I know its 7 years after the fact but I finally watched the brilliantly beautiful movie Life is Beautiful starring the indomitable Roberto Benigni. This story is one of many, many Holocast stories but told with so much humour and emotion as only Benigni could pull it off. He is only the 2nd actor to direct himself to a Best Actor Oscar, the first being Sir Laurence Oliver, and also the only person to win Best Actor for a non-English language film.
The storyline is simply how a man with a penchant for comedy and creating memorable experiences, happiness and having fun. He meets a woman who he calls his “Principessa” from their first meeting. They get married and have a son. Soon afterwards the Nazi’s invade Italy and all Jewish people are sent to concentration camps. He’s wife is not Jewish but they share such a close connection she refuses to stay behind and goes with them on the train. To ensure his son doesn’t suspect anything untoward he creates a game. This game manages to keep he’s son distracted the entire time and looking forward to winning the 1st prize, a tank! Please go and rent this movie, find it, watch it, and share it with everyone you can possibly imagine. To my mind this is one of the most beautiful stories ever. I salute Benigni and look forward to watching his version of Pinocchio soon.
Superman, the archetypal comic book superhero was born in the early 1930′s depression era America. The brainchild of writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster Superman was initially a villain but soon became the greats hero known to mankind. The myth of Superman is essentially that he was born on the planet Krypton with a red sun. Before the planet was destroyed his parents, Jor-El & Lara, sent him off to Earth. The only survivor from his home planet he became an American icon helping fight World War II, saving FDR and much more. In the early 1990s Superman was killed in by Doomsday. He was resurrected (sound familiar) and his powers temporarily changed but was soon reversed to the original set of powers.
Christopher Reeve became famous overnight when he starred in the first Superman (1978) movie. He reprised the role 3 more times although the last movie, Superman 4: The Quest for Peace (1987) was pretty lame compared to the sequels. The first two are rated as the best and the third starring Richard Pryor is a bit of a comic farce in the vain of Batman Forever (with Jim Carrey). My personal favourite is #2 with the 3 baddies from Krypton. After suffering severe injuries from a horse riding accident Christopher Reeve was paralyzed. He still continued to do work behind the camera. He also petitioned Hollywood to make more social conscious movies at the 1996 Oscars. Although he will best remembered as the Man of Steel, he has made an enormous contribution to the cause of the disabled, and was in particular outspoken about Stem Cell Research.
What is your favourite Christopher Reeve moment? Please comment on this post and share it with me.
The Iraq war is a farce and we all know it. The United States of America led by George (Dubya) Bush had invaded a sovereign country that was not a threat to America. For the last 18 months we’ve been bombarded with an assortment of lies. Even the once respectable Colin Powell, LIED in front of the United Nations when he called for a special resolution (READ permission to go to war). George W Bush is a liar, an idiot and viciously protecting the interest of American special interest groups in the defence and oil industries (READ Halliburton, Boeing, etc). A couple of weeks ago I watched Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11.
How obvious it must be now to see that Dubya stole the election from Al Gore. Bush’s family was involved in all aspects from the Fox News reports which declared him the winner in Florida, to his brother Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida. The American media continuous not to show the reality of the Iraq and it’s consequences for there own soldiers who are dying every week. Moore interviews a very patriotic mother of a soldier in Iraq. Only when he dies and his body is sent home for burial does she start to question the reason why he went in the first place. Moore probes the relationship American relationship with Saudia Arabia, and I conclude that it is incestuous in nature. You have to wonder who the parasite is and who the prey between them is.
