I love him in Fight Club because he played the part so well and I like him in Red Dragon. I didn’t even know that was him until I looked up all the movies he was in. Bottom line the man has a job.

He is so good looking too! I mean those green eyes are gorgeous and he is tall. I don’t know what it is but tall guys are always hotter than shorter ones.

Read more on sexy Edward Norton

All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.

Religion is a subject I generally avoid, because it boils down to this: You either believe or you don't. Jesus-lovers love it, Jesus-haters hate it and the rest of us just try to get along.

Personally, I have nothing against Christians. I married one with the understanding "she is who she is." And over the years, my wife has taught me to listen with an open mind and not be too judgmental.

I believe I have largely succeeded. I'm not offended when the wifey starts quoting verse. And unlike so many of my athiest and agnostic co-workers, I do not engage in Christian-bashing. I believe in "to each his own." If Christianity makes people feel good about themselves, so be it.

But since this is my blog, and no one here knows me, let me share what I've learned about Christians over the course of my 20+ year marriage. Forgive me in advance if my statements are offensive. They are merely my personal observations.

First, I believe that Christianity is a "fix" for people who can't find a way to fix it themselves.   By adopting this cultish mindset, they cease taking any responsibility for their own actions.

Christianity is surely the greatest invention in the history of  the world. It's better than a shrink, and cheaper than Prozac.  With God as their co-pilot, their can put their brains on auto-pilot.  "Take the controls, Lord, because I have no control."

The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren is the perfect example of how to will yourself to believe.  I have read that book, being married to a Christian, and actually enjoyed it.  My favorite chapter was Warren's "suggestions" on how to make the voices in your head go away:

"The Bible tells us to pray all the time. How is it possible to do this? One way is to use 'breath prayers' throughout the day. You can choose a brief sentence or simple phrase that can be repeated to Jesus in one breath: 'You are with me.' 'I receive your grace.' 'I'm depending on you.' 'I belong to you.' Practicing the presence of God is a skill, a habit you can develop."

Habit?  I thought you said it was divine intervention, not a phrase you repeat a thousand times until it starts to seem true.

Yet nothing you can ever say will change a Christian's mind. They have an answer for everything, an "auto-answer."  Here are a few examples:

• You don't understand because you've never felt the presence of God.
• God is in control of my life, not me.
• God loves me, and forgives me for all my sins.
• God has great things in store for me.
• With God, I can do anything.
• All bad things that happen are according to God's plan.  It's all part of His purpose.

And so it goes.

It was with shock and horror that I recently discovered a "friend" of mine has chugged the Jesus Kool-Aid. A once-smart and attractive TV reporter (and a damned good investigative producer) has decided that God is the answer to her misery. When I came across her blog, I almost shit myself. Here's a woman who was once at the top of her game, a creative go-getter with big things in store. Now she has slipped into a dreamlike state that will have her fantasizing about the afterlife for the rest of her days. I know, because I live with a dreamer.

When I read T's blog, my heart sank. I almost burst into tears.  Is this the final straw for people who can't handle the difficulties and complexities of life?  I adored that girl.  I still think of her constantly.  T is a "beautiful and unique butterfly."  She's so creative.  Such a free-thinker.  It was her mind I loved.  Her penchant for life.  Now, she touts her G-Rated life, and begs her Sisters in Christ to help her "shake the memories of...oh, you don't want to know."

How convenient for this newly-hatched Christian soldier to label me the devil for what she now considers her vulgar, X-rated sins against God.  "Please Lord, help me shake those awful memories.  That man was a demon wrapped in human flesh.  God, maybe hubby will forgive me for my sins if I dedicate my life to Jesus.  I will tell hubby 'the devil made me do it,' but that the Lord has now cleansed my wicked flesh.  He won't divorce me if I do that, will he Lord?"

Amen.

And to think I was absolutely crazy about this woman.  I missed talking to her.  Still do to be honest.  But conveniently, she has dismissed me as evil, and vows to purge me from her thoughts.  I see from reading the comments on her blog she's being "love bombed" by eager Christians everywhere.  Together they will pray and chant bible verses, and I will cease to exist.  She will also immerse herself in the duties of a Godly wife, trading her Blackberry for a bible.  And perhaps she will take up the game of World of Warcraft to spend quality time with her human master.  And his friends.

Nite-nite, Tracy. Sleep tight.

Jim Emerson has a post on his blog SCANNERS (here) that talks about how and why the film Fight Club made such a strong impression on him. As the narrator deals with depression so does Emerson. It's a strongly written piece and one that sums up my feelings not only for Fight Club, but also for my feelings concerning Wanted.

