paolo
Phoenix
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Posts: 1299
Location: Italy
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 Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 4:48 am Post subject: |
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If "Rain Man" was made to make the public understand the tragedy of autism, it failed completely. The problem would have required an intimistic existental approach. But Raymod-Hoffman is only a virtuoso performer and Charlie-Tom is only Tom Cruise. Strict adherence to ritual agenda is only seen as a oddity good to impress a superficial audience. So are Raymond's mnemonical capacities. No expression of the suffering, no attempt to dig at the needs of ritual adherence, that is a need to feel at home somehow and allay a desperate anguish. I talked with several persons who had seen the movie. Nobody saw it as the representation of a somber piece of humanity, but only as feat of Dustin Hoffman.
In literature Kafka and Fritz Zorn are perhaps the best descriptions (from the inside of tormented souls) of the autistic condition. Read, if you can, "The Burrow" the last novella that Kafka wrote. Of corse there is much in many other authors, especially poets: Ann Sexton, Plath and writers like Beckett, Yates, Camus, Robert Walser and many others. |
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krex
Phoenix
Joined: Jun 21, 2006
Age: 49
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Location: Village of the Damned
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| Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 4:58 am Post subject: |
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I thought I was the only one who read Plath,nobody ever mentions her as a good poet,yet her poetry and "Bell Jar" were the only things that made me feel "not alone"...Kafka and Camus didnt come until college...but I could not believe that their were others describing my internal experience.You are so right about "Rain Man"...I havent seen any of the latest movies which "deal" with AS but I am a bit apprehinsive....For me...even good movies can not come close to makeing me understand/feel,what a book can...I'm not sure why,but words have always held more power for me...movies tend to skim the surface of the skin...(not to say I havent seen powerful movies,but it just doesnt seem to reach me in the same place.
I would be interested in any suggestions for movies that you have found interesting...
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paolo
Phoenix
Joined: Aug 13, 2006
Posts: 1299
Location: Italy
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| Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:18 am Post subject: |
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In “Good old neon” David F. Wallace explains in a vivid way the degeneration of self, or perhaps the built in structural weakness of self. “My whole life has been a fraud”. And there is also a disturbing paradox, because how to get rid of the fraudulent condition, this mortal sickness of your soul, if your self-denunciation might be a part of the fraud? Perhaps one should accept to be condemned to silence, as the character of “Persona” by Ingmar Bergman and the protagonists of the films of Kim il Duk, the Korean director.
The strength of the feelings might be our only salvation: not the perfunctory kisses exchanged at a funeral, but the passionate hugs of mothers and her children, when they discover that they are of one flesh, in the face of loss or of grave danger. Rarely I have experienced the happiness of a hug, certainly not with my mother. So the representation of feelings in the movies are a solace for me. Sometimes you find the representation of feeling without the physicity of the hugs, like in the splendid trilogy of Apu of the great Indian moviemaker Ray (“Pather Panchaly”, which I have seen dozens of times) and in the cinema of the Japanese Ozu, where they never touch each other, but there is so much force of feeling! |
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MrMark
Abstract Data Type
Joined: Jul 04, 2006
Age: 54
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Location: Tallahassee, FL
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| Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:44 am Post subject: |
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| paolo wrote: | | there is also a disturbing paradox, because how to get rid of the fraudulent condition, this mortal sickness of your soul, if your self-denunciation might be a part of the fraud? |
That's also the Zen Buddhist paradox. Who is it that gets rid of the self?
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paolo
Phoenix
Joined: Aug 13, 2006
Posts: 1299
Location: Italy
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| Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 4:14 pm Post subject: |
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Here are some of the directors and films I like most. Many of them are intimistic and some is very sad. I like sad films, I can't stand comedies with few exceptions (Billy Wilder and Jacque Tati are among the exceptions):
Cassavetes, Barbara Loden ("Wanda"), Gus Van Sant, Alain Tanner ("Messidor"), Dreyer ("Ordet"), Bresson, Rohmer, Kiarostami, the Dardenne freres (they are great, great filmmakers), Fritz Lang ("M", "Metropolis"), Becker ("Casque d'or"; here there is this extraordinary french song "Le temps de cherises")... These come to my mind immediately.
