Evening. 100 strings translated today exactly. This is good news, as I've actually did more than I was meant to do according to the 80-strings-a-day current plan. Let's just say it is a slight make up for the last couple of days lazyness. Still, 369 to go. The problem is, most of the remaining ones from now on are very long sentences indeed, though not particularly challenging, only lengthy. This basically means it will become tough to wipe those 80 strings each day until next Thursday. But, as they say, when the going gets tough, that's when the toughs get going!

I guess I'm on a bind of DVD re-runs. Today's was no more no less than my very favourite of all-time: The Shawshank Redemption. I guess it is truly useless to introduce this movie to anyone these days, as everyone must have seen it one time or another. It currently sits comfortably in the #2 spot on IMDb's Top 250 second only to Coppola's 1972 masterpiece The Godfather. I feel like comenting a bit on Shawshank but I must confess I fear I can't make justice up to this film using my own bare words.

I feel everything about this flick is perfect. The mood, the way it is shot, the cast, the scenery, the plot.. well, everything. Not a single flaw in my point of view but I'm (very) biased. My favourite actor of all-time (Tim Robbins) stars in it as Andy Dufresne, and Morgan Freeman comes very close in my own personal favourites list so that helps quite a lot. Silly as it may sound, this movie has served as an escape for me many times in the past. I used to play it over and over during my most difficult university years when things weren't going too good and I wasn't happy with what I was doing. The sentiments echoed in the screen, the warm feeling of companionship on display despite it being about inmates jailed for life in a high-security prison, all these factors helped me having a feeling of comfort and security watching it. Also, because the story is so beautifully told, it immerses the viewer completely into its world.

(Mild spoilers ahead..)

Then it is full of those scenes that chill you to the bone, dialog-driven scenes so uniquely acted that you can't do anything else but stare at the screen and drink it all the way. Consider the sequence of Brooks Hatlen out of jail and his quick and heart-breaking descent into suicide. It is ingenious how the whole sequence is narrated by Brooks himself reading aloud a letter left to his inmates at Shawhshank, that they actually read later on after he's gone and dead. The whole sequence is the perfect corolary of Red's early talk about being 'institutionalized': "They put you here for life, and that's exactly what they take. The part that counts anyway." And then you got all the scenes with Red being heard by the parole officers. The way he goes from very keen on getting parole to completely careless about it is magnificient and reflects the story just perfectly. Or the sequence with Andy broadcasting aloud the Italian opera for every inmate to hear through the facilities speaks which cost him two weeks in the Hole. And right after he gets out of the solitary, his little talk about hope, at the lunch table, with Red and the others, when Red deems it as a 'dangerous thing'. I could tell you about dozens of beautiful scenes but if you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about. I'm yet to meet a single person on this Earth who didn't like Shawshank.

In fact, the movie is full of outstanding quotes. I've chosen one to transcribe here:

Red: [narrating] I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.

This is a movie about redemption and most of all, about hope. To quote the tagline:

Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.

And that's exactly how it is.