Cracks Film Quotes

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

But human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase. Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to the death.

Like that lightning that comes out of the blue when there’s not even a storm going on, just a crazy crack in the sky. With something like that right in front of you, you can’t help but feel there’s new possibilities out there.

Women of Manhattan, magnificent as they were, they forgot sometimes they weren’t immortal. They could throw themselves like confetti into a fun-filled Friday night, with no thought as to what crack they fell into by Saturday.

They (...) call what I have an invisible illness, but I often wonder if they're really looking. Beyond the science stuff. It doesn't bleed or swell, itch or crack, but I see it, right there on my face. It's like decay, this icky green colour, as if my life were being filmed through a grey filter. I lack light, am an entire surface area that the sun can't touch.

His eyesight was possessed by the colours of trauma, cracking and bubbling like an old Super Eight film to remind him of his near-death drowning some two months ago in that very moment when he needed to act.

Because it's a brilliant film. It's funny, and violent, and it's got Harvey Keitel and Tim Roth in it, and everything. And a cracking sound track. Maybe there's no comparison between Ian sleeping with Laura and Reservoir Dogs after all. Ian hasn't got Harvey Keitel and Tim Roth in him. And Ian's not funny. Or violent. And he's got a crap sound track, judging from what we used to hear through the ceiling. I've taken this as far as it will go.

But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed. Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast. It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye. You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down. You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living. And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing. For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.

Here it is undeveloped, a roll of film with all its mysteries locked up. I never took it anyplace, just left it waiting in a drawer dreaming of stars. That was our time, to see if Lottie Carson was who we thought she was, all those shots we took, cracking up, kissing with our mouths open, laughing, but we never finished it. We thought we had time, running after her, jumping on the bus and trying to glimpse her dimple through the tired nurses arguing in scrubs and the moms on the phone with the groceries in the laps of the kids in the strollers. We hid behind the mailboxes and lampposts half a block away as she kept moving through her neighborhood, where I've never been, the sky getting dark on only the first date, thinking all the while we'd develop it later.

Farber says (in my recollection, anyway) the European (or classical) art, including film, is culturally assumed to be a monumental slab. It's about that slab, and how it's been shaped, or what's been carved on it. In "termite art" though, your slab has been wormholed countless times, and its meaning is really taking place in the resulting interstices. The actual art of the piece, in other words, and your enjoyment of it, is taking place in the cracks, and the shape of the slab is coincidental and ultimately meaningless.

You’re always surprising me,” she said. “The things you take an interest in.” “I take an interest in everything,” said Miss Marple. “I mean taking up new subjects at your age.” Miss Marple shook her head. “They aren’t really new subjects. It’s human nature I’m interested in, you know, and human nature is much the same whether it’s film stars or hospital nurses or people in St. Mary Mead or,” she added thoughtfully, “people who live in the Development.

During the 1970s (and particularly because of Vietnam), it slowly became standard for absolutely everyone to go to college, particularly if they had no desire to get a real job. One of the results was a massive population of film school students, most of whom became waiters and valets in the 1980s. Since the vast majority of these Kubrick wannabes couldn't crack the motion picture industry, they saw opportunities to make minimovies in the world of rock 'n' roll.

I got hold of a copy of the video that showed how Saddam Hussein had actually confirmed himself in power. This snuff-movie opens with a plenary session of the Ba'ath Party central committee: perhaps a hundred men. Suddenly the doors are locked and Saddam, in the chair, announces a special session. Into the room is dragged an obviously broken man, who begins to emit a robotic confession of treason and subversion, that he sobs has been instigated by Syrian and other agents. As the (literally) extorted confession unfolds, names begin to be named. Once a fellow-conspirator is identified, guards come to his seat and haul him from the room. The reclining Saddam, meanwhile, lights a large cigar and contentedly scans his dossiers. The sickness of fear in the room is such that men begin to crack up and weep, rising to their feet to shout hysterical praise, even love, for the leader. Inexorably, though, the cull continues, and faces and bodies go slack as their owners are pinioned and led away. When it is over, about half the committee members are left, moaning with relief and heaving with ardent love for the boss. (In an accompanying sequel, which I have not seen, they were apparently required to go into the yard outside and shoot the other half, thus sealing the pact with Saddam. I am not sure that even Beria or Himmler would have had the nerve and ingenuity and cruelty to come up with that.)

Aside from wanting to write cracking good books that turn children into lifelong readers, I really want to create stories that enable kids to LOOK at the world around them. To see it for what it is, with wide open, wondering eyes. Our mass media is so horribly skewed. It presents this idea of 'normalcy' which excludes and marginalises so many for an idea of commercial viability which is really nothing but blinkered prejudice. People who are black and Asian and Middle Eastern and Hispanic, people who are gay or transgendered or genderqueer, people who have disabilities, disfigurements or illnesses - all have this vision of a world which does not include them shoved down their throats almost 24-7, and they're told 'No one wants to see stories about people like you. Films and TV shows about people like you won't make money. Stories about straight, white, cisgendered, able-bodied people are universal and everyone likes them. You are small and useless and unattractive and you don't matter.' My worry is that this warped version of 'normal' eventually forms those very same blinkers on children's eyes, depriving them of their ability to see anyone who isn't the same as them, preventing them from developing the ability to empathise with and appreciate and take joy in the lives and experiences of people who are different from them. If Shadows on the Moon - or anything I write - causes a young person to look at their own life, or the life of another, and think, 'Maybe being different is cool' I will die a happy writer. -Guest blog - what diversity means to me

Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain? Tell me, have you these in your houses? Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master? Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires. Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron. It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh. It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels. Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral. But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed. Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast. It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye. You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down. You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living. And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing. For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.

Each of us was becoming more isolated. The more we needed support, the more shallow were our friendships; the more we needed sincerity, the more sarcastic we became. It had become an unwritten law among the terns: don’t tell what you feel, ’cause if you show a crack, you’ll shatter. We imagined that our feelings could ruin us, like the great silent film stars had been ruined by sound.

Once I had it free, I gobbled the sandwich like a nature-film otter cracking an oyster on its stomach: knees up in the wiring under the dashboard, my elbows jammed against the steering wheel, my chest serving as a table, my shirt as a tablecloth.

We came back [from Mars]," Pris said, "because nobody should have to live there. It wasn't conceived for habitation, at least not within the last billion years. It's so old. You feel it in the stones, the terrible old age. Anyhow, at first I got drugs from Roy; I lived for that new synthetic pain-killer, that silenizine. And then I met Horst Hartman, who at that time ran a stamp store, rare postage stamps; there's so much time on your hands that you've got to have a hobby, something you can pore over endlessly. And Horst got me interested in pre-colonial fiction." "You mean old books?" "Stories written before space travel but about space travel." "How could there have been stories about space travel before - " "The writers," Pris said, "made it up." "Based on what?" "On imagination. A lot of times they turned out wrong [...] Anyhow, there's a fortune to be made in smuggling pre-colonial fiction, the old magazines and books and films, to Mars. Nothing is as exciting. To read about cities and huge industrial enterprises, and really successful colonization. You can imagine what it might have been like. What Mars ought to be like. Canals." "Canals?" Dimly, he remembered reading about that; in the olden days they had believed in canals on Mars. "Crisscrossing the planet," Pris said. "And beings from other stars. With infinite wisdom. And stories about Earth, set in our time and even later. Where there's no radioactive dust." [...] "Did you bring any of that pre-colonial reading material back with you?" It occurred to him that he ought to try some. "It's worthless, here, because here on Earth the craze never caught on. Anyhow there's plenty here, in the libraries; that's where we get all of ours - stolen from libraries here on Earth and shot by autorocket to Mars. You're out at night humbling across the open space, and all of a sudden you see a flare, and there's a rocket, cracked open, with old pre-colonial fiction magazines spilling out everywhere. A fortune. But of course you read them before you sell them." She warmed to her topic. "Of all -

TOM Do you want to practise slapping me? EMMA (brow furrowed) Excuse me? TOM Because in the next film, that’s what you do. You slap me. (lying through his teeth) I just read it! EMMA OK, great. TOM (mansplaining) Right. So. Here’s what you do. You need to stand there, you need to use your body, you need to put everything into it to sell it, you need to… While Tom is talking, Emma calmly sizes him up, raises one hand and—not realising that he was talking about a stage slap—cracks him as hard as she can across the cheek.

His chief failing was a habit of cracking heavy pedantic jokes; he was unable to let a good idea drop, and remarked several times during the course of the film that the heroine looked like she ought to be playing the horse. The comment had some truth in it, in that the heroine did have an equine cast of feature, but he made it too often, and with too little variation; however, she was willing to forgive him, in view of his evident tolerance of her social errors, such as an inability to say whether or not she wanted an ice cream.

