Just like last year a little less than 1.5 hours of whacky-fun holiday music for you. Hope you and yours enjoy.. please share too..
(Right/Control Click and Save As)
Chas Vs. Xmas Vol. 2 - Download
Last Years if you never got:
Chas Vs. Xmas Vol. 1 - Download
Merry Christmas!
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I see tonight that there is a youtube video out regarding the ending of Lost in Translation. It apparently uses a voice enhancer or some such doohickey to determine exactly what it is Bob Harris (Bill Murray) says to Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) at the end of the movie. (just quit reading now if you haven’t seen it yet, and shame on you)
Anyway, this is easily one of my favorite movies, one worth owning anyway (ie good enough that I need to be able to immediately watch it at any time) - and what I love most about it is how beautifully subtle it is. It just drips with under-moments, odd little glances, almost invisible shared understandings, and in a romance, which I guess is what you would call the film more than anything else, this is especially wonderful. Life, quite usually, is not like some movie after all.
So at the end of Lost in Translation, our two “lovers” never have their Hollywood moment really, and good. Bob is in the car to the airport, is suddenly compelled to seek out Charlotte, some obviously unfinished moment which was to happen but didn’t on his mind, and he does find her on a crowded street - they kiss - he whispers something in her ear and then he goes back to the car.
It’s an open ended ending, certainly more than it’s not, and so you are left wondering what he said, what will happen next, etc etc. John Q. Moviegoer who likes tight little bows at the end of every movie often finds this very annoying - where as I like that we are left to imagine the ending. I like that I have to do some work in the afterglow of such an enjoyable film. And as much as I do enjoy and sometimes need the emotional payoff at the end of a movie, I can settle for the kiss and the whisper and not the happily ever after we have been bamboozled with over and over again. (see: Love Actually - the most insulting movie to my emotional intelligence that I have probably ever seen)
So that it is now possible to find out what he does in fact say, I guess it makes for two kinds of people - those who want to know and those who don’t. And I find myself quite unwilling to look behind this curtain. I like not knowing. I like trying to dream up what he says every new time I see the movie. I like imagining when I’m feeling romantic that they meet again, and when I am pessimistic that they do not. I like that life includes mysteries and that I may not figure them all out. (see: how was the universe itself created)
So what kind of person are you? And if you go to find out what he says don’t you dare ever tell me.
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POSTSCRIPT: Roger Ebert: as the the end of his original review:
Well, I loved this movie. I loved the way Coppola and her actors negotiated the hazards of romance and comedy, taking what little they needed and depending for the rest on the truth of the characters. I loved the way Bob and Charlotte didn’t solve their problems, but felt a little better anyway. I loved the moment near the end when Bob runs after Charlotte and says something in her ear, and we’re not allowed to hear it.
We shouldn’t be allowed to hear it. It’s between them, and by this point in the movie, they’ve become real enough to deserve their privacy. Maybe he gave her his phone number. Or said he loved her. Or said she was a good person. Or thanked her. Or whispered, “Had we but world enough, and time…” and left her to look up the rest of it.
Ten years ago my (absolutely wonderful) senior English teacher in High School, Ms. Lukas, introduced my class to the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in such a way that she almost broke into tears. I’ve read it a few times since then and have recommended it myself to countless people. And while I don’t have it memorized I will always be humbled by the story. That anyone could intellectually and emotionally survive such a devastating injury is beyond my comprehension. And the same way that I can insert myself into a landing craft at Normandy and wonder if I would freeze or rally, I can suffer an imaginary stroke and wonder if I have a book in me, even a bad book. Such determined humanity should be a legend of a lesson for every person alive. And now the cliff notes of a film adaptation is available to supplement as well.
And the film itself is a possibly perfect adaptation and yet a unique addition to the lesson as well. I have never seen a film like it. Where as the book allows a portrait of a mind trapped inside itself, the film offers the actual experience. The director and cinematographer imagine what tears look like to an eye, what thoughts sound like to a brain, what memory feels like when it is almost all that remains of our experience. You must let letters become words become sentences become ideas and then deal with their consequences for the characters and for your emphatic reaction, all in real time, a viscerally unforgettable experience for an audience. And the patient juxtaposition of Locked-In Syndrome’s maddening claustrophobia with the sensory overwhelm of imagination leaves you quite shaken. The film is a study of human emotions, of the literal faces of emotion, and the things we believe but forget to remember, the people we leave behind or the undone things we were meant to do, the simple intimacy of innate compassion, and most of all, what is actually important when life is reduced to it’s simplest form, to a blinking keyhole between the stark beauty of existence and the complex brilliance of human consciousness.
It is what I believe I will call a “Posture Film”. One that regardless of your movie seat discomfort leaves you walking away from the cinema at the absolute peak of your height, perhaps hunting a good piece of chocolate like I was, Or paying meticulous attention to the detail of your experience… the subway rumbling below the theater, the conversations of strangers, the brisk air, all subtleties and their magnificence….
When blessed silence returns, I can listen to the butterflies that flutter inside my head. To hear them, one must be calm and pay close attention, for their wing beats are barely audible. Loud breathing is enough to drown them out. This is astonishing: my hearing does not improve, yet I hear them better and better. I must have butterfly hearing
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if I don’t start writing again I may go insane so a great deal might end up here because that way it’s probably finished and I can get ideas out of me again
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