Na drogaria, aprende-se a fechar uma venda. Um acto intemporal. Volume II
Dona - Hortensinha, diga lá. Sra - Eu quero … que nome lhe dou? Tapetes para as baratas. Vou de férias. Dona - Aqui tem. Sra - Mas esses tapetes têm a imagem de um rato. Dona - É verdade, agora dizem que para apanhar baratas estes são a melhor coisa. Sra - Eu vou-lhe dizer, quando se apanha uma epidemia de baratas, por amor de Deus, chiça, o que eu tenho penado. Na escada, são assim…(gestos). Em casa não, são das pequeninas, e no café. Mas na escada… (gestos). Dona - Foi de estarem a mexer naquele prédio. Quando foi daquele ali em cima, meteu-se aqui uma ratazana (gestos) . Sra - Bem, dê-me outro. Assim, deixo espalhado na cozinha.
Oliver Stone, 1987. Com Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas
Filme de 1987 que poderia ser de 1997, 2007 ou 2017, bastava mudar a tecnologia à volta das personagens. "A ganância e boa" tem eco na mente de decisores à volta do mundo desde aí. Uma história simples de alguém que se vê apoderado pelo desejo de abundância material, sobrepondo-se até à moralidade.
Armando Iannucci, 2017, Com Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, Michael Palin
Hilariante comédia seria sobre o fim do reinado de um todo-poderoso que deixa a apetitosa cadeira do poder disponível sem sucessor claro. O ridículo da dança para lá chegar é deliciosa e transversal a todo o espectro político, tem algo de intemporal.
Vasily Stalin: I know the drill. Smile, shake hands and try not to call them cunts.
Georgy Malenkov: Nod as I'm speaking to you. People are looking to me for reassurance and I have no idea what's going on.
Georgy Malenkov: He's saying I am the lamb, and you the people have given me life!
Anastas Mikoyan: Or, the lamb is the people and the milk is socialism!
1987, Paul Auster 138 Little does Blue know, of course, that the case will go on for years. But the present is no less dark than the past, and its mystery is equal to anything the future might hold. Such is the way of the world: one step at a time, one word and then the next. There are certain things that Blue cannot possibly know at this point. For knowledge comes slowly, and when it comes, it is often at great personal expense.
185. Everything we see, everything we touch – everything in the world has its own colour. Struggling to stay awake a little longer, he begins to make a list. Take blue for example, he says. There are blue birds and blue jays and blue herons. There are cornflowers and periwinkles. There is noon over New York. There are blueberries, huckleberries, and the Pacific Ocean. There are blue devils and blue ribbons and blue bloods. There is a voice singing the clues. There is my father’s police uniform. There are blue laws and blue movies. There are my eyes and my name. He pauses, suddenly at a loss for more blue things, and then moves on to white. There are seagulls, he says, and terns and storks and cockatoos. There are the walls of this room and the sheets on my bed. There are lilies-of-the-valley, carnations, and the petals of daisies. There is the flag of peace and Chinese death. There is mother’s milk and semen. There are my teeth. There are the whites of my eyes. There are white bass and white pines and white ants. There is the President’s house and white rot. There are white lies and white heat. Then, without hesitating, he moves on to black, beginning with black boots, the black market, and the Black Hand. There is night over New York, he says. There are the Chicago Black Sox. There are blackberries and crows, blackouts and black marks, Black Tuesday and the Black Death. There is blackmail. There is my hair. There is the ink that comes out of a pen. There is the world a blind man sees. Then, finally growing tired of the game, he begins to drift, saying to himself that there is no end to it.
5 Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
46 Firmness, I may observe was the grand quality on which both Mr and Miss Murdstone took their stand. However i might have expressed my comprehension of it at that time, if I had been called upon, I nevertheless did clearly comprehend in my own way, that it was another name for tyranny; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil's humour, that was in them both.
