seamana atat de mult cu tine, si cand ma uit la el te vad numai si numai pe tine, si e un om nemaipomenit..chiar e.. poate in timp..

noapte buna Zburatorule..

A.

This is where I live.

The city of Los Angeles.

Only it doesn’t look like this anymore.  These are from 1899.

I found them at Shorpy.

Wim Wenders’ Der Himmel über Berlin (a.k.a. Wings of Desire, if you like your titles a bit more on-the-nose, a.k.a. The Film That City Of Angels Is Just Barely Based On) is undoubtedly a beautiful film to look at. Its visuals are a love letter to Berlin as much as to black-and-white cinematography. It’s also a film containing many gems: the image of many, many angels hanging out at the library, watching over us; Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander sitting in a show car, comparing notes; their conversation about the history of the world; almost every scene that Ganz has with Peter Falk, and the conceit of Falk being an ex-angel himself. There are many quietly beautiful, poetic, even funny moments.

And yet, in spite of the accolades the film has garnered, even after two viewings I can’t shake the impression that it tries way too hard to be poetic, to be art. The worst offender is the poem that the film picks up again and again, Peter Handke’s “Lied vom Kindsein”, that interminable bit of pretentious doggerel that begins with “Als das Kind Kind war…”. Not only does it offer the appearance of depth rather than the real thing, Ganz also keeps falling into this childlike singsong, making it wholly insufferable. It’s a series of idealising clichés about the innocence of childhood that make me want to hunt down the poem’s titular child and send it off to boarding school.

What bothered me even more, though, is the trapeze artist that Bruno Ganz’ Damiel gives up his angelhood for. Her lines – both her thoughts and her dialogue late in the film with newly mortal Damiel – are painfully faux-deep, making me think that if I was Damiel and had just given up immortality for her, I’d feel pretty ticked off right now. That whole last dialogue seems to boil down to “The meaning of life lies entirely in man and woman having it off, and that’s what makes life, like, deep, man!”

I guess that’s my main problem: when the film doesn’t try its damnedest to be deep and poetic, it actually becomes these things. When it aims at depth, it comes off as an overly earnest transcript of one of those conversations first-year students have at 2pm in the morning after lots of cheap red wine. I also had these conversations, I enjoyed them, but there’s a difference between being young and drunk, as much on wine as on one’s sense of understanding of the world and all, and having to sit through them as an outside observer.

I’ll probably end up watching the film again, five years or so down the road, because there are so many people who love it dearly. Perhaps Der Himmel über Berlin just isn’t for me, at least not in its entirety, but I keep thinking there’s something I’ve missed. Or perhaps I missed the opportunity of seeing this film first when I was younger. “Als das Kind Kind war” and all that jazz…

I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss from her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it.

- City of Angels

A heart can be broken; but it keeps beating just the same.

-Fried Green Tomatoes

You’re not perfect sport, and let me save you the suspense, this girl you met, she isn’t perfect either. But the question is whether or not you’re perfect for each other.

- Good Will Hunting

Love is passion, obsession, someone you can’t live without. If you don’t start with that, what are you going to end up with? Fall head over heels. I say find someone you can love like crazy and who’ll love you the same way back. And how do you find him? Forget your head and listen to your heart. I’m not hearing any heart. Run the risk, if you get hurt, you’ll come back. Because, the truth is there is no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love – well, you haven’t lived a life at all. You have to try. Because if you haven’t tried, you haven’t lived.

-Meet Joe Black

Summer romances begin for all kinds of reasons, but when all is said and done, they have one thing in common. They’re shooting stars, a spectacular moment of light in the heavens, fleeting glimpse of eternity, and in a flash they’re gone.

- The Notebook

I’ve kissed a guy… I’ve kissed guys. I just haven’t felt that thing…. That thing… that moment when you kiss someone and everything around you becomes hazy, and the only thing in focus is you and this person. And you realize that that person is the only person you’re supposed to kiss for the rest of your life. And for one moment you get this amazing gift. And you wanna laugh and you wanna cry, ‘cause you feel so lucky that you’ve found it, and so scared that it’ll go away all at the same time.

-Never Been Kissed

In reputable newspapers and magazines, articles have surfaced about how the gang scene has returned to Los Angeles, California.  Gang related violence has increased 143% in the last year because criminologists believe those arrested in the crazy crack epidemic bust in the late 1980s and early 1990s are slowly, but surely, opening the cell doors where they’ve served their sentenced time. 

“Hail Mary, Full of Grace…..please find me a parking space,” Keith thought to himself as he turned the corner around his office building trying to find a parking spot in downtown L.A.

