Moonlight by Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney - 9 out of 10

 

Moonlight by Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney

9 out of 10

 

 

This is an acclaimed film, it won the 2017 Academy Awards for Best Motion Picture of The Year, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor in a Supporting Role and I could only finish it last night, for some wrong reason – it was late when it aired, did not really feel another gay romance would really make my day, and others

 

Brokeback Mountain https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/02/brokeback-mountain-by-annie-proulx.html is just one of those stories, which I enjoyed a lot, it is just a question of how many, and also, the issue I have when I do not relate, identify with the character, seeing as I do not understand same sex love…

Sapphic love is excluded, and then, this is a limitation that would prompt a change of reading material – you would find something which is not way better, but also acceptable, politically correct, since I see myself as open-minded, my absolute favorite writer is Marcel Proust https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/04/le-temps-retrouve-by-marcel-proust.html

 

Then another, perhaps second on the list of favorites, would be Somerset Maugham https://realini.blogspot.com/2012/12/rain-and-other-south-pacific-stories-by.html whose stories are mesmerizing, glorious, and whose sexual orientation was the same as for Marcel Proust, and other authors

Yes, I get that, after so much silence, of millennia actually, and abuse, discrimination and punishment for those who felt differently, it will take a long time to make up, establish some kind of balance, though in my case, I really prefer to see stories about men and women, or women and women involved intimately, especially when we get the bedroom scenes

 

This is in fact not an isolated, retrograde, passe individual, there was an article in The Economist that looked at the Oscars and the big win that Oppenheimer https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2023/12/oppenheimer-based-on-book-by-kai-bird.html represents for cinephiles

Oppenheimer has won this year’s Oscar for Best Motion Picture and it was a box-office hit, yet, since 2010, no other winner for the top spot was a hit with audiences, which is why the journalist from The Economist was cheering the fact that, after such a long time, audiences have seen an Oscar Winner, and we may hope for better films

 

Since studio executives have supported the Marvel type of film, which was bringing in success at the box office, and looked at the awarded films as art house productions, independent projects that would not sell tickets, we could expect the same, without this recent change, indeed, Martin Scorsese spoke of the death of cinema…

 

As we know it, given that the storylines for those movies based on cartoons are simplistic and we get out of the theater made more stupid by these, and now that this big hit, with a billion in ticket sales – which made one hundred million for Christopher Nolan – has taken seven Oscars, we could hope that more decent projects will get approved

Moonlight was not even in the top 100 movies, in terms of sales, in the year when it was out in the cinemas, albeit it is an excellent film, if you ask me, I would pick Manchester by The Sea https://realini.blogspot.com/2023/10/manchester-by-sea-by-kenneth-lonergan.html over the winner, a personal choice

 

Arrival https://notesaboutfilms.blogspot.com/2017/07/note-on-arrival-directed-by-denis.html was also more my cup of tea, in moonlight, there is more than same sex love, evidently, and we feel empathy, more than that, for the young hero, who has to suffer a lot, his mother is a junkie, and on top of that, he is bullied

Lucky for him that Juan aka Mahershala Ali – he has won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and he is one of the best thespians of our times, one of my favorite films of last year was Leave the World Behind https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/01/leave-world-behind-by-rumaan-alam.html a wondrous SF film

 

Mahershala Ali, Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke act in it and on my list, Leave the World Behind is above Poor Things https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/03/poor-things-screenplay-by-alasdair-gray.html with talk about apocalypse, how America (and the world for that matter) descends into chaos and conflict, with few survivals

The Economist – again, hey, this is my main, if not only source of global information, I have been reading this since I was 19, some 41 years ago – has a look at Civil War, a well-received motion picture, with a metascore of 73, that looks at what the title makes clear, the USA after states have seceded and they fight each other

 

In my mind, America (which should have been called…Erica, king Eric had more to do with the discovery than Vespucci) is already divided into the blue (mostly decent realms) and the red, which I see as worse than where I leave – and to think that in my AT&T days I tried to move to America, a few lines about that time are included below

Lake Wobegon Days https://realini.blogspot.com/2020/08/lake-wobegon-days-nine-out-of-10.html is the novel that talked about the United States of Erica and what has become the Lake Wobegon Effect, the notion that most have of themselves – they see themselves as better than average…

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”