The Falsification Of Photographs In Stalin’s Russia

I don’t know how many souls I have. I’ve changed at every moment. I always feel like a stranger. I’ve never seen or found myself. From being so much, I have only soul. A man who has soul has no calm. A man who sees is just what he sees. A man who feels is not who he is.

Attentive to what I am and see, I become them and stop being I. Each of my dreams and each desire Belongs to whoever had it, not me. I am my own landscape, I watch myself journey - Various, mobile, and alone. Here where I am I can’t feel myself.

That’s why I read, as a stranger, My being as if it were pages. Not knowing what will come And forgetting what has passed, I note in the margin of my reading What I thought I felt. Rereading, I wonder: “Was that me?” God knows, because he wrote it.

Fernando Pessoa,  I don't know how many souls I have

Hansel and Gretel (2007) | dir. Pil-sung Yim | South Korea

Cinematography by Ji-yong Kim

Jin Ji-Hee 

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) dir. Steven Spielberg 

Withnail & I (1987) | dir. Bruce Robinson

The film is a testament to the potency and sadness of friendship and the compromises required for the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

“To pronounce oneself immune to the charms of Withnail & I is to declare oneself a philistine, a Puritan and a snob.” - Kevin Jackson, 2004

At the end of Bruce Robinson’s much-loved journey through the dying months of the 1960s, Withnail (Richard E. Grant) walks Marwood ( Paul McGann ) through Regent’s Park on the way to the station. As his friend vanishes from his life, Withnail stands in the rain and quotes one of Hamlet’s soliloquies to the watching wolves.

Set at the fag-end of the 1960s, Robinson’s comedy of bad manners sees two struggling twentysomething actors – flamboyant, melancholic narcissist Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and his unnamed, unassuming friend (Paul McGann) – pursue booze, recreation, work and the meaning of life in Camden Town and the Lake District. Based on Robinson’s own experiences, this labour of love achieved cult status on the strength of its endlessly quotable dialogue and brilliantly eccentric performances (notably Richard Griffiths’ Uncle Monty and Ralph Brown’s Danny the dealer). The beautifully sodden photography and a cannily evocative pop soundtrack help fix the mood. The script references Bruce Robinson’s own acting work in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968).

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (via coffeeandmeditation)

Dead Man’s Shoes (2004) | dir. Shane Meadows

DoP : Danny Cohen

Every true thinker for himself is so far like a monarch; he is absolute, and recognises nobody above him. His judgments, like the decrees of a monarch, spring from his own sovereign power and proceed directly from himself. He takes as little notice of authority as a monarch does of a command; nothing is valid unless he has himself authorised it. On the other hand, those of vulgar minds, who are swayed by all kinds of current opinions, authorities, and prejudices, are like the people which in silence obey the law and commands.

Arthur Schopenhauer, “Thinking for Oneself”, Parerga and Paralipomena (via philosophybits)

This is the secret of the stars, I tell myself. In the end, we are alone. No matter how close you seem, no one else can touch you.

Beth Revis, Across the Universe (via books-n-quotes)

Viciousness in the kitchen! The potatoes hiss. It is all Hollywood, windowless, The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine.

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I'm doped and thick from my last sleeping pill. The smog of cooking, the smog of hell Floats our heads, two venomous opposites.

from Lesbos by Sylvia Plath - The New York Times

Amélie | dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet | 2001

DoP: Bruno Delbonnel