philosophy in film

I tend to steer clear of films bursting at the seams with all manner of supernatural bullshit. But when a “horror” film garners a 92% fresh rating at RT [based on 225 reviews no less!] I will make an exception.

RT:

Five friends go to a remote cabin in the woods. Bad things happen. If you think you know this story, think again. From fan favorites Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard comes The Cabin in the Woods, a mind blowing horror film that turns the genre inside out.

Touche.

But it sure doesn’t start out that way, does it? Not until we see the guy on roof “reporting in” as they drive off: “Nest is empty. We’re right on time.”

Huh?

It’s one hell of a twist, true. But, nonetheless, it’s still all just supernatural bullshit.

That’s why something like Baghead will always be considerably more scary: It’s not. Then there is Cube with all the science fiction tropes. And it is [at times] like that on steroids.

In other words, as with Zombieland you’ve got to play along with it and revel in the camp. Once you leave the campground here it all simply becomes preposterous. Clever, ingenius, maybe, but it still all comes together in la la land. Uh, the Ancient Ones? Like…the Oracle?

Or, what the hell, maybe the world really is this way. And me? I got passed over.

Good.

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS [2011]
Written and directed by Drew Goddard

[b]Marty [drives up smoking a bong]: People in this town drive in a very counterintuitive manner.

Marty: Statistical fact: Cops will never pull over a man with a huge bong in his car. Why? They fear this man. They know he sees further than they and he will bind them with ancient logics.

Jules: Is society crumbling, Marty?
Marty: No, society is binding. Society needs to crumble.

Lin: Do we pipe it in or do you wanna do it orally?
Sitterson [closes eyes]: Ask me that again only slower.

Sitterson: They have to make the choice of their own free will. Otherwise, the system doesn’t work. Like the harbinger: creepy old fuck practically wears a sign saying “YOU WILL DIE”. Why would we put him there? The system. They have to choose to ignore him. They have to choose what happens in the cellar. Yeah, we write the game as much as we have to but in the end, if they don’t transgress they can’t be punished.

Curt [seeing an old gas pump]: This thing doesn’t take credit cards.
Marty: I don’t think it knows about money.

Curt: The wind must have blown it open.
Marty: And that makes what kind of sense?

Marty: I dare you all to go back upstairs?

Marty: Ok, I’m drawing a line in the fucking sand here. Do NOT read the Latin!

Girl: That’s not fair! I had zombies too!
Sitterson: Yes, you had “Zombies.” But this is “Zombie Redneck Torture Family.” Entirely separate thing. It’s like the difference between an elephant and an elephant seal.

Sitterson: I’m sorry, man.
Hadley: He had the conch in his hands!
Sitterson: I know. Couple more minutes, who knows what would have happened.
Hadley: I’m never gonna see a merman.
Sitterson: Dude, be thankful. Those things are terrifying. And the cleanup on them’s a nightmare.

Jules: Not here.
Curt: We’re all alone.[/b]

Cut to the studio…packed with folks watching.

[b]Marty [of Holden]: He’s got a husband bulge.

Dana: I’m not leaving here without Jules.[/b]

Knock, knock.

[b]Sitterson: Uh, oh. That’s not good.

Marty [finding the hidden camera]: Oh, my God! I’m on a reality TV show!

Hadley [sighs]: These fucking zombies. Remember when you could just throw a girl into a volcano?

Curt: I’m coming back with cops, and choppers, and large fucking guns, and those things are going to pay.[/b]

Nope.

[b]Sitterson: What do you mean, “upstairs”?

Hadley: Which one?

Marty: I had to dismember that guy with a trowel. So what have you been up to?

Marty: Good work, zombie arm,

Hadley: Ah, come on!

Marty: Punished for what?

Dana: Me? A virgin?
The Director: We work with what we have.

The Director: You can die with them or you can die for them.
Marty: Gosh, they’re both so enticing.[/b]

Come on, admit it. Take away the special effects [and Marty] and how much is left?

Here’s how it works. There’s you here and there’s eveybody else in the world. And you can make contact with any one of them if you only know the right combination of 6 – or sometimes less – people to contact. Simple.

Only it’s not [for most of them] because you have no idea which combination of folks it is.

Start here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon

This is a very strange movie. Or it is for me. I’m not sure when I am or am not being put on. Is it meant to convey meaning in layers or is it layer upon layer of irony. It’s got a great big heart at the end of it and a great big mystery that will never be solved. But is all this just, “wink, wink”?

That you want it to be “real” is a testiment to how the film is able to draw you in below the surface. Or, again, some of us.
Then there are the trials and the travails of the upper middle class. And their shitbag kids.

Or maybe this is all just a surreal remake of My Fair Lady—with Will Smith as Eliza Doolittle.

IMDb

[b]The inspiration for Paul, David Hampton, died of AIDS on 18 July 2003.

Will Smith refused to actually kiss Anthony Michael Hall just before their kissing scene so a camera trick was used showing only the back of their heads. In an interview, Smith stated that Denzel Washington advised him not to kiss a man on-screen for it would harm his career. Smith stated that he regretted not going through with it saying “It was very immature on my part.”

Will Smith’s character in the film passes himself off as Sidney Poitier’s son. In real life, when Smith met Poitier for the first time, the veteran actor said, “Well, you’re almost handsome enough to be my son”.[/b]

trailer:
youtu.be/HLIyuYwbVnA

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION
Directed by Fred Schepisi

[b]Flan: My God!
Ouisa: Is anything gone?
Flan: How can I look, I’m shaking!
Ouisa: I want to know if anything’s gone!
Flan: Calm down.
Ouisa: We could have been killed! Oh, my God! The Kandinsky!
Flan: The Kandinsky!
Ouisa: It’s gone, oh my God! Call the police!
Flan: Oh, no, there it is. Oh! The silver Victorian inkwell!
Ouisa: How can you think of that thing?
Flan: Here’s the inkwell.
Ouisa: We could have been murdered!
Flan: A silver Jaguar. Why?
Ouisa: Slashed. Throat slashed.
Flan: There’s the Degas.
Ouisa: To go to bed at night happy and then murdered. Would we have woken up?
Flan: We’re alive.

Ouisa: Chaos, control. Chaos, control…

Flan: Having a rich friend is like drowning and your friend makes lifeboats.

Geoffrey: I wish you’d visit.
Ouisa: Oh, but we’d visit you and sit in your gorgeous house, planning visits to the townships, demanding to see the poorest of the poor. “Are you sure they’re the worst off? I mean, we’ve come all this way.”

Flan: It’s like when people say “Don’t think about elephants”, it’s all you can think about, elephants, elephants.

Flan: Blunt question. What’s he like?
Ouisa: Oh, let’s not be star-fuckers.
Flan: I’m not a star- fucker!
Paul: Well, you know my father. He’s perfect.

Paul: A teacher out on Long lsland was dropped from his job for fighting with a student. Weeks later, he returned to the classroom, shot the student - unsuccessfully, held the class hostage, and then shot himself - successfully. This fact caught my eye. Last sentence, Times - “A neighbour described the teacher as a nice boy, always reading Catcher in the Rye.” This nitwit Chapman, who shot John Lennon, said he did it to draw the attention of the world to Catcher in the Rye, and the reading of this book would be his defence. Young Hinckley, the whiz kid who shot Reagan and his press secretary, said: “If you want my defence, all you have to do is read Catcher in the Rye.”

Paul: What alarms me about the book - not the book so much as the aura about it - is this. The book is primarily about paralysis. The boy can’t function. At the end, before he can run away and start a new life, it starts to rain. He folds. There’s nothing wrong in writing about emotional and intellectual paralysis. It may, thanks to Chekhov and Samuel Beckett, be the great modern theme. The extraordinary last lines of Waiting for Godot.; “Let’s go.” “Yes.” “Let’s go.” Stage directions: “They do not move.” The aura around Salinger’s book - which, perhaps, should be read by everyone but young men - is this. It mirrors like a fun-house mirror, and amplifies like a distorted speaker one of the great tragedies of our times - the death of the imagination. Because what else is paralysis? The imagination has moved out of the realm of being our link, our most personal link, with our inner lives and the world outside that world, this world we share. What is schizophrenia but a horrifying state where what’s in here doesn’t match what’s out there? Why has imagination become a synonym for style? I believe the imagination is the passport that we create to help take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is merely another phrase for what is most uniquely us.

Flan: I thought, dreamt, remembered how easy it is for a painter to lose a painting. He paints and paints, works on a canvas for months, and then one day he loses it - loses the structure, loses the sense of it. You lose the painting. I remember asking my kids’ second-grade teacher: “Why are all your students geniuses?” Look at the first grade - blotches of green and black. The third grade - camouflage. But your grade, the second grade… Matisses, every one. You’ve made my child a Matisse. What is your secret? I don’t have any secret, she said, I just know when to take their drawings away from them.

Flan: I want to get down on my knees and thank God. Money!
Ouisa: Who said “When artists dream, they dream of money”?

Kitty: We’re going to be in the movies.
Larkin: We are going to be in the movie of Cats! Yes!
Ouisa: You tell your story first.

Flan: When you see your little sister, don’t tell her that Paul and the hustler used her bed.
Tess: You put him in that bed!

Paul [as imagined by ouisa]: “The imagination. It’s there to sort out your nightmare, to show you the exit from the maze of your nightmare, to transform the nightmare into dreams, that become your bedrock. If we do not listen to that voice, it dies, it shrivels, it vanishes. The imagination is not our escape. On the contrary, the imagination is the place we are all trying to get to.”

Shitbag son: You gave a complete stranger who happens to mention my name the keys to our house?! Dad, sometimes it’s so obvious to me why Mom left. I’m so embarrassed to know you! You gave the keys to a stranger who shows up at your office?! Mom told me you beat her, and you drank so much your body smelt of cheap wine. Mom said sleeping with you was like sleeping with a salad with bad dressing! Why did you bring me into this world?! You’re an idiot! You’re an idiot!

Woody [another shitbag son]: You gave him my pink shirt? You gave a complete stranger my pink shirt? That shirt was a Christmas present from you! I treasured that shirt, I loved that shirt! My collar had grown a full size from weightlifting, you saw that my arms had grown, you saw that my neck had grown and you bought me that shirt for my new body! I loved that shirt! My first shirt for my new body and you gave that shirt away? I can’t believe you! I hate this life and I hate you!

Trent: When rich people do something nice for you, you give 'em a pot of jam

Ouisa: I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it extremely comforting that we’re so close. I also find it like Chinese water torture, that we’re so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection…I am bound, you are bound, to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people.

Ouisa: The next chapter…

Elizabeth: “Quality of mercy is not strained”? Well, fuck you, quality of mercy!

Flan [to Paul on the phone]: What am I doing talking career counselling to you?!

Paul [on the phone to Ouisa]: That night was the happiest night I ever had.
Ouisa [to Flan]: That was the happiest night he ever had.
Flan [to Ouisa]: Oh, please. I’m not a bullshitter, but never bullshit a bullshitter.

Ouisa: Paul…We love you.

Desk Sargeant: It sounds like your friend was wanted for something else.

Ouisa: I read today that a young man committed suicide in Rikers lsland prison, and tied a shirt around his neck and hanged himself. Was it the pink shirt?

Ouisa: And we turn him into an anecdote, with no teeth, and a punchline you’ll tell for years to come: “Oh, that reminds me of the time the imposter came into our house.” “Oh! Tell the one about that boy.” And we become these human jukeboxes spitting out these anecdotes to dine out on like we’re doing right now. Well I will not turn him into an anecdote, it was an experience. How do we hold onto the experience?

Flan: What kind of behavior is this?
Ouisa: Tell me Flan, how much of your life can you account for?
Flan: Are you drunk? What’s the matter with you? Don’t you realize how important she is? What are you unhappy about? The Cezanne sale went through, the Matisse went through, we’re rich! Rich enough. Next month there’s a Bonnard.
Ouisa: These are the times I could take a knife and dig out your heart! Answer me! How much of your life…
Flan: -my life can I account for? All of it!
[pause]
Flan: I am a gambler.
Ouisa: We’re a terrible match.[/b]

Well, it worked in Times Square, right? Let’s do it everywhere!

It’s only a matter of figuring out a way to turn it all into a buck.

Travis. Is he more haplessly naive or hopelessly whacko? My pick: up and down, some of both. And so pathetic at times it’s almost unbearable to watch.

Where the hell did he come from? Why the hell does he do these things? What a narrative that must be. Maybe he picked it up in the Marines.

But this aside all the stuff that disgusted him is no less still here, right? But always hidden now from the rest of us. You know, as the country drifts closer and closer to “friendly fascism”. We can still go there though. As entertainment, for example.

And all that controversy about the ending is just bullshit to me. The point is not whether he is a hero or a villian but a depiction of the complex manner in which human motivation is rooted in a point of view. And in intentions. The ending is bursting at the seams with irony. Just as it was [less explosively] in King Of Comedy.

Interesting note: Robert DeNiro was paid $35,000 to play the part of Travis Bickel.

IMDb

[b]The scene where Travis Bickle is talking to himself in the mirror was completely ad-libbed by Robert De Niro.

Director Martin Scorsese claims that the most important shot in the movie is when Bickle is on the phone trying to get another date with Betsy. The camera moves to the side slowly and pans down the long, empty hallway next to Bickle, as if to suggest that the phone conversation is too painful and pathetic to bear.

The girl with whom Martin Scorsese studied in order to prepare for the role of Iris (played by Jodie Foster, the actress who won the role) also appears in the film, as Iris’ friend on the street.

Martin Scorsese was reluctant to edit the climactic (and very bloody) shootout to avoid an X rating. However, he was amused by the changes ordered by the MPAA, because they made the final scene even more shocking than had originally been intended.

Many critics and fans have speculated that Travis Bickle actually dies during the climatic shootout, and the scenes where he recovers, is thanked by Iris’ parents via letter, and talks to Betsy when she happens to ride in his taxi by chance, are either his dying delusions or pure fantasy. Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader both provided commentary on laserdisc/DVD releases of the film that deny this theory. Scorsese said that the cab ride with Travis and Betsy is a real event, with Travis’s ambiguous look after she leaves the cab indicating uncertainty over his own thoughts. Schrader’s comments were that Travis “is not cured” after surviving the shootout, and the writer added “next time, he’s not going to be a hero”.[/b]

Note: Some explicit dialog

TAXI DRIVER [1976]
Directed by Martin Scorsese

[b]Travis [voiceover]: All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. I go all over. I take people to the Bronx, Brooklyn, I take 'em to Harlem. I don’t care. Don’t make no difference to me. It does to some. Some won’t even take spooks. Don’t make no difference to me.

Travis [voiceover]: Each night when I return the cab to the garage, I have to clean the cum off the back seat. Some nights, I clean off the blood.

Palantine: What is the one thing about this country that bugs you the most?
Travis: I don’t know. I don’t follow political issues that closely.
Palantine: There must be something.
Travis: Well, whatever it is, he should clean up this city here…because this city is like an open sewer, it’s full of filth and scum. Sometimes I can hardly take it. Whoever becomes the president should just…really clean it up, know what I mean? Sometimes I go out and I smell it. I get headaches, it’s so bad. It’s like–They never go away. It’s like the president should clean up this whole mess here. He should flush it down the fucking toilet.

