Love Closes `The Long Distance Relationship

Ah, terrific, terrific.  Now, that's a very creative, very poignant twist on what first seemed to be a usual long-distance relationship.  The young lovers live in two different cities, maybe two different countries.  For a stretch, they are enamored with each other and draw on technology to keep themselves close.  Then, the mood shifts, turns down, and at first this, too, seemed common and expected.  Except she is dying, so she films herself for him in her waning days.  Then, in the end, we find out that they had been together all along, that is, through her death.  What makes their relationship long-distance is the fact she has gone someplace else and he is still there.  Utterly sad, utterly brilliant.

Symbolism in `When You Love Someone

"When you Love Someone" tells the story of a boy who tries to run away from his love, after realising that his memories are the only thing he still keeps from his past. 

The idea for this project was to create a simple, yet inspiring video, something that could actually make people feel better, awakening deep feelings and emotions. While the original story doens't search for great attention, its potencial remains on the beauty of the images and landscapes, combined with the musical experience. Our goal was not to impress the public with a remarkable screenplay, but to give a brighter look to your day. We hope we did it. Thanks!

In the absence of text (words), this short film may be too abstract for some.  "I don't get it" and "What just happened?" are two comments.  But to convey love purely in visual and soundtrack is creative.  Things become symbolic and visceral, thus more evocative.  This, instead of logical or precise.

The terrain this dude hikes through is lush and stunning, yet rugged and hilly, and that's a terrific metaphor for the ambivalent nature of a breakup.  We find that he had just headed to the neighborhood park.  The little wildflower he picks up is a reliving of memories for him and in the process a working through of his loss.  Sleep is a kind of elixir, so when he wakes up, he isn't exactly rid of his malaise but he feels better and he begins to see life as fresh and playful again.

Love Changes Things in `Text Me

Falling for each other online, two teenagers finally meet in person for a date at what turns out to be a mob-owned Italian restaurant. Will their Internet love shatter or grow strong and rich like a tomato ragout?

Noah and Jamie are far from a match made in heaven, but in their awkward, occasionally snide way they run into each other like contact lenses that drop on the floor.  When Jamie slides on her glasses, she looks suddenly different to him, prettier and more approachable somehow, and she in turns looks at him differently, perhaps more endearing in his dorkiness.

Love Excalibur in `Struck

On his way to work one day, Joel (Bodhi Elfman) is impaled through the chest by a three-foot arrow. But it doesnt harm him. And it wont come out. So Joel has to learn to deal both with his newfound protrusion, and his own painful loneliness. He tries to go to work, to date women, but no one seems ready to accept his strange flaw. Little does he know, his life is about to change forever...

I love it.  When you're lovestruck, people notice it everywhere you go.  You feel awkward, as it hampers you from doing the things you normally do.  You may go on date after date, but while the others are preoccupied perhaps with their own Cupid arrow, or at least the desire for it, they do sense that you're not all there.  Cupid may be the unshaven, beer guzzling, football fan, but only the chivalrous King Arthur (or earnest Queen Annette, as the case may be) can extricate the Excalibur embedded tightly in stone.

`Little Gidding in `Maybe One Day

Even the weather in its inconsistency is at least routinely inconsistent...  But as I struggle up this 40-year hill, I have to consider what I will see at the top...  As the 70-year old me beats his chest, who's going to hear that roar of success...?  Hello?  Exactly, no one...  In the sea will I wash.  The swell of the sea is just kind of swell.  I enjoyed today.  

What a brilliant film!  The cinematography and soundtrack, the script and acting.  All converge to make for a lifetime in a day for this man.  It reminds me of this little bit from a poem:

TS Eliot

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

From `Little Gidding (part V), by TS Eliot.

Finding a New Purpose in `The Plan

It's about going back to a time when life was unexpected.  Taking a chance that would allow me to start over.  Finding a new purpose, a new adventure, a new love.  I will go through with it.  No matter what the outcome is, at least it won't be the life that I live now.  

I believe that chance meetings aren't necessarily chance meetings.  I believe that things happen for a reason but that reason isn't always easy to discern.  I believe that however our life turns is exactly how it is supposed to turn.  

`Here and Now, by Julian Higgins

Julian Higgins is a Los Angeles-based writer and director. His graduate thesis film from the American Film Institute, THIEF, won the 2011 Student Academy Award, and he went on to make his television directing debut with one of the final episodes of HOUSE. In his Project Imaginat10n film, HERE AND NOW, a young married couple contemplates the future of their strained relationship, reflecting back on the times when they were most in love.

