Man On Wire

The French consistently remind me of beauty without question. There is no "why?", there is life being lived on the wire though. The walk between the towers altered everyone involved to an astounding degree, far beyond what I would have thought. This film is beautiful.

Encounters At The End Of The World

The latest film from Werner Herzog, like his many other documentaries, is beautiful in that you begin to see, and ultimately enjoy, the way Herzog views the world. Not to be seen as March of the Penguins 2: Revenge of the Little Tuxedos, this film focuses more on the people one would expect to meet at the South Pole. Each one is very, very unique from the Eastern European philosopher/backhoe driver to the misanthropic penguin expert that tells those who see a penguin heading away from water and into the interior of Antarctica to just "let 'em go".

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crytal Skull

Unfortunately the Indiana Jones of my youth (the hard-nosed and spry Jones of Raiders of the Lost Ark) has been (see South Park's accurate but obscene take on the most recent Jones film for verb) by George Lucas. Once again, the man who gave us the original Star Wars trilogy only to sour the entire series of films by making tween-friendly prequels has done it again with this film. Right from the outset, this film is loaded with cliches and Jones seems to be only able to spout catchphrases and one-liners. Cate Blanchett does a very unconvincing Russian as her British accent comes through again and again. Harrison Ford's Jones continually reminded me of a senile grandfather that somehow wandered onto the sets of old King Kong films. I felt more sorry for him than anything, like I should talk to him in a soothing voice only to have him yell "What?" as he turned up his hearing aid.

Taxi To The Dark Side

A terrifying film about the lengths to which a Cold War-raised government will go when it is most afraid. This documentary also reminds us that moral responsibility, so easily attached to superiors during the Nuremberg Trials, is conspicuously absent in today's Abu Garaib's and other atrocities.

Samurai Jack

Yes, it is a cartoon and, yes, it is about a samurai named Jack that is thrown into the distant future by his arch nemesis the evil Aku to continually battle foes of all shapes and sizes in the hope of getting back to his own time. It is all of these things but it is also really, really good. The pacing and cinematic style just makes you smile and enjoy the ride. The characters are very imginative and they each have a presence all their own. If all of that isn't enough for you, Samurai Jack also won 4 Emmy Awards.

President Barack Obama!

The first non-white man in the White House and it looks like he is about to heal something too. Amen.

Wristcutters: A Love Story

For David: It was good. Everyone should watch it.

Mongol

The first part in Sergei Bodrov's triology about Genghis Khan made me very mad because I want to see all three right now. I only learned later that Bodrov had a very low budget for such a massive epic and that it was a joint effort between Germany, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Russia. The cinematography is incredible and most of it was filmed in Mongolia. Both the young and old actors that play Temujin (Genghis Khan) do a superb job and there is recognizable continuity between the two.

The Visitor

Thomas McCarthy's second film (his first being "The Station Agent") again delivers a film with characters that are uncomfortably realistic. He excels at finding the perfect actors for these roles that place ordinary people in situations that push them beyond their comfort zone. All the while making the viewer experience it along with them.

Young At Heart

If you watch the trailer for this film you will most likely feel the beginnings of a good cry when and elderly gentleman does his version of Coldplay's "Fix You". When you watch this film (and you most definitely should) the tears will start flowing as the director introduces more and more of the characters that make up the Young @Heart chorus group and you begin to realize the context in which this song was song.

Please Meet Brielyn

She reminds me of the folksiness of Gillian Welch, the beauty of Joan Baez, and the poetry of Mary Oliver.

She is a warrior woman that tells me we are trees growing into life and space.

She is able to know all green things that spread out upon the earth and love them.

She sees the world in a way that I can only dream and I am lovingly envious.

She writes words that make me realize that I am in the company of brilliance and is one of the best writers I have encountered.

She changes my life and I love her for that.

We converse about all things holy and divine.

We travel to parks and water to know more fully the grandeur of God.

We are process, we are restoration, we are both beloved.

Miguel de Unamuno

How could you not love this man?

Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism is a mind-set. The iconography and language it employs can be either religious or secular or both, but because it dismisses all alternative viewpoints as inferior and unworthy of consideration it is anti-thought. This is part of its attraction. It fills a human desire for self-importance, for hope and the dream of finally attaining paradise. It creates a binary world of absolutes, of good and evil. It provides a comforting emotional certitude. It is used to elevate our culture, social and economic systems above others. It is used to justify imperial hubris, war, intolerance and repression as a regrettable necessity in the march of human progress. The fundamentalist murders, plunders and subjugates in the name of humankind’s most exalted ideals. Those who oppose the fundamentalist are dismissed as savages, condemned as lesser breeds of human beings, miscreants led astray by Satan or on the wrong side of Western civilization. The nation is endowed with power and military prowess, fundamentalists argue, because God or our higher form of civilization makes us superior. It is our right to dominate and rule. The core belief systems of these secular and religious antagonists are identical. They are utopians. They will lead us out of the wilderness to the land of milk and honey.

