Corey's Best So Far...

One day Joseph, a Masai warrior, who was walking along one of these hot, dirty African roads, met someone who shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with him, and then and there, he accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior. The power of the spirit began transforming his life, and he was filled with such excitement and joy that the first thing he wanted to do was return to his own village and there share the good news to the members of his own local tribe. Joseph began going from door to door telling everyone he met about the cross, suffering, and the salvation that it offered, expecting to see their faces light up the way his had. And to his amazement, the villagers not only didn’t care, they became violent. The men of the village seized him, held him to the ground while the women beat him with strands of barbed wire. He was dragged from the village and left to die alone in the bush. Joseph somehow managed to crawl to a water hole and there, after days of passing in and out of consciousness, found the strength to get up. He wondered about the hostile reception that he had received from people he had known all his life. He decided he must have said something wrong or left something out from the story of Jesus. After rehearsing the message that he gave at first, he decided to go back and share this message again. Joseph limped into the circle of huts and began to proclaim Jesus. “He died for you so that you might find forgiveness and come to know the living God,” he pleaded. Again he was grabbed by the men of the village and held while the women beat him, reopening wounds that had just begun to heal. Once more, they dragged him unconscious from the village and left him to die. To have survived the first beating was truly remarkable. To live through the second was a miracle. Again, days later, Joseph awoke in the wilderness, bruised, scarred, determined to go back. He returned to the small village, and this time, they attacked him before he had a chance to open his mouth. As they flogged him for the third and possibly the last time, he again spoke to them of Jesus Christ, the Lord. Before he passed out, the last thing he saw was the women who were beating him began to weep. This time, he awoke in his own bed. The ones who had so severely beaten him were now trying to save his life and nurse him back to health. And the entire village came to Christ.

How Our Suffering Glorifies the Greatness of the Grace of God by John Piper (via worshipgifs)

Metaphorically resonant…

The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby  (via sunst0ne)

An Essay on Café Society

Woody Allen’s most recent film, Café Society, has been probably the season’s most anticipated piece in a few circles, as the old writer-director has unceasingly uphold his reputation in the past several years. He had many exceedingly and a few hardly memorable movies in his line of annual releases. This year’s film is simultaneously a worthy continuation and a surprising departure from the latest trend in the Woody Allen factory.

In numerous respects it’s a classical piece with all the usual themes: urban life, particularly the praise of New York; disillusionment; the overall pointlessness of life; being a Jew in America; neurosis and neurotics; unfulfilled love, and jazz. In some ways these were easily identifiable and fresh but at the same time they seemed to be somewhat rushed and stale--it is almost impossible to describe it without contradictions.

In this period piece we get to follow the life of a Jewish New York family and their several exploits. In the focal point there is a young, neurotic Jessie Eisenberg, who looks and acts quite similarly to the young Woody Allen. He falls in love with an unsuccessful, unspoiled Hollywood debutante, even has a chance at a short romance with her but his influential, wealthy and well-loved uncle takes the girl. As the protagonist returns to his hometown, he finds solace in high social life and a nicely growing success as a bar manager. The movie ends without many great twists and turns, with a few bitter moments of the once-lover couple meeting but never chancing at starting again together. 

I think it’s unnecessary to go into details concerning the family, the why’s and how’s, as the real treasure that this film is is hidden somewhere else.

In the context of the last twenty years of Woody Allen movies he has arguably been creating more of essays than solid works. The characteristics of his films have been changing, from the surreal reality to more subtle ways. The incomplete list of his themes above is very well-known among the people who have seen at least three or four of his works and there seems to be a will to find a perfect body for a Woody Allen film. Evidently experimentation with tone, color, period, narrative tools and much more have been defining the writer-director’s approach to his work.

Firstly, the tone is now balanced and masterful. With Match Point, and Irrational Man he has gone down the path paved by Dostoevsky. The dark brutality that he has tried to grasp in humanity has been so refined now that he probably felt it burdensome to emphasize its graveness and made it as frivolous as is fit to someone, who grew up on classical film noires. But also the romantic and neurotic air, so typical, has been refined into a cynical calmness, beyond even the point of “I can only laugh”. We have all seen the disillusionment of Woody Allen but it seems the energetic overtone is now smoothing out, which is a good thing, since the things to replace it are subtlety, mastery and unpretended grandeur.

