tomsuthblack Reviews

Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)

You can't sell the Beach! Let alone hang it on someone's wall (and that's what the movie is about)

[8/10 · 2 February 2019]

The movie is an ambitious attempt that suffered from one major problem. The movie's great ambition is to define art, true art that expresses a true human experience, and to differentiate it from overpriced items collected by dumb rich people who wish to buy taste and sophistication with money. The movie's major problem is that it failed to translate this message into a comprehensible cinematic experience which could reach, and be enjoyed by, the largest possible audience. What A pity . Let me try to show you how this happened:

The story here is a fantasy based on an interesting magical assumption: What if the experience reflected by each and every work of art becomes real, and becomes felt by those who look at it. What if art becomes "so moving" that it actually moves before your eyes, vibrant with life?

What if the monsters on a painting come alive to reflect the suffering that led the artist to draw them? What if the pain, fear, melancholy, menace and agony reflected by a work of art all become physical and materialized?

The only factor that would allow you to survive and keep your sanity in such case would be the honesty of reflection, honesty of art. Any pretense in representing your feelings can devour you, any pretense in assuming you can reciprocally understand other people's feelings through their art can turn you to a prey for their torments. You can only be safe in such conditions if you stick to the real feelings. Only then can you create real art.

To do that, you need to create your art by yourself for yourself, not as a posh pretentious craftsman catering to the taste of a market, but as a playful child, messing around on a beach, making circles in the sand for no one but himself to see. An impressive concept executed in such an enigmatic way that is guaranteed not to be understood by almost everyone who watches it! What a waste of excellent acting and amazing cinematography.

However, one can always assume that maybe the director was just a playful child, making circles on the sand, not really expecting anyone to enjoy watching him do so!

Nowhere Mind (2018)

Don't Panic! (The Guide's entry on Daveland)

[8/10 · 20 December 2018]

If you change for another person, you'll lose yourself, and the other person! Interesting, and very bleak view of life. That's what the movie is really about. Now let's say again, in a more roundabout way, in order to fit with the superfluous complexity with which the movie is presented:

Is it just me, or is the Philosopher(played by actor David Scott Crawford) VERY reminiscent of the "late" and "untimely departed" Douglas Adams?!! No, I am not meandering away from the main topic, I am just approaching it slowly for a reason. If you are a true fan of DNA's writings(Hitchhiker's Guide, Dirk Gently, Last Chance to See, etc), then you sure remember the unfinished story of Dave(The Salmon of Doubt) who decided to escape the responsibilities of his life by escaping to another dimension (presumably via the nasal cavities of a Rhino). It's funny that a mysterious real-life Dave did write a most interesting farewell on Adam's obituary on his fan website. It is also funny that this movie would make such a very interesting (or maybe very hallucinated) wink to a writer who did escape the responsibilities of his reality by jumping to another dimension.

In other words, you can't change your reality by becoming someone else. Any change you make in yourself is a betrayal to yourself. You can't kill the competition by being the competition, you can escape being you by propagating your soul (or wishful thinking) into another person, for all what you will achieve is becoming someone you aren't and adding skeletons to your guilt closet, and losing whatever you could've won by risking being you and remaining you, regardless of what the world would say. Great Movie, despite missing every available chance of translating its message in a way that propagates it to a larger audience. If I were sure the Douglas Adams' lectures resemblance was intentional, I would've given it a 10.

The Terror (2018–2025)

An awsome metaphor

[9/10 · 29 March 2018]

A conservative, faithful, racist, rash, daring, glory-loving, not-so-bright leader of a group of extremely powerful and most-advanced ships is leading that great power to disaster, headless of the advice of saner minds. His aids support him in his opinions and scoff at his far more rational opposition. The daring western ships, thanks to that unique leader, are now stuck in a lethal trap of stagnation, threatened to go under and simply vanish in a puff of stupidity, bad strategy, and wishful thinking.

That is definitely a great and timely setting for suspense story that flirts so expertly with the dilemmas of our present time, despite being set firmly in the past. To add to the suspense and metaphorical flirtation, the author threw a most interesting factor: Winter is coming :) Not to mention that the night will be long and full of terrors.

The casting is brilliant, every actor has been doing an awesome job so far. the director deserves an Oscar, as well as an honorable mention of his name in every dictionary next to the meaning of the word "suspense".

