our actual circumstance, would be right here making our ordinary reality. What if one of those happy parallel worlds is inhabited by <i>another self </i>who is living a fullfilled life of harmony? And so without having neither more talents o more intelligence than we have, only having enjoyed more luck or (slightly) better decision making? If only we could enter that parallel world! We could so easily reach what we deserve! What are we to do in order to get it? Could we even get to the point of, say, killing?</div>
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Tonight's gathering is at Mike's (Nicholas Brendon); two of the friends attending the dinner are Emily (Emily Baldoni) and Kevin (Maurey Sterling), who are now a couple. Another of the guests is Kevin's ex, Laurie (Lauren Maher), to the annoyance of Emily. Let's put the lens on Emily. She appears to be rather insecure about her life outlook and the choices she made that, through the years, built up this life she now has. Probably she feels that what she has achieved is under her true potencial. And she probably has lost herself sometime into <i>fantasies of parallel worlds.</i> Out of her dialogues we can guess a bit of what's inside her mind. At some point she will make a decision: she truly deserves another existence, a different outcome. Now, happily provided by an unnerving cosmical disruption, she has a chance to alter. And (<i>even to the point of killing?</i>) she will go for it. </div>
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SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-11936214898886230412018-03-17T04:55:00.003-07:002018-04-05T08:55:39.013-07:00World Order: Singularity <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the 1980s, if you wanted creativity and innovation in what's generically (and inaccurately) labeled as "pop music", it was probably the UK you were to find that. But I bet today you would have to look somewhere else.<br />
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Like Japan, for example, an astonishing country in so many areas. Check out Japanese band <i>World Order </i>and their spectacular world wide street choreographies. It is among the most clever and creative things I have seen in recent years.SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-93670888483802252018-03-11T14:23:00.004-07:002018-03-17T17:50:09.955-07:00On Chesil Beach, the movie <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><i>“This is how the entire course of a life can be changed: by doing nothing.” </i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><i>“It's shaming sometimes, how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions. Who, for decorum's sake, has ever slowed his heart, or muted a blush?” </i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><i>“Thinking of her friends, she felt the peculiar unshared flavour of her own existence: she was alone.” </i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><i>“This was still the era - it would end later in that famous decade - when to be young was a social encumbrance, a mark of irrelevance, a faintly embarrassing condition for which marriage was the beginning of a cure.” </i></span><br />
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The movie version of <i>On Chesil Beach</i> is scheduled to be released on June, 2018 in the UK. (In Spain I don't know if it will be released at all). Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting will be played by Billy Howle and Saoirse Ronan (who will feature in another McEwan adaptation after 2007's <i>Atonement). </i><br />
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So far only critics and the like have seen the movie, giving it a "fresh" 63% approval on <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/on_chesil_beach/" target="_blank">Rotten Tomatoes.</a> Not too bad. Probably watchable.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/sep/07/on-chesil-beach-review-billy-howle-saoirse-ronan-dominic-cooke" style="background-color: transparent;" target="_blank">Movie Review (The Guardian)</a></span><br />
<a href="https://eastboundreframing.blogspot.com.es/2012/08/on-chesil-beach.html" target="_blank">Novel</a><br />
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SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-25203156609203762752018-01-16T10:35:00.003-08:002018-05-08T15:38:45.536-07:00Dolores O'Riordan <iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Yam5uK6e-bQ/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Yam5uK6e-bQ?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe><br />
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1971-2018<br />
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From <i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> (1993)</span>SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-20375764691211494172017-12-29T05:36:00.005-08:002018-04-02T03:25:10.171-07:00Ian McEwan: Nutshell (2016)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Nutshell </i>is a narration made from the point of view of a... foetus. Yes, a still unborn baby, a child in waiting. At the moment the tale starts off, this shakespearian foetus (<i><span class="st">"<i>I could</i> be bounded in a <i>nutshell</i>, and count myself a king of infinite spac</span>e"</i>) is just a few weeks away from leaving his mother's womb, a few weeks away from finally making it into the (outside) world. Ian McEwan's new novel is a foetus' monologue, but as we soon discover, it is also a <i>crime narration</i>: an adulterous woman and her lover plan to murder her husband. The woman is no other than the foetus-narrator's mother. And the lover is, well, his father's brother. This is a absolutely awesome <i>mise en scène</i>, even if it is not really the first time we encounter a foetus-narrator in literature.<b> </b><br />
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<b>We realize, as the monologue progresses,</b> that the unborn child's intelligence and verbal capacity is similar to, say, that of a young college guy, and an <i>engagé </i>one at that. He has a bit of a <i>social conscience </i>and philosophical leanings. With the addition of a layer of sophistication that our (very) young narrator has obtained from his mother's penchant for Radio 4 as well as cultural postcasts of all topics, which he somehow manages to listen to through the placenta. (He has even become some sort of <i>wine connoisseur</i>, thanks to the respectable variety of liquors his mother drinks and which get to him). Along with the action, the not-yet-born baby keeps on learning and so he changes and develops his psychology. Of course his extreme cleverness and sophistification is a literary fantasy license by McEwan, not unlike that of Gregor Samsa <i>transforming himself into a monstrous insect: </i>a sole giant supernatural element ingrained into a realistic story, or just a deliberately comic element.<br />
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Never mind. The narration flows wonderfully in any case, like nearly all of McEwans' works, no matter the register. It is ironic, and it is dead serious. It is <i>hamletian</i>: the foetus feels itself paralysed by the doubt<i> of either beeing or not beeing.</i> <i>Not beeing</i> means considering the possibility of erasing himself from existence (an existence that might be so disturbing) by comitting suicide hanging himself with the umbilical cord; the alternative, that is opting for <i>beeing,</i> is managing to finally be born and set out to act in the outside world: perhaps avenging his father's murder with an adult's hands: his future hands. The foetus' life is a full life within a very peculiar and strange world, the world we all live in inside our mother's placenta:<i> only this one lasts nine months and not nine decades,</i> as is the case with the existence coming right after birth. But fetal life is a life in full, one of its own all the same.<br />
