O gebo e a sombra

Manoel de Oliveira, 2012, com Michael Lonsdale, Claudia Cardinale, Jeanne Moreau, Leonor Silveira, Luis Miguel Cintra, Ricardo Trêpa - Cineclube de Viseu, 18 Dez 2012

Por que lado se alinha Manoel de Oliveira no seu interior? Com o gebo ou do lado da sombra? De uma lucidez e hiper-realismo perversos.Talvez ele e Raúl Brandão contem apenas as coisas como elas são, sem assumir posição. Apenas o dinheiro, a pobreza, a frustração, o mal, o bem, a pena e a coragem na estranha dança que executam.

"Essa agora! Eu cá por mim, quando acabo o trabalho e me sento aqui, com os livros ao lado, a ouvir chover - e como ela cai! - não me sinto infeliz. Pelo contrário: estou quente, tenho-vos ao pé de mim...".

NBA 2K3

Sega Sports, 2002 - Playstation 2, Infogrames, Visual Concept

Estão as velhinhas estrelas todas lá. Capturou os meus emocionantes anos de basquetebol. Alan Iverson na capa e Michael Jordan nos Wizards. Uma delícia.

A short history of nearly everything

Bill Bryson, 2003, 2004 - Black Swan edition

The joy of science condensed into a book. Powerful and accessible for those curious about the subject but not too knowledgeable. Almost philosophical in how it absorbs and changes the way you look at the world around you.

'Behaviourally modern humans have been around for no more than about 0.0001 per cent of earth's history - almost nothing, really'.

Battleship

Peter Berg, 2012

Os extraterrestres têm um ar muito 'cool' mas surpreendem pela fragilidade táctica. Podia-se ter feito algo bem melhor deste monstro 'popcorn'. Os veteranos que aparecem para salvar o dia são mesmo veteranos porque claramente não sabem representar.

Cloud Atlas

Escrito por David Mitchell, 2012 - Realizado por Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski, com Tom Hanks, Hale Berry, Hugo Weaving, Hugh Grant 

Muitas historias, demasiadas provavelmente mas lá entreteve. Não é um filme enxuto e parece que complicam apenas porque foi combinado complicar na promessa do guião. Não precisava de ter três horas. A caracterização é excelente. Ambicioso sim, mas acho que não concretizou como podia. 

Killing them softly

Andrew Dominik 2012, Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini

Brilliant piece of storytelling and acting. My favourite of 2012. The film noir brought back to life. Suspense and tension in a different kind of gangster thriller. One that is full of meaning and a strange sort of hiper realism at times in its attention to detail, ambiance and dialogues.  “I’m living in America and in America you’re on your own. America’s not a country. It’s just a business. Now pay me.”

Ted

Seth Macfarlane, 2012

Não tem o ritmo nem a cadência dos gags de Family Guy, também de Seth MacFarlane. Sim, tem os seus momentos mas os clichés da história são em demasia.

Cosmopolis

David Cronenberg from a Don DeLillo novel, 2012


Estranho. Um sonho mal dormido de uma actualidade em que a palavra crise é repetida diáriamente ad nauseum. A queda do Yuan. Ai a depreciação do Rato.  O Ícaro das finanças.

“There’s a rumour it seems involving the finance minister. He’s supposed to resign any time now,” she said. “Some kind of scandal about a misconstrued comment. He made a comment about the economy that may have been misconstrued. The whole country is analysing the grammar and syntax of this comment. Or it wasn't even what he said. It was when he paused. They are trying to construe the meaning of the pause. It could be deeper, even, than grammar. It could be breathing.”

Dança da morte

August Strindberg, Encenação de Marco Martins, com Miguel Guilherme, Isabel Abreu, Sérgio Praia
Teatro São Luiz, Novembro 2012

Teatro da intimidade lhe chama um dos patrocinadores desta história e ela assim o é. Uma prisão delicada, tanto a casa-gradeada como o agonizante relacionamento do capitão e sua donzela. As bodas de prata não são para qualquer um.

A banda sonora, a música Feathers, de ManMan, é qualquer coisa. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=play%C2%ADer_embedded&v=OpuVa6Kh2-c

Darwin and Angola

'On 1 July 1858, Darwin's and Wallace's theory was unveiled to the world. Darwin himself was not present. On the day of the meeting, he and his wife were burying their son. The Darwin-Wallace presentation was one of seven that evening - one of the other was on the flora of Angola - and if the thirty or so people in the audience had any idea that they were witnessing the scientific highlight of the century, they showed no sign of it. No discussion followed. Nor did the event attract much notice elsewhere. Darwin cheerfully noted later that only one person, a Professor Haughton of Dublin, mentioned the two papers in print in his conclusion was that 'all that was new in them was false, and what was true was old.'

Bill Bryson

Naval Timber and Arboriculture

'Much less amenable to Darwin´s claim of priority over the theory of evolution was a Scottish gardener named Patrick Matthew who had, rather remarkably, also come up with the principles of natural selection more than twenty years earlier - in fact, in the very year that Darwin had set sail in the Beagle. Unfortunately, Matthew had published these views in the Appendix of a book called Naval Timber and Arboriculture, which had been missed not just by Darwin, but by the entire world'.

Bill Bryson
 
´"It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world" Charles Darwin in The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms (1881) 

A (s) Boda (s)

Encenação de Bruno Bravo, teatro Viriato, Outubro 2012

São duas bodas à mesa de madeira, uma de Anton Tchékhov e outra de Bertolt Brecht. Agradável ida ao teatro. Intriga sem deslumbrar, o ruído é muito, complicado sem sem complexo?

Henry Howard Crampton

In one of his essays, Stephen Jay Gould notes how a hero of his named Henry Edward Crampton spent fifty years, from 1906 to his death in 1956, quietly studying a genus of land snails called partula in Polynesia. Over and over, year after year, Crampton measured to the tiniest degree - to eight decimal places - the whorls and arcs and gentle curves of numberless Partula, compiling the results into fastidiously detailed tables. A single line of text in a Crampton table could represent weeks of measurement and calculation.

in Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'