Cinerama

I have nneglected my duties as a film reviewer over the last few weeks and have decided to rectify the situation to some extent by offering cut down notes on a number of the films that I have seen over that time. If you think I scatter around those little asteriscs too liberally, in the spirit of brevity, I have kept to my favourites.

The Machinist *****

A fascinating and disturbing study of guilt. (Christian Bale has managed to get himself unfeasibly skinny for the role of the eponymous factory worker). Most thought provoking, (for someone like me).



Little Miss Sunshine ****

This has been much hyped and rightly so. Disfunctional family attempts to support youngest daughter in her dream of success in one of those weird child beauty pageants they do in the States. Not what it seems, very funny and in the end, makes a point. (One criticism is that a repeated and nevertheless funny joke based on a mechanical problem with their transportation annoys me slightly as as it would not be possible).

Pan's Labyrinth ****

Very unusual, stylish, violent, engaging cross between a war thriller and fairy tail; honest. Brilliant nevertheless. Features the guy who played Harry in Harry he is here to help; Sergi Lopez, as a very nasty nutter, a role in which he is entirely believeable.


Volver****

An unusually accessible Almodovar film. Troubles in a Spanish family for Penelope Cruz to work out. The film is touching and atmospheric and now I can see what the all the fuss about Penelope Cruz is for. I really cared by the end.



I Vitelloni***

The adventures of a group of young men (vitelloni are calves), attempting to find their way in life, in a seaside town in Italy. Fredrico Fellini brilliantly makes me squirm at how people can be such idiots. Had to admire it even if not enjoy it. Once again (it was made in 1953) he manages to make a film that doesn't really date.

Sideways*****

Another film that makes you want to squirm a bit but which is perhaps more forgiving. Two very different (early middle-aged male) friends go off wine-tasting in Northern California in the week before the not very successful actor,(the other one is a penurious wannabe writer) is due to get married. A number of extreme situations in which they find themselves force them to face their own and each other's problems. Very very funny, brilliant acting.

Send three and fourpence.....

I just enjoyed a substancial lunch at a local Japanese Restaurant. At the bar afterwards I was chatting to the waitress and asked her the meaning of Japanese symbol/character. After three confrimations I was confident that she had said "wheat grain", despite having intially thought she'd said "wheat germ". Gemma joined in the conversation at this point and quickly established that the girl was saying "weekend". I have had some odd conversations with that very nice girl in the past.

Respiro ****

Living in a traditional Italian fishing village, the heroine is slightly bonkers in an unthreatening, even endearing kind of a way. This does not go down well with the locals however for whom her deviation from the norm is not acceptable. The film is about being an outsider and what that means, it is about taboo. The consequences are surprising and ironic.

The characters, particularly of the family members are authentic and compelling and the film has a great atmosphere, I use the word carefully. Respiro means "I breathe", at times we witness moments of Grazia's spirited liberation. However, the film also manages to convey the feeling of suffocation that she struggles with as a result of her inability to conform; several times I noticed my attention was drawn to my own breath, particularly at the perfectly conceived climax.

Word of the week - dystocia

Dystocia is the name given to the condition experienced when having trouble giving birth. This week I have had trouble coming up with a word of the week. Perhaps it could be said that I have suffered from a touch of etymological dystocia or alternatively that I need to pull my finger out.

Carbon copy

Yesterday I had a couple of meetings in London in the morning and was on my way to Green Park to get the tube back to Vicotira when I had the idea that I could take a look at the Damien Hirst exhibition at the White Cube gallery in St James's. I suspected that there might not be a big queue to see the skull at 11.30 on a Monday morning and fortunatley I was correct. Entry is free but you have to have a ticket for a particular time slot; I was able to get my ticket and go in five minutes later.

The security man takes up seven or eight people at a time and you stand in a line in a corridor that reminded me of being at school. You get a little pep talk about leaving your bags on the floor outside and so on. He made me smile by explaining that the room was dark but that the only thing in there was the exhibit itself and not to worry about bumping into anything despite not being able to see your feet. He then mentioned however, that there was a woman in wheelchair already in there.

You have to give Mr Hirst credit for his ability to create icons, I have to say that I found "for the love of god" quite a stunning thing. The sense of theatre plays a part but the head itself is an object of beauty. I was particularly impressed by the view from the back. From the front, it is obviously an inanimate (if painstakingly prepared) object but from the rear there are no features missing that would necessarily lead you to believe that you might not be looking at the back of the head of young person, albeit shaved and covered with diamonds. I did wonder about its provenance, I understand that it is a cast made of platinum but of whom, where was he from, what colour skin did he have, what thoughts occurred in that space?

If I could fiddle with time, I could ask the artist on the bus on the way to school; he was in the year below me and often sat on his own. They didn't offer PR as a subject at that school but it is all art if you ask me. I remember the anticipation and the smell of paint as I queued outside the art room, I wonder what he remembers about those days. No smells at the White Cube but plenty of the other.

