Katik pažiūrėjau šitą filmą dabar sėdžiu apsižliumbus.Nuostabus filmas ir dar nuostabesnė istorija. Tai tik dar kartą patvirtina:
“Dulke gimęs-Dulkėmis pavirsi.”

Man ši istorija labai graži ,jaudinanti ir įdomi. Siūlau visiems pažiūrėti.

Joanna Newsom in Armani; image courtesy of wmagazine.com

So W just dropped news that Joanna Newsom has a proper follow-up to Ys and the subsequent Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band EP, the particulars to which twentyfourbit.com elaborated, all of which I know about thanks to GRCA’s Emily Marks.

Now, I’m not sure why it’s taking her so long to make another full-length, which I’m assuming Drag City is releasing. Some might speculate that her hiatus might be due to her relationship with SNL’s Andy Samberg. And while I have no problem with giving Samberg a good feminist hard time, I’m not entirely sure if her absence can be attributed to playing house. With recent appearances in trendy fashion magazines like W, much as she did earlier in her career with publications like PAPER, I think it might have something to do with playing dress-up.

The boys of Lonely Island with their dates at the 61st Annual Primetime Emmy Awards; image courtesy of aceshowbiz.com

Yikes! I realize those last two sentences might have infantilized the singer, something choruses of music critics do any time they call her voice “child-like.” What I mean is that Newsom has been mingling in the fashion world. Perhaps it’s no surprise that a long-haired, full-lipped, leggy white lady recording artist can get designers to take notice. However, I find it particularly interesting who she’s syncing up with, how this might help construct her image, and what all this might suggest about the commodification of indie. Because she’s not just putting on Armani. She’s friends with Rodarte, waxing pretentious about the collaborative process and wearing their designs to in-the-know, downtown fêtes. 

Joanna Newsom representing Rodarte's Fall 2008 collection; image courtesy of obsoleteantics.blogspot.com

Sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, who created a label honoring their mother’s maiden name, Rodarte, have made quite a splash in the fashion world and on the red carpet over the past few years. They seem like cool ladies with whom I’d definitely want to watch some movies. Yet I’m still on the fence about their decidely avant-garde design aesthetic. I almost like a lot of it, but it gets way too drapey and twee at times — particularly when factoring in the cost.

Natalie Portman and Reese Witherspoon’s dresses for the 2009 Oscars were vivid shades of pink and blue, but the knotty bodice patterns and woozy detailing made me a bit nauseous. Similar situation with the dress Tilda Swinton wore for a premiere of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – loved the color palette, wanted to rip off the sleeves. And in theory, I like the Rodarte sweater Kristen Stewart wore in last January’s Teen Vogue, but in actual practice, I have a hunch that I could find some moth-eaten angora free of charge if I just brave the family attic. 

Cute sweater or is Kristen Stewart just wearing the empress's new cardigan?; image courtesy of flickr.com

That said, I like that Rodarte work with retailers like the Gap and Target to make their clothes more accessible and affordable. And they have made some killer, coveted items that I’d snap up if I had the money.

Reese Witherspoon's minty fresh Rodarte minidress; image courtesy of girladvantage.com

Michelle Obama wore a 2007 Rodarte dress to meet with Queen Rania in April 2009; image courtesy of paulrfrost.blogspot.com

But Newsom and Rodarte seems an interesting match. Though musicians pairing up with designers is nothing new (see also: Cher and Bob Mackie, Madonna and Jean-Paul Gaultier, Courtney Love and Christina Aguilera representing Versace, M.I.A. representing Marc Jacobs), something seems pretty perfect with the alignment here. Perhaps with the three ladies’ talk about collaborative processes, we’ll get to see a Newsom-designed collection, as we did with Chloë Sevigny’s 2008 collection for Opening Ceremony.

Chloë Sevigny models her own designs for Opening Ceremony, convincing this blogger that t-shirts can be successfully paired with strapless dresses; image courtesy of stylefrizz.com

This pairing might be read alongside what commercial ventures Newsom has entertained. In an era that has seen many independent artists rely upon advertising and television shows to get their music heard, Newsom’s music has been featured in several places. Often she has elected that her music be used in documentary work. However, The Milk-Eyed Mender’s “Sprout and the Bean” was featured in Victoria’s Secret’s Dream Angels ad campaign. Note that her voice is not heard in this spot.

Or it could be that a dress is just a dress. Which is fine too. But while I’m excited about hearing Newsom’s new album, I’ll have two labels on my mind when it comes out: Drag City and Rodarte.

Hey guys!

Yes I know I’ve been more than MIA but University is very stressful and tiring.

However I have a new review for you so that’s good right?

The book is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

This book is special because it was the first book I listened to instead of reading.

This is probably how I will get through all my classic novels since my time is so limited.

So instead of trying to read on a crowded bus I just pop in my earphones and listen to the story instead.

The narrator was Mr. Michael Scott and I think he does a fabulous job.

If you’re interested in audio books there is a vast library of classics and modern literature at Audible.com.

However if you’re like me with no way of paying Audible for their services classics are free at ThoughtAudio.com and LearnOutLoud.com, two great sites.

