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TIM BURTON – MICHAEL KEATON – BEETLEJUICE – 1988

That’s the real beginning of this Tim Burton of great fame. This film is absolutely crazy as for the tomfoolery, the ghosts, the people and the situations. It is off limits in all possible ways but it is great because this time there are two things that hold the whole story together.

First of all there is the music. The calypso is a phenomenal good idea. That music in itself is the music of the dead, of happy newly deceased who finally get their last word in this world: they can stay in their home and they become the real soul of this home that is inhabited by some living people and haunted by them with the full agreement and collaboration from the living inhabitants. Death is finally the pleasant delirium that it is supposed to be and not that ordeal so many people are afraid of. When you die you must make friends with some living people. The point is to find how you can make yourself useful to them so that they will welcome you in their home that used to be yours.

The calypso is the gluing element of this fable. Just for it I would watch the film twenty five times if not more.

The second element is that death is a world in itself, a world that is beyond limits and off limits at the same time, in other words infinite and limitless. Death is a real paradise if you accept to be a ghost and to welcome the living in your ordeal. The world of the dead is a vicious world you do not want to linger in. They are so dead that they have to wait for their turn to even get the slightest attention, to wait millions of turns before they just have one chance to maybe see Juno or whoever can help them change their diapers or dance the polka with flies in a spider web waiting for the spider to come and swallow you alive, well that’s a way of speaking since you are dead.

In this crazy world of the dead there is one character you must absolutely meet though you will lose your head, your brain, your sanity and even probably your dead virginity if you meet him. He is the concoction only the dead can relish. He is a breakfast drink for living dead, the extracted juice of some bugs generally known as beetles. And these beetles are not singing even if Beetlejuice is as gross and aggressive as most other beetles, I mean the type that sings. Remember his only and sole goal is to be resuscitated and in this crazy world of the dead you can only be rejuvenated, reborn if you marry a living being and in this case do not dream you can escape the straight marriage of those old days. I guess the Supreme Court had not yet ruled on the subject. Maybe the land of the dead is beyond their jurisdiction.

This way of laughing of the dead, of death is probably the best thing you can do while you are still alive and it is so easy to trespass onto the other side without even knowing about it and certainly not looking behind. Anyone who is a little bit anxious about the end of their life on this earth should enjoy this film that is more than entertainment, it is undertaking. Next time be careful and just run over the dumb dog who is trying to send you into the hellish sands of the dune inferno vastly travelled, run through and browsed by sand worms that have more teeth than a whole herd of dragons.

But remember that getting on board one of these sand worms is the best way to get rid of the bad demonic Beetlejuice and to conquer your haunting place in this here world of the living. You could even consider you have become the new Messiah, Moadib.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

MUSTANG – 2015

A very important film and there is very little to say about it. Turkey, five daughters (and sisters) are being raised by their grandmother because their parents are dead. The grandmother is helped in that task by the girls’ uncles. We are in a small city or big village. The girls are wild and the grandmother is probably not up to her task. So the uncles take over when some rumor starts spreading. The girls are locked up in the house, taken away from school, which shows education does not seem to be compulsory for girls, and the uncles decide to get rid of them by marrying them. They marry two. The third one commits suicide and the last two will have to elope and that is going to be difficult.

There is little mention of Islam behind because we are not dealing with Islam here but with a traditional agricultural society where the family is sacred and the girls are the best possession a family has to improve their lot in society by marrying them with an important dowry to a man who is from an important family and who has an important position himself. Marrying the girls is nothing but improving the status of the family. This has been a characteristic of all agricultural societies in the West and it caused the development of a conflict if not unrest when they started turning industrial, and Turkey is part of that West and they are going through that very phase in social development.

When I have said that, there is nothing else to add. They had the same situation in Southern Italy just twenty years ago. Portugal is not much better off on that question and twenty years ago girls had to be married fast and from the day after their marriage they were supposed to dress in black.

What I regret is that the audience is reacting to a film like that as if that was typical of Islam and any Muslim society. And that is a lie. It is typical of all societies that shift from agriculture to industry and in which the family is the core of social hierarchies and prestige. The point for a country like Turkey is that the change that took about four generations if not more in Western Europe and definitely more in the agricultural plains of the USA has to be done and finished within one generation. The shift is directly from total submission for women to eloping, fleeing and escaping.

