Plastic for wood

Last night dinner consisted of fried lobster, oven baked fillets of corvina fish, broccoli and brown rice.
The Queen of Dreams is also an excellent cook.

It is just a kind of motorhome parked long time along the Pacific Ocean in a desolated part of Mexico, but every night dinner is as they serve in a five star restaurant.

Of course after dinner it is the pioneering photographer who washes the dishes and makes a cup of Damiana tea with honey served with some healthy cookies.

This time in the bedroom which is at the end of the corridor.

Tea in bed because it was movie time!!!
On a HP-laptop running on the six solar powered Trojan batteries through a Magnum inverter.

The film was "Nell" directed by Michael Apted in 1994 starring Jodie Foster.
And Hollywood managed again to disappoint deeply the audience.

In order to please the audience and generate as much money as possible, the film is without true drama, has no center nor gravity.
The story is of a young woman who lives isolated in the forrest and who is by accident discovered by a doctor.
She has never been in touch with society and speaks a language she created herself.
Of course society can't leave her alone.
Not the young boys on motorbikes.
Not the press.
And not the medical world.

These are ingredients that could result in a dramatic and fascinating film.
But Michael Apted failed totally.
In 1970 French filmmaker Francois Truffaut made
"L'enfant sauvage" about a young boy found in the woods and confronted with society.
A film that is full of drama and is thought provoking.
But Truffaut had not the intention to make money as is always the case with Hollywood films.
He believed in something he wanted to communicate and was therefore honest and made the film out of personal integrity.

The way films are made in Hollywood makes at least the audience in the Fuso Szulc feel sick.
Disgusted.
Wood replaced by plastic.

Michael Apted and Francois Truffaut.
The difference between a dinner that consists of fried lobster, oven baked fillets of corvina fish, broccoli and brown rice.
And a McDonald's hamburger.



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A good film in bed

One of the exquisite pleasures of being with someone in love, harmony and peace is to watch together in bed a good film.
Curled up and caressing while the plot of the film unfolds.

This privileged experience gets even more excellence when the film is more than just a good movie.
Like the one of last night:
"Das Leben der Anderen" made by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

It is a story that plays in Autumn 1984 in the time East Germany was called the DDR.
The German Democratic Republic.
A country that only existed thanks to the Soviets and was ruled with an iron fist by Honnecker and his bandits who were responsible for making their country a totalitarian state.
Where there was not much freedom and a secret service, called the Stasi, that was controlling everybody.
People lived constantly in paranoia and were unable to protest the miserable circumstances they had to live in.

In this dramatic context the film "Das Leben der Anderen" tells the story of a well-known author of books and theater plays who revolts against the rulers that are celebrating him as a great and political correct writer.
The illegal activities of the author are discovered by a Stasi agent who monitors each moment of the life of the author and his girlfriend.
But this Stasi agent meets his morality.
He has his political opinions that are in solidarity with the socialist regime he works for.
But in the process, he develops sympathy and other human feelings for the couple he is monitoring and trying to frame.
Eventually, he protects them and contributes to the rescue of them and to the fall of the DDR.

The film "Das Leben der Anderen" is a fantastic film.
Very well made.
Great actors.
Fabulous story.
Strong emotions.
No wonder it won numerous awards.
Including an Oscar as best foreign film.
Quite an achievement because the film "Das Leben der Anderen" was the debut of the director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

Nevertheless, it must be realized that this movie reaches a rather small audience.
Compared to most Hollywood movies.
In order to grasp the essential of this movie, one must have some geographical and historical knowledge.
Educated Europeans therefore have access to the film and are able to clearly understand the story but one may wonder how deep this film can go with educated people in the USA, Japan, China and other countries uninformed and disinterested in recent European history.
Most likely is that they will never see this film as it will not show in a movie theatre near where they live.
Nor that they would be interested in a film about the German Democratic Republic about which they hardly know anything.
Hence, we have a situation that we have a marvelous and great film and that most people worldwide only see Hollywood garbage.

movie madness

Snowing and cold in Cracow, Poland.
An opportunity to see another movie in the theatre.
Before existence is again in the Baja California simplicity of sunrises and sunsets with no distractions from being pushed out of the centre of life.