It was all a beautiful illusion until the movie began. Up to this point, we had only seen a few unedited scenes at Hal’s house on his home projector, so none of us really knew what to expect. Eight minutes from the start of the film, with nothing happening on the screen but driving and jazz music, it was clear to the audience and to us that our collective world had already begun to show cracks.

She scanned the mess on the floor where several of the book’s pages were bent, and the glass of the frame had a single crack etched across it. Bending over, Helen picked up the picture. Through shades of black and white, her mother radiated up at her. When The Wizard of Oz had come out with color, everyone had been amazed, Helen included. But after the film, while the others talked about the munchkins’ hair and Emerald City and Glinda’s dress, Helen realized that the color made you see things. Black and white made you see souls.

Berlin. November 18, 1917. Sunday. I think Grosz has something demonic in him. This new Berlin art in general, Grosz, Becher, Benn, Wieland Herzfelde, is most curious. Big city art, with a tense density of impressions that appears simultaneous, brutally realistic, and at the same time fairy-tale-like, just like the big city itself, illuminating things harshly and distortedly as with searchlights and then disappearing in the glow. A highly nervous, cerebral, illusionist art, and in this respect reminiscent of the music hall and also of film, or at least of a possible, still unrealized film. An art of flashing lights with a perfume of sin and perversity like every nocturnal street in the big city. The precursors are E.T.A. Hoffmann, Breughel, Mallarmé, Seurat, Lautrec, the futurists: but in the density and organization of the overwhelming abundance of sensation, the brutal reality, the Berliners seem new to me. Perhaps one could also include Stravinsky here (Petrushka). Piled-up ornamentation each of which expresses a trivial reality but which, in their sum and through their relations to each other, has a thoroughly un-trivial impact. All round the world war rages and in the center is this nervous city in which so much presses and shoves, so many people and streets and lights and colors and interests: politics and music hall, business and yet also art, field gray, privy counselors, chansonettes, and right and left, and up and down, somewhere, very far away, the trenches, regiments storming over to attack, the dying, submarines, zeppelins, airplane squadrons, columns marching on muddy streets, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, victories; Riga, Constantinople, the Isonzo, Flanders, the Russian Revolution, America, the Anzacs and the poilus, the pacifists and the wild newspaper people. And all ending up in the half-darkened Friedrichstrasse, filled with people at night, unconquerable, never to be reached by Cossacks, Gurkhas, Chasseurs d'Afrique, Bersaglieris, and cowboys, still not yet dishonored, despite the prostitutes who pass by. If a revolution were to break out here, a powerful upheaval in this chaos, barricades on the Friedrichstrasse, or the collapse of the distant parapets, what a spark, how the mighty, inextricably complicated organism would crack, how like the Last Judgment! And yet we have experienced, have caused precisely this to happen in Liège, Brussels, Warsaw, Bucharest, even almost in Paris. That's the world war, all right.

I went up the stairs of the little hotel, that time in Bystřice by Benešov, and at the turn of the stairs there was a bricklayer at work, in white clothes; he was chiselling channels in the wall to cement in two hooks, on which in a little while he was going to hang a Minimax fire-extinguisher; and this bricklayer was already and old man, but he had such an enormous back that he had to turn round to let me pass by, and then I heard him whistling the waltz from The Count of Luxembourg as I went into my little room. It was afternoon. I took out two razors, and one of them I scored blade-up into the top of the bathroom stool, and the other I laid beside it, and I, too, began to whistle the waltz from The Count of Luxembourg while I undressed and turned on the hot-water tap, and then I reflected, and very quietly I opened the door a crack. And the bricklayer was standing there in the corridor on the other side of the door, and it was as if he also had opened the door a crack to have a look at me and see what I was doing, just as I had wanted to have a look at him. And I slammed the door shut and crept into the bath, I had to let myself down into it gradually, the water was so hot; I gasped with the sting of it as carefully and painfully I sat down. And then I stretched out my wrist, and with my right hand I slashed my left wrist ... and then with all my strength I brought down the wrist of my right hand on the upturned blade I'd grooved into the stool for that purpose. And I plunged both hands into the hot water, and watched the blood flow slowly ouf of me, and the water grew rosy, and yet al the time the pattern of the red blood flowing remained so clearly perceptible, as though someone was drawing out from my wrists a long, feathery red bandage, a film, dancing veil ... and presently I thickened there in the bath, as that red paint thickened when we were painting the fence all round the state workshops, until we had to thin it with turpentine - and my head sagged, and into my mouth flowed pink raspberryade, except that it tasted slightly salty .. and then those concentric circles in blue and violet, trailing feathery fronds like coloured spirals in motion ... and then there was a shadow stooping over me, and my face was brushed lightly by a chin overgrown with stubble. It was that bricklayer in the white clothes. He hoisted me out and landed me like a red fish with delicate red fins sprouting from its wrists. I laid my head on his smock, and I heard the hissing of lime as my wet face slaked it, and that smell was the last thing of which I was conscious.

Which philosophers would Alain suggest for practical living? Alain’s list overlaps nearly 100% with my own: Epicurus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Michel de Montaigne, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell. * Most-gifted or recommended books? The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, Essays of Michel de Montaigne. * Favorite documentary The Up series: This ongoing series is filmed in the UK, and revisits the same group of people every 7 years. It started with their 7th birthdays (Seven Up!) and continues up to present day, when they are in their 50s. Subjects were picked from a wide variety of social backgrounds. Alain calls these very undramatic and quietly powerful films “probably the best documentary that exists.” TF: This is also the favorite of Stephen Dubner on page 574. Stephen says, “If you are at all interested in any kind of science or sociology, or human decision-making, or nurture versus nature, it is the best thing ever.” * Advice to your 30-year-old self? “I would have said, ‘Appreciate what’s good about this moment. Don’t always think that you’re on a permanent journey. Stop and enjoy the view.’ . . . I always had this assumption that if you appreciate the moment, you’re weakening your resolve to improve your circumstances. That’s not true, but I think when you’re young, it’s sort of associated with that. . . . I had people around me who’d say things like, ‘Oh, a flower, nice.’ A little part of me was thinking, ‘You absolute loser. You’ve taken time to appreciate a flower? Do you not have bigger plans? I mean, this the limit of your ambition?’ and when life’s knocked you around a bit and when you’ve seen a few things, and time has happened and you’ve got some years under your belt, you start to think more highly of modest things like flowers and a pretty sky, or just a morning where nothing’s wrong and everyone’s been pretty nice to everyone else. . . . Fortune can do anything with us. We are very fragile creatures. You only need to tap us or hit us in slightly the wrong place. . . . You only have to push us a little bit, and we crack very easily, whether that’s the pressure of disgrace or physical illness, financial pressure, etc. It doesn’t take very much. So, we do have to appreciate every day that goes by without a major disaster.

In 1976, a doctoral student at the University of Nottingham in England demonstrated that randomizing letters in the middle of words had no effect on the ability of readers to understand sentences. In tihs setncene, for emalxpe, ervey scarbelmd wrod rmenias bcilasaly leibgle. Why? Because we are deeply accustomed to seeing letters arranged in certain patterns. Because the eye is in a rush, and the brain, eager to locate meaning, makes assumptions. This is true of phrases, too. An author writes “crack of dawn” or “sidelong glance” or “crystal clear” and the reader’s eye continues on, at ease with combinations of words it has encountered innumerable times before. But does the reader, or the writer, actually expend the energy to see what is cracking at dawn or what is clear about a crystal? The mind craves ease; it encourages the senses to recognize symbols, to gloss. It makes maps of our kitchen drawers and neighborhood streets; it fashions a sort of algebra out of life. And this is useful, even essential—X is the route to work, Y is the heft and feel of a nickel between your fingers. Without habit, the beauty of the world would overwhelm us. We’d pass out every time we saw—actually saw—a flower. Imagine if we only got to see a cumulonimbus cloud or Cassiopeia or a snowfall once a century: there’d be pandemonium in the streets. People would lie by the thousands in the fields on their backs. We need habit to get through a day, to get to work, to feed our children. But habit is dangerous, too. The act of seeing can quickly become unconscious and automatic. The eye sees something—gray-brown bark, say, fissured into broad, vertical plates—and the brain spits out tree trunk and the eye moves on. But did I really take the time to see the tree? I glimpse hazel hair, high cheekbones, a field of freckles, and I think Shauna. But did I take the time to see my wife? “Habitualization,” a Russian army-commissar-turned-literary-critic named Viktor Shklovsky wrote in 1917, “devours works, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war.” What he argued is that, over time, we stop perceiving familiar things—words, friends, apartments—as they truly are. To eat a banana for the thousandth time is nothing like eating a banana for the first time. To have sex with somebody for the thousandth time is nothing like having sex with that person for the first time. The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes. This is true of chocolate and marriages and hometowns and narrative structures. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we’re not careful, pretty soon we’re gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack. In the Tom Andrews Studio I open my journal and stare out at the trunk of the umbrella pine and do my best to fight off the atrophy that comes from seeing things too frequently. I try to shape a few sentences around this tiny corner of Rome; I try to force my eye to slow down. A good journal entry—like a good song, or sketch, or photograph—ought to break up the habitual and lift away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought be a love letter to the world. Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.

