FILM_ W Allen's misdemeanor -A great murder story

how to write about Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, a film which poses the question: what is morality, if not what your conscience allows you to get away with? Outside the grim Bananas, Crimes and Misdemeanors is Allen's most unrelentingly bleak and hope-annihilating film. His blackest comedy, it also might be his best.

SPOILER: Judah confesses to the now divorced Cliff a "hypothetical" murder scenario with a "strange twist", where a rich man gets away with murder, and comes to realize that all people carry around awful deeds with them, and with the passing of time all crises fade, and life goes on.  

"By choosing to have Dolores murdered, Judah has defined himself as a man of wealth and privilege, respected by society, 'idolized' by his wife, and a murderer. He can live with that." 

This is the "real world" we are left with: the rich and powerful routinely get away with murder--literally in Judah's case--evil is respected, adored. Meanwhile the weak get shit on. 

The Guardian -REVIEW 

In Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Judah Rosenthal, played by Martin Landau, is a successful opthamologist who also has a little mistress problem, which he solves by asking his brother, a thug, played by Jerry Orbach, to “handle the matter.” This involves hiring someone to kill her in her apartment and make it look like a robbery. 

Judah responds, “God is luxury I can’t afford.”Because Judah was raised in a deeply observant family, he does have attacks of conscience . . . at first. 

At the end of the film, and after some time has passed and Judah is obviously not going to "pay" for the murder of his mistress, Judah recounts his own story, as a third-person impersonal narrative, which he thinks would make a great movie, to Woody Allen’s character, Cliff Stern, a documentary filmmaker, whom he has just met at the wedding of the rabbi Ben's daughter, where they are both guests:

Judah: My murder story has a very strange twist.

  SCENE____ 1:50:28

Judah: And after the awful deed is done, he finds that he's plagued by deep-rooted guilt. Little sparks of his religious background which he'd rejected are suddenly stirred up. 

• He hears his father's voice. 
• He imagines that God is watching his every move. Suddenly, it's not an empty universe at all, but a just and moral one, and he's violated it. 

• Now, he's panic-stricken. 

• He's on the verge of a mental collapse-an inch away from confessing the whole thing to the police. 

And then one morning, he awakens. The sun is shining, his family is around him and mysteriously, the crisis has lifted. He takes his family on a vacation to Europe and as the months pass, he finds he's not punished. In fact, he prospers. 

The killing gets attributed to another person - a drifter who has a number of other murders to his credit, so I mean, what the hell? One more doesn't even matter. 

Now he's scott-free. His life is completely back to normal. Back to his protected world of wealth and privilege. (1:52:02)

Cliff : Yes, but can he ever really go back?
Judah: Well, people carry sins around with them; maybe once in a while he has a bad moment, and in time, it all fades.
Cliff : Well, then his worse beliefs are realized.
Judah: Well, I said it was a chilling story, didn’t I? . . . This is reality—in reality, we rationalize, we deny, or we couldn’t go on living.
Cliff : Here’s what I would do: I would have him turn himself in, because then your story assumes tragic proportions, because in the absence of a god, or something, he is forced to assume responsibility himself. Then you have tragedy.
Judah: But that’s fiction, that’s movies—you’ve seen too many movies. 

Final Scene:   Professor Levy: [voiceover]

We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions. Moral choices. Some are on a grand scale. Most of these choices are on lesser points. But! We define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are in fact the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does not seem to have been included, in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying, and even to find joy from simple things like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more. 

Pinker - 'grammar rules' it's OK to break (sometimes)

Dr. Steven Pinker On Life (07:04) 





At The Colbert REPORT  - TV show -2007 (06:38)
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/n36pgb/the-colbert-report-steven-pinker

Steven Pinker:

'Many of the alleged rules of writing are                            actually superstitions'

Linguists and lexicographers have long known that many of the alleged rules of usage are actually superstitions. They originated for oddball reasons, violate the grammatical logic of English, degrade clarity and style, and have been flouted by the best writers for centuries. At the same time, pointing out the illogic of many rules of usage means that rules of usage should interpreted judiciously, with a sensitivity to their historical provenance, consistency with English grammar, degree of formality, and effects on clarity and grace.For all these reasons, I have long recognised the need for a style guide based on modern linguistics and cognitive science.

at TED TALKS: 

What our language habits reveal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjQM8PzCEY0


Stephen PINKER: 

     "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's".

