Mind matters

För många år sedan började jag med att samla på biobiljetter och diverse biljetter till evenemang jag gått på. Jag kom att tänka på biljetterna när Magnus visade mig sin myntsamling som består av amerikanska quarters från 2000, med olika baksidor för olika delstater, samt gamla svenska 5 kronor. Det påminde mig om min myntsamling, så jag vispade upp den och gick igenom en salig röra av mynt från 94 och framåt, där mynten från 94 är från island.

Mynten i sin tur låg brevid en matlåda där jag förvarar mina biljetter (försöker minimera luftpåverkan på dem så att bläcket ska sitta kvar längre) så jag tog fram den och började bläddra lite bland biljetterna…

Bland de första biljetterna jag hittade var Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Jag kommer ihåg att det var en av de första filmerna som jag sparade biljetten från, kanske till och med den första. Den såg jag 27 september 1991 kl 21:15 i Sal 1: China på Filmstaden i Linköping och kostade 65 kr. Vi hade åkt över en bunt ungdomar från Motala för att se filmen. Jag kommer ihåg att jag var lyrisk över filmen när vi åkte hem med 520:an (bussen Motala-Linköping) och att det var väldigt sent. Till dags dato så är det fortfarande en av de filmer jag har på min tio-i-topplista.

Nästa biljett jag hittade var Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves 12 oktober 1991 kl 18.30 i Sal 5: Röda Kvarn, också på Filmstaden i Linköping. Kostnaden var 60 kr. Det jag kommer ihåg från den filmen var att Alan Rickman var mycket bra som Sheriffen av Nottinghamn.

En annan goding som hoppar upp är Army of Darkness, tredje filmen i Evil Dead trilogin, med en av mina favvisskådisar Bruce Campbell som antihjälten Ash. Den sågs 13 september 1993 kl 21:15 i Sal 2: Victoria, SF Linköping. Den biljetten betalade jag 45 kr för. Undra varför den var billigare…

Det finns kanske 3-400 biljetter i lådan som skvallrar om min bio- och evenemangshistoria. Däribland finns biljetter från Filmfestivalen i Göteborg där jag varit 3 gånger. Då såg jag 13-15 filmer på en enda helg. Kanske något som ska upprepas nästa vår! Det finns också en biljett till Dolly Partons konsert i Globen 16 mars 2007. Say no more!

Biljetten som ligger överst i matlådan, och som är den senaste filmen jag såg på bio, är Terminator – Salvation som sågs 7 juni 2009 kl 18:15 i Sal 3 på SF i Norrköping. Priset för biljetten var 100 kr. Jag gillade filmen skarpt. Det är en mycket bra actionfilm, men lite av känslan från Terminatorfilmerna har gått förlorad.

På 18 år har Terminator gått från film nummer 2 till film nummer 4 och biljettpriset har höjts med 35 kr. Någon dag kanske jag går igenom högen och skapar mig lite statistik över hur många filmer jag sett per år, hur mycket tid jag lagt ner på att se på film på bio samt hur mycket det har kostat. Kan kanske bli en ögonöppnare

Nu har Oscarskommittén släppt nomineringarna för Oscars 2008. Själva galan går av stapeln 24 februari, och som vanligt så ska vi försöka se den live!

Hoppas bara att någon svensk TV-kanal köper rättigheterna för att sända den. 2007 var det på håret. Då sände Kanal 9, den nya kanalen som koncernen bakom Kanal 5 startade, det som en del av lanseringen av kanalen. Kan ju bara hoppas att det inte var en engångsgrej och att de fortsätter sända galan.

Och precis som förra året så ska jag försöka ta mig igenom alla Oscars-filmer innan själva galan (fast jag lyckades inte riktigt, hade 12 filmer kvar att se när galan gick, varav 6 var sådana jag inte fick tag på). Så det blir till att jaga torrents för att hitta nedladdningar. Som tur är så fungerar oscars-nomineringar för torrentar ungefär som nobelprisnominering fungerar för författare, så det brukar vara ganska lätt att hitta dem. Problemet har varit de korta filmerna (animerade och dokumentärer) och de utländska filmerna. Som tur är så startades siten Oscar torrents förra året, och där hittade jag flera länkar till filmer jag annars missat.

En annan nackdel är att jag numera har jobb. Det hade jag inte förra året. Kanske skulle ta semester en vecka innan själva galan och bosätta mig framför TVn?

Och så har vi manusstrejken också. Skådespelarna bojkottade ju Golden Globe-galan pga den och de fick ställa in den, och hotar med att även bojkotta Oscarsgalan, så det kanske inte blir av heller.

Här är i alla fall listan på de nominerade filmerna!

