Monday, December 15, 2008

Breughel The Wedding Feast


Hello. I've been away. I'm back briefly. What do you think of this painting? I don't care if no one reads this blog. One day I shall be great and afford some new strings and maybe I can find myself a new master: exciting and dynamickey mouse. I am poor. I dress badly. The boss of my boss is a scrooge. Nothing comes down to me. No trickle down, even though my youtube.com performance has had 61 hits. I'll get there. I will. I will.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The Japanese 20 Greatest Films Season - BFI




There were some great films in this season: Kurosawa; Oshima; Ichikawa; Imamura; Shindo, and others.

Me and K1 saw a pitiful few but of what we saw we were only truly impressed by Onibaba (pictured right). This is one of the greatest films of all time. Only the chamber piece nature of it takes away from its masterfulness. Plotwise, allwise - barring perhaps the above - it is masterful. It is BW and the eroticism is perfect: that is morally the nudity and sex is just enough but the main point is the brilliance of the plot. Read it simply as one of the greatest What Goes Around Comes Around stories. Karma. Read it as one of the great Hell and Brimstone stories worthy of any cinematical Dante-inspireds out there. It is a beautiful film of great emotional power. It is a tragedy almost as dramaturgically well timed as Oedipus Rex. See this film.

Onto the other films: Tokyo Drifter (Suzuki), Intentions of Murder(Imamura), A Full Up Train (Ichikawa). Full Up Train failed to deliver for me. But what it is greatest at is to show the shiteness of life in Post-War Japan: the Company as YOUR life. Over.Made in 1957.

By the 60's things are a little better. Intentions of Murder(1964) and Tokyo Drifter(1966) are worth comparing back to back. The former is BW the latter colour. The former is realistic, the latter fantastic. IoM is about a marginal female in an upper-class family ultimately having the cunning to have the cake and eat it - partly because she (unwittingly?) understands the structural strictures of the society. She does go through a harrowing ordeal to get there and through this Imamura is able to do what he did best: give us really compelling flavours of the Japan of that time.

Tokyo Drifter also gives us a gangster flavour and locations and feel that is worthy of the viewers and the Japonophiles attention. The plot is good but abandons our engagement because the central axis of patron and protege is let down. There is a level where we cannot suspend our disbelief in the characters any longer. To do so perhaps more hyperbole not less is needed. The hero is basically unkillable. However, the use of song - the female love interest is a singer - lifts the film while one views.

Finally to 1971. Oshima, director of the incredibly erotic (pornographic, dirty?) Realm of The Senses, delivers a startlingly beautiful diachronic story of a wealthy Japanese family linking it with the Manchurian disaster of Japan's occupation of that (Chinese?)region. (Manchuria hovers at the borders of the plot of Dr Zhivago and lends its name to the brilliant, original version of The Manchurian Candidate-ominous? Another post might address Mongolia, which borders that region). But the film fails partly because some of the character's names begin with the same letter. Beware screenwriter (and novelist, playwright, storyteller): unless it is something special you are doing do not confuse the viewer, reader with similar names! Basically one gets a bit lost. There are masterpiece moments in the film worthy of plunder but ultimately the film fails. Why? Really because the central character is a loser whose losses as humans we cannot believe in. But he's a truly realistic loser: his bride does not even show up for the wedding and the only two real loves of his life have been screwed by the same guy: his older, handsomer nemesis/friend. Happens all the time loser. You know where I'm coming from. That kind of winner has his own sadness to deal with; his own kinds of losses BUT that type of character is different and is found in other types of film. In fact the other films in this article include HIM in some degree or another.

But echoing the ending of one of Shakespeare's sonnets - can't remember which- begins with Like as the sea makes towards the pebbled shore - I end with Onibaba where justice is served and where the meaning of Mercy or the need, desire, wish, hope for mercy cannot be avoided and its meaning cannot but fail to be explored...deeply. We bow to Shindo. Truly, truly, cliche though it may have become, may have been, may be, may have always been: MIND THE GAP.


Tuesday, July 22, 2008

A Li'l Definition for those Computer File Names


www.what-is-exe.com

This is a link to a great site defining all those annoying file names you sometimes see on Windows. You can look up the definition of .dll or .exe and many others.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

COCKPIT VIEWS GALORE!

CHECK IT OUT: SPECTACULAR SHOTS FROM AEROPLANE COCKPITS. DO LOOK!

It just goes to show how beautiful the world can be given or taking the chance to see the world from a different perspective. I'll try and look at things from a new perspective, a new angle today!

http://www.canadabizmart.com/bootstrapper/collection/spectacular-cockpit-photos/

Friday, July 11, 2008

Oh yeah Veeerwhoop!

Oh Yeah!!! I started this here blog with the question: where are the mirrors in the Universe? And here it is: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080625.htm. Wow. I had a feeling this idea was correct because even in ponds we see "mirrors". Your eyes are mirrors. In a sense the mind is a kind of mirror.

K1 and me have always been fascinated by mirrors. I am in a sense a mirror of him and he unwittingly is mirrored by me or is it he mirrors me. I think the latter is better. Go to the above link. It's fascinating.

Where have I been? Oh well, don't ask. It's big thinks. Keep thinking.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Big Thinks

Hi All

Big thinks denotes profound thoughts as opposed to little thinks which are commonplace, mundane, quotidian. These two stock opinion phrases are spoken by a hybrid half-Ape half-Human character in HG WELLS' great novel THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU. Currently there is a Jeanne Moreau
season at the bfi. Please check it out if you are a fan of hers.

