I am done with marking, life can resume.

So you’re on your knees? Good. Now die to yourself. To your idea of yourself. Everything you think you are, you’re not. What’s left? Find out. Stop. Stop thinking. You people all want to help someone. Help yourself first, like the airplane. Put on your own mask first.  All you hear are your own crazy thoughts like a river of shit running on and on. See your thoughts for what they are. Stop your helping. Stop your planning. Give up! There’s no way out! Not for others, not for you. We are living out here at the end of the road, the end of the Earth in a place called “Paradise”. How’s it going? Perfect? No! You are madder than ever. You are tired? So lie down right here. Be like a cat. Heal yourself. There is no match for the tremendous intelligence of the body. Rest.

In Rear Window Hitchcock appears at the Composer’s apartment, winding a clock. To me, the meaning here seems to be: time to start paying attention. The events that unfold after this shot lead the story to it’s first plot point, the strange and apparently sinister activity of one Lars Thorwald. Jeff, edgy from his fight with Lisa, and ever a peeping Tom, witnesses these strange comings and goings, and starts putting the pieces of the puzzle in their right order. 

I always look for him when watching this movie. Such a discrete but powerful cameo.

It fills my heart with glee whenever there is good chemistry between two characters in a romantic comedy. I get this warm and gooey feeling in my heart that life is good and pretty. 

Such chemistry has become rare in movies lately, but this season of New Girl has really been excellent in making me root for Nick and Jess. 

So I started thinking how I understand good chemistry in film and television: when the story begins we sort of already know that they’re going to meet, face various kinds of antagonism and conflict, maybe become separated but at the end get a happy ending. So the point is to create characters that the audience will come to love separately and somehow wish them to come together. In such a case, they probably need to be emotionally incomplete people who will become complete when they come together. This could work if one or both of them have an inner conflict that needs to be confronted and resolved before the union occurs.  So, I guess character and story development is of the essence here. And I do think New Girl has achieved that this year.

At least it is working for me.

In this lovely scene from Bridesmaids, Annie is seen preparing a cupcake. She spends a considerable amount of time preparing this one solitary cupcake, this pretty, delicate, perfect and ready to be ravished cupcake. It is in this preparation that she somehow seems convincingly in control of her life. At the end, unceremoniously, and in reversal of convention, she eats the cupcake in one bite. Gone is the elegance and delicacy of the making. What good is control, when the heart is aching?

In semiotics, a sign is something that can be interpreted as having a meaning, which is something other than itself, and which is therefore able to communicate information to the one interpreting or decoding the sign. Signs can work through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory or taste, and their meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning.

There are two major theories about the way in which signs acquire the ability to transfer information. In the tradition of semiotics developed by Ferdinand de Saussure the sign relation is dyadic, consisting only of a form of the sign (the signifier) and its meaning (the signified). Saussure saw this relation as being essentially arbitrary motivated only by social convention. Saussure’s theory has been particularly influential in the study of linguistic signs. The other major semiotic theory developed by C. S. Peirce defines the sign as a triadic relation as “something that stands for something, to someone in some capacity”. This means that a sign is a relation between the sign vehicle (the specific physical form of the sign), a sign object (the aspect of the world that the sign carries meaning about) and an interpretant (the meaning of the sign as understood by an interpreter). 

source: wikipedia

Sometimes things work out and justice is served. Maybe the journey is not perfect, maybe the solutions are not noble, maybe the means are questionable. But the end feeling of catharsis helps the viewer, at least it helps me. It helps by restoring a sense of right. As such it becomes a form of escape. An escape to an alternative reality where things work out. Where the good guys win, where justice can be served and crazy people are not rewarded, supported or followed. 

So true