perhaps because I am not so much into blogs these days, but lately, when I take a little time off for blogland (OK, maybe too little time, but then again, I must also be unlucky then), I read so many automatic, predictable, conformist and inconsiderate opinions about issues on blogs I like that it really puts me down (and I wonder, why I liked these blogs again?)
But they do reflect something that happens in real life too. I mean this thing of automatic opinions that are used and not actually considered before use, just thrown at you over and over again.

Like, it comes out a movie and Libi is like, whoa, it's wonderful, and A. at school is like, it's fantastic, and I read about it on the web and it's all 'wonderful', 'literary' (what the hell that means?) and such, and then the Oscar mafia comes out with, whoa, masterpiece, so in the end how could anyone not agree? (this is how opinions are consolidated: with the numbers, not the reasons.) And then you watch the movie, and OK, beautiful pictures, but c'mon. There's emotion all right. But there's also nothing into it. There's nothing into the story, into the characters. Cool serial killers and tired straight old policemen. Again. Is that fiction about life? It seems like people enjoy it because it does NOT disrupt their idea of the world, it only spices it up a little.
"The world is dangerous and I am not a killer: that's why I don't live." Like, here it is the flattest interpretation of your day, plus a little unrealistic flirtatious pretentiousness (southern accents and solemn ironic monologues), plus guns and blood and chasing, and all the rest of the usual shit hollywood has been pouring over our trashed heads for generations.
Enjoy. Life is not ambiguous, it is just plain scary. And you're a baby.

The day them mafia bosses there in hollywood or the big apple will be able to pull out a film about life and death and consumption and disorder without using weapons of sorts, murder, and other forms of desensitizing violence I'll really try to listen and watch hard. Otherwise, sorry, I'm sick of the celebration of violence masqueraded by ironic masterpiece.

"This movie is really cool, you should download it"
"Wait. Is there even a single gun into it? A murder? A rapist? Is there a so-debauched christian fundamentalist? A car chase? Dismembered rotting bodies? Is there the end of humanity as we know it amidst savage barbaric violence? Is there even a second of any of that?"
"Actually..."
"..."

and, funny how the same happens with much more serious issues, where bloggers I happen to read and used to like rush to support, say, Kosovo independence. Without hesitation, because of the above-mentioned automatic reflex, in this case applying to the rule that it is so cool to support whatever people struggling somewhere for whatever independence, and, who could be against it, right? they declare how much they care for the oppressed. This is done without even bothering to explain why they feel they should declare they support Kosovo, why this drugs-&-guns-smuggling-UN-supported mafia enclave should be cheered when acting like a chauvinist scoundrel, while being supported immediately by all the racist scoundrels of western Europe, when the same people and entities are so strict and picky with independence movements in their own countries. Don't bother to ask.

Yes I not only will pass, but I am not listening any more if more than two blogs or individuals at the same time come crying to me at the altar of this or that masterpiece, this or that convenient idea etc. Especially if this is done without really wanting to explain why.
It's annoying. Sad to relate, maybe, but in the end --with very few exceptions-- to me blogs are interesting only when they revolve around slices of personal life. Singular point of views, the phenomena of existing. The material is much harder to handle than any goddamned opinion and the quality of the product can get to be so much more superior, with maybe less posts and more respect for the reader (Hey, I'm not talking about myself here, this blog is in a coma, I know it).

Which reminds me, sorry for this post of opinions against other posts of opinions, won't happen again now.
Love, etc.

As though the sky now partook of an alien system, it became too high for the high towers of civilization in the foreground of the picture, and against the compact, menacing background the human landscape degenerated into a junkyard. The deep blue with which a time grown plethoric weighed on the world was the essential -- the scattered leaflets down below, in which only fear of life or death could beguile him (or anyone else!) to find the slightest meaning, were a secondary, minor factor.

-- Peter Handke, as quoted in this article (thanks to Greg for pointing it out)

-- in movie, above: just the nothingness recorded by my little camera from inside a coffee place.

