Continuing on my stroll through iconic terror movies, I recently watched Kubrick's version of The shining, with good ol' Jack Nicholson. For the fourth time, actually (yes, movies like that are what make me so psychotic...).

I want to know your theory
I just wanna see if I got this straight, so correct me if I'm wrong. Ok, so we have this family comming into this huge hotel to take care of it while it's shut down during winter. The father is a failed writer. The kid has ESP (Extra Sensorial Perception, mind powers such as telepathy, clairvoyance, telechinesis and so on...) and so does the black guy. Along the movie, I began questioning wether perhaps the father also has ESP. Let's take his side of the story. He come to the hotel to finally do some writting away from the distractions of the city. He hears what happened to the last family who took the job. For the following days, he finds himself still uninspired to write. The days go by and still not one page... As if that wasn't enought, the wife starts bitching about their son, about being lonely, about everything. That stress, plus his fear of being in that ghostly hotel all by himself gets him into seing things, imagining characters (like my Marcus...). Among them, the murderous father of the former family. As the days progress, still no inspiration. Frustration builds up and he begins seeing more of that guy. The buttler. He starts to identify with him. All the while, the kid starts getting all sorts of weird impressions about the place and about what he heard. So both of them have all this energy in them. My guess is, by the time the buttles convinces the father to butcher his own family, all that energy starts materializing things and making things happen. Like when the buttler opens the door for the father, freeing him. Or all the other things that the mother sees in the end of the movie. Even that last photograph, where it's clear that the father has come to such a level of identification, that he believes he is the buttler.

Got any other views on this?

By the way, Kubrick's photography and sript are excellent! I hear they trashed the movie on this new version that came out recently... I don't even feel like watching.

By the way, I just had to do this:

All work and no play make Pan a dull boy.
All work and no play make Pan a dull boy.
All work and no play make Pan a dull boy.
All work and no play make Pan a dull boy.
All work and no play make Pan a dull boy.
All work and no play make Pan a dull boy.

Fui assistir Dolls num desses dias em que sobrou um tempinho.



Cometi o erro crasso de levar minha mãe. Mamãe se interessa muito por coisas relacionadas a arte (imagine que a escolha dela para assistirmos era um desses filmes iranianos que estão em voga...). No entanto, as opiniões dela são quase sempre diametralmente opostas às minhas.

Gostei muito do filme. Posso compreender por que a Lioness e Chebel ficaram sem palavras para descrevê-lo. Posso dizer que o filme trata mais de devoção do que de amor. Devoção do rapaz que joga fora seu futuro promissor para cuidar eternamente da ex-namorada que tentou suicídio e enlouqueceu depois que eles terminaram. Devoção do chefe da Yakuza que ajuda o filho sem pernas ou braços de um membro da organização (o personagem cômico do filme). Devoção da namorada de adolescência deste mesmo chefe da Yakuza que ia ao mesmo banco de praça todos os sábados à espera de que seu amor voltasse. E por fim, a devoção do fã que se mutila para poder chegar perto de seu ídolo pop. O diretor Takeshi Kitano tece estas três histórias com um fio surrealista, onde vale mais a sensação do que a organização cronológica. Ele joga imagens na mesma ordem que alguém escreveria um texto: "no parque XXXXXX há um par de mendigos que andam sempre amarrados. A história deles é triste. Veja..."

A Lioness escreveu sobre a poética da violência. Pareceu-me mais uma poética de desespero, visto que violência mesmo há pouca no filme. Talvez apenas o "aftermath" de cenas de violência, o sangue derramado no chão e muitos, muitos elementos de um vermelho muito vivo, raramente visto em cenas de cinema. Mas acho que o que mais pega mesmo é o desespero. Situações que poderiam muito bem serem evitadas se os personagens não se deixassem levar pela emoção ou pelo romantismo. Mas afinal, quem não gosta de se deixar leva um pouco?

