"We also have tremendous opportunities to use our ships as transport vessels for relief supplies and personnel to Haiti . . . Simply put, we cannot abandon Haiti now that they need us most."
So what are the passengers really complaining about? Having their vacations ruined. Boo, hoo. Fuckers. If there's a ghost of a chance cruise ships can help out, shut the fuck up and bear it. Being far from Haiti doesn't make it fiction.
I watched Raging Bull again last night. I was thinking about how much Cathy Moriarty as Vickie La Motta looks like Kim Novak in Vertigo, and I wonder if Scorsese had that in mind when he cast her. Her looks serve a similar function--strikingly beautiful and often sort of frozen. Neither actress conveys big emotion, and I think in both cases this is meant to reflect the male protagonist projecting his imagination on her. We see many scenes of Jake La Motta interrogating her and others because of some paranoid idea of his that he's being insulted or cheated behind his back, and her face singularly gives him nothing. We think he's just paranoid, until later when La Motta's brother, Joey, sees her at the Copacabana with some other guys. Nothing in her face told us that she would be going out behind Jake's back, and nothing in her face told us she wouldn't.
She's a stark contrast to Jake's first wife, who engages with him in regular screaming matches early in the film. Rarely do we see Vickie raise her voice, but she's hardly submissive. There's a sweet, very physical understanding between the two of them.
When she finally leaves him, she has to tell him from inside her car without rolling down the window because she knows if she lets him touch her she might change her mind. We see her packing her bags after he'd beaten up both her and his brother, only to change her mind because he put his arm around her waist and quietly pleaded.
I'm talking about what people's facial expressions say because, although there's plenty of dialogue in the movie, few of the important character and relationship developments are directly communicated this way. La Motta is controlled by his emotions, and interprets the world through them. If he's upset, there must be something wrong with the world, and he has to tear away at it until he can confirm the problem and overcome it, rarely guessing that it's his own pushing that creates the problem. We don't really get a sense that he's aware of what he does until he's banging his head against the wall in solitary confinement. And you realise the guy is stuck with himself. His irrational behaviour puts a wall between himself and others--even before his wife leaves him and his brother stops talking to him, we see Joey beat the shit out of the guys Vickie's out with at the Copacabana only to not tell Jake about it later--he's rightly afraid Jake might kill Vickie.
The title card at the end says a lot;
So, for the second time, [the Pharisees] summoned the man who had been blind and said:
"Speak the truth before God.
We know this fellow is a sinner."
"Whether or not he is a sinner, I do not know,"
The man replied.
"All I know is this:
Once I was blind and now I can see."
- John IX, 24-26
the New English Bible
In spite of all his behaviour, and the vivid portrait painted of him by the movie, we can't really say Jake's a bad man. He's a likeable man, in a lot of ways. All we can say for sure is we can see him.
Last night's tweets;
Only good brothels may service Wonka.
Lime candy carpet coats the upstairs floor.
Zangief paid the new girl to blow Blanka.
Electricity leaves her somewhat sore.
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