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Separated at birth? — 11 Comments

1. in case you havent notice they find and replace old actors with newer ones that are akin to the old… the same process is in hit music… mix a bit of old for familiarity, then some new so its fresh, add a hook (like using an incomplete music phrase that the beginning of the song plays), and dump in some emotions.

   i do note that you did not use the picture of him with two earrings which signify something that then makes other things obvious.

   Morgan Freeman Blasts ‘Racist’ Tea Party, Calls Koch Bros., Rush Limbaugh ‘Strange’

   MORGAN FREEMAN: I think that we did a really good thing when we elected Barack Obama. I read his books, they read his books. He is absolutely and totally qualified for the job. He has proven himself to be not only qualified for the job, but very good at it. The things that he’s managed to get accomplished in the face of so much push back is amazing. And I think, this is Morgan Freeman’s personal thought, we’re going to be in a lot of trouble if we don’t reelect him because people on the other side of the fence scare me.

   “He is being purposely, purposely thwarted by the Republican Party, who started out at the beginning of his tenure by saying, ‘We are going to do whatever is necessary to make sure that he only has one term,'” Freeman said. “That means they will not cooperate with him on anything. So to say he’s ineffective is a misappropriation of the facts.”

2. Morgan Freeman is a great actor, but I wish he would just shut up about politics and stick to playing God.

3. Neo you need to learn a new word:
   Doppelganger, comes from German & it means
   a *twin* to somebody who is not related to them at
   all.

4. I saw Nelson Mandela.

5. Molly NH:

   Actually, I first learned the word doppelgé¤nger many many years ago, long before it became popular in this country. I learned it in its original meaning, which is not the one you mentioned or the way it’s commonly used now in this country. It originally did not mean a living person who looked like another person. Instead it was more of an apparition or spirit that resembled that person and whose appearance was often thought to be the harbinger of evil tidings.

   So I never use the word to mean the same as “double.”

6. I picked up that usage from the daily Mail out of the UK. Daily Mail has a great deal of fun with it frequently alluding to doppelgangers for the Royals.
   They have set up birthday parties for Prince george,
   baby showers for Kate all with the use of their
   doppelgangers, today’s news had a Charles & Camilla couple heading for the hospital, lol
   I get a huge laugh out of it, the Queen Elizabeth doppelganger can often be seen in the pics reading a racing form ! LOL

7. That *dark* definition form the German of *evil tidings* is a bit creepy for my taste, I like the lighthearted Uk version !

8. I loved Black Orpheus but it has been years since I last saw it. I wonder what I would think now (I’m going to look for it).

   When Robin Williams died I raved about Being Human on this site. I got it from Amazon to watch again and – – wow – – was I wrong.

   I realized how much Being Human had affected me on an emotional and psychological level without regard to how good of a movie it was, which turns out to be not very good. So much for fond memories.

   I recently watched Sleepers and- – wow – – it was not only not funny, but was also embarrassingly bad. Ok, the orgasmatron is still funny, and the line “that’s so McKuen”. The rest was just plain stupid and super shoddy.

   But it did remind me of one thing which is still as true as true can be. Diane Keaton is the worst actor or actress ever to have a successful career. She has zero charm, zero insight, zero art.

   She was the only blot in the Godfathers (“I had an abortion! It was a boy!” – – maybe the worst delivered lines in the history of cinema.)

   I realize I am the only person on the planet who feels this way about Keaton. I have no trouble admitting when I am wrong, or reconsidering my pov if someone asks me to, but with respect to Keaton – –

   I am right and the rest of the planet is wrong!

9. I remember reading that President Obama said, “Black Orpheus” was his mother’s favorite movie.

10. Rufus Firefly:

    Yes, but Obama himself detested the movie and seemed contemptuous of her for liking it, as well:

    “One evening, while thumbing through the Village Voice, my mother’s eyes lit on an advertisement for a movie, Black Orpheus, that was showing downtown. My mother insisted we go see it that night; she said it was the first foreign film she had ever seen.”

    He goes on:

    “‘I was only sixteen then,’ she told us as we entered the elevator. ‘I’d just been accepted to the University of Chicago — Gramps hadn’t yet told me I couldn’t go — and I was there for the summer, working as an au pair. It was the first time I’d ever been really on my own. Gosh, I felt like such an adult. And when I saw this film, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.'” …

    “We took a cab to the revival theatre where the movie was playing. The film, a groundbreaker of sorts due to its mostly black, Brazilian cast, had been made in the fifties. The storyline was simple: the myth of the ill-fated lovers Orpheus and Eurydice set in the favelas of Rio during carnival, in Technicolor splendour, set against scenic green hills, the black and brown Brazilians sang and danced and strummed guitars like carefree birds in colourful plumage. About halfway through the movie I decided I’d seen enough, and turned to my mother to see if she might be ready to go. But her face, lit by the blue glow of the screen, was set in a wistful gaze. At that moment I felt as if I were being given a window into her heart, the unreflective heart of her youth. I suddenly realised that the depiction of the childlike blacks I was now seeing on the screen, the reverse image of Conrad’s dark savages, was what my mother had carried with her to Hawaii all those years before, a reflection of the simple fantasies that had been forbidden to a white, middle-class girl from Kansas, the promise of another life: warm, sensual, exotic, different.”

    Some of the blacks (and whites, by the way—there are bit parts by whites) in the movie are carefree. After all, it’s Carnival in Rio! Some are most definitely not, nor are they simple. Neither Orfeo nor Eridice (I think those are the propler Portuguese spellings) are simple people, nor is Hermes nor the small boy who tags along with them. The movie is tragic, in case Obama didn’t notice.

    But he was too busy looking down at everybody who didn’t share his sensibility.

    Here is an English translation of the lyrics to one of the most famous songs from the movie, a song Orfeo sings and supposedly has written:

    Sadness has no end
    Happiness does

    Happiness is like a feather
    That the wind carries through the air
    It flies so lightly
    But has a brief life
    It needs to have a wind that never stops

    The happiness of a poor man is like
    The grand illusion of Carnaval
    People work the whole year long
    For one moment’s dream
    To play the part of
    A king or a pirate or a gardener
    And all of that is ended on [Ash] Wednesday…

    Not exactly a happy-go-lucky song.

11. neo-neocon,

    Thanks for that. Very interesting. It seems to me that Obama’s mother was always abandoning him and his siblings to chase her dreams. Do you know if he felt that way, or did he respect her life’s work?

    Also, a weird thing I read long ago, from a credible source, but never recall anyone focusing on: Timothy Geithner’s father had helped President Obama’s mother secure a grant when she was studying… Does anyone know if there really is/was such a connection?

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