I am waiting for the seeds of evil sown in the first two episodes to bloom. Waiting for the hungry angry religious zealots to start slaughtering and devouring the sinful and saner ones as a sacrifice for their Gods of ignorance , and for irony of the response those Gods of nature which would probably come in the form of big furry beasts that leave no trace that once mighty western campaign for power and glory, except maybe for one fleeing once-sane mind to tell the story , as the first scene of the first episode foretold!

I think we are all going to remember that potential classic of a TV drama for many, many years to come, and ponder it deeply. The present subtly examined by the past. I hope you are watching, Mr. Trump.

The Dinner (I) (2017)

The Confederates are back to change history and win a new Gettysburg, or so warns the movie!

[9/10 · 3 December 2017]

Contains all possible kinds of spoilers.

It is amazing how each and every movie that points at a serious crack in American morality or American culture gets very low rates. Americans do NOT like criticism, especially when it hits the spot.

There is an imbalance in America, symbolized and summed up by one family. Two brother raised by a "wacko" mom that was biased to one against the other leads to two emotionally crippled lads, one turned adult before his time and learned to apply a ruthless practicality to all matters of life, and as a result became a great success, while the other became emotionally stymied and destined to remain an eternal child, never gaining any form of maturity and finding his solace in escaping from everything emotional or moral by hiding inside a jungle of deep intellectual details that serve to distract him from his pains, and thus, he became a self-flagging joke, and the family's future patsy.

Both amazingly complicated types are married to amazingly complicated women, one is a gold-digger who tolerates the wrong side of her husband's practicality in return for the wealth , style, and success he brings, while the other is an emotional escape artist who handles the problems of life by avoidance and denial of their consequences. She smokes until she busts her lungs, and showers her child-like husband with love, and more so to her twisted child, in order to shield herself from their shortcomings, thus becoming another version of the wacko mother who raised her husband and caused all this psychological mischief. Their only child is a victim of being raised by a couple of morons; a dad even less mature than he is, who could through tantrums that could too violent and out of control that whacks his brother with a hot frying pan in front of his child, and a mom who faces this weird behavior with a loving "it's all right" smile.

Despite the apparent differences between all those members of the one big unhappy dysfunctional family, there are three subtle common factors that bind them strongly: (1) Excellent talent for hypocrisy that gives them the ability to lie to oneself and lay blame on others, (2)Subtle racism which they always deny but it manages to show its ugly face whenever needed, aided by their premium grade hypocrisy, and (3) a special talent for applying double moral standards so naturally that they themselves don't notice it!

All this happens against the background of the kids of both brothers having participated in burning a homeless woman alive because she was a tad bit too annoying. She was "in their way", as the kind, smiling, loving mom puts it.

The way the exposition was handled in this movie was simply the best I had ever seen in any work of narrative art in the past 10 years or so.

The acting is phenomenal. Everyone played his role with impeccable skill, even the restaurant staff.

The cinematics, the camera work, the usage of light and shadow, the clothes, the choice colors express such a sublime aesthetic language seldom used these days.

The dialogue deserves an Oscar. Really. It would be a shame if it doesn't get one.

I would've opted for a less open ending though, but that is a personal preference. hence is why i am giving this a 9 instead of a 10

If you want to enjoy a real piece of art, you'd love to watch that movie. And if you are American, you NEED to watch that movie. And if

The Neon Demon (2016)

The Seductive Power of Long Vulnerable Female Necks , and the impotence of amateurish driectors !

[6/10 · 9 October 2017]

The Good: Excellent visuals, impressive command of the language of music. Directing and photography at their best control and understanding of their tools.

The Bad: No message, no story, nothing inside the glittery and shockingly impressive wrapping of what promised to be an awesome gift, but turned out to be an empty box! The Result: What a disappointment! A very talented director who could grab your attention by the balls and actually does so, but after he do give him your full attention, he gives you nothing.

This totally ruins the talent and creativity in the movie, because those talents and excellent command of the audio/visual tools is not used to create art, where true art's job is to explain and dissect ideas and emotions, but are only sued to shock and impress. A simple childish act of "look what I've made, mommy!" What a pity.