Okay enough about audio books on to the review.

This book is pretty short, 64 pages, a little more than an hour’s listening time and pretty concise.

It tells the story of Benjamin Button and his very curious existence.

For those who don’t know Benjamin Button’s case is curious because he was born a 70 year old man but not only that he gets younger with each day.

The story documents his life from birth to death with all his accomplishments squashed in between.

Now from the get go I had problems with the realistic nature of this story.

Even if I believed the premise that a baby could be born 70 years old, the fact that he was 5′8 at BIRTH defies ALL logic.

I mean how could a mother have a baby that is 5′8 in her womb and then expel him and NOT die?

That is both IMPROBABLE and IMPOSSIBLE.

Also the memory of the town folk and just people in general in this story is appalling.

How can you go to school with someone for four years and not realize he’s getting younger, or be in the army and not notice this, or work with him and not realize that he looked 50 when you started working and now he looks 30.

This story took place before plastic surgery was even thought about and he got away with it…and I have no idea how?

Barring the people’s stupidity it was pretty good.

The story of his life and his issues were interesting but all in all it was like a biography of Benjamin.

I felt sorry for him I really did.

The only time Benjamin seemed to enjoy life was in the middle because when he was young he looked and acted like an old man and when he was old he was a child and couldn’t do anything his real age would allow him to.

All in all interesting story, likable characters and occasionally humorous.

I give it a 3 out of 5.

If you like short stories or just want a good story to keep you company give this book a try.

Please comment and subscribe.

Thanks for dropping by and I’ll try to update soon.

Finals are coming up so I can’t promise anything but I surely will try.

Do come back and visit and tell a friend.

~Shiney~

Golem of Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

I haven’t seen the Spike Jonze film “Where the Wild Things Are” (2009), but the brilliant work of acclaimed Australian Conceptual Artist Patricia Piccinini (born in 1965 in Freetown, Sierra Leone) reminds of such wrinkly creepers, including the Middle-earth’s Golem of Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003), New Orleans’ Ben Button in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), and Transylvania’s Count Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992).

Piccinini explores what she calls the ‘often specious distinctions between the artificial and the natural’. By displaying the similarities and differences between the organic, natural and our constructed material world, Piccinini challenges our classification of life. This inspires her to combine human and animal physiology and technological development in many of her works.

www.patriciapiccinini.com

Location: 
Melbourne, Victoria
, Australia

Regular visitors to this Blog will know that I indulge from time to time in creative writing and will have found evidence of this in the form of poetry, an unfinished novel and a short story for children.

Putting something like that on your Blog is usually the closest one gets to actually publishing one’s work – but of course the readership is somewhat limited. It seems out of kilter to the actual effort of writing the piece to find that a mere hardy half dozen of your closest Blog groupies are following your work.

Which is why I got quite excited recently to discover that websites exist that encourage new writers to publish their work online, electronically and even enable them to receive payment for their work for next to no effort on their part.

Upon finding that such cyberplaces exist I immediately repaired to one that is quite local to me here in Worthing (although these sites are of course location-free zones) called www.meeqi.com and its sister site www.sixtyminutestory.com

The former is a veritable treasure trove of books available in a variety of electronic formats such as e-pub, Kindle, PDF – in fact anything that can be read on a variety of compact electronic devices such as the i-Phone, Blackberry, i-Touch, e-readers and mobile computers and phones.

You don't mean to say that you read novels on paper, do you?!

The site conveniently does all the electronic conversion for you – so if you have your book in rich text format or even Word it will convert your project into any of the formats necessary for the stressed young executive to download as they enjoy a nano second of downtime on the Tube.

Then it gets interesting because you have to create an Author’s profile on the site along with a photograph of yourself looking earnest and bookish – fortunately my son Callum had taken such a shot of me in the recent past and then the uploading process can commence. It helps if you have an attractive front cover for your book which can be uploaded at the same time – although the helpful site administrators will do this for you if you are stuck – but a Word format version of your masterwork may not meet the necessary aesthetic standard that you will undoubtedly set.

You can at that stage also set a price level for downloading your book – or give it away for nothing, if you don’t feel sufficiently worthy yet!

The MeeQi.com site points you in the direction of the sixtyminutestory.com site which daringly asserts that it is launching a brand new literary format – the SMS (sixty minute story) – a book of less than 15,000 words designed to read in under an hour. This format is the perfect length for the harassed modern traveller and office worker looking for an oasis of literary relief in the middle of their working deserts. Sixty minutes to start, immerse yourself in and complete a novel is a sign of the times that some may find a little sad, but does have a certain swashbuckling appeal for those of us who don’t have time to read 800 page novels outside of our two week annual holiday.

The site allows you to upload your SMS (via MeeQi) so long as it meets the ten standards of SMS  one of which is that the cover must be square – a little like CD box faces.

You can also find on the MeeQi site a range of out of copyright novels – including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – which was written in 1921 by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

However, the beauty of the site is its simplicity and accessibility – both for writers and readers. They promise to upload a new novel every day starting any day now and the idea of getting your daily hour long shot of literature by downloading a small electronic file is quite attractive. 

