39 Steps to Hitchcock

I know I'm kind of obsessed with Alfred, but I keep finding all this useful material, which is both of interest and pleasure, and helpful for whom is studying film or working in films. The 39 Steps ( from Hitchcock's film released in 1935) was the caption for the Hitchcock's retrospective which was taking place here when I first arrived (I know lectures are almost over and I'm starting getting nostalgic). Here is the list of all the steps and by following the link you can open them on Hitchcock's portrait:

1. The Shaping of Alfred Hitchcock  
2. The Master of Suspense     
3. The Evolution of Style
4. Hitchcock's Britain                          
5. The Hitchcock Touch          
6. Looking for Alfred
7. Hitchcock's Odyssey                       
8. Guilty?                                  
9. Murder!
10. Secret Agents                                
11. In the Act                            
12. The Right Women
13. The Wrong Men                          
14. Alma Reville                      
15. Hitchcock and the System
16. "What's a MacGuffin?"              
17. Brand Hitchcock                  
18. Hitchcock Goes to War
19. Queer Window                         
20. The Writers                         
21. Dial "M" for Mother
22. Sound and Music                          
23. Psychosis                             
24. Hitchcock's Family Plot
25. Dead Funny                                
26. His Favourite Things           
27. Hitchcock's America
28. The Trouble with Sex                    
29. Through the Lens                
30. The Watchful Eye
31. Graphic Images                            
32. The Cutting Room               
33. Setting the Scene
34. The Set Piece                               
35. Hitchcock and Art                
36. Dressed to Kill
37. The Reputation                            
38. The Films that Never Were      
39. After Hitchcock

http://explore.bfi.org.uk/39steps

Directors on Hitchcok - BFI Article

While I was going through some articles on the BFI website I have found this interesting and entertaining article published as a Sight & Sound supplement on the August 1999 issue. Famous directors talk about Hitchcock and are asked what, according to them, is Hitchcock's most definitive scene or moment and, then, what the importance of Hitchcock for them personally is.





A suggested reading to find out the most various answers from directors such as Woody Allen, John Carpenter, Martin Scorsese, Roger Corman, John Waters, Ingmar Bergman, Theo Angelopoulos and so on. It's nice to see how,according to their different artistic visions, style and film genre, they are attached to different films and film moments.
Hope you enjoy it!

http://explore.bfi.org.uk/4e85f707152f6

What shall I read today? Part 4

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote (1966)

Disturbingly true, amazingly written, incredibly touching. This is a book that makes you think, about the past, about the human mind, about justice. The story? The multiple murder of the Clutter family in 1959 in Holcomb, Kansas. The book is a thoughtful and deep reflection on this family's last day, and Capote crosscuts between them and the planning of the murder by Richard "Dick" Hickcock and Perry Smith. It took Capote six years to complete the it, and it immediately gained a huge success. It's Capote's first non-fiction book, and it asks its readers to think about some universal questions: What leads two young men to plan and kill an entire family without knowing it? What lies behind the human psyche? And, above all, aren't we all guilty in some way?

Favourite quotes:

“It is no shame to have a dirty face- the shame comes when you keep it dirty.”

“Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity. ”

“As long as you live, there's always something waiting; and even if it's bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can't stop living.”

“You are a man of extreme passion, a hungry man not quite sure where his appetite lies, a deeply frustrated man striving to project his individuality against a backdrop of rigid conformity. You exist in a half-world suspended between two superstructures, one self-expression and the other self-destruction."

“Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.”

“The enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.”

“I've tried to believe, but I don't, I can't, and there's no use pretending.”

“I thought that Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman. I thought so right up to the moment that I cut his throat.”

Beautiful Losers, Leonard Cohen (1966)

Leonard Cohen is one of those artists who can do pretty much everything: singer, song-writer, poet, and writer. One of the aspects I love the most about his art is that both his music and novels think about the boundaries between sacre and profane. His art sounds like an eternal Hallelujah and Beautiful Losers, his second novel, is a very good example of this. I'll write one of the statements written behind my book's cover: "A tale of religious obsession, in which the sensualist cannot be distinguished from the saint, its transcendence lies in its humanism; it is the lesson of what happens when the sacred infects the human, when a lust for the unattainable trumps he will to love a person." I couldn't find better and more concise words to explain it. We should not forget that it is also a very complex book in its writing style, but this doesn't stop the reader from loving every single page and feeling the widest range of emotions at the same time.

Favourite quotes:

“Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore”

“How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?”

“Do not be a magician - be magic!” 

“What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is a caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape.”

“..you wanted to be the Superman who was never Clark Kent” 

“Dream after dream we all lie in each other's arms” 

“Please make me empty, if I'm empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I'm not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness.” 

“It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which changed and changed into itself over and over.”

Next "What shall I read today?":
Jean-Claude Izzo's noir trilogy: Total Kheops, Chourma, and Solea.

The Lumineers: 14/03/2013

Thanks to my dear friend Emily I had the chance to see The Lumineers performing at the Hard Rock Cafè on Thursday night. The gig was awesome, in a small and intimate space in which you feel very close to the performers and get carried away by the music.
I've always loved live performances because they represent the moment in which you get to see the artists, and in which you feel their music even more.


