pop culture

I wanna start with pop culture, namely film and how we judge their merit.

Don't you just detest two-dimensional Hollywood blockbusters? I do–unless they deviate a great deal from their traditional format. Now take cutting edge movies that push the boundaries of film making, that's a different story (literally)–film making should be an uncensored medium (unlike TV) and a visit to the flicks should not just be entertainment but an informative, eye opening or even a soul-searching experience. Leave the formula driven happy ending fodder to telemovies I say.

When it comes to rewarding the filmmakers, I see some fundamental problems in that presently, the movies which appeal to the lowest common denominator tend to get the kudos. The Academy Awards speak for themselves in this respect with members of the academy–who more often than not have one foot in the grave, given the power to allow a film to go down in history as great. They are a relatively small cross-section of the film-going public, so they lack depth, and the middle of the road films of course, win out–cuz the independent flicks with something to say don’t appeal to this group on a whole.

Now, this is hardly a conducive way to get cutting edge results! And the Golden Globes are far LESS legitimate. To achieve their results, they pretend to be all-inclusive by using the foreign press, a group of 90 or so hand picked ‘journalists’ (read: invited members who all now reside in Hollywood) who can be bought–and often are! and who become no more than puppets to the might of the big studios.

Now there's no point bagging sumthing unless you have an alternative right? So what is it? Simple.. films of each particular flavour that are voted on by people who understand this flavour i.e. if you like and understand Film Noir, YOU vote for the films that fall under that umbrella. Or if you can identify with Chinese gangster flicks, once again, YOU vote for it. This concept has been put into practice online with some websites allowing people to give their own ratings on the film of the day. If the site is well patronised and universally recognised, it can achieve a vast wealth (database) of knowledge. The end result is that people with more than a passing interest in films and also a knowledge of the subject matter of the particular film, are given the power to judge it. When we look at upwards of 10,000 (now knowledgeable) people voting on the film, it irons out individual bias and we get a clearer picture of any films worth. Ans any person can therefore find and watch a Japanese Samurai film that has scored well, with confidence that it is one of the best of it’s type around–power to the people! Furthermore, if that person understands the culture and identifies with its characters, he may be compelled to vote on the film himself!

So in saying that, next I intend to share some of the films I give my vote to.

They must find it difficult, those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as authority
 -  Gerald Massey

writing style

Before I get into this, allow me to digress a little about some aspects of my writing style, and I’ll tell why before how.

Now man has been around for however many millions of years right, and when I say that of course you understand ‘man’ to include women as well. Maybe not? Well that’s because some people change their language and taste to reflect the rise in feminist and racial sensitivities—a well intentioned if condescending effort to acknowledge other peoples existence. But in essence, it’s just changing accepted standards so as not to offend anyone.

For that reason, I’ll skip changing the generic ‘he’ to become the ungrammatical ‘they,’ or changing words like ‘man-hole’ to ‘person-hole’. Some people, I kid you not, change ‘all the King's men’ to ‘all the Monarch's support-persons.’ So you can take it as red that when I say him or her or even man, I of course mean her or hers or woman as well. Wat a clumsy language English is!

My style also, you’ll notice, doesn’t follow the moral code: ‘if it may offend someone, don’t say it’.

So at times u may disagree with what I have to say, you may not like some aspects of the world as I see it—but you can be assured that my words will not be restrained so as not to offend.

You have been warned! ;)

Kites rise highest against the wind. - Winstone Churchhill

I don't see the point of blogs

I don't!

Isn't it just a journal made public?

Surely if your interested enough in someones life to read their blogs, you'd be close enough to talk to them personally? Otherwise the unfounded interest is just creepy. Sorta like the post-er inviting random people to stalk them. I dunno, this 'me' generation who seem to welcome self promotion for the purpose of instant self gratification (normally guided by how many 'hits' they get) says more to me about its collective self esteem than anything else.

Anyway, with that said...welcome to my blog =)

Along with that spray, I'm not so pretentious as to think the world is that interested in my life and I'll keep any personal issues with the select few I keep close to me (you know who you are) and I'll leave this space first and foremost as a place to document my thoughts and beliefs to get them clear in my own mind if nowhere else. If I succeed in doing that, I'd consider it mission accomplished.

BAD BOY NOTICE:
To get to where I wanna be, I'll need to draw on many of the wise people throughout the ages. I'll credit them where I can, but in process of explaining stuff, I hope any unintentional plagiarism will be overlooked and if 'the man' comes looking for me, I tells ya "give me a break...'man' I'm not doing this for any gain, so lay off hey".

So lets jump in.. oh. one last thing, if your here for quick, punchy observations on life and society, go somewhere else hey. The flavour of this blog ain't the forum for that. I intend to go deep n probe the depths of the human psyche and society as a whole and that requires an attention span that many in today's society no longer possess. A doco just recently surmised that 'We are no longer being taught to think..only to count, with virtue and wisdom no longer of value. And once you stop asking questions, you loose the capability of generating answers'. A situation I'm becoming more and more ashamed of and one I don't intend to propagate further if I can help it.

..so you get the idea of whats coming...a different sorta blog, lets see how it goes..

No mans life can be encompassed in one telling. There is no way to give each year its allotted weight or to include each event and each person who helped to share in that lifetime. What can be done though, is to be faithful in spirit to the record and to try to find one’s way to the heart of the man.

What follows, is that record..