Sunday afternoon, the guy is lying down on the grass, enjoying his B.D. In this world where we can order movies via pay-per-view, our books online and our pizza on the phone, it’s nice to go out to read, to sit in a café to write and to walk, outside this stupid metallic cages we call “our convenient cars”!

A Scanner Darkly

I do not recall the last time I’d seen so many geeks together in one place! Was it in the screening of the last Harry potter or the third episode of Lord of the rings?! Anyway, the theatre was more like an international Geek convention! It reminded me of Sharif University’s faculty of software engineering, except here, girls were slightly prettier!

The latest work of Richard Linklater, A Scanner Darkly, which is an animation based on Philip K. Dick’s novel with the same title, is the story of an undercover detective, played by Keanu Reeves, living in Orange County in the near future, fighting against the traffic of a brain-destructive drug called “substance D”. This hallucinogen, is an organic substance, derived from a blue flower, and unlike the novel, this fact is disclosed so early in the movie.

The rest of the story is the interaction between this undercover detective with himself and also with his girlfriend (Winona Ryder) and his two roommates, all of whom severely addicted to the Substance D.

A scanner Darkly is an irritatingly dark movie with a seriously gloomy and depressing atmosphere that perfectly suits the style of the animation being used. The story is surly, and to me deliberately, hard to follow and to be honest, boring at some points due to the excessive use of dialogues, but has its own hilarious moments and also moments to ponder about.

Robert Downey Jr. who plays a mentally damaged, always high, comically wise-guy addict, shows a spectacular performance. I don’t know whether playing in an animation qualifies someone for an academy award, but this magnificent performance certainly deserves to be considered.

And I don’t want to begin talking about my lovely adorable Winona Ryder. I enjoyed every second of her presence, even as an animation character. In fact, when she’s high, she’s even sexier!

Finally, the idea of the scrambled suit, a dress worn by detectives that covers their identity was a marvelous idea in the novel which has been executed stunningly brilliant in the movie!

It should be noted that A Scanner Darkly is the first movie that has been worked entirely by the technique called Rotoscope, in which a motion picture, made by real actors, is sketched on later and turned into animation. The technique has been used quite frequently before, even by the same director in the movie “Walking life”, but never so comprehensively to generate an entire motion picture.

Altogether, an unforgettable experience, a masterpiece which will give an ultimate pleasure to anyone with a bit sense of fantasy, interested in comics or animation, or anyone tasteful enough to appricaite so much talent that has been used in making this breathtaking piece of work.

And a word about this director. What amazes me is how someone could be able to make some of the sweetest, most romantic movies of all time (before sunrise and sunset) , the way one feels he’s been deeply in love his entire life and yet have the ability to enter such gloomy, geeky, dark science fictional realms ( Scanner Darkly and Walking life) like he has been a nerd, or more, a nerd with severe addiction to narcotics all along the way! Add to this, some fantastic comedy like School of Rock and Voila, you have a genuine genius indeed.

I can’t wait to see his latest, “fast food nation”, which is a loosly based on Eric Schlosser's great work.

If you think money can’t buy happiness, you don’t know how to spend!

From a gorgeous brunette’s T-shirt, in the bus

Life is short, Play more

A commercial for Lingerie

This one is a piece of art. Magnificent!

Another one!

Blow job

Scoop

Tonight was the premier of Woody Allen’s latest work, Scoop and what a delightful experience.!I’ve had missed Woody on the screen, his nervous tedious nagging and his stupid monotonous remarks. I’ve had missed a genuine Woody Allen movie with all those glorious sophistications for so long, and tonight, like someone who’s seen his beloved after a while, I could have danced all night!

It was brilliant two hours that erased the fatigue of a week of hard work. I wish he could make a movie, every week. Wouldn’t life be great then?!

I don’t mind if he wants to work in London instead of Manhattan or get involved with British aristocracy instead of New York’s upper class. I don’t care if he’s got so intrigued by rich people getting involved in murders and I certainly understand if he’s in love with Scarlet Johansson and her chubby but extremely sexy body, but containing all these elements, he still can make a Woody Allen movie and not that Match point crap! I was screaming this all these months and tonight, he proved that I was right all along!

