Thursday, June 23, 2005
review: captain corelli's mandolin
- The spread(of)CC, a map of the CC meme's organisational spread throughout the world. [from the Lessig Blog]
- Brian's Emu: Genesis/Megadrive [from last week's emulation hunt]
- CoolROMs: Genesis ROMs [ditto]
- deviantART: Bule Journal The journal of a young Eastern European photographer adventuring the various freaked out nooks and crannies of Indonesia. [from deviantART]
- fight mannequinism.ORG -- unfortunately lots of windows only media. Kewl concept tho'. By the AdCouncil [from one of those ads up above this blog's contents]
- The history of the Starbucks logo [from Boing Boing]
- Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation [from /.]
- Gates and Ozzie: How to Escape Email Hell. An online workspace where coworkers can edit documents together live on the internet sounds like a cool idea. Wonder when the FOSS clan would respond to this (or perhaps they have?) [from Fortune magazine]
- And you know like I just googled my name and I discovered that most hits I got mentions the OSI button I made a while back. And I haven't even told them about the little blogbutton I have on the sidebar here. This blog isn't on the list though....
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
directed by John Madden
starring Nicholas Cage, Penelope Cruz, John Hurt
Walt Disney Pictures, Buena Vista Entertainment
2001
I watched Madagascar last Monday with a few campus friends at Wijaya 21. Afterwards with Ruli's suggestion we had dinner at Basil's. We had various pastas and sandwiches, I myself ordered a Fetuccine Carbonara. It was delicious and it cost only Rp 18.000 (US$ 1.7).
While at Basil's Ruli related a tale of how he was kicked out of a french restaurant in Paris because he put Tabasco on his dinner. Supposedly the chef barged out and yelled French obscenities at our dear friend, all of it meaningless to him because he doesn't speak the language, and he was promptly ushered out of the café/restaurant/place/whatever without having to pay anything.
There's something to be said about people too stuck up to understand how insignificant one is in the grand scheme of the universe, but the French are not Italians. Nor can we expect to accurately predict any action of any particular person based on any particular stereotype, but you gotta love any pasta carbonara. And Italian operas.
I'd always fancy myself an appreciator of various musics. And those Italian soldiers under Captain Corelli sure can sing. It was pretty lucky of me to get to catch Captain Corelli on TV7 two nights ago. Good luck trying to find it on rentals and pirate DVD stalls here; art films just don't sell; even if it won an Oscar. Well, maybe if they won an Oscar and also feature some barely-legal almost-sex (like American Beauty).
Anyway can anyone point me to where I can get a copy of the full score for that guitar concerto, "Pellagia's Theme," that Captain Corelli wrote for the Mandolin and was played in the movie? I wanna play it.... Does Nicholas Cage really play the mandolin himself? It looks like it in the movie, and it sounds great. I'd love to be able to play it with Mahawaditra. Hell, I'd love to hear Mahawaditra play it, even if someone else does the guitar solo.
But its not just the music though. There's not much of it actually, though what little there is is beautiful. Most reviews made on the movie when it first came out would go on and on about the love story, and I must admit it is a very touching and somewhat complex love story (but not so contrived as to become a daytime soap). But what stuck in my mind more was Pellagia's dad, Iannis, and his nuggets of bottled wisdom. Especially what he said about love (exact quote wording courtesy of the IMDB).
When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No... don't blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? But it is!
And also I love how it portrays the peaceful life on the island where people from two cultures (actually three when you count Gunther and the Germans) could 'act towards one another with civility,' in such a 'dark and sad time.' Gunther singing along with Corelli and the troops, with the Greeks dancing to the Italian band. When they can find those few precious moments where they can enjoy life in the middle of dire circumstances. Overcoming the fact that they're enemies, with realisation that we are all (mostly) human.
The look in Gunther's face when he had to kill his friends.
And to imagine all this as based on a true story...
So, does anyone have the concerto?
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
