The Pensieve

ayer por la noche, mié esta película con mis amigos. fue la primera vez que una de mis amigas miraba tal película. pienso que no fue una buena experiencia para ella. jaja… es una lástima que elijiera esta película. todo el mundo se puse confundido cuando la película se terminó. jeje… sin embargo, cuando volví a casa, pensé más en la película y sentí que había un significativo profundo. pues, me voy a tratar de explicarlo.
por lo primero, la película muestra que no es posible crear un mundo perfecto. un mundo sin dolor, sin lagrimas sin todo tipo de padecimiento. lo mismo se entiende con el libro ‘el mundo perfecto’ por aldous huxley. la palabra ‘utopía’ se parece una buena cosa pero no se puede hacer en realidad. así es la vida. para mí… prefiero un mundo con todo, no me gusta el sufrimiento pero eso es muy importante. sin eso, no se puede apreciar el valor de la felicidad, no se puede guardar lo bueno que se tiene como un tesoro.
la película gira sobre tres personajes - tomasa, papa dorita y fidel. Tomasa es una joven innocente y sencilla. huyó de su mama, una prostituta, o una puta (como dijo), sin un objetivo en la vida, se siente perdida y confundida muchas veces. cuando mama dorita se murió y tomasa se encargó con la tarea de ‘la nueva virgen’, se puse más y más confundida. trató de huir otra vez pero no pudo. lo curioso es que empezó mantener relaciones sexuales con todos los hombres en los cuarteles y solo ella podía hacerlo. era como la diosa de las rameras… lo mismo que su mama! he óido que lo más se odia de los padres, es lo mucho que nos parecemos a ellas. quizás sea cierto.

el amor entre papá basilio y mamá dorita merece mucho respeto. hay raro que uno pueda ver tal cariño entre dos personas. para mí, son las personas m’as normales en la secta.

fidel es como tomasa. muy joven, muy inseguro, y afronta la crisis de identidad. (jeje… no sé como escribirlo en la manera española). de cualquier manera, fidel no puede aguantar el estrés de su tío y escapó a la secta. allí, él se vestía como una mujer. por fin, tomasa le ayudó a tomar la decisión. (pienso que no voy a ser tan explícita. jeje… pueden imaginar)

está película es tan extraña, y tan poca natural. supongo que el concepto de esto culto no va bien conmigo. el estilo de su ropa me pone ‘urgh’…

despu’es est’a pel’icula, me voy a eligir la pr’oxima pel’icula mexicana con mucho cuidado!

on the surface, ‘the gospel of wonders’ might seem really stupid and boring, and confusing (actually i still think it is) but anyway to make my 9bux worth it and also becuz i feel this impending urge to analyse it… (i think i’m a rationalising freak, everytime there’s something i dun understand, i got to rationalise it… and i got to get the answer to all my questions too).
i think this movie proves once more that a utopian world will never exist, as seen in ‘brave new world’ and ‘— ——-’. somehow, it seems that the typical sins are inborn in all of us. there doesn’t seem to be a way where we can protect ourselves from each other and from ourselves. despite all the precautions taken to preserve the only ‘human’ left in the new world, (brave new world), it was unable to stop him from taking his own life. Similarly in this movie, despite all the cries and promises of joyousness, of salvation from the end of the world and of unadulterated heavenly peace, ‘los sublimos’ still ended up commiting one of the greatest sins - murder.
maybe the whole big deal of life is not about protecting ourselves from the ‘tools of the devil’ (as many religious grps or more like cults put it) - like money… (this cult went even as far as to say tt movies are evil) as can be seen in this film, despite all the precautions taken, i think, we need to protect ourselves from ourselves more then we need protection from any other things.
it seems to me that humans are simply unable to put their faith in an idea, a belief, and to put our faith in ourselves, we have to worship something else… the simple idea of a God existing is not enough for us… we just HAVE to have a idol, something to put on the altar, on the wall… like dolls, statues, crosses, figurines… i think i would be more interested in a religion that didn’t have an object to represent it. (but i think that’s almost impossible, anyone know of a religion such as this, pls drop me a note!)
hmmm… i like the idea of an inherent madness in us. (yo, AG, that would help us rationalise a bit, it’s ok to be a bit cranky after all u know! haha) Just look at Tomasa, young, beautiful, at the brink of puberty, handed a computer and a title of ‘the new virgin’ (ie. the chosen one they believe would bring forth the second christ) and there she goes creating her weird rules.. (or rather, hallucinating that God has talked to her and given her various tasks)… the entire setting just looked so weird and creepy to me, it’s like there’s something majorly wrong in there and i just wanna get out of it asap!
the film reminded me a little of this old film ‘the gods must be crazy’ (think most of u shld have caught it by now, it’s hilarious isn’t it) anyway, it’s kind of paralleled here. Tomasa has a gameboy and a flower tattoo on the arm as well as knows how to play games on the computer. the prophet, took these as signs that she was the messiah… that all these were signs fr above that she would be the new virgin… ok, i dunno to laugh at the ridiculous nature of it or to cry at the fates of all those who would be under her tutelage!
till now i have no idea what the ending means… i would like to think that they adopted an egyptian style to mama dorita’s burial… maybe those guilty of butchering fidel ate blue paint or some kind of poison and committed mass suicide and tomasa and her remaining faithful followers were buried or jumped off the cliff or sth (simply, just die) together with the mummified corpse of mama dorita. then the film-crazed papa basilio somehow managed to get this all down on film which he spends the rest of his life watching! hahaha….

