View allAll Photos Tagged Misunderstanding,
Hi my fellow flickrers, hope you are well...
As you can see, this time what I've uploaded is neither a picture or a drawing... it's a statement that I've been dying to shout out!
Some of my friends here on flickr began to notice and protest against the "shallow" wave of people, mostly new comers who join flickr to pollute it! They are not serious about photography or at least having fun, but they seek perverted pictures of pornography or perverted people. Either way, it does disturb lots of people and began to give flickr a bad name!
A local news paper actually warned parents from the evil flickr~ <_< which is so not true, but this is what outsiders began to see! so we have to make a statement and clear the name of flickr once and for all! lets be a ONE HAND to face this...
I'm sure that you want to make flickr our home forever! and never let shallow people destroy it's beauty!
So join me in this battle and we will see who will lose at the end....
The idea is to:
1- get this message to the majority of people and spread it everywhere!
2- post it in small size in any page that have gone over the line! In terms of the following:
a. pornography in all its forms
b. plagiarism and theft
c. using inappropriate language
3- protest and shout because it's your right.
4-Report abuse if what you see breaks the rules.
Flickr is for everyone so lets keep it safe for all ages!
The link to the news paper from tot™ Doha2016's page:
www.flickr.com/photos/fatoom_world/2072401120/
عن أبي سعيد الخدري - رضي الله تعالى عنه - قال: قال رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم: { من رأى منكم منكرًا فليغيره بيده، فإن لم يستطع فبلسانه، فإن لم يستطع فبقلبه وذلك أضعف الإيمان } أخرجه مسلم.
فهذا منكر يا إخواني و يجب على كل مسلمٍ أن يحاربه
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The Flickreenos
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I thought of adding it coz maybe not everyone have actually read it and so one will know what to do and not to do here on flickr! And when to report someone...
Please Join the Group to show your support...
Thanks to Messy K for creating the group...
This is a shot of a laser musical performance at city of Hang Zhou.
The laser tunnel meant through time travel, audience went back to the old time when the story happened.
This story of Butterfly Lovers:A Tale of the Chinese Romeo and Juliet :
Yingtai Zhu, the only daughter of a prosperous family, despairs at the prospect of staying within the walls of her family's compound until she marries and goes off to live behind a new set of walls. More educated than most girls, she persuades her father to allow her to masquerade as a man and travel to Hangzhou to study with Master Zhou. On the way, she meets Shanbo Liang and the two become friends and "sworn brothers." Yingtai has difficulty concealing her gender from him, especially after she falls in love with him. Nonetheless, she keeps up the pretense until she is called home, entrusting Mrs. Zhou to reveal her secret after her departure. Of course Shanbo wants to marry her once he learns the truth-but her parents have found her a groom. The story, based on a Chinese folktale, has all of the elements of a great tragic love affair, including misunderstandings, withheld information, meddling servants, jealous rivals, tears, psychosomatic illnesses-and last but not least-an ending in which the star-crossed lovers are transmuted into a pair of butterflies. Yingtai is an engaging and clever heroine, never willing to give up the pursuit of her desires. Shanbo can be downright dense at times, but he makes a romantic leading man, even though he is never as resolute or courageous as Yingtai. He loves her beyond death, and that's what counts in this kind of story.
... Partying ...
|| Day 54/365 || 27 . 08 . 09 ||
I know what you're thinking right now : "He doesn't look like he's partying!"
Actually this wasn't a "party" at its first meaning, it was better a "dinner" between friends.
But well it was fun, my parents forgot to come to drive me home from my friend's so I stayed there for the night (misunderstanding)
I just came back so that's why I'm posting yesterday's picture (which is a SOOC from my mobile) today.
[kind of killer face?]
(Aka The Fall)
Atlas refusing to play his role .
He's facing the earth before our fall.
This pictures is a part of my serial about modern / vanishing gods
model: Juan
I try to explain our lack of spirituality, through the decadence of our own representation of divinities or gods. These one we have created. The spirit we have killed.
These pictures are about the great misunderstanding between religion and spirituality.
Less Gods and more Spirit.
Today (17th February) is the World Cat Day, Światowy Dzień Kota, Festa del gatto, which is celebrated in Italy and Poland =^.^=
A few days ago Mosiek submitted his CV and cover letter to 10 Downing Street, since he mistakenly believed that Her Majesty was looking for a new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Once the misunderstanding was cleared up (it turned out it had been all about rats prowling at Number 10), he withdrew his candidacy, and recommended Larry the cat as the ideal candidate for the job needed.
Daily HDR Blog | HDR One Magazine | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Google+
French Journal Day 16 (Travel Diary Day 96)
(travel blog - strange-lands.com/daily/2012/10/19/a-lovely-indonesian-fi...)
I do a number of things to avoid public embarrassment when I’m in the UK. If I’m running for a bus, and it drives past me, I keep running to show onlookers that I wasn’t even running for the bus anyway. Sometimes I walk to the next bus stop. It’s
always embarrassing if I then see the people from the previous stop on the bus I just got on.
If I’m walking in the wrong direction in town and don’t want to look a fool by turning around, I’ll pretend I’m speaking to someone on the phone, and then turn around. That seems to take the edge off it.
Once I was buying hair removal products for myself in preparation for dressing as a woman, and I pretended to be speaking on the phone. The invisible person on the line, presumably Rachel, was telling me which product she wanted. I played the ‘stupid husband who doesn’t know what products his wife usually uses’ role. I knew what I was looking for, but I cleverly hid the shame.
Funnily, on the road, I have no shame – especially in the far East, where public etiquette is often non-existent. While waiting for a bus in Korea, everyone knows it’s going to be chaos when the bus arrives. They don’t do queueing. I’d weigh up the little old ladies and think ‘you’re going down granny’. I was often wrong. Korean old ladies are powerhouses. I’ve been punched in the back more times by Korean grannies than any other group of people – that’s a fact.
In France, I haven’t come up against any awkward situations apart from the odd linguistic blunder. I often say ‘hello’ when I mean ‘goodbye’. That really confuses people, especially when I look as if nothing odd is happening because I haven’t yet figured out what I’ve just said. They just stare at me.
I had to call the cleaner today and tell her not to come in to work. Since Rachel’s mental and did all of the house work, the cleaner has nothing to do. I told her on the phone that she could have the day off. She asked ‘so I shouldn’t come in?’ I responded with ‘I don’t know’. What the hell was I thinking!?
It’s hard enough having a conversation in French with a Moroccan woman who doesn’t speak the language well, and an Englishman who can barely speak English, never mind French. It was just an automatic response. I often say it to French people when I have nothing left to say to them.
It took another 5 mins to clear up the misunderstanding.
I have to pick up Betsy tomorrow. I’m hoping her braeks will be in tip-top shape. I have no idea what the mechanic is saying. His accent is extremely thick. When I called him today, out of the hundreds of words he said, I understood ‘not ready’ and ‘tomorrow morning’. There’s no bus nor taxi, so I’ve got a 3 mile walk ahead of me to pick it up.
Today’s Photo – A fishing boat in Karimunjawa
One of the most beautiful places in Java. Apart from washing my face in human poo and sleeping with rats, I really liked Karimunjawa. It was such a quiet island. We were free to walk along this deserted beach at sunset and explore the resting fishing boats. It was the peaceful spot we needed after a busy day on the motorbikes.
This one is for the film shooters. I know we’re out there. We like our old cameras. We like the unique look of film. We like the tactile processes. And some of us even like rolling up our sleeves and developing our own color film.
Developing film is not difficult. I’d say if you can cook a frozen pizza you can probably handle film. There are a lot of moving parts to doing it well, but if you are like me, you will find the challenge enjoyable, relaxing, even fun!
Once you have your film developed, that is when the fun pretty much ends. How do you get the images off that negative strip to share with the world? How do you get prints? Well....wet darkrooms are certainly one way to do it. Get out those color filter packs and...good luck. in 2019, practical considerations mean for most of us a hybrid analog/digital workflow makes the most sense.
So. You have to scan your film. It’s about as much fun as a trip to the dentist. But there is a new wrinkle out there. Camera scanning. On the surface it has much to recommend it. Leverage the power of the camera you probably already own. It’s fast. Blazing fast compared to scanners. But, as with any new and unfamiliar technique....there is a great deal of FUD to be found on the web.
You will hear the naysayers opine that the dust will be bad enough to make 1930s Kansas blush. You’ll hear from those who cannot believe their “6400 dpi” scanner only manages 2700 optical...on a good day. You will hear all manner of maladies attributed to a vague mistrust/outright misunderstanding of the color science behind the Bayer Matrix CFA used in virtually all modern digital sensors.
To the doubters, all I can say is: results. Look at the results I am getting and decide for yourselves. I don’t give a damn how you handle your film. Really. Judge for yourself and do your own thing. If it isn’t for you, it isn’t for you. No worries. I just want to share what I found after attacking the problem hard-core over the past few years.
Dust is a pain in the ass. But good housekeeping practices minimize it. And modern software tools make quick work of ridding the files of the stuff which remains. It took me about two minutes to clean this one.
As for the color science? Chroma subsampling is well proven. Your own eyeballs use it. The Bayer matrix needs no defense from me. Viewed on calibrated wide gamut monitors I simply don’t see any jarring discontinuities in my files. On screen, these would manifest as posterization. Especially in smooth toned areas like the sky. When judging the histogram, these would manifest as missing tonal values. Gaps in the histogram.
I simply see no such evidence.
Now, it may well be that others will get different results. There are “white” light sources out there with certain colors simply not present. There are digital cameras which only manage 12 effective bits per pixel. 12 bits per pixel is acceptable for ordinary photography. But when performing the massive curve manipulations needed to create positive images from negative captures, 12 bit input data can prove limiting.
As of 2019, the process requires a fair bit of problem solving. I made my own light table. Adapted camera mounting schemes from the hardware store. And yes, you will need a decent digital camera and macro lens. You will need Adobe Lightroom. Ten bucks a month...me? I quit going to Starbucks. That more than paid for it. You’ll need some film holders. And you will need Nate Johnson’s #negativelabpro
But what you get in return is indispensable.
Having a high quality and yet rapid means of digitizing both historic and current photographic film is key. The best pro-sumer film scanners for medium format were last made a decade ago. Current models still use the old technology. They are slow, not great in terms of optical resolving power, and have reliability issues. The best current flatbeds peak at around 2700 dpi and are also slow. The best current solution is a $26,000 Imacon Flextight. If that is in your budget, by all means, write that check and enjoy that great machine. And if you really have time and money to burn, the drum scanners can do an excellent job...at a rate of two to three frames per day scanning and wet mounting.
As ever, there are many approaches to this problem, offering varying quality levels. Camera scanning is not the ultimate in quality. At least, not at the present time. That said, I’d argue that it’s damned good. And it will only get better.
Look carefully and judge for yourselves.
View in all its grainy glory on black
Lyrics from Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls.
This is the hardest thing. I find it so hard to be honest with myself, let alone other people. I constantly find myself becoming somebody I'm not. Somebody I don't want to be.
I feel like I'm going in the completely wrong direction.
Love:
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
--Reinhold Niebuhr
I will never get tired of this.
(edit: I just realized this looks a lot like some of Meagan's photos. That was completely unintentional, although she is amazing.)
August 21, 2005
The Breaking Point
By PETER MAASS
The largest oil terminal in the world, Ras Tanura, is located on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, along the Persian Gulf. From Ras Tanura's control tower, you can see the classic totems of oil's dominion -- supertankers coming and going, row upon row of storage tanks and miles and miles of pipes. Ras Tanura, which I visited in June, is the funnel through which nearly 10 percent of the world's daily supply of petroleum flows. Standing in the control tower, you are surrounded by more than 50 million barrels of oil, yet not a drop can be seen.
The oil is there, of course. In a technological sleight of hand, oil can be extracted from the deserts of Arabia, processed to get rid of water and gas, sent through pipelines to a terminal on the gulf, loaded onto a supertanker and shipped to a port thousands of miles away, then run through a refinery and poured into a tanker truck that delivers it to a suburban gas station, where it is pumped into an S.U.V. -- all without anyone's actually glimpsing the stuff. So long as there is enough oil to fuel the global economy, it is not only out of sight but also out of mind, at least for consumers.
I visited Ras Tanura because oil is no longer out of mind, thanks to record prices caused by refinery shortages and surging demand -- most notably in the United States and China -- which has strained the capacity of oil producers and especially Saudi Arabia, the largest exporter of all. Unlike the 1973 crisis, when the embargo by the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries created an artificial shortfall, today's shortage, or near-shortage, is real. If demand surges even more, or if a producer goes offline because of unrest or terrorism, there may suddenly not be enough oil to go around.
As Aref al-Ali, my escort from Saudi Aramco, the giant state-owned oil company, pointed out, ''One mistake at Ras Tanura today, and the price of oil will go up.'' This has turned the port into a fortress; its entrances have an array of gates and bomb barriers to prevent terrorists from cutting off the black oxygen that the modern world depends on. Yet the problem is far greater than the brief havoc that could be wrought by a speeding zealot with 50 pounds of TNT in the trunk of his car. Concerns are being voiced by some oil experts that Saudi Arabia and other producers may, in the near future, be unable to meet rising world demand. The producers are not running out of oil, not yet, but their decades-old reservoirs are not as full and geologically spry as they used to be, and they may be incapable of producing, on a daily basis, the increasing volumes of oil that the world requires. ''One thing is clear,'' warns Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, in a series of new advertisements, ''the era of easy oil is over.''
In the past several years, the gap between demand and supply, once considerable, has steadily narrowed, and today is almost negligible. The consequences of an actual shortfall of supply would be immense. If consumption begins to exceed production by even a small amount, the price of a barrel of oil could soar to triple-digit levels. This, in turn, could bring on a global recession, a result of exorbitant prices for transport fuels and for products that rely on petrochemicals -- which is to say, almost every product on the market. The impact on the American way of life would be profound: cars cannot be propelled by roof-borne windmills. The suburban and exurban lifestyles, hinged to two-car families and constant trips to work, school and Wal-Mart, might become unaffordable or, if gas rationing is imposed, impossible. Carpools would be the least imposing of many inconveniences; the cost of home heating would soar -- assuming, of course, that climate-controlled habitats do not become just a fond memory.
But will such a situation really come to pass? That depends on Saudi Arabia. To know the answer, you need to know whether the Saudis, who possess 22 percent of the world's oil reserves, can increase their country's output beyond its current limit of 10.5 million barrels a day, and even beyond the 12.5-million-barrel target it has set for 2009. (World consumption is about 84 million barrels a day.) Saudi Arabia is the sole oil superpower. No other producer possesses reserves close to its 263 billion barrels, which is almost twice as much as the runner-up, Iran, with 133 billion barrels. New fields in other countries are discovered now and then, but they tend to offer only small increments. For example, the much-contested and as-yet-unexploited reserves in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge are believed to amount to about 10 billion barrels, or just a fraction of what the Saudis possess.
But the truth about Saudi oil is hard to figure out. Oil reservoirs cannot be inventoried like wood in a wilderness: the oil is underground, unseen by geologists and engineers, who can, at best, make highly educated guesses about how much is underfoot and how much can be extracted in the future. And there is a further obstacle: the Saudis will not let outsiders audit their confidential data on reserves and production. Oil is an industry in which not only is the product hidden from sight but so is reliable information about it. And because we do not know when a supply-demand shortfall might arrive, we do not know when to begin preparing for it, so as to soften its impact; the economic blow may come as a sledgehammer from the darkness.
Of course the Saudis do have something to say about this prospect. Before journeying to the kingdom, I went to Washington to hear the Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, speak at an energy conference in the mammoth Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, not far from the White House. Naimi was the star attraction at a gathering of the American petro-political nexus. Samuel Bodman, the U.S. energy secretary, was on the dais next to him. David O'Reilly, chairman and C.E.O. of Chevron, was waiting in the wings. The moderator was an éminence grise of the oil world, James Schlesinger, a former energy secretary, defense secretary and C.I.A. director.
''I want to assure you here today that Saudi Arabia's reserves are plentiful, and we stand ready to increase output as the market dictates,'' said Naimi, dressed in a gray business suit and speaking with only a slight Arabic accent. He addressed skeptics who contend that Saudi reservoirs cannot be tapped for larger amounts of oil. ''I am quite bullish on technology as the key to our energy future,'' he said. ''Technological innovation will allow us to find and extract more oil around the world.'' He described the task of increasing output as just ''a question of investment'' in new wells and pipelines, and he noted that consuming nations urgently need to build new refineries to process increased supplies of crude. ''There is absolutely no lack of resources worldwide,'' he repeated.
His assurances did not assure. A barrel of oil cost $55 at the time of his speech; less than three months later, the price had jumped by 20 percent. The truth of the matter -- whether the world will really have enough petroleum in the years ahead -- was as well concealed as the millions of barrels of oil I couldn't see at Ras Tanura.
For 31 years, Matthew Simmons has prospered as the head of his own firm, Simmons & Company International, which advises energy companies on mergers and acquisitions. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a graduate of the Harvard Business School and an unpaid adviser on energy policy to the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush, he would be a card-carrying member of the global oil nomenclatura, if cards were issued for such things. Yet he is one of the principal reasons the oil world is beginning to ask hard questions of itself.
Two years ago, Simmons went to Saudi Arabia on a government tour for business executives. The group was presented with the usual dog-and-pony show, but instead of being impressed, as most visitors tend to be, with the size and expertise of the Saudi oil industry, Simmons became perplexed. As he recalls in his somewhat heretical new book, ''Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,'' a senior manager at Aramco told the visitors that ''fuzzy logic'' would be used to estimate the amount of oil that could be recovered. Simmons had never heard of fuzzy logic. What could be fuzzy about an oil reservoir? He suspected that Aramco, despite its promises of endless supplies, might in fact not know how much oil remained to be recovered.
Simmons returned home with an itch to scratch. Saudi Arabia was one of the charter members of OPEC, founded in 1960 in Baghdad to coordinate the policies of oil producers. Like every OPEC country, Saudi Arabia provides only general numbers about its output and reserves; it does not release details about how much oil is extracted from each reservoir and what methods are used to extract that oil, and it does not permit audits by outsiders. The condition of Saudi fields, and those of other OPEC nations, is a closely guarded secret. That's largely because OPEC quotas, which were first imposed in 1983 to limit the output of member countries, were based on overall reserves; the higher an OPEC member's reserves, the higher its quota. It is widely believed that most, if not all, OPEC members exaggerated the sizes of their reserves in order to have the largest possible quota -- and thus the largest possible revenue stream.