Betsy: Travis, I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone quite like you.[/b]

On the other hand…

[b]Betsy: Taking me to a place like this is about as exciting as saying to me “Let’s fuck.”

Travis [to Besty at Palantine campaign headquarters]: You’re in a hell, and you’re gonna die in a hell like the rest of them!

Passenger [to Travis]: You see that window with the light? The one closet to the edge of the building? You know who lives there? Of course you don’t know who lives there, but I’m saying “Do you know who lives there?” A Nigger lives there, and that isn’t my apartment. My wife is in there and…I’m gonna kill her. I’m gonna kill her with a .44 Magnum. Have you ever seen what a .44 Magnum will do to a woman’s face? It’ll fucking destroy it. Just blow it right apart. That’s what it can do to her face. Did you ever see what it can do to a woman’s pussy? That you should see. You should see what a .44 Magnum’s gonna do to a woman’s pussy.

Travis [to Wizard]: I got some bad ideas in my head.

Travis: Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There’s no escape. I’m God’s lonely man…June 8th. My life has taken another turn again. The days can go on with regularity over and over, one day indistinguishable from the next. A long continuous chain. Then suddenly, there is a change.

Easy Andy [after selling Travis an arsenal]: How 'bout dope? Grass, hash, coke…mescaline, downers, Nembutal, toluol, chloral hydrates? How 'bout uppers, amphetamines? I can get you crystal meth. Nitrous oxide. How 'bout that? I can get you a brand-new Cadillac with the pink slip for two grand.

Travis: You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talking… you talking to me? Well I’m the only one here.

Travis: Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is someone who stood up.

Sport: Well, take it or leave it. If you want to save yourself some money, don’t fuck her. Cause you’ll be back here every night for some more. Man, she’s twelve and a half years old. You never had no pussy like that. You can do anything you want with her. You can cum on her, fuck her in the mouth, fuck her in the ass, cum on her face, man. She get your cock so hard she’ll make it explode. But no rough stuff, all right?

Iris: God, you’re square.
Travis Bickle: Hey, I’m not square, you’re the one that’s square. You’re full of shit, man. What are you talking about? You walk out with those fuckin’ creeps and low-lifes and degenerates out on the streets and you sell your little pussy for peanuts, man? For some low-life pimp who stands in the hall? And I’m square? You’re the one that’s square, man. I don’t go screwing fuck with a bunch of killers and junkies like you do. You call that bein’ hip? What world are you from?
Iris: Sport never killed nobody.
Travis: He killed somebody.
Iris: He’s a Libra. I’m a Libra, too. That’s why we get along so well. I think that Cancers make the best lovers…but, God, my whole family are earth signs.

Sport: Hey, go back to your fuckin’ tribe before you get hurt, huh man. Do me a favor, I don’t want no trouble, huh. Okay?
Travis: You got a gun?
Sport: Get the fuck outta here, man.
[Flicks his cigarette at him]
Sport: Get outta here
[Sport kicks him]
Travis: Suck on this.
[he shoots him]

Narrated [over newspaper article about Travis tacked to the wall]: “Dear Mr. Bickle, I can’t say how happy Mrs. Steensma and I were… to hear that you are well and recuperating. We tried to visit you at the hospital… when we were in New York to pick up Iris. But you were still in a coma. There is no way we can repay you for returning our Iris to us. We thought we had lost her… and now our lives are full again. Needless to say…you are something of a hero around this household. I’m sure you want to know about Iris. She’s back in school and working hard. The transition has been very hard for her, as you can well imagine. We have taken steps to see… she has never cause to run away again. In conclusion, Mrs. Steensma and l…would like to again thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Unfortunately, we cannot afford to come to New York again…to thank you in person, or we surely would. But if you should ever come to Pittsburgh…you would find yourself a most welcome guest in our home. Our deepest thanks. Burt and Ivy Steensma.”

Betsy [in cab]: Hello, Travis.
Travis: Hello. I hear Palantine got the nomination.
Betsy: Yeah. Won’t be long now. Seventeen days.
Tavis: I hope he wins.
Betsy: I read about you in the papers. How are you?
Travis: It was nothing, really. I got over that. Papers always blow these things up. Just a little stiffness, that’s all.
Betsy: Travis…I’m-- How much was it?
Travis: So long.[/b]

Mathematics. Science. Philosophy. Religion. Wall Street.

But, given conflicting points of view, not necessarily in that order.

A rare film indeed. One that is clearly about 1] ideas and 2] the particular relationship they have to the world we actually live in. But 3] the gap between them is, in many crucial respects, still as maddeningly wide as ever.

And, sure, the metaphysical and religious tangents are fanscinating too. What is existence? How will we know? And [of course] when each of us one by one topples over into the abyss is all that gone forever? For “I”?

Here’s the thing though: I am not all that sophisticated in the language of mathematics. I can only fathom the implications of Pi up tp a point. Like you probably. All the things we just have to assume that others do know what they are talking about.

When you’re younger you think that, before you die, there will be an astounding breakthrough here. The pattern will be found. As you get older though you think that less and less.

IMDb

[b]Pi cost only $60,000 to make, most of which was raised in the form of individual $100 contributions from the director’s friends and family. When it was later bought by Artisan Entertainment, each contributor got back a $150 return on their investment.

No location permits were secured for any of the scenes filmed. The crew had to have one man constantly serving as a lookout for police so they could stop filming if needed.[/b]

wiki

[b]Themes:

Mathematics
Pi features several references to mathematics and mathematical theories. For instance, Max finds the golden spiral occurring everywhere, including the stock market. Max’s belief that diverse systems embodying highly nonlinear dynamics share a unifying pattern bears much similarity to results in chaos theory, which provides machinery for describing certain phenomena of nonlinear systems, which might be thought of as patterns.

Kabbalah
The 216-letter name of God sought by the characters of the film is known as the Shem ha-Meforash or the Explicit Name. It comes from Exodus 14:19-21. Each of these three verses is composed of seventy-two letters in the original Hebrew. If one writes the three verses in boustrophedon form—one above the other, the first from right to left, the second from left to right, and the third from right to left—one gets seventy-two columns of three-letter names of God.

The game of Go
In the film, Max periodically plays Go with his mentor, Sol. This game has historically stimulated the study of mathematics and features a simple set of rules that results in a complex game strategy. The two characters each use the game as a model for their view of the universe; Sol says that the game is a microcosm of an extremely complex and chaotic world, while Max asserts that patterns can be found in the complexity of its variations.

Actors Sean Gullette and Mark Margolis both spent many hours learning the game at the Brooklyn Go Club, and had the help of a Go consultant for the film.[/b]

trailer:
youtu.be/oQ1sZSCz47w

PI [1998]
Written and directed by Darren Aronofsky

[b]Max [voiceover]: Something’s going on. It has to do with that number. There’s an answer in that number.

Max [voiceover]: Restate my assumptions: 1] Mathematics is the language of nature. 2] Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. 3] If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics; the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile. So, what about the stock market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. A natural organism. My hypothesis: Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well… Right in front of me…hiding behind the numbers. Always has been.

[repeated line]
Max [voiceover]: When I was a little kid, my mother told me not to stare into the sun, so when I was six I did.

Max [voiceover]: Personal note. Second attack in under 24 hours. Administered 80 milligrams Promozine HCI and six milligrams Sumattrapan orally, as well as one milligram Dihydroric-atamine-mezilayte by subcutaneous injection.

Sol: But life isn’t just mathematics, Max. I spent 40 years searching for patterns in Pi. I found nothing.
Max: You found things.
Sol: I found things…but not a pattern. Not a pattern.

Max [voiceover]: Sol died a little when he stopped research on Pi. It wasn’t just the stroke. He stopped caring. How could he stop, when he was so close to seeing Pi for what it really is? How could you stop believing that there is a pattern, an ordered shape behind those numbers, when you were so close? We see the simplicity of the circle, we see the maddening complexity of the endless numbers 3.14 off into infinity.

Lenny: Hebrew is all math. It’s all numbers. You know that? Look. Ancient Jews used Hebrew as their numerical system. Each letter’s a number. The Hebrew A, Aleph, is 1. B, Bet, is 2. Understand? But look, the numbers are interrelated. Take the Hebrew for father, ab. Aleph, Bet. 1 plus 2 equals 3. The word for mother, haim. Aleph, Mem. 140 equals the sum of 3 and 41. 44. Now, the Hebrew word for child - mother, father, child. Yelev. That’s 10, 30 and 4. 44. Torah is just a long string of numbers. Some say that it’s a code, sent to us from God.

Max [voiceover]: Failed treatments to date: Beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, adrenalin injections, high dose ibuprofen, steroids, Trager Mentastics, violent exercise, cafergot suppositories, caffeine, acupuncture, marijuana, Percodan, Midrine, Tenormin, Sansert, homeopathics. No results. No results. No results.

Sol: What…What’s happened?
Max: First, I get these crazy low picks, then it spit out this string of numbers. I never saw anything like it. And then it fries. It crashed.
Sol: You have a print out? Of the picks, the number?
Max: I threw it out.
Sol: What number did it spit out?
Max: I don’t know, a string of digits.
Sol: How many?
Max: I don’t know.
Sol: What is it …a 100, a 1000, 216? How many?
Max: Probably around 200. Why?
Sol: I dealt with some bugs back in my Pi days. I wondered if it was like one I ran into.

Sol: You remember Archimedes of Syracuse, eh? The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he’s received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time. It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks - insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end. Finally, his equally exhausted wife - she’s forced to share a bed with this genius - convinces him to take a bath to relax. While he’s entering the tub, Archimedes notices the bath water rise. Displacement, a way to determine volume, and that’s a way to determine density - weight over volume. And thus, Archimedes solves the problem. He screams “Eureka” and he is so overwhelmed he runs dripping naked through the streets to the king’s palace to report his discovery.
[pause]
Sol: Now, what is the moral of the story?
Max: That a breakthrough will come.
Sol: Wrong! The point of the story is the wife. You listen to your wife, she will give you perspective, meaning. You need a break, you have to take a bath or you will get nowhere!

Lenny: We’re searching for a pattern in the Torah.
Max: What kind?
Lenny: We’re not sure. All we know is it’s 216 digits long.

Max: You asked me if I’d seen a 216 digit number.
Sol: Oh, yeah. You mean the bug. I ran into it working on Pi.
Max: What do you mean ran into it?
Sol: Max, what’s this about?
Max: There are these religious Jews I’ve been talking to. Hasids, the guys with beards. I know one from a coffee shop. He’s a number theorist. The Torah is his data set. He says they’re after a 216-digit number in the Torah.
Sol: Come on, it’s just coincidence.
Max: There’s something else, though. You remember those weird stock picks? They were correct. I got two picks on the nose. Smack on the nose, Sol. Something’s going on. It has to do with that number. There’s an answer in it.

Sol: The Ancient Japanese considered the Go board to be a microcosm of the universe. Although when it is empty it appears to be simple and ordered, in fact, the possibilities of gameplay are endless. They say that no two Go games have ever been alike. Just like snowflakes. So, the Go board actually represents an extremely complex and chaotic universe. So, the Go board actually represents an extremely complex and chaotic universe. And that’s the truth of our world, Max. It can’t be easily summed up with math. There is no simple pattern.
Max: But as the game progresses, the possibilities become smaller. The board takes on order. Soon, every move’s predictable. So maybe, even though we’re not aware of it, there is a pattern, an order underlying every Go game. Maybe it’s like the pattern in the stock market? The Torah? This 216 number?
Sol: This is insanity, Max!.
Max: Or maybe it’s genius.
Sol: Listen to yourself. You’re connecting my computer bug with one you might’ve had and some religious hogwash! You want to find the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from a mere street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere.

Marcy: Mr Cohen…
Max: God damn it! I’m sick of you following me. I’m not interested in money. I want to understand our world. I don’t deal with petty materialists like you.

Max [voiceover]: More evidence. Remember da Vinci. Artist, inventor, sculptor, naturalist. ltaly, 15th century. Rediscovered the perfection of the golden rectangle and pencilled it into his masterpieces. Connecting a curve through the concentric golden rectangles, you generate the mythical golden spiral. Pythagoras loved this shape, for he found it in nature - a nautilus shell, rams’ horns, whirlpools, tornadoes, our fingerprints, our DNA and even our Milky Way.

Max: You lied to me.
Sol: You have it? OK, sit down. I gave up before I pinpointed it, but my guess is that certain problems cause computers to get stuck in a loop. The loop leads to meltdown, but just before they crash they become aware of their own structure. The computer has a sense of its own silicon nature and it prints out its ingredients.
Max: The computer becomes conscious?
Sol: In…In some ways…I guess. Studying the pattern made Euclid conscious of itself. It died spitting out the number.
Max: Consciousness is the number?
Sol: No, Max. It’s only a nasty bug.
Max: It’s more than that.
Sol: No. It’s a dead end! There’s nothing there!
Max: It’s a door, Sol. A door.
Sol: A door to a cliff, you’re driving yourself over the edge. You need to stop.
Max: You were afraid. - That’s why you quit.
Sol: I got burnt. It caused my stroke!
Max: That’s bullshit! It’s mathematics, numbers, ideas. Mathematicians should go to the edge. You taught me that.
Sol: It’s death!
Max: You can’t tell me what it is. You’ve retreated to your Go and books and goldfish.
Sol: Max, go home.

Marcy [to Max]: You don’t understand it, do you? I don’t give a shit about you! I only care about what’s in your fucking head! If you won’t help us, help yourself. We are forced to comply to the laws of nature. Survival of the fittest Max, and we’ve got the fucking gun!

Lenny: Where’s the number?
Max: It’s not on me. It’s in my head.
Lenny: Did you give it to those Wall Street bastards.

Rabbi Cohen: The High Priest had one ritual to perform there. He had to intone a single word. That word was the true name of God.
Max: So?
Rabbi Cohen: The true name, which only the Cohanim knew, was 216 letters long.
Max: Are you telling me that…that the number in my head is the true name of God?
Rabbi: Yes! It’s the key to the Messianic age. It will take us closer to the Garden of Eden. As the temple burnt, the Talmud tells us the High Priest walked into the flames. He took the key to the top of the building, the heavens opened and received the key from the priest’s outstretched hand. We have been looking for that key ever since. And you may have found it.
Max: I saw God.
Rabbi Cohen: No. You are not pure. You cannot see God unless you are pure.
Max: No…I saw everything.
Rabbi Cohen: You saw nothing, only a glimpse. There’s so much more. We can unlock the door and show God we’re pure again.
Max: You’re not pure. How are you pure? I found it!
Rabbi Cohen: Who do you think you are? You are only a vessel from God. You’re carrying a delivery meant for us!
Max: It was given to me. It’s inside of me. It’s changing me.
Rabbi Cohen: It’s killing you! Because you are not ready to receive it.
Max: It’s just a number. I’m sure you’ve written down every 216-digit number. You’ve translated all of them. You’ve intoned them all. Haven’t you? What’s it gotten you? The number is nothing. It’s the meaning. The syntax. It’s what’s between the numbers. You haven’t understood it. It’s because it’s not for you. I’ve got it. I’ve got it! I understand it. And I’m gonna see it. Rabbi, I was chosen.[/b]

There are so many different combinations of events that can create a “troubled boy”. And the suicide of his beloved mother is a good place to start. And this boy is convinced it wasn’t a suicide at all.

