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Stephen Pickering

Category: Culture

  • Song in No Strings Attached Christmas party scene

    It’s “Girlfriend” by the French band “Phoenix” off their album “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.”

    What’s weird is that it’s not listed on the ‘official’ soundtrack, so I used the app “Shazam” on the iPhone to detect the right song. Pretty cool.

  • What to Watch on Netflix Instant

     

    Update: 12/28/12 – “Woody Allen.” This is a fantastic documentary, certainly a must watch for his fans, and fans of comedy and film in general. I wasn’t ever going to watch it, even though I love Woody Allen, because I thought for some reason, it would be one of those “Cheesy” documentaries with just like a general overview. But no! Thankfully, my Brother in Law, who is in town for the Holidays told me it was great, and he was right! Greatly directed, Woody Allen himself is interviewed, and it’s like he takes you into his World and his process. I was thinking Woody was so intensely private that he wouldn’t even be in it, but he is all in it, directly. It’s like an intimate look into his World, as well as being a great overview of his career and chock full of direct interviews with the Actors and Actresses that played such important rolls in his work.

    11/19/12 – Finally got around to watching “Ira & Abby” last night on Netflix, and I really enjoyed it. I probably would never have considered this movie if I hadn’t seen “Friends With Kids” which I loved. I was wondering who Jennifer Westfeldt was? I loved her performance in that one, and even though this is a bit quirkier, if you’re a fan of hers, you’ll definitely enjoy it. Her personality pervades this one as thoroughly with good vibes and humor as  in “Friends With Kids.” It’s a good movie, and the performances of the parents in this movie (Robert Klein is one, you’ll recognize the others) are fantastic and funny. It works and is enjoyable.

    11/5/12 – “Manhattan” by Woody Allen. Man, I love this movie. This is a must see for any movie buff, or even if you aren’t a Movie buff, and you like to read the type of short stories that are in the Paris Review and that sort of literature, I think you’ll love this. This reminds me of an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, only on film. The tone, the atmosphere, the aesthetic, put me in a blissful aesthetic “arrest.” Which is what true art does. Too bad I actually bought this film on iTunes over a year ago. But I’m delighted it’s on Netflix. It’s timeless and wonderfully refreshing.

    11/2/12 – This looks interesting. Just saw it on Ebert’s Facebook: “Out of Sight” with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, directed by Steven Soderbergh. Based on an Elmore Leonard novel, so it should be fun. Here’s Ebert’s review.

    10/9/12 – Dumb and Dumber – The Unrated Version – Just saw Ebert Facebook about this new streamer on Netflix. There’s one scene that made him laugh so hard he embarrassed himself.  Here’s a link to his comment about it if you have a Facebook account.

    8/5/12 This just in from a friend on my Facebook Feed: “watching the documentary, ‘Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston.’ instant Netflix has its advantages.”

    Also, I watched most of “The Way” with Martin Sheen on the treadmill. I have about 30 minutes left, which I’ll finish on my next treadmill session. But it’s fantastic. For some reason I was thinking it was a documentary about that pilgrimage. No, no, no. It’s a fictional movie, written and directed by his son, Emilio Estevez, and I love it. Very moving and terrific acting.

    8/1/12 – Just saw this headline come through my Facebook feed today: The 50 Best Movies on Netflix Instant from Paste Magazine.

    This is a nice little movie. Once again, I paid good money to rent it on iTunes. I like these little Burns movies. They’re not big productions, but they’re good stories and focus on the acting and the movements. They feel real, and they’re entertaining.

    Update: 6/30/12 – “The Wedding Planner” with J-Lo and again Matthew McConaughey, much younger versions of both, is a cute little movie. Doesn’t take any effort, and entertaining way to spend an hour and a half, and the stars are of course charming and easy on the eyes. So is the backdrop of San Francisco. What man doesn’t dream of a 30 year old J-Lo or what woman a (Well, I’m not sure how old he was in this) McConaughey, especially as a young doctor?

    Update 6/29/12 – Apparently “The Lincoln Lawyer” with Matthew McConaughey is now on Netflix instant. Great movie, saw it twice. (I think I rented it both times from iTunes. Dang it!)

    Update 6/24/12 – Just saw Mindy Smith, the recording artist, say this on Facebook, “Just watched a great film called Cemetery Junction. It’s on the Netflix so check it out! Gotta love the Britt’s.” (I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ll put it in my Queue.