In the days of excess supply, bankers like Simmons did not know, or care, about the fudging; whether or not reserves were hyped, there was plenty of oil coming out of the ground. Through the 1970's, 80's and 90's, the capacity of OPEC and non-OPEC countries exceeded demand, and that's why OPEC imposed a quota system -- to keep some product off the market (although many OPEC members, seeking as much revenue as possible, quietly sold more oil than they were supposed to). Until quite recently, the only reason to fear a shortage was if a boycott, war or strike were to halt supplies. Few people imagined a time when supply would dry up because of demand alone. But a steady surge in demand in recent years -- led by China's emergence as a voracious importer of oil -- has changed that.
This demand-driven scarcity has prompted the emergence of a cottage industry of experts who predict an impending crisis that will dwarf anything seen before. Their point is not that we are running out of oil, per se; although as much as half of the world's recoverable reserves are estimated to have been consumed, about a trillion barrels remain underground. Rather, they are concerned with what is called ''capacity'' -- the amount of oil that can be pumped to the surface on a daily basis. These experts -- still a minority in the oil world -- contend that because of the peculiarities of geology and the limits of modern technology, it will soon be impossible for the world's reservoirs to surrender enough oil to meet daily demand.
One of the starkest warnings came in a February report commissioned by the United States Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory. ''Because oil prices have been relatively high for the past decade, oil companies have conducted extensive exploration over that period, but their results have been disappointing,'' stated the report, assembled by Science Applications International, a research company that works on security and energy issues. ''If recent trends hold, there is little reason to expect that exploration success will dramatically improve in the future. . . . The image is one of a world moving from a long period in which reserves additions were much greater than consumption to an era in which annual additions are falling increasingly short of annual consumption. This is but one of a number of trends that suggest the world is fast approaching the inevitable peaking of conventional world oil production.''
The reference to ''peaking'' is not a haphazard word choice -- ''peaking'' is a term used in oil geology to define the critical point at which reservoirs can no longer produce increasing amounts of oil. (This tends to happen when reservoirs are about half-empty.) ''Peak oil'' is the point at which maximum production is reached; afterward, no matter how many wells are drilled in a country, production begins to decline. Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members may have enough oil to last for generations, but that is no longer the issue. The eventual and painful shift to different sources of energy -- the start of the post-oil age -- does not begin when the last drop of oil is sucked from under the Arabian desert. It begins when producers are unable to continue increasing their output to meet rising demand. Crunch time comes long before the last drop.
''The world has never faced a problem like this,'' the report for the Energy Department concluded. ''Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.''
Most experts do not share Simmons's concerns about the imminence of peak oil. One of the industry's most prominent consultants, Daniel Yergin, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about petroleum, dismisses the doomsday visions. ''This is not the first time that the world has 'run out of oil,''' he wrote in a recent Washington Post opinion essay. ''It's more like the fifth. Cycles of shortage and surplus characterize the entire history of the oil industry.'' Yergin says that a number of oil projects that are under construction will increase the supply by 20 percent in five years and that technological advances will increase the amount of oil that can be recovered from existing reservoirs. (Typically, with today's technology, only about 40 percent of a reservoir's oil can be pumped to the surface.)
Yergin's bullish view has something in common with the views of the pessimists -- it rests on unknowns. Will the new projects that are under way yield as much oil as their financial backers hope? Will new technologies increase recovery rates as much as he expects? These questions are next to impossible to answer because coaxing oil out of the ground is an extraordinarily complex undertaking. The popular notion of reservoirs as underground lakes, from which wells extract oil like straws sucking a milkshake from a glass, is incorrect. Oil exists in drops between and inside porous rocks. A new reservoir may contain sufficient pressure to make these drops of oil flow to the surface in a gusher, but after a while -- usually within a few years and often sooner than that -- natural pressure lets up and is no longer sufficient to push oil to the surface. At that point, ''secondary'' recovery efforts are begun, like pumping water or gas into the reservoirs to increase the pressure.
This process is unpredictable; reservoirs are extremely temperamental. If too much oil is extracted too quickly or if the wrong types or amounts of secondary efforts are employed, the amount of oil that can be recovered from a field can be greatly reduced; this is known in the oil world as ''damaging a reservoir.'' A widely cited example is Oman: in 2001, its daily production reached more than 960,000 barrels, but then suddenly declined, despite the use of advanced technologies. Today, Oman produces 785,000 barrels of oil a day. Herman Franssen, a consultant who worked in Oman for a decade, sees that country's experience as a possible lesson in the limits of technology for other producers that try to increase or maintain high levels of output. ''They reached a million barrels a day, and then a few years later production collapsed,'' Franssen said in a phone interview. ''They used all these new technologies, but they haven't been able to stop the decline yet.''
The vague production and reserve data that gets published does not begin to tell the whole story of an oil field's health, production potential or even its size. For a clear-as-possible picture of a country's oil situation, you need to know what is happening in each field -- how many wells it has, how much oil each well is producing, what recovery methods are being used and how long they've been used and the trend line since the field went into production. Data of that sort are typically not released by state-owned companies like Saudi Aramco.
As Matthew Simmons searched for clues to the truth of the Saudi situation, he immersed himself in the minutiae of oil geology. He realized that data about Saudi fields might be found in the files of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Oil engineers, like most professional groups, have regular conferences at which they discuss papers that delve into the work they do. The papers, which focus on particular wells that highlight a problem or a solution to a problem, are presented and debated at the conferences and published by the S.P.E. -- and then forgotten.
Before Simmons poked around, no one had taken the time to pull together the S.P.E. papers that involved Saudi oil fields and review them en masse. Simmons found more than 200 such papers and studied them carefully. Although the papers cover only a portion of the kingdom's wells and date back, in some cases, several decades, they constitute perhaps the best public data about the condition and prospects of Saudi reservoirs.
Ghawar is the treasure of the Saudi treasure chest. It is the largest oil field in the world and has produced, in the past 50 years, about 55 billion barrels of oil, which amounts to more than half of Saudi production in that period. The field currently produces more than five million barrels a day, which is about half of the kingdom's output. If Ghawar is facing problems, then so is Saudi Arabia and, indeed, the entire world.
Simmons found that the Saudis are using increasingly large amounts of water to force oil out of Ghawar. Most of the wells are concentrated in the northern portion of the 174-mile-long field. That might seem like good news -- when the north runs low, the Saudis need only to drill wells in the south. But in fact it is bad news, Simmons concluded, because the southern portions of Ghawar are geologically more difficult to draw oil from. ''Someday (and perhaps that day will be soon), the remarkably high well flow rates at Ghawar's northern end will fade, as reservoir pressures finally plummet,'' Simmons writes in his book. ''Then, Saudi Arabian oil output will clearly have peaked. The death of this great king'' -- meaning Ghawar -- ''leaves no field of vaguely comparable stature in the line of succession. Twilight at Ghawar is fast approaching.'' He goes on: ''The geological phenomena and natural driving forces that created the Saudi oil miracle are conspiring now in normal and predictable ways to bring it to its conclusion, in a time frame potentially far shorter than officialdom would have us believe.'' Simmons concludes, ''Saudi Arabia clearly seems to be nearing or at its peak output and cannot materially grow its oil production.''
Saudi officials belittle Simmons's work. Nansen Saleri, a senior Aramco official, has described Simmons as a banker ''trying to come across as a scientist.'' In a speech last year, Saleri wryly said, ''I can read 200 papers on neurology, but you wouldn't want me to operate on your relatives.'' I caught up with Simmons in June, during a trip he made to Manhattan to talk with a group of oil-shipping executives. The impression he gives is of an enthusiastic inventor sharing a discovery that took him by surprise. He has a certain wide-eyed wonder in his regard, as if a bit of mystery can be found in everything that catches his eye. And he has a rumpled aspect -- thinning hair slightly askew, shirt sleeves a fraction too long. Though he delivers a bracing message, his discourse can wander. He is a successful businessman, and it is clear that he did not achieve his position by being a man of impeccable convention. He certainly has not lost sight of the rule that people who shout ''the end is nigh'' do not tend to be favorably reviewed by historians, let alone by their peers. He notes in his book that way back in 1979, The New York Times published an investigative story by Seymour Hersh under the headline ''Saudi Oil Capacity Questioned.'' He knows that in past decades the Cassandras failed to foresee new technologies, like deep-water and horizontal drilling, that provided new sources of oil and raised the amount of oil that can be recovered from reservoirs.
But Simmons says that there are only so many rabbits technology can pull out of its petro-hat. He impishly notes that if the Saudis really wanted to, they could easily prove him wrong. ''If they want to satisfy people, they should issue field-by-field production reports and reserve data and have it audited,'' he told me. ''It would then take anybody less than a week to say, 'Gosh, Matt is totally wrong,' or 'Matt actually might be too optimistic.'''
Simmons has a lot riding on his campaign -- not only his name but also his business, which would not be rewarded if he is proved to be a fool. What, I asked, if the data show that the Saudis will be able to sustain production of not only 12.5 million barrels a day -- their target for 2009 -- but 15 million barrels, which global demand is expected to require of them in the not-too-distant future? ''The odds of them sustaining 12 million barrels a day is very low,'' Simmons replied. ''The odds of them getting to 15 million for 50 years -- there's a better chance of me having Bill Gates's net worth, and I wouldn't bet a dime on that forecast.''
The gathering of executives took place in a restaurant at Chelsea Piers; about 35 men sat around a set of tables as the host introduced Simmons. He rambled a bit but hit his talking points, and the executives listened raptly; at one point, the man on my right broke into a soft whistle, of the sort that means ''Holy cow.''
Simmons didn't let up. ''We're going to look back at history and say $55 a barrel was cheap,'' he said, recalling a TV interview in which he predicted that a barrel might hit triple digits.
He said that the anchor scoffed, in disbelief, ''A hundred dollars?''
Simmons replied, ''I wasn't talking about low triple digits.''
The onset of triple-digit prices might seem a blessing for the Saudis -- they would receive greater amounts of money for their increasingly scarce oil. But one popular misunderstanding about the Saudis -- and about OPEC in general -- is that high prices, no matter how high, are to their benefit.
Although oil costing more than $60 a barrel hasn't caused a global recession, that could still happen: it can take a while for high prices to have their ruinous impact. And the higher above $60 that prices rise, the more likely a recession will become. High oil prices are inflationary; they raise the cost of virtually everything -- from gasoline to jet fuel to plastics and fertilizers -- and that means people buy less and travel less, which means a drop-off in economic activity. So after a brief windfall for producers, oil prices would slide as recession sets in and once-voracious economies slow down, using less oil. Prices have collapsed before, and not so long ago: in 1998, oil fell to $10 a barrel after an untimely increase in OPEC production and a reduction in demand from Asia, which was suffering through a financial crash. Saudi Arabia and the other members of OPEC entered crisis mode back then; adjusted for inflation, oil was at its lowest price since the cartel's creation, threatening to feed unrest among the ranks of jobless citizens in OPEC states.
''The Saudis are very happy with oil at $55 per barrel, but they're also nervous,'' a Western diplomat in Riyadh told me in May, referring to the price that prevailed then. (Like all the diplomats I spoke to, he insisted on speaking anonymously because of the sensitivities of relations with Saudi Arabia.) ''They don't know where this magic line has moved to. Is it now $65? Is it $75? Is it $80? They don't want to find out, because if you did have oil move that far north . . . the chain reaction can come back to a price collapse again.''
High prices can have another unfortunate effect for producers. When crude costs $10 a barrel or even $30 a barrel, alternative fuels are prohibitively expensive. For example, Canada has vast amounts of tar sands that can be rendered into heavy oil, but the cost of doing so is quite high. Yet those tar sands and other alternatives, like bioethanol, hydrogen fuel cells and liquid fuel from natural gas or coal, become economically viable as the going rate for a barrel rises past, say, $40 or more, especially if consuming governments choose to offer their own incentives or subsidies. So even if high prices don't cause a recession, the Saudis risk losing market share to rivals into whose nonfundamentalist hands Americans would much prefer to channel their energy dollars. A concerted push for greater energy conservation in the United States, which consumes one-quarter of the world's oil (mostly to fuel our cars, as gasoline), would hurt producing nations, too. Basically, any significant reduction in the demand for oil would be ruinous for OPEC members, who have little to offer the world but oil; if a substitute can be found, their future is bleak. Another Western diplomat explained the problem facing the Saudis: ''You want to have the price as high as possible without sending the consuming nations into a recession and at the same time not have the price so high that it encourages alternative technologies.''
From the American standpoint, one argument in favor of conservation and a switch to alternative fuels is that by limiting oil imports, the United States and its Western allies would reduce their dependence on a potentially unstable region. (In fact, in an effort to offset the risks of relying on the Saudis, America's top oil suppliers are Canada and Mexico.) In addition, sending less money to Saudi Arabia would mean less money in the hands of a regime that has spent the past few decades doling out huge amounts of its oil revenue to mosques, madrassas and other institutions that have fanned the fires of Islamic radicalism. The oil money has been dispensed not just by the Saudi royal family but by private individuals who benefited from the oil boom -- like Osama bin Laden, whose ample funds, probably eroded now, came from his father, a construction magnate. Without its oil windfall, Saudi Arabia would have had a hard time financing radical Islamists across the globe.
For the Saudis, the political ramifications of reduced demand for its oil would not be negligible. The royal family has amassed vast personal wealth from the country's oil revenues. If, suddenly, Saudis became aware that the royal family had also failed to protect the value of the country's treasured resource, the response could be severe. The mere admission that Saudi reserves are not as impressively inexhaustible as the royal family has claimed could lead to hard questions about why the country, and the world, had been misled. With the death earlier this month of the long-ailing King Fahd, the royal family is undergoing another period of scrutiny; the new king, Abdullah, is in his 80's, and the crown prince, his half-brother Sultan, is in his 70's, so the issue of generational change remains to be settled. As long as the country is swimming in petro-dollars -- even as it is paying off debt accrued during its lean years -- everyone is relatively happy, but that can change. One diplomat I spoke to recalled a comment from Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the larger-than-life Saudi oil minister during the 1970's: ''The Stone Age didn't end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil.''
Until now, the Saudis had an excess of production capacity that allowed them, when necessary, to flood the market to drive prices down. They did that in 1990, when the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait eliminated not only Kuwait's supply of oil but also Iraq's. The Saudis functioned, as they always had, as the central bank of oil, releasing supply to the market when it was needed and withdrawing supply to keep prices from going lower than the cartel would have liked. In other words, they controlled not only the price of oil but their own destiny as well.
''That is what the world has called on them to do before -- turn on the taps to produce more and get prices down,'' a senior Western diplomat in Riyadh told me recently. ''Decreasing prices used to keep out alternative fuels. I don't see how they're able to do that anymore. This is a huge change, and it is a big step in the move to whatever is coming next. That's what's really happening.''
Without the ability to flood the markets with oil, the Saudis are resorting to flooding the market with promises; it is a sort of petro-jawboning. That's why Ali al-Naimi, the oil minister, told his Washington audience that Saudi Arabia has embarked on a crash program to raise its capacity to 12.5 million barrels a day by 2009 and even higher in the years after that. Naimi is not unlike a factory manager who needs to promise the moon to his valuable clients, for fear of losing or alarming them. He has no choice. The moment he says anything bracing, the touchy energy markets will probably panic, pushing prices even higher and thereby hastening the onset of recession, a switch to alternative fuels or new conservation efforts -- or all three. Just a few words of honest caution could move the markets; Naimi's speeches are followed nearly as closely in the financial world as those of Alan Greenspan.
I journeyed to Saudi Arabia to interview Naimi and other senior officials, to get as far beyond their prepared remarks as might be possible. Although I was allowed to see Ras Tanura, my interview requests were denied. I was invited to visit Aramco's oil museum in Dhahran, but that is something a Saudi schoolchild can do on a field trip. It was a ''show but don't tell'' policy. I was able to speak about production issues only with Ibrahim al-Muhanna, the oil ministry spokesman, who reluctantly met me over coffee in the lobby of my hotel in Riyadh. He defended Saudi Arabia's refusal to share more data, noting that the Saudis are no different from most oil producers.
''They will not tell you,'' he said. ''Nobody will. And that is not going to change.'' Referring to the fact that Saudi Arabia is often called the central bank of oil, he added: ''If an outsider goes to the Fed and asks, 'How much money do you have?' they will tell you. If you say, 'Can I come and count it?' they will not let you. This applies to oil companies and oil countries.'' I mentioned to Muhanna that many people think his government's ''trust us'' stance is not convincing in light of the cheating that has gone on within OPEC and in the industry as a whole; even Royal Dutch/Shell, a publicly listed oil company that undergoes regular audits, has admitted that it overstated its 2002 reserves by 23 percent.
''There is no reason for any country or company to lie,'' Muhanna replied. ''There is a lot of oil around.'' I didn't need to ask about Simmons and his peak-oil theory; when I met Muhanna at the conference in Washington, he nearly broke off our conversation at the mention of Simmons's name. ''He does not know anything,'' Muhanna said. ''The only thing he has is a big mouth. We should not pay attention to him. Either you believe us or you don't.''
So whom to believe? Before leaving New York for Saudi Arabia, I was advised by several oil experts to try to interview Sadad al-Husseini, who retired last year after serving as Aramco's top executive for exploration and production. I faxed him in Dhahran and received a surprisingly quick reply; he agreed to meet me. A week later, after I arrived in Riyadh, Husseini e-mailed me, asking when I would come to Dhahran; in a follow-up phone call, he offered to pick me up at the airport. He was, it seemed, eager to talk.
It can be argued that in a nation devoted to oil, Husseini knows more about it than anyone else. Born in Syria, Husseini was raised in Saudi Arabia, where his father was a government official whose family took on Saudi citizenship. Husseini earned a Ph.D. in geological sciences from Brown University in 1973 and went to work in Aramco's exploration department, eventually rising to the highest position. Until his retirement last year -- said to have been caused by a top-level dispute, the nature of which is the source of many rumors -- Husseini was a member of the company's board and its management committee. He is one of the most respected and accomplished oilmen in the world.
After meeting me at the cavernous airport that serves Dhahran, he drove me in his luxury sedan to the villa that houses his private office. As we entered, he pointed to an armoire that displayed a dozen or so vials of black liquid. ''These are samples from oil fields I discovered,'' he explained. Upstairs, there were even more vials, and he would have possessed more than that except, as he said, laughing, ''I didn't start collecting early enough.''
