Walnut Tree Stop Nuts

" Across the Universe "(2007) Julie Taymor

After a film by Julie Taymor is willing to go on a diet for a few days to see for a while ', black and white film, strict sequences, minimalism, silence, not later than the eighty minutes that were the norm a few decades ago, when the film was not obliged to wrest viewers to TV programming.

But, as with some family dinners on important occasions, sometimes a nice stuff gotta have it, and a film like "Across the Universe" è un'occasione più che discreta per tornarsene a casa barcollando, alla ricerca di un bicchiere di bicarbonato visivo.

La Taymor è una provocatrice barocca che viene dal teatro (e ci torna spesso e volentieri) e che, come spesso accade ai registi di derivazione teatrale quando impugnano la macchina da presa, si scatena nell'esplorazione forsennata di tutti i mezzi che il teatro non offre. In misura minore e modi diversi è quel che è successo, soprattutto nei primi film, a Mike Nichols (e, più di recente, a Sam Mendes e perfino
al nostro Fausto Paravidino), solo che la Taymor sembra aver intenzione di rilanciare di film in film, così che "Across the Universe" è stilisticamente even more radical "Frida", which in turn exacerbate the trends that were already apparent excess in "Titus."

Somehow, the excess is partly justified by the general here that the film belongs: "Across the Universe" is in effect a musical, built on a wide range of Beatles songs used in whole or in fragments, from time to time to replace one or more lines of dialogue, to hold an entire scene, or even just to be a musical number that is part of the narrative. The musical is by its nature, a genre marked stylization, whether we are in the assembly sbizzarisca whether we are worth of elaborate choreography, and finally, we rely on the Digital artists of the composition for combining the one and the other with the rules and the potential of animation.

If a problem exists, it is in the source material: starting from Shakespeare or the biography of an interesting character as Frida Kahlo, the very sound Taymor established bases on which to build the most imaginative visual stiribaccole. But the Beatles are much more difficult material: taken out of context, the songs are often only songs and illustrate them in a significant way is not granted. It is probably for this reason that Taymor has set the film in the era of dispute, Timothy Leary, the hippies and flower power, placed on trial, the story of love between un ragazzo di Liverpool di estrazione proletaria e una fanciulla dell'America benestante, benpensante e benenata.

Ma non basta: le immagini e nuovi arrangiamenti riescono a dare qualche spessore in più ad alcune canzoni d'amore, però poi il film procede per la sua strada senza sviluppare i temi a cui accenna: l'incipit di "Girl" annuncia un amore che si rivelerà molto meno tormentato di quanto non sembri promettere (e non può che ricordare l'apertura del pur sopravvalutato "Moulin Rouge", che il suo bel po' po' di dramma in serbo ce l'aveva), "Something" anticipa la separazione fra i due amanti in un momento che si direbbe prematuro. E "I Want To Hold Your Hand", resa particolarmente tenera da un contesto homosexual, introduces a theme that there simply is exhausted.

"Across the Universe" is a bit 'all over it: it works fine until it comes to describing the climate, but stumbles every time he mentions wanting to raise the bar, with musical numbers that express the promise of something without the rest the film feels obliged to maintain it. There is a beautiful ballet of leverage on the visit of young people to be sent to Vietnam, but the challenge remains visual and off the last note. The great conflict between the two protagonists is resolved in the fact that she decides to work hard in the protest, while he is imprisoned in artistic research and becomes jealous of the "cause" to bind the girlfriend. And when the Finally, after Vietnam, arrests and shootings on students, this love not so opposed ends happily with a big hug, what's the song "All You Need Is Love", the impression is that Taymor has chosen the easy way out, putting on a Beatles anthology that recalls some greatest hits produced by record companies in the mood for gifts easy disposal, without even addressing the problem of obtaining a concept album.

is an important limitation, which perhaps explains the enthusiastic reception on the whole not that the film received by critics. Yet one can not deny that "Across the Universe" remains a show in spite of everything generous, exhausting so pleasant, chock full of ideas, colors and, of course, music. With a couple of outstanding shares that should be appreciated by anyone who knows me better than the world of rock (but no: I have heard reviewers of nice podcast Filmspotting complain that the appearance of Bono is almost offensive, and that the presence Joe Cocker has as its only result is to bring out what the protagonists, however talented, are not the height of singers vocally true).

the Rome Film Festival, the hall was enthusiastic: the rhythm of the musical number that closes the film was all accompanied by applause, which continued along all the credits and were extended for another five minutes Off-screen, with Taymor and other cast members who were enjoying the triumph. We'll see if things are going so well in theaters, but it deserves to enjoy "Across the Universe" is advisable to make a small first trimmed to their expectations.

