Identify Movie Quotes

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Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person -- sexual chemistry, let's say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty -- and you get to pick three of those things. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It's only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all those things. But this isn't the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That's real life. Don't you see it's a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you'll wind up with nothing.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
The entire universe is God's cosmic motion picture, and that individuals are merely actors in the divine play who change roles through reincarnation; mankind's deep suffering is rooted in identifying too closely with one's current role, rather than with the movie's director, or God.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Maybe that was why I adored horror movies and true crime. I identified with the villain, the foe, the outsider. I was always the person who didn’t belong.
Kayla Krantz (What I Did)
Women couldn’t identify with her and didn’t support her.
Molly Haskell (From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies)
SETH: But don’t you understand, Amy? You’re wrong. Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person—sexual chemistry, let’s say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty—and you get to pick three of those things. Three—that’s it. Maybe four, if you’re very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It’s only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But this isn’t the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That’s real life. Don’t you see it’s a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you’ll wind up with nothing.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
I read sad stories to inoculate myself against grief. I watch action movies to identify with the quick-witted heroes. Both the same fantasy: I'll escape the worst of it.
Sarah Manguso (300 Arguments: Essays)
The pop culture cliché of the American High School movie, which adapted old archetypes, depicted a social world in which the worst sexists were always the all brawn no brains sports jock. But now that the online world has given us a glimpse into the inner lives of others, one of the surprising revelations is that it is the nerdish self-identifying nice guy who could never get the girl who has been exposed as the much more hate-filled, racist, misogynist who is insanely jealous of the happiness of others.
Angela Nagle (Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right)
One evening at a remote provincial college through which I happened to be jogging on a protracted lecture tour, I suggested a little quiz—-ten definitions of a reader, and from these ten the students had to choose four definitions that would combine to make a good reader. I have mislaid the list, but as far as I remember the definitions went something like this. Select four answers to the question what should a reader be to be a good reader: 1. The reader should belong to a book club. 2. The reader should identify himself or herself with the hero or heroine. 3. The reader should concentrate on the social-economic angle. 4. The reader should prefer a story with action and dialogue to one with none. 5. The reader should have seen the book in a movie. 6. The reader should be a budding author. 7. The reader should have imagination. 8. The reader should have memory. 9. The reader should have a dictionary. 10. The reader should have some artistic sense. The students leaned heavily on emotional identification, action, and the social-economic or historical angle. Of course, as you have guessed, the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense–-which sense I propose to develop in myself and in others whenever I have the chance.
Vladimir Nabokov (Lectures on Literature)
Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person - sexual chemistry, let's say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty - and you get to pick three of those things. Three - that's it. Maybe four, if you're very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It's only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But this isn't the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That's real life. Don't you see it's a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you'll wind up with nothing.' ...At the time, he hadn't believed these words, because at the time, everything really did seem possible: he was twenty-three, and everyone was young and attractive and smart and glamorous. Everyone thought they would be friends for decades, forever. But for most people, of course, that hadn't happened. As you got older, you realized that the qualities you valued in the people you slept with or dated weren't necessarily the ones you wanted to live with, or be with, or plod through your days with. If you were smart, and if you were lucky, you learned this and accepted this. You figured out what was most important to you and you looked for it, and you learned to be realistic. They all chose differently: Roman had chosen beauty, sweetness, pliability; Malcolm, he thought, had chosen reliability, and competence...and aesthetic compatibility. And he? He had chosen friendship. Conversation. Kindness, Intelligence. When he was in his thirties, he had looked at certain people's relationships and asked the question that had (and continued to) fuel countless dinner-party conversations: What's going on there? Now, though, as an almost-forty-eight-year-old, he saw people's relationships as reflections of their keenest yet most inarticulable desires, their hopes and insecurities taking shape physically, in the form of another person. Now he looked at couples - in restaurants, on the street, at parties - and wondered: Why are you together? What did you identify as essential to you? What's missing in you that you want someone else to provide? He now viewed a successful relationship as one in which both people had recognized the best of what the other person had of offer and had chosen to value it as well.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
One who doesn't recognise an opportunity is bigger loser than one who tries his hand at an opportunity.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
Mess with Texas. No live human being could mess with Texas. If you succeed in messing with Texas, it's a sure bet you're as dead as a Junebug in July.
Seth Grahame-Smith (How to Survive a Horror Movie (How to Survive))
Confession: I don't want everybody to be beautiful, not in that unlined, creaseless, symmetrical way. Android beauty, like it comes out of a test tube. Beauty without blemish or mark. Not only do I not identify with such people, I don't believe in them either. I don't even find them attractive. This is what makes watching television so hard: they don't cast actors anymore, only models. When they make a movie of my life, they'd better cast a character actor in the lead. Don't try to tell me I'm not a character.
Lisa Samson (The Sky Beneath My Feet)
Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person - sexual chemistry, let's say, or a good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty - and you get to pick three of those things. Three - that's it. Maybe four, if you're very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It's only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But this isn't the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That's real life. Don't you see it's a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you'll wind up with nothing.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
I've heard youngsters use some of George Lucas' terms––"the Force and "the dark side." So it must be hitting somewhere. It's a good sound teaching, I would say. The fact that the evil power is not identified with any specific nation on this earth means you've got an abstract power, which represents a principle, not a specific historical situation. The story has to do with an operation of principles, not of this nation against that. The monster masks that are put on people in Star Wars represent the real monster force in the modern world. When the mask of Darth Vader is removed, you see an unformed man, one who has not developed as a human individual. What you see is a strange and pitiful sort of undifferentiated face. Darth Vader has not developed his humanity. He's a robot. He's a bureaucrat, living not in terms of himself but of an imposed system. This is the threat to our lives that we all face today. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes? How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it? . . . The thing to do is to learn to live in your period of history as a human being ...[b]y holding to your own ideals for yourself and, like Luke Skywalker, rejecting the system's impersonal claims upon you. Well, you see, that movie communicates. It is in a language that talks to young people, and that's what counts. It asks, Are you going to be a person of heart and humanity––because that's where the life is, from the heart––or are you going to do whatever seems to be required of you by what might be called "intentional power"? When Ben Knobi says, "May the Force be with you," he's speaking of the power and energy of life, not of programmed political intentions. ... [O]f course the Force moves from within. But the Force of the Empire is based on an intention to overcome and master. Star Wars is not a simple morality play. It has to do with the powers of life as they are either fulfilled or broken and suppressed through the action of man.
Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth)
The truth is that The Wild One -- despite an admittedly fictional treatment -- was an inspired piece of film journalism. Instead of institutionalizing common knowledge, in the style of Time, it told a story that was only beginning to happen and which was inevitably influenced by the film. It gave the outlaws a lasting, romance-glazed image of themselves, a coherent reflection that only a very few had been able to find in a mirror, and it quickly became the bike rider's answer to The Sun Also Rises. The image is not valid, but its wide acceptance can hardly be blamed on the movie. The Wild One was careful to distinguish between "good outlaws" and "bad outlaws," but the people who were most influenced chose to identify with Brando instead of Lee Marvin whose role as the villain was a lot more true to life than Brando's portrayal of the confused hero. They saw themselves as modern Robin Hoods ... virile, inarticulate brutes whose good instincts got warped somewhere in the struggle for self-expression and who spent the rest of their violent lives seeking revenge on a world that done them wrong when they were young and defenseless.
Hunter S. Thompson (Hell's Angels)
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.)
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
Are we creating and cultivating things that have a chance of furnishing the New Jerusalem? Will the cultural goods we devote our lives to - the food we cook and consume; the music we purchase and practice; the movies we watch and make; the enterprises we earn our paychecks from and invest our wealth in - be identified as the glory and honor of our cultural tradition? Or will they be remembered as mediocrities at best, dead-ends at worst? This is not the same as asking whether we are making "christian" culture.
Andy Crouch (Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling)
This book is about what might be the world’s most improbable Hollywood success story. At its center is an enigmatic filmmaker who claims, among many other things, to be a vampire. This man speaks with a thick European accent, the derivation of which he won’t identify. He also refuses to reveal his age or the origins of his seemingly vast fortune. His name is Tommy Wiseau; and the film he wrote, directed, produced, starred in, and poured $6 million into is a disastrous specimen of cinematic hubris called The Room.
Greg Sestero (The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made)
One helpful way of identifying these kingdom features is to examine closely the "preview" passages in the Bible. Pop a movie into your DVD player, and you'll first see previews of coming attractions. Similarly, throughout the Bible are previews of the "feature film": the kingdom of God in all its consummated fullnness. These texts offer us glimpses into what live will be like in the new heavens and new earth.
Amy L. Sherman (Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good)
Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person—sexual chemistry, let's say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty—and you get to pick three of those things. Three—that's it. Maybe four, if you're very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It's only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But this isn't the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That's real life. Don't you see it's a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you'll wind up with nothing.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
The world of French crime films is a particular place, informed by the French love for Hollywood film noir, a genre they identified and named. But the great French noirs of the 1950s are not copies of Hollywood; instead, they have a particularly French flavor.