As regards the color and period of this film I must say this is the closest I have seen to perfection. Obviously these work as great reassurances to the subject matter of the movie but there is also an important subtle depth to them. His most successful attempts at these two have been Irrational Man and Midnight in Paris. The former with its rosy color foreshadowing violence, the latter being half-set in the most resonant period of American history. In some respect Café Society is an adaptation of The Great Gatsby, dwarfing Baz Luhrman’s--in comparison--cheap attempt. In the titular film several moments are highlighted and tainted with a golden shade--something not similar but identical to Fitzgerald’s work. At first it seems to underline the high hopes and dreams of the likable protagonist and it then gradually flowers into the color of death and decay, more and more disappearing from Jessie Eisenberg’s scenes and more and more coloring death around him. In the beginning he is hopeful, he is made golden but what it symbolizes loses meaning and moves into external things, for example originally he feels this golden color and loves a brunette, then in the end feels nothing close to that but his wife has golden hair. The period of the film is also evocative of The Great Gatsby: one will feel both a romantic feeling for that specific time and a detachment because of the overhanging horror.

In To Rome with Love we have seen a contemporary, yet clear narrative with multiple storielines to follow, hardly ever intersecting each other, connected mainly by the place but not limited by anything. Now Café Society is far more conservative but clearly shows the understanding that the creator has obtained through a daring project. It is subtle, it is a lot but it is enough--according to this blogger. Here it is the family members that create multiple dimensions, although they are pointing toward a final intersection inside our protagonist. To me it’s these simultaneously running stories that create the oh-so-familiar feeling of neurosis in Café Society.

A nowadays often looked-down-upon tool has been utilized in the film: voice-over. However there is nothing to be despised about it, since it is no more than semblance that it served the function of exposition--in fact it is subtle but continuous cynicism, magnified only by the past experiences with Woody Allen films. It speaks a language known only to the adepts but to them it speaks it quite comprehensibly.

Even the casting of this film is subtly outstanding. We have several savvy choices of returning actors from past Woody Allen movies, like our old Hemingway as the brute of the family, or pseudo-neurotic Jessie Eisenberg. What I think is the greatest decision with regards to the actors is Steve Carell, who is Italian enough to play a Jew--a joke a little too much on the nose...

Overall this film is one more step in the direction of at least my ideal of a Woody Allen film. It has so numerous merits, it looks so subtle, expensive, real and beautiful that I won’t stop praising it in a reasonable space of time.

Scottie Cometh

Mr Dis App had been born into a small rural community. Lived around the same several familiar cottages all his life. But he, he’d always felt, had also been born into a fate. Since early life, he had known things, understood things.

He had had intimations that perhaps he wasn’t alone with his knowledge--perhaps other people weren’t mindless automatons either but there was just no telling and also the inner voice had been impossible to ignore.

Plowing away on a piece of farmland, cognizant of the existence of faraway, opportunity-ridden places, he kept himself ready. He knew someday fate would come for him.

Laugh and scorn all you want, he thought about other people. You will ooh and ah soon enough.

And after an eternity but before you’d know it, there came fate looking. It was old Scottie, in a cheap used car.

Well fate looks off, Dis App had thought. The person is perfect but he is so dishevelled, and the car is wrong.

“You’ve been expecting me,” the sage said.

“You know it.”

“Get ready, we have to go.”

“I am. Where to?”

“There waits pain and ignorance and a shrill pang of disappointment in the city of Nuu.”

“Is it far away?”

“Why, yes.”

And Dis App was happy. Far was perfect.

What is Brendan Eich?

Nearly everyone has heard of how Brendan Eich, Mozilla's former CEO, stepped down because of a scandal around his contribution to an organization that sought to ban gay marriage. Conservatives and liberals have been engaging in heated debates on this matter and this post isn't to determine who's right or who's wrong. What it is meant to discover is the phenomenon itself.

