Tuesday 26 February 2013

Letters to God #7: The Lord's Prayer



Pieces of Letters to God
Our Father, which art in heaven

Good day Big Guy in the sky :).

Hallowed by thy Name.
Thy kingdom come.

Well then, here we are and it's good to be here - to be so near You. I like looking up at the blue sky and know that Thou art there. Get it? You're up there making beautiful art. I read that we've managed to create multiverses in a lab the other day. This is probably old news to You, what with having created multiverses from the get go - Big Bang and all that. I imagine that You're proud though, Your creatures take after You. We live to create, or as Professor Tolkien more aptly put it, sub-create. If You've kept up with the news You know it's all doom and gloom down here - all rape and murder. That's what we do when we're not sub-creating. People are saying it's the end of days. I say it's the gentle and kind invasion of Your kingdom. It's like the bit in Final Crisis where non-existence invades existence - only it's gentle and kind. We're not being gentle and kind about it though. We're quite brutal in reaction to gentle and kind things. Do me a huge favour, would Ya? Carry Anene, Reeva and every single human being (everyone who was a potential generator of goodness beyond measure) who tragically passed away lately gently into your bosom. Send the Lady on the Grey to bear them away on her steed:

'He is gentle enough to bear the mightiest of you away on his broad back, and strong enough for the smallest of you' - Neil Gaiman.

Also, please forgive the folk who took their lives, even... Or rather, especially when we can't.

Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven

This is the bit about Your will and our free will that I don't understand so well. I get the end bit where evil will find that it has been serving You all along. What I don't get is what's happening in between - it gets murky there. Our will is pretty much reigning in the earth sphere right now. I'm not too sure what how the governance is top-side but down here it's Jacob Zuma.

Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgives us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.

Padre Nostro

Padre nostro che sei nei cieli,
sia santificato il tuo Nome,
venga il tuo Regno,
sia fatta la tua Volontà
come in cielo così in terra.
Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano,
e rimetti a noi i nostri debiti
come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori,
e non ci indurre in tentazione,
ma liberaci dal Male.

At this point the whole world needs a hug. I'm not sure about the rest of the multiverse but give them a hug too. There's a lot of pain and suffering doing the rounds. People are in great need of daily bread, daily hugs and just good ol' fashioned daily love. Hook us up, ol' G. We need a whole new level of strongs for the forgiving some trespasses bit. Folks is nasty out there lately and John Legend's approach seems to be the most attractive: "Now I’m not afraid to do the Lord's work, You say vengeance is his but I'm'ma do it first." It's a bit of a steep learning curve as You can see. I can't speak for the rest of humanity on this one but I need my trespasses forgiven. At the rate I'm going I'm a burglar! Temptation is pretty much everywhere and hard to avoid. You've seen the second The Lord of the Rings movie, right? There's the scene where Gollum's leading Frodo and Sam through the Dead Marshes and tells them not to look at the dead faces in the water. That's pretty much the first thing Frodo does! They aren't even cute hobbit girls in revealing dresses, just creepy, dead faces and Frodo's tempted to look. Temptation is rough. Deliverance from evil is straight up necessary though, hey. We need every form of escape we can get from evil's gaping maw.

That's it for now, Big Guy. Later times.

For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever
Amen.

Saturday 2 February 2013

My Magical Place: Django Unchained




When a Quentin Tarantino joint hits the big screen we all pay attention. People like me get wildly excited and forget to wear pants to the cinema. Other folks throw their hands in the air in disdain at the amount of blood that will be spilled on-screen and worry about the direction in which our society is headed. Add American slavery to the mix and you have Spike Lee refusing to see the film.

Django Unchained, set two years before the American Civil war, is pretty straightforward in its premise: Django, brilliantly portrayed by Jamie Foxx (Ray), is a slave who has been unchained. The unchaining is done by dentist-turned-bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz, the fastest gun in the South, played by the charming Christoph Waltz, whose previous role in a Tarantino gig (2009's Inglorious Basterds) as SS Col. Hans Lando was breath-yanking. Django and King team up to kill some bad white folk and to save Django's wife Broomhilda, played by the oh-so-beautiful Kerry Washington (Ray) from the evil clutches (I think that's an appropriate phrase) of Mississipi plantation owner, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). Lots of things happen in-between that - and that's where the fun is.


What makes Django Unchained such a great picture is that even though the element of slavery is there to jar your brain and incite a strong emotional reaction (and rightly so) it's a terrifically good, if quite simple, story that just happens to take place in an inhumane era of America's history. At its heart it's a Spaghetti Western and pays homage to classic movies in the genre. The movie has some beautiful shots of Django looking very much like Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) - the movie Tarantino states is the best-directed film of all time. He especially looks the part in the gunslinger shots in the theatrical poster. Django Unchained takes its title from Sergio Carbucci's spaghetti western, Django (1966) with Franco Nero as Django. Nero makes a cameo appearance in this feature. The title also alludes to the films Hercules Unchained (1959) and Angel Unchained (1970). Both these films also deal with the themes of escape from captivity and revenge. By now, we all know that Tarantino is well versed in revenge and he doesn't skip a beat with it in this feature. Django is angry and will gun down anyone who stands between him and his woman.

 
The movie's musical score's excellent and is one of its best elements. The scenes with Rick Ross' '100 Black Coffins', John Legend's 'Who Did That To You' and 'Freedom' by Anthony Hamilton are perfect.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) play their roles as Calvin Candie and Stephen to a tee. The whole cast deserves a standing ovation though. If you've not seen Django Unchained yet do yourself a favour and rectify the situation today. This is Quentin Tarantino at his very best.


The only thing really wrong with this movie is that Boba Fett isn't in it, what with being the coolest bounty hunter in a galaxy far, far away and owning a ship called Slave I. I really should write some fan fiction with him in it, a la Fifty Shades of Grey.

 
P.S. At this rate Tarantino should direct the films based on Stephen King's Dark Tower series and Jamie Foxx play the role of Roland Deschain.