Roger Ebert (The Great Movies II)
lower her to my side and pull her against me so that her head is resting on my jacket. Her breath tastes like starburst and it makes me want to keep kissing her until I can identify every single flavor. Her hand touches my arm and she gives it a tight squeeze just as my tongue slips inside her mouth. That would be strawberry on the tip of her tongue. She keeps her hand on my arm, periodically moving it to the back of my head, then returning it to my arm. I keep my hand on her waist, never once moving it to touch any other part of her. The only thing we explore is each other’s mouths. We kiss without making another sound. We kiss until the alarm sounds off on my phone. Despite the noise, neither of us stops kissing. We don’t even hesitate. We kiss for another solid minute until the bell rings in the hallway outside and suddenly lockers are slamming shut and people are talking and everything about our moment is stolen from us by all the inconvenient external factors of school. I still my lips against hers, then slowly pull back. “I have to get to class,” she whispers. I nod, even though she can’t see me. “Me, too,” I reply. She begins to scoot out from beneath me. When I roll onto my back, I feel her move closer to me. Her mouth briefly meets mine one more time, then she pulls away and stands up. The second she opens the door, the light from the hallway pours in and I squeeze my eyes shut, throwing my arm over my face. I hear the door shut behind her and by the time I adjust to the brightness, the light is gone again. I sigh heavily. I also remain on the floor until my physical reaction to her subsides. I don’t know who the hell she was or why the hell she ended up here, but I hope to God she comes back. I need a whole hell of a lot more of that. • • • She didn’t come back the next day. Or the day after that. In fact, today marks exactly a week since she literally fell into my arms, and I’ve convinced myself that maybe that whole day was a dream. I did stay up most of the night before watching zombie movies with Chunk, but even though I was going on two hours of sleep, I don’t know that I would have been able to imagine that. My fantasies aren’t that fun. Whether she comes back or not, I still don’t have a fifth period and until someone calls me out on it, I’ll keep hiding out in here. I actually slept way too much last night, so I’m not tired. I pull my phone out to text Holder when the door to the closet begins to open. “Are you in here, kid?” I hear her whisper. My heart immediately picks up pace and I can’t tell if it’s that she came back or if it’s because the
Colleen Hoover (Finding Cinderella (Hopeless, #2.5))
Watch movies. Read screenplays. Let them be your guide. […] Yes, McKee has been able to break down how the popular screenplay has worked. He has identified key qualities that many commercially successful screenplays share, he has codified a language that has been adopted by creative executives in both film and television. So there might be something of tangible value to be gained by interacting with his material, either in book form or at one of the seminars. But for someone who wants to be an artist, a creator, an architect of an original vision, the best book to read on screenwriting is no book on screenwriting. The best seminar is no seminar at all. To me, the writer wants to get as many outside voices OUT of his/her head as possible. Experts win by getting us to be dependent on their view of the world. They win when they get to frame the discussion, when they get to tell you there’s a right way and a wrong way to think about the game, whatever the game is. Because that makes you dependent on them. If they have the secret rules, then you need them if you want to get ahead. The truth is, you don’t. If you love and want to make movies about issues of social import, get your hands on Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay for Network. Read it. Then watch the movie. Then read it again. If you love and want to make big blockbusters that also have great artistic merit, do the same thing with Lawrence Kasdan’s Raiders Of The Lost Ark screenplay and the movie made from it. Think about how the screenplays made you feel. And how the movies built from these screenplays did or didn’t hit you the same way. […] This sounds basic, right? That’s because it is basic. And it’s true. All the information you need is the movies and screenplays you love. And in the books you’ve read and the relationships you’ve had and your ability to use those things.
Brian Koppelman
As time passed there was no more buying food, no money, no supplies. On some days, we wouldn’t even have a crumb to eat. There’s a vivid scene in Nanni Loy’s The Four Days of Naples, a movie made after the war about the uprising of the Neapolitans against the occupying Germans, in which one of the young characters sinks his teeth into a loaf of bread so voraciously, so desperately, I can still identify with him. In those four famous days in late September, when Naples rose up against the Germans—even before the Allies arrived, it was the climax of a terrible period of deprivation and marked the beginning of the end of the war in Italy.
Sophia Loren (Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life)
Suddenly the door to one of the trailers opens, and a famous head emerges. It is a woman’s head, quite a distance away, seen in profile, like the head on a coin, and while Clarissa cannot immediately identify her (Meryl Streep? Vanessa Redgrave?) she knows without question that the woman is a movie star. She knows by her aura of regal assurance, and by the eagerness with which one of the prop men speaks to her (inaudibly to Clarissa) about the source of the noise. The woman’s head quickly withdraws, the door to the trailer closes again, but she leaves behind her an unmistakable sense of watchful remonstrance, as if an angel had briefly touched the surface of the world with one sandaled foot, asked if there was any trouble and, being told all was well, had resumed her place in the ether with skeptical gravity, having reminded the children of earth that they are just barely trusted to manage their own business, and that further carelessness will not go unremarked.
Michael Cunningham (The Hours)
Some gifted people have all five and some less. Every gifted person tends to lead with one. As I read this list for the first time I was struck by the similarities between Dabrowski’s overexcitabilities and the traits of Sensitive Intuitives. Read the list for yourself and see what you identify with: Psychomotor This manifests as a strong pull toward movement. People with this overexcitability tend to talk rapidly and/or move nervously when they become interested or passionate about something. They have a lot of physical energy and may run their hands through their hair, snap their fingers, pace back and forth, or display other signs of physical agitation when concentrating or thinking something out. They come across as physically intense and can move in an impatient, jerky manner when excited. Other people might find them overwhelming and they’re routinely diagnosed as ADHD. Sensual This overexcitability comes in the form of an extreme sensitivity to sounds, smells, bright lights, textures and temperature. Perfume and scented soaps and lotions are bothersome to people with this overexcitability, and they might also have aversive reactions to strong food smells and cleaning products. For me personally, if I’m watching a movie in which a strobe light effect is used, I’m done. I have to shut my eyes or I’ll come down with a headache after only a few seconds. Loud, jarring or intrusive sounds also short circuit my wiring. Intellectual This is an incessant thirst for knowledge. People with this overexcitability can’t ever learn enough. They zoom in on a few topics of interest and drink up every bit of information on those topics they can find. Their only real goal is learning for learning’s sake. They’re not trying to learn something to make money or get any other external reward. They just happened to have discovered the history of the Ming Dynasty or Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and now it’s all they can think about. People with this overexcitability have intellectual interests that are passionate and wide-ranging and they study many areas simultaneously. Imaginative INFJ and INFP writers, this is you. This is ALL you. Making up stories, creating imaginary friends, believing in Santa Claus way past the ordinary age, becoming attached to fairies, elves, monsters and unicorns, these are the trademarks of the gifted child with imaginative overexcitability. These individuals appear dreamy, scattered, lost in their own worlds, and constantly have their heads in the clouds. They also routinely blend fiction with reality. They are practically the definition of the Sensitive Intuitive writer at work. Emotional Gifted individuals with emotional overexcitability are highly empathetic (and empathic, I might add), compassionate, and can become deeply attached to people, animals, and even inanimate objects, in a short period of time. They also have intense emotional reactions to things and might not be able to stomach horror movies or violence on the evening news. They have most likely been told throughout their life that they’re “too sensitive” or that they’re “overreacting” when in truth, they are expressing exactly how they feel to the most accurate degree.
Lauren Sapala (The INFJ Writer: Cracking the Creative Genius of the World's Rarest Type)
But don't you understand, Amy? You're wrong. Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person - sexual chemistry, let's say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty - and you get to pick three of those things. Three- That's it. Maybe four, if you're very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It's only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But this isn't the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which there qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That's real life. Don't you see it's a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you'll end up with nothing.
Hanya Yanagihara
But don’t you understand, Amy? You’re wrong. Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person—sexual chemistry, let’s say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty—and you get to pick three of those things. Three—that’s it. Maybe four, if you’re very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It’s only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But this isn’t the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That’s real life. Don’t you see it’s a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you’ll wind up with nothing. AMY:
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
It’s like they’re introducing the child to a tribe. There's a ritual. You hold your child above your head, bring him toward some Wizard of Oz like set up, place him down as an offering and say, ‘watch this!’ Then, you watch him, watching Star Wars, trying to figure out just what you have in common with your kid, see which character he’ll identify with, who he’ll root for...If you can find a common language that runs from 5 to 85 you’ve got yourself something. And Star Wars fans have something. In a way it’s as if they know they have this great gift to bestow and they want to bestow it as perfectly as possible: the perfect time, the perfect place, the perfect situation for passing on this life-defining experience. And the kids will always remember for their entire lives how they first felt when they first saw their now favorite movie. And they were given this gift by their parents and can now share it together, truly a family affair.