The creed, as I should state it now, was this. Mr Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to be so firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his firmness. Miss Murdstone was an exception. She might be firm, and must be; but only in bearing their firmness, and firmly believing there was no other firmness upon earth.
51 The picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighborhood, every stone in the church, and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own in my mind, connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church-steeple; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself at the wicket gate; and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that Club with Mr Pickle, in the parlour of our little village alehouse.
78 I heard that one boy, who was a coal-merchant's son, came as a set-off against the coal-bill, and was called on that account 'Exchange or Barter' - a name selected from the arithmetic-book as expressing this arrangement.
10 He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid.
It is only necessary for one powerful nation like Russia - barbaric as she is said to be - to place herself disinterestedly at the heart of an alliance having for its object the maintenance of the balance of power in europe, and it would save the world.
12 influence in society, however, is capital which has to be economized if it is to last
De braço dado, ela usava óculos escuros, tal como ele, cego. Esta semana queria, mas não escrevi. Confundo sempre a triste ilha com um submarino. Garrafas de plástico nas fendas da pedra. Não me consigo concentrar na paisagem. No mar a bater nas rochas. Ticas. Um dos blocos principais caiu. Seis pessoas tiram a mesma foto.
- Oitenta e oito anos. Eu alguma vez esperava chegar a esta idade? Estou morto. Estou à espera.
Com um blazer bege. a camisa é em padrão verde alface, a condizer com o verde vivo do lenço da esposa.
- Têm sorte em ter-se um ao outro. Anda para aí muita gente viúva, diz a filha.
Foi à sala buscar botões de punho que tinha deixado na mochila. Perdeu-se a arrumar um bloco de notas e à procura de outro. Zombifica. Dorme mal há três dias. Vai envelhecer rápido. Está com dificuldade em ver-se livre de coisas.
A frágil Hanna atravessa um mundo estranho com coragem, simplicidade e curiosidade. Leva-nos. E o mundo à volta tornar-se mais estranho do que ela, bem mais. "As pessoas com síndrome de Down transmitem a ideia de que a eficácia e a eficiência, a produção, são inúteis diante de qualquer coisa que não sabemos bem o que é, mas que sentimos que e mais forte e que em a ver com a característica humana, talvez uma ingenuidade bondosa, que me parece tocante."
Martin MacDonagh 2017, Com Frances MacDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell
Um cocktail de odio, amor, injustiça e entrega total a uma causa. Orgulho, carácter e sentido de dever cruzam-se com o desespero de ver as nossas instituições colectivas falharem-nos. Vivemos todos numa zona cinzenta, mas uns mais do que outros.
194 and as he walked slowly through the evening, breathing the fragrance and tasting upon his tongue the sharp night-time air, it seemed to him that the moment he walked in was enough and the night not need a great deal more. Love is not an end, but a process through which one person attempts to know another.
'Lust and learning', Katherin once said. That's really all there is, isn't it?´
258 (After WWII) Innocent of fashion or customs, they came to their studies as Stoner had dreamed a student might - as if those studies were life itself and not specific means to specific ends.
268 He stood at the stairs that led up to the second floor; the steps were marble, and in their precise centres were gentle troughs worn smooth by decades of footsteps going up and down. They had been almost new when - how many years ago? He had first stood there and looked up, as he looked now, and wondered where they would lead him. He thought of time and of its gentle flowing. He put one foot carefully in the first smooth depression and lifted himself up.
“Ninhua pessoa de qualquer condiçam que
seja nom venda aos estrangeiros caravelas nem naus pera fora do reyno: nem as
vaa laa fazer a estrangeiros: nem as frete pera fora do reyno: mais que por hu
soo anno: e nom hu apos outro: nem tire pano de treu que se neste reyno faça:
nem madeira: nem tavoado pera fazer navios fora do reyno: sob pena de qualquer
ho contrairo fazer ser preso ate nossa merçe: e perder todos seus bens para
nos”.