Does taking Iraq’s oil riches make America less dependant on Saudi oil, or are really a cover up for something deeper? And why did other Arab nations not stand up for Iraq?!After watching another documentary, The World According to Bush on SABC3, rebroadcast this past Sunday I’m even more convinced that we are all ignorant and have allowed this farce to continue long enough. The difference with these two excellent documentaries is that The World According to Bush was produced in France, and it starts out with a linking Bush to the neo conservative Christian right wing in America. This is a very powerful lobby group that is Israel’s staunches supporters. It’s like there’s an implicit agreement between them on America’s foreign policy. You have to ask yourself why the hell America keep interferes in other countries. Doesn’t if have enough problems internally to keep it busy? The world is not a better place because America tries to police it. Case in point it creates its own enemies like Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Ladan but wants to get rid of them when they are no longer needed as is currently the case. Some of the obvious facts that was omitted and ignored by most people are as follows:
Dubya’s grand father Prescott Bush was the secret banker for Adolph Hitler in World War 2
In the 1980s Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq and recommended that the USA support them against Iran
Osama Bin Laden was a CIA trained spy in Afghanistan fighting the Russians
The Carlyle Group had Shafik Bin Laden, Osama’s half-brother as a major shareholder
Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia ambassador to the USA organised that all Bin Laden’s relatives in the USA and other Saudi’s be flown back to Saudi Arabia on September 12, 2001 when no other plains were allowed to fly in the USA
There’s an endless stream of evidence that Bush & Co. planned to get rid of Saddam Hussein before 9/11. Both documentaries prove this beyond a doubt. So what can we do about this? We can encourage President Thabo Mbeki to more outspoken about the USA & Britain withdrawing from Iraq. Innocent women and children are being killed in the crossfire. Saddam cannot be tried by any courts that has anything to do with the USA because the have an inherent bias against him. Send emails to Thabo Mbeki president@gov.za and tell him to tell the USA to get the hell out of Iraq (and Afghanistan). While you at it email George W Bush president@whitehouse.gov and tell him as well where to shove it. Never before has there been a more arrogant and stupid president in the USA. I implore everyone to go and watch the funny yet poignant documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.
“Sending more troops will not make the U.S. safer; it will only build more opposition against us. I urge you on behalf of truth and patriotism to consider carefully and rethink Afghanistan.” — Retired Corporal Rick Reyes, speaking before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
As the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan continually creates unintended consequences, RETHINK AFGHANISTAN investigates the most striking issues surrounding the war — the impact on our troops, Pakistan’s still underreported involvement, and the cost of war in financial and human terms — through the eyes of experts and the people of Afghanistan.
Today I watched the movie The Sea Inside about the life of quadriplegic, Ramon Sampedro, who decided to end his life because of his physical disability. In the movie he is brilliantly portrayed by Javier Bardem, one of my favourite actors. The director Alejandro Amenábar is a favourite of South African movie critic Barry Ronge, and when you see this film you realise maybe why he is the most respected Spanish director currently making movies in both Europe and America (The Others). This was a film I wanted to watch not in the least because he is my namesake – Ramon – but because I also had several bouts of depression, with at least two of them driving me to towards suicide. So I could see a part of me inside the main character of this film.
Ramon Sampedro campaigned for almost 30 years to be allowed to take his own life, also known as euthanasia, which is illegal in most countries. He believed he was not living with dignity and his the only thing he looked forward to was his death. His main argument rested on the fact that he was sure he wanted to die. Freud called this the Thanatos – or the death drive and is the opposite of eros. Before the accident he travelled all over the world, brilliantly shown by a collage of photos to his married lawyer, Julia (Belén Rueda). She herself has a degenerative disease, which reduces her capacity to walk and function after several strokes. At some point during their engagements there is moments of intimacy that develops between them, especially after Julia reads Ramon’s poetry. She insists that they must be published and that they would eventually jointly commit suicide when the first book is delivered from the printers. This never happens because she has the book sent to him and goes her own way to some extent. Towards the end of the film it becomes clear that her own health had deteriorated to such an extent she was not able to mentally function and follow through on the promise she had made to Ramon.
So it’s no surprise to find out the book has been adapted into a film by the name of Slumdog Millionaire. The title character’s name has been changed and the story possible shorted for dramatic effect.
