I am so impressed by Sofia Coppola‘s Somewhere with Elle Fanning & Stephen Dorff.

The real star is the gorgeous black 2002 Ferrari 360 Modena. If I ever can afford it, I will definitely suffer the label of douchebag to make that car my daily ride, no matter how exotic.

I also love the fact that Stephen Dorff is less than 5’7″ and they even make him stand up on a wooden box in order to make him seem more commanding.

He’s so scruffy and not merely unimpressive and lost but is has an enamel of Pretty Boy Celeb that he is also irresistible to everybody — no matter how fucked up.

It really is such a brilliant film.

Somewhere spends more time devoted to the in-between space than the real push of the plot. I feel like Sofia is impersonating Un Homme et une Femme, 1966, as directed by Claude Lelouch.

Especially the first scene. Especially the first scenes — in both A Man and a Woman and Somewhere.

PS: Sofia: be careful about over-doing the whole mysterious ending thing.

Last year I had an opportunity to meet Barnet Bain through Ellen Bry who played the role of Mrs. Ester Hobbes in The Lost and Found Family and we have kept in touch a little.  He popped me a link to a an article he wrote a couple months ago that I would love to share with you, Tao of Hollywood–Drama By Barnet Bain.

Tao of Hollywood–Drama By Barnet Bain

I’m so happy to be writing this for you today, the first appearance of “The Tao of Hollywood” on Find Bliss. And what better way to start the New Year than by talking about spirituality, a topic that I love to discuss more than anything in the world. Along the way I’ll be looking forward to sharing some of my own journey with you, in addition to many of the incredible tools and resources I’ve gathered along the way.

Drama. What is drama anyway? In the language of entertainment, drama is conflict. It’s what happens when one character’s set of hot-button adrenaline charged themes, beliefs or values comes into direct opposition with somebody else’s tightly held and equally charged themes, beliefs or agendas.

The primary ‘player’ in dramas, the one with a vested position to protect is usually the ego. The ego always tries to protect its noble opinion of itself, its position as ‘opinionator in chief.’

I’ve been wondering why we tend to remember big dramas more often than the pleasant stories, and I think this is just as true in life as it is in the movies. Pleasant stories get a bad rap in our world. How often do we hear the words ‘chick flick’, or ‘soft’, or ‘lifetime weepie’ used as a form of put down? It’s code for unmanly entertainment. In fact, we can easily become addicted to our drama. Conflict dumps cortisol, adrenaline, and God knows what else into the blood stream.

So why do we tend to obsess on drama, focusing relatively less attention on the flowing, pleasant experiences of life, those devoid of rife and conflict? If this question rings true for you, and it’s a situation you’d like to change, here is a helpful technique.

WRITE OUT one or two dramas from your past. Look for the distressing stuff, things you find yourself remembering obsessively over and over again even though the incident itself may be water long under the bridge. Maybe there’s a theme that’s tended to repeat itself with other players in other situations over the years. For example I once had an old business relationship that came to an end after a lot of drama. Years later I was still reviewing it over and over in my thoughts. At last I understood I was hooked on the ego rush of righteousness and nobility.

The next step is to write down an inventory of your pleasant experiences. You may find yourself recalling memories you’d almost forgotten. Take note of how it feels to remember them.

Finally each time you catch yourself replaying or caught up in drama, remember to make a conscious choice to revisit and respect the pleasant, beautiful experiences of your life.

Hollywood producer Barnet Bain has earned a reputation for celebrating the human spirit in films including The Celestine Prophecy, What Dreams May Come, Jesus, Homeless to Harvard. Upcoming productions are Richard Bach’s Illusions and Milton’s Secret by Eckhart Tolle and Robert Friedman. Barnet’s latest, The Lost and Found Family is now available at your local video store.  To inquire about inviting Barnet to speak at your next event, contact The Tao of Hollywood at (323) 656-8829.

From advertisements for a Portuguese independent film group, several ideas and their enemies. (Via heavy backpack and Kottke)

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont and Grace is Gone are two films I have recently caught unintentionally that I consider to be both sweet films and lovely films.  Sometimes human, other times sad, but all-in-all, very sweet and lovely.

I don’t know where these movies make it into my pantheon of film but there is surely a spot for them in my life.  Why do I like them and why was I pinned through each of them?  Well, I have softened after years after being trained up as a postmodernist who attacks every film with the mallet of deconstruction in the form of gender, race, class, intent, messaging, subtext, and the dumbing-down of cinema and entertainment.

Yes, I was surely insufferable.  Now I see some very fine space for simple tales of love and family. I see space for tales that have the mission of role-modeling how people should behave and how people should love and how families should treat each-other, even if they’re not families of blood but families none-the-less.  So, yes, I can recommend these films.

They’re both sad and uplifting and much easier to watch than the masterful but highly intentionally dense and artfully-sculpted Wings of Desire, a film that I will need to watch again before I go on about it here.

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Cover of Memento [Blu-ray

Beth suggested seeing Memento — and we did over in Dupont — and it was a real mental exercise for me. It was like a puzzle insofar that it was a story played out in reverse. In much the same way Pulp Fiction was nonlinear and Run Lola Run was a study of alternate outcomes, Memento was shown in scenes, each scene butting up against the scene before it.

I quite enjoyed the psychological jumps that the movie made as the camera made love to the actor Guy Pearce, playing Leonard. Here is a summary from the IMDB

Leonard (Guy Pearce) is an insurance investigator, who’s memory has been damaged following a head injury he sustained after intervening on his wife’s murder. His quality of life has been severely hampered after this event, and he can now only live a comprehendable life by tattooing notes on himself, and taking pictures of things with a Polaroid camera. The movie is told in forward flashes of events that are to come that compensate for his unreliable memory, during which he has liaisons with various complex characters. Leonard badly wants revenge for his wife’s murder, but, as numerous characters explain, there may be little point if he won’t remember it in order to provide a satisfying feel to him. The movie veers between these future occurrences, and a telephone conversation Leonard is having in his motel room, in which he compares his current state to that of a client whose claim he once dealt with.

If you cannot follow the nonlinear and it you have a hard time with self-conscious postmodern film making, then you might want to avoid this film and enjoy Pollock, but if you like puzzles, and psychodrama, then Memento is for you.