It is thus an interesting film but nothing really to change the face of history. When Ataturk decided to westernize Turkey in the 1920s he set Turkey on that road and industrialization has only started to really penetrate this country some thirty years ago. The change that is happening at record speed right now explains the desire of the Turks to keep some balance and that’s probably why they turn toward some traditional conservative mildly Muslim party who can more or less guarantee that the change will be done without a blood bath nor a complete destruction of traditions and cultural references, including of course the religious reference.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

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TIM BURTON – PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE – 1985

That sure is a comedy, what do I say, a farce indeed in Molière’s style, and as they say in French “Bonjour les dégâts!” meaning something like “Good Morning Vietnam!” I must say there is no logic, no real development of any theme at all, except absurdity and tomfoolery, maybe some masquerade and charade in shambles. And it is funny just because it is absurd.

But really what’s left at the end of it, will you ask or shouldn’t I say shall you ask? Life us absurd. We knew that. Crooks end up in prison. Let me doubt that one. Love is number one human interest. Ah Ah maybe in Hollywood but is it for real in life? Let me be dubitative, or is it doubtful I should say? Some physical episode maybe but Pee-Wee loves his dog and his bike more than anything and anyone else. Love is mental not physical like they pretend in Hollywood.

The film then is some good exercise of a rookie director who is learning his job and tries to make teenagers and children laugh. A dinosaur in your cup of tea is always funny and a few snakes in your hands will make any infant laugh like hell. Or be frightened to high heavens.

Some will say we have all the magic of Tim Burton in this old film. I don’t think so. Tim Burton’s art is not in this twisted absurd story but in the spirituality he will often reach beyond the surface of things. And here the spirituality is rather light and the surface is rarely pushed aside to get something more empathetic and sweetly cultural.

The only moment I see something deeper is when he makes fun of Hollywood. That is both deserved and justified. Hollywood has to put some flesh on this absurd skeleton of a story and that flesh is a couple of kiss, a lascivious girl friend and some hot steam we can imagine in the background, though we know better and the pee-wee actor and his girl friend actress are only making out for the screen and in real life they may hate each other, the man may prefer men and the woman may prefer women. Make believe and nothing else. But the real Pee Wee is just the same. Make believe and nothing else.

Well, I guess the first steps of Tim Burton were not yet very brilliant as for the mental side of things. I guess he could not go lower and he was bound to improve. See you in the next episode.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

The US Supreme Court,

A Universal Lesson in Constitutional Right

Jacques Coulardeau & Ivan Eve

This essay studies the Case of California's Proposition 8 from its adoption by the voters in November 2008 to the most recent US Supreme Court ruling on June 26, 2013. This essay is essentially centered on the legal and constitutional side of the case and the arguments dealing with Amendment 14 to the US Supreme Court, Article III of teh US Constitution, and the concepts of due process of law, equal protection of the laws, strict scrutiny, standing, all concepts that should be universal in all legal and judiciary systems in the world. The case then provides the world with a full demonstration of these judicial human rights that in fact should define the concept of Habeas Corpus.

This case deals with same-sex marriage in California. The US Supreme Court refused to rule on the constitutionality of Proposition 8. They vacated and remanded the Federal Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit's ruling on the case because the people speaking for the State of California did not have the necessary standing. That ruling indirectly affirms the ruling of the Federal District Court that had declared Proposition 8 unconstitutional. Though it does not create a legal void in California, this ruling encourages the ProtectMarriage organization to start a new round of legal proceedings in the California Supreme Court.

This long essay would not have been possible if the first and shorter version had not been encouraged by one of its first readers as follows:

“I think your argumentation and logic is good. You shouldn’t be entering the rest of the discussion, maybe you can quote all the experts or send back to what was said in a footnote, but it is not your point. You are following the logic of the legal and constitutional system: Amendment 14, the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court. What will happen, we can’t be sure, but you can project yourself in the future, and you are already doing it, by saying that the Supreme Court, despite taking a lot of time (which can also be to get the “temperature,” the mood of the country within the next few months), is very unlikely to commit itself with such an important issue. And your logic shows just that . . .

So, in short, your approach is the most valuable as the case starts in California (and its norms) and shifts to the federal level (multiple norms): they all thrive under the US Constitution and Amendment 14.”

                                                                Paris, January 11, 2013

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BBC – MICHAEL PALIN – REMEMBER ME – 2014

A miniseries in three episodes. A strange story concerning an old man, a really old man who is probably one hundred and ten or fifteen years old. It is a thriller in a way, of some sort, but yet it is a lot more an exotic love affair turned sour.