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<b>He anticipates his "death" to this uterine life</b>, which means entering the utter world which is the physical world of <i>born people</i>, our world. He vindicates to be let in to have his chance. His chance to live the bunch of decades he's entitled to, to eventually manage to make it all the way to the <i>22nd century,</i> perhaps beeing at that point, in that distant future, a fragile and thin (if quite in decent form) old man in his early 80s, by 2100. This is a awesome idea: the phoetus'birth is his death as a phoetus and so it is the end of this fetal nine-month life, it implies his entering into a sort of <i>after life </i>which is the birth into our world. (Of course, an inmediate idea springs out of this <i>: Is there another after life after the adult's life?)</i><br />
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<b>The (outside world) is a exhausting riddle </b>to the soon-to-be-born narrator. His mother is a cold blooded killer who tries to escape the unbearable sense of guilt through self explanatory moral narratives, but she is also a riddle, as are his changing feelings towards her. She is beautiful and seductive and devastating, but also she is his sole shelter and protection. His uncle, on the contrary, is not that much of a riddle: rather a primary egotistic materialistic being whom he despises. Even without having been born yet, our protagonist has already had the chance to know about life's pains, about its maddening complexity, the lies, the secrecies, the betrayals. The moral mess which is the <i>actual</i> world. And yet he wants to fill his place in it, a world of things, and thoughts and actions, a <i>most exciting place for a strong conscience,</i> provided this is aided by the ordinary physical tools we all have and take for granted.<br />
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He yearns for the possesion of his due pair of hands<b> </b>and his pair of legs, the possibility to listen to his favourite music simply of his own will (not having to wait for his mother to, say, turn on a CD player), or drinking wine (if possible all kinds and varieties, as he loves it) by holding a cup with his own hand, or climbing mountains by himself; or whatever he wishes to do. So finally after a due cycle of existencial doubts (in him quite advanced in time), even more dramatic in his case as evil and murder have been involved, his decision is clear: he wishes to be helped into the sunlight, to show the head, to look directely at her mother's face. To unreservedly embrace <i>beeing, </i>with all its pleasures and pains,<i> </i>taking control of his existence. As it was his choice, his will be a true birth.SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-9015098272417502332017-09-19T07:11:00.003-07:002017-09-19T13:52:46.528-07:00Train to Busan (2016) <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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South Korea, today. A workaholic and selfish father takes her little daughter to Busan, after she has begged him to, in order to reunite her with her mother. They intend to get there by train. Of course fully ignoring the (usual) Zombie Apocalypse that will take place, this time (and movie) inside that train.<br />
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What is a <i>zombie</i>, by the way? Well, the notion of it dates back to several centuries ago, and sure its symbolic potential is not a small one. Anthropologist, artists, even philosophers have used it in their works. But it has been mainly through movies that it has become hugely popular, in particular since Romero's 1968 <i>Night of the Living Dead</i>. The Zombie concept, as it has been constructed by movies, is one to think about. Suppose you lose a loved one to Death: that is painful, devastating enough. Suppose now that the loved one you lose is not only lost, <i>but turned into a monstrous entity who wants to destroy you</i>. Well, that is beyond painful. It might be unbearable. (I have always viewed that as a symbol for some lost friendships: "dead ones"who besides turn against you).<br />
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Sure, the South Korean <i>Train to Busan</i> (Yeon Sang-ho, 2016) is another movie for the succesful Zombie genre. But it is much more than that. It is probably one of the most clever and humane of all Zombie movies. You will be frightened and carried away by the fast-paced action. But you may cry as well.SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-32854083991719040082017-07-05T15:09:00.002-07:002018-04-02T03:26:06.683-07:00Amy McDonald: Dream On<i>Dream On</i>, first single from <i>Under Stars </i>(2017), latest album by my favorite Scottish female singer<br />
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<br />SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-49207875456966487752017-06-28T02:55:00.000-07:002018-04-09T05:07:36.330-07:00Arrival (2016)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Here's a new version of the <i>Contact </i>topic. That is, Earth people's contact with an intelligent and technologically advanced <i>Alien </i>civilization<i>. </i>However <i>Arrival </i>(<span class="st">Denis Villeneuve, 2016) </span>is not of the <i>Independence Day </i>type, but rather of the clever <i>Contact</i> (R Zemeckis, 1997) type. In the 1997 movie starring Jodie Foster (and based on an absorbing 1985 Carl Sagan novel) it was Science and Technology that were at the center of the stage, even if sharing prominence with some metaphysical implications. Scientist Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster), after receiving a signal from Vega, manages to travel there making use of alien technology, even if her story has later to face general disbelief. And it will be a life-changing deeply emotional event she will experience over there, in outer space, on the surface of a Vega Planet (in some sort of Paradise beach, near a deepest blue sea), an spiritual experience, not unlike that of Dave Bowman in <i>2001, A Space Odissey. </i></div>
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But it was physics, astronomy and engineering that Ellie Arroway used as ways to her transfiguring voyage. In<i> Arrival, </i>it is not Physics leading the way, but another science is, one often neglected in this kind of movies: linguistics/philology. So the protagonist here, that is, the scientist mainly in charge and (intelectually) kicking ass does not come from a "hard" science, but from a "soft" humanistic discipline: Dr Louise Banks (Amy Adams), an expert on everything related to human languages in all their variety and complexity.</div>
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<b>Communicating with advanced aliens: a cultural challenge</b> </div>
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Yes. Language. Because, suppose the aliens finally come. Suppose they have an amazing technology, and a (way deeper than ours) knowledge of natural laws, and how the universe works. Well, how do we learn from them? How do we manage to communicate? Linguistics/Philology reigns in <i>Arrival </i>as the main science or discipline.</div>