We spoke for several hours. The message he delivered was clear: the world is heading for an oil shortage. His warning is quite different from the calming speeches that Naimi and other Saudis, along with senior American officials, deliver on an almost daily basis. Husseini explained that the need to produce more oil is coming from two directions. Most obviously, demand is rising; in recent years, global demand has increased by two million barrels a day. (Current daily consumption, remember, is about 84 million barrels a day.) Less obviously, oil producers deplete their reserves every time they pump out a barrel of oil. This means that merely to maintain their reserve base, they have to replace the oil they extract from declining fields. It's the geological equivalent of running to stay in place. Husseini acknowledged that new fields are coming online, like offshore West Africa and the Caspian basin, but he said that their output isn't big enough to offset this growing need.
''You look at the globe and ask, 'Where are the big increments?' and there's hardly anything but Saudi Arabia,'' he said. ''The kingdom and Ghawar field are not the problem. That misses the whole point. The problem is that you go from 79 million barrels a day in 2002 to 82.5 in 2003 to 84.5 in 2004. You're leaping by two million to three million a year, and if you have to cover declines, that's another four to five million.'' In other words, if demand and depletion patterns continue, every year the world will need to open enough fields or wells to pump an additional six to eight million barrels a day -- at least two million new barrels a day to meet the rising demand and at least four million to compensate for the declining production of existing fields. ''That's like a whole new Saudi Arabia every couple of years,'' Husseini said. ''It can't be done indefinitely. It's not sustainable.''
Husseini speaks patiently, like a teacher who hopes someone is listening. He is in the enviable position of knowing what he talks about while having the freedom to speak openly about it. He did not disclose precise information about Saudi reserves or production -- which remain the equivalent of state secrets -- but he felt free to speak in generalities that were forthright, even when they conflicted with the reassuring statements of current Aramco officials. When I asked why he was willing to be so frank, he said it was because he sees a shortage ahead and wants to do what he can to avert it. I assumed that he would not be particularly distressed if his rivals in the Saudi oil establishment were embarrassed by his frankness.
Although Matthew Simmons says it is unlikely that the Saudis will be able to produce 12.5 million barrels a day or sustain output at that level for a significant period of time, Husseini says the target is realistic; he says that Simmons is wrong to state that Saudi Arabia has reached its peak. But 12.5 million is just an interim marker, as far as consuming nations are concerned, on the way to 15 million barrels a day and beyond -- and that is the point at which Husseini says problems will arise.
At the conference in Washington in May, James Schlesinger, the moderator, conducted a question-and-answer session with Naimi at the conclusion of the minister's speech. One of the first questions involved peak oil: might it be true that Saudi Arabia, which has relied on the same reservoirs, and especially Ghawar, for more than five decades, is nearing the geological limit of its output?
Naimi wouldn't hear of it.
''I can assure you that we haven't peaked,'' he responded. ''If we peaked, we would not be going to 12.5 and we would not be visualizing a 15-million-barrel-per-day production capacity. . . . We can maintain 12.5 or 15 million for the next 30 to 50 years.''
Experts like Husseini are very concerned by the prospect of trying to produce 15 million barrels a day. Even if production can be ramped up that high, geology may not be forgiving. Fields that are overproduced can drop off, in terms of output, quite sharply and suddenly, leaving behind large amounts of oil that cannot be coaxed out with existing technology. This is called trapped oil, because the rocks or sediment around it prevent it from escaping to the surface. Unless new technologies are developed, that oil will never be extracted. In other words, the haste to recover oil can lead to less oil being recovered.
''You could go to 15, but that's when the questions of depletion rate, reservoir management and damaging the fields come into play,'' says Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi oil and security analyst who is regarded as being exceptionally well connected to key Saudi leaders. ''There is an understanding across the board within the kingdom, in the highest spheres, that if you're going to 15, you'll hit 15, but there will be considerable risks . . . of a steep decline curve that Aramco will not be able to do anything about.''
Even if the Saudis are willing to risk damaging their fields, or even if the risk is overstated, Husseini points out a practical problem. To produce and sustain 15 million barrels a day, Saudi Arabia will have to drill a lot more wells and build a lot more pipelines and processing facilities. Currently, the global oil industry suffers a deficit of qualified engineers to oversee such projects and the equipment and the raw materials -- for example, rigs and steel -- to build them. These things cannot be wished from thin air or developed quickly enough to meet the demand.
''If we had two dozen Texas A&M's producing a thousand new engineers a year and the industrial infrastructure in the kingdom, with the drilling rigs and power plants, we would have a better chance, but you cannot put that into place overnight,'' Husseini said. ''Capacity is not just a function of reserves. It is a function of reserves plus know-how plus a commercial economic system that is designed to increase the resource exploitation. For example, in the U.S. you have infrastructure -- there must be tens of thousands of miles of pipelines. If we, in Saudi Arabia, evolve to that level of commercial maturity, we could probably produce a heck of a lot more oil. But to get there is a very tedious, slow process.''
He worries that the rising global demand for oil will lead to the petroleum equivalent of running an engine at ever-increasing speeds without stopping to cool it down or change the oil. Husseini does not want to see the fragile and irreplaceable reservoirs of the Middle East become damaged through wanton overproduction.
''If you are ramping up production so fast and jump from high to higher to highest, and you're not having enough time to do what needs to be done, to understand what needs to be done, then you can damage reservoirs,'' he said. ''Systematic development is not just a matter of money. It's a matter of reservoir dynamics, understanding what's there, analyzing and understanding information. That's where people come in, experience comes in. These are not universally available resources.''
The most worrisome part of the crisis ahead revolves around a set of statistics from the Energy Information Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy. The E.I.A. forecast in 2004 that by 2020 Saudi Arabia would produce 18.2 million barrels of oil a day, and that by 2025 it would produce 22.5 million barrels a day. Those estimates were unusual, though. They were not based on secret information about Saudi capacity, but on the projected needs of energy consumers. The figures simply assumed that Saudi Arabia would be able to produce whatever the United States needed it to produce. Just last month, the E.I.A. suddenly revised those figures downward -- not because of startling new information about world demand or Saudi supply but because the figures had given so much ammunition to critics. Husseini, for example, described the 2004 forecast as unrealistic.
''That's not how you would manage a national, let alone an international, economy,'' he explained. ''That's the part that is scary. You draw some assumptions and then say, 'O.K., based on these assumptions, let's go forward and consume like hell and burn like hell.''' When I asked whether the kingdom could produce 20 million barrels a day -- about twice what it is producing today from fields that may be past their prime -- Husseini paused for a second or two. It wasn't clear if he was taking a moment to figure out the answer or if he needed a moment to decide if he should utter it. He finally replied with a single word: No.
''It's becoming unrealistic,'' he said. ''The expectations are beyond what is achievable. This is a global problem . . . that is not going to be solved by tinkering with the Saudi industry.''
It would be unfair to blame the Saudis alone for failing to warn of whatever shortages or catastrophes might lie ahead.
In the political and corporate realms of the oil world, there are few incentives to be forthright. Executives of major oil companies have been reluctant to raise alarms; the mere mention of scarce supplies could alienate the governments that hand out lucrative exploration contracts and also send a message to investors that oil companies, though wildly profitable at the moment, have a Malthusian long-term future. Fortunately, that attitude seems to be beginning to change. Chevron's ''easy oil is over'' advertising campaign is an indication that even the boosters of an oil-drenched future are not as bullish as they once were.
Politicians remain in the dark. During the 2004 presidential campaign, which occurred as gas prices were rising to record levels, the debate on energy policy was all but nonexistent. The Bush campaign produced an advertisement that concluded: ''Some people have wacky ideas. Like taxing gasoline more so people drive less. That's John Kerry.'' Although many environmentalists would have been delighted if Kerry had proposed that during the campaign, in fact the ad was referring to a 50-cents-a-gallon tax that Kerry supported 11 years ago as part of a package of measures to reduce the deficit. (The gas tax never made it to a vote in the Senate.) Kerry made no mention of taxing gasoline during the campaign; his proposal for doing something about high gas prices was to pressure OPEC to increase supplies.
Husseini, for one, doesn't buy that approach. ''Everybody is looking at the producers to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, as if it's our job to fix everybody's problems,'' he told me. ''It's not our problem to tell a democratically elected government that you have to do something about your runaway consumers. If your government can't do the job, you can't expect other governments to do it for them.'' Back in the 70's, President Carter called for the moral equivalent of war to reduce our dependence on foreign oil; he was not re-elected. Since then, few politicians have spoken of an energy crisis or suggested that major policy changes are necessary to avert one. The energy bill signed earlier this month by President Bush did not even raise fuel-efficiency standards for passenger cars. When a crisis comes -- whether in a year or 2 or 10 -- it will be all the more painful because we will have done little or nothing to prepare for it.
Peter Maass is a contributing writer. He is writing a book about oil.
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Barnes & Noble has a “Women’s Interest” section, but they removed the “Men’s Interest” header, so you can now find Playboy® and similar magazines in the “Technology” section!
Isn’t putting men’s magazines under Technology actually less politically correct than having a Men’s Interest section? Are women not capable of understanding technology? Or do the men buy the magazines to mansplain technology to their wives and girlfriends?...
Mr Scissor Hands put in an appearance at Wales Comic Con in Telford at the weekend.
Edward Scissor hands is a character in the film / movie of the same name. The young man is constructed by a scientist (Vincent Price) who temporarily gives Edward hands made of scissors and other sharp utensils. Sadly the scientist dies before he can replace the hands. The script then follows him as he is, at first, feted as a superstar celebrity which, slowly, turns to misunderstanding, mistrust, envy and terror.
Edward is from one of my photos from the weekend and the background is from a stock photo.
123 Pictures in 2023, theme # 109 Utensils
the will and the wish
the loveliness and the loneliness
everywhere and nowhere
from anyone to anyone
where it starts and where it ends
the years full of months full of days
from movements to rapid silences
the various exhaustions; what ifs.
shear zone formed at the sea, so tensed
by oscillation of the raining thoughts, and to
'listen within' to my meditative, centering guide
if triggered, would you stick to your guns?
cravings get coddled & the carving self
stands on incomprehensible legs - the
opaque notes scrabbles in a fine estate,
not to release everything immediately.
facts transfer the load to triste learning.
the ego me still chews the old dawns and
icecream never maintains a fixed point
as en route undertow kicks out comfort.
today what we feel, the thirst never goes
and happiness held in the freezer,
because everything rushes us along.
the circumferences of revulsion,
the cut and paste of misunderstanding,
the velocity of experiencing it all.
those memories under these tired hands;
sugar loaf's crumbs, fragments of discontent.
never conjoined at every point all the time,
this cohabitation's towardness, be not whole;
whose drowning days nurses a dark secret.
the magic of an immaculate conception
the daily healing with teaspoon of calm,
billions of galaxies in this four clover leaf.
eyelid moments, this dream to redeem.
without sorrow valley, in thousand thoughts
quietness, full of emotional resonance
from dusk to dawn, the horizon of sleep.
i know i'll see you <3
east begins with a magical 'e'
and breathes in the micro-moments
of eterna presence
from dawn to dusk, the earnestness
from dawn to dusk, the heart opening
purely to tenderness of a good Heart.
✏️
Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate. - Albert Schweitzer
Can you recall a time when you were accused wrongly and managed not to react with bitterness, but even with understanding of the misunderstanding? Such signs are precious. They are evidence of the Spirit at work in your life. They show that the flow of your river is towards the ocean that is mystery, love, God. And this can be true of many people who cannot make sense of ‘religion’ as they perceive it. This hidden strand of our spiritual adventure is our normal experience of God. Not just our journey in the direction of God, but God’s journey towards us, God’s hidden revelation, like an artist secretly shaping our lives into love.
-FAITH MAPS Ten religious explorers from Newman to Joseph Ratzinger Michael Paul Gallagher SJ, chapter 3:
Karl Rahner: the magnetism of mystery
"I understand there is a girl of good character and woman's learning in your home. You and I are of the same year and same day. Could we not be sames together?"
Those are the words that paired Snow Flower and Lily together as "laotongs", a journey that should have lasted a lifetime but when a misunderstanding occurs their friendships is sorely tested and threatens to come apart.
A beautiful, yet somewhat heartbreaking book about China in the 19th century, highlighting the concept of a woman's unworthiness, the practise of arranged marriages, foot binding and the use of nu shu, a secret writing used exclusively by women to communicate in secret and from the influence of men.
And exquisite and absorbing story. A book I found hard to put down. I will most definitely be looking for more books by this author.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre contains in itself all that remained of the Bible Golgotha where Jesus was crucified Christ. This place was located outside the walls of Old Jerusalem. In the 11 years after the crucifixion of Christ, this place were already in the city limits. Archaeological work confirmed that they were here the old cemeteries. According to Jewish law, it was impossible to bury the dead within the walls of the Holy City (Jerusalem). We know that at this point the Emperor Hadrian ordered to build a temple to Jupiter. He wanted to destroy the Jewish religion and Christianity. Instead the opposite happened. In 326 years Constantine the Great with his mother, St. Helena, ordered to tear down the pagan temple. Easily found Calvary and the tomb of Christ. Quickly built a beautiful new basilica. Throughout its history it has suffered many misfortunes. She was repeatedly demolished and rebuilt. According to the "status quo", concluded with Turkey in 1852, the basilica is at the disposal of Christians (Greek Orthodox and Armenów). Syrian Jacobites, Copts and Ethiopians have some rights. Since the days of Saladin custody of the church and the keys to the Holy Sepulchre has a Muslim family. For a long time ongoing disputes and misunderstandings. Only after 1958, all the co-hosts have agreed on a plan for a restaurant of this important Christian temple.
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Kościół Bożego Grobu zawiera w sobie wszystko co pozostało z Biblijnej Golgoty na której był ukrzyżowany Jezus Chrystus. Miejsce to znajdowało się poza murami Starej Jerozolimy. W 11 roku po ukrzyżowaniu Chrystusa, miejsce to znalazło się już w granicach miasta. Prace archeologiczne potwierdzają, że były tutaj stare cmentarze. Według prawa żydowskiego nie można było chować zmarłych wewnątrz murów Świętego Miasta (Jerozolimy). Wiemy, że w tym miejscu imperator Hadrian kazał wybudować świątynie dla Jowisza. Chciał zniszczyć religię żydowską i chrześcijańską. Stało się odwrotnie. W 326 roku Konstantyn Wielki wraz ze swoją matką św Heleną, kazali zburzyć świątynię pogańską. Bez trudu odnaleziono Kalwarię i Grób Chrystusa. Szybko wybudowano piękną nową bazylikę. Na przestrzeni swojej historii doznała ona wielu nieszczęść. Była wielokrotnie burzona i odbudowywana. Według "status quo", zawartego z Turcją w roku 1852, bazylika jest w dyspozycji chrześcijan (Greków prawosławnych i Armenów). Syryjscy Jakobici, Koptowie i Etiopczycy mają tylko niektóre prawa. Od czasów Saladyna prawo opieki nad kościołem i klucze do Bożego Grobu ma rodzina muzułmańska. Przez długi czas trwają spory i nieporozumienia. Dopiero po roku 1958 wszyscy współgospodarze uzgodnili plan restauracji tej ważnej dla chrześcijan świątyni.
... You are the only one to which you never have to explain what you mean. Everything else is misunderstanding. Renate Dorrestein
The story begins in classic style: once upon a time… Once upon a time, down on a drainage line behind the house where the soil was deeper, the moisture more reliable, was a neglected old row of pear trees in what was once an orchard. It seems like a lifetime ago. Maybe it was. But when I looked at the latest satellite imagery, almost 50 years on, a row of trees still stands there as a marked lineation.
Those were the days! On the other side of the ridge, the spring fed deep hole on the creek where the water was crystal clear, the old windmill fed water up to the house, and troughs for the stock. I was the one to clamber up, tie it off to check the oil, and do the what seemed like constant job of replacing the gland packing on the brass shaft, or trudging up and down the hill to turn it out of the wind when the tank was full, or into the wind when it wasn't. Most times the adventurous cats would follow, except Weed who was infirm and I'd carry on my shoulders, or her "daughter" Chin — pedigreed and a sook, too precious to get her feet wet.
For all the complexity of country life, things were pared back. I might have been too young, too green, ill-informed or simply ignorant. That row of pears was already old for one thing. Another was that I didn't ever make enough use of their bounty. Such foolishness probably distracted me from ever planting my own pear trees while I pushed ahead poking just about everything else into the ground. Remember what I said: those old trees, fifty years on are still there! We live; and learn.
Planting strategies for me always focus on things that are worth my while to grow. If someone else grows it, then I possibly needn't bother. If I can't buy it, or they can't grow it as well as I do, then I'll give it a crack. None of my apples can be bought in a shop — they are earlier, later, more fragrant, poorer keeping, better keeping, misshapen and magnificent. So it goes with the little concession I have given to pears through my regrettable ignorance — my preferences have been pared back.
Pared back to a pair of pears! But what a nice pair they are: doyenne du comice, and this little number, glou morceau. Both flowered prolifically in a sweet spot between Spring's bad and worse weather. The knowing have already spotted a couple of flowers that haven't succeeded in setting fruit, and to be honest, I'll probably thin those that have as the season goes on. This number will be pared back for a numerically smaller crop of superior sized fruit. Here's hoping…perhaps a century from now, someone will appreciate the holes I dug for these trees?
Some misunderstanding between man and animal:
On a small path I met this creature, he/she wanted to go my way and I the other..It was impossible to pass each other except for jumping in the mud below : I took some pictures and suddenly the creature was storming my way !
I'm no hero in situations like this and I shouted out loud in fear...
That caused the creature to stop...
We had a status quo 4 feet from each other...
Someone had to be the wise one, the creature decided it had to be me...
So with my brandnew walking shoes I jumped in the mud, making me a mess and able to tell this story...
Salvation | Introduction
What is salvation? Every believer in the Lord believes that as long as they pray to the Lord with a true heart, confess and repent to Him, their sins will be forgiven, and they will be saved by grace. When the Lord comes back, they will be directly taken into the kingdom of heaven. Is salvation really so simple?