I sit into another coffee place of that silly chain, just next to Korean town, on 32nd. I stretch my right leg under the table close to the window. The knee still bothers me, and at moments it seems like it is never going to stop hurting. But I decided not to let it ruin my trip, so I stick to the plan. I just leave it there, eat a sandwich, take the drugs. My leg smells of hospital, it's the bengay cream. My pants look a little like hospital pants, all pastel blue as they are. Girls check me out because I look like a doctor on a break. I try to accustom to the part, looking heroic and bored and undisclosedly fit. It's not hard, that's a little how I feel, together with lost and displaced and good for nothing of course.
People are using laptops on the few tables around me. Everyone went to typing school and writes real fast. So fast and aggressively it distracts me from my thoughts. Not that my thoughts are so relevant at this moment of the day. A table of Korean youngsters produces collective burst of laughs at given intervals, and two incredibly attractive young Indian girls talk animately and with a lot of mannerisms at a table behind them.

I just ended the worse conversation on the phone with Libi. I called her from a public phone on the street, it was chaotic. She was sleeping, I woke her up, had her telling me about her day. As soon as I started talking about how I felt she used her long pauses and was all defensive and then I told her about my dreams, the bare bones of projects I would love to have, it was as if everything emanating from me was there to threaten her. She said "I knew this was going to happen" and I had no idea what "this" was, and then the voice said "thirty seconds" ridiculously soon, damn polish prepaid cards.

A middle age guy from the next table gives me his videocamera to film him and his ten year old son eating pizza together. They actually took pizza from Sbarro and brought it here. I don't know why he wants me to film that. The proposal is so unexpected and the man so nice I can't think of anything, any rudeness, to avoid the thing. So I film them, the dad acts like he's making a toast with his son with the pizzas, and I even wave into the camera to convince the little kid to wave back. He does, with a beautiful smile, and asks me what's my name. I tell him. Must repeat it a couple of times 'cause it is unusual. His dad is convinced that I must be Russian. I am italian, I tell him, and he says, really, me too. Born here, though, he says. i fail to manifest pleasure and surprise. He gives me his card. Frank Positano, there's written on it. Photographer, New York. He looks expectant but I don't know what to say. "You're a photographer", I say. "Interesting."
I give him back the camera. Our moment is over. I put my own little camera on the table and start filming the outside, just out of nothingness, I hope he doesn't notice.
People walking by. Neons flickering. Girl with stilettos getting off the cab. Korean people converging to 32nd. Cars and bikes passing by. Music suggesting arbitrary feelings unasked for. I just sit there in a daze and let it flow in and out until it's time to go.

I haven't followed the awards. I don't have a TV set, I never go to the movies, I am so out of touch I don't even know the name of most of the new Hollywood icons. And the old icons, all former alpha males with their hairplugs and gigantic white fake teeth, I am happy for them if they're still alive and kicking but, I'm sorry, they just bore me to death with all their self-indulgent aura and all.
Shiny gold disturbs me. Fanfare makes me sad. And the italians at the Oscars? Forget about them! Judging from Salvatores, Benigni and Tornatore, they usually begin to destroy themselves and to cover their own country with shame shortly after the ceremony, so I'm not even going into that.
The only thing that can surprise you when you're so out of touch with something, is to see other people interested in it. So many posts about the Oscars the day after. How anyone can be sucked up into that, you are left to wonder. But that's also so subjective. Honestly I don't really have a point "against the Oscars". I am only completely out of touch and happy with it and I wanted to say it, since today my mood is doing much better and all.

--in picture: shiny gold, ugh.

To live between terms, to live where death
Has his loud picture in the subway ride,
Being amid six million souls, their breath
An empty song suppressed on every side,
Where the sliding auto's catastrophe
Is a gust past the curb, where numb and high
The office building rises to its tyranny,
Is our anguished diminution until we die.

