Ataraxia

  Wild, based on the memoir by Cheryl Strayed 8.3 out of 10 Reese Witherspoon – nominated for an Academy Award for her performance – offers the audience a tour de force in this Wild motion picture, where the main character takes almost everything to the extremes, when she uses drugs it is with fervor and abandon, while she has a period of frequent sex – conservatives would call that fornication – it is again intense and finally, when she decides to take a hike, she accomplishes the impossible and travels alone for…one thousand one hundred miles! The story is told with flashbacks, in various tense moments, when the temperature drops to well below zero, she throws away perhaps her most valuable belongings, the walking boots, the protagonist thinks mostly of her deceased mother, Bobbi aka Laura Dern, also nominated for an Oscar for her remarkable acting, the abuse she has suffered from a violent father, that they had had to run away from, one night, in a pouring rain that looked like ...

  Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan written by Gene Roddenberry, Jack B. Sowards and Harve Bennett is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made, although it does not make my own 1,000 favorites, indeed, it made me wonder what is so special about this motion picture, and there is worse, but more details in the lines bellow – you   find a few thousand notes on films from The NYT 1,000 and other pages, plus more thousands of reviews of magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html     6 out of 10   Alas, I have seen Star Trek The Wrath of Khan and Weekend by Jean Luc Goddard in the past few days and I am quite disillusioned, to the point where I am nearly asking what the fuck is wrong with this NYT list of the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made – yes, "De gustibus non disputandum est" but still, these are bad for this cinephile...

  The Wheel of Love and Other Stories by Joyce Carol Oates was a finalist for the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was called "Quite simply, one of the finest collections of short stories ever written by an American” – you find a few thousand reviews of magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time and other lists, plus other thousands of notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other sites on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html     9 out of 10   Black Water https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/black-water-by-carol-oates-this-book.html by Joyce Carol Oates is an enchanting read, seeing that, I would have started Blonde, which is ranked 723 rd on The GOAT site for masterpieces, but it is extremely long, I think it has more than one thousand pages…   In The Region of Ice is the fist in this collection - one of the others is at 6843 on t...

  From the list of 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read – Charade by John Mortimer  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction 10 out of 10     John Mortimer has two works on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, Charade and Titmuss Regained  http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/03/titmuss-regained-by-john-mortimer-10.html  , but there is much more to interest readers, such as the Rumpole series, which I look forward to take up  http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/05/rumpole-and-miscarriage-of-justice-by.html   Nonetheless, charade only has sixteen (soon to be seventeen) reviews and just about eighty seven ratings, which seems so ridiculously few, especially when we compare this to some preposterous works (not that anybody would reject the associated fame, wealth, well, maybe the fame comes with so much trouble attached, but the mansion, supercars and the pool would be nice, albeit positive psychology studies have looked at the Hedoni...

When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs 10 out of 10 At the time of the worldwide calamity – well, except for China, which pretends to have it under control, a statement that may mean that they lie about the numbers and whatever happens is just buried, literally and figuratively, by the official propaganda of a tyranny that cares most about holding to power, the image of competent, if eternal leadership, horrified at the idea that this was called the Chinese virus, which it really is, originating from exotic animals markets, where these beings are horribly abused, markets which have now opened so that they bless the planet with another Corona, perhaps that time strong enough to wipe us all out – you could do no better that read the resplendent When the Wind Blows…but be careful to read the fantastic – also both literally and in terms of value – work of Raymond Briggs. At only forty eight (48!) pages, this is surely the shortest book, never mind a memorable, unique work, I have read since...

  White Heat with James Cagney A different version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at: -               https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEVa4_CsRStSBBDo4uJWT8BSWtTTn0N1E   and    http://realini.blogspot.ro/ This is considered one of the best films ever made. It is listed by TIME Magazine on its list of the greatest movies made since 1923; the All-TIME Movies list is available here: -            http://entertainment.time.com/2005/02/12/all-time-100-movies/slide/all/ James Cagney is also noted separately, on the same All-Time list, for his exceptional performance, along with: -            Bill Murray for his extraordinary performance in Groundhog Day, Marlon Brando for On The Waterfront and a few others Indeed, James Cagney is wonderful in the role of a leader of ...