Uma bela e breve viagem ao sabor de um suave choque de culturas. Arrastado pelo trabalho, um homem ganha uma doce e determinada vontade de se integrar, mas as barreiras e desconfiança são muitas. Algo no ritmo e na fotografia do filme torna-o cru, real e próximo.
Fascinante história sobre a batalha judicial sobre o Holocausto. Onde se traça a linha das liberdades individuais, da liberdade de expressão e do dever de memória e de verdade?
E como conter a vontade de explodir, gritar e denunciar para bem de uma vitória em tribunal. Uma vitória de agenda. Não queremos que testemunhe Deborah Lipstadt porque senão David Irving tornaria o caso de difamação sobre ela.
Irreconhecível Gary Oldman como Winston Churchill num zoom sobre um período de tempo contido, familiar e decisivo. O dom da escrita e da oratória é algo de realmente belo. Decisões estratégicas de Estado que assumimos como fáceis, lógiocas e garantidas hoje, quando são tomadas nem sempre o são. Mestre de efeitos especiais Kazuhiro Tsuji fez trabalho estonteante na transformação.
"Eu não percebo nada de arquitectura e diverti-me mais a fazer o filme do que pensava que ia".
As obras do atelier são belas, misteriosas e merecedoras de cuidada e alargada reflexão e estudo.
Merecedoras de muito maior profundidade, mesmo que só performativa.
Este parece ser controverso e de visões extremas do público. Para mim, ficou aquém do anterior episódio 7. Embora esteticamente belo, achei que o guião podia ter sido melhor. Talvez seja algo a revisitar. A Ray descobre as suas habilidades. Desagradou-me a evolução do storm trooper Finn, que era o meu personagem favorito deste bloco de filmes. O holograma e fim de Luke Skywalker mereciam um pouco mais.
A decadente burguesia britânica, expulsa para o desterro de professores numa escola, a viver num ciclo de aparência e podridão cómica e superficial. Caricaturas exageradas ou fieis? O puro Paul Pennyfeather é um Cândido do início do século XX, manipulado e destruído pelas más intenções das pseudo elites à sua volta.
76 One way and another, I have been consistently unfortunate in my efforts at festivity. And yet I look forward to each new fiasco with the utmost relish 125 I could have forgiven him his wooden leg, his slavish poverty, his moral turpitude, and his abominable features; I could even have forgiven his incredible vocabulary, if only he had been gentleman 133 There is a home and a family waiting for every one of us. We cannot escape, try how we may. It's the seed of life we carry about with us like our skeletons, each one of us unconsciously pregnant with desirable villa residences. There is no escape. As individuals we simply do not exist. We are just potential homebuilders, beavers and ants. 151 For three centuries the poverty and inertia of this noble family had preserved its home unmodified by any of the succeeding fashions that fell upon domestic architecture. No way had been added, no window filled in; no portico, facade, terrace, orangery, tower of battlement marred its timberland front
224 Well, I might put you into the arts and crafts workshop. I came to the conclusion many years ago that almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression 227 the next four weeks of solitary confinement were among the happiest of Paul's life. (...) It was so exhilarating, he found, never to have to make any decision on any subject, to be wholly relieved from the smallest consideration of time, meals or impression he was making; in fact, to be free.
Otto Friedrich Silenus, an architect in Evelyn Waugh´s 'Decline and Fall', a book first published in 1928. He embodies an amusing stereotype in this comical novel which I finished reading while I was in Geneva.
“It was Professor Otto Friedrich Silenus’s first important commission. ‘Something clean and square,’ had been Mrs Beste-Chetwynde’s instructions.
