About me
☥ Hii I'm Raven, my life is boring, I'm neurotic and possibly psychotic, and I have great taste (or so I'd like to think). Here are some quotes that I love ☥
“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and — in spite of True Romance magazines — we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely — at least, not all the time — but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
"I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas"
— T.S. Eliot
"Sometimes I feel like a vampire."
— Ted Bundy
“I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.”
— Yohji Yamamoto
“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life.”
— Voltaire - Candide: or, Optimism
“I really don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what people think about me…I would be totally paralyzed. How could you get up in the morning if you worried about some poll or what somebody said about you? That’s giving up power over your life to somebody else, and I don’t intend to do that.”
— Hillary Clinton
"And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
— Friedrich Nietzsche
"And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted---nevermore!"
"And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy."
— Edgar Allan Poe
"I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there was one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face."
— Henry Miller
“It is so much safer not to feel, not to let the world touch me.”
— Sylvia Plath
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
“I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased, yet I do not know what ails me.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky - Brothers Karamazov & Notes From The Underground
"I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.”
— Franz Kafka; from a diary entry dated 23 March 1914
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Shakespeare's writing really is like another language and decoding it was a pain in the ass for me when I first encountered it as a teen. Once I started to figure it out, however, I found a lot of truth and insight in it, which I will always appreciate.
I'm not the biggest Shakespeare fan in the world, but I do believe he wrote some good shit. As always, it's admirable how you're committed to going full throttle with your opinions, not caring if they may raise some eyebrows.
I say Branagh can be a great director sometimes because of my affection for everything in "Much Ado About Nothing" (except Keanu Reeves - worst casting ever), but "Thor" was pretty lame, and I agree with you that Kenny's facial hair has been awful at times. =)
http://www.listal.com/list/only-because-love-you
Thanks for that behind-the-scenes info about Warren Beatty. So very, very amusing. His douche-y behaviour like thanking Carly Simon for the song and reducing Nicholson's screen time out of jealousy is some of the funniest stuff I've read in awhile.
Don't feel bad about your new list not setting the listal world on fire. That's what tends to happen when you make one about a subject that isn't so well-known. My next one is probably going to have a similar fate, but I'm optimistic about the one I'll post after (yes, I have the next TWO planned in advance) since it deals with subject matter that has more wide-ranging appeal.
No, I've never read a book on Greta Garbo, but I've watched some short documentaries about her. I was seriously considering checking out a book on her life, but a few things scared me away from that.
First of all, I read a book about Marilyn Monroe last summer and it made me intensely depressed. It was such a bummer finding out about how sad her life was in so many ways. She had a lot of psychological and physiological problems and so many men took advantage of her.
It didn't take long for me lose count of how many people she had sex with (very few of which did that with her in the context of a happy, loving relationship). After that, I really didn't want to know about the potentially/probably sordid lives of my favourite stars.
I also don't want to read too much about Greta because I already know from the documentaries that her life had a lot of tragedy in it too. Some of those docs left me really sad. I do however plan to maybe read a career retrospective book about her after I've seen all of her pictures (probably won't be long before I reach that goal!). I'd like to read stuff about her, just as long as it's not about her personal life!
P.S. I sent you two messages with the same title because the first one had a minor factual error in it, and I'm a crazy perfectionist when it comes to my writing. Please read the message you received most recently and delete the one that was sent earlier.
About "The Noah"...
My nickname actually has always been The Noah, and so when I found out there was a movie called that, I made sure I watched it. I actually made my Listal profile before I watched "The Noah". I thought it was a really good film, but if you found "Antichrist" boring, then you would probably fall asleep thirty minutes into it. It's even slower than "2001" (which I still love!). So yeah, everybody who sees it (though there are very few) either absolutely loves it or absolutely hates it, so watch it if you want. Oh, and thanks for the advice to watch "Cannibal Holocaust" last!
