Chords of Life

Or Is It Just A Crazy Dream?

2008-12-02T19:56:00.004+03:30

Really missed my corner, my book. The big changes were confusing, catastrophic, unbelievable and fast. Moving abroad, moving to a new track, new people, new language, losing a most beloved...I can say it is not a wind, but a thunder taking you far far away from the person you used to be, makes you feel older the way you get older every time you listen to The Final Cut.

2008-07-18T23:13:00.004+04:30

In memory of Khosro Shakibai (1944 - 2008), Hamoun that we loved.

Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

2008-05-01T13:54:00.006+04:30

Good reason to get back to my corner: I need concentration and motivation and I need them seriously. I live in an environment filled with negative energy, filled with stories of failure. People strive but they are never rewarded what they deserve.
There are lots of things to complain about. But I won't. This is my good corner and I want to keep it clean, happy and motivating as it was before. So here we go again:

Last week a good friend sent me a link to the excerpt of an Oprah show, introducing Randy Pausch. And good things come to you when you are in need. You just have to be cautious to grab the right thing. And I did. I downloaded the full stroy, and I gained my nearly lost hope and courage again.

Randy is a Carnegie Melon computer science professor. He is 47 and suffers from liver cancer and doctors say that he's going to die in a few months. He prepares his last lecture in the university and gives invaluable, enchanting, memorable and impressive lessons to the audience. Watch for yourself:

Celestial Voices

2007-09-27T22:37:00.000+03:30

There's something magical in Celtic music that makes my spirit soar beyond mundane boundaries every time I listen to it. I don't know how the Irish could keep loads of those great old melodies during the time and why we, Iranians, couldn't. I wish we could. Those Celtic melodies divinely express a spectrum of different senses from wisdom, joy and love to the deepest grief. Iranian musicians say that in Iran we have just kept the grief part during the time, and lost most of our vivacious melodies, that's why we are now the top sad nation in the world. Without music we are spiritless and gloomy.

Anyway. It's been some days that I can't change my playlist to play any other item than Loreena McKennitt's songs. Her voice is unique and makes part of me departing during any of her songs. Mixed with some eastern instruments she sometimes shifts to new age style. In 2006, she gave an album called An Ancient Muse, 9 years after her last album in 1997. In 2007 she had a concert in Alhambra, Spain. This video is from that concert:

Do You Find Me Sadistic?

2007-09-11T10:43:00.000+03:30

La Mariée était en noir (The Bride Wore Black) (1968)
Directed By: François Truffaut
IMDB
My Rate: 4/5

I was surprised to learn that this film is the archetype of Kill Bill's plot. How intelligent Tarantino is.! Kill Bill is just another intelligent hybrid movie! As you may guess, the story is like this:

In the wedding day, when the bride and the groom come out of church with the guests around them, out of nowhere the groom is shot and the despondent bride pledges a revenge the other day in the same church. She finds the the killers' names and addresses and makes her "DEATH LIST FIVE" and crosses out the names one by one. But of course there's no sign of Tarantino violence or martial action in this film. The bride is a woman and uses the women's tricks to seduce her victims and commit her cold blooded revenge.

This is the second time that I see the original model of a quite new film that is based "totally" upon the older one. Fortunately both new films worked great and were more interesting for today's taste. The other one was Abre Los Ojos by Alejandro Amenabar which is remade by Cameron Crowe as Vanilla Sky. Certainly Abre Los Ojos is a genuine film but it has some small flaws in the ending scene when the main character, César, is going up and down the building to figure out that the building is not real. In Vanilla Sky these kind of small flaws were patched, and of course some unique sense of sadness is imbued in the film with great selection of music used in it. About Kill Bill no further explanation is needed that it quenches the today's audience need to watch bloodshed, suspension and thrill.

Acoustic Simple Pleasures

2007-09-06T15:54:00.000+03:30

1. JOJO /kho-kho/, that's how Spaniards represent evil laughter. I'm happy that I can pronounce that /kh/ sound. Regarding to this page at least 309 million English speaking people in the world can't pronounce it!

2. Hugo Weaving in V for Vendetta wore a mask in the whole movie, he made a revolution with his sonorous voice in the movie, and made me remember his conversation with Neo, in The Matrix, forever:

...In one life, you're Thomas A. Anderson... program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number. You pay your taxes. And you help your landlady carry out her garbage...

3. The first CD I burned for myself, was a collection of Eloy albums. The German rock band who took his mystic name from H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, one of my favorite books to read over and over as a teenager, where human beings in some future time are divided into two castes and the delicate, rich, healthy, lucky and aristocrat caste is called Eloi. Eloy is categorized as a space rock band. The heavy organ and bass fills that each play a major role in the songs, always make me high. I call it the natural high feeling. A sense of Floating, which is the name of one of their albums.

Cauldron of Hate

2007-09-02T00:32:00.000+03:30

Death and The Maiden (1994)
Directed By: Roman Polanski
IMDB
My Rate: 5/5

In some Latin American country a brutal fascist regime has been subverted. Paulina Lorca (Sigourney Weaver), a former political activist who has been tortured by that regime now lives in some coastal suburb with her husband Gerardo Escobar who has also been an activist but now is a lawyer and tries to litigate the dogs of the previous tyrant. Paulina still suffers from the trauma of the tortures but has never thoroughly disclosed the traits of the torments she had been through. One rainy night incidentally she recognizes her torturer accompanying her husband to home. Time to get revenge. Time to get things even. Time to have a straight-up talk with Gerardo.

Considering myself in a situation like that, I thought what would be the best thing to do? As an observer you may say, yes, that's the best time to get revenge. Take an eye for an eye. Rape him if you have been raped! There he has sat, his hands are tight, he has no power, you can adjudicate, you can torture him and get his confession, and finaly you can execute him. Better slaughter and butcher him. But how many people really can do that? Can I kill somebody who have done the worst things to me? Am I capable of applying justice even if I'm totally in the right? I'm afraid I am not. I think I am not.

The Magic Lantern

2007-07-31T12:34:00.000+03:30

We, Persians, are famous of unique demeanors and grooves, some are righteous, some are culpable. One of the latter ones is our inclination to necrolatry not in its literal meaning but in the way that we tend to praise long eulogies for the mortified ones and exaggerate about their virtuous traits when just before they die, we completely ignore them or in the case they present or support some contrary or unique idea, we destroy them as much as we can.

I felt the same when I wanted to write about the news I read today in the papers: "Swedish Director Ingmar Bergman Passes Away In The Age of 89".

Sometimes you find the great ideas and people so late. A couple of months ago I watched my second film of him, Winter Light, my first film of him was Wild Strawberries. I was astound with what he does with lights in his films and how simply, with no action or much effort he presents the most complicated cognition of human-beings and God relativity in Winter Light. It was very impressive. So I bought his autobiography, The Magic Lantern, and collected around 20 of his films with the help of a friend. I was about to define an "Ingmar Bergman Project" for myself, but I postponed it, to deal with "some more important stuff"*, anyway. Now that he's dead, I should be Persian.

* ...and who knows which is which and who is who...

Infinite Creativity

2007-07-26T23:23:00.000+03:30

The Five Obstructions (2003)
Directed by: Lars Von Trier & Joergen Leth
IMDB
My Rate: 5/5

Some call it an aristocrat fancy game of two intellectual directors. I don't see anything wrong about it even if we consider it so.

Actually it's a meta film. Von Trier challenges his favorite director Joergen Leth on remaking one of his earliest films called The Perfect Human, which is a unique short film about how the director sees human being as a series of motions, habits, manners, actions and reactions. Over these shots of a single actor and actress, Leth asks questions like "What does the perfect human think about?" and so.

To do so, Von Trier sets very random and spontaneous obstructions for Leth, on his way to remake the short film. Like that when they speak about smoking a Havana cigar, Von Trier comes with the idea that his first episode should be filmed in Cuba! You can read about the obstructions here.

What made me so fond of this film is what it left me in the end. Just like Von Trier's masterwork, Dogville, you are imbued with some feeling of vague awareness that is hard to express in words and questions like who is who, how things are done, how a spark of an idea leads to some splendid consequent that no one has ever thought about it. How infinite the human being's creativity can be? Does it make the human perfect? I don't know.

Signals And Systems

2007-07-04T01:35:00.000+03:30

Finally you find somewhere quiet, you sit down and close your eyes for a moment, you take a deep breath, play your media player to listen to your favorite songs, you inhale deeper and deeper, you ventilate your lungs more and more, you feel your heart beating slow down, you stretch your hands and feet, and enjoy the blood rushing through them, this is heaven... but suddenly your phone rings! RING .... RING ... RING ..., and you sell your heaven to a phone call that 99% of the times is not a matter of life and death. It seems inevitable, it's like we're conditioned to such things like a phone call. When it rings you give up everything to answer it! Who has set it as a rule? How has it penetrated in our minds? How many times has it happened to you?

Phone calls are not the only example of this situation. We do things in certain ways that we have used to them. But just think about doing them in some other style. Maxwell Maltz suggests: one morning when you go to work, as you fasten your shoelaces, and you always put the right lace on the left one, this time do it vice versa, and see how the world changes within you.

Next time it rings, just smile to it, and tell I won't answer you, and see how some strong feeling of joy spreads in your veins. Of course there's a caller ID function and you can call him or her back a couple of minutes later, but feel that you have the choice, you are not a slave of a human made signal, you are free, just don't let it ruin your moment of glory.

P.S. To friends: hey don't test it on me, I am the one who suggests it to you so exempt me from your experience, thank you. ;)

Different Worlds, Same Idea

2007-06-30T00:20:00.000+03:30

As I told somewhere before, I sometimes check my old mp3s and make selections of them. This time I was investigating Chris de Burgh's songs. In his first album (1975 - Far Beyond These Castle Walls), there's a very mellow, romantic and oneiric song called Satin Green Shutters. He depicts his hopes and dreams of having "the most beautiful house in the world" and having his love of life forever and having "the most lovely children in the world". I know that at least his last wish came true a few years ago, when his daughter, Rosanna won the miss world title. Many people were fascinated here because Chris de Burgh has many fans in Iran.