Barry, if I were to say to you that I haven’t seen Reservoir Dogs yet, what would that mean?” Barry looks at me. “Just…come on, what would it mean to you? That sentence? ‘I haven’t seen Reservoir Dogs yet?’” “To me, it would mean that you’re a liar. Either that or you’ve gone potty. You saw it twice. Once with Laura, once with me and Dick. We had that conversation about who killed Mr. Pink or whatever fucking color he was.” “Yeah, yeah, I know. But say I hadn’t seen it and I said to you, ‘I haven’t seen Reservoir Dogs yet,’ what would you think?” “I’d think, you’re a sick man. And I’d feel sorry for you.” “No, but would you think, from that one sentence, that I was going to see it?” “I’d hope you were, yeah, otherwise I would have to say that you’re not a friend of mine.” “No, but—” “I’m sorry, Rob, but I’m struggling here. I don’t understand any part of this conversation. You’re asking me what I’d think if you told me that you hadn’t seen a film that you’ve seen. What am I supposed to say?” “Just listen to me. If I said to you—” —“‘I haven’t seen Reservoir Dogs yet,’ yeah, yeah, I hear you—” “Would you …would you get the impression that I wanted to see it?” “Well…you couldn’t have been desperate, otherwise you’d have already gone.” “Exactly. We went first night, didn’t we?” “But the word yet… yeah, I’d get the impression that you wanted to see it. Otherwise you’d say you didn’t fancy it much.” “But in your opinion, would I definitely go?” “How am I supposed to know that? You might get run over by a bus, or go blind, or anything. You might go off the idea. You might be broke. You might just get sick of people telling you you’ve really got to go.” I don’t like the sound of that. “Why would they care?” “Because it’s a brilliant film. It’s funny, and violent, and it’s got Harvey Keitel and Tim Roth in it, and everything. And a cracking sound track.

The notion of finding “a body in the library” of a country house was another trope of the genre. Christie had fun with it in The Body in the Library, where the corpse is found in Gossington Hall, owned by Miss Marple’s cronies, Colonel Arthur Bantry and his wife Dolly. But profound changes were taking place in British society as war was followed by peace-time austerity, and high taxes made it impossible for many families to cling on to old houses that were cripplingly expensive to run. Country house parties fell out of fashion, and although traditional whodunits continued to be written and enjoyed, detective novelists could not altogether ignore the reality. The scale of upheaval is apparent in another Marple story, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, published twenty years after The Body in the Library. Gossington Hall has been sold off, and been run as a guest house, divided into flats, bought by a government body, and finally snapped up for use as a rich woman’s playground by a much-married film star. Her entourage provides a “closed circle” of suspects suited to the Sixties.

I took a step back and appraised the sight of the naked torso in front of me. He’d always had an amazing body, but Christ. Trip had gotten freaking ripped. I put my hands to my hips and asked, “Are you kidding me? What the hell is this?” My anger probably missed its mark, considering I was standing there totally nude. It’s hard to be taken seriously when you’re not wearing any clothes. He knew exactly what I was talking about and was trying to contain a smile as he asked, “What?” I rolled my eyes. “When did this happen? Jesus. Look at you! Give a girl a heads up about such a thing, huh?” That made the smile crack his features. “What? So I’ve been hitting it a little harder lately. I just came off a gladiator film and I’m starting a hockey flick in a few weeks. Occupational hazard, I guess.” “Yeah. A hazard to me, maybe! Here I am with my saggy ass and you’re standing there looking like Michelangelo’s David, you jagweed!” He stepped closer, grabbing my butt and pulling me into direct contact with what was assuredly going to be revealed as his perfect dick. He probably lifted weights with that thing, too. His cock probably possessed its own set of washboard abs.

He knew, without knowing how it had happened, that he lay on the floor, in the dusty space before the altar which he and Elisha had cleaned; and knew that above him burned the yellow light which he had himself perched on. Dust was in his nostrils, sharp and terrible, and the feet of the saints, shaking the floor beneath him, raised small clouds of dust that filmed his mouth. He heard their cries, so far, so high above him - he could never rise that far. He was like a rock, a dead man's body, a dying bird, fallen from an awful height; something that had no power of itself, any more, to turn. And something moved in John's body which was not John. He was invaded, set at naught, possessed. This power had stuck John, in the head or in the heart, and, in a moment, wholly, filling him with an anguish that he could not endure, that even now he could not believe, had opened him up; had cracked him open, as wood beneath the axe cracks down the middle, as rocks break up; had ripped him and felled him in a moment, so that John had not felt the wound, but only the agony; had not felt the fall, but only the fear; and lay here, now, helpless, screaming, at the very bottom of darkness.

Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of success is showing up. Having written and directed fifty films in almost as many years, Allen clearly knows something about accomplishment. How, when, and where you show up is the single most important factor in executing on your ideas. That’s why so many creative visionaries stick to a daily routine. Choreographer Twyla Tharp gets up at the crack of dawn every day and hails a cab to go to the gym—a ritual she calls her “trigger moment.” Painter Ross Bleckner reads the paper, meditates, and then gets to the studio by 8 a.m. so that he can work in the calm quiet of the early morning. Writer Ernest Hemingway wrote five hundred words a day, come hell or high water. Truly great creative achievements require hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of work, and we have to make time every single day to put in those hours. Routines help us do this by setting expectations about availability, aligning our workflow with our energy levels, and getting our minds into a regular rhythm of creating. At the end of the day—or, really, from the beginning—building a routine is all about persistence and consistency. Don’t wait for inspiration; create a framework for it.

Lynum had plenty of information to share. The FBI's files on Mario Savio, the brilliant philosophy student who was the spokesman for the Free Speech Movement, were especially detailed. Savio had a debilitating stutter when speaking to people in small groups, but when standing before a crowd and condemning his administration's latest injustice he spoke with divine fire. His words had inspired students to stage what was the largest campus protest in American history. Newspapers and magazines depicted him as the archetypal "angry young man," and it was true that he embodied a student movement fueled by anger at injustice, impatience for change, and a burning desire for personal freedom. Hoover ordered his agents to gather intelligence they could use to ruin his reputation or otherwise "neutralize" him, impatiently ordering them to expedite their efforts. Hoover's agents had also compiled a bulging dossier on the man Savio saw as his enemy: Clark Kerr. As campus dissent mounted, Hoover came to blame the university president more than anyone else for not putting an end to it. Kerr had led UC to new academic heights, and he had played a key role in establishing the system that guaranteed all Californians access to higher education, a model adopted nationally and internationally. But in Hoover's eyes, Kerr confused academic freedom with academic license, coddled Communist faculty members, and failed to crack down on "young punks" like Savio. Hoover directed his agents to undermine the esteemed educator in myriad ways. He wanted Kerr removed from his post as university president. As he bluntly put it in a memo to his top aides, Kerr was "no good." Reagan listened intently to Lynum's presentation, but he wanted more--much more. He asked for additional information on Kerr, for reports on liberal members of the Board of Regents who might oppose his policies, and for intelligence reports about any upcoming student protests. Just the week before, he had proposed charging tuition for the first time in the university's history, setting off a new wave of protests up and down the state. He told Lynum he feared subversives and liberals would attempt to misrepresent his efforts to establish fiscal responsibility, and that he hoped the FBI would share information about any upcoming demonstrations against him, whether on campus or at his press conferences. It was Reagan's fear, according to Lynum's subsequent report, "that some of his press conferences could be stacked with 'left wingers' who might make an attempt to embarrass him and the state government." Lynum said he understood his concerns, but following Hoover's instructions he made no promises. Then he and Harter wished the ailing governor a speedy recovery, departed the mansion, slipped into their dark four-door Ford, and drove back to the San Francisco field office, where Lynum sent an urgent report to the director. The bedside meeting was extraordinary, but so was the relationship between Reagan and Hoover. It had begun decades earlier, when the actor became an informer in the FBI's investigation of Hollywood Communists. When Reagan was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild, he secretly continued to help the FBI purge fellow actors from the union's rolls. Reagan's informing proved helpful to the House Un-American Activities Committee as well, since the bureau covertly passed along information that could help HUAC hold the hearings that wracked Hollywood and led to the blacklisting and ruin of many people in the film industry. Reagan took great satisfaction from his work with the FBI, which gave him a sense of security and mission during a period when his marriage to Jane Wyman was failing, his acting career faltering, and his faith in the Democratic Party of his father crumbling. In the following years, Reagan and FBI officials courted each other through a series of confidential contacts. (7-8)

