The Comfort Zone of Unhappiness
/
"Don’t Worry About Me, I’m Perfectly Unhappy"
Read MoreComics Are for Everyone - Less Escapism, More Veganism
/
Killer Shark likes kale shakes for his Rumi. Obviously.
Read MoreThe Battle of Fear: Politics vs. Terrorism
/
When Paris happened, I said it won’t be different. What I meant was, that the reactions to it will be the same as after every other major terrorist attack. On the one hand, I was wrong, because I was surprised by many people bemoaning the same reactions and criticizing our ignorant view on these events, which makes me hopeful. On the other hands, seeing how politicians react, how the bombing started right away, how everything became a little bit more insane and extreme, I realize that it’s exactly what I feared, only worse. I’m not the first to say that terrorism’s goal is to instill fear and what most politicians are doing right now, is taking that fear and riding on it to do whatever they want, they increase and nurture it and keep it alive. They do exactly what the terrorists want them to do.
Read MoreRevolutionary Road (2008)
/
(no real spoilers)
Revolutionary Road is the adaptation of a great novel by Richard Yates that I read many years ago and dearly loved as an amazingly early criticism of our culture. The movie achieves to portray the problems from the novel in a very effective way. I don’t want to compare both of them too much, because I think the movie is its own thing that works well. It features great performances, especially by Kate Winslet and Michael Shannon, but really, all the actors are great. It’s beautifully directed and shot, with a great Thomas Newman score. Director Sam Mendes treads very similar territory as in his American Beauty, but the movies are very different in their tone.
Read MoreThe Story of "Here's Your Future" (III)
/
After describing the writing process and detailing what happened during rehearsals, today I’ll tell the final part of the story, which mostly revolves around the actual performance of the play and the aftermath.
Read MoreThe Conspirator (2010)
/
The Conspirator tells an interesting story in a boring way, which is too bad. The casting and acting is excellent and if nothing else, the movie is almost worth watching many good actors. But not much is done with it, at least not more than is absolutely necessary. It’s a solid movie with an obvious message, which I will get to in a second. The movie takes too long to get going, giving us the whole Lincoln assassination without giving us a clue what the movie will be about for fifteen minutes. Only then the real story comes through and inbetween the movie also spends time with too many things that seem irrelevant.
Read MoreOur Life Is a Movie: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
/
(spoilers, I guess, but either you’ve seen it already or you probably won’t ever want to anyway)
The Empire Strikes Back is not a movie I thought would ever end up here, though it’s always a challenge to find something worth discussing in popular movies like this. My motivation was in picking my favorite movie from 1980 and I realize that it’s Empire. It’s probably the best Star Wars movie because it’s so entertaining and dark at the same time, it’s never boring and the ending still breaks my heart. The music is some of the best film music ever composed and the cliffhanger at the end laughs at all those movies nowadays that call themselves Part 1 and Part 2 (except Kill Bill, maybe). It’s really a good movie and it surpasses all the other movies from 1980 for me (although, Ordinary People came in close just a few days ago, surprisingly).
Read More