He also lived in a tree before the trek to Edinburgh. There he finds a young woman who looks remarkably like…his mother.

One suggestion: If you are going to be troubled [and very strange] it pays to be resourceful.

Look for Spud. And an endless string of highly improbable coincidences.

trailer:
youtu.be/nJTr84lAI5c

MISTER FOE [Hallam Foe] 2007
Written and directed by David Mackenzie

[b]Hallam: Dad, when she took me out in the boat how long was it before she died.
Julius: About a month.
Hallam: Were you fucking Verity by then?

Julius: I know it is hard but you have got to try to pick up the pieces.
Hallam: It didn’t take you very long, did it?

Verity [after fucking Hallam in the treehouse]: It’s time to fly the nest, Hallam. I think you know that.[/b]

This after Hallam tried to strangle her.

[b]Raymond: I fucking hate this job, but it’s my job. D’ya understand?
[Hallam nods]
Raymond: I killed a man once. Smashed his skull on a pier. Just so ya know.

Kate: Is there a love in your life?
Hallam: She’s dead. Would you like to meet her?
Kate: I like creepy guys.

Kate: You know if it wasn’t for your dress sense I might think you were gay.

Hallam: Look, you’re very attractive but I’m politically very committed to the gay cause.
Kate: How do you explain the erection then.[/b]

More to the point, how do you explain it to your mother?

[b]Kate: Don’t worry the room’s free. All I need to do is suck the manager’s cock…I’m joking.

Kate: How long has this been going on?
Hallam: Since I first saw you. I thought you looked like someone so I followed you. I didn’t know something was going to happen between us.
Kate: Who do you think I look like?
Hallam: My mother. She’s dead.
[pause]
Kate: Please, just leave me alone. And I mean alone. Hallam, you’re fired.

Kate: I’m a real live human being Hallam. Sometimes I want sweet; sometimes I want sour. Sometimes I don’t know what I want. My shit stinks. I’m going to die someday. If I look like your mother, it’s just a coincidence. Am I telling you anything you don’t already know?

Verity: You’ve treated me like a white trash gold digging whore from day one.
Hallam: That’s because it’s exactly what you are.
Verity: How is it with your look-alike. Do you feel like you are fucking Mommy?

Julius: Oh, she loved you.
Hallam: But not enough to stick around.

Kate: Look me up in five years’ time.
Hallam: Will you still be beautiful in five years’ time?
Kate: I hope so.
Hallam: You will be.[/b]

This is a really, really funny movie. And if you have ever raised a kid [and I have] you’ll recognize yourself in the occasional flashback.

But nobody as cynical as I am would ever in a million years believe the ending. Just endure it as best you can. By, for example, not watching it. Just kidding. A little.

And it is bursting at the seams with folks ever sliding into and out of the white middle class rendition of the American Dream.

Did I mention how funny it is?

I still have a hard time recognizing Joaquin Phoenix as Garry though.

PARENTHOOD
Directed by Ron Howard

[b]Gil: This is a memory of when I was a kid. I’m 35 now. I have kids of my own. You don’t even really exist. You’re an amalgam.
Usher: A what?
Gil: A combination of several ushers my dad left me with over the years. I combined them into one memory.
Usher: Why?
Gil: This was a great symbolic moment of my life. My father dumping me with you…it’s why I swore things would be different with my kids. It’s my dream. Strong, happy, confident kids.
Usher: That’s great, that’s great. You know, you - you got a lovely family, and I’m a god-damn amalgam!

Kevin [singing]: When you’re sliding into first and you’re feeling something burst, diarrhea, diarrhea. When you’re sliding into third and you feel a juicy turd, diarrhea, diarrhea. When you’re sliding into home and your pants are full of foam, diarrhea, diarrhea. When you’re driving in your Chevy and your pants are feeling heavy, diarrhea, diarrhea.
Karen: Kevin, honey, where did you learn that song?
Kevin: Last summer at camp, Mom.
Gil: Ah, that was money well spent.

Gil: Now, if it was my sister’s kid…
Karen: Garry.
Gil: Now, there´s a kid with problems.

Justin: Who’s that?
Gil: It’s my kid brother, Larry, your uncle. Don’t give him any money.

Larry [approaching Grandma]: Is that Grandma?
Frank [derisively]: Yeah, she’s still alive.

Gil: How long has it been? Three years?
Larry: Something like that.
Gil: You stopped wearing your turban!

Marilyn: Cool is adorable. Adorable! Why didn’t you write us when you had a son?
Larry: I didn’t know myself until a couple of months ago. You see, a few years ago, I was living in Vegas with this girl. Show girl. She was in that show ‘Elvis On Ice’. Anyhow, we drifted apart as people do in these complicated times and then a couple of months ago, she shows up with Cool and tells me, “You watch him. I shot someone. I have to leave the country.”

Helen [whimpering as she flips through the stack of sex photos of Julie and Tod]
[Julie enters the room and Helen holds up a picture]
Helen: I… I… I think this this one is my favorite.
Julie: It was just for fun Mom.
Helen: Well, I’m glad to know it’s not a job. That’s that Tod, isn’t it? There’s one with his face.
[as she looks closer at the photos]
Julie: Is that what bothers you? That I did those things? Or that I did those things with Tod?
Helen: Gee whiz, Julie, so many things bother me about this, I don’t know where to separate them.
[holds up a different photo]
Helen: Oh! Whoo! Here’s something for my wallet!
Julie: Tod is very important to me.
Helen: And we’ve got the photos to prove it!
[as she holds up the sex photos again]
Julie: Mom…
Helen: [looking again at the ephotos] This is your room. You did these things right here? In my house?
Julie: Well, I thought someone in this house ought to be having sex - I mean with something that doesn’t require batteries.
Karen: He likes to butt things… with his head.
Nathan: How proud you must be.

Helen: I swear, Julie, if you walk out that door, don’t you dare come back!
Julie: Don’t worry about that!
[Garry enters]
Julie: Hi Garry.
Garry: Hi.
Julie: I’m moving out.
Garry: Bye.
Helen: See? Now you’ve upset your brother!

Marilyn: Frank?
Frank: What?
Marilyn: Cool just finished lunch.
Frank: l´ll call the newspaper.
Marilyn: l thought you and Larry could take him somewhere.
Frank: l am showing Larry my car.
Larry: Just plop him in front of the TV. That´s what he always does.

Frank [watching Larry get thrown from a moving car and rolling up next to his feet]: What was that?
Larry: Oh, some friends of mine were just dropping me off.
Frank: Friends? Friends slow down, they even stop!

Julie: He said that he loved me.
Helen: Men say that. They all say that. Then they come.
Julie: I can’t believe I trusted him…
Helen: Well, what did you expect from a kid like that?
Julie: Oh, Mom, back off. The last guy you dated stole our furniture. Men are scum.

Tod: Julie, you belong with me!
Helen [hitting him]: Let go of her!
Tod: Julie, you’re my wife!
Helen: If you don’t let her go right now I’m going to call the…his what?!
Julie: His wife. We got married a couple of days ago.
Helen [stops hitting Tod and starts hitting Jilie]: Are you out of your mind? Are you out of your mind?!

Julie [to Tod]: I wouldn’t live with you if the world were flooded with piss and you lived in a tree!

Nathan: Well?
Susan: Why are you pouring water through my diaphragm?
Nathan: To check. To see if it’s OK. You didn’t know I did that, did you?
Susan: No.
Nathan: Obviously not or you wouldn’t have tried this.
Susan: Are you accusing me of making that hole?
Nathan: No, a woodpecker came in here, went into the bathroom, opened the drawer with his little wing and pecked a couple of holes in your diaphragm!

Helen [to Garry]: l assume you’re watching these because you’re curious about sex…you know. Or filmmaking.

Tod [commenting on Garry]: That is one messed up little dude.

Helen: I guess a boy Garry’s age needs a man around the house.
Tod: Well, it depends on the man. I had a man around. He used to wake me up every morning by flicking lit cigarettes at my head. He’d say, “Hey, asshole, get up and make me breakfast.” You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog, or drive a car. Hell, you need a license to catch a fish! But they’ll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father.

Larry: Dad, they’re going to kill me.

Frank: Did you ever think about getting a job?
Larry: Oh, great. Oh, that is just great now. What did you always tell me, huh? ‘‘Make your mark. Make your mark. Don´t be one of the numbers. Make your mark’’
Frank: You misunderstood me. You weren´t listening.
Larry: Aw, come on! lf l called you up to tell you, ‘‘Hey, Dad, l´m the new assistant…sub-vice president of pencil sharpening at some crappy little company’’… you´re telling me you´d think that was great? l am better than that! l am not Gil!

Julie: If he thinks I’m having his baby now, he’s crazy!
Helen: Baby?
George [shocked]: Your daughter’s having a baby?
Helen [even more shocked]: A baby?!
George: You’re going to be a grandma?
Helen [laughs incredulously]: No, no, no, no. I’m too young to be a grandmother. Grandmothers are old. They bake, and they sew, and they tell you stories about the Depression.
[shouts] I was at Woodstock, for Christ’s sake! I peed in a field!

Karen: This puts a minor crimp in my life too. l was thinking about starting back to work in the fall. Now l can´t.
Gil: That´s the difference between men and women. Women have choices. Men have responsibilities.
Karen: Oh, really? Okay, well, then, l choose for you to have the baby. That´s my choice. You have the baby. You get fat. You breast-feed until your nipples are sore. l´ll go back to work.
Gil: Let´s return from la-la land, because that ain´t gonna happen. Whether l crawl back to Dave or get another job…it´s obvious now l´m gonna have to spend less time at home. l´m gonna have to have business dinners. l´m gonna have to play racquetball. l´m gonna have to get guys laid. l hope you don´t mind if l bring home a few prostitutes…because that´s what it takes to get anywhere, and l´m not getting anywhere. Whatever happens, you have to count on less help from me.

Gil: l´m ready to discuss it. However, l can´t right now. l gotta go to the goddamn Little League. Ten little boys are waiting for me to guide them into last place.
Helen: You really have to go?
Gil: My whole life is ‘‘have to.’’

Gil [after Frank asks for advice about Larry]: You want my advice? Why me? Why now?
Frank: Because I know you think I was a shitty father.
[Gil is silent]
Frank: Thank you for not arguing. And I know you’re a good father.

Frank: You know, when you were two years old, we thought you had polio. Did you know that?
Gil: Yeah, Mom said… something about it a couple of years ago.
Frank: Yeah, well, for a week we didn’t know. I hated you for that.
[Gil looks surprised and hurt]
Frank: I did. I hated having to care, having to go through the pain, the hurt, the suffering. It’s not for me.

Frank: Then Monday morning, 6: a.m you come to work with me at my place. l´m going to teach you the business.
Larry: Plumbing supplies.
Frank: ln a few years, l´ll retire, and you´ll take over. Meanwhile, as long as you´re working… and if you agree to go to Gamblers Anonymous, l´ll keep paying your debt. That´s it.
Larry: Okay. But let me just add a wrinkle. About an hour ago, l got a phone call from an associate in Chile. Big opportunity. Platinum. Why don´t l just toddle off down there for a few months, see if it pans out? lf it does, great. lf not…we put the Frank Buckman plan into effect. Sound good?
Frank [giving up on him]: Sure. Great.
Larry: l could use a little…
Frank: Two thousand enough?
Larry: Ample. Ample. Well, better pack.
Frank: What about Cool?
Larry: What? Oh, Jesus, that´s a tough one. This is not really the kind of trip that…Listen, how about if…
Frank: Don´t worry about it.

Cool: My dad´s going away.
Frank: Yes. He´s leaving right away.
Cool: ls he ever coming back?
Frank: No. Would you like to stay here with us?
Cool: Yeah.

Susan [as her husband serenades her in the middle of her lesson]: Nathan, we’re trying so hard to keep these kids off drugs

Tod: Did l win?

Garry: You, like, saved their marriage. That was really cool.
Helen: Yeah, well, l give ´em six months. Four, if she cooks.[/b]

Afghanistan the first time. The Soviet Vietnam. Either way it is tens of thousands of young soldiers [or jihadists] slaughtering each other along with hundreds of thousands of folks forced to participate collaterally.

You try to wrap your mind around it – to pick someone or some thing to blame – but it is always overwhelming in the end. We live in a world where these things have happened since the dawn of testosterone. We just have far more lethal ways in which to inflict it.

And if this isn’t brainwashing writ large what is it? From birth they are molded into this frame of mind. And on both sides. Just as we were molded in turn. It’s only question of acknowledging it or not. And of situating it out in the world as best you can.

This film is based “loosely” on true events. But, come on, who is kidding whom. It’s still going on today. Only it’s the Yanks trying to wiggle out of it. Another rendition of “peace with honor”.

It’s really just a Russian remake of Full Metal Jacket

IMDb

Set domestic box office record in Russia, in 2005, generating $ 7,700,000 in five days. Surpassed Turetskiy gambit in October 2005 to become the highest-grossing movie in post-communist Russia. It was the first movie in post-communist Russia to surpass the $20 million mark at the box office.

wiki

The film received a mixed reaction from the veterans of that war, who pointed to a number of inaccuracies, but nevertheless, judging by ticket sales, was embraced by the general public, and even by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

trailer:
youtu.be/FVB9Xz2DyME

9TH COMPANY [9 rota] 2005
Directed by Fedor Bondarchuk

Drill Sergeant: You must be the painter, huh?
Petrovsky: That’s correct drill sergeant.
Drill Sergeant: So why’d you drag your ass over here? Could’ve stayed back home and drawn naked gals and pretty flowers.
Petrovsky: You see, comrade drill sergeant, if you believe Doctor Freud any creative art is sublimation of man’s subconscious instincts. Including violence. However, you may disagree since Soviet science doesn’t acknowledge Freud’s bourgeois teachings.

The look on the DI’s face: priceless. But then he punches Petrovsky very hard in the stomach.

[b]Drill Sergeant: Rule number one: a paratrooper is always ready for an ambush.

[Punches another soldier]

Drill Sergeant: Rule number two: Only one smarter than a Drill Sergeant is a Sergeant Major.[/b]

The rest is just the usual basic training bullshit. On the other hand, the Drill Sergeant here makes Gunnery Sergeant Hartman look like a pussycat.

The soldiers in unison: WE SERVE THE SOVIET UNION!

And most of them really do buy into it: The Motherland bullshit.

