Ibane’s ramblings
“The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc is bound to be noticed.” S. KierkegaardArchive for April, 2009
Modern Times
Retiro Park
The other day discussing with a friend about the different books that we have been reading along our lives we realized that we had many in common, but also we reached the same conclusion about the current literary scenario. That the more you read the classics more difficult you find to read one of these “wonders” of the modern literature that nowadays they are flooding the bookstores. It is often that I have thought who has time to go through the ridiculous amount of new books, I don’t but I can be doubted about my time management skills. Also every month there is a new Dostoevsky of our century, or the young Proust or any other absurd adjectives or tricks used to sell. I have been wondering when these guys, Dostoevsky, Henry James, Thomas Mann,…were writing and publishing their books how they were reaching the people, I mean, were they using the same annoying tricks or they were just writing for the sake of writing with no expectations. It would be interesting to know because currently the marketing machine has taken over the content. So it is more important to have a nice package and someone able to say that stupid things without sounding too stupid, so you can make sure a big junk of sales, than the content itself. But in an exercise of innocence and naiveness maybe with this crisis everything changes…
Gran Torino (2009)
My previous post has been deleted due to a mixture of too impatient clicking and some problems with wordpress when about deleting drafts. However I think that everyone is following this post will be able to sleep with such a loss. My disappointment has been mitigated thanks to the very good movie “Gran Torino”.
I usually love Clint Eastwood films because his honesty, his mastering of the
times in his films, the excellent development of characters and his precision directing.
Many good things that nowadays it is very difficult to find in the films released
from Hollywood, especially.
In “Gran Torino”, Eastwood shows the complexity of relationships between different
cultures without sweeteners, and the long journey that some has to take to
understand their neighbors and ourselves. Clint Eastwood solves this issue without falling in an
easy and cheesy way out. There are some deficiencies in the film like some key roles are not performed by actors at the level required but this is easily forgiven and forgotten with the superb interpretation of Clint Eastwood. The script is solid and no holes, which lately in the film panorama having a decent script has become a luxury. In other words a good film as a good film should be done.
Probably Clint Eastwood is not very appreciated among the leftist intellectual
European elite because of his Republicanism militant, and I would probably
disagree in many issues with him, however if someone asks me how I would like
to get old, I definitely will reply “like Clint Eastwood…”.
Ibane's ramblings 