    On another note, I’ve found a cure for my 30 Rock addiction: Arrested Development! I’ve watched 18 episodes in the last few days and haven’t laughed so much since, well, 30 Rock! Maybe more, because the comedy is written so densely. It’s totally different. If you like Jason Bateman in the movies, which I do, you’ll see why the offers came pouring in after he did this series.

    Update 6/12/12 – Just saw Ebert tweet that “Shakespeare in Love” is just now on instant. Never saw it. Guess I should.

    Update 6/11/12 –

    Well, I burned myself out on “30 Rock.” As much as I love Tina Fey, I watched every episode so many times, I knew every little thing that was going to happen. So I watched the Gary Shandling movie from 2000 called “What Planet are You From” with Annette Bening. I went in not expecting too much. The reviews weren’t great, but I ended up really enjoying it. It was good. You can’t go wrong with a Mike Nichols film. If you like comedies and or Gary Shandling (And I’m a huge fan of “The Larry Sanders Show”) I think you’ll like it.

    But what I’m most crazy about is “Sherlock.” I watched the first episode last night and it was crazy good! I’d seen it in the queu for weeks, but didn’t think much about it. But then I heard from two or three people online how awesome it was. So, I decided to dive in. And I wasn’t disappointed! Loved it. Netflix has the first season of 3 88 minute episodes. So they’re almost as long as a movie. Can’t wait to watch episode #2 tonight!

    Drama

    • The Quiet American – I got this one from Ebert also. I loved it. It’s with Michael Caine, Brendan Fraiser, and the beautiful Vietnamese actress  Do Thi Hai Yen Takes place in Vietnam in the 50’s and is about how the Vietnam War came about. It’s from an English Novel, and so of course, politically, the English protagonist is portrayed ideally, ie. England’s role in Southeast Asia was one of “love” while of course the “Quiet American” himself, Frasier, is portrayed as coldly calculating, manipulating, and coniving (at least politically. Personally, as we see in the love story within the story, he’s ‘quiet’ and charming) in his political quests of influence on behalf of America. I don’t know about the history, especially the English idealism versus the one dimensional American lack of refinement as well as soul, but it makes for a good drama. And the love story within the political story is not only well played and convincing by all three actors, but riveting in it’s parallel conflict of idealism versus pragmatism. The story builds, crescendos, and ends in a way that feels real all the more because the tensions seem to parallel the paradoxes of how real life and politics works.
    • “Rumble Fish” (1983) is a Francis Ford Coppola black and white film, made in part to demonstrate the beauty of the medium. Early performances by Matt Dillon, Diane Lane and Vincent Spano. Great work by Mickey Rourke. It’s streaming on Netflix Instant. Here’s my review: http://bit.ly/uny0Mi ” – Roger Ebert
    • An Unmarried Woman – ‘RT @EbertChicago: “An Unmarried Woman,” my choice as the best fim of 1978, is streaming on Netfix. My review: http://bit.ly/opzkz2l ‘

    Christmas/Holiday

    Comedy

    • Casino Jack (2010) – ?”Casino Jack” is unusual in that it’s a political movie that uses real names, especially that of Jack Abramoff (Kevin Spacey), the celebrated Washington lobbyist who was accused of defrauding the Indian tribes that were his clients. The movie was directed by George Hickenlooper, who also made the unforgettable “Hearts of Darkness,” a doc about the making of “Apocalypse Now.” He died unexpectedly on Oct. 29, 2010, a few months before the release of this film. It’s on Netflix Instant. Here’s my review: http://bit.ly/epLExs
    • Morning Glory (2010) – I rented this movie on iTunes earlier this year when it came out on DVD. I liked it. Saw Ebert facebook it yesterday: “Currently the most popular film on Netflix. It’s a charmer. Streaming on Instant.” Here’s a link also to his review.
    • Swingers (1996) – If you’re any kind of film buff, you’ve gotta see this one. Man, it’s so good. I had the same feeling after watching it that I had after watching “Manhattan” by Woody Allen: It feels like the proper use of the medium. It has the feel of a really good piece of literature, a great short story, which is really hard with the medium of film, since human beings are built to be affected by the visual sense more than any other. That makes film a very hard medium to achieve ‘art’ with, to achieve something that is not didactic or pornographic. But this and Manhattan are the closest I’ve ever seen the medium come to achieving that “aesthetic” arrest that James Joyce talks about.