As in most super hero films if you can't connect with the hero's dilemma as a normal person you won't feel as drawn to him trying to break free from that prison he finds himself in. For Wesley, McAvoy's character, it's his depression. His inability to feel anything. To feel something - even anger, is a freeing thing. Anger can in fact be a great thing to feel. It's both Fight Club's and Wanted''s notion to take that initial breaking free point and carry it through to an extreme. And they realize that those extremes probably aren't the healthiest way to deal with things.

These depressive states, this loss of identity that both of them suffer from, makes them vulnerable to becoming swept away by a mob mentality. It's not an unbelievable thing. Pretty much all of German fell under the sway of Hitler when the country was seeking some kind of identity after WWI. Anybody who joins a cult suffers from an identity crisis. They aren't strong enough with who they are as a person. It happens every day and sometimes to devastatingly violent and tragic outcomes.

That's why to me a film like Wanted is so releasing and enjoyable. I suffer from depressive states in which I feel little or nothing. Some times for extended periods of time. The exaggerated and stylized use of violence becomes a metaphor. If the violence were real or the assassination attempts staged in a realistic fashion, then it would be about the killing, which it's not. It's about defining who you are in a world that sucks you in and herds you together, and then beats you down to feel nothing.  For Wesley it was first his job and his girl and his best friend, then it became the thing that was supposed to save him as it does for the Narrator in Fight Club.

Take a look at Emerson's post and the very first response to his post is mine.

•  Bizler tarihin ortanca çocuklarıyız. Bir amacımız ya da yerimiz yok, ne büyük savaşı yaşadık ne de büyük buhranı. Bizim savaşımız ruhani bir savaş, en büyük buhranımız hayatlarımız.

• Etrafımda tarihin en güçlü insanlarını görüyorum.Biz televizyon izleyerek, milyonerler, sinema tanrıları, rock yıldızları olacağımıza inanarak büyüdük, ama olmayacağız. Şimdi bunu anlamaya başlıyoruz ve bunun için çok kızgınız.

• Dinleyin sürüngenler;

• Sizler özel değilsiniz, Sizler güzel ya da eşi benzeri olmayan kar tanesi de değilsiniz, sizler işiniz değilsiniz, sizler paranız kadar değilsiniz, bindiğiniz araba değilsiniz, kredi kartlarınızın limiti değilsiniz, sizler iç çamaşırı değilsiniz, Sizler herkes gibi çürüyen birer organik maddesiniz..!

  Bizler bu dünyanın şarkı söyleyip dans eden pislikleriyiz.

  Hepimiz aynı pisliğin lacivertleriyiz ...!

• Mobilya satın alırsınız. Kendinize dersiniz ki, bu hayatım boyunca ihtiyaç duyacağım son kanepe. Kanepeyi alırsınız ve sonraki birkaç yıl boyunca, hangi işiniz ters giderse gitsin, en azından kanepe sorununuzu çözmüş olduğunuzu bilirsiniz. Sonra o güzel yuvanızda kısılıp kalırsınız. Bir zamanlar sahip olduğunuz şeyler artık sizin sahibiniz olur.

To sum up, while she was not a big fan of either the book or the movie, Chartroose seems to appreciate the book for what it is: a non-comedic satire. She mentions the outcry that occurred when the book was first published, then her own reaction to it:

I read until the wee hours of the morning and finished it the next evening. I decided the novel was total trash and stuck in my bookcase, thinking I would probably end up throwing it away later on. Disposal of the novel never happened though, in fact, over the next several days I found myself pulling it off the shelf and rereading entire passages just to make sure that I was recalling them correctly. I had American Psycho on the brain, and it was not an enjoyable experience. Even though it was creeping me out, I just couldn’t get it out of my head. It was the most disturbing book I had ever read.

She goes on to make some extraordinarily cogent points re: sociopathy and . . . oh, hell. Did you read it? You totally should. It's totally worth it. In fact, here's that link again, because otherwise I'm going to have to quote her penultimate paragraph, anyway.

Okay. So.

I can't say that I loved American Psycho; like Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, it's not an experience you can really love--it's bleak and disturbing and kind of even hurts as you read it, so it's not really something to love.

But good?

Yes, I think so.

I never heard the media outcry over the novel; I was a sophomore in college in 1997 by the time a buddy of mine read it and recommended it to me. And perhaps that's very crucial; sophomore is Latin for "fool," or thereabouts, if I'm not mistaken, and where I was in life at that time might have been instrumental in my reading of Ellis' novel. To wit: back then, I was struggling with my identity. I'd just left my bucolic South Jersey hometown for Jersey City to attend a small Jesuit college that was, ultimately, a seminal experience in my life even though it wasn't exactly the prototypical college experience. When most of my friends at other institutions were getting their bang on every bit as much as they were getting their book on, I had buried my head in credits and writing (back then I had just completed the first draft of my first novel, which clocked in at nearly half a million words, not one of which was actually really worth anything). I was struggling with identity to the point that I was even questioning my own name; my given name is William, and every man I know with the same name had become "Bill" by high school, and so I did, too. Until well into college, when I just wasn't sure what I wanted people to call me anymore.

