"You can change or stay the same...We can make the best or the worst of it. And I hope you make the best of it. 

I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. 

And if you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again."

-- Benjamin B.

Beauty and the Beast

one of my all time favorite Disney films

ted chung,
you're so dreamy



a thousand words
Berlin International Film Festival

Every day: so many opportunities to connect...
What if you took just one?

mike's

UCLA Director's Spotlight

A reclusive roommate realizes 

there's more to life than he imagined.

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the
iniquities of the selfish, and the tyranny of evil men.

Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill
shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for
he is truly his brothers keeper and the finder of lost children.

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance
and furious anger, those who attempt to poison and destroy
my brothers.

And you will know my name is the Lord,
when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

(Ezekiel, 25:17)

3 am watching Boondock Saints on my day off from work--

such a good idea

"We all must fear evil, but the evil we must fear 

the most is the indifference of good men."

I can't wait to watch this

"What we have here is a dreamer; someone completely out of touch with reality."

RED: But there are times I curse him for the dreams he left behind... dreams where I am lost in a warm place with no memory. An ocean so big it strikes me dumb. Waves so quiet they strike me deaf. Sunshine so bright it strikes me blind. It is a place that is blue beyond reason. Bluer than can possibly exist. Bluer than my mind can possibly grasp. I am terrified. There is no way home.

The Shawshank Redemption: 9.2/10 rating = must watch

time passes when you're not looking --

This was an impulse buy from the small DVD shop next to my house. I originally purchased it for the alluring synopsis on the bootleg backcover: 

"Driven by Isabel Coixet's visually assured and deepy observant direction,"Elegy" charts the passionate relationship between a celebrated college professor and a young woman whose beauty both ravishes and destabilizes him. As their intimate connection transforms them more than either could image, a charged sexual conquest evolves into an indelible love story. With humanistic warmth, wry wit and erotic intensity, "Elegy" explores the power of beauty to blind, to reveal and to transform."

But this film is more than that. So much more. It shows the power of beauty and infatuation and its ability to cripple a person with a regression to adolescent behaviors. It turns an independent, confident man into someone weak and submissive lacking the ability to leave his bed.

It makes you realize that beauty is fleeting, and so is youth. After all, time makes fools of us all. As we see David Kepesh dive further into despair because of the ever widening gap between him and the Cuban beauty Consuela Castillo, it made me understand the small crevices in a relationship that can pull two people apart and become gulfs and canyons of distance.

There is no 'happily ever after' at the end of this film.

Instead, there is a hospital bed.

There is a woman, who sadly questions the damage to her pristine, youthful body. And there is a man, past his prime, continuing to chase the ghosts of relationships past.

"But when you are 17, you know, you do

 a lot of things to feel 

that you are moving."

quote #142.

"Later, much later, back in Paris, each harrowing ordeal will become an adventure. For some idiotic reason, your most horrific experiences are the stories you most love to tell."  

- L'auberge Espagnole