Are you kidding?

Love Actually is the worst in an awful series of movies by Richard Curtis that take place in a shallow fantasy realm supposed to represent the uk.

This article devalues the otherwise high standards of the site..

I'd have a break from the mushrooms....

Perfect comment. You are confirming my worst fears about this site and the audience I have attracted. Have you ever noticed there are few if any women coming to this site? Why is that? I'm beginning to suspect two things. That a sizeable segment of people attracted to these ideas are, 1) men with latent macho adolescence hangups who like the 'bad boy' aspect of all of this or, 2) men with Aspergers who have yet to find a support group. There might be a third category, but it's not coming to me this early in the morning.

You're welcome to trash a movie you don't like but to trash my site because I happen to like this movie and what it represents, was something I was expecting to happen but was hoping wouldn't happen.

So please everyone, let the rants and raves continue. I expect this to be precisely the illuminating feedback I've been looking for to gauge the future direction of this site.

I'm not really ranting or raving. Just a little unsure where 'Love Actually' fits into 'Celebrating the Rebirth of Psychedelic Futurism'. As far as I know, I'm a little old to be a 'bad boy' and pretty sure I don't suffer from Aspergers. Is this how you always react to a bit of jokey criticism?

Seriously though, how does 'Love Actually' relate to the rest of the excellent articles on the site?

I don't mean to go on, but to illustrate why I posted the original negative comment, take a look at the Reader Reviews on the UK's most popular film review site.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/Reader_Review/0,4163,-96863,00.html

Here's a taste:

"Some films are good, some mediocre, some poor, some bad, some stink, some stink to high heaven. Love Actually stinks so bad it's immoral. The only appropriate response to it is anger. There's not an emotionally honest moment from first to last. Every one of the A-list Brit-thesp cast should hang their heads in shame for taking Curtis's tainted shilling."

Maybe it's becuase we're British that we react so badly to these kind of films...

I'm not british, so I can't speak for your perspective. However, I created this site, and have put a tremendous amount of work into it. It's my baby, and it has become a very personal expression of myself. Of course there are several other authors who write for this site. And one of the questions I continue to ask myself is this... what exactly is psychedelic futurism? Is this site not allowed to talk about love or something new agey? Who defines what it is? Isn't it unique for all of us? I think this goes to the heart of it. At what arbitary point is something no longer psychedelic enough? If you look at the sum total of articles on this site, you'll see that perhaps 90% of them don't mention psychedelics at all? Now isn't that interesting? So obviously for most people this whole 'psychedelic' thing has permeated our culture and thinking to such an extent that it's hard to know where its effects have stopped.

So where does 'Love Actually' fit into this? Simple - love. This was and has been a central part of any spiritual movement, and I hope its an integral part of any so-called psychedelic future. So then we have to ask ourselves, does it matter where this love comes from, how it is expressed? Is there a psychedelically correct form of it? Like Political correctness, should we have psychedelic correctness? It certainly seems that way from people I've talked about. "Oops. Paul, what were you doing mentioning Love Actually, there is nothing psychedelic in it, it's not psychedelically correct!". No, I liked this film. You can dislike it. Of course. :) But this post was part of an experiment to see peoples reactions. I not only anticipated a strong reaction from readers, but planned on it. I want this issue to come out, and throwing a silly romance seemed the perfect way to do. That and besides, I really liked this film. Yes, it is a fantasy. Isn't that what films are about?

Fair enough.

I think we can put it down to cultural differences. It's just that I have such high regard for a lot of the articles that have appeared on the site that I was a little shocked to see this one. So you you got your strong reaction.

Anyway, no offence intended, and keep up the good work ;->

I think this brings up a larger and more important issue, and that is the relative lack of a female voice in psychedelic related thought - especially with the topics we often discuss here. Love Actually is a 'chick flick' no question about it. As I get older (I'm 39), I have come to like chick flicks, and I'm confortable enough with my masculanity to be ok with this, better than ok actually. And I think psychedelics have a way, for those who let it, to push us past the masculine/feminine duality into androgyny. So, what can this site do to become more balanced in this regard?

Well I'm 32, and not averse to 'chick flicks' at all. Just this particular one.;->

But I do take your point, and over the years have come across a certain 'gung ho' approach to psychedelic use. I've witnessed guys daring each other to take hits on the DMT pipe at a music festival.

It's interesting to note that many so called 'primitive' cultures that use(d) psychedelics in Shamanic / Religious rituals would often exclude the females from the proceedings. I can't remember Mckenna relating any stories involving female practitioners, but that could be just my memory failing me.

On a more positive note, here in the UK, there has been a big resurgence in the various 'pagan' belief systems and many of them are female led and mushroom using.

I experienced a mushroom ritual at a Lamas camp last summer and more than three quarters of those present were female, including the leader.