Los Angeles is different from New York  City – different accents, different mentality, terrible PT system. The borders of many neighborhoods in Los Angeles are very sudden (you can be on one side of the street and be in a “sunny” neighborhood, and then cross the street and end up in a “shady” part of town… and I’m not talking about the weather.)  But, one headache is the same - Parking. Especially, if you’re late for work. 

After circling the fifth time in his black Prius, he gave in.  Keith had to drive down the block and park in the lot in the dodgy side of town.

He pulled up to the ticket booth, paid his entrance fee and found the closest parking spot for his eco-friendly stealth bomber. Keith got out of his car, put on his suit jacket without a wrinkle, picked up his briefcase and bid good morning to the security guards.  After he clicked the button to lock the car, He was ready to start his day.

BANG!  BANG! BANG! BANG!

Keith’s heart was racing!  He could feel all the nervous energy fall to his stomach.  Of course this would happen the only time he had to park in the lot farthest from his office.  Looking around to find the nearest cover,  Keith tucked his body as he leaped in the air and rolled underneath the nearest car for protection.

He saw the security guards sitting on two folding chairs looking at him –  puzzled – in what seemed like  two football fields of open war zone.

“What are you guys doing!?” Keith yelled over to the men, “Take cover! Can’t you hear the gun shots!?”

The men look at each other, trying to hold it in, but they just can’t. They burst out laughing.

“They’re filming a movie down the street,” one man chuckled to Keith.

Keith rose off the ground to his feet and brushed himself off.

“I was totally getting ready for my audition for the young Jack Bauer… did it look real?  You think I’ll nail it and get the part?” 

He walked away and went to work. 

….AWKWARD!!

Hit the jump for We The Kings’ Travis Clark performing a brand new song “City of Angels” unplugged.

“And I’d give up forever to touch you
‘Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be
And I don’t want to go home right now”–

I’d waste all my time so I could be close to him simply because I think something might happen. I think he’s the closest to true love I’ll ever find, which is a mistake. And when I have to leave him, I feel sad. When I watch him walk away from band practice, a part of me walks away, too.

“And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
‘Cause sooner or later it’s over
I just don’t want to miss you tonight”-

When I’m around him, I’m very self-conscious and I pick up every little detail about everything he does. But, sooner or later, I have to leave him, and I’ll be stuck thinking about him all night. And I feel bad because I could never date him without Katie murdering me. And she could never date him without me feeling especially desolate.

“And I don’t want the world to see me
‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am”-

I don’t want everyone to see me when I’m thinking of him, or when I see him and blush or giggle. They wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t see why I like him. To them, he is just another guy in the background. At the same time, when hearts are made to be broken, I don’t want him to get too close to me. I just want him to know my name and not hurt me.

“And you can’t fight the tears that ain’t coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything feels like the movies
And you bleed just to know you’re alive”-

He doesn’t know me, so he can’t cry over me. And he doesn’t know that I see truth in what he says even though it doesn’t mean anything. However, when everything is so dramatic around me, I keep hurting to know I’m still living in the present.

I love this song! It’s so amazing. One of my favorite songs. It’s extremely meaningful. Check it out!

The Heart of Downtown: The Los Angeles Theatre

So, I am inspired to write this week’s post on Los Angeles for a number of reasons, but mostly because there are so many thoughts about this city percolating in my mind, if I don’t express them soon, I think I’ll forget them.

Los Angeles, we’ve had issues. Every time I’ve visited, you give me a warm hug, a beautiful rainbow sherbet-dappled sunset and then leave me waiting for you in traffic.

Los Angeles, let me give you some feedback that is meant to be a compliment but you probably won’t take that way. You’re everyone’s dream of a city, everyone’s nightmare of a suburb, a paradise fit into a traffic jam. Some people point to Las Vegas as the quintessential American city, but in my book you will always be what I love about the U.S.A. You are boundless energy, countless people with strange dreams all striving for some piece of an American life that no longer exists.

OK, I’ll be honest, the first time I saw you I knew I had to know you. I watched The Muppet Movie religiously on VHS as a kid and each time that Kermit reached Hollywood I would rewind. It made sense. Where does a frog and a bear and a pig and a gonzo go in a Studebaker? Oh, duh, Los Angeles. The destination. You start in the swamp and if you’re really lucky you make it to Hollywood. If you’re not lucky, you’re stuck with a banjo and a dream. My family and I visited Disneyland when I was about eight and I was even more convinced—what other town has its own “Fantasyland?” What other place offers that experience? Disneyland Paris, but who wants to commute that far?

