BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
MAGNOLIA --Paul Thomas Anderson*, writer, director.
I saw this 3 hour film tonight at home. One of the best. Enters my top fifty if I ever make a list. It's complex and original. And never fails to be interesting. Several intertwined stories dealing with forgiveness, happiness, attempting to erase the indelible past, confession, coincidence, deus ex machina, the weakness of the strong, the strength of the weak, choices made in the past, choices to be made in the future, and choices of the present. Creating false personas, and promising to be true.
And, two men dying asking for forgiveness from those they hurt, and from those who don't now that they have been hurt.
Is this enough to keep your interest?
*Note: Two actors have 3 part names like the writer, Paul Thomas Anderson: Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Phillip Baker Hall, if that doesn't confuse you then the movie won't either.
Comment from a friend:
Magnolia. You asked me to tell you what I understood from the rain of frogs. All of the characters in Magnolia, like all of us, are enslaved by our thoughts. We make ourselves, then we get stuck in our own viewpoint. We behave in accordance with what we think. Each of us must liberate ourselves from the incarceration of our ideas. That is the most difficult task we will ever face. It takes great courage to insist on an honest appraisal of what we are and demand of ourselves that we become what we know we must be. The rain of frogs alerts us to the urgency of this task. There is no more time. We must face up to ourselves now, or we shall never escape. The frogs are a warning that everything depends on our acting to liberate ourselves now, or it will be to late, and will languish in the prison of our childish notions until we die. Michael
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Here's something from the Paris Review, Summer 2009. #107:
Gay Talese on infidelity.
"Here's what people don't get. Sex is not that important. It isn't the most important thing in any relationship. Marriage is never about sex, and yet in American fiction so many stories and novels present a sexual dalliance ans an unpardonable sin. (In real life) I never thought that should be true. Marriage is the main event. These other relationships bring me into worlds I would otherwise not know. These relationships have helped our marriage. ..I think of all these people who get divorced over minor matters...I don't see how people can live in conventional marriages. "
Gay Talese has a fifty year marriage with a very accomplished,independent and fiscally successful wife.
Here's something from the Paris Review, Summer 2009. #107:
Gay Talese on infidelity.
"Here's what people don't get. Sex is not that important. It isn't the most important thing in any relationship. Marriage is never about sex, and yet in American fiction so many stories and novels present a sexual dalliance ans an unpardonable sin. (In real life) I never thought that should be true. Marriage is the main event. These other relationships bring me into worlds I would otherwise not know. These relationships have helped our marriage. ..I think of all these people who get divorced over minor matters...I don't see how people can live in conventional marriages. "
Gay Talese has a fifty year marriage with a very accomplished,independent and fiscally successful wife.
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
E.L. Doctorow, Homer & Langley to be published in September
"And so do people pass out of one's life and all you can remember of them is their humanity, a poor fitful thing of no dominion, like your own."
This novel is unlike anything Doctorow has written before, it uses to the Collyer brothers to draw us through the twentieth century in America as seen by a blind man and his eccentric pack rat brother whose bodies were found in a Fifth Avenue mansion after their deaths.
"Homer Lusk Collyer (November 6, 1881 – March 21, 1947) and Langley Collyer (October 3, 1885 – March 1947) were two American brothers who became famous because of their snobbish nature, filth in their homes, and compulsive hoarding.
The brothers are often cited as an example of compulsive hoarding associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), as well as disposophobia or 'Collyer brothers syndrome', a fear of throwing anything away. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely-seen, unemployed men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street), in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected newspapers, books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby traps set up in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders.
Both were eventually found dead in the Harlem brownstone where they had lived as hermits, surrounded by over 100 tons of rubbish that they had amassed over several decades." Wikipedia
E.L. Doctorow, Homer & Langley to be published in September
"And so do people pass out of one's life and all you can remember of them is their humanity, a poor fitful thing of no dominion, like your own."
This novel is unlike anything Doctorow has written before, it uses to the Collyer brothers to draw us through the twentieth century in America as seen by a blind man and his eccentric pack rat brother whose bodies were found in a Fifth Avenue mansion after their deaths.
"Homer Lusk Collyer (November 6, 1881 – March 21, 1947) and Langley Collyer (October 3, 1885 – March 1947) were two American brothers who became famous because of their snobbish nature, filth in their homes, and compulsive hoarding.
