Some months ago Amy Winehouse caught my eye for sleazy emaciated beehive haired girls while zapping. Her voice seemed ok, and I liked the retro R&B. Then someone said something about a new pop star dragged into drugs and shit, how sad it was, whatever. Thing is the music and the persona are really quite fresh, even with all the retro aura—retro which has actually become so prevalent in good music as to make one wonder, isn’t this really the way music IS, and all those other non-retro forms nothing but deviations?

But then, why decadency has such power over us? First, success doesn´t help at all the basic sufferings we all have, sometimes it even intensifies it—we enjoy having this knowledge, being the losers we are. We like to devour the idea of such wasted life, exactly because it is mocking itself, specially when some new bravery comes with it—I don’t even know why I spend some time every day thinking of her, maybe its just that I got caught into some advertisement campain, but, alas, we all have to do something with what captures our minds… or maybe we don’t. Well, its better than thinking about totalitarianism or any castle-of-cards shit they give me at the philosophy class...

Who knows? I cheated myself as I knew I would. Maybe we are just enjoying her buzz through some twisted sense of empathy, having some of her drugged-delight through her voice, safe crumbs of a high we know from the womb. Forget: the open quality of some of the vintage reverbs they are using makes it all so much like a sunny happy day, and some honest slutty frailty will always give us mind boners.

War is hell. That we know. But how does it sound to be trapped inside a foul sardine can, with the latest technology a 40s diesel fueled U-Boat could give you, without any specific connection to the ideologies of your country? Knowing, of course, most of your fellows sailors didn't survive in last campains?

This is on par with any great hell movie you have watched, with the added bonus of retro technology, great war-is-insane criticism, characters you will really care about, and impeccable exquisitely designed sets.

I was recently invited to translate for a tibetan dharma teacher, and after the event I wrote this to him. Never delivered it, though. May it be a good advice and warning for all.

This was long before all the widespread milk controversy in Brazil.

Yesterday I watched Skammen for the first time, and today I woke up to the news Bergman had died. I feel no peculiar sadness after his death. His movies make me suffer so much, and will scream quiet despair for so long, his death remains but a minor incident. Skammen was way too bleak yesterday and I still haven’t been able to recover… but this misses the point. The fact is that the rare occasions I had thought of Bergman as someone alive walking this world it just felt… strange. Such art hovers so timeless I have always seen him as already one of the many other dusty-coffin fellows I admire.

Yet, shame. Yes. Shame. Bergman is so much of a high-brow thing, such a common name amongst anyone who has ever read one or two paragraphs of literature in his life and considers himself to be sufficiently cultured, I sometimes feel like it is too crowded a club for me to belong. Like opera or soap opera or Philip K. Dick, it didn't have the flare of idiosyncrasy, the very very long tail of the niche I wish to stand for. (Sometimes it is enough anyone saying "wow, man, I really liked that stuff you showed me" for it to be completely smashed and ruined for me.) That's why I say "shame". The thing is, Bergman is truly of that rarest of species: the unanimously good.

Why is he so good? Just look at one frame of it. Just ponder over a few lines of dialog. Just loose yourself in all that suffering. Not that hard to recognize greatness, eh?

On this movie in particular: here we have the many shames of a man caught in weakness after weakness. When external situations get out of control, war stepping into his and his wife's lives, his weakness finally flourishes into complete degradation. But aren't we all living the dreams of someone who, at waking, will feel ashamed? And what is this shame? Having the nerve to disappoint Liv Ulmann! Yes, and I say "Liv Ulmann" because if every sentient being was like Liv Ulmann, or maybe I would say His Holliness Liv Ulmann, we wouldn't have problems developing compassion towards them.

To end, unlike most Bergmans, in a high note, funny was the comment made by Arnaldo Jabor, after praising—rather eloquently I must recognize—Bergman's many artistic achievements: "Though of death too much, but still he laid all pretty Swedish actresses around... It was a good life." Right, Brazilian wisdom is the perfect cherry on top on any Swedish nightmare...

"Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees"—the title looks like its going to be a lyrical, maybe even romantic Japanese trip. Well, in a sense, it is romantic and lyrical—but with that punch of peculiar dark humour only Japanese can brew.

It is difficult to talk about it without spoiling it, but lets just say the movie is beautiful, surprising and a little kinky. I will spare you the details. The overal theme is how love makes us crazy, and how far can a man go to please a woman.

The woman, in fact, is one of the most interesting characters ever.
On the surface she's sort of spoiled, but in fact that may be her adaptation to her misfortune. Was she a demon, or was she open to the situation and found a way to show her captor the essence of what he was already doing? Her chanting of some Buddha's praise while indulging in even more psychotic behavior than her new husband is bloody twisted.