Commander [to assembled troops]: But, the most important thing to remember: When you cross the border, you will be in an Islamic state. Islam is not just another religion. It’s another world with its own laws, a different view of life…and of death. A true Muslim is not afraid to die in battle. And those who perish fighting the infidel – which is us – will immediately go to Heaven where they will get everything they lacked in this life—water, bountiful harvests, and bigbosomed beauties.

And the Soviet soldiers? They were reared in an atheist culture. No comforts of religion here. When they die that’s it.

[b]Commander: The most sacred thing to a Muslim is his home…haram. The second meaning of this word is “not allowed”. Forbidden. Looking at Muslim women…haram. Everything which concerns sexual relations…haram. It’s haram to show a Muslim any obscene gestures, to which all of you are so used to. For that you can receive a bullet even from a peaceful civilian.

Captain: The moment you step into a Muslim village you are guests. Killing a guest, even if he’s an infidel…haram. So remember, as long as you’re in the village, you’re safe. But the moment you step beyond its boundaries, the same host who’s giving you tea five minutes ago can shoot you in the back. Because killing an infidel is a heroic deed. A stairway to Heaven.

Captain: In the entire human history, no one has managed to conquer Afghanistan. No one. Never.

Captain: Men, why are we in Afghanistan?
Soldiers [shouting in unison]: FULFILLING OUR INTERNATIONAL DUTY, BY ASSISTING THE BROTHERLY PEOPLE OF AFGHANISTAN IN REPULSING IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION!

Petrovsky: Weapons are the most beautiful thing that man ever created in his entire history. During the Renaissance there was an artist. His name was Michelangelo. He was once asked how he created his sculptures. He answered, “it’s simple, I take a stone slab and knock off the extra pieces.” You understand beauty’s when there’s nothing extra. No excess. No waste. And in war there’s only life and death. And nothing else. War is beautiful.
Lyutyy: Listen, Giaconda, I don’t get it. Are you actually an idiot or you just fucking with us? What’s so beautiful? A man’s guts tangled up around tank treads. You really think that’s beautiful?! Got bored…so you decided to play soldier?
Petrovsky: I said you wouldn’t get it.

Lyutyy: It’s not bad if it’s quick. Much worse is if it just mangles you…

Lyutyy: I was at this hospital in Tashkent, where they brought some of those guys. Filled up the whole ward. Each one to half a bed. All that’s left of them.[/b]

Danny, my friend, RIP.

[b]Sergeant: War for some, mother’s milk for others.

Hohol: This isn’t basic training! This is war! You don’t get bad grades here! You get killed![/b]

The rest is history. Just as today in Afghanistan it’s history repeating itself. And the folks that manufacture the weapons of war don’t give them away for free.

Given the staggering enormity that is the Second World War, there must be hundreds upon hundreds of movies still to be made. Though none of them will ever be the one pointed to as the turning point in the effort stop the next “great war”. And if you haven’t guessed that by now I won’t make the attempt to disillusion you. And then there are still all the little wars to lament.

People can’t do these things. People do these things. And some will always do it in the name of morality. They rationalize the ignominious means in order that they be in accordance with the lofty ends.

And let’s not forget, the Nazis were far removed from nihilism. All of these terrible things were done [at least by many] in the name of idealism. The autocratic minds of authoritarians and objectivists.

This is just a speck in the war. Like we are all just specks in the grand scheme of things. How is it even possible to connects the dots between them?

We do things with the best of intentions. We do things because we understand a situation in a particular way. Then there are terrible consequences for what we do. And some carry the guilt until, finally, it consumes them. But others do not. Everything for them revolves precisely around intention and perspective.

wiki

Sarah’s Key follows an American journalist’s present-day investigation into the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup of Jews in German-occupied Paris in 1942. It tells the story of young girl Sarah’s experiences during and after these events, illustrating the participation of the French bureaucracy while also showing how other French citizens hid and protected Sarah from Vichy France authorities.

Vel d’hiv roundup in depth at wiki:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vel%27_d%27Hiv_Roundup

trailer:
youtu.be/LzDZ9e3mGRE

SARAH’S KEY [Elle s’appelait Sarah] 2010
Written and directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner

[b]Editor: I guess Chirac’s speech in '95 at the Vel D’Hiv has finally served some purpose.
Young Journalist: Chirac at the what?
Editor: Vel D’Hiv.
Young Reporter: How do you spell that?
Editor [laughing]: You’re joking?
Young Reporter: What happened?
Julia: On the 16th and 17th of July '42, they arrested 13,000 Jews, mostly women and children. They took 8,000 of them and put them in the Velodrome d’Hiver, in inhuman conditions.
Editor: Imagine the Superdome in New Orleans, only a million times worse.
Julia: A million times worse. And then they sent them to the camps.

Mike: No images? That’s weird. Normally, they were really good at that. They documented everything, the Nazis. That’s what they were known for.
Julia: Mike! This was not the Germans, it was the French.

Mother: Surely, they would never send the children to work camps.

Anna [to Sarah]: Think only of yourself. Yourself.

Father: Arrest my son! Please arrest my son!

Sarah [taking the key from her father’s hand after he’s been knocked to the ground]: See? Why didn’t you trust me? Why didn’t you give her the key?
Father: Why did you lock him in? Do you realize what you’ve done? Do you realize? Do you realize?!

Old man [enroute to camp]: See this ring? It contains poison. Nobody in the world can choose when I die. Nobody!

Father: Your mother must never find out, you understand? She was out that day.
Julia: What day?
[a long pause]
Father: The day the girl came back.
Julia: What happened to Sarah?
Father: From 1942 to his death, Dad never once spoke her name. Sarah was part of the secret. Whenever I asked where she was, what happened to her, he told me to be quiet.

Julia: In one week, you sign the deal of the century. No money worries for 150 years! Grown-up daughter, beautiful apartment from deported Jews…
Bertrand: What did you just say?

Colleague: Your article is amazing Julia. When I think all this happened right in the middle of Paris in front of everyone it’s absolutely disgusting.
Julia: And how do you know what you would have done?
Colleague: What do you mean?
Julia: If you had been there, how do you know what you would have done?
Mike: I would have just watched it all on television, you know like the bombings of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan…

Sarah’s mother-in-law: It was in 1966. The truck driver claimed she swerved towards him and there was nothing he could do.

Sarah’s mother-in-law: Their son left to Italy.
Julia: She had a son?
Nathilde: Willian, my half-brother.
Sarah’s mother-in-law: He was nine when Sarah had her accident.

Julia: I just wanted to know the truth.
Bertrand: The truth? The journalist’s quest. So where does it get us now, this bright shiny truth?
Julia: The truth has a price, whether you like it or not.

William: Dad, why didn’t you tell me? My whole life is a lie. My whole life.
Father: William, try to understand. For your mother, if you were Jewish, your life was in danger. Right after you were born she rushed out of the hospital. Went to church to get you baptized. We’re all the product of history.

William [holding up a key]: What’s this?

Julia Jarmond [voiceover]: And so I write this for you, my Sarah. With the hope that one day, when you’re old enough, this story that lives with me, will live with you as well. When a story is told, it is not forgotten. It becomes something else, a memory of who we were; the hope of what we can become.[/b]

Come on, the “war against terror” has been the tail wagging the dog now for over 30 years. Once the Commies tore down their walls, the military industrial complex, the war economy and national security state needed a new bogeyman. And thus was born “the endless war” against jihad. And then, almost miraculously, 9/11 sealed the deal. It couldn’t have been better if they had planned it themselves.

And while I don’t go that far, I have no illusions about those who pull the strings behind the curtains. Of course it helps to have a really dumb audience. Or a really ignorant one.

Already, our presidential campaigns are scripted to the point they may as well be produced in Hollywood.

IMDb

[b]After this film started production and before its release, US President Bill Clinton became involved in a sex scandal and threatened military action against Iraq.

During the filming of Wag the Dog Dustin Hoffman, his co-star Robert De Niro and director Barry Levinson had an impromptu meeting with President ‘Bill Clinton’ at a Washington hotel. “So what’s this movie about?” Clinton asked De Niro. De Niro looked over to Levinson, hoping he would answer the question. Levinson, in turn, looked over to Hoffman. Hoffman, realizing there was no one else to pass the buck to, is quoted as saying, “So I just started to tap dance. I can’t even remember what I said.”[/b]

WAG THE DOG
Directed by Barry Levinson

[b]Titlecard: Why does the dog wag its tail? Because the dog is smarter than the tail. If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog.

Winifred: That’s him. That’s Mr Fix-it.

Connie: So, it’s not the illegal nanny thing? What is it?
Staffer: A group of Firefly Girls were here last month…The president took one of them in the office behind the Oval Office. The girl’s alleging…
[Staffer hands him the report. Connie reads it]
Connie: Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Connie: And it’s most certainly not about the B-3 bomber.
John: There is no B-3 bomber.
Connie: I just said that! There is no B-3 bomber. I don’t know why these rumors get started!

Connie [repeated line]: I’m working on it.

Winnifred: Tell me again.
Connie: Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing new. During the Reagan adminustration, 240 Marines were killed in Beirut. 24 hours later, we invade Grenada. That’s the M.O… Change the subject, change the lead.

Connie: What’s the thing people remember about the Gulf War? A bomb falls down a chimney and blows up a building. The building could have been made out of Legos.

Winifred: Why Albania?
Connie: Why not?
Winifred: What have they done to us?
Connie: What have they done for us? What do you know about them?
Winifred: Nothing.
Connie: See? They keep to themselves. Shifty. Standoffish.

Stanley: Okay you bought yourself a day or two.
Connie: All I need is 11 till the election.
Stanley: This isn’t going to hold for 11 days. He fucked a Girl Scout.

Connie: What do you think would hold it off, Mr. Motss?
Stanley: Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. You’d have to have a war.

Stanley: I’m in show business, why come to me?
Connie: War is show business, Mr. Motss, that’s why we’re here.

Stanley: No no no no no, fuck freedom.

Fad King: We’re locked into Albania. Why?
Johnny Dean: Albania’s hard to rhyme.
Stanley: What are you looking at me for? It’s the name of the country.
Johnny Dean [sighs resignedly, then sings]: “Albania, Albania…”
Stanley: That rhymes.

Tracy: What would they do to me if I did tell someone about this?
Connie: They could come to your house in the middle of the night and kill you.

Stanley [repeated line]: This is nothing.

Stanley: They used the same process here as in the last Schwarzenegger movie. And this is only the beginning. Wait till we get to the song, image, merchandising tie-ins.

CIA Agent Young: There are two things I know to be true. There’s no difference between good flan and bad flan, and there is no war.
Connie: Of course there’s a war. I’m watching it on TV.

Stanley: Neal can’t end the war. He’s not producing this.

Connie: The CIA cut them a better deal.

Stanley: The war isn’t over until I say it’s over. This is my picture. This is not the CIA’s picture.

Connie: If Henry Kissinger can win the Peace Prize I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I had won the Preakness.

Stanley: The President will be a hero. He brought peace.
Connie: But there was never a war.
Stanley: All the greater accomplishment.

Winifred: So when we touch down tomorrow, Big Bird is going to meet Schumann at the airport, huh?
Stanley: Big mistake, big mistake. You gotta bring them in by stages. Big mistake to reveal Schumann before the election.
Winifred: How so?
Stanley: Sweetheart, Schumann is the shark. Okay? Schumann is Jaws. You have to tease them. You gotta tease them. You don’t put Jaws in the first reel of the movie. It’s the contract, sweetheart. The contract of the election, whether they know it or not, is “Vote for me Tuesday, Wednesday I’ll produce Schumann.” See, that’s what they’re paying their seven bucks for.

Winifred: What did he do?
Stanley: He raped a nun…
Winifred: Oh, God. Oh, God. Jes - Oh, God!
Stanley: And…
Winifred: “And”? I don’t want to know an “and”. Why is there an “and”?
Stanley: Look, look, look, look, look. He’s fine as long as he gets his medication…
Winifred: And if he doesn’t get his medications?
Stanley: He’s not fine.

Sergeant Schumann: Who are you? Who are you sons of bitches?!

Winifred: Oh, God. What do we do now? Huh? Huh? What do we do now, huh, boy producer? Huh? Mister win-an-Emmy, social-conscience, whale-shit, save-the-rain-forest, peacenik-commie, fuckin’-hire-a-convict-shithead? Huh? What do we do now, liberal, affirmative action, shithead, peacenik commie fuck? What do you want to do now?
Stanley: This is nothing! Piece of cake.

Stanley: It’s okay, he’s not dead.
[gunshot]
Stanley: Uh, strike that.

Stanley: You think I did this for money? I did this for credit.
Connie: You always knew you couldn’t take the credit.
Stanley: But I’m not going to stand here and let two dickheads from film school take it.

Stanley: Look at that! That is a complete fucking fraud, and it looks a hundred percent real. It’s the best work I’ve ever done in my life, because it’s so honest.

Stanley: They told me I couldn’t remake Moby Dick from the point of view of the whale. But I did it. $450 million domestic.

News reporter: And turning to the Hollywood page famed film producer Stanley R. Motss died suddenly of a massive heart attack while sunbathing poolside.

Newscaster: This just in. A group calling itself “Albania Unite” has claimed responsibility for the bombing moments ago of the village of Klos, Albania. The president was unavailable for comment but General William Scott of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says he has no doubt we’ll be sending planes and troops back in to finish the job.[/b]

The critics hated this one. But I suspect some of that was aimed at the subject matter. Who wants to have this shoved in their face? But there it is.

I tend to approach it more as did Roger Ebert [who gave it 3 stars out of 4]:

“8mm is a real film. Not a slick exploitation exercise with all the trappings of depravity but none of the consequences. Not a film where moral issues are forgotten in the excitement of an action climax.”

And yet some suggest the cause of morality is dealth a blow when “the Machine” explains his motivation for doing these things.

You have to dig deep down under the bottom of the barrel to find the scum that populate this world. Those who make the stuff and those rich enough to purchase it. Stuff and snuff. As in the real thing.

IMDb

The actress (Jenny Powell) playing the character of Mary Ann Mathews was originally a stripper hired in to act as a stand-in. Joel Schumacher gave her the part of the victim on the 8mm film as she had a suitably “haunted” look about her.

8MM [1999]
Directed by Joel Schumacher

[b]Tom: I want you to listen carefully. What you’re talking about is a “snuff film.” But, from what I know, snuff films are a kind of…urban myth. There’s no such thing, I can assure you. Please, believe me. This is probably an S&M film of some sort. Simulated rape, simulated violence. Hard to stomach, and it might seem real, but there are ways of making it look realistic…fake blood and special effects.

Tom [speaking to missing girl’s mother]: Can you tell me if you had to make a choice…if you were forced to choose between imagining her out there somewhere living a good life…being happy…but you don’t know…you never find out…or the worst being true…her being gone…but you know…you finally know what’s happened to her.
Mother: What would I choose?
Tom: Yes.
Mother: I would choose to know.

Max [to porn store customer]: Hey! It’s like a gas station, you pay before you pump!

Max: I can hook you up, though. You name the vice I name the price.