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So aliens arrive, then.<i> It is Arrival Day. </i>And they hang up there amidst the clouds, in strangely shaped spaceships. But unlike <i>Independence Day,</i> they do not just set out to destroy human cities straight away and for the sake of it, they just happen to hang up there, apparently waiting, as if not being sure what to do next once they have made it to Earth, and finally found out there is an intelligent species over here.</div>
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What's next? Well now they (and we) have to try to establish some sort of communication. But how do you communicate with beings that do not share anything with you, no psychological or emotional traits, only the knowledge of physical laws? Sure there should be a common ground, as after all we are all biological creatures from the same universe, with the same physical and biological laws underlying us. But the abyss between us must be huge all the same.</div>
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<b>The humanities, also within the equation </b></div>
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I remember this book by Evry Schatzman<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; font-weight: bold;">,</span> <i>The Children of Urania </i>which was about technologically Advanced Alien Civilizations, about their chance to exist, about the (scientific) conditions for their existence, all the theoretical frame for such existence, developed once again: the Kardashev types of civilizations, the Fermi question (<i>how come they still have not visited us if there are probably so many of them?</i>), the impossibility for faster than light travel, and so on and so forth. </div>
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So the book went through the usual exposition of the conditions that make an (alien) civilization likely: the right size of the star, the right size of the planet, the right distance, the necessity for liquid water on the surface, or for an oxygen atmosphere...the full list of astronomical, physical, chemical demands. But there was something in <i>The Children of Urania </i>which I had not found in other similar books, and which was for sure food for thought. <i>Mutations of culture as doors into science and technological development. </i>A cultural change as a key condition for the advent of science and technology, a change or a mutation that might not have happened on Earth, that might indeed be very rare, and that... might explain our astronomical solitude.</div>
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Take human civilization(s) some 1000 years ago. What kind of civilization was it back then? Let's take a look, for instance, at West/Latin Europe. Could we consider it an<i> advanced</i> Civilization? <i>What would aliens have thought of it</i> had they arrived on Earth around 1000 AD to pay a visit and check how things were going on here in terms of intelligence and technical progress? Well, for sure, back then European civilization was an "advanced" one, in some sense. After all, it was quite a rich, sophisticated one. Philosophy, theology, architecture, literature, poetry, politics, art...were all developing at a good level. But sure Medieval European Civilization (or those of the rest of the world for that matter)<i> were not scientific-technological.</i> Not in the sense today we understand as such. Sophisticated they were, highly conceptual, but with a very limited knowledge of the real (material) nature of the Universe. </div>
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Well, what happened half millenia later? In the early 16th century, the so called <i>scientific revolution</i> took place. The modern scientific method was established and a growing body of positive knowledge of the natural world started to build-up.<i> Around 1600, we abandoned finally the speculative laberynth that all past civilizations underwent, and managed to enter at last a solid terrain of positive knowledge</i>. What was the explanation to this mutation? was it the emergence of capitalism? Protestant culture and ethics? The enormous building-up of classic knowledge due to the invention of printing? <i>It was in any case a cultural mutation that might not have happened.</i> How can we be so sure that that mutation always takes place in all alien civilizations? Perhaps we are alone, and there is no other technological civilization in the whole universe, the reason being not such things as, say, the peculiar size of our moon and the tidal force<i>, but the astonishing and mysterious cultural change that took place in the 16 century and which led to the so called scientific revolution. </i></div>
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See? There is more to the <i>Contact </i>story than <i>hard experimental science</i>. Humanities and <i>soft</i> social sciences might be as important. The mutation of Civilization into a scientific technological one had a "humanistic cultural" basis. It might not have happened. Language, as the basis of the so-called humanities is a fundamental tool and one essential discipline in our process of <i>contacting. </i>Let's stop forgetting it<i> </i>or minimizing it. <i><br /></i></div>
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Aliens from an advanced civilization must be "intelligent" which means not only rational, but in possession of a good set of neurons (or neuron-like cells) making them not only logical and mathematical but spiritual, thus capable of creating deep spiritual worlds of symbolism and meaning. Will we contact their spiritual world with our spiritual world? </div>
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<b>A "feminine" aproach</b><i> </i></div>
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<i>Arrival </i>highlights the importance of culture in the <i>Contact </i>topic. Not just physical science, but cultural approaches and transformations. Again it is a woman who leads the way (as in 1997 <i>Contact)</i>, but this time with a "social science" as an instrument. Women are probably better at social and humanistic disciplines, so its fair enough that a woman leads the show here. Women are very good at language and communication (whereas men are probably, even if this is probably not too PC to say, better at physics). <i>Arrival </i>is a movie on the importance of language and communication between unbelivably distant beings, of emphasizing the necessity for building up bridges. Of solving the tricky riddle of how to connect minds and intelligences, linking psychological (spiritual) inner worlds. </div>
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<i>Arrival</i> is a<i> feminine </i>(not a "feminist") approach to the <i>Contact </i>topic, this being a frequent -sometimes even tiresome- topic within the SF frame. Language, and not physics is the star here. <i>Arrival </i>is a clever movie, with a good script, a good development, well-drawn psychologies and fine performances. But I would highlight, as its most interesting trait, its vindication of a humanistic discipline as a fundamental key to a possible future Contact. Something which reminds us the overall importance of the rest of the (so called) humanities in our (likely) future contacts with aliens, with advanced technological alien civilizations. Because they might well be a product of cultural mutations, of cultural intangible forces (not only biological ones), much as we ourselves are. Theirs being a spiritual vasteness as deep as ours, for which we will need approaches well beyond the strict reign of matter, once we have aknowledged, of course, that we both share the same rational scientific frame. </div>
SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-59037562232377058462017-05-17T08:09:00.003-07:002018-03-17T09:12:11.406-07:00WestWorld / Season 1 (2016)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"They say that great
beasts once roamed this world. Big as mountains. Yet all that's left of
them is bone and amber. Time undoes even the mightiest creatures. Just
look what it's done to you. One day, you will perish. You will like with
the rest of your kind in the dirt. Your dreams forgotten, your horrors
faced, your muscles will turn to sand, and upon that sand a new God will
walk, one that will never die, because this world doesn't belong to you
or the people who came before. It belongs to someone who is yet to
come."</i></div>
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This great line of probably one of the best TV shows today made me think of an idea expressed by paleoanthropologist Yves Coppens in <i>The Most Beautiful Story of The World</i>. <i>"It is unsure if we humans are to be the heroes of this story" </i>The "story" being Earth's geological/biological evolution since its formation. We humans have been here on this planet for a mere million years. How long will we survive? Let's not forget that there are still like 4.000 million years of Earth history yet to unfold!</div>
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So will humans last? How long? And if not, who will their succesors be? And will these be the product of evolution/biology (as we were), or rather the product of (human-derived) technology?</div>
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Our descendants, the new masters of the world, will they be of the carbon type? Or rather of the silicon type, like these Westworld "artificial" but increasingly -through experience and change- humanlike creatures?</div>
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<br />SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-82277726231426013702017-05-16T04:26:00.002-07:002017-05-20T04:42:35.684-07:00Onibaba (鬼婆, 1964) <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As well as books, movies are countless. Over a century of movie-creating has resulted in an infinitude of them. In all languages, all topics and genres, all possible human approaches, and from all countries. Quite a few outstand as well-known masterpieces (<i>Kane, Potemkim, Vertigo, 8 1/2, Tokio Story, 2001, Rashomon, Rules of the Game,</i> and the like). But so many years of the so-called (7th)art have inevitably also led to the existence of a good amount of <i>forgotten classics</i>. That is: movies of obvious quality and aesthetic value but no longer (if ever) present in the charts, the critics' reviews or moviegoers' conversations. Perhaps <i>forgotten </i>is not the right word of course, as these movies are not actually "forgotten", but sure they're (a bit) neglected. At least outside the country where they originated.</div>
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Here's one of those hidden gems: <i>Onibaba </i>(鬼婆, 1964), from one of the most important cinematographies in the world: Japan. This dark hypnotic movie is not exactly a <i>hidden gem</i>. It is a gem, sure, but not "hidden", at least not in Japan. But is it known or heard of by most fans (even horror fans) in the West or the rest of the world? I doubt it. </div>
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The story of <i>Onibaba </i>is set in Japan in the mid 14th Century, during a period of civil war, of death, poverty and hunger, of loneliness and suffering. Two women, mother and daughter-in law, survive by killing soldiers after inadvertedly atacking them with spears, or tricking them into a deep hole. They later trade with their possessions, and that is how they make their living. A dangerous living in the nearly perpetual dusk (even under the sunlight) of this ominous world of <i>Onibaba. </i></div>
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Later on, at some point, the two women will be haunted by a sort of masked demon, whose origin was a previously killed (by them) masked samurai. Directed by Kaneto Shindo (who worked as an assistant of the legendary japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi), <i>Onibaba </i>is a true Japanese horror classic. Little known (or not at all) in the West. Some critics consider the movie to be a period drama, but most view it plainly as a horror movie. Well, it is both. And it contains solitude, hunger, maddening sexual desire, jealousy, fear, deceit, murder, claustrophobia, a menacing war background, and the presence of the supernatural, A great deal of symbolism underlies the story. (The mask hiding the desfigured samurai might be a symbol of that real Japan desfigured by the Hiroshima bombing, etc)</div>
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<i>"Onibaba is a chilling movie, a waking nightmare shot in icy monochrome, and filmed in a colossal and eerily beautiful wilderness"</i> Peter Bradshaw</div>
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<i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIfdwHPAjBw&t=5034s" target="_blank">Onibaba </a></i>is a gem, hidden o not, not to be missed. </div>
SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-68622445238906855832017-01-17T07:37:00.003-08:002017-05-20T14:40:00.872-07:00Enemy (2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><span class="st"><i>Chaos</i> is merely <i>order</i> waiting to be <i>deciphered</i>.</span></i><span class="st"> José Saramago </span><br />
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<i>Enemy </i>(Denis Villeneuve, 2013) is a Canadian-Spanish production loosely based on Jose Saramago's <i>The Double,</i> with screenplay by Javier Gullón. In a way, this is an intriguing encounter beetween the universes of the late portuguese writer (philosophical, intellectually on point, somewhat morose) and that of David Lynch (fantastic, dreamlike, highly symbolic). In Villeneuve's movie we are introduced to a College history teacher (Jake Gyllenhaal) by the name of Adam Bell, who leads a life apparently devoid of all excitement, a guy who seems totally focused on his academic discipline and who, as he himself claims <i>"is not interested in movies"</i> and probably, the viewer guesses, not into any other form of entertainment either. He just teaches history at College and makes love to his fiancée Mary (Mélanie Laurent), that's all.<br />
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<b> <span class="st"><i>Doppelgänger</i></span></b></div>
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But one day he comes across something really weird, something that will turn his monotone life upside down. On one ocasion a colleague suggests he take a look at one particular movie that he might find of interest which comes under the title of <i>Where There's a Will There's a Way. </i>Without much excitement, Adam rents a DVD of the movie and makes a pretty scary discovery: in the movie playing a very small role, there is an actor <i>who is physically identical to him.</i> Yes, a double, a <span class="st"> <i>doppelgänger, </i></span>there in that obscure movie he had never heard of. After some quick googling, Adam finds out the identity of this second-to-third-rate basically unknown actor. He learns that he has just made a few movies and played in very small parts, as an extra, essencially. The actor's name is Anthony Claire and the little information he finds in the internet makes it clear that they are like two drops of water, or next to it. </div>
