Click images for desktop size: "Pilgrims Going To Mecca" by Belly In the 80's there was a mediocre film made by Dalton Trumbull. He made "Silent Running", a pretty good little movie.
This film was so soundly thrashed by the critics that Trumbull stopped making films and perfected the IMAX format and a few other amusement park ride movie making tricks.
"Brainstorm" was pretty misguided. It starred Christopher Walken as a loving husband and brilliant scientist who was not crazed or obsessed! Natalie Wood gave her final performance and was merely okay. The macguffin of the film was brilliant though, that could have been the problem - that the least important part of a story becomes the total inspiration behind it.
Walken invented this really wild device. It was a machine that recorded your every sensation and thought. The tape could be played back and any other person could see, feel and know you as intimately as you knew yourself.
The movie did the expected jokes, a fellow making an endless loop of another guys orgasm so he could be in orgasmic bliss for days until he was accidentally discovered. (It was an amusing sidebar that the character, after undergoing 72 hours of nonstop orgasm's discovered God and became very devout.)
The meandering plot finally found focus. A female scientist is having a heart attack, she uses the device to record her death. It takes them some work so that Walken doesn't die from her heart attack (confusing? it was in the movie too) but eventually they sort it out so that Walken can play the tape and experience her death and then, in great special effects, experience her afterlife.
Not much of a movie. There was a scene though that was remarkable and incredibly effective. Not so much for what happened on screen, but for the great desire it opens up in our own heart.
Natalie Wood is Walken's wife. She's going to leave him because she thinks he doesn't care about her, or cares about his work more than he does her and their family.
Walken loves his wife. While recording into his miracle machine, he remembers her, he remembers all he feels for her. He remembers those little moments in life that a couple have and one or the other and even both usually forget. He remembers the special times and the bad times - the fights and the hugs, the joy and the sadness the two of them shared.
And Natalie comes in and puts on the machine and listens, feels, and hears the tape Walken made.
After feeling exactly what he feels for her, by seeing his memories she doesn't leave him.
Can you imagine it? Seeing yourself through the eye of someone who loves you. Feeling how their heart races when they see you across the room, feeling the warm blood flowing into your face the first time the two of you talked.
What bigger gift could there be.
I still think that the greatest gift, the greatest joy we have is seeing the soul of another - just a tiny part of it is more than we can bare. My puppy thinks its a piece of salmon but that's another issue.
As mediocre as I thought "Brainstorm" was that little snippet, confirming that at least one other person felt the same way I do about such a big and tiny thing makes the film worthwhile.


Click images for desktop size: "Bamboo Road" I now officially and irrevocably hate my job. Turns out that the bank thing wasn't fraud or identity theft at all but a printing error by the check company . . . I've been apologized too but so what. I did get to meet two babies, listen to someone's plans for a new business (selling junk on ebay so not new, just new for them), hear about someone's adventures in Kuwait a planned trip to Catalan and more. Not a bad day at work for those things, bad for everything else though. I like hearing what people have to say and wonder why they feel compelled to tell it to me. Though I'm grateful for it.
The want ads in the paper were less than a half page so I'm keeping my mouth shut but I am gone as soon as anything remotely acceptable comes along.

As to that elusive 5th movie I've been revamping my thinking on what is the suitable pick!

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