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shadowkatHaven't done much today. Outside of fighting a sinus headache. It's a hot day - 87-89 F/ 27-29 C, an muggy. So I've been sticking to the fans and A/C (78-79F/18-19 C indoors). And looking out at the treetops, birds and sky, also binge watching The White Lotus S3 on HBO MAX, and watched a portion of my UU Church's service about how make it about Love. Didn't hear the whole sermon - but the portion I did was interesting - the lay-person lecturer/preacher was a former staff member of the Bernie Saunders Campaign, and had worked for a non-profit involved with Hurricane relief. She interviewed a Mayor who had worked with Hurricane victims. The take-aways - were, if you can find any way to get across that climate change is a reality we all need to fight against to folks, and do your small part to do it? Please do. And, guiding your actions through love is the best way - and brings happiness. Love of a stranger, love of the planet, love of the sky, just love - it doesn't have to be a love that rewards me or you or us directly in kind.
I forget that sometimes. The world likes to tell me that love is a quid pro quo situation, such as romantic love, or familial love, or friendship. That it isn't all encompassing. And isolated. And without that specific type of love or daily companionship? I'm bereft. But that's not true. Love isn't specific. It's more than that? It's as big and as varied as the ocean and space. Hate is a vacuum in space, a black hole. Love is the stars, the planets, the sun, and the ocean with all the drops of water inside it. I love animals. I love that they exist. I love the sky. I love strangers. I love reading and learning about people I've never met.
In the story - which I caught the tail end of - the teller told of how the Mayor rediscovered her faith. She came to the site of the disaster, and provided aid, a survivor came to her and stated : "Oh thank you, I prayed for you to come and provide aid to us, to help us, and you did, God provided you as an answer to my prayers. Thank you. I love you for that." The man was shivering and desperate and had lost everything and the aid she provide was simple enough, warm clothing, shelter, a blanket, a meal for him and his family. The Mayor had been raised Catholic and had lost her faith, and rediscovered it that day. And it gave her joy and filled her with love - or so said the teller of the story. The story teller said - what was important to take from this is the that people in the story did it with love.
I found that comforting or at least comforting enough to relate here. It surprised me, this story - which I only caught the tail end of. Because I wasn't going to listen, the title of the sermon, turned me off - it felt too sentimental or fake, somehow. But the sermon or story was not. Two lessons there? Don't judge a story by it's title, we don't always pick the best ones. And lessons can come in odd packages?
The White Lotus, Episode 7, I think also had a nice little thought lesson, which I didn't expect to find. It's underlying theme of the series, I suspect?
Jason Isacc's character (a financial consultant who is in trouble), Tim Ratliff, visits and questions a Thai Monk at a Meditation Center that his daughter wants to come back and live in for a year.
Tim: I feel a bit lost...and...was wondering, this may seem like a strange question, but what is on the other side of death?
Monk: Many spend their lives chasing pleasure to flee pain, only to find more pain. When we are in reality just drops from the ocean - when we are born, we lift up and learn, and when we die, we fall down again and rejoin the ocean and become one with the source. We are happy and whole, and there is no longer any suffering. We have in a way come home.
That's very close to what I believe. I think I've become a Buddhist? Maybe I should join a Meditation Center in my old age?
There's another nice bit - where Ratliff's son, Saxon (played by Andrew Schwazznegger's kid - Patrick), asks Chelsea, who is with Walter Goggin's Ric Hatchett, why she wouldn't hook up with him. She tells him because she found her soul mate, and cheap sex with someone who isn't is empty and kind of pointless. It's not worth it to have it with him - because he's soulless. He kind of is, rich, spoiled, entitled, gambling with others money, and having sex like he would take a drug - to escape or show how great he is.
At any rate, both comforted me more than expected. Like a cool blanket or hugging a monk.
**
I also saw Ryan Coogler's Sinners on HBO Max this weekend. How to describe it? It's kind of a 1930s historical, with R&B music, meets Night of the Living Dead horror with creepy blue grass and Irish folk singing vampires?
The set up, although it may be better to go in blind like I did? I don't know. I kept going to sleep during the first half - which was kind of plodding, except with insanely beautiful cinematography. So beautiful, I was glad I had a 55 inch television set. It would look amazing in a movie theater. The colors popped.
Then in the second half, once the sun goes down - it changes. And takes off. Also, it suddenly becomes a really cool musical.