An old man tries to escape his own house bY bringing the social services into his business with a fake accident, so that he could escape the ghost that is living in the house with him, a possessive ghost in a way, in fact a ghost who wants to go away but cannot without him and apparently he does not want to liberate her because it means die for himself.

That ghost is jealous and to force him to do what he has to do to finish that job she will start hitting and hurting and killing all the people he may come close to in a way or another. And the exit door is nothing but a very old traditional song, slightly modified by the grandfather in law of his very evanescent wife. Guess what happened to her, right after their marriage?

The truth will come out and it will be clear that he is manipulated by the ghost, and that ghost is nowhere but in his head and it is enough for him to do what that ghost wants him to do. She is that powerful. At the same time he cannot be the killer all the time, and yet he has to be.

The police is of course impotent and helpless. A girl, in fact a young nurse, practically a rooky nurse will get involved and she is the one who will bring out the truth and the police officer, detective rather, will be the one who will witness the damage and certify the truth, and yet it will be kept silent and cool at the bottom of a cold case box.

What is good about this series is first of all the good actors, second the well cut mystery mixing some Indian folklore to plain superstition, and third the cool pace of a hectic fable that is supposed to suspend us and our disbelief over a slow fire burning our feet with fear. And they do burn with rage, our feet.

Entertaining and just a little bit stressful.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

UNBROKEN – 2014

This film can be entered in two different ways. Through the obvious door at first bu also through the chimney then, and the chimney is always more interesting because it is the way Father Christmas favors.

The first one is the main character and his true story. There is little to say about that true story. Louis Zamperini is what we call a hero. He managed to go through and survive some absolutely unique and insane situations in which he was made to suffer for the pleasure the torturer was getting out of it, that pleasure which compensates for all the frustrations you can imagine. All torturers are simple people in everyday life but they are deeply frustrated or alienated because they could not do what they wanted to do and some others than themselves have been able to do it. They have to take some vengeance and get even with those who dared do better than they did. A sadist is always a failure who is turning his failure into success by getting even with those who were not failures, with those who had the guts to succeed while he, himself, did not have the brain to even imagine how to succeed.

But this approach of the film is not very interesting. No one admire Jesus because he accepted to suffer for us. We admire him because he managed to forgive his torturers.

The second approach is the distance this film creates with WW2. That was an event that was a long time ago and Louis himself is demonstrating that living in the spirit of the war, in the desire to come even with those whom we fought, in some vengeful way or even in some due payment for the suffering they imposed onto us, is absurd and insane.

The film shows that strength is inside and that strength dictates we forgive them afterwards and we try to stand up to them or in fact very often down to them, even if that costs us our own life because dying would be a victory since we would have forced them to sell their soul and their sanity to the devil and to absolute oblivion, human annihilation. It is this strength that enables someone who is unjustly convicted of a crime he did not commit, or of a crime that was never committed, to be strong enough to survive as long as possible and to submit to the final ordeal in dignity. Look at your executioner in the eyes and dare him to be proud of what he is doing in front of God, a committee of one thousand people from all over the world, or simply his mother and father, sister and brother, and let him have the power to tell his own brother he would do the same to him in a similar situation. Why not his father or his mother?

That’s where the film is strong. The final image of the room of the sergeant who ran away leaving behind a picture he should have cherished of himself as an infant with his father. He was not in such a hurry that he forgot it. He just let it behind because he couldn’t let his father know he would have done the same thing to him if the situation had required it. He knew he was an unworthy son of his own father, that he had betrayed his faith and his hope in him. And that’s the worst part of a defeat.

Apart from that level of empathy, the film is beautifully acted and poignantly set up and directed. You cannot resist some scenes because they are stronger than what you way imagine as the maximum you can decently bear. Louis Zamp’ carried his beam just as well as Jesus carried his cross. We all have a cross to carry and it is by carrying it we can hope to reach some remarkable level. There is no future to those who want to have it easy all along the way. I can only tell the younger people I know and who seem not to realize that their dream is after a long path of hard efforts and stiff suffering that they are confused: their future is in their hands and that will require them to soil them and to harden them and even to scar them a little. Louis Zamp’ shows us that simple truth with the power of an unfailing faith in what strength can bring.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, was asked about Ali al-Nimr, and about the crucial role Saudi Arabia is meant to play in the advancement of human rights. A transcript of the relevant exchange (http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2015/09/247169.htm#SAUDIARABIA, accessed September 26, 2015) is posted below. I don’t know Toner, but I feel pity – and shame as well as revulsion – for any U.S. government official who believes that he is forced by the nature of his job to cover up for Saudi Arabia:

QUESTION: Yesterday, Saudi Arabia was named to head the Human Rights Council, and today I think they announced they are about to behead a 21-year-old Shia activist named Muhammed al-Nimr. Are you aware of that?

