<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>Great review Jaime! You are a wizard with words. </div><div><br></div><div>Bless you brother.</div><div><br></div>
<div>Jack<br><br>Sent from my iPad</div><div><br>On Dec 11, 2012, at 10:03 PM, Jaime R Vergara <<a href="mailto:svesjaime@aol.com">svesjaime@aol.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><font color="black" size="3" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><b><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman'">The
awesome world of teenager Pi</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman'"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><i><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman'">The Life
of Pi </span></i><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman'">is Yann Martell's best selling yarn of the
Pondicherry-born Pi (<i>aka </i></span><span style>Piscine Molitor Patel) made into film
under the direction of Ang Lee, (Li Ang to the Chinese), the Taiwan-born
colleague of Spike Lee, and known for directing the controversial <i>Brokeback Mountain </i>film of same-sex affections.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>Out title for
this article is from our feeble translation of the Chinese movie title (the
"awesome" may also be translated as "bizarre, weird, strange,
illusory and/or magical") currently showing both on regular and 3D
screens. I saw the 3D version, worth the
¥-cost, allowing me to commune with the zoo residents of the old Pondicherry
Botanical Gardens up close and personal.
Awesome.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>I start at
the edges. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>There is Gérard Depardieu, the renowned French actor
and director who is three years our junior but whose recent mid-girth images
double ours. He plays a French cook
on-board the ill-fated Japanese cargo ship for carnivorous sailors. He had no sympathy to the vegetarian
characters from India sailing across the Pacific. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>We already mentioned France's Pondicherry, which is set to introduce the
character of Pi and to narrate the circumstances that led to the voyage, long
in the book telling but marvelously and powerfully cinematographed at the
opening of the movie.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>Pi's family decides to move to Canada with their menagerie when public
funds in Pondicherry were no longer extended to the maintenance of the gardens
and its animals. Crossing the Marianas
Trench, complete with a map and a foreboding "deep" in the movie,
they run into a storm that we are only too familiar with in our protracted
stays in places like Oahu, Majuro, Nuku'alofa, Kolonia, Hagatña, and Saipan.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>The plot thickens to the main story, which is how a vegetarian
Hindu-Christian survives 288 days afloat the misnomered "Pacific"
ocean with a ferocious fully-fanged misnamed (Richard Parker) Bengali tiger on
a 30-passenger lifeboat. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>The tongue-in-cheek reference to religious practices and the God-speak is
part of the context. Our young teenager
PI embraces Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam before he reaches puberty, to the
great dismay of his science-enamored parents who would rather that the he makes
a choice of practice rather than fall into the nebulous world of the muddled
mixed middle. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>Then, we get to the final confrontation between the young teenager, the
tiger, and the sea.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>Facing the wide expanse of the awesome and aweful universe, Pi's Hinduism
remains unalterably all embracing in his affirmation of the unfathomable
mysteries of his life. Though not shown
to be Madrasah-trained, with a laser-beamed disciplined awareness of bean
counting cans of water and biscuits/wafers, Pi remains alert to the limits of
his possibilities and brave enough to know in his bones that if elements in
one's surrounding is non-compliant, like Richard Parker, it can, at least, be
trained. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>Then life runs into its illusions, actual in Pi's telling, imagined as a
mirage to those familiar with the desert and the open seas. Pi and Parker run into a verdant island, a
floating huge algae, hospitable and sustaining during day but acidic and toxic
at night. Pi had a pond of fresh water
and roots to fill his carb needs, and Parker had thousands of malleable
creatures for lunch, but the island turned the evening shadows into a
nightmare. The duo survived and after
filling up provisions, sailed away.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>A strange catholic <i>pieta </i>comes
through as the exhausted Pi finally cradles on his lap the head of the equally
emaciated tiger, the earlier allusion to the mysteries of the Christ of
compassion with a Padre at a Portuguese Church.
The religious theme got a final brush in the cinematographic tableau
before it hit the shores of Mexico.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>"I have a story that will make you believe in God," is a line
early on in the novel and in the movie.
Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam gets early billing, with Judaism's
Kabbalah gets a line when Pi the professor claims he lectures on the subject
also.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>Japanese insurance company accountants that covered the cargo ship
provide the epilogue segment of the film, interviewing their sole survivor for
their report. Pi's story was too
fantastic to be believed, so Pi personified the zebra, hyena, gorilla, and the
tiger with those of his parents and the ship's cook. The accountants' report stayed with the story
of Pi and the tiger. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style><br>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman'">Belief in God is an
account of the real. </span><font size="4">(Pi's </font><i style="font-size:large">pi </i><font size="4">in one scene is 3.14, then to the <i>nth</i> degree. It is also represented by 22/7, and 335/113, never a whole number!) In any case, however we relate our story,</font><span style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman'"> stories reveal beliefs</span><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="4" style="font-size:10pt;font-family:helvetica,arial">,</font><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"> not beliefs determining stories</font>.</font></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>Pi's complaint was that the tiger never even bothered to say
"goodbye." In an earlier
episode before he left Pondicherry and his first heartthrob, Pi recalled that
the parting did not include uttering "goodbye". </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>For three thousand years, humankind told their story in God-speak,
too. In the life of this meat-eating
former teenager from Northern Philippines, God walked away without saying
"goodbye", as well. "For
Unto Us a Child is Born" is the season's wondrous and awesome theme, not
the Magi's appearance, and their going away without saying goodbye.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif"><span style>I am with Pi on God in this one.</span></div>
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<div style="font-size:18px;font-family:'Times New Roman',Times,serif;clear:both"><a style="font:lighter 10px Verdana,Arial;color:#000000"><img align="absmiddle" border="0" src="http://presence.mail.aol.com/mailsig/?sn=jrvergarajr2031"></a> <font color="black" face="arial">j'aime la vie
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<div><i><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#ff0000"><b>Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, </b></font></i></div>
<div><i><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#ff0000"><b>Celebrate!</b></font></i></div>
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