She's barely gained consciousness and when she sees me standing over her naked, I can imagine my virtual absence of humanity fills her with mind-bending horror. I've situated the body in front of the new Toshiba Television set and in the VCR is an old tape and appearing on the screen is the last girl I filmed. I'm wearing: a Joseph Abboud suit, tie by Paul Stuart, shoes by J. Crew, a vest by someone Italian and I'm kneeing on the floor beside a corpse eating the girl's brain gobbling it down spreading Grey Poupon over hunks of the pink fleshy meat. "Can you see?" I asked the girl not on the Television set. "Can you see this, are you watching?" I whisper. I try using the power drill on her, forcing it into her mouth but she's conscious enough, has strength to close her teeth clamping them down and even though the drill goes through the teeth quickly it fails to interest me. So I hold her head up, blood dribbling from her mouth and make her watch the rest of the tape. While she's looking at the girl on the screen bleed from almost every possible orifice I'm hoping she realizes that this would've happened to her no matter what. That she would've ended up here lying on the floor in my apartment hands nailed to posts, cheese and broken glass pushed up into her cunt. Her head cracked and bleeding purple no matter what other choice she might have made.

A drone is often preferred for missions that are too "dull, dirty, or dangerous" for manned aircraft.” PROLOGUE The graffiti was in Spanish, neon colors highlighting the varicose cracks in the wall. It smelled of urine and pot. The front door was metal with four bolt locks and the windows were frosted glass, embedded with chicken wire. They swung out and up like big fake eye-lashes held up with a notched adjustment bar. This was a factory building on the near west side of Cleveland in an industrial area on the Cuyahoga River known in Ohio as The Flats. First a sweatshop garment factory, then a warehouse for imported cheeses then a crack den for teenage potheads. It was now headquarters for Magic Slim, the only pimp in Cleveland with his own film studio and training facility. Her name was Cosita, she was eighteen looking like fourteen. One of nine children from El Chorillo. a dangerous poverty stricken barrio on the outskirts of Panama City. Her brother, Javier, had been snatched from the streets six months ago, he was thirteen and beautiful. Cosita had a high school education but earned here degree on the streets of Panama. Interpol, the world's largest international police organization, had recruited Cosita at seventeen. She was smart, street savvy, motivated and very pretty. Just what Interpol was looking for. Cosita would become a Drone!

I found out Si was taking naps every day on Kay’s couch! I went to Phil and told him it was a problem. “Look, I know he’s your brother and he’s my uncle, but he’s not the kind of worker we need to have,” I told Phil, while trying to make a good first impression. I was trying to instill a new work ethic and culture in Duck Commander, and I couldn’t have Si sleeping on the job! “Don’t touch Si,” Phil told me. “You leave him alone. He’s making reeds and that’s the hardest thing we do. Si is the only guy who wants to do it, and he’s good at it. Si is fine.” Amazingly enough, in the ten years I’ve been running Duck Commander, we’ve never once run out of reeds. Six years ago, Si suffered a heart attack. He smoked cigarettes for almost forty years and then quit after his heart attack, so we were all so proud of him. Even before his heart attack, I wasn’t sure about putting Si on our DVDs because I thought he would just come across too crazy. He cracked us up in the duck blind and we all loved him, but I told Jep and the other camera guys to film around him. Honestly, I didn’t think anyone would understand what he was saying. When we finally tried to put him on the DVDs, he clammed up in front of the camera and looked like a frog in a cartoon just sitting there. He wouldn’t perform. Finally, we put a hidden camera under a shirt on Si’s desk. We were near the end of editing a DVD and showed a shooting scene to Si. He always takes credit for shooting more ducks than he really did. He’s said before that he killed three ducks with one shot! We were watching patterns hitting the water, and Si started claiming the ducks like he always does and going off on one of his long tangents. After we recorded him, we ran the DVD back and showed it to him. I think Si saw that he was actually pretty funny and entertaining if he acted like himself. We started putting Si on the DVDs and he got more and more popular. Now he’s the star of Duck Dynasty!

You have asked a question: "Are we by chance a lie?" you say. The possibility disturbs you, but it is necessary for you to reconcile yourselves to being part of an unfinished set of events. You might, for example, be the characters in a literary work of the fantastic genre who have suddenly gained autonomous life. On the other hand, we might be a conglomeration of dreams dreamt by various people in different parts of the world. We are somebody else's dream. Why not? Or a lie. Or perhaps we are the materialization, in human terms, of a chess game ending in a stalemate. Or perhaps we are a film, a film that lasts barely an instant. Or the image of others, not ourselves, in a mirror. Perhaps we are the thoughts of a madman. Perhaps one of us is real and others, his hallucination, There is still another possibility. Perhaps we are a printing error that has inadvertently slipped by, that makes an otherwise clear text, confusing. Perhaps it is the transposition of the lines of a text that brings us to life in this prodigious manner. Or perhaps we are a text that being revealed in a mirror takes on a totally different meaning from the one it really has. Perhaps we are a premonition - the image formed in someone's mind long before the events in which we participate in real life take place. Perhaps we are a fortuitous event that has not yet occurred, which is barely gestating in the cracks of time, or a future event that has not yer occurred. We are an incomprehensible sign drawn on a moist windowpane on a rainy afternoon. We are the memory, nearly lost, of a remote event. We are beings and objects invoked by a magician's spell. We are something has been forgotten. We are an accumulation of words, an event told by means of illegible writing, a testimony no one hears. We are part of an entertaining magic show. A bill sent to the wrong address. We are the fleeting, involuntary image that crosses the minds of lovers as they meet, at the instant they lust, at the moment they die. We are a secret thought. . .

The Pakistani film International Gorillay (International guerillas), produced by Sajjad Gul, told the story of a group of local heroes - of the type that would, in the language of a later age, come to be known as jihadis, or terrorists - who vowed to find and kill an author called "Salman Rushdie" . The quest for "Rushdie" formed the main action of the film and "his" death was the film's version of happy ending. "Rushdie" himself was depicted as a drunk, constantly swigging from a bottle, and a sadist. He lived in what looked very like a palace on what looked very like an island in the Philippines (clearly all novelists had second homes of this kind), being protected by what looked very like the Israeli Army (this presumably being a service offered by Israel to all novelists), and he was plotting the overthrow of Pakistan by the fiendish means of opening chains of discotheques and gambling dens across that pure and virtuous land, a perfidious notion for which, as the British Muslim "leader" Iqbal Sacranie might have said, death was too light a punishment. "Rushdie" was dressed exclusively in a series of hideously coloured safari suits - vermilion safari suits, aubergine safari suits, cerise safari suits - and the camera, whenever it fell upon the figure of this vile personage, invariably started at his feet and then panned [sic] with slow menace up to his face. So the safari suits got a lot of screen time, and when he saw a videotape of the film the fashion insult wounded him deeply. It was, however, oddly satisfying to read that one result of the film's popularity in Pakistan was that the actor playing "Rushdie" became so hated by the film-going public that he had to go into hiding. At a certain point in the film one of the international gorillay was captured by the Israeli Army and tied to a tree in the garden of the palace in the Philippines so that "Rushdie" could have his evil way with him. Once "Rushdie" had finished drinking form his bottle and lashing the poor terrorist with a whip, once he had slaked his filthy lust for violence upon the young man's body, he handed the innocent would-be murderer over to the Israeli soldiers and uttered the only genuinely funny line in the film. "Take him away," he cried, "and read to him from The Satanic Verses all night!" Well, of course, the poor fellow cracked completely. Not that, anything but that, he blubbered as the Israelis led him away. At the end of the film "Rushdie" was indeed killed - not by the international gorillay, but by the Word itself, by thunderbolts unleashed by three large Qurans hanging in the sky over his head, which reduced the monster to ash. Personally fried by the Book of the Almighty: there was dignity in that.