It means that students, novice writers, enthusiastic amateurs like myself and even established writers writing under a nom de plume to experiment in different styles, can easily upload their material and wait for the public to score it and award stars of merit.

The site even provides a link to a useful web tool which calculates your reading speed. At the average reading speed of 250 words per minute reading an SMS will take less than an hour. And, they argue persuasively, whilst it takes the average reader an hour to complete an SMS, you can always aim to improve your reading speed so you can fit even more in. If you want to check your reading speed, the site is myreadspeed.com 

If you are experienced and technically proficient, there are many tools which you can use to produce your e-book in the new SMS formats; plain text, epub and pdf. If you are less experienced and prefer doing it the smart way, you can upload your book (at no cost, mind) to MeeQi.com where your book will be converted to all three SMS book formats. MeeQi even provides you with free tools to publish and sell your book online.

So the days of  hawking your literary masterpiece as a bundle of manuscript around publishers’ offices are gone. No more nervous waiting for rejection slips. Now you can write your book at the keyboard, upload it and start to receive royalties without moving from your keyboard. Sounds like a novel plotline. Mine’s up – is yours?

I hate movies with misleading titles. But I like movies that can tell an effective story in an hour and a half.

When my wife made me watch “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day,” I thought I was getting some sort of fantasy movie where the character ages uncommonly a la “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” or a murder mystery where the titular character has only 24 hours before the bad guy strikes.

What I actually got was a screwball romance set in pre-WWII bombed London.

The movie would more accurately be titled “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Lot of Days, One of Which is Presented Here for Comical Effect.”

How do I know it was a screwball comedy? In an early scene the characters run around an apartment to the soundtrack of a clarinet and high-hat cymbals. Nothing says zany like a high hat cymbal.

Here’s an example where the right instruments set the mood for the movie. Add staccato violins and bass and you’d have a suspense movie. Throw in a banjo and a moonshine jug and we’d have a getaway scene from “Bonnie and Clyde.” I think they were saving the horns and tympani for the sequel: “Miss Pettigrew Conquers the Huns.”

The apartment-scurrying characters are Pettigrew and her new employer Amy Adams. Pettigrew is an out of work nanny who thinks she’s about to babysit Adams’ child but soon realizes she has to untangle three of Adams’ suitors. There’s Nick, a nightclub owner who provides Adams with luxury, Phil a theater producer who can offer her fame, and Lee Pace as a jilted fiance who is Adams’ only chance at finding love.

Adams doesn’t know what she wants; fame will get her a career, riches will get her clothes and love with get neither of the two. Frances McDormand’s Pettigrew urges her to chose Pace’s penniless piano player.

Pettigrew herself is struggling to understand the world Adams so desperately wants to inhabit. One where a silk scarf is a casual castoff to one character but a prized possession of another and where cucumbers are not for eating but to keep the eyes puffy.

As she untangles Adams’ lovers, she herself falls under the affection of a lingerie-designer (played here by Ciaran Hinds, who was also Caesar from HBO’s “Rome”). Whenever I recognize character actors from other movies or TV shows, I wonder how the old characters would fare in their new situations. For example, would Brutus be so quick to stab Caesar if he knew of his penchant for making negligees or men’s socks? Would Adams be so quick to run off with Pace if she knew he had the ability to raise the dead as his character had in “Pushing Daisies?”

I realize this practice easily drifts into the fanboy area of IMDB-philes such as myself. Rather than speculate who would win in a fight between captains Kirk and Picard, I imagine if how McDormand’s Pettigrew would fare if she switched places with McDormand’s character from “Fargo.”

But I digress.

This being a movie set in the pre-war era, we know everything will be settled with fisticuffs in a nightclub against a background of hot jazz.

Pettigrew’s main fear is her new-found friends will discover her frumpy, street urchin past, despite the fact that she has made little effort to hide this. The inevitable conclusion is reached when the secret does come out and everything ends happily for the characters who deserve it, Pettigrew included.

But as she walks off with Caesar, I mean the lingerie designer, I’m left to wonder, did the title just refer to the event’s just shown to us or is there something more sinister ahead.

When I told my wife this, she said I need a new hobby.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

!!!!!

Regizor: David Fincher
Actori principali:

• Cate Blanchett (Daisy)
• Brad Pitt (Benjamin)

mai merită menţionaţi:

• Charles Henry Wyson / Peter Donald Badalamenti II (Benjamin 1928-31)
• Robert Towers (Benjamin 1932-34)
• Tom Everett (Benjamin 1935-37)

…

Ai văzut Forest Gump? Dar Memento? Twilight Zone?

…

Ţi-ai băut cafeaua?

Te-ai uitat vreodată în ochii unui nou-născut, şi să ai senzaţia că dacă ar putea vorbi, ţi-ar spune care este rostul vieţii? Te-ai uitat vreodată la un pensionar bolnav, dependent de alţii, dar care nu mai poate fi ajutat de nimeni să gândească coerent … şi merge la vot?

Te-ai gândit la diversitatea de oameni pe care o cunoşti şi cu care ai contact direct în fiecare zi? Te-ai gândit vreodată la un şir de evenimente (aparent independente unele de altele) care toate se potenţează între ele şi duc la aceeaşi finalitate tragică?

