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Monday, November 30, 2009
He's Just Not That Into You
Nah ... is not cultural shock or miss understanding, he's not weird, he's not complicated, he's actually kindah cool but...
Sunday, November 29, 2009
When it hits down under!!!
(...)
Carla
vou juntar
uma $$ pra visitar vcs no
proximo ano
10:06pmCapoeira Brazil
visitar ou morar???
fica !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
;-)))
Capoeira Brazil
vc esta feliz ai?
(...)
--FB chat with my capoeira teacher and especially friend in Sydney!
Two Monks and the Beautiful Woman...
A senior monk and a junior monk were traveling together. At one point, they came to a river with a strong current. As the monks were preparing to cross the river, they saw a very young and beautiful woman also attempting to cross. The young woman asked if they could help her.
The senior monk carried this woman on his shoulder, forded the river and let her down on the other bank. The junior monk was very upset, but said nothing.
They both were walking and senior monk noticed that his junior was suddenly silent and enquired “Is something the matter, you seem very upset?”
The junior monk replied, “As monks, we are not permitted a woman, how could you then carry that woman on your shoulders?”
The senior monk replied, “I left the woman a long time ago at the bank, however, you seem to be carrying her still.”
Comments:
The older monk, his mind free, saw the situation, responded to it, and continued to be present to the next step after letting the woman down.
The younger monk was bound by ideas, held on to them for hours, and, in doing so, missed the experiences of the next part of the journey.
Reference to Decision Making:
Mental attachment to an idea or earlier experience blocks the full experience of the present here and now. Attachments slow the mind, interfering with appropriate responses to the immediate situation.
In order to evaluate a situation requiring a decision, the mind must be open to the possibilities. Being anchored in the past restricts the choices. Examples of holding on, outlined in the Mental Bias post, are favoring current conditions and giving disproportionate weight to old information.
Friday, November 27, 2009
What's Missing? or What is Missing ?
My recipe for a rainy day away from home!
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Fired Up
Fired Up is a silly movie, but I laughed from beginning to end. The premise of girl starved high school males may have been done in dozens of movies before, but Fired Up manages to make this concept fun again. The majority of this rests on the characters of Nick & Shawn played by Eric Christian Olsen & Nicholas D’Agosto.
Olsen & D’Agosto have a natural chemistry together that makes for amazing comic timing. Watching Nick & Shawn is made fun because of this. They are two halves of one whole but they complement each other so well that you don’t want them to be torn apart. Nick should not be without Shawn’s watchful eye and Shawn can never be too intellectual because of Shawn’s quick quips and sexist observations. I truly hope Olsen & D’Agosto work together again; you can’t force chemistry and these two are the best pairing I have seen in years.
Perhaps what is most surprising about Fired Up is the intelligence behind it. These are well written characters even though they are stereotypes; the football coach is a beautiful exaggeration, a cheerleader is a closet lesbian, the jocks are brick headed – everything is what you expect but so well crafted that the characters flow naturally in their world and don’t do anything that seems expected in a negative way. Screenwriter Freedom Jones even manages to work in a character arch for both Shawn and Nick and keep the film quippy and funny. Perhaps my favorite sequence in the film has to do with when Nick & Shawn are cooking dinner and realizing that Nick knows the names of and cares for the girls on the cheer squad.
Fired Up may be a movie in the vein of American Pie but I somehow the tone coming out of the film is far more joyful than that franchise left me. This is one DVD that is going to be added to my collection as soon as I can.
Director: Will Gluck
Writer: Freedom Jones
Shawn: Nicholas D’Agosto
Nick: Eric Christian Olsen
Carly: Sarah Roemer
Diora: Molly Sims
Dr. Rick: David Walton
Poppy: Juliette Goglia
Coach Byrnes: Philip Baker Hall
Coach Keith: John Michael Higgins
Nick: Bottomless breadsticks only keep you at the Olive Garden for so long, until at some point you look up and say 'Why the hell am I at the Olive Garden with all these fat people?'
The Box
Not surprisingly, The Box is a movie that most people won’t like. This is a morality tale and if anyone wants to be honest that means it’s a movie that can’t have the easily accomplished, cop-out ending. As a true morality tale The Box makes sure it has a lesson to impart and does so in the best way it can: just like Icarus got caught up in the moment and plummeting into tragedy, Arthur & Norma help cause the tragedy that unfolds around them and they have no one to blame but themselves.
Part of what I loved about The Box is that it’s a true Richard Kelly film – it’s a morality tale with a B-movie, science fiction slant. By setting the film around NASA in the seventies Kelly is allowed the room to play with a world that is still wary of technology, space and the mysterious “other”. Arlington Steward is a mystery instead of a search on the internet – genuine gumshoe work is required. This lends an aura of mystery to the film that is hard to accomplish in a film set in a contemporary period. Even though this mystery involves the supernatural it is one that could be easily resolved now adays as it revolves around one central figure, one who could be easily tracked on the internet or in any computerized database. I assume Kelley added this element to the short story himself as he said the concept for Norma & Arthur in the film were based around his parents.
Richard Kelly films thrill me in a way that I have talked too much about to those that know me. He makes movies that can still surprise me, movies that have visuals I want to emulate, and stories that astound me. I am sad that the mass audiences no longer have the film vocabulary to view and enjoy as Richard Kelly film, but I have to hope that the more movies he makes and the longer they pick up followings on DVD that the easier it will be for a mass audience to see and enjoy his films in the theatre.
Director & Writer: Richard Kelly
Norma: Cameron Diaz
Arthur: James Marsden
Arlington Steward: Frank Langella
Dana: Gillian Jacobs
Walter: Sam Oz Stone
If you want to touch someone, send them a letter!
I asked my aunt where could I find some Xmas cards and she told me, to send fun emails instead!!!