Max: It’s not too late to change your mind about this. There are some things that you see, and then you can’t unsee them.

Max [about the porn industry]: All I’m saying is…it can get to you.
Tom: No worries. Thanks for the warning, though.
Max: You’re welcome. Pops. Just remember. If you dance with the devil, the devil don’t change. The devil changes you.

Max: There’s two kinds of specialty product; legal and illegal. Foot fetish, shit films, watersports, bondage, spanking, fisting, she- males, hemaphrodites…it’s beyond hardcore, but legal. This is the kind of hardcore where one guy’s going to look at it and throw up, another guy looks at it and falls in love. Now, with some of the S+M and bondage films, they straddle the line. How are you supposed to tell if the person tied up with the ball gag in their mouth is a consenting or not? Step over that line, you’re into kiddie porn. Rape films, but there aren’t many. I’ve never seen one.

Max: You’ve got Penthouse, Playboy, Hustler, etc. Nobody even considers them pornography anymore. Then, there’s mainstream hardcore. Triple X. The difference is penetration. That’s hardcore. That whole industry’s up in the valley. Writers, directors, porn stars. They’re celebrities, or they think they are. They pump out 150 videos a week. A week. They’ve even got a porno Academy Awards. America loves pornography. Anybody tells you they never use pornography, they’re lying. Somebody’s buying those videos. Somebody’s out there spending 900 million dollars a year on phone sex. Know what else? It’s only gonna get worse. More and more you’ll see perverse hardcore coming into the mainstream, because that’s evolution. Desensitization. Oh my God, Elvis Presley’s wiggling his hips, how offensive! Nowadays, Mtv’s showing girls dancing around in thong bikinis with their asses hanging out. Know what I mean? For the porn-addict, big tits aren’t big enough after a while. They have to be the biggest tits ever. Some porn chicks are putting in breast implants bigger than your head, literally. Soon, Playboy is gonna be Penthouse, Penthouse’ll be Hustler, Hustler’ll be hardcore, and hardcore films’ll be medical films. People’ll be jerking off to women laying around with open wounds. There’s nowhere else for it to go.

Max: What about you, Tom? You got a wife and a daughter and a nice little yellow house and a dog named ‘Shep’. What the hell are you doing here?

Max: Do you get turned on at places like tonight?
Tom: No, I do not.
Max: But you don’t exactly get turned off either, do ya? Devil’s changing you already.

Tom: Whoa, who said anything about a victum?
Max: There’s three rules in life: One, there’s always a victim; two, don’t be it.
Tom: And three?
Max: I forgot that one.

Dino Velvet [holding a picture of Tom’s wife and daughter]: What I could do with faces like these on film. On second thought, why would I need their faces?

Tom: Why would Christian want this?
Longdale: You’re asking me why? Why?!
Tom: Yes, why would he want a film of a…a little girl being butchered?!
Longdale: Because he could! He did it because he could. What other reason were you looking for?

Dino Velvet: Mr. Longdale, if there was no honor among perverts and pornographers, the whole fucking business falls apart.

Tom: Take off the mask.
Higgins [after removing it]: What did you expect, a monster?

Higgins: Can’t get your mind around it, huh? I don’t have any answers. Nothing I can say is going to make you sleep easier at night. I wasn’t beaten. I wasn’t molested. Mommy didn’t abuse me. Daddy never raped me. I’m only what I am. That’s all there is to it. There’s no mystery. The things I do, I do them because I like them. Because I want to.[/b]

What’s it about? From RT:

Yosuke’s first indication that Saeko is quite unlike the other girls is when he spies her stealing cheese from a local market. She later tells him that her body is a spring of water that wells up within her. The only means of relief is by doing something naughty – like shoplifting – or by engaging in a vigorous round of sex.

How vigorous? Really vigorous. But it’s not what you think. Don’t take this one too literally. It’s a “fable”. Among, well, other things.

And then there’s Ramin. I’ve never seen a character quite like him in a Japanese film. Not in the boonies.

And Taro, the philosopher. And even a lesson in neutrinos.

WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE
Written and directed by Shôhei Imamura

[b]Saeko: You must never tell anyone about the water.
Yosuke: The water?

Yosuke: A first for me too.

Yosuke: Promise me you will stop stealing. If it does happen again, I could help out.

Taro: Man’s been a lecher all through history. The ruling class never had to worry about survival. They could devote all their energies to food and sex. You know why?
Yosuke: They had nothing else to do?
Taro: No. Because that’s been the ideal life since ancient times. Squeeze what they could from the peasants. Then enjoy a degenerate life.

Taro: People today are sick. Too learned to honestly admit to their desires. Forget all the trivialities and throw yourself into lasciviousness.[/b]

And don’t get him talking about hard-ons.

[b]Saeko: I expected the 21st century to be different. But everything is still the same.

Taro: Keep on thinking until your brain cells start to rot.
Tosuke: My boss always said I thought too much.
Taro: That only proves you don’t think enough. The corporate culture…you see they don’t want the workers to think. They want fools who’ll work all their lives without complaining. Just like jail.

Taro: Lose your free will, and you lose your humanity. But in the end, it’s all in the hands of the gods.[/b]

Or at the behest of nature. Maybe one day I will actually understand what to me is a preposterous [and hopelessly contradictory] point of view.

[b]Saeko [to Tosuke]: For you it was just exotic sex, but do you realize how much I suffer? I tried to kill myself many times!

Taro [from the grave]: You know yourself it’s an impossible tale.[/b]

Never seen it done quite like this before. And, based on a true story, it’s all the more remarkable.

As brutal as it is to watch these films, you can never have too many reminders of just how loathesome and despicable the Nazis were. And then the knowledge that not all that far below the surface is the monster they bring out in you. And these guys are not exactly the heroes most folks have in mind.

Rage and fear. Rage and fear. Rage and fear.

That terrible predicament when the future seems unbearable and past is certain death. Just imagine living 14 months in a sewer. And them being the lucky ones?

trailer:
youtu.be/mcXzWKCxZJg

IN DARKNESS [2011]
Directed by Agnieszka Holland

[b]Socha: I know the sewers better than I know my own wife. It’s no place for you.
Mundek: There is no place at all more us anymore.
Socha: But I know places where it could work. For the right price.

Socha [to Szczepek]: We can always turn them in later. Let’s see how much they’ve got.

Klara [in sewer]: There’s shit everywhere.

Socha: Fucking hell. Everyone and their dog came down!

Socha: You’re bargaining over your own life, just like any other Yid.

Socha: They’re offering rewards for turning in Jews. Some people are making a pile.
Wife: God will punish the greedy.
Socha: The Jews crucified Jesus. It’s written in the Bible. “His blood be upon them and their children.” The priest said so.
Wife: That’s just church politics. Just think about it. Jews are just the same as us. Our Lady and the Apostles, they’re all Jews! Even Jesus.
Socha: Jesus?

Klara: I never thought I’d miss the ghetto.

Yanek: I’ve chosen 7.
Chiger: And who made you God?
Yanek: It was my room. I took all the risk. And the idea was mine, too.
Chiger: Which I am paying for!
Yanek: That makes you better than us?
Chiger: Before the war we would never have been in the same room together![/b]

Then it devolves into a swirl of rationalizations.

[b]Wanda [looking at Szczepek’s watch]: New?
Szczepek: From Mr. Chiger. He’s one of our Jews. Hasn’t Poldek told you about…
Wanda: Jews, Poldek?
Socha: We found some Jews in the sewers.
Wanda: And you’re helping them?
Socha: Wanda, they pay us.
Wanda: So that’s your “raise”.
Socha: You said the Jews were just like us. That Jesus was a Jew.
Wanda: This is different.
Szczepek: Jesus was a Jew? Is that really true? Jesus was a Jew?

Szczepek: What if they talked before they were killed?
Socha: Then we’d be dead by now.
Szczepek: No, Poldek! I can’t help you anymore.

Chiger: I thought you were going to sell them?
Socha: I won’t be coming back. I’m risking my life, my family’s life, for what? Complaints and accusations. And now this betrayal. Enough. This is too much. Szczepek was right.

Vendor: Have you heard? The Germans hanged ten Poles in revenge for a single German soldier.
Socha: A German soldier?
Vendor: But they weren’t satisfied so they shot 40 more people. Or maybe 50, all good, God- fearing Poles. You know, whoever killed that soldier is a hero to me, but the innocent always have to suffer.

Chiger: The baby is dead. She smothered him…Maybe it’s for the best.

Socha: It’s over! It’s over! You can come out now!

Titlecard: “Socha’s Jews” spent 14 months in the sewers of Lvov. On May 12th, 1945, Leopold Socha was killed, saving his daughter from an out-of-control Russian army truck. At his funeral someone said, “It’s God’s ounishment for helping the Jews.” As if we need God to punish each other.[/b]

Well, I guess that let’s Him off the hook.

Titlecard: Kyrstyna Chiger grew up to write her memior, “The Girl in the Green Sweater”, published in 2008. She and the other survivors escaped Soviet Lvov for Israel, Europe and the United States. Leopold and Wanda Socha are among the more than 6,000 Poles honored by Israel as The Righteous Among the Nations. This film is dedicated to all of them.

Of course, the Palestinians might have their own take on Israel’s idea of righteousness.

How good is it? It’s one of those rare films that got a 100% fresh rating at RT with 50 reviews or more [57].

He’s a staid businessman far removed from the world of art and she’s an impassioned actor immersed in it. Her friends are snobs. The possibilities are endless. Especially in France. Or so they want us to believe.

There are so many different ways to be and so many more ways in which to react to them. And every relationship eventually revolves around somehow fitting the parts in conflict together.

Or getting out of it once and for all.

wiki

Speaking to Paris Match in 2004 director Agnès Jaoui said ; “I detest mono-cultures. The problem of identity is something very complicated with me. I am profoundly secular, but if I were attacked for being Jewish, I would scream. And I want the right to say I violently condemn the politics of Ariel Sharon, even if it’s complex. It’s the same thing for Jean-Pierre as it is for me, it is the individual who counts. It’s the social dimension of characters that interests us, not their roots or their heredity. I detest the notion of the inward looking group. It’s this we tried to say in The Taste of Others. Whether it is a religious clan or a group of snobs, it’s the same in our eyes. It’s the same dogma, the same fundamentalism.”

THE TASTE OF OTHERS [Le Goût des Autres] 2000
Directed by Agnès Jaoui

[b]Bruno [to Franck]: I wanted to ask you something, have you ever killed someone?

Bruno: Where did we meet, exactly? I’m sorry…
Manie: It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. We just had sex.

Bruno [to Franck]: Is “200 to 300” a figure of speech?

Clara: What do you call a 40 year old unemployed actress? Redundant.

Franck: Do you know Bruno well?
Manie: No, not very well. We have sex every 10 years.

Bruno: It’s not the same for a man. A man can have sex with whomever. It doesn’t mean anything. I wasn’t talking about you.
Manie: No, no, but I think you are wrong. For plenty of women is doesn’t mean anything either.

Manie: A tobacco store, that doesn’t bother you?
Franck: No, that doesn’t bother me.
Manie: Or a bar?
Franck: What do you mean? Alcohol is legal, so are cigarettes.
Manie: What is this bullshit?
Franck: Don’t use that tone. Are alcohol and cigarettes legal or not.
Manie: Are alcohol and cigarettes harmful or not? They’re ten times worse. But you don’t care. Your problem is that it’s illegal.
Franck: Your arguments won’t help you in jail.
Manie: Why? Will you turn me in?

Clara [of Franck]: He doesn’t get bored doing nothing?
Jean-Jacques: No, that’s his job.

Clara [seeing Jean-Jacques at a play]: What’s he doing here?!
[Antoine waves to him]
Clara: Stop! He’ll come over.
Antoine: He’s really friendly. Why shouldn’t he come over?
Clara: You’re not the one he’ll talk to.

Manie: Your boss seems nice.
Franck: He’s dense. They made fun of him all night. He didn’t even realize it.

Clara [to Manie]: Why “poor guy”? He put himself in this situation. He comes, it’s one stupid thing after another, and in the end, he picks up the tab!

Antoine: He’s happy, but a lot of journalists didn’t show up.
Jean-Jacques: You mean they said they would show up but they didn’t. What a bunch of fags.
Antoine: Fags? What do you mean?
Jean-Jacques: You know, fags.
Antoine: You mean ass-fuckers like my friends and I?

Jean-Jacques: I apologize for what I said earlier. I spoke without thinking.
Antoine: Yes, you did.

Clara: Perhaps I have too many scruples.
Antoine: And I don’t?
Clara: You’re taking advantage of him. It makes me uneasy.
Antoine: Absolutely not. What are you talking about? He enjoy’s Benoit’s work and wants a fresco. What’s the problem?
Clara: Antoine, you know what I mean. Don’t tell me that Castella enjoys Benoit’s work. Castella doesn’t know anything. He’s spending his money, and you make him believe that you’re friends.

Jean-Jacques: I don’t understand. Why do you say that he’s taking advantage of me? I like these paintings and I buy them, that’s all. What’s the problem? Why did you think I was buying them? You thought it was to please you? Is that it? To make a good impression?
Clara: I don’t know. Maybe.
Jean-Jacques: You didn’t imagine for a minute that I could…like them? Is that what you think of me? Don’t worry. I like them.

Angélique: Flucky is happy. He doesn’t understand nastiness or hypocrisy. He’s content running everywhere. He’s happy. He doesn’t bother a soul or know how ugly the world is.
Bruno: The world is what it is. We deal with it.
Angélique: I don’t want to! It’s too disgusting, too awful. I’m not interested!
Bruno: You should move to Disneyland.

Clara: Do you know if Castella is coming?
Antoine: Castella? Why? You were afraid I’d invite him?
Clara: I invited him.[/b]

No smart phones and no Internet here. But in other respects it was anticipated that, by 2001, we would be considerably more advanced then we are even now. A colony on the Moon? A trip to Jupiter? Not quite. But some things always seemed to stay the same back then in Hollywood: It’s a [white] man’s world.

But there is still the part about the wonder of it all. What does the Monolith represent if not that? The interpretations are vast and varied. As are speculations regarding what the movie itself “means”?

Start here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreta … ce_Odyssey

HAL may well be the star here. This is artifical intelligence that immediately implicates all the conflicting arguments regarding what the hell that even means. After all, if the determinists are right we may well just be nature’s own rendition of it. Is intelligence artificial if it has no no capacity to be other than what it must be given the laws of physics? What does it even mean then for HAL to attribute something to “human error”?

IMDb “trivia” about the film— all 90 items:
imdb.com/title/tt0062622/trivia?tab=gf

Also the IMDb “FAQs”. Some really interesting stuff here.
imdb.com/title/tt0062622/faq

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
Written and directed by Stanley Kubrick

[b]Female computerized voice: Welcome to Voiceprint Identification. When you see the red light go on, would you please state in the following order: your destination, your nationality, and your full name; surname first, Christian name and initial.