And finally, I was a nearly twenty-year-old dude, which meant I felt like society had certain expectations of me that I was meant to fulfill. Except I had absolutely no idea how to actually be a guy, and so I sought advice from the only resource readily available: Men's Health. Not to mention Esquire and GQ. Every man depicted in the pages of those magazines seemed to be the ur-man, not just the uber-man but in fact the sort of prototype on whom the entire idea of masculinity is based. Washboard abs, Colgate teeth, well groomed hair, chiseled biceps, perfect jeans, tailored suit . . . you get the idea.

The perfect ideal of masculinity.

That was the mindset I had when I came to Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, and for that reason, it was the perfect book at the perfect time in my life. Not only did I feel like I got it, and what he was trying to do, but I felt too as though he had captured precisely the perfectly incredible absurdity of pretty much everything I was experiencing at the time. One device Ellis makes frequent use of in the novel is the extraordinary attention to detail the protagonist, Patrick Bateman, pays to the wardrobe and effects of those around him; anyone who's ever read Esquire has encountered precisely the same thing. The ten best face washes. The thirteen best new colognes of the season. The four most realistic-looking fake tans.

And no woman can tell me such is relegated to the pages of men's magazines. Cosmo does it constantly--this season's hottest shades of lipstick! Next season's hippest designer!

When I read American Psycho, I read it as a pretty much brilliant critique of precisely that aspect of our culture. Chartroose mentions:

American Psycho is trying to tell us that capitalism is as violent and merciless as Patrick Bateman, and Bateman’s disregard for women as anything but body parts to be abused and discarded is a mirror reflection of modern society’s objectification of women.

But I think it's more than that; it's not modern society's objectification of women but rather our culture's collective objectification of ourselves. Bateman doesn't merely objectify women; he objectifies everyone, which is why every new character is described not in terms of a quality or a smile or a trait but rather in terms of the suit he wears or, famously, the business card he carries or, even more famously, the music he likes. When Bateman enjoys something, like Phil Collins' "Su-su-sudio," he does so not because he actually likes the music but rather because it is something everyone else seems to enjoy. He uses a Sony Walkman and wears headphones quite often, and when he listens to Whitney Houston, it's not because he wants to dance with somebody but rather because he wants people to think he wants to. If Bateman objectifies everyone, it is because he feels himself an object; his lack of empathy comes not from his detachment from other people's feelings but rather from the fact that he has none of his own. His clothes, his beauty regimen, his workouts; he's not improving himself so much as improving the way the world sees him, and trying all the time to be a more beautiful object to those who view him.

I think it's a rather brilliant critique, obviously, and I think it ultimately springs from the same sorts of disillusionment as inspired Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club:

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

Patrick Bateman is the reason Fight Club exists; he is a rockstar, basically, and he doesn't chase cars and clothes because he already owns them. He has achieved everything society has told him he should want but still feels he has no purpose or place. He kills people, but mostly he understands that "On a long-enough timeline, the survival rate drops to zero" for everyone.

"Shut up! Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?"
"No, no, I... don't..."
"Listen to me! You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen."

Patrick Bateman has achieved, as both a man and a person, pretty much everything society expects of him, or is on his way to. Society has convinced him that, if he does so, he will be happy, but that happiness . . .

Where is it?

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.

Precisely.

Willy Wonka promised that the man who got everything he ever wanted lived happily ever after, but Jagger got it arguably more right; happiness isn't getting what you want but rather in getting what you need and understanding why you needed it in the first place.

Com filmes como Alien³ e Se7en no curriculo, já era de se esperar que David Fincher fizesse de Fight Club algo memorável, e ele fez mais do que isso, transformando o filme em uma mistura de cultura e violência. Apesar de inicialmente os atores cotados para fazer os papéis principais terem sido Russel Crowe e Matt Damon, Pitt e Norton pareciam terem sido feitos para os papéis e tiveram aulas de como fazer sabonetes e boxe apenas para representarem bem seus papéis. Para o papel de Marla Singer, Reese Witherspoon foi a primeira a ser cotada, mas Fincher achou que ela era nova demais, escalando assim Helena Bonham Carter.

O filme traz a história do narrador sem nome (Norton), que está cansado da sua vida consumista. Ele acha que é um escravo da sociedade, tendo que comprar coisas inúteis apenas para se sentir satisfeito. Até que ele encontra o despreocupado Tyler Durden (Pitt), que apenas vive um dia de cada vez e faz muitas maluquices. O Narrador sem nome frequenta diversos grupos de auto-ajuda como ajuda para quem tem cancer ou aids e acaba por conhecer a Marla Singer (Carter), e assim eles decidem dividir os grupos para não deixar os outros perceberem que eles não estão doentes. Graças a explosão do seu apartamento, o Narrador acaba hospedado na casa de Durden e juntos eles fundam o Fight Club, um grupo onde eles podem se bater e apanhar para se livrar do stress que a vida morderna gera, e é ai que tudo vai pelos ares...