Xu Zhiqian, the hero of this film, has believed in God for many years. He enthusiastically worked for God and abandoned everything to perform his duties. Because of this, the Chinese Communist Party arrested him and cruelly tortured him, and even sentenced him to six years' imprisonment. After being released, he continued performing duties and had some practical experiences. He was able to solve the practical problems of his brothers and sisters. He didn't make complaints or become negative and weak when his wife was arrested and imprisoned…. The brothers and sisters all praised and commended him. Xu Zhiqian believed that he already had the reality of truth, and he would surely be granted entrance into the kingdom of heaven. Soon after, however, a trial came upon him suddenly. His wife was tortured to death by the Chinese Communist police. He became extremely grieved and had notions about and misunderstanding of God, so he made complaints, and the thoughts of disobeying and betraying God emerged in his mind…. Later, he realized that it was betrayal to God, so he began reflecting upon himself: Can people like him, who complain against God, misunderstand God and betray God when faced with trials be truly saved? Are they qualified to enter the kingdom of God?
Recommended for you: Gospel Videos
My dude TimRobot invited me(Attila) to participate in a tiny Groupexhibition in the display window of the Hummel Shop in Berlin Mitte.
My painting is called “Die Missverständnismaschine” (The misunderstanding-mashine) and deals with the topic of misunderstandings that appear very often by communicating via SMS.
More infos here!
Find below quotes at
www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/moliere.html
Moliere, French Playwright
Date of Birth: January 15, 1622
Date of Death: February 17, 1673
A learned fool is more a fool than an ignorant fool.
A lover tries to stand in well with the pet dog of the house.
A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation.
Ah! how annoying that the law doesn't allow a woman to change husbands just as one does shirts.
All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.
All which is not prose is verse; and all which is not verse is prose.
As the purpose of comedy is to correct the vices of men, I see no reason why anyone should be exempt.
Books and marriage go ill together.
Don't appear so scholarly, pray. Humanize your talk, and speak to be understood.
Esteem must be founded on preference: to hold everyone in high esteem is to esteem nothing.
Every good act is charity. A man's true wealth hereafter is the good that he does in this world to his fellows.
Frenchmen have an unlimited capacity for gallantry and indulge it on every occasion.
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Thursday, August 28, 2008
Thursday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
St. Augustine, author of the first Western autobiography.
Learn about his sinful and faith-filled life and works at
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Augustine
A reflection on today's Sacred Scripture:
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Psalm 145:2-3, 4-5, 6-7
Matthew 24:42-51
In today's Gospel Jesus tells His disciples: "Stay awake!" (Matthew 24:42)
The briefness of the statement and the exclamation mark at the end leave no room for misunderstanding. It isn't a request or something that would be rather nice to do, but is instead, a command. As such, it implies dire consequences for those who would disobey.
In this case, it is being unprepared for the Lord's return as judge of the living and the dead; a time we might suppose, where we have run out of opportunities for another chance.
The thought is frightening—for what one of us doesn't think there will always be at least a little time to set things in better order, but Jesus says, in order to be ready, we must stay awake!
To stay awake beyond what we are accustomed is often exhausting if not altogether impossible. Yet, we are told, "Stay awake!" and not just sometimes, but always!
How much these few words make me realize how much we are in need of God's help—and that we already have it! When the Blessed Trinity resides in us as Triune Lord and King, He never sleeps! His are the eyes that watch, His the ears that hear, His the spirit that prays and adores on our behalf.
"Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come." (Matthew 24:42)
- Donna Nelson, OCDS | email: drn3rd@hughes.net
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below I got from
infoenglish@zenit.org
US Bishops: Pelosi Got Church Teaching Wrong
House Speaker Misrepresents Catholic Understanding of Life
WASHINGTON, D.C., AUG. 26, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The chairmen of the U.S. bishops' Committees on Pro-Life Activities and Doctrine affirmed that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi misrepresented Church teaching on abortion during an interview on national TV.
Pelosi was asked on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press" on Sunday to comment on when life begins. She responded saying that as a Catholic, she had studied the issue for "a long time" and that "the doctors of the Church have not been able to make that definition."
Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the U. Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Bishop William Lori, chairman of the Committee on Doctrine, said her answer "misrepresented the history and nature of the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church against abortion."
They noted that the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, "Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law."
And the prelates explained: "In the Middle Ages, uninformed and inadequate theories about embryology led some theologians to speculate that specifically human life capable of receiving an immortal soul may not exist until a few weeks into pregnancy. While in canon law these theories led to a distinction in penalties between very early and later abortions, the Church's moral teaching never justified or permitted abortion at any stage of development.
"These mistaken biological theories became obsolete over 150 years ago when scientists discovered that a new human individual comes into being from the union of sperm and egg at fertilization. In keeping with this modern understanding, the Church teaches that from the time of conception -- fertilization -- each member of the human species must be given the full respect due to a human person, beginning with respect for the fundamental right to life."
For the record
Other bishops also released statements clarifying Church teaching.
Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., noted that bishops are entrusted with the responsibility to interpret and teach Catholic doctrine.
"We respect the right of elected officials such as Speaker Pelosi to address matters of public policy that are before them, but the interpretation of Catholic faith has rightfully been entrusted to the Catholic bishops," he said in a statement. "Given this responsibility to teach, it is important to make this correction for the record. […]
"From the beginning, the Catholic Church has respected the dignity of all human life from the moment of conception to natural death."
And from Denver, Archbishop Charles Chaput and Auxiliary Bishop James Conley addressed an online letter to their faithful, titled "On the Separation of Sense and State: a Clarification for the People of the Church in Northern Colorado."
The letter affirms: "Ardent, practicing Catholics will quickly learn from the historical record that from apostolic times, the Christian tradition overwhelmingly held that abortion was grievously evil. In the absence of modern medical knowledge, some of the Early Fathers held that abortion was homicide; others that it was tantamount to homicide; and various scholars theorized about when and how the unborn child might be animated or 'ensouled.'
"But none diminished the unique evil of abortion as an attack on life itself, and the early Church closely associated abortion with infanticide. In short, from the beginning, the believing Christian community held that abortion was always, gravely wrong."
Cardinal Edward Egan released a statement this morning saying he was "shocked to learn" of Pelosi's remarks. He said her statements were "misinformed."
The cardinal affirmed that the unborn have "an inalienable right to live, a right that the speaker of the House of Representatives is bound to defend at all costs for the most basic of ethical reasons."
"Anyone who dares to defend that they may be legitimately killed because another human being 'chooses' to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason," he added, "should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name."
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On the Net:
Statement of Denver bishops: www.zenit.org/article-23469?l=english
Statement of Archbishop Wuerl: www.zenit.org/article-23470?l=english
Statement of Cardinal Egan: www.zenit.org/article-23476?l=english
EXPLORE # 404 on Thursday, August 28, 2008; # 440 on Thursday, September 11, 2008
Fam. Asparagaceae Juss. 1789
Subfam. Agavoideae Herb. 1837
Probably a 'short-day' plant, it begins to bloom usually until September / October, never in the period from May to July! This year these starts to bloom very early! An flower initiation at this Yucca I never observed if was a day length 15 hours or a night length of less than 9 hours.
Yucca x vomerensis C. Sprenger in Cat., 1901
In his "Mitteilungen über meine Yucca-Hibriden und -Formen" (Mitt. Deutsch. Dendrol. Ges. Nr. 29: 119. 1920) he wrote:.
"Yucca aloifolia x gloriosa gave me a large number of seedlings, but among themselves mostly very consistent, so that one could call them without further ado, one and all as 'vomerensis'."
Yucca x glorifolia nom. nud.
(not an valid name, and there can be misunderstandings because also used for Y. gloriosa x recurvifolia hybrids)
In the Botany of the Bermudas by H. B. Small, 1913, is listed
Similar forms are also called Yucca gloriosa 'aloifolia form'.
My professional appointment in Würzburg was over. My colleagues were still for lunch, but I wanted to use the time before I have to leave, for looking for nice, friendly, sympathetic people. Würzburg is a university town. Students are curious and open-minded, so my experiences so far. There is also a special atmosphere on the River Main Promenade. The weather also wents well; so best conditions for nice encounters.
And really, I strolled along the river and saw two young people sitting on the small wall. Entertaining, enjoying the view of the river and the castle and very relaxed. I spoke to them, introduced myself, explained my concern and showed the last photos of my project on my smartphone. I was able to convince.
So here in Würzburg I met Rosemarie and Lukas. Both were very open-minded. As the sun disappeared behind a cloud, I was able to start the shooting. The result found the approval of Rosemarie and Lukas. I could go to part two: my little interview.
Rosemarie is 24 years young and is studying philosophy and pedagogy here in Würzburg. Her goal is to work and help young people. Rosemarie has already worked in Diakonische Werk (The Diakonische Werk is a charitable organization of Protestant churches in Germany) and has given assistance and support for families and young people.
It is a challenge for Rosemarie, and with all her's might she spends her energy in the work with other people, it is worth it to help other people and get positive feedback. Rosemarie is most annoyed by the fact that there are too many misunderstandings between the people, sometimes the communication seems to be disturbed, but the aim should be to deal with each other friendly and with understanding.
I asked Lukas, her companion on that day, as he would describe Rosemarie. Rosemarie is calm, reserved, thoughtful ...and not to forget, beautiful, Lukas explained.
A great challenge for Rosemarie is to reconcile the external demands that are brought to her with the inner desires.
My last question was whether Rosemarie had motto of life. Yes, Rosemarie answered, I try to see something positive in all things, and trust that everything will be all right and better in the end.
Sitting on the wall I just made a photo in the bright sunlight and after I had talked to Lukas, we exchanged e-mail addresses and my card and I had to say goodbye.
Thank you, Rosemarie, for this pleasant conversation. I wish you all the best and success in your studies and hope that your motto of life will be realized.
In addition:
It was hard for me to decide which photo I should post to the group, because I have taken some very lovely photos of Rosemarie. In the end, I decided to take this more serious picture.
This is my 45th post to the group "The Human Family". Visit "The Human Family" here and have a look on the photos of the other photographers:
www.flickr.com/groups/thehumanfamily/
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Mein beruflicher Termin in Würzburg war beendet. Meine Kollegen waren noch zum Mittagessen, ich wollte vor meiner Abreise noch die Zeit nutzen, Ausschau nach netten, freundlichen, sympathischen Menschen zu machen. Würzburg ist eine Universitätsstadt. Studenten sind offen, neugierig und aufgeschlossen, so meine Erfahrungen bisher. Außerdem herrscht am der Main-Promenade eine besondere Stimmung. Auch das Wetter spielte mit; also alles gute Voraussetzungen für nette Begegnungen.
Und wirklich, ich schlenderte am Main entlang und sah zwei junge Menschen auf der kleinen Mauer sitzen. Unterhaltend, den Blick auf den Fluss und die Burg genießend und sehr entspannt. Ich sprach sie an, stellte mich vor, erklärte mein Anliegen und zeigte die letzten Fotos meines Projektes auf meinem Smartphone. Damit konnte ich überzeugen.
Hier also in Würzburg traf ich Rosemarie und Lukas. Beide waren sehr aufgeschlossen. Da gerade die Sonne hinter einer Wolke verschwand, konnte ich gleich mit dem Shooting beginnen. Das Ergebnis fand die Zustimmung von Rosemarie und Lukas. Ich konnte somit zu Teil zwei übergehen: meinem kleinem Interview.
Rosemarie ist 24 Jahre jung und studiert hier in Würzburg Philosophie und Pädagogik. Ihr Ziel ist es, später einmal für Jugendlichen da zu sein. Rosemarie hat schon inder Diakonie gearbeitet und hat da Hilfe und Unterstützung für Familien und Jugendliche geleistet.
Es ist eine Herausforderung für Rosemarie und kostet zwar Kraft mit anderen Menschen zu arbeiten und auf diese einzugehen, aber es lohnt sich, anderen Menschen zu helfen und ein positives Feedback zu bekommen. Rosemarie stört am meisten, dass es zu viele Missverständnisse zwischen den Menschen gibt, manchmal scheint die Kommunikation gestört zu sein, dabei sollte es doch das Ziel sein, freundlich und verständnisvoll miteinander umzugehen.
Ich fragte Lukas, ihre Begleitung an diesem Tag, wie er Rosemarie beschreiben würde. Rosemarie ist ruhig, zurückhaltend, nachdenklich und nicht zu vergessen, schön, erklärte Lukas.
Eine große Herausforderung für Rosemarie ist es, die äußeren Ansprüche, die an sie herangetragen werden, mit den inneren Wünschen in Einklang zu bringen.
Meine letzte Frage bezog sich darauf, ob Rosemarie ein Lebensmotto habe. Ja, antwortete Rosemarie , ich versuche in allen Dingen etwas Positives zu sehen und vertraue darauf, dass am Ende doch alles gut und besser wird.
Zum Schluss, nach einem Abschiedfoto in der Sonne (nachdem ich mich mit Lukas unterhalten hatte), tauschten wir noch E-Mail-Adressen bzw. meine Karte aus und ich verabschiedete mich.
Postscriptum: Es war schwer für mich, zu entscheiden, welches Foto ich in die Gruppe posten soll, weil ich einige sehr schöne Bilder von Rosemarie habe. Letztendlich habe ich mich für dieses etwas ernstere Foto entschieden.
Danke, Rosemarie, für dieses angenehme Gespräch. Ich wünsche Dir alles Gute, viel Erfolg bei deinem Studium und hoffe, dass sich dein Lebensmotto immer verwirklicht.
Dies ist mein 44. Beitrag zu der Gruppe "The Human Family". Mehr Fotos von anderen Fotografen der Gruppe findest Du hier:
日中の危険な暑さを避けて朝に撮影したのですが、目算は外れました。仏さまは私に灼熱地獄の試練を与えたようです。ブドウ糖が不足した僕の脳は蓮の花托を”らくがん”に見せてしまいました。そのようなことをして過ごした週末でした。
It was dangerously hot during the day, so I shot it in the morning, but it was unexpected. The Buddha seems to have given me the anguish of enduring the scorching hell. My brain, which lacked glucose, misunderstood the lotus seed as Rakugann (Japanese sugar confectionery). I spent the weekend doing such things.
My friend Kaisar, four years junior then me, Honors Student of Pure Chemistry in Jogonnath University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. - A photographer with highly aggressive strength and a strong personality to keep on focusing subjects around....... Member of BPS (Bangladesh Photographic Society) and a photojournalist.
Meeting with him was dramatic, was by a funny way... another friend of me Ikbal was write about a person called Moon in his stream, if Kaiser knows him, using my account when i was log in flickr in Ikbal's studio, without let me notice... Kaiser become confused and send me mail for inquiry... it was like who searching who, and first it was sending flickr mail, then call by phone and confirm all misunderstanding.....
Relation with him wasn't close until a Bangladesh borned pathetic looser made a mistake,,, was said some untruth thing about Bangladesh and proved himself a hypocrite. I was the one claim on it at my most, didn't check my language, and the guy was delete both our conversation and the topic and were send mail to too many of his contact to block me, when he was a old user of flickr and for me it was less then 15 days i join flickr..................... Kaiser denied his request, and receive a block from him........ and we become closet friends instantly :):):)
and the only native flickr user with who I usually make some photo-walk, etc...... The only fear I have for or dislike of him is, he just afraid to touch a SLR... I doesn't mean dSLR:p, he thinks he can't use Film...... and still missing the test of most advanced technology of photography (not DArt) in human history.....
May Almighty give him superb skills and the earth and sun on his side to capture every unique moments he face while he in mood of Photography, Aamiin
There are three types of white egrets here in the states. This one is a great egret. “Well, that’s just wonderful, Mike. But how do you know?” I’m glad you asked. Great egrets are distinguished from snowy and cattle egrets by a few peculiarities evident here, such as the black legs, the yellow bill, and the green patch around his eye, the last one particular only to male great egrets. You may see that and think that he’s camouflaged in the same value as the spring green of the bald cypress he’s resting on. Those showy feathers (yet another distinction of the great egret) that were fluttering in the wind made his camouflage null and void… well, that and the contrastive white tux he was dressed in. That green patch around his eye is prevalent only during mating season… which has made me wonder about my own situation. I have hazel eyes, which means they sometimes appear to be green and other times appear to be brown… likely, however, since I’m often described as being “full of beans”, the “green” condition may indicate I’m just a quart low… darn!
You can tell from those long legs that great egrets are wading birds much like the great blue heron. Its diet consists mostly of small fish… as does the heron, it can be seen in water up to the length of its legs moving ever so slightly until it uses its extensive neck and bill to spear into the water. I’ve never seen one miss its target… and then swallow the hapless fish whole. You may notice that this egret has some discoloration of its feathers… turns out that great egrets, though being wading birds and lacking the webbed feet that geese do, swim using their wings. This fella is drying himself after a short swim in one of the swampy ponds of Magnolia Plantation... among alligators. The gators took note, so he went from breast-stroke to airborne mode quickly… the transition from swimming to flight looked a bit awkward, yet here he is none the worse for it. I remember a story that Louie “Satchmo” Armstrong once told of his childhood that may explain the “discoloration”: “When I was a little boy living in Louisiana, my mother said, ‘Boy, run down to the pond an’ fetch me a pail of water right away. So, I went runnin’ down to this pond to get water, but the minute I went to dip the pail into the water I saw an alligator rise up out of that water. I jumped up and ran home. I no sooner got to the porch when my mother asked ‘Where’s that water that I told you to get?’ I told her there’s an alligator in that water! She said, “Boy, don't you know that 'that alligator is as afraid of you as you are of him? And I said, ‘Well if that alligator is as afraid of me as I am of him, that water ain’t fit to drink.’” Seems plausible to me.
Many folks have a misunderstanding of Canada geese, thinking they’re Canadian geese… they lack citizenship granting them “Canadian” status, however. On the other hand, great egrets are also known as American egrets. They were nearly hunted to extinction in the mid-20th Century for their plumage to grace women’s hats and accessories. It is for that reason, and possibly because they are such elegant creatures, that they were chosen for the symbol of the Audubon Society… which is reason enough for citizenship.
location : Ryoan-ji Rock Garden (Historical Site/ Special Place of Scenic Beauty) . Ryoanji temple , Kyoto city , Kyoto Prefecture ,Japan
京都 龍安寺 石庭 虎の子渡しの庭
www.flickr.com/photos/100016856@N08/albums/72157681669571215
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Ryōan-ji (Shinjitai: 竜安寺, Kyūjitai: 龍安寺, The Temple of the Dragon at Peace) is a Zen temple located in northwest Kyoto, Japan. It belongs to the Myōshin-ji school of the Rinzai branch of Zen Buddhism. The Ryōan-ji garden is considered one of the finest surviving examples of kare-sansui ("dry landscape"),a refined type of Japanese Zen temple garden design generally featuring distinctive larger rock formations arranged amidst a sweep of smooth pebbles (small, carefully selected polished river rocks) raked into linear patterns that facilitate meditation. The temple and its gardens are listed as one of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, and as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The site of the temple was an estate of the Fujiwara family in the 11th century. The first temple, the Daiju-in, and the still existing large pond were built in that century by Fujiwara Saneyoshi. In 1450, Hosokawa Katsumoto, another powerful warlord, acquired the land where the temple stood. He built his residence there, and founded a Zen temple, Ryōan-ji. During the Ōnin War between the clans, the temple was destroyed. Hosokawa Katsumoto died in 1473. In 1488, his son, Hosokawa Matsumoto, rebuilt the temple.