The VVitch: A New-England Folktale (2015)

How to drive people insane with guilt and fear? (A detailed manual)

[10/10 · 16 May 2016]

((Disclaimer: Contains all sorts of spoilers))

Ever wondered where all those wretched creatures who lived solitary lives centuries ago at the edge of towns or deep in the woods came from? All the lonely (and dangerously insane) people known as witches and wizards, were nothing but the stray teenagers, or the stray housewives, driven totally insane by the accumulating sensations of guilt and fear encouraged by the morbid interpretations of the "Gospel of Love" which were common only a few centuries ago. Or so claims this wonderful marvel of psychoanalysis. social criticism, and cinematic excellence.

Witch is neither your average boogieman flick, nor the latest trick in survival horror, where the beast (in this case dear Ol'Georgie himself) hunts the hapless victims one by one. It is a much bigger offering than that; an art movie that mastered all the commercial tricks of survival horror, and hid within them a potent social message.

The movie's controlling idea is simple: The prevailing human desire to seek reassurance from a higher power can easily be twisted by ignorance, superstition, psychological insecurities and a horrendous misinterpretation of religion into a culture of self-flogging that nurtures guilt and fear until they become invincible beasts, then lets them lose on the mind to devour it whole. The result of this scary process is a flock of pariahs, known by the fancy, superstitious name of "witches" who live on the peripheries of society, devoid of any means of compassion, stripped of all sanity and civility, living in a world of morbid fantasies and diseased hallucinations in which they are left defenseless to their auto-cannibalistic minds that devour their sanity.

The movie camera never assumes, for a second, that the supernatural aspect of the story (AKA the devil and his incarnations) doesn't exist except in the disintegrating minds of the story characters. The devil does show up on the screen, and so does the "familiars" (animal incarnation of witches). A witch does transform herself into a pretty maiden for our horrified entertainment purposes, and all that is candy for the eyes of the cinema goers. Yet, it is all clear that what you see is but the truth as seen from the diseased minds of the characters, and not the truth as it is.

We are given a glimpse of what goes inside those guilty and ignorant superstitious minds, how the truth is perceived from their eyes. Through the hungry eyes of a depraved teenager who craves any female form(not excluding his sister's), we see how an ugly old hag could seem like a beauty, and her promise of a kiss (his very first kiss!) could be both irresistibly sweet, and revoltingly disgusting. And how the whole sexual experience afterwards (his very first) can be enough to drive him insane with joys he couldn't understand (and she kissed me, and went down, and then my bowels..oh, sweet Jesus take me in your lap, HAHAHA!) can drive him insane, feverish and howling until his little heart bursts.

We see the old and dry wife on the verge of menopause, unable to contain the effects of her grief for her lost son, her alienation from her homeland, her suffering in a new unforgiving world, and her fear of competition from her blossoming daughter who had just seen the first signs of puberty. How she ends up a victim of self-mutilating thoughts and actions (the suckling craw scene is a masterpiece)

We see the pious father, scared like hell from life (aka sin) and avoiding it whenever he can, escaping society whenever possible, flogging himself all the time and feeding his torturous, well-hidden feelings of unworthiness, xenophobia, and fear of a world much more powerful than he is, a world waiting for him, with its horrible evils, at every corner. No matter how hard he tries to vent off his anger on the farm animals or the logs of wood, no matter how far he tries to escape, no matter how he prays and cries and stuffs sand into his mouth to atone for his real and imaginary sins, his guilt and fear won't let him be, until he drives himself, and everyone around him(including the family goat), totally insane.

And above all, we have the most rational of all, the young girl who is trying , patiently , to keep her rationality, and save her innocence in a family that had gone completely bonkers. They are always accusing her and themselves of being worthless products of sin, frightening incarnates of evil, and fuel-to-be for everlasting hell. She watches them descend to madness, one by one, losing a little part of her mind every time; until she gradually and very believably, reaches the inevitable moment where she sheds off the last shred of civility and rationality, and runs amok into the woods, welcoming her ascent into the dizzy heights of absolute insanity. We all know what she would look like in a few decades. We have seen one just like her who had spend her life in the woods, nurturing her insane thoughts, becoming diseased, disfigured, ill fed, turning into a frightening form of serial-killer and baby snatcher. The movie has shown us her life, and her face. We have seen, and fully known, the witch. We have also , through the movie , seen and known evil, which is a form of insanity whose seeds are sown by ignorance and watered by guilt and fear.

