officially not helping the situation since 1985

It’s discouraging not having anything to write here.  I mean… I am writing now, I guess, though I’ve come to believe that writing about not being able to write is one of the most fraudulent (and annoying) exercises in the blogsphere, besides maybe plagiarism.  So this doesn’t count. No matter the letters, the words, or the irony…

You did not read this. I did not post it. This has_all_been_an illusion.

My grandfather never talked much about World War II. Ever so often he would mention something about it if the topic arose, but it was never anything that he dwelt upon or sought others to dwell upon. There was one thing though that he used to say often, usually whenever we found ourselves in a futile hustle to get somewhere… ‘You know what we used to do in the army?’ he’d say. ‘Hurry up and wait. For food or battle, it was always the same. We’d hurry. Only to find ourselves waiting.’

There is alot of waiting in The Thin Red Line. It’s an unconventional war film, and anyone primarily seeking action and fighting and yelling and blood would do better to look elsewhere. Don’t be mistaken though, the film does have action (soldiers fight and yell and bleed), but the massive amount of waiting time between the sequences of war will irritate most filmgoers seeking the genre’s usual madness, mayhem, and murder à la carte!

The Thin Red Line is not a presentation of war, it is a film about war. It’s about warriors and their lovers and their brothers and their friends. It’s about the ugliness and glory of death, and the ugliness and glory of life. Of hate and love and dirt and water. It is more real than an ‘realistic’ war film will ever be able to be. The Thin Red Line takes poetic license and injects the traditional war film with the grandeur coupling of Terrence Malick’s auteurist stream-of-thought voiceovers and John Toll’s musical cinematography. The film ebbs and flows between why nots and whys, questioning the source of evil and good, distress and peace…

‘This great evil. Where does it come from? How’d it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who’s doin’ this? Who’s killin’ us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin’ us with the sight of what we might’ve known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed to this night?’ – Private Witt

The Thin Red Line actively and verbally grapples with questions that all ‘realistic’ war films can only mention sporadically (if directly at all). Saving Private Ryan (a film of the same year, but of a completely different nature) is a film geared, above all things, at being realistic. And it is very realistic. It presents a particular war as it was and then calls it a day, and it does this fairly well.

The Thin Red Line is a different genre of war film entirely though, and one more true to the core principles of war, more true to the great questions that war forces us to ask.  The structure of the film is found primarily in the fleshing out and development of its themes, themes true of World War II and any war this side of our creation. The film is poetry. It asks, and doesn’t state. It ponders, and doesn’t dismiss. It waits when it is time to wait, taking that time to show the real war of our lives: the fights and the yellings and the bleedings of the endless battle that is our questioning consciousness…

‘We were a family. How’d it break up and come apart, so that now we’re turned against each other? Each standing in the other’s light. How’d we lose that good that was given us? Let it slip away. Scattered it, careless. What’s keepin’ us from reaching out, touching the glory?’ – Private Witt

:: A+

part 1:

part 2:

theoreo.org is going out of commission for a week. Yours truly can’t afford to pay the measly ten bucks to renew his domain name for a year (economy has gone to hell, has it not?), and week long extensions are apparently not possible on bluehost.com’s system (wah.).

I’m not sure why I’m posting this because the only people who will get it will be those who use an RSS reader of some sort and therefore don’t even need to visit the site anyway. But even more, those who DO visit… well… it’s likely you won’t get this on time and your perplex will not be remotely waned.

So if there is a purpose to posting this, it is that I will not need to explain my absence when I return, and I can just get on with things, even if the getting on was slow at the get off. (That made sense in my head.)

sic transit gloria,
under the mercy,
yours truly,
the oreo,
raymond

(Now that’s one sick exit, if I do say so myself. Might be using that again, on occasion at least…)

My new obsession: Noah and the Whale. A band.

They’re British.

I’ve been listening to their debut album ‘Peaceful The World Lays Me Down’ on repeat for a little over a week now and have yet to tire of it. They’re folky… uplifting and epic in a cozy way. I’m partial to ‘Give A Little Love’, which has lyrics I could have sworn I was writing as I heard them… a déjà vu, of sorts… of the heart and soul.

They’re British.

Also of somewhat interesting note (a note that probably only a select few of human beings on the planet care enough about to note… I alone, more likely), the band’s name comes from the meshing of the title of the movie The Squid and the Whale (which I thought was great) and its director’s name, Noah Baumbach.

They’re British.

I’m kind of in love with them.

They’re British.

I want to go to one of their concerts. Not just because they’d be incredible live, but because anyone with this sort of taste has to be cool (myself veritably) and there will be a room full of these Cools thumping, bumping, and wiggling about to some damn fine music. They have a new album coming out on August 31. I like there music alot. And not just because they’re British. That’s the cherry—a shiny, red, juicy cherry.

They’re British.