The temple served as a mausoleum for several emperors. Their tombs are grouped together in what are today known as the "Seven Imperial Tombs" at Ryōan-ji. The burial places of these emperors -- Uda, Kazan, Ichijō, Go-Suzaku, Go-Reizei, Go-Sanjō, and Horikawa—would have been comparatively humble in the period after their deaths. These tombs reached their present state as a result of the 19th century restoration of imperial sepulchers (misasagi) which were ordered by Emperor Meiji.
There is controversy over who built the garden and when. Most sources date the garden to the second half of the 15th century.[3] According to some sources, the garden was built by Hosokawa Katsumoto, the creator of the first temple of Ryōan-ji, between 1450 and 1473. Other sources say it was built by his son, Hosokawa Masamoto, in or around 1488. Some say that the garden was built by the famous landscape painter and monk, Sōami (died 1525),.but this is disputed by other authors.Some sources say the garden was built in the first half of the 16th century.[7] Other authors say the garden was probably built much later, during the Edo Period, between 1618 and 1680.[6] There is also controversy over whether the garden was built by monks, or by professional gardeners, called kawaramono, or a combination of the two. One stone in the garden has the name of two kawaramono carved into it.
The conclusive history, though, based on documentary sources, is as follows: Hosokawa Katsumoto (1430-1473), deputy to the shogun, founded in 1450 the Ryoan-ji temple, but the complex was burnt down during the Onin War. His son Masamoto rebuilt the temple at the very end of the same century. It is not clear whether any garden was constructed at that time facing the main hall. First descriptions of a garden, clearly describing one in front of the main hall, date from 1680-1682. It is described as a composition of nine big stones laid out to represent Tiger Cubs Crossing the Water. As the garden has fifteen stones at present, it was clearly different from the garden that we see today. A great fire destroyed the buildings in 1779, and rubble of the burnt buildings was dumped in the garden. Garden writer and specialist Akisato Rito (died c. 1830) redid the garden completely on top of the rubble at the end of the eighteenth century and published a picture of his garden in his Celebrated Gardens and Sights of Kyoto (Miyako rinsen meisho zue) of 1799, showing the garden as it looks today. One big stone at the back was buried partly; it has two first names carved in it, probably names of untouchable stone workers, so called kawaramono. There is no evidence of Zen monks having worked on the garden, apart from the raking of the sand,
The temple's name is synonymous with the temple's famous 'Zen garden', the karesansui (dry landscape) rock garden, thought[by whom] to have been built in the late 15th century.
The garden is a rectangle of 248 square meters. Young and Young put the size at twenty-five meters by ten meters. Placed within it are fifteen stones of different sizes, carefully composed in five groups; one group of five stones, two groups of three, and two groups of two stones. The stones are surrounded by white gravel, which is carefully raked each day by the monks. The only vegetation in the garden is some moss around the stones.
The garden is meant to be viewed from a seated position on the veranda of the hōjō, the residence of the abbot of the monastery.
The stones are placed so that the entire composition cannot be seen at once from the veranda. They are also arranged so that when looking at the garden from any angle (other than from above) only fourteen of the boulders are visible at one time. It is traditionally said that only through attaining enlightenment would one be able to view the fifteenth boulder.
The wall behind the garden is an important element of the garden. It is made of clay, which has been stained by age with subtle brown and orange tones. In 1977, the tile roof of the wall was restored with tree bark to its original appearance.
When the garden was rebuilt in 1799, it came up higher than before and a view over the wall to the mountain scenery behind came about. At present this view is blocked by trees.
The garden had particular significance for the composer John Cage, who composed a series of works and made visual art art works based on it.
Meaning of the garden
Like any work of art, the artistic garden of Ryōan-ji is also open to interpretation, or scientific research into possible meanings. Many different theories have been put forward inside and outside Japan about what the garden is supposed to represent, from islands in a stream, to swimming baby tigers to the peaks of mountains rising above to theories about secrets of geometry or of the rules of equilibrium of odd numbers. Garden historian Gunter Nitschke wrote: "The garden at Ryōan-ji does not symbolize anything, or more precisely, to avoid any misunderstanding, the garden of Ryōan-ji does not symbolize, nor does it have the value of reproducing a natural beauty that one can find in the real or mythical world. I consider it to be an abstract composition of "natural" objects in space, a composition whose function is to incite meditation.".
Scientific analysis of the garden
In an article published by the science journal Nature, Gert van Tonder and Michael Lyons analyze the rock garden by generating a model of shape analysis (medial axis) in early visual processing.
Using this model, they show that the empty space of the garden is implicitly structured, and is aligned with the temple's architecture. According to the researchers, one critical axis of symmetry passes close to the centre of the main hall, which is the traditionally preferred viewing point. In essence, viewing the placement of the stones from a sightline along this point brings a shape from nature (a dichotomously branched tree with a mean branch length decreasing monotonically from the trunk to the tertiary level) in relief.
The researchers propose that the implicit structure of the garden is designed to appeal to the viewer's unconscious visual sensitivity to axial-symmetry skeletons of stimulus shapes. In support of their findings, they found that imposing a random perturbation of the locations of individual rock features destroyed the special characteristics.
Centuries after its creation, the influences of the dry elements at Ryōan-ji continue to be reflected and re-examined in garden design — for example, in the Japangarten at the Art Museum at Wolfsburg in Germany.
Ryōan-ji (jap. 龍安寺, dt. „Tempel des zur Ruhe gekommenen Drachen“) ist ein 1499 gegründeter Zen-Tempel im Nordwesten der japanischen Stadt Kyōto in deren Stadtbezirk Ukyō.
Erbaut wurde er 1450 von Hosokawa Katsumoto, einem hohen Staatsbeamten der Muromachi-Zeit, auf einem Grundstück, das ursprünglich der Fujiwara-Familie als Landsitz diente. Seit 1994 gehört er zusammen mit anderen Stätten zum UNESCO-Weltkulturerbe Historisches Kyōto (Kyōto, Uji und Ōtsu). Der Tempel gehört zur größten Schule des Rinzai-Zen mit dem Muttertempel Myōshin-ji.
Hauptattraktion des Tempels ist der hier befindliche und wohl berühmteste Zen-Garten Japans, der Hojo-Teien im Kare-san-sui-Stil aus der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts. Der Garten besteht aus einer Fläche (30 mal 10 Meter) aus fein gerechtem Kies mit 15 scheinbar zufällig platzierten Steinen in 5 bemoosten Gruppen. Aus keinem Blickwinkel sind alle 15 Steine sichtbar. Die südliche und westliche Seite des Gartens ist von einer rötlichen Mauer gesäumt, über welcher der Blick auf die Bäume und Sträucher des begehbaren Gartens fällt. Auf der nördlichen Seite befindet sich das Tempelgebäude mit der Sitzterrasse, von der aus man den Steingarten überschaut. Die umgebende Mauer ist mit ölgetränktem Mörtel erbaut worden. Im Laufe der Jahrhunderte ist das Öl aus dem Stein ausgetreten und hat so das charakteristische Muster auf dem Stein hinterlassen.
Zur Tempelanlage gehört auch ein großer Teich, der auf eine allererste Tempelgründung an dieser Stelle im 10. Jahrhundert zurückgeht. In der Mitte des Teiches befindet sich eine kleine, begehbare Insel mit einem Schrein, der der Gottheit Benzaiten gewidmet ist.
Ryōan-ji (龍安寺 o 竜安寺 El templo del dragón tranquilo y pacífico) es un templo Zen situado en Kioto, Japón. Forma parte del conjunto de Monumentos históricos de la antigua Kioto (ciudades de Kioto, Uji y Otsu) declarados Patrimonio de la Humanidad por la Unesco en el año 1994. El templo fue creado por la escuela Myoshinji de los Rinzai, pertenecientes al Budismo Zen.
Dentro de este templo existe uno de los karesansui (jardines secos) más famosos del mundo, construido a finales del siglo XV, en torno al 1488. El creador de este jardín no dejó ninguna explicación sobre su significado, por lo que durante siglos ha sido un misterio descubrir el verdadero sentido o el porqué de su gran belleza.
Se trata de un jardín rectangular construido frente al edificio principal. La composición utiliza arena rastrillada, musgo, y rocas. Existe un predominio de formas alargadas colocadas en paralelo a la posición del edificio.
Los tres lados restantes están cerrados por muros, lo que junto a la línea inferior de la plataforma desde la que se debe contemplar el edificio, permite acotar la visión del jardín en un marco longitudinal
El jardín se ubica frente al salón Hojo, en el extremo sur, como una extensión del salón perteneciente al abad.
En total hay 15 piedras dispuestas en 3 grandes grupos. El primero comprende las 3 rocas de más a la derecha. El segundo, las 5 siguientes, y el tercero, las 7 restantes. En cada grupo destaca una piedra mayor que las demás. El musgo se utiliza como base de algunos grupos para dar unidad.
Existe una idea de movimiento, según miramos los grupos de derecha a izquierda, se van volviendo cada vez más dispersos, hasta llegar a las últimas dos piedras que no tienen musgo. No se puede ver todo de un sólo vistazo, hay que ir moviendo la vista.
El árbol oculto
Durante muchos años se pensó que la mejor interpretación del sentido de la disposición de las piedras en el jardín era el de una especie de Tigre cruzando un río. En el 2002, unos científicos de la Universidad de Kioto utilizaron ordenadores para buscar formas usando la disposición de las zonas vacías del jardín en vez de la disposición de las piedras. El resultado es que encontraron el patrón de un árbol escondido dentro de la estructura del jardín. Dicen que por eso es tan placentero presenciar el jardín, nuestro subconsiciente capta el patrón del árbol sin que lo notemos.
El mismo equipo de investigación probó moviendo algunas piedras de forma aleatoria y vieron que enseguida se perdía la armonía de la configuración inicial. Por ello creen que la construcción del jardín está muy bien pensada y no es un acto de la casualidad.
Ryōan-ji (竜安寺 / 龍安寺, littéralement « Temple du repos du dragon ») est un monastère zen situé dans le Nord-Ouest de Kyōto, construit au xvie siècle, à l'époque de Muromachi. Il fait partie du Patrimoine mondial de l'UNESCO, étant l'un des monuments historiques de l'ancienne Kyoto. Le temple appartient à l'école Myōshin-ji de la branche rinzai du bouddhisme zen. Le site du temple appartenait à l’origine au clan Fujiwara.
Le monastère a été fondé en 1450 par Hosokawa Katsumoto. Détruit lors de la guerre d'Onin par un incendie, il est rebâti par son fils, Hosokawa Masamoto, à partir de 1488. Après un nouvel incendie en 1797, le monastère est profondément remanié.
Pour beaucoup, le nom du temple évoque son célèbre jardin de pierres, de style karesansui, qui est considéré comme l’un des chefs-d’œuvre de la culture zen japonaise.
Le jardin a été construit à la fin du XVe siècle ou au début du xvie siècle, entre 1499 et 1507. Sa superficie est d'environ 200 mètres carrés. Il est entouré au sud et à l'ouest d'un muret couvert d'un toit de tuile, à l'est d'un autre muret, et au nord d'une véranda en bois derrière laquelle se trouve le hōjō (les appartements du supérieur du monastère). À l'extérieur se trouvent des érables et des pins rouges qui n'étaient sans doute pas présents à l'origine. La construction sur un terrain plat est une nouveauté à l'époque. Quinze pierres, entourées de mousse, y sont disposées en groupes, d'est en ouest, de cinq, de deux, de trois, de deux puis de trois. Le petit nombre de pierres est aussi une nouveauté par rapport aux autres jardins secs de la même période : celui du Daisen-in par exemple en compte plus de cents, sur une surface deux fois plus petite. Le jardin de pierres du Ryoanji appartient à la catégorie des « jardins de néant » (mutei).
La paternité du jardin a été attribuée diversement à Hosokawa Katsumoto ou au peintre Sōami. Ces attributions sont probablement légendaires. Sur l'une des pierres du jardin sont gravés les noms de deux kawaromono (ja) (une sorte d'intouchables japonais) : Kotarō et Hiko jirō. On sait par ailleurs qu'un Kotarō et un Hikojirō ont travaillé au jardin du Shōsenken (au monastère Shōkokuji) dans les années 1490-1491. Aussi ces deux personnes pourraient bien être les véritables auteurs du jardin de pierres du Ryoanji.
Les pierres ont été disposées de telle sorte qu’il ne soit pas possible de voir les quinze pierres à la fois, d’où que se trouve l’observateur5.
Le jardin se compose simplement d’un lit de fins graviers de kaolin harmonieusement ratissés. Le kaolin ratissé symbolise l’océan, les rochers les montagnes.
- wikipedia
About a year and a half ago I witnessed a tiff between a Snowy Egret and a juvenile Little Blue Heron that revolved around a simple misunderstanding of bayou protocol (flic.kr/p/ftcWN6). But apparently there were persistent hard feelings that played out in another round with the now-adult Little Blue.
This time of year is the perfect time to reflect and show appreciation.
For the loved ones who support us - I am truly grateful for all of my family, friends and also my viewers/readers here that have and continue to support me in my journey. Honestly, I could never have done it without them and without you.
For the ones sacrificing for our needs - I am truly grateful for those who work when they should be with family and friends, those who are away from those they love.
For the loved ones who are no longer with us - memories of someone very dear who is sadly missed at this time of the year. I am truly grateful for having had these special people in my life, that they have been and will always be part of me in my heart. Below is a short poem by someone very special to me, and if you followed my SecondLife adventures on DeviantArt, you would know who that is.
I want to wish each of you a very, merry Christmas full of love and laughter and family and friends and wrapping paper and presents and happiness and joy. I wish each of you to have whatever Christmas miracle you have been praying for. I believe that magic happens at Christmas.
Merry Christmas to you all.
Sophia
----
Sophia - My Friend, My Lover, My Mistress
I am not a poet, I am a Lioness - but every word is from deep in my heart and carries with it ALL my Love and Trust - so 😊💋here goes:
My Friend, My Lover, My Raven Mistress Sophia,
You give me love and accept mine;
I handed you my whole trust with no fear,
In turn, I cherish yours like a precious shrine.
You possess beauty of body, heart, soul and mind;
You lead me wondrous places I never thought to find.
You are my Reason, my Love, my Life.
We share so much - moments glorious,
Soft words, sensual whispers, joyous pleasure;
"Oasis" times so golden precious;
Time to laugh, time to love, time for leisure.
I lift "dark clouds" and make you - YOU,
Sensual Romantic, gentle Lover to name but few.
You make me happy, you make me smile - you make me complete.
The road of love we share, can be tough,
If too easy - it would be a mere shallow vanity;
A mood here, misunderstanding there - can be rough -
But through it shines true love for eternity.
I demand nothing, you make me rich,
I tremble, I smile, I do not flinch.
My Friend, My Lover, I will not disappoint You.
I look at you - my eyes smoulder - I blaze,
You set me afire throughout every hour,
And, I feel desired,loved, wanted under your gaze.
You make me blossom, bloom - like precious flower,
You make me weak, you make me strong -
You lift me up till I shout your name with joyous song.
YOU are my ONLY Mistress, My True Friend, My Beautiful Lover.
If I stumble - have patience - guide me;
If I misunderstand, it is not intentional;
If I err, help me see;
I ask little - I give you ME, my ALL.
Sophia, I am unreservedly yours in love,
Your Lioness, like a rock - unshakeable - will not move.
Darling Sophia - you make me whole and bring me joy.
When you need I will soothe you - calm you with loving care;
Let me ease and caress worries away;
Come to me as you want - to share;
Let what WE want - how and when - be the day.
Your beauty, your warmth - sometimes - leave me speechless;
Your touches, your kisses, your words leave me breathless.
My Darling - I am patient - I am here - whatever, however, whenever.
Sophia - I just LOVE YOU in a myriad inexplicable ways
Rain Man is a 1988 American road comedy-drama film directed by Barry Levinson, from a screenplay written by Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass. It tells the story of abrasive, selfish young wheeler-dealer Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise), who discovers that his estranged father has died and bequeathed virtually all of his multimillion dollar estate to his other son, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), an autistic savant, of whose existence Charlie was unaware. Charlie is left with only his father's beloved vintage car and rosebushes. Valeria Golino also stars as Charlie's girlfriend Susanna. Morrow created the character of Raymond after meeting Kim Peek, a real-life savant; his characterization was based on both Peek and Bill Sackter, a good friend of Morrow who was the subject of Bill (1981), an earlier film that Morrow wrote.[3]
Rain Man premiered at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Bear, the festival's highest prize.[4] It was theatrically released by MGM/UA Communications Co. in the United States on December 16, 1988, to critical and commercial success, grossing $354.8 million, on a $25 million budget, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1988, and received a leading eight nominations at the 61st Academy Awards, winning four (more than any other film nominated); Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (for Hoffman), and Best Original Screenplay.[5]
As of 2022, Rain Man is the first and only film to win both Golden Bear and Academy Award for Best Picture. It was also the last MGM title to be nominated for Best Picture until Licorice Pizza (2021) 33 years later.[6]
Contents
1Plot
2Cast
3Production
4Release
4.1Box office
4.2Critical reception
5Accolades
6In popular culture
6.1Qantas and airline controversy
6.2The Buick convertible
7See also
8References
9External links
Plot[edit]
Collectibles dealer Charlie Babbitt is in the middle of importing four grey market Lamborghinis to Los Angeles for resale. He needs to deliver the cars to impatient buyers, who have already made down payments, in order to repay the loan he took out to buy them, but the EPA is holding the cars at the port because they have failed emissions tests. Charlie directs an employee to lie to the buyers while he stalls his creditor.