Carrie Fisher (The Princess Diarist)
The town had a faint air of benign neglect that only added to its charm: a seaside village with white clapboard buildings, seagulls wheeling overhead, uneven brick sidewalks and local shops. They passed a gas station, several old storefronts with plate-glass windows, a diner, a funeral parlor, a movie theater turned into a bookstore, and an eighteenth-century sea captain’s mansion, complete with widow’s walk. A sign out front identified it as the Exmouth Historical Society and Museum.
Douglas Preston (Crimson Shore (Pendergast, #15))
sense of identifying with the characters, although that is an important part of it, but by seeing the world as another person sees it. François Truffaut said that for a director it was an inspiring sight to walk to the front of a movie theater, turn around, and look back at the faces of the audience, turned up to the light from the screen. If the film is any good, those faces reflect an out-of-the-body experience: The audience for a brief time is somewhere else, sometime else, concerned with lives that are not its own. Of all the arts, movies are
Roger Ebert (The Great Movies)
Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person—sexual chemistry, let’s say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty—and you get to pick three of those things. Three—that’s it. Maybe four, if you’re very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It’s only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But this isn’t the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That’s real life.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
Here are some questions that not only will elicit stories but also might yield relatively interesting answers: • “How did you spend your morning today?” • “What’s the farthest you’ve ever been from another human?” • “What’s something weird or unusual you did early on in life?” • “What’s a story one of your references might tell me when I call them?” • “If I was the perfect Netflix, what type of movies would I recommend for you and why?” • “How do you feel you are different from the people at your current company?” • “What views do you hold religiously, almost irrationally?” • “How did you prepare for this interview?” • “What subreddits, blogs, or online communities do you enjoy?” • “What is something esoteric you do?
Tyler Cowen (Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World)
Sitting at the edge of his bed those days, weaving and watching television movies – movies themselves, mostly made from the seasickness of misguided creative endeavor. Normalization of commercial compromise had left his medium as one of dominantly irrelevant fantasies adding nothing to the world, and instead providing a perfect storm of merchanteering thespians and image builders now less identifiable as creators of valued products than of products built for significant sales. Their masses of fans as happy as hustled, bustled, and rustled sheep. A country without culture? Nothing more than a shopping mall with a flag? Still, business is branding buoyantly, leaving Bob to yet another bout of that old society-is-sinking sensation.
Sean Penn (Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff)
Watching violent, arousing shows may actually contribute to suppressing your immune system. As you identify with the anger you see on the screen or read about, stress chemicals called catecholamine and cortisone are released that can adversely affect your immune system. The effect of exposure to both anger and love on the immune system was shown in research by Harvard scientist David Mclelland, and later reproduced by the Heart Math Institute in California (Bhat 1995). Watching an anger-provoking movie suppressed the immune system (as measured by chemicals in the saliva) for five to six hours in study subjects. However, watching a movie about the compassionate work of Mother Teresa caused elevation of the immune level in the participants.
Ted Zeff (The Highly Sensitive Person's Survival Guide: Essential Skills for Living Well in an Overstimulating World (Eseential Skills for Living Well in an Overstimulating World))
Cities have characters, pathologies that can make or destroy or infect you, states of mind that run through daily life as surely as a fault line. Chandler’s “mysterious something” was a mood of disenchantment, an intense spiritual malaise that identified itself with Los Angeles at a particular time, what we call noir. On the one hand noir is a narrow film genre, born in Hollywood in the late 1930s when European visual style, the twisted perspectives and stark chiaroscuros of German Expressionism, met an American literary idiom. This fruitful comingling gave birth to movies like Double Indemnity, directed by Vienna-born Billy Wilder and scripted by Raymond Chandler from a James M. Cain novella. The themes — murderous sex and the cool, intricate amorality of money — rose directly from the psychic mulch of Southern California. But L.A. is a city of big dreams and cruelly inevitable disappointments where noir is more than just a slice of cinema history; it’s a counter-tradition, the dark lens through which the booster myths came to be viewed, a disillusion that shadows even the best of times, an alienation that assails the sense like the harsh glitter of mica in the sidewalk on a pitiless Santa Ana day. Noir — in this sense a perspective on history and often a substitute for it — was born when the Roaring Twenties blew themselves out and hard times rushed in; it crystallized real-life events and the writhing collapse of the national economy before finding its interpreters in writers like Raymond Chandler.
Richard Rayner (A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age)
I wanted to be platinum blond. On our black-and-white television and at the theater where they screened technicolor movies, there was something about platinum hair that was so luminescent and exciting. In my time, Marilyn Monroe was the biggest platinum blond on the silver screen. She was so charismatic and the aura she cast was enormous. I identified with her strongly in ways I couldn’t easily articulate. As I grew up, the more I stood out physically in my family, the more I was drawn to people that I felt I related to in significant way. With Marilyn, I sensed a vulnerability and a particular kind of femaleness that I felt we shared. Marilyn struck me as someone who needed so much love. That was long before I discovered that Marilyn had been a foster child.
Debbie Harry (Face It: A Memoir)
Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person—sexual chemistry, let’s say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty—and you get to pick three of those things. Three—that’s it. Maybe four, if you’re very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It’s only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But this isn’t the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That’s real life. Don’t you see it’s a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you’ll wind up with nothing.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person - sexual chemistry, let's say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty - and you get to pick three of those things. Three - that's it. Maybe four, if you're very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It's only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But this isn't the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That's real life. Don't you see it's a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you'll wind up with nothing.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
In New York University media scholar Jay Rosen’s definition, journalism is a report on “what’s going on” in the community with which one identifies but outside the scope of individual experience: what happens in a place where you are not, at a time when you are doing something else. Journalists report on people who are unlike the people you know personally but whom you still consider your countrymen; on the proceedings and decisions of your government; on plays, movies, books, and music that you have not necessarily experienced firsthand but that form the culture in which you live. Journalism is essential to democracy because it creates a sense of shared reality across a city, a state, a nation. Without this shared reality, a public sphere—the term philosopher Jürgen Habermas uses to describe the space where public opinion takes shape—cannot exist.
Masha Gessen (Surviving Autocracy)
Everything is subservient to the system, yet at the same time escapes its control. Those groups around the world who adopt the Western lifestyle never really identify with it, and indeed are secretly contemptuous of it. They remain excentric with respect to this value system. Their way of assimilating, of often being more fanatical in their observance of Western manners than Westerners themselves, has an obviously parodic, aping quality: they are engaged in a sort of bricolage with the broken bits and pieces of the Enlightenment, of 'progress' . Even when they negotiate or ally themselves with the West, they continue to believe that their own way is fundamentally the right one. Perhaps, like the Alakaluf, these groups will disappear without ever having taken the Whites seriously. (For our part we take them very seriously indeed, whether our aim is to assimilate them or destroy them: they are even fast becoming the crucial negative - reference point of our whole value system.)
Jean Baudrillard (The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena)
He looked up at her and saw that she wore the face of Everyone. It was the face of the two women who talked in the seat behind him on the bus; it was the face of Mrs. Leslie, saying to him, "Some of us are going to organize a Pretentionist Club ..." It was the face of those who did not dare sit down and talk with themselves, the people who could not be alone a minute, the people who were tired without knowing they were tired and afraid without knowing that they were afraid. And, yes, it was the face of Mrs. Leslie's husband, crowding drink and women into a barren life. It was the grinding anxiety that had become commonplace, that sent people fleeing for psychological shelters against the bombs of uncertainty. Gaiety no longer was sufficient, cynicism had run out, and flippancy had never been more than a temporary shield. So now the people fled to the drug of pretense, identifying themselves with another life and another time and place--at the movie theater or on the television screen or in the Pretentionist movement. For so long as you were someone else you need not be yourself. Clifford D. Simak. Ring Around the Sun (Kindle Locations 1207-1215). Avon. Kindle Edition.
Clifford D. Simak (Ring Around the Sun (Masters of Science Fiction))
On the one hand, the creeds do not speak of “the Jews” as responsible for the death of Jesus; he “suffered under” and “was crucified under” Pontius Pilate. On the other hand, the creeds do not mention Jesus’s Judaism at all. With the stress in some churches on Jesus’s divine sonship, the cross, the resurrection, and the redemptory role of saving humanity from sin and death, his historical connection to Judaism gets lost along with his very Jewish message of the kingdom of heaven. The problem is more than one of silence. In the popular Christian imagination, Jesus still remains defined, incorrectly and unfortunately, as “against” the Law, or at least against how it was understood at the time; as “against” the Temple as an institution and not simply against its first-century leadership; as “against” the people Israel but in favor of the Gentiles. Jesus becomes the rebel who, unlike every other Jew, practices social justice. He is the only one to speak with women; he is the only one who teaches nonviolent responses to oppression; he is the only one who cares about the “poor and the marginalized” (that phrase has become a litany in some Christian circles). Judaism becomes in such discourse a negative foil: whatever Jesus stands for, Judaism isn’t it; whatever Jesus is against, Judaism epitomizes the category. No wonder even today Jesus somehow looks “different” from “the Jews”: in the movies and artistic renderings, he’s blond and they are swarthy; he is cute and buff and they need rhinoplasty and Pilates. Jesus and his followers such as Peter and Mary Magdalene become identified as (proto-) Christian; only those who chose not to follow him remain “Jews.