Later, in the same day, I was running with my friend in the park as our regular sports schedule. He talked about a poor worker of a freight company who had rented their house many years ago. He said although he had a poor family but he always talked like he had enough money for everything. He always had bigger dreams than his pocket. They moved out and they had no contact with my friend's. But yesterday, oddly enough, the door bell rang and yes it was that worker with his wife riding a precious brand new BMW to come over my friend's family. He now owns a freight business himself and has sent his son and daughter to university. He is wealthy and happy with his family as he always thought so.

It was a nice coincidence to me. It doesn't matter what you are or how big or small your scale is. How much you are famous or how rich you are. You'll become what you think of yourself.

Here's a couple lines of Chris de Burgh's Satin Green Shutters:

"Where your dreams are, put your hopes, you know they will not fail you,
Where your love is, put your heart, oh what would you do if your dreams came true?"

One Week Father

2007-06-29T10:26:00.000+03:30

Vozvrashcheniye (The Return) (2003)
Directed by: Andrei Zvyagintsev
IMDB
My Rate: 5/5

The portrait that is carved in my memory about a Russian movie, is a black and white, long and boring film whose story usuallys happens in a village fully covered by snow with poor muzhiks living there, very few words uttered and so on, everything converges to dejectedness in those films.

After a long time of watching western movies, this one was handed over me. The only thing it has in common with that style is it's minimum words. This, along with astonishing scenery, blur and cold colors makes it a very calm and relaxing film.

It's the story of two youngsters, Ivan and Andrey, who have not seen their father since they were very young. The only memory is a family picture hidden in the attic. But suddenly the father comes back out of nowhere and takes them out to a short trip which lasts longer than expected. He teaches them how to be a man, he says: "Use your hands" in response to feeble boys' complaints facing to physical works for the first time.

It's a tribute to fatherhood I think, in contrast with Pedro Almodovar's Return and it's highly recommended as well.

Cold as Ice

2007-06-14T11:50:00.000+03:30

La Tourneuse de Pages (2006)
imbd
Directed by: Denis Dercourt
Gog's Rate: 4/5

My devotion to french cinema is nothing new, I enjoy quite a lot movies coming from our northern neighbours for many reasons: the real/credible stories, whirling plots (which do not frame the spectators), the beautiful scenery and cinematography are common in these films, or at least more common than they are in the cinema which comes from the other side of the Atlantic.

The film 'The Page Turner' is not a typical french movie. At the very beginning, I had the feeling of watching a Merchant-Ivory film, no feelings, no gestures, very few words,... pure seriousness. A very cold movie, with a cold-coloured cinematography.
I don't know if I should tell something about the plot: The daughter of a low class family plays the piano, but it's rejected in the last minute, as the teacher makes her lose her concentration during a exam. Years later they meet again, and the teacher (who doesn't remember the girl at all) wants her to turn the pages on her concerts.

I would strongly recommend this movie for the uneasiness which causes the young belgian actress Déborah François, the rare atmosphere which is breath all over 85 minutes. The ending is (also) great. I would rate it '5', but I saw it yesterday, and I may still be under the influence of such a fine piece of machinery, which lies inside this film.

His Mysterious Ways

2007-06-13T18:12:00.000+03:30

Babel (2006)
IMDB
Directed by: Alejandro González Iñárritu
My Rate: 5/5

Impressive, breathtaking and real! They are the first expressions that came to my mind describing it. Babel is composed of 3 stories occurring in Morocco, Mexico and Japan, connected to each other in a curious way and as we may expect from Iñárritu (the director of 21 Grams), with a slight time shift. But that's not the point that makes the film so interesting. The point is that it is so much real like a bitter story of "somebody else" you read in a newspaper everyday. Sort of disastrous stories that we read a lot about these days. The stories you wish that somebody could have done something to prevent them, but that's not possible. Somethings happen with no intension, they just happen. I don't know if we should call them God's will. People here normally call it so.

The main theme of the film is the human's solitude. The lonely human who is nothing apart from his family and his home, who is afraid of strangers and who is nothing if left alone and not supported by the family. We are still as vulnerable as a lonely kid in a desert.

The title of the post comes from the film Constantine. In the last scene John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) says: "He (God) does his works in mysterious ways, some people like it, some don't." Some people may like this film some don't. It depends on how you interpret the world.

Captain

2007-06-01T14:04:00.000+03:30

South Korea started her car industry lunge at the same time Iran did. They improved day by day, but we produced that junk product over and over for more than 30 years and we were proud to call it our national automobile. Koreans developed other industries and we developed ideologies. The result is that today we are a great market for Korean cars and electronic goods. I use a Korean monitor on my desktop. Korea is a symbol of economic development for Iranian economists.

During 1996 Asian Cup our national football team defeated Korea 6 - 2, that was a great achievement because even in football we have been always behind them. The man of the match was today's best scorer of the whole football history in the world: Ali Daei, who scored 4 of 6 goals.

Daei has had the undeniable position as the team captain till the last FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany. But that wasn't easy for him to hold the position. As he got more and more famous he became the target of the most envious critics inside Iran. From one side he became the best scorer of all time with 100+ goals in international matches, but from the other side he was cruelly criticized by the media because he had some deficiencies during some matches and the media and people following them wanted him to retire. Finally all pressures made the national team coaches to omit the long term captain from the list.

He didn't gave up. As he was playing in a mediocre team in Iranian Premiere League, he accepted to coach that team in the middle of the season, and in the end, that mediocre team was the champion of the league with Ali Daei's last goal. He abandoned playing football with glory and with all the envious people who always tried to destroy him.

I once read somewhere describing Daei's personality, it said: "He is the kind of men that has plans for everything, except for his death". And I saw him in an interview when he was asked: "Is there anything in the world that you like to exchange football with it?" and he said: "I exchange football with every good thing in the world. Football is just a small part of my life, I've got many other plans and issues that I like to follow, football isn't my everything."

He is the man of his plans and fighting for his plans.

Non-Linear World

2007-05-27T14:13:00.000+03:30

11:14 (2003)
IMDB
Directed by: Greg Marcks
My Rate: 4/5

We have a famous and beautiful poem in Persian literature, I can't remind the poet's name. It tells the story of an eagle that spreads its wings and flies to find something to hunt, but is hit itself by a hunter's arrow. During falling down the eagle looks at its wing and the arrow and finds his own feather at the tail of the arrow, it sighs:
"At who we should protest? We're responsible for what happens to ourselves." (the whole effect and beauty of the story is in the Persian the poet has used, and you can't find any of that in my translation!).

Most of the time these effects are not so apparent as that eagle observed, because the universe is so complicated. The nature is curved and non linear, that's why works of art that follow the style of nature are more affecting. 11:14 adheres the same scheme. A very simple story told in a non-linear way, from different points of view of different observers and effectors. this kind of narration is supported with some butterfly effect philosophy make an incredible movie from a young and independent director. I can compare the narration to the way of "21 Grams", (but in a more simple way, 21 Grams was much more complicated), and the character design to Tarantino's characters with all their stupidities.

Move It!

2007-05-23T18:31:00.001+03:30

It's always the matter of time Mr Shellman! So move it!

The Girl In Scarlet

2007-05-22T11:19:00.000+03:30

Schindler's List (1993)
IMDB
My Rate: 5/5
Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Oskar Schindler is a German businessman who comes to Poland in the first days of occupation by the Germans in 1939. During the evacuation of jews from the cities, he picks some of them for labour to establish a factory producing utensils for the German army. His factory then becomes a refuge for the fugitive jews who prefer labour to death. Watching the Holocaust happening, shocks Schindler and makes him to spend all the money he has gathered from the factory to buy jews' lives from SS officers by bribing them and saving the jews from being slaughtered in Auschwitz concentration camp.

It's in black and white mostly, except that deeply affecting scene when Schindler watches the slaughter from a vantage point and he sees a little girl in scarlet dress running for her life and the only coloured thing in the scene in the little girl. Very touching. The film has many of these emotional peaks showing that how people suffer and what war has done to them...

Behind any war, is some stupidity and behind the stupidity is some ideology. In 1945, when Germany is defeated, a Russian soldier enters the camp and with the Russian accent tells them: "You are liberated by the Soviet army!". Yes, liberated but bound to another ideology that supports killing of the people for another purpose, another kind of groove, another 45 years for another ideology, and then another.

How many do we need?

Which One's Pink?

2007-05-18T16:02:00.000+03:30

That's been the classic vexing debate after Pink Floyd's break up, between Roger and David's fans. The question comes from what Roger had heard in a convention in the early days of Pink Floyd. Someone had asked: "Oh by the way, which one's Pink?" thinking that Pink Floyd is a band member name. That made Roger to write Have A Cigar later for Wish You Were Here Album. A song about fame, fortune, money, and "riding the gravy train" in music industry.

Thanks to my introducer to Pink Floyd, he gave me the video of a cover band called "The Australian Pink Floyd". A pack of very talented Australian guys who could make themselves the most prominent and serious cover band, at least the only one that I know. The video is their concert in Liverpool in 2004. They have covered the whole Dark Side of the Moon and a bunch of other songs incredibly great in a big stage imitating all those post-Roger concerts style. The audience were enjoying themselves completely because although the music was greatly performing, the men behind the microphones were not the legendary official band members, so one could just say: shout and scream, who cares? This ain't Pink Floyd! The same idea was supported by the band themselves! They had replaced the classical pig with a funny giant kangaroo dancing during One of These Days (that scary song)!!! That made me laugh about an hour insanely! I enjoyed it a lot.

