• Sections

    • Apr

    27

    “Blindness” to be a Movie

    Filed Under books, movies, people, quotes | Leave a Comment

    I’m not quite sure what to think yet. One of my favorite novels, Blindness, is being adapted to the big screen. The cast list has me scratching my chin - it includes Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Sandra Oh, Danny Glover, and Gael Garcia Bernal. The inclusion of North Americans puzzles me a little as the writer, José Saramago, is Portuguese, and his stories tend to be set in nameless Iberian countries. 

    But … it could be good. The premise - in case you’re wondering by this time - is this: a man on his way home from work or wherever is sitting in his car at a light, when all of the sudden he goes blind. Of course, he cannot drive so he is assisted to his home by another man. The man who went blind visits the doctor, who isn’t sure what’s going on. But very soon after, the doctor goes blind. The blind man’s wife goes blind. Pretty soon many people have inexplicably gone blind, and the government starts housing them all in an unused asylum.  And then we see what happens to people in these situations, and what becomes of society as more and more people lose their sight.  

    Back to the film: The director, Fernando Meirelles - also Portuguese - is responsible for City of God and The Constant Gardener. Oh my god - two films that can grind even a stone heart into sand for an hourglass. I’ve only a little exposure to the screenwriter Don McKellar. He is a Canadian, who seems to travel (at least some of the time) within this circle of excellent and interesting Canadian actors and directors like Egoyan, Cronenberg, Sarah Polley, and Oh. He made the indie film, Last Night, which I thought was … okay. In general, I find Canadian films made by this group of people to feel slightly frozen. I like them, but the characters always seem to be in the midst of thawing. 

    Maybe something truly remarkable will be the result when these two Portuguese and Canadian sensibilities are mixed. The novel itself gives the experience of being rent from a long distance. Saramago is magical that way.

    This afternoon I skimmed through some of the book, rereading underlined passages. It’s a challenge to quote Saramago because his “sentences” are the length of paragraphs, while his paragraphs are the length of chapters; his humor is difficult to take out of context, and the dialogue is not separated from the narrative.  But here are a couple of excerpts that I like:

    …The good and the evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much-talked-of immortality ….

    … She did not waste time asking herself where such a thought had come from, she was only surprised at its slowness, at how the first word had been so slow in appearing, the slowness of those to follow, and how she found that the thought was already there before, somewhere or other, and only the words were missing, like a body searching in the bed for the hollow that had been prepared for it by the mere idea of lying down. 

     

    … animals are like people, they get used to everything in the end.

    That last one reminded me of something Dostoevsky wrote in another of my favorite pieces of fiction, House of the Dead, - “Man is a creature who can get used to anything, and I believe that is the very best way of defining him.” 

    There are many days when I think this is true. In Blindness, Saramago offers a great parable. 

    Popularity: 45% [?]

    Dec

    5

    Movies Without Plots

    Filed Under lil things, movies | 4 Comments

    I was thinking about No Country for Old Men, one of the best movies I’ve seen all year, and how it has a plot, but really … it’s not about the plot. And how if you ask me what my favorite stories are “about” I can’t say they are about any particular event, but people. And should that be unusual considering that when we talk about a real person’s life, we don’t usually sum it up as a plot. Most lives aren’t about one big thing that’s happened. Sometimes we get caught up in a chain of events, sometimes we set those events in motion, but at the center of every life is a person.

    Popularity: 16% [?]

    Oct

    6

    Movies, Race, and My Puerile Joke of the Day

    Filed Under friends, humor, lil things, movies, pop culture | 3 Comments

    For her birthday, the LH and I decided to buy our friend - a Russian immigrant - some of the movies that we grew up with as kids of the 80s and early 90s.  She was raised in the US, but her family was very religious and she never watched television or movies until she went off to university. When we went to Disneyland earlier this year with her, she didn’t know who any of the characters were, except Mickey Mouse.

    So, as part of our American Childhood Pop Culture “Starter-Kit” we picked up The Goonies, The Princess Bride, Mary Poppins, The Muppet Movie (the LH’s choice), and ET. (We also wanted A Neverending Story, but the store didn’t have it.)

    The LH started quoting the Princess Bride, and then became concerned that some of the verbal humor will fly right over her head.  I pointed out that we enjoyed those jokes as adolescents and so very likely she’ll get them too. Movies that made us laugh (or cry) as kids should definitely be broad enough to register on her radar. He said okay. Then we started talking about the silly jokes that kids tell each other, and he related this one to me:

    Q: What do you get when you cross an elephant with a rhino?

    A: Elef-ino!

    That just cracked me up. He says it’s a common joke, but I never heard it!

    Depending on the success of this movie sampler, I think that for Christmas I want to get her a collection of movies about people of color in the US. There’s an HBO movie version of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and I wonder if it’s any good. I’m thinking  specifically of when she told me that she would “LOVE” to be an Indian because “they get everything for free.”  The LH says we should also get her Roots.

    Popularity: 28% [?]

    Sep

    12

    Parents Just Don’t Understand

    Filed Under heteropatriarchy, movies, people, pop culture, questions | 4 Comments

    Yesterday the theme of parenting reoccurred throughout the day. At lunch with my grandmother, the issue of spanking came up; and while watching The Last Mimzy it became overwhelmingly apparent how typical it is for parents to not listen to their children.

    During lunch, my grandmother spoke about how she got spanked more than her sister because, as the oldest child, she was expected to know better. She still believes in spanking, and tends to equate spanking with discipline: Parents who don’t spank their kids are letting their kids run wild; some kids need to be spanked more because they’re bad/hard-headed, and so on. At one point she admitted that she probably didn’t benefit from spanking, but she still thought it was the right thing to do.