Mamãe, obviamente, prestou mais atenção em outros aspectos do filme. Em como o cabelo de um crescia mais para mostrar a passagem do tempo, enquanto o do outro ficava curto. Ou em como, apesar de um personagem ser um mendigo, suas roupas são sempre novas e de cores vivas. Ficou prestando atenção da falta de emoção nos rostos japoneses. Ou nos erros de edição, quando um flash de cena que não tinha absolutamente nada a ver aparecia por uma fração de segundo.

No entanto, em uma coisa ambos concordamos. As cores do filme, a limpeza e nitidez das imagens era surpreendente. Mamãe diz que nunca viu imagens tão belas no cinema. E aconselhou Tink a vê-lo só pelas imagens. De fato, as cores são absurdamente vivas. O filme transcorre de elementos em lilás a elementos avermelhados, com uma ou outra cor aqui e ali. Mas tudo é impecável. E não é só nas cores. As ruas são limpas, os parques são perfeitos e a neve é suave. Tudo belíssimo e absurdamente irreal como em um pesadelo bom.

Some artists, specificaly painters, depict entire inner worlds. It's been a tradition ever since surrealism. Worlds with their own characters and settings, each with it's unique meaning, usualy only grasped by the artist himself. You can easily understand the inner world of Sandra Cinto, or my dear Edward Hopper if you see enough of their works. Tonight, I think I got a glimpse of a part of my world.

A year ago, as I listened to Letting the cables sleep (Bush), I had this strange feeling. With the speed of thought, I witnessed a bunch of images put toghether. I saw an irrecognizeable face of a girl with short hair, lying on her back on an unmade bed, glancing at me. The sheets draped to the floor. It was late at night and she was criss-crossed by beams of neon lights from the outside filtered by the curtains in the window into some sort of squared pattern. At the same time, I could see this building, all windows were regular squares, no lights inside, making them pitch dark. The neon lights in the city below would turn that darkness into a light purple. Tiny LED lights would blip in different colors all along the vortices of the squares. Still, there was a third image of a naked child standing some corner of the city, lit only by the lonely light of a street lamp. There was this general mood of a before-dawn stillness. Those hours when there's virtually no one on the streets but one or two cars eventually drive by at high speeds...
Overwhelmed by that strange feeling, I bought some canvas and began painting it. It took quite a while to organize everything that had come to me and I lost much of it along the way. In the end, I had a canvas I entitled Letting the cables sleep.
But I hated it. Because it seemed I wasn't dexterous enough to paint it at the time. Furthermore, I didn't stick to the original idea. For the girl, who had been place high atop the cancas, upside-down, I had used my Blonde Muse's face. It was her portrait I was doing at the time and I knew her face well enough. But no matter how well I knew it, the results sucked. I also lost the squared pattern and the entire second image. The little boy was there, at the bottom. Staring blankly upwards at the girl. My lack of expertise with my colours made me mix his flesh tones with black for the shadows, resulting in a gray skin.

I have no idea what became of that canvas. Eventualy, in my clumsiness, I misplaced it somewhere. Never saw it again. Then recently, after a lazy afternoon with Tink, I sketched a few doodles to use her as the girl in the sky.

Tonight, as I was coming home from Tink's, I was listening to Cowboy Bebop's See you Space Cowboy. The streets were almost empty, with those same cars at high speeds. And in those first saxophone notes, there was this image of another naked gray child, standing on the ledge of a building. The ledges created that same squared pattern with LED lights flickering. The windows were still dark. The night sky had stars this time. And the child would stare blankly at the sky again. I imagined there would be a presence there, like the girl in the other one. But I couldn't make it out this time.

I think my inner world is a neon-lit ghost city, with square-patterned buildings and naked gray-skinned children running around. Looking at the skies will lead you into other space/time junctions: bedrooms in those long minutes after sex. And these gray boys keep staring at the sky in hopes that they'll one day grow up and be the men in those bedrooms. And then the presence of those women in there won't seem so overpowering.

*Sigh*

Forgive my senseless yaking. I don't think you care about naked gray-skinned children, girls in the sky or neon-lit ghost cities. Doubt anyone will read this far anyway. But I just had to write this down for the record.