Amy-Jill Levine (The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus)
The Ten Ways to Evaluate a Market provide a back-of-the-napkin method you can use to identify the attractiveness of any potential market. Rate each of the ten factors below on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is terrible and 10 fantastic. When in doubt, be conservative in your estimate: Urgency. How badly do people want or need this right now? (Renting an old movie is low urgency; seeing the first showing of a new movie on opening night is high urgency, since it only happens once.) Market Size. How many people are purchasing things like this? (The market for underwater basket-weaving courses is very small; the market for cancer cures is massive.) Pricing Potential. What is the highest price a typical purchaser would be willing to spend for a solution? (Lollipops sell for $0.05; aircraft carriers sell for billions.) Cost of Customer Acquisition. How easy is it to acquire a new customer? On average, how much will it cost to generate a sale, in both money and effort? (Restaurants built on high-traffic interstate highways spend little to bring in new customers. Government contractors can spend millions landing major procurement deals.) Cost of Value Delivery. How much will it cost to create and deliver the value offered, in both money and effort? (Delivering files via the internet is almost free; inventing a product and building a factory costs millions.) Uniqueness of Offer. How unique is your offer versus competing offerings in the market, and how easy is it for potential competitors to copy you? (There are many hair salons but very few companies that offer private space travel.) Speed to Market. How soon can you create something to sell? (You can offer to mow a neighbor’s lawn in minutes; opening a bank can take years.) Up-front Investment. How much will you have to invest before you’re ready to sell? (To be a housekeeper, all you need is a set of inexpensive cleaning products. To mine for gold, you need millions to purchase land and excavating equipment.) Upsell Potential. Are there related secondary offers that you could also present to purchasing customers? (Customers who purchase razors need shaving cream and extra blades as well; buy a Frisbee and you won’t need another unless you lose it.) Evergreen Potential. Once the initial offer has been created, how much additional work will you have to put in in order to continue selling? (Business consulting requires ongoing work to get paid; a book can be produced once and then sold over and over as is.) When you’re done with your assessment, add up the score. If the score is 50 or below, move on to another idea—there are better places to invest your energy and resources. If the score is 75 or above, you have a very promising idea—full speed ahead. Anything between 50 and 75 has the potential to pay the bills but won’t be a home run without a huge investment of energy and resources.
Josh Kaufman (The Personal MBA)
As the subject watches the movies, the MRI machine creates a 3-D image of the blood flow within the brain. The MRI image looks like a vast collection of thirty thousand dots, or voxels. Each voxel represents a pinpoint of neural energy, and the color of the dot corresponds to the intensity of the signal and blood flow. Red dots represent points of large neural activity, while blue dots represent points of less activity. (The final image looks very much like thousands of Christmas lights in the shape of the brain. Immediately you can see that the brain is concentrating most of its mental energy in the visual cortex, which is located at the back of the brain, while watching these videos.) Gallant’s MRI machine is so powerful it can identify two to three hundred distinct regions of the brain and, on average, can take snapshots that have one hundred dots per region of the brain. (One goal for future generations of MRI technology is to provide an even sharper resolution by increasing the number of dots per region of the brain.) At first, this 3-D collection of colored dots looks like gibberish. But after years of research, Dr. Gallant and his colleagues have developed a mathematical formula that begins to find relationships between certain features of a picture (edges, textures, intensity, etc.) and the MRI voxels. For example, if you look at a boundary, you’ll notice it’s a region separating lighter and darker areas, and hence the edge generates a certain pattern of voxels. By having subject after subject view such a large library of movie clips, this mathematical formula is refined, allowing the computer to analyze how all sorts of images are converted into MRI voxels. Eventually the scientists were able to ascertain a direct correlation between certain MRI patterns of voxels and features within each picture. At this point, the subject is then shown another movie trailer. The computer analyzes the voxels generated during this viewing and re-creates a rough approximation of the original image. (The computer selects images from one hundred movie clips that most closely resemble the one that the subject just saw and then merges images to create a close approximation.) In this way, the computer is able to create a fuzzy video of the visual imagery going through your mind. Dr. Gallant’s mathematical formula is so versatile that it can take a collection of MRI voxels and convert it into a picture, or it can do the reverse, taking a picture and then converting it to MRI voxels. I had a chance to view the video created by Dr. Gallant’s group, and it was very impressive. Watching it was like viewing a movie with faces, animals, street scenes, and buildings through dark glasses. Although you could not see the details within each face or animal, you could clearly identify the kind of object you were seeing. Not only can this program decode what you are looking at, it can also decode imaginary images circulating in your head.
Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
FACT 4 – There is more to the creation of the Manson Family and their direction than has yet been exposed. There is more to the making of the movie Gimme Shelter than has been explained. This saga has interlocking links to all the beautiful people Robert Hall knew. The Manson Family and the Hell’s Angels were instruments to turn on enemy forces. They attacked and discredited politically active American youth who had dropped out of the establishment. The violence came down from neo-Nazis, adorned with Swastikas both in L.A. and in the Bay Area at Altamont. The blame was placed on persons not even associated with the violence. When it was all over, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the icing on this cake, famed musicians associated with a racist, neo-Nazi murder. By rearranging the facts, cutting here and there, distorting evidence, neighbors and family feared their own youth. Charles Manson made the cover of Life with those wide eyes, like Rasputin. Charles Watson didn’t make the cover. Why not? He participated in all the killings. Manson wasn’t inside the house. Manson played a guitar and made records. Watson didn’t. He was too busy taking care of matters at the lawyer’s office prior to the killings, or with officials of Young Republicans. Who were Watson’s sponsors in Texas, where he remained until his trial, separate from the Manson Family’s to psychologically distance him from the linking of Watson to the murders he actually committed. “Pigs” was scrawled in Sharon Tate’s house in blood. Was this to make blacks the suspects? Credit cards of the La Bianca family were dropped intentionally in the ghetto after the massacre. The purpose was to stir racial fears and hatred. Who wrote the article, “Did Hate Kill Tate?”—blaming Black Panthers for the murders? Lee Harvey Oswald was passed off as a Marxist. Another deception. A pair of glasses was left on the floor of Sharon Tate’s home the day of the murder. They were never identified. Who moved the bodies after the killers left, before the police arrived? The Spahn ranch wasn’t a hippie commune. It bordered the Krupp ranch, and has been incorporated into a German Bavarian beer garden. Howard Hughes knew George Spahn. He visited this ranch daily while filming The Outlaw. Howard Hughes bought the 516 acres of Krupp property in Nevada after he moved into that territory. What about Altamont? What distortions and untruths are displayed in that movie? Why did Mick Jagger insist, “the concert must go on?” There was a demand that filmmakers be allowed to catch this concert. It couldn’t have happened the same in any other state. The Hell’s Angels had a long working relationship with law enforcement, particularly in the Oakland area. They were considered heroes by the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers when they physically assaulted the dirty anti-war hippies protesting the shipment of arms to Vietnam. The laboratory for choice LSD, the kind sent to England for the Stones, came from the Bay Area and would be consumed readily by this crowd. Attendees of the concert said there was “a compulsiveness to the event.” It had to take place. Melvin Belli, Jack Ruby’s lawyer, made the legal arrangements. Ruby had complained that Belli prohibited him from telling the full story of Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder (another media event). There were many layers of cover-up, and many names have reappeared in subsequent scripts. Sen. Philip Hart, a member of the committee investigating illegal intelligence operations inside the US, confessed that his own children told him these things were happening. He had refused to believe them. On November 18, 1975, Sen. Hart realized matters were not only out of hand, but crimes of the past had to be exposed to prevent future outrages. How shall we ensure that it will never happen again? It will happen repeatedly unless we can bring ourselves to understand and accept that it did go on.
Mae Brussell (The Essential Mae Brussell: Investigations of Fascism in America)
The Braintrust, which meets every few months or so to assess each movie we’re making, is our primary delivery system for straight talk. Its premise is simple: Put smart, passionate people in a room together, charge them with identifying and solving problems, and encourage them to be candid with one another.
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar)
We review proposals because we owe it to the agencies that fund our work. We review proposals on airplanes when we would rather read a novel, watch a movie, or sleep. Patient? No. A proposal must convince reviewers that the topic identified in the opening is important and then compel them with the excitement of the questions posed in the challenge. If it fails to do this, it is dead.