O filme foi um grande sucesso, e o dvd é repleto de extras que trazem ainda mais insanidade para acompanhar o filme. Quando foi lançado a caixa do dvd parecia um embrulho feito com saco de papel e era muito bem sacada.

Talvez este seja o melhor filme de Brad Pitt, e sem dúvida é um dos melhores de Edward Norton. A narração faz com que acompanhemos a tragédia do narrador, seus medos e sua alegria quando tudo está pegando fogo. A ação do filme é brutal, vemos lutas bem coreografadas e nada de exageros, e tudo parece bem real, inclusive os dentes voando. Claro que o filme não é somente sobre o Clube , mas para é necessário vê-lo para apreciar todo o brilhantismo da história, ou a doideira do diretor. Claro que como todo clube ele também tem as suas regras, e a primeira regra do Fight Club é: Você não fala sobre o Fight Club!

Tür : Aksiyon
Gösterim Tarihi : 10 Aralık 1999
Yönetmen : David Fincher
Senaryo : Jim Uhls , Chuck Palahniuk (Kitap)
Görüntü Yönetmeni : Jeff Cronenweth
Müzik : The Dust Brothers
Yapım : 1999, ABD , 139 dk.

Oyuncular

Brad Pitt (Tyler Durden) , Edward Norton (Anlatıcı) , Helena Bonham Carter (Marla Singer) , Meat Loaf (Bob) , Zach Grenier (Richard Chesler) , Richmond Arquette (Stajyer) , David Andrews (Thomas) , Rachel Singer (Chloe)
Dövüş kulübünün ilk kuralı, dövüş kulübü hakkında konuşmamaktır. Dövüş kulübünün ikinci kuralı da, kulüp hakkında konuşmamaktır...

Filmin baş kişisi, sıradan hayatının girdaplarında bunalımlar geçiren bir sigorta müfettişi olan Jack, Kanserli olmadığı halde, uykusuzluğunu yenmek ve hayatına anlam katmak adına, kanserlilere moral destek sağlayan terapi gruplarına katılır. Orada, Marla Singer adlı bir kızla garip bir yakınlık kurar.

Bir iş gezisi dönüşü ise, Tyler Durden adlı egzantrik karakterle tanışır. Durden, Jack'in olmak isteyip de olamadığı adam gibidir. Tyler'ın girişimleriyle bir yeraltı faaliyeti olarak başlayan dövüş kulübü, Jack'e hayatında yepyeni kapılar açacaktır... Ve tabii, bu kapılardan ister istemez Marla geçecektir... Fakat... Tyler Durden gerçekte kimdir?

LİNKLER
Part1
Part2
Part3
Part4
Part5
Part6
Part7
Part8

TÜRKÇE ALT YAZI İÇİNDEDİR

Allegedly (meaning absolutely) they are both having affairs while Blake is in prison (Amy with Mark Ronson the producer and others, Blake with a big strapping English dude…

jk, jk, only because I care… but he is moving and grooving with this chick. (Note…not to say that this woman looks like a man...cuz she does not...She is very pretty, much better than what I thought that he had in him... just the fact that in prison, anal rape happens…)

Amy Winehouse didn't turn up to see husband Blake sentenced today but his reported girlfriend was in floods of tears outside the court.

Blonde German model Sophie Schandorff, 21, was obviously distraught after the hearing, which saw Fielder-Civil sentenced to 27 months in prison today for grievous bodily harm and perverting the course of justice.

Schandorff caused a stir at court in April when she was in Winehouse's usual place to support Fielder-Civil and the couple were seen to mouth 'I love you' to each other.

He had admitted beating up pub manager James King in a barroom fight in 2006 and then offering him £200,000 to keep quiet about it.

Judge David Radford told Fielder-Civil he had behaved in a 'gratuitous, cowardly and disgraceful' way.

Fielder-Civil has already served around nine months on remand and he could be free in four-and-a-half months if he behaves himself in prison.

Miss Winehouse was not in court today to support her husband.

Earlier, Fielder-Civil appealed to a judge to let him walk free so he could become a role model for the troubled singer.

Through his barrister, Fielder-Civil told of his love for his wife and determination that both will devote themselves to becoming clean.

Jeremy Dein QC, told Snaresbrook crown court: 'They are very much committed to each other and their ambition is to divorce themselves from hard drugs and not separate themselves from each other.

'Knowing the nation's glare is upon him, Mr Fielder-Civil has every possible motive to rehabilitate himself in the way he has already shown he is fully committed to doing.

