What shall I read today? Part 7

Choke, Chuck Palahniuk (2001)

As a Palahniuk's novel, and one of unique genius, I would add, the world presented to us is a surreal one.
However, since I would define Palahniuk an "anthropologist", first of all and, secondly, a writer, the material for this surprising novel comes from his researches in reality. Through his attendancy to sexual addiction groups, or talks with total strangers, Palahniuk built the story of Victor Mancini and his friend Denny. The writer's focus and study on the individual and its pysche reaches outstanding levels in this book. Unforgettable are the scenes set in the characters' working place: a re-enactment museum set in colonial times, plus the author's ability to combine the numerous sub-plots, and make them collide in an exciting, breath-taking climax.

Favourite quotes:

“What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.”

"People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.”

“We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.”

“I feel my heart ache, but I've forgotten what that feeling means.”

“It's pathetic how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.”

“We've spent so much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own.”

“The girl's lover was gone, but his shadow was still there.”

“I used rebellion as a way to hide out. We use criticism as a fake participation.”


The elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery (2006) 

There is nothing better in books than characters who share your same love for literature, especially if it's Lev Tolstoj. We follow the two main characters, Paloma and Renée, whose lives will meet thanks to the presence of Kakuro Ozu, a Japanese business man, fascinated by Renée's hidden intelligence and culture. One of this book's best qualities is the choice of its setting: an upper-class Parisian block of flats, in which Renée works as a concierge, and Paloma lives with her family's hypocrisy. Exquisitely, and thoughtfully written, a tale about life, culture, and beauty. Without forgetting hilarious scenes of subtle social criticism set in the building's hall. The book, as its title, has the "same simple refinement as the hedgehog."

Favourite quotes:

“I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language. ”

“People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd.”

“When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?”

“Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty.”

“I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the foundation of our beliefs is never shaken.”

“Do you know that it is in your company that I have had my finest thoughts?”

“Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that's not true, it's too late.”

“When someone that you love dies..it's like fireworks suddenly burning out in the sky and everything going black.”

“Beautiful things should belong to beautiful souls."

“They didn't recognize me," I repeat.
He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm.
"It is because they have never seen you," he says. "I would recognize you anywhere.”

“In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song.”

The old Great Gatsby: suggested readings before Baz Luhrmann's film

While waiting to see the new Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, I have found some nice readings offered by the BFI.

First of all, discoveries from Jack Clayton's archive will become available at the BFI Reuben Library for all film researchers. Meanwhile, this great article offers previews on some extracts from Clayton's work, unforgettable director of 1974 The Great Gatsby starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/third-gatsby

Other interesting quick readings on the subject:

Ten great films set in the roaring 20s
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-films-set-roaring-20s

Focus on Marcel L'Herbier's cinema, the fashion of the roaring 20s
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/fashion-film-jazz-age-look

My BFI May Calendar

'Lonesome Cowboy' Pierre Lauret on The Searchers
Mon 20 May 18:20 NFT3

"In the latest in our series exploring film through a philosophical lens, Pierre Lauret (Professor of Philosophy at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris) presents a screening of The Searchers, and then considers the troubling absence of 'home' in John Ford's Western masterpiece through an insightful talk. Lauret identifies a void at the heart of this tale of a Civil War veteran doggedly hunting the Comanches who have kidnapped his niece: where will he return with her upon victory? The Comanches have burnt her home out, and have killed the rest of the family. The hero who protects the family and the community, has no family and no community, just like his charge. He must, in the end, return to the desert, as Ulysses returns to the land of the dead."

BAFTA Masterclass: Film Make-up with Lois Burwell 

Thu 23 May 18:10 NFT3

"Having recently wowed audiences by transforming  in Daniel Day-Lewis Stephen Spielberg's Lincoln, Lois Burwell received her third BAFTA nomination, following those of Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. Her expertise in her craft has seen her as head of the make-up department on the Fifth Element, Almost Famous, Mission: Impossible, Catch Me If You Can and The Green Mile, to name just a few of her illustrious credits. This will be a rare opportunity for an audience to hear first-hand how some of these iconic looks have been created."