When Charlie learns that his estranged father Sanford Babbitt has died, he and his girlfriend Susanna travel to Cincinnati in order to settle the estate. He inherits only a group of rosebushes and a classic 1949 Buick Roadmaster convertible over which he and his father clashed, while the remainder of the $3 million estate is going to an unnamed trustee. He learns that the money is being directed to a local mental institution, where he meets his elder brother, Raymond, of whom he was unaware his whole life.
Raymond has autism and savant syndrome and adheres to strict routines. He has superb recall, but he shows little emotional expression except when in distress. Charlie spirits Raymond out of the mental institution and into a hotel for the night. Susanna becomes upset with the way Charlie treats his brother and leaves him. Charlie asks Raymond's doctor, Dr. Gerald Bruner, for half the estate in exchange for Raymond's return, but Bruner refuses. Charlie decides to attempt to gain custody of his brother in order to get control of the money.
After Raymond refuses to fly to Los Angeles, he and Charlie resort to driving there instead. They make slow progress because Raymond insists on sticking to his routines, which include watching The People's Court on television every day, getting to bed by 11:00 PM, and refusing to travel when it rains. He also objects to traveling on the interstate after they encounter a car accident. During the course of the journey, Charlie learns more about Raymond, including his ability to instantly perform complex calculations and count hundreds of objects at once, far beyond the normal range of human subitizing abilities. He also realizes Raymond had lived with the family as a child and was the "Rain Man", a comforting figure that Charlie had falsely remembered as an imaginary friend. Raymond had saved an infant Charlie from being scalded by hot bathwater one day, but their father had blamed him for nearly injuring Charlie and committed him to the institution, as he was unable to speak up for himself and correct the misunderstanding.
Charlie's creditor repossesses the Lamborghinis, forcing him to refund his buyers' down payments and leaving him deeply in debt. Having passed Las Vegas, he and Raymond return to Caesars Palace on the Strip and devise a plan to win the needed money by playing blackjack and counting cards. Though the casino bosses obtain videotape evidence of the scheme and ask them to leave, Charlie successfully wins $86,000 to cover his debts and reconciles with Susanna, who has rejoined the brothers in Las Vegas.
Returning to Los Angeles, Charlie meets with Bruner, who offers him $250,000 to walk away from Raymond. Charlie refuses and says that he is no longer upset about being cut out of his father's will, but he wants to have a relationship with his brother. At a meeting with a court-appointed psychiatrist, Raymond proves unable to decide for himself what he wants. Charlie stops the questioning and tells Raymond he is happy to have him as his brother. As Raymond and Bruner board a train to return to the institution, Charlie promises to visit in two weeks.
Cast[edit]
Dustin Hoffman as Raymond "Ray" Babbitt, an autistic savant who is Charlie's elder brother
Tom Cruise as Charles "Charlie" Babbitt
Valeria Golino as Susanna
Jerry Molen as Dr. Gerald Bruner
Ralph Seymour as Lenny
Michael D. Roberts as Vern
Bonnie Hunt as Sally Dibbs
Beth Grant as Mother at Farm House
Lucinda Jenney as Iris
Barry Levinson as Doctor
Production[edit]
A now-abandoned gas station and general store in Cogar, Oklahoma was used in a scene from the film. The Colvert sign has since been removed, revealing the full name of the business.
Roger Birnbaum was the first studio executive to give the film a green light; he did so immediately after Barry Morrow pitched the story. Birnbaum received "special thanks" in the film's credits.[citation needed]
Real-life brothers Dennis Quaid and Randy Quaid were considered for the roles of Raymond Babbitt and Charles Babbitt.[7] Agents at CAA sent the script to Dustin Hoffman and Bill Murray, envisioning Murray in the title role and Hoffman in the role eventually portrayed by Cruise.[3] Martin Brest, Steven Spielberg and Sydney Pollack were directors also involved in the film.[8] Mickey Rourke was also offered a role but he turned it down.[9]
Principal photography included nine weeks of filming on location in Cincinnati and throughout northern Kentucky.[10] Other portions were shot in the desert near Palm Springs, California.[11]: 168–71
Almost all of the principal photography occurred during the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike; one key scene that was affected by the lack of writers was the film's final scene.[3] Bass delivered his last rough cut of the script only hours before the strike started and spent no time on the set.[8]
Release[edit]
Box office[edit]
Rain Man debuted on December 16, 1988, and was the second highest-grossing film at the weekend box office (behind Twins), with $7 million.[12] It reached the first spot on the December 30 – January 2 weekend, finishing 1988 with $42 million.[13] The film would end up as the highest-grossing U.S. film of 1988 by earning over $172 million. The film grossed over $354 million worldwide.[2]
Critical reception[edit]
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 89% based on 79 reviews, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The website's critical consensus states: "This road-trip movie about an autistic savant and his callow brother is far from seamless, but Barry Levinson's direction is impressive, and strong performances from Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman add to its appeal."[14] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on 18 critic, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[15] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[16]
Vincent Canby of The New York Times called Rain Man a "becomingly modest, decently thought-out, sometimes funny film"; Hoffman's performance was a "display of sustained virtuosity . . . [which] makes no lasting connections with the emotions. Its end effect depends largely on one's susceptibility to the sight of an actor acting nonstop and extremely well, but to no particularly urgent dramatic purpose."[17] Canby considered the "film's true central character" to be "the confused, economically and emotionally desperate Charlie, beautifully played by Mr. Cruise."[17]
Amy Dawes of Variety wrote that "one of the year's most intriguing film premises ... is given uneven, slightly off-target treatment"; she called the road scenes "hastily, loosely written, with much extraneous screen time," but admired the last third of the film, calling it a depiction of "two very isolated beings" who "discover a common history and deep attachment."[18]
One of the film's harshest reviews came from New Yorker magazine critic Pauline Kael, who said, "Everything in this movie is fudged ever so humanistically, in a perfunctory, low-pressure way. And the picture has its effectiveness: people are crying at it. Of course they're crying at it—it's a piece of wet kitsch."[19]
Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four. He wrote, "Hoffman proves again that he almost seems to thrive on impossible acting challenges...I felt a certain love for Raymond, the Hoffman character. I don't know quite how Hoffman got me to do it."[20] Gene Siskel also gave the film three and a half stars out of four, singling out Cruise for praise, "The strength of the film is really that of Cruise's performance...the combination of two superior performances makes the movie worth watching."[21]
Rain Man was placed on 39 critics' "ten best" lists in 1988, based on a poll of the nation's top 100 critics.[22]
Accolades[edit]
AwardCategoryNominee(s)Result
Academy Awards[5]Best PictureMark JohnsonWon
Best DirectorBarry LevinsonWon
Best ActorDustin HoffmanWon
Best Screenplay – Written Directly for the ScreenRonald Bass and Barry MorrowWon
Best Art DirectionIda Random and Linda DeScennaNominated
Best CinematographyJohn SealeNominated
Best Film EditingStu LinderNominated
Best Original ScoreHans ZimmerNominated
American Cinema Editors AwardsBest Edited Feature FilmStu LinderWon
American Society of Cinematographers Awards[23]Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical ReleasesJohn SealeNominated
Berlin International Film Festival[24]Golden BearBarry LevinsonWon
Berliner Morgenpost Readers' Jury AwardWon
BMI Film & TV AwardsFilm Music AwardHans ZimmerWon
British Academy Film Awards[25]Best Actor in a Leading RoleDustin HoffmanNominated
Best Original ScreenplayRonald Bass and Barry MorrowNominated
Best EditingStu LinderNominated
César Awards[26]Best Foreign FilmBarry LevinsonNominated
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards[27]Best ActorDustin HoffmanNominated
David di Donatello AwardsBest Foreign FilmBarry LevinsonWon
Best Foreign DirectorNominated
Best Foreign ActorDustin HoffmanWon
Best Foreign ProducerMark JohnsonNominated
Best Foreign ScreenplayRonald Bass and Barry MorrowNominated
Directors Guild of America Awards[28]Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion PicturesBarry LevinsonWon
Golden Globe Awards[29]Best Motion Picture – DramaWon
Best Actor in a Motion Picture – DramaDustin HoffmanWon
Best Director – Motion PictureBarry LevinsonNominated
Best Screenplay – Motion PictureRonald Bass and Barry MorrowNominated
Goldene Kamera (1989)Golden ScreenWon
Goldene Kamera (1991)Golden Screen with 1 StarWon
Heartland FilmTruly Moving Picture AwardBarry LevinsonWon
Japan Academy Film PrizeOutstanding Foreign Language FilmNominated
Jupiter AwardsBest International FilmBarry LevinsonWon
Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards[30]Best FilmWon
Best DirectorBarry LevinsonWon
Best ActorDustin HoffmanWon
Best Supporting ActorTom CruiseWon[a]
Kinema Junpo AwardsBest Foreign Language FilmBarry LevinsonWon
Mainichi Film AwardsBest Foreign Language FilmWon
MTV Video Music AwardsBest Video from a Film"Iko Iko" – The Belle StarsNominated
Nastro d'ArgentoBest Foreign DirectorBarry LevinsonNominated
Best Supporting ActressValeria GolinoNominated
National Society of Film Critics Awards[31]Best ActorDustin Hoffman3rd Place
New York Film Critics Circle Awards[32]Best Actor2nd Place
Nikkan Sports Film AwardsBest Foreign FilmWon
People's Choice AwardsFavorite Dramatic Motion PictureWon
Turkish Film Critics Association AwardsBest Foreign Film2nd Place
Writers Guild of America Awards[33]Best Screenplay – Written Directly for the ScreenRonald Bass and Barry MorrowNominated
YoGa AwardsWorst Foreign ActorDustin HoffmanWon
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
2006: AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers - #63
In popular culture[edit]
Rain Man's portrayal of the main character's condition has been seen as creating the erroneous media stereotype that people on the autism spectrum typically have savant skills, and references to Rain Man, in particular Dustin Hoffman's performance, have become a popular shorthand for autism and savantism. Conversely, Rain Man has also been seen as dispelling a number of other misconceptions about autism, and improving public awareness of the failure of many agencies to accommodate autistic people and make use of the abilities they do have, regardless of whether they have savant skills or not.[34]
The film is also known for popularizing the misconception that card counting is illegal in the United States.[35]
The Babbitt brothers appear in The Simpsons season 5 episode $pringfield. The film is mentioned in numerous other films such as Miss Congeniality (2000), 21 (2008), Tropic Thunder (2008) (in which Tom Cruise made an appearance), The Hangover (2009), Escape Room (2019), and also in the television series Breaking Bad.
Raymond Babbitt was caricatured as a rain cloud in the animated episode of The Nanny, "Oy to the World". During the episode, Fran fixes up CC the Abominable Babcock with the Rain Man. He is portrayed as a cloud of rain mumbling about weather patterns and being an excellent driver.
Qantas and airline controversy[edit]
During June 1989, at least fifteen major airlines showed edited versions of Rain Man that omitted a scene involving Raymond's refusal to fly, mentioning the crashes of American Airlines Flight 625, Delta Air Lines Flight 191, and Continental Airlines Flight 1713, except on Australia-based Qantas. Those criticizing this decision included film director Barry Levinson, co-screenwriter Ronald Bass, and George Kirgo (at the time the President of the Writers Guild of America, West). "I think it's a key scene to the entire movie," Levinson said in a telephone interview. "That's why it's in there. It launches their entire odyssey across country – because they couldn't fly." While some of those airlines cited as justification avoiding having airplane passengers feel uncomfortable in sympathy with Raymond during the in-flight entertainment, the scene was shown intact on flights of Qantas, and commentators noted that Raymond mentions it as the only airline whose planes have "never crashed".[36][37] The film is credited with introducing Qantas' safety record to U.S. consumers.[38][39]
The Buick convertible[edit]
Two 1949 Roadmaster convertibles were used in the filming, one of which had its rear suspension stiffened to bear the additional load of camera equipment and a cameraman. After filming completed, the unmodified car was acquired by Hoffman, who had it restored, added it to his collection and kept it for 34 years. Hemmings Motor News reported that this car was auctioned in January 2022 by Bonhams at Scottsdale, Arizona and sold for $335,000.[40] The camera-carrying car was similarly acquired by Barry Levinson, who a few years later had it restored by Wayne Carini of the Chasing Classic Cars television series.
Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone
But it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me
Ryōan-ji (龍安寺 o 竜安寺 El templo del dragón tranquilo y pacífico) es un templo Zen situado en Kioto, Japón. Forma parte del conjunto de Monumentos históricos de la antigua Kioto (ciudades de Kioto, Uji y Otsu) declarados Patrimonio de la Humanidad por la Unesco en el año 1994. El templo fue creado por la escuela Myoshinji de los Rinzai, pertenecientes al Budismo Zen.
Dentro de este templo existe uno de los karesansui (jardines secos) más famosos del mundo, construido a finales del siglo XV, en torno al 1488. El creador de este jardín no dejó ninguna explicación sobre su significado, por lo que durante siglos ha sido un misterio descubrir el verdadero sentido o el porqué de su gran belleza.
Se trata de un jardín rectangular construido frente al edificio principal. La composición utiliza arena rastrillada, musgo y rocas. Existe un predominio de formas alargadas colocadas en paralelo a la posición del edificio.
Los tres lados restantes están cerrados por muros, lo que -junto a la línea inferior de la plataforma desde la que se debe contemplar el edificio- permite acotar la visión del jardín en un marco longitudinal.
Durante muchos años se pensó que la mejor interpretación del sentido de la disposición de las piedras en el jardín era el de una especie de "Tigre cruzando un río". En el 2002, unos científicos de la Universidad de Kioto utilizaron ordenadores para buscar formas usando la disposición de las zonas vacías del jardín en vez de la disposición de las piedras y encontraron el patrón de un árbol escondido dentro de la estructura del jardín. Dicen que por eso es tan placentero presenciar el jardín, nuestro subconsiciente capta el patrón del árbol sin que lo notemos.
El mismo equipo de investigación probó moviendo algunas piedras de forma aleatoria y vieron que enseguida se perdía la armonía de la configuración inicial. Por ello creen que la construcción del jardín está muy bien pensada y no es un acto de la casualidad.
Aunque el jardín de rocas es el más conocido de Ryōan-ji, el templo también tiene un jardín acuático; el estanque Kyoyochi, construido en el siglo XII como parte de la finca Fujiwara. Recientemente se han plantado cerezos al noroeste del estanque.
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%8Dan-ji
japonismo.com/blog/viajar-japon-el-templo-ryoanji-de-kioto
Ryōan-ji (Shinjitai: 竜安寺, Kyūjitai: 龍安寺, The Temple of the Dragon at Peace) is a Zen temple located in northwest Kyoto, Japan. It belongs to the Myōshin-ji school of the Rinzai branch of Zen Buddhism. The Ryōan-ji garden is considered one of the finest surviving examples of kare-sansui ("dry landscape"), a refined type of Japanese Zen temple garden design generally featuring distinctive larger rock formations arranged amidst a sweep of smooth pebbles (small, carefully selected polished river rocks) raked into linear patterns that facilitate meditation. The temple and its gardens are listed as one of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, and as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
There is controversy over who built the garden and when. Most sources date it to the second half of the 15th century. The conclusive history, though, based on documentary sources, is as follows: Hosokawa Katsumoto (1430–1473), deputy to the shōgun, founded in 1450 the Ryōan-ji temple, but the complex was burnt down during the Ōnin War. His son Masamoto rebuilt the temple at the very end of the same century. It is not clear whether any garden was constructed at that time facing the main hall. First descriptions of a garden, clearly describing one in front of the main hall, date from 1680–1682. It is described as a composition of nine big stones laid out to represent Tiger Cubs Crossing the Water. As the garden has fifteen stones at present, it was clearly different from the garden that we see today. A great fire destroyed the buildings in 1779, and rubble of the burnt buildings was dumped in the garden. Garden writer and specialist Akisato Rito (died c. 1830) redid the garden completely on top of the rubble at the end of the eighteenth century and published a picture of his garden in his Celebrated Gardens and Sights of Kyoto (Miyako rinsen meisho zue) of 1799, showing the garden as it looks today. One big stone at the back was buried partly; it has two first names carved in it, probably names of untouchable stone workers, so called kawaramono. There is no evidence of Zen monks having worked on the garden, apart from the raking of the sand.
The temple's name is synonymous with the temple's famous Zen garden, the karesansui (dry landscape) rock garden, thought to have been built in the late 15th century.
The garden is a rectangle of 248 square meters (2,670 square feet), twenty-five meters by ten meters. Placed within it are fifteen stones of different sizes, carefully composed in five groups; one group of five stones, two groups of three, and two groups of two stones. The stones are surrounded by white gravel, which is carefully raked each day by the monks. The only vegetation in the garden is some moss around the stones.
The garden is meant to be viewed from a seated position on the veranda of the hōjō, the residence of the abbot of the monastery. The stones are placed so that the entire composition cannot be seen at once from the veranda. They are also arranged so that when looking at the garden from any angle (other than from above) only fourteen of the boulders are visible at one time. It is traditionally said that only through attaining enlightenment would one be able to view the fifteenth boulder.
The wall behind the garden is an important element of the garden. It is made of clay, which has been stained by age with subtle brown and orange tones. In 1977, the tile roof of the wall was restored with tree bark to its original appearance. When the garden was rebuilt in 1799, it came up higher than before and a view over the wall to the mountain scenery behind came about. At present this view is blocked by trees.
Like any work of art, the artistic garden of Ryōan-ji is also open to interpretation or research into possible meanings. Many different theories have been put forward inside and outside Japan about what the garden is supposed to represent, from islands in a stream, a tiger family crossing a river, mountain peaks, to theories about secrets of geometry or the rules of equilibrium of odd numbers. Garden historian Gunter Nitschke wrote: "The garden at Ryōan-ji does not symbolize anything, or more precisely, to avoid any misunderstanding, the garden of Ryōan-ji does not symbolize, nor does it have the value of reproducing a natural beauty that one can find in the real or mythical world. I consider it to be an abstract composition of 'natural' objects in space, a composition whose function is to incite meditation."
In an article published by the science journal Nature, Gert van Tonder and Michael Lyons analyze the rock garden by generating a model of shape analysis (medial axis) in early visual processing.
Using this model, they show that the empty space of the garden is implicitly structured, and is aligned with the temple's architecture. According to the researchers, one critical axis of symmetry passes close to the centre of the main hall, which is the traditionally preferred viewing point. In essence, viewing the placement of the stones from a sightline along this point brings a shape from nature (a dichotomously branched tree with a mean branch length decreasing monotonically from the trunk to the tertiary level) in relief.