Joshua Schimel (Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded)
can identify the movie that's playing. Extra EXTRA points if you can identify the cars
Anonymous
hanky and panky occurred... just don't get caught! See anything you'd like to drive home? (Extra points if you can identify the movie that's playing. Extra EXTRA points if you can identify the cars in the
Anonymous
See anything you'd like to drive home? (Extra points if you can identify the movie that's playing. Extra EXTRA points if you can identify the cars in the movie that's playing!)) -- That Car Guy (Chuck)
Anonymous
Growing up I had been ambivalent about being Chinese, occasionally taking pride in my ancestry but more often ignoring it because I disliked the way that Caucasians reacted to my Chineseness. It bothered me that my almond-shaped eyes and straight black hair struck people as “cute” when I was a toddler and that as I grew older I was always being asked, even by strangers, “What is your nationality?”—as if only Caucasians or immigrants from Europe could be Americans. So I would put them in their place by telling them that I was born in the United States and therefore my nationality is U.S. Then I would add, “If you want to know my ethnicity, my parents immigrated from southern China.” Whereupon they would exclaim, “But you speak English so well!” knowing full well that I had lived in the United States and had gone to American schools all my life. I hated being viewed as “exotic.” When I was a kid, it meant being identified with Fu Manchu, the sinister movie character created by Sax Rohmer who in the popular imagination represented the “yellow peril” threatening Western culture. When I was in college, I wanted to scream when people came up to me and said I reminded them of Madame Chiang Kai-shek, a Wellesley College graduate from a wealthy Chinese family, who was constantly touring the country seeking support for her dictator husband in the Kuomintang’s struggles against the Japanese and the Chinese Communists. Even though I was too ignorant and politically unaware to take sides in the civil war in China, I knew enough to recognize that I was being stereotyped. When I was asked to wear Chinese dress and speak about China at a meeting or a social function, I would decline because of my ignorance of things Chinese and also because the only Chinese outfit I owned was the one my mother wore on her arrival in this country.
Grace Lee Boggs (Living for Change: An Autobiography)
How to locate find out on a Garmin GPS Device Complete Guideline How about receiving message or email on phone that your son/daughter has reached school safely when they actually do so? Don’t you will be relaxed and concentrate more on your work? If you your question how can I do this? Then the answer is with the help of Garmin GPS device. And if next question comes like this How to locate find out on a Garmin GPS Device? Then read complete information mention on page. What Is Garmin GPS Device? Garmin GPS is a device that works on the concept of Global Positioning System. With this device you will not only be able to locate your position, but also you will be able to locate position of person or thing easily. With Garmin there are multiple devices available that works fine to solve all your needs. Garmin GTU10, GPS locator works in same way. This devise is attached to stuff whose location need to be tracked. Person can monitor the activity of items in their smart phone or computer. Benefits of Garmin Locator • You can attach Garmin locator device in your kid bag and draw a virtual parameter of area which you want to track. Once your child reach within the area or out of that area, you will get notification on your phone via mess or email. • Similarly, the position of your pet, car, lovable things can also be tracked • Have you seen in movies how the heroes track location of villain by sending a framed victim with GPS to their location? I am pretty sure devices of Garmin are used there. • With the help of this device accidental bus, cars or any person’s location can be identified too. Check Out Details with Garmin Team So, if you are interested to know more about Garmin devices and How to locate find out on a Garmin GPS Device then give a call to Garmin tech support team. They will answer to all your concerns with perfection. Among all GPS devices Garmin GPS are best. One can trust on accuracy of data present. There are time comes when devices face some hiccups but not often. Also, for that Garmin customer care is there to help users. They can be reached via all communication method i.e. through call, email and online chat. The details for same are mention on web page.
Garmin Customer Service
Once I got past grief, depression, and resignation, I needed help identifying other types of sad feelings. But unlike my exploration of anger, the thesaurus wasn’t much help this time. I added a few more words to the constellation, but I’m not sure how strongly I experience any of them. Sadness feels like a diffuse emotion, more of a background state of being than a tangible feeling. I’m rarely actively sad. I don’t burst into tears when I hear sad news. The last time I cried at a movie, I was 12. The only book that ever made me tear up was A Prayer for Owen Meany. More than once I’ve sat stoically immobile beside someone I love while they broke down. My sadness is all undercurrent, twisted up inside me, unable to escape to the surface. This, of course, makes me look cold and unfeeling. The stereotypical emotionless Aspie. The first time I confronted my muted sadness was in high school. A girl in my class, Karen, was killed in a car accident. The entire junior class attended her funeral, and everyone sobbed from beginning to end. Except me.
Cynthia Kim (Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate: A User Guide to an Asperger Life)
For the first four, nearly five, years of their lives, I’d had complete understanding of my sons’ brains. Every animal Cap identified—I knew where he’d learned it. Every food Leo liked—I knew when he’d first tasted it. Every word they used came from me or a book we’d read together. Even as they started to have their own thoughts and ideas—“I’m a doggie, and you’re the mommy doggie, and we’re going to fall in the mud”—I could source the books and experiences they were mixing and matching.
Hilary Liftin (Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper)
When using more than one questioner, ensure that you identify roles beforehand. One questioner takes the lead, while the other observes, takes notes, and considers follow-up questions—all without interrupting. When the first questioner is finished, he turns to the second questioner and “passes the baton” by saying, “That’s all I have. Do you have anything?” At this point, the roles reverse. The baton passing continues until both questioners are satisfied that the subject has revealed all of the truthful information he intends to disclose. There are advantages to having only one questioner in the room—remember the maxim “People don’t confess to crowds.” The baton passing helps create the sense of a one-on-one, rather than a two-on-one, encounter. •    Briefly apprise the subject of exactly what the issue is, and why you’re talking to him. Cryptic introductions or “hiding the ball” only work in the movies.
Philip Houston (Get the Truth: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Persuade Anyone to Tell All)
One last school issue that we commonly see for adopted children is daydreaming. Adoption is an archetypal theme. We find it in mythology, biblical stories, and fairy tales. It is a theme that occurs again and again in children’s literature and film. When adopted children watch these movies or read these stories in school, they have a tendency to identify with them and to lose focus as they daydream. Daydreaming is a normal occurrence for people who are kept from knowing the truths of their lives and who are living with fantasy. It is a way to reframe things that are hard to understand and to compensate for things that are painful. For many school-aged adopted children, daydreaming is a very understandable and necessary strategy for doing the extra work of forming identity. Daydreaming, though, is often taken as a symptom of attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactive disorder; it is in fact one of the many indicators that leads to the diagnosis of ADD. There are many children who do have this real disorder, and it is important in these cases to find the appropriate behavioral or pharmacological treatments. But, for adopted children, and for some other children in complex or difficult situations, the daydreaming or distracted air is not always an indicator of ADD.
Joyce Maguire Pavao (The Family of Adoption: Completely Revised and Updated)
In political contests in most parts of America, the candidate who captures this refusal of deference is, more often than not, the candidate who wins. This is a crude and sweeping simplification, but nevertheless it is usually true. Understood the way I have defined it, populist protest against the economic elite is what made the Democrats the majority party for so many decades. Another reason we know that anti-elitism works is because we have seen it working against us for fifty years. The Republican Party owes its successful hold on power to adopting—you might say “stealing”—the anti-elitist themes I have described. From the days of Nixon to those of Trump, the conservative revolution happened not because Americans love polluters and disease but because Republicans sold themselves as a party of protest against the elite. Most of the time it was the cultural elite that was the target: the prideful people who make movies and write newspapers; who love blasphemy but hate the flag. The point is so easy and so obvious that it’s hard to understand why it’s been so difficult for Democratic politicians to get it: Populism is the supreme rhetorical weapon in the arsenal of American politics. On the other hand, the impulse to identify your goals with the elite—with any elite, even a moral one—is a kind of political death wish. In a democracy, a faction that chooses to go about its business by admiring its own moral goodness and scolding average voters as insensitive clods is a faction that is not interested in winning.
Thomas Frank (The People, No: The War on Populism and the Fight for Democracy)
He had a conventional notion of culture. He thought that going to the theater or ballet and keeping up-to-date with the movie listings made you cultured. I, on the other hand, learned to believe in the depth of experience: returning ten times to the art gallery near my house to look at that Kandinsky again because I identified with its shapes, on a deep level, in my soul. I didn’t care at all whether it was fashionable and I didn’t attend the concerts my father timidly suggested. For me music worked better in the solitude of my room than it did live.
Marcela Serrano (Ten Women)
She remembered watching a movie from some years ago, when she’d had nothing else to do while snowed in at a Denver hotel, something with Kellie Martin on The Women’s Network. A detective identified a singer’s killer by studying the audience in concert footage. The killer—a stalker—showed up in every film.
Alexia Gordon (Murder in G Major (Gethsemane Brown Mysteries #1))
Identify a statement you’re going to make. Answer this question: “if I were to make a movie of this statement, what would I point the camera at?” Engineer that into your communication.
