Pastels

One dimension, three dimensions, multi-dimensions.
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By the way, blogger converts graphics to PNG files. I am not sure why, because it seems to me that those files are usually larger than my JPGs or GIFs. Anybody in the know on this?

On thinking

What's the difference between how leaders and followers think?

Fraulein Gurli

Fraulein Gurli goes shopping, like always meeting the world on her own terms.

Dharma forever!

Dharma and Greg season one is FINALLY out on DVD!

You know this already if you are a paying member of the Jenna Elfman fanclub like me, but just in case you let your membership lapse, I hereby inform you. Go get it.

Dharma and Greg was one of the very best sitcoms of the nineties, and that is not an idle statement. And of course Jenna Elfman at the worst of times is wonderful, and in that part she was just irresistably funny, charming, and ssssssexy. (Jenna, call me.)

New art, Eye of the Desert

The Sikorsky S-38

In The Aviator there is a great scene with Hughes and Kate Hepburn flying in Hughes' private plane in the night over Beverly Hills. After some painstaking research, I found out that the airplane they are flying is a Sikorsky S-38. It is really beautiful and graceful.

I have just decided that when I get a house I will also get an airplane like that. Battling it out on the ground with other drivers of cars doesn't appeal to me a lot. But flying high above them does!

I am just hoping that there is a modern plane which is as beautiful as this one. I think airplanes and cars from the early twentieth century are much more beautiful than modern ones. I wonder why this is?

Martin Scorsese's The Aviator

Martin Scorsese's The Aviator is a fascinating film about a fascinating man. Beautifully filmed and acted, and feels much shorter than its 2.5 hours.

Cate Blanchett especially is amazing as Kate Hepburn. I have much renewed respect for her. And, er, desire. She was smoking hot.

Same could be said for DiCaprio. (Uh, minus the desire part.) "The Beach"* did nothing to enamore him to me, but he really is good.

The visuals is a story onto themselves, just gorgeous.

As is Howard Hughes of course. Just like van Gogh, who in the popular mind is "the painter who cut off his ear", Hughes is mistreated by the small attention span of the popular mind. He was not just fabulously rich and extremely neurotic. He accomplished a fantastic amount of stuff, and the film industry as well as aviation was changed forever because of him.

* (To be fair I did not see it. I really don't want to. If I ever go to hell I am sure The Beach and Titanic are on the screens there 24/7.)

Big Tree

Anxiety healing

By the same author as the book below, here is an excellent article on stress and anxiety.

Contest, win an e-book!

I consider EmoTrance to be surely the most important spiritual breakthrough this millennium so far.
If you are already aware of the older technology EFT (emofree.com), then EmoTrance is the next step.
It is not so much a therapy as it is a whole, workable philosophy about how to handle the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle!) energies surrounding us and our bodies, which have huge impact on our emotions and lives. The philosophy has changed my life in a few weeks.
So I have contacted Silvia Hartmann, the inventor and the author, and purchased twenty licences to distribute her book Oceans of Energy in e-book form, a 40-dollar value, to selected readers.
What you have to do to enter the draw is write in an email a couple sentences on what you like best in this blog (to give me feedback for future developments), and answer this question in one sentence: What is EmoTrance? (to make sure the winners are people who will actually read the book).
The winners get notice directly. Deadline is June 30.

King Kong

If nothing else proves an ecclectic taste, this will: a rave review of Dangerous Liaisons, followed by a rave review of King Kong!

Once is a while I get to say it: Fantastic visuals, and a gripping story.

I am not done with the film yet, but the sequence where Kong fights the T-rexes for WhazFace was just so astonishing I had to blog something. Seriously. I can't begin to fathom the kind of work going into making something like that.

I only saw it now because I can't sit three hours in a cinema these days. And further delayed by the film being in great demand at my online DVD rental service. So I finally just broke down and bought it.

Update: I am watching the extensive making-of documentaries on the second disc, and it is certainly not less impressive. The miniature they made of the ship Venture, for instance, is fantastic. And they recorded around 50,000 different sound effects for the movie!

"Dangerous Liaisons", movie review

Dangerous Liaisons

I am not often very interested in stories taking place in pre-industrial times. I like technology too much, and I find that human interactions without even a telephone are just too limited. But there are exceptions, for instance Dangerous Liaisons, which is just a wonderful story.

It is based on a novel of the same title written and taking place in France before the revolution, in the highly decadent upper class society. The same story was filmed at the same time in another very good movie, Valmont.

Apart from beautiful cinematography and great acting, the story is gripping and has wonderful characters, particularly the two main characters (played by Glenn Close and John Malkovich) who are perhaps the best nasty characters in any story ever. They are just really slimy. And yet they they can feel love and regret, which of course are weaknesses in really nasty people, and this leads to their downfall.

Having Michelle Pfeiffer and Uma Thurman as some of their innocent victims does not hurt either. (Warning, if you don't like the prospect of Uma Thurman topless, don't watch this one.)

It was many years since I saw it in the cinema, I was curious if it held up. It did. Warmly recommended.