What I'm thinking now, is what Roger was saying in Live At Pompeii video. Answering questions about the expensive and unique equipments they used to perform their music, he said:

RW: This is the question of using the tools available when they are available! And more and more now there's all kinds of electronic goodies which are available for people like us to use. If we can be bothered and we can be bothered... It's like saying give a man a Les Paul guitar and he becomes Eric Clapton, you know, and it's not true! Give a man an amplifier and a synthesizer and he doesn't become whoever, he doesn't become us... I'd like to say if we were at a gig, it could be nice sometimes to say: Go on then, there it is, get stuck in! In fact open the show, it's gonna be 4000 people in here in half an hour, get out there and knock them out man, and then they'd say: Oh but we don't know the equipment and need time to rehearse! So we'd say: So did we about four or five years ... if people come to a concert and they don't like it, they don't come again!

and in another argument:

RW: Steve you're good at your job, but you could never produce a record so it's silly of you to try!

Steve: No rubbish! if you take a crappy enough group with only twelve songs...

RW: that's not we're talking about!

Steve: We're talking about producing works of art, or Pink Floyd records! That's 0.01 percent of the market, there's plenty of other crap going on!

RW: We are not talking about it at all, we're talking about a record producer who is in charge of a recording session. In order to be in charge of a recording session you need to have a minimal, not minimal, you need to have a fairly extensive knowledge of what the equipment is about and what music is about and what rock and roll's about, well steve knows what rock and roll's about but he got no idea of what the equipment is about, he's got very little idea in terms of technicalities, he knows what he likes.

Steve: Plenty of people have produced very successful records on that basis!

RW: Who?

...

RW: All Im' saying is in the finished article the only thing that's important is whether it moves you or not, there's nothing else as that important.

Easy Movie

2007-05-17T00:03:00.000+03:30

View From The Top (2003)
IMDB
Directed by: Bruno Barreto
My Rate: 3/5

After a hard day arguing with a "dog", and after my fit of hatred was put out by listening to Animals, it was the time to bring my attitude back on track, probably by watching an easy movie. My random choice was successful and surprisingly supporting the idea that I'm reading a lot these days: having clear and detailed vision of your future goal and strive to get it.

Donna (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a small town girl always wished to see the world but she never had a chance to even leave that small town. After a break up with her boyfriend, she incidentally watches a famous and successful stewardess in TV, and that sparks a will in her heart to gain whatever she wishes. It's a simple, easy and delighting romantic comedy. I liked it.

The Virtuous And The Vicious

2007-05-12T07:51:00.000+03:30

Volver (Return) (2006)
IMDB
Directed by: Pedro Almodovar
My Rate: 5/5

Raimunda (Penelope Cruz) is a maid, she lives in Madrid with her husband, Paco and daughter, Paula. Her parents are both dead in a fire accident in the suburbs of Madrid, where they used to live. She has an old and ill aunt left there and comes over her from time to time.

Paco is the only male character in the movie! All other main characters are females! In the first glance it seems very feministic. The brave woman's life who tries to come over really big problems. Women are the ones who "govern" everything by their natural senses: love, hate, envy, motherhood and smelling! (There's a reference to that in the movie) in contrast with the men are the ones who only look for alcohol and sex no matter with who. But looking more deeply and optimistically, it seems like a tribute to motherhood and the mother's natural tendency to raise and protect.

There are deeply hidden family secrets which are concealed from one generation to another, but a chain of events makes them unrevealed and that's the motive of the film. So that's very hard to have a review of it withough letting the cat out of the bag, but I won't do that. Watch yourself and enjoy it because in addition to the interesting story, it has great shots, great angles, bold and stirring colours and everything to make it a French film, although it's Spanish.

Get Busy Living, Or Get Busy Dying

2007-05-01T06:38:00.000+03:30

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
IMDB
Directed by: Frank Darabont
My Rate: 5/5

Everything is in the chain. Good things come in your good times, when you look for motivation, it will find its way to you. The Shawshank Redemption is the story of Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) an innocent banker accused for the murder of his wife and her lover, and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in Shawshank prison. The prison shows the teeth in the first night to him and all other new comers. When one of them couldn't help crying after the lights out, the guards beat him to death!

The hard labour, ruthless wardens, rapists, and the solitary cells are enough to make everybody break down, but:

[spoiler]
Andy never gives up, he uses his abilities to make it a better place to live for other prisoners, he asks for financial aid for organising a prison library by writing a letter per week to charity organisations for 5 years, until they accept to help him with a 200$ check, but he won't be satisfied by it and starts to write two letters per week to beg for more aid!

He gives useful financial advices to the guards and that makes him known to the prison warden. The warden makes him his consultee to perform money laundry for him! That gives great power to Andy, although he is humiliated as a criminal by the warden. But Andy has bigger plans in his mind...
[/spoiler]

This is a story of hope and endeavour. Although it's ficition but who cares as long as it's beautiful and motivating? Andy says in a scene to his friend, Red (Morgan Freeman): Get busy living, or get busy dying. The world was very cruel and unfair to him but he chose the first option.

Respect and WCs

2007-04-23T19:45:00.000+03:30

As I came to Austria, I created a blog and published an article (I wouldn't call it a "great article") about surprising things that I found in this country with the following picture:

The text said more or less:

"It's incredible that nobody ever had the simple idea of printing in toilet paper something different from flowers or stripes. It's a channel for spreading ideas or knowledge, or at least, that may have thought the manufacturer of the roll in the picture.

Question: In which year were the first football world cup held?
Answer: 1930

This roll is a monograph on football. I have to confess that when I found it, I unrolled a couple of meters, just to read some questions more. I left it as I found it. Sure you'd have done the same. It's tempting"

Later on, it was Monkey who proposed that such trifles (or -french-based synonym bagatelles) make a difference between modern, open minded countries and developing countries. Respecting the knowledge, and respecting each other is the basis to produce more intelligent citizens and a better society.

I do agree.

Inventing History

2007-04-03T09:29:00.000+03:30

My father was a radio buff before his illness and old age could take that interest from him. That habit gave us the chance to always have those foreign radios sounds spread in our house every morning before we leave for school or every night when he got back from work. So during the war years we had the chance to listen to BBC, VOA and DW before we know anything about satellite TV channels, and they had become a pre-school-have-to-listen-everyday besides Pink Floyd's Time intro in The Calendar of History programme from the national radio.

Speaking about history, VOA Persian radio channel, had a history section too, which used to review some important events in the United States history happened in the same day. I can never forget the day the anchor said that: "today is the day Mr X brought the WC indoors for the first time in US history, and from then people started to build their WCs inside their houses"! I remind how much we laughed for the matter me and my brother. How important that could be to be written down in the history pages of a big country?!

Now speaking about 300 the movie, offended as any other Iranians by a country with 200 years of history with history books god knows how much thicker than ours having 7000 years of art (not history), and humiliated recently in Dubai, a country with less than 30 years of history, scanning my eye like a potential criminal or smuggler as an arrival welcome, I say that's all our own fault! Our own failure!

It's the matter of self respect. If you do not respect yourself, you shouldn't expect it from the others, how powerful it may be over you (US) or how panicked (UAE) it could be from you, if Iranians learn to respect each other, other things can get better. I bet there's no way out and I don't see any sign of it.

P.S. To know more about toilets, bathrooms, and WCs and their relationship to the self respect, I encourage my friend Gog to put an English copy of that great article about Austrian Toilets. Thanks in advance Gog.

Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun

2007-03-13T10:11:00.000+03:30

To follow the path:

Look to the master,

Follow the master,

Walk with the master,

See through the master,

Become the master.

Black Books and Cult Books

2007-03-04T16:01:00.000+03:30

Our memory is weak. I think that a film, or a book can be considered a good one, only when after some time, you can still remember the story, the name of the main characters or maybe some dialogue lines. Books or films which you have recently seen can lead you into confusion: You need to take your time in order to ground an opinion on them.

Call me a fool, but I named myself after a book I have recently read. It's probably too soon to say, but this book is one of the best ones I have read within the last few years (along with the second part: 'The Black Book').

The book tells the story of a man, who is incredibly rich. Rich enough to buy things that nobody else could pay, and to keep being the richest man on Earth. He has the money to start the most extravagant collections that you can imagine, to travel the world without a destination and to arrange interviews with the most influential personalities in the 20th century (see picture).

If I only said that, nobody would probably believe that a book including fictitious interviews could be a good one. If you think that, you should read some biography about Giovanni Papini. He was probably the last humanist, and one of the greatest readers of all times.
Some people say he didn't succeded writing a novel which would have given him a popularity through the years, but the works he wrote are good enough to take him in consideration.

I don't know if in a few years I'll regard this work with so much passion as I do today, but, this book is really in its way to became a personal cult book. It proposes a big thema to talk about in each chapter, and gives an opinion on it. I'd recomend this book to people who enjoy very much comparing, debating or just hearing different opinions on topics, we all already have thought about.

I'll leave here this quote by Papini, so I'll be able to find it easily next time.

"If it's true that in each friend there's a potential enemy, Why can't it be, that behind each enemy, is hidden a friend, waiting for his turn?"

Viva Roger

2007-02-27T09:34:00.000+03:30

21 Feb 2007, Media City, Dubai. The concert was going to start at 8:30 pm, but we were there from 4:30 pm to take the front lines of the standing area. Everybody spoke Persian there, in that time of the day, no other nationality intended so soon for the concert, but for the Persians it was very different. I had heard that some of them were there since 10 am that morning, just wishing to be in the front line. It was probably the only opportunity for Iranian fans to see Roger, because that was his last world tour, and for many of us, it was the first time attending a rock concert or even going abroad, so it seemed natural to be so greedy about the standing situation.