A very good guide for movies is the English "Time Out", very reliable except for the list of best films. Nearly all are available in DVD or VHS.
The motif of my beloved "Le temps of Cherises" can be found in Internet. Yves Montand, and many others, sang this song. I could't say why I am shaken and moved by this song as by no other song.
When I taught sociology, I used to show my students some of them. It was for me a relief from the atrocious effort I experienced having to talk. But I think students were happier and learnt more than by my spoken "lessons".
That's it for now. |
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krex
Phoenix
Joined: Jun 21, 2006
Age: 49
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Location: Village of the Damned
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| Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks so much for the film info....I will have to see if I can find them on line...there are very few rental places here that have more then the most basic "foreign films".I think the only one I have seen
is Matropolis,which I enjoyed(there is also an interesting animated version).Have you watched Pi(the circumfrance of a circle.....my computer doesnt have a symbol for it)...If so ,I would be interested in your opinion about it.
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Fraya
Demon with broken wings
Joined: Aug 22, 2006
Posts: 1675
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| Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 5:01 pm Post subject: |
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Sorry have to nitpick Pi is not the circumference of a circle its the constant used in equations that relate a circles circumference to its radius.
For bonus points though (without looking it up) who knows what an apothem is? 
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krex
Phoenix
Joined: Jun 21, 2006
Age: 49
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Location: Village of the Damned
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| Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 5:20 pm Post subject: |
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Of course....smarty pants....its a large grey mammel that lives on the continent of Africa,it likes to hang out in the rivers and can be very agressive.....no wait ...thats hippopotimus...apothem is a critter that lives in South and North Americas,it hangs from its tail in trees and I think it is a marcupeal(they like to BBQ it in southern states of USA.)and I didnt even look it up...
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Just because one plane is flying out of formation, doesn't mean the formation is on course....R.D.Lang
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Fraya
Demon with broken wings
Joined: Aug 22, 2006
Posts: 1675
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| Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 5:24 pm Post subject: |
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I know because thats an opposum
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One pill makes you larger
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And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
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superfantastic
ahhh!
Joined: Jul 18, 2006
Posts: 1101
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| Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 5:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Isn't it that line that goes from the middle of one side of a figure to the center? |
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Fraya
Demon with broken wings
Joined: Aug 22, 2006
Posts: 1675
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| Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 5:29 pm Post subject: |
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Eh close enough yes it a line drawn as the perpendicular bisector of one side of a polygon connecting to the center of the polygon.
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One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
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krex
Phoenix
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| Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 5:30 pm Post subject: |
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Apothem....sorry Fraya...I just assumed your computer had a lisp...
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Just because one plane is flying out of formation, doesn't mean the formation is on course....R.D.Lang
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Fraya
Demon with broken wings
Joined: Aug 22, 2006
Posts: 1675
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| Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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What makeths you sthay that?
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One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
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paolo
Phoenix
Joined: Aug 13, 2006
Posts: 1299
Location: Italy
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| Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 3:16 am Post subject: |
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Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
T.S.Eliot |
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paolo
Phoenix
Joined: Aug 13, 2006
Posts: 1299
Location: Italy
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| Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 4:59 am Post subject: |
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| Well. Probably Eliot's solution was mysticism. I am not for that. But I think that the strenuous effort of our culture to cover, hide, mask and distort any image or trace of dacay and death, has much to do with the senseless of our life. Our life of effort and difficulty to survive as fragile selfs should not go in the direction of nearing (falsely) as much as possible the life of the so called NTs. NTs "all go in the dark" like us, as Eliot would say. And there should not be a competition with them in the achievement of futile enterprises. CEOs of Boeing and Airbus are obliged to plan for dacades. When the superjumbos will fly aboundantly in China and elsewhere, how will be the face of our world, and what will be of these CEOs, whose life is totally dedicated to building these monsters, win markets and struggle one against the other? |
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