'He knows if he fails, an appointment with calamity awaits, not just for himself but for his wife.

'He can now see that hard drugs are to be regarded as nothing other than a smiling assassin.

'He wishes now to become a role model for Miss Winehouse but he knows it would be impossible for her to alienate herself from drugs if he continues to befriend them.'

Mr Dein urged the judge to either impose a community order, a suspended sentence or a prison term of no more than 18 months, the equivalent time Fielder-Civil has served awaiting his sentence.

The court heard Fielder-Civil kicked James King on the ground as the victim was being beaten up by Michael Brown in a row over a girlfriend in June 2006.

After he was arrested and released on bail, he became involved in a plan to pay off Mr King with £200,000 and a holiday in Spain to ensure the trial would collapse.

Co-defendant Anthony Kelly approached reporters from a tabloid newspaper who recorded attempts to bribe Mr King.

Brown, 40, has admitted the same offences and also to failing to surrender to bail. Kelly, 26, and James Kennedy, 20, have both pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice.

Open marriages are cool, if it is cool with the parties involved. They have both been getting around with other people in the news and they seemingly do not care. Amy missing her husband's sentencing is damning evidence that she has just said goodbye. Don't cry any tears for Blake, as he has a German Supermodel waiting for him and she is only 21.

These two have fought a lot, so he has gotten some practice in smacking someone around, but prison is a little more difficult that your coked out wife of about 100 pounds. Blake, since you got 27 months, I wanted to leave you with some advice…

For those who don't know, it is based on the book by the same name from Chuck Palahniuk.  He has written many great books over the years.  He also happens to be one of my all time favorite authors.  I know that he's not everyone's cup of tea, but he is an amazing writer.  If all you ever did was watch Fight Club and never read the book, you missed a lot of the true meaning of the story.  I mean it is a good movie, but the book has so much more depth to it.  I am now on my third copy of the book, because the previous two were loaned to people and never returned.

Choke

Victor Mancini, a sex-addicted med-school dropout, who keeps his increasingly deranged mother, Ida, in an expensive private medical hospital by working days as a historical reenactor at a Colonial Williamsburg theme park. At night, Victor runs a scam by deliberately choking in upscale restaurants to form parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who "save" him.(IMDb)

From Chuck Palahniuk the author of Fight Club





Coming Soon

And there was the attic. The five of us, four boys and I, moved a stereo and a couch up the stairs. He put up cheap plastic glow-in-the-dark stars that made our every weekend neon. Our nights were always electric. And even still, the Fall always smells like pizza and must to me. Real stars didn’t shine as bright for a long time until I told myself that I can’t compare those nights in barns and basements and attics to the sky, I can’t hold a memory in front of my life. And I moved on.

But not before the new house. They left his dad and dog with The Barn and the attic. His mother took him and a futon and an heirloom couch. The couch moved into the new basement where we found new sounds to fill our nights, but with his angst, he brought new smells. And my winters of snow angels in the golf course behind the old barn turned to cold days of second-hand smoke and late-night consolations; his doctor said it was up to me to keep him from suicide. No one succeeded in keeping him from anorexia, bipolar disorder, depression, psychosis, overdose after overdose in the following year.  Somehow in the middle though, I learned to love the newness: the new bedroom with a futon and a ceiling fan. The new basement with its empty bottles and graffiti. It wasn’t hard to fall in love in those days. And we all did, and spent our Friday nights in lazy postures writing on the walls and singing old songs that meant everything. That was all that mattered, and it’s funny now how none of it really matters.

I thought it would be impossible to leave that second house behind. To leave his mother without warning, though she had warned me to save myself before. Maybe, I often thought, if I had known that one night would be my last, I would have taken the time to cement it in my brain for good. But it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. We watched Fight Club and ate pretzels and said goodnight, not goodbye.

I can still remember pulling out of the driveway that last night. When I think hard, I can smell the sour summer air, recall the weather, hear the sounds of cars on the other side of the woods. But those parts are dim now. Mostly, I just see him. And not all of him really. Just, very clearly, the eyes. They were clear blue when we met. The bluest blue you can imagine, not ocean blue or sky, but bright bursting Crayola blue that sucked you in. After the move, they never lost their color, but the whites around them turned veiny and red, bloodshot. And the shiny black pupils were always too big or too small, depending on the night’s poison. On the last night they were too small--the needle he used just before I got there had sucked the black right into its chamber.

It wasn’t always just the eyes. In that last image, the one I see clearest when I think of him, there is a mess of black hair, spotted green and blonde, a result of careless dye jobs. A nose perfectly shaped, like his mother’s, straight and narrow. And the shy mouth, two lip rings, self-inserted, and a set of pure white teeth that would have surely needed braces had he cared enough about his image to pursue the matter. He was tall, too tall for me but not imposing. At seventeen he weighed 100 pounds, bones protruded from his shirt when he sat. You could trace every vertebra. He could wear my pants. None of these were flaws to me. Not even the holes in his shoes, newly burned from red-hot cigarettes, or on the knees of his torn black jeans could have made him seem less than perfect. Only the bag he hid under the speaker in his room, only the syringe in the shed.