There were two entrances to the venue and since we had ITN tickets the security guided us to the western entrance. The arena was a fenced area with a thick green canvas, so the only thing we need to do was following the fence across the southern street, where we passed the VIP entrance section to find the other box and there was it in the west. I gave my confirmation email print and got our 3 tickets, and the first thing to do was to kiss them firmly!

The security took our tickets and let us in, we thought that we entered the arena directly and rushed in but there were one more level to it. There were another line there beside a long bar table with phillipinas behind it, normally you can see them everywhere in Dubai, serving beverages and sandwiches. They were also selling t-shirts and hats of the tour, in a very poor quality, each for 100 Dirhams (1 dirham = 0.22 euro at the time), and I didn't want to pay it through the nose, so we just sat down chatting with some other Persians who were quite the same age and older than us, in contrast with the eastern entrance which were full of young and teenage Persian girls and boys.

The first surprise and the first lesson was that, as our tour guide in hotel had warned us about not taking any kind of camera to the venue, we left everything in hotel, but some people there had their cameras with themselves, it seemed the security wasn't very tough about the rules. And that was the lesson I had learned in the military service before but had forgotten it: Take the risk god damn it and don't obey everything you're told! Most of the time no bad things happen. So we should pass the time drinking, chatting, reclining on the ground...

It was about 5:30 pm that suddenly we heard the sound of a guitar from the inside, and that was enough for the crowd to shout and scream their passion. They were equalizing the instruments, and unexpectedly, the Dm chords of Another Brick In The Wall started and God, he was Roger singing: "We don't need no education..." everybody jumped like a spark cheering and whistling I started to scream too. We were hearing Roger live, and then the intro of Shine On you Crazy Diamond started to play, and that was when I couldn't keep myself up anymore and started to explode my dizzy happiness into tears. Mani said, shame on you, it's bad! don't cry! and I stopped pouring out my feelings, what we all have learned to do professionally in Iran: to keep our feelings deep inside.

Around 6:00 pm they gave us our bracelets, in a silly way. They asked everybody in the line to come to another table to take the bracelets, so suddenly there were no lines, so if you had come sooner, you weren't the first entering the arena, everything got disordered and everybody tried to get back in his own place in the line, but it was impossible.

10 minutes later they opened the way to the arena, there we were! A not very big steep ground, with VIP seats in the highest place in the south and we were rushing down towards the stage in the north. We could take a good place to stand. Right in the middle of the stage about ten meters far from it.

So we should pass another 2 hours waiting there. First we sat on the ground but as people entered the arena, the crowd pressure increased so we had to stand up to not to get squeezed by them. And that was when I started to communicate directly in English with people around coming form everywhere, Lebannon, Portugal, Belgium, Canada, Malaysia, Brazil,... gathering there for one thing. Bruno was a young Portuguese software engineer coming there with his friends, we had a great time, and I'll never forget the way he was speaking about unpleasant political situation, drunk, happy, easy, he spit in my face as he spoke and how he was astonished when we told him that we have two armies in Iran!

People were very good and kind to each other, everybody was joking and having fun and enjoying their time, even Persians that rarely you can see them being so kind to each other inside Iran, now they were really supporting each other. Some kind of unity and friendship that I had never seen before. People who had one single intention at the time, one single common reason to be there.

The screen during these two hours was showing a table with and old radio on it, a bottle of liquor and a glass, and an ashtray filtered with a sepia light seemed like an old piece of movie. The radio was playing soft rock music but I didn't recognise none of the songs. A hand came to the frame filling the glass and taking shots of it and sometimes changing the channel to another song. What a nice idea!

In The Flesh

Evevrybody was getting bored. It was 8:30 and the band wasn't on the stage. The air was filled with heavy smoke of cigarettes and joints the people were using. It was making me annoyed a lot. 8:40 pm. At last they came. There in back Harry Waters with a cowboy hat, the girls Carol Kenyon (the girl in Live8), Katie Kissoon and P.P Arnold, then Jon Carin and Andy Fairweather-Low (how old he had become, he has a new pair of glasses and beard and moustache!), followed by Ian Ritchie (the sax player) then David Kilminster and Snowy White, and finally, my old man came on the stage, smiling and waving to the audience, my heart beat got faster and blood rushed to my head I was just screaming, and couldn't believe I was there, I had dreamed Roger three times I think and now he was standing there shading his eyes from the spotlights watching the crowd who were unconsiously screaming to the great charisma he brought with him on the stage. Ro...ger, Ro...ger people cried.
He went for his bass and: EINS.. ZWEI.. DREI.. ALLEEEE! it had started!

Katie Kissoon performing Mother

I was kind of hypnotised for the whole concert. It was a strange feeling I had never experienced. Song after song came and I couldn't even recall what the last one was, I couldn't keep them in my mind. It was like you are living in the present moment. There was no past or future. There was just Roger and his brilliant music I had lived with it for about 10 years. Now it was playing live in front of me. What should I say, how can I believe it was real? But it was.

Set the controls for the heart of the sun

Snowy White, playing the haunting intro of Shine on you crazy diamond

Have a cigar

Wish you were here

Southampton dock/Fletcher memorial home

Perfect sense

Leaving Beirut

Andy Fairweather-Low performing Leaving Beirut

The songs played in the first part were:

1. In the Flesh
2. Mother
3. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
4. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts II - V) (abridged)
5. Have a Cigar
6. Wish You Were Here
7. Southampton Dock
8. The Fletcher Memorial Home
9. Perfect Sense, Parts 1 and 2
10. Leaving Beirut
11. Sheep

The first part finished so fast, the only thing that remained in my mind was the surprise of the explosion during Perfect sense, when I was watching Roger doing his pantomime in the left of the stage, the submarine missile hit the oil facility in the screen and BANG! and the hot wave completed my warm thrill of confusion. And they didn't have any pig but who cares?

One problem that I had in that close distance was watch-who and watch-what! If you watched Roger, you could lose the new clips on the screen, or if you watched the clip you missed beautiful solos Kilminster and Snowy were playing! And I should say, the songs performed quite better than I had seen in In The Flesh DVD in 2000, Kilminster exactly had the mood and feeling of David Gilmour in playing, I could say I was listening to the original album!

After the first part they went for a 15 minutes break, the screen showed a picture of the moon becoming larger and larger during the time. The second part strated in darkness with "I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years..." Magnificent.

During the second part

Probably during Time

Money

Us and them

Any colour you like

End of part 2 and goodbye

We decided to get back in the second part to listen better to the songs, people were very loud and crazy in the front. We did it during The Great Gig In The Sky, and now in the back we had more focus on the music, the sound quality was much better and there were less noisy people.

The second part was the whole everlasting album of all times, Dark Side of The Moon:

1. Speak to Me
2. Breathe
3. On the Run
4. Time
5. Breathe (Reprise)
6. The Great Gig in the Sky
7. Money
8. Us and Them
9. Any Colour You Like
10. Brain Damage
11. Eclipse

It also passed so fast, what a shame, and the band gathered together and waved goodbye, but we knew there will be an encore part, so they did come back, Roger said: "You want more?" YEEEESSS, crowd said. "Ok, here we go" Roger said.

So the encore came with songs from The Wall:

1. The Happiest Days of Our Lives

2. Another Brick In The Wall (Part 1

3. Vera

4. Bring The Boys Back Home (what a glorious performance)

5. Comfortably Numb

And it was over. Roger thanked the audience and said he had a great reception from the audience and it was a great finish of the first part of his 2007 tour, and they'll go to South America and goodnight!

I couldn't believe it was over. Perplexed and sad we made our way back to the place we had arranged for the hotel taxi.

P.s. Special thanks to Ian Ritchie, Mani, Ehssan, and Mr. Reza Vaezpour for his great pictures and great favour to share them with me.

Exhortative Essence of Summer

2007-02-16T12:57:00.000+03:30

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)

IMDB

Directed by: Robert Mulligan

My Rate: 5/5

Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is a lawyer having two trouble making kids as his wife is dead some years ago. As he deals with the adult's world, accepting to defend an innocent black guy accused for raping a white farmer's daughter, in the racist atmosphere of 20s, he is observered curiously from his kids point of view as their hero father.

The last time I felt the childhood so close and touching was in the first or second year of the university, when I watched one of Dariush Mehrjui's masterworks, The Pear Tree. It was about an intellectual man in his middle age going back to his home town in his father's now old vacant house to have a peaceful time and location to finish his book. But his past memories of the house and people living there rush into his mind and he sees his lovely childhood, his relatives and his growing up and turning to a political activist and opposition against monarchy. He finds what he really has lost taking all those days for granted: His childhood. That house and all those childish games seemed exactly copied from my own childhood.

And after all these years I found that childhood again watching this great film, To Kill A Mockingbird. Being a 6 years old maniac menace little kid wearing short pants, always ambushing to fulfill the insatiable thirst of curiosity and that magic exhortative essence of summer penetrating in our manners, games and feelings of the world around.

That is great you know, but I'm not the nostalgic type (anymore) to tell things like I'd give all my life to live one day in that age again. Instead I'm thinking about how it is possible to keep that feeling of being a 6 years old boy alive to feel rejuvenated always... That's a question.

Chain of Goodness

2007-02-13T12:11:00.000+03:30

Sometimes some things happen to make you explore one new level of life. I don't think it's just coincidences. When you decide to change, or moult, the season changes, the world around you changes to make you able to do it, but just one should be careful enough to grasp and grab the happenings. And they're not like a great job offer or a winner lottery ticket. They can be a 2 minutes song, a short novel, a delicious food or an inside murmur.

I just recognised this strange harmony of events and happenings talking to my friend M. who was truely obsessed with his everyday struggles and bad people around him. I just told one sentence to him and today he called and told me that single "tiny microscopic thing"* could change his mind and he felt better. He participated in a class of the great Persian computer science professor Caro Lucas today, catching him right when he was speaking about Artificial Intelligence philosophy, and how he felt even much better today after the class. He just grabbed it and he'll see how the chains of events will happen to make him feel greater.