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Adam also finds out that his double (played also by Gyllenhaal, obviously) lives in Toronto as well, this dreamlike Toronto as depicted in <i>Enemy</i>, and he decides that he should meet him. Eventually the two men will meet in a creepy, slightly terrifying, face to face encounter, that Adam cannot completely cope with.<span class="st"> </span></div>
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<span class="st">Except for some minor details (Anthony wears a wedding ring), the two appear to be identical. </span>Also both happen to be related to physically similar blond girl friends: Mary (Mélanie Laurent) and Helen (Sarah Gadon), Anthony's wife, who is 6 months pregnant. Adam and Anthony might look identical in physical terms but their psychologies drastically differ. Adam, the history teacher, is dubious and hesitating; Anthony, on his part, is more proactive, even agressive. </div>
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There is an unequivocal Lynchean atmosphere, oneiric, weird, in the development of the story. We find <i>spiders </i>here and there in the course of the movie, as if the <i>spider </i>(and a spider's web) was a key concept to the understanding of <i>Enemy</i>. What is going on here? What is the deeper meaning of this strange movie we are seeing?<br />
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<b>Spiders here and there</b></div>
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I remember some time ago talking to a friend who had been engaged for a few years, though not yet married to his fiancée. I asked him how the thing was going, and I recall him saying something like <i>At first I felt sort of trapped. But now I would say I am fine</i>. Well, <i>trapped. </i>And this has been pointed out as one possible key to the underlying meaning of <i>Enemy. </i>This feeling of being <i>trapped</i> in a relationship, which is not clear. As if one was a kind of insect in a spider's web, and even ready to be devoured by the <i>spider.</i> And who is the spider? Well, uh, the woman. And the spider's web is nothing but the commitment: this commitment so often demanded, which some find suffocating, and so hard to stick to at times.</div>
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Also there is this final shot in <i>Enemy. </i>Again involving a spider. The most terrifying final shot in all movies, as some have said. Don't know if the most terrifying one, but scary as fuck, all the same. Spiders.</div>
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Spiders. Are they the clue? Being trapped by the <i>spider's web </i>of a commited relationship. Or is this, as someone else has suggested, an <i>Invasion of the body snatchers</i> thing? Could Anthony Claire, Adam's <span class="st"><i>doppelgänger</i></span>, be truly a <i>spider</i> in a human disguise? Well, anyway, <i>Enemy </i>is rich enough to allow different interpretations, as dreams do. One thing is certain: here is a story of the<i> Mulholland Drive </i>sort: incomprehensible, complex, lysergic, scary. Wonderfully <i>image-turning.</i> Filled with enigmatic clues and symbolisms to taste, if you are into it<i> (Is this chaos </i><span class="st"><i>decipherable</i></span>?) If not, you can at least enjoy a good lynchean oneiric ride, without caring much about the meaning. </div>
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<br />SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-27143904520556055732017-01-10T04:22:00.001-08:002018-06-24T16:53:49.271-07:00Nightcrawler (2014) <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Of course, in <i>Nightcrawler </i>(Dan Gilroy, 2014) we have another great performance by <span class="st">Jake Gyllenhaal, a most eclectic and arguably one of the finest actors today. But what I find most fascinating about his brilliant Louis Bloom creation is something that has already been noted by some viewers and critics: smartly psychopathic, Bloom is a close relative of two iconic Robert De Niro characters: Travis Bickle from <i>Taxi Driver </i>(1976) and Ruppert Pupkin from <i>The King of Comedy</i> (1982), both directed by Martin Scorsese. </span>Louis Bloom is definitely a sort of mixture of Bickle and Pupkin, sharing psychological traits with these two other <i>lovable </i>sociopaths.</div>
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Like Travis Bickle in <i>Taxi Driver, </i>he also scans away the night scene with a cold, dispassionate eye, safely behind the wheel of his car. Only that Bloom's eye is even colder and more dispassionate, because Bloom, unlike Bickle, doesn't exactely feel dismayed or angry by what he sees in the New York streets in the small hours, nor does he play with the idea of perhaps cleaning the streets up in some sort of <i>fascist </i>way. Louis Bloom just wants to document them, to "print on tape", or digitally register, the pain he comes across in the streets, or rather which he actively seeks for (accidents, murders, whatever), and then deliver it to others who are eager to consumate it. He delivers it to the media and wants to be paid for it accordingly. That is it. He doesn't give a shit about what causes the tragedies and their pains, or what could be done about it. We have this intuition that he could even be happy to create the painful situations himself, if necessary, if that could better serve his purposes, so as to have more of them to register, and earn more money. His eye is not a moral one, it appears purely dehumanized.</div>
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<span class="st">And along with his other <i>kindred spirit </i>Ruppert Pupkin</span><span class="st"><span class="st"><i> (King of Comedy),</i></span> Bloom also has illusions of grandeur. Like Pupkin, he is obsessed with climbing up the ladder of success, no matter what. He definitely wants to be someone, a big someone. He is the ultimate entrepreneur, and an unscrupulous type of it. He knows what he wants. His moral approach might be reprehensible, but at least no one could say his goals are not crystal-clear. Aside from the psychological similarities between Bloom and Pupkin, <i>Nightcrawl </i>also<i> </i>delivers us (like <i>The King</i> <i>of Comedy </i>did) a critical comment on the media culture of the day. And in the case of <i>Nightcrawl, </i>on the harshest variety of it. <i>If it bleeds it leads </i>takes media culture to a most cynical dimension, in which images are coldly and impeccably manipulated to suit one particular narrative or editorial line. </span></div>
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Bickle, Pupkin and now Gyllenhall's Bloom are three sociopaths sharing the same essential icy loner psychology. <i>Nightcrawl </i>could well be considered the<i> Taxi Driver </i>of today. (It even has its own <i>You Talking to Me?</i> scene, guess which one). We could note that in 2014 <i>Nightcrawl </i>Jake Gyllenhall was the same age (33) as Robert De Niro in 1976 <i>Taxi Driver. </i>Maybe that is just a biographical anecdote, but it could as well be a sign of Gyllenhall's coming iconic status. What is not anecdote for sure, is that the anapologetic strenght of <i>Nightcrawl </i>seems to equal that of <i>Taxi Driver </i>and <i>The King of Comedy. </i>Gilroy's movie is a great one, a realistic knockout in a moral sense. A cynical document in the form of fiction of today's world, and through the eyes of a most cynical character.</div>