Wales told me some time ago that she walked out of the movie theater and couldn't see the whole thing. She loved the first part, but found the second part too scary. I didn't find it all that scary when I saw it? It didn't scare me at all. (It's not a mean horror film like Heredity or MidSommer or so many others, it's more of a fun thematic musical horror movie?) Actually I was kind of puzzled at why Wales found it so scary she had to walk out of the movie theater? (I saw the Ring in the movie theater with Wales and Blair Witch Project, she didn't walk out then? Those were scarier and ended horribly, this really wasn't. This ended on a good note. It wasn't mean.) Honestly, if you can make through Supernatural, Game of Thrones, Vampire Diaries, Buffy, and Doctor Who - you'll be fine. It's kind of humorous actually. While it borrows heavily from Night of the Living Dead - it's not Night of the Living Dead (way too many horror films have). And doesn't come close to The Walking Dead.
The film is beautifully made, and has an excellent score. Also the performances for the most part are spot on. But, it like many of Ryan Coogler's films is more style over substance. I never care that much about the characters? I don't know them well enough to care. Part of the problem is the action takes place within one day, and there are a lot of characters to care about. Also, we're not given a lot information on any of them? Just snippets here and there. The point of view character - we only know a scant amount about, and his relationships with the others, a stray line here or there. The focus of the film isn't on the characters or the plot really, but on theme. The director is more interested in the meta or the thematic message, than he appears to be in the characters or the story - so it all felt a bit hollow in a way?
That said, it's a lot of fun in the second half, and has great visuals and soundtrack. If you are a fan of cinematography? And visuals? You should enjoy it. Also R&B music, blue grass, and African-American/Irish/Scottish-American folk. The Soundtrack is great - I want the soundtrack. Also there is an all-encompassing scene of African-American musicians throughout the cultural history of that music - which is worth seeing on a big screen with surround sound all on its own (if you are into that sort of thing? I'm not, so seeing it on my television screen was fine for me).
I just wish he did a little bit better job building and developing the characters, which would have meant cutting back on the long scenes of the boys driving through the white cotton plantation fields (that's what kept putting me to sleep). And I get why we got those scenes - like I said, it's a visually thematic film - heavy on the meta-narrative, and blends genres, while commenting on them as well as various horror film, historical and black exploitation film tropes. Also went through various music genres and how to tell stories through music and build suspense through music. This film is in many ways a musical - but it uses the music to further theme and story, without becoming an opera, or a musical in the classic sense of the word.
I'd tell you more? But part of the fun is not quite knowing. Although I did figure it out - more or less at a certain point, the writer more or less telegraphs it to the audience at the halfway mark.
I forget that sometimes. The world likes to tell me that love is a quid pro quo situation, such as romantic love, or familial love, or friendship. That it isn't all encompassing. And isolated. And without that specific type of love or daily companionship? I'm bereft. But that's not true. Love isn't specific. It's more than that? It's as big and as varied as the ocean and space. Hate is a vacuum in space, a black hole. Love is the stars, the planets, the sun, and the ocean with all the drops of water inside it. I love animals. I love that they exist. I love the sky. I love strangers. I love reading and learning about people I've never met.
In the story - which I caught the tail end of - the teller told of how the Mayor rediscovered her faith. She came to the site of the disaster, and provided aid, a survivor came to her and stated : "Oh thank you, I prayed for you to come and provide aid to us, to help us, and you did, God provided you as an answer to my prayers. Thank you. I love you for that." The man was shivering and desperate and had lost everything and the aid she provide was simple enough, warm clothing, shelter, a blanket, a meal for him and his family. The Mayor had been raised Catholic and had lost her faith, and rediscovered it that day. And it gave her joy and filled her with love - or so said the teller of the story. The story teller said - what was important to take from this is the that people in the story did it with love.
I found that comforting or at least comforting enough to relate here. It surprised me, this story - which I only caught the tail end of. Because I wasn't going to listen, the title of the sermon, turned me off - it felt too sentimental or fake, somehow. But the sermon or story was not. Two lessons there? Don't judge a story by it's title, we don't always pick the best ones. And lessons can come in odd packages?
The White Lotus, Episode 7, I think also had a nice little thought lesson, which I didn't expect to find. It's underlying theme of the series, I suspect?