Yes, at this years Minds 6 conference, there is going to be sizeable number of female presenters. I look forward to this. There is still this gender divide though that has bothered me for quite some time. It's particularly noticeable in transhumanist circles, where the women see this as just the Mensa version of guys talking about their toys - instead of cars or guns, it's nanotech and AI.

One film that transcends gender based preferences is Baraka, also happens to be the best feature length film to watch while peaking on psychedelics.

I also adore films by Charlie Kaufman and am very happy he finally won Best Screenplay last night. Adaptation is a mind fuck about a hallucinogenic sacrament among many other things, and Eternal Sunshine (which can be considered a chick flick ;)
Human Nature and Being John malchovich are all great smart movies.

And BLUEBERRY
BLUEBERRY
BLUEBERRY!!!!
A western that portrays the entheogenic experience on film through special effects and CGI better than anything I ever seen. Also a great movie.

I'd like to mention Constantine just cause it's playing now. I wasn't expecting anything but it turns out to be pretty decent. More christion mythology than Dogma and the two lead 'good-guys' are killed by alchohol and tobacco respectively so i found some nice subtext for modern western mysticism.

Hey,
Ok I haven't seen this movie yet, but i dare responding to the question raised here.

I think that when one trips "seriously" (to sound pretentious), one incorporates the experience into everyday life and life itself becomes psychedelics. Or psychedelics becomes life.
I personally do not view my life as life vs psychedelic life, or any dualisms as such on that area.
I live my life, takes some trips once in a while, and i also know that without incorporating the experiences into everyday life, the trips sort of loose its meaning, and to me, my proces of life gets twisted into a dualistic mainframe, where i would need the psychedelics to get in touch with the One (or whatever one calls it). This is not to say that i am having what Shulgin would call a +4 all the time, because in everyday life it is good to have a based Ego that functions with the body in those moments of life, but I am aware of it, and I meditate etc. to not forget, and be at peace and in more harmony with the experiences of deep mystical nature. (Spoken from a pure conventional view-point that is, because life is divine all the time, but at this time i am based in the ego and use language to expres myself ;):))

So where does all this lead.
Well it leads me to say that, life itself is psychedelic. Meaning that all life is proces, some uses psychedelics, as they were coined for convenience sake, as part of that proces. This means that watching a "silly" movie is also part of the proces, and being at peace with it because it is pure entertainment is to me a good thing.

I am only 22(because we are talking age and stuff;-)) f.ex. and i am sure enough about my masculinity that i also enjoy chick-flicks once in a while, relax with it, and see what it brings me.

I hope all this made sense.

Peace
Odden.

Odden, very well put! Yes, as long as we remain human and part of human culture, we need to integrate these otherwise very profound psychedelic experiences into our everyday life. I think that's why I liked this film. It was simple, sweet, and optimisitc. It was grounded in what can be the most simple and beautiful of things, love. What I liked about this film, was that it reminded me not to take things so seriously. I can never get enough reminders in this regard. Sure, this film is probably lame, sappy, or shallow for some people... maybe that's why I liked it. I remember a quote from Antero Alli's book, 'Angel Tech', are you deep enough to be shallow? I think what he was saying here is don't take things so seriously, enjoy this moment and all its mundanity. I have found some of the most precious things in the mundane!

EVAN - yes, Baraka is one of my all time favorite films. The first time I saw it a friend and I were having fun getting stoned in public and enjoying all the night life. While we were walking down the street, this lady grabbed us and told us it was a moral imperative to see the film about to start in this small theater. So we glazed on in, sat down, and had our collective minds blown.

Cinema Paradiso by Guiseppe Tornatore is a very good and deeply touching love story. Perhaps the best I saw in this "genre".

For my all-time favorite movie I would probably choose the Japanese anime Serial Experiments: Lain. That's the deepest movie I have ever seen (OK, Alexandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain comes close, but I find its in-your-face directness a bit embarrassing). The all-encompassing, tender love of spiritual fulfillment is pouring out of (the last episode of) that film. It has a great resolution. And it's very psychedelic, too.

Here are some others I liked quite much:

About Schmidt
American Beauty
Contact
Dancer in the Dark (starring Björk)
Donnie Darko
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
eXistenZ
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick) (this hit me really hard - I was very high on grass, so the emotions and behind-the-scenes spiritual meanings came through unbelievably intense)
K-Pax
The Big Blue (Luc Besson)
Waking Life (Richard Linklater) [ now I'm waiting for "A Scanner Darkly" ]

clx

Films in keeping with the spirit of Future Hi that I have enjoyed (In additon to many already mentioned):

Fantastic Planet (animated, trippy)
The Quiet Earth (apocaplyptic fun)
Love and Death, Sleeper (any Woody Allen really)
Dreams (aka Yume, by Kurosawa)

On Love Actually, I have not seen it, but I would just note that I think the proper quip would be for Paul to lay off the ecstacy, not mushrooms :)

Jason,

Good one! Too much ecstacy... I'm ok with that. :) Feel the love, feel the love.