Best leading actor
George Clooney in Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Tommy Lee Jones in In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises

Best supporting actor
Casey Affleck in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman in Charlie Wilson’s War
Hal Holbrook in Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson in Michael Clayton

Best leading actress
Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie in Away from Her
Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose
Laura Linney in The Savages
Ellen Page in Juno

Best supporting actress
Cate Blanchett in I’m Not There
Ruby Dee in American Gangster
Saoirse Ronan in Atonement
Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton

Best animated feature film
Persepolis
Ratatouille
Surf’s Up

Art direction
American Gangster
Atonement
The Golden Compass
Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
There Will Be Blood

Cinematography
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Atonement
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Costume design
Across the Universe
Atonement
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
La Vie en Rose
Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Director
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Best documentary feature
No End in Sight
Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
Sicko
Taxi to the Dark Side
War/Dance

Best documentary short
Freeheld
La Corona
Salim Baba
Sari’s Mother

Film editing
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Into the Wild
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Foreign language film
Beaufort
The Counterfeiters
Katyn
Mongol
12

Makeup
La Vie en Rose
Norbit
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Original Score
Atonement
The Kite Runner
Michael Clayton
Ratatouille
3:10 to Yuma

Original Song
Once – Falling Slowly
Enchanted – Happy Working Song
August Rush – Raise it Up
Enchanted – So Close
Enchanted – That’s How You Know

Best movie
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Best animated short
I Met the Walrus
Madame Tutli-Putli
Même Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis
My Love (Moya Lyubov)
Peter & the Wolf

Best live action short
At Night
Il Supplente
Le Mozart des Pickpockets
Tanghi Argentini
The Tonto Woman

Sound editing
The Bourne Ultimatum
No Country for Old Men
Ratatouille
There Will Be Blood
Transformers

Sound mixing
The Bourne Ultimatum
No Country for Old Men
Ratatouille
3:10 to Yuma
Transformers

Visual effects
The Golden Compass
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Transformers

Adapted screenplay
Atonement
Away from Her
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Original screenplay
Juno
Lars and the Real Girl
Michael Clayton
Ratatouille
The Savages

One of the movies I’m eagerly awaiting this summer is The Simpsons Movie. I know it’ll probably be a lot less fun than I anticipate, but I’ll go and see it anyway.

My good friend Peter sent me this link to the movie’s website: http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/

There you can create your own Simpsons character, using their Avatar tool! Here’s mine. I call him ‘The Environmental Nerd Guy’

Apparently there’s an american basketball player called Tim Hardaway who said that he hates gay people. Of course this didn’t go unnoticed in the comedy shows. On one of them, Jimmy Kimmel Live, the former Star Trek actor George Takei (who played Hikaru Sulu in the Original Series, and who himself is gay), made a little fun of Tim Hardaway. Take a look at the video.

I must say, being a gay man myself, that George Takei just skyrocketed on my list over people I think are cool!

I just finished watching Jesus Camp, a documentary about some of the activities of the evangelic church in america. I now only got 10 movies to go before sunday’s Oscar gala!

The documentary shows us how some children in america are schooled in the evangelic faith by their parents and their church. The movie makers film children talking about their faith, the church meetings, some of the home education and the camp many of the children attend. They also film Mike Papantonio when he’s doing his radio show and talking about the evangelic church and his take on all of it.

It’s scary! Scarier than An inconvenient truth! They actually teach their children that the global warming is not a problem. When a mother homeschools her kid, they have the following conversation:

Mother: “One popular thing to do in american politics is to note that the summers in the united states over the past few years have been very warm. As a result, global warming must be real. What’s wrong with this reasoning?”
Child: “It’s only gone up by 0,6 degrees.”
Mother: “Yeah, it’s not really a big problem, is it?”

75% of homeschooled kids in the United States are Evangelic Christians.

The scariest part is right in the beginning of the movie where Becky Fisher, a Pentecostal children’s minister, says:

“I want to see young people who are as dedicated to the cause of jesus christ as the young people are to the cause of islam. I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are over in pakistan and israel and palestina and all those different places. You know, because, we have… excuse me [exited]! But we have the truth!”

It’s a scary movie. Well worth watching! The thing is that the life these children seem to live doesn’t seem so bad. They get a lot of attention, they get a huge amount of moving experiences. They have a lot of people who care for them and what becomes of them. They have a community that thinks like they do. A lot of their basic needs are met by this lifestyle in the church. That’s why it’s so dangerous. There’s no reason for them to question what they are doing, and what is happening, since it all seems so good.