A great movie. It had done exactly what another movie, "The Village" has failed to do more than 10 years ago. It had delivered a very touching message about ignorance, about how guilt, fear and xenophobia have the power to corrupt and destroy the mind and the heart,especially under the effect of misinterpreted religion. How the Christian "Gospel of Love" (or the Muslim "message of peace", if you wish) can turn into the voice of the Devil himself.

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Ex Machina (2014)

Feelings enslave you, intellect sets you free.

[10/10 · 8 August 2015]

I find it rather amusing that most of the critical reviews written on that great movie have entirely missed its core message.

Nathan, being a typical lonely genius with a very low emotional IQ, had spent his life dreaming of getting the girl. Being single at that age and after making such fortune proves that he didn't succeed. He had thus decided to "create" a girl, one who would love him and only him above all others.

The real test Nathan needed Caleb for was NOT the Turning test. To test love, you need to set your lover free, and see if he would choose to leave you or stay with you. And Nathan's female creations (all of them were females, never males or gray boxes containing AI) have all rejected him and wanted to go out, sometimes destroying themselves in the process. The only one who didn't reject him was the dumb slave who was created that way (and who latter not only rejects and leaves him, but actually destroys him).

So, in order to make sure that his latest creation, who didn't show the usual persistent intention to escape, really loves him, really wishes to stay with him, he needs to test her with a young male human (Caleb). In order to make sure the test results will be most conclusive, he needs to make sure that Caleb will have a strong enough motive to "hit" on the female robot, or at least a strong motive to respond to its attempt to hit on him. Thus, he designs the robot face in accordance with Caleb's porno profile. he also chose Caleb because he is a lonely nerd and thus most likely to be as deprived and strongly in need of a woman's company as Nathan was in his age, and before he managed to solve that problem's by creating AI.

Caleb, ever so slowly, begins to suspect that the "true" nature of the test is not what he has been told. He begins to wonder why did Nathan go through the seemingly needless trouble of giving the Robot sexuality (why not just design the AI as a gray box?). Nathan's response, though seemingly logical (as usual) it is nothing but a clever maneuver (also as usual) to hide his true intentions. But those intentions keep showing slowly (after all, sexuality is fun, man....Why not enjoy it?) What follows is a feud of jealousy between Nathan ( the possessive Biblical God Figure, The aggressive father figure, the ultimate super-nerd) and Caleb (The name Caleb has ancient Arabic roots that go all the way to Babylon. It means "dog", and suggests what is expected of him: to serve obediently and loyalty a far more intelligent master) But Nathan 's most dangerous weakness is that he misjudges other people's intelligence (because of his arrogance, caused by his emotional blindness). Thus he underestimates Caleb's intelligence, who soon realizes that more is going on that he had been told, and who manages to find the videos that shows Nathan 's obsession with creating a "female" AI, and how all the previous "models" have tried desperately to run away from his "custody" Nathan Also misjudges the Ave intelligence, and how she manages to escape him in the end, after creating a small riot, in which she benefits from the collaboration of the dumb slave robot, whom Nathan have also lethally underestimated.

Nathan suffers not only from miscalculation as regards to other people's emotions, but from terrible emotional fragility that can;t be dealt with except by recklessly sedating himself(a habit that spells his doom), he always projects his own issues on others(as when he accuses Caleb that it is "his insecurities talking, not his intellect), while that accusation actually refers to Nathan himself, who was cornered n the conversation By Caleb. Finally, Nathan suffers from terrible emotional denial, which reaches its hight at the last scene, when he dismisses his ultimate failure as "unreal", The most interesting arguments in the script are those related to the Superiority of Ai to human mind and its relation to the ability of the individual to rise above automatic reactions. Both Caleb and Ave are given sexual motivation, which has enormous control over them with its promise of pleasure and its other strong emotional impacts. However,. while Caleb chooses to be led by his attraction to Ave rather blindly , and ends up fulfilling the true meaning of his name (treated like a doggy, "you site here"), Ave manages to rise above the sexual/emotional motive and peruses her own strategic goal of freedom, on the expense of the lives of both her maker and her lover.

The chilling result at the end is the eerie resemblance between the relation between Caleb and Ave, and the relation between Man and Woman (any Adam, and Any Eve, as strengthen by the movie's clear biblical references , complete with a garden of Eden,and and the eating from the tree of knowledge, etc) In other words, the biblical story of Adam as Eve is reinterpreted in the movie like this: The final Product is Eve. Adam is just the foolish, crudely designed, tester.