I think it’s rather nefarious to wish death upon anyone, much less rejoice after the fact. Between work and Facebook, I (and you also, no doubt) have been witness to some very audible gasps, silent moments of shock, and the occasional sarcastic and emotionless ‘Thank God!’ over today’s (and the rest of the month’s) news: Michael Jackson, “King of Pop”, died. By the time you read this it won’t be new news to you and you’ll already have your own opinion figured and calculated about the whole thing. You’ll have either spent hours in front of the television, or hours avoiding the television. You may even make a valiant (but futile) attempt to disassociate yourself intellectually and emotionally from the charade altogether because “there are more important things” or “he was a very, very bad man… I want nothing to do with him.” But you won’t be able to.

Michael Jackson was an integral part in the lives of many people, and it is people we congregate with mind you, not vapid uninfluencable human pods that find it easy to erase the joys of their past because the present finds itself so lacking. The positive influence that his music had on the millions and millions has undoubtedly influenced you positively in one way or another, whether you have the option of knowing it or not.

Presently, the ostensible truth of Michael Jackson’s “very, very bad man” actions make listening to his music a less gleeful fare than they may otherwise have been had no transgressions taken place. Which is fair. This is how we have been made. Our minds, souls, and bodies have been temporarily fused together into a single unit of existence, a unit of existence made to be and to create, and that is how we are (and should be) perceived. So it is no mistake that when people listen to his music they struggle to get over what became of the human unit that was Michael Jackson: a child molester concerned more with his own gratification than the lifelong well being of another human… of their mind, of their body, and their soul. It is no mistake to be relieved that it won’t happen with him again.

But what is a mistake is the proposition that he doesn’t deserve any compassion whatsoever… that he’s ‘one of those people’ that aren’t worthy of being saved from themselves… aren’t worth the time, energy, or thought, and would be better off dead. It is a mistake to egregiously weigh the transgressions of a person on a scale we’ve wrenched into being heavily in our own favor… It is a mistake to be flippantly (or worse, emphatically) happy in their death. It is a mistake to take gratification in condemnation.

‘Even while we kill and punish we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves—to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not.’ — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

So it is with that that I hope the awful pleasure or joy any of you might take in the death of a person is diminished and replaced with the simple, loving recognition of their humanity. For every human is just that: human: mind, body, and soul. And even the murkiest of the lot deserve the clearest of compassion, a compassion so strong that the death of one among billions actually means something, something infinitely more holy than our little resentful, sarcastic ‘Thank God!’ quips could ever fathom to compare.

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra.

Fantastic student short film!

An Imaginary Friend

Trouble the Water
Man on Wire
Waltz With Bashir

Three documentaries, three completely different formats, all released in 2008…

I highly recommend all of these films. Each one has it’s own documentary format: Trouble the Water is pretty straight forward, Man on Wire is a reenactment, and Waltz with Bashir is animated. The more I think about it, the more I want to say that Waltz with Bashir is the best animated movie from last year, even when including the magnificent Wall-E. Waltz with Bashir is my personal favorite of these three documentaries.

I can’t see very many people being disappointed by any of them…

Trouble the Water :: A

Man on Wire :: B+

Waltz with Bashir :: A

Keanu Reeves is going to take the title role (or roles, if I must) in a new adaption of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I’m not sure how this makes any sense what.so.ever. The very actor in Hollywood known for his inability to differentiate his character’s persona from one movie to another is somehow being asked to create two different personas in one character, in one movie? I just don’t get it. He really is the last person I would ever have considered for such a role, which is why I’m bringing it up. I’m befuddled. My brain has an itch, and the only scratcher available is writing about it.

P.S. To set the record straight, I’m not a Keanu-hater. I like him in The Matrix and Thumbsucker, and I also really like one of his least-liked movies, The Lake House. His stilted way of performing is not always a hindrance, but I see it hindering much in Jekyll and Hyde…

P.P.S. This project is not the same as the Jekyll and Hyde project slated for Guillermo del Toro in the next decade or so… del Toro knows better. And I think we all know which adaption has the advantage…

P.P.P.S. ‘P.S.’ stands for ‘post-script’, in case you’ve wondered all your life like I had until this morning, May 9, 2009. Behind I might be, but fervently learning more nevertheless!

‘The Confession’

Interesting article at Screen Savour on Hitchcock’s Psycho.  An article longer than your arm about ‘neuroenhancing’ drugs at The New Yorker.  Brett McCracken’s ‘The Rise of the Ironic Class‘.   Repentance, not perfection, is the constant state of the Christian life.  Sigur Ros actually is the expression of the right hemisphere of God’s brain.

:: symconlyd [sim - kuhn - lahyd]  abbr. ’stuff-you-must-check-out-now-lest-you-die’ ::

I never regularly watched Sex and the City when it was on television. I saw three episodes, none of which I was very enthusiastic about, so I didn’t think much about seeing the movie. Film critic Mark Kermode of the UK gave it a heavily-inked stamp of ’stupid’, and we’re usually on the same page, so I was then even more inclined not to take the time to watch it. It’s also two hours and twenty-five minutes long, which is longer than most action-packed blockbusters. But… my curiosity got the better of me, and since recording stuff on DVR isn’t that much of a hassle (nor is fast-forwarding), I ended up watching it last night. And I’m very glad I did.