So, what can we do about it? Not much unfortunately, as far as I can see. They’re not legally doing anything wrong. Maybe they could change the rules about homeschooling, but I bet the right wing lobby would see to that never happening. There are estimates that 25% of the population in america is of the evangelic faith…

In my quest to try to watch all the oscar nominated movies before oscar night 25:th of february, I today reached An inconvenient truth. This is a movie of Al Gore travelling around the globe making presentations about the global warming. In this movie he presents some of the facts about global warming that are known today.

I wanted to see this movie to expand on my own knowledge about the global warming, which I must confess is rather limited. I thought the scientific community was split up in two camps about this issue, but as Gore shows there is no dispute today. The theory that we are the cause of the current warming of our planet is no longer a theory, it is in fact a fact.

One of the main sceptic arguments is that the rise in CO2 we are seeing today in the atmosphere is just part of natural variations. I also thought this could be the case. But the data, sampled from the ice in anarctica, that shows measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere for the last 650,000 years, indicate that we are way above the natural variations that have occured in these 650,000 years. In fact, it’s quite clear that it is mankind that is the reason for the increase of CO2. We in europe produce 27% of the CO2 worldwide, only America is a bigger producer than us.

This movie is an eye opener. Atleast for me. It could be argued that it is a campaign movie for Al Gore, since it portrays not only the climate, but also personal details from Al Gores life. But I think it’s just a way to make him seem more sympathetic, and thus make people take his words even more seriously. And considering the danger we are facing, I would say that it’s worth it.

I would strongly recommend everyone to see the movie.

The movies website: http://www.climatecrisis.net/

The big day is coming up! The day for the Oscar gala! 25th of february it will be broadcasted live from Hollywood. I’m not yet sure if any of the major swedish TV-networks will be broadcasting the show, but I sure hope so! Me and a couple of friends try to stay up at the oscars and watch it live Best way to watch it!

This year I decided to try and watch most of the nominated movies, so I started to hunt them down on the internet. Easier said than done. Some of them I still can’t find. Luckily I stumbled to this site today: www.oscartorrents.com, a sister site to The Pirate Bay. Unfortunately, some of the movies are still missing there too…

Anyway, they don’t list a little masterpiece that has been nominated for best animated short film, one that I happened to find on youtube today. Maestro. It’s brilliant! And here it is, for your entertainment

I think it was back in 1999 that I first heard of the show Stargate SG-1. I remember watching a couple of episodes but thought it was rubbish. I think the major reason was that the year before Babylon 5 had just finished airing. Babylon 5, with it’s 5 seasons, was a ground breaking Sci-Fi series because it had a plotline, created by one man, that spanned the whole series. Every episode and everything that happened was part of a Big Master Plan. The notion of a Big Master Plan brings continuity, of things evolving and changing, to a show and that really appealed to me. So I considered watching another Sci-Fi series that didn’t have this as a waste of my time.

A couple of weeks ago I finally borrowed 8 seasons from a friend and started watching. After watching the first season, I was really hooked. I loved the idea of people travelling around the galaxy with stargates, left here by an ancient race, exploring and bumping into mysteries hinting of a much larger picture yet to be uncovered.

It took me about 2.5 weeks to watch 9 seasons of the show. I’m currently watching the 10:th season, which is still under production and won’t finish until next year.

There’s this air to the show of not taking itself too seriously which I love! One of the things that comes into mind is an episode where Jack O’Neill and Teal’c are caught in a time loop and have to relive the same day over and over again, much like the movie Groundhog day. O’Neill complains about how he always comes back at a moment where Daniel Jackson is asking him a question and he doesn’t have a clue what the question is. Teal’c says that O’Neill is not alone in coming back with such bad timing, and then we see how Teal’c is hit in the face by a door!

Admittedly I’ve been fast forwarding through some tedious character developement stories with plotlines that were easily predicted or that I deemed would not add enough value to the overall story being developed. But that was just a couple episodes each season.

Stargate SG-1 is one of the longest running Science Fiction TV-series in history, with it’s 10 seasons spanning over 10 years. They started in 1997 and it seems they’re coming to an end after the 10:th season, since Sci Fi-channel hasn’t renewed the show for another season.

In 2004 there was a spin-off series created: Stargate Atlantis. I’ve been watching the first season of it. It’s not Stargate SG-1, which is good, because you can’t copy that show, but it lacks enough characters with humor to make it as much fun to watch. They take themselves too seriosly, atleast in the first season. It might ease up as they go along. It’s entertaining enough for me to watch anyhow. Stargate Atlantis is into it’s 3:rd season and has been renewed for a 4:th, and I’m looking forward to where they’re going to take the show. Hopefully to an equally fun and interesting place as Stargate SG-1.