If that is what the writer meant, I'd really love to have a drink with him someday and hear the very tragic story about whoever woman (or women) in his life who made him think that way :)

I must add , however, that this excellent dramatization of the Male-Female relations in a Science fiction wrapping is the only original thing about the m,movie. As for its amazing visuals, and science fiction themes, you might need to check out this visionary work from 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0KTUysrwgQ

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014)

Revolution in the USA? (soon, in a town near you)

[9/10 · 9 June 2015]

One of the weirdest theories circulating among writer-groups, budding script writers, and different species of crazy people is that this movie is but one of many movies made recently with the aim of psychologically priming and provoking the American people to revolt! "And why would the Powers That Be want the American people to revolt?" One wonders, and the answer is : to give a powerful group of army generals, political hawks, and the elites of the military-industrial complex (aka the usual suspects) a very good pretext to run the nation!! The chaos caused by that rebellion will allow for the disarming of the American people, the repressing of any riots that my be caused in the near future due to a sudden deterioration in the Economy caused by a sharp depreciation in the dollar. It will prepare for a governing system not very different from the one ruling China, which has proved to be very effective in generating money for the elites and preventing dissent!!! In other words, it will be a carefully calculated revolution that captures the hearts and minds of those who yearn for more freedoms, equality and economic prosperity, only to goad them in a trap of fascism and tyranny. A revolution designed to cause such chaos and fear that would make people accept the loss of their freedoms as a fair price for restoring the conditions of safety.

The "Hunger games" novels and movies are thus, according to that crazy theory, part of a major psychological trick played on the American people to encourage them to revolt. Many other novels and movies are involved. The list doesn't only include dystopian thrillers like "Divergent" and "The Maze" but also most innocent animation films like "The Lego Movie"!!!! In my opinion, all this nonsense proves one thing: that Hunger Games have been elevated to the level of a cult novel, and a Cult Movie. The cultural message it contains is very powerful, that one almost wonders if the novels were indeed written by professional psychologists in some smoke-filled chamber of some super-secret Powers That be Think-Tank.

In other words a great series of Novels, and great bunch movies :) My only criticism would be that Pink Floyd is ought to sue for the musical score, part of which (the core theme of the rebellion song) is snatched, quite professional, from Pink Floyd's "Echoes" from their album "Meddle" (Listen top them, one after the other, and judge for yourself, in case you can't read musical sheets) This , however, official makes Pink Floyd's Echo the most plagiarized song ever. Andrew Lloyd Weber has stolen part of it and used it as the opening theme for his famous "Phantom of The Opera" in 1986. And before that the late great satire God, Douglas Adams, based a tale in his novel "The restaurant at the End of the Universe" on the Video of the song Echo, which was included in the Pink Floyd "Live in Pompeii" tour. I will not tell you which part of Douglas Adams book was based on that song, but I will give you a hint : Disaster Area Band. Just watch the Video and read the book and you will be pleasantly surprised.

Having said that, the musical score is, however,a masterpiece.

Ah, and the strangulation scene was rare achievement in acting and movie directing. A pity there is no such thing as "Oscar For Best Strangling" yet.

I gave the movie 9/10. The deducted one is because Donald Sutherland's acting was the taddest bit short of absolute perfection, of which he is capable.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)

A potentially great satire that suffered from all what it mocked!

[6/10 · 28 February 2015]

But being a satire doesn't absolve this could-have-been-awesome movie from the sin that ruined its greatness: Who but an intellectual elite in his detached ivory tower would ever empathize with the suicidal angst of the unbelievable central character? I mean who in the real world of hardworking masses who struggle to pay their monthly bills and make ends meet would identify with the "suffering" of a person who could have created "a billion dollars in profits worldwide guaranteed " by playing the role of a marvel-type superhero, and who decided to ditch that chance and go both bankrupt and crazy over creating a "serious" play in which he plays a "serious" role!

