Today I had a typical full film festival experience!
First I just happened to see a film I hadn’t planned to see, and it was a disaster!
Later I saw another film that was absolutely wonderful. The film is called The Fountain, by the director Darren Aronofsky. It is absolutely beautiful, fascinating and extremely gripping!
One big advantage with watching films at a film festival is the audience. Festival audiences know and appreciate the difference between watching film at the cinema and at home. They don’t talk and they do turn their cell phones off. They eat sweets and popcorn, but they do it silently! Just imagine a big theatre full of people but at a moment in the movie, where it is completely silent, it is indeed totally silent! Wonderful!
The reason I watch that much film right now is that I volunteered to help out in the festival Guest centre. It is quite interesting! I get to meet directors, producers and other filmmakers and film-maker-wannabes. Those are almost the most interesting; they are young film students or actors waiting to be discovered. For someone like me, who like film, but never ever considered the idea to work with it and who really don’t know much about the film business, it is very interesting. It is like a complete different world!
The other film I saw today is called Avida and if anyone has seen it and understood it, you are more than welcome to explain it to me….
Friday, November 24, 2006
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Stockholm Film Festival
Now it seems I have gotten involved in the Stockholm Film Festival!
My plan was to use the time I now have to see a lot of films I normally would not have seen, but now it seems it will get beyond that.
Anyway, I saw a film today, which I can warmly recommend! It is called “Little Miss Sunshine”. It is about a fabulous family trying to get the daughter to a beauty pageant competition in Carlifornia and everything that will happen on their way there (for those how have been driving from Belgrade to Cortina and back, with a malfunctioning clutch, it will for sure have a added value!)
A wonderful feel-good-movie that I would recommend to anyone! I laughed a lot and I would even recommend it to my mother. I think it is the kind of film everyone will like. Normally movies entered at a film festival can be a bit difficult, but this one...; I think everyone will like. My advice is; Go and see it!
My plan was to use the time I now have to see a lot of films I normally would not have seen, but now it seems it will get beyond that.
Anyway, I saw a film today, which I can warmly recommend! It is called “Little Miss Sunshine”. It is about a fabulous family trying to get the daughter to a beauty pageant competition in Carlifornia and everything that will happen on their way there (for those how have been driving from Belgrade to Cortina and back, with a malfunctioning clutch, it will for sure have a added value!)
A wonderful feel-good-movie that I would recommend to anyone! I laughed a lot and I would even recommend it to my mother. I think it is the kind of film everyone will like. Normally movies entered at a film festival can be a bit difficult, but this one...; I think everyone will like. My advice is; Go and see it!
Friday, November 17, 2006
Life Aid?
Considering the fact that the human species has been around for quite some years one would think we would have gotten some training and gathered some experience in how to live life. But somehow we seem to have been better at making life more complicated, than at coping with it.
Ok, we have found a lot of solutions for many problems, but we are also very good at finding new problems. Somehow I now have the feeling we can no longer live our lives ourselves, we need help to do that. Now I am not talking about the need for doctors, psychotherapists, lawyers, technicians or all other people we whose help we sometime might need. I am just fascinated about all TV-shows that aim at helping people live their lives. We have seen so many docu-soaps trying to make stars or top-models out of hopeful wannabes, we have seen loads of extreme makeovers of people and their homes, we have seen tons of different dating shows and we have seen people fight and get married on TV, and we have had the Super-nanny teaching people how to raise their kids. Nothing of this is new. However, lately I have noticed a kind of TV programme that for me seems to take this one step further. It is no longer any competition and it is not focusing on how you look or how your home look but it is trying to tell you how you are supposed to live you life!
I Swedish TV we now have one show running that is closely following a family with small children, while they are visiting other families with children to see how they cope with everyday life. There is another show where professional economists are helping families who are trapped in debts. They try to explain the basics of economy and tell the families how they must change their way of living to be able to pay their debts. Another show is called the Single Coaches. There a group of probably self-elected “experts” teach people how to behave to get out of their miserable single life. They are taught not only how to dress and style themselves, they are also taught how to flirt, how to move, how to talk, how to act on a date etc etc..
I am not saying anything of this is wrong, but when the hell did life get that difficult that we need someone else to live it for us?? And are we really the first ones who want to meet someone to live with, to have a nice home, to cope with debit and credit, and are we the first ones to have children?? I don’t think so. And when the hell did we get that bored we need to watch other people live their life on TV??
Ok, we have found a lot of solutions for many problems, but we are also very good at finding new problems. Somehow I now have the feeling we can no longer live our lives ourselves, we need help to do that. Now I am not talking about the need for doctors, psychotherapists, lawyers, technicians or all other people we whose help we sometime might need. I am just fascinated about all TV-shows that aim at helping people live their lives. We have seen so many docu-soaps trying to make stars or top-models out of hopeful wannabes, we have seen loads of extreme makeovers of people and their homes, we have seen tons of different dating shows and we have seen people fight and get married on TV, and we have had the Super-nanny teaching people how to raise their kids. Nothing of this is new. However, lately I have noticed a kind of TV programme that for me seems to take this one step further. It is no longer any competition and it is not focusing on how you look or how your home look but it is trying to tell you how you are supposed to live you life!
I Swedish TV we now have one show running that is closely following a family with small children, while they are visiting other families with children to see how they cope with everyday life. There is another show where professional economists are helping families who are trapped in debts. They try to explain the basics of economy and tell the families how they must change their way of living to be able to pay their debts. Another show is called the Single Coaches. There a group of probably self-elected “experts” teach people how to behave to get out of their miserable single life. They are taught not only how to dress and style themselves, they are also taught how to flirt, how to move, how to talk, how to act on a date etc etc..