Why Did Diego Rivera Painted The Agitator

" John Sturges' of ... um ... Alberto Farina

are already ten years? I thought I had started on Iacino in early 1998, but it occurred to me that I was already facing a little 'pathetically, using the account of a friend in September 1997. I was still in Canada at the end of work on "Blues Brothers 2000" , and tried to intervene here and there on Usenet, answering a few questions and also trying awkwardly to advertise on my Castoro John Landis (published two years earlier) and "Shoot the director!" Instead it was almost hot off the press.

then have passed more than ten years after those first tentative post. And even ten years have passed since I published a book of my own - I mean, in collaboration with other authors. A little 'other commitments, a little' because pleasure always exciting to write to the newsgroup ends in part to remove the writing energies even in the so called real life.

just that after a little 'back the urge to write something on paper. In 2007 I started working at the Beaver returned several times to Sam Raimi, Then they asked me to write a book first slimmer (just 97 pages, including title pages) dedicated to a film that everyone saw at least one or two movies but that today very few remember the name.

In the sixties and until the first half of the Seventies, John Sturges was pretty well known: one of those solid craftsmen in their hands Filmon solid adventure relying on the craft gained in thirty years of his career. How many great professionals of the past, Sturges had entered the industry in Hollywood through the back door, first aid assistance as aid, then gradually as an assistant editor and later as an editor on his own. Throughout this long apprenticeship he worked among others with David Selznick e George Cukor, collaborando anche ai primissimi film in Technicolor. Per poi passare alla regia grazie a William Wyler, che se lo portò dietro in Italia durante la guerra e gli consentì di firmare insieme a lui un insolito (e sfortunatissimo) documentario bellico, intitolato " Thunderbolt " e dedicato allo sforzo aereo alleato per favorire la liberazione della penisola dai tedeschi.


Tornato negli Stati Uniti, Sturges lavora per diversi anni alla Columbia, subendo come tutti le celebri angherie del boss Harry Cohn . In una sua intervista viene fuori un aneddoto curioso, soprattutto perché raccontato in una versione solo marginalmente diversa da William Castle in his autobiography. It seems that Cohn had the habit of giving young people registucoli a horrible script, perhaps written by himself, to see if they had any sense critical. Sturges Castle is that he refused to tell, trembling, to draw from a movie - and discovered after I made the right choice, because Cohn would fly out of anyone who was foolish enough to accept a position clearly failed.

years at Columbia, Sturges turns a bit 'of everything: noir, melodrama, children's films (including a series dedicated to Rusty, a heroic German shepherd star of seven titles, one of which headed right by William Castle) , western and even an extension of a feature story by Mark Twain "The frog jumping." Then go for a while 'to MGM there and implements what is considered by many to be his best film: it is " Day at Black Rock" (Bad Day at Black Rock), with Spencer Tracy, which is a kind of modern western and that uses an intelligent fashion, exploded at the time, of the wide screen, using it to describe white space and solitude, instead of the usual exaggerated scenes, landscapes lush and marching armies.

Later, along with illustrious colleagues such as Billy Wilder , Sturges will be among the first filmmakers to abandon the creaking system of the studios, assumendosi in prima persona la responsabilità della produzione dei propri film e appoggiandosi a un'organizzazione piccola ma agguerrita come quella dei fratelli Mirisch. Sarà con loro che realizzerà, fra gli altri, film oggi classici come " I magnifici sette " e " La grande fuga ".

L'ultimo film di Sturges è del 1976 ed è una avventura bellica abbastanza divertente. Se n'è parlato qui sul gruppo proprio di recente, quando qualcuno è venuto a chiedere se ne conoscevamo il titolo, che è " La notte dell'aquila " (il thread è questo , ma attenzione perche' e' spoilerosissimo). Nel complesso, la sua carriera attraversa oltre quarant'anni of American cinema, going from Studio System to the period of independent producers, up to the threshold of the new major media mergers-economic initiated in the late seventies and has long become the norm.

If I read the post in which I tried - in vain, and sideways - to speak with one of my book on Landis, blush. Better then not to seek an excuse, this time, and boldly declare it spam. With the partial mitigating this bill is not copyright. My small book on John Sturges is not in library but in the video library: it is sold attached to two different films Sturges on DVD - " The Great Escape" and "The Magnificent Seven . Both films in edizione a due dischi e pullulano di extra. Non posseggo ancora "I magnifici sette", ma per "La grande fuga" posso segnalare un corposo documentario sulla lavorazione del film e un ancor più corposo documentario sul vero fatto storico che ispirò il soggetto.

C'è anche un commento audio che, invece, tutto sommato non è imperdibile, fabbricato com'è con un montaggio sicuramente laborioso di dichiarazioni di Sturges stesso e vari altri collaboratori. Spesso ci sono cose molto intessanti, ma non sempre sono puntuali come si vorrebbe rispetto alle immagini che scorrono sullo schermo: molto meglio sarebbe stato recuperare il commento audio realizzato da Criterion nel 1991 per un'edizione in laserdisc che è ormai da anni fuori catalogo e che io ho avuto modo di ascoltare solo grazie a un generoso collezionista finlandese che me ne ha spedito copia.