From "I Don't Believe in Atheists" by Chris Hedges

The Counterfeiters

For The Bible Tells Me So

I Want This Life

Pierre Berès, Tenacious Book Collector, Dies at 95

When the manuscript of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s “Journey to the End of the Night” turned up for sale in 2001, no one in the world of antiquarian bookselling needed to ask who had discovered this rarity, missing for decades. It could only have been Pierre Berès, the king of French booksellers, friend to Picasso and Éluard, publisher of Barthes and Aragon, a man renowned for his taste and connoisseurship, his vast financial resources and his ruthlessness in the pursuit of the rare and the beautiful. Mr. Berès died on Monday at 95, members of his family announced to the French press on Wednesday.
“We have lost a legendary figure in the world of art, collecting and publishing,” said the French culture minister, Christine Albanel.
Mr. Berès had already staged a memorable exit from the world of books in 2005. Closing the store he had run since the late 1930s on the Avenue Friedland, near the Arc de Triomphe, he put his collection of 12,000 books up for sale. In a series of six sales at Drouet, the auction house, spaced out over two years, records fell as bidders lined up for treasures like the first edition of Rimbaud’s “Season in Hell,” inscribed by the author to Verlaine.
The sale realized more than 35 million euros. Mr. Berès headed off to retirement in his modern villa in St. Tropez, but not before making a final grand gesture. Unexpectedly, he removed from the sale and donated to the French nation an edition of “The Charterhouse of Parma” that included Stendhal’s revisions, undertaken after he read Balzac’s criticisms of the novel’s opening pages.
Mr. Berès excelled at creating a personal mystique. “I do not seek, I find,” he once proclaimed, cryptically, about his uncanny knack for turning up rare editions. His own background, which he deliberately kept vague, only added to his allure. Born in Stockholm in 1913, he bore the surname Berestov, but throughout his life he remained silent about his parents. He grew up on the Left Bank, attended the prestigious Lycée Louis-le-Grand and in his early teens began collecting autographs and haunting the bookstalls of Paris in search of periodicals with authorial inscriptions.
Early on he displayed nerve and charm, two qualities that would carry him far. At 13 he knocked on the door of Georges Clemenceau, the former prime minister of France, presented him with a notebook and asked for his autograph. Captivated, the old man complied, unaware that the supplicant on his doorstep had approached every other member of the French Academy to gather a complete set of autographs.
While still a student, Mr. Berès set up as a dealer, buying new first editions and reselling them later at a small profit. André Gide, who lived a few doors away on the Rue Vaneau, entrusted him with three of his manuscripts to sell.
Precisely how Mr. Berès within a few years parlayed his early sales into a shop of his own, Incidences, on the Rue Lafitte, remains puzzling. A 2004 profile of Mr. Berès in Le Temps states that after being offered some stolen books, he sought out their owner, a down-at-the-heels aristocrat, whose library he then sold, and whose extensive contacts he took full advantage of.
In any case, he navigated the turbulent economic waters of the 1930s with surprising ease, exhibiting a sharklike appetite for opportunities like the distressed state of American millionaires. A quick trip to the United States in 1938 netted the collections of Mortimer Schiff and Cortland F. Bishop.
Mr. Berès returned to France with first editions of Cervantes and a trove of French Renaissance books once owned by François I. He sold a few volumes to cover the costs of his trip and put the rest in storage for several decades, during which time their value increased exponentially. This strategy served him well throughout his career.
Rivals found him unscrupulous. In one celebrated instance he advertised in his own catalog some choice specimens that happened to belong to a competitor. When a client expressed interest, Mr. Berès told him to wait while he fetched the required volumes from his warehouse. Instead he raced to his competitor’s shop, bought the books and resold them.
Such habits died hard. In 1941 he approached the writer Paul Léautaud with a first edition of his novel “Petit Ami,” formerly in the possession of the poet Henri de Régnier. Perhaps the author would now like to inscribe a dedication? Léautaud was appalled. “Write it yourself,” he shouted, slamming the door. Mr. Berès, after entrusting his assistant Lucien Goldschmidt to open a New York branch of his bookstore in 1937, moved to new premises on the Avenue de Friedland in 1939. He survived the war unscathed. The German writer Ernst Jünger, in his wartime Paris journal, described buying several volumes at the Berès bookstore, and not at a discount, either.
It was during this time that Mr. Berès, often accompanied by the writer Raymond Queneau and the photographer Brassaï, would drop by Picasso’s studio. After the war Matisse selected Mr. Berès’s bookstore to exhibit “Jazz,” his collection of prints based on cutouts.
Mr. Berès’s circle of artistic and literary friends broadened after he acquired Éditions Hermann, a publisher of science books, in 1956. Over the years he developed a distinguished catalog of books on mathematics, physics, philosophy and literary criticism, with a stable of writers that included Aragon, Barthes and Queneau. He also branched out into limited-edition art books and began collecting art. On the walls of his house in Paris visitors could admire works by Seurat, Balthus and Matisse.
These were the beginning of the glory years for Mr. Berès; they lasted more than half a century. Combing the death notices of French newspapers with an eye to hidden links that might lead to great finds, he courted the great and the small. He coaxed an annotated Stendhal from Proust’s maid. Wrapped in a red shawl, often with a Siamese cat perched on one shoulder, he would turn up at magnificent chateaus, talk his way inside and emerge with treasure.
Competitors referred to him, enviously, as a “seduction machine.” Women found him to be one. He married three times and fathered eight children, of whom seven survive: Pervenche, Anémone, Angélique, Platane, Achille, Jacques and Anne-Isabelle Montanari.
He never took on a business partner, routinely outbid rivals for choice merchandise, showed no deference to grand clients and in general operated as if he were the sun in his own solar system.
At the same time, his bookstore was much more open and welcoming than the typical French antiquarian business, in which only selected clients get to see the top-quality books hidden in a back room or upstairs.
“He cut his own swath,” said William Wyler, a partner in Ursus Books and Prints in Manhattan. “He just bought great books, and if he liked you, he sold them to you.”
Over the years Mr. Berès’s collection included a 1670 edition of Pascal’s “Pensées,” a 20-volume edition of Balzac’s “Comédie Humaine” inscribed “to my dear mother from her devoted son Honoré,” and a first edition of “Madame Bovary” sent to Alexandre Dumas by the author with a note, “The homage of an unknown, Gve Flaubert.”
As he acquired, he also gave. He donated the archives of Pierre and Paul Curie to the Bibliothèque Nationale, and after giving the archives of the composer Paul Dukas to the library in 1959, he was awarded the Legion of Honor.
On the other hand, the library had to organize a subscription campaign in 2000 to buy, for what Mr. Berès called “a friendly price,” the nine-volume manuscript of Charteaubriand’s “Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe.”
A year later the library paid 1.8 million euros for the mysterious Céline manuscript. When asked how the manuscript came to him, Mr. Berès answered, “Through the door.”
Summing up Mr. Berès, Mr. Wyler said, “An exceptional mind, exceptional taste, exceptional connoisseurship.”
Mr. Berès’s farewell auction offered countless examples of that taste, like his first edition of “Les Paradis Artificiels.” It was Baudelaire’s own copy, with the author’s notes in the margin.
“This was precisely the sort of thing that Pierre Berès would have,” said John Bidwell, the Astor curator of printed books at the Morgan Library & Museum. “The most desirable copy of an important book.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1918-2008