 Standards of usage are desirable in many arenas of communication. They can lubricate comprehension, reduce misunderstanding, provide a stable platform for the development of style and grace, and signal that a writer has exercised care in crafting a passage.

Does the putative rule confuse grammar with formality? Every writer commands a range of styles that are appropriate to different times and places. (...) Many prescriptive guides are oblivious to this distinction, and mistake informal style for incorrect grammar.

(four rules -out of 10)

like, as, such as

Long ago, in the bygone era when cigarettes were advertised on radio and television, every brand had a slogan:  And most infamously, "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should."

Writers are free to use either "like" or "as", mindful only that "as" is a bit more formal, and that the Winston-tastes-good controversy became such a bloody shirt in the grammar wars that readers may mistakenly think the writer has made an error.

A related superstition, ruthlessly enforced by many copy editors, is that "like" may not be used to introduce examples. According to this guideline, "like" may be used only for resemblance to an exemplar, as in "I'll find someone like you". (...) To end,  "Such as" is more formal than "like", but both are legitimate.

But this does not mean that every pet peeve, bit of grammatical folklore, or dimly remembered lesson from a Jurassic's classroom is worth keeping. Many prescriptive rules originated for screwball reasons, impede clear and graceful prose, and have been flouted by the best writers for centuries.

that and which

Many spurious rules start out as helpful hints intended to rescue indecisive writers from paralysis when faced with a choice provided by the richness of English. These guides for the perplexed also make the lives of copy editors easier, so they may get incorporated into style sheets. Before you know it, a rule of thumb morphs into a rule of grammar, and a perfectly innocuous (albeit second-choice) construction is demonised as incorrect. 

The choice between "that" and "which", according to the rule, is simple: 

• nonrestrictive relative clauses take "which";  "The Cambridge restaurant, which had failed to clean its grease trap, was infested with roaches." 
• restrictive relative clauses take "that".

To me, this second part of the rule is utterly incorrect. There is nothing wrong with using "which" to introduce a restrictive relative clause

 "The Cambridge restaurant which (that)  had failed to clean its grease trap, was infested with roaches." 

 Indeed, with some restrictive relatives, "which" is the only option, such as "That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and "The book in which I scribbled my notes is worthless." Even when "which" isn't mandatory, great writers have been using it for centuries, as in Franklin Roosevelt's "a day which will live in infamy".

So what's a writer to do? The real decision is not whether to use "that" or "which" but whether to use a restrictive or a nonrestrictive relative clause.

 "The Cambridge restaurant, which had failed to clean its grease trap, was infested with roaches." 

very unique

The purists say you can't be a little bit married or a little bit pregnant, and purists believe that the same is true for certain other adjectives. One of the commonest insults to the sensibility of the purist is the expression "very unique" and other phrases in hich an "absolute" or "incomparable" adjective is modified by an adverb of degree such as "more", "less", "somewhat", "quite" or "almost".

Great writers have been modifying absolute adjectives for centuries, including the framers of the American Constitution, who sought "a more perfect union". Many of the examples pass unnoticed by careful writers, including "nothing could be more certain" and "there could be no more perfect spot". Though the phrase "very unique" is universally despised, other modifications of "unique" are unobjectionable, as when Martin Luther King wrote, "I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson, and the great grandson of preachers."

count nouns, mass nouns and "ten items or less"

English speakers can conceptualise aggregates as discrete things, which are expressed as plural count nouns, such as "pebbles" or as continuous substances, which are expressed as mass nouns, such as "gravel".

 the purists have botched the "less-fewer" distinction. "Less" is perfectly natural with a singular count noun, as in "one less car" and "one less thing to worry about". It's also natural when the entity being quantified is a continuous extent and the count noun refers to units of measurement, such as "21 years old" and "70 miles an hour".
And "less" is idiomatic in certain expressions in which a quantity is being compared to a standard, such as "Describe yourself in 50 words or less."

wikipedia knows nothing plus -else-more than Socrates

When ignorance is a bliss, or is it not? 

Have we ever heard of a witty, childish paradox?