In effetti, gran parte del libro è stato reso possibile proprio dalla generosità di alcune persone incontrate su Internet. Su Sturges, l'unico libro pubblicato finora era quello di un francese che lo intervistò un paio d'anni prima della morte - un lavoro nel complesso un po' pasticciato e farraginoso da consultare e leggere, ma zeppo di informazioni interessanti e soprattutto di testimonianze di prima mano. Nel complesso, però, le sole fonti disponibili sul regista sono gli articoli pubblicati da quotidiani e periodici nel corso della sua carriera. Finlandese a parte, for me it was absolutely invaluable assistance of IACiner Alessandro Coricelli, that after my request right around here I found, in a library in Los Angeles, a great deal of valuable material. I can not thank Alex enough for the time dedicated to me and I want to do it again here, where I asked for help: I \u200b\u200bowe him at least an extensive interview with Sturges on "The Old Man and the Sea " a lot of reviews of 'time to his film taken from "Variety" and "Hollywood Reporter" and several articles of great interest - including those in which we talk about some projects that Sturges never realized and passed to other directors, such as "U- Boot 96 "and" Jaws .

Many of Sturges films are still unavailable on DVD, and can be remedied only in this way ... or using the mule, while risking only find dubbed versions in English. Something goes wrong is coming out here too (in fact point out that is just around " The whip", published by Millennium Storm), but the bulk remains inaccessible. Even when it comes to securities at the time started with a certain effort as " Underwater! , "a submarine with the pulpy melodrama unlikely Jane Russell, known primarily for its world premiere was held under water in the presence of journalists with wetsuit, snorkel and fins ... and animation with a not yet famous unexpectedly Jayne Mansfield. The film is not nothing to it, but it intrigued me greatly. Although there is not yet a commercial version, the mule has brought me a piece that contained a logo that I sent up a forum for film fans underwater (!), Where I tracked down the person who digitized, recorded after on television, and who managed to pass a full copy by mail.

Finally, it is mainly because of the frantic searches done for this book that I discovered pluricitato Betterworld , a site that sells books
for Charity (English) Discontinued libraries, almost always in excellent condition, and shipping rates than any other site in the books of my knowledge.


enough. I noticed that in the video library book with cellophane so that the DVD cover is not seen. Here is the link to the ticket in Anobii, which I discover that the good Shepherd Jack he's already secured a copy.

Good reading, Jack, and thanks. :-)
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FVO: Ginger and Fred (DVD) / Hearts (DVD) / The Bourne Supremacy (DVD) / The Bourne Identity (DVD) - http://www.albertofarina.tk

Women Wetting Theirselves

"Midnight Mass" by F. Paul Wilson



In an ideal aristocracy monsters of classic horror, vampires have always been considered the aristocracy. Dracula, the founder, is an account - but also its many imitators in general tend to have, in the structure of society, a dominant position.

The premise of "Midnight Mass", while making a clean sweep of any direct reference to coats of arms, takes this principle to its logical consequence: instead of acting to detail, the vampires have brought to humanity the assault on another plane unleashing a real World War III. They won without difficulty and now are concerned only to keep alive a number of human enough to earn his blood that they need to survive and avoid turning them into more mouths to feed and maintain, however, whole herds of "bitches", that women are able to produce new prey to faint.

But if the planet is almost too late, a small group of people organized a strenuous resistance: the vigorous father Joe Cahill, a Catholic priest of unshakable faith, her sister Carol, a nun who has learned to get busy with explosives (and with reluctance that he does not hesitate to stop the veil to wear provocative clothing in order to distract his opponents) and Lacey, nephew of Father Cahill, lesbian and staunchly atheist.

is a strange bunch, in which the fourth musketeer is unlikely a rabbi in disguise. But God's ways are inscrutable, and although they have the traditional vampire weaknesses (they are vulnerable to piles of ash, the beheading and symbols of Catholicism - with severe discomfort of those who belong to other religions) on their side there are also legions of collaborators : the so-called "Vichy", human vampires who agree to serve for about ten years behind the promise to be processed in turn conquer life (almost) forever. What

F. Paul Wilson is not a particularly sophisticated novel, "Midnight Mass" offers action, action, action from cover to cover, however, can, surprisingly, never to be repetitive, and above all playing with the tradition in modo intelligente, rispettandone i cardini principali ma in modo niente affatto pigro o acritico.

