about Aronofsky and good old Europe

The new movie of Darren Aronofsky will open the Venice Film Festival this year. And it will be beautiful movie about ballet and Natalie Portman. This time no math, no science, just pure art, art about art. By "beautiful" I mean.. "beautiful" in the Aronofsky kind of way.



I like the first Aronofsky movie - "Pi". Numbers, Kabalah, the simple well known message, that the more you know, the better you know how sad the story of life is. When I was a teenager, once a friend of mine (Christophor) said to me: "How can you be so happy? There are only 2 ways - either you are very stupid, or you know something we all don't." (I suppose, it was the first one :) )

However, I love art.. and I love science. But I'm agree, that artists should stay artists and they better be no scientists. Otherwise we miss a lot of beautiful stuff.. Like.. Imagine that the frontman of Pearl Jam was thinking about logic, when he wrote the song "I am mine". Then he would stumble upon the sentence "North is to south what clock is to time". And he would probably throw his manuscript in the bin, because anyone who has a basic knowledge of logical expressions would notice how it does not make any sense. But fortunately, Eddie Vedder' s last priority when writing the song, was logic.

And for the fans of Queen, the good news is, Freddy also hasn't put his statements under deep consideration. Otherwise he would notice, that you can't fall in love for the first time knowing that this time it's for real (because you don't have a basis to compare and because "this time" implies the fact you already was in love at least once before).

Anyway..

In 2 weeks I'm changing my home temporary. I got my J1 visa 2 weeks ago and now I'm preparing my stay in Pittsburgh. The good news is, I have the unique chance to learn plenty of new things at one of the best computer science universities in the world - Carnegie Mellon University and I have the support of 2 very important professors, moreover very kind persons. The bad news is, that I had so much stress and disappointments last few months, that I'll be too tired to enjoy completely my stay in Pittsburgh. And I'll miss the good old Europe as well. I hope it's worth...

My fave movie recently :) amazingly weird

the black list

The movies you better never watch (in order to preserve your sanity)*:

A Hole In My Heart (2004, Lukas Moodysson)
Gummo (1997, Harmony Korine)
Hotel (2001, Mike Figgis)
Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch)
Racconti di Canterbury, I (1972, Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Taxidermia (2006, Gyorgy Palfi)
Tetsuo - the Iron Man (1989, Shinya Tsukamoto)
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989, Peter Greenaway)
Requiem For A Dream (2000, Darren Aronofsky)
4 (2005, Ilya Khrjanovsky)
Edipo re (1967, Pier Paolo Pasolini)**

* not ordered by the degree of damages
** as well as every other movie from Pasolini, I suppose..

how time flies

On the last day of the month I managed to find some free minutes for a quick November overview. Luckily, this November could be described only with one sentence - it was very very busy month. And that's all... In the column TODO there are many records, while in HAPPENED almost nothing interesting (except the completed work at the university and my 2 jobs).

Interesting stuff I found in Internet:

Google fight: Google Fight Not only funny, but it also can be helpful. For example, if you're not sure about the correct spelling of a word. :) However... the first things I put in conflict were: Apple and Microsoft.. Won't tell you the result... Watch the fight yourself.

The second worthVisiting site is Sorry Gottago!
I suppose it can find application in the reality, but the main point is certainly not the application but the clever idea.

And now.. for something completely serious... :) My fave BBC news in the past few weeks (actually, only their titles):

1. Commuter cat is star of bus route
2. Hi-tech holy water calms flu fear
3. Windows 7 borrowed 'look' of Mac
4. Bangladesh men jailed for beating crocodile
5. Australian aims to breed 'green' sheep that burp less
6. 'Thatcher dead' text sparks fears


Oh, yes.. Yesterday I watched the best from all movies I watched this year (if no surprises in December). The movie is called O'Horten and guess, who's the director... :) That threw me back in the 2006, when I was part of the Sofia International Film Festival team... Some pictures from these happy times:


Here: [left] Jim Stark (the producer of "Factotum") , me in the middle and [right] Bent Hamer (the director of "Factotum" and "O'Horten".. and "Kitchen Stories")


With Sir Alan Parker (on the SIFF closing party)



The whole team from the International Guests department @ the final party



Stefan Kitanov (the boss of Sofia IFF), Stefan Laudyn (Warsaw IFF) and Andreas Ströhl (Munich IFF)


With Matthieu (I still can't write his family name.. :) too difficult :P , but he is one of the Cannes FF movie selectors)



With Kami (my best friend from the team.. phew, I haven't seen her for centuries... :( )


With Tim Oliehoek (director of "Too fat too furious")


The last one is special for me.. :) On this picture - Terry Jones from Monty Python.. :) And now... for something completely different..

THE END


:)