Peter Andrei (Interpersonal Communication: How to Win Clients and Influence Teams: Know exactly what to say, gain communication skills, and master the people skills ... and job hunting. (Speak for Success Book 8))
Dallas. The scriptwriters have each of the actresses in the soap opera play the death scene in the swimming pool: they do not know which of them is to die, and hence disappear from the series. The 'soap' becomes their destiny. If they should die in reality, a way is devised for writing them out of the script. If they are sacrificed in the script, their stardom inevitably comes to an end in real life too, since they are identified with the characters they play. It is the same as in a ceremony: outside the ritual, you count for nothing, but the ritual is flexible enough to make use of all the chance happenings of life. Dallas 's secret lies in its closeness to tribal and initiatory stereotypes. That is why there is never any laughter in it: no wit, no humour, no comic episodes, no happy coincidences. It is a closed world in which everything leads inevitably to fatality, perfidy, sentimental incest or magical cannibalism. Such is the tribal law, of which J.R. is the emblem, which gives rise to the desperate efforts on the part of the women to escape from this archaic trap. In its artless cruelty, Dallas is superior to any 'intelligent' critique that can be made of it. That is why intellectual snobbery meets its match here. In a dream I saw the face of servitude. It is the face of a woman with heavy lidded, blue, expressionless eyes. The crescent shapes of her breasts are asymmetrical. She always has a smile for the poorest as she crawls off daintily towards infinity. Boredom is like a pitiless zooming in on the epidermis of time. Every instant is dilated and magnified like the pores of the face.
Jean Baudrillard (Cool Memories)
By my early twenties, I was still devoted to heroic woman stories, but the love narratives had started to lose some of their appeal. The release of a new Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks vehicle seemed far less interesting to me than the latest installment of the Alien movie franchise. Had I lost interest in romance? Far from it. In fact, this was at the time in my life when I was very serious about finding a great love. However, I was also struggling to be my own person, to understand my identity, to follow my own dreams and start down my chosen career path. I had plans to travel the world, to attend graduate school. I was coming into—and exercising—my own forms of strength and independence. But I was tired of the one-sided representations of male-identified characters doing this, of feeling that only one version of this kind of empowerment existed. I wanted balance and social justice. I wanted to see more evidence of women on screen doing the same, women making a difference, doing something amazing, and being the heroes of their own lives and stories. Unfortunately, there weren’t very many female-bodied characters who did that who also got to find love. In fact, the more romance a woman enjoyed in a narrative, the less strength or independence of any kind she expressed in the story, especially before the last two decades. (3)
Allison P. Palumbo
The number one thing a good logline must have, the single most important element, is: irony. My good friend and former writing partner, the funny and fast-typing Colby Carr, pointed this out to me one time and he’s 100% correct. And that goes for whether it’s a comedy or a drama. A cop comes to L.A. to visit his estranged wife and her office building is taken over by terrorists – Die Hard A businessman falls in love with a hooker he hires to be his date for the weekend – Pretty Woman I don’t know about you, but I think both of these loglines, one from a drama, one from a romantic comedy, fairly reek of irony. And irony gets my attention. It’s what we who struggle with loglines like to call the hook, because that’s what it does. It hooks your interest. What is intriguing about each of the spec sales I’ve cited above is that they, too, have that same ironic touch. A holiday season of supposed family joy is turned on its cynical head in the 4 Christmases example. What could be more unexpected (another way to say “ironic”) for a new employee, instead of being welcomed to a company, to be faced with a threat on his life during The Retreat? What Colby identified is the fact that a good logline must be emotionally intriguing, like an itch you have to scratch. A logline is like the cover of a book; a good one makes you want to open it, right now, to find out what’s inside. In identifying the ironic elements of your story and putting them into a logline, you may discover that you don’t have that. Well, if you don’t, then there may not only be something wrong with your logline — maybe your story’s off, too. And maybe it’s time to go back and rethink it. Insisting on irony in your logline is a good place to find out what’s missing. Maybe you don’t have a good movie yet.
Blake Snyder (Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need)
1.​Identify the messages that are being presented. They all have one or more. (Except maybe that song about there being millions of peaches… I think those dudes were just high.) 2.​Along with your kids, identify which values the creators are elevating. (Freedom? Autonomy? Sex? Drugs? Pride?) Which values are they demeaning? (Humility? Responsibility? Traditional gender roles?) 3.​Try to piece together the worldview behind the message. What do you think the artist’s definition of good and bad is? What about moral and immoral? What is the good life—the life that reflects success (according to their art or writing)? Is it money? Lots of romantic relationships? Freedom from rules? 4.​If you are watching a movie, identify which characters and qualities are presented in an attractive way. Pay attention to the traits that are exhibited by the villains. The protagonist and antagonist are often archetypes, or representations of ideas.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer (Mama Bear Apologetics™: Empowering Your Kids to Challenge Cultural Lies)
Jenna, you are halfway to freedom from Wayne. A few more months and you can hand him back to us, and not have to deal with him anymore. If you launch this business with him, you are locked in, day in and day out, for a minimum of four or five years. And really, can you imagine him really helping at these events? I just see him knocking over ice sculptures, and tipping over cakes, and generally being a bull in the china shop everywhere he goes. A bull on steroids. With an inner ear imbalance. On roller skates." "Enough, lawdouche, she gets it." "I know. But again, Wayne is pretty clear that his area here would be identifying and helping land clients, and consulting on thematic details and event brainstorming, and keeping up with all industry aspects of the target market." "You mean going to movies, reading comics, and playing video games." "Yep, something like that." "You can't really be thinking you are going to do this." "I can be thinking that. And I'm pretty sure that the only opinion I asked you for on this was legal ramifications and financial obligations. I don't really care about your personal opinions." "Well, that hurts my feelings, because I still care about you on a personal level, and I think this is a huge mistake for you personally." I wait for my heart to race, for the sweats to start, for my colon to twist itself into a pretzel. And when none of that happens, I look at Brian. "I think, that being the case, that perhaps you ought to speak to your partners about who might be the best attorney to work with me moving forward." "You're firing me? Because I care about you?" "I'm firing you because I need an attorney who is less personally interested in the decisions I make. I'm a big girl, and I have a dad. And clearly, this is no longer a good fit. I'll appreciate a call from the other partners by the end of the week with a plan that I can review." "Seriously, I feel like you've completely lost your mind!" "Careful, Brian. At the moment, I'm asking you be removed from my account. However uncomfortable that may be for you with your partners, I assume you would rather that, than having to explain why I'm leaving the firm entirely. And I will be advising Wayne to shift to the same person I am with, obviously, for convenience." His chiseled jaw snaps shut, and while I can see a dozen retorts on the tip of his tongue, he doesn't speak. "Thank you. I'll review this further, and will discuss my decision with my new attorney. You'll get formal word from Wayne on his choice soon, I'm sure.
Stacey Ballis (Out to Lunch)
I stood staring at the cake a long time.  How could I be so blind?  He’d shrugged when I’d asked why he’d gotten his job, but the answer, wrapped in layers of sinful chocolate mousse frosting, sat before my eyes. Thinking back, I identified several of the little things I’d previously overlooked.  Things I’d assumed Rachel had purchased, like movies I’d mentioned I wanted to see.  He’d gotten his job for me because of my speech the day after we’d met.  My heart melted a little as I thought of all the effort he’d put into trying to be what I needed, and I knew I fought a losing battle. *
Melissa Haag (Hope(less) (Judgement of the Six #1))
But they do," he said. "That is the distressing part. They do. The quality--the intellectual or artistic quality--of the films is almost irrelevant. The crucial thing is only the degree to which they can identify, the degree to which they can project and see themselves as they would like to be. If they can do those things they can believe the picture, and if they can believe in it, then it is a good picture.
Henry Sutton (The Exhibitionist)
All the experts proved what we’ve all known all along. That they are full of shit. They all got it so wrong they needed cover and when they saw something, no matter how asinine, it became gospel to cover their abject failure. Still, the left wouldn’t feel sorry for itself for long. First it picked up the Russian spy story and started pushing it to every devastated reporter who would listen. Then it did everything it had told us the Trump supporters would do if Hillary won. Think about it. For weeks leading up to the election, we had been hearing about all the horrible things Donald Trump would force his supporters to do if he lost. DJT wouldn’t accept the defeat they were all so sure was coming. The editorial boards at the New York Times and the Washington Post both ran many articles warning us about the chaos that was about to ensue. According to popular opinion, Trump supporters were going to riot in the streets, refuse to accept the results of the election, and begin some kind of underground coup against the duly elected president, Hillary Clinton. They would start a second civil war. The streets would become absolute anarchy. And when things didn’t go the way the Democrats had wanted them to go, what happened? Let’s see. They held riots in the streets. (Check.) They refused to accept the results of the election, cooking up one of the strangest spy-movie stories I’ve ever heard in order to maintain their collective delusion. (Check.) Then they formed an underground group of online keyboard warriors called “the Resistance,” dedicated to taking down my father one stupid hashtag at a time. Prominent journalists, liberal activists, and actors have all identified themselves as proud members of “the Resistance” on Twitter. When I’m attacked by an outraged mob online, their voices are usually among the loudest. (And Check.)