The brothers are often cited as an example of compulsive hoarding associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), as well as disposophobia or 'Collyer brothers syndrome', a fear of throwing anything away. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely-seen, unemployed men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street), in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected newspapers, books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby traps set up in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders.
Both were eventually found dead in the Harlem brownstone where they had lived as hermits, surrounded by over 100 tons of rubbish that they had amassed over several decades." Wikipedia
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Saturday, August 08, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
William Vollmann
But meaning can be found in the most desolate zones, for survivors if not for victims, and in Rising Up and Rising Down Vollmann relates the following story from the San Francisco morgue as what he calls a "Solomonic parable":
Three different mothers were led into the viewing room one by one to identify a dead girl, and each mother claimed the girl as hers, with a desperate relief, as I would suppose.... Those three mothers must all have given up hoping that their daughters would ever speak to them or smile at them again. They wanted to stop dreading and start grieving. They didn't want to go into viewing rooms any more. And maybe the glass window was dirty, and maybe their eyes were old or full of tears. It was a natural mistake. But one mother was lucky. The dead girl was really her daughter.
William Vollmann
But meaning can be found in the most desolate zones, for survivors if not for victims, and in Rising Up and Rising Down Vollmann relates the following story from the San Francisco morgue as what he calls a "Solomonic parable":
Three different mothers were led into the viewing room one by one to identify a dead girl, and each mother claimed the girl as hers, with a desperate relief, as I would suppose.... Those three mothers must all have given up hoping that their daughters would ever speak to them or smile at them again. They wanted to stop dreading and start grieving. They didn't want to go into viewing rooms any more. And maybe the glass window was dirty, and maybe their eyes were old or full of tears. It was a natural mistake. But one mother was lucky. The dead girl was really her daughter.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
"A Man Escaped" Director: Robert Bresson--1956
The most tantalizing, enthralling movie I have ever seen. The true story of a French prisoner of the Nazis, who meticulously plans an escape. The detailed planning takes 1 hour and 30 minutes of the 1 hour and 40 minutes of the entire film. Breathless, riveting, alarming, complete non-stop tension.
Rating:
Run Time: 102 min
MPAA Rating:
Released: 1956
Directors: Robert Bresson
Genre/Type: Drama
Prison Film
Docudrama
Escape Film
Producers: Alain Poiré
Jean Thuillier
Plot Synopsis by Tom Wiener
In a genre crowded with quality films, director Robert Bresson's POW drama has become legendary, in part because it strips down the experience of a man desperate to escape to the essentials. That's in keeping with the approach Bresson took with all of his films. The filmmaker, who spent a year in a German prison camp during World War II, based this story on the experiences of Andre Devigny, a French Resistance fighter sent in 1943 to the infamous prison in Lyons, where 7,000 of the 10,000 prisoners housed there died either by natural means or by execution. Lt. Fontaine (Francois Leterrier) is certain that execution awaits him, and he almost immediately begins planning his escape, using homemade tools and an ingenuity for detecting the few weaknesses in the prison's structure and routine. For a time, he goes it alone, then takes on a partner, but only reluctantly. Fontaine does get some help from a couple of prisoners allowed to stroll in the exercise yard, but for the most part he is a figure in isolation. For Bresson, the process of escape is all, and in simplifying his narrative he ratchets up the tension, creating a film story of survival that many feel is without peer.
"A Man Escaped" Director: Robert Bresson--1956
The most tantalizing, enthralling movie I have ever seen. The true story of a French prisoner of the Nazis, who meticulously plans an escape. The detailed planning takes 1 hour and 30 minutes of the 1 hour and 40 minutes of the entire film. Breathless, riveting, alarming, complete non-stop tension.
