Friday, January 30, 2009
Bad movies are still Awful
This was the worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life.
I have nothing else to say other than I'm actually thankful. Because when I saw this at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, it made me realize I can do great things.
If this film got made. Anything is possible.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Religion and Wrestling
So - I had the pleasure of watching two very different yet both incredibly interesting films in their own right today: The Wrestler and Religulous.
The latter is Bill Maher's journey to end the superstitions that drive the major religions in the world, in order to stop people from being okay with the Rapture, and perhaps bringing it into existence by their narrowly conceived "blind-faiths." Which I can appreciate. But I can't help but think that his approach is still fundamentally wrong. Maybe its because its fine to say that and understand it, but telling 5 billion people they're dead wrong (*even if they are) and they need to abandon their religions, is probably not going to do much either. I guess it's part of a larger problem I've been thinking about for a while. And while organized religion has been highly politicized, and manipulated for centuries, I can't help but acknowledge the fundamental truths of those religions is the same, and not bad: 1) Know who you are 2) Respect others 3) Appreciate the fact that the world is a mystery 4) Love.
If we are ever going to solve our problems and get beyond our differences, we need to start not by denying people's belief systems, but by appealing to their better sides. The sides that are accepting of others, the sides that don't just tolerate difference, but celebrate it.
In the Wrestler, Mickey Rourke gives a tour de force of a show as a washed-up Wrestler who has to work the independent circuit with cheap steroids and in the shadow of his broken past. It was a wonderful film that expands upon his struggle to exist in a world that has gone beyond him. "Guns and roses were awesome, and then Cobain came along and ruined it." The 80's ruled. At one point he sits in his trailer park and invites one of the neighbor kids to play an old nintendo version of an 8-bit Wrestling game. The kid gets bored and elaborates on Call of Duty 4, showing how much the world has changed. Rourke is out of place. The film also has a series of shots that follow Rourke's back as he walks through his routine, whether he is walking through the locker-room towards the Ring, or through the packing room of the grocery store to the meat-kiosk. He can't deny, even after he quits wrestling from a heart-attack, that he is a wrestler, it's what he loves. It's who he is. Albeit, wrestling is a silly sport, it's all a show, and yet so many people love it, follow it, and live in that strange circle of Make-up and Spandex.
I guess that's my problem with Bill Maher. He is unwilling to accept that religion isn't just a dogmatic scheme for peons to be herded through existence. He can't seem to see that there is still good there. It may need to be saved from a collision course with an awful reality of Religious Wars, but the answer is within its own make-up. It's fabric holds the cure to this potentially terrible path it could continue to find itelf on.
Maybe Religion is like Wrestling. Sometime its okay to put on the costume and step into the hyper-real sensation of the arena. If it connects you to people, and it allows you to live a life you Love, and others love also, how can it be purely wrong?
Even if you don't like Wrestling. And I don't.
Go see the Wrestler. It's a great film. And even though Bill Maher get's annoying really quick, Religulous is still worth a watch. He brings up valid points, he just doesn't have a very good way to solve the problems he highlights. Empathy is what's missing from our lives. Maher could benefit from it. Rourke did, certainly in terms of his career, and definitely in the film as Randy the Ram.
It's the force that can truly solve problems, and allow us to be who we truly are.
The latter is Bill Maher's journey to end the superstitions that drive the major religions in the world, in order to stop people from being okay with the Rapture, and perhaps bringing it into existence by their narrowly conceived "blind-faiths." Which I can appreciate. But I can't help but think that his approach is still fundamentally wrong. Maybe its because its fine to say that and understand it, but telling 5 billion people they're dead wrong (*even if they are) and they need to abandon their religions, is probably not going to do much either. I guess it's part of a larger problem I've been thinking about for a while. And while organized religion has been highly politicized, and manipulated for centuries, I can't help but acknowledge the fundamental truths of those religions is the same, and not bad: 1) Know who you are 2) Respect others 3) Appreciate the fact that the world is a mystery 4) Love.