The interpretations I've encountered are:

#1: Opposing liberals meant that Eich made a strategically wrong step. Admitting to failure, he decided to step down.

#2: His personal standpoint went against the very mission of Mozilla, which was not creating profit but spreading openness, freedom and such with a diverse community.

These arguments. however, don't directly lead to the actual consequences. The reasons why these are misleading, inaccurate arguments are:

#1: Even though in politics and everyday life we all try to bring our own views to victory, a liberal couldn't oppose Eich. A liberal answer to his donation would have been nothing but total respect. That is because such a reply would be in favor of diversity, although all-inclusive includes the ones, who don't agree even with inclusiveness. There are many forms of liberalism but none of them would scold Eich's contribution to that organization. In summary, he couldn't oppose liberalism in a way that would lead liberalism away.

#2: Brendan Eich made his contribution as an independent individual, back in 2008. Now he spoke against everything that could oppose the gay society. He realized that holding up such views would definitely infringe Mozilla's mission. Still, his altered position promoted diversity. One could say that he is responsible for the collectivity of his actions but he actually faced this past act of his, trying to make it fit to the company's mission. Opposing Eich would actually mean failing this mission because at least toward him they close their imaginary gates and would exclude him.

What I'm trying to articulate is that there cannot be any idealistic reason to support his stepping down. On what grounds do many support it then?

(Before making my thesis, I want to note, once more that I'm not saying Eich was right or wrong when donating to the anti-gay organization, neither the same about his stepping down. Now back to the point...)

What this case tells us is that though people sympathize with liberalism or communitarianism or anything else, most of them don't actually belong to them. Eich's opposition (the kind, which doesn't only have a different view but instead is actively against him/agrees with his resignation) doesn't consist of liberals or any other group of idealists, instead of people, who may sympathize with them but they themselves are essentially different.

Carl Schmitt wrote that the main function of politics is to distinguish between friend and enemy. Schmitt wasn't a liberal--more importantly he wasn't an idealist but a realist.

Eich's opposition makes an enemy out of him. They called on Mozilla users to uninstall their browser and stop using their products. They took up a fight against him with smart methods, ones, which were enough to make the continuation of his being a CEO impossible. 

It's not a question whether or not Eich was right but whether or not he is a friend to us. Not a liberal community opposed him but rather a realist one that, at best, only serves a liberal community. They can sympathize with liberals but they can't be them.

The reason why I thought this whole matter important to see is that it's not the age of idealism any more. Of course I can't deal an absolute in regards of this because the political sphere is very mixed and while there are realists in it, we can just as easily name another huge group of idealists. My ultimate point is that this presently emerging trend is, contrary to popular statements, not liberalism, or any other form of idealism but realism instead, where one can't rely on rights or morals, only on the inclinations of those, possessing power.

Tarsem’s The Fall #2 - Immersion

In this series I’m exploring the reasons why Tarsem’s “The Fall” is my favorite movie.

Seeing a movie for the first time can be awfully important because as the viewer goes along with the story they build up their attitudes, which will hardly change later. Now this doesn’t apply in all cases, since many art films heavily rely on alienation, absurdity and obscurity, all these undermining the importance of the first time, as the case is often that the conception and solidification of attitudes and a deeper understanding of the experience come later. In fact we regularly process movies after the event, however this is usually more of an adjustment in the case of genre movies.

One feature that I find overarching The Fall is its generosity and it is present and foremost here, in the field of immersion, as well as in many other places. The Fall, being an independent film with an R rating, didn’t have very much to win by being as viewer-friendly as it ended up being. My argument is that this film is enjoyable and not at all puzzling at the first time viewing but it serves an artistic purpose and not popularity.

I found two interconnected parts of the film that helped it accomplish this feat.

#1: Placing us in Alexandria’s point of view. First off, a child seems a relatable protagonist, since everyone has been one. Her being in a hospital with a broken arm seems like nothing out of the ordinary; even if one has never had a broken bone, there’s nothing predominantly exotic about it.