    Documentary

    • Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) – It’s about those ancient cave paintings in France from 30,000 years ago. Ebert’s Review.
    • Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011) – Heard this one recommended by Amber MacArthur and Sarah Lane on the Social Hour. Documentary about the New York Times.
    • Pearl Jam Twenty (2011) – Actually got this from one my friends on Facebook. Of course it helps to be a hard rock/grunge/ Pearl Jam fan, but I am, and so are a lot of folks.

    Television

    • 30 Rock – The process of producing a TV Comedy becomes a TV Comedy. And no one gets the comedic irony of  everyday life mixing with showbiz life, male egos mixing with female egos, the feeling of being in the middle of the chaos and yet being released from it through comedic surrender, better than Tina Fey.
    • Bones (2005) – Eileen Rivera from Twit.tv always talks about watching this one. Seasons 1-6
    • The Larry Sanders Show – All six seasons! Definitely one of the best TV shows of the 90’s.
    I figured building a repository for this topic would be beneficial. Probably 90% of the recommendations will come from Roger Ebert, where I get mine, and you can follow him on Twitter @EbertChicago or on facebook at Facebook.com/RogerEbert Of course, this list will build as time goes on. Also, leave a comment below of any of your recommendations.

  • Advice for Aspiring Writers

    I came across this today via Twitter, and I thought it was so good, that I needed to keep it on my blog, so that I would always have a copy.

    Here’s the advice:

    First — keep reading. Writers are readers. Writers are also people who can’t not write.

    Second, follow Heinlein’s rules for getting published:

    1. Write it.
    2. Finish it.
    3. Send it out.
    4. Keep sending it out until someone sends you a check.

    There are variations on that, but that’s basically what works.

    Ciao,
    Annie

    It’s from novelist Anne McCaffery who died today at 85. I wasn’t aware of here, but when I read the blog post about her death and it noted this piece of advice, it made such an impression on me that I posted it on all my Social networks, but also felt the need to keep it on my blog.

    You’re blog on you’re own domain, I think is important, because things like Twitter, Facebook, are great for “Real-Time” but they are ephemeral, and you tend to forget what you posted after a few days, much less can you find things that you need.

    One of the things that resonates with me on her list is “Finish it.” I’ve noticed that with songs: Even if you don’t necessarily like your lyrics, it’s always so much better to finish the song, rather than leave it lingering, waiting for the “perfect” lyrics to “someday” come. Someday never will come, but if you finish the song as best you can, then it takes on a life of it’s own and has the opportunity to get better.

    “Done is Better than Perfect.” is a sign that they have around Facebook’s Headquarters. Very à propos.

  • The Mythic Dimension

    If I were going to help Deepak in his argument with Leonard (Leonard Mlodinow) I might say:

    Our eyes are only capable of seeing a tiny sliver of all the magnetic waves that exist.

    “Deepak, ask him whether he believes in the 4th dimension. After he says, ‘Yes,’ ask him to point to it.”

    He can’t. He can’t even imagine it. Our brains are incapable of even imagining it. They’re hard wired for only 3 physical and one temporal dimensions. Unfortunately they make a perfect playground on which Social Conditioning can make it’s stamp
    of reality only consisting only of what our 5 senses are capable of experiencing. Note that even our eyeballs, as advanced as they are, are only capable of sensing a tiny fraction of the lightwaves that are (Conveniently coined the “Visible Spectrum”)

    Isn’t that the same as Spirituality? We can’t point to it, but we know it’s there.

    It’s the “Mythic” dimension, which is constantly at right angles, known as “eternity”, to the arrow of time.

    “Eternity is in love with the productions of time,” said Blake.

    Why?

    Because like a beautiful work of art needs a canvass to act as a medium for manefestation, even in some sense acting as “foil,” eternity needs the “foil” of time and space to act as “relief” in representing it’s message of the infinite.

    Think about it. In order to represent something moving, you have to have another thing standing still, or the message can’t be conveyed.

    In the same way, in order to convey the message of “revelation” you need to have the backdrop, the blank canvass, if you will, of a mundane, restricted, and merely mechanical “Worldview.”

    Without the Labyrinth, there wouldn’t be the adventure, the magical thread that leads one out.

     

  • Spirituality vs Science: Missing the Point

    A few minutes into that video on the previous post Leonard Mlodinow says something like neither Hawking nor he, and presumably neither science in general, rule out the possibility of there being a God.