The same thing has happened to me since last 3 months. I read about Psycho Cybernetics, I overcame a paradox about my future life style, I started this blog and writing about everything in my mind, and one of my wishes, which I thought it's very big, but it's not, is simply coming true in the next week! That chain of events is happening to me and I can't believe it. I learned to not get overwhelmed with stress and anger and ruin my days. And yesterday I just discovered a couple of great inspiring blogs that made my day (you can reach them from the links section). And that's in the chain. Everything is in the chain, I just should be careful to follow them.

* Comes from Tim Burton's Corpse Bride!

Countdown: 10

2007-02-11T15:29:00.000+03:30

"...My mother was so obsessed with education and the idea that childhood and adolescence and what everything was about preparing for a life that was gonna start later. and I suddenly realised that life wasn't gonna start later you know it starts and darts and happens in a little time and at any point you can grasp the reigns and start guiding your own destiny, and that was a big revelation to me. I mean it came as quite a shock.", Roger Waters

Countdown: 15

2007-02-06T07:44:00.000+03:30

The Final Cut is probably the hardest to get and the most political Pink Floyd album. That's why most of the fans don't like it as much as the other conceptual albums. It's obvious, when you talk about politics everybody gets offended or as Roger himself says, you can't write rock and roll withought offending people.

This album contains Roger's deepest concerns and worries. You know when you are young, you shout and cry, you protest, you follow philosophies, you praise your intellectual heros, you fall in love, you win, you lose, but in that particular middle age, when you pass your youth, when you are 40, that's when you comprehend your deepest desire.

You see that you were just immitating the philosophers you didn't believe in the bottom of your heart. You find that your loves and goals were not the ones you really looked for, you find that most of the issues you've been struggling and fighting for are not changeable, you see that you can't avoid death, you can't deny God, you can't change the world. You imagine what if you were young again having today's vision.

40 is the age of wisdom and here's the words of wisdom, Roger is driving in his car and he faces another sun in the sky, a nuclear bomb explosion that finally makes minority and majority, powerful and weak, even steven.

Two Suns In The Sunset

In my rear view mirror the sun is going down

Sinking behind bridges in the road

And I think of all the good things

That we have left undone

And I suffer premonitions

Confirm suspicions

Of the holocaust to come.

The wire that holds the cork

That keeps the anger in

Gives way

And suddenly it's day again.

The sun is in the east

Even though the day is done.

Two suns in the sunset

Could be the human race is run.

Like the moment when the brakes lock

And you slide towards the big truck
You stretch the frozen moments with your fear.

And you'll never hear their voices

And you'll never see their faces

You have no recourse to the law anymore.

And as the windshield melts

My tears evaporate

Leaving only charcoal to defend.

Finally I understand the feelings of the few.

Ashes and diamonds

Foe and friend

We were all equal in the end.

Radio: "...and now the weather. Tomorrow will be cloudy with scattered showers spreading from the east ... with an expected high of 4000 degrees Celsius"

Brilliant Beatiful Blue

2007-02-05T08:08:00.000+03:30

You may have felt sometime that somebody is watching you over from behind or from a nearly far distance and you turn back and see that yes, a friend or a stranger is looking at you. It sometimes happens to me. I can't tell when I have this third eye open it's very unconscious. Yesterday afternoon I was walking to the company to do some extra work and I felt the same but this time from high above in the sky, where it was a long time I had not take a look at it!

I just stood and didn't want to miss that brilliant beautiful strange blue in the sky. It was 4:30 pm, and the sky wasn't that sunset red, it was partially cloudy with a magnificent dark blue in a proudly fluffy full of rain cloud. I wish I had a camera to take some photos of the scene through some awkward buildings in that alley. It was a blue that I had just seen in photoshop!

Anyway it feels like the winter is passing and Esfand (March) is coming with it's great unsteady weather. Spring is on its way, just about 44 days to Norooz and the moral of this story is: sometimes look at the sky.

What The Bleep Am I Watching? II

2007-01-31T11:07:00.000+03:30

We had a two days religious vacations (for mourning!). My cousins and I had a lot of time to watch some movies. Most of the movies were mess, I was wondering why should I write about those bad movies in my blog? And I found the reason: The benefit is first, getting rid of them and throw them away from my mind, second, to alarm my readers to not to waste their time on them. Yes I care about your time, I am careful you know.

Here are the movies:

Borat (2006)
IMDB
Directed by: Larry Charles
My Rate: 0/5

I don't know why it has such a high rate in imdb (7.8 now)! Did people really like it? It's the story of a Kazakh TV reporter who is sent to US to make a documentary of life in US for Kazakh TV. All I saw in the movie was that Borat (and Kazakhs) are illiterate and uncultured and that makes jokes about them. It's not about culture shocks it's about insulting people who are not like Americans as showing them villain villagers who sleep with their sisters, who defecate in the street, who fall in love with prostitudes and blah blah. Never waste your time on this film.

The Grudge II (2006)
IMDB
Directed by: Takashi Shimizu
My Rate: 1/5

It's the story of a ghost in a haunted house taking the lives of everyone in her way, no matter if he/she is guilty or did something wrong about the ghost. It's a crap too.

Apocalypto (2006)
IMDB
Directed by: Mel Gibson
My Rate: 2/5

I never liked Mel Gibson films even his most polemic film: The Passions of Christ. In this film he is back again to the most destructive and wild part of human species, his greed. And again with lots of violent and gore images. It's about a small Mayan tribe who are ambushed by some other wild tribe and slaved for some frightening purpose. It's full of action and killing and I don't like watch and enjoy them Mr Gibson, why should I?

La Doublure (The Valet) (2006)
IMDB
Directed by: Francis Veber
My Rate: 3/5

Francois is a valet, living in a small shared apartment with his colleage, he has a girlfriend and is going to propose her to marry, but suddenly he falls into a famous and rich supermodel's love life with a CEO (Daniel Auteuil). He is payed to play the role of the supermodel's lover for some days to feed the paparazzi media.

That was my best movie this week. It's another happy French film about love and relationships. Lovely Paris locations, beautiful Parisiennes, and women's tricks to take over their men make this a quite funny and relaxing movie. I recommend it if you like French movies.

Another Boring Romantic

2007-01-27T23:13:00.000+03:30

50 First Dates (2004)

IMDB

Directed by: Peter Segal

My Rate: 1/5

I hardly get through the romantic movies, this one is no exception because not only it's a romantic movie, but also it's not well written, made and played.

It really doesn't fit to Drew Barrymore to be an innocent girl who has lost her short term memory, as it doesn't fit to Adam Sandler to be a sacriticer lover boy who tries to help her. It's a short 5 minutes story that is told in about 90 minutes, the same jokes or romantic issues are used over and over, and they're not really funny or very much affecting.

The only matter that made me give it a 1/5 was just the last 2 minutes of the movie which was in a different atmosphere of the whole movie in a nice miseenscene and a nice message: Love your partner as it's your first day! That's all of the movie.

Easy Laughter

2007-01-24T08:58:00.000+03:30

Meet The Fockers (2004)

IMDB

Directed by: Jay Roach

My Rate: 3/5

If you want to have a good and easy laughter after a busy and boring day, that's a good choice. It's a collection of jokes on a marriage situation and relationships played by some great actors like Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman. Take it easy and enjoy it.

Illusion

2007-01-23T11:55:00.000+03:30

Primal Fear (1996)

IMDB

Directed by: Gregory Hoblit

My Rate: 3/5

Aron Stampler (Edward Norton) is a young boy accused for the butcher of a famous archibishop in Chicago. Martin Veil (Richard Gere) a well known lawyer takes his advocate role in the court for free, because he thinks he is innocent.

[Spolier]

This is a complete court movie with all the necessary elements. Dirty money, sex scandals, hidden evidence, powerful lawyers, and of course a dual personality psychopathic defendant.

[/Spoiler]

I think this is the first important movie that Edward Norton has appeared in, and he has done it great. So that a couple of years later he takes a similar role of a dual personality man in David Fincher's masterwork, Fight Club. The same situation for Richard Gere, he plays the same role some more years later in one of the great musicals of history, Chicago.

Overall, it's a good film with great acts, but quite predictable for me because I had seen a British film many years ago with quite the same situation and the same ending. I can't remind the name, that's a shame it was a very good film that was shut totally indoors.

Dependent To Our Own Creatures

2007-01-22T10:47:00.000+03:30

Ten (2002)
IMDB
Directed by: Abbas Kiarostami
My Rate: 5/5

It's seems a familiar film to me, because the situations are very familiar for every urban Persian. It's filmed in just one single location: In a car. The driver is called Mania, an educated (maybe an artist) woman, divorced and re-married, she has a son , called Amin, who lives with his own father. She is allowed to pick him up from his father's and have him for one night from time to time. Amin does not accept his step-father.

It's in 10 episodes and in each, Mania has picked some woman up in her car and they struggle about relationship issues and the relationship crisis in today Iran. Mania tries to be free, to be not dependent to anybody, not to obey anybody, that's why she divorced from her autocrat ex-husband.

The spectrum of people is different from and old woman who pilgrims a holy place 3 times a day (a symbol of the old religious people in Iran) to a street girl who thinks that Mania is a man and jumped in her car (a symbol of today lost, dizzy and futureless youth).

The discussions are very interesting. They show how people manage themselves to be dependent to something or somebody. How different the generations are in today Iran and how lost we Persians are. "And finally we are dependent to our own creatures. Dependent to our children, to our religion, to our philosophies"*.

* This quote is taken from a book called Souvashoun (a Persian theatrical piece showing the tragic death of Siavash, a Persian ancient hero whose story is told in Shahnameh) written by Simin Daneshvar.