Un altro mondo

West from Rocca Calascio

Abruzzo is quite mountainous. There are those peaks around Grand Sasso in the north, in the Grand Sasso National Park, the other main group is to be found in the Majella National Park more southerly, where San Tommaso, one of a number of places in Italy so-named by pope somebody the something after Henry VIII had martyred Thomas Beckett is to be found. The village is located about a third of the way up Majella, so to get to most other places, you have first to decend a few hundred meters to a town called Scafa where you can join the autostrada if you're going somewhere in a hurry or a main road if you are staying more local or aren't in a rush.

The Mille Miglia (the thousand mile road race, last run fifty years ago) used to pass through here, the drivers having just turned west to cross the country to Rome before turning back north to complete their mad few hours back in Brescia. Gemma's dad used to cycle down from San Tommaso (where cars of any type were rarely seen) to witness those special people hurtling through that town.

Turning left at Scafa leads you along a valley and between two big hills to a town called Popoli. Turn right there and wind back up, higher than San Tommaso and slightly weirdly, find yourself on a massive flat plane. Driving its length will take about half an hour and will lead you to L'Aquila. That road is mainly dead straight and driving along it gives me the feeling that I must have a special, other wordly destination.

This time we decided to check out some of the villages that cling to the hills that surround the plane. One such is Calascio, where an ancient, mostly ruined castle commands views, on a clear day, all the way back to Majella to the south and for a long way in every other direction. We arrived there in our Fiat Idea 1.3 diesel having driven up some roads that were precarious enough to have caused raised voices in the car, despite my crawling along in second gear, the absence of barriers between the edge of the road and the sheer drops being the main problem. Eventually you arrive in a dust bowl of a small car park also occupied by the village bins. From there by foot you climb steeply with expectations of seeing very little activity, the first houses and many of the others too have been abandoned for what looks like a long time. As you climb, through the gaps between those run down homes to your left, the view makes you giddy.

Looking north from Rocca Calascio

Don't be surprised, when you find a tiny cafe, perched on the cliff, with a quintet (Il Quintetto a fiata della Baronia) playing Hinemith's Kleine Kammermusik opus 24, no. 2. Stoop to enter, order your espresso, retire to a table outside and wonder about how things can sometimes be so extraordinary. Shake off the emotions you have been sitting in and climb the last bit to the castle itself. This is our other-worldly destination, a bridge between the prosaic and the astral.

Looking south from Rocca Calascio (that's Majella topped with snow)

p.s. I thought I had better just check my Mille Miglia facts before publishing this post and have spent a most enjoyable half hour surfing through related sites. At first I was concerned that there was some confusion over the exact route and that Gemma's dad might have been referring to a 16 mile street circuit that used to exist in the Pescara environs but I was pleased to be able to confirm that that infamous race did pass along that exact piece of road. A fact which, for me, really turns the evocativeness knob right up, is that the route of the race actually included the road across that plane. Next time I am there, I can imagine Sterling Moss passing me at 170mph (a speed the cars often reached on the straights in those days) in his cocoon of noise and wind, dirty faced, his eyes piercing those leather rimmed goggles, calculating in a moment the value of the hazard that I represent, before forgetting me forever, vanishing in a vortex of dust.

It turns out that there were a number of routes (click here),used for the race between 1927 and 1957. From 1949 they all passed between Pescara and L'Aquila in one or other direction.

Il Rifugio della Rocca (click here) is where those concerts are held, if you happen to be passing.

Word of the week - boh

In view of my recent trip, this week we travel to Italy to find our word of the week. Boh is a bit rude and means I don't know or I don't care and although I couldn't find it in my dictionary it does appear in the BBC's language website under "cool Italian" click here to hear it pronounced, where it says it is usually accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders. When I first encountered it I was impressed by the level of laziness it conveys.

Che ora e?

What time is it?

Boh!

How the hell should I know!

Some Italy pics

They fish from these

View of the Marone from 23 Corsa Reale, San Tommaso

Gargano Adriatic

A view from the tower in San Stefano

That's Vieste in Gargano in the distance

A stick

Monopoly

He sat confidently, ready to play. It was the aspect of his day which made it all worth while, every tenth encounter would contain opportunity, and every third of those would be truly satisfying. The beauty was that he had nothing to lose, he was protected, there was the high desk between him and the danger, behind him was a large sign warning people that his company would not tolerate him being abused in any way. The object of the game; make them do things they don't want to.

