Why are shows lately better than movies, why I don't care about extinctions and why I wouldn't mind being frozen for 5000 years..

Personally, I am not a fan of environmentalists. I have zero compassion for people who insist on staying hardcore primitive and all around them world is changing. Why should everyone else adapt to those who refuse to change? Things change. I like the fact we're changing. I like evolution, I like the philosophy of it. I like living in this age, when I remember toilet paper still being impossibly uncomfortable and journalists sending messages via a thingie that used a punctured paper strip and now sitting on the toilet, reading about phones coming out that have koi ponds in them. We are changing the environment, the climate, soon even the solar system and other planets and I am very proud of that. This world is very willing to change, too. Of course some think it's best to keep it in some stabile state that may have been or may not have been some time ago, but I am fairly certain they're like those archeologists who think middle ages were quaint. We are the dominant species do jour and while we're here, world is ours. One of these days, give or take a few thousand years, we'll be gone and our ambitions will be overgrown and forgotten. Nature won't even blink. Urbanism here, pollution there, boo hoo. How did this planet feel when ferns first came to town and totally overthrew the climate, making it full of oxygen and totally without sulfur? Radical change!! Turn it back!! Seriously..

As bad as it may be for some, machines and things that last only a short while are modern now. Factory workers refuse to understand that their time is over. Of course 15o years ago it took a whole village to school one man and now everyone is schooled and nobody wants to do grunt work. Society around me hosts 100.000 unemployed within this crisis and not a single person willing to work for a living. Where are the times when a craftsman needed a whole family of support to work day and night and paid pennies to his sweepers and wood choppers.. Now if I want someone to do my lesser tasks perish the thought I'd force them to sing for their supper! Nooo, everyone wants a great job, easy work, lots of doe, right now, right here.

Things are happening so quickly, that the whole culture, whole planet (except those with their heads insistently in the sand) chokes on daily basis. Does anyone - again, referring to those who actually know how to read - remember what was the immortal hit 5 years ago? What revolutionary product that was going to change our lives was on top of the list? Which book was considered instant classic? There are SO many now, it is SO easy to succeed, but you've got to be prepared to last only a second. Trick is how to make the most of it while it lasts and then change and start all over again.

My former video-rent boss and I chat over periodic coffees about movies and shows. Movies used to be events, social gatherings, debate clubs.. I used to see EVERYTHING that came through this town, sometimes even stuff that only screened half a day's train-ride out. Now I've had 4 free tickets for weeks and not much allures me. It's not because of the downloads - I've never had much problem knowing what's way better on screen. There were movies I'd go see 2o times in a row. There's so much people wanna say within those 100 minute frames, spending hundreds of millions of dollars (I mean - GOD!?) on sets and costumes that are on display for 5 seconds... But shows, lately, and more and more I think, suddenly attract way better cats, writers and approaches and take their time to introduce characters, explain, show of, deviate, twist, let the story grow with times and audience.. All of a sudden you want someone else's life to be happening alongside of yours, screen constantly on, grateful it's there and not yours. And for every show that goes bad after three or four seasons, lately three or four new ones enlist...

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Uh, it's getting late and I still have work to do and I am able to go on for a while. To be continued... For sure :p

Movies and other historic portraits

Must confess I've lately fallen well under the influence of Sofia Coppola.. I mean, not influence as such, but I am in such Sofia Coppola vibe today... I first started to notice her work and then realized if I was into movies, I'd probably direct the exact same way as she does and lastly, I watched Marie Antoinette twelve or so times today and began to forgive the little idiot. The sad, too adult and unfortunate life of the heroine in Lost in Translation is in this movie the exact reverse - Marie's existence is kitschy, hectic, short and childish. I used to think 'down with the aristocracy!' pretty clearly and now I'm just weary of historic reports. Gods know I have seen more of the history's backstage than a regular Herodotus. Those imposing, majestic portraits of kings and generals in 8o-pound gilded frames in museums which are the size of pocket states, those continue to deliver the stories of these memorable men in such ridiculously romanticized way, we think they must have been righteous people, to be so pompous.

Didn't care much for Virgin Suicides, that story was just sick. I do have Lost in Translation on speed dial, mostly because I can't get enough of footage of Tokyo and if it's shot through the eyes of a visitor, foreigner and a talented one at that, then the cultural differences are bridged.. Similar thing happens in The Brave One, where Neil Jordan delivers a portrait of New York as only a foreigner in awe could.

Taking the huge leap from the depressed, lonely, minimalistic shooting of Lost in Translation, the girl takes us to the worst of Versailles..
               Personally I've experinced those circles twice - first while still in high-school, smitten by the plots and power of the court of the self-anointed king of Sun, Louis XIV, knowing the names and short histories of all his courtiers, ministers, mistresses and favorite servant, as well as the stories of some of the buildings and women involved in those.. Second time it was less in awe and more as a villain.. And it is too easy to look down on the rich and to think they had them coming with that business with the guillotine.
                But honestly.. It was bad enough that vast majority was viciously inbred and sick one way or another, but they were brought up so blind and ruthless.. Almost everyone's upbringing is inevitable, there's just no way of getting out of it unless you know better and most people never learn. My country has almost no colored folk and everyone looks at non-countrymen as if they were freaks. We don't mean anything truly wrong by it, we just do it. I was scared shitless of Arabs when I first got to Africa. They all looked to me like the creeps from To Ten Most Wanted posters. But still - to see an Asian in our street is an anomaly. They seem to belong only to the restaurants, other than that people stare. A child of different appearance is still molested in school, no matter how confused by it..

Then again, I was always the social outcast myself, and I didn't look particularly unusual. True, my mother cut my hair and for all her well meant effort, it did ruin almost all my childhood photos, but no matter what, even in kindergarten, I was off. People can sniff I'm off within hours of knowing me and that's when I am putting all thrusters into 'normality mode'. I've grown to be pretty happy about it, but I probably annoy a whole lot of people without even realizing it. So many must have been hurt so much while the hurting party never even knew it. 

There are still some issues between me and death. I KNOW there has to be illness and accidents and I know EVERYBODY dies, but to read about those poor people, torn apart by the mob, literally ripped to pieces and the estate thrashed to bits.. I can believe someone would have suffered for so long they had nothing left but wrath to demolish icons responsible, but still.. That was one hell of a swipe the French revolutionaries swung. Hope later rulers of this kinky little planet learned never to allow it to get this far again. Kim Jong-il may want to read a book. 

Went to see Public Enemies last night, the latest Mann movie. I liked his Miami Vice version oodles and I appreciate the experimenting with unconventional camera techniques and almost too realistic shooting scenes. Still. What was cute and well measured in M. Vice was starting to get annoying here... A little TOO much 'documentary' framing for my taste, bad lighting and painfully close-ups. And sure, the shooting scenes are still scary, but half an hour each is plenty.. Did appreciated his casting, tho. The 'Cochi Loco' guy is always welcomed and it was good to see Leelee Sobieski alive and well, although she seems to have taken 'tall women are sooner to get ahead' too seriously and she is not 11 ft tall. Lead girl was a fresh step from the tired H'wood routine a-la-Aniston or Paltrow or Johanssen. And last but not least was miss Katič. You don't see many of the old Yuga folk break through and she kicked bootie as the gypsy tom in Black Cat White Cat. Am happy for her.

There's a scene where marshals bring the caught (lost count which time it was) Dillinger to Indiana with a plane and they carry their guys as proudly as samurai would their swords. Those were some lovely pieces, too. The one used in the shooting scene in the orchard, where the Purvis character is introduced, is poetry to shoot with indeed. Piček's hunting weapon of choice.