A distância II

Os CTT são os guardiões definitivos e finais das distâncias.

Odeio certos clichés, fico triste e chateado.

É que não havia nexexidade.

Atonement

This past weekend I went to the movies again and watched Atonement. (I seem to be going to the cinema a lot these days even though some films I watch aren’t really worth mentioning…)

Atonement is a full-fledged drama, based on the terrible consequences stemming from a false accusation made by a young girl who couldn’t possibly understand what she was putting the other people through.

The action of the film takes place around the time of WWII and the ending is (as it well should) a very sad one.

The story in itself is not terribly original and although I’m quite partial to a good dramatic flick, this is not what drew me to it.
In fact there were three things that made me enjoy the film:

• Being a British film, set in a period which I find particularly interesting, with all of the British flair and mannerisms. For some reason I cannot fully grasp I find this type of story and films really appealing —I still remember watching and thoroughly enjoying the TV show “Brideshead Revisited”, even though I was far too young to fully understand everything that was going on;

• Being a dramatic film which ends “badly”. Yes, I like a dramatic story (even if —or maybe especially if— it is a love story) and I do favor it over an action one any day. And also it is much more close to reality;

• The soundtrack. Composed by Dario Marianelli and played by a full chamber orchestra, I was especially impressed by the interpretation of Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s piano.

This is not a ground-breaking film and I don’t expect it to be one that I’ll remember as a favorite in the long run, but I did quite like to watch it and I had a good time doing so (and that, I believe, is very worthy in itself).

Diary 2008-01-19

What a week I’ve had…
This evening I went to have dinner with a couple of friends (or should I say a couple I’m friends with)?
Anyway, I kept having that irksome trouble of trying to remember the name of bands, songs, movies, actors or whatever and just blanking. I could almost feel my synapses shutting down when I needed them to work.
Boy, I’m tired! I definitely need a break. I still have three more weeks to go before I hit the mountains and thrash my body away in the slopes, while my mind gets the royal treatment and gets cleansed by the sights of the snow and trees. Can’t wait!

The conversation during dinner led me to a peculiar realization tough: I haven’t been discovering new music recently, not as I used to.
I’ve been buying some old albums that I didn’t have and I missed or that I previously had and wanted to get again and I’ve especially been re-connecting with some old music (some of which has been really balmy to the soul, to be sure), but as far as new music goes, I’ve essentially been stalled for quite some time now.
This is not a good thing.

On the other hand, going to work by train is definitely the best decision I’ve made in recent times. The amount of reading I’ve been getting done in the daily commute is very significant and I feel great when I get to the office or home, not at all stressed out like I used to feel for the last… oh… far too many years.
I still take the car when I need to, but those times just make me appreciate all the more the other days when I put on my headphones, sit back on the train and read myself away to some other place for the whole journey. In fact I sometimes find myself wishing the journey was longer so that I could read just a little bit more!
It really feels like going to college all over again, only now I don’t feel like I’m slacking off and should be studying all the time! :-)

Control

Control —a biography of Ian Curtis, tortured soul and singer of Joy Division.

I almost forgot to mention this film, but luckily Jojo saw it recently and talked about it on her blog and that reminded how much I loved it.

I saw it a few weeks ago and like Jojo said, the photography is nothing short of amazing. I love that it is black and white and it sure fits the mood perfectly. I also quite like Joy Division’s music so in that area I’m a bit biased, but the way the film portrays Ian’s life and each moment that gave rise to each of the songs present in it is really quite interesting.

Of course the sad part is his death (although no surprise there if you knew about the band), but after watching the whole film you start to get why he did it.
A classic —if tragic— case of paying for the mistakes you did in your youth later on (even if he was still really young).

Confusion in her eyes that says it all.
She’s lost control.
And she’s clinging to the nearest passer by,
She’s lost control.
And she gave away the secrets of her past,
And said I’ve lost control again,
And a voice that told her when and where to act,
She said I’ve lost control again.

And she turned around and took me by the hand and said,
I’ve lost control again.
And how I’ll never know just why or understand,
She said I’ve lost control again.
And she screamed out kicking on her side and said,
I’ve lost control again.
And seized up on the floor, I thought she’d die.
She said I’ve lost control.
She’s lost control again.
She’s lost control.
She’s lost control again.
She’s lost control.