Have you ever browsed randomise on the wikipedia?
We did. We reached a nice entry by serendipity: 

"I know that I know nothing" or "I know one thing: that I know nothing", sometimes called the Socratic paradox, 

Related to  a question we read in two sources “spoken words in two characters from Xenophon's or Plato's works:

 Socrates (Xenophon) or  Chaerephon (Plato)

is said to have posed to thePythia, the oracle of Delphi, in which the Oracle stated something like Socrates is the wisest  = "No-one is wiser than him"

The phrase, originally from Latin:

"ipse se nihil scire id unum sciat",[2])

is a possible paraphrase from a Greek text.

It is also quoted as "scio me nihil scire" / "scio me nescire".[3]

 It was laterback-translated to Katharevousa Greek as

 "[ἓν οἶδα ὅτι] οὐδὲν οἶδα", [èn oîda óti] oudèn oîda)

classico

 ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα, hèn oîda hóti oudèn oîda;

Somebody was interested in seeing the Socrates famous quote in various versions or various languages. We know the quote is “I know one thing, that I know nothing”. It is simplified as “I know that I know nothing”.

However, there are various translations of the original ancient Greek Word

 ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα hèn oîda hóti oudèn oîda.

        

        browsing the internet .... these various translations were found.

• “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.”
• “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”
• “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
• “I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.”
• “To know, is to know that you know nothing.”
• “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.”
• “One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.”
• “True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.” 

 The more quotes we read, the greatest the wonder and his influence in Beauty, philosophy and virtue: Socrates KANT be as WILDE as LAO-TSE! Judge by yourself.... with JOBS:

However, in Apology, Plato relates that Socrates accounts for his seeming wiser than

any other person because he does not imagine that he knows what he does not know.

[…] ἔοικα γοῦν τούτου γε σμικρῷ τινι αὐτῷ τούτῳ σοφώτερος εἶναι, ὅτι ἃ μὴ οἶδα οὐδὲ οἴομαι εἰδέναι.

[Then I have seemed at least than this [person] at any rate with this little something itself to be wiser: because that which I may not have known-through-seeing in no way I imagine myself to have known-through-seeing.]

The impreciseness of the paraphrase of this as I know that I know nothing stems from the fact that Plato's Socrates is not saying that he does not know anything but means instead that he cannot know anything with the absolute certainty of seeing. 

Socrates also deals with this phrase in Plato's dialogue Meno when he says:^[10]

καὶ νῦν περὶ ἀρετῆς ὃ ἔστιν ἐγὼ μὲν οὐκ οἶδα, σὺ μέντοι ἴσως πρότερον μὲν ᾔδησθα πρὶν ἐμοῦ ἅψασθαι, νῦν μέντοι ὅμοιος εἶ οὐκ εἰδότι.

[So now I do not know what virtue is; perhaps you knew before you contacted me, but now you are certainly like one who does not know.] (trans. G.M.A. Grube)

    == 000 =====  0 =====  000   =====

PS: In other words.... 

TIANWEI shows some of his skills at calligraphy in Catalonia, 

"Writing Beauty", a forgotten art.

To know more about the text, see link below:

http://ma-serendipity.blogspot.com.es/2015/06/i-know-nothing-about-calligraphy-tian.html

2-VID 1-socrates:  ________________  https://vimeo.com/131714875

2-VID-201master said: _____________ https://vimeo.com/131715315

4-in progress-WA0008   _______ https://vimeo.com/131715134

4-compared panels- WA0009 ___ https://vimeo.com/131715270

I know nothing about calligraphy -TIAN at gilded work

Once upon a time, ... 

I met a young learner, an artist inside,

who came form the eastern shores of the northern China sea,

Tianwei 李天伟.

He kindly accepted my humble proposal to paint a panel for me.

It become a harder work than expected.

I learned on the way about practical aspects of Chinese calligraphy, as if it had been an open book! The flow of the tool, the space around the character, the order of strokes, etc.
Unbelievable!.
How pleasant it was for me ... as it was action for him!
                                                                                               -ma-serendipity


Now the process itself. We went through all the stages, in harmony, five of them, of course:

STAGE 1. Inscription:

Message. Which one?
select something meaningful
a bit eastern, a bit western.

I said "Em sona a chino" (in Catalan : "it sounds Chinese to me")
He said: 'it is Greek to me.'