MR. TONER: I’m not aware of the trial that you—or the verdict—death sentence.

QUESTION: Well, apparently, he was arrested when [he] was 17 years old and kept in juvenile detention, then moved on. And now, he’s been scheduled to be executed.

MR. TONER: Right. I mean, we’ve talked about our concerns about some of the capital punishment cases in Saudi Arabia in our Human Rights Report, but I don’t have any more to add to it.

QUESTION: So you—

QUESTION: Well, how about a reaction to them heading the council?

MR. TONER: Again, I don’t have any comment, don’t have any reaction to it. I mean, frankly, it’s—we would welcome it. We’re close allies. If we—

QUESTION: Do you think that they’re an appropriate choice given—I mean, how many pages is—does Saudi Arabia get in the Human Rights Report annually?

MR. TONER: I can’t give that off the top of my head, Matt.

QUESTION: I can’t either, but let’s just say that there’s a lot to write about Saudi Arabia and human rights in that report. I’m just wondering if you [think] that it’s appropriate for them to have a leadership position.

MR. TONER: We have a strong dialogue, obviously a partnership with Saudi Arabia that spans, obviously, many issues. We talk about human-rights concerns with them. As to this leadership role, we hope that it’s an occasion for them to look at human rights around the world but also within their own border

DAVID OLEYOWO – SELMA – 2014

The film is historical since it deals with a very special episode of recent modern US history: the passing of the act on the right to vote for black people, which in fact was an act banning any kind of procedure that would prevent black people from registering as citizen to vote and run in elections. That act was finally passed in 1965 under President Johnson.

The film explores how that act came into being. Under the pressure of a strong peaceful movement organized and led by Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama. The movement came from the local black people who had been organized by some young black people from Selma itself. Martin Luther King was only asked to come into the picture because the local people needed someone to go and speak to the President himself. And Martin Luther King had just receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Johnson refused at first to deal with the voting problem of the blacks. He had more urgent business to run: his famous law on welfare and poverty and his war in Vietnam. King did not take no for an answer and he went to Selma to organize things with the locals. The reaction from the whites was superbly racist and violent. The governor, the famous Wallace, was entirely against changing traditions and he even asked the President to send troops or other forces to keep peace in the streets.

Johnson actually refused and Martin Luther King managed to get the attention of the national media. Then it was only a question of patience and endurance. They went to court to claim their right to peacefully demonstrate on a constitutional question like the right to vote written in black and white in the 13^th and 14^th amendment plus quite a few laws. The surprise came from the white judge who had to be a federal judge since it was a federal constitutional matter. The judge decided that the Blacks had the right to demonstrate to request the implementation of their federal constitutional right.

Then the battle was won. A massive demonstration was organized and the state of Alabama did not provoke any violence. Then within weeks the act about the matter was passed by Congress and signed by Johnson into law. This final demonstration enables the producers of the film to get history back on the screen with some of the TV coverage of the time in black and white.

This film is important historically, is well made and well acted. But this film is all the more important because it really starts with a bomb that kills four girls in their home. Thank you Ku Klux Klan! And the killing of a young demonstrator by a cop with his firearm. Thank you racist police and sheriff! This film was shot in 2014 and at the same moment in Ferguson, and then many other places a whole series of young male blacks were killed by police forces with their firearms or their physical brutality or lack of assistance to dying prisoners.

In other words in a way the film tells us history repeats itself if we do not keep up with the various issues encountered in life and make sure the solutions found now will hold later. This violence against young male blacks is typical of that necessity as much as typical of the vicious racism that is developing or that is cultivated in various local police forces in the USA, no matter what race these policemen or policewomen may be. They seem to believe that young male blacks are the inner enemy of the welfare of the nation, at least of their little patch of the nation.

As such, this mixture of history and present politics is a good point for a film on the subject.