Te-ai gândit că orice egoist furios care pe moment îţi fute viaţa din motive care pe tine personal te depăşesc de fapt ar putea ajunge mâine în aceeaşi groapă din cimitir care astăzi ţie ţi-o sapă?

Foarte probabil, te-ai gândit la toate astea. Însă nici un film (care de fapt este ecranizarea unei poveşti, scrisă de F. Scott Fitzgerald în 1921), nu a reuşit să te facă să le simţi pe toate, la acest nivel, până acum.

…

Multe elemente din film m-au dus cu gândul la Forest Gump.

…

Azi noapte am revăzut de trei ori ultimele 10 minute din film. Singur.

Astăzi încerc să îmi adun gândurile şi să merg mai departe cu ce mi-am propus.

Mâine îmi cumpăr cartea în engleză prin Amazon.com.

…

Life is a box of chocolates. The End.

Today’s factoid will again be building off the revelation of my former days of cutting the movie ads out of the newspaper and plastering them across my wall. I recently discarded over 5 years of ads, leaving only one. I opened it up to guesses, and since no one replied, I’ll just go ahead and tell you.

The ad was from the day after Oscar nominations were announced this January. It was from “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” and it showcased all the laurels that the cast and crew had been nominated for or awarded. The ad is in color and has a small shot of Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt riding on a motorcycle.

I går kom jeg på jobb kl 9, sånn som jeg hadde avtalt med sjefen. Siden jeg har så vondt i ryggen, skulle mamma opp å høre om jeg kunne få time hos kiropraktoren. Så da ho kom innom jobben med en pakke ibux og sa ifra at jeg kunne til kiropraktoren 14:30 sendte de meg hjem. Mamma måtte innom Norli for å snakke med sjefen der (mamma jobba på Norli før). Så da benytta jeg sjansen til å kjøpe meg et par dvd’er. Kjøpte “The curious case of Benjamin Button” og “XIII the conspiracy“. Har sett XIII før, men ikke Benjamin Button. Ikke hele i alle fall. XIII er kjempebra, den anbefales!

Etter turen på Norli kjørte vi hjem. Jeg la meg ned for å hvile ryggen mens jeg leste i den ene boka som må være ferdig lest til mandag 2. november. Litteratur til utdannelsen jeg går på “Livsveiledning og *Regresjon” Veldig spennende! Boka heter “Den åndelige rejse” å er skrevet av Asger Lorentsen. For dere som er interessert handler den om klientene til Asgers mange oppleverser gjennom regresjon og informasjon om tidligere liv osv. Midt i boka ringte tante. Ho lurte på om jeg og mamma ville være med til Englegaard, et slags hotell/butikk/restaurant greie. Maten var himmelsk, men i overkant dyr. 189,- for kylling sandwich med sørlands chips på sia.

Etter turen til Tvedestrand var vi hjemmenom for å slappe av littegrann før timen hos kiropraktoren stod for tur. Han konkluderte med at jeg har en forskyvning i bekkenet på venstre sider som sannsynligvis har kommet pga tidligere overtråkk og sånt. Henger i alle fall sammen med beinet ;O I tillegg er det noe galt med den nedereste ryggvirvelen eller noe. skjønte ikke helt.. I alle fall, så knakk han ryggen i alle mulige retninger og sykemeldte meg. Har ny time på mandag. Så får vi ta det derfra hvordan det blir med jobbing. Håper jeg kan jobbe, for det er ufattelig mye å gjøre på jobb nå. Og nesten ingen folk.. Så for min egen del og jobbens del bør jeg være tilbake på tirsdag!

Men dagen var ikke over med det. Kl 18:30 var jeg på møte med diabetesforeningen igjen. Vi ble enige om gratis bowling, pizza og brus for diabetikere fredag 11. desember. Så nå må jeg sette igang med inbydelser og diverse andre greier. Jeg og Tuva skal ta oss av påmeldinga.

- Har du sett “The curious case of Benjamin Button“ 
eller “XIII the conspiracy“?
- Har du andre filmer å anbefale?

Il n’y a pas que les musiques du monde dans la vie, il y a aussi les musiques de film (entre plein d’autres choses !).

Le festival du film de Gand a toujours consacré une large partie de son programme aux musiques qu’on entend dans les films, avec des invités prestigieux tels Shigeru Umebayashi cette année (un billet à son sujet suivra), Michael Danna, Angelo Badalamenti et bien d’autres les années précédentes. Chaque année, il y a des concerts mais aussi des prix décernés par la World Soundtrack Academy.