The final selection was evenly decided: Master Socrates came to help us.

Wǒ zhī wǒ bù zhī suǒ zhī

Meǐ rén bǐ tā gèng zhì huì 

    "I know i know nothing". - Socrates (470-399 a. C) 

    The Master (= Confucius -551–479 BC) said:

                "No-one is wiser than him"


STAGE 2. PENCILWORK ON PAPER:

Suport.  He wrote the characters stylistically on 2 long pieces,
one for each sentence.

It was necessary to add the comments:

1- The first piece was said by Socrates (="so+ga+re+tu)To write his name he needed 4 extra characters!

2- he started the second sentence with the typical Confucius start:"The Master said:", as in the Analectas  论语, pinyin: Lún Yǔ

He said: Now I know I have to paint 

11 (7 +4) characters on first lineand 9 (2+ 7) on the second line

This is the part I really enjoyed as I tried to repeat and disciplined myself to draw the characters in the RIGHT order!  And my attempts were poorly done. It only meant I needed more practice ... till one day  woill arrive that I would be able to write in the right order of strokes, the the ink and flow of tool, and so on!  In this regard I like G. K. Chesterton's quote: 

• “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” 

-ma-serendipity

STAGE 3. LARGE BRUSHWORK ON CARDBOARD:

He said:  Distributing space, the best answer was:

  1- different size for text and place it in the centre,

  2- Socrates on the upper right part and 

3  The Master on the lower left part,

to keep the harmony on the panel.

Now go on next stage...

STAGE 4. WORK ON WOOD -THICK BRUSH:

Working on the correct size, but with a thicker brush
we calibrated the width of the brushpaint on the surface:

1 -We worked on a larger size first and 

2- adapted to the second sentence.

STAGE 5. GILDED WORK AND ARTIST:

Many thanks for this personal workshop we shared, Tian and me, during a weekend of June in Manresa.

Last words from Tianwei:
To say it with a Chinese motto:

台上一分钟，台下十年功

• One minute's brilliant performance on the stage
•  is attributed to ten years' practice under the stage.

  
To reach Tianwei... click here 


PS: In other words.... 

TIANWEI shows some of his skills at calligraphy in Catalonia, "Writing Beauty", a forgotten art. 

If you had troubles with video viewing, try VIMEO links below:

2-VID 1-socrates:  ________________  https://vimeo.com/131714875

2-VID-201master said: _____________ https://vimeo.com/131715315

4-in progress-WA0008   _______ https://vimeo.com/131715134

4-compared panels- WA0009 ___ https://vimeo.com/131715270

FIRST IMPRESSIONS towards Sarajevo - 13 IDEAS

0:01 - Hey guys! If you are watching this video it means that you are probably interested in my country … and are likely to visit it one day.
0:02 -  So, Today I would like to talk to you what to expect when you first come to this land.
0:03  - First time I came to Bosnia was pretty long time
ago, so my memories are a bit blurry now, however, you can never forget some things.
0:04  - So first of all, when you come to this capital city be prepared to get lost.
0:05  - Even though it is not difficult to get around the airport after you come out, if you can not  speak our local language
0:06 - all signs are going to be written in some mysterious strange characters that you have to guess what they mean.
0:07  - Before in other trips, for example Anna, when she travelled in Europe I was at least able to recognize letters
0:08  - and even figure out some words even if she does not speak the language,
0:09  - On the contrary, here for example Steve, he must probably feel just lost when he first arrives.
0:10  - While people are friendly not many can speak English, so foreigners might have a hard time asking for directions.

 TWO21:  - You are going to be rich!  4 thousand, 5 hundred. A thousand local money is equivalent to 50 euros,
22:  -  which means you can be a millionaire in Bosnia fairly easy. YES, Very easily, INDEED.
23: - Then something we can’t live without, food. Balcanic food is spicy! I mean really hot,
24:  - I remember some people I first met were not able to handle their meals at all.
25:  - For me, on the one hand, this is heaven as I love spicy food and basically have none of these delicious dishes back home.
26:  - On the other hand though, everything is super sweet in the bakery!
27:  Does Steve want to buy some white bread? Then he must be prepared to taste super candy sweetness.
28:  - Does Anna want to eat crisps with while having a beer?
29:  - Again, be Reddy toe at sweetness, sweet things. You’ll have to either go to a western bar or change your eating habits.
30:    - Oh, and you don’t relieve Bosnians really use salt either. 