    But really thinking of “God” as a fact is not what spirituality is about. God as a symbol for that which is beyond fact or fiction, beyond being and non-being, beyond past and present, or any duality one can think of is what spirituality is about.

    Any kind of definition throws you out of the “Garden,” to which only “being” can bring you back.

    Also, I was really exited that Deepak tweeted me back. I had tweeted him “The Scientific Method did not create Relativity or the Quantum Theory. Inspiration did. The Scientific Method only verified them.”

    He tweeted back that he liked that, that way of putting it, that the Scientific Method hadn’t rested the physical laws but only verified them.

    But now that I think about, even he was missing my point a little bit. Of course the physical laws weren’t created by The Scientific Method, but what I was saying was that even the scientific theories themselves came from Inspiration & Imagination, and then only later to be verified by observation.

    So what I was saying was no we weren’t using the Scientific Method to explain our World. We were using imagination and creativity to do so, which are Zen like, Spiritual activities, and then later the Scientific Method to verify them.

    So, really Science and Religion aren’t so different. It’s just that the science of 4000 years ago is way different than the science of today. Today we have new explanations: The Big Bang, Inflation, String Theory. Non of which are incongruent with Spirituality. As a matter of fact each new discovery seems to invoke the Sublime and increase the sense of wonder that we have labeled “Spirituality.”

  • The War of the Worldviews: A Zen Review

    OK, so I haven’t read the book. Or have I? Quantum theory would say that there is at least one Universe in which I have.

    But we’ll stick with the consciousness that I am experiencing now. I haven’t read the book. I’ve seen Deepak tweet about it for a while now. I follow Leonard Mlodinow, and he actually followed me back.

    Once I tweeted him saying, “God is Symbol for that which is beyond all thought, beyond what is even capable of being thought.”

    He replied, “You sound like Deepak!”  I must admit that made me happy. Happy because Deepak is a hero. Happy because not only did he reply, acknowledging me, making me feel part of the conversation, but also because, though I disagree with him (Do I? Again, there is at least one Universe in which I agree with him, but also one in which I am him!) he was cheery. That was nice.

    I don’t like debates. That’s one reason I’ve been reticent to begin reading this or even to watch the videos, but I do feel like the fact that Leonard is such a cheery, warm, nice person, that perhaps some benefit can come from it.

    My sister put it best on the phone just a while ago, “Maybe he isn’t coming from it from a place where he needs to win.” Debates could be productive activities if neither side had an absolute need to win, in as much as having a desire to come to the truth.

    So I don’t know if this post will even be finished. I’m just doing it “stream of consciousness” starting with a couple tweets I sent today (10/8/11) after watching the first 10 minutes of a video of them debating. Again, not liking debates, that’s all I could watch for now.

    So if this goes on, if I can continue and actually read the book, this post might actually get done, or at least expand.

    My niece who works at the Wall Street Journal, actually sent me a copy that she saw at their offices without even knowing I knew anything about it. I guess lying around. It is definitely an advanced copy. On it read, “Not for resale.” I feel special. Thanks Michelle!

    That fact seems kind of Zen to me already.

    So here goes the beginning of my ‘real’ post or the beginning of what I’m thinking:

    •  The Scientific Method didn’t create Relativity or Quantum Theory. Inspiration did. It merely verified them.

    OK, so what I’m saying here is that the two greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th Century did not come by way of the “Scientific Method” of which Dr. Mdlinow seems to constantly refer. Those discoveries came through imagination and inspiration. They weren’t discovered through a calculatory method, but rather through a creative method, and then later verified by calculations. These achievements have more in common with the revelatory nature of spirituality and mysticism (at least in their birth) than they do with the systems (Science! Physics! Computers!) that they gave birth to.

    • The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the Earth, yet men do not see it.” – Jesus

    Why don’t they see it? Here’s a story that might explain:

    A young yogi came to his master.
    “Master,” he said, “You say ‘Buddha is in all things’?”
    “Yes,” replied the master.
    “Is the Buddha in me?” asked the student.
    “No.”
    “But you said he is in all things.”
    “He is in all things, but not in you.”
    “But why?”
    “Because you are asking the question.”

    Do you get it? So the sense of asking the question is actually creating an “Ego” type separation consciousness, actually cutting one off from Unity Consciousness to which one must re-link (“re-ligio” .latin) or re yoke (“Yoga”) in order to have an understanding of that which is beyond thought.