Back to the prophetic Wells. He
shows us in this short and astonishing work hybrid creatures: sub-humans who nauseate the central character Pendrick by their almost human-likeness and yet their animalness. Being neither, they have no beauty. They are grotesque and this is my fear for science. We are learning of the beautiful symmetries that underpin the building blocks of reality at the same time as fiddling with the biological foundations and structures of what makes us, I mean you, human. A great addition to this debate in fictional form is Michael Crichton's NEXT. Here we have a humanzee called Davey who doesn't quite reach human intelligence but who has great physical prowess. Next is a compelling read; it alerts the reader to much ugly rapaciousness in the area of genetic research. Ultimately, however, it fails to fully deliver, perhaps imagination-wise, on the severe consequences we could all face as a result of such unbridled and money fueled experimentation.

Anyway I want to leave you with a great picture - you can click on it to go to its original resting site - and apologies if any copyright is being infringed. The illustrator's imagination
here must be praised.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Reading into it the Bush Administration has been funding terrorism, alarmingly

George W. Bush's war on terror has indadvertently allowed terror groups to get their hands on billions of dollars while weakening Iraqi security resources. Go to this link and do some sums. LINK

Friday, June 06, 2008

PHYSICS IN CRISIS

rEMEBER WHEN i SPOKE of natural mirrors like still lakes in the Universe? Physics is now in crisis because of dark matter. Why is everything going wrong? :}http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/science/03dark.html?_r=2&ref=science&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Sunday, April 13, 2008

I have an aeroplane theme

Hi Everynobody, I've added this because it's in the spirit of my origins. I am Squorch747 and I have an aeroplane theme. 




KOW-LOON AEROPLANES

Sunday, April 06, 2008

This is an excellent graffiti because it uses many common symbols. However, it does not use the 'M' of McDonalds though that may be intentional.

On a hypothetical level I want to link this graffiti, which I spotted opposite the entrance of Westminster Cathedral, to the coming recession and the rise in rice prices.

Let's just admit that Blair and Bush are GUILTY. GUILTY, guilty, guilty. The war in Iraq may come to be seen as the catalyst that began the West's decline into a darker poorer age. China and Russia were the beneficiaries.

I have been reading The Prince by Machiavelli. In the first few pages he says: Do not occupy a state. It is a disaster. Durhh!!! Did the strategists in the US read that book. Probably. Did it sink in? You tell me. I had George W. Bush down as a nice man. And he was. See him now. He has a corrupt air about him now. He's going down in history as a twit. And what about Condeleeza Rice? Well at least she tried to oppose the biggest greediest idiot in modern history: Dick Cheyney. Unless he repents he will probably burn in the fires of hell.  Is that too harsh. Sorry if it is. 

Thursday, March 27, 2008

What On Earth

What's This? Why is it sideways? Is it the BatCave?

No. It's Montserrat, the location of the discovery in 880ad of the image of the Virgin of Montserrat. I couldn't rotate it. And anyway if you're into images you'll know how useful seeing things from alternative perspectives is.Nerh.

Monday, March 24, 2008

HarliquinComeToMyAid


I believe this painting by Miro is one of K1's favourites. It has inspired him often. For me I relate to the mustachioed character to whom our eyes are first drawn. I do feel "he" inspired Zebedee of The Magic Roundabout.

In this painting he seems ill at ease and like the Laughing Cavalier his emotional expression is determined by his mustache. The Laughing Cavalier, as is well known, does not laugh or even smile but his mustache does and so the viewer is "tricked" into perceiving a smile of jollity; the cavalier's twinkling eyes abet this effect. Here our hero, sorry my hero, is ill at ease, in a quandry, discombobulated, and this is as a result of the down turned left (red) eye firstly and then the mustache. So I'm wrong to place such emphasis on the mustache. Sorry. But it's not insignificant.

It is amazing what a/the mustache can do. I might grow one soon. I'll keep you posted. Further analysis of this painting will be made and to all of the two readers of this blob out there, your comments are most welcome sans the cobbler of Barnes.Grrrr!

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Still from The White Balloon
Mikio Naruse
These two films share a similar sensibility in their approach to childhood. Narratives about childhood, whether by Marcel Proust or by the two directors of The Approach of Autumn and The White Balloon, test us as adults.Memories of childhood are rich and we relate to the world of children with, if you will, a suspension of adultness. Or rather we shift perspectives more readily than when our protagonists are adults only.

Both films deal with the vulnerability that is possibly childhood's core; the need for children to find care and love. Both films end on a similar note, a sad note, a sense that the children have been betrayed by the selfish and apathetic world created by adults.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Wh-movement

time to move with the questions
they flow from the heart to the mouth you know
and out into the cobwebs of communicating
dust they get dusted knuckle-dusted too

questions are reality in action
our habitations alter without cease
the chief of this region is the sun
and its puppets the planets it whips around

i'm hungry
where can i get food?
the organ is not spirit
and the spirit too
may need questions
to clarify the position its in
when
it loses its body
oh shit
where's my body
oh shit it's down there
oh shit i must be dead

did i ask enough questions
i'm still asking them
oh shit
how's that?
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