THREE31:   -  Everything is lovely, overly cute. Bosnia is the land of cuteness. Boy clothes, girl accessories, modern shops, new restaurants, yes, basically everything in town must be cute.
32: - Crazy melodic songs, nostalgic short poems, bad drama, sentimental fever. Honestly, I didn’t even hear about such things as soul staff  before I came to this montainous country,
33:  - but believe me, either you want it or you do not, if a man  comes here, he will come across it! There’s a long good list of old music playing everywhere.
34:  - And all friends will ask Steve what’s his favorite artist or his best band, and he will have no idea what they are talking about
35:  - and also to Anna, she will get really lost and then at the end the wife will end up at the same circle  as everyone.
36:  - One of the main features of the old town is it is crowded, which you will notice right away after you leave the bus station.
37:  - You may and be really mislead because the airport is really quite empty and very quiet.
38:  - However, just wait until you get to the main square and near streets.
39:  - It’s so packed, it’s basically impossible to find yourself being alone, any longer than for a couple of minutes.
40:  - At some extent, I love this friendly street life, but at the same time I hate this at some hours.

FOUR - 4- FOUR  -4
41:  -When the night comes there are NOT going to be a lot of lights! You will NOT see many neon lights all over the place as in Barcelona.
42:  - But you can find the night life. Especially if you go to a more alive areas.
43:  - There,  you will realize that  many of  all lower floors have neon signs on their walls, the lights just trying to blind you.
 44:  - Shopping. The insane, unhealthy obsession that young Bosnian citizens have with shopping. You won’t need to go to shopping districts or actually even exist subway station,
45:  -as you’ll have shopping right there underground subway station.
 46:  - Also, coffee shops obsession. For a long time there was no Italian coffee in town, so when it arrive at this country, young adults went a bit nuts. Yes, crazy.
47:  - Consequently, it is still very difficult to buy the best coffee in a small supermarket.
48: - Although there are more than necessary coffee shops in the capital.
49:  - Sarajevo is actually a capital with the highest number of Starbucks coffee shops in the nation.
50. I like a strong white coffe, I love tasty coffee with milk.

FIVE  -Oh, FIVE - 0551:  - A thing that I did not really expect was that local old people consume a lot of alcohol.
52:  - Any tourist is going to see drunken young people all over the place. Steve thinks too many.
53:  - And differently from back home, nobody, no-one cares about you being drunk here.
 54:   - One of my main memories I can still remember is this: when I came to Korea there was the most uncommon smell, a strange mixture of strong smells.
55:  -There is a restaurant next to a bar, next to a pizzeria, which makes all of the different smells mix together.
56:  -. And Anna is not really used to Balcanic food, the smell can be a bit funny.
 57:  - The technology. Honestly, I expected Bosnia to be more technologically advanced, however,
58: - there are going to be many things that you will come across will be just astonished.
59: - Also, it’s a country of old phones, so on the subway you will see at least  twelve phone boxes.
60: -the young girls being on their phone, the young boys plauing with their cameras. 

SIX   - 6 -6 -66 -6
61: - The traffic is going to be hectic. Sorry, but Anna thinks young drivers do not know how to drive.
62:  - Be very careful not to get hit when you just come and want to drive your hired car.
63: - There are food delivery motorcycles riding on pedestrian paths all the time.
 64: - Last but not the least, keep in mind that weather is super humid. Depending where you are coming from, it may be really a shocker for you.
65:  - From me if it’s 25 degrees Celsius in my dry homeland it is little hot but still great weather where you don’t sweat much.
66:  - However, if it’s 25 degrees in Bosnia Anna is going to sweat a lot. Humidity really makes the weather much more dificult, more radical.
67:  - So, the summers are going to be much hotter and obviously,  the Bosnian winters are going to  be much colder.
      
68: - There are so many more things I could talk about, expensive fruits, old Bosnian grannies, the hard war and so on.
68:  - Why not cleanness,  cinema in the park, kind politeness ?
69: - However, I want to keep this story short so I will finish now.  I hope you think now you have a good idea of what you can expect.