Many years ago, before we were married, Karen and I were friends with John and Madeleine.  We may have met in T'ai Chi class, John having been my student, I believe.  One time, at their apartment in Rogers Park in Chicago, John played a poignant piano piece that, I swear, I had heard before.  But I couldn't place it.  I never knew the title or composer, as I somehow never felt inclined to ask John.  I just listened to it, turned inward, and that was that.  Some years later, I heard that piece again, and by then I had two layers of evocative memory at my disposal.

It was Gymnopédie no. 1, by Erik Satie.  

Julian Higgins anchors his film on this piece, and if it were music or poetry, it would be the volta.  In her reminiscence, she and her husband are making love in the tight bed quarters of a trailer, and this piece is playing in the background.  She may have been dreaming, while asleep lightly, and remembering at the same time.  But she wakes up, and hears it in their house.  So it isn't just a dream, because her husband is actually playing it in the living room.  Their relationship remains quite strained, but this volta is the pained beginning of their romantic rekindling.

Higgins is not a celebrity, so he wasn't endowed with a big budget to make the film and there isn't any behind-the-scenes video.  But no matter.  Here's a blog that captures the under story: Abigail Spencer Lights Up Award-Winner.

`A Dream of Flying, by Georgina Chapman

"A Dream of Flying" is the story of a girl who will spend her whole life trying not to fly, and a boy who would give his life to teach her. Throughout different stages in their lives, timeless love will bring the couple together and lift them off of their feet.

It's lovely, lavish film.  `A Dream of Flying is, in a way, a literal thing for me.  It's about half-and-half, that is, dreams of flying that were pleasant and magical and those where I felt out of control and in the midst of dread.

For Georgina Chapman, however, flying is a metaphor for imagination and mischief in childhood.  But her film infuses the metaphor with life, so it grows and changes.  In young adulthood, for instance, flying is about unconventionality and escape, even romance and reminiscence.  Finally, in older adulthood, flying is about fantasy, remembrance, and death.  I don't know if Chapman intended this, but the couple ascending into the night sky, off the Ferris Wheel, made me think of Jesus Christ rising to the Heavens in exalted light.

`Chucked, by Jared Nelson

A passionate and unwearying Writer/Director, Jared Nelson graduated with a B.A. in Filmmaking and Theatre in early 2013. 'Chucked' is his sixth short film. Awards from his other work include: 2012 Boise State Film Festival Winner; 38th Student Academy Awards Semi-Finalist. In his film 'Chucked,' a book return shaped like a robot falls in love with a human girl.

The first girl (Devon Wilczynski) makes it her daily routine to visit the bookstore, pick out a book for Chuck, then have a chat with him that is more of a diary note.  But it is the nature of friendship, isn't it, that once a romantic interest comes into the picture, the friendship slinks dispirited off to the side.  But does Chuck have any such sentiment or emotion?  Jared Nelson suggests that he does.  When the second girl (Allison Molnaa) enters, all is well that ends well.

It's a lovely little film, well-shot and well-scripted.  The actors do quite fine, too, at making it all unforced, natural.  I was curious about its Writer/Director and his behind-the-scenes, and found UCR [University of California, Riverside] Alumnus Jared Nelson Wins Unique Short Film Competition.

`Cloud Atlas (3) The Sonmi-451 Philosophy

To be is to be perceived, and so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other.  The nature of our immortal lives is in the consequences of our words and deeds, that go on and are pushing themselves throughout all time.  Our lives are not our own.  From womb to tomb, we're bound to others. Past and present.  And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.

It is Neo-Seoul, and the year is 2144.  The city is a paradigm of technology, but it belies the underground existence of the old Seoul where a revolution is brewing.  Sonmi-451 (Doona Bae), a product of human engineering to populate a slave workforce for the Purebloods, is the unlikely revolutionary leader.  Her love affair with Commander Hae-Joo Chang (Jim Sturgess) emerges over the course of his rescuing her from captivity and oppression.

The foregoing wise words from Sonmi-451 come as the Enforcers squelch the nascent revolution, and becomes a bible for people of the Big Isle, 106 winters after that Fall.  The people believe she is indeed a goddess, but are in a bit of shock when Meronym (Halle Berry) tells Zachry (Tom Hanks) that she was simply human.

Maybe it is by cinematic and thematic design that I found Sonmi-451 the most compelling character, and the romance between her and Hae-Joo the most hard-wrought and ultimately the most tender.  Their lovemaking is erotic and sublime at the same time.  Bae and Sturgess cement their love further in an odd cinematic retreat-yet-advance in time.  They also play Adam and Tilda Ewing, newly married, in the 1849 Pacific Islands, and their quiet revolt against her slave business-owning family follows in a scene, after Hae-Joo is shot and Sonmi-451 is executed.  Moreover the handsome actor and pretty actress apparently date each other.

All of this is the context for these wise words, and there is more to draw from the philosophy of `Cloud Atlas.  In time I will capture more.