If we are ever going to solve our problems and get beyond our differences, we need to start not by denying people's belief systems, but by appealing to their better sides. The sides that are accepting of others, the sides that don't just tolerate difference, but celebrate it.
In the Wrestler, Mickey Rourke gives a tour de force of a show as a washed-up Wrestler who has to work the independent circuit with cheap steroids and in the shadow of his broken past. It was a wonderful film that expands upon his struggle to exist in a world that has gone beyond him. "Guns and roses were awesome, and then Cobain came along and ruined it." The 80's ruled. At one point he sits in his trailer park and invites one of the neighbor kids to play an old nintendo version of an 8-bit Wrestling game. The kid gets bored and elaborates on Call of Duty 4, showing how much the world has changed. Rourke is out of place. The film also has a series of shots that follow Rourke's back as he walks through his routine, whether he is walking through the locker-room towards the Ring, or through the packing room of the grocery store to the meat-kiosk. He can't deny, even after he quits wrestling from a heart-attack, that he is a wrestler, it's what he loves. It's who he is. Albeit, wrestling is a silly sport, it's all a show, and yet so many people love it, follow it, and live in that strange circle of Make-up and Spandex.
I guess that's my problem with Bill Maher. He is unwilling to accept that religion isn't just a dogmatic scheme for peons to be herded through existence. He can't seem to see that there is still good there. It may need to be saved from a collision course with an awful reality of Religious Wars, but the answer is within its own make-up. It's fabric holds the cure to this potentially terrible path it could continue to find itelf on.
Maybe Religion is like Wrestling. Sometime its okay to put on the costume and step into the hyper-real sensation of the arena. If it connects you to people, and it allows you to live a life you Love, and others love also, how can it be purely wrong?
Even if you don't like Wrestling. And I don't.
Go see the Wrestler. It's a great film. And even though Bill Maher get's annoying really quick, Religulous is still worth a watch. He brings up valid points, he just doesn't have a very good way to solve the problems he highlights. Empathy is what's missing from our lives. Maher could benefit from it. Rourke did, certainly in terms of his career, and definitely in the film as Randy the Ram.
It's the force that can truly solve problems, and allow us to be who we truly are.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Alex Jones Tv:2009 Police State
My favorite part is where Alex Jones talks about the Police Drinking Fluoride Water, Pumping their kids with Mercury, and swat teaming bar-oweners saying: "YOU CAN'T SELL WHISKEY TO A GOD!"
With Us or Against Us
George Bush once repeated a not-so-subtle mantra during the midst of his 8 years of terror, debt, destruction, and the dissolution of America as we know it, in a manner that at the time by many was deemed justified. In order to fight Terror as he put it, we must throw out the old rule book, and we need everyone on our side. The mantra was simply this:
EITHER YOU ARE WITH US, OR YOU ARE WITH THE TERRORISTS.
Aside, from sounding like something the Borg might've said in an episode of Star Trek, it is a fatuous and bellicose statement with no moral intrinsic value. In fact, it is the exact opposite.
When we accept this didactic nightmare we engage in a narcoleptic vision of the world which sees our own understanding of reality slipping further away from any sense of constructive or positive relevance. I began to think about this again as I work on trying to finish a documentary about the life of a poet from British India, Muhammad Iqbal, who understood this concept 100 years ago.
It's nothing new of course. But today, the mantra has a powerful twist. Bigger Weapons, Larger Consequences, More Insidious and Endless Enemies. The War on Terror, if we accept it, is a self-fulfilling prophecy brought forth by the Spectacle itself, trying to usher us into an era of pure thoughtlessness, fear, and ignorance.
What we have actually done by accepting this is far removed from those ideals we hollowly assume we are upholding (freedom, democracy, truth, prosperity, liberty, etc...)
When we accept this, we are actually initiating a war against ourselves. And the longer we pursue violence as a means to an end, the longer we pursue cultural domination as a by-product of global corporate control, the longer we accept even a single innocent casualty as just cause for our larger Religion of Hegemonic lust, the quicker we demonize ourselves, and the easier it becomes to bury ourselves completely: consumed by the narrative of our own fears.