<br />SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-11713350927947823852017-01-04T04:08:00.001-08:002017-05-20T04:44:42.941-07:00George Michael (1963-2016) <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3K9rDq9zUKQ/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3K9rDq9zUKQ?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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Here's a cool acoustic version by George Michael of Wham!'s <i>Everything She Wants </i>(1984). With a live orquestra and a small crowd of some 300 people, he performed it along with tracks from his 1996 album <i>Older </i>and other works.</div>
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Recorded in London, in October 1996 (aired 1997), this was critically aclaimed as one of the best MTV Unplugged performances.</div>
<br />SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-77979068480386338822016-12-22T05:08:00.000-08:002017-05-20T04:47:09.629-07:00James Taylor / Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Someday soon we all will be together</span></i><br style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: proxnov-sbold, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /><i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">If the fates allow</span></i><br style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: proxnov-sbold, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /><i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow</span></i><br style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: proxnov-sbold, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /><i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">So have yourself a merry little Christmas now</span></i><br /><br /><br />Here is <i>Christmas</i> again. This is a time which is loved by many, but feared by quite a few as well. It is a time (supposedly) of happiness, of family gathering and heavy dinners, of partying. Also of bitter loneliness and near depression. Perhaps nothing of what we wanted has been achieved, another year is passing by, and to many that alone is depressing.<br /><br />Written in 1944 by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blame for Minnelli's<i> Meet me in Saint Louis</i>, <i>Have yourself a Merry little Christmas</i> is one of the most popular and most performed Christmas songs of all time. It has also been covered quite a few times by different artists. But I would say that James Taylor's version is possibly the one that's best captured the bittersweet taste of this period of the year: sparkling happiness mixed up with dark melancholy, the two sides of Christmas.</div>
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SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-74473721661107454722016-12-13T03:50:00.002-08:002017-05-20T04:47:40.748-07:00Ian McEwan: Atonement <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It is the hot (for England) summer of 1935, in a nice big country house in Sussex. The Tallis, a high class family, inhabit it for the summer holidays. The father, a high government commissioner, is away in his London office, busy at work with preparations for a European war that back then, in mid 1930s, is becoming a real possibility. Among the people at the house we find the mother, tortured by never-ending migraines; the elder daughter (22 year-old Cecilia); the younger one (13 year-old Briony); the brother Leon; business man Paul Marshall; and finally three cousins from the North, on a visit. Along with a due bunch of servants, we find Robbie Turner as well, the son of the governess, who is also a <i>protegé </i>of the Tallis family.</div>
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Briony is the central character in this amazing story. At 13, she is theoretically on the brink of leaving childhood, but she is also well into that strong egotism so typical of childhood and early (sometimes full) adolescence. Nonetheless, in this case to her ordinary child's solipsism, you also add up a great imaginative creative power.</div>
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<b>Briony, thrilled by story creation </b></div>
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She's thrilled by the act of creating tales. Writing, translating into words the awesome, or just plain, events of existence is something she definitely loves to do: she is truly a writer, a narrator in the making, a young person whose life will, in years to come, likely be devoted to literature, to the re-shaping of reality in the form of fiction. It already is, actually, this very day, as she spends most of her hours putting little stories on paper with increasing skill. She imagines stories all along, which she later has her mother (and about everyone else) read and evaluate: she likes showing off her talent. Her emotional development, her new experiences and thoughts will find immediate reflection on those pages she is constantly filling up.</div>
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But on this particular summer day extraordinary things will happen. Things which will mark Briony's fate as well as those around and linked to her. The fate of the people at the house that very moment is going to be determined by Briony's imaginative powers. Today is the day, and tragedy will take place.</div>
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What is going on? Some cousins from the north are coming to the Sussex mansion, in order to spend a few weeks with the Tallis: 15 year old-Lola and her two younger twin-brothers. Also among the new guests today are Leon (Briony's brother) and a friend of his, Paul Marshall, already a successful young businessman. Just then, immediately before the arrival of the guests, Briony has finished a play that she has intitled <i>Arabella, </i>which she, full of excitement, of course intends to represent before her beloved brother and the rest of the guests. For that, she counts on the (reluctant) aid of the cousins: Lola and the twins. So she calls out for the due rehearsals to the annoyance of the northern cousins, which would rather do anything else. Go play by the swimming pool, for instance.</div>
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At the same time, Robbie, the housekeeper's son, spends the morning in dreamy introspection, thinking of quite a promising future unfolding before him: to his literature degree he has just achieved, he speculates with adding a new one: Medicine, no less. And of course he also thinks, and quite so, of Cecilia, the Tallis elder daughter, whom he has known since they were children. He fancies her. That morning, he is fantasizing about her, while inmersed in his bathtub. And at one point, he emerges from the bathtub and reaches the nearby desk, where he sits down to typewrite a letter to Cecilia Tallis.</div>
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He playfully tries different versions, some of them a bit too rude<i> </i>to really think of delivering, but which he writes as well, just for the fun of it (maybe thinking <i>what if, anyway)...</i>. He finishes the definitive version, one he thinks is OK: a more or less polite version of course, of what he had to say. But, what happens then?...yes, we guessed it: he mistakenly ends up sending the wrong letter, one of the rude versions he had been playing with, one which he thought he had discarded. The rudest one, in fact, one which reproduces a explosive <i>slung </i>word. Explosive, that is, for the place and time and the vehicle, a letter.</div>
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<b>Fancying, invoking tragedy </b></div>