I approached and placed my case on the weighing scale, and with a smile and a "hi" handed over three passports. He nodded to himself, this could be a good one. It transpired that I had misunderstood something on the website, he wanted thirty quid in excess baggage charges despite our carrying less than our allowance, (our return tickets had come to less than £50 each). We redistrubuted the contents of our bags. He now wanted only 5 quid but he also wanted our booking reference. I have used this carrier many times and in the past my passport (and maybe my credit card) had been enough. Now he wanted me to go to the sales desk to get the code and rejoin the back of the queue. I remained fairly calm, suggesting that I would be prepared to leave my position in the queue if he called security. Gemma was less happy and wanted his name, he refused and so she called him a "scaredy cat". Eventually that issue was resolved. He then announced that he didn't want any more money from us but that "as you have been so uncooperative, we would not like to see you here again".

The end result, as far as I can make out, was that everybody in the queue had experienced a ten minute delay, Ryan Air had made no more money, we had not enjoyed the nicest start to our trip, but "nameless man", after adjusting himself in his seat, running his finger round the inside of his collar and stretching out his lower jaw, was feeling good and ready for the next passenger.

Prima Colazione (Breakfast)

Wereen is an older guy in Gemma's family's village in Italy, a real character, he is always doing nice things for me when I am there. Several times during the stay, I opened the front door to find a bottle of wine there that he had left for us; he makes wine, that is his big thing, and Grappa. Under his house in what they call the cantina over there, or what he calls his office, he has a still as well as various other grape related paraphernalia. Outside the cantina there is a bird cage where a minor bird lives, she will return your “Boun Giorno” with an unsettlingly human voice. Between her cage and the road is a high hedge, Gemma’s mother had become quite angry when, walking down the road last week, she was wolf whistled at a number of times.

Yesterday Wereen came round to the house in the morning to say that he was off to the next village to get his paper, and I suppose to see if I wanted to go too. Gemma’s mum intercepted him at the door telling him that I was busy, which I kind of was; I was writing a letter to Nat West for a lady who had an account there in the 60’s with about £200 in it; she wanted to know how she could retrieve the balance.

Anyway, when I had finished the letter I went after him. He was in his garden, he’d been and come back but thought he might have left his paper at the shop/café because he couldn’t find it. So off we went in his old Fiat Panda through the heat, down the hill across the bridge that Gemma’s granddad built in the 50’s (he was the foreman) and is now occasionally used for bungy jumping or suicides, up the other side into a sleepy village, through some very narrow streets before stopping outside the shop. When we went in we saw that the owner had ordered three copies of Il Centro (Abruzzo's daily) for the day (he showed us his manifest) and that he only had two left, the assumption being that Wereen had left with the other one. A shrug later we went through an archway into a deserted and dark room, the shop keeper followed us through and became barman. Wereen ordered two Sambucca al Centerbas.

Centerba is 70% alcohol and smells like it should be illegal. You can buy it on its own, usually only a splash is added to coffee (after dinner). Sambucca al Centerba has a slight taste of the "hundred herbs" spirit, it is delicious if a bit strong for 9.30 am. I declined, but agreed to have some in my coffee. Wereen had the drink in a measure that I would describe as being about the size of a small glass of wine. When we left there he insisted that he would like to take me to another bar. We drove through a maze of tiny streets arriving at the little square where, in one corner there were five or six mainly older guys sitting outside what looked like a very small shop, some of the men were drinking. It was very hot and bright, despite the early hour, as well as very quiet, it reminded me of a western film set. Everybody knows Wereen and he exchanged banter with some of the guys in French (he and a number of the locals had all gone off to Belgium to work in a coal mine in the 50’s) and the local dialect before we stepped into the cool of the bar. No tables, two slot machines, one not working. He asked for two Sambucca al Centerbas. The lady behind the bar produced the bottle but it only had enough for one (wine glass sized) shot left in it. There was a short debate about whiskies and other Sambuccas before Wereen suggested topping up our glasses with neat Centerba. Our hostess looked shocked at the idea, I couldn't understand everything that was said but I could see that she felt it was important that I knew what I was letting myself in for. Sambucca al Centerba is clear, Centerba is bright green and so were our cocktails. Five minutes later when I left, I knew I had had a drink.

Fave Maria?

Buon giorno from the Abruzzese town of Chieti, perched high on a hill from where you can see the Adriatic to the east and, in the distance, Grande Sasso ("Big Stone", the tallest mountain in the region to the West).

The sky is clear blue but for a few whisps of cotton wool, unlike the last few days which have seen every conceivable meteorogical phenomenon.

Optimistic, we set out to walk to the hermitage of San Bartolomeo, a cave with an extension, perched on the side of a cliff, not far from here, on Sunday. Half way back a thunder storm intervened and when we reached the car we looked as though we had swam there.

Have been eating particularly well, yesterday's highlight being fried lambs liver, heart and kidneys with onions, I think it was called Contorto d'Agnello, but that could be bollocks. My Italian is not as good as I thought. When asked how I was, despite having made the same mistake previously, I tried to be clever by saying that I was as healthy as a fish, the equivalent to being fit as a fiddle at home. I announced that I was a saint like a peach.