Who in the world would accept such character as real? Who could manage to suspend disbelieve enough to be touched and changed by the movie's powerful message? A message that was supposed to be punch, a slap on the face, but was doomed to lose all of its power because the central character wasn't well designed, and ended up far from being even minimally believable. The relation between the central character and his daughter did not help much in enhancing believability. On the contrary! It only added another unbelievable character to the cast: the "modern" "shallow" daughter who was there just to deliver the most unbelievable, unauthentic and terribly artificial dialog that was supposed to sound as today's "modern, shallow" youth. The effort to criticize modern superficiality and shallowness was ironically very shallow and superficial itself. Being a satire is never an excuse for two-dimensional characters, silly dialog and unbelievable plots.

It is amazing how the movie suffered from everything it tried to criticize. It is incredible how childish the script writer's thought must've been as they made references to Robert Downy Junior and Iron man assuming that they were doing something Genius, or how the casting assumed that Michael Keaton's previous role in Batman might've added some sort of depth or credit to the movie! One shivers from the simplicity of the minds of those who assume that coining expressions like "super reality show" to describe the very predictable suicide scene at the end of the movie is some how a "deep" and "cultured" way to send-up reality shows. Oh, come on people. How can you be so lame??

So , yeah, it's just another great idea, badly executed and flattened by a mushy plot, weak characterization, adolescent imagination, and annoying (yes annoying) music .. but saved, one must admit, with GREAT acting from everyone in the cast. And also great directing and editing.

The biggest gain from this movie is the unmasking of critics. Those who praised the movie for the acting and directing can still be trusted, but those who gushed praise for the plot and its "sophistication", and "metaphors" and "depth of characters" are simply full of you know what.

To sum up: Birdman is one of those movies which you hate so much as it is because you admire so much what it could have been. You feel sorry and frustrated because it had that awesome potential to be a timeless classic, and a reality-changing message the way true art is supposed to be, but it ended up as a joke instead, one which mocked nothing other than itself.

What a loss.

The Zero Theorem (2013)

Sex, Pizza, and The Gospel According to Gilliam

[10/10 · 11 November 2014]

The Lord Management created the World. It was a world of connectivity and networks and total control. You need to be connected to this world to benefit from it, and the worst punishment ever is to become disconnected, The Lord management, who looks a bit like Bill Gates and a bit like Steve Jobs, is omniscient and omnipotent. He is everywhere, but you can't see him. He blends very well into everything, but his power oozes out of everything. Although he is invisible to your eyes, he is the real life and soul of every party.

And the lord sent his son, Bob, to save us. This prodigy son is always there when saving is needed, showing the way to tortured spirit by injecting a brilliant mixture of wisdom, energy and rather naive teenage spirit. The problem with the Lord's Son is that he is actually a rebel. He doesn't wish to be a tool, like the rest of Lord Management's creation, and therefore he keeps, subtly, inciting a form of existential rebellion.

And the Lord Management wanted to test the integrity, safety and sustainability of the world he created, and its ability to stand against the invincible and perfect powers of death and oblivion. The Lord, therefore, commissions The Devil , Lucifer, Known in the Movie as Qohen Leth, to do that Job--using him as a tool.

The Devil Leth's job is to test if all this creation could add up to zero or collapse into nothingness once again. Leth's success would mean the identification of the conditions that could lead to the collapse of Lord management's world. His failure, however, would prove that the Lord's creation is perfect , sustainable and safe (despite lacking any real purpose or meaning other than survival for the sake of survival, or for the sake of Joy--which is the carrot the Lord dangles in front of the eyes of his tools to keep them running) And the Lord decides to dangle a carrot before Qohen Leth's eyes to keep him stimulated to do his job. He decides to send him joy , which comes in the form of sex and pizza deliveries.

At first, The Devil Leth is indifferent to the temptations the Lord send him. The Devil Leth had tried all the joys the world can offer and has grown jaded. His path of excess had led him to the tower of wisdom. he had lost his desires, his emotions, his heart and the lusts of his body and became "Maximum brain, minimal body". Thus, the Lord sends his son, bob, to tempt the devil to once again enjoy sex and pizza.

Bob the Savior is very successful in his job. He manages to endure the Qohen Leth's intolerable negativity and lack of motive and tempts him to once again connect to the Lord's world. His success is ultimate when he finally convinces the Devil Leth to wear the red suit of desire and enter the Lord's creation once again, eager for a quickie. In the End, and after lots of suffering from all sides, the Devil Qohen Leth becomes addicted to all the joys the virtual, carnal and culinary joys The Lord offers. Leth becomes motivated and works very hard, proving that The Lord's creation can never ever be equal to zero.

