My Acidulous Body

You know what I think?
My body got stuck
In a tangle of arms and legs;
Arms need elbow room
And legs need ground
To stand on.
They get what they wish for;
As for body simple
Nothing but annoyance:
Fingers pick lint
Off navel unasked,
Or scratch the small of  back
As tho’ they did it some service.
Such complaints flying back and forth
Pile up : you [...]

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Rashomon-1950

The German filmmaker Werner Herzog said that Rashomon is the closest to “perfect” a film can get. However when first released most Japanese critics called the film a failure: It failed in “visualizing the style of the original stories,” was “too complicated,” “too monotonous,” and contained “too much cursing.” No surprise. No filmmaker is without [...]

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A Quote

He who puts into his  world more than what he receives  terms of advantages-material riches and family connections, is merely paying a debt of honour or has opened an account with the bank of posterity”.
benny

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A Nous La Liberte-1931

René Clair is considered to be one of the pioneers of modern comedy, particularly in French film. His An Italian Straw Hat (1927), which is considered his silent masterpiece, shows his consummate sense of timing, and there is ample evidence of it in this movie also.
The title translates roughly to “Liberty for us”. It is [...]

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A Rounded Life

Life is a bowl of salad I am told:
Fresh lettuce, sprouts and carrots raw
Or diced,- a healthy diet is eaten cold;
Whoever has his moral sense in his maw
Life so simple as some fads observed
For a vegan will do.
Doesn’t there a spirit in roots
That guides the oak to fill out in size,-
No tender greens put out [...]

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Two Films by Jean Vigo

L’ATALANTE
I can sum up this film in one line. It tells the story of 3 people on a barge satirically named for the fleet goddess. Let me see if I can interest you by enlarging it with a few details.
The story follows Jean (Jean Dasté), the captain of the barge L’Atalante and his new wife, [...]

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Cicero-at his best

13.
Cicero was the best orator of his time. He made his name in one of the darkest periods of Rome. Sylla the dictator had decreed the sale of goods that belonged to one who was murdered with his consent. While the crier had the goods sold off at rock-bottom price to a favorite of the [...]

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Touch Of Evil-1958

The idea of conflict between good and evil is central to this film and the US-Mexico divide in which the drama is played out merely is a geographical divide, and not necessarily to be taken for a moral divide. Having said this let me introduce Mr. Big and he is evil incarnate and he is [...]

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The Bicycle Thief-1947

Art and literature certainly fatten on the misery of war and calamities. Supposing we were freed completely of the consequences of war what would be the fate of Picasso’s ‘Guernica’? Had it been shown to Adam and Eve they would have simply rubbished it as the work of some madman. But we have been like [...]

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Poetry Please!-romancing dead

To an infant still-born
 
Were you a water-baby
While you skimmed the fluid
By dead certainty of life
‘Mong the knotted grass of blood
And colloidal ooze
Of some primeval womb?
 
Death erased the name
And a few inconsequential
Particulars that perforce
Ride the tail of life
To fill a musty corner
Of Registrar’s office.
Death has spared the fret-
Those frantic cares and dull unease
The living suffer daily.
You [...]

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