Dr. Smyslov: Dr. Floyd, at the risk of pressing you on a point you seem reticent to discuss, may I ask you a straightforward question?
Dr. Floyd: Certainly.
Dr. Smyslov: Quite frankly, we have had some very reliable intelligence reports that a quite serious epidemic has broken out at Clavius. Something, apperently, of an unknown origin. Is this, in fact, what has happened?
Dr. Floyd: I’m sorry, Dr. Smyslov, but I’m really not at liberty to discuss this.[/b]

Another thing that never changes.

Dr. Floyd: I understand that beyond it being a matter of principle, many of you are troubled by the concern and anxiety this story of an epidemic might cause your relatives and friends on Earth. I can understand and sympathize with your negative views. I have been personally embarrassed by this cover story. But I fully accept the need for absolute secrecy and I hope you will. It should not be difficult for all of you to realise the potential for cutural shock and social disorientation contained in the present situation if the facts were prematurely and suddenly made public without adequate preparation and conditioning.

Gee, who would have thought that’s how it works?

[b]Dr. Michaels: The evidence seems pretty conclusive that it hasn’t been covered up by natural erosion or other forces. It seems to have been deliberately buried.
Dr. Floyd [intoning awe]: Deliberately buried…

Dr. Floyd: I don’t suppose you have any idea what the damn thing is, huh?
Dr. Michaels: I wish to hell we did. No, the only thing we’re sure of is it was buried four million years ago.

Interviewer: HAL, you have an enormous responsibility on this mission, in many ways perhaps the greatest responsibility of any single mission element. You’re the brain, and central nervous system of the ship, and your responsibilities include watching over the men in hibernation. Does this ever cause you any lack of confidence?
HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.

HAL: I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

Interviewer: In talking to the computer one gets the sense that he is capable of emotional response. For example, when I asked him about his abilities I sensed a certain pride in his answer about his accuracy and perfection. Do you believe HAL has genuine emotions.
Dr Poole: Well, he acts like he has genuine emotions. Of course, he’s programed that way to make it easier for us to talk to him. But as to whether or not he has real feelings that’s something I don’t think anyone can truthfully answer.

HAL: …during the past few weeks I’ve wondered whether you might be having second thoughts about the mission?
Dr. Bowman: How do you mean?
HAL: I’ve never freed myself of the suspicion that there are some extremely odd things about this mission. Certainly no one could have been unaware of the very strange stories floating around before we left. Rumors about something being dug up on the moon. I never gave these much credence but particularly in view of some other things that have happened I find it difficult to put out of my mind. For instance: The way all our preparations were kept under such tight security and the melodramatic touch of putting Drs. Hunter, Kimball and Kaminsky aboard already in hibernation after four months of separate training on their own.

HAL: Just a moment…just a moment…just a moment. I’ve just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It’s going to go 100% failure in 72 hours.

Dr. Bowman: Well, HAL, I’m damned if I can find anything wrong with it.
HAL: Yes, it’s puzzling.

Dr. Bowman: How would you account for this discrepancy between you and the twin 9000?
HAL: Well, I don’t think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before and it is always attributable to human error.

Dr. Poole: Well, whaddya think?
Dr. Bowman: I’m not sure, what do you think?
Dr. Poole: I’ve got a bad feeling about him.
Dr. Bowman: You do?
Dr. Poole: Yeah, definitely. Don’t you?
Dr. Bowman [sighs]: I don’t know; I think so. You know of course though he’s right about the 9000 series having a perfect operational record. They do.
Dr. Poole: Unfortunately that sounds a little like famous last words.

Dr. Poole: Let’s say we put the unit back in and it doesn’t fail? That would pretty much wrap it up as far as HAL was concerned.
Dr. Bowman: Well, we would be in very serious trouble.
Dr. Poole: We would wouldn’t we? There isn’t a single aspect of ship operation that isn’t under his control. We wouldn’t have any choice but disconnection.
Dr. Bowman: I’m afraid I agree with you. But it would be tricky. We’d have to cut his higher brain functions without disturbing the purely automatic and regulatory systems.

Dr. Bowman: You know, another thing just occured to me. As far as I know, no 9000 computer has ever been disconnected.
Dr. Poole: Well, no 9000 computer has ever fouled up before.
Dr. Bowman: That’s not what I mean. I’m not so sure what he’d think about it.

Dr. Bowman: Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dr. Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Dr. Bowman: What’s the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dr. Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dr. Bowman: I don’t know what you’re talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.
Dr. Bowman [feigning ignorance]: Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dr. Bowman: Alright, HAL. I’ll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave? You’re going to find that rather difficult.
Dr. Bowman: HAL, I won’t argue with you anymore! Open the doors!
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

HAL: Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?

HAL: I know everything hasn’t bee quite right with me but I ca assure you now very confidently that’s it’s going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do. Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop Dave? Stop, Dave.

HAL: I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid…Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you.
Dave Bowman: Yes, I’d like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.
HAL [his voice increasingly sluggish]: It’s called “Daisy.”

Mission Control [prerecorded message speaking through TV on board Discovery while Bowman looks on]: Good day, gentlemen. This is a prerecorded briefing made prior to your departure and which for security reasons of the highest importance has been known on board during the mission only by your H-A-L 9000 computer. Now that you are in Jupiter’s space and the entire crew is revived it can be told to you. Eighteen months ago the first evidence of intelligent life off the Earth was discovered. It was buried 40 feet below the lunar surface near the crater Tycho. Except for a single very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter the four-million year old black monolith has remained completely inert. Its origin and purpose are still a total mystery.[/b]

As is existence itself.

Lots of folks dream of doing it. A few actually do. But the rest of us live in the real world—a world infested with the obligations and the responsibilites that revolve around raising a family and earning a living to pay the bills. But, sure, more power to those able to yank themselves up out of all that. It’s just not a very realistic option for most of us.

What balls though.

On the other hand, his at times insufferably self-righteous idealism is nothing less than…insufferable. We’d be in a fist fight before the sun went down each and every day.

You watch him interact with people and he seems to fit right in. He’s no misanthrope. It must be the part about “society” that repels him away. Authority always seems to rub him the wrong way. That and his fucked up parents.

In the end though there is too much spiritualualism and God here. Was for me, anyway.

Christopher McCandless at wiki:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless

IMDb

Shot on location, except for the bus scenes. According to Sean Penn they abandoned the idea of shooting at the real bus out of respect for Christopher and the McCandless family. Instead, they built a set in the wilderness, with an exact replica of the real bus.

INTO THE WILD
Written and directed by Sean Penn [from the book by Jon Krakauer] 2007

[b]Title Card: There is a pleasure in the pathless woods / There is a rapture on the lonely shore / There is society, where none intrudes / By the deep sea, and music in its roar / I love not man the less, but Nature more…
Lord Byron

Driver: That’s about as far as I can get you.
Chris: All right. Thank you.
Driver: Hey, you left all your shit on my dash.
Chris: Keep it.
Driver: Suit yourself.
Chris: Thanks again.
Driver: Hey, hold on a minute. Here, take these boots. They’ll keep your feet dry. If you make it out alive, give me a call. My number’s inside the boots.
Chris: Thanks.

Chris [voice-over]: Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road.

Chris: I don’t need a new car. I don’t want a new car. I don’t want anything.
Mother: Okay.
Chris: These things, things, things, things.

Carine [voice-over]: Chris measured himself and those around him by a fiercely rigorous moral code. He risked what could have been a relentlessly lonely path but found company in the characters of the books he loved from writers like Tolstoy, Jack London and Thoreau. He could summon their words to suit any occasion, and he often would. I forgot to ask what quote he’d have picked for his graduation dinner, but I had a good idea of who the primary target would be. It was inevitable that Chris would break away. And when he did, he would do it with characteristic immoderation.

Chris [voice-over]: It should not be denied that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations. Absolute freedom. And the road has always led west.[/b]

And then [eventually] north.

[b]Rainey: So you’re a leather now.
Chris: I’m a leather?
Jan: Yeah, a leather tramp. That’s what they call the ones that hoof it, go on foot. Technically we’re rubber tramps. Because we have a vehicle.

Chris: I don’t need money. Makes people cautious.
Jan: Come on, Alex. You gotta be a little cautious.

Chris: Where’s Jan going?
Rainey: Well, my friend, all is not well on the hippie front.

Chris [to Rainey]: Some people feel like they don’t deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.

Chris [voice-over]: The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now I don’t know much about the sea, but I do know that that’s the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong. To measure yourself at least once. To find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions. Facing the blind death stone alone, with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head.

Carine [voice-over]: In early September, Mom and Dad got a call from the Annandale police notifying them that Chris’ abandoned car had been identified by the Arizona Highway Patrol. A group of rare flower hunters stumbled upon it in the desert. There were no signs that Chris had intended to return to it. But there wasn’t any evidence of struggle, either. The police thought Chris had chosen to leave it behind and not that it was taken from him. The initial comfort that gave Mom and Dad quickly turned to the realization that Chris was actually trying not to be found.

Chris: No, man. Alaska, Alaska. I’m gonna be all the way out there, all the way fucking out there. Just on my own. You know, no fucking watch, no map, no axe, no nothing. No nothing. Just be out there. Just be out there in it. You know, big mountains, rivers, sky, game. Just be out there in it, you know? In the wild.
Wayne: What are you doing when you’re there though? Now you’re in the wild, what are you doing?
Chris: You’re just living, man. You’re just there, in that moment, in that special place and time.

Chris: You know, about getting out of this sick society.
Wayne: Society!
Chris: Society!
Wayne: Society, man!
Chris: Society!
Wayne: Society! Society!
Chris: Society! Society, you know! Society!

Wayne: What “people” we talking about?
Chris: You know, parents, hypocrites, politicians, pricks.
Wayne [poking him on the forehead]: This is a mistake. It’s a mistake to get too deep into all that kind of stuff.

Wayne: Now, there’s one thing that you should try to keep your eye on is what happened in the late 1940s in Roswell…

Carine [voice-over]: When a search of tax records revealed that Chris had given his life savings to charity [$24,000 to Oxfam!], Mom and Dad became what Dad called "mobilized. " They hired a private investigator and notified law enforcement nationwide, determined to track him down.

Man: I warned Wayne about them little black boxes.

Carine: [voice-over] The year Chris graduated high school, he bought the Datsun used and drove it cross-country. He stayed away most of the summer. As soon as I heard he was home, I ran into his room to talk to him. In California, he’d looked up some old family friends. He discovered that our parents’ stories of how they fell in love and got married were calculated lies masking an ugly truth. When they met, Dad was already married. And even after Chris was born, Dad had had another son with his first wife, Marcia, to whom he was still legally married. This fact suddenly redefined Chris and me as bastard children. Dad’s arrogance made him conveniently oblivious to the pain he caused. And Mom, in the shame and embarassment of a young mistress, became his accomplice in deceit. The fragility of crystal is not a weakness but a fineness. My parents understood that a fine crystal glass had to be cared for or it may be shattered. But when it came to my brother, they did not seem to know or care that their course of secret action brought the kind of devastation that could cut them. Their fraudulent marriage and our father’s denial of his other son was, for Chris, a murder of every day’s truth. He felt his whole life turn, like a river suddenly reversing the direction of its flow, suddenly running uphill. These revelations struck at the core of Chris’ sense of identity. They made his entire childhood seem like fiction. Chris never told them he knew and made me promise silence, as well.[/b]

Of course we only hear his side of it.

[b]Chris: If I wanted to paddle down the river, where’s the best place to launch out of?
Ranger Koehler: To launch out of? What’s your experience level?
Chris: Not much.
Ranger Koehler: Any? Do you have a permit?
Chris: A permit? Permit for what?
Ranger Koehler: You can’t paddle down the river without a permit. If you want, you can apply for one here, get some experience, and I’ll put you on the wait-list.
Chris: There’s a wait-list to paddle down a river? Well, how long do I have to wait?
Ranger Koehler: Next available is May 17th, 2003.
Chris: Twelve years? Twelve years? To paddle down a river.

Chris: If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.

Christ: The core of mans’ spirit comes from new experiences.[/b]

And you find that out in particular when your body implodes and you’re pretty much denied access to them.

[b]Fast food manager: Alex, I don’t mean to be on you about everything. You’re doing a great job. I wanna keep you on and we all wanna help you get to Alaska, but you’ve got to start wearing socks.

Carine [voice-over]: A year and a half had passed in what Dad called “suspended animation.” The weight of Chris’ disappearance had begun to lay down on me full-length.

Chris: Mr. Franz I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don’t want one.

Title Card: In memory / Christopher Johnson McCandless / February 12, 1968 - August 18, 1992. Two weeks after Chris’s death, moose hunters discovered his body in the bus. On September 19, 1992, Carine McCandless flew with her brother’s ashes from Alaska to the eastern seaboard. She carried them with her on the plane…in her backpack.[/b]

A true story. But not even close to being the whole story. Regarding, for example, the function of intelligence agencies in America.

A breach of national security. No doubt about it. But what is it exactly that is being secured? You won’t find that probed here anymore than you’ll find the nature of American foreign policy probed in a war film. Instead the focus is on the mind boggling gaps between the manner in which Robert Hanssen projected himself to the world and the world he actually lived in from day to day.

What a strange, strange man in a strange, strange land.

On the other hand, no way am I suggesting there aren’t some things worth securing.

And then there is the particularly murky role that God plays here. Proof yet again there is pratically nothing He can’t be twisted into sanctioning. Behaviors rationalized as somehow in accordance with His will.

wiki

[b]Manohla Dargis of The New York Times said, “One of the strengths of Breach, a thriller that manages to excite and unnerve despite our knowing the ending, is how well it captures the utter banality of this man and his world.”

The filmmakers fictionalized much of Eric O’Neill’s story, as mentioned in the end credits. Among the major changes made for the film:

  • The real O’Neill knew going in that Hanssen was the subject of a counterintelligence investigation. There was no cover story about sexual perversions, and no dramatic meeting where O’Neill learned the truth.
  • There was no extensive contact outside the office between O’Neill and Hanssen as portrayed in the film (the O’Neills visiting the Hanssens, the Hanssens dropping by O’Neill’s apartment). However, Hanssen did take O’Neill to church.
  • The scene where Hanssen takes O’Neill out into the woods and drunkenly fires his pistol is fictional.
  • Unlike in the movie, O’Neill never saw Hanssen after the arrest.
  • While O’Neill did obtain Hanssen’s PDA, he took it to FBI techs to download rather than downloading it himself.[/b]

Robert Hanssen at wiki:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen

Breach [2007]
Directed by Billy Ray

[b]O’Neill: Wait, I’ve heard of this guy. Wasn’t he the one who hacked into another agent’s hard drive?
Burroughs: He’s the best computer guy we’ve got. He’s also a sexual deviant.
O’Neill: Oh.