Rating:
Run Time: 102 min
MPAA Rating:
Released: 1956
Directors: Robert Bresson
Genre/Type: Drama
Prison Film
Docudrama
Escape Film
Producers: Alain Poiré
Jean Thuillier
Plot Synopsis by Tom Wiener
In a genre crowded with quality films, director Robert Bresson's POW drama has become legendary, in part because it strips down the experience of a man desperate to escape to the essentials. That's in keeping with the approach Bresson took with all of his films. The filmmaker, who spent a year in a German prison camp during World War II, based this story on the experiences of Andre Devigny, a French Resistance fighter sent in 1943 to the infamous prison in Lyons, where 7,000 of the 10,000 prisoners housed there died either by natural means or by execution. Lt. Fontaine (Francois Leterrier) is certain that execution awaits him, and he almost immediately begins planning his escape, using homemade tools and an ingenuity for detecting the few weaknesses in the prison's structure and routine. For a time, he goes it alone, then takes on a partner, but only reluctantly. Fontaine does get some help from a couple of prisoners allowed to stroll in the exercise yard, but for the most part he is a figure in isolation. For Bresson, the process of escape is all, and in simplifying his narrative he ratchets up the tension, creating a film story of survival that many feel is without peer.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Yes, I’m at my desk, alone,
I can’t look in my mirror , instead I look
In books and at my computer,
I was warned. But I am not surprised,
Even though I knew, I didn’t act and my
Strength disappeared, slowly, I didn’t notice,
What dreams I had.
I thought there was always time.
July 2009
Yes, I’m at my desk, alone,
I can’t look in my mirror , instead I look
In books and at my computer,
I was warned. But I am not surprised,
Even though I knew, I didn’t act and my
Strength disappeared, slowly, I didn’t notice,
What dreams I had.
I thought there was always time.
July 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Musings, notes,
I don't know whether to write truth or fiction, but then I never know what my life is. mek
"It was, It will never be again. Remember." Paul Auster
Why is it that there are so many great trailers, but so few good movies? mek
"It is not what is criminal that is hardest to acknowledge; but rather what is ridiculous or shameful." Jean Jacques Rousseau
Understand, do not deny, that from the beginning we live in a state of perpetual decay. mek
"Art cannot exist without surprize or without change." Jean Renoir
Cutting work back is fine. But don't stop working until someone measures you for the six sided box. mek
Two skeletons on a tin roof during a windstorm. (of a piece of modern music by an unknown critic.)
Musings, notes,
I don't know whether to write truth or fiction, but then I never know what my life is. mek
"It was, It will never be again. Remember." Paul Auster
Why is it that there are so many great trailers, but so few good movies? mek
"It is not what is criminal that is hardest to acknowledge; but rather what is ridiculous or shameful." Jean Jacques Rousseau
Understand, do not deny, that from the beginning we live in a state of perpetual decay. mek
"Art cannot exist without surprize or without change." Jean Renoir
Cutting work back is fine. But don't stop working until someone measures you for the six sided box. mek
Two skeletons on a tin roof during a windstorm. (of a piece of modern music by an unknown critic.)
Friday, July 24, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Synecdoche, New York, Screenplay – Charlie Kaufman.
"There are almost thirteen billion people in the world and not one is an extra. They are all leads in their own stories. And they must be given their due.
I woke up and found my life. She helped me find my after I lost it.
The end is built into the beginning.
-
Everything is more complicated than you think. We see only 10% of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every decision we make. And you destroy your life every time you choose and maybe you won’t even know it for twenty years. And you may never trace that decision to its source. You only get the one chance to play it out.
And they say that there is no fate—but there is: it’s what we create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons we are here for only a fraction of a second. Most of our time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while we’re alive we wait in vain wasting years for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right.
But it never comes or it seems to but doesn’t really so we spend our time in vague regret or vague hope that something good will come along. Something that will make us feel connected, make us feel whole, make us feel loved.
-
What was before us, our exciting mysterious future is now behind you. Understood, disappointing. We realize we are not special; we have struggled into existence and now are stepping silently outward. This is everyone’s experience, every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone is everyone.
-
As the people who adore you stop adoring you—as they die,as they move on, as you shed them, as you shed your beauty, your youth, as the world forgets you, as you recognize your transience, you begin to lose your characteristics one by one, as you learn that there is no one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving, not coming from any place, not arriving any place, just driving, counting off time, now you are here, it’s 7:43, now you are here, it’s 7:44, now you are---gone.
-
Where is everyone?
– Mostly dead—some have left—
(paraphrase) I’m tired,…and lonely...everyone’s dreams.. in all those lives, all those thoughts, we’ll never know, that’s the truth of it.
I love you
I love you too.
I know how to do this play now…I have an idea.
Synecdoche, New York, Screenplay – Charlie Kaufman.
"There are almost thirteen billion people in the world and not one is an extra. They are all leads in their own stories. And they must be given their due.
I woke up and found my life. She helped me find my after I lost it.
The end is built into the beginning.
-
Everything is more complicated than you think. We see only 10% of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every decision we make. And you destroy your life every time you choose and maybe you won’t even know it for twenty years. And you may never trace that decision to its source. You only get the one chance to play it out.