I'm not a huge western fan or anything but "Virginia City" has two of my favourite stars together with Errol Flynn (Miriam Hopkins and Humphrey Bogart). Apparently it's not as good as "Dodge City", but I've become quite used to watching lesser movies just because of the cast. These are the kinds of people (Garbo being the best example) who can get me through just about any movie, no matter how weak it may be, because I love them that damn much!
I watched it for two hours and was like, "Okay, I'm 2 hours into this and I still don't give a shit about anything in it, so I'm not going to bother watching another hour." This was about 5 years ago, so maybe I would feel differently if I tried it again, but I have no desire to ever re-visit that picture.
Fortunately, I liked "Reds" much more. I didn't really care about or understand the politics of it (I'm not interested in politics in general). What made the picture work for me was the love story. I've liked Diane Keaton for a long time and as you know, my opinion of Beatty only becomes more positive as I see more of his work.
I really enjoyed the way the relationship between Beatty and Keaton played out, especially when it became a love triangle with the Jack Nicholson character. I watched Siskel & Ebert's review and Siskel said he wished there was more of the Nicholson character. I did too. I thought O'Neill was the best character in the movie, with great dialog and Nicholson bringing his usual incomparable brand of charisma with him, even in a smaller, less flamboyant role.
What a coincidence that you brought up the Carly Simon song! I met a friend of mine last weekend and I mentioned you to her. I was telling her about how I'm friends with someone who likes Warren Beatty and got me interested in his movies.
My friend responded by saying something like, "Warren Beatty was REALLY arrogant! Did you know that the 'You're So Vain...' song was about him?". I was about to tell you about that, and then you go ahead and tell me first! By the way, I'm so glad my Harryhausen tribute motivated you to put out your cinematography showcase. That list is pure class all the way. =)
http://www.listal.com/list/only-because-love-you-ar
http://www.listal.com/list/my-favorite-underappreciated-actors
Made me think of you.....thought you would fine it as hilarious as I do :)
Hopefully when you do see one of her sadder pictures, you won't feel like I did at the end of some of them: like someone ripped out my heart and stomped on it like Woody's glasses in "Take the Money and Run". =P
Yeah, I watched "The Silver Linings Playbook". I got a bunch of movies from a friend and there are some new ones in there. I was curious about this one partially because the girl in it won the 'Best Actress' Oscar. It's a little sad that this is the sort of stuff that wins those awards these days, if you think about the history and lineage/past winners of the awards.
Like a lot of newer pictures, the dialog and performances in this one have a blunt obviousness to them that's not very natural or subtle, but at the same time keeps me from being bored. It was diverting enough, but the whole time I couldn't help but be aware of how fake all of it felt.
I was into "El Topo" for its first hour with all the bizarre, hypnotically bewildering shit going on in the desert. I was intrigued by the grotesque, surreal unpredictably of the unfolding events, but once the action shifted out of the desert and was isolated to a town, my interest started to dwindle. Basically, I think the picture had a strong start, but it lost me towards the end.
"Take the Money and Run" was sloppier and less consistent than Woody's later movies, but still damn entertaining overall, so I can't complain much about it. I liked the running gag with people stomping on his glasses. =)
I'm not as sour on "Something Wild" as you are apparently. I like the cast. It was cool to see Ray Liotta in something before "Goodfellas", I'm okay with young Melanie Griffith (I also liked the Louise Brooks references with her wig and alias), and I've appreciated Jeff Daniels for a long time.
On the other hand, the plot was tremendously stupid and unrealistic. Also, the picture really suffered in comparison to Beatty's "Heaven Can Wait", which I watched immediately after. I might have liked "Something Wild" more if its ass hadn't been so thoroughly kicked (quality-wise) by the brilliance of "Heaven Can Wait". =)
I love the new walls here. They're trippy! Thanks a mil for all the votes, Raven. 8) *hugs*
You never know, Orpheus might surprise us all and come back after a while.