Le palmarès de cette année:

• compositeur de l’année et meilleur score de l’année: Alexandre Desplat (pour The curious case of Benjamin Button)
• meilleure chanson: Jai Ho de A.R. Rahman pour Slumdog Millionaire
• découverte de l’année: Nico Muhly pour The reader (bientôt à la Médiathèque)
• “Lifetime Achievement Award”: Marvin Hamlisch
• prix du public: Carter Burwell pour Twilight
• prix de la Sabam pour le meilleur jeune compositeur européen: Christopher Slaski (pas de cd disponibles pour le moment)

Alexandre Desplat a été particulièrement prolifique cette année, composant score sur score, et tous de très bonne qualité. Et comme disent certains, vu qu’il est le compositeur pour Twilight – New Moon (dont le score sortira fin novembre), il recevra probablement le prix du public l’année prochaine. Je ne me souviens pas du score de Benjamin Button mais j’ai été charmée par celui de Coco avant Chanel, très délicat et élégant.

IMDB link  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421715/

IMDB ratings 8.1/10   110,101 votes
Release Date : 25 December 2008 (USA)

Genre : Drama | Fantasy | Mystery | Romance

Plot: Tells the story of Benjamin Button, a man who starts aging backwards with bizarre consequences.

Direct Download links

ftp

ftp://210.1.193.4/shares/MYSHARE1/Video/The%20Curious%20Case%20of%20Benjamin%20Button..avi

rapidshare.com

http://rapidshare.com/files/242632362/Benjamin.Button.2008.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/242636721/Benjamin.Button.2008.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/242646007/Benjamin.Button.2008.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/242650460/Benjamin.Button.2008.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/242654740/Benjamin.Button.2008.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/242657698/Benjamin.Button.2008.part6.rar

Life, anticlockwise.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button sets you thinking. It is an amazing story, hence a riveting film.

Should I describe it as science fiction? Maybe. But whatever fiction — science or otherwise — it is, the story teases you with a niggling question. Doesn’t it come close to reality?

Nonsense, you’d say.

Children are never born all shrivelled, wrinkled and withered. Can you contest that? They don’t get young with years. Any doubts? They age and die. How does this story come anywhere close to reality then?

Life really is a countdown to death. That’s where the similarity lies.

You are born new and die old. Why can’t you be born old and die new? Either climb up from zero, bow out somewhere along the scale or start at 100 and breathe your last at zero. Whichever way you go, there is an expiry date.

Coming to think of it, the Button scale of ageing is both fictional and real. I say this because newborns are defenseless and helpless just as elders. Both need caring and feeding, are scared when you let go of their outstretched hands, make unreasonable demands and sulk when denied. So, where is the difference?

Relationships.

The difference lies there. The film shows a progressively ageing woman with a husband who keeps getting younger, one day slipping below her age and finally ending up in her lap as a baby.

Benjamin Button, played by Brad Pitt, tells his wife of his dilemma when they plan a baby. “You can’t raise two of us,” he pleads and one day, after their kid is born, leaves home.

He shocks with his reappearance one cold evening.

His ex-wife is getting ready for home after an exhausting day’s work, new husband and daughter waiting in the car. Button is a strapping young man, twenty-something, with a shock of blonde, in a pair of jeans and jacket on his back.

Later the couple meets at Button’s hotel room and once again he disappears only to re-emerge at a care home as a cantankerous child with failing memory. He can’t even remember if he had had breakfast.

Button’s age and state notwithstanding, the woman he knew as his wife refuses to abandon him. Her love endures and Button is a bundle of fading life in her lap. “I know he recognised me when he breathed his last,” she tells her daughter on her deathbed. She is deeply satisfied.

In reality, human beings don’t physically shrink into babies as they die. But mentally, they often do. Those who genuinely love them hold them tight and walk them to the edge of life. Often in their dying moments, these people too cast a look of recognition at their care-givers before signing off.

I conclude, therefore.

Those who love us selflessly — wives, parents, children — are many things to us. They play roles as we journey along the scale of life. Fact is they care. Sometimes as wife, sometimes as mother, otherwise as friend and companion. I believe there’s a Benjamin Button in all of us.

An endless stream of congratulations to our amazingly talented Eugenia Redondo Rivas (AZ/Alpha). She took 3rd place in the Dallas AICE’s contest Splice Capades. The competition gives assistant editors and/or interns the opportunity to showcase their work.

The Assignment: Select from one of the films on the list, and edit a :90  second trailer which promotes the film as a picture of a different genre. (For  instance, a comedy could be edited as a horror film or a drama as a romantic comedy.)

The screening took place on October 7, 2009 at the Granada Theater in Dallas. The winners placed with the following films:

1st place – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as a documentary about the perils of    alcohol.
2nd place – Slumdog Millionaire as Hindi-Annie
3rd place Eugenia used The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and created “El mal de ojo de Benjamin Button”; thus turning a Fantasy Drama movie into a Foreign Horror film.

ENJOY!

Dicen que no se debe juzgar un libro por su portada, pero esta selección hecha por wellmedicated me encanta y hace que diga sin remordimiento alguno, que quisiera tener todos estos libros expuestos en mi biblioteca. Si su contenido es buenos o no, no sabría decirlo pero sus portadas me gustaron bastante! Personalmente creo que los libros son unos artículos muy interesantes, complejos portales hechos de miles de pequeñas figuras bidimencionales son capaces de trasladarnos a lugares que se escapaban de nuestra imaginación, sus portadas son algo que muchas veces hacen del libro un tímido personaje que nos sorprende… creo que amanecí intenso, en fin ahí les dejo las portadas de los libros.