‘the village’ is a movie set in the ‘colonical times’ USA, about a fear that never should have been there, a theory so complicated and so utopian, it would give aldous huxley a run for his money. it’s a suspenseful story about a creatures in a forest terrorising a village surrounded by the forest. it’s also about love (this is the dominant theme), love between parents and children, love between a woman and (unfortunately two men)… it’s about how love can strengthen, and how love can destroy a man. most importantly, it brings up the question of whether when we love someone, do we do all we can to protect them, and to what extent are we willing to do that.
it’s a very worthwhile watch, and those people who’ve watched and said it’s boring, or uneventful, it’s obvious that you lack the ability to look beyond the surface. i would say, it might even be worth a second watch!

Genre: classics

‘… rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.’

Synopsis:
Ann Hutchison, a married woman living in a Puritan village, while awaiting the arrival of her husband, commits adultery and bears a child. She refuses to reveal who the father of her child is, and because of that, was condemned to spend an entire 9 months in the dungeon, and to wear the scarlet letter ‘A’ upon her chest for the rest of her life if she chose to remain in the village. She and her daughter, Pearl, are scorned every minute of their life, as she represents all that a virtuous, chaste woman is not.

For 7 long years she lived in the village, quietly accepting her fate and teaching her daughter as best as she could, and through the 7 long years, the villagers gradually forgot her ’sin’ and stopped wondering who the child’s father was… and they started to respect her and see the scarlet letter as a representation of her kindness,quiet resilience and recognised her other virtues.

Meanwhile, while she did her penance, the father of her child (as was later revealed to us to be the pastor), suffered from guilt, eating away at his conscience, leaving him a wretched old man. In addition, her rightful husband had actually returned but made her promise not to reveal his real identity, and for 7 long years, he masqueraded as the town’s physician. Fast forward… eventually, the pastor told the truth and stood with Ann and Pearl at the scaffold where the mother was made to stand every day for 3 hours as punishment, and he died at peace with himself and his people. But for her rightful husband, he was so eaten away by his quest for revenge, and when that was thwarted by the pastor’s public confession, he was left lost and empty, dying as a man who did not know what he had lived for.

Comments: This intricately woven classic tells us of three important principles in life, as portrayed by the three characters. It emphasises the importance of being at peace with our conscience. No matter how much good we might do, and no matter how ‘angelic’ others see us, we will forever be tortured by our own demons. We have to first recognise our ‘demons’, laying them down clearly before us, and then can we start to fix the wrongs we have done. Revenge, might be sweet, but only in the quest and the action of it, what remains after we have achieved ’sweet revenge’ is nothing, but a recognition of the vast amount of time and effort we have spent in procuring it; time that would be wiser spent doing other things.

An interesting note to point out would be that the scarlet letter, an original symbol of shame eventually evolved to become a symbol of respect, of virtue and of resilience. I believe that a symbol is only a meaningless picture, something that we should not place too much emphasis on. Ultimately, it’s what we do that afixes a symbolism to the picture. Thus, it might be a warning not to place such emphasis on the symbols in life - the condominium, the credit cards, an Oscar, a title… ultimately, it’s what we do that people respect us for, not what we have that draws the respect, at least, from the people that matter.

Ok, so… blow fly, one of the latest novels about Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a forensic anthropologist-cum-lawyer. It’s mainly a follow-up of the story revolving around the Chandonne cartel and the psycho twins… euw… twins, so connected and similar in their psycho tendencies, obsessions and fetishes. (real gros details in the book) yet so different in apperance. one’s like some greek god (think sculpted muscular lean body, ie. ‘hot bod’ plus blue eyes and blond hair) the other, unfortunately inflicted with a rare disease, likening him to the loup-garou.

The language is refreshing… for once an entire book is told in a retrospective, narrative format… very personalised yet very detached. The interesting part, everything is in third-person narrative YET in present tense, a bit like a script. It is more about everyone battling their inner-demons rather than about the demon who’s on death-row. There’s the doc battling her fears and her anger and her sorrow at losing the man she loved… there’s Lucy (the niece) battling her entire life of police training and killing (outwardly murdering, real cold-blooded scene) the corrupt lawyer of the cartel… then there’s her sidekick who’s battling his desire for her… uh… and Pete Marino (legendary inspector), battling his hatred for his son (tt corrupt cartel lawyer)… and then… we also find out that Benton Wesley (the man Scarpetta loves) is actually NOT DEAD! his death was staged, to keep him save from the cartel, and currently he’s staging his own plan to avenge his ‘death’, protect Scarpetta and bring down the cartel!

The ending is super chilling, that disgusting monster escaped death row soooo simply… tsk tsk. Even a high-security state prison could do nothing to stop him. Shit lah, now when i’m in dark, ulu places i get this creep down my spine… can’t wait for the next novel to be out, i hope that demonish misbreed dies in it.

PS: i don’t encourage pple to read it unless they’ve read at least three or four books that are about Scarpetta…

Genre: forensics, thriller

This is my current read, i almost drooled when i saw the title! saw this book in the shops earlier this year but didn’t want to burn money on it… hehe seems like my wait has finally paid off! yoohoo!

Synopsis: It’s a summer of record-breaking heat in Charlotte. Tempe Brennan is looking forward to her first vacation in year, but it is not to be. She’s almost out the door when the bones start appearing. First there’s the little skeleton of a newborn found in a wood stove. Did the baby’s young mother put her there? The mother, hardly more than a child herself, has disappeared.

Next, a Cessna flies into a rock face on a sunny afternoon. Both pilot and passenger are burned beyond recognition, their bodies covered with a strange black substance. What could it be? There’s evidence that they may have had criminal purposes for the flight.

Most puzzling, though, is a cache of bones found in a remote corner of the county. Some animal, some human, the bones are enough to keep Tempe busy for a long time to come. Everything leads back to an isolated farm. What happened there, and who will be the next victim? The answers lie hidden deep within the bones – if only Tempe can decipher them in time…