The King of Marvin Gardens

Fri 24 May 

"Nicholson plays David Staebler, a retiring type getting by in Philly by relating wry confessional stories over the radio, until he's suddenly summoned to Atlantic City by his younger brother Jason (Bruce Dern, all gloriously ratty panache). It's not just that Jason needs to get out of jail; he wants a partner for his get-rich-quick scheme in Hawaii. So David lingers on, with Jason, his ragdoll lover (Ellen Burstyn) and her spaced-out stepdaughter, in the fading, maybe dangerous grandeur of a resort whose streets once inspired the Monopoly board... Rafelson's witty, compassionate study of a sibling relationship awkwardly rooted in childhood dreams and adult rivalries is as rich, resonant and unpredictable as a good novel; from its superb opening soliloquy to a quietly affecting coda, the film grips like a vice. Lent terrific support by Julia Anne Robinson, Scatman Crothers and John Ryan, the three leads are magnificent, while Làszlò Kovàcs' camerawork is marvellously evocative of life on, above and under the boardwalk. A killer movie."

Missing Believed Wiped Special: An Evening with John Henshall

Tue 28 May 18:30 NFT1

 

" To celebrate 20 years of the BFI's Missing Believed Wiped initiative we are mounting a series of MissingBelieved Wiped specials throughout 2013, highlighting the most recent finds and revisiting some old favourites. One of the great finds of the last few years has been the sensational footage of David Bowie performing "The Jean Genie" from a 1973 edition of Top of the Pops. The footage was recovered from the collection of John Henshall, a television cameraman and director of photography who had made the special lens used for the Bowie performance. John has had a long career in the TV industry and was found to have hundreds of tapes of rare and missing bits of television within his collection and these are being catalogued by our colleagues at Kaleidoscope, the classic television organisation. Tonight John will join us on stage to share some of those gems with us and regale us with the fascinating - often hilarious - stories behind the productions. Expect more magical moments of missing music, segments of lost dramas, rare pop video footage and other unmissable examples of the flotsam and jetsam of British television."

Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell

Wed 29 May 18:30 NFT1

"When Dr Simon Helder is committed to an asylum after being caught experimentating on stolen cadavers, he finds himself in the company of fellow re-animator Baron Frankenstein, who is physician there. The two join forces to continue their research but Helder gradually realises that a fine line separates the inmates from those apparently in charge. This was Terence Fisher's last film and the final instalment in Hammer's exploration of the Frankenstein story. Here, Peter Cushing's Baron raches his most degenerate, his gaunt yet distinguished appearance giving little inkling of the menace just beneath the surface. To mark the centenary of Cushing's birth, we are showing Hammer's new high-definition restoration of his final portrayal of the character that brought him international fame: Baron Frankenstein." 

The screening will be additionally introduced by Madeline Smith, the film's co-star, and Joyce Broughton, Cushing's secretary for 35 years.     

 

 

 

The story behind the song - Chelsea Hotel by Leonard Cohen

I started thinking about this new idea for the blog when I was listening to Leonard Cohen's 1985 live when he dedicates Chelsea Hotel to Janis Joplin. In that moment I thought that some songs in particular have entire personal stories behind them, so I will try to discover them, analyze the songs' lyrics and, when relevant, music videos.

Leonard Cohen wrote Chelsea Hotel no. 1 in 1972 and then replaced with Chelsea Hotel no. 2. I will now publish both songs' lyrics to see their differences, and the one thing they have in common, a splendid elegy by a songwriting's master to another, in memory of the great woman, and lover, Janis Joplin was. Nonetheless, with the glorious New York Chelsea Hotel as setting.

Chelsea Hotel #1  

                                                                                   
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel  

You were talking so brave and so free
Giving me head on the unmade

bed
While the limousines wait in the street
And those were the reasons and that was New York
I was running for the money and the flesh
That was called love for the workers in song
It still is for those of us left.
But you got away, didn't you, baby?
You just threw it all to the crowd
You got away, they can't pay you now
For making your sweet little song
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
In the winter of 67
My friends of that year they were all trying to go queer
And me I was just getting even
And those were the reasons and that was New York
I was running for the money and the flesh
That was called love for the workers in song
It still is for those of us left
But you got away, didn't you, baby?
You just threw it all to the crowd
You got away, they can't pay you now
For making your sweet little song

 Chelsea Hotel #2

I remember you
well in the Chelsea Hotel,
you were talking so brave and so sweet,
giving me head on the unmade bed,
while the limousines wait in the street.
Those were the reasons and that was New York,
we were running for the money and the flesh.
And that was called love for the workers in song
probably still is for those of them left.
Ah but you got away, didn't you babe,
you just turned your back on the crowd,
you got away, I never once heard you say,
I need you, I don't need you,
I need you, I don't need you
and all of that jiving around.

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music."

And then you got away, didn't you babe...

I don't mean to suggest that I loved you the best,
I can't keep track of each fallen robin.
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
that's all, I don't even think of you that often.  

