latest movie briefs - what to watch and what to avoid!

Recently I've been bolstering my flagging DVD collection. Also, I've been to the cinema a few times. I'm loathe to say it, but not all my choices of movies have proved to be good.

Brief comments on the must watches and the must avoids -

Hero - Definitely avoid! Dear lord, how could such a god-awful film ever come into being. And what's more surprising... what the hell is Jet Li doing in it and what the hell is Quentin Tarentino doing producing such a shite film! 0 stars!

House of Flying Daggers - What was said for Hero goes twenty times for this apalling waste of film, CRTs and movie screens! Zero stars! What a pity I can't rate a movie -20,000 stars!

Fun with Dick and Jane - Yawn... what a BORING and inane film! Every time I feel like Jim Carrey might redeem himself, he proves me wrong! 1/2 stars - and that only because of Tea Leone, whom I fancy!

Ice Age 2 - Meltdown... Now this is a nice film! Scary in the bits where the croco-saurs wreak havoc in the drowning mammals! I loved the possums and the sloth is funny! Not as funny as the first film, but watchable once. Three stars.

V for Vendetta - now here's an entertaining film! Definitely worth watching once... I'd give this one 4 stars!

She's the Man - Very funny film... gorgeous girls, good sport, cool guys who're not depicted as Gods... worth a watch! 4 stars!

Sin City - Dear Lord... now THIS is the Tarentino we know and love! None of that gay balletic kung-fu nonsense! A full-on, in-your-face guts and gore and glory film of real men and spunky women! 5 Stars! Shame I can't rate a film 10 stars!

Company of Wolves - what a waste of 6 quid of my hard earned cash! This one gave me a migraine! One Star!

2 can play that game - what an entertaining film! No bullshit, and the gorgrous and emminently sexy Vivaca A Fox... that works for me! 3.5 stars!

Harold and Kumar get the Munchies - funny film. Couldn't quite capture the humour of American Pie or Van Wilder... but good for passing time. 3 Stars!

Well... you have been advised and warned! So watch and avoid accordingly!

true nature of heaven

Heaven -
I do not talk about the biblical or mythical place floating on top of clouds, surrounded by floating people with wings etc.
Rather I talk about a concept, quite nebulous and ill-defined. For me, at the moment, it's just a thought, a fleeting glimpse.
In some ways, it's smart brilliant idea that's lurking just behind the veneer of regular mundane thoughts that infest waking consciousness. You know it's there, you can almost grasp it's form and figure. But at best, it's always just beyond your grasp, and forever threatens to slip deep into the unfathomable recesses to be never again retrieved.
I'll call your attention at this point, to an offbeat movie - Casshern, which tried to depict this difficult-to-grasp concept with some success. Without going into the specifics of the story (I don't believe in spoiling people's fun, just in case any of you reading this post might see the film at some point in the future), I'll just suffice by saying that the movie provides a visual reference to what I attempt to describe. Just before some of the characters in the film die, they see "it". This "it" is something that makes them visibly happy, and enables them to make sense of it all, of what's happening, where they're going etc. What is it that they see? It is different for everyone, and one can only assume that it's a glimpse of their own special heaven (and the film is worth watching for just that fleeting glimpse if nothing else).
So what exactly is heaven? Here, I will be slightly hamstrung by the nebulousness of the concept.
But in extremely simple terms, it's a place where you feel safe and warm and happy. It's a place where no worries touch your mind, where each moment blends into an endless stream of happiness. If you can imagine a life without worries, in which you are totally happy, the place and people you're with would be your heaven.
Few people actually experience this feeling in their life. Many people strive to achieve that feeling, work their entire lives to get their lives in a state that mirrors their personal heaven. But very few actually understand clearly what they search for.
Ever wake up in the morning feeling absolutely and deliriously happy for no apparent reason? If you haven't, you have my sympathy, for you have missed on a taste of your own personal heaven. It has happened to me once. I woke up one morning about 10 years ago, and I was almost tingling with happiness. I had a vague recollection of a dream just before waking up, but it was a brief fleeting shadow of a thought lurking just below the surface (sounds familiar?).
My explanation for this phenomenon is that the subconscious thoughts that shape your dreams, sometimes know precisely what your personal heaven is. Sometimes they manifest this knowledge in the form of a very real glimpse of your personal heaven in a dream.
Knowing one's personal heaven is tied very closely with knowing oneself. In spite of what we think we know, most of us do not know our true selves much. Most of what we think we know about ourselves is actually a complex mixture forged by social influences, aspirational self image, constraints of day-to-day life etc.
If you were ever to get clarity on what your personal heaven is, how would you go about getting there? In my opinion, you could go on to achieve it physically in the physical world that we live in and which we perceive, OR you could work towards it spiritually.
At this moment, I am not spiritually advanced enough to know how I would go about achieving my personal heaven. But I know that the first step is definitely to find out what my personal heaven looks like. Then the second step would be to evaluate if it would be possible to try and achieve my personal heaven in the physical world. My worldly experience tells me that this will be unlikely. My worldly experience tells me that I'll probably discover that the path to my personal heaven starts in self discovery and continues through the discovery of the nature of reality and creation.
There are a lot of spiritual gurus and a lot of spiritual philosophies which will tell you a lot of things about the true meaning of life and of creation and of reality. However I reject all of them on the basis that at best they all lead to somebody else's personal heaven. At best, they work for somebody else. I need to find my own path, discover my own self and my own personal heaven and my own way to get there. When my life ceases to have a worldly purpose, this quest will drive me on. Finding my personal heaven will be the purpose of existing.
Like I said in another post long ago, what gives me hope is the thought that there exists some good in the world. I might not be worthy of of it, but I strive to achieve it nonetheless. My personal heaven is precisely one such good.