Science is so much easier than women~~~

If you know what I am talking about then you know what I mean~~~

   昨天看了District 9，有感而发一下。只算严格意义上的硬科幻吧，lord of the rings一类的奇幻风，或是Batman一类的漫画风暂且不提。

   完美的神作 10/10：Blade runner。主题深刻，动作/悬念恰到好处，影响后世的教科书式摄影布光配乐，当然还有诗一般的对白。

   无可挑剔的大制作 9/10：The Matrix (1 only!!!)，District 9，Star wars legacy。值得一看的主题，各方面制作娴熟而无明显破绽。

   剑走偏锋的精致小品 8/10：太空牛仔风格的Serenity，荒谬乌托邦式的Brazil。鲜明的风格使其独树一帜。在制作上明显感到影片本身的野心有限，但整体掌控恰当而得体。

   闪光之作 7/10：Dark city，The thirteenth floor，Minority report。立意和制作上不乏可取之处，但或是情节漏洞，或是制作粗糙，总之总有些明显的缺憾。

   Hollywood 流水线合格品 6/10：The abyss, The sphere, Jurassic Park，Terminator 1&2，Alien 1&2…………不过不失，可以一看的消遣之作。

   去Montreal开会，住了有史以来最overprice的旅店。作了第一次会议talk，效果还不错，poster没什么人理。

   Montreal是一个很有sense的城市：）老城区很小很小，但是石头铺的小路和楼前或挂或载的鲜花让人心情大好。Downtown隔几个街区就有一个小小的广场和各有风味的雕塑。圣母大教堂举办过Celine Dion的婚礼，里面的装潢是我从未见过的绚丽。McGill大学附近的几条街上排满了各地的餐馆，路边都是用餐的人群和献艺的乐手，实在是惬意到不行。

   由法国人带队，我们好好吃了几顿法国餐馆。著名的foie gras确实很好吃，还有用鸭油炸的薯条以及生牛肉等等等等，每一样拿出来的确都十分精细。不过用餐的时间真是很长，开胃酒-〉前菜-〉正餐-〉甜点 加上中间不停的红酒，每次都是从8点吃到12点。中间无数漫长的等待时间大家还就不断地就食物进行深入细致的讨论——只能说法国人实在是太能享受生活了。

   这里另起一段赞一下Montreal的女生长的很正。美国农村司空见惯的体态臃肿打扮老土在这里一个都见不到。刚到的那天晚上出去吃饭（生牛肉），接待我们的waitress长的简直就是(Juliette Binoche + Julie Delphi)/2，吃的我整个晚饭都魂不守舍。 后来几天逛街，才发现街边无数的小馆子里面，似乎每一个waitress都是超级fit加有型。

   困了，在千岛湖见jj和lb的故事以及照片下次再上吧。

PS: 在唐人街见到了传说中的“洪门”…………自己汗一个。

   好吧，下半部分见这里，我就偷个懒好了：）

http://aroomwithview.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!A70325C729BAFBF6!1000.entry?sa=372079495

   PPS: 终于发现了！自己一个人郁闷的时候就去看mitbbs的鹊桥和家版。然后就觉得我考原来我自己的感情生活这么成功。。。

   PPPS: 再次强烈谴责工作过分努力的某人！！！

Delia Elena San Marco

We said good-bye on one of the corners of the Plaza del Once.
   From the sidewalk on the other side I turned and look back; you had turned, and you waved good-bye.
    A river of vehicles and people ran between us; it was five o’clock on no particular afternoon. How was I to know that the river was the sad Acheron, which no one may cross twice?
    Then we lost sight of each other, and a year later you were dead.
    And now I search out that memory and gaze at it and think that it was false, and that under that trivial farewell there lay an infinite separation.
    Last night I did not go out after dinner. To understand these things, I reread the last lesson that Plato put in his teacher’s mouth. I read that the soul can flee when the flesh dies.
    And now I do not know whether the truth is in the ominous later interpretation or in the innocent farewell.
    To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say “Today we play at going our own ways, but we will see each other tomorrow.” Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
    One day we will pick up this uncertain conversation again, Delia - on the band of what river? - and we will ask ourselves whether we were once, in a city vanished into the plains, Borges and Delia.

