Font of the Week!

Kite Runner The Movie:

It is not a surprise to hear about Kite Runner’s movie, a well-written novel by Khaled Hosseini, now a movie directed by Marc Forster; an expected destiny for any engaging novel. What surprised me - a very exciting surprise I should admit - was seeing Homayon Ershadi playing Baba’s character on the movie.

Ershadi is an Iranian actor known for his strong performance on Taste of Cherry (Ta’me Guilass-1997) directed by Abbas Kiarostami. Educated as an Architect in Europe, Ershadi started his acting career in 1997. Now I have a stronger will to see Kite Runner this November.

Marc Forster has also directed Stranger Than Fiction, Finding Neverland and Monster's Ball.

Check MOMA's Exhibitions:

50 Years of Helvetica on MOMA. We know Helvetica more than we think; perhaps it is fare to say we have seen Helvetica more than our own reflection in the mirror. For decades Helvetica has educated, informed and led us into the third millennium. Designed by Max Miendinger and Eduard Hoffmann in 1957, Helvetica ruled the world as the most used sans-serif font. This is the first typeface purchased for MOMA’s Collection and this exhibition presents the graphic materials that have been produced using the genuine design of Helvetica. The exhibition was up all spring and summer and it will go through March 2008.

Interested in motion picture or animation? If yes, MOMA’s Panoramas of the Moving Image: from Nineteenth-Century Magic Lantern Shows is the exhibition to see.

Last but not at all least is the upcoming exhibition of Georges Seurat: The Drawings. My interest in Seurat’s drawings is about two years old now. I have learned to appreciate drawing as an art medium through Seurat’s sketches. This is one of the largest exhibitions in the past two decades that centers utterly on Seurat’s drawings. The exhibition will be open at the end of October.


To whom it may concern:

Khavar Sultan is back as healthy as an old truck like her can be. Although the reunion with Khavar Sultan is priceless the repair was costly. We drove, today to Washington Rd. to retune two of our borrowed movies to LRC: Naked Lunch (1991) directed by Cronenberg and L' Année dernière à Marienbad, (Last Year at Marienbad) Alain Resnais’ movie of 1961.








* The font used for this post is Arial, since I did not have Hervetica font on my blogger font-box,: Arial is the closest typeface to Helvetica designed on 1982.

Rope vs. Vertigo

Iranians on Internet:

I am still busy with Khavar Sultan; I couldn’t study for my exams in the past couple of days. This is a past due matter. Please accept my apologies for the delay regarding Iranians on Internet: A seminar for Iranian beloggers. Please read about it on: From Berkeley, Ala Hazrat Haj Agha and Iranian.com.

Now some up-to-date matters:

Last night I caught the last screening of the day for Eastern Promises (2007) directed by David Cronenberg. A movie about Russian Mob in London: like A History of Violence (2005) a straightforward story, great performances and plainly smart decoupage made it an easy-to-follow movie. However the exaggerated violence of the bathhouse sequence didn’t suit my eyes I enjoyed Eastern Promises. Particularly the first sequence – the murder in the barbershop - reminded me of a short story I read a while a go where a barber kills a Nazi Officer in his shop. I don’t recall the name of the story but it was a great short story.

On Saturday escaping form Princeton’s arrogance I went out of town to have Portuguese food with some friends. It was so great that it made me miss our lovely Portuguese friends André and Filipa. Though I am not sure if it was only the food that reminded me of them. More probably it was the heated debate I had about two of Hitchcock’s movies Rope (1948) and Vertigo (1958) that made me miss them. I have had the same discussion with André before. Simply I like Rope better than Vertigo and they don’t. Today I watched Rope again, maybe after 8 years. This time Rope didn’t seem as eye-catching as I wanted it to be. Why? I don’t know. To find out I am about to see Vertigo once more.

By Bike

This is for Baloot as an update on Khavar Sultan:

Today I biked to school. This is what I should do from now on since my poor baby, Khavar Sultan (Sultan of East), does not feel good. She is waiting her turn in the repair shop. Her full name is Khavar Sultan Sultne Jaaddeh Ha (Sultan of All Roads). I think you got the idea that she is a vehicle of kind but she is not like any vehicle: She is a Tameshkish (reddish) 87-Nissan pick up truck; has 4 new tires and a happy face. At least her face was happy up to a month ago when she suddenly got sick. The other day, when I went to check up on her, she was sitting majestically next to a Nissan SUV waiting for me to get her home. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her she should wait some more. I left quietly.

I chose a mildly sloped track today. There were two traffic lights on the way. I catch them both on red so it took me about 17 minutes to bike to Marquand library. Also, today I figured out that it is one thing to bike to school and entirely another matter to be able to work afterwards. Optimistically I assume if biking to school becomes my routine I will be able to have some work done.

Khavar Sultan Sultan-e-Jaaddeh-Ha, Fall 2006

Her Pulse

She sat on the cold wooden bench
Under the mist of rain
She sat
And
She looked up at the height of his Pride
She looked and grasped
Grasped the night
It is to be the end of the day
No sun
No light
No warmth.
There was nothing to be done
Night was there.

It was at the end of the day
When she finally climbed all the way up
Up to the top of his coldness
Up to the end of the day
And
She hung her pulse to
the coldness of the night.




*Belly Dancers, Sacramento Art Walk, September 2007

Caffe Strada & The Traveling Curse

The sun is out: a rare thing in the Berkeley that I’ve seen so far. I am in Caffe Starda. In the second week of September I am still trying to escape the curse of this summer: The Traveling Curse. The Traveling Curse is a curse worse than the Cruciatus Curse. In my book Traveling Curse is under the unforgivable-unforgettable section.

After going back and forth between Florence and Tehran, all summer long, now I am going back to Princeton from Berkeley. If you ask me how I ended up at Berkeley I shall say: in the worst possible way: by Driving Now I will stop talking about this worst curse of all; I’ve already nagged enough.

Lets turn to some movies:

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007): A good and engaging action and as the third of a trilogy it was an A movie.
The Simpsons Movie (2007): Although it was Funny, it was still a TV show and there was no need in seeing it in Cinema Theater.
Harry Patter and the Order of Phoenix (2007): So far it is the best movie in Harry Potter series. The performances are perfect: in particular Imelda Staunton’s portrayal of Dolores Umbridge. David Yates directed masterfully. He knows were to cut the story short and how to maneuver in the open parts of the story.
Ratatouille (2007): A good animation with a nice message: "Anyone can cook." Also Auguste Gusteau’s ghost was hilarious.
Venus (2006): Though a repetitive theme in a very usual setting should make any movie a boring one, Venus was painfully factual.

And now some audiobooks:

Life of Pi by Yann Martel: I had read the book last year, but this time, while driving across the country, I listened to its audiobook and loved it. The narrator, Jeff woodman performed beautifully.
The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant was also interesting - both the story and the narration.
Historian by Elizabeth Kostova has a very tacky story. The only good thing was that it has more than one performer so in the long hours of driving you wouldn’t go to sleep. But the novel itself is really bad. Don’t bother with it if you are not under the Traveling Curse.

Caffe Strada, Berkeley, September 2007