Mr. Nobley had entered the room before he noticed her. He groaned. “And here you are. Miss Erstwhile. You are infuriating and irritating, and yet I find myself looking for you. I would be grateful if you would send me away and make me swear to never return.” “You shouldn’t have told me that’s what you want, Mr. Nobley, because now you’re not going to get it.” “Then I must stay?” “Unless you want to risk me accusing you of ungentleman-like behavior at dinner, yes, I think you should stay. If I spend too much time alone today, I’m in real danger of doing a convincing impersonation of the madwoman in the attic.” He raised an eyebrow. “And how would that be different from--” “Sit down, Mr. Nobley,” she said. He sat in a chair on the opposite side of a small table. The chair creaked as he settled himself. She didn’t look at him, watching instead the rain on the window and the silvery shadows the wet light made of the room. She spent several moments in silence before she realized that it might be awkward, that conversation at such a time was obligatory. Now she could feel his gaze on her face and longed to crack the silence like the spine of a book, but she had nothing to say anymore. She’d lost all her thoughts in paint and rain. “You are reading Sterne,” he said at last. “May I?” He gestured to the book, and she handed it to him. Jane was remembering a scene from the film of Mansfield Park when suitor Henry Crawford read to Frances O-Connor’s character so sweetly, the sound created a passionate tension, the words themselves becoming his courtship. Jane glanced at Mr. Nobley’s somber face, and away again as his eyes flicked from the page to her. He began to read from the top. His voice was soft, melodious, strong, a man who could speak in a crowd and have people listen, but also a man who could persuade a child to sleep with a bedtime story. “The man who first transplanted the grape of Burgundy to the Cape of Good Hope (observe he was a Dutchman) never dreamt of drinking the same wine at the Cape, the same grape produced upon the French mountains--he was too phlegmatic for that--but undoubtedly he expected to drink some sort of vinous liquor; but whether good, bad, or indifferent--he knew enough of this world to know, that it did not depend upon his choice…” Mr. Nobley was trying very hard not to smile. His lips were tight; his voice scraped a couple of times. Jane laughed at him, and then he did smile. It gave her a little thwack of pleasure as though someone had flicked a finger against her heart. “Not very, er…” he said. “Interesting?” “I imagine not.” “But you read it well,” she said. He raised his brows. “Did I? Well, that is something.” They sat in silence a few moments, chuckling intermittently. Mr. Nobley began to read again suddenly, “Mynheer might possibly overset both in his new vineyard,” having to stop to laugh again. Aunt Saffronia walked by and peered into the dim room as she passed, her presence reminding Jane that this tryst might be forbidden by the Rules. Mr. Nobley returned to himself. “Excuse me,” he said, rising. “I have trespassed on you long enough.

You know, if you don't use your dick, it will turn to stone and fall clean off your body.” I start cracking up and so does Riley. “I remember when Camden told us that when we caught him beating off in his room.” Riley says with a laugh, “I know I sure as hell never risked finding out if he was right.

In the headlights of the truck, I saw small animals popping out of the ground everywhere. Steve leaped out of the truck excitedly and motioned me over to get a close-up look at the creatures emerging from the mud. “Cycloranas,” Steve said, “water-holding frogs.” He explained that these frogs would burrow into the ground and then cover themselves with a membrane that would hold in water. They wouldn’t pee, and none of their bodily fluids would evaporate. They could remain underground for weeks, months, or even years, until the next rain hit. “Then they emerge up from their tiny tombs, lost their membrane, and are good as gold,” Steve said, marveling. “They’re ready now to reproduce and feed and do their own thing.” It was an epic task to get the camera out and set up the waterproof gear to film the cycloranas. The rain finally broke, and Steve was able to film a scene. We had been driving all day, out in the rain, changing flat tires from the debris on the track. Steve even had to repair the fence when the crew’s truck slid sideways across the slippery mud, knocking a neat hole in one section. Everybody was beyond exhausted. No matter how hard Steve tried, he couldn’t get his words right. He couldn’t properly explain how the frogs could go so long without water. “Membranes” became “mum-branes,” “water-filled” was “water-flood.” We were all getting frustrated. John said, exasperated, “Just give us something really concise.” I whispered two words into Steve’s ear. He turned to the camera. “Water…nah,” he said. The whole crew cracked up. Two words to sum up the water-holding frog.

This would be the only chance I had to utter those famous last words like you see in the films. Ahem. “Your head is fairly oversized your highness,” I sniggered. “BEGONE!” he roared, as the crowd exploded into a fit of laughter, despite the situation. Even B.B. cracked a smile. I turned away, stepping into the water tunnel. Never to return.

You can stop laughing at any moment, Bailey! This shit isn’t funny!” I chastise her. “You wanted it! You demanded it! Oh my fucking god, I’m going to pee myself!” she spouts in between bouts of laughter while she’s rolling around on her side of the bed. “You could have been more insistent with your warnings, you know!” I pout at her. “Oh god! I need to video this shit! Where’s my phone?” “You make one move towards your phone, I’m taking you out!” I holler at her. This shit definitely does not need to be filmed! Fucking Bailey is laughing too hard to respond. Insensitive witch! “Just get this shit done! Now, woman!” “Oh my god. Oh my god. Okay, okay. Calm down. Okay, let’s finish,” she finally quits laughing long enough to answer me. She gets to her feet and ambles to my side of the bed before she starts roaring again. After another moment of her laughing at me, she calms enough to stand up straight again. I scowl at her but it doesn’t erase the tears of laughter that are still coating her cheeks. “Okay, Ax. Only a few more strips to pull and then we’re done. Are you ready?” “Fuck no, I’m not ready! Who the fuck is ever actually ready to have their asshole pulled off with strips of cloth coated in wax? Huh? Who? Tell me now, Bailey! Do you actually know anyone who has ever answered that question with, “Why, yes, I am ready for excruciating pain, bring it on, girlfriend?”[...] “Thank every fucking god I know that Bailey refused to wax my ball sack like I first asked. Holy mother of all that is holy, if she had applied wax to them, I would have left it there until I died. No way is anyone pulling wax off of the twins. I am already pretty sure I’ll never get another erection just thinking about that kind of pain. I have a whole new respect for drag queens. They are tougher than I will ever be and I have no problem admitting that fact. “Holy fuck! What the ever loving fuck was that for? Oh my fucking god!” “Owwwwww! Make it stop!” I scream at Bailey when she rips a strip of wax and hair from my ass crack without warning me first. The evil witch is laughing too hard to stand so she’s now leaning her forearms across my back while I twitch my ass right and left trying to get the burning to stop. I can feel her tears landing on my back. Holy shit, I’m never sitting down again! “Holy mother of god! Fucking hell! Owwwwww! Woman, I hate you! Owwwwww! It burns like the fires of hell!” I shout as the last, thank god, strip is torn from my body. My colon may have just been removed also. I flop myself down on the bed and yes, I hide my face and allow a tiny tear or two to drop onto my pillow. Don’t judge me until you’ve been in this predicament!

I rolled over and faced the cracked green wall. I regretted that simple action immediately; it had felt like a slow-motion film with every other frame missing.

Even with all of this plot to be dispensed, the songs do rise organically out of the script. Doris’s first entrance, in head-to-toe buckskin, finds her astride a stagecoach, belting out the very catchy Sammy Fain/Paul Francis Webster song “The Deadwood Stage (Whip Crack Away).” The rollicking tune and exuberant Day vocal match the physical staging of the song, and character is revealed. Similarly, later in the film there is a lovely quiet moment when Calamity, Bill, the lieutenant, and Katie all ride together in a wagon (with Calamity driving, naturally) to the regiment dance, softly singing the lilting “Black Hills of Dakota.” These are such first-rate musical moments that one is bound to ask, “So what’s the problem?” The answer lies in Day’s performance itself. Although Calamity Jane represents one of Day’s most fondly remembered performances, it is all too much by half. Using a low, gravelly voice and overly exuberant gestures, Day, her body perpetually bent forward, gives a performance like Ethel Merman on film: She is performing to the nonexistent second balcony. This is very strange, because Day is a singer par excellence who understood from her very first film, at least in terms of ballads, that less is more on film. Her understated gestures and keen reading of lyrics made every ballad resonate with audiences, beginning with “It’s Magic” in Romance on the High Seas. Yet here she is, fourteen films later, eyes endlessly whirling, gesturing wildly, and spending most of her time yelling both at Wild Bill Hickok and at the citizens of Deadwood City. As The New York Times review of the film held, in what was admittedly a minority opinion, “As for Miss Day’s performance, it is tempestuous to the point of becoming just a bit frightening—a bit terrifying—at times…. David Butler, who directed, has wound her up tight and let her go. She does everything but hit the ceiling in lashing all over the screen.” She is butch in a very cartoonlike manner, although as always, the tomboyish Day never loses her essential femininity (the fact that her manicured nails are always evident helps…). Her clothing and speech mannerisms may be masculine, but Day herself never is; it is one of the key reasons why audiences embraced her straightforward assertive personality. In the words of John Updike, “There’s a kind of crisp androgynous something that is nice—she has backbone and spunk that I think give her a kind of stiffness in the mind.