“Nicholas, a thing you should know: Excuses are for the weak.”

At an unpaid job, it’s easy to find yourself somewhere stuck in adolescence at the same time as you might be trying to free yourself from it.

After all, you’ve just spent the majority of your life at this point referring to your superiors (teachers, professors) as Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. (or later as merely, “Professor”), all as part of a system of pedagogy that seems to ensconce you in its own rules separate from reality.

The transition from school to unpaid work then is different from a job, where addressing your bosses like you once addressed those old superiors only entrenches their perception of your stance in adolescence, while you are simultaneously guided from that stance.

Thus the security guard, among many others at my work, had taken up a mentorship of me, that included such bits, as the phrase about excuses.

I think at the time, the phrase was meant for a failure to deliver a package.

But I feel it draw on.

***

I’ve found myself not writing and not for lack of things to write about.

I’ve been seeing films at the New York Film Festivals, plays on Broadway and downtown and living life at a general pace.

If this blog is mostly comprised of the write-able moments from my life, then I haven’t been at a lack for them.

Monday evening, I returned to Planet Rose Karaoke with a mix of shame and uneasiness. I had skipped a week again, after not being able to go for so long due to my play. Not only I had skipped the week though, but I had also missed my friend Colin The Bartenders’s birthday, who I consider my friend due to our mutual affinity for Karaoke and the compassion that he would show for Rob or J-Sam and I on a slow-down Monday afternoon.

Then again, it’s always hard to gauge with people who are paid to be friendly to you (or paid to sell drinks or both).

But either way, he’d invited me to his birthday party and I had flaked out and not gone and instead come crawling back to his establishment.

But as I talked to Colin he accepted my apology and I as sat there and did my first song and friends poured in, I felt a flash or a convulsion through my body, a slight spasm or charge of energy.

A sense of uneasiness flaring up as it left my body, a sigh.

Finally at Karaoke again, as I waved from some light Beatles to Neil Young to Springsteen, finally, I was at home.

***

Or the day I went to go see a Triple Feature on Faith, consisting of A Serious Man, The Invention of Lying and Anvil!: The Story of Anvil.

A Serious Man, I saw with my mother and Eva, after a lunch with waiter service at Katz’s on a busy Saturday morning, the first I’d ever had for waiter service. For me going to Katz’s personally, it was always more satisftying to get your sandwich from the guys at the counter, preferably the old Russian Jew who seemed both worn and timeless. It satisfied that New Yorker element in me that wanted personalization, attention and that satisfying sense of oversight, as if the sandwich maker was working for you personally, in your one-man-enclave of meat.

Still, the ‘rents were taking me out and a lunch at Katz’s is a lunch at Katz’s and was particularly appropriate for that movie.

A Serious Man was the most Jewish film I had ever seen, in more ways than one.

My mother had told me, after the film, that somehow, a friend of my grandmother, the Time critic Richard Corliss, had found the movie “anti-semitic”, a claim I find both difficult to understand and oddly fitting with the film.

You see, for all you goy readers out there, A Serious Man is very much about the questioning nature of being Jewish and the way that life can be interpreted. As a story, it can be seen as a retelling of the book of Job, with the suffering of a righteous Jewish man before the whims of G-d. However, as a film it reads like a Jewish text, with many questions poised to the viewer, ethical and otherwise.

Even from the prologue we are given a whopper:

Was the husband, attempting kindness, right in the prologue? Or was the wife right in her attempt to defend her family?

Either a way a man is dead and it is left for G-d to judge.

Which is the point of the film, as beautifully illustrated in the story of “The Goy’s Teeth” (The Sheherazzad of the film). God is unknowable, his workings a question, the answers to which we create in our decisions in our existence.

This is not an easy thing to accept, or even a rational one, but it is a very Jewish thing.

Which is probably why, in The Invention of Lying, a very un-Jewish film, religion is posed as a massive lie of useless proprotions.

The first film directed by Ricky Gervais (The Office, Extras), the story is a parable unsure of its own meaning. It tellls of a world where everyone tells the truth, unable to lie even by omission, talking incessantly even when irking other people.

As a concept, this should be close to my heart, but on screen it gets tired fast and when the movie veers into Gervais (the main character) inventing religion as part of his sole capacity to lie, it becomes as saddled with concepts it can’t handle as was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by its unwieldy invocation of Hurricane Katrina.

For The Invention of Lying, religion is just another lie people would rather cling to than the unfortunate circumstances of “the truth”. But part of the failing of that film is that faith in itself is not a lie, but a gamble. When there is no certainty people try to find a concrete answer (the search in A Serious Man), but the absence of an answer is not a meaningless void, but a vast, unknowable expanse (think glass half-empty/half-full). In Lying, Gervais attaches his pessimism awkwardly to a standard “rom-com” shell, but his failure is to understand the forces he wrestles with.

In the final film of the triple-feature, Anvil!: The Story of Advil, possibly the best film of the three, seen lying in bed with my girlfriend on VH1, using the Time Warner Cable “Start Over” feature, we finally get characters comfortable with their faith and place in the world.

