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Man Vs Wild, Wonders of the Solar System and Fear factor

I like to watch Man Vs Wild on Discovery channel.

I like Clint Eastwood's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly".

EASTWOOD

After watching Clint Eastwood's film Unforgiven recently I took an interest in Daniel Bormann?s academic analysis.1 Bormann summarizes the commentary that has been written since the movie came out in 1992 and won the many awards that it did.  The year 1992 was a big one for me as I began to take the writing of poetry seriously, and the Faith I belonged to, the Baha'i Faith, commemorated the 100th anniversary of the passing of its Founder, Baha'u'llah.  

Bormann tells us that there have been many views of the chief character in the film, William Munny.  It is difficult, therefore, to view Munny as one-dimensional.  Munny can be seen as supernatural, natural, evil, simple or complex. Cinema analysts can utilize psychoanalytically based frameworks for their commentary. The view which Bormann stresses is Munny as: simple-man with brutish propensities but, still, a man with principles. This view also sees him as a man with a convincing but tormented inner life.  Bormann sees Munny as fundamentally symbolic, a man who stands for, who metaphorically represents America.

Bormann sees Munny as an example of a character in which complexity is attained by, is dealt with, simply, with simplicity.  In the end one of the lasting psychological and technical contributions of Eastwood through his film Unforgiven may be that he gives us, again metaphorically, an important way in which America understands itself.  Some work is still to be done to make Munny cohere further in the fullness of his contradictory complexity; perhaps future research and analysis of this film will choose to follow this trail of coherence through the paradox, the polarity, of complexity and simplicity that Bormann has opened-up for cinema enthusiasts who like a bit of solid analysis.  Most of the study of this film thusfar, Bormann argues, provides individually brilliant, but collectively sterile, work.-Ron Price with thanks to 1Daniel Candel Bormann, "Too Many Munnies, too Many Americas: The Answer to the Academic Frontier in Clint Eastwood?s Unforgiven," European Journal of American Studies, 2009.

So often when one sees a film it hits
the sensory emporium and then one
goes to bed or out for a meal,  a cup
of tea and a piece of cake....the little
bit of cinema slips into a long visual
complex history that is part of one's
life.....One can not solve the world's
violence vicariously through mythic
tales however transcendent the truths
are to the advancement of civilization
and however much these tales bring
out virtues latent in our characters &
our quotidian lives?....We are, for the
most part, spectators, in an immense
global drama that is tearing the world
apart & reconstructing it in a Plan that
is as mysterious in its workings as it is
inscrutable to the wisest men among us.

Ron Price
26 August 2010

Sometimes in the afternoon my wife Chris, who is often not well, watches a movie to relax, to be distracted and take her mind off the several worries that tend to occupy her in the evening of her life, in her late adulthood, the years from 60 to 80 as defined in one of the models of human development, of the lifespan, used by psychologists.  On this sunny afternoon in Tasmania with less than three weeks to go in an Australian winter, the movie shown on the box was Summertree.1  This 1971 movie was about a young man going to Viet Nam. It starred Michael Douglas.  The movie was released into cinemas nearly forty years ago, just one month before I left Canada for Australia in July 1971. 

By 1972 my first wife and I had helped form the only Baha?i locally elected body outside of eastern Australia and outside of Adelaide, Perth and Darwin.  Little did we know at the time how rare Baha?i Assemblies were outside the major population centres of Australia.  Little did I or Michael Douglas know what was ahead of us professionally and personally.  Michael and I were both born in mid-1944 as the allies were finally rolling back the German armies on the continent and on the Italian and Russian fronts. We also both graduated from university in 1966. 

When Michael was breaking into acting in New York in the late 60s, the baggage of being the famous Kirk Douglas?s son?born with a silver spoon in his mouth, having no excuse to fail?literally made him sick with self-consciousness and anxiety.2  My anxiety and sickness in the late 60s came from a different source, a full-blown episode of bipolar disorder. ?Ron Price with thanks to 17Two TV, 11 August 2010, 2:30-4:30 and 2 Evgenia Peretz, ?Michael Douglas, Take Two,? Vanity Fair, April 2010.

You got into movies the year
we both graduated and I went
on to university in Windsor in
that City of Roses?.Canada?s
most southerly city?taught in
Inuit land in ?67 on Baffin Is...

By the time you were producing
that great film?.One Flew Over1
the Cuckoo?s Nest I also had my
time in mental hospitals and was
on my way, at last?in my career
as a teacher?.You are still going
strong, Michael?with so many a
success in entertainment?s world
as we both head into these middle
years, 65 to 75, of late adulthood.

I wish you well in your several
projects, Michael, to help make
this world a better place2 and?
may we both finish our years on
this planet contributing to unific
forces that will preserve the life
of its planetizing-global culture.3

1 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a novel written in 1959 by Ken Kesey and published in 1962.  The book is set in a mental asylum in Oregon. I became a Baha?i in 1959, began my travelling-pioneering life in the Canadian Baha?i community in 1962 and entered a mental asylum in 1968.
 
Kesey?s book was made into a movie directed by Milos Forman.  The movie was produced by Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas and starred Jack Nicholson.  It was very popular, won many Academy Awards and is now considered a classic.
2 In 2009 Douglas joined the project "Soldiers of Peace", a movie against all wars and for a global peace.  He also lent his support to the campaign to release Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning after being convicted of committing adultery.]
3  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, ?The Planetization of Mankind,? The Future of Mankind, Harper & Row, New York, 1959. I joined the Baha?i Faith that same year.

Ron Price
12 August 2010

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

The princess and the frog

Heaven by Bryan Adams

[DARK ARC]

Dan Zukovic's "DARK ARC", a modern noir dark comedy called "Absolutely brilliant...truly and completely different..." in Film Threat, will be released on DVD on August 24 through Vanguard Cinema. (www.vanguardcinema.com/darkarc/darkarc). The film had it's world premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival and it's US premiere at the Cinequest Film Festival. Featuring Sarah Strange ("White Noise"), Kurt Max Runte ("X- Men", Battlestar Gallactica") and Dan Zukovic (director and star of the cult comedy "The Last Big Thing").
 
*****! (Five Stars) "Absolutely brilliant...truly and completely different...something you've never tasted before..."  Film Threat
"A black comedy about a very strange love triangle!"  Seattle Times
"Consistently stunning images...a bizarre blend of art, sex and opium, "Dark Arc" plays like a candy-coloured version of David Lynch."  IFC News
"Sarah Strange is as decadent as Angelina Jolie thinks she is...don't see this movie sober!"  Metroactive Movies
"Equal parts Film Noir intrigue, pop culture send-up, brain teaser and visual feast." American Cinematheque

[Baghead]

Baghead