Sunday, July 15, 2018
What if?
Friday, May 22, 2009
Heath Ledger's poignant final bow [feedly]
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, featuring Heath Ledger's poignant final bow, is just too madly self-indulgent
Heath Ledger takes a poignant final bow in Terry Gilliam's loopy, sweet-natured but madly self-indulgent fantasia The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, showing here at the Cannes film festival out of competition. Halfway through shooting, Ledger had made a desperately sad early exit, so the director ingeniously re-invented his character as a series of personae. Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp gamely stepped into the breach.
The Dr Parnassus of the title is played by Christopher Plummer, an ageing swami-showman who rattles around in his "imaginarium", a kind of Gypsy-wagon-cum-mobile-fairground theatre, with his fellow players: dyspeptic Percy, played by Verne Troyer, his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) and leading man Anton (Andrew Garfield) who's obviously deeply in love with Valentina. When members of the audience are invited up on to the stage, they slip back through the ratty old curtains which lead them to a Narnia-like wonderland in which their imaginations can be set free. Dr Parnassus is engaged in a deadly duel with the devil (Tom Waits): Parnassus wants to claim souls for glorious, imaginative freedom – Satan wants to chain them to banality and dullness.
This contest is made more interesting when Parnassus and his troupe rescue a mysterious stranger from a Roberto Calvi-style attempted suicide-by-hanging under a bridge. He is "Tony", played by Ledger et al, evidently a leading charity campaigner and public figure – but soon revealed as shallow and insidious. A newspaper headline, Tony Liar, hints that he may be inspired by a certain former prime minister of tarnished memory.
When Gilliam shoots off into his surreal wonderland, his film has a kind of helium-filled jollity and spectacle. The moments when Plummer's face looms hugely out of the hallucinatory landscape are great: a reminder of the old Python magic. But the film's convoluted curlicues are tiring, insisting too loudly on how "imaginative" everything is. And when it descends into the real world – Lucy out of the sky without diamonds, as it were – the film can frankly be a bit ho-hum, with some very broad acting from the bit-part crowd players. Gilliam's previous movie Tideland showed he still has teeth, and he bares them occasionally here. The dark side reveals itself, time and again, in the ruined, unsentimental locations in London. But this movie, though perfectly amiable, could be for fans only.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Time-Lapse Photography Captures Galactic Core of the Milky Way [feedly]
Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Perception is Reality
Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Walk a Mile in my shoes
For just one hour, if we could find a way
To get inside each others mind
If you could see you through my eyes
Instead your own ego I believe youd be
I believe youd be surprised to see
That youve been blind
Walk a mile in my shoes
Just walk a mile in my shoes
Before you abuse, criticize and accuse
Then walk a mile in my shoes
Now if we spend the day
Throwin stones at one another
cause I dont think, cause I dont think
Or wear my hair the same way you do
Well, I may be common people
But Im your brother
And when you strike out
Youre tryin to hurt me
Its hurtin you, lord how mercy
Now there are people on reservations
And out in the ghetto
And brother there, but, for the grace of god
Go you and i,
If I only had wings of a little angel
Dont you know, Id fly
To the top of a mountain
And then Id cry, cry, cry
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Don't have expectations?
The unfortunate thing is, that in all those cases above sometimes those things don't happen.
They happen for a reason.......cause and effect.....
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Being John Malcovitch
Every wanted to be someone else?
Why?
You think your not smart, you think your ugly, you hate your life, you have no friends, your not sure what want to do with yourself etc....etc...poor you!
Look however your feeling right now your not alone there are millions who go through the same thing and many go through some terrible experiences in life and triumph in the face of tragedy.
Fact is you can do something about it or go on living the same pain, and for sure so many people who go through this will tell you they never thought they could get out of the way they were feeling or turn their life around. Then you ask them what happened and they tell you they are happy and the experience taught them a lot.
So I'm going to use the film being John Malcovich to point out that often we have little self belief. This is a major problem in moving forwards. In this film the puppeteer believed that he needed to be someone else before he could become successful. When really he wasn't John Malcovich at all he just looked like him. He became successful because his perception of self changed and once that changed then others also changed their perception.
Start with yourself.....change the way you look at things then the things you look at change. Look in the mirror and love yourself....its O.K