I really appreciated when Wesley Schultz asked everyone to put their phones down and live the performance instead of watching it on a screen.
I had never thought about that before, but in this era everyone is so used to technology (me included, of course) that we actually forget that it's not an Youtube video, but someone passing his/her art and passion to you.

I recorded a couple of songs, the sound is not the best ever, but hope you enjoy them!

What shall I read today? Part 3

On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1951)
A book is also special for the journey it represents, On the Road was a gift from my dad, while we were dreaming of doing a coast to coast trip in the US. Manifesto of the Beat Generation, jazz as constant soundtrack, friendship, goodbyes, love, adventure, and the stars above looking at them, this book has everything. I still haven't seen the cinematic adaptation, but I think that a book like this has too much to be enclosed in a two-hour film, it's a lifetime journey.

Favourite quotes:

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.”

“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”

“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”

“A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.”

“I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.”

“I was surprised, as always, be how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.”

“We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time.”

“But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?”

“My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.”

“Sure baby, mañana. It was always mañana. For the next few weeks that was all I heard––mañana a lovely word and one that probably means heaven.”


Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote (1956)

This is one of the few books I read after watching the film. I think both are incredible, even if in different ways. Holly Golightly is probably one of the most well-rounded characters in literature. First of all, she stands out from the crowd, she's a heroine with loads of fears, she is independent, and New York city is the perfect setting for her life. Moreover, her character is probably the one who influenced the following generations of independent women in life, but also in TV series and films. Where do you think the inspiration for Sex and the City came from? And, remember, no place is like Tiffany's. 

Favourite quotes:
 
“Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,' Holly advised him. 'That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."

“You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”

“I don't want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together.”

“She was still hugging the cat. "Poor slob," she said, tickling his head, "poor slob without a name. It's a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven't any right to give him one: he'll have to wait until he belongs to somebody. We just sort of took up by the river one day, we don't belong to each other: he's an independent, and so am I. I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together. I'm not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it's like." She smiled, and let the cat drop to the floor. "It's like Tiffany's," she said.

"It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany's, then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name.”

“I loved her enough to forget myself, my self pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen.”

“You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend.”


Next "What shall I read today?":
In Cold Blood (Truman Capote) and Beautiful Losers (Leonard Cohen).

Phoenix, Chuck Palahniuk's new short story

Chuck Palahniuk is one of my favourite writers of all time, I've read all his books and, while waiting for the new ones he is, fortunately, publishing essays, short stories and advice on writing.
The last published is Phoenix
,a Kindle Single exclusive short story.
Check it out if you can and, then, go and read the author's series of essays about it:
http://chuckpalahniuk.net/

In addition to that, you can find other information about his future novels: titles and publication date, for example. This website is remarkable especially because you get to see how much an author is involved in what he writes, and what lies behind the curtain of his words. There's a direct dialogue with him through Q&A and also through social networks like Twitter.

Nowadays, we are very lucky to have such possibilities, we can always be informed on our interests, an advantage not to undervaluate. The Internet and the social networks are not the ruin of communication if used to achieve information and research otherwise difficult to find.

Here's Chuck's bibliography, and I will talk about my favourite more in depth in: "What shall I read today?".

Fight Club (1996)

Survivor (1999)

Invisible Monsters (1999)

 Choke (2001)

 Lullaby (2002) 

Diary (2003) 

Fugitives and Refugees:  A Walk in Portland, Oregon (2003)

Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories (2004)

Haunted (2005)

Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey (2007)

Snuff (2008)

 

Pygmy  (2009)

Tell All (2010)

Damned (2011)

What shall I read today? Part 2

Fire in the Blood, Iréne Nemirovsky (1941)

I've always thought that what makes a book special is the moment in your life in which you find yourself reading it, and realize how much it means to you. I remember being in Cap d'Antibes (south of France) with my family last summer. I had just turned 19 and I found myself in that bittersweet place between past and future, my life in London was still a big question mark, everything was about to change. I read it as fast as I could, I just couldn't get my eyes off those pages, the French setting, the life of a provincial town, which really remembered me of mine, the depth of the characters and their hypocrisy, the power of memory. One of the best element of the book is the use Nemirovski does of time and space, it is so perfect that one day I hope to adapt it as a theatre play or a film. It's one of those works of art so well done and versatile that it could suit every form of art. Read it, young or old. In the first case it will make you reflect upon the next step of your life and the beauty of being 20, in the second case, it will take memories back, and make you feel that fire in the blood again. 
 
Favourite quotes:

“After all, the three of us were young. It wasn’t just about the pleasure of the flesh. No, it wasn’t that simple. The flesh is easy to satisfy. It’s the heart that is insatiable, the heart that needs to love, to despair, to burn with any kind of fire…That was what we wanted. To burn, to be consumed, to devour our days just as fire devours the forest.”