And they say that there is no fate—but there is: it’s what we create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons we are here for only a fraction of a second. Most of our time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while we’re alive we wait in vain wasting years for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right.
But it never comes or it seems to but doesn’t really so we spend our time in vague regret or vague hope that something good will come along. Something that will make us feel connected, make us feel whole, make us feel loved.
-
What was before us, our exciting mysterious future is now behind you. Understood, disappointing. We realize we are not special; we have struggled into existence and now are stepping silently outward. This is everyone’s experience, every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone is everyone.
-
As the people who adore you stop adoring you—as they die,as they move on, as you shed them, as you shed your beauty, your youth, as the world forgets you, as you recognize your transience, you begin to lose your characteristics one by one, as you learn that there is no one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving, not coming from any place, not arriving any place, just driving, counting off time, now you are here, it’s 7:43, now you are here, it’s 7:44, now you are---gone.
-
Where is everyone?
– Mostly dead—some have left—
(paraphrase) I’m tired,…and lonely...everyone’s dreams.. in all those lives, all those thoughts, we’ll never know, that’s the truth of it.
I love you
I love you too.
I know how to do this play now…I have an idea.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Word of the Day for Thursday, August 28, 2008
chthonic \THONE-ik\, adjective:
Dwelling in or under the earth; also, pertaining to the underworld
"Driven by dæmonic, chthonic Powers."
-- T.S. Eliot
"The chthonic divinity was essentially a god of the regions under the earth; at first of the dark home of the seed, later on of the still darker home of the dead."
-- C. F. Keary
"The chthonic imagery of Norine's apartment, which..was black as a coalhole and heated by the furnace of the hostess' unslaked desires."
-- M. McCarthy
"Two great and contrasted forms of ritual: the Olympian and the Chthonic, the one a ritual of cheerful character, the other a ritual of gloom, and fostering superstition."
Chthonic comes from khthón, the Greek word for earth.
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for chthonic
Word of the Day for Thursday, August 28, 2008
chthonic \THONE-ik\, adjective:
Dwelling in or under the earth; also, pertaining to the underworld
"Driven by dæmonic, chthonic Powers."
-- T.S. Eliot
"The chthonic divinity was essentially a god of the regions under the earth; at first of the dark home of the seed, later on of the still darker home of the dead."
-- C. F. Keary
"The chthonic imagery of Norine's apartment, which..was black as a coalhole and heated by the furnace of the hostess' unslaked desires."
-- M. McCarthy
"Two great and contrasted forms of ritual: the Olympian and the Chthonic, the one a ritual of cheerful character, the other a ritual of gloom, and fostering superstition."
Chthonic comes from khthón, the Greek word for earth.
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for chthonic
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
The forest is a solemn place of wonder and discovery. It is there that most often that the cosmos comes to fill the soul. This is a time when all is shed and room is made for universal commonality and centrality.
You are a part of all and all is a part of you. You can feel it most among the trees.
m
The forest is a solemn place of wonder and discovery. It is there that most often that the cosmos comes to fill the soul. This is a time when all is shed and room is made for universal commonality and centrality.
You are a part of all and all is a part of you. You can feel it most among the trees.
m
Monday, July 06, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Is there a distinction between what is real and what is apparently real? This goes to my Picasso story about the "print" in his hostess' bathroom, that he identifies as being an original. His hostess immediately takes the print from the bathroom and replaces another painting from its honored place above the mantelpiece in her living room with the newly discovered Picasso original.
"But why?" asks Picasso, isn't it the same work that was previously delegated to the bathroom?
Is there a distinction between what is real and what is apparently real?
+++++++++++++++++++++
"Three Indian climbers were trapped high on the Northeast Ridge (of Everest) on May 10, and early the next morning a Japanese party intent on the summit walked past them, though they were still alive. By the time the Japanese descended, one of the climbers was dead, another missing, a third barely alive and tangled in his rope. They removed the rope from the survivor but made no effort to help him down the mountain. He too would die. 'Above eight thousand meters,' one of the Japanese climbers offered by way of self-justification, 'is not a place where people can afford morality.' "
"Fallen Giants, A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes" Maurice Isserman & Stewart Weaver
Is there a distinction between what is real and what is apparently real? This goes to my Picasso story about the "print" in his hostess' bathroom, that he identifies as being an original. His hostess immediately takes the print from the bathroom and replaces another painting from its honored place above the mantelpiece in her living room with the newly discovered Picasso original.