From Danny Boyle, director of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, comes the story of Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is about to experience the biggest day of his life. With the whole nation watching, he is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India’s “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”
I’m re-posting this directly from the Times Multimedia because I have been struggling to write anything original longer than 140 characters. Another reason for this is because my friend Natalie Becker has a small role in this film and she informed me about it beforehand and because I love watching movie trailers, this grabbed my attention. And so once I’ve watched the film I will update this will my own review. One thing that bothers me is that the two lesbian women are unusually attractive. Especially the women who is supposedly a mother. Also view the awesome website for The World Unseen.
Sheetal Sheth, the central figure that creates the tension in the plot, has some of the most amazing eyes I’ve ever seen. And I’ll be looking for more of her earlier movies like Looking for Comedy in a Muslim World. And it turns out Lisa Ray is a model turned actress with a strong Bollywood background. This is not unusual in the movie business because who wants to look at average looking people in film and television?
Anyway here’s what The Times has to say about it, mostly like taken from another source like IMDB.
In 1950’s South Africa, apartheid is just beginning.
Free-spirited Amina has broken all the rules of her own conventional Indian community in South Africa by running a café – a safe haven of laughter, music and home-cooked food. A ‘grey area’ for those who fall outside the strict ‘black and white’ rules of the apartheid-led government.
Café regulars include Amina’s feisty waitress, Doris, her gentle “coloured” business partner, Jacob, and the sparky white local postmistress, Madeleine. Long accustomed to the racial barriers of the country and its new laws, Madeleine and Jacob nevertheless share a budding attraction.
Miriam, on the other hand, is a doting mother to her children and a demure, subservient wife to her chauvinistic, frustrated husband, Omar. Quietly intelligent, Miriam has never assumed that she has choices in life.
When Miriam meets Amina, their unexpected attraction throws them both off balance. Although Miriam manages to subdue her fascination with unconventional Amina, she finds herself slowly inspired to confront familiar and familial constraints. Shortly after their encounter, Miriam moves to an isolated life in the country, but, even here, apartheid is placing its cruel footprint on society and these injustices bring the two women together again, cementing the basis of their growing feelings.
Meanwhile, Jacob decides to pursue a love affair of his own and he and Madeleine begin a tentative, touching relationship. But the best intentions of both are overcome by practical challenges and indignities of simply spending time together.
Even the fearless Amina, faced with the strength of her feelings and with the reality of Miriam’s situation, starts doubting herself. And Miriam finds herself making some courageous choices that will change her own life forever.
Using the stunning South African landscape and jazz music of the time, The World Unseen explores a system that divides white from black and women from men, but one that might just allow an unexpected love to survive.
David DeAngelo, an American dating coach has a famous saying online, ?Attraction isn’t a choice.? Those words in fact became the title of the 2nd ebook he published after the hugely successful Double Your Dating. Both of these books were the starting point for what has turned into my life purpose, improving my own dating life, and in turn helping others improve their dating and relationships.
Let’s starts by giving attraction a definition: the force that brings people together. Repulsion is what pushes people away. Thinking about magnets you realise how opposites attract and similarities push apart. However, in human relationships you’ll notice that in the short term opposites may indeed spark attraction but its people who have more similarities who are the ones who stay together over the longer term. Someone once told me friendships last longer than most marriages. That is a certain ring of truth to that even without any supporting evidence in the 21st century.
What makes one person more attractive over another person? This is a mystery because philosophers and poets have written about it for thousands of years. And recently many scientists have contributed to the parade. Dr Paul Dobransky defines Attractiveness or Power as positive emotional energy and mature boundary function. In physics power or energy is the amount of work that can be done in a particular length of time. The more potent you are is a core metaphor for masculine power. It’s this potency men advertise to women that creates attraction without using any words or deeds. A woman notices a man, and says to her friend, “I don’t know what it about him…” referring to her initial experience of the masculine energy.
Self-esteem or self-worth is directly linked to attraction. The more self-worth, the higher your self-esteem, the more attractive you are to people. Again from Dr Paul Dobransky, self-esteem is made up of confidence and well-being. Confidence is what you get from transforming your anxiety into courage. And as you look deeper into this you’ll realise removing uncertainty has the same effect. Well-being is more of a motherly energy. You have enough money, enough friends ? your needs is are met – enough peace, enough vacation. Mature adults need to learn to father themselves through courage and mother themselves through what’s called assertiveness. If you don’t have well-being you take anger you feel and you use it in the form of assertiveness. Assertiveness is defined as going out and getting what you need. Again the more assertive, the more attractive.
