I have never seen an Ingmar Bergman film. They have always seemed to me to be the epitome of impenetrable, confusing European art-house cinema. This book doesn’t change that impression, but it does make me want to watch some of these films.
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Viktor Frankl was a doctor who spend several years during the second world war in concentration camps and forced labour camps, including Auschwitz. He writes about his experiences in the camps and about how camp life affected people — both the prisoners and the guards.
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I love the Auckland Writers Festival. Every year I attend a few events, miss lots of good ones, and I always say that next year I will be better organised and see more. This year I took a day off work on the Friday so I could pack everything in to one day. I still didn’t get to everything I wanted to, but Joanne and I had a good day anyway. Here’s what we saw.
This is fun to read and it may change your life. The subtitle describes it best: chaos (particularly perhaps the chaos of the modern world) is what Peterson dreads, and he offers prescriptions, strategies and even commandments for how to preserve an ordered and civilised life from the relentlessly pounding waves of entropy. And all presented using language that virtually demands to be read out loud.
Each of the 12 homely “rules” is really just the starting point for a wide discussion of how life should best be lived. Peterson is a psychologist and a Christian, and those are the lenses through which he views the world. There is a lot about biblical history and teachings — a lot of it is presented as metaphor so it is still somewhat relevant even to non-Christian and even non-religious people. But still, there is a lot more bible-bashing than I was expecting, even from such a famously conservative figure. Each of the 12 chapters ends with a restatement of the rule as its last sentence. For some reason I find this irritating and twee. And I normally like tweeness.
A few days later, I read an article by Michael Hofmann in the London Review of Books about the “professional controversialist and Austropathic ranter” Thomas Bernhard. Hofmann quoted a passage and said it “loops like a villanelle”. (The passage, a powerful yet demented diatribe, makes me want to read the book.) Encountering villanelles twice within a few days inspired me to write one. Very restrictive forms are easier to write in a way, since there are fewer choices to make.
I love TMBG’s regular albums, but their kids’ stuff is understandably not always my cup of tea. No! was pretty good, but Here Come the ABCs was just too simplistic for my sophisticated musical sensibilities. (My pre-school children quite liked it though.) But Here Comes Science is just about on a par with their best. I didn’t like all the “funny” voices on ABCs, but Science keeps them to a minimum.
Thanks to Leslie for lending me this on a long plane journey many years ago. (In 2000, if you must know.)
(500) Days of Summer (don’t forget the parentheses!) is a conventional boy-meets-girl story dressed up with a bundle of enjoyable and inventive extras. It’s a lot of fun.
The film-makers dug deep into their box of tricks for this film. The timeline zooms back and forth across the 500 days. A voiceover occasionally offers explanations. There’s a surreal moment when the thunderstruck protagonist turns into a drawing and gets erased, and an even more surreal song-and-dance number during an earlier happy moment.
Even though there are quite a few cliches — such as the kindly boss, the loveable loser friends and the wise little sister — there is enough humour in the thing to keep you smiling.
Any time the thunder starts to rumble down
Don’t let hope tumble down
Or castles crumble down
If the blues appear just make the best of them
Just make a jest of them
Don’t be possessed of them
That guy from The Office (who despite many other noteworthy roles including this one is destined always to be known only as “That guy from The Office“) really is pretty funny. He’s much more likeable in this film than the painful idiots he plays in The Office and Extras.
(OK, his real name is Ricky Gervais. But I had to look it up.)