Looking back it was easy to block out the leaving. It was simple to tell myself the smell of hay and innocence and Fall nights in barns, winters in basements and attics and golf courses could never return and that I had no business holding on to something so inherently fleeting. I convinced myself his parents were ghosts. When I drove by Larchmont and later, by Harrigan I taught myself not to look, not to even hope to see the car that drove us around on late nights when I would lie to my parents to sneak off to shows and highways with him. I didn’t even cry when I went back to the silo we used to climb to look out over the ruins of that burned down building. I didn’t cry when they sealed up the entrance and trapped all our memories inside. I let them stay in there forever. It wasn’t hard to find something else to do with my Fridays and Saturdays and in between every class in school. After he dropped out we just stopped showing up at his locker. I threw out all the notes and dried flowers from our first walk in the forest, our last Valentine’s Day.

It was easy to accept never seeing his father again too. We all hated the man, knew it was his fault that everything came crashing down. His fault for cheating and lying and putting his son’s head through a wall. It was his fault that Charlie had to get away. No, it was easy to let go of all that.

So if I could so easily turn away from buildings, moments, seasons, dogs, why couldn't I let go of a ghost? Surely, I could at least loosen my hold… But always, nights and mornings, he comes rushing back in a flood of two blue waves. The bluest, hardest blue to have to face. And once my own eyes connect to them, I know there’s no escaping the rest that washes ashore: the breathless laughter, the singing voice, arms moving lightning speed over a beat-up guitar, the smell of soap and smoke and skin, the jokes and serious conversations, the slow rhythm of breathing on a sunny futon afternoon, the plans for a crappy apartment when I graduated college and he made it with the band, the dreams of something better, something far away from here, the sound of a quiet voice over the phone just before sleep, swearing that things would never end, that when we woke up, everything would be alright.

 "I see... the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off." -Tyler Durden, Fight Club

This haiku was inspired by Fight Club.  While this remains one of my favorite films, it is also one which holds a strong anti-commercialism message.  Project Mayhem is not my thing, but I would like to become more than a slave to the wage.

We own things own us

Working each day a mere slave

Blow it all away

Ich bin wirklich gespannt, ob The Dark Knight hält, was er momentan verspricht!!!

Dei Pixies vi ho già parlato in precedenza per un'altra canzone molto bella,"Velouria",e oggi invece vi piazzo un'altra canzone che è troppo troppo troppo bella e si tratta di "Where is my mind" che è stata anche utilizzata come colonna sonora del film strafamoso che appare nel video^^ vi consiglio la versione fatta da Zombina e The Skeletones molto molto cupa.
Dopo il jump il testo originale e quello tradotto dalla mia personcina.
With your feet on the air and your head on the ground
Try this trip and spin it, yeah
Your head'll collapse
If there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind
Where is my mind
Where is my mind

Way out in the water
See it swimming

I was swimming in the Carribean
Animals were hiding behind the rock
Except the little fish
But they told me to swim
Is to try to talk to me, coy coy

Where is my mind
Where is my mind
Where is my mind

Way out in the water
See it swimmin'

With your feet on the air and your head on the ground
Try this trip and spin it, yeah
Your head'll collapse
If there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind
Where is my mind
Where is my mind

Way out in the water
See it swimmin'

Traduzione

Con i piedi per aria e la testa a terra
prova questo viaggio e giralo
la tua testa crollerà
se non c'è niente dentro
e ti chiederai

Dov'è la mia testa
Dov'è la mia testa
Dov'è la mia testa

Esce dall'acqua
Guardala nuotare

Stavo nuotando nel mare dei Caraibi
Gli animali si nascondevano dietro la roccia
tranne un piccolo pesce
Ma mi hanno detto di nuotare
stà cercando di parlarmi,timido timido

Dov'è la mia testa
Dov'è la mia testa
Dov'è la mia testa

Esce dall'acqua
Guardala nuotare

Con i piedi per aria e la testa a terra
prova questo viaggio e giralo
la tua testa crollerà
se non c'è niente dentro
e ti chiederai

Dov'è la mia testa
Dov'è la mia testa
Dov'è la mia testa

Esce dall'acqua
Guardala nuotare

My time here in Poland has facilitated me moving more to the right politically and economically than ever before. Yet a few films have been on my mind lately that point, in some ways, to the left. I wanted to share a short list.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. The first thing you notice about the film is how thoroughly researched it is. I consider director Alex Gibney to be intellectually sound and politically level headed. The film is two parts investigation, one part meditation. But most of the research was already done by the two Fortune Magazine reporters who wrote the book of the same title. Gibney furthers the conclusions of the book and allows for a different, more human focus to the economic story. The film ultimately creates a microcosm of the evils that prevail in extreme Reagan-esque privatizations. The great thing about this film is that it doesn't speak about privatization, per se, but it does try to learn from the Enron fiasco. To the best of my knowledge, no film has better achieved such clarity, even-handedness, and profundity while simultaneously doling out such massive amounts of information. Profound investigative reporting with a conscience.