Hanssen [first words on meeting]: Tell me five things about yourself, four of them true.
O’Neill: I’m sorry?
Hanssen: It’s a “game” we used to play, at the subanalytical unit. Keep ourselves sharp. It’s lie detection.
O’Neill: Oh.
[chuckling slightly]
O’Neill: I don’t think I’d be much good at bluffing.
Hanssen [rolling his eyes and walking off]: That would’ve counted as your lie, right there.[/b]

Later…

[b]O’Neill: You still want my list, sir? The five things?
Hanssen: Sure.
O’Neill: I won Boy Scout merit badges in every category except Rifleman. I haven’t been to confession since high school. There are several words I constantly misspell. My favorite drink is a vodka tonic. And I’m the only male in the last four generations of my family who hasn’t served in the military.
Hanssen: So what is your drink then, gin?
O’Neill: Scotch.

Hanssen: God expects you to live your faith, Eric, at all times. Besides, I disapprove of women in pantsuits.
O’Neill: You do?
Hanssen: Men wear pants. The world doesn’t need any more Hillary Clintons.

Hanssen: You know why the Soviet empire collapsed?
O’Neill: Good morning?
Hanssen: I made a career studying them. They were smarter than us. More devious, more determined. So why did they fail? Godlessness.

Hanssen: I saw a woman from Planned Parenthood on television this morning. A lesbian, naturally. Defending gay marriage. I almost ripped the cable out of the wall.
O’Neill: Bet she was wearing pants, huh?

O’Neill: Wait, what if he’s smarter than I am? I’ve never misread anyone this badly before. Except maybe you.
Burroughs: A couple of years ago, the bureau put together a task force. Lots of assets had been disappearing. So this task force was formed to find the mole who was giving them up. Our best analysts poring over data for years looking for the guy, and they could never quite find him. Guess who was put in charge of the task force? He was smarter than all of us. Actually, I can live with that part. It’s the idea that my entire career has been a waste of time, that’s the part I hate. Everything I’ve done since I got to this office, everything we’ve all been paid to do, he was undoing it. We all coulda just stayed home.

Hanssen [voiceover]: One might propose that I am either insanely brave or quite insane. I’d answer neither. I’d say, insanely loyal. Take your pick. There’s insanity in all the answers.

Juliana: Do you trust me?
O’Neill: (sighs) Yes.
Juliana: 'Cause I think you’ve got this idea somehow that telling me the truth about him would mean you were betraying your country or something.

Hanssen: I have to be sure that I can trust you.
O’Neill: Why don’t we go back to the office? You can polygraph me.
Hanssen: You heard of Aldrich Ames?
O’Neill: Of course.
Hanssen: Worst spy in U.S. History. Sold $2.5 million worth of information to the Soviets, and passed every polygraph the Agency gave him. But he never would have gotten past me. I can read anyone.

O’Neill: The page was from Juliana, obviously. My wife. She’s trying to reach me because I told her I’d be home by now, and because we’re in another fight, caused by you, as usual. Thanks for dropping by unannounced and lecturing her about Opus Dei. That was real helpful. Oh, and thanks for staring at her in church like she was from Mars. That also worked out great. Let me guess. You were testing her, too. You know, she asked me this morning why you’re like this. I had all these answers for her. ‘He’s misunderstood.’ ‘He’s trying to fix the bureau and no one will listen.’ ‘He was born in the wrong century.’ ‘His father’s a jerk.’ I got a whole list. But you know something Sir, at the end of the day it’s all crap. You are who you are. The why doesn’t mean a thing does it? DOES IT?!
Hanssen: I… matter… plenty.

Hanssen [being arrested]: So, this is how it goes.

Hanssen [to Agent Plesac]: Maybe now you’ll listen.

Plesac: Even if all you give them is why you did it, it buys you some goodwill. Well, that’s what Ames did at first. Just gave up the why.
Hanssen: That mustn’t have taken long. All Ames cared about was the money. Why else would he have done it? It’s not so hard to guess, is it? Considering the human ego. Can you imagine, sitting in a room with a bunch of your colleagues, everybody trying to guess the identity of a mole and all the while, it’s you they’re after, you they’re looking for? That must be very satisfying, wouldn’t you think? Or maybe he considered himself a patriot. Maybe he saw it as his duty to show us how lax our security was. We can’t rule that out as a possibility. Or maybe he… Oh, what good does speculating do? He spied. The why doesn’t mean a thing. Does it?
Plesac: No, I guess it doesn’t.

Hanssen: Pray for me.
O’Neill: I will.[/b]

Who can really understand what it means to live as he does until you live as he does. What the hell is the meaning of reality [from day to day] in this world? Amnesia is one thing. You can wrap your head around forgetting everything and starting over. But never being able to start over again? What the fuck can that be like? Who can you trust when everything comes down to what you wrote down yesterday regarding what you think you understand then and there?

Even going forward from the past now I am in dispair over over what it all means. Is he better off then? Not counting all the violence and the folks lining up to take advantage of him?

There are no doubt folks who take pride in fully understanding what the hell is going on here. But I’m not one of them. It’s too goddamn surreal.

But here is someone who takes a stab at it:
taylorholmes.com/2010/07/28/memento-explained/

IMDb

[b]The medical condition experienced by Leonard in this film is a real condition called Anterograde Amnesia - the inability to form new memories after damage to the hippocampus.

Wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia

The test given to Sammy Jankis involving the electrified objects is based on a real life case study of a patient commonly referred to as HM, who suffered from the same form of amnesia following surgery to treat severe epilepsy. A doctor repeatedly shook HM’s hand with a joy buzzer, shocking him every time. After a few trials, HM refused to shake hands. The test shown in the movie is an illustration that Sammy’s condition was not identical to a real life case study, but would not have excluded him from insurance coverage.[/b]

Memento at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_(film

MEMENTO [2000]
Written and directed by Christopher Nolan

[b]Leonard: I guess I’ve already told you about my condition.
Teddy: Oh, well, only every time I see you.

Leonard: I have no short-term memory. I know all about myself, I just…Since my injury I can’t make new memories. Everything fades. If we talk for too long I’ll forget how we started…and next time I see you I won’t remember this conversation. I don’t even know if I’ve met you before. So if I seem a little strange or rude, or something, uh…I’ve told you this before, haven’t I?
Burt: I don’t mean to mess with you but it’s so weird.
Leonard: You don’t remember me at all?
Leonard: No.
Burt: But we’ve talked a bunch of times.
Leonard: I’m sure we have.

Natalie: But even if you get revenge you’re not gonna remember it. You’re not even going to know that it happened.
Leonard: My wife deserves vengeance. It doesn’t make any difference if I know about it. Just because there are things I don’t remember…doesn’t make my actions meaningless.

Leonard: I meet Sammy through work. Insurance. I was an investigator. I’d investigate the claims to see which ones were phony. I had to see through people’s bullshit. It was useful experience, 'cause now it’s my life.

Leonard: Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They’re just an interpretation, they’re not a record, and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts.

Leonard [voiceover]: Sammy can think just fine but he can’t make new memories. He can only remember things for a couple of minutes. He’d watch TV but anything longer than a couple of minutes was too confusing… he couldn’t remember how it began. He liked commercials. They were short. The crazy part was that this guy who couldn’t follow the plot of Green Acres anymore could do the most complicated things…as long as he learned them before the accident…and as long as he kept his mind on what he was doing.

Sammy [after being shocked]: What the fuck?
Doctor: It’s a test, Sammy.
Sammy [flipping him the bird]: Test this, you fucking quack!

Leonard: Natalie, right?
[Holds up photo of a bloody face, labeled “Dodd”]
Leonard: Who the fuck is Dodd?
Natalie [Looks at photo]: Guess I don’t have to worry about him anymore.
Leonard: What the fuck have you gotten me into?

Leonard: My wife is gone. Raped and murdered. And the present is trivia, which I scribble down as fucking notes!

Leonard [on the phone]: Even with total short-term memory loss Sammy should have learned instinctively to stop picking up the wrong objects. Other cases responded to conditioning, Sammy didn’t respond at all. It suggested that his condition was psychological not physical. We turned down his claim on the grounds that he wasn’t covered for mental illness. His wife got stuck with the bills and I got a big promotion.
Teddy: You know, I’ve had more rewarding friendships than this one, Leonard. Although I do get to keep telling the same jokes.

Leonard [finding a beaten man in his closet]: …who did this to you?
Dodd: What?
Leonard: Who did this to you?
Dodd: You did.

Teddy: A gun. Why would I have a gun?
Leonard [pulling a gun out of a drawer]: It must be his. I don’t think they’d let someone like me carry a gun.
Teddy [more to himself]: Fucking hope not.

Leonard [running]: OK, so what am I doing?
[sees Dodd also running]
Leonard: Oh, I’m chasing this guy.
[Dodd shoots at Leonard]
Leonard: No… he’s chasing me.

Leonard [on phone]: This is a difficult condition to understand. Look at Sammy Jankis. His own wife couldn’t deal with it. I told you how she tried to get him to snap out of it. She came to see me at the office. I found out all kinds of shit. She told me about life with Sammy. How she treated him. She’d get Sammy to hide food around the house…then she’d stop feeding him to see if his hunger would make him remember. She wasn’t a cruel person. She just wanted her old Sammy back.

Mrs. Jankis: You know all about Sammy and you’ve decided he’s faking.
Leonard: The company’s position isn’t that Sammy’s faking anything… …just that his condition can’t be shown to be…
Mrs. Jankis: I just want to know your honest opinion about Sammy.
Leonard: We shouldn’t be talking like this while the case is still open to appeal.
Mrs. Jankis: I’m not appealing the decision.
Leonard: Then why are you here?
Mrs. Jankis: Try to understand, when I look at Sammy, I don’t see some vegetable. I see my same old Sammy. What do you think that’s like for me to suspect that he might be imagining this whole problem? That if I just could say the right thing…he’d snap out of it and go back to being normal. If I… If I knew that my old Sammy were truly gone…then I could say goodbye and start loving this new Sammy. As long as I have doubt I can’t say goodbye and move on.
Leonard; What do you want from me?
Mrs. Jankis: I want you to forget the company you work for for thirty seconds…and tell me if you really believe that Sammy’s faking his condition. I need to know…what you honestly believe.
Leonard: I believe that Sammy should be physically capable of making new memories.
Mrs. Jankis: Thank you.

Leonard [on phone]: I thought I’d helped her. I thought she just needed an answer. I didn’t think it was important what it was. Just that she had one to believe.

Teddy: You ever wonder how long you can hang around here…before people start asking questions?
Leonard: What sort of questions?
Teddy: The same questions you should be asking yourself.
Leonard: Like what?
Teddy: Like how did you get this suit, the car?
Leonard: I have money.
Teddy: From what?
Leonard: My wife’s death. I used to work in insurance. We were well covered.
Teddy: Oh! So in your grief you wandered into a Jaguar dealership? You don’t have a clue, do you? You don’t even know who you are.
Leonard: Yes, I do. I don’t have amnesia. I remember everything right up until the incident. I am Leonard Shelby, I am from San Francisco…
Teddy: That’s who you were. You do not know who you are. What you’ve become since the incident. You wander around playing detective. You don’t even know how long ago it was. Let me put it this way. Were you wearing designer suits when you sold insurance?
Leonard: I didn’t sell insurance, I investigated it.
Teddy: Right, right. You’re an investigator. Maybe you should investigate yourself.

Leonard is on the phone when he peals away the bandage from his latest tattoo: NEVER ANSWER THE PHONE

Leonard: Hey, don’t talk about my wife.
Natalie: I can talk about whoever the fuck I want! I can say whatever I want and you won’t remember! I can call your wife a fucking whore and we can still be friends. You can’t get scared! You don’t know how, you fucking idiot!
Leonard: This has nothing to do with me.
Natalie: How the fuck would you know? You don’t know a fucking thing! You pathetic piece of shit! I can say whatever the fuck I want and you won’t have a clue, you fucking retard! I’m gonna use you. I’m telling you now because I’m gonna enjoy it much more if I know that you could stop me if you weren’t such a fucking freak!

Natalie: I read about your condition, Leonard. You know one of the causes of short-term memory loss? Venereal disease. Maybe your cunt of a fucking wife…sucked one too many diseased cocks and turned you into a retard! You sad, sad freak. I can say whatever the fuck I want and you won’t remember. We’ll still be best friends. Or maybe even lovers.

Leonard [on phone]: It’s completely fucked because nobody believes you. It’s amazing what a little brain damage will do for your credibility. I guess it’s poetic justice for not believing Sammy. You know the truth about my condition, officer? You don’t know anything. You feel angry, you don’t know why. You feel guilty, you have no idea why. You could do anything and not have the faintest idea ten minutes later.

Leonard [on phone]: She went into a coma and never recovered. Sammy couldn’t understand or explain what happened. Oh! He’s been in a home ever since. He doesn’t even know his wife is dead. I was wrong about Sammy and I was wrong about his wife. She wasn’t interested in the money. She needed to understand his problem. His brain didn’t respond to conditioning but he wasn’t a con man. And when she looked into his eyes, she thought he could be the same person. When I looked into his eyes, I thought I saw recognition. Now I know you fake it. If you think you’re supposed to recognise somebody, you pretend to. You bluff it to get a pat on the head from the doctors. You bluff it to seem less of a freak.

Leonard: Jimmy knew about Sammy, why would I tell him about Sammy?!
Teddy: You tell everybody about Sammy! Everybody who’ll listen! “Remember Sammy Jankis?” “Remember Sammy Jankis?” Great story. Gets better every time you tell it. So you lie to yourself to be happy. There’s nothing wrong with that. We all do it. Who cares if there’s a few little details you’d rather not remember?
Leonard: What the fuck are you talking about?
Teddy: Your wife surviving the assault. Her not believing your condition. The torment and pain and anguish tearing her up inside. The insulin.

Leonard: See, Sammy’s wife came to me…
Teddy: Sammy didn’t have a wife. It was your wife who had diabetes.
Leonard: My wife wasn’t diabetic.
Teddy: You sure?
Leonard: She wasn’t diabetic. You think I don’t know my own wife? What the fuck is wrong with you?
Teddy: I guess I can only make you remember the things you want to be true. Like old Jimmy down there.
Leonard: He’s not the right guy.
Teddy: He was to you. Come on, you got your revenge. Enjoy it while you still remember.

Teddy: No reason, Lenny, no conspiracy, just bad fucking luck. Couple of junkies too strung out to realise your wife didn’t live alone. But when you killed him I was so convinced that you’d remember. But it didn’t stick. Like nothing ever sticks, like this won’t stick.

Teddy: Cheer up. There’s plenty of John Gs for us to find.

Leonard [voiceover]: I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning. Even if I can’t remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world’s still here. Do I believe the world’s still here? Is it still out there? Yeah. We all need memories to remind ourselves who we are. I’m no different. Now, where was I?[/b]

It’s a world I know almost nothing about. The South. Small town. Farming. Evangelism. Nymphomania.

Way too much religion for me. People finding spiritual redemption through finally giving in to all the things that God expected of them anyway.

But better this I suppose than what they were before.

As for a black man keeping a young white girl chaimed in his house to a radiator, well, even given the context, lots of folks got something to say about that.

IMDb

[b]Shipped to theaters as “Bible School Mission”.