Final word, there is something about New Yorkers, which seems interesting to me. No matter how proud they are of Manhattan, no matter how much they adore this island, no matter how confidently they believe (and I absolutely agree with them) that they are living in the center of the world, deep inside, there’s always something they profoundly envy and it is British aristocracy with all its sophistications. From their posh accent to their elegantly decorated mansions, from their mysterious private clubs to all those meticulously kept traditions, they want to be a British aristocrat, even for a day, or in a movie.
Well, honestly, who could blame them?!

When the grass is not green enough!

The angel is standing on top of a building in Berlin, watching people on earth. Everything is in black and white. That‘s how “The wings of desire” commences. Later on, he falls in love. He blinks, and as he opens his eyes, the world is colorful.

I lived a good portion of my life in a beautiful dream, dominated by this visual poetic perception, Wenders has created.

Now, after years and years, I still refuse to believe that the notion is too unrealistic, too dreamy or even too poetic to be true, but what life forced me to believe is, the colors won’t last very long. It’s not too poetic but it certainly is much too momentarily. In a quite unpleasantly non-poetic example, I may say it’s like an old color TV. Sometimes it does what it should do, but all of a sudden, right in the middle of an important football match, it loses the colors and turns into a stupid black and white TV. You can smash it on the head occasionally and you might even get some colors back for couple of minutes, but you’ll lose them again soon, guaranteed!

There’s a technique, used to bring old black and white movies to color, and it simply is to colorize every frame, one by one! Maybe it works in big Hollywood studios, but in real life, manually colorizing every frame is not an option. It’s much too time consuming and the final result always looks disgustingly fake!

A good alternative would be to enjoy life in black and white. The reality is, most of the masterpieces in photography, and to some extend in cinema, are in black and white, where there is no color to distract your eyes from the beauty of the shades, shapes and the compositions. In fact, sometimes you have to manually get rid of the colors and that’s when the colors are weak, unappealing and simply don’t worth to be kept.

You select your poorly-colored picture and then select, Image-mode-Grayscale from the menu! Photoshop will ask “you’re going to lose the color information, are you sure you want to continue?” you pause. You think. You look again. You see that pale blue sky and those unflattering colors, covering your potentially nice image. You remember how unsuccessfully you tried your best to edit the colors. You exhale and click “YES”!

You blink and as you open your eyes…Voila…it’s Black and white.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOPHjNL9BCk&search=mylove%20blair%20bush

I watched this almost 2 years ago for the first time. But due to this new scandal in the recent G8 summit, it’s still hilarious to watch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlYkwgIcd_0&search=nomad

This is amazing...don't miss it

Understanding Engineers

(A funny article I recieved today)

Take One:
To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Take Two:
What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers?
Mechanical Engineers build weapons and Civil Engineers build targets.

Take Three:
Three engineering students were gathered together discussing the possible designers of the human body. One said, "It was a mechanical engineer. Just look at all the joints." Another said, "No, it was an electrical engineer. The nervous system has many thousands of electrical connections." The last one said, "Actually it was a civil engineer. Who
else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?"

It takes more than a Leica to become Bresson

Every time I see Sam, I realized how lazy photographer I am. We were doing the same thing, taking pictures, in Paris. He had a huge, at least 10kg backpack on his shoulders, filled with accessories, lenses and stuff, including my favorite, a magnificent super wide lens, and I, on the other hand, was walking around with a 220g camera, no accessories, nothing! To make the matter worse, I had even forgotten to bring my 200g tripod with myself to Paris! And as if it’s not shameful enough, that was the only thing I forgot to bring with myself!!! And then, he was running around, taking pictures, walking around the monuments to find the good spot, changing lenses one after another, and I was gossiping with Talayeh and taking some shots once in a while, as I was talking (my favorite activity!) between several proposal to sit down somewhere and have a coffee or a drink! You know, carrying around a 220g camera is not easy at all!



As a huge fan of Henri-Cartier Bresson, I was always so tempted by the idea of walking around everywhere with a tiny Leica and freeze the moment, that when Leica introduced a new fully manual D-lux 2, I didn’t think for a second to order it. Well, back then, I had no idea that you can do the same, with your bulky SLR and all those sets of lenses, but to be honest, I’m not that devoted anyway.

I mean, apart from a long list of problems and short comings, including inferior picture quality, not being able to use different lenses or filters, specially the one that I miss the most, Polarizer, and awful a lot of others, it gives you a huge advantage: it is not as intrusive as a SLR with a bulky, photo journalistic lens! and if you want to be a people’s photographer, it worth all the pain indeed.

