Scorsese is really hit and miss with me, often in the same movie. I like a few of his films (and I do consider them films), but I think they're all pretty flawed. Even Paul Schrader, writer of Taxi Driver, thinks he screwed up the script pretty badly in places. But still it's incredibly powerful, dark, intense, and an unrelentingly interesting character study (of an incredibly repellent guy). But it has moments that are transcendent for me, and I know for many other cinephiles. It's probably my favorite of his films. I also really like Goodfellas, and I really want to like The Last Temptation of Christ, but it's such a weird movie, and so bizarrely made. I think he has grand ideas and is really ambitious, but I think he tries things that often just don't work. But I do love that he keeps on doing what he does, and tries to make really great films outside of the Hollywood studio system, so he gets artistic control and doesn't have to put bums in seats and make massive box office draws (actually I think he sort of can't do it that way anymore, not really sure). I haven't seen any of his recent movies though, and I don't thinnk I'd care for them much. Oh, one I really like from him (that falls short of being a really excellent film, but is incredibly enjoyable I think) is Bringing Out the Dead.
Wow, I didn't even know he directed that one! I think I've seen it, I know I've seen The Hustler. Which one had Tom Cruise in it? Was that the Color of Money? If so then I've seen it.
Which, among other things, makes him an important film-maker. He takes chances, goes out of his way not to be repetitive. So he misses the target, but nobody else has even tried very hard to shoot at it. The Coen brothers are the same way... they've had misses like Hail Caesar, but you can go to their better movies and see things that are done that take you by surprise. Mel Brooks had a few stinkers among his films, but I can't say he ever tried to play it safe. Scorsese's recent film, The Irishman. had Robert de Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino in its cast. Pesci and Pacino had some reservations about playing gangsters yet again, but were persuaded to be in this one because Scorsese wanted to show aspects of the gangster genre that hadn't been done before, about what happens to the characters afterwards, as they get old and confront their pasts. Wikipedia says, I'm sure that Killers of the Flower Moon, his latest, will be up to his usual standards
The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said that, “talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
Buddhist view on setting personal boundaries: "Preserving yourself and knowing your boundaries is not the same as exclusively seeking your own happiness. It's about the healing process of learning to skillfully discern what will and will not serve all beings, yourself included." Pila Jennings, "Boundaries Make Good Bodhisattvas."
Something to keep in mind when writing antagonists and villains: “In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.” ― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
“Don't be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.” ― Roy T. Bennett
“Don't be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.” ― Roy T. Bennett
The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows. - Frank Zappa
Joan of Arc, in front of the French army, in front of the walls of the English held city of Paris: "Open your gates, in the name of God." Lowly English crossbowman on the top of said gates, who subsequently shot her: "You brassy trollop." Lord Sumption, reflecting on events six hundred years later: "It rather undermined her credibility."
"I was born of poor because honest parents..." --first line from an Ambrose Bierce story, "The City of the Gone Away".
"....I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally says she's going to adopt and sivilize me. and I can't stand it. I been there before." -- Last line of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn.
"To be nobody-but-yourself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." ee cummings.
“We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self-control.” ~ Inscription on a 6,000-year-old Egyptian tomb.
Accept certain inalienable truths Prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too, will get old And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young Prices were reasonable, politicians were noble And children respected their elders Respect your elders -Mary Schmich (Excerpt from an essay entitled "Wear Sunscreen" but immortalized in the Baz Luhrman song "Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen." Totally worth a listen. It contains much useful wisdom.)
With their tanks and their bombs And their bombs and their guns In your head, in your head, they are crying ~ Zombie, The Cranberries
"I had managed to convince myself that . . . I could somehow haul myself back, as if one's youth were a place you could visit whenever you felt like it. I bring you momentous news. It's not. Who'd have thought?" Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down. Came to mind as I was sorting through my stacks of old photos, which I am slowly digitalizing. Those days are so, so, long gone.