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Cecilia and Robbie have known each other since they were children. They are in love, only they still haven't become fully aware of it. They soon will, that same day actually, but the most awful misunderstanding is going to stand on their way, also that same night. And it is the deliverer of the letter (writer-in the-making Briony) who will be the responsible for it. </div>
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After Briony has given Robbie's letter to her sister, one definitive scene will take place. In the evening, the guests (including Robbie) gather up for dinner. Afterwards, having both got up discreetly from the table, Cecilia and Robbie head for the library, where they will end up making love with shelves full of books as a frame. Briony just enters the library while they are at it, and well, she sees the thing, and being just 13 (and also being high class England in the 1930s) she does not quite understand what is going on.</div>
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But her powerful imagination is quickly set into motion. A dark imagination at that moment, way darker than that of a similar creature: Ana, from <i><a href="http://eastboundreframing.blogspot.com.es/2011/09/spirit-of-beehive.html" target="_blank">The Spirit </a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" target="_blank">of the Beehive</a>. </i>Briony is more proactive than Ana, and she will unconciously generate what will turn out to be injustice and cruelty, born out of that abundant inner world of hers.</div>
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Earlier that day, Briony had also witnessed something by the lake, again involving Cecilia and Robbie, another <i>weird</i> (to her child's imagination) event, that she again will process in the wrong way.</div>
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Later at night, in the woods surrounding the house, something horrible will happen. Is it a rape? An attempt? The victim is Lola, the 15-year-old cousin from the north. Everyone is distressed, and the police are quickly called in. All people at the house are interrogated on the crime. Who might the assailant be? But Briony, her imagination out of control, has already decided <i>who </i>he is.</div>
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<i>Atonement</i> is a great exploratory work, a must for those readers who wish to be told a good story, also for those who like reflecting on the power of literature, who want perhaps to manufacture good valuable literature themselves, for the story which is told and the horizons the narration might reach. <i>The great power of fiction, and its own reality</i>.</div>
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History itself is a construction of our minds, even if its based on <i>factual truth</i>, it is after all a series of texts, which we create and shape. So will the lives be of those people in Briony's hands. Narrations. Imagination can be a source of aesthetical beauty. Also of lies, arbitrariness, ultimately disaster. But it too has the potential of eventually creating some form of posthumous symbolic justice.</div>
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<b>The destiny of the flesh </b></div>
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As an author, as any author worth the name, Briony is some sort of a<i> goddess</i>, thus capable of instilling life on the creatures of her imagination, putting them on stage and set them out to think, live and experience. Also, as we will discover, she will even have the capacity to alter the lives of the physical beings around her, retelling their stories and destinies. Early in the movie, we had seen Briony alone in her room in the middle of the act of writing, so precious to her, and we have spoted some diminutive figures by her side, like ready to be manipulated by her, if she wishes. They might be a symbol of her power of creation and literary manipulation. </div>
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We are made of flesh and, true, that flesh will be vanishing in the course of just a few years or decades. After that, it is only remembrance that will remain of us. Our flesh will have become just a text, a narration, an oral one or, if we are lucky enough, written by someone. If anything, we will have turned into a story, such is the destiny of our (now) tangible matter. What is to be done with that bunch of texts which constitutes our identity, once we are gone? We are in the hands of those who will carry out our memory, those executors of our narrations, those who establish its basis and those who will add to it. If they exist, if we are fortunate enough to have them. Otherwise, nothing will be left of us, fair or not. </div>
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Briony will discover just that in due time. At one point, people are gone and all that is remaining is their tale. She will learn that this tale can be retold or reinterpreted, enriched with new meanings, clever variations. And in doing so, in some mysterious way some sort of peculiar justice, should we say rebalancing (in an aesthetical or moral sense), can even be made, without betraying the essential truth.</div>
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In Briony's case, it was a matter of <i>atonement, </i>of self-punishment.<i> </i>A moral challenge. But overall, if we are the chosen ones, if we have awaken a strong mind's creative power and put it at the service of our story...well, it is hard to imagine a bigger fortune.</div>
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<br />SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-65869986133127254502016-12-05T04:21:00.001-08:002017-05-20T04:48:34.504-07:00Compliance (2012) <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It is a mad busy day at a branch of a fast food chain. The day outlook seems to be a bit grim. Dificulties are mounting up. The previous night, someone left the refrigerator door open. Some food have got rotten, and there will be problems to serve some orders. Also, problems aside, and beyond some artificial friendliness, staff members do not appear to get along extremely well. </div>
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To make things a bit more confusing, suddenly there is a phone call asking for the branch manager. Turns out to be a police officer, coming up with a strange accusation: a customer claims that money has been stolen from their purse, that same morning at the branch. The officer also reveals the existence of some amount of evidence for the crime. As a result, one of the staff members, 19 year-old Becky, is accused by the officer on the phone. She is drawn aside. And the nightmare begins.</div>
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<i>Compliance </i>(Craig Zobel, 2012) is true psychological horror. Horror might arise from a life-threatening menace, but more frequently it simply arises from trouble (or complete impossibility) to understand exactly what is going on, not in the world as a whole, but in our personal micro-world. Horror arises from the troubles we all have understanding the others (and ourselves), their deep pshycology and reasoning, their actual motivations, the meaning of their actions. To some extent, all we are familiar with is nothing but a handful of masks we see around us, acting in a way whose actual purpose we dont completely grasp, or not at all. We just have verbalized messages directed at us or at the others, along with some ambiguous body language clues. All to just try figure out a little what the mess is about.</div>
