All posts tagged: hollywood

Station Eleven and other books like turquoise blue seas

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How do you choose what worlds to get emerged in? I finished a book last week and I’m having a hard time moving on. My book selections are pretty random, but afterward I usually see the beautiful symmetry of adding this particular world to the thousands of worlds I already hold within. A Facebook link led me to a Buzz-whatever like list of books that “contain horror in completely ordinary settings” and I am so down with that. Of Station Eleven: A novel they said, “that moment of genuine terror when the internet goes out forever in this post-apocalyptic world.” For all my talk of wanting to usher in a new evolution of consciousness more aligned with the planet we live on, I’m not really into dystopian, post-apocalyptic books. They are too bleak and lack the beauty I crave in my worlds. I devoured The Hunger Games, and moved on. I’m happy that the movies are somehow better. But it’s not somewhere I want to live. I went into Station Eleven blind and found something …

Angelina

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I was 17 when I became infatuated with Angelina Jolie. It was 2001 and Tomb Raider was about to come out. Hollywood, the media, tabloids, everything seemed a little different back then. It wasn’t so immediate around the clock. There was less internet and no social media. An half hour interview with the celebrity you liked still had to be scheduled on MTV and taped on VHS. Magazine clippings actually mattered. And I settled in to watch MTV At the Movies: Tomb Raider, and I met my spiritual soul mate. I did tape it, and I watched it over and over. It wasn’t just how beautiful she was, or the things she got to experience while filming Tomb Raider in Iceland and Cambodia; it was the tone of her voice when she got excited. It was how she talked about love and her husband Billy Bob Thornton. It was that, for some reason or the other, she had managed to carve out a life for herself in which she was absolutely free, and I had …

Old Hollywood on the page

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A well-written biography is the intersection between life, story and truth – my three absolute favorite things. To follow someone’s journey through their whole life, their highs and lows, regrets and lessons learned, is a very intimate thing. And unlike fictional stories, it feels more intimate because it is all true. Sure, they can’t all be gems, and it’s up for debate whether the fault lies with writer or subject, but the really good ones – oh gosh. It really is like gaining a friend. You come to know this person. You laugh with them at their silly stories, you read the poignant moments over and over, marvel at their perfection, and ultimately, you cry when they die, no matter how rich and wonderful a life. Mainly, because it was so rich and wonderful. In October I went to Hollywood for a few days to hang out with my favorite girls – Rita Hayworth and Gene Tierney – and I took a tour of the Warner Bros lot to get the feel of a historic …

The Artist’s Walkabout ft. Lana Del Rey and Charmaine Olivia

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I don’t know if you are born an artist, or if you become one. I guess deep down I think everyone is an artist at heart, it’s the human condition to want to create something beautiful and meaningful, but not everyone feeds that particular beast. I have all these moments from childhood that stand out to me, and lately I’ve been cataloging them to see if they can steer me on the right path since I’ve been feeling a little lost lately. I’ve always been kind of a loner and at age 9 my biggest luxury was to stay home alone and spend all day building and playing with pirate Lego. Pirates appealed to me from a very young age because they had two things I’ve always desired: absolutely freedom and tropical islands. I could easily spend six hours or more totally engaged building ships and deserted islands with crumbing forts. I had an audio book of Treasure Island that I knew inside out, I had played it so many times, but it always help …

A guide to watching independent movies and review: YellowBrickRoad (2010)

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Being bedridden with a migraine is definitely on my list of least favorite things to do but finding random little film gems is pretty high on my favorite list so I’m calling this weekend a draw. After high school I worked on and off in an independent video store for a couple of years where the only perk was free access to a 30,000 titles film library. This was before the dawn of torrents so this was the best film education that money could not buy. I’m sure everyone who is interested in filmmaking knows this, but the best way to learn about what makes a movie good is to watch independent non-Hollywood movies. Hollywood movies are too flashy and too filled with good-looking famous people that feel like your friends to really notice if the story works or not. And because Hollywood movies are so expensive to make, they can’t be very complex because it has to reach a wide audience in order to make their money back. There can be no ambiguous endings …

Notes from my travels: Los Angeles (2006)

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I’ve been wanting to write but then it’s also been the last thing on my mind all summer. I’ve searched for perfectly constructed sentences but I’ve contented myself with finding them in other people’s work. And I did, only they weren’t always written. Sometimes it was a sunset. On certain evenings the sky in California turns pink, not just around the horizon — all of it; cotton candy pink. I’ve been meaning to write about Los Angeles. So I might as well do it now, while my nails are drying. I’ve been alternating between blood red and aubergine for months, several times a week I’ll switch back and forth. Today is purple but when little children in restaurants and shops confront me about it, they insist it is black and their voice commend me for such a bold choice. Some mornings I wake up alone. He’ll be gone already but never without touching my lips with his and, “I love you.” We hardly ever part without those three precious words. I didn’t think I wanted …