Lead singer Steve “Lips” Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner, are best friends, Canadian Jews and what would be referred to explicitly by most people as “failures”. Once grouped among bands like Led Zeppelin and Metallica, their band “Anvil” now only supports them through three-quater-empty European bars and small-but-dedicated parties around their native cold home. To support himself, “Lips” is forced to work as a porter in a catering service that supplies middle and pre-schools with their bland, pre-packaged lunches.

Despite intense oblivion and ignominy though, the band still acts like a band, replete with the love and fighting, wives kids and dedicated fans that a band that released an album called “Metal on Metal” should have. Some could say these two long-haired, mostly ridiculous Jews are fools or throw-backs, high-school dropouts who barely seem to function in the real world. But much like The Mountain Goats’ song “The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out Of Denton”, even in their 50s, these fellows are convinced they are headed for “stagelights and leerjets and fortune and fame”.

To this end they pursue their goals doggedly, at times pathetically, but never with a lack of enthusiasm or heart.

To this end any success they have is a genuine one, as a reward for their faith.

This is most eloquently expressed in an interview where Robb recalls his dead father, a Hungarian Holocaust survivor, who supported him when he dropped out of school to become a drummer. When he saw his son’s enthusiasm for drumming, he dropped his original insistence that his son go to college. “Just do whatever makes you happy.” Robb tells us. A cliche, but one that is pregnant with the faith of multiple generations.

Rock, like Judaism and Baseball, is a religion and Anvil! is a religious movie in the best sense, a companion piece to A Serious Man and a response to the cynicism of The Invention of Lying. Because, for Lips and Robb, no matter what G-d or man throws at this band, they make their own answers and keep on rocking.

***

Yesterday, I realized that I couldn’t write new pages for my script because I no longer had a functioning copy of Final Draft (I’d lost my old one when I went from PC to Mac).

I guess that’s when this all crystalized for me the sense that I was making excuses in my life, as the security guard had attempted to inform me upon my package-ery.

The sense of disappointment in myself snowballed from a question of disappointing the people at my writing group, to whether I would lose my ability as a writer along with my adolescence to whether I was self-destructing as a person and destroying my future in a mass that overwhelmed logic.

But as I talk about Katz’s Deli and Karaoke and seeing movie after movie about faith, it strikes me that the cure for excuses is action, as my security guard would tell me.

And that the only way to cure a guilt caused by lack of writing, is to begin writing.

And thus, here I am.

- You couldn’t have known.

- I was 23. I just didn’t care.

Today I’ll be breaking my normal format to provide you with a few tips on how to save money on your vices in this clearly anti-vice economy.

1. Soda: I don’t know about you guys but I love my fucking soda, and I love paying as little as possible for it. Unfortunately Publix brand soda is the cheapest around and it tastes like it. Lucky for you you can get a Double Gulp from 7/11 with any soda you want in it for $1.72, and if you save your cup you can get a refill for $1.06 or take your cup to RaceTrac and refill it with a larger variety of soda for only $0.85. Also a Double Gulp can hold 64oz which is 2oz away from being a full 2 liters.

2. Cigarettes: Now I’m not much of a smoker but I am surrounded by them every day, so I picked up a few tricks on how to save money on them. First off 7/11 and privately owned convince stores have the most expensive cigarette prices, try BP, Hess, Mobil, and Chevron for cheaper prices. Secondly most people don’t not smoke all of their cigarettes, so if you don’t have a brand preference and you want to save money then I suggest sucking up your pride and combing through public ashtrays for unfinished cigarettes, if your germ-a-phobic them cut off the filter. Thirdly I suggest you get and electronic cigarette, I saw them at my local flea market for $30.00, and that included everything you need to last you a few months. You would only have to pay for refills that won’t be effected by new cigarette taxes, and it’s not going to give you cancer.

3. Music: Well aside form illegally downloading it you could buy it from places like the iTunes store for a steep $0.99 per song, or perhaps you’d like something a little more free. Last FM is my personal favorite site for listing to music for free, but there are plenty of others out there like Pandora. Last FM basically records your listing habits, and after it has enough data it builds a station based on your tastes, it also recommends new music to you and shows you people with similar tastes as yours. It’s kind of hard to explain but you should defiantly check it out for yourself.

4. Movies: Well I’m sure you all know about Hulu by now so I’m not even going to cover it. What you may not know about is that your local Library carries DVDs that you can rent for free, Redbox is a cool idea but it’s not free. It differs library to library but normally library cards are free, and you can use then to rent a DVD or VHS for about a week absolutely free unless you are late returning. Most library’s do have poor selections, mostly black and white movies but if your in a bigger city then you can expect a much larger selection. My library for example carries Benjamin Button, and Tropic Thunder. So it’s just the luck of the draw.

Well that’s it for now, I hope I helped you save some money, keep truckin’ ’till the rescission is over.

-D.J. Taylor

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

“That’s sad,” said my 11-year old boy after we watched the 167 minute-long movie. I was surprised that he sat through the whole thing. My two older boys joined us only after the first few minutes. It’s a good family rated-PG movie. I enjoyed watching it with the boys, lots of life lessons to learn from.