Fahrenheit 9/11. I went into the movie expecting to hate it for its melodrama and disregard for truth. I was surprised to find less belligerence than in Bowling for Columbine (perhaps the most illogical, absurd, and yet still self-congratulatory political film I can think of). Most often Bowling for Columbine is described as one-sided while I found it lacking in subject matter — I don't believe the film actually had a point, therefore we can't argue that it was too one-sided. I felt similar sentiments about all of Michael Moore's previous endeavors, both in TV for IFC and his Academy recognized Roger and Me. Imagine my surprise, then, at the skill in the filmmaking in Fahrenheit 9/11. Unlike his previous work, this film was more than a 7th-grade political essay. While we can still argue that some of the political connections he makes are a bit outrageous if not inconclusive, the questions his filmmaking raise does great good for political discussion, I am convinced. I must say that I find the film, despite some of its outrageousness, more politically relevant now than the year it won Palm D'Or at Cannes.

Fog of War. This film, which essentially consists of an interview with Robert McNamara by master documentarian Errol Morris, goes more in depth than the book written by McNamara about the Vietnam War. View this film, if for nothing else, to hear a man who had so much responsibility and so much power in that war say the phrase aloud on camera, "We were wrong." (Am I the only person who desires this more than anything else in American politics? To hear politicians be honest, even to the detriment of their public image?) The film's perspective and maturity is astounding.

Hearts and Minds. Though this film is about Vietnam, one can't help but see application to the current war situation. I highly recommend this film, which was filmed in Vietnam during the war, though it was outrageously one-sided and even skillfully and subtly manipulative. To my eyes, it seems less so now than I imagine it did then. Simply for historical perspective and sheer mass of fact-based information (with occasional anecdote, of course). I highly recommend the Criterion Collection disc of this movie and remember to view it with and without the commentary. The commentary is less for film buffs and more for politically-minded people.

An Inconvenient Truth. Flat out, this is a propaganda piece. The film follows a series of lectures Al Gore gives about global warming. But some messages are simply worth propagating. Now, I grew up in a place where "going green" didn't need to be articulated because it was almost everyone's way of life. So I'm grateful for someone bringing to the forefront something that I have believed to be important from my childhood. If nothing else, the film is worth watching or revisiting since I cite it as an epicenter for the more omnipresent environmental discussion (the unfortunate underbelly of which has recently been manifest on The Millennial Star blog).

An Unreasonable Man. You may love or hate Ralph Nader or you may not even know who he is. No matter what group you may belong to, chances are you will have something to say, and that passionately, after this film. When my wife and I saw this at the Sundance Film Festival, everyone seemed to be engaged. The screening before ours had required security because some members of the audience were either so in favor or so angry that they went up on stage, uninvited, during the discussion to take charge of the microphone. Almost everyone had something to say. This quite even-handed film was made by someone who had worked for Nader for several years, who, on the whole, had a favorable take on Nader but also knew his flaws far better than most. Perhaps the greatest quality the film possesses is that of an intense critique of a bipartisan system. The running time is well over two hours, but I can't remember being on the edge of my seat more consistently during any documentary.

Why We Fight. Though the filmmaking in Andrew Jarecki's second endeavor is not quite as slick and clever as his first and more disturbing feature Capturing the Freidman's, the content of Why We Fight is perhaps more visceral and gives more weight where the filmmaking may fall short. The premise is two-fold: First, a reframing of Frank Capra's vital and historically important propaganda films and second, to reframe our present military condition in light of President Eisenhower's presidency.

The American national sentiment after Word War I was by and large not supportive of further American involvement in "foreign wars." Yet the American "powers that were" felt that we needed to go to war. It was in this light that Frank Capra was asked to explain to the American public why it is that we fight. The films clarified and polarized — even narratized — the current global affairs. Jarecki's feature, as you may guess, is not propaganda, but it seeks to understand 1) the American mentality that causes war as well as 2) the current American popular understanding of political war machinations. To my mind, it fails at both, though there's more success in the former than the latter. (Through this process, however, the question is raised to whether America should be considered an imperialist state.)

The second premise, however, results in success, to question the industrial-military complex President Eisenhower warned about as he was ending his presidency. This film allows us to view our own time through the lens and foresight that President and General Eisenhower had.