Dadaist revelation X:

I just hate it when things get to this point of evanescence. The slow fading away. Still gotta find a way to avoid over-exposure.

After lunch that same day, I was dumping all the leftovers. And as usual, I had left my pickle slices inside the BigMac box (why do they keep using pickles if every one takes the slices out??). And suddenly I had this comic, yet unethical daydream about some homeless guy literaly swiming in a garbage dump and finding this box, that dismally resembles an oyster, and then opening it to eat the "pearls" inside...

When I was a child, I thought there would come a day when something specific would happen and I would hence be understood as "an adult". That there was this one specific event that would turn me into a grown-up overnight. The world would then look a lot smaller, because I'd be bigger; and my ideas would magically be more mature. And then I learned about teenage and that time when you're neither one nor the other. When you're too old to play the same old games and yet too young to play the new and interesting ones...

This weekend I ventured into a McDonald's for lunch. And that once wonderful and enticing burger odour seemed strangely nauseating. I came to grips with the fact that I no longer like McDonald's. Or any of the fast-foods for that matter. I mean, I still eat at those every now and then. But given the choice, I'd easily choose something else. Same goes for soda pops... I'll take juice over those any day.

Well, the change didn't exactly happen overnight. But going into that store and being nauseated by that characteristic smell sure did come as a surprise. The same surprise that hit me when I found the street I lived in when I was a child. That whole block, that seemed like the entire universe to me, was now just another block amidst the city. It was nothing. Tiny. Puny. Because I was bigger.

Choose a band and answer the questions using song titles:

David Bowie version
Are you male or female? Hallo Spaceboy
Describe yourself: Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud
How do some people feel about you? Strangers when we meet
How do you feel about yourself? Dead man walking / Affraid
Describe your girlfriend: I've been waiting for you
Where would you rather be? Looking for satellites
Describe what you want to be: Little Wonder / "Heroes"
Describe how you live: Survive / Under pressure
Describe how you love: I would be your slave / Modern Love / Teenage Wildlife
Share a few words of wisdom: Hang on to yourself


Tears for Fears version
Are you male or female? Elemental
Describe yourself: Standing on the corner of the third world
How do some people feel about you? Mr. Pessimist / Cold
How do you feel about yourself? Fish out of water
Describe your girlfriend: Mother's talk
Where would you rather be? Empire building
Describe what you want to be: The way you are
Describe how you live: Always in the past
Describe how you love: I choose you
Share a few words of wisdom: Everybody wants to rule the world / Don't drink the water

I've recently met Lady Visentainer again. Along with about half a dozen of the avatars of school years. By avatars I mean those guys who'd get the highest grade on just about any subject and who seemed realtively devoid of a personal life. Milady has remained the same edgewalker, much to my joy. Good to reasure myself that the law course isn't brainwashing her. But the avatars are really turning into an interesting bunch. I always wondered what happened to those guys once school was over. I always thought they'd have promising careers right from the start. But now I see it takes a little social skill to do well in these first few stages of adulthood. Social skills that I do not posess, and neither do they. On the other hand, we've all began edgewalking. As if they had found out that life is more than just grades... And as if I had gradually lost some of my nerve... Some of them have even turned homossexual or bissexual. And I know many people back at school would taunt them in such a manner, but they'd be surprised to see that they actualy did become homossexual. Meanwhile, one of milady's friends is dating a scottish fifty-year-old she met on the net. And all through the night, milady was as insinuating as she had always been, though she respected Tinkerbell at my side. I like that. Tsc... I can't understand why she has a hard time landing a boyfriend.
Anyway, it was nice to get toghether with a gang that wasn't so normal... I needed that. Perhaps I'll keep in touch this time.