Professor Silenus – for that was the title by which this extraordinary young man chose to be called – was a ‘find’ of Mrs Beste-Chetwynde’s. He was not yet famous anywhere, though all who met him carried away deep and diverse impressions of his genius. He had first attracted Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde’s attention with the rejected design for a chewing-gum factory which had been reproduced in a progressive Hungarian quarterly. His only other completed work was the décor for a cinema film of great length and complexity of plot – a complexity rendered the more inextricable by the producer’s austere elimination of all human characters, a fact which had proved fatal to its commercial success. He was staring resignedly in a bed-sitting room in Bloomsbury, despite the untiring efforts of his parents to find him – they were very rich in Hamburg – when he was offered the commission of rebuilding King’s Thursday. ‘Something clean and square’—he pondered for three days upon the aesthetic implications of these instructions and then began his designs.
Professor Otto Silenus as sketched by Evelyn Waugh
‘The problem of architecture as I see it,’ he told a journalist who had come to report on the progress of his surprising creation of ferro concrete and aluminum, ‘is the problem of all art – the elimination of the human element from the consideration of form. The only perfect building must be the factory, because that is built to house machines, not men. I do not think it is possible for domestic architecture to be beautiful, but I am doing my best. All ill comes from man,’ he said gloomily; ‘please tell your readers. Man is never beautiful; he is never happy except when he becomes the channel for the distribution of mechanical forces.’
‘I suppose there ought to be a staircase,’ he said gloomily. ‘Why can’t the creatures stay in one place? Up and down, in and out, round and round! Why can’t they sit still and work? Do dynamos require staircases? Do monkeys require houses? What an immature, self-destructive, antiquated mischief is man! How obscure his prancing and chattering on his little stage of evolution! How loathsome and beyond words boring all the thoughts and self-approval of his biological by-product! this half-formed, ill-conditioned body! this erratic, maladjusted mechanism of his soul: on one side the harmonious instincts and balanced responses of the animal, on the other the inflexible purpose of the engine, and between them man, equally alien from the being of Nature and doing of the machine, the vile becoming!’
Henrik Ibsen, 1884
Encenação de Tiago Guedes
Teatro Viriato, Outubro de 2017
Com Gonçalo Waddington, Anabela Almeida, João Grosso, Lúcia Maria, Margarida Correia, Pedro Gil e Tónan Quito
Na família Ekdal há um pato selvagem ferido que mergulha até ao fudo de um lago e decide morrer, mas o arauto da verdade absoluta não o deixa. Será que a humanidade e a família têm mentiras necessárias, indispensáveis à vida, à tranquilidade? A verdade a produzir resultados desastrosos. Doctor Reling: "Deprive the average human being of his life-lie, and you rob him of his happiness."
Não tenho memória de ter assistido duas vezes ao mesmo filme no cinema. Deixa-ns contemplar um futuro distópico com muitos traços que se poderão confirmar, vagamente familiares. É uma obra de arte estética, que respeita o original, mantendo muitas das questões fundamentais sobre inteligência artificial, a divisão e solidão que a tecnologia poderá criar e sobre o que é a imaginação. O escritório dos vilões é estonteante. E os planos abertos em CGI um mimo.
Um peça corajosa e avassaladora, convidando crianças para representar uma série de histórias em torno da saga real do abusador e assassino de crianças belga Marc Dutroux. Mas a peça consegue ser leve e desarmante, contendo muito do choque que poderiamos recear, apesar de emocionante. As crianças são levadas a representar, sendo também uma peça de meta teatro.
Coloca-nos, primeiro, no centro do treino de novos recrutas
e depois no olho do furacão da guerra do Vietname. É pesado, pastoso, pessoal e
ao mesmo tempo belo. Kubrick criou infernos contemplativos e personagens de
enorme profundidade, carregadas de expressão. Muitos ‘close ups’ misturados com
planos abertos para capturar o deserto de destruição, sempre com fogo a arder. Sempre aos berros, Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann, um instrutor de fuzileiros na vida real, é um vil colosso. Foi inspirado no livro 'the short timers', de Gustav Hasford, correspondente dos fuzileiros da 1ra divisão de Marine. Correspondente civil Michael Herr, contribuiu para o guião.