    When the LH told my grandmother that he’d never been spanked by his parents, she said, “Wow. You must have been an angel.” He laughed and said he had most certainly not been an angel. But his parents were the “hippie” parents who sent the kids to their room to calm down, and then talked about what had happened; the kids even had input into what their punishment would be! And both kids and parents were expected to apologize to each other if they’d been disrespectful in any way. A consequence of this is that the LH and his brother actually liked and got along with their parents when they were teenagers. Unlike most of their friends, they didn’t feel the need to lie, and they trusted their parents to be fair and reasonable.

    My grandmother thought this was pretty interesting, and shocked me by offering that, because of this, the LH and I were likely to have well-behaved children even though we weren’t going to spank them! Later, when the LH mentioned that he was raised as an atheist, she shocked me even further by agreeing that belief in God had nothing to do with whether you could raise children to be good, moral people. I swear, if I had proposed these things I would have gotten no end of argument. The LH has a way of getting my family members to agree with him on pretty radical points. Just a few weeks ago, with a few sentences, he had my religious, anti-evolution brother conceding that human beings were descended from the same ancestors as apes!

    Anyway, back to the subject of children: last night we were watching The Last Mimzy, a science fiction family movie about two siblings who find relics from the future. Weird but truly exciting things start happening to the kids, and the parents (mom in particular) get freaked out. But instead of asking the kids what’s going on, or where they found the “toys,” they become very reactionary, trying to get rid of the toys, or calling in experts. It doesn’t ever occur to them to get the full story from the children before drawing conclusions, or to take the time to observe their children’s relationships to the objects.

    Somehowthe desire to protect one’s children didn’t include being in dialog with them. Instead there was a real pattern of interrogation followed by assumption followed by decision. And it didn’t matter how the kids responded to any of these steps - that was the trajectory the parents were on.

    All of this has me thinking about how, from birth, I’ve been conditioned to ask questions, gather information, and make decisions. Often it’s just easier to make assumptions - it saves time - in the short term, but the misunderstandings can cause confusion long after the initial interaction is forgotten.

    It’s also astonishing to me how what many parents want more than anything is for their child to be normal. In Mimzy, the mom is really upset that her kids are exhibiting qualities of genius. “Something’s not right,” she says. The dad doesn’t get it at first. After all, what’s so wrong about suddenly excelling at science? But when his daughter demonstrates telekinetic abilities, he jumps onto the same page as mom: surely something is wrong with his child, and it must be examined and corrected so that she can be normal again!

    What we don’t understand is frightening, I know. But I wonder how much confusion and pain it causes when we stop listening because we think we know our children or the other people in our lives. Is it really any less than if we just admitted that we don’t?

    Popularity: 32% [?]

    Aug

    29

    Full Steam Ahead: What’s Going On

    Filed Under being creative, friends, health, lil things, local, movies, plans, small happinesses | 2 Comments

    I think I’m addicted to Facebook. Just a little bit. It’s pretty awesome. There are a lot of other things going on, though. Like writing for HealthyNerds - I have to build up a reservoir of posts for those days when I’m not home (my goal is to post daily for my clients). And I’m also working hard to find more clients. I really enjoy the coaching aspect, but being my own boss means putting myself out there and risking failure! And talking to new people all the time - that’s my big challenge. That, and being consistent. Doing a little bit every day. The skills I’m having to learn as a new health coach will serve me well in all aspects of my life, especially as I pursue a writing career. (Yes, me too!)

    Which reminds me: I decided to apply for a women’s writers-in-residence program. I don’t really know how that works, or whether I have any chance of getting in, but it can’t hurt to apply, and it will be good to have my “samples” all ready to send out at a moment’s notice. Unfortunately, I have to include in my application “why this program will be of benefit to me.” *balk* Pray for me, is all I have to say. That’s due in a couple of weeks, and I still have two poems to finish for that package.

    Beginning tomorrow I’ll be a landlady for the first time! My new tenants seem to be a nice young couple, and my place seems a good match for them. Keeping fingers crossed that the next year is delightful and low-key. Tonight, however, I’m cleaning in preparation for the couple’s move-in. I hired a cleaning service and they didn’t do a spectacular job. The DH and I were dealing with several properties at one point this year, and I can definitely attest to the fact that “good help is hard to find.” Our gardening guy flaked out on us, a cleaning lady showed up 12 hours late, and the pressure washer dude charged $500 for a few hours of work. But the man who installed the new baseboard trim finished two days ahead of time, and the landscaper did a fabulous job with no drama. You win some, you lose some, I guess.

    This weekend I’m going to the Redlands with a UU friend I’m getting to know better. She and I (and another woman I don’t know), will be staying at a top rated hostel and going hiking. Yay! Hoping to get some new photos out of the trip, and at least one good writing piece.

    Later in September: starting off several new clients the day after Labor Day; a joint birthday party/camping trip with several other Virgoan friends; producer training at the cable access channel in town; taking swimming lessons from my dad; riding the bike around the neighborhood; writing lots more poetry; facilitating a book group for the Real Wealth of Nations; the Portland Spelling Bee; and experimenting with our new outdoor grill. Oh, and I think I’m going to bow out of ushering from church this year. I’ve been late to a couple of Sundays and after four years I think it’s time to find another way to serve!

    My friend Claire introduced me to a new word: Organi-tarian. It describes meat eaters who strive to support humane treatment of their animal food sources. I think Claire made this word up, so yay for Claire!

    Right now, I’m looking forward to the last month of summer, and hoping that somewhere between the reading, writing, and putting myself out there, I’ll be able to keep up with the laundry, the housework, the yard work, and my friends. Oh, and I’ve definitely got to see Christian Bale’s new movie, 3:10 to Yuma.

    Popularity: 26% [?]

    Next Page →

    Close
    E-mail It
    visitors since June 16, 2007