Well I had to ‘phone her friend to state my case,
And say she’s lost control again.
And she showed up all the errors and mistakes,
And said I’ve lost control again.
But she expressed herself in many different ways,
Until she lost control again.
And walked upon the edge of no escape,
And laughed I’ve lost control.
She’s lost control again.
She’s lost control.
She’s lost control again.
She’s lost control.

I could live a little better with the myths and the lies,
When the darkness broke in, I just broke down and cried.
I could live a little in a wider line,
When the change is gone, when the urge is gone,
To lose control. When here we come.

Diary 2008-01-13

Lots of stuff…

• Got me an iPod shuffle for running and I must say the absolute absence of weight and the ridiculous small size of it make it really, really good for the job. I was getting a bit tired of lugging the big iPod photo around and this is a much better way of bringing my music with me while exercising. The fact that I got it for a discount (due to the fact that the colour I chose is being discontinued) was no great shame either;

• Running with the appropriate gear makes all the diference. I combined the new iPod shuffle with a new high-tech, body-moulded shirt and wind breaker and I did feel a huge difference;

• The perfect album for running is (at the moment) Live after Death (yes, by Iron Maiden. Yes, from the stone age. Yes, I’m that old!) :-)

• The swiss exercise ball my brother got me for christmas a year ago is really useful for the ski-specific exercises. I never did like the gym and ended up only emptying my wallet whenever I was “going” to one, but running outside and exercising at home is turning out to be much more effective (and fun) than I ever could have guessed;

• The golfing I did over the Christmas/New year break in Algarve got me hooked. Yet another expensive sport that tickles my fancy (I also find myself missing going out sailing a lot more than I thought I would). Oh deary, deary me…

• The Argentine Tango is really fun to dance (and, in a way quite different from all the other styles I learned during my ballroom dancing days). I went to an open class and stayed a bit for the Milonga that followed and thoroughly enjoyed learning the few steps that I did. They played much electronic tango, as well the the traditional one and since I was already a fan of that music genre it added to the overall fun. Having a partner that knows her way around the dance floor and is willing to forgive the stupid beginner mistakes is also a huge help, of course;

• So now that NetNewsWire is free (I’ve been a paying customer for years) all I’m missing is a Linux desktop-app to read my feeds off NewsGator. I use the web interface (which got a much needed functionality revamp just last week), but I really would like a desktop client for that platform;

• Another thing I’m trying to get on a remote (and possibly web-based) solution (OK, two things) are my contacts and my calendar. I would love to use my mac server at home as the base for that information and then synch it with Google Calendar for my domain, but the fact of the matter is that for all the hype, whenever I tested the Spanning Sync solution it just didn’t work. Last time it kept generating duplicates of all my appointments, all with an hour of diference of the original, so after N synchs I had N copies of each, all of them one hour appart. Also, it never really managed to deal with my timezone and the daylight savings time shift. A shame really, I’d really love to use it, since then synching my home calendar, my mobile phone and my on-line calendars would be a cinch. I even tried a service to synch my mobile phone directly to my Google-based calendars, but that failed miserably too. Synch is really, really hard…

Like I said, lots and lots of stuff, and no links because I’m feeling lazy and I want to go torture the neighbors practise my sax. :-)

Cassandra’s Dream

Last evening I went to the cinema to catch the latest Woody Allen’s film “Cassandra’s Dream”.

I didn’t know the plot, I didn’t know what to expect from it but I do know I enjoyed it very much.

This is not a funny film, there is only so much humor in it. Most of the time it tries (and in my opinion succeeds) to be a deep psychological drama —definitely not a comedy.

Woody sometimes does awful things to his characters, but usually he “only” inflicts psychological pain on them and most often that not everything is set on a humorous setting with high comedic value and so it is all a little easier to digest.

Not this time though: when the going starts to get rougher the funny stuff almost disappears (unless you enjoy the darker humor in things, which I happen to do) and all that is left is this wretched situation the characters got themselves into, the rising and oppressing feeling of despair and the terrible ending.

All in all it got to me in a very big way. Great film!