I am not saying anything of this is wrong, but when the hell did life get that difficult that we need someone else to live it for us?? And are we really the first ones who want to meet someone to live with, to have a nice home, to cope with debit and credit, and are we the first ones to have children?? I don’t think so. And when the hell did we get that bored we need to watch other people live their life on TV??
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Autumn darkness
Important vs. nice and the existence of God vs. the dentist.
Recently I came across the saying: “It is nice to be important, but is more important to be nice”. I immediately liked that idea. As I am not very important, but like to think of myself as fairly nice, it felt good to think that that would be more important.
But then, of course I started to think about it, and then everything, of course, got more complicated. To whom is it more important to be nice? To others? Or to oneself? Ok, it might make you feel good about yourself to be nice, and it might give you a lot of friends. But on the other hand, if you are important, you will get friends anyway, because of course everyone wants to be befriended to someone who is important. And if you are important, you will always get a good job, make a lot of money, have a lot of extras and have access to all the cool places, which will most likely make you feel good about yourself. Nice people don’t really get very far by just being nice! People who are not nice will be able to step over dead bodies to get what they want, they will use other people for their own benefit and they will not care about other people’s feelings and wellbeing. That will get them what they want. Ok, you might say, but it won’t get them real friends. That might be right, but I guess these people probably don’t care and if they are important they will anyhow have people around them who will want to be their friends. And what about how they feel about themselves? I honestly really don’t think they care. So what is really most important?
These thoughts were so depressing that I wanted to believe in some kind of divine justice, that in the long run all the nice people will be rewarded. But as Keynes said; in the long run we are all dead. So this would then presume an existence of some kind of afterlife and some kind of divinity and I guess this is why people get religious; to be able to stand thoughts like these.
Hmmm, this made things even more complicated for me, as I just have decided that dentists are another proof that God does not exist. If there was an almighty God, teeth would have been perfect and we would not have had to go to the dentist…
But then, of course I started to think about it, and then everything, of course, got more complicated. To whom is it more important to be nice? To others? Or to oneself? Ok, it might make you feel good about yourself to be nice, and it might give you a lot of friends. But on the other hand, if you are important, you will get friends anyway, because of course everyone wants to be befriended to someone who is important. And if you are important, you will always get a good job, make a lot of money, have a lot of extras and have access to all the cool places, which will most likely make you feel good about yourself. Nice people don’t really get very far by just being nice! People who are not nice will be able to step over dead bodies to get what they want, they will use other people for their own benefit and they will not care about other people’s feelings and wellbeing. That will get them what they want. Ok, you might say, but it won’t get them real friends. That might be right, but I guess these people probably don’t care and if they are important they will anyhow have people around them who will want to be their friends. And what about how they feel about themselves? I honestly really don’t think they care. So what is really most important?
These thoughts were so depressing that I wanted to believe in some kind of divine justice, that in the long run all the nice people will be rewarded. But as Keynes said; in the long run we are all dead. So this would then presume an existence of some kind of afterlife and some kind of divinity and I guess this is why people get religious; to be able to stand thoughts like these.
Hmmm, this made things even more complicated for me, as I just have decided that dentists are another proof that God does not exist. If there was an almighty God, teeth would have been perfect and we would not have had to go to the dentist…
Everyday glamour!
Now some of my friends have invented the perfect remedy for laundry room fascism, and at the same time brought the Tuesday in November concept one step further!
As you anyway have to set of a day or an evening every now and then for doing your laundry, you have better make something nice out of it! Like celebrating it with champagne and pâté! Or as some friends, with sparkling wine, scallops, prawns, lobster and cheese. I like that!!! Viva glamour!!
I only wonder what the people at the laundrette would think if I brought champagne and lobster there!
As you anyway have to set of a day or an evening every now and then for doing your laundry, you have better make something nice out of it! Like celebrating it with champagne and pâté! Or as some friends, with sparkling wine, scallops, prawns, lobster and cheese. I like that!!! Viva glamour!!
I only wonder what the people at the laundrette would think if I brought champagne and lobster there!
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Fitness flirtation
If anyone was wondering about flirting at the launderette, I have to admit it does not seem to be too successful. Someone asked me what kinds of people go there, as it is absolutely not common in Sweden. To be honest I still don’t know; you hardly see the other people using the laundrette. I have only met a father with his two sons and two German tourists there. However, today I saw something really mind boggling. In front of one of the washing machines there was a pair of shoes! That makes you wonder where the owner of the shoes are, and what he is wearing. I mean I have seen movies where people are sitting at the launderette in their underwear because they have to wash the clothes they were wearing, but let’s assume the person had to wash the socks and therefore took off the shoes and the socks, but then… It was nobody there!! Did he walk away without his shoes?? Is there something more behind the launderette that I have missed!?
So if the launderette turned out to be a disappointment when it comes to flirting, I recently became witness to flirtation in another unexpected location; the fitness club. I was running on the treadmill and not really paying attention to what was going on around me, until I could not help overhearing the conversation on the two treadmills next to me. There a guy was definitely hitting on the girl next to him. It was quite interesting to listen to. She did not seem to be uninterested and in the end he got her number and they had a date! Amazing! The idea that you could catch a date at the gym never struck me!
So if the launderette turned out to be a disappointment when it comes to flirting, I recently became witness to flirtation in another unexpected location; the fitness club. I was running on the treadmill and not really paying attention to what was going on around me, until I could not help overhearing the conversation on the two treadmills next to me. There a guy was definitely hitting on the girl next to him. It was quite interesting to listen to. She did not seem to be uninterested and in the end he got her number and they had a date! Amazing! The idea that you could catch a date at the gym never struck me!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