It unfolded like a stop-motion film of a blooming rose: bright, beautiful and blindingly fast. And I wanted to laugh as I ducked and lunged; wanted to sing as I sank my fist wrist deep in an abdomen, whipped an elbow up, up, through a fragile jawbone, slid to the side of a thrusting arm and took it, turning it, leaving it, letting the body follow in an ungraceful arc. My heart was a tireless pump, arteries and airways wide. I was unstoppable lost in the joy of muscle and bone and breath. Axe kick to the central line of fuddled mass on the floor; disappointment at the sad splintering of ribs and not the hard crack of spine. Mewl and hail of body trying to sit; step and slam, hammer fist smearing the bone of his cheek. Latex slipping on sweat. Body render my hands folding to the floor, not moving. Nothing moving but me, feeling vast and brilliant with strength, immeasurable and immortal.

The ability of the murderer to know exactly where Edie was, the phone being used only where it would be most difficult to pinpoint who’d used it, which implied knowledge of police methods, and the extraordinarily detailed knowledge about the two new characters for the film that Yasmin had said Ormond had. Murphy was now asking her about her own holiday plans. Robin pulled herself together enough to describe learning to ski, back at New Year. The conversation was only lightly personal, but it was pleasant and easy. Murphy made Robin laugh with a description of a friend’s accident on a dry ski slope, where he’d taken a date he was keen to impress. At no time did he mention his previous invitation for a drink, nor did he make her feel uncomfortable in this small space, and she was grateful for both these things. They were approaching Blackhorse Road when Robin suddenly said, astounded by her own bravery, ‘Listen – that time you called me about a drink – the reason I was so – I’m not used to people asking me out.’ ‘How’s that possible?’ said Murphy, keeping his eyes on the road. ‘I’ve just got divorced – well, a year ago now – from someone I was with since we were seventeen,’ said Robin. ‘So – anyway, I was in work mode when you called, and that’s why I was a bit – you know – clueless.’ ‘Ah,’ said Murphy. ‘I got divorced three years ago.’ Robin wondered how old he was. She’d have guessed a couple of years older than her. ‘Have you got kids?’ she asked. ‘No. My ex didn’t want them.’ ‘Oh,’ said Robin. ‘You?’ ‘No.’ They’d pulled up outside her flat before either spoke again. As she picked up her bag and put her hand on the door handle, Murphy said, ‘So… if, after I get back from holiday, I called you again and asked you out…?’ It’s only a drink, said Ilsa’s voice in Robin’s head. Nobody’s saying you’ve got to jump into bed with him. An image of Madeline Courson-Miles flickered before Robin’s eyes. ‘Er –’ said Robin, whose heart was hammering. ‘Yes, OK. That’d be great.’ She thought he’d look pleased at that, but instead he seemed tense. ‘OK.’ He rubbed his nose, then said, ‘There’s something I should tell you first, though. It’s what you say, isn’t it, “come out for a drink”? But, ah – I’m an alcoholic.’ ‘Oh,’ said Robin again. ‘Been sober two years, nine months,’ said Murphy. ‘I’ve got no problem with people drinking around me. Just need to put that out there. It’s what you’re supposed to do. AA rules.’ ‘Well, that doesn’t make any – I mean, thanks for saying,’ said Robin. ‘I’d still like to go out some time. And thanks for the lift, I really appreciate it.’ He looked cheerful now. ‘Pleasure. Better get back to my packing.’ ‘Yes – have fun in Spain!’ Robin got out of the car. As the blue Avensis pulled away, Murphy raised a hand in farewell, and Robin reciprocated, still amazed at herself. It had been quite some morning. She’d just unlocked her front door when her mobile rang. ‘Hi,’ said Strike. ‘Is that offer of the sofa-bed still open?’ ‘Yes, of course,’ said Robin, both confused and pleased, entering her flat and pushing the door shut with her foot. ‘How’s Pat?’ ‘Bloody grumpy. I got her home all right. Told her to get an emergency appointment with her doctor. Half the door flew off and hit her in the back. I can tell she’s sore: she could’ve cracked something. She told me to piss off, though not in those exact words. Probably thinks I’m accusing her of being too old to survive a door hitting her.’ ‘Strike,’ said Robin, ‘I’ve just found something out. They’re about to arrest Phillip Ormond for murder.’ Silence followed these words. Robin walked into her kitchen and set her handbag down on the counter. ‘Ormond?’ repeated Strike.

In the 2016 film Arrival by director Denis Villeneuve, based on “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is part of a scientific team summoned to Montana to help decipher the language of visiting extraterrestrials, known as “heptapods,” so that their intentions can be clarified. She starts to have frequent visions of a dying girl that she cannot place—she fears she may be going crazy from the strain of her assignment. The audience naturally assumes that these are flashbacks, memories of a child she lost in her past. As Louise begins to realize that her increased understanding of how the aliens communicate is helping liberate her cognitively from linear time, she begins having visions that aid in her work, including reading from the definitive book on the aliens’ written language that she herself is destined to write and publish in her future. From the book’s dedication, she realizes that the girl in her visions is a daughter she is going to have and who will eventually die of a rare disease. And at a key moment, when the world is on the brink of war with the visitors, she is able to contact a Chinese General on his private cell phone and talk him out of his belligerence after she “premembers” his phone number, which he will show her at a celebration months or years in the future—an event celebrating international unification in the aftermath of humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrial beings, made possible thanks largely to her intervention. It is a story about time loops, in other words. And what “arrives” at the climax and at various turning points—excitingly in some cases and sadly in others—is the meaning of Louise’s baffling experiences. The heptapods, with their circular language, feel at home in the block universe of Minkowski spacetime, where past, present, and future coexist. In Chiang’s short story, the scientists attempting to crack the code of their language get an important clue from Fermat’s principle of least time (Chapter 6), which suggests a kind of teleological interpretation of light’s behavior—it needs to know where it is going right from the start, in order to take the fastest possible route to get there. Chiang resolves the perennial questions about precognition and free will by suggesting that knowledge of future outcomes causes a psychological shift in the experiencer: an “urgency, a sense of obligation”1 to fulfill what has been foreseen. “Fatalism” would be one word for it but inflected more positively—perhaps not unlike how Morgan Robertson and Phil Dick may have seen it: as absolution rather than restriction.

In the 2016 film Arrival by director Denis Villeneuve, based on “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is part of a scientific team summoned to Montana to help decipher the language of visiting extraterrestrials, known as “heptapods,” so that their intentions can be clarified. She starts to have frequent visions of a dying girl that she cannot place—she fears she may be going crazy from the strain of her assignment. The audience naturally assumes that these are flashbacks, memories of a child she lost in her past. As Louise begins to realize that her increased understanding of how the aliens communicate is helping liberate her cognitively from linear time, she begins having visions that aid in her work, including reading from the definitive book on the aliens’ written language that she herself is destined to write and publish in her future. From the book’s dedication, she realizes that the girl in her visions is a daughter she is going to have and who will eventually die of a rare disease. And at a key moment, when the world is on the brink of war with the visitors, she is able to contact a Chinese General on his private cell phone and talk him out of his belligerence after she “premembers” his phone number, which he will show her at a celebration months or years in the future—an event celebrating international unification in the aftermath of humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrial beings, made possible thanks largely to her intervention. It is a story about time loops, in other words. And what “arrives” at the climax and at various turning points—excitingly in some cases and sadly in others—is the meaning of Louise’s baffling experiences. The heptapods, with their circular language, feel at home in the block universe of Minkowski spacetime, where past, present, and future coexist. In Chiang’s short story, the scientists attempting to crack the code of their language get an important clue from Fermat’s principle of least time (Chapter 6), which suggests a kind of teleological interpretation of light’s behavior—it needs to know where it is going right from the start, in order to take the fastest possible route to get there. Chiang resolves the perennial questions about precognition and free will by suggesting that knowledge of future outcomes causes a psychological shift in the experiencer: an “urgency, a sense of obligation”1 to fulfill what has been foreseen. “Fatalism” would be one word for it but inflected more positively—perhaps not unlike how Morgan Robertson and Phil Dick may have seen it: as absolution rather than restriction. In the film, one of the heptapods sacrifices its life to save that of Louise and her team members from a bomb planted by some soldiers, even though it clearly knows its fate well in advance. Their race even knows that in 3,000 years, humanity will offer them some needed assistance, and thus their visit is just the beginning of a long relationship of mutual aid in the block universe. At the end of the film, Louise chooses to have her daughter, even knowing that the girl will die.