The researchers propose that the implicit structure of the garden is designed to appeal to the viewer's unconscious visual sensitivity to axial-symmetry skeletons of stimulus shapes. In support of their findings, they found that imposing a random perturbation of the locations of individual rock features destroyed the special characteristics.
While the rock garden is the best-known garden of Ryōan-ji, the temple also has a water garden; the Kyoyochi Pond, built in the 12th century as part of the Fujiwara estate. Cherry trees have recently been planted northwest of the pond.
A moment of misunderstanding can break two hearts..so, don't break a heart, resolve the small period of tension and make your moments even more happier..:-)
Look After You
After recent events, after all misunderstandings Dannee and her two closest persons mended what was cracked between them. With Chil’a, the holiday of the New Year time approaching, it is time for forgiveness, presents and bright hopes for the future… - www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/images/370813/?
There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding about what constitutes a Vintage Show Us A Little Leg photograph. This example is an archetype of the form. The LEG SHOWING must be intentional. INTENTIONAL. Being in a bathing suit is not necessarily intentional leg showing, unless it's like one of those old-timey wool skirt things they used to wear in the way way back, pulled up just a tad to display a bit of inner thigh.
After imbibing some ethnography and natural history at the pleasant Sarawak Museum we walked in the Serene Gardens of the Old Reservoir. Here's a pretty Chinese bridge there.
This Reservoir and the Chinese of Kuching are closely connected in a perhaps surprising way.
'Common Knowledge' has it that the name Kuching by which the second White Rajah, Sir Charles Anthoni Johnson Brooke (1829-1917), named his capital on August 12, 1872, means "Cat City". The story is told that name is due to a misunderstanding between Brooke and a local Malay: Brooke with a sweep of his hand asking what this place was called, and our Malay thinking he was pointing to a cat uttering the Malay word for that creature: kuching. It has been pointed out by Francis Chan that the local, Sarawakan Malay for cat is not 'kuching'. 'Ku-ching', he says, is a Mandarin word for 'Old Well'. It refers to the old well on Upper China Street that was used for good drinking water before the (now old) reservoir for good piped water was completed in 1895. So 'Kuching' means something like 'Good Drinking Water City'.
No doubt this story leaves room for discussion as well... possibly as you're ambling over this pretty bridge.
"VIDEO KILLED THE RADO STAR?"
Well, just about, I'm a tad knackered at the moment!
G’day, I’ve been a wee bit quiet for the past few weeks as I reviewed movies at this year’s 2007 Melbourne (Australia) International Film Festival. I broadcast the reviews over about two and a half hours all up on my show, Zero-G: Science Fiction, Fantasy & Historical Radio, on 3RRR FM. (rrr.org.au)
The above picture is the sign on the Erwin Rado Theatre at 211 Johnson Street, Fitzroy, where the MIFF has its headquarters. The building's nothing much to look at from outside, really! But the sign...well, THAT has character!
Below the MIFF offices, the theatre, named after the director of the Film Festival from 1957 - 1983, has a charming old 69 seat cinema that can screen 16mm and 35mm film as well as DVD, LaserDisc, VHS, Data and MiniDV.
The MIFF’s access to the theatre expired at the end of 2007 and, ideally, it really should have its own dedicated screening facility, as other major city’s film festivals have. Still, the office itself has now moved to a more central location in Melbourne, which is handy!
To find out more about the MIFF go here:
www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/
Anyway, I thought I’d post some of reviews here, inspired by films that I particularly enjoyed at this year’s event.
The full transcripts can be found at:
-AACHI & SSIPAK-
SOUTH KOREA
This continuously violent South Korean animated adult feature presents a future where human excrement is an energy source. Citizens have a monitoring chip attached to their arses and particularly productive individuals are rewarded with addictive drug laced munchies called Juicy Bars.
I shit you not.
The story begins with a roadwarrior highway battle as the swarming blue mutant Diaper Gang (!) attempts to truckjack a cargo of Juicy Bars, only to encounter a devastatingly lethal cyborg enforcer who makes Judge Dredd look like a human rights campaigner.
Headshot bodies fall at a rate that would impress Aeon Flux and Samurai Jack combined as the repressive government, assorted roving bands of bandits and con men, including the title characters Aachi and Ssipak (pronounced ‘she-pock’) along with a feisty would-be actress, all compete for the Juicy Bars.
Given the outrageous level of mayhem and the giggling concept that lies at the, er, bottom of the plot, it’s hardly worth noting that the animators cheerfully raid pop culture for many sequences, including the films Aliens and Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom. The latter is extensively overmined for one tunnel chase set up.
The animation is quite stylistically vigorous while the off the wall social commentary reminds me a little of the kind of thing that animator Ralph Bakshi attempted in his Fritz The Cat days, well before the likes of South Park and its shock-anime kin. There’s also something to be said for the biting political satire that runs through the narrative, which results in the government and gang leader being merely two opposite sides of the same ruthless coin.
People with kids could have pointless fun banning them from seeing this film, but apparently MTV’s thinking of doing a telly series based on it anyway, so, futile or what?
Subtle it isn’t, but it is a species of wicked fun that will gather bums on seats!
Director Joe Bum-jin
2006/90mins
-A FEW DAYS IN SEPTEMBER-
ITALY/FRANCE/PORTUGAL
The first film directed by screenwriter Santiago Amigorena, A Few Days In September
(Quelques Jours en Septembre), is a laid back but quite charming French spy thriller that makes espionage a family affair...and a realistically bickering family at that.
Elliot, mostly alluded to or played as an off screen voiceover by Nick Nolte until near the film’s conclusion, is an ex-CIA agent with knowledge about the upcoming 911 attacks. He hopes to trade the information for a stake that will enable him to reunite and live with his biological daughter and step-son, legacies of two seperate cover identity marriages in France and the U.S.
Much sought after by various factions, Elliot entrusts his grown up children, Orlando (Sara Forestier) and David (British actor Tom Riley) to the capable care of Irène, a cool, experienced French secret agent who used to be Elliot’s colleague. The potentially overwhelming meta-story takes a back seat to the character relationships, which makes a nice change to the usual breathless adventures that would normally puff up this kind of story into a by-the-numbers action thriller.
Juliette Binoche brings marvelous, stylish depth to her role as world wise spy Irène, providing a wryly sophisticated setting for her charges’ inevitable romance. (What IS it with the French anyway? After Irène’s arm is injured she turns up wearing a chic scarf as a sling, but of course!) Always gorgeous, the actress pitches the character as being adept enough at her deadly trade so that she can afford to enjoy herself while she works. Forestier is all sharp edged, angry eyed angst as she works through father/daughter issues while Riley nervously cooks (his character worked in a restaurant) for the two formidable women who have abruptly complicated his life with their Amazonian expertise with firearms. I also very much enjoyed the arch Franco/American banter between Orlando and David.
Seeking Elliot through the medium of his children is William Pound, a whacko ‘wet work’ assassin who has a penchant for poetry, drives a florist’s delivery van and has a mobile phone plagued by the world’s most annoying ringtone. Pound’s character is tightly wound by John Turturro, who played one of the convicts in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and also an equally obsessive relative of the title character in the television series Monk.
A Few Days In September benefits from first rate cinematography, including some playful soft focus shots that whimsically render Venice and Paris, cheekily explained by Irène’s habit of removing her glasses to ‘see things differently’. There’s also a cracking good shot through the dark framed doorway of a Venetian Chapel which reminded me of a signature frame from a John Ford Western, only instead of Mesas and sagebrush we get the Venice Lagoon and a passing ocean liner.
Although this film lingers perhaps a little too lovingly on the wrangling entanglements of its main characters I still found it pleasant and rewardable viewing. Amigorena certainly knows how to inject off-beat life into his characters.
Director/Screenwriter Santiago Amigorena
2006/115 mins
-BUG-
USA
When down on her luck small town waitress Agnes White (played by Ashley Judd) invites eccentric drifter Peter Evans into her seedy motel room she receives much more than she bug-aned for!
Director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, & The French Connection) gets almost unbearably psychological in this cross genre movie that wisely adds no excess fat to the one set, pressure cooker Tracy Lett’s play that it’s adapted from. As the two main characters’ relationship slowly emerges from a far too tightly spun chrysalis the film builds to one of the most intensely wound paranoic conclusions seen on screen.
Michael Shannon is gauntly convincing as Evans, a role that he pioneered in the original stage play and intially at least, reminds me a little of a young Steve McQueen or perhaps, Joachim Phoenix. Harry Connick Junior has a supporting part in the film as Agne’s ex-convict, ex-husband.
Bug’s maddeningly paced escalating tension is supported by an appropriately chittering score, composed by Brian Tyler, who also gave us soundtracks for the films Constantine, Bubba Ho-Tep, the Children of Dune miniseries, as well as episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise and the upcoming Aliens Versus Predator 2: Survival Of The Fittest. Speaking of Star Trek, Ashley Judd also played Ensign Robin Lefler in Star Trek: Next Generation.
Bug is a film that creeps up on you and by its final scuttling rush will definitely get under your skin...one way or another.
Director- William Friedkin
Screenwriter-Tracy Letts
2006/101mins
-EL TOPO-
(MEXICO)
El Topo (“The Mole”) was director Alejandro Jodorowsky's third film. The infamous Mexican allergorically surreal Eastern/Western is presented at the festival in a very fine new restoration (a bit of a shock for those used to seeing it in its customary raddled grindhouse/cult prints!) along with its natural companion piece, The Holy Mountain.
This comprehensively startling but compelling film begins, not unlike the Lone Wolf And Cub Samurai series, with the black clad, flute playing gunslinger El Topo (played by the director himself) riding across the wastelands in company with a taciturn child companion. After a blood drenched encounter with drunkenly bestial bandits El Topo replaces the boy with a seductively manipulative woman who urges him to become the greatest shootist in the world by seeking out and defeating four master gunfighters.
As with the wuxia martial arts films that this story frequently references the quest for the masters proves dangerous, difficult, baffling and wonderous.
The gunslinger’s odyssey to achieve enlightment and mastery is populated with exotic encounters and inventive, symbolically charged imagery. Deflating balloons signal the start of duels, capering outlaws with shoe fetishes rape feminised sand paintings and carve bananas with sabres, civilised townsfolk prove more depraved and debauched than the wasteland bandits, herds of rabbits mysteriously die at El Topo’s feet, incestuously deformed trogalytes living in oil drums tunnel to escape their underground prison, and live bullets are caught and deflected by butterfly nets.
This visual melange is supported by Jodorowskys and Nacho Méndezs evocative music which, by turns soothing or jarring, echoes across the many desert based sequences and permeates the locations, which frequently read more like artistic installations than sets grounded in any kind of mundane reality. In fact, there is a timeless anachronistic feel to the desert that makes you question whether this is nominally a period Western or indeed set in some kind of post-apocalyptic Stephen King future.
El Topo is rendered even stranger by its renowned mid-film gear change, one of several enigmatic transformations that can be interpreted as Buddhist inspired reincarnations of the title character.
Just imagine what might have been if Jodorowsky had pulled off his mid-70s adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune, with its intended cast of Salvidor Dali as the Emperor, Mick Jagger playing Feyd Rautha and Orson Welles as Baron Harkonnen? As it is the Acid Western tradition at least got another outing in Jim Jarmusch's more recent film, Dead Man, which, for all its many remarkable charms, by comparison to El Topo is cast into monochrome shade.
A bizarre chimera even by Zero-G's notoriously unhinged standards El Topo is a cult classic given gloriously grotesque new life by its own recent transfiguring restoration.
Director/Screenwriter Alejandro Jodorowsky
1971/125mins
-FIDO-
Canada/USA
Fido fiendishly expands upon the gag featured in Shaun of the Dead (amongst other films) that zombies could be domesticated to perform simple tasks. Zombies helping in the kitchen? Uh-oh, better make sure they keep those rotting fingers are kept hygenically away from food preparation surfaces with a pair of crisp, clean white cotton gloves....
In an alternate 1950s the all encompassing ZomCom, which apparently helped win the Zombie War, protects and serves the walled small towns of America. Now, we all know that the only reason to provide zombies with clever electronic control collars is so that the gadgets can malfunction; cue zombie outbreak! It’s the slyly subversive juxtaposition of wholesome mom and apple-pie Leave It To Beaver sitcom with Zombie killing procedural that lends this consistently bemusing film a wicked Addams Family style where Pop naturally reads Death Magazine and scenes shot in cars are filmed using good old fashioned rear screen projection.
Not that we’re talking Black and White telly, nosirree Bob! Fido is filmed in full, glorious technicolour, complete with ginormous finned automobiles, two toned shoes and compliant Stepford housewives who wait at the front door for their patriarchal hubbies to take the martini from their submissive, manicured hands. Happily, Carrie Anne-Moss in one of the main roles, as Helen Robinson, is more of a buddingly feisty Desperate Housewife after the armed and dangerous example of Bree Hodge. (From The Matrix to a zombie packed Pleasantville is indeed an ironic career path!) It’s not long before Helen kicks over the domestic traces following the example of her young son, Timmy (knowingly played by the intriguingly named K’Sun Ray) and his new pet zombie, the Fido of the title, embodied by Billy Connolly. Connolly plays the long suffering Fido with toothy glee, moaning and groaning and lurching in the throes of what could easily double as a hangover of fatally heroic proportions.
Keep an eye out (easy to do in a zombie film) for Dylan Baker, as the nervously cheerful Bill Robinson. Baker has had the sleeper part of Doctor Curt Connors in the Spider-Man films and, as comic book fans anticipate, should eventually get to mutate into the super-villain, The Lizard.
Fido is my genre pic of the Festival, in the tradition of another year’s shambling B-schlock spoof, The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra. I ask you, how can I not enjoy sinking my teeth into a film where a pet zombie is addressed with a line like: “What’s that Fido? Timmy’s in trouble?”
It’s enough to make Lassie dig her way out of her grave!
Director- Andrew Currie
Screenwriters- Robert Chomiak, Andrew Currie, Dennis Heaton
2006/91mins
-HANSEL & GRETEL-
GERMANY
If you go down to the woods today.....you’d better take your copy of the Brothers Grimm Cookbook For Baking Independent Elderly Female Cannibal Sorceresses.
German director Anne Wild and screenwriter Peter Schwindt settle for a straightforward retelling of the classic rural ‘stranger danger’ story wherein the devious Gretel proves the most resourceful of two deliberately lost children who end up on the menu of the obligatory member of the local Guild of Almagamated Wicked Witches & Confectioners.
Deliberately lost? How do you think the kids got to be wandering around in Blair Witchburg in the first place? Sometimes tactfully omitted from modern retellings of this familiar story is the neglected element of child abandonment, a practice forced upon starving families in situations of plague, famine, wars and other social upheavals. In this case, it’s the pragmatic step-mother who pushes her more sentimental but nontheless compliant woodcutter husband into cutting loose the kids.
In early versions of the story it’s usually just the natural mother who suggests jettisoning the offspring...a much more useful cautionary tale for parents to use as and Awful Threat when disciplining naughty anklebiters.
Leaving aside observations about how Hansel and Gretel underlines the historical distrust of skilled single women of independent means this is actually a moderately creepily staged film. The woods are suitably threatening, and the witch herself, though certainly not up to Buffy The Vampire Slayer standards is a reasonably nasty albeit dimwitted piece of work...
I never can figure out quite why witchy poo needed to go Hannibal Lector on kiddies when she was capable of whipping up enough food to fatten a small army, not to mention all that square footage of gingerbread real estate. Let’s just assume it’s an alternative lifestyle choice, along the lines of supergenius Wile. E. Coyote yearning after Roadrunner drumsticks in spite of the fact that he had enough credit to order truckloads of expensive gadgets from the ACME Corporation.
(On the subject of ghoulish folks developing a fondness for ‘long pig’ just what DID those darling children do with the oven fired witch after they fried her arse?)
We all know how this ends, after making off with the witch’s portable property the kids, in a remarkable act of forgiveness, share their taxfree windfall with their deadbeat dad...though their step mother has obligingly dropped dead in the meanwhile.
Hmm, did anyone actually see step-mama and Ms Witch in the same room at the same time?
Don’t expect a Post-Modern fractured fairytale from Hansel and Gretel and you won’t be led astray by what’s essentially a traditionally told, moderately unsettling film.
Director- Anne Wild
Screenwriter- Peter Schwindt
2006/76mins
-THE HOLY MOUNTAIN-
MEXICO
If you thought Alejandro Jodorowsky’s third film, El Topo, was weird...well, no caca Sherlock!
Wait until you get a load of this....
His next surreally allegorical outing, 1973’s The Holy Mountain, scales even more whackily experimental heights. Like El Topo, The Holy Mountain has also been recently, lovingly restored, all the better to trip out on the eye bulging psychedelic imagery!
Again, as with El Topo, the nominal protagonist is on a messianic quest to achieve enlightment. Even more ironically symbolic in this case since the central thief character bears a strong and exploitable resemblance to the traditional representation of Jesus Christ.
Horácio Salinas plays the hapless thief, leaving Jodorowsky himself the catalytic role of a tower dwelling alchemist who charges him to accompany seven influential but materialistic powerbrokers to Lotus Island where they will achieve eternal life once they have climbed the eponymous Holy Mountain.
Initially the dialogue is thin on the ground but soon ramps up to cheerfully inexplicable levels where a line like “hypersexed brown native vampires” can pass without comment or indeed comprehension. Politics, art, sexuality, and filmmaking, amongst many other subjects, all cop a satirical hiding in this extraordinary film which relies heavily upon fantasy imagery drawn from tarot cards, astrology and religion.
Just listing a few of the oddball ideas gives you an idea of the unique scope of Jorodowsky’s fevered imagination.
Two women are ‘cleansed’ of clothing, make-up, jewellery, false nails, and hair by a black robed priest who himself has ebony varnished fingernails. A screaming man lies covered in tarantulas...no big acting stretch there! The Invasion of Mexico is renacted by lizards dressed in Mezoamerican costumes battling frogs wearing Conquistador armour and missionary robes. (I have my doubts about this sequence, it sure looks like the poor frogs are really being blown up by explosives?) A mulitple amputee writes cryptic messages in the dirt with a severed animal leg. Parading prostitutes turn out to be just as holy as priests. Roman soldiers cast the thief in plaster and create a line of life-sized crucifiction merchandise. Art factory paint coated nude backsides stamp out images on a production line while live body painted nudes are built into installations so they can be fondled by gallery patrons. Gas masked soldiers attend dances and machine guns and hand grenades are painted in rainbow colours. Spartan like warriors pursue a cunning plan to emasculate 1000 heroes to create a shrine of 1000 testicles....and nevermind what they did with the other 1000! Eviscerated victims spill chicken guts....and I mean they literally pull chickens from their wounds’ while Liederhosen wearing Teutonics trip on drugs and strongmen are able to turn intangible and teleport through entire mountains.