A last thing has to be said. Martin Luther King Jr. was shown as a person who doubted a lot before coming to his decisions and actions. At times his decisions and actions were taken in some ritual way that lets us think he wanted us to believe he got in touch with God and got his advice. That attitude is surprising and yet is part of his prudence, a cautiousness that wants to be reassuring by being staged properly, that is to say with some religious dimension.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

DEREK JARMAN - TWO PHENOMENAL COLLECTIONS

https://www.academia.edu/16168628/DEREK_JARMAN_-_TWO_PHENOMENAL_COLLECTIONS

DISCUSSION

https://www.academia.edu/s/10cd914494

Derek Jarman is leading us into a field that has to do with sadism, violence, torture, and many other perverse activities or attitudes or behaviors. The victims can be innocent, submissive or even a saint, the result is the same: the torturers, the sadists are enjoying their "game," and that means both the game they are playing and the game whose flesh, blood and sanity they are working on. Does this perversion enable us to better understand the constant resurgence of such acts both in peace and in war, both as a means to win a war or a plain means to dominate people and kill those who do not want to be dominated, but provided the perpetrator of that violence gets as much pleasure out of it as possible, at least proportional to the frustration they got from the victim who refused to humor them, obey them, accept their orders.

Abstract:

Derek Jarman - here only illustrated with pictures about San Sebastiane - is a brilliant film maker that deals with homosexuality all the time before it was called gay. He died of AIDS because he was of his time and considered promiscuity as a life style and multi-orientation as a must in this life style.

Yet his films are not really dealing with this simple fact that concerns his own life. The films are most of the time using gay sexuality as a metaphor of segregation, apartheid, rejection, victimization, etc. That leads him to a vision of humanity as being an impulsive compulsive segregationist species.


This is not so much pessimistic as realistic up to 1993 when he died with the enormous heritage of the two world wars and then all the colonial wars and particularly the Indochina war, the Algerian war and the Vietnam war, not to speak of Pol Pot, South Africa and the fall of the USSR.

Has it changed since then with the Yugoslavian wars, the Middle East, the Caucasus, Al-Qaeda, and so many other conflicts and hundreds of thousands of dead people and casualties and millions of displaced, internally or not, people.

If you take these films at this level then you find out that they are the most enlightening stories and visions of what the human species could be if they could develop their empathy instead of their hatred. But is it realistic to hope such a thing?

Research Interests:

Torture, Eroticism, Cinema, Martyrdom, Purity, Sadism, Canonization and sanctity, History of sanctity, Perversity, Extreme Violence, and Erotic Suffering

L’APOCALYPSE SELON SAINT JEAN

Adaptation Jacques Coulardeau

Interprétation Jacques Coulardeau

Musique Kévin Thorez

Je dédie ce texte à tant de gens que je ne saurais tous les nommer. Cependant certains ne peuvent pas être oubliés.

Tout d’abord ceux qui m’entourent ou m’ont entouré jour après jour, Lucretia La Notte en premier lieu et Annunzio dans la foulée.

Au Puy en Velay Père Emmanuel Gobillard à qui je dois une survie à qui il rendit l’espoir sur un lit d’hôpital.

A Saint Gervais sous Meymont Michel Thénot qui me fit traverser le désert d’église romane en église romane, de Wuyvre en Sheila-na-gig, avec mes amis de toujours, Jakin et Boaz, retrouvés à Beurrières sur un portail du 12^ème siècle.

Le poète Armand Olivennes qui fut un ami tout du long de plus de deux décennies et demie.

Et plus que tout ce soleil que je sens luire dans ma galaxie intérieure nourrie du feu de mes étudiants, car vivre c’est servir et quand on ne sert plus personne ni rien il ne reste plus que la sortie, en fait on est déjà sorti. Et ces étudiants sont des milliers sans que je les aie jamais comptés.

Olliergues, le 8 mai 2013

Date de sortie d'origine : 5 juin 2013

Label: Editions La Dondaine - Mtkx

Copyright: (p) Association La Dondaine - Mtkx

Durée totale: 1:54:54

Genres: Gospel et musique spirituelle

ASIN: B00CY4R1W0

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FOR A MOTLEY POLYCHROMATIC UNIVERSE

https://www.academia.edu/16048804/FOR_A_MOTLEY_POLYCHROMATIC_UNIVERSE

DISCUSSION