Apologies are a funny thing. They often help the person offering them more than the intended recipient. Apologizing when you’ve hurt someone’s feelings is aimed mostly at relieving the shame, embarrassment or remorse. Which, when you think about it, is probably just as selfish as what you did in the first place that required apologies…And I would know. Shame, embarrassment, remorse and regrets have kept me company for the past couple of days. Ironically enough, they weren’t caused by something I recently did, but rather by something that happened over one year ago and which made me feel terrible about myself. Continue reading
It sounds silly now that I think about it and probably quite a few snobs will roll their eyes at me for what I’m about to say, but I was truly and genuinely impressed by a movie in the Batman series. Namely The Dark Knight Rises. And while I thoroughly enjoyed the action-packed scenes, the sci-fi pieces of equipment and all the unexpected twists of the story, the movie also provided some serious food for thought.
Well, ok, maybe serious is a bit of an overstatement in this case. To be more specific, some things in this movie sent me back to the old Hollywood cliché of what is it about men in uniforms that makes them so sexy?… Except I took it one step further and focused not on uniforms, but on masks. Continue reading
In order to avoid spoiling it for those who haven’t seen it I won’t dwell on the actual story too much. What I can share is that it’s NOT a classic love story along the lines of boy meets girl and they fall in love. Quite on the contrary – and in a manner that may be confusing when one starts watching the movie for the first time – the story begins with a scene of VERY casual sex… and pretty much seems to end there. Continue reading
Live together, die alone. While this is the title of a memorable episode in the TV series Lost, it was a different show that caused me to reflect on this maxim. Namely, Ada Milea’s The Island (“Insula”, original title in Romanian). The show was powerful beyond description, so I won’t even attempt to write a review, but it’s brought some thoughts to the forefront of my mind that, I think, are worth mentioning.
The Island is, quite obviously, a metaphor of loneliness and the suffering it entails. Throughout the show, the main character, Robinson, seeks relief from his loneliness through just about any means possible: by taming a savage, by finding love, by becoming reunited with his family… Continue reading
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