Distantly reminiscent of Fellini’s Satyricon, and to some extent Roma, The Holy Mountain also boasts the most startling Orgasmatron machine since the erotic cult film Barbarella, in the form of a Giant mechanical vagina that’s manipulated like a theramin.... well, if a theramin was played by a giant dildo!
Is it any surprise, really, in the wake of the cult success of El Topo, that The Holy Mountain’s producer Allen Klein also managed The Beatles and that those fans of all things psychedelic, John Lennon and Yoko Ono helped fund the movie?
Landmark or landfill experimental film? The Holy Mountain remains an obvious precursor to movies like Eraserhead, The Cremaster Cycle, and The Qatsi Trilogy.
Climb it at your own peril. (You know you want to!)
Director/Screenwriter Alejandro Jodorowsky
1973/114mins
-lLS-
France
Clementine (Olivia Bonamy) and Lucas (Michael Cohen) live happily in pastoral rural isolation in a rundown chalet in the Romanian woods, until one night they are attacked by....THEM! No, not by lurching giant ants from a 1950s horror film but by...well, that would be telling. Some horror films take their time building suspense but Moreau and Palud’s shiversome first feature nails you straight to the wall and keeps you hanging there for the economical just-over-an-hour’s running time. And I do mean ‘running’.
The adept direction and unrelating pace set within the atmospheric confines of the old chalet (a dream of a location to create nightmares in) is ramped up by genuinely unnerving sound effects design, an evocatively tense soundtrack, solid if necessarilly Spartan performances by the two leads, and the teasing revelation of the nature of the besiegers.
There’s nothing particularly new about the ingredients stirred into this terrifying mix. In fact, you could, after the credits have rolled and the lights come up again, sit back and tick off the horror cliches one by one, starting with the usually tiresome pronouncement, “Based On A True Story”. Commentators seem uncertain about the veracity of that, but in this case it adds to the overall feel of unease that permeates the ending of this film. I found myself thinking, “Y’know, I can see how that could actually happen....brrrr!”
Ils...it took me a while to realise that the title is merely the French word for “Them”... is one of the most disturbing horror films I’ve seen in some time, and all without buckets of blood or lashings of sickly inventive torture porn. With its efficient minimalist approach it’s very close in tone to the best of the New Wave of Japanese horror that burst upon the West several years ago now.
Directors/ Screenwriters- David Moreau and Xavier Palud
2006/70 mins
-ISLAND OF LOST SOULS-
DENMARK
A big budget supernatural fantasy for young adults that's part Spielberg, part Lucas, with an added dash of Harry Potter, but which ultimately wears its ample CGI well to create an enjoyable and in a few places reasonably scary film.
When two children move to a quiet country town the last thing they expect to find is a haunted island plagued by a supernatural confluence of kidnapped souls. When a young girl taps into the mystic mayhem it results in her brother being possessed by the spirit of a centuries dead member of an ancient order of sorcerous crimefighters.
The film's young actors are capable and ‘self possessed’ in the face of some quite formidable magical opposition, including a new and nasty take on that familiar player from Central Horror Casting, the living Scarecrow, along with a necromancer who could be brother to both Nosferatu and the Star Wars Emperor, right down to the cadaverous features and handy ability to cast Sith lightning from his fingies! I especialy liked the offbeat character of the trainspotting psychic investigator who inevitably comes to the kid’s aid in their hour of dire peril.
A fun little romp that’s no longer than it should be at an economical 100 minutes.
Director- Nikolaj Arcel
Screenwriter- Ramsus Heisterberg
2007/100mins
Sessions
Sun, 12th of August, 1:00 PM
ACMI
-KHADAK-
Belgium/Germany/The Netherlands
Bagi, played by Batzul Khayankhyarvaa, is a young nomad, who, along with his family are wrenched from their nomadic existence by the Mongolian government who want to consolidate people in towns, villages and cities as the fledgling democracy gears up to enter the 21st century’s global economy. After rescuing Zolzaya (Tsetsegee Byamba), a beautiful female coal thief, Bagi boldly goes where nomad has gone before on a shamanistic quest that culminates in fantastical revelations about Mongolia’s future relation with the environment.
Khadak is underpinned by a hypnotically compelling narrative fascination with magic realism that often contrasts the shabby reality of the concrete high rises with the colourfully organic traditional nomadic traditional yurt dwellings.
The film overflows with powerful imagery, including a simple but effective camera roll that causes an iconistic prayer-scarf draped tree to turn upside down as the land itself is inverted by mineral exploitation and pollution. A deserted town, in reality an abandoned former Soviet barracks, stands in for one potential future. Tractors, used to haul the disassembled yurts, are started and allowed to run aimlessly free across the steppes as the government agents burn the nomads’ links to their former lifestyle behind them.
Khadak doesn’t always offer too nostalgic a view of the nomadic struggle; many of the former rural folk cheerfully adapt to their new circumstances and some seem to pragmatically thrive, especially Bagi’s mother, who ends up running heavy machinery at the coal mine where immense draglines swing with saurian grace across the screen.
The film’s reverberating score resonates across the wind blown, echoing steppes, giving way to some moments of pure musical bliss, especially when some of the newly urbanised young people get together for astonishing ‘jam’ sessions.
Both lyrical and hard edged Khadak is a film, like Martin Scorsese’s Kundan, whose exotic sights and sounds will be welcome guests in my yurt for as long as they choose to stay.
Directors/Screenwriters- Peter Brosens, Jessica Hope Woodworth
2006/105mins
-LAST WINTER, THE-
USA/Iceland
It’s damn cold in Northern Alaska but not cold enough, as tough but soft centered Ron Perlman’s advance oil drilling preparation crew discover when they set out to re-open an isolated test drilling site that may be viable in the face of looming energy shortages. The arctic circle tundra is thawing rapidly, unleashing the kind of environmental horror movie that used to be in vogue back in the 1970s and which is all too timely now as global warming makes its presence felt in the real world.
Perlman, as usual, is excellent, giving the kind of inflected performance that graced Hellboy, Cronos, City Of Lost Children and his impressive work in the television fantasy series Beauty & The Beast. The ensemble players are also deftly sketched in, often in a low key fashion that adds realism.
Director Larry Fessenden successfully follows up and even references in one brief bit of dialogue, Wendigo, one of his earlier, not entirely disimilar horror outings. As with some other genre films in this year’s festival the horror elements are timeless; from the simmering sexual and tensions and hostility between the boffins and the bluecollars to the classic scenario of the besieged ice station. The latter is a character in itself, in the ‘Thingy’ tradition of both Howard Hawks and John Carpenter’s seperate adaptations of John W. Campbell’s seminal very Cold War science fiction novella, Who Goes There? Best possible use is made of this stunning location, as the screen often becomes an overwhelmingly vast white or dark canvas to trap and diminish the hapless blue collar workers.
Crystal clear sound design helps ‘sell’ the visuals and the impressive CGI special effects are first rate, without ever detracting from the practical drama of the sheer dangers of living and working in such an extreme environment.
The Last Winter is a cunningly ambiguous chiller that cleverly maintains a plausible alternative explanation for the film’s lethal events up to and possibly including the final admirably restrained frame which begs teasingly to be opened out into a wider shot but leaves the audience wanting more, leaving room for a possible but unecessary sequel.
Oil be back!
Director- Larry Fessenden
Screenwriters- Larry Fessenden, Robert Leaver
2006/107mins
-MEN AT WORK-
IRAN
A carload of Iranian buddies on their way down the mountains from a skiing holiday stop for a toilet break at a precipitous roadside layover and discover a monolithic rock
that just HAS to be tumbled down the slopes.
If you’re a bloke, you automatically know how it is.
If you’re a woman, equally, you KNOW how we are!
An amusing exploration of male bonding and stubborness this happily crazy film is guaranteed to contain no sociopolitical allegory whatsoever (really!) and the Iranian writer/director has asked that the U.S please refrain from invading his leg of the Axis of Evil until he has finished his next project.
Director/Screenwriter- Mani Haghighi
2006/75mins
-SEVERANCE-
UK
When completely politically incorrect arms merchant Palisade Defence rewards its crack Euro Sales division with a team-building weeked in the woods of Eastern Europe the mismatched but archtypal bickering office workers soon find that they’re not quite the ‘gun’ group that they thought they were.
Yes, the comparison of choice is The Office meets Deliverance and that’s fair enough because what makes this movie so gormlessly funny is the inept Brits Abroad schtick combined with an equally knowing, wickedly timed take on the horror slasher genre that puts most inept Hollywood fun with fear spoofs to more shame than ever. The only time this film ever really fumbles is when it takes the horror too seriously, which is not all that frequently, though more noticably and perhaps inevitably, in the apocalyptic last reel.
Oddly, Severence’s particularly grungy baddies who get to fold, spindle and mutilate our heroic twonks remind me very much of the “Stalkers” from the recent popular video game, which itself references the Tarkovsky film and the less well known science fiction novel that classic is itself based on, Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic.
The heavyweight British ensemble cast is a real corker here, and one of the most enjoyable in the festival films I’ve seen this year, including at least one former Bond villain (Toby Stephens who was Gustav Graves in Die Another Day) and the always wetly amusing Tim McInnerny who plays to his well known Blackadder type (He was both Lord Percy and Captain Darling) as the incompetent boss of the Palisade’s party.
I won’t be the last reviewer to note that Eastern Europe has become destination of choice for horror filmmakers of late. Attracted by threatening woodlands, abandoned buildings and low cost production facilities the exotic locales also perhaps wallow in a degree of smug and possibly premature Western superiority in the wake of the economic collapse of former Eastern Bloc foes. For the moment, these once hard to access countries are providing filmmakers with a place to set their stories ‘beyond the glow of the streetlights’. Again, as with other festival genre films, Severence does benefit from a marvelously decrepit Old Dark house of a location.
Severence is laced with joyfully understated sight gags, dialogue to listen for, and a good deal of well meaning irony regarding corporate responsibility. The icing on the cake is a musical score that fiddles with both ominous gypsy curses, pop tunes and even riffs off We’ll Meet Again as featured in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, to which black comedy there’s more than one reference.
Severance gives awful new meaning to the term, “You’e fired!”
Director- Christopher Smith
Screenwriters- James Moran, Christopher Smith
2006/90mins
-STILL LIFE-
HONG KONG/CHINA
An intimate but involving look at the disapora of displaced persons produced by China's Three Gorges Dam mega-engineering project as seen through the eyes of two people.
In the first part of the film coal miner Han Sanming (played by Sanming Han) returns after 16 years absence to his former home town of Fengjie, only to find its 2000 years of history submerged beneath the waters of the dam. Taking a temporary job in demolition, he searches for news of his ex wife, whom he hasn’t seen for 16 years.
Still Life never wanders far from the dominating horizontal visuals of the mighty Yangtze River and the monolithic concrete and steel dam. The apocalyptic rubble of the yet-to-be flooded part of the town forms another powerful metaphor, a full stop to the flow of linear time represented by the River, which itself has been given pause by the immense project.
It’s a hard life for Han, though undoubtedly far less dangerous than the notoriously hazardous Chinese coal mining industry, and it provides some extraordinary imagery.
Men in supposedly protective suits with sanitising back pack sprayers wander through gutted homes. Friends are made amongst workmates to the jaunty ringtones of their mobile phones as they exchange numbers...a socialising ritual that later prompts one of the film’s most poignant moments when a mobile ‘s unanswered ringing signals a tragic accident. Condemned buildings collapse with tired grace in the distant background as they receive explosive coup de grâces.
The second half of the film segues into another quest for closure, as Nurse Shen Hong (Tao Zhao) journeys to the town looking for her own estranged husband.
Again, the dam is another defining presence in the story, providing a backdrop for the final resolution of Shen Hong’s search.
One baffling scene (and I’d welcome any light that anyone can shed on this!) sees Shen staring at a large monument in the distance. It appears to be a Chinese alphabetical character, rendered in concrete. As she turns away, rocket motors ignite at its base and the whole giant structure lifts off into the skies. I assume this is some kind of reference to the recent successes of the Chinese manned space programme but am not sure as to why it’s relevant to the story? Unless it’s just a bit of triumphalism? Or indeed, because Shen does ignore the startling sight, perhaps it’s meant to be ironic? Enquiring minds need to know!
Actually, the overall philosophical conclusion drawn at the end of Still Life does read a little bit like some kind of inspirational tract to me....but that may just reflect my own bias, or again it could be ironic, and I won’t spoil the ending by going further into detail. (Well, cross cultural puzzles have always attracted me to World Cinema!)
Still Life is a beautifully visualised, thoughtful film with a measured pace that aptly reflects the larger elements that form the canvas that its smaller, but no less important, human dramas are played out against.
Director/Screenwriter- Jia Zhang-ke
2006/108mins
-THE WAR TAPES-
USA
Rather than be 'embedded' in a U.S military unit in Iraq filmmaker Deborah Scranton chose to give cameras to three National Guardsmen to record their own experiences deployed with Charlie Company, 3rd of the 172nd New Hampshire Mountain Infantry. Scranton provided additional remote directorial aid via text messaging and email to the three soldiers, Sgts. Stephen Pink and Zack Bazzi, and Specialist Michael Moriarty, whose stories were chosen from an overall pool of 1000 hours of footage.
The soldiers’ personal and professional accounts are sobering and revelatory and never less than enlightening.
Though it does this remarkably cohesive documentary something of a disservice to cherry pick material out of its sturdily engineered overall context it’s necessary to give some idea of the range of material included in the film.
We see several ambush eye views of the destructive force of roadside Improvised Explosive Devices which, though initiated and responded to with varying degrees of control by both combatant forces, usually result in chaos and confusion, death and destruction, for bystanders. One soldier matter-of-factly tours a vast graveyard of combat lossed vehicles, shattered and gutted by I.E.Ds, casting in an increasingly ironic light President Bush’s triumphantly naive 2003 announcement that “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended...”
The complexity of night operations are mirrored in the silvered eyed stare of soldiers seen through the eerie but tactically invaluable lenses of night vision equipment , rendering one formation of troops strikingly like a formation of stolid Terracotta Warriors. The detached professionalism of the soldiers understandably falters when a night time convoy kills a woman who was then struck repeatedly by each truck in turn.
The irony of soldiers and hired civilians (drivers and security guards) risking and losing their lives to protect re-supply cargos of, for example, cheese for hamburgers, is not lost on the troopers who wonder loudly if the complex and highly profitable logistical tail is wagging the policy dog? In fact, they’re refreshingly unguarded in their speculations about what they see, from their perspective as boots on the ground, as the reasons behind the ongoing war. Their observations are pithy, and to the point...or, rather, multiple points, as the individual opinions cover the entire spectrum of current controversy, from oil driven conspiracy to patriotic war on terror.
Soldiers will always enthusiastically relish the opportunity to grouse about their lot, reserving special venom for the shortcomings of their equipment, training, rations and orders. One complaint amongst many was that these soldiers received little or no cultural instruction to help prepare them for operating in the Iraq theatre, which ommission makes it hard to both know the enemy or understand your friends. Even a simple misunderstanding over a commonly used hand gesture for ‘Stop’ can, in the local environment, be fatally mistaken for ‘Hello!”
The fact that the Iraq conflict is, in reality, fought amongst peoples homes rather than some spiffily titled combat theatre, warzone or neutrally termed area of operations is thoughtfully underlined by frequent segues to the soldiers’ American homes, either when the troops have returned or during their absence. Surface impressions notwithstanding there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of difference between U.S and Iraqi civilians; folks, it seems, are alike all over. Stateside sequences touch upon the complicated effects that the deployment had on civilian family members, the problems of post traumatic stress disorder suffered by the veterans, and the more obvious physical injuries. For example, one of the soldiers has carpal tunnel syndrome in his hands, the result of vibration transmitted through the grips of his vehicle mounted machine gun on patrol. He also has to cope with back pain from wearing body armour in a confined space.
Crammed with ‘real time’ feedback from ongoing conflict The War Tapes makes a provocative companion piece with the 2005 documentary Gunner Palace. For balance I would also add to the recommended viewing list: Control Room (2004), Baghdad ER (2006), and My Country, My Country (2006)
Director- Deborah Scranton
2006/97mins
-WELCOME TO NOLLYWOOD-
USA/NIGERIA
Never heard of the Nigerian film industry? This inspiringly cheeky doco will rectify that and should be seen by all budding filmmakers seeking new ways to practice their art.
Something like 2400 movies per year are produced in Nigeria, making it the third most prolific film industry in the world. Film? Well, that’s a nostalgically generic term to describe the Nigerians’ enthusiastic bypassing of conventional film stock and its complex and expensive infrastructure in favour of digital video distributed directly and cheaply at local marketplaces on DVD or VCD.
The 300 or so Nigerian directors have an already rich tradition of oral storytelling to draw upon, and have embraced multiple genres usually lensing them through an action adventure filter, which has fostered a support industry of movie fight Action Camps where actors can learn the stunt fight business. Although one director claims “We don’t do science fiction” Nollywood nevertheless loves fantasy, especially religious based melodramas with plenty of demons and angels, sorcererors and witches.
Period films set in Nigeria often have a luridly portrayed but understandably anti-slavery element, which alongside with the witchcraft angle concerns some commentators who argue that focusing on these aspects promotes stereotypes.
A visit to the set of a film grounded in the recent Liberian war shows the Nigerian director, who at least partly funded the movie himself, putting his actors through boot camps to learn how to fill out their soldierly roles, including veteran advisors from both sides of the original conflict. The actors go through production hell but ironically are brought low by a botched contract with the caterers...
Nollywood; not entirely different from Hollywood!
Director- Jamie Meltzer
2007/58mins
-U-
FRANCE
A lyrical French animated feature with fluidly drawn artwork and an equally languid, but elegant plot as a Princess Mona is faced with choosing between new love and a beloved friend, who happens to be a unicorn. The charming, anthropomorphic animal cast could have been drawn by Dr Seuss, and the story is a souffle of flirtatious love with a playful musical topping.
Directors- Grégoire Solotareff, Serge Elissalde
Screenwriter- Grégoire Solotareff
2006/71mins