You were really upset the other night. I know you were trying to put on a brave face, but it was obvious Darcy hurt you. Worse than you let on. Now “You were really upset the other night. I know you were trying to put on a brave face, but it was obvious Darcy hurt you. Worse than you let on. Now you’re agreeing to fake a relationship with her? Because of your family? Elle, if they can’t see how amazing you are . . . this isn’t worth it.” Elle ground the toe of her boot into the rug, tracing the singe mark in the paisley pattern from the Birthday Sparkler Incident of 2017. “I don’t really know what I’m doing,” she admitted. The lump inside her throat grew, forcing her to swallow to keep her voice from cracking. “I’m just tired of falling short, Mar.” Margot’s face crumpled. “Elle—” She jerked her chin and sniffed hard, blinking away the film of tears blurring her vision. She smiled and shrugged. “If I can get my family to take me seriously about one thing, see that I have my life together in a way that makes sense to them, maybe they’ll come around to the rest.” Margot shook her head. “So you’re throwing in the towel? You’re going to be like Lydia now? Dating the sorts of people your parents want and shrinking yourself down to be palatable to people who don’t get you? Who don’t even try?” No. God no. Elle wasn’t going to actually compromise who she was or how she lived her life. No, this was a blip on Elle’s radar, a pit stop, a means to an end. Elle wasn’t settling. She just wanted her parents to be proud of her for who she was. If she had to speak their language for a brief bit of time, what was the harm? “No way. This is fake. I just want them to understand I’m not the letdown they think I am. Maybe hearing how awesome I am from someone else, someone like Darcy who’s the sort of person who satisfies their whole nine-to-five I’m a serious adult vibe, will help.” Margot stuck out her tongue, eyes rolling. “Boring, you mean?” Elle shrugged. “Besides, it’s cuffing season and Lydia’s got a boyfriend. Jane’s got Gabe and Daniel has Mike and I’m just—Elle. I’m not exactly jazzed about spending another holiday alone as the black sheep of the family.” “Just Elle is pretty great.” Margot smiled. “But I get it. I mean, I might not be in your shoes, but I understand where you’re coming from. I just want you to remember that you deserve someone you don’t have to fake it with.” Both her brows rose. “And I mean that in all ways.” Elle cracked a smile. “Thanks.

One of the most popular applications for enjoying multimedia on your PC is QuickTime Player. Einige der Komponenten, die in ihm enthalten sind, sind ein Browser-Plugin und ein Desktop-Spieler, der eine ansprechende Benutzeroberfläche wie die des Macs hat. Es ist möglich, die meisten QuickTime-Filme, die Sie im Internet finden, direkt in Ihrem Browser zu spielen.

It’s Fae on Fae, man, what are you thinking?” he asked with a frown and I could only glower as I looked back to the fight, forcing myself to remain still. It might have made me ache to hold back but he was right, I couldn’t get involved in a fight between two Fae. And if it had been anyone else, I never would have considered it. But Roxy always made me want to break the rules. “You jumped up, crown touting, cock sucking, whore!” Mildred slammed her fist into Roxy’s face again, not even bothering to use magic as she screamed insults in her face which included way too many references to me being her beloved. “What’s the matter, Mildred?” Roxy snarled. “Is it just that you can’t suck cock properly with that mis-matched jaw of yours or is it that you know Darius is only marrying you because his father is forcing him to?” “When I take my beloved to the bedroom he will be screaming so loudly that he won’t even remember the name Vega!” Mildred howled as she punched Roxy again. “Yeah, screaming in horror,” Roxy spat and I almost fucking laughed aside from the fact that she was about to get her face smashed in by that beast of a girl. “We’ll see if he’s so tempted by you when I’m done pulverising that pretty face of yours and I cut your perky tits off for good measure!” Mildred howled. “Not the tits!” Tyler Corbin gasped from the other side of the crowd as he filmed the whole thing. My heart pounded. Roxy might have been tough, but Mildred was four times the size of her. She needed to fight back with magic if she was going to stand a chance, but as she swung her head forward and cracked the bridge of Mildred’s nose with a savage headbutt, I got the feeling she wasn’t going to use it. Roxy swung a fist into Mildred’s throat to follow it before driving her knee up between her legs as hard as she could. “Ooo right in the vag!” Tyler called and a laugh caught in my throat. “Yes, Tor!” Darcy screamed as she pushed her way to the front of the crowd. “Show her how we fight where we come from!” As Mildred reared back, Roxy lunged forward, rolling them over so that she was on top before swinging her fists down into Mildred’s ugly face with a brutality that made my heart race. She was wild and vicious, blood pissing down her face from her own injuries as she used my stolen rings to batter Mildred again and again. I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t end up with Dragons imprinted all over her face from her own injuries as she used my stolen rings to batter Mildred again and again. I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t end up with Dragons imprinted all over her face from the shape of the jewellery. Mildred gave as good as she got, punching Roxy in the sides, the chest, even trying to bite her fist as she punched her. “Holy shit,” Seth breathed as he nuzzled against my arm. “This would be so hot if it wasn’t, you know, Mildred. But if I imagine her being literally any other girl then I’d be so turned on right now.” I swallowed a lump in my throat as I refused to agree out loud, but he was right. There was something about Roxy as she fought like that, her lip curled back with determination and absolutely no mercy in her. They might have been fighting like mortals having a bar brawl, but with a crown on her head and blood painting her flesh, I didn’t think she’d ever looked more like the Savage King’s daughter before. She really was a Fae Princess. And I liked it. Mildred cursed and screamed, throwing fists like sledgehammers so hard that I was pretty sure I heard ribs cracking, but Roxy wasn’t going to give in. She swung her arm back one final time and with a scream of rage, she hit Mildred so hard in her pug face that she blacked out. A laugh tumbled from my lips before I could stop it and Roxy looked up at me with a wild determination in her eyes as she grinned like a damn warrior. (Darius POV)

What was it about the I'll kill the bitch guy that cracked our audience up so much? Simple, everyone in the theatre had seen that guy before. I had seen that guy. And when we stepped outside the theatre into the Scottsdale shopping center where the Carson Twin Cinema was located, we might see that guy again. But what really cracked us up was we had never seen that guy in a Hollywood movie.

Abaude" Still, the house; then light-crack, the entr'acte          of dawn: each pane laliqued, fern-etched                  on the emery-wheel of December. Brief, that film, already burning, the evaporate fact          I'd stay lost in longer, the far-fetched                  dream the sun now filches like a thief. And so the windows fill with day's contusions,          a slurry of routine, hours stretching                  toward predictable horizons. Belief once fluttered at my lips. What god can soothe                          such grief?

But what if everyone assumes they're doomed to die, no survivors? What if the plane is breaking up, and the smoky sky leaks through the cracks, and there’s a piercing screech in the wind? There’s the promise of disintegration, of body parts scattered across hundreds of kilometres of wilderness, and teddy bears, and a debris field filmed from a helicopter, families weeping in nearby airports, framed on the front page, last names later chiseled into a marble memorial. That would be so much worse, that moment you realize no one’s going to make it, everyone’s going to die, because no survivors means the end of your world, ugliness all the way down, fear and its resulting cruelty, until the wings slice the treetops and the cabin bursts into flames. No survivors is the end of everything.

there are times when the truth won’t let us go. Sure, I can avoid other people’s scrutiny by telling my bullshit side of the story over and over to anyone who will listen. But I know the truth. And sometimes it all catches up with me at night as I lie in bed — in that not-quite-awake and not-quite-asleep place. In those moments, my ego is turned off, perhaps for the only time all day. In that consciousness-minus-ego state, the truth fights past the layers of food and entertainment and all the other distractions I shovel on top of it and, unbidden, crawls its way back up into my thoughts. “Does everyone have these moments?” I wondered aloud to Caitlin. Perhaps some feel their errors in life aren’t bad enough to fret over, or perhaps they’ve built enough protective layers around their ego that they have successfully avoided feeling shamed by their secrets altogether. But like Matt Damon’s character in the film Good Will Hunting, if they were confronted with limitless and repetitive grace, like that offered by the counselor Robin Williams played, they’d eventually crack. Not because they should, but because we all do. Right? Because we are all burdened by the ugly things we’ve done and continue to do.

