Category: Movies
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It hurts, all this. ~ Sherlock Holmes
On the TV series, Elementary, Sherlock Holmes explains to Agatha why he cannot donate his sperm so she can have a baby with his DNA and, hopefully, his gifts. Sherlock: You’re right. I am… remarkable. That’s precisely why I can’t help you. Agatha: What does being amazing have to do… Sherlock: No no. I didn’t…
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The Speck Becomes the Sea
We are, each of us, a speck, living on a speck, rotating around a speck which is just one of billions of specks clustered in a speck. Here am I experiencing my own infinitesimal significance. I realize: I am a miracle, infinite in my miraculousness. In all the uncountable experiential specks that are consciousness in…
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Adama and Roslin ~ Discovering love in the quiet moments.
One of many beautifully rendered scenes from the fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica. Admiral William Adama has fallen in love with Laura Roslin, President of the Twelve Colonies of Cobol. He hasn’t told her yet. He hasn’t even admitted it to himself, yet. But he is just about to. For the moment, he…
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Roger Ebert ~ Discovering Kindness
Roger Ebert died, yesterday, ‘after an extended battle with cancer’ as they say. Except, as with many who find grace along the journey to life’s end, Ebert appears to have instead taken cancer’s hand and walked with it into the darkness of oblivion he did not fear. That grace is evident in I Do Not…
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The first rule of flying ~ Firefly, Serenity & Love
You can know all the math in the ‘verse but take a boat in the air that you don’t love? She’ll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds.
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Matches and the eternal sunshine of the spotless soul ~ Lawrence of Arabia
Metaphor. I love metaphor. Matches. I just posted one about matches. Matches and pain. This one isn’t about pain. Not at all. It’s about perfection. This one is about the fire that burns inside each of us. Well, maybe there’s a little pain. It’s the pain you feel in your eyes as the sun rises…
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The trick … is not minding that it hurts ~ Lawrence of Arabia
I’ve always loved this scene introducing Peter O’Toole in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. In a film rife with extraordinary storytelling and wisdom, it remains my favourite. In hindsight perhaps it’s the spiritual undertone of Lawrence’s statement that’s always intrigued me most because, of course, Lawrence isn’t only talking about physical pain here. There’s plenty…
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Jason Bourne and identity — who am I?
Who are you? Are you the sum of your experiences, your actions, your memories? Are you your dreams, your plans, your aspirations, the person you’ll someday become? Are you your past, or your destiny or your present? The best films in any genre are always the ones that touch on essential human questions. What is…
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Blade Runner ~ do androids weep electric tears?
Blade Runner is among my favourite films. In a veritable symphony of cinematic elements — cinematography, script, production design, soundtrack, direction, acting — it doesn’t miss a note. The film touches on all the major themes of the human condition: love, death, good and evil, redemption, justice, ethics, greed, passion. It’s philosophically spiritual and passionately…
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To Kill a Mockingbird: the courage of Atticus Finch
It’s the 50th anniversary of the publishing of Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, and I’ve got the film paused, just after the scene in which the verdict is handed down. Guilty. Both the film and the book resonate very deeply with me, in all the themes they touch upon. Family, community, love, goodness,…