PHOTO BY CHI PENG

(AMONG) ESSENTIAL NEW FLMS TO SEE

AMOUR….(France) Director: Michael Haneke. Act: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert. Genre: Romance/Drama. 80-year old lovers.

THE ANGEL’S SHARE….Dir: Ken loach.

ARGO….(USA) Dir: Ben Affleck. Act: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Alan Arkin,

Victor Garber. Genres: Modern history/war drama/thriller. Location: Iran.

BEASTS OF THE SOUNTHERN WILD….Dir: Benh Zeitlin (1^st feature). Act: Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry, Levy Easterly. Fantasy/Drama. 6-year-old girl tries to save her father; Nature rebels.

GUNS: HOT ENTERTAINMENT REALITY FRANCHISE RETURNS

When I was young, idealistic, undiplomatic, and certain of right and wrong, I was outspoken. I said exactly what I believed, openly, in newspapers and magazines, on bulletin boards and telephone poles. I signed opinions, often including my address, and even, recklessly, my photo....

USEFUL FILM WEBSITES

http://www.indiewire.com

For independent filmmakers. Articles, reviews, interviews, links, discussion, and daily news.

http://www.snagfilms.com

Watch newest fiction, shorts, and documentaries films & trailers free online.

AMERICA: 1936, 201?

HISTORY VS. TRUTH

History and truth are in the hands of the person in temporary power, subject to be changed at any moment by some writer who wants to win an award, secure tenure, sell books or a script. History and truth are relative.

DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKERS AT TNNUA

Tainan National University of the Arts (TNNUA) once had some of the best documentary filmmakers (students), from 1998-2006. The Department has been destroyed by the worst of Taiwan educational politics, power addiction, professor's ego, misguided academia, and fear of creativity. This is a major loss to Taiwan, truth-seeking, serious filmmaking, and to international audiences, who will forever miss the vital opportunity of experiencing powerful documentaries that matter.

Among the superb and good documentarians from TNNUA, 1998-2006:

MY CHINA

New York Times Book Review, by Jonathan Mirsky

TOMBSTONE

The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962

by Yang Jisheng  (translated by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian), 629 pp., Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $35.

In the summer of 1962, China’s president, Liu Shaoqi, warned Mao Zedong that “history will record the role you and I played in the starvation of so many people, and the cannibalism will also be memorialized!” Liu had visited Hunan, his home province as well as Mao’s, where almost a million people died of hunger. Some of the survivors had eaten dead bodies or had killed and eaten their comrades. In “Tombstone,” an eye-­opening study of the worst famine in history, Yang Jisheng concludes that 36 million Chinese starved to death in the years between 1958 and 1962, while 40 million others failed to be born, which means that “China’s total population loss during the Great Famine then comes to 76 million.”

CHOICES

DIFFERENCES

Everyone dislikes someone. Everyone living in a community dislikes something in the community: the age-condition-size of a home, noise from a barking dog-old A/C-music-TV-arguing-Mahjong, kids, visitors, too old-too big-too expensive cars/trucks/motorcycles/motor scooters, where and how vehicles are parked, trees or no trees, gardens or no gardens, ornaments, flags, decorations, degrees of neatness, unfriendly or too friendly neighbors, gossip-politics-religion-culture. Landlords-management companies-lawyers…..The list of personal likes and dislikes in a community, a country, and the world is infinite.

DRAWINGS (not doodles)

PASSIONATE LOVE: A SHORT LIFE

In fairy tales, love and marriage lasts happily ever after. Science, however, tells us that love has a limited life.

Western researchers tracked 2000 couples who stayed married over 15 years: newlyweds enjoy a big happiness boost that lasts just two years. Then the special joy wears off and they are back where they began, in terms of happiness. 

The good news is, if loving couples stay together past that two-year slump - for another couple of decades - they may recover the excitement, discovering each other and their early bliss, once again. 

When love is new, we are in “passionate love” -- intense longing, desire, attraction. This love changes into “companion love” -- deep affection and connection. Or love disappears forever. 

INEQUALITY

Beauty - Height - Weight - Muscles - Hair

Body shape - Breast size - Penis size

Voice quality - Speech - Accent - Tone

Friendship - Dating - Love - Sex - Satisfaction

Marriage - Children - Grandchildren - Caretakers

Family - Grandparents - Parents - Siblings

Childhood - Parental support - Psychological problems

Employment - Boss - Work - Job security - Career

Education - School quality - Intellect - Study - Learning

Spirit - Heart - Growth - Change - Contributions - Legacy

TOURISM

Every country in the world seems desperate to improve their Tourism Industry.  Tourists = Money.

What are “Tourists”?

Tourists are people who usually have (a lot) more money than the people they come to see.  They usually know little about the countries they go to, and don’t really want to know.  They prefer surfaces to knowledge, photos to communication, quick pleasure to intimacy.