- By Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley

      头痛。难得的关掉电视，开始收拾屋子。在卧室和客厅各挂上一幅梵高，在厨房挂上一只chat noir，在厕所挂上一幅抽象派的唐吉坷德——没有人觉得去厕所是一种多少有些超现实的体验么。

      在CD里放进一张久违了的Bill Evans，听着钢琴声象水一样在房间里荡漾。嗯，这次的伪小资完成度还是相当高的…………

PS：顺便谴责一下工作过分努力的某人，一百遍啊一百遍：-P

English Poem

What can I hold you with?

I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon
   of the jagged suburbs.

I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked
   long and long at the lonely moon.

I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts
   that living men have honored in marble:
   my father's father killed in the frontier of
   Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs,
   bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers
   in the hide of a cow; my mother's grandfather
   -- just twenty-four -- heading a charge of
   three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts
   on vanished horses.

I offer you whatever insight my books may hold,
   whatever manliness or humour my life.

I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never
   been loyal.

I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved,
   somehow -- the central heart that deals not
   in words, traffics not with dreams, and is
   untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.

I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen
   at sunset, years before you were born.

I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself,
   authentic and surprising news of yourself.

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart;
   I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

- Jorge Luis Borges (1934)

靠，算是栽在这个小妮子手里了。俗话说人在江湖漂，谁能不挨刀……

4/21/2009补记：好吧其实我也是一个很邪恶的生物，呜哇哇~~~

      Battlestar算是到美国后第一部有跟着看的电视剧。被吸引主要的一个是配乐，一个剪辑，以及很多细节的设计——起码还设计了像样的制服和装备（有不少Blade runner的影子），不至于像stargate一样拉着一队Marine端着p50就去拯救宇宙。虽然电视电影的局限让剧情还是显得拖沓而差强人意，虽然时不时出现的宗教故弄玄虚让人倒胃口，但比起Lost这种只顾吸引眼球拉长剧情不顾自圆其说的“悬念”还是要强上不少。

      然而今天看了serial final，还是不得不失望，最终battlestar还是没有摆脱几乎所有美剧解决悬念的俗套。所有的不合理最后都用god或是类似的超自然主义很神圣地敷衍过去，然后还狗尾续貂的加上一段反智主义的cliche。科技被放弃，似乎这就是拯救我们文明的最后手段，当然冥冥之中还有天使和上帝照顾着我们。

      这实在是一个奇怪但广为流传的理论。什么是文明和科技的冲突？什么是人性和科技的冲突？我们的文明当然是由文学和艺术而define的，但难道它也不是由我们的科学、我们对自然的理解所define的吗？比起中世纪神学家们争论一个针尖上能站多少天使，一张从太空中拍摄的地球照片不是更能够象征我们的文明，更能启发人们对内心的探索吗？唉，sci-fi频道毕竟不是ridney scott，Battlestar最后还是成不了Blade runner。

1：The New Yorker, Mar 16, 2009, Page 72

“The highest compliment a woman can receive is 'My God, she looks smart', not that 'she's sexy'”

哈哈，原来Lanvin的设计师的看法和我的一样嘛。不错不错。

2：The NYRB, March 12, 2009, Page 32

"Beauty isn't beauty," he writes, "if it doesn't inspire awe for a specific proposition about reality" ... And artists or artworks that are, as he says, merely "likeable," or don't have bite, are, in a phrase heard more than once, "more trouble than they are worth."

和我很久前引过的Kafka说的也是一回事。
 

A l'occasion de l'anniversaire d'Andersen...again...