And then I moved here this past summer and I found another aspect of you. You’re not perfect. In fact, even though you offer everything, you really give away nothing. The metaphor for my six months here is the freeway—an unnervingly convenient eight lanes always packed with cars. You either see yourself in the adjoining cars’ reflection or you look out into the traffic and you see nothing, you see brake lights, endless lines of brake lights carelessly spreading to the ocean.

Los Angeles you are lights, pollution, people, traffic, sprawling suburbs reaching across Orange County or into the hills and the San Joaquin, cars stretching from beach to desert to valley and in between, careening everywhere and nowhere, constantly turning around, being stopped, crashing, washing away to the ocean. You are a monolithic scape constantly changing but never changed. On the sides of Boyle Heights bodegas are Stars of David, abandoned factories are newly renovated hundred-seat theatres, and former beauty salons on Wilshire are statuesque relics.

Los Angeles, you think you’re all that and you are. I have seen your best aspects, your Beverly Hills and Bel Airs and I am amazed. But I’ve also seen your slums and your shantytowns and I can’t help thinking that those things are even more indicative of your character. You are everything the movies, America, the world promises but you are the stark reality of those things coming true. You are heat, light, endless summer and the perpetual anger of living in a well-lit urban wasteland offering no escape.

Well, there is escape. I can just as easily leave as I came, I think. It doesn’t really matter, anyway, nobody will remember or care. But when I leave you, you’re gone and I will miss you. Where else do I go? Peoria? New Jersey? How boring! Imagine waking up and not being a stone’s throw from the Universal lot? How could you go to the grocery store in Akron in the middle of the night without expecting the paparazzi (even if they never come)? You are my city and here’s the tragic thing, you don’t even care.

Jon

This was a school project before my thesis film.
It’s a scene from “City of Angels“.
Shot with HD F-900 with zoom lens.

“You… complete me- Jerry Maguire

Wanted: Right Mate

The infamous quote of the century. My question is, how did Jerry KNOW that Dorothy could in fact COMPLETE him? Like she was the missing puzzle piece to his heart? (or she had his wallet…) There are countless movies, lyrics and books where they all in a round about way mention if you find the right mate who completes you, they will finally fill your every need and make all your dreams come true. (kind of a high standard right?)

From the textbook, “Sex, Love and Romance in the Mass Media,” dating expert Mary Laner suggest, ” that the depersonalization inherent in our mass media society might lead to unrealistically high expectations and individual longings for a close relationship in which one person will satisfy every need. “ Does the song … “Some day my prince will come….Some day when my dreams come true..” sang by Snow White ring any bells? Admittedly, we have all grown up thinking there is only ONE person out there that can truly complete us and make us happy. The reality is, the higher the expectations, the harder we fall when they aren’t met.

We see it in the movies, like most Disney and chick flicks, and also music lyrics with titles like “I can’t live, if living is without you,” and “You’re nobody till somebody cares.” Or you can go to the bookstore and buy the book, “From Your Lips to God’s Ears…Finding Your Right Mate in 10 easy Steps. (All for the small price of $12.95)  Some excerpts from the book,  “Are you lonely? Do you long for that special someone to complete you? Do you think that the right mate is impossible to find? This is a very unique little book on how to find that special someone that may have been eluding you in this lifetime.” (Not only do we have to find the person who completes us…but they may have been hiding?)

Having such idealistic views on who and how the right mate will complete you can only lead to disappointment and depression once your anxiety issues hit the fan. The path to success is to complete yourself instead of using that line, “You had me at hello,” every chance you get.

The following are examples of where we might have gotten this illusion.

Books – Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty, and most romance novels

Movies – Pretty Woman, When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail!, An Officer & a Gentleman, Last of the Mohicans, Only You, Sleepless in Seattle, City of Angels, Only You

Television – 90210, Mad About You, Ozzie & Harriet, Dawson’s Creek, I Dream of Jeanie

Music – You Complete Me, Because You Love Me, All of My Life

Three reviews from the gents today as they go on a journey around hipster America in Away We Go, want more Julia and less Julie and feel robbed of precious life by Gamer. They go on to chat about telling the story of a major heist, remaking Highlander and reviving the career of The Rock. They celebrate the brilliance of Wings of Desire, remember how fun Robocop is and delve in the world of American Vogue in The September Issue. They concluding trailer round-up includes a couple of key disagreements, a couple of resounding agreements and, in a shocking development, sees Sam defend Michael Moore.

Download The Movie Overdose Episode 35

Show notes to follow later.

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