Saturday, December 25, 2010

Favorite Christmas Movies

In no particular order, I wanted to put together a list of Christmas themed movies that I've enjoyed through the years.

It's A Wonderful Life

Truly a classic fantasy story where George lives his entire life not knowing what sort of impact he has made on all the people around him and in his darkest hour, Clarence reveals how a dystopian life without George could be and through that experience, he realizes he desperately wants his own life back.



Love Actually

A medley of love stories leading up to Christmas, from unrequited love as is the case in this clip, first loves and crushes, infidelity, and so on. This is a wonderful movie about love around the holidays.



The Holiday

Two women swap houses for a couple weeks at Christmas and discover love in these new temporary worlds they inhabit. For Amanda who meets and falls in love with Iris' brother Graham, she finally opens up her heart.


The Family Man

Another fantasy story where Jack Campbell who has lived a jet-setting life of M&A is so full of himself that he taunts fate and is transported to a suburban life complete with wife and two kids. A fish out of water for most of the movie, he eventually settles in and realizes what he's been missing.


The Year Without Santa Claus

This one just takes me back my childhood. Loved this one growing up!


A Charlie Brown Christmas

An oldie but a goodie.


Bridget Jones Diary

This lovely romantic comedy takes place over the course of a year, but Christmas seems to bookend the opening and closing sequence which is quite touching, as you see Bridget's progression.


The Sound of Music

I remember sitting at the kitchen table in our flat in Toronto watching this beautiful musical on a small television angled at us on the counter and I was entranced.



Rent

Modern-day adaptation of La Boheme with one of the most stunning and memorable soundtrack, including Seasons of Love.



White Christmas

And what list would be complete without Bing Crosby's White Christmas.



Punchlines

I couldn't possibly wear something smaller, possibly a napkin, but do you think it's really necessary for me to cover my three nipples?

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.
- Alexander Pope

A close friend introduced me to this amazing film about memories, longing and fate. It's an intriguing story told in a fractured narrative about erasing painful memories and exploring the implications of that sort of possibility. As much sorrow that could be had by living through pain, I'm not sure that I would opt for it and this is why: I think suffering yields growth and art... maybe even a connection to humanity, and I'm not sure if I would want to eradicate that part of me. The human experience would be far less meaningful, I would think.

There are a few moments that I particularly enjoyed in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The first is  when the two of them escape to his childhood memory framed by the beautiful scoring of Jon Brion.



The second is the moment when Joel realizes that he doesn't want to give up the happy memories along with the sad ones. Creating these memories are fleeting enough and I think one of life's gifts is that through time, you do look back fondly at the happy moments in your life and push away the dark ones.



And I love what Ebert had written in his review, "Discovering this, Joel in revenge applies to have his memories of her erased. But the funny thing about love is, it can survive the circumstances of its ending; we remember good times better than bad ones, and Joel decides in mid-process that maybe he would like to remember Clementine after all. He tries to squirrel away some of his memories in hidden corners of his mind, but the process is implacable."


Punchlines
Do midgets belong in porn?
Oh pish. Come on, don't be such a prude. We all need a little fun.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

My Dinner with Andre


On a quiet, rainy sunday night, I watched for the first time the brilliant movie, My Dinner with Andre. Over the course of a two hour meal, these two masterful storytellers recount their experiences and talk of the theatre, life, art, and what it means to live. Watching this is like eavesdropping on the conversation at the next table in a posh restaurant, and one can easily imagine the stories as they're told rather than watch a series of flashback sequences. This of course goes counter to a typical cinematic experience and especially the mantra in screenwriting to "show, don't tell." But even so, this movie works for me probably because I have a pretty active imagination and could easily visualize this film in my mind's eye.  And after hearing the line "I could also live in my art but never in my life," I was hooked. I could sympathize with that sentiment from a writers' and artists' perspective, but  it is a devastating and tragic way to live, no?

There were many other ideas explored through dialog that I found intriguing and I was struck with how timely my viewing of this movie occurred in light of my last blog entry.

What does it mean to be alive, truly alive?