It’s not all of what one might think it would be. Yes, there is sex, and the awfully romantic enveloping city of New York, and lots and lots of designer clothes… but there is more than that. There are relationships, believe it or not, relationships clearly worn in over the years, fractured and mended, fractured and mended, all the while canopied by what the film adopts as it’s theme: love, ‘a label that never goes out of fashion’. Which is almost corny beyond imagination, but in the context of the film and in the universal context of life… it’s true. Love never goes out of fashion, and anyone who attests that love is an unworthy adventure or a fickle bitch, has lost perspective. Love is worth it. ‘Even worth…’ you ask. Yes, even worth that.

*spoilers*

In the film, Miranda, one of the four ladies, is cheated on by her husband Steve. He confesses what he has done to her directly and she leaves him immediately, refusing to forgive him. Shortly thereafter Carrie, the main lady of the four, is stood up by her fiance on her long awaited, heavily anticipated, outlandishly planned wedding day. Six months later Miranda confesses to Carrie that on the night before her wedding, Miranda had spouted (in a bout of frustration over her own failed marriage) to Carrie’s already cold-footed fiance that they would be ‘crazy to get married’ cause ‘marriage ruins everything’.

This, obviously, angers Carrie. Her friend indirectly encouraged her fiance not to show up on the wedding day. After a few days Miranda tracks Carrie down and implores her to forgive her, at which point Carrie asks Miranda how she expects others to forgive her after three days when she (Miranda) can’t even forgive her begging and clearly remorseful husband six months after he admitted cheating on her.

‘But it’s not the same thing,’ Miranda says.

‘It’s forgiveness,’ replies Carrie.

Which, maybe only for personal reasons if nothing else, is one of the more interesting insights I’ve encountered in a while. It’s nothing new, but the suggestion is still profound. Forgiveness, however grave the crime, or however small and ‘inconsequential’ the betrayal, is forgiveness through and through. It’s measure is unmeasurable.

‘Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.’ – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

From a psychological point of view, forgiving someone for one thing may be more difficult than forgiving them for something else, but when it comes down to it… if you forgive for a stolen dollar or forgive for marital unfaithfulness, the forgiveness is neither more nor less potent in either circumstance. It’s forgiveness.

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?’
Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven.’ — Matthew 18:21-22

It’s not about the sin. And it’s not about how many times you forgive it. It’s about the spiritually sound heart needed to forgive. Forgiveness has nothing to do with whether or not what the other person did to you was kind of a bad thing, a really bad thing, or a vicious and vile thing, but everything to do with the realization that one’s self, just like everyone else’s self, is on its way to hell in a hand basket with nothing but forgiveness to jump up, out and onto.

C.S. Lewis:

I admit that this means loving people who have nothing lovable about them. But then, has oneself anything lovable about it? You love it simply because it is yourself. God intends us to love all selves in the same way and for the same reason: but He has given us the sum already worked out in our case to show us how it works. We have then to go on and apply the rule to all the other selves. Perhaps it makes it easier if we remember that that is how He loves us. Not for any nice, attractive qualities we think we have, but just because we are the things called selves. For really there is nothing else in use to love: creatures like us who actually find hatred such a pleasure that to give it up is like giving up beer or tobacco… – Mere Christianity

This obviously doesn’t mean we forgive an ax-murderer for ax-murdering a child by giving him an ax and letting him spend a weekend with another child. Silliness. That’s not forgiveness, but foolishness. You can forgive and still retain standard circumstantial consequences. A murderer can be forgiven, but cannot, as we have been created, be easily trusted thereafter. Trust takes time. Forgiveness is not a stupid thing to do, but a smart one; it is the acknowledgment that the other person has fallen down and we really, really want them to get back up and follow a better path. Forgiveness, when given, is an instant reckoning, and the reckoning gives breath and life to a person finding it hard to breath… just like you, me… everyone. It’s a reckoning we should put at the top of our lists, before hate and before repulsion, and before we make the mistake of thinking any person a ‘mere mortal’.  I’m not saying it’s easy and I’m not saying I’m good at it, I’m just laying it out as it should be…

In the end, Miranda went back to her husband. Did she have to? No. But did she at least have to forgive? Yes. Especially if she expected it from others.

We all have people we need to forgive. I can think of a few people I need to forgive right now. Though chances are we have more people we need to ask forgiveness of than those who need it from us.

Sex and the City is a fundamentally sound movie. Its simple embrace of ‘never unfashionable’ love, and the suggestion that forgiveness is just that… it’s forgiveness (’no matter how small’, as Dr. Suess might say), had me won over by the end.

:: B