"When you're twenty, love is like a fever, it makes you almost delirious. When it's over you can hardly remember how it happened...Fire in the blood, how quickly it burns itself out.”

"The way a man drinks in company tells you nothing about him, but the way he drinks when alone reveals, without his realizing it, the very depths of his soul.”

“Memories of the past would return to us more often if only we sought them out, sought their intense sweetness. But we let them slumber within us, and worse, we let them die, rot, so much so that the generous impulses that sweep through our souls when we are twenty we later call naive, foolish…Our purest, most passionate loves take on the depraved appearance of sordid pleasure.”

“When older people get together there is something unflappable about them; you can sense they’ve tasted all the heavy, bitter, spicy food of life, extract its poison, and will now spend ten or fifteen years in a state of perfect equilibrium and enviable morality. They are happy with themselves. They have renounced the vain attempts of youth to adapt the world to their desires. They have failed and now, they can relax. In a few years they will once again be troubled by a great anxiety, but this time it will be a fear of death; it will have a strange effect on their tastes, it will make them indifferent, or eccentric, or moody, incomprehensible to their families, strangers to their children. But between the ages of forty and sixty they enjoy a precarious sense of tranquility.”

"We didn't move. She seemed to be drinking me in, breathing in my heart. As for me, by the time I finally let her go I knew I had already begun to love her less." 

  
The little Prince,                                 Antoine De Saint-Exupéri (1943)

There's a reason if this book is considered a classic in a child's education and in a grown up cultural luggage. This reason is very simple: it teaches you what friendship is, and how to make it eternal. Something we often take for granted becomes the object of study of the Little Prince's Bildungsroman. We learn how to see with the heart, how to take care of something/someone special, how to create endless bonds, how to look at stars and see them laughing. I think these quotes talk for themselves, but this book has something new to tell each time you read it. 

Favourite quotes:

“Goodbye, said the fox. And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

"All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it."

"To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world....”

“What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well...”

“It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.”

“You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them...In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night...You - only you - will have stars that can laugh.”

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad.”


Next "What shall I read today?":

On the Road (Jack Kerouac) and Breakfast at Tiffany's (Truman Capote).

Happy Birthday American Psycho!

Thanks to Chuck Palahniuk's tweet I found out that two days ago Bret Easton Ellis's novel American Pyscho turned 22!

I discovered this book two years ago thanks to my dad (always the best books' adviser), and I just fell in love with his writing and recognized in his style all the things I love in a good book.
So I'll leave you with this very interesting article Palahniuk tweeted, if you want to discover more on this novel's history, back in 1991.

http://litreactor.com/columns/lurid-american-psycho-a-retrospective

What shall I read today? Part 1

I've been wanting to write a post like this for a long time. Books were my first love, even before films, and I've always dreamed and lost myself into those worlds far away, into those books which had the ability to bring images out of their words.  
From here everything is connected, those words inspiring my fantasy made me think about another way to explain them: find images that could talk as books through the art of cinema. I am not good  in choosing my favourite book, so this will only be a chronological list of some of my endless literary loves.

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte (1847)

Jane Eyre is a great novel, but what about Charlotte's sister?? I think Emily as a writer was ahead  of her time. The publishers were surprised, but also disappointed by her passionate writing, her descriptions of grotesque characters who were not conventional heroes. They are all so well developed that they make the reader love and hate them at the same time. When the book was published, she wasn't, unfortunately, as appreciated as her sister. However,after many years Wuthering Heights has been reconsidered as the great literary achievement of a young visionary writer. Catherine and Heathcliff's love story is one of the most intense I've ever read, the descriptions of the gloomy landscapes are awesome, there's pure passion coming out from the pages. A must read.
Favourite quotes:

"There is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the Universe would turn a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it."

"It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire."

"My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."

"Two words would comprehend my future—death and hell: existence, after losing her, would be hell."

"It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands,' he answered. 'Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer—but yours! How can I?"

"The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!"

Peter Pan, James Matthew Barrie (1902)

Peter Pan has always been an obsession for me, since I was child Neverland  was my refuge, then I had to realize that I had to grow up, but I manage to leave an open place for The second start to the right when I need it. Peter Pan is, probably, one of the most adapted stories in cinema, but nothing is as emotional as reading my old copy of the book. I'm waiting for a sunny and warm weather just to go to Hyde Park and read it sitting at Kensington Gardens in front of Peter's statue.
Favourite quotes:

"All children, except one, grow up. They soon know they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this."

"We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more."

"You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh  broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies."

"Odd things happen to all of us on our way through life without our noticing for a time that they have happened."

"You won't forget me, Peter, will you, before springcleaning time comes?
Of course Peter promised; and then he flew away."

"The last thing he ever said to me, 'Just always be waiting for me, and then some night you will hear me crowing.' "

In my opinion, one of the best film adaptations ever made is Hook (1991) by Steven Spielberg, starring an unforgettable Robin Williams.
A classic play, a magic fairytale, even when you become a grown-up.


Next "What shall I read today?": 

Fire in the Blood (Iréne Nemirovsky) and The little Prince (Antoine De Saint-Exupéry).