Sathfilms

A friend showed this to me.

my father showed me this:

Somewhere down below in bold is a comment that I really liked on the post “Oedipal Atheists” found on the Religious Write blog. The post looked at a new study:

Oxford University researchers will carry out a £2 million ($4.3 million) study into why people believe in God. The three-year study by anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other academics will consider whether belief in a divine being is an inherent part of human nature.

Project director Roger Trigg, acting head of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, says anthropological and philosophical research suggests that faith in God is a universal human impulse found in most cultures around the world. “One implication that comes from this is that religion is the default position, and atheism is perhaps more in need of explanation.” (more…)

“I always figured Hell would be less ironic.”
Ben Snyder
Charlottesville, Va.

Drawing by Paul Noth

If I have any conclusion at all after this trip - which is not something I claim to have - perhaps it is that all these places, whilst being vastly different on the surface, to me, are incredibly similar underneath. How different can these places within the realm of humanity truly be in the search for what truly matters, whether it’s India, China, Germany, England, America, Australia and so on? What kind of emancipation exists in seeing the world, apart from getting an increasingly acute feeling that satisfaction is somewhere between the lines. There is an odd sensation in seeing the same happiness, sadness, problems, denial, uncertainty and glimpses of beauty, framed in countless diverse ways around the globe, even in states that border each other and even between and within communities that are smaller and physically closer yet.

At ground level, as I traveled around in different kinds of groups - with different friend, with family, with strangers, by myself - seeing a variety of places, I saw numerous ways in which nations and communities have been shaped by their long histories. Ideas have been emphasised differently between societies as occurrences in the past have dictated it. It is quite fascinating to experience how differently people view even simple things because of the way they were brought up and because of the place in which they have grown up.

Firstly, as mentioned, there is contrast in what I’ve seen between places, whilst there remains an intense underlying sameness. Just as the differences keep everyone divided and distracted, the sameness shows promise for peace in the distant future despite the challenges that obviously exist. Secondly but definitely not independent of the first point, there is a type unity in the pervasive dissatisfaction existing in the world today. Identity is getting obscured as people strive to claw uncertainly for an identity, or at least something, anything, to matter enough. Perhaps I’m talking only about myself but I do not think that I am. And perhaps this only exists outside the dogmatic religious frame. In any case, the first phenomenon impedes the second; the first phenomenon distracts us from the difficulty of merely addressing the second let alone overcoming it. Living in that distraction might be necessary, but beneath that distraction is one thing that can cause unity… but does that matter?

A friend showed me this video clip. “What’s a Girl To Do” by Bat for Lashes; video directed by the successful Dougal Wilson. I think it’s really cool - trippy.

A short article about the clip found here.

I’m not sure if anyone’s been watching On The Lot but it’s a show on Fox, created by Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett. I’ve heard about it a number of times, but I only happened to catch it earlier this week. For those who don’t know, it’s sort of like an American Idol for filmmakers with a prize of a one-million dollar development deal at dreamworks. So as expected, many people apply and only a handful are selected. Each week a group of contestants are given a theme for a short, and once made, viewers vote on their favorite films. The contestant with the least votes is sent home.

Anyway, when I saw the show earlier this week there were quick highlights of the previous week and the judges comments, which I find hilarious. One judge, Gary Marshall, loves quoting other people in his appraisals of short films. Carrie Fisher is equally amusing. You probably need to watch just one episode and you’ll enjoy the somewhat non-constructive feedback.

I’m not sure if this is a regular thing on the show, but there was a guest judge on this episode who was one Luke Greenfield. He’s quite a young filmmaker, just over thirty years of age. I looked him up on IMDB just because I was bored, and I wanted to know who he was. His notable directing achievements are basically The Animal with Rob Schneider and The Girl Next Door with Elisha Cuthbert. Both films had their amusing moments, but neither was really that good in my opinion (but who the hell am I?) and his comments on the show which could be summarised as “totally unexpected is good” were a bit strange. I was just wondering why he was on a show as someone with authority where they are trying to find a good new filmmaker. I was reading his bio, and I read that Adam Sandler searched out Luke Greenfield to direct the Animal after seeing his short film The Right Hook which was made a good six years after he left the USC under-graduate film school. I checked out the film on YouTube, and it was quite decent - written and directed by Luke Greenfield, check it out here.

If you’re willing to respond to this blog-post and are short on time, perhaps reading the last two paragraphs of this post is enough because I’m really interested in what people think.

Chinatown is a really good film. The characters and the strange character relations are somewhat unique. Another particularly interesting element of the film is its structure, and it is discussed in Alternative Scriptwriting at some length. I’m probably inadvertantly spoiling the film for you in the rest of this post, so if you plan to see the movie (which you should) perhaps skip over this of this paragraph. The structure of Chinatown isn’t particularly noticeable,, seemingly framed almost standardly in the three acts, but then the last act of the film illustrates otherwise, revealing to the audience something classically unexpected. (more…)