"But why?" asks Picasso, isn't it the same work that was previously delegated to the bathroom?
Is there a distinction between what is real and what is apparently real?
+++++++++++++++++++++
"Three Indian climbers were trapped high on the Northeast Ridge (of Everest) on May 10, and early the next morning a Japanese party intent on the summit walked past them, though they were still alive. By the time the Japanese descended, one of the climbers was dead, another missing, a third barely alive and tangled in his rope. They removed the rope from the survivor but made no effort to help him down the mountain. He too would die. 'Above eight thousand meters,' one of the Japanese climbers offered by way of self-justification, 'is not a place where people can afford morality.' "
"Fallen Giants, A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes" Maurice Isserman & Stewart Weaver
Sunday, July 05, 2009
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Monkeys:
Put eight monkeys in a room. In the middle of the room is a ladder,
leading to a bunch of bananas hanging from a hook. Each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder, all the monkeys are sprayed with ice water, which makes them miserable.
Soon enough, whenever a monkey attempts to climb the ladder, all of the other
monkeys, not wanting to be sprayed, set upon him and beat him up. Soon, none of the eight monkeys ever attempts to climb the ladder.
One of the original monkeys is then removed, and a new monkey is put
in the room. Seeing the bananas and the ladder, he wonders why none of the other monkeys are doing the obvious. But undaunted, he immediately begins to climb the
ladder. All the other monkeys fall upon him and beat him silly. He has no idea why.
However, he no longer attempts to climb the ladder.
A second original monkey is removed and replaced. The newcomer again attempts to
climb the ladder, but all the other monkeys hammer the @%!*# out of him. This includes the previous new monkey, who, grateful that he's not on the receiving
end this time, participates in the beating because all the other monkeys are doing
it.
However, he has no idea why he's attacking the new monkey.
One by one, all the original monkeys are replaced. Eight new monkeys are now in the
room. None of them have ever been sprayed by ice water. None of them attempt to
climb the ladder. All of them will enthusiastically beat up any new monkey who tries, without having any idea why.
Monkeys:
Put eight monkeys in a room. In the middle of the room is a ladder,
leading to a bunch of bananas hanging from a hook. Each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder, all the monkeys are sprayed with ice water, which makes them miserable.
Soon enough, whenever a monkey attempts to climb the ladder, all of the other
monkeys, not wanting to be sprayed, set upon him and beat him up. Soon, none of the eight monkeys ever attempts to climb the ladder.
One of the original monkeys is then removed, and a new monkey is put
in the room. Seeing the bananas and the ladder, he wonders why none of the other monkeys are doing the obvious. But undaunted, he immediately begins to climb the
ladder. All the other monkeys fall upon him and beat him silly. He has no idea why.
However, he no longer attempts to climb the ladder.
A second original monkey is removed and replaced. The newcomer again attempts to
climb the ladder, but all the other monkeys hammer the @%!*# out of him. This includes the previous new monkey, who, grateful that he's not on the receiving
end this time, participates in the beating because all the other monkeys are doing
it.
However, he has no idea why he's attacking the new monkey.
One by one, all the original monkeys are replaced. Eight new monkeys are now in the
room. None of them have ever been sprayed by ice water. None of them attempt to
climb the ladder. All of them will enthusiastically beat up any new monkey who tries, without having any idea why.
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
From "Public Enemy" -- 2009
Some folks are for 'come from,'
Others are for 'going to.'
Johnny Depp (John Dillinger)
BUT
From "Out of the Past' -- 1947
Robert Mitchum (Jeff) and Jane Greer (Kathy) have this dialog:
Jeff: What's your name?
Kathy: Kathy.
Jeff:I like that name.
Kathy: But do you know where I come from?
Jeff: Baby, I don't care. I'm thinking about where we're going.
From "Public Enemy" -- 2009
Some folks are for 'come from,'
Others are for 'going to.'
Johnny Depp (John Dillinger)
BUT
From "Out of the Past' -- 1947
Robert Mitchum (Jeff) and Jane Greer (Kathy) have this dialog:
Jeff: What's your name?
Kathy: Kathy.
Jeff:I like that name.
Kathy: But do you know where I come from?
Jeff: Baby, I don't care. I'm thinking about where we're going.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)