It was a movie called "The Daybreakers" made by Michael and Peter Spierig in 2009.
Recently released in Poland.
The film shows the acting skills of Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and Claudia Karvan.
The totally ridiculous story is that in the year 2019, only 9 years from now, an unknown plague has transformed the world's population into vampires.
One would think that this concept would be rejected by any financier of movies because of lack of originality.
But not in this case.
The story line continues that while the human population nears extinction, vampires must capture and farm every remaining human.
Or find a blood substitute before time runs out.

Why is it that sitting in the movie theatre and seeing this movie the thinking only produces one thought:
"why am I watching this nonsense bullshit?"
While once the movie was over, many Poles left the theatre as if they had been tremendously entertained.
They seem to have enjoyed the most cruel scenes possible.
A father dehumanizing a daughter.
A man seeing his brother being devoured by vampires.
His body being ripped apart.
Blood being sprayed on walls and faces and bodies in many scenes.
Many humans being massacred in a way that even is not occurring in Iraq or Afghanistan.

A more experienced person living in the nowadays reality may ask what all the fuss about this film on this blog is really about.
If someone visits these days a movie theatre, people on screen are often violently killed.
And a contemporary person is not being misbalanced by seeing these kinds of cruelties.

But is it that normal, really?
Is a person who has a fine developed system of balanced awareness, pure amazement and delicate sensibility able to enjoy to watch bloodshed and extreme cruelty and violent murders?
Without getting disgusted and appalled?
No, not likely.

How has it come that far?
That the mass audience obviously these days are entertained by extreme presentations of the negative sides of humanity.

That makes going to the movie theatre to see a film a weird experience.
Sitting among fellow human beings who are enjoying the cruelty while the personal experience is one of disgust and appall.
It feels like not being on the right planet anymore.
Of being in a film more extreme than "The Daybreakers".

Films Polish way

In countries certain things are done differently.
Like driving on the right side of the road.
In the UK, Japan and Guyana they drive on the left.
Like eating with fork and knife.
There are countries where they eat with their right hand or with chopsticks.
Like walking next to a lady.
In some countries she walks far behind him.

That is all very well and of course we respect local and national religions and customs.

But there is something in Poland we must really have serious doubts about.
Something worse than a woman having to walk in the dust of her husband.
Worse than driving on the left side of the road or eating with chopsticks.

It is the following terrible thing:

Many films are made in the English language.
A majority we can safely claim.
Now, this creates a problem in countries where the people do not understand English.
They see the film but they do not understand much due to the language.
Hence, there are three solutions applied.

One solution is sub-titling.
In the language of the audience a text appears at the lower end of the image where one can read what the actors and actresses say.
The other solution is to post-synchronize the film.
They keep the original sound track of the film but filter the voices out.
Instead they put in voices of new actors and actresses who say the text in the language of the particular country.
The thirds option is of course not to see the film at all.
This is not a joke because many very good films that are not in English never reach for that reason the American audience.

But the Poles have come up with something different.
They show films on TV that are not sub-titled nor post-synchronized.
What they do is to have a man talking calmly in Polish in a neutral and totally unemotional voice what the actors and actresses are saying.
One can hardly hear the actors and actresses nor even the sound effects of the film.
The only thing is the voice of this man.

This way of showing a film takes at least 60 % of the effects of the film away.
The actors and actresses in the original sound track use their talking as a way to express emotions.
It is an important part of their acting.
It is eliminated in Poland.
A most important part of a film is the soundtrack and its sound effects.
Also that is eliminated in Poland.
It is only this boring male voice one hears.

This important matter has been taken up with some Poles.
Don’t they think this is a ridiculous way of showing a movie?
The answer is: not at all.
They are so used to it that they think it is normal and OK.

A film is also an artistic product of talented artists.
The way Poles show a film is like showing a painting in the way that the audience only sees the sides.

It is so bad to see a film molested, raped and screwed the way they do in Poland, that not one minute is spend in front of the TV watching a movie.

While the family deeply enjoys a film on TV with the Polish voice-over, the pioneering photographer puts on headphones and continues his gigantic task of scanning over 500 images.




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