"Most people I met thought there was something wrong with me. They didn’t say that, but I could tell that that was what they thought. But see, what I think I experienced was for the first time in my life, to know what it means to be truly alive. Now that’s very frightening because with that comes an immediate awareness of death because they go hand in hand. The kind of impulse that Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, that feeling of being connected to everything, it means to also be connected to death. And that’s pretty scary, but I really felt as if I were floating above the ground, not walking…"

Andre's central thesis is that the modern age is stripping us of our humanity.

“You see, I think it's quite possible that the nineteen-sixties represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished. And that this is the beginning of the rest of the future now, and that from now on there'll simply be all these robots walking around, feeling nothing, thinking nothing.”

We aren't acting like true and honest people instead we're take up roles which are related to our occupations. We conform ourselves to narrow pursuits and expectations instead acting out of our own genuine desires.

“I've acted the role of the husband, I've acted the role of the friend, I've acted the role of the writer, director, what have you. I've lived in the same room with this person but I haven't really seen them. I haven't really heard them. I haven't really been with them.”

We are so dissconnected from other people that we know very little about the lives of our closest friends.

“I mean, we live in such ludicrous ignorance of each other. I mean, we usually don't know the things we'd like to know even about our supposedly closest friends!”

In a way, I envisioned myself in Wally's character who having spent that fictitious evening with his friend Andre, summed up his thoughts about his own way of looking at life. He didn't need Mount Everest to have this life-affirming realization.

"Tell me, why do we require a trip to Mount Everest in order to be able to perceive one moment of reality? I mean...I mean, is Mount Everest more "real" than New York? I mean, isn't New York "real"? I mean, you see, I think if you could become fully aware of what existed in the cigar store next door to this restaurant, I think it would just blow your brains out! I mean...I mean, isn't there just as much "reality" to be perceived in the cigar store as there is on Mount Everest?"

Wally lives a simple life and can find joy in the simple things. Isn't it enough to feel more alive in those moments without having to resort to bold gestures? I'd like to think so.

Punchlines

I too love cats. I love 'em. I play with 'em. I touch 'em. I...
Judge: Thank you, that will do. The defendant may be seated.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Abre los ojos


First of all, to those who follow me on twitter, sorry for that half-baked comment that I made. For those who missed it, this is what I wrote:

 Feel like phasing out the mundane from my life. Is that possible?

...followed by...

 BTW my "mundane phase out" plan has nothing to do with unfollowing or defriending. I may have to blog about what I meant (or just shut up).

So this is what I meant. I'll just ramble a bit about it and if it happens to gel with you, great. If not, then move along. There's really nothing to see here except an addle-minded ingénue (yeah, right).

Over the past several months, I've been fascinated by this notion of waking up. Not the kind of waking up you do every morning, but the kind of waking up that occurs when your senses feel enlivened or heightened as a child would respond when he first discovers the world or more importantly what happens when this occurs within your mind, heart or soul in a way that can alter the way that you look at life.

So rather than see a routine - for example, commuting to work - as mundane, it's becoming aware of the sensations of what it is to do such a thing. It could also be about listening to a friend, not in the half-assed way where you really want to turn the conversation around back to yourself, but in a way that fully engages your attention on her. It could be about approaching life in a fresh way and looking for elements that resonate with you or to find beauty in the ordinary.

Certainly there's the clinical aspect to this and according to the Mayo Clinic, keeping your mind sharp by doing different things prevents mental atrophy. But I suppose what I'm focused on is what will feed your soul.

Wouldn't that just make life a little more bearable? But not just that, wouldn't it make it chimerical? So to bring the comment full circle, what I meant about "phasing out the mundane," was really a call-to-action on my part to view life through a different lens and not always allow the automatic thoughts to take over or to zombie through life. This could mean exploring new places locally or abroad, meeting new people from different walks of life, sampling different cuisines from around the world, trying something new ... but in the end, whatever it is, it's about waking up and abre los ojos.


Punchlines
Well, my date was going just fine until she started Frenching her Yorkie. Now I guess I'll just have to play with my Puli.