Mamãe não entende por que tenho tanta má vontade em fazer coisas simples nesta cidade. Lembro em uma ocasião em que tive que ir a um borracheiro consertar um pneu do meu carro (deve estar anotado aqui em algum lugar...). Conversando sobre isso, eu deixei escapar: "lá se vai o meu dia de amanhã...". E ela desatou a dar sermão sobre como isso só demora alguns minutinhos e eu não preciso perder meu dia.

Pois bem, nesta semana tive um exemplo perfeito do meu ponto de vista: a visita o consulado italiano para renovar meu passaporte para a viagem de fim de ano. A odisséia começou na segunda. Ligo para lá e descubro que eles atendem das oito ao meio-dia. Olho no relógio: 12:45. Fica para amanhã. E então descubro que eles não atendem às terças sabe Deus por que... Passo para a quarta. E então, falho em acordar com o despertador. Chego lá às dez da manhã. A fila, calculando por cima, demoraria umas quatro horas no mínimo. Passo para a quinta-feira, chegando uma hora antes da abertura do consulado e já pegando uma pequena fila na porta. La dentro, mais uma hora e meia. Finalmente, dou de cara com um senhor relativamente simpático, que no entanto explica as coisas tão rápido que não tenho tempo de assimilar tudo. Resultado: me agenda um horário para voltar em Agosto, sem pegar fila e para ir direto ao assunto, se eu tiver toda a documentação... Ou seja, aquilo que mamãe disse durar um dia, vai provavelmente se estender para alêm do mês que vem.

*Suspiro*

Nessas horas eu detesto cidades grandes...

Seria ótimo se todas as gramáticas fossem tão simples como a italiana. Um S é um S. E não um SC, Ç, C, Z e variações... Cada letra tem um som e apenas um som. No mais, a única preocupação que se deve ter é a de saber quando se duplica a consoante ou se o acento no E final é agudo ou grave (a única letra que tem os dois, como o nosso A, e eles só acentuam letras no final da frase...).

Já levo duas semanas de aula e aprendi bastante. Já dá pra falar um pouco e fico feliz de me pegar pensando em italiano de vez em nunca. É um idioma com uma sonoridade belíssima. Tento a toda custa aprender como a criança aprende. Foi do jeito que aprendi o inglês e o espanhol: "esta palavra significa este conceito", e não "esta palavra significa esta outra em português que significa este conceito", como as pessoas mais velhas aprendem... Capisce?

Aula passada terminou com traduções da música do Eros Ramazzotti que eu tanto gosto: Cosa della vita. A pedido meu. Algumas partes complicadas, mas foi interessante.

P.S.: Aprendi o que quer dizer o pernacchia que eu ouvia tanto por aí entre decendentes de italianos...

Seen a couple of movies on the weekend...
First, there was Charlies Angels: full throttle on theatres. . I have to say: the director, a fellow who goes by the name of McG, must've been really stoned while directing this. There are a bunch of really cool action scenes, but most of them are simply too riiculously far fetched, even for an Angels movie. Like for instance, Demy Moore, the villain, jumping off a builiding and flying half-way across an avenue with clothes that look like a silk version of X-men's Banshee. On the good side, I can enlist the appearence of fellow countryman Rodrigo Santoro, who doesn't actually do anything relevant, but hey, it's one of our actors on the big screen! Also, I really liked the enourmous amounts of references to pop culture idols. I mean, the movie is one big collage of references. From Drew Barrymore wearing David Bowie's Alladin Sane make-up as a wrestler (to the sound of Bowie's Rebel Rebel...), going through Matrix-like action scenes, Moulin Rouge choreographies, and your obvious references to angels, heaven, hell, etc... Nice roles played by X-Files' Robert Patrick and Bruce Willis, who seems to be one more actor to chalk up on that list of guys who always play the same role. Oh, I almost forgot! You also get to see the return of that thin guy who fought with them on the first movie!! Definitely one of the coolest characters (aside from the angels themselves, that it...).
After all that excitement, I came home to find that my parents had rented 007: Dr. No. Yes, it was the very first 007 movie. Dad wants to do what everyone always talks of doing: rent them all, in sequence. The first movie seems to be just one big detective story. Nothing too great about it. Bond doesn't even have any of those nifty gadgets he uses. It is, however, the movie that introduces the famous Walter PPK, his famous, yet tiny pistol. Bond is played by a very young Sean Connery, who depicts him as a seductive gumshoe with one or two tricks up his sleave (and bellow the belt...). One thing that really drew my attention is how simple are the fight scenes. Nowadays both the villain and the hero fly up into the air in slow-motion break out the fancy martial arts. But back then, Bond would just unarm his opponents with a simple flick of the wrist. No camera tricks. I'm curious to see how he'll evolve...

