Tag Archives: Movie theater

Gods, Actors, And Cannes

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The most beautiful thing about an actor is the way he looks into your soul, simply by turning his head and gazing into your eyes.  It is impossible to return the favor and we swoon as the movie continues.  We feel secure when the actor does this…. revealing the complete meaning of being alive.  Sometimes it is almost as if God is speaking, as if the messenger from heaven, wings unfurled and flight through the air to rush towards earth, is the breath of the one who creates.  Are we ever so lucky?  Do we ever get to see this extra-ordinary circumstance any more than once or twice in our life?  And, why do we pine so, just for these one or two circumstances?

I am willing to pay for a movie theatre experience, which can add up to one hundred dollars for our family when we do this outing….  I love that the size of the actor takes the whole wall.  I love that the music, the voices, the dialogue, fills the entire room.  I like the dimness, shared with all the audience.

Movie awards season has started again.  Cannes, France is the host of the Cannes Film Festival, and it is the premiere film fest in all the world.  It means something…  something good, to be there.  It is difficult for me to get any juiciness out of it…. I ravenously swallow all the information that I can find….  But, as always, as an outsider, I can only admire the red carpet poses and read the opinion of the local film critic.  I, too, have fallen in love with the great actors and the great leading men.  Who can forget Russell Crowe in Gladiator…  and of course, Brad Pitt in Fight Club or Seven….  Or more appropriately, in Troy or Mr. and Mrs. Smith?

These actors take over the screen, and screen by screen, they take over the world, making money fly.  I could watch several movies from Hollywood in one day…  And not be blind to everything by the end of it.  I could enjoy as if I gorget the horrible facts of reality.  But in the end, I always find the incredible efforts of these global names takes me away and I know I will live forever.

The wish for many gods to exist is not some barbaric pagan dream.  It is not about trying to ignore reality and hope for something that we can understand.  It is about seeing.  The look of a god.  The meaning of a god.  The wish come true of what God is.  It is about having and believing, because one God can only look like one thing….  Perhaps the greatest?  Perhaps the only?  Perhaps nothing like the way I am, the way I live, the way I think,  the way life is?  Why is there a God of everything when everything just cannot meet the standard that this One God is creator of?

What if the Greeks of ancient times, actually are right?  What is there are different dieties?  That let us say, each race, each  ethnicity, is led by a god?  That there is great importance to this each god?  That these gods are exactly perfect in who and what they are, in the role they have in creation, in nature, in life?

If we use the example of Hollywood, with all their screen gods and goddesses, it suddenly becomes possible and probably…  that a universe of many gods can exist.  I am not saying that one great God cannot create what it is that we have, I am saying that we do not have to rely and believe only in one God just because it makes sense that one God ca make reality make sense in every single case.  Many gods can come from the same point of view.  Many gods can still make one reality.  God and gods and existence is not about endeavoring beyond ability to create.  Things suddenly exploded, as in the Big Bang.  Things just interlace.  Things just rely and delegate and work together.  It does not necessarily gave to be a lonely universe…  a lonely planet.  Our desire for more, for relatedness, for company, for greater, for love, for familiar, for just plain old life, is the mirror of the being or beings that lead all of this creation.  They show the way time after time after time.  With each birth.  With each death.  And with each moment that we catch that glimpse of God.

So, I am looking at Cannes…. Looking to see what it is that that lonely planet of Hollywood and all the other planets of movies have created in their gathering for Cannes.  I am thinking that they try their best at Cannes.  That the movies are always greater there.  I wish I could join the crowd that has gatherer from around the world there.  They are gathered there to see each other and to see everyone.  They are there for a great party, once a year, because Cannes is the siren call for all greatness.

One day, in another life, I will get the chance to fly to Cannes.  I will remember here, where I am now, but I will be in the future.  I am looking forward to it.   A bientot, Cannes!