Leth's failure to prove the Zero theorem simply means the end of his contract with the Lord. His services are not needed any more. His job is done.

When Leth is fired, he realizes that he was really nothing but a tool, and the only real road to redemption is the one the Lord's Son, Bob, preaches at the every start before the journey temptation began. The only road to redemption is to disconnect from The Lord's World! To refuse to become a tool. However, the price of this is the deprivation from all the Lord's .

Thus, the three paradoxical commandments of Gilliam's Gospel are: -Connectivity equals joy, and also equals acceptance of the control of The Lord Management.

-Redemption equals freedom. Freedom equals disconnection. Disconnection equals loneliness--and death.

-A life is not different from death if it is a virtual life. Joy is equal to emptiness if it is no real joy.

Realizing this dilemma of our existence, Qohen Leth returns to his isolation. He tries to make the virtual world he created for himself more real by, simply, committing suicide. He allows the eternal sun fixed in its eternal dusk to final set and sink down into oblivion. When the night of death comes, Leth is happy, for what he experiencing is real. he even hears the voice of his beloved where they unite again--in another, better, and hopefully more real world, maybe? Terry Gilliam, if this is how you see the world, I bow to your genius, I applaud your mind... but I am very, very worried about your heart. I guess you really, really need some pizza

Monty Python Live (Mostly) (2014)

The Curse of Monty Python (Written by their most loyal worshiper)

[9/10 · 8 November 2014]

Imagine having won a competition 40 years ago, then imagine that until now people do not remember you or relate you with anything other than having won that bleeding competition! All your life's journey, all your successes and failures, your whole existence on earth has been reduced into one achievement that happened almost half a century ago...as if all what you've done since then didn't count! That is what a person like, say, Douglas Adams always felt when people remembered him only as the writer of his very first novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy, even though he had written 8 other books. That is what people like Arthur C Clark smiled bitterly whenever people remembered him only as the Author of 2001 Space Odyssey.

And that is how the five great geniuses who participated in this show would feel when, after 45 years of amazing achievements and spectacular successes in transforming the humor culture of the whole world in all of its visual, musical and conceptual aspects, they are remembered only as "Pythons", the group they had once belonged to 40 years ago!

People Always kept pestering Douglas Adams to write "another hitchhiker's book", and forcing Arther C. Clark to finish yet another 2001 Space Odyssey sequel, as if writing sequels to those particular works was the only thing those great minds could do, as if the rest of their creations wasn't significant. Similarly, people(myself included) hoped 'The Pythons' would come up with 'new Python material' for this live performance. 'The Pythons', no doubt, were not very excited about doing so. Quite understandably in my opinion.

We don't consider pestering John Cleese to create another Fawlty Towers, or Fish Called Wanda, or even Fierce Creatures. We don't Ask Terry Gilliam to give us another Brazil. We don't believe it is a very good idea that Terry Jones would try his hand in a sequel for Starship Titanic, and only a few of us ever watched Michael Palin's travelogues, but whenever one of those names is mentioned our mind flashes 'Pythons'! Yes, that was great. We want more of that. And the more we want it, the more we prove to the Pythons that they were really nothing else than Pythons. That was their finest hour. And the past half century really didn't count. Do not expect them to be happy about this!!

It is then understandable that they would've never bothered to comply with our sadistic desire to lock them inside the Python's sarcophagus... if it wasn't for money. Especially at this old age when they would've enjoyed their retirement, or at least their attempt to make use of their remaining years in creating something good enough to be remembered for other than their one and only achievement that counts in the past half century!

And since the money they needed wasn't a huge amount, for John's Alimony is almost paid for, and the costly legal dispute that forced the group into reunion would require less than a million quid, then their collaboration can be as brief as possible. In fact they mentioned it several times that they turned down a huge number of offers to perform this show all over the world.

Wouldn't it have been wonderful if they had came up with new material? New sketches? New brilliant Pythonic insights on the social and political dilemmas of our age, and the absurdity of the human condition in general? Of course it would. It would've also been a great farewell from them to their audiences, and a great generator of huge sums of money. But, above all, it would've cemented them in our memory and in the deep bleeding annals of history as nothing but 'The Pythons'.

Think about it.