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We usually speak of the existence of <i>kafkaesque</i> situations in our ordinary life. That does not imply any event of fantastic nature. Just ordinary stuff that actually happens to us and quite often, becoming some sort of <i>psychological horror.</i> <i>Kafkaesque </i>is an used-up term expressing a world of weird, obscure (somewhat laughable) unfathomable situations of personal alienation. But that is actually our real world, too: one of confusion and misunderstandings in the everyday interaction between impenetrable psychologies. And it becomes incresingly sinister and hilarious -more <i>kafkaesqu</i>e- as our civilization goes on gaining more and more complexity. Our brains are in some way limited, there is a limit to the complexity we can cope with. The irony is that we now have better tools than ever before to communicate, to expand ourselves, but most times they are just technological projections of our inner chaos.</div>
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Now add <i>evil</i> to this equation. Add <i>voluntary </i>confusion and misunderstanding, add the actual intention to <i>create </i>pain, to create confusion. Then you have the full picture. At some point the whole thing might ignite, and unexpectedly we find ourselves confronted with perfectely exposed accusations in a polite articulate manner which we simply cannot understand: we find ourselves in the position of a well known Kafka character. <i>Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K, he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested. </i>We simply fail to figure out what has happened. How it is the rest of the world seems to have converged into action against us.</div>
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And there is, all of a sudden, the <i>horror.</i> <i>Compliance </i>happens in day light in an ordinary work environment, with ordinary characters, none of them specially evil, o not at all. Yet I found it one of the most frightening movies I have seen in recent times.</div>
SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-64361103679833053452016-12-03T04:16:00.000-08:002018-01-16T04:40:29.904-08:00Suzanne Vega & Carson McCullers <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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I have been a long time Suzanne Vega fan, yet I missed her 2011 homage to the ill-fated southern (US) writer Carson McCullers, or at least I wasn't fully aware of it. I actually remember having heard something back in 2011 when I still lived in London. Now I learn that it was a musical stage piece written and performed by Suzanne Vega: <i>Carson McCullers Talks about Love. </i>And now in 2016, Suzanne has released a new album with songs adapted from the musical: <i>Lover, Beloved: songs from an Evening with Carson McCullers. </i></div>
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It was precisely just a few months ago that I discovered the literature of Carson McCullers, and I did so through the most frequent door into her world: her highly popular 1940 novel <i>The Heart is a Lonely Hunter</i>. And like so many others before me, I too was stunned by this 23 year old girl at the time who had managed to write such an incredible mature novel, her first. In 1940, when <i>Lonely Hunter </i>first appeared, McCullers was a shock for the reading public, by her obvious literary powers oddly combined with her fragile teen looks, even younger than her actual age.</div>
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It was McCullers herself who would later write that 1930's America, more specifically the "South", had become a great literary stage, to an extent that it could well be compared in literary potential to such spaces like czarist Russia. And along with William Faulkner -and later other new writers like Harper Lee, Capote or Tenesse Williams-, it was also McCullers who would become one of the key figures to settle the reality of such a daring comparison. Yes, the American South seemed to have become some sort of a tragic dostoievskian space. With a biblic air to it. A literary space that demands the unfolding of human passions, or simply the exposition of the maddening complexity of human relations.</div>
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From a very early age, Carson McCullers had to fight against illness. She had rheumatic fever at 15, and suffered from continuous strokes throughout her entire life, which eventually left her half paralyzed in her early 30s. Finally in 1967, at just 50, she died from one final cerebral stroke. Her life was really a troubled one, in a physical as in an emotional sense: illness came along with alcoholism, sexual repression and a tragic relationship with her husband, Reeves McCullers, from whom she took her literary name.</div>
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It was around 1977, that the subtle and insightful 18-year-old Suzanne Vega came across a picture of Carson MacCullers, who had already been gone for a decade. She suddenly felt sort of intrigued by the clear physical resemblance. Some kind of discreet spiritual connection was at that point set into motion between her and Carson. </div>
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Then in the early 1980s, Suzanne was studying English and drama at Barnard College, in New York. One day, her drama tutor came up with a funny project. He asked his students to disguise as an artistic or cultural figure from the past, and then respond to some questions as in a TV interview show, as if the students were actually the artistic figures. Of course, it was McCullers the past personality Suzanne inmediately picked to give life to. </div>
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Throughout the 1980s Suzanne established herself as a succesful iconic folk singer with such delightful works like <i>Marlene on the Wall, <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VZt7J0iaUD0" target="_blank">Luka</a> </i>or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05AHPFPpHIM" target="_blank"><i>Solitude Standing.</i></a> And it was back in those days that she had started work in a play that would intend to explore that spiritual connection she had felt with Carson a few years before. The completion of this work would last for 30 years, as it would not be till 2011 that she finally completed it and put it on stage.</div>
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In 1967, the year Carson died, Suzanne was a child of eight. From that 1977, when Suzanne felt for the first time touched by the presence of Carson, until now it has been nearly 40 years. That is decades of connection for these kindred spirits. The result in creative terms is quite a nice one: an intriguing musical play and an album with a handful of smart songs. </div>
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I love these two, Suzanne known to me for many years, and Carson, a recent discovery. And I feel delighted to know about this unexpected cultural link between them.</div>
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<br />SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1868462699191810688.post-87156561962734454682016-11-08T02:35:00.000-08:002018-03-17T15:20:17.022-07:00Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<i>In My Secret Life. </i>From <i>Ten New Songs</i> (2001) </div>
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<i><br /></i>SG Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02299125064208250499noreply@blogger.com0