BLACK SWAN: PASSION OR PERFECTION?

I used to be a perfectionist. Thank God I’m not anymore. I still place great value on doing good work and my best, but I’m no longer obsessed with having to do everything perfectly. Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) in the movie Black Swan is obsessed with dancing perfectly.


This film does an excellent job at showing the audience the competitive, and believe it or not, brutal world of ballet. We get a glimpse of the toll it takes on the dancer’s body, especially their feet which often become bloody and torn. We see the diligence the dancer must take with their shoes, their body and their dancing. We also see the competitiveness and rivalry inherent among dancers.

The director of the ballet company Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) bypasses the aging lead ballerina Beth (Winona Ryder) and gives the lead role of Swan Queen in his newer, rawer version of Swan Lake to Nina. The role requires that she play two very diverse parts, the innocent and pure White Swan and the provocative and sexy Black Swan. Nina has the White Swan mastered, but being too young and inexperienced she can’t quite grasp what is needed for the Black Swan. Yet waiting in the wings is another dancer, Lily (Mila Kunis), ready to fill Nina’s shoes should she not succeed. We begin to understand Nina’s drive for perfection.

The director, using sexual advances, tries to get Nina in touch with her dark and passionate side, but this would require an abandonment and letting go that just doesn’t fit with her perfectionism. Sex, orgasm, abandonment and passion all require one to totally let go of control and the need for it all to be perfect.

We soon discover that Nina is more than just obsessed with being perfect, she’s psychotic. She is a tortured soul who mutilates her body, or does she? Throughout the film we switch back and forth between reality and Nina’s fantasies, and it becomes as difficult for the viewer, as it is for Nina, to tell the difference between the two.

In the end she not only masters the role, but she literally becomes one with the passionate and dark Swan. Her ending words are “it was perfect.” This film is dark, violent and extremely sexual. It is not for everyone, but I found it to be an excellent, Oscar worthy film.

If I, personally, had to choose between passion and perfection, I would choose passion. I’d rather abandon myself into something I love and not worry about how it all turns out. However, I’m grateful that, unlike Nina, I’m not psychotic and am able to distinguish the difference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jaI1XOB-bs

BRINGING BACK THE OLD HOLLYWOOD

Below is a message directly from Hollywood Producer and Director Stephen Simon:


The spirit of The Old Hollywood is engrained in my soul and in the souls of hundreds of millions of people around the world. I grew up in the Old Hollywood. My father was a producer and director, Frank Sinatra was my "godfather", and I spent much of my youth with such stars as Lucille Ball, Red Skelton, Milton Berle, The Marx Brothers, and Abbott and Costello. In my own career, I have produced movies with Christopher Reeve, Tom Cruise, Robin Williams, and Madonna, who gave me lessons in honesty. Yes, truly, she did.
Unless something dramatic is done, new movies will soon become extinct.
Bringing Back The Old Hollywood is a passionate declaration that The Old Hollywood is most definitely not gone forever. Like Brigadoon, it has only been cocooned, soon to emerge in a newer and more dazzling form.
I invite you then to join me on this journey to welcome back The Old Hollywood as it is reborn.
That rebirth can come sooner than we can even imagine.
Because we are the ones who can now bring it back.
From the bottom of my heart, I thank you so much for your support.

Thanks so much!

Stephen Simon

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT THE BOOK: http://theoldhollywood.com/cart_cmd.php?af=1283759 As an affiliate, I will receive $5 if you purchase the book from this link. Thank you.

The Old Hollywood

I just discovered a new website called Theoldhollywood.com. It is sponsored by Hollywood producer and author Stephen Simon.

I had the privilege of meeting Stephen at a Spiritual Cinema Film Festival at sea a number of years ago. I was also a charter member of Spiritual Cinema Circle (http://www.spiritualcinemacircle.com/). I had to let my subscription go when I lost my job, but I truly hope to be able to renew it someday soon...if I ever get another job...I WILL get another job...LOL.

I also took a teleseminar with him and pitched the idea for my book Reel Transformation: Your Life Now Playing to him. If I ever get that book finished and published there will be an acknowledgment to him in the front of the book as I would never have even started it without his encouragement. Actually, I'm secretly hoping he'll write the forward to it.

Stephen produced one of my favorite movies Somewhere in Time as well as What Dreams May Come. He’s also just written a new book that I have ordered called Bringing Back the Old Hollywood. I’ve read the first couple of chapters online and can’t wait to read the rest. When I finish it I’ll post more here about it. I've become an affiliate which means you can buy the book through this link: http://theoldhollywood.com/cart_cmd.php?af=1283759 and I will receive $5 of the sale.

So click on that link and check out the website and Stephen’s blog and check back here later for my review of the book.

Our Crisis is a Birth

Does it feel to you like our nation is experiencing a crisis? Our economy is at its worst. Millions of people are unemployed. Our government is bickering across the aisle and stuck in how to solve our country’s economic problems, and many other issues as well.

What if what appears to be a crisis happening around us and to us is actually just labor pains? What if we are in the process of birthing something new and exciting? Well, Barbara Marx Hubbard and Ian Xel Lungold believe that is exactly what is happening, and I’m inclined to agree with them.

I looked back over my posts and couldn’t believe that I hadn’t written about this already. I was so jazzed by the Mayan Calendar film that Xel Lungold did that I watched it a number of times, showed it to a group of folks at church and sent copies to my friends…and yet I didn’t talk about it here.

Here’s the link to check it out on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVIUBP2ho3c

Ian says that the Mayan calendar is about the evolution of consciousness. Everything that has happened since the beginning of time…even before the Big Bang has been a result of consciousness evolving, and consciousness has a plan. As many of you know the Mayan calendar ends soon. Ian says the calendar ending doesn’t signify the end of the world, but the end of the world as we know it, and the beginning of an entirely new level of consciousness where humanity becomes conscious co-creators.

Barbara Marx Hubbard who is a futurist, an author and a visionary believes that humanity is on the verge of evolving into an entirely new species that she calls a Universal Human. http://www.barbaramarxhubbard.com/con/

What I’ve discovered in my own life and in researching the subject is that crisis (or what feels like crisis) always precedes transformation. Now I’ve never given birth, but I have been present at the birth of a baby and what I know is that it is a painful, sometimes difficult and messy process. So is life.

Imagine for a moment that you are a fetus about to be born. You’ve been safe and secure in the womb and all of a sudden there are contractions and you are being pushed through a tight and narrow passageway. It isn’t comfortable. If you could see…you would see a long tunnel with a light at the end. You would probably think (if you had the capacity to think) that you were dying. But you are not dying, you are about to begin a new and exciting adventure. The baby doesn’t resist the birth process…it surrenders and lets it happen. If it did resist, it would probably get stuck and die.

So, what if our country’s financial meltdown and political chaos are just the contractions of birth? Let us too not resist, but help it along by staying conscious and trusting the process. We are not in crisis; we are giving birth to a whole new level of being. I can’t wait to see what we become!