17 November 2011

Film Review: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010), by Woody Allen, ****

Synopsis

Two couples discover the grass may not always be greener on the other side in Woody Allen’s breezy comedy on wry, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger. Hoping to relive the pleasures of youth, Alfie Shepridge (Anthony Hopkins) dumps his wife of 40 years (Gemma Jones) and pursues a young call girl (Lucy Punch). So when daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) develops a crush on her boss (Antonio Banderas) and husband Roy (Josh Brolin) becomes obsessed with the beauty (Freida Pinto) who lives across the way, the entire clan’s fantasies take on reality as their passions not only drive them out of their marriages, but out of their minds as well.


Review

I had great fun watching this movie. Typical dry Woody Allen irony about the futile attempts by simple people to change the way the world works. And wasting their life in doing so. I got a great quote from this move, that I would probably never have read in the original in my life:

"Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act 5, scene 5

Thanks Woody for bringing this to my attention!


11 November 2011

Glass and gondolas in Venice


Murano glass taking shape
Early start of the day in Venice. I am here for a photo workshop and we are off to catch the sun rise by the dock of the ferry to Murano, where Stefano has talked to his brother in law who owns a glass shop. We will have the privilege of being let into the shop while the dozen or so glass blowers are working to make the glass masterpieces which make Murano famous.

About a dozen artisans are blowing glass today, all Italian men plus a young and very thin French lady who has moved here six years ago to learn the trade. It seems that with 8% "unemployment" in Italy we need to import tall young girls from Burgundy to keep the magic of Murano glass alive! She follows closely each and every move of the senior master, who sometimes holds her hand in a fatherly fashion to guide her through the moves that transform sand into glass masterpieces.

The atmosphere is magic. In the middle of the shop a huge furnace radiates intense heat, and all around skilled workers dance with their red-hot glass at the end of a steel pole, blowing, cutting, chiselling, attaching gold leaves, shaping and reshaping their creations.

We leave the shop after two very full hours and take the ferry back to Venice, where a lineup of "spritz" is waiting for us at a local bar. They will be followed by delicious cicchetti for a true Venetian lunch by Rialto. I was afraid to run into a tourist trap, of which there are too many in the neighborhood, but ended up in a delightful little restaurant for a very special treat.

Fixing gondolas
The day then continues with a visit to  "squero" of San Trovaso, a shop where they build and maintain gondolas, the trademark boats of Venice. Again thanks to the good offices of Stefano we are welcomed into one of a handful of workshops where this ancient art is kept alive by a bunch of skilled masters.

As one of them shows us the tools he explains that a gondola costs about thirty thousand euro as it comes out of the carpenter's shop, with no accessories, decorations, or anything one would call an "optional" in a car. It can be twice as much when it hits the water with all its bells and whistles installed. There are only 420 licensed gondolas in Venice and licences are impossible to get unless you are well connected into the inner circles of the city and come from a family of gondolieri.

This squero can only make two new gondolas per year, and spend most of its labor time on maintenance. I had the good luck to witness some of this work today, one master was pushing special straw thread in the crevices between the long beams of a gondola to improve its water tightness. As the sun sets, a gondoliere arrives at the squero to deliver his gondola for repairs. Everyone gives a hand to raise it from the water, and after a first inspection a workplan is agreed upon. It's time for us to say farewell, and head off to town for a dinner of polenta with cuttle fish in its black ink sauce...

26 October 2011

Book Review: Formosa Betrayed, by George Kerr, *****

Island of Tatan, off Quemoy with Nationalist flag
By way of background...

"Our experience in Formosa is most enlightening. The Administration of the former Governor Chen Yi has alienated the people from the Central Government. Many were forced to feel that conditions under autocratic rule [Japan's rule] were preferable.

25 October 2011

Recensione: Percorsi d'Amore, di Maurizio Cremasco, ****

Recensione
Questa è una serie di poesie che trasmettono lo stato d'animo irrequieto dell'autore, uno scrittore che è stato pilota da caccia e politologo, si è appassionato di vini e cucina ed ha viaggiato per il mondo. Una fertile mente che affronta l'ultima fase della sua vita con l'entusiasmo di un aitante giovanotto. Nelle poesie traspare questo afflato ansioso, la voglia di vivere, l'energia che sprizza da tutti i pori...

15 October 2011

Book review: Coral Gardens, by Leni Riefenstahl, *****

Review
Leni Riefenstahl was a great, if politically controversial, movie director, but only later in her life she picked up photography in a serious way. Her books on African tribes are justly famous.

14 October 2011

Book Review: A Little Book of Zen, *****

I bought this book some six years ago and it has found a permament home atop my writing desk ever since. I open it almost every day, usually on a random page, and almost always find someething that gives me reason to pause and think positively. Strongly recommended as dispenser of a daily pill of wisdom.

13 October 2011

Recensione: People from Ikea, di Andrea Pugliese, ***

Sinossi
Componendo a incastro questi tubi, ripiani, viti e bulloni, sono possibili milioni di combinazioni. Sul catalogo per tale meraviglia si sprecano i sostantivi: guardaroba, libreria, scaffalatura, separatore d'ambiente, portatutto, riassumicasino...

10 October 2011

Book Review: Slaves of the Cool Mountains, by Alan Winnington, *****

Author with released slaves in Yunnan
Synopsis

Beijing, 1956: foreign correspondent Alan Winnington heard reports of slaves being freed in the mountains of south-west China. The following year he travelled to Yunnan province and spent several months with the head-hunting Wa and the slave-owning Norsu and Jingpaw. From that journey was born this book, which Neal Ascherson has called 'one of the classics of modern English travel writing'. The first European to enter and leave these areas alive, Winnington met a slave-owner who assessed his value at five silver ingots ('Your age is against you, but as a curiosity you would fetch a decent price'), a head-hunter who a fortnight earlier killed a man in order to improve his own rice harvest and a sorcerer struggling against the modern medicines sapping his authority and livelihood.


01 October 2011

Book Review: Excerpta Maldiviana, by HCP Bell, *****

Male' harbour in early 1880s
H.C.P. Bell 1887
This is not easy reading. In fact it is not really meant for reading at all. It is mostly a comprehensive catalog of historical documents on the islands, compiled by a British civil servant who went there many times over several decades spanning the end of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX.

24 September 2011

Book review: Maldives: Kingdom of a Thousand Isles (2004), by Andrew Forbes, ****

Cemetery on a Maldivian island
Precious little is written on the Maldives besides guide books on posh resorts. This book goes a long way toward filling that gap. The author is well read on the subject and has spent considerable time travelling around the archipelago. He provides fairly exhaustive historical and cultural analyses.