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died yesterday at the age of 89. He made the world aware of the Soviet Gulag system through novels like "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and the massive "Gulag Archipelago".

"Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers — such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read."

"One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to."

The Dark Knight

This felt like a few stories attempting to be blended together and I don't think it ultimately worked. I really enjoyed the film primarily because of this man, the late Heath Ledger. I was disappointed by the rather cursory treatment of Harvey "Two-Face" Dent. The transformation could have been given a film unto itself but instead it felt like a sideshow to the Joker story. I found myself being actually angry and sad at the end of the film because I knew that this incarnation of the Joker will never be seen again. He was the perfect adversary to what the mythology of Batman has produced over the many years. This Joker will have a prominent place in the Batman story and Heath Ledger will be remembered for another method-driven acting performance.

Films

These should be seen immediately and yes, I did include "Iron Man" because not everything I enjoy is pretentious or elitist. Though it appears that way.

Finally!

I'm done with college. (and there was much rejoicing)

Done

Well almost. I finished my last college paper tonight and my last assignment for my theology major. It feels strange and it has yet to completely sink in. Perhaps graduation will remedy this but I doubt it. I am going to miss the School of Theology but this just gives me the motivation to get an M.Div and Ph.D. so that I can eventually become one of them.

The End of the Day

A perfect poem to read after drinking wine with friends at the close of the night.

