Snakes on a Plane (on a plane)?
In a fit of fiscal irresponsibility, I rented one of those video players for trip over the river and through the woods. I ended up renting BORDT instead, but I almost rented SoaP for the sheer laugh value, even though the movie is... dubious.
BORDT isn't a movie. It's an almost unwatchable yet curiously captivating cultural experience. The male nude no holds-barred wrestling, the utter lack of political correctness... Watch it if you haven't. I found it to be more horrifying than funny, but I guess I'm a little sheltered. The one question that comes to my mind is: is this how people in other countries perceive American tourists?
I just can't seem to finish Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. I did read two more Ibsen plays (Ghosts and When We Dead Wake) and I've started on Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls." Ironically, the (1940 edition) copy I have has a big ol' check mark in the front cover, indicating that my great grandmother read it.
The epigraph on the Hemingway caught my eye, because I don't think I'd actually seen the context of both that statement and another famous quote. They're both from a sermon by John Donne (Devotions upon Emergent Occassions, Med XVII):
"No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe, every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine, if a Clod bee washed away be the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."
Makes a lot more sense when you put the two pithy sayings together. The full meditation (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/meditation17.php) contains a lot more overtly religious references, and I'm not so convinced by a Catholic church at this point. Your mileage may vary.
BORDT isn't a movie. It's an almost unwatchable yet curiously captivating cultural experience. The male nude no holds-barred wrestling, the utter lack of political correctness... Watch it if you haven't. I found it to be more horrifying than funny, but I guess I'm a little sheltered. The one question that comes to my mind is: is this how people in other countries perceive American tourists?
I just can't seem to finish Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. I did read two more Ibsen plays (Ghosts and When We Dead Wake) and I've started on Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls." Ironically, the (1940 edition) copy I have has a big ol' check mark in the front cover, indicating that my great grandmother read it.
The epigraph on the Hemingway caught my eye, because I don't think I'd actually seen the context of both that statement and another famous quote. They're both from a sermon by John Donne (Devotions upon Emergent Occassions, Med XVII):
"No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe, every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine, if a Clod bee washed away be the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."
Makes a lot more sense when you put the two pithy sayings together. The full meditation (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/meditation17.php) contains a lot more overtly religious references, and I'm not so convinced by a Catholic church at this point. Your mileage may vary.