And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground There are certain people of whom it is difficult to say anything which will at once throw them into relief—in other words, describe them graphically in their typical characteristics. These are they who are generally known as “commonplace people,” and this class comprises, of course, the immense majority of mankind. Authors, as a rule, attempt to select and portray types rarely met with in their entirety, but these types are nevertheless more real than real life itself. For instance, when the whole essence of an ordinary person’s nature lies in his perpetual and unchangeable commonplaceness; and when in spite of all his endeavours to do something out of the common, this person ends, eventually, by remaining in his unbroken line of routine—. I think such an individual really does become a type of hi
Man on wire (2008)
(In the wake of 9/11, studios edited or digitally removed the World Trade Center from shots of the New York skyline in their new releases).
In this exhilarating, breathtaking documentary by British filmmaker James Marsh , the twin towers are back to celebrate one of their finest moments: the breathtaking, palm-moistening 1974 tightrope walk between their summits by French high wire artist Philippe Petit.
At dawn on August 7th, the young Frenchman shifted his weight from the foot planted on the still-under-construction South Tower, and placed it on the other foot, on a cable he and his confederates had strung across the 200 feet to the North Tower above 1,350 feet of empty vertical space.
"This was probably the end of my life," he remembers thinking, "and yet something I could not resist."
The film won 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
He never just "walked" on a wire. He lay down, knelt, juggled, ran. Every wire presented its own problems, and in rehearsing for the WTC, he built a wire the same distance in France. To simulate the winds, the movements of the buildings and the torsion of the wire, he had friends jiggle his wire, trying to toss him off. His balance was flawless. He explains how a wire can move: Up and down, sideways, laterally, and it also can sometimes twist.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/man-on-wire-2008
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