I've Always Been Thirsty!

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

Psycho Cybernetics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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! ;)