The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

I seem to be in the mood for movies lately, but I’m in the mood for a lot of things. I think the main thing I’m in the mood for is escapism (because today I can’t decide if I just want to crawl up in a ball with my head in a book or shoot zombies) because I’m having emotional overload.

I went and saw Inception on the weekend. I’m not going to discuss that on purpose because it’s one of those movies where there is no definite conclusion and then everyone ends up having a million ideas, looking into it to the point of obsessive dissection, and going around in circles. I don’t have the energy for that at the moment, but visually it was a good movie. I did get a little bored, but that may have just been because it was a long movie and I can’t handle long movies.

The reason I’m really blogging today though is because 1. I feel like it and 2. I was just looking up The Sorcerer’s Apprentice because we saw the preview trailer for it at the movies. I like looking to see if there is a book that the movie is based on when I see a trailer like that, any trailer that even remotely intrigues me, or if the trailer intrigues me yet I don’t think the movie will be that good.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice has gone through some channels to get where it is and like majority of movies these days it’s not an original idea, but an adaptation of something else. If you’ve seen Fantasia, do you remember where the apprentice experiments with magic to make a broom go and fetch water from a well before it all goes awry?

This is where the Socrerer’s Apprentice is adapted from. I’ve typed up the progress of that segment from it’s present state to it’s original beginnings which I found surprising.

• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – 2010 film starring Nicholas Cage
• Fantasia – A musical animation from the 1940′s comprising several different segments based on classical musicals.
• Paul Dukas‘ Sorcerer’s Apprentice – A French composer who composed The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in 1897 which is based on…
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem of the same name which was written in 1797 and was apparently inspired by the rhetorician Lucian of Samosata, but I don’t know if that’s true or not (I don’t know if anyone does know if it is).

How’s that for a long journey for a story? Incidentally I played one of the brooms when we did a play of Fantasia in primary school.

Anyway, here’s the movie trailer so you know what one I’m talking about.

Finding Nirvana

When we’re idealistic, we — and many practitioners — imagine that nirvana exists somewhere higher in the realms, reserved for those who have meditated for the whole of their life.

In the morning and evening chanting in the forest we recite our meditation words, that liberation is ever present, immediate, timeless, to be experienced here and now by all who see wisely.

Nirvana appears when we let go, when we live in the reality of the present. Sorrow arises when the mind and heart are caught in greed, hatred, and delusion. Nirvana appears in their absence. Nirvana manifests as ease, as love, as connectedness, as generosity, as clarity, as unshakable freedom.

This isn’t watering down nirvana. This is the reality of liberation that we can experience, sometimes in a moment and sometimes in transformative ways that change our entire life.

- Jack Kornfield-,
“The Wise Heart,”

Nerd Test

That is version 2. I did version one also and got a score of 76-Mid Rank Nerd. I think that’s a little scary considering how many of those questions were technical and scientific.

Not Surprising!

Discover your Zodiac Personality @ Quiz Me

The Red Paintings

The song I am actually listening to, Cinema Love, I can’t find a clip of online so I’m going to share several other clips of The Red Paintings. I love them. They sing my favourite version of Mad World (not that I don’t love the original by Tears for Fears or the Gary Jules version).

50 Cent’s Dramatic Weight Loss For Movie Role

Could these pictures of beefy rap star 50 Cent be real?

That’s the talk on fan sites this morning after reports surfaced that the In Da Club star had shed an astonishing amount of weight for a movie role.

Media reports claim 50 Cent, real name Curtis Jackson, lost 25 kilograms to play a cancer sufferer in Things Fall Apart.

Fan site ThisIs50.com posted pictures of the gaunt artist, with comments claiming he had been on a liquid-only diet.

50 Cent’s dramatic weight loss for movie role.

Source – Sydney Morning Herald

The things people do for art. What do you think of it? Is it going too far or does health and someone’s mental state not matter in the bigger artistic picture?

Discovering Your Animal Totem

Also known as your Spirit Animal or Power Animal.
Begin the process of discovering your animal totems by examining the animals you have been most interested in & the times of your life that interest was piqued.

Use the following questions to help determine which animals are probably totems to you in your life.

1. Which animal or bird has always fascinated you? (We are drawn to that which most resonates with us. Those animals which fascinate us have something to teach us.)
2. When you visit the zoo, which animal do you wish to visit the most or first? (ESP. Children)
3. What animal(s) do you see most frequently when you are out in nature? Have you had encounters with animals in the wild? (The animals we encounter, in their city environments or in the wild, have significance for us. We can learn from them, even if only about survival within that environment.)
4. Of all the animals in the world, which are you most interested in now? (Our interests in animals change. Yes, we usually have one or two that are lifetime, power animals, but others become prominent when there is something importance or specific to teach us.)
5. What animal most frightens you? (That which we fear the most is often something we must learn to come to terms with. When we do that, it then becomes a power. Some shamans believe that fears will take the shape of animals, and only when we confront them without fear do their powers/medicine work for us instead of against us. Such an animal become a shadow totem.)
6. Have you ever been bitten or attacked by an animal? (Historically, if a shaman survived an attack, it was believed that the animal was the shaman’s spirit totem and the attack was the totem’s way of testing the shaman’s ability to handle the power.)
7. Do you have dreams with animals in them or are there animal dreams you have never forgotten? (This is especially important if the dreams are recurring or if at least the animal image in the dream is a recurring one. Children often dream of animals, & attention should be given to these animals. They will often reflect specific spirit totems of the child.)