Donald Trump Jr. (Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us)
Like most Americans, I was raised to be a white man. I read William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. I read F. Scott Fitzgerald and Charles Bukowski. I came to identify with the emotionally disengaged characters, the staccato sentences, the irreverent dirty old man voice. The books I read asked me to imagine the power I might have. I got a woman pregnant and then worried that they wouldn't get an abortion, tying me down forever when all I wanted to do was continue experiencing my freedom. I wrote poems about the absurdity of writing poems, enjoying the decadence of imagining my readers drinking in my disregard for them. Being likable, explaining myself to others were not prerequisites of protaganism. I watched women move, their hips and dresses, their lips on glasses, their breasts heaving, all that offered up to me to enjoy, to consume. The fact that I was a brown woman was not something that seemed immediately relevant when I was younger. I moved through the world with the sense that I would have the same kind of power as the protagonists I read and movies I watched.
Onnesha Roychoudhuri (The Marginalized Majority: Claiming Our Power in a Post-Truth America)
The first step towards #मोक्ष - broadly translated as #Salvation - is Identifying Yourself ... Unfortunately we are collectively becoming Non Humans, rather Viruses as depicted in MatrixTheMovie1999.
Sandeep Sahajpal (The Twelfth Preamble: To all the authors to be! (Short Stories Book 1))
Just think about the incredible transformation that took place in Steve’s life and career after Pixar. In 1983, Apple launched their computer Lisa, the last project Jobs worked on before he was let go. Jobs released Lisa with a nine-page ad in the New York Times spelling out the computer’s technical features. It was nine pages of geek talk nobody outside NASA was interested in. The computer bombed. When Jobs returned to the company after running Pixar, Apple became customer-centric, compelling, and clear in their communication. The first campaign he released went from nine pages in the New York Times to just two words on billboards all over America: Think Different. When Apple began filtering their communication to make it simple and relevant, they actually stopped featuring computers in most of their advertising. Instead, they understood their customers were all living, breathing heroes, and they tapped into their stories. They did this by (1) identifying what their customers wanted (to be seen and heard), (2) defining their customers’ challenge (that people didn’t recognize their hidden genius), and (3) offering their customers a tool they could use to express themselves (computers and smartphones). Each of these realizations are pillars in ancient storytelling and critical for connecting with customers. I’ll teach you about these three pillars and more in the coming chapters, but for now just realize the time Apple spent clarifying the role they play in their customers’ story is one of the primary factors responsible for their growth. Notice, though, the story of Apple isn’t about Apple; it’s about you. You’re the hero in the story, and they play a role more like Q in the James Bond movies. They are the guy you go see when you need a tool to help you win the day.
Donald Miller (Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen)
If I was the perfect Netflix, what type of movies would I recommend for you and why?” “How do you feel you are different from the people at your current company?” “What views do you hold religiously, almost irrationally?” “How did you prepare for this interview?” “What subreddits, blogs, or online communities do you enjoy?” “What is something esoteric you do?
Tyler Cowen (Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World)
It was on my third viewing of Henry Levin’s 1959 movie Journey to the Center of the Earth that I first stumbled upon an exercise I still use today. I had left the living room with the TV’s sound turned low, and when I returned for the “exciting conclusion” that the program’s announcer always promised, I came upon my favorite action sequence, in which the protagonists encounter a convincingly real-looking dimetrodon dinosaur. I had long wondered how the filmmakers pulled this off. With the sound down, I could more easily decode the techniques and effects at work. I noticed that the monstrous dinosaur was actually an iguana of some kind with a spine sail glued to its back. I figured out that the ruins of Atlantis were really carefully rendered matte paintings. I identified the camera setups that the filmmakers used to stage the sequence and make the audience believe every second of it. Thereafter, I lowered the sound whenever there was a scene that I wanted to study closely. With my own money, I bought a Bauer
Ron Howard (The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family)
He explained to Steve that there was an important difference in the digital media value chain as well. In physical retail, Amazon operated at the middle of the value chain. We added value by sourcing and aggregating a vast selection of goods, tens of millions of them, on a single website and delivering them quickly and cheaply to customers. To win in digital, because those physical retail value adds were not advantages, we needed to identify other parts of the value chain where we could differentiate and serve customers well. Jeff told Steve that this meant moving out of the middle and venturing to either end of the value chain. On one end was content, where the value creators were book authors, filmmakers, TV producers, publishers, musicians, record companies, and movie studios. On the other end was distribution and consumption of content. In digital, that meant focusing on applications and devices consumers used to read, watch, or listen to content, as Apple had already done with iTunes and the iPod. We all took note of what Apple had achieved in digital music in a short period of time and sought to apply those learnings to our long-term product vision.
Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
The Keeling Curve is a useful reality check, one that cuts through all the noise and confusion of the climate and energy debates. Unlike the slopes of the huge volcano on which it is measured, the initially gentle upward curve gets steeper the higher you go. That means that the rate of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere is steadily increasing, from roughly 1 ppm in the early years to about 2 ppm annually today. There is no visible slowdown, no sudden downwards blip, to mark the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, still less 2009’s Copenhagen ‘two degrees’ commitment or the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015. All those smiling heads of state shaking hands, the diplomats hugging on the podium after marathon sessions of all-night negotiating – none of that actually made any identifiable difference to the Keeling Curve, which is the only thing that actually matters to the planet’s temperature. All our solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, lithium-ion batteries, LED lightbulbs, nuclear plants, biogas digesters, press conferences, declarations, pieces of paper; all our shouting and arguing, weeping and marching, reporting and ignoring, decrying and denying; all our speeches, movies, websites, lectures and books; our announcements, carbon-neutral targets, moments of joy and despair; none of these to date have so much as made the slightest dent in the steepening upward slope of the Keeling Curve.
Mark Lynas (Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency)
Returning to the screen example, we can easily understand how Consciousness stays immaculate despite what happens in the movie. If there’s a fire in the movie, it doesn’t affect the screen one bit. Currently, the vast majority of humans identify themselves with the movie and its characters (ego-mind). Those who want to wake up from this mass delusion have to recognize their true essence as the eternal and ever-pure screen of Consciousness, disidentifying from the temporary and restless false self known as ego. Ego is “I,” the feeling of being a separate entity always seeking something; it’s a “blend” of consciousness with the finite qualities of the body and mind. It’s as if the screen believed itself to be a character in the movie, subject to whatever was happening in it and limited by its length, being finite.
SantataGamana (Kundalini Exposed: Disclosing the Cosmic Mystery of Kundalini. The Ultimate Guide to Kundalini Yoga & Kundalini Awakening [Expanded Edition] (Real Yoga Book 3))
Miss Brooks had a devilish streak of witty sarcasm. Her dialogue was wonderfully “feline,” as critic John Crosby would note: her snappy comeback to the stuffy assertions of her boss, principal Osgood Conklin, bristled with intelligence and fun. She complained about her low pay (and how teachers identified with that!), got her boss in no end of trouble, pursued biologist Philip Boynton to no avail, and became the favorite schoolmarm of her pupils, and of all America. The role was perfect for Eve Arden, a refugee of B movies and the musical comedy stage. Arden was born Eunice Quedens in Mill Valley, Calif., in 1912. In her youth she joined a theatrical touring group and traveled the country in an old Ford. She was cast in Ziegfeld’s Follies revivals in 1934 and 1936, working in the latter with Fanny Brice. She became Eve Arden when producer Lee Shubert suggested a name change: she was reading a novel with a heroine named Eve, and combined this name with the Elizabeth Arden cosmetics on her dressing room table.
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
The past is not a still photograph but a movie, and it is very difficult to mark one cel of film as the most important. In other words, more times than not the founders of a tradition are hard to identify. Certainly they did not wake up one morning and decided to start something utterly brand new–most often they thought they were insiders making a few adjustments to fix some important problems. Martin Luther never called himself a Lutheran, Menno Simons a Mennonite, or John Calvin a Calvinist. (pp 90-91)
Margaret Bendroth (The Spiritual Practice of Remembering)
And because the audience members identify with the protagonist, you’ve got a brutal grip on them as well.
Jeff Kitchen (Writing a Great Movie: Key Tools for Successful Screenwriting)
Police quickly arrested the shooter, who was identified as John Hinckley Jr., a 25-years-old university dropout. He was obsessed with the actress Jodie Foster in the movie Taxi Driver, which had motivated him to kill the President. Luckily, his efforts failed.
Howard Johns (Drowning Sorrows: A True Story of Love, Passion and Betrayal)
The problem is that even top psychiatrists failed to identify them as real threats. And it’s not as though psychiatrists lack incentives to get the diagnosis right. Beyond their reputation, professional pride, and desire to help, psychiatrists also have a legal obligation to inform authorities of threats. Families of the Aurora movie theater victims sued Holmes’ psychiatrist for not recommending that his patient be confined.