Benjamin narrated at the beginning:

My name is Benjamin Button, and I was born under unusual circumstances. While everyone else was agin’, I was gettin’ younger… all alone.

The key word there is alone. I guess anybody has experienced that feeling of being alone at least a few times in their life. It’s not a good feeling. Although the movie has a sad ending, there are a few funny parts in between. The boys like especially when Mr. Daws would tell Benjamin, “Did I ever tell you I’ve been struck by lightning seven times?” And there would be a clip of how he was struck by lightning.

It was pretty cool to watch the earlier parts of the film when Brad Pitts’ character was old. We are so used to CGI Images now, how they make actors look older. Make-up artists do a pretty good job, too. But what I found amazing is how they made Pitt look like a young 23-year old. I don’t know, somehow, I find it freaky. Not the way he looked, but just knowing that he doesn’t really look like that now. It’s like they took that image from one of his older movies.

Last Chance Harvey

It’s a charming love story, not the mushy kind. It’s about two older people having a late chance at love. Harvey is a divorced American who went to London to attend his daughter’s wedding. Kate works at the Heathrow airport. When they first met, he was rude to her. But on their second meeting, they warmed up to each other. They spent the next few days together and their quick friendship might lead to a possible romance. I was touched by Harvey’s speech at his daughter’s wedding. I can relate to what he said about how it must have been tough for his daughter to come from a broken home. It was a very moving speech.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

This movie reminded me of Closer, but only this one is lighter. And unlike Closer, this one is not really about the lies. Relationships and emotions already tend to be complicated so why do people still get involved with people who are already involved with somebody else? In this movie, two women friends who have different views on love fall for the same guy. Vicky has a more conservative approach to love. She looks for a realistic and stable relationship. On the other hand, Cristina is willing to risk her feelings to find passion.

I find the narration weird. It sounded like the narrator is reading from a book, without any feelings at all. So unlike the narration from Desperate Housewives. Although Mary Alice doesn’t seem to tell the story with feelings either, there are changes in her intonation. But then again, Woody Allen must have intended for the narrator of this movie to tell the story like that.

I’m also wondering why the actress who played Vicky (Rebecca Hall) didn’t get, I think, a fair billing. After all the title is Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and the story is about Vicky and Cristina in Barcelona. If you see the billing, you’d think that it was Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson who play the title characters.

Never before have I seen a movie that moved me so much.

I just finished watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and I cried twice during the two hours it ran. It really made me think about love and loss in an entirely new way. It made me wonder about my own life and where it’s heading.

It made me wonder about time and how it will affect the people I love. And, for a second there, I felt the pain of watching your child grow up.

**SPOILER WARNING**

I cried when Caroline was reading the postcards from Benjamin. Each message made me so sad! What did one of them say? …”I wish I could have taken you to your first day of school. I wish I could have told you not to chase after some stupid boy. I wish I could have held you when you had a broken heart.” My gosh, I’m getting misty-eyed just typing this!

And I cried when the red-haired woman (forgot her name) was holding Benjamin as a baby and she said he looked at her as if he finally knew who she was and then he died. That’s so terribly sad to have someone finally remember you and then they leave you forever.

**SPOILER ENDING**

I really liked how they took Benjamin’s life from beginning to end… or from end to beginning, depending on how you look at it. The first part was very slow, but I felt so bad for Benjamin. The Captain took him to a brothel when he was, what, fifteen? And Benjamin hardly ever knew his father! He was stepped on as a child! He had such a terrible childhood.

I liked how it had just snippets of his life, even the affair he had with the swimmer. And, by the way, I loved how they had her on the TV in the restaurant. And the hummingbird, by the way.

Wow.

My outlook on life, love, and loss has just been changed. I mean, wow. Looking at someone’s life and the echoes is really moving.

**MORE SPOILERS**

I felt so bad for Benjamin when he found the mother of his child and her husband. And his daughter, who had no idea Benjamin was her father! “This is Benjamin. You knew him, but you were a child.” And Caroline was reading the diary, and–wow.

**SPOILERS END**

Seriously, this was definitely a five-star movie. Watch it past the beginning; it’s seriously worth it. I almost stopped watching, but I remembered how much my friends had been moved, and I kept with it. And, yes, I did cry. Twice. A great movie, the best I’ve seen in a while. Rent it or something–seriously!

Chicken What?!

During a time in life filled with uncertainty and insecurity, many teenagers have enjoyed the comfort found in the stories published in Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. Interestingly enough, much like our teenage years, being fresh out of college is equally as scary and unsettling.

Now, the Chicken Soup series has tons of different editions. There’s Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul, Golfer’s Soul, Newly Wed Soul. The list goes on and on.

What you won’t find, however, is a Chicken Soup for the Post Grad Soul and that is what I hope to provide with these periodic posts. In each Chicken Soup post you will find a bit of wisdom to help get you through a hard day.  Even if you don’t feel like you’re a lost teenage-like soul in this strange and confusing “Real World,” hopefully you will still find each spoonful to be something to think about and save for a rainy day.

Today’s Spoonful:

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”

- From the Motion Picture, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).