Be The Change

2007-01-17T09:34:00.001+03:30

This is a quote from Nelson Mandela I grabbed from Anousheh Ansari's spaceblog:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone.And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

The Warm Thrill of Confusion

2007-01-16T08:44:00.000+03:30

That was a dream for 10 years for me: can I attend a Roger Waters concert? Can I feel "The warm thrill of confusion"?

And one day some friend tells, hey, Roger has a concert in neighbourhood, and everything comes in its order, everybody helps to get you there. And the dream is coming true.

Special thanks to one of my dearest: A. for her great help. I know, I'm sure, one day I'll see her face to face and return her great favour in the best way I can, and I mean it.

Now I'm waiting for the last confirmations...

And... It's OK!! Yoohoo!

M. Like Minor, Major And Mother

2007-01-13T11:14:00.000+03:30

M. Like Mother (2006)
IMDB
Directed by: Rasool Mollagholipoor
My Rate: 4/5

Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani), a violin player, is a victim of Sardasaht chemical bombardment by Saddam Hussein during Iran-Iraq war, where she was a volunteer in Red Crescent. The story takes place after the war when she is pregnant from her husband, a diplomat in foreign ministry. The doctors tell them that their baby will have lung and limbs defects because of chemical effects on Sepideh. She wants too keep the baby but her husband convince/force her to do an illegal abortion but after all the baby is born...

It was the first Persian film which caught my attention since Afkhami's The River's End in 2003. Everybody was telling that you'll cry a lot during this movie, and it's true. It contains lots of dramatic scenes showing the love of a mother, which suffers from lung cancer, for her handicapped child, unable to breathe without the help of an oxygen capsule in his knapsack. It's a heaven for Farahani to show her great acting ability as a young and beautiful actress, but that's where the film fails beacuse of excessive amount of such scenes. It doesn't stop showing the handicapped boy living hardly, being a lame and simultanously carrying the capsule, but it takes the camera to the handicapped sanitarium over and over.

You can cut many of such scenes with no damage to the whole plot even make it more affecting. A couple of scenes like the first one showing the boy, buying bottles of milk for his mother and neighbours, and the bathroom scene can completely have the meaning and affect the audience, there's no need to bombard them with sympathic scenes and that overly used sad violin theme.
As a Persian film, I think it's very well made and not like the other Persian films you can see different beautiful camera angles and movements, like in the bathroom scene, or in abortion scene. The acts are also good, especially Farahani's role as mother.

Talking about the subject, I should say it tries to cover lots of subjects which has made it quite jammed. The chemicals used against Iran, mother's majesty in Persian culture, men's hegemony over women in Iran, fall of Saddam, abortion legality, post-war veterans having no future and hope, street girls, handicapped people pushed to the corner,... I liked it to be a minimalistic film.

What the bleep am I watching!?

2007-01-12T15:51:00.000+03:30

What the bleep do we know!? (2004)

IMDB
Directed by: William Arntz, Betsy Chasse and Mark Vicente

Gog's Rate: 0/5

Personally, I find docu-films very interesting. I saw sometime ago a poster promoting the film: "What the bleep do we know!?", and yesterday, I finally got to see it. At the very beginning of the film, I had the feeling that I was watching something very good, but at the end everything goes wrong and the film turns into a complete nonsense.

The film consists on two parts, but I'll only speak about the excerpts of interviews with people who are supposed to be serious scientifics. Only at the very end of the movie, the spectators can read their names and achievements.

The film starts speaking about quantum physics. It's quite an interesting topic, and it's explained in a way that most of the people would understand it. The second part it's about physiology: how does our brain construct proteins, and how do these proteins affect the cells in our body. These two parts have a couple of controversial points, but everything is (in my modest opinion) right. The third and final part, speaks about religion and God, and many other things that do not have any relation with science.

The film tries to convince the spectators, that using only the power in our mind, we can proyect our reality (as in quantum physics, there's nothing until you try to measure it). It tries to establish an analogy between life and quantum physics, that is a complete stupidity.

The positive thinking theory is well-know in psychology (see for example: Daniel Goleman's "Emotional Intellegence" or Maxwell Maltz's "Psycho Cybernetics"), and it's proven to work. What really annoys me is that this basis it's used to tell us about religion, to criticise religion, and to present some american new age sect (School of Enlightenment or similar), whose leader is also interviewed in the film (a blonde woman who seems to be an ET).

I fell in the trap, If you ever see this movie, stop the tape after one hour. It's a friend's advice.

Note: Check this link and you'll get convinced: wikipedia

Crisis? What Crisis?

2007-01-08T19:02:00.000+03:30

If you're not familiar with Christmas, I'd say it's a religious celebration, that brings joy to all christian families, as we commemorate the birth of Jesuschrist, the 25th of December. It's for sure easy to understand, as there're similar celebrations in (almost) every religion.

The fact is that Christmas is not a nice time to me. I really hate that people are pushing the boat out for it. If you read newspapers or watch the tv, you'd hear that the economic situation is getting worse, that the prices are raising, that the mortgages are higher day after day or that the unemployment rate is quite high, but people do not stay at home.

Everything is more expensive in Christmas, but the commercial areas in every city (and I've seen a few cities this Christmas) are incredibly crowded with people and there's enormous traffic jams in the highways. The cash registers are ringing louder than ever, nevertheless. Every year is the same, or maybe it's going worse year after year.

I 'd like to criticise the spirit of "modern" Christmas, in which people are so eager to waste their money, no matter what they're looking for or no matter how hard will be January. After two weeks buying tenths of presents, the finest food, and moving from one city to the other, families are supposed to have not much money to spend.

Now, in January, almost every shop makes the prices lower, or offers discounts: they're having sales, and thousand of bargain-hunters are invading (yes, in January too) shopping centers, commercial stores and shops. I ask myself, where the hell do people earn so much money? crisis? what crisis?

Double Dutch

2007-01-06T07:55:00.000+03:30

Un Chien Andalou (1929)

IMDB

Directed by: Luis Bunuel

My Rate: 3/5

A woman's eye is cut by a razor blade in the very beginning of the film! Then some irrelevant other sequences are shown: A man trying but unable to reach that woman in a room, because of the burden of a dead donkey, two priests and a grand piano around his neck. In another scene that man has an ant colony in his palm. This couple are walking at the beach in the end!

This (17 minutes) short film has no story line. It's just sequences of some grotesque surrealistic scenes which can mean everything or nothing to the audience. Probably the easiest scene is that I mentioned, when the man tries to reach his desire, religion (priests) and tradition (piano) don't let him. But what's the donkey?

Anyway I think I should study about surrealism and of course Salvador Dali who has cooperated with Bunuel in the screenplay, to understand the film. These two have made another film in 1930 called L'Age D'Or (The Golden Age). I have seen it too, but it has a more clear story line than this one and it was slightly more reachable.

A Two Minutes Masterwork

2007-01-02T09:23:00.000+03:30

I sometimes listen to my old mp3s randomly and in most cases I find something great to add to my Bests folder. A few days ago, I found a masterwork: Supertramp's Breakfast In America. It's a great song from the 1979 album with the same title. Supertramp is a Dutch rock band formed in 1969. A rich music and delightful melody composed of saxophone, keyboards and guitar with a joking, easy and free lyrics, and of course great scatting of the singer makes it my these days playlist top. It has quite the same feeling when you see the movie Amelie Poulin or listen to its soundtrack. Some sense of freedom, relaxation and delight.

There are other great songs of them like Logical Song, School and Bloody Well Right which I love.

Here's the lyrics to the Logical Song, you know where to find the music!

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical,
And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily,
Joyfully, playfully watching me.

But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible,
Logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
Clinical, intellectual, cynical.

There are times when all the worlds asleep,
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man,
Wont you please, please tell me what we've learned
I know it sounds absurd
But please tell me who I am.

Now watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical,
Liberal, fanatical, criminal.
Wont you sign up your name, we'd like to feel you're
Acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable!

Bad Movies

2007-01-02T04:23:00.000+03:30

Attack of Killer Tomatoes (1978)
IMDB
Gog's Rate: 3/5

I really love these films done during the 70s and the 80s with almost no money and almost no ideas. I have just seen "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" (John de Bello, 1978), a film in which tomatoes are growing and spreading around the US.

While I was watching the film, I thought it was not as good as some genre-classics, like 'Revenge of the Nerds', 'Airplane' or many university campus, zombie or horror films, but the truth is that, by the end of the movie, I (partially) changed my mind. The jokes are terrible, but the idea used to finish the film is great.

The point is that there's some similarities between this film and "Mars Attacks". I just mention this after Monkey's article: "Remember, Remember, the 5th of December". Everything is influenced, inspired or directly taken from somebody or somewhere else. Maybe you don't know, but many actual filmmakers are great lovers of low-budget movies (we call z-series in spanish). I'm sure Tim Burton or John Waters are great fans.

Anyway, old films like that with the tomatoes, have over me some strange sense of attraction that modern films don't. It's only me, or does anybody else feel attracted by low-budget movies?

For the consideration of all those people who think like me, please check out: http://www.badmovies.org/ and visit to B-Movie Reviews.

I've Always Been Thirsty!

2006-12-30T11:11:00.000+03:30

Big Fish (2003)

IMDB

My Rate: 5/5

Directed by: Tim Burton

Blend a little truth with lots of imagination and don't forget the love. This film is about that quote from Goethe in Faust intro.

It's the feeling of sitting beside an old timer who has seen the whole world and he starts to tell you his stories of the places he has visited the people he has dealt with and all of his experiences and you say wow how a man can know all of this about life?