Today I went to do weight lifting for the first time in 4 weeks. I’ve been so tired lately that I have not had energy enough to overcome my internal resistance to training. Now I pay for my good intention with an aching back! What I did was try to do back lifts (you know, bending over a bench face down and rising the upper body using the lower back muscles) with the same weight I did before my 4 week break, and when I did my first rising I heard a ‘knicks’ from my lower back and felt a sharp pain! Ouch!

I moved around a little to make sure it wasn’t a slipped disk (diskbråck) that I was experiencing. I hope it isn’t. Not sure how one of those feel, but I’ve been told they can be really painful! I’ll live with the pain for a while and see if it gets better on itself, otherwise I’ll have to seek medical attention.

Nevertheless I continued to train a bit, with exercises that didn’t affect my back, and that worked fine. Later this evening I also conducted the Aikido class. I couldn’t run, that hurt like hell! But I could do forward and backward rolls! Very weird.

Oh, and Stargate. I’ve borrowed DVDs with Stargate SG-1, the TV-series, from a friend. That’s 16 discs with 8 seasons, 22 episodes each season and 42 min per episode. I started watching last week. Now I just finished season 5. That’s like 5*22*42 = 77 hours of viewing time! Cheesus!

The series was of to a slow start, but now it has picked up it’s pace. I really like the characters, especially Richard Dean Anderson, who many remember as MacGyver. Richard plays the role of colonel Jack O’Neill, who leads a team of 4 people with the designation of SG-1. During the show, more SG-teams are assigned. I think there’s 13 or so right now. What they do, is to use a system of gateways, Stargates, to travel to other planets and explore. Oh, and also seek technology and allies which can be used to defend earth from the Goa’ould, a powerful race of parasitic symbiots who try to rule the galaxy.

The best part of the show is the dialouge, I think. Sometimes it’s really, really funny Here’s an example. I don’t know if the dialogue stands for itself, or if you need to have developed a knowledge of the characters before it becomes funny. Anyhoo, this is when Teal’c (one of the four in SG-1) is dying, and O’Neill and Daniel (another one of the SG-1) are talking to him:

O’Neill – “Va’lar,” is that what he said?
Daniel – I thought he said “velour.”
O’Neill – Velour?
Daniel – Velour.
O’Neill – The fabric?
Daniel – That’s what I heard him say.
O’Neill – Why would he say that?
Daniel – I don’t know. Why would he say “Va’lar”?
O’Neill – I don’t know.

Anyway. Right now I think it’s a really good show, and there’s 10 seasons of it Time to watch a couple more episodes!

Not long ago, movies was the new black. Everyone watched movies. Movies were shown on TV and in the cinemas. Even more not so long ago, people started downloading movies from the internet, and thus more and more people watched movies.

Movies started to get boring thought. To watch a movie where you might get attached to the characters, and then they suddenly drop out of your scope when the movie ends. And if the director was even slightly wrong in the head, you didn’t actually connect with the characters at all in the timeframe of the movie.

Enter TV-series! Today many people are downloading TV-series instead. I know I am. In TV-series you can take your time developing the characters and introducing a story arch. There’s plenty of time to twist the plot around until your head spins and you ache to know how it all ends!

There are drawbacks of course, with TV-series. First one is the lack of finishing off story archs and essentially leave us hanging. This is the case with Lost, which I stopped watching right at the beginning of season 2, and am waiting for it to finish and see if they managed to tie up all the lose ends in a satisfactory way.

Second one is that the TV-networks may decide to cancel the show before we get to know how the story ends! As was the case with Surface and Threshold. Extremely annoying!

Nevertheless, I’ve watched many TV-series, and currently I’m following these (the links below lead to www.tv.com and I recommend using Adblock with Firefox if you want to start using the site, many ads they do have):

• Supernatural – Into it’s second season, and unfortunately getting worse. Two brothers battle ghosts and other evil creatures.
• Veronica Mars – Into it’s third season, and fortunately only gets better! A school girl as detective. Very smart show.
• Heroes – First season now running, it’s one of the best shows out there today! Ordinary people around the world wake up with super powers.
• Battlestar Galactica – Third season running right now, one of the other best shows out there. Really dark science fiction! I love it! Remake of the old TV-series; humans on the run from Cylons, robots they themselves once created.
• Torchwood - First season just started, a spin off of the new Dr Who series – has potential. Secret undercover agency in UK, created centuries ago, seeks to protect earth from alien threats.
• Ghost Hunters – Third season just finished, I like this show a lot! Documentary with soap like qualities about TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society) searching for ghosts, but they go into a place trying to debunk there’s a haunting. It has almost turned me into a believer. No actors in this show.