The Eurovision song that melted our hearts

Portuguese people fell in love with the song that will represent the country in Kiev. This song reminds us that we are a country of poets. Yes, this song melted our hearts.

The lyrics are very simple: a boy is asking his beloved to return to him, not to be afraid of loving or suffering but to try to learn to love again. He tells her that his heart can love for both. Amar pelos dois = love for both of us.

Salvador Sobral was very moved by the way people felt the song and learned to sing it. In one of his concerts, in Évora, he asked the people to sing it together again. :)

This is the magic of music. It opens our hearts and fills them with a tender universal love. 

Indian Givers - Standing Rock - In the River - Women's Warrior Song

"Rope" (Alfred Hitchcock): a psycopath in action, an obedient conformist and their victim

Rope is an Alfred Hichtcock's masterpiece: Brandon, a psychopath in action, Phillip, an obedient conformist and David, their victim. Brandon will claim Rupert, their teacher, is their mentor. Rupert will claim he was misunderstood.

We sense, as we enter the apartment and meet the two young men, that something very wrong has happened. The chest where the body is hidden is always in our minds. We wish to see somebody open it and at the same time we fear to confirm the horror. 

In the next sequence Hitchcock shows how he masters scenes about evil minds in every morbid detail: the characters are eating not at the table but on the chest while talking about horror stories. Another morbid detail: Brandon, the psychopath, had lightened candles over it. And while this feast is being staged before our eyes, Hitchcock turns this scene into a comedy making us feel really uncomfortable:

My favourite sequence: Rupert is becoming more and more suspicious and Mrs. Wilson is clearing the chest while the conversation about David is going on:
  

This movie is famous, however, not for its sharp psychological analysis of evil minds, but for its technique: "... There are 10 shots within the film overall, running 9:34, 7:51, 7:18, 7:09, 9:59, 8:35, 7:50, 10:06, 4:37 and 5:40 minutes:seconds each." (IMDB)

"Hyperprism" (Varèse, 1923)

Music had restricted rules, a structure. But Varèse could hear all the sounds of the world.
"Hyperprism" wasn't accepted as music then, but it was his first score to be published (see NewMusicXX notes on youtube, with very interesting information).

If for some odd reason you'd find yourselves in a time machine that suddenly stopped in a very ancient civilization, woudn't it be possible that these were the sounds that would shake you?

Menphis Beat, the right formula

Menphis Beat is more than a tv series, Menphis Beat is the right formula to let us take a look at a city, its people and its culture. In Menphis it's the music, the music is everywhere.
But also the characters that seem like real people with real issues, emotions, fears, empathy. The lines and the dialogues are funny, never boring.
I wonder if someone could use the same formula in a city like Detroit, a city that could benefit from: a nice perspective of its streets and best places (restaurants, bars, shops, markets, houses, parks); a good story with interesting characters; and a true love for its culture.
Today tv series are replacing movies and its public is faithful. So, it's a promising way of promoting cities that need a new breath. I'm not thinking of CSI, it would be just one more. I mean something like Menphis Beat, something about real people, culture, habits, behavior, stories, places.

Life as a road movie

David Lynch' The Straight Story: life as a road movie. 
It is also about aging. Aging in a wiser perspective, finding the right rythm of life, a choice of freedom and some dignity, travelling with family and friends in our hearts.

"Stravinsky's 'The Rite of Spring', Visualized in a Computer Animation for its 100th Anniversary" (Open Culture)

When I heard Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring for the first time I was hypnotized. I was still a child watching TV in black and white, and it was a ballet.
I don't enjoy ballet any more but this music stays in my brain and in my heart. The Rite of Spring could be a perfect soundtrack for so many movies... movies about life, spring, nature, desire, beginning, passion, ravishment, vitality.  

I found this Computer Animation in Open Culture:

"... In 2013, the art of computer graphics greatly expands the quest for an ever more perfect way to represent music not just to the ear, but to the eye. Composer, pianist and software engineer Stephen Malinowski has long led the way with the various iterations of his Music Animation Machine."

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" projects on extra-terrestrials the best parts of human nature

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a Spielberg movie about extra-terrestrials that reveals much more about terrestrials. It projects on extra-terrestrials the best parts of human nature.

This week I found on youtube a video with a scene I wanted to show you today:

Just notice how some of these scenes look like a documentary, that's an art mastered by very few directors: it seems real because it's about real people, it could happen that way. And also notice how strong is human quest for the truth. They want answers. No boundaries can stop them. Their need to understand overcomes fear.
Religion, science and politics have tried to fill this human quest. We are submersed by information, manipulation, consumer marketing, the constant noise. This movie also reminds us that we must always question information and try to validate it.
No given explanation can replace individual counsciousness, especially when it makes resonance with others'. We need one another, we are communities, so, we must learn how to respect other's space and time.

Person of interest, the irrelevant list...

Recently I am spending my late afternoons watching Person of interest with Jim Caviezel. The script is based on a screenplay developed by J. J. Abrams and Jonathan Nolan (IMDB).
Thank you all, writers, producers, actors, designers, for the nice moments I'm spending while Winter is welcoming Spring.
It's comforting to believe there is justice in this world and to see the best of mankind showing up in these episodes.