——————

At the end of this list, I realize how much discussion there is about war and how, on the whole, the view of war is critical. By way of disclosure, I did recently argue in favor of violence in my LDS reading of Fight Club on my blog, Toward an LDS Cinema.

Email a friend

                For all you fans of disgustingly realistic, horrifyingly repulsive, provocative and psychotic comedies out there, yes, I did steal this quote from Chuck Palahniuk’s first and probably most famous novel, Fight Club.[1] Is this completely fair; to steal another writer’s quote for the sake of writing something on a similar topic?  Is this completely honest to take one person’s idea and write about it as if it’s my own?  The question is not whether it’s fair or honest to have taken Palahniuk’s quote in an attempt to write a fairly decent essay of my own.  The question is more or less, why I chose this particular quote. 

                Are we, as human beings, all slowly dying?  Some people would unquestionably say yes.  Of course we’re all slowly dying.  Every minute in our lives is one less minute of existence; one minute closer to death.  My family almost always eats dinner together.  One could always tell when my mother had had a particularly trying day.  Those were the days that she would sing during dinner.  What would she sing?  She sang a lively little tune with a chorus that went, “one meal closer to death, sweet Jesus.  One meal closer to death…”  I always considered this song very depressing and melancholic and not a suitable song to be singing at the dinner table.  (That is, if any song is suitable to be singing while eating a meal.)  Therefore, I always hated it when she sang this song.  Why?  Sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t solely because of its melancholic tone, but rather, at least partly, because I was scared of death.  I recognized the fact that this silly tune had a greater truth about it.  I was one meal closer to death.  Every second of my life was one second less.  Each wasted day, was a day I could never get back.  So, if you think about it in a sense, yes, we are all dying…minute by minute.

                Yet others would say we are all slowly living.  Every minute is not a minute closer to death, but rather a minute more spent in the full fledges of life; a minute more learning about yourself and others on this wonderful planet we call Earth.  Each moment is a moment filled with vigor, vigor for life.  Are these people simply more optimistic than the people who tend to live by the philosophy that we are all slowly dying?  Are these people simply ignorant to the untimely truth that the world’s depressed, emotional, and pessimistic poets have already discovered and embraced? 

                Either way you choose to look at it, one thing’s easy to understand.  This is no ordinary argument.  Arguably, everyone is right.  Every day we are alive is another day of experience and memories; of life.  Every day we are alive is one day less on Earth; one day closer to death.  Oddly enough, this is an argument where everyone is also wrong.  Can we really be both?  Can we, as human beings, be both living and dying at the same time?  Is that probable? I think the answer to the aforementioned questions, is one loud, resounding, yes.  For why not?  Why couldn’t a person be both living and dying at the same time? As I write this seemingly unimportant essay, I am listening to probably one of the most poetic songs I have ever heard.  This song, “Learning How to Die” [2], has a simple chorus that says: “Don’t talk about how every living thing goes away.  All along I thought I was learning how to take, how to bend, not how to break, how to live, not how to cry, but really, I’ve been learning how to die.” Maybe that’s all any of us are doing really.  Each day in our lives is preparing us for our ultimate demise. 

Then again, maybe I’m completely wrong and much of this argument simply has to do with how much a person values life.  Do they “live every day to the fullest”, or do they wish every day they weren’t stuck in this complete hell-hole.  I’ve been on both sides of the road.  These days, I seem to have found somewhere in the median.  I just hope I don’t get hit. 

somewhat perverse, somewhat clever, somewhat entertaining,
its the warped world of Tyler Durden & company

I need to travel.

In trying to start my own business I have been trying to think of where travel fits into my life (or will fit once I get enough money to have a life). I have had lives in my head where travel was central and that seems the easiest to reconcile because I can see it more clearly. Mostly this plan was dashed when the organization I was going with told me they didn't want to be associated with Christians (which makes no sense since they were supposedly a Christian group--go figure). So the humanitarian thing may be on hold for a while but does that mean all travel has to be?

This is one of those times when reminding myself I am 23 does not help because I don't want to have to settle and travel when I am too old to want to explore or do anything--this happens in my family.

"'Fight Club's jabs at consumerism seem to have particularly upset certain critics, because the movie doesn't typecast its corporate villains. "Why pick on IKEA?" wonders David Denby. It would have been easy to get an audience to hate ruthless, faceless, monolithic monsters of greed like IBM or Microsoft. Everybody hates them already. But "Fight Club" targets a more insidious kind of corporate enterprise — the kind that markets itself as your best friend and uses cutesy branding images to get under your skin and into your wallet: IKEA, Volkswagen, Apple, Starbuck's. If you don't get some sort of vicarious thrill from seeing one of those insufferably precious (and overpriced) new VW bugs receive a facial with a sledgehammer, or from watching that smug Apple logo blown to bits (how's that for "Think Different"?) ... well, as they say, check your pulse."