Tim Burton as always has used his best fantasies and finest and funniest details to make you astound and absorbed to his film. I can't remind a second of being far from the movie, I just got stuck before my computer till the end with the film's marvelous fantasy and its narrative way. It's the story of a man who has always been to catch a big fish in the nearby river. That's not always that big fish, it's about all big fishes a man can get in his life, a big fish wife, being a hero from school to the frontline in the war, and back again in ordinary life, determined to overcome anything that doesn't let him feel good about life, there should be nothing annoying in his life. Then this man has a son and tells his life stories to him until he grows up and doubts in his father's fantastic stories.

Read A Book Instead

2006-12-28T08:48:00.000+03:30

I'm just considering how much time do I waste on everyday habbits. One of them is TV. I regularly don't watch TV. But I never lose a hot national football match or Olympics games or FIFA World Cup matches. There's a nightly comic series and an artistic film each weekend which is always censored. So I'm lying. I do watch TV. I waste my time watching a football match for 2 hours fed by commercials, a nonsensce excitement and maybe grief after the match, I waste my time to watch that comic series in beg for a laughter in 60 minutes. I waste my time watching a censored film God damn it!

And all for what?

So here's my rule, my plan: Never Watch TV! Whatever it's showing, how hot the match is or how important the news (lies) are, how rare the late night weekend film is. Instead, if I feel very tempted to watch it, ok I'll give it my finger and I'll take a book and start to read. I'll read a book and I won't waste that 2 hours anymore. That's it. That's better now.

How Many Do We Need?

2006-12-24T20:55:00.000+03:30

This is a part of a transcript of Roger's Amused To Death premiere in Toronto, 27 August 1992, fourteen years ago, right after the first Persian Gulf war, when it was bomb and blood in Bosnia. I found it among the old documents I think it comes from the website: www.ingsoc.com.

Jim Ladd, the host of the show, asks Roger the big question I like to have it here for a review:

Jim Ladd: In this particular work as in all of your work, you are adressing these issues. There was a time that you and I both lived through, I think everybody in this room lived through, called the 60's when there was a movement where we thought we were going to go out and change the world for a better place. Has there just been too much information come at us now? Is it possible to rally people again? How shocking does it have to be? How many people do we have to see rolled over by the tanks? How many great albums like Amused to Death before people will say, 'That's it. I draw the line here. We're going to do something.'

Roger Waters: Well, it's more complicated than that. The good thing about television, which is what this album is about, is that it is a two-edged sword. And it can cut through a whole bunch of bullshit. And some of it does. That's why it interests me so much. Is that it either is the prime tool of the market forces, but equally it can the prime tool for us to look at ourselves and to educate future generations. And for us to start thinking about what the nature of human life really is. And what we want it to be. And it does that. It does both those things. And it's doing it really fast. That's the other thing that interests me is that history appears anyway to be speeding up. Events follow one upon the other really quickly now. It doesn't take you like five days to get from Boston to New York or from London to Manchester like it used to when you had to get on a horse and ride.

Carter Allen: As you were saying, television is a double edged sword from the fact that for example that in the Persian Gulf we kinda did witness a tv show as presented by our government. We saw only what they wanted us to see. Not like the Vietnam war where we saw people coming back in body bags. Do you remember seeing blood and guts in the Persian war? You didnt' see it.

Red Beard: Well, hang on. The Vietnam war was a ground war and I think that is the very important distinction between what happened...what we saw on television this time around. And we touched on it earlier, it wasn't a real person being killed with a smart bomb it was a blip on a screen, like a video game.

When There's Blood In The Street, Buy Property

2006-12-24T12:41:00.000+03:30

Inside Man (2006)
IMDB
My Rate: 3/5
Directed by: Spike Lee

Keith Fraizer (Denzel Washington) is a police officer of NYPD, responsible for a bank robbery and hostage situation in Manhattan. The robbers' head wants a bus to the airport and a jet, otherwise he'll kill the hostages one by one.

As mentioned in the film by Keith Fraizer, it's like the Dog Day Afternoon, so what's the catch? We all have seen Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon. So there must be a trick.

That's all of it: 2 moral quote for adults, one this posts's title, another about violent video games the children play today, a neat bank robbery plan, some famous actors and an almost clean language make Inside Man a quite acceptable pop corn movie. But I had seen much better tricks and acts in Ocean's Eleven.

Camera Buff

2006-12-23T18:32:00.000+03:30

Amator (1979)
IMDB
My Rate: 4/5
Directed by: Krzysztof Kieslowski

Who told TV is shit?! ;) It's good for a couple of hours in a week. Let's be positive!

Filip Moscz, a family guy and a low rank clerk in communist Poland buys a Russian mechanical portable camera to record the birth and growth of his first child. He gradually finds a lot of interest in himself about recording the life and making films about it. His boss asks him to film a business event in his company. This film introduces him to a film festival, and that spreads a new horizon of life before him. His "artist life" begins: new people with artistic figures, girls, fame, money, reputation (all not in the hollywood style!), smoking, losing his wife because of his negligence.

[spoiler]
In his social life, his documentary style makes his boss, the supporter of his film club, nervous and that leads to firing Filip's friend responsible for the cultural issues of the company. Filip gets ruined and destroys his latest work which was to be sent to TV for screening.

The last scene is a master work. He turns the camera back to himself, in a close-up, shocked and cautious, starts to review what had happened since the birth of his daughter.
[/spoiler]

This is the kind of films with a simple story and very familiar un-judgeable situations. You have your wife and child in one side, and you have a brilliant new creative idea that can make your life very much more joyful. What if your wife doesn't give a shit about that idea? What if the idea makes everything go to the dogs? What if it's not a creation but a momentary temptation? How can you distinguish these two?

They are not distinguishable, I'm afraid. Art is a temptation to create. Once you find that you can create something, you can do it or kill the idea and: "Go to the farms right now. Hoe the land, and keep your mind in a close circle!"

That's it. Pay the price. If you want to be the artist type pay the price for it Mr Moscz and "see how deep down the rabbit hole goes".

Happy Yalda

2006-12-21T08:29:00.000+03:30

It's Yalda Night tonight.
A surprising fact that I learned about it a couple of years ago was that Yalda, originally being a Mithraist Persian ceremony which also celebrated in Mithraist Roman empire, was adapted to become Jesus Christs's birthday when the Roman empire accepted christianity. Romans accepted the day, with a tolerance of 4 or 5 days because of intercalary, with it's symbol, the famous christmas tree.

Centuries later Persians lost most of their ceremonies and symbols after Islam's hegemony. But they also kept some of their ceremonies, symbols and heros, adapting their old beliefs with the new religion symbols just as the Romans did.

That's just where I'm going to have a doubt on religious and ancient beliefs, customs or traditions; That none of them seems very original. People either naturally have adapted their national customs to their religions, and vise versa or being forced to do so during some foreign country's dominance; Both of the cases happened a lot in the history of the middle east, especially in my country.

So where have all those original ideas gone? How can you trust the stuff you're fed by the society as beliefs and customs and traditions? I'm not against traditions as far as they keep people good for themselves and others, but when it comes to raising wars for traditions and beliefs I become absolutely against them. I am Muslim and your Christian, This is our promised land and that's yours, We do things so, and you don't, We believe in God and you don't. Fanaticism kills everything. It kills the beliefs that have made them too, soon or later.

You've heard the story of the Easter Island?

That's enough. Let's enjoy our Yalda and our Christmas for now! :)

Fuel, Fire, My Desire

2006-12-17T14:06:00.002+03:30

A perfect image that a man can imagine for his appearance, can involve a fit and tall body, stylish haircut, intent face probably having a footprint of an old scar, penetrating looks, strong, warm and deep voice, dark fashionable clothes, and the whole masculine charismatic issues that can affect everybody and make respect without any need to self expression.

Having a great talent in music and all the mentioned characteristics plus a pure natural juvenility has made James Hetfield a very affecting celebrity.

James Hetfield, I think, is the successful type person. He has used his best talents and characteristics to make it to the top for twenty years. Strong self confidence has made him like an idol on stage who can laugh satanically, scream and shout to his audience with a strong language but make them completely satisfied letting their all rage to pour out.

This self esteem has made James and his band to change their musical style during these 20 years. Just when they are one of the top hard rock and heavy metal bands, they perform bluesy music. When they become top again as a rock band, they experience a symphonic rock concert with Michael Kamen. In their most famous years as an influencing rock band, they give a full album of other bands cover songs!

And this reminds me of the book, "Who moved my cheese?". They are always looking for their new piece of cheese.

Reiki Experience

2006-12-17T09:48:00.000+03:30

Reiki is a Japanese word meaning the soul energy. It's a method to absorb, guide or transfer what is called the universal engery to certain paths of the human body or certain environmental circumstances. There is no scientific or medical evidence for the existence of such energy or the effects it can have on an organic or physical environment or a spirtual situation. Some say it's just the power of suggestion or a placebo effect. Yes that's what I'm going to talk about. Anything it is, even if it is skeptically a placebo, it makes you feel good.

One of my friends is a Reikist, he has had many such mental and spiritual exercises since I know him from the teenage. We had a couple of energy guidance sessions last week, each for fifteen minutes long. Both of them were long distance sessions of course.

In the first session he asked me to sit down on the ground keeping my hands on my knees facing upward. I should focus on my body in a silent room. What I felt during the 15 minutes was a periodic phases of tingles pouring to my body from the head. The point was that the more I concentrated on my limbs, the more tingles I felt. The most feeling was when I focused on my brain himself! But my hands were warm during the whole 15 minutes.

In the second session I lied down in a dark room listening to Chopin with a headphone. This time those phases were very rare. most of the time I felt nothing, except one of those brian focused tingles. I complained about it to my friend but he said that I had a strong reception and I trust him very much.

And how I felt good after both sessions. I'll try more sessions with him and it's good as long as it makes me feel good.