Hanging Out With Friends

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Look in the distance, do you see the car driving on the hills?  It’s like seeing the roller coaster when it’s far away–the train of cars travel the track–the noise clicking and clacking.  The ride down the hill is a rush of noise and wind.  The screamers have no qualm and scream.

I think the roller coaster is like the popping corn machine at the movie theatre.  Irrisistible.

The hills are beautiful.  Come hang out with me there.  It’s as far as you can see, and then, it just drops….  Into the valley on the other side.  It’s a place in suburbia, surprisingly.  No need to drive for two hours for this fun.  We can make it there in summer or in winter.  It’s just a big hill, so, you have to bring your own picnic.

The hills are on top of each other, building up, climbing higher, and the mounds can be seen, following them, up, into the horizon.  They change colour with each season…  white with a blanket of snow in winter, the greyish green of regeneration in spring, the bright, bright green of healthy growth in summer, and the yellow of dying grass in fall.  It is beautiful here.  And, I do have to travel to get here, but not like when I want to find myself skiing on a hill.

I miss the days when the roller coaster was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  It was complete and utter beauty.  Strength, power, noise, propelled movement, and the thrust and rust o wind.  I saw the engineers sitting at their drafting tables, perhaps their hands on a keyboard and a mouse, as they made the ability of flight come alive.  I loved that riding the hill downward gave me a reason to scream.

I miss that all of my friends and I could just go, on a bus, out to a whole bunch of wild rides…, our favourite one being the Wild Beast.  It was rickety because it was built when wood was cheaper than reinforced steel, and we loved imagining the possible catastrophy of the wood cracking and ripping and just collapsing beneath the weight of the cars with us in it, flying.  Part of my scream was a dare to the inanimate wood to just collapse!

Today, I am more likely to become motion sick on those rides.  I get off, feeling nauseas, and wishing that good things could last forever.  Why is it roller coasters only exist in my memory?  Anything that they are now, are just illness-causing games…  I gamble with myself, with my children, and with my younger cousins and my new nephews saying…  “The next one….  I’ll get on the next one….  I’m not too sick yet!!!”

Do we only go on these rides because we imagine what it is first, before ever, ever, even approaching close to one?  Do we hear the words, “roller coaster,” and know what it is?  Or is the sight of a train of cars running on a track and making a rhythmic beat all the way to the top, …  and we’ve already decided?  Do we watch the cars follow the round about tracks until the end, making sure no one dies, and then, fearlessly, make our decision to go on it?

I tease my nephews, they are young, and fearless, and will attack anything that even sounds remotely fun.  It is a rite of passage towards the time when riding… a hill, a board, or a car, involves more than just daring.  It involves responsibility…., and more importantly, the ability to take control, which is the ability to use the power in your hands.  At what point does all of this make sense?  So, it’s not about booking with mom and dad about borrowing the car for the weekend…., or even for just a few hours…., it’s about filling it up with gas, it’s about parking it in an appropriate place, not only to save on the parking ticket, but so that the car just doesn’t get lifted.  There’s also not putting too many friends into the car, as that makes the car go fast–and the friends screaming their approval about making the car go fast, will make it go fast.  This is a trap for instant car accident if not instant paralysis from getting hurt in the accident.

I miss the days when friends were easy to find and easy to entertain… now, going out with friends, there is a minimum investment of a few hundred dollars just to start the evening.  We leave the kids at home, with a babysitter….  We take the car….  We go a little earlier for drinks….  Then, there is dinner, and, if it is in the evening, sometimes there is a show we can catch.  Lunch is similar…  Cheaper, but difficult to do, is the shopping trip with the girlfriends.  Everyone is on a different schedule, and this makes spending an afternoon together difficult to plan into happening.  But, as human beings always are, when there’s something that we can take advantage of, and, gain from, we will probably plan it into happening.

So,  from the days of  “riding the rails,” when my heart hit the quick beat, now, just driving the safely back from a trip and seeing the house up the drive and getting into the garage, is a true treat, making my heart hit that quick beat.