2
" This time, something different happens, though. It’s the daydreaming that does it. I’m doing the usual
thing—imagining in tiny detail the entire course of the relationship, from first kiss, to bed, to moving in
together, to getting married (in the past I have even organized the track listing of the party tapes), to how
pretty she’ll look when she’s pregnant, to names of children—until suddenly I realize that there’s
nothing left to actually, like, happen. I’ve done it all, lived through the whole relationship in my head.
I’ve watched the film on fast-forward; I know the whole plot, the ending, all the good bit. Now I’ve got
to rewind and watch it all over again in real time, and where’s the fun in that?
And fucking … when’s it all going to fucking stop? I’m going to jump from rock to rock for the rest of
my life until there aren’t any rocks left? I’m going to run each time I get itchy feet? Because I get them
about once a quarter, along with the utilities bills. More than that, even, during British Summer Time.
I’ve been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and
me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains. "
― Nick Hornby , High Fidelity
4
" That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from behind the tool-shed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows.At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed. Soon, from the river's sunbaked hollows, it was possible to buy Titanic carpets, and Titanic cloth, from bolts arranged in wheelbarrows. There was Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, Titanic perfume, Titanic pakora, even Titanic burqas. A particularly persistent beggar began calling himself " Titanic Beggar." " Titanic City" was born.It's the song, they said.No, the sea. The luxury. The ship.It's the sex, they whispered.Leo, said Aziza sheepishly. It's all about Leo." Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. " That's what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead. "
5
" A basic premise of Expressionism was that mise-en-scène - the visual space of the film (as well as of fiction, theatrical presentation, and painting) - should express the stressed psychological state of either its main character, or more universally, the culture at large. Edvard Munch's painting The Scream (1893) best exemplifies this effect, though it actually predates and influenced the Expressionist movement. This painting of a figure on a bridge, standing in front of a violent multicolored sky, hands held up in anxiety and terror, is a dominant image for the twentieth century. It encapsulates the Expressionist desire to make the world a reflection of the interior anguish it has caused. "
― , Film, Form, and Culture W/ DVD-ROM