Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

Tag line: Tim Burton back at his best. Subtitle: Why people who love a movie should never watch the remake. Why do we all love Tim Burton? I don’t know about you, but I have always loved his absurd humor, his digging deep into the human soul to find out there is levity in there, to an extent that other people can’t seem to find. No matter which of his movies you go to, you’ll see something magic happen, usually something pleasant and pleasing. Continue reading

M (1931)

Fritz Lang’s first talkie – that’s how Netflix presented the movie to me. It’s amazing to see how quickly movies changed from the days of no sound and their pathos, to the current way of shooting movies. Seems like the jump from silent to sound was much more dramatic than that from black and white to color. M is billed as one of the first thrillers ever shot. A young, quite effemminate man turns out to be a child killer out on the loose. Continue reading

Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

There is something distinctly non-American about the narrative in “Life of Pi.” A flow of story that writers here seem to have forgotten: an seemingly infinite expansion when the story becomes wide and sweeping; a narrowing speedup where the story starts rushing like a rapid. Unpredictability is hence the motto, and it serves the story well. Life of Pi is a narrative that brought me closer to life, to nature, to humanity. Continue reading

Spanish Concert

Friend invited me to an open air concert of the San Francisco Symphony at Dolores Park, with the main theme of “Spain.” It was a packed event, and people streamed into the venue long after it had all started. It was a wonderful day, with the heat of Saturday replaced by Sunday’s stream of cool fog air. All in all a success. My hosts had packed great lunches, and wine to boot. Continue reading

Cancer and Evolution?

Strolling back from my morning coffee run, I noticed a pigeon with a giant cancerous growth underneath its left wing. I didn’t know pigeons suffer from tumors, although it surely makes sense. I was feeling pity for the poor little fella, but suddenly my thoughts turned in a different direction: what if the tumor growth had actually been something that helps the pigeon survive? What if the distinguishing features of a pigeon were actually determined not by slow mutation and selection, but by a mechanism that allows for sudden appearance of a new feature without slow motion? Continue reading

Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (J.S. Spong)

The most outstanding thing an alien from Western Europe notices when crossing the border to the United States is the degree to which Puritanism has influenced the world view of the common human in this country. Literal fundamentalism is something virtually unknown where I come from, and the Bible as a whole is read as a book illustrating the divine, not taking it for granted. Indeed, Western Europe has spent a great many years and a great many deaths on finally convincing itself the earth is not flat, the sun does not revolve around the earth, and that God did not create the world in seven literal days. Continue reading

Time Frame of Ministries

John 8:57 has the Jews say that Jesus was not yet 50 when he came to Jerusalem. (They mock him for claiming to have seen Abraham). If that is the case, then Jesus was probably close enough, but not yet 50; maybe in his late fourties? That is of importance, because the Gospels constantly talk about this generation as the target of the words of Jesus. And while Paul portrays himself as the apostle to the Gentiles, nothing in the Gospels mentions him; there is though a reference to a mission to the entire world, but it surely reads like a late addition. Continue reading

Uploaded Pictures

Here they are! After a lot of waiting (mostly due to the fact I was too lazy to move the pictures from my laptop to the web server – it’s 260MB of them, after all!!!), here the {moszoomalbum:2005-07-02} with the pictures of the trip to Hawai’i. A few changes to the usual format: this time I refrained from putting all pictures from one day in the same folder, and just highlighted the places we went to. Continue reading

Zucchero & Co. (CD)

There are the times when you realize you have been missing home for way too long. In nothing else do I realize it as much as when I get to hear music from Italy, one of my home countries, the one with the more distinct music tradition. Italy has of course an extremely long tradition in music, as exemplified by the copious amounts of musical terms that are borrowed from the Italian. Continue reading

The Seven Samurai (1954)

So what’s the deal with this one? Billed as one of the Greatest Movies of All Times on IMDB (#5), it took me four days to watch it. Somehow the plot was too predictable, the scenes too repetitious, the acting unintelligible without cultural context. Didn’t get it. Sorry. Maybe in a next life.