As we can notice, the first version is a proper elegy focused on the singer's death, whereas the second one is more universal and focused on the world of music, on the pros and cons of success, and on the lust that accompanied them inside room 424.
Before performing the song, Leonard Cohen explained how they met in the hotel's elevator... In his words:

"Every concert that I give, I dedicate this song to a great American singer that I met one night in an elevator in a shabby hotel in New York City. It was a fine elevator, we found ourselves there often. I don't know what she was doing there, I think she was looking for Kris Kristofferson, I told her that I was Kris Kristofferson, but she said: "I thought he was bigger." I said I used to be bigger, but I've been sick. And we spent a little time together, and I love the way that she sang, and she died, and sometime later I think I was sitting at a bar in a Polynesian restaurant in Miami Beach, I don't know what I was doing that either. I have no programme, no five-year-plan. I just move from hotel to hotel, and from bar to bar, and by the grace of the one above, the song comes. And I remember sitting at this particularly abnotious Polynesian restaurant where they served a kind of coconut drink that was particularly little and sinister, which contained no alcohol, but a certain chemical that demoralized you entirely. And I remember writing on one of their very badly designed napkins  "I remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel..."

Link to the 1985 live version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVq9K3lGtN4

Lana del Rey recently covered the song and gave it an amazing hommage through her terrific performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj_myXdOLV0 

Novembre: independent short horror film, now on Youtube

Last summer my friend Elia told me he was going to make a short horror film as a cameo to John Carpenter's Halloween. I wrote the screenplay, as he directed the film with his crew called Collettivo A/Reazione.
The film is in Italian and it was made with no budget, just with the help of friends and with our town's countryside as location. I hope you will like it, and experience how films can be made together when you have the right crew, and without a huge amount of money if you have the right talent.
Enjoy it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PsvTBHLy4L8

What shall I read today? Part 6

My Dark Places: An L.A. Memoir, James Ellroy (1996)

This book represents a writer's, and a man's braveness in telling about his "dark places" publicly. James Ellroy's masterpiece is a personal trip inside his own life, starting with the trauma and obsession for the "Black Dahlia" which will accompany him throughout his whole life. 

Ellroy's mother, Jean Ellroy, was killed in El Monte in 1958 when he was 10, and her death still remains one of the unsolved homicides in the United States. From then we follow the mind of a child, a teenager, a young man, who by going through the harsh hell of life develops an extreme hunger for books, knowledge, investigation, and the rest is history.  

The history of one of the most celebrated crime writers of the 20th century. Only a few quotations this time, because I think, the 'poem' dedicated to his mother at the beginning of the book is already enough to understand the richness of it.

Favourite quotes:

"A cheap Saturday night took you down. You died stupidly and harshly and without the means to hold your own life dear.
Your run to safety was a brief reprieve. You brought me into hiding as your good-luck charm.
I failed you as a talisman - so I stand now as your witness.
Your death defines my life. I want to find the love
we never had and explicate it in your name.
I want to take your secrets public. I want to burn 
down the distance between us. 
I want to give you breath."

“Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.” 

“She quoted a dead playwright and called me a bullet with nothing but a future. She understood my lack of self-pity. She knew why I despised everything that might restrict my forward momentum. She knew that bullets have no conscience. They speed past things and miss their marks as often as they hit them.”

Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk (1999)

This book, as many others I reviewed on this blog, has a particular meaning for me. 
First of all a very simple one: it helped me decide the topic of my final exam last year, the story of the grotesque in literature and films. Secondly, I could not read it without crying, without being aware of its being extreme and at the edge of reality, but because of this reason, its characters seem more true than any other living person.  
In a society of repression, and prejudices, being yourself is not always easy, so you prefer wearing masks, transform yourself to become the one you have always wanted to be. You cannot read it if you don't like to be schocked and to be questioned about what life really is. 
It was supposed to be Chuck Palahniuk's first novel to be published, but the editor stopped  it because it was too disturbing. After Fight Club's success, though, they published it, but not in the way Palahniuk wanted. For the book's layout he had taken inspiration from women's magazines, fashion catalogues, etc. in which you are constantly asked to read the rest of an article in another page, so you find yourself jumping from page to page to finish a story. It was considered too confusing and complicated, but I just think it's brilliant.  
It soon became one of his most celebrated books. In 2012, though, after this huge success he had the right to publish it as he wanted, this new version is called Invisible Monsters Remix. Nothing more to add, I'll let Chuck speak...