Don Juan Demarco
In this movie Johnny Depp plays a young man believing himself to be the greatest lover in the world. It starts out with him being depressed because he lost the one great love of his life and is ready to commit suicide. But first must have one last romantic encounter with a woman in need.
Just this opening scene is worth your money in gold because Don Juan gives a perfect example of how to be charming, romantic and seduce a woman. He interrupts a red-headed woman waiting alone at a table, sits down and begins talking to her in a deep commanding voice. As she objects, I insist, ?I will not linger.? He proceeds to tell her how sensitive certain women are to the touch of a man. Moving up from the bottom of their legs, he proceeds to move from her fingertips to her knuckles, which he in turn associates with her knees. Eventually the fleshy part of a finger, is like the thighs and finally…he ends up kissing her between the fingers implying a kiss elsewhere on the female body.
Here’s a clip from the movie with the scene I’ve just described:
Don Juan Demarco, as a movie is a fantastic demonstration of how romance can lead to natural attraction. The problem is, it’s a movie, not real life, in the real world, sparking attraction can be reinforced or strengthened by romance, not the other way around. What I mean here is that without attraction there is a long road to misery that lies ahead. So focus on creating attraction first before you spill your feelings to the person you are attracted.
I recently watched this comedy and was only mildly entertained by it. The more important lesson is that its possible for a shy, nerdy, insecure guy to become confident, social and improve your success with women. So many of the guys who ask me about my coaching programme are infatuated with ONE girl. They miss the point that it is about improving your overall social success with women.
This is one of those few movies like Hitch which can give insecure, lonely or frustrated guys a glimpse of what’s possible. The basic plot of the movie is that Roger, a nerd, played by John Herder from Napoleon Dynamite fame, takes a class with a self-help guru Dr P, played by Billy Bob Thornton. Dr P is a real ass hole and treats all his students with disdain. He has a bad-add enforcer in the form of Lesher, played by the huge Michael Clark Duncan. You can read more detailed reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
What I want to highlight is how stupid this movie ends. Roger basically wins back his girlfriend from Mr P, who turns out to be the biggest liar and a con-man. When you watch a movie like this you have to think about how realistic it is for a character as pathetic as Roger to build enough confidence to do what he does. What I mean is to actually pull it off. This kind of things never happen in the real world. It takes a long time to build up enough muster to challenge an authority figure like Dr P. There are no short cuts and you can throw luck out the window. Fake it till you make it just won’t cut it with women in the long term. If you want to supercharge your social success with women in South Africa, join the South African Seduction Lair and meet guys with more experience. Stop reading books or listening to audio programs from the Internet. Meet guys who can show you what’s possible.
Just came back from watching the awesome Bourne Ultimatum. Matt Damon really kicks some solid ass in this film like he did in the previous ones. Bourne is tortured by memory loss and is on a mission to find out where it all began.
This got me think about Jason Bourne vs James Bond as a spy but more so as a male role model. It’s been said other than their initials they do not have much in common. Jason Bourne is edgy, vulnerable and tortured while James Bond is smooth, droll, conscience-free. Bourne is stalked by the loss of his girlfriend in the Bourne Supremacy while James Bond is the ultimate player and womaniser. For a brief moment it seemed like Bourne was going to hook-up with Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles). But he sent her on her on way as he continued to go for broke trying to find out his origins.
In terms of raw energy Jason Bourne is the more pragmatic of the two spies. James Bond relies so much on gadgets to accomplish what he needs to do. I do accept that Daniel Craig is likely the only actor to play Bond that could be superior in ass kicking than Matt Damon‘s Bourne. So while James Bond relies on his charm, Bourne could be enormously attractive to women because of his single minded conviction while showing compassion when you least expect it.