Incidentally, the claim that watching sunsets is no different that viewing porn was actually tested and debunked in a 2000 brain scan study.[ 121] Cocaine addicts and healthy controls viewed films of: 1) explicit sexual content, 2) outdoor nature scenes, and 3) individuals smoking crack cocaine. The results: cocaine addicts had nearly identical brain activation patterns when viewing both porn and a crack pipe. However, for all subjects brain activation patterns when viewing nature scenes were completely different from the porn-viewing patterns. All subjects had the same brain activation patterns for porn. The important takeaway is that drugs can activate the ‘sex’ neurons and trigger a buzz without actual sex. So can internet porn. Golf and sunsets cannot.

She could not have been described as Sex Incarnate, or “The Bust” or “The Torso.” She had been long and slim and willowy. The bones of her face and head had had some of the beauty associated with those of Garbo. She had brought personality to her pictures rather than mere sex. The sudden turn of her head, the opening of the deep lovely eyes, the faint quiver of her mouth, all these were what brought to one suddenly that feeling of breathtaking loveliness that comes not from regularity of feature but from sudden magic of the flesh that catches the onlooker unawares. She still had this quality though it was not now so easily apparent. Like many film and stage actresses she had what seemed to be a habit of turning off personality at will. She could retire into herself, be quiet, gentle, aloof, disappointing to an eager fan. And then suddenly the turn of the head, the movement of the hands, the sudden smile and the magic was there.

Mankind has long sought to identify, isolate, ward off, cast off, and/or destroy its malevolent aspects—when it hasn’t sought to locate, evoke, embody, and exploit them. Horror lives at the borders between life and death, in the cracks between human and inhuman. By crashing through the normal, horror redraws those boundaries. Many times the enormous reservoir of human fear is, at its base, a fear of transformation, and the inevitable changes that death, time, loss, and an uncaring universe can impose. Experiencing the vicarious thrills of horror can help us confront, rehearse, and, finally, transcend our fears.

In 1984, I had another conversation that had underscored this point to me. Herb Okun, the deputy US ambassador to the UN, had come to his post after serving as US ambassador to communist East Germany. “What’s it like there, Herb?” I had asked him. “Oh, nothing much,” Herb answered. “They live in dilapidated housing, drive funny little Trabants, drink vodka all day while watching eight hours of West German television.” “What!” I asked in disbelief. “What did you just say?” “They watch eight hours of West German television every day and then drink themselves to sleep,” he repeated. “You mean to tell me that watching eight hours a day of West German television doesn’t have any effect on them?” I asked incredulously. “None that I can see,” Okun answered. “Herb,” I said, “that can’t be. It’s just a question of time until the cracks will appear.” The conversation made me recall an engineering course I took at MIT. We loaded a small model bridge with steadily increasing loads and photographed the process. The bridge held fine, until it suddenly collapsed. Yet upon closer examination of the film we could see tiny cracks propagating in the structure well before the fall.

I set my bag on top of my thighs and take a look around. There are cameras here and cameras over there as well. There are old cameras and new cameras. Cameras to carry with you. Standing cameras, sitting cameras, cameras riding wheelchairs, yawning cameras, dozing cameras, sleeping cameras, chatting cameras, cracking-up cameras, angry cameras, passionate gaming cameras, music-listening cameras, begging cameras, ignoring cameras, swearing cameras . . . and even a camera on my insides filming me. The cameras don’t know who they are. When one camera shoots another, they too are shot. Cameras that are shot and are shooting each other. Surveilling and being surveilled. Being surveilled and surveilling.

MARTIN SHEEN: Terry called me one night, and he had done so after finally making a decision. His gut hunch was to hire me, but he had other considerations, or an obligation to sort through his casting agent’s suggestions. He asked me if I was still interested. I got up just before sunrise and started driving the Pacific Coast Highway to the tune of Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Road.” It was one of the most profound moments of my life. Dylan, who was one of my personal heroes, had cracked something wide open inside of me. I was experiencing an epiphany. There was a realization of what just happened to me. I started to weep, and pulled the car over on the highway and reflected on this. My happiness. Before that phone call, I would have never thought that such a thing would happen to me. I realized that acting was no joke. You don’t show up on a set and just decide that you are going to throw yourself out there without preparation. Me being there was no accident. The stars had aligned and Badlands was a role of a lifetime. I have Terry Malick to thank for it.

The Minnesota State Weather observer at Pine River Dam recorded a minimum temperature of 46 below on December 29; observers at Pokegama Falls and Leech Lake Dam were unable to take temperature readings that day because the mercury inside their government-issued thermometers froze solid. It's hard to find vocabulary for weather this cold. The senses first become sharp and then dulled. Objects etch themselves with hyperclarity on the dense air, but it's hard to keep your eyes open to look at them steadily. When you first step outside from a heated space, the blast from 46-below-zero air clears the mind like a ringing slap. After a breath or two, ice builds up on the hairs of your nasal passages and the clear film bathing your eyeballs thickens. If the wind is calm and your body, head, and hands are covered, you feel preternaturally alert and focused. At first. A dozen paces from the door, your throat begins to feel raw, your lips dry and crack, tears sting the corners of your eyes. The cold becomes at once a knife and, paradoxically, a flame, cutting and scorching exposed skin.

Gentile’s office in downtown Las Vegas, I got on the elevator and turned around and there was a TV camera. It was just the two of us in the little box, me and the man with the big machine on his shoulder. He was filming me as I stood there silent. “Turn the camera off,” I said. He didn’t. I tried to move away from him in the elevator, and somehow in the maneuvering he bumped my chin with the black plastic end of his machine and I snapped. I slugged him, or actually I slugged the camera. He turned it off. The maids case was like a county fair compared with the Silverman disappearance, which had happened in the media capital of the world. It had happened within blocks of the studios of the three major networks and the New York Times. The tabloids reveled in the rich narrative of the case, and Mom and Kenny became notorious throughout the Western Hemisphere. Most crimes are pedestrian and tawdry. Though each perpetrator has his own rap sheet and motivation and banged-up psyche, the crime blotter is very repetitive. A wife beater kills his wife. A crack addict uses a gun to get money for his habit. Liquor-store holdups, domestic abuse, drug dealer shoot-outs, DWIs, and so on. This one had a story line you could reduce to a movie pitch. Mother/Son Grifters Held in Millionaire’s Disappearance! My mother’s over-the-top persona, Kenny’s shady polish, and the ridiculous rumors of mother-son incest gave the media a narrative it couldn’t resist. Mom and Kenny were the smart, interesting, evil criminals with the elaborate, diabolical plan who exist in fiction and rarely in real life. The media landed on my life with elephant feet. I was under siege as soon as I returned to my office after my family’s excursion to Newport Beach. The deluge started at 10 A.M. on July 8, 1998. I kept a list in a drawer of the media outlets that called or dropped by our little one-story L-shaped office building on Decatur. It was a tabloid clusterfuck. Every network, newspaper, local news station, and wire service sent troops. Dateline and 20/20 competed to see who could get a Kimes segment on-air first. Dateline did two shows about Mom and Kenny. I developed a strategy for dealing with reporters. My unusual training in the media arts as the son of Sante, and as a de facto paralegal in the maids case, meant that I had a better idea of how to deal with reporters than my staff did. They might find it exciting that someone wanted to talk to them, and forget to stop at “No comment.” I knew better. So I hid from the camera crews in a back room, so there’d be no pictures, and I handled the calls myself. I told my secretary not to bother asking who was on the line and to transfer all comers back to me. I would get the name and affiliation of the reporter, write down the info on my roster, and

The term android is a dangerous one, undermined by certain generic assumptions. I don’t like using it. In fact, I threatened to crack open heads with a baseball bat if I heard it used around me on the set,” Scott jestingly declared to this writer in 1981. “You see, android is a very familiar word. Not just to science fiction readers, but to the general public. A lot of material—some good, some crap—has been touched by the term. Therefore, I didn’t want Blade Runner to be premonitory of android at all. Because then people would think that this film was about robots, when in fact it isn’t. I thought it was better that we come up with a new word altogether.

Usually when someone sees a film, the first thing friends ask is “Did you like it?” It’s not an inappropriate question. Art by its nature engages our imaginations and sensitivities, and so our personal response is as essential to its design as is our response to a delicate flower growing out of a tiny crack in a boulder high in the Rockies. I would argue, however, that though the question of whether we liked it is not inappropriate; it is not the most important question for the faithful Christian. The question with which we must be even more concerned is “Did I get it?” Why are people resonating with this film? Why do they identify with these characters or that plot? What have they seen and heard and why does it strike them as important?

His dark eyes searched hers as they breathed together. They knew that there was nothing sensational or innovative or dangerous about their lovemaking, nothing that would be replicated in a film, and yet it was the familiarity of conjugal sex that moved Hope. To her, it proved that the ordinary could transform you, too. In the motel, she and her husband studied each other in awe, like a pair of detectives who had cracked the uncrackable case.