There are a million ways to declare your love to your beloved, but I don’t know why most of them involve a sort of vandalism and destroying public properties! and almost all of them are somehow lame!



This one in particular, I don’t care how lame it is, has been executed quite tastefully. It caught my eyes, somewhere near the Seine.

What a useless habit…

Thinking I’m talking about. Wired but true! I mean, seriously, unless you’re trying to find a solution for the world’s hunger or global warming, do we need to spend hours and hours thinking? In the real life, do we really need to think that much?!

Personally, I never had any problem in life, required more than 10 minutes of systematic thinking. The rest, were always, trying to find an alternative that didn’t exist, were the excruciating pain of representing the problem in a way that the desirable solution could fit in, were to justify the errors, created by using those favorite answers!

Think about your thinking procedures! and try to be honest with yourself, aren’t you doing the same, almost all the time?! Take a look at this guy! Most of the time we’re just like him, well! not as handsome and muscular but anyway! Are we really waiting for this guy to find any solution for any problem whatsoever, no matter how deep he thinks?!



We think when need to think, which is fine, but when we found the solution, we think just a bit more to buy time before applying the undesirable solution, and then, we think more to avoid doing what we know we should, but we don’t want to. And we think again, waiting for a new alternative, suddenly comes from the above and reveals itself to us. Even sometimes, while we’re resisting doing the right thing, we think again, cause we don’t have anything better to do!

Here comes the worst, when we think we’re thinking, but what we’re really doing is subconsciously complicating the problem in way that the simple, obvious but disliked answer can’t fit in anymore! Then we can sit down, thoughtfully ask our friends “you see! I’m telling you, my problem is so complicated, what the hell should I do?!”

The harsh reality is that the gangrenous leg should be cut! Brutal but inevitable! The more you think about it, the more limbs you’re going to lose.

Sometimes, as soon as the thinking procedure yields a reliable and convincing result, no matter how harsh it is, we should stop thinking, go out, lie down on the green grass and just look at the deep deep blue sky. Just looking!

Please accept the apology!

Israel’s ambassador to UN: “We’re doing the people of Lebanon a favor. Most of them don’t like Hezb-Ollah and appreciate what we’re doing!”

I heard it, 2 minutes ago from BBC with my own ears!

Well, Mr ambassador, Lebanese are busy, burying their dead children, otherwise, they would thank you in person. Please accept the apology!

Alley of lost time!

When I was reading Marcel Proust's "a la recherche du temps perdu", I never thought I would find it in this cute little village in Rubelle, near Paris. I have to admit that my condition was as mysterious and strange as the name of this alley. I had 37 glass of champagne the night before (till 6 am), but I was as good as can be and I was doing photography at 9:00 am, the same day. No headache, no hangover!

Tonight I went to see the new Linklater movie, A scanner darkly, which was a masterpiece. The guy is a genius. Whatever he does is a masterpiece. I’ll write about it later. But before the movie began, there was a trailer for this new horror movie, Pulse, that seriously scared the shit out of me! I mean, the trailer was screaming that the movie is bullshit but GOD it was scary!
Now I came back home, and there’s this dramatic weather and thunderstorms, and I’m so happy that I didn’t watch Pulse instead! I’m so gonna watch it but definitively, I’m gonna check the weather forecast beforehand and certainly, I’m not gonna watch it alone! Anybody in?!

To the land of burnt Cedars...

I was visiting Jardin des Plantes in Paris. I sat down under this massive, beautiful tree to rest for a minute. I raised my head to read the label. As much as I adore nature, I’m clueless about the name of the trees and the flowers! On a small bronze label, it was written: “Le Cedre du Liban!”

I thought to myself, how I wish visiting Beirut sometimes in the future!

Since I had deliberately disconnected myself from the world, I had absolutely no idea that at the same time that I was enjoying the peaceful shadow of this gracious Lebanese cedar, the land of the Cedars is falling into pieces. Karl Marx once said: “History always repeats itself twice, first time as tragedy, second time as farce!”. At least in the case of Beirut, the only thing to laugh about is the world’s reaction toward this tragedy!

Oh…the Glorious Jarret!