Jason Isacc's character (a financial consultant who is in trouble), Tim Ratliff, visits and questions a Thai Monk at a Meditation Center that his daughter wants to come back and live in for a year.
Tim: I feel a bit lost...and...was wondering, this may seem like a strange question, but what is on the other side of death?
Monk: Many spend their lives chasing pleasure to flee pain, only to find more pain. When we are in reality just drops from the ocean - when we are born, we lift up and learn, and when we die, we fall down again and rejoin the ocean and become one with the source. We are happy and whole, and there is no longer any suffering. We have in a way come home.
That's very close to what I believe. I think I've become a Buddhist? Maybe I should join a Meditation Center in my old age?
There's another nice bit - where Ratliff's son, Saxon (played by Andrew Schwazznegger's kid - Patrick), asks Chelsea, who is with Walter Goggin's Ric Hatchett, why she wouldn't hook up with him. She tells him because she found her soul mate, and cheap sex with someone who isn't is empty and kind of pointless. It's not worth it to have it with him - because he's soulless. He kind of is, rich, spoiled, entitled, gambling with others money, and having sex like he would take a drug - to escape or show how great he is.
At any rate, both comforted me more than expected. Like a cool blanket or hugging a monk.
**
I also saw Ryan Coogler's Sinners on HBO Max this weekend. How to describe it? It's kind of a 1930s historical, with R&B music, meets Night of the Living Dead horror with creepy blue grass and Irish folk singing vampires?
The set up, although it may be better to go in blind like I did? I don't know. I kept going to sleep during the first half - which was kind of plodding, except with insanely beautiful cinematography. So beautiful, I was glad I had a 55 inch television set. It would look amazing in a movie theater. The colors popped.
Then in the second half, once the sun goes down - it changes. And takes off. Also, it suddenly becomes a really cool musical.
Wales told me some time ago that she walked out of the movie theater and couldn't see the whole thing. She loved the first part, but found the second part too scary. I didn't find it all that scary when I saw it? It didn't scare me at all. (It's not a mean horror film like Heredity or MidSommer or so many others, it's more of a fun thematic musical horror movie?) Actually I was kind of puzzled at why Wales found it so scary she had to walk out of the movie theater? (I saw the Ring in the movie theater with Wales and Blair Witch Project, she didn't walk out then? Those were scarier and ended horribly, this really wasn't. This ended on a good note. It wasn't mean.) Honestly, if you can make through Supernatural, Game of Thrones, Vampire Diaries, Buffy, and Doctor Who - you'll be fine. It's kind of humorous actually. While it borrows heavily from Night of the Living Dead - it's not Night of the Living Dead (way too many horror films have). And doesn't come close to The Walking Dead.
The film is beautifully made, and has an excellent score. Also the performances for the most part are spot on. But, it like many of Ryan Coogler's films is more style over substance. I never care that much about the characters? I don't know them well enough to care. Part of the problem is the action takes place within one day, and there are a lot of characters to care about. Also, we're not given a lot information on any of them? Just snippets here and there. The point of view character - we only know a scant amount about, and his relationships with the others, a stray line here or there. The focus of the film isn't on the characters or the plot really, but on theme. The director is more interested in the meta or the thematic message, than he appears to be in the characters or the story - so it all felt a bit hollow in a way?
That said, it's a lot of fun in the second half, and has great visuals and soundtrack. If you are a fan of cinematography? And visuals? You should enjoy it. Also R&B music, blue grass, and African-American/Irish/Scottish-American folk. The Soundtrack is great - I want the soundtrack. Also there is an all-encompassing scene of African-American musicians throughout the cultural history of that music - which is worth seeing on a big screen with surround sound all on its own (if you are into that sort of thing? I'm not, so seeing it on my television screen was fine for me).
I just wish he did a little bit better job building and developing the characters, which would have meant cutting back on the long scenes of the boys driving through the white cotton plantation fields (that's what kept putting me to sleep). And I get why we got those scenes - like I said, it's a visually thematic film - heavy on the meta-narrative, and blends genres, while commenting on them as well as various horror film, historical and black exploitation film tropes. Also went through various music genres and how to tell stories through music and build suspense through music. This film is in many ways a musical - but it uses the music to further theme and story, without becoming an opera, or a musical in the classic sense of the word.
I'd tell you more? But part of the fun is not quite knowing. Although I did figure it out - more or less at a certain point, the writer more or less telegraphs it to the audience at the halfway mark.