What Christmas Is All About

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lady Chatterley's Lover: An Intensely Sexy Read

Warning: The following post contains adult content .  You can not really discuss this novel without talking dirty. There are some smutty adult words here, all quoted from the novel reviewed. Read them responsibly. Long-time readers know that I try to maintain a certain health regime and lifestyle. Part of that is regular sex. There are numerous studies that indicate the health benefits of sex , the benefits to relationships, and to piece of mind. No need to revisit all that here other than to say that after practicing this for many years, I have discovered that in my mid-50's I am a more erotic person than I was as a college student or when I first married. The erotic is an accentuated part of my life. It inspires, motivates, entertains, and brings fulfillment. It can be a strong thread tying otherwise loose ends of life together in a holistic fashion. For years I have read erotic novels and watched erotic films (both pornographic and artsy). As you know I also enjoy read...
Read more

Faulkner's As I Lay Dying: Part Five – These Unreliable Narrators

Image
  Another Gemini AI image.  I asked the AI to draw something symbolic of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying . Read my earlier posts: [ Part One ]  [ Part Two ]  [ Part Three ]  [ Part Four ] Faulkner's masterful use of narrators is central to the power of As I Lay Dying . But, by presenting the story through multiple perspectives, each fraught with its own biases, limitations, and psychological quirks, Faulkner creates a narrative landscape where the reliability of any single viewpoint is questionable. Can you believe everything you are told? Are you even told everything? I have my doubts, which is a marvelous thing that Faulkner intentionally creates in the reader's mind. I admit that much of the “unreliability” in the novel is conjectural or based on interpretation rather than provable falsehoods. Whenever multiple characters narrate the same event they often give slightly different accounts, but it's frequently difficult to determine which, if any, is objectively...
Read more

Looking Into Tarkovsky's Mirror

Image
Andrei's mother enjoying the view during World War Two.  The actual story starts with this gorgeous shot. Andrei Tarkovsky begins Mirror with a miracle.  In black and white, a Russian speech therapist converses with a badly stuttering late-teen boy.  She is dressed in official healthcare attire, all in white.  She is very demanding and has the boy perform various non-verbal tasks related to balance and focus.  Suddenly, she commands him to say “loudly and clearly, 'I can speak'.”  The boy does so flawlessly. This is not an rehearsed scene.  It is an unedited shot by Tarkovsky himself documenting this Russian technique to treat stuttering as it happened.  Then we get a hard cut to the the opening credits and rest of the film, which is completely disassociated from this introductory scene.  He did this before with the wonderful (and miraculous for the time) hot air balloon flight scene that begins Andrei Rublev .  Though a joy to watch...
Read more