About six years ago, I went to this cute little restaurant in Place des Vosges, and I had a dish called Jarret de porc, which simply was a peasant dish, braised porc leg shank with beans. It sounds crazy but to repeat that unforgettable experience was one of the things I was fancying the whole time I was planning revisiting Paris. First time I went there, it was with Marjan. But since we were kind of full for such a heavy dish and also she was willing to try more of the French cheese, we sat in another café on the other side of the square and had wine and cheese instead. Did I mention that I spilled red wine on her white skirts?! Thanks god it was not a first date! Anyway…




Couple of days later and after hours of walking in Paris, I went back to that square, as hungry as possible. I went to that restaurant and asked “six years ago, I had a magnificent Jarret de porc here. Do you still have that on your menu?”

With a half a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape , one of my favorite French wines, and in this magnificent old square, I can put the experience somewhere between watching Annie hall for the first time and a very good sex! I think the rating was clear enough !

Semi-Canadians!

As I was listening to the news about the war in Lebanon, I was stunned by the amount of the Canadian casualties which was somewhere between ten to twenty percent of the whole figure. For seconds, I was wondering why there are so many Canadians in Lebanon, but as they announced the names, everything became clear.

Apparently, during the Lebanon’s long and bloody civil war, a good percentage of rather rich, educated and dominantly French speaking population of Beirut had been immigrated to Canada and mostly to Quebec. During the period of peace and prosperity in Beirut, most of those immigrants, now with Canadian passports, had returned to Beirut and have been working and living there ever since.

Now, the problem is, the awfully large amount of people with dual nationality who haven’t been integrated properly into the Canadian society for whatever reasons, those who’ve come back to their original countries long ago, working and living there and they’re just carrying the Canadian passport as a backup, puts the government of Canada in a very awkward and uneasy situation.
From one side, the government should react in a proper way to the fact that a lot of Canadians have been killed by Israel’s attacks, but from the other side, it’s improper by nature to react to the death of those who apart from their Canadian Passports, are internationally regarded as Lebanese and not Canadian!

The mild and somehow neutral reaction of Canada shows that regardless of what they say, they seem to believe in the existence of a so-called Second class semi-Canadians! The subject that if not addressed and debated properly, can cause considerable problems in the future for the credibility of the Canadian citizenship!

Is Paris Photogenic?

In Persian and Arabic literature, there is a term called “Shahl o Momtane” which simply means something that seems so easy to do but in fact, it’s not.

The first time I visited Paris, which was six years ago, I literally didn’t have the slightest idea how to put a film inside a camera, let alone taking pictures. So All I got from there was a huge visual library inside my brain of all those beautiful monuments and streets. I think there is no need to explain how I was dying to get to Paris and indulge myself and my cute little Leica. In fact, taking good pictures of Paris is somehow like taking beautiful shots from Natalie Portman. How hard could it be?! Well, it turned out to be hard enough! I may say, significantly harder than taking photos of aesthetically-challenged Toronto! ( I still believe it’s a cool city but you have to admit it’s not beautiful per say!). but why it’s so hard?

First of all, the charm of Paris is so overwhelming that like a hearty roasted pork in Munich’s October fest, it’s as hard to digest as it’s delicious. There is a good chance that for the first couple of days, you find yourself, just wandering around, wondering where you should point the camera to. Even after that, the tougher decision would be how to frame the picture. Everything is so delightfully pretty and so strongly connected that it looks like a crime to exclude any bit of it from the rest.

Even when you find your frame, there’s a huge technical problem and it’s distortion. Most of the dreamy streets in Paris are so narrow that they hardly allow you to step back far enough to be able to avoid distortions, caused by shooting with a wide angle lens from the bottom of a tall building from very close distance and unless you’re using a quite pricy shift lens, you should find a way to incorporate that so called problem into your style some how.

Another problem is, as a tourist, you don’t have the luxury to be always at the right place at the right moment like a photographer who actually lives in Paris. Not only you’re going to visit Pairs in a short period of the year, and mostly in the summer, your time also is going to be limited and whether you like it or not, you’ll find yourself in front of a magnificent scene, where the sun is in the middle of the sky and you’re going to have some strong, unflattering shadows combined with some unpleasant colors and if you really want to depict the details in the buildings and your camera can not be equipped with a polarizing filter, well, you should start singing “good bye blue sky” in front of that wall!

And in the summer, they are tourists everywhere and no matter how hard you try, it’s almost impossible not to have them in the frame, and unlike super cute super elegant Parisian girls, most of the tourists are not so pleasing to the eyes to be included in the compositions.

And the last but not the least, every corner of this city has been excavated by many photographers including giants like Bresson and Doisneau and it’s almost a mission impossible to make anything unique or original.