Psycho Cybernetics

2006-12-16T08:17:00.000+03:30

Dr Maxwell Maltz (1899-1975) was a plastic surgeon. What brought him into psychology was the point that he observed most of his patients' lives change dramatically with a simple surgery to resize their noses or ears or removing a scar from their faces. Was it really their new face that led those patients' lives into a better and successful ones? No. It wasn't their new face actually but their new "self image" they created after the surgury.

I'm just reading this great book and I read somewhere it was the best seller at the time, and I should say that it's not an old fashioned book at all. Dr. Maltz tries to express and develop the idea that human brain acts like a servo-mechanism, it is based on the simple rules you can apply for such mechanisms. But of course the whole system is much more larger than that. Ok, now what? We have this great machine within ourselves. The most powerful and complicated mechanism in the whole world. But why most of us are "the failure type"? Because every mechanism is designed for a goal. If you do not set a proper goal or if you set a bad goal for the system, simply the result is a failure. This is the very essence of this book. To provide the reader the way to create a "true" and successful type "self-image, and that's what many people really lack but don't know anything about it. The idea seems very obvious, and you can say well, I know the whole about it, but if you read it you can see that no, you don't know the whole about it!

The Man I Adore

2006-12-14T11:21:00.000+03:30

There are always people who inspire you or affect you strongly in some way. For me, Roger Waters has been much more than this.

The first time I started to know him, I was 19, knowing nothing about music, studying in our cold weary room, in the dormitory, with walls full of the pictures of "the dead" Persian poets and authors, me and my roommate used to cut or copy from magazines or books and pasted them on the wall. We had always something playing in my roommate's tape recorder, most of the time it was some Persian nostalgic sad pop song my roommate liked a lot. But suddenly out of nowhere there was a different tape in the tape recorder, that sounded extremely different. It was a very hysteric song that without knowing any English you could imagine that it's taking place in a court, there's a trial and somebody is being condemned. Wow, how can a song provide you such an image without understanding the lyric?

It was Trial, from The Wall Live In Berlin, I knew later. I had a chance that one of my friends, Ehssan, already knew the band. "It's Pink Floyd", he said. "They're great! The one with ugly voice is called Waters, the one who has the nice voice is Gilmour!", he continued, and he gave me the tapes of "The Division Bell", "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" and "Animals" respectively. That was the start.

I became a mad collector of their works, and the more I read Roger's lyrics and interviews, the deeper I penetrated to his songs. I mostly was affected by Animals (the one that Roger doesn't like a lot himslef). The ruthless way he categorised people with that strong raging music and singing. That was wonderful. From the other side, the way he complained his emptiness in "Nobody Home", always made me think about the way I was going to choose to live. In a word, he was my moral teacher, my big brother that was always in my head. The one who taught me many things. The one who made me have good vision and have great respect to him.
Thank you a lot Roger!

And that's really my passion: To spend an afternoon with him, talking, drinking, and playing music! I did so a couple of times in my dreams, but that was just a dream.

Whew! I feel better now that I took my time to say a simple thank you to him. I really owed it to him.

Quotes From Faust

2006-12-14T08:17:00.000+03:30

I read Faust last summer. As everybody says only the first part of the book, until Faust meets Helene, is understandable for someone who doesn't have a coverage on Roman and Greek mythology. Anyway it's a great book. Like any other I scribbled some quotes of it that I liked, and since I don't want to lose it, I'll write them here in the blog.

What comes is a translation of a translation:

From the opening of the book:

"Blend a little truth with much imagination,

Paint the clouds with just one ray of sunlight,

Then be sure that you'll overcome all problems,

Your audience get impressed and delighted,

All they need is a mirror not a painting,

Let them come every night and watch themselves in it,

And do not forget the love,

That's only with love that they keep cheering,

And we keep making money,

Make a big fire for the youth to gather around,

To keep it alive, always,

And to take blaze."

God talking to Devil:

"As long as he lives on earth you are allowed to tempt him, Anyone who walks, can get lost!"

"Human gets lazy most of the time, he likes inertia, and I like someone active and agitative beside him, although be able to create, someone like Devil"

Down to earth, hopeless but arrogant Faust talks to himself:

"I see that we cannot understand anything,

That's what makes me nervous,

No longer obsession,

No longer doubt,

No more fear of the devil,

Nor hell,

That's why I have nothing joyful in life."

Mephistopheles interrupts Faust's solitude:

"Evils and ghosts have a rule,

They must get out just from the door,

They've got in,

We are empowered by ourselves at first,

But we are enforced by the other, after that."

Mephistopheles:

"There exists none of the four elements in this animal!"

Mephistopheles gives a sarcastic solution for Faust's skepticism:

"That's the way which needs no money, no medical science, no magic. Go to the farms right now. Hoe the land, and keep your mind in a close circle. Be happy with a simple food, live like an animal among other animals, and do not take it a low job to manure the farm by your own hands, and believe me that's the best way to become 80 years younger!"

Mephistopheles to the Faust's girlfriend and her mother:

"Nice idea! The one who overcomes his ego, will be victorious certainly. The church has a good stomach, it has swallowed whole countries and never has got sick. Dear ladies, the illegitimate money can only be digested by the church"

Mephistopheles to Faust:

"Nature is bound to the sin, and intelligence with the devil. I cansee the doubt as an illegitimate and ugly son between them"

Mephistopheles to Faust:

"who can have either a foolish or brilliant idea that nobody ever had before? Think! The Devil is old. You should get old to know him"

Faust:

"Finally we are dependent to our own creatures."

Who told this?

"You are, before you have the right to be."

The Distress:

"The one I cover under my wings,

Has no tendency to the world,

There's no sunrise or sunset,

In his eyes covered by an eternal mist,

The darkness lingers in him.

The treasures he longs for them, in vain,

He can get with a glimpse of an eye.

Fortune, misfortune,

Everything is annoying for him.

He'll die of hunger as he is rich.

Joy or Sorrow,

He postpones it to tomorrow.

He always thinks about tomorrow."

The Lion On The Flag

2006-12-13T12:32:00.000+03:30

There's a Persian proverb saying:

We are all lions, but lions on the flag

That's the wind who makes us attack

Yes it was the wind of Anousheh who made us feel better to be a Persian. To read and think about success. To sleep and wake up with that smile Anousheh suggested. But where is all that joy, honour, courage and energy I felt those days? It seems as the wind stopped blowing, I stopped running.

The Philosopher's Gift

2006-12-13T12:04:00.000+03:30

I had a visit to the first big book fair in our small town. A friend of mine, Hossein, is a philosopher. He has the masters in western philosophy, and he has chosen this corner to live and kill the time. We have always argues and I always encourage him to continue his study abroad. I'll persuade him one day I know.

Anyway, he gifted me a book last night, Marcus Aurelius Meditations. Aurelius was the Roman emperor and philosopher (the one who died or was killed by his son in the beginning of Gladiator movie). This book is about his own "moral" issues he had experienced and gained during his life. The point of it is that, he writes about morality in his most powerful time and situation as the emperor. That's in contrast with Nietzsche's theory who says moarlity is an artifact of the weak!
I've just read the first of 12 chapters.

Remember, Remember, The 5th of November

2006-12-13T10:56:00.000+03:30

V For Vendetta
IMDB
My Rate: 4/5

"I think all the boundaries of music have been discovered, from classical music to complete noise music. All you need to do is making genuine hybrids. That's all about progressive music, a band like King Crimson is influenced by classical avant-garde music as by Beatles...", Steven Wilson said in an interview.

V For Vendetta is a hybrid. It's influenced by a classic story like Jesus sacrificing for the sins of human , or a hero saving people like Zorro, as by a modern story like Fincher's Fight Club. It's also highly influenced by 1984. But it's not all. There are also some over context points in the film:

- John Hurt, the chancellor in this film, plays the extreme opposite role he did in 1984. The chancellor seems the B.B. of 1984, now is played by the worker who was tortured to death to recover his faith to B.B. and the revolution!

- Hugo Weaving, the V himself, is the one who changes human fate, by sacrificing himself. He plays the extreme opposite role he did in The Matrix series as Agent Smith, the vicious character.

- Natalie Portman, Evey, they shave her head as a torture, and the result is an activist who is damn alike Sinead O'Connor! She's an Irish activist, you know.

- In Fight Club, Tyler Durden blowed up the sky scrappers, a totem of modernity, in this film V blows up the parliament and every "old" symbols.

- More to add?

- Yes there's more. the challenges of good ol' US of A are the future's crises. They are: Homosexualism, Islam, and Terrorism!

- I can't recall any black or coloured or eastern character in this movie, of course it may has a reason, the ruling government is racist, maybe they have done some racial genocide.

Requiem For The Music

2006-12-13T09:47:00.000+03:30

The Sound of Muzak > In Absentia > Porcupine Tree

Hear the sound of music
Drifting in the aisles
Elevator prozac
Stretching on for miles

The music of the future
Will not entertain
It's only meant to repress
And neutralise your brain

Soul gets squeezed out
Edges get blunt
Demographic
Gives what you want

Now the sound of music
Comes in silver pills
Engineered to suit you
Building cheaper thrills

The music of rebellion
Makes you wanna rage
But it's made by millionaires
Who are nearly twice your age

One of the wonders of the world is going down
It's going down I know
It's one of the blunders of the world that no-one cares
No-one cares enough

Degradation

2006-12-13T08:35:00.000+03:30

Last night one of those 6 channels of shit, was showing what wasn't shit at all. It was Chaplin's fire fighters film.
I just wondered, we have not such people in 21st century anymore. People like Chaplin, John Lennon, Gandhi, Einstein, ... people who made great influences to the whole world. People who changed the world, who changed the way people think or do things. After the 80's, after the death of such people, everything got worse and worse till now. It feels like we are taking a degradation process. We seem civilised in many aspects, we use modern tools, but the problem is that we "do not think" civilised.
And I recall the future Spielberg showed in his "AI". The future with beautiful delicate humans who control the world as they imagine actions.
Just a mind flight! ;)