Si arriva alla fine delle sue oltre 400 pagine senza annoiarsi, sorprendendosi dopo un po' a credere completamente al mondo che viene descritto e anche alle scelte più improbabili di personaggi non proprio sfaccettati ma nemmeno totalmente di cartone. Accettando tranquillamente quel tipo di eccesso che di solito si è disposti a perdonare alle migliori graphic novels. Una bella sorpresa, valorizzata da una traduzione particolarmente attenta a chiarire, per i lettori italiani, i riferimenti meno immediatamente riconoscibili alla cultura pop americana di cui Wilson è impregnato.

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UFV:Ratatouille/P.S.(DVD)/Die Hard:vivere or morire/40
Year Old Virgin (DVD) - http://www.albertofarina.tk

Time For Skin To Heal After Mole Removal

"Letter to the spectators" (2007), by Various

What Do You Write In A Sympathy Card For Cancer

"The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" (2007) by Seth Gordon

Because today we remember who was the Red Baron? Why is the pilot who, during the First World War, was able to bring yourself down more enemies than anyone else. 86 aircraft shot down, an incredible number, especially when you consider that the runner had scored just over twenty.

relata Referer: are in train and I have no way to control, but more or less these were the stoned one of the protagonists of this entertaining documentary, during a daring analogy. The Red Baron was at the time, the number one aviation Teutonic to aim, reflexes, coordination of body, mind and instrumentation. Much like the world champion of Donkey Kong.

Who has approximately forty years, surely you remember Donkey Kong: roughly contemporary with the more famous Pac-Man, was that game where a mustache Omarini must climb up complicated structures to save his girlfriend from a gorilla that 'kidnapped her - dodging at the same time, the barrels that the ape throws him off the pace, but also challenging other perils such as fire-balls, springs bouncing and elevators. Those of my generation, we played a bit 'all: gamers have known in later incarnations and versions later, when Omarini the mustached and has been dubbed Super Mario has a brother (Louis), creating a pair of Super Mario Bros. - even brought to the screen in one of the first, infamous, for film adaptations of successful video games.

For most of us, the era of video games "arcade" has also left room for other hobbies for many has been to enrich the heritage of nostalgic memories of adolescence. For some, however, Donkey Kong has remained an all-consuming, an obsession, a matter of life and self-assertion. There are people who have, in their garage, the heavy original cabins, as detected by amusement arcades and lovingly maintained in office for two decades. People who are still able to play for hours in pursuit of "perfect match", the one where you can skip all the barrels, to put out a hammer all balls of fire, to take all the elevators and get to the twenty-fourth, impossible, the game screen, the so-called KILL SCREEN, one in which the computer's memory is no longer enough to manage the game and the mustachioed Omarini lose, automatically, a life after a few seconds, whatever I was doing, even without barrels nearby .

There are people who for a quarter of a century, takes up an organization allow for the championships of Donkey Kong, there are those who spend hours and hours to look at vhs where gamers of all U.S. record footage of their matches, to check that there are no tricks and, if so, validate the record that proponents claim to have achieved. And there are those who on their league position remained unbeaten for twenty years has built his life and his personal success, and a retinue of loyal acolytes willing to do anything to touch the hem of the robe to the master.

"The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" is the story of this great champion and a challenger, so that attempts to break his record of eight hundred thousand stitches and broken - not just for the sake of defeating the person, as to prove himself to be first in something, after failing as a musician, as a player baseball and basketball and as a businessman. The success and failure in their lives, after all, is to some extent a personal matter, and if you have not achieved success in fields where we measure the normal people, after all, you do not see why you should not do so trying to save a girl from pixel to pixel of a gorilla, skipping thousands of barrels made of pixels.

There are half a matter of rules: a record from a video that is documented as a record achieved in public, in a tournament? The machines are all the same or are there some that is more or less easy to play? It's not that you can falsify the software? E 'lawful swearing during the game? And then

There are deeper questions: fear and desire of the comparison, the power of friendship, popularity, money, a title acquired, the need to prove something to others around you because it means prove it to themselves. In addition to the considerations that only those old video game long can possibly really understand: the obsession of the challenge, the alienation that you care and feeding at the same time, simplify electronic tensions in life that never occur in repetitive screens , sinking into the hypnotic reasoning that after a while 'begin to develop according to the logic of the game.

There is all this and more in this film that manages to laugh without become acrimonious, without pretending to judge a group of "white and nerdy" who have found their reason for living in a discipline that maybe no one would ever expect. E 'at the same time a parody of the documentary of inquiry and investigation itself, compelling, engaging and, in his 79 minutes, absolutely impeccable. If you had twenty years in the eighties, you can not miss stuff, but it is even if you have any passion that monopolizes a large part of your free time and sometimes becomes awfully serious for you more than it deserves. Such as write to a newsgroup.

Rome Film Festival, October 25, 2007


The movie trailer on YouTube