Ok…I think I’ve made enough excuses to justify why my pictures aren’t so great…

Oh God…when I was leaving for holidays, two weeks ago, Israel was still fighting with Palestinians in Gaza. All of a sudden, there’re bombarding Beirut?! I got a Figaro at the Airport and for seconds, I had the impression of time traveling or something! I actually did check the date on the paper…it was not 1982, it was July 16th 2006.
I can’t leave you unsupervised for two weeks?

A very North American comment

Four things you’ll miss in Paris
Customer service, English keyboard, Smoke free environment, and most of all...Air conditioning,

That was disgusting…

In the history of the world cup, only two times the final has got to the penalties and Italy was part of both of them. Do you any wonder?

A team who defended in front of a 10 Men’s France, a team who didn’t have even one opportunity in the second half, doesn’t deserve to win.

A false penalty in 92nd minute, a goal in 118 minute and a win in penalty thanks to the bar… good luck Italy…seriously…good luck.

I’m beginning to believe in the Catholic God…apparently it works…

The loneliest man in the world

Germany lost…at least Italy deserved to win and it lessens the pain….

I was in Brussels, with Ali, Leili and Marjan…Ali and Leili both die hard Italian fans and Marjan, not a real fan but enough anti-German to cheer for Italy, we were in an Italian bar with at least 100 Italians and I'd never felt lonelier in my entire life!

I have to say though, just watching those Italians, swearing and waving their hands was a huge stress reliever to be honest and watching Ali who was accompanying them with the hand gesture and some seemingly Italian phrases that in fact were nothing but noises, so typical of him of course, were quite entertaining!

And after the game, I had no idea that you could find so many Italians in Brussels. They were everywhere, blocking almost every streets in downtown Brussels, dancing and cheering till morning. I felt like I was in Rome and what a bad time for a German fan to be there!

I’m happy that I had so much fun before and after the game that I could handle it rather easily. Although it’s the world game but it’s still just a game and it simply can not ruin my so far wonderful trip!

For now and since I’m in Paris, vive la France and Allez les Bleus!!!

Paris

I’m leaving tomorrow for Paris to attend Arash and Mana’s wedding. Couple of days in Paris, a day trip to Brussels, a daytrip to Munich if Germany reaches to the final, and a possible trip to Barcelona if I could find a good company. That’s been my plan so far.

Anybody has any idea?! Suggestion?

Orkut’s 9 commandments!

1. You’re Profile photo should be at least from a period of your life in which you could pee on your own!
I know you’ve missed the attention you’ve been receiving when you were three, but believe me, no one fantasize a 35 years old man, in dipper!

2. You’re not here only for Activity partners and business networking if you’re profile photo is more like a Victoria Secret’s add!
Either change your photo or admit that you like attentions from people you don’t have any business with but you don’t mind to be their partner in some activities!

3. Girls, just because our country situated in the continent of Asia, you’re not qualified to call yourself Asian!
For that matter, certain other rules apply.


4. If in your profile photo, you’re in a pink bikini in Cancun, holding a Pina Colada, you can not chose Islam as your religion!
Sorry folks! Islam has some regulations that you’ve already broken a dozen of them in one picture so… get over it!

5. That gorgeous elegant lady with those dreamy eyes is not you, she’s a deceased actress called Audrey Hepburn!
I don’t know how much you hate your actual appearance, but seriously, putting up that beautiful picture there, doesn’t change anything!

6. Dragging your boyfriend into your profile picture is not cute!
There are multitudes of places where you can prove your love to your partner and Orkut’s profile photo is definitively not one of those. Changing your relationship status to committed is the decent, less pretentious way of declaring the same thing!

7. You can call yourself a Very Left liberal, if you can distinguish the difference between your left and right hands!
To be politically Very left is not a symbol of being cool, it’s choosing a life style in which your father should start paying taxes and you can’t go skiing on Monday mornings!

8. Funny and quick-witted are the compliments, OTHER PEOPLE should give to you!
If you are so obsessed to be called those, ask one of your stooges to write a testimonial for you!

9. That dark spot in the horizon could be anything from a palm tree to a lost camel. All cameras these days have a button with which you can zoom in! Next time you want to take a picture for your profile, use it!

Sorry! Since I had to go to the bathroom, I couldn’t wait for God to send the last one. You figure it out yourself.