COMMENTS

You may post comments now. . .
I finally learned how to enable it.
Please be kind with any criticism.

LULLABY

     "Lullaby" (1997)-Frank Moore

VIRTUAL REALITY TV

[ WARNING:  This essay is written in over-the-top American English.... If you do not like this "style," please don't give up reading the rest of the Blog, which is written in more reader-friendly English to communicate clearly! ]

The mega-blockbusters, “American Idol,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “So You Think You Can Dance,” and “America’s Got Talent” are the Titanics of TV, except they have happy American success-story endings and never sink, unlike America.

“The Voice” invented revolutionary hideously-designed spinning chairs and a beyond-silly singing wrestling ring. It also recognizes excellence, and, unlike some shows, has a beating non-plastic heart.  Of course, unlike Japanese and Mexican boy bands, Idol-with-Chairs contestants don’t have to be tortured into sleeping with Blake or Adam to further their careers. And there are plenty of non-black straight guys who like exaggerated Hispanic rears. “Voice” has a lot to offer everyone, even vicariously.

VALUES

     For Sale: $65-million.

     Phoenix, Arizona.

BEING PRESENT

INTIMACY FATALLY ATTACKED 

The strong, but fading responses against interrupting personal real contact with technological virtual contact is comforting, although it is a losing battle.  The war has already been won, and those who support intimacy are already dinosaur zombies. 

In defiance of the robotization of culture and communication, some rebels still are able to summon the positive energy and courage to resist massive social and planned-obsolescence pressures to spend, update, and boast.  

Play Review: "ICELAND"

ICELAND: A STATE OF HEART

冰島：心的國度

Iceland and Taiwan are both islands.  Iceland has volcanoes and melting ice.  Taiwan has corruption, pollution, volatile politics on the TV Yuan, and China.  Iceland thought it was safebecause it floated away as far north as possible from the insanity of Europe.  Taiwan thought it was safe because America passionately offers its stallion youth to defend democracy and oil around the world.and China.  
冰島和台灣都是島嶼。冰島有火山和融冰的威脅；台灣則要面對貪污腐化、環境污染、立法院搬演的火爆政治秀以及兩岸問題。冰島自認安全，因為它已儘可能飄流北方，遠離荒唐的歐洲；台灣亦自認安全，因為美國用種馬般的精力，積極捍衛全球的民主和石油。

ART VS. DEATH

   

    25,000 years ago, France

    38,000 years ago, Spain

SUPPORT PEOPLE, NOT RULERS

It is a tragic fact that America, the beautiful Hope of the rest of humanity, usually chooses the wrong world leaders to support. This is due to our own fundamentalist close-mindedness, egotistical stubbornness, and self-deluding naïveté about life. It is also because, no matter what our glorious Constitution, Bill of Rights, and good-hearted American Myth say....our nation's crucial decisions are still made for extremely short-sighted, immorally pragmatic, and greedy financial reasons. It is entirely possible for us to support oppressed people who rise-up against every corrupt and evil dictatorship...but then those who are really in power in America would lose money, and we would all have to sacrifice immediate comforts. Can you imagine how the overwhelming majority of people on earth would react towards America, if we actually helped them, rather than their rulers? What a lovely dream.

GRATITUDE

BOOK OF GRATITUDE

This Book was started on Thanksgiving Day 2011. Then every day when I wake up, I visualize other vital people and things, feel their influence on my heart and spirit, and ritualistically write their names…..

NATURE

I am grateful for hummingbirds, rabbits, trees, clouds, rain, snow.

HEALTH

I am grateful for breathing easily, seeing, moving my body, crying, making love, sleeping well.

PEOPLE

I am grateful I lived in the same centuries with Bob Dylan,

Jackson Pollack, Walt Kelly, Federico Fellini, Maya Plisetskaya,

Akira Kurosawa, Doc Watson, Jorge Preloran, Ingmar Bergman,

WHY I DON'T LEARN CHINESE

I’ve lived in Taiwan for 12 years.

No one can understand why I did not learn Chinese.

It’s absurd.

There must be a logical reason, so people imagine:

·                    I am lazy.

    I don’t respect Taiwan.
          I have a brain problem (besides age).

ART FROM XINDIAN

MOMENTO

One of the most complex film scripts written. Creative filmmakers were thrilled when Momento came out. No one had made a film like that before....and it’s hard to make a completely different film, because everything has been done many times. It is such a difficult film for audiences to understand, but it still earned $40-million, so audiences are NOT stupid, like some producers and studios believe.

The real editor is the Writer/Director, who is unique in cinema, like all great directors are. No one makes films like Christopher Nolan, from England. He studied English Literature, which is why his scripts are so intellectual AND smart.

He started making movies as a boy, with a Super-8mm home film camera. This is the passion needed to become a good filmmaker.