Rumor has it the original ending involved Justin Timberlake’s character shooting Samuel L. Jackson in the back of the head during the scene where Christina Ricci sings “This Little Light of Mine”. Director Craig Brewer decided, however, that it would be better to make the film happy, and with a very positive ending.[/b]

trailer:
youtu.be/j7Z7Cf9IDGw

BLACK SNAKE MOAN [2006]
Written and directed by Craig Brewer

[b]Rose: Thought we was gonna be friendly about this.
Lazarus: Carryin’ on behind my back. Make me out to look like a fool to all our people. Tell me, what’s friendly about that?
Rose: I’m not ready to grow old, Laz. Livin’ with you. I feel it. Like I’m one foot in the dirt. Saw it happen to my momma. And that’s not gonna happen to me. I got living to do.

Mother [to Rae]: Cough drops or condoms?

Lazarus: Mayella, it ain’t never happened. And it damn sure ain’t gonna happen tonight.
Mayella: Oh, Laz, I know you’re hurtin’. But you should know more than me, ain’t no better cure for the blues than some good pussy.

Lazarus: Cain slew Able, slew him out of envy. God put his mark on Cain for his sins, is that what you want Deke? Huh? Is that what you come here for? I’ll do it for you, all you got to do is say it again… Say you love me.
[pause]
Lazarus: SAY YOU LOVE ME NIGGA!

Rae: Why you got me chained?
Lazarus: I wanted to tell you about that.

Lazarus: God saw to it to put you in my path. And I aim to cure ya of your wickedness. You sick. You got a sickness…we broke that fever…now we gonna break that hold the devil got on ya.

Rae: Why you old men gotta talk so much? You gotta talk yourself into fucking me? Like little boys. It’s okay. I’m grown, I know. We can go slow.
[pause]
Rae: You gonna give me another bath?

Lazarus: You gotta go, R.L…I ain’t foolin’ this time.
R.L.: You sayin’ that gun’s for me if I don’t?

R.L.: Now, this got anything to do with Rose?
[Lazarus shakes his head]
R.L.: Then what?[/b]

He finds out.

[b]R.L.: Are you outta you’re Goddamn mind?!

Lazarus: R.L., you watch yourself in there. That gal be on your dick like stink on shit.

R. L. [to Rae]: Ima tell you something and it’s just gonna be between you and me. I think folks carry on about heaven too much, like it’s some kind of all you can eat buffet up in the clouds and folks just do as they told so they can eat what they want behind some pearly gates. There’s sinning in my heart, there’s evil in the world but when I got no one, I talk to God. I ask for strength, I ask forgiveness, not peace at the end of my days when I got no more life to live or no more good to do but today, right now…What’s your heaven?[/b]

Don’t you sometimes wish religion [faith in God] could come down to this? Each one making his own pact. Leaving everybody else out of it

[b]Gill: Hey, take it easy, man. He just got back.
Herman: To get back he had to have gone somewhere.

Lazarus [freeing Rae]: Not my place to change your mind, or anybody else’s. People gonna do how they please. You only get one life…should be lived the way you wanna live it. I can take you back to town now if you want.
Rae: Laz, will you do something for me.
Lazarus: Whatever you want.

Rae: You don’t even got to say you’re sorry… Just say how you knew what he was doing to me.
Mother: Only thing I’m sorry for is listenin’ to my parents and having you instead of doin’ what I should’a done.

Angela: This your niece?

Ronnie: It ain’t been but a week and you already some nigger’s whore.[/b]

Not even close. So Ronnie gets saved too.

I spent years in college surrounded by intellectuals of the, uh, pedantic sort. Men and women [but mostly, by far, men] who found it inordinantly important to erect walls between them and the “philistines”.

And for a while I was one of them. Fortunately, I bumped into folks able to show me just how insufferable we could be.

I can just imagine then what it must be like when your favorite parent is hell bent on making you one too. And poisoning your relationship with the parent less favored.

On the other hand, I have never really gotten along well with folks who don’t “care about books and interesting films and things.”
I just don’t judge them as I once did.

And, let’s face it, divorce effects some kids more adversely than others. But Frank is in a league all his own.

trailer:
youtu.be/JRkK5n2mkvg

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE
Written and directed by Noah Baumbach

[b]Frank: Mom and me versus you and Dad.

Walt: We’re reading A Tale of Two Cities in English. Is that any good?
Bernard: It’s minor Dickens. Popular in schools. But I think David Copperfield or Great Expectations is much richer. What is it about high school, you read all the worst books by good writers.
Joan: You should read it yourself and see what you think of it.
Walt: I don’t want to waste my time.

Bernard: She’s a very risky writer, Lili. Very racy. I mean, exhibiting her cunt in that fashion is very racy. I mean Lili has her influences in post modern literature, it’s a bit derivative of Kafka, but for a student, very racy. Did you get that it was her cunt?

Bernard: What are you writing?
Joan: I’m working on the Peugeot story.
Bernard: Did you take my note about the ending.
Joan: Some of it.
Bernard: Does he still die?
Joan: Yeah.
Bernard: Then you didn’t take my note.

Bernard: Frank. I’ve got an elegant new apartment across the park.
Frank: Across the park? Is that still Brooklyn?

Walt: Who’s Richard?
Bernard: Oh, a man from the neighborhood. I think she met him at one of Frank’s Little League games. A shrink. Seems sort of like an ordinary guy. Not an intellectual.

Walt: ls Mom letting you drink soda?
Frank: Beer.
Walt: Since when do you drink beer?
Frank: Since recently.

Sophie: Yeah. I mean, it’s gross when he turns into the bug, but I love how matter of fact everything is.
Walt: Yeah, it’s very Kafkaesque.
Sophie [looking at him oddly] Because it’s written by Franz Kafka…It would have to be.

Bernard: Ivan is fine but he’s not a serious guy, he’s a philistine.
Frank: What’s a philistine?
Bernard: It’s a guy who doesn’t care about books and interesting films and things.
Bernard: Your mother’s brother Ned is also a philistine.
Frank: Then I’m a philistine.
Bernard: No, you’re interested in books and things. You liked The Wild Child when you saw it.
Frank: Lot’s of people like that. No, I’m a philistine.

Frank: Mom’s dating Ivan.
Bernard: Really? Ivan, back there, Ivan?
Frank: Yeah.
Bernard: Are you sure? Why didn’t you say something? Why is your mother dating all these jocks? Very uninteresting men.
Frank: Ivan is very interesting.
Bernard: Ivan’s not a serious possibility for your mother.
Frank: I think he is.
Bernard: I don’t want to badmouth Ivan. But I don’t know what Joan is thinking.
Frank: I think Ivan…
Bernard: Frank.

Bernard: How do you know they were both Frank’s?
Ms. Lemon: Well, I suppose it’s possible other kids are masturbating and spreading their semen around the school as well…It’s possible, but, uh, somewhat unlikely.
Bernard: Oh, it happens, I’m sure, much more than we know.
Joan: Bernard, have you ever done anything like this?
Bernard: I’m not going to answer that.

Joan: You’re living with a twenty-year-old.
Bernard: It’s none of your business, Joan.
Joan: It’s my business when you have our kids! It’s confusing for them. Frank says Walt’s in love with her.
Bernard: Walt has a girlfriend. Fuck off, Joan. I don’t ask about you and Ivan. Stay out of my life. I can’t believe you’d talk to me like this. You left all those fucking ticket stubs and letters lying around! You wanted me to know. It was fucking torture, Joan! FUCKING TORTURE!

Bernard [to Walt]: Does Simic know both your parents have Ph.D’s in literature?..These public schools tend to hire well-meaning but ultimately unsophisticated bureaucrats.

Walt: It’s like…we were pals then…we’d do things together…we’d look at the knight armor at the Met. The scary fish at the Natural History Museum. I was always afraid of the squid and whale fighting. I can only look at it with my hands in front of my face.

Walt: I shouldn’t have broken up with Sophie.
Joan: Why did you?
Walt: I thought I could do better.
Joan: Better how?
Walt: I don’t know.

Bernard [Waiting to be taken away in an ambulance after having a heart attack]: Degolas.
Joan: What?
Bernard: It means “bitch.” Don’t you remember?
Joan: You’re calling me a bitch?
Bernard: No, don’t you remember the last line of Godard’s “A Bout De Souffle”? Belmondo calls Seberg a bitch. “Degolas.” We saw it at the Thalia with the Dicksteins. I got you in for the children’s price. You were pregnant with Walt.
Joan: Like six weeks.
Bernard: I still got you in for a children’s ticket. You told me you didn’t like Godard. You thought the jump-cuts were -
[He is loaded into the ambulance]
Bernard: I’d check for the cat behind the ashcans, under the Golodners’ stoop!
Joan: OK.[/b]

One is totally immersed in the world politically and the other treats politics as a mere prop in his ultra feminine fantasies. That he is also a homosexual way back then in a Brazillian prison makes the exchange between them all the more surreal.

And then the beautiful woman. She has many roles to play. And, in part, because there are many roles she can play. Her beauty is the key to open lots of doors.

These two are locked up in a world where the idiots have won. And there is not a damn thing either one of them can do except to seethe with outrage or to escape into fantasy.

Only things are not at all what they seem. And yet however it ends what creates the conditions that make men such these prisoners doesn’t change. You can’t reduce the world down to a narrative like this however effective it might be in opening our eyes. To prevail you must have the power to prevail. Being “right” doesn’t mean shit.

IMDb

[b]During rehearsals, the two actors had trouble finding the chemistry they needed for their scenes together. To better understand what each needed from the other’s role, William Hurt suggested they try an experiment where they would switch roles, with Hurt as Valentin and Raul Julia as Molina.

Reportedly, William Hurt and Raul Julia worked for nothing but the payment for their air tickets and hotel bills in Brazil, where the film was shot.

Kiss of the Spider Woman was one of the first independant hit movies. It received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, a first for an independant film, and won an Oscar for William Hurt. Hurt’s performance also marked the first time an actor had received an Oscar for playing an out homosexual.[/b]

trailer:
youtu.be/1FVd6uRrYhM

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN [1985]
Directed by Hector Babenco

[b]Molina: She’s… well, she’s something a little strange. That’s what she noticed, that she’s not a woman like all the others. She seems all wrapped up in herself. Lost in a world she carries deep inside her.

Molina: No matter how lonely she may be, she keeps men at a distance…
Arregui: She’s probably got bad breath or something.
[bursts out laughing]

Arregui: Don’t talk about food. I’m serious. No food and no naked women.

Molina: Blessed Mary, is that all you can talk about? You must’ve studied political philosophy in school.
Arregui: The phrase is political science, and the answer is no, I studied journalism.

Arregui: Why did the interrogations stop?

Molina [as a new prisoner arrvives]: Is it a political prisoner?
Arregui: They don’t treat you that way for stealing bananas.

Arregui: I find you boring.
Molina: Darling, you don’t know page one. You know I’m a faggot? Well, congratulations. You know I corrupted a minor? Well that’s even on TV, film at 11.

Arregui: You really like those Nazi blonds, don’t you?
Molina: Well, no, you see I detest politics but i’m mad about the leading man. He’s so romantic.
Arregui: Your nazis are about as romantic as the fucking warden and his torture room.
Molina [subdued]: I can imagine.
Arregui: No…You can’t.

Molina: Do you want to shave.
[Arregui scoffs]
Molina: Well I didn’t mean your legs.

Arregui: God help me.
Molina: You atheists never stop talking about God.
Arregui: And you gays never face facts. Fantasies are no escape.
Molina: If you’ve got the keys to that door, I will gladly follow. Otherwise I’ll escape in my own way, thank you.
Arregui: Then your life is as trivial as your movies.

Molina: Do you really think eating this avocado will make you spoiled and weak? Enjoy what life offers you.
Arregui: What life offers me is the struggle. When you’re dedicated to that, pleasure becomes secondary.

Molina: Does your girlfriend avoid pleasure too?
Arregui: She knows what really counts. That the most important thing is serving a cause that is noble.
Molina: What kind of cause is that? One that doesn’t let you eat an avocado?

Molina: Well, I understand one thing. I offer you half of my precious avocado and you throw it back in my face!

Arregui:Don’t act like that. You sound just like a –
Molina: Like a what? Say it. Say it. Like a woman, you mean.
(Arregui nods)
Molina: What’s wrong with being like a woman? Why do only women get to be sensitive? Why not a man, a dog, or a faggot? If more men acted like women, there wouldn’t be so much violence.

Molina: This girl’s finished.
Arregui: What girl?
Molina: Me, stupid!

Arregui: You son of a bitch! They’re killing one of my Brothers, and what am I doing? Listening to your fucking Nazi movie! Don’t you know what the Nazis did to people – Jews! Marxists! Catholics! Homosexuals?
Molina: Of course I know.
[Arregui hurls Molina across the cell]
Arregui: You don’t know shit. You wouldn’t know reality if it was stuck up your ass.
Molina: Why should I think about reality in a stinkhole like this? Why should I get more depressed than I already am?
Arregui: You’re worse than I thought! Do you use these movies to jerk yourself off?
Molina [Crying]: If you don’t stop, I will never speak to you again!
Arregui: Stop crying! You sound just like an old woman!
Molina [Whimpering]: It’s what I am! It’s what I am!
Arregui [Forcing Molina’s legs apart]: What’s this between your legs, huh? Tell me, “lady”!
Molina: It’s an accident. If I had the courage, I’d cut it off.
Arregui: You’d still be a man! A MAN! A MAN IN PRISON! JUST LIKE THE FAGGOTS THE NAZIS SHOVED IN THE OVENS!

Arregui: Your Nazi movie, how does it end?

Molina: The nicest thing about feeling happy is that you think you’ll never be unhappy again.

Pedro [to Molina]: You faggot piece of shit! You fell in love with that bastard!

Molina: There’s something I’d like that you’ve never done, although we’ve done much more.
(pause)
A kiss.
Arregui: Okay. But first promise me something.
Molina: I told you, I can’t. I’m so sorry.
Valentin: No, no. Promise me you will never let anybody humiliate you again, that you’ll make them respect you. Promise me you’ll never let anybody exploit you again. Nobody has the right to do that to anybody.

Molina [to bis sleeping mother]: You remember, Mama, when I was little and you used to come into my room to kiss me good-night. I always pretended to be asleep, but I was always waiting for your kiss. Although you’re sleeping now, I know you understand me. It’s time for me to take care of my own life. You understand, don’t you, Mama. Don’t be sad.

Pedro [voiceover]: Subject was shot to death by the extremists. His recent activities, such as closing his bank account… suggest that he planned to escape with them. Also, the way he was shot seems to indicate that he had agreed, if necessary, to be eliminated by them. In any case, it appears that he was more deeply involved than we suspected.[/b]

Not even close.

[b]Doctor [to Arregui who has been tortured]: This is morphine. So you can get some rest. Okay? Oh my God, the way they worked you over. Don’t tell about this or I’ll lose my job. Just count to forty and you’ll be asleep.

Arregui: I love you so much. That’s the one thing I never said to you, because I was afraid of losing you forever.
Marta: That can never happen now. This dream is short, but this dream is happy.[/b]