There is no clash of civilizations. There is only a clash within ourselves.
The major problem of the 21st century isn't terrorism, it's pursuing a false-global democracy that is synonymous with Terror as a State of Mind. War as a Way of Life.
The danger of our times is that we have forgotten who we are.
The Secret of the Self is simple: We have to remember.
This realization starts within, and has to find a way to work itself into the world before it's too late. Or one day we might wake up and realize we created our own personal Hell on Earth, where no one trusts anyone, and no one believes anyone, and there is no more diversity, there is no more difference, there is no more unity, there is nothing.
It's not as dramatic here as it is in real life.
Go out and do your part. But don't despair. We have to win this battle by loving life. We have to win this battle by actively being engaged, to defend those things we love most.
We have to be Creative, Non-Violent, 21st Century, Mystic Revolutionary Combatants.
We have to Know who We Are.
Good night or Good morning. Whichever it is. . .
EITHER YOU ARE WITH US, OR YOU ARE WITH THE TERRORISTS.
Aside, from sounding like something the Borg might've said in an episode of Star Trek, it is a fatuous and bellicose statement with no moral intrinsic value. In fact, it is the exact opposite.
When we accept this didactic nightmare we engage in a narcoleptic vision of the world which sees our own understanding of reality slipping further away from any sense of constructive or positive relevance. I began to think about this again as I work on trying to finish a documentary about the life of a poet from British India, Muhammad Iqbal, who understood this concept 100 years ago.
It's nothing new of course. But today, the mantra has a powerful twist. Bigger Weapons, Larger Consequences, More Insidious and Endless Enemies. The War on Terror, if we accept it, is a self-fulfilling prophecy brought forth by the Spectacle itself, trying to usher us into an era of pure thoughtlessness, fear, and ignorance.
What we have actually done by accepting this is far removed from those ideals we hollowly assume we are upholding (freedom, democracy, truth, prosperity, liberty, etc...)
When we accept this, we are actually initiating a war against ourselves. And the longer we pursue violence as a means to an end, the longer we pursue cultural domination as a by-product of global corporate control, the longer we accept even a single innocent casualty as just cause for our larger Religion of Hegemonic lust, the quicker we demonize ourselves, and the easier it becomes to bury ourselves completely: consumed by the narrative of our own fears.
There is no clash of civilizations. There is only a clash within ourselves.
The major problem of the 21st century isn't terrorism, it's pursuing a false-global democracy that is synonymous with Terror as a State of Mind. War as a Way of Life.
The danger of our times is that we have forgotten who we are.
The Secret of the Self is simple: We have to remember.
This realization starts within, and has to find a way to work itself into the world before it's too late. Or one day we might wake up and realize we created our own personal Hell on Earth, where no one trusts anyone, and no one believes anyone, and there is no more diversity, there is no more difference, there is no more unity, there is nothing.
It's not as dramatic here as it is in real life.
Go out and do your part. But don't despair. We have to win this battle by loving life. We have to win this battle by actively being engaged, to defend those things we love most.
We have to be Creative, Non-Violent, 21st Century, Mystic Revolutionary Combatants.
We have to Know who We Are.
Good night or Good morning. Whichever it is. . .
Monday, January 5, 2009
Monday - January 5, 2009 (close to 10pm)
I am not sure what drove me to jump back into the blogosphere. But here I am. I guess I will start slowly and give no reasons.
The role of the mind is to externalize itself, and the role of the world is to be internalized by the mind.
As far as I can tell thats as close a reason as I can find to describe this sudden desire.
I send my prayers to Gaza. Will it ever end?
Wishing you are well at the start of what will undoubtedly be a Wonderful and Horrible Year.
Good night.
I am not sure what drove me to jump back into the blogosphere. But here I am. I guess I will start slowly and give no reasons.
The role of the mind is to externalize itself, and the role of the world is to be internalized by the mind.
As far as I can tell thats as close a reason as I can find to describe this sudden desire.
I send my prayers to Gaza. Will it ever end?
Wishing you are well at the start of what will undoubtedly be a Wonderful and Horrible Year.
Good night.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)