John Lott (Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched "studies" have twisted the facts on gun control)
There are some people who, when they speak, no matter what the topic, seem to draw you into their own worldview, almost like an act of magic, like you are stepping into a movie, TV show, computer game, or graphic novel of their making. This can be a sign of their energy and creativity.
Tyler Cowen (Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World)
A hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms. Lack of candor, if unchecked, ultimately leads to dysfunctional environments. So how can a manager ensure that his or her working group, department, or company is embracing candor? I look for ways to institutionalize it by putting mechanisms in place that explicitly say it is valuable. In this chapter, we will look into the workings of one of Pixar’s key mechanisms: the Braintrust, which we rely upon to push us toward excellence and to root out mediocrity. The Braintrust, which meets every few months or so to assess each movie we’re making, is our primary delivery system for straight talk. Its premise is simple: Put smart, passionate people in a room together, charge them with identifying and solving problems, and encourage them to be candid with one another. People who would feel obligated to be honest somehow feel freer when asked for their candor; they have a choice about whether to give it, and thus, when they do give it, it tends to be genuine.
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar)
Hey, Doc, we better back up. We don’t have enough road to get up to eighty-eight,” I quoted as I slid into the passenger seat. “‘Roads?’” he replied in an excellent impression of Christopher Lloyd’s eccentric scientist. “‘Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!’” The call-and-response rituals of geeks were a thing of beauty, and allowed said geeks to identify each other across time and space.
Atom Yang (Herc & Pyotr (Storming Love: Meteor Strikes, #5))
One of the factors that drew Himes to Rico was their mutual need for fantasy. Movies especially entranced them. They lost themselves in Hollywood gossip, immersed themselves in movie magazine lore, and pretended to identify with the stars. But it was the films themselves-frequently shown in the prison-that most affected them, evoking images of life outside the walls and at the same time reminding them of where they were.
Edward Margolies (The Several Lives of Chester Himes)
Although the hyperreal operates as its own type of reality, this does not mean that its provenance is divorced from the material conditions in which we live. The fact that the images that the media project can be readily identified as "representations," rather than the truth of the matter, works to further mask the political, social, and cultural interests involved. At the same time, these images have the force of reality and serve as a conduit of meaning. No doubt, viewers can recognize the Arab terrorists in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film True Lies (1994) as fictional characters ("It's just a movie!"), but these images undoubtedly reinforce, if not substantially inform, American viewers' notions of Islam and the U.S.-Middle East conflict.
Jane Naomi Iwamura (Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture)
The 50-inch TCL Roku TV balances picture quality and value for money. And this is also what happens when America’s top TV brand and the world’s most popular streaming services content instantly and from one single place. You have everything on the Roku from live TV to game console or if you wish choose from over 1500 streaming channels. This is also the widest selection any smart TV has ever had. Find that perfect movie or TV show easily across top streaming channels by title, actor or director with the acclaimed Roku ‘Search’ feature. On the Roku, you will find more than 200,000 streaming movies and shows that you can choose from. The Remote is simple and puts control into the users’ hands and lets you instantly choose your preferred content from anywhere. Use the Roku Mobile app on your smartphone or tablet to control your Roku TV. Cast your personal media, videos and photos and even music to the big screen. With a 120 Hz refresh rate, the TV displays images at 1080p. It has a built-in wireless and not one, but three HDMI ports that provide a high definition multimedia interface. Wired calls the TCL Roku TV ‘The First Smart TV worth using’. The TCL TV has a Roku box built into it. It is a smart TV that includes the Roku operating system, which is also the favorite OS for most users. The OS is considered as one of the best compared to all the other products and definitely better than any other smart TVs. Recently, the Roku TV was displayed at the prestigious CES 2018 with a brand new OS. We all know a lot about Roku and there are lots of Roku fans across the United States. The recently released series of Roku OS 8 comes with some new and improved features. All Roku TVs have a ‘Tuner’ input that enables you to plug into an antenna and look for channels. In the new Roku TV, the ‘Tuner’ input is available on the Home screen itself; which makes it very easy to navigate to it without fumbling Once you select the ‘Tuner’ input it takes you to the last tuned channel You will also get a preview of what is playing right now The Roku OS 8 also comes with a Smart Guide where you will get a 14-day preview of what is available on all the channels that the Roku TV has scanned for Scroll through the Smart Guide to find out your next programming on the list The experience is fluid with no judder or lag; users will be able to scan through the Smart Guide very easily All you have to do is use the HD antenna and the Roku TV will pop up all the entertainment information In addition to the Smart Guide, there is also a new feature called ‘More Ways to Watch’ Anytime Roku identifies a content that is on the Smart Guide, which is also available on other Roku channels it is marked with a ‘*’. This indicates that there are more ways to watch a single programming content You also don’t have to wait to watch your favorite programming Wherever you see the ‘*’at any time on the Smart Guide, hit the ‘Ok’ button on your remote and watch it on another Roku channel instantly The pricing for the channel or programming is also displayed If you have a Roku set top box that is connected to a different TV (other than the Roku), there is a new feature in the ‘Search’ where Roku will tell you the channel on which a particular programming is available with the precise timing. The Roku OS 8 has already been pushed out to all the players and TVs. The same OS 8 version is available for Roku Set top boxes as well. If any problem in Roku setup, please call us @+1-877-302-5260
Mike Scott
It becomes baggage that they carry everywhere with them. Look at all the stuff you had before. It’s gone now. Do you miss it? People have garages and sheds full of boxes. If you asked them what’s in the boxes, they often wouldn’t know. “If everything was destroyed in a fire or something, you’d probably be hard put to say what was missing. Then, every ten years or so, you decide to go through the boxes intending to get rid of most of the contents. You open it up and say, ‘Oh there’s that theatre ticket I had when I took Martha to the movies for the first time. I can’t throw that out!’ So you put it back in the box and put it away and forget about it until ten years later, when you go through the whole process again. “It’s like we have to hang on to everything in our past because somehow all that stuff, all those souvenirs, all those memories, add up to who we are. When we forget who we really are and identify with our stories, we become attached. But what happens when we die? The relatives go through the boxes, they find the old movie ticket and it means nothing to them. They say, ‘Hmmm … what do you want to do with this old ticket? You want it? I don’t want it, do you want it? Nah, chuck it out.’ A lifetime of hoarding and protecting and hanging on means nothing. Wasted energy. Sure, the memory is nice, but you don’t need an old piece of paper to remind you of that. If the memory of the first time you took Martha to the movies is important, you will keep it in your heart. But it’s not more important than the present moment. And if you constantly compare the good old days to what is happening today, then you will find that you are never satisfied, never happy with the way things are now.
S. Sean Tretheway (Beyond The Road)
Many modern movies premise the action upon themes identified in ancient myths. Americans are still attracted to the thematic urgency of ancient lore. Despite the advances made by scientist and America’s technological revolution, the universal questions that haunt human beings’ quietude remain unchanged. The subjects that interest us as a people provide useful instructions pertaining how to live. Do we choose the myths that we live by? Do we sort through a bin of past events and select telling stories that we wish to use to define our existence? Do we modify or eliminate handpicked memories that do not fit the fable that we nominate to define our walk through life?
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
that it’s getting tougher and tougher to pin their jobs on hoods, tougher to make a rap stick. For good or ill, that’s the way it is. You damn near have to catch them in the act of dismembering the body … And I had it. I was lugging my damned camera. Maybe there’d been a reason—besides the fact that I had some splendidly provocative shots of Tootsie in the exposed footage—for my hanging onto the Bolex. The next best thing to actually catching hoods in the commission of a crime should be a movie of them in the middle of it. A shot of them chasing after me, shooting at me, should be enough for any court in the land, temporarily. That meant I would have to get into the film somehow, myself, while taking care that the action was merely of the boys shooting at me, not in me. So, for one, I couldn’t stand holding the camera, filming them while they ran down on top of me. And for another, I was going to have to run at least another mile. But I was quite a bit ahead of them now—though a shot still rang out from time to time—so I sprinted as hard as I could for a hundred yards, the last thirty of which were quite straight, and then skidded to a stop. The Bolex was battery-operated and, once started, would function unaided until the film ran out, if I locked the shutter release down. But there was only one hundred feet of film, and that would run past the lens in four minutes. I didn’t think I could be sure of running another mile in four minutes—not after what I’d recently been through. In fact, I was pretty sure I couldn’t. But there was still a way. If I set the camera speed to expose not the normal sixteen frames a second but only eight, which I could do merely by turning a little knob on the side of the camera, the thing would run twice as long, or for eight minutes. True, when projected it would be in fast motion, the action speeded up, but that didn’t matter. The faces—and guns—of those lobs would be identifiable. The only ticklish part, actually, after adjusting the lens aperture and frames-per-second setting, was spotting a limb in the right place and at the right angle to hold the camera firmly. But I found one suitable, jammed the Bolex into place pointing back down the path, depressed and locked the shutter release to start it whirring and moved out of there.
Richard S. Prather (Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Six)