Favourite quotes:
  
“The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.”

“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.”

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.”

“If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?”

“When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?”

“Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.”

“We'll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.”

"You can only hold a smile for so long, after that it's just teeth.”

“The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”

"Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them. This only looks like love.” 

“Beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.”

“Find good in what the world says is evil.”

“I'm not sure what we're running from. Nobody. Or the future. Fate. Growing up. Getting old. Picking up the pieces. As if running we won't have to get on with our lives.”

“The murderer the victim the witness each of us thinks our role is the lead.”

“I'm not straight, and I'm not gay. I'm not bisexual. I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.”

“All these thousands of miles later, all these different people I've been, and it's still the same story. Why is it you feel like a dope if you laugh alone, but that's usually how you end up crying? How is it you can keep mutating and still be the same deadly virus?”

“Did you ever think about life as a metaphor for television?”


Next "What shall I read today?":
Choke (Chuck Palahniuk) and The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Muriel Barbery).

Festival De Cannes 15th - 26th May 2013

For the 66th year Cannes is getting ready for celebrities, parties, red carpet, and films, films everywhere. This year's selection is incredible, and so are the Jury and the incredible Guest of Honour.
You can find all the information concerning the events on the official website: http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en.html, but if you just want to have a glimpse on the most important events I have selected some of them.

First of all, the incredible Jury: I love film festivals because they are able to put together different tastes, nationalities, languages, and people. Moreover, the selection includes some of the most acclaimed directors/actors of this and last year's, and of all time.

Steven Spielberg: President of Jury

Vidya Balan (Indian actress)
Naomi Kawase (Japanese director)
Nicole Kidman (Australian actress/producer)
Lynne Ramsay (British scriptwriter/director/producer) 

Daniel Auteuil (French actor/director)
Ang Lee (Taiwanese director/producer/scriptwriter)
Cristian Mungiu (Romanian scriptwriter/director/producer)
Christoph Waltz (Austrian Actor)

One of my favourite events is always the projection of a restored classic, this year it's the turn of:

Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankievicz, 1963) starring the amazing Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Visions of Eight film of the Munich Olympic Games (1972).

La Reine Margot (Patrice Chéreau, 1994).

Charulata (Satyajit Ray, 1964).

Sanma No Aji - An Autumn Afternoon ( Yasujirô Ozu, 1962).

Le Joli Mai (Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme, 1963).

Goha (Jacques Baratier, 1957).

Lucky Luciano (Francesco Rosi, 1973).

Il Deserto dei Tartari - The Desert of the Tartars (Valerio Zurlini, 1976).

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (Ted Kotcheff, 1974).

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964).

Hiroshima mon Amour (Alain Resnais, 1959).

Borom Sarret (Ousmane Sembene, 1963).

Manila in the Claws of the Light (Lino Brocka, 1975).

The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973).

The Last Emperor 3D - Le Dernier Empereur (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987).

Fedora (Billy Wilder, 1978).

Plein Soleil (René Clément, 1960).

La Belle et la Bete - Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946).

Opium (Arielle Dombasle, 2013).

Two Documentaries will be shown at the Bunuel Theatre:

Con la Pata Quebrada (Diego Galàn, 2013).

A Story of Children & Film (Mark Cousins, 2013).

Last: Shepard & Dark (Treva Wurmfeld, 2013).

Not only these films will be shown not only in the presence of their restorators, but also of the directors still present today. 

I have kept it as the last thing, because I am still too sad I will miss it, but one of the biggest classics screenings will have a very special Guest of Honour:

Kim Novak is presenting the restored copy of Vertigo 

(Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

Another remarkable event is The Celebration of the Centenary of Indian Cinema's Birth. India is, then, going to be the special guest country of the Festival.

The Opening Galà will see the screening of Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, which I am very curious to see.

As for the Official Competition I am excited for:

Joel and Etan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis

Roman Polanski's Venus in Fur

Paolo Sorrentino's La Grande Bellezza - The Great Beauty

For this film in particular I want to give a special information for those who speak Italian, and for those who don't, but want to know more about it. One of the biggest Italian newspapers' websites: La Repubblica opened a new section called Spettacoli in which I found the script of the film's first scene.
If you have ever been to Rome, if you live there, or far away, and you just want to feel the city I suggest to read it, and get ready for what will be a fresh, thoughtful, and art film by Sorrentino starring the great Toni Servillo.

http://www.repubblica.it/spettacoli/cinema/2013/04/22/news/l_inizio_della_sceneggiatura_di_la_grande_bellezza-57238653/