The End of the Day

Under a sallow light
Runs insolent, shrieking Life,
Dancing and twisting capriciously.
Then, as soon as sensual night

Climbs the horizon
Hushing all, even hunger,
Effacng all, even shame,
The Poet says to himself: "At last

My spirit like my bones
Pleads dearly for repose;
My heart is full of melancholy dreams,

And I go and lie on my back
Coiling myself in your curtains,
O restoring darkness!"

Charles Baudelaire

Compline

Atonement

It seems as though the world figured I needed a good cry.

Once

Before I saw Damien Rice a few years back I wanted to find out who this band, called The Frames, was that was opening for him. Damien said that The Frames were one of two bands that he felt put on the very best live shows he had seen. The other band was Radiohead.

Glen Hansard, the lead singer of the Frames, brings all of that passionate intensity to his character of the Guy in this film. There are those buskers (street musicians) that find a way to make you uncomfortable, even embarrassed for them when they sing in public. Hansard made me uncomfortable when he wasn't singing. This was a man born simply to sing and make music. He is a pleasure to watch and the Girl (Marketa Irglova) conveys a subtle, strong beauty.

This was a delicate and lovely film.

The Roots

Michael Clayton

Go see it now.

Very Interesting

I just read this the other day in Newsweek.

McSweeney's (courtesy of Maryann Shaw)

FIRST DRAFTS OF THE PARABLES OF JESUS.
BY A.J. PACKMAN
- - - -
Jesus said, "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."
One of the disciples asked, "What of the man who builds his house inside the house built on the rock? Surely his house will be even less damaged by water and wind. Is this what we should do?"
And Jesus said, "No, don't do that."
- - - -
At that time a man said unto Jesus, "Jesus! I do not understand the nature of the kingdom of heaven."
Jesus said, "The Father's kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. One of them went astray. He left the 99 and looked for the one until he found it. When it was found, he said to the sheep, 'That you went astray is a clear sign that you misunderstand my instructions. You are nothing to me.' And then the shepherd turned the lost sheep into a pillar of salt, because the shepherd is God in this parable, and that's the sort of thing He does when people fail to understand His Word."
"Wait, what?" said the man,
And the man became a pillar of salt.
- - - -
Then Jesus said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him. Then the one inside answers, 'OK, just gimme a minute,' and he goes to one of his friends, and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of a friend of mine on a journey has come to the friend who's my friend, and that friend has nothing to set before his friend.'"
One of the disciples said, "Wait, doesn't the original person's friend need three loaves of bread because a friend of his friend who's on a journey has come to the friend of the original person's friend, and that friend has nothing to set before his first friend? Or is that what you just said?"
"It doesn't matter," said Jesus. "The point is that God can get you free bread."
- - - -
"But what do you think about this?" asked Jesus. "A man with two sons told the older boy, 'Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.' The son answered, 'No, I won't go,' but later he changed his mind and went anyway. Then the father told the other son, 'You go,' and he said, 'Yes, sir, I will.' But he didn't go. Which of the two was obeying his father?"
"The first!" cried some of the disciples.
"The second!" cried the rest of the disciples.
And Jesus said, "Wait, I messed this one up. Did I mention that when the first son went to work in the vineyard he killed somebody? Because that's important. So, yeah, which of the two was obeying his father?"
"Uh ... the first?" said some of the disciples.
"The second! The second!" cried the rest of the disciples.
And Jesus said, "Oh, cripes, also the father only has one arm. And he is riding a horse the whole time. Was that clear?"
One of the disciples said, "Are you sure that's not 'The Parable of the One-Armed Father Who Rode on a Horse'?"
And Jesus said, "Maybe you're right. OK, let's change the question: Which of the two sons was the tallest?"
The disciples were silent.
Jesus shook his head in dismay. "Have I taught you nothing?"

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

In the same vein as "There Will Be Blood" with a smattering of Terrence Malick, this second (!) film from Australian director Andrew Dominik was deeply haunting (I'm thinking that I've used that adjective before but I don't really care). Casey Affleck is so very disturbing and awkward that it is at times uncomfortable to be in the same room as him. The typical (12 Monkeys, Fight Club, Se7en) Brad Pitt that, when he is acting well, comes off as entertainingly unsettled is a far more subtle character here. He is a Jesse James that is hounded by mistrust and appears so disconnected from every human being in his life. A soundtrack from Nick Cave creates tension and beauty which, I believe, culminates on the day of the assassination. A beautiful film that deserves a place alongside Unforgiven and The Proposition.

There Will Be Blood

I figured out that I have watched over 1000 films in my life so far.

This one may be the best I have seen.