#2: The narrative arc is gradual. To delay the exposure of the audience to the more powerful motifs of a film is a hard thing to do because it requires confidence in the script and performances and high payoff value expectation. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the story’s starting point is very familiar and seemingly simple. When we are shown the characters and their depths, the movie follows a classic formula: we start with more mundane details and progressively move toward the more dramatic. A juxtaposition: in today’s storytelling it’s more common to try to shock the viewer early on and thus induce an immediate and strong emotional response.

The Fall follows through with this approach of gradual expansion on every layer, e.g. Roy’s story starts out as an independent tale, which is very safe and light, then it becomes inseparable with their reality and concerns the darkest and hardest topics around the end. In this narrative mode the audience is granted safety from confusion, as there’s an obvious story on the top that is entertaining in itself. At the same time, however, the more profound layers of the film, through being concentrated in the later parts, can be encountered without the deception that sudden shocks and an ensuing emotional chaos would have caused. Thus I think the art in The Fall is exquisitely genuine and can be experienced as such, which is a very rare merit.

How to be afraid

Be afraid that you'll drop-out from school and you'll never find another one where you can fit in. Be utterly frightened that your book will never be published and that it's rubbish. Be genuinely fearful of the fact that your body can break-down in any minute because you have a disease that you think you're "too young for". Be worried about never finding a proper job. Be scared of never finishing anything. Be completely, undeniably and irreversebly drenched with fear and worries.

It's 00:12 here, in my parents' kitchen, where I write these lines, while listening to some classy music, that I invited to create the illusion of uppercase-life. But all this, around me, is built on I don't know what. I'm supposed to know, I ought to know but somehow I feel struck by worries. I've been the guy who never felt fear, the one who never regretted failure. But the ground has been shrinking under my feet and I wasn't paying attention and now I'm just floating in nothing. I feel miserable and defeated. My body is broken and so is my spirit. I know I shouldn't give in to the circumstances but I feel vulnerable and hurt. I'm immensely frightened.

Oh goodness, why am I saying this nonsense? This attitude in itself is the manifestation of everything I am against. The Bible says I should pray and do it with a thankful heart. It's extremely hard to do. But not impossible. I'm thankful for the love of my life (yes, I know we're young). I can't express how thankful I am for the promise of eternal life. This is something, that most of you can't put your fingers on. Well neither can I. But I feel that it is not a lie or fantasy. I believe because I have this splinter in my soul, shrieking: YOU'RE SAVED. And I am, indeed. My faith is not the one of the weak. It's the one of humans. Because none of us can fight or trick death. We all are subjects to it. We all are limited and vulnerable. We are creations. I find my hope and basically my life in the Creator of all of us. Even in these times. So, cheer up :)

If you want something you've got to stand up for it and ask it, otherwise no matter what a decent person you are, you'll never get it.

Let me share a secret with you: this is the time of your life. Or there's a very big potential in it. Why? Maybe: how do I know that? Quite simple: It always is. It surely sounds like a common place but let's search through the depths of it.

I'm not trying to express a carpe diem kind of philosophy, for that is most commonly mistaken for the worse. I'm not packing my message into good-sounding witty phrases for those serve little good for the people, who are very quick to scroll down and just consume the easily digestable parts of every post on the site.

Returning to our (maybe it's just "my" but as long as you're reading, we both share this) topic, what is the great deal about today? Or about your life? What grand adventure may await you? We have this concept, that these are the priviliges of exceptional people and maybe it's true. But I'm not asking you to attempt things, that are not meant for you. We are called or more like entitled to be the creators of amazing things. Some of us could be leaders of nations, movie stars, inventors but others bring these incredible things to the world, like being the ever-smiling cashiers or raising well their children. The how is always individually altered and understood, so I really cannot give you specific information. However, none of you need it! Because these ways are spectacular, obvious. Yes, we walk blindly, suffering because of our own ignorance and fear. Be courageous!

I could go on for quite long but I'm gonna stop right here. Because the rest is really up to you. I'm not telling you to find your way, I'm only asking you to look for it.