Well, that's enough for now... Still haven't seen Spirited Away. But there'll be other weekends...

Just when you thought you'd seen enough quizzes...


SPIRIT is your chinese symbol!


What Chinese Symbol Are You?
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Uma Malibu e duas tequilas num estômago vazio...
Saldo:
Fala arrastada, desorientação , descoordenação e algumas idéias meio esquisitas na cabeça...

Italian seems to be going fine, thank you. Of course, I still can't make it through five minutes of conversation. But nonetheless I've learned quite a lot. It's the first time I face a language class knowing virtually nothing of the language. To me, the weirdest thing of all is not knowing wether the teacher speaks an accurate italian. In the pointless english classes I had at school, I was always noticing teachers' mistakes. Their accents and wrong pronunciation. Seldom did I find a teacher with a 100% correct english. But in the italian course, I have no reference of such things. For all I know we could all be speaking with terrible foreign accents and not knowing it. By the way, It's palpable how I'm progressing way faster than everyone else, save for one other spanish-speaking girl. Spanish really helps me understand it all faster, even though a few words get me confused every now and then: there are words that have different meanings in spanish and italian, but the word is the same.
Today there was an interesting observation to be made. The teacher had us all play a memory game. You know, the one where you put cards on the table with figures (in our case, they were sentences) and you have to find the matches? I did very well. As oposed to some of my coleagues who were either too tired to remember anything or simply had crappy memories. After that, I noticed how the same people who did well on the game could remember vocabulary and grammar rules while the others seemed to be eternaly on their first day of class. Goes to show how memory and learning are two versions of the same thing.


On other, unrealted news, Pete Bunny seems to have found a way to correct the puctuation problems that we potuguese writters have had lately (characters being replaced for question marks...) How did you do it? PLEASE!!! WE MUST KNOW!!!

Going by the video rental shop, this old nostalgia hit me. I decided to leave aside the high-quality movies and go for some old-fashioned 80's terror. And who could be better than good old Freddy Krueger, the icon of such an age? . I used to watch some of his movies when I was a kid. My favorite was the 3rd Nightmare on Elm street, called Dream warriors. The thing with Freddy is that he had no specific victim. For all I knew when I was a kid, I could be the next one just as soon as I fell asleep. And you couldn't stay awake forever... That's what made Freddy better than, let's say, Jason, who had a very specific story and a setting. I knew he couldn't come after me in the middle of the city because he always stayed close to water. Reminds me of another horror classic of the 80's: Puppet master. The monsters were this team of small puppets and dolls. Imagine what it was for a kid to watch such a movie and then be put to sleep in a room full of armed G.I. Joes and other toys... Last but not least, there was also Aracnophobia. A movie that seemed to tease our fear of common house spiders.

I went back home asking myself why do kids like horror movies so much. And I figured it's because horror movies meddle with one of our most basic feelings: fear. See, a child can't understand enough of a romance to feel anything for it. And comedies seem to be made mostly for adults who understand the dirty jokes and the social and political satires. Sure, adventures are fun. But terror is what really gets their blood going and their minds working for days. Also, it deals with morbid curiosity: you always want to know how each of the dozens of characters dies in the movie. It's like collecting cards: "yep, I've seen that one...", "woa, cool, I've never seen that!!". In the case of Puppet master there was an even bigger appeal to morbid curiosity: every now and then a new puppet would be created with many more fun ways to kill.