-- Delmore Schwartz

These are shitty days. Nothing is clear in my mind. My life and Libi's just dab each other and doesn't even seem to be related anymore. I wake up at six or five, have my breakfast, set up hers, open the computer. Invariably I wish I could go out for a walk in a city that still makes me curious, but the city repels me. Its activity, its rudeness. The tragic solitude of the truancy walks in the parks in the morning--
Solitary birds now sing in the empty hour above the terrace, when the sun is still behind clouds and my plants seem to shiver for the cold, the dirt dried and hard stamped by the hungry pigeons. But the young leaves, small on the branches are still bright green and pointing upward, close to the bark, the first flowers are blossoming and ready to receive the visits of unobtainable hymenoptera with wings. Like church bells the birds remind me of the summers on the Lugano Lake, and the heart skips a beat for all the days that are gone by--
I daze myself in a computer stupor, keeping the fears asleep, when I should go 'round and fix a number of things before I leave --the things that everyday I postpone-- passport, fines to pay, travel books to get, presents. I am eroded by absurd sudden worries, triggered by things I should never read --like that I'll have Alzheimer because there's aluminum in the crowns that cover my teeth, and mercury in the fillings-- and I grab my ears and shake my head and moan in the secret of the orange bathroom whining for my Alzheimer years to come--
Later Libi wakes up and we smile to each other but she doesn't come to me to hug me like we used to do. I don't tell her how attractive she is, ruffled like a cat -- then she goes to bed to read and finish her coffee and I only hear the noise of the leafed pages.
"Do you like this book?" I call from one room.
"Quite" she answers from the other. I gave her the book--
Oh, dear friend, dear lover, I know how complicated and lost I am sometimes-- it's like I feel that you can't reach me, and that you don't even want to try anymore because I'm leaving anyway.
I wonder what Libi is talking about with her therapist. And I am never going to have one, I swear to myself once again.
Every house in the city contains habits and words not visible in the picture-- everything that goes on in the shape of the unsharable habits, like everyone turning its back to you--
I wanted to be closer to Libi these last weeks before leaving for three months, or more-- instead we are nervous, irritable, defensive. Libi seems to be tighten up in her world, full of hours at the atelier, going for shops and suppliers, trams to get and the theaters at the end of the day --Every moment is like the negative of the separation, somewhere where the separation hurts but it's not told or visible and this makes it all the more hard and wrong--
She said she was worried that I might not come back-- I don't know if I've done enough to, I don't know, reassure her--
Sometimes, often, Libi goes to the movies alone, sits in the first seats and sinks herself in the marvel of the the loud voices and the gigantic pictures --and I think of her, there, following a story and shedding few tears or laughs. We are never so much apart like in those moments --and not because I'm not there. Sometimes she falls asleep and snores in the theater and someone notices her, but no one wakes her up. I wouldn't wake her up either-- I wish I could give her a similar sense of wonder and protection, or carry her away instead of being the one who's deserting the nest and leaving her alone-- but we are past that moment and perhaps I didn't wish hard enough.

And finally to get out --and let the city beat its drums all around you, the shops to yellow up your face in a sudden glow, the people on the sidewalks to walk past you forever-- to forever mistake everything about you in a glimpse-- it's reciprocal-- let your indelible suicidal thoughts to mix up with all the other feelings and let 'em get lost for a little while, in the annoying feeling of the city, the smell, the babies carried in a rush, the dogs dragged away from the smell of feces and death-- the conversations through the earpieces smaller than a finger, punctuating the solitude of the souls in all the mirrors-- etc.

still deleting old drafts...

// (...) I think it's endearing of her to say it. And then it hits me, while those thoughts that I have end within the boundaries of what is me, what I think it's being me, it's this kind of things, done together with no apparent reason nor necessity and totally mundane, to make two persons a couple, whatever a couple is. It is just not obvious to me why, nor whether I like this or not. //

// (...) Later they watched together the Ozu movie in color, just downloaded illegally, called An Autumn Afternoon, that made them both hungry for japanese food and beer. He asked how was it possible, that so sensitive and intimate people never touched each other, if not for some occasional shoulder-patting on the way, not even in the most sorrowful situations? It probably was the same in Italy years ago, rural life and all. But at least there were the recurrent beatings and rapes and clashes, wives against husbands, husbands against wives, parents against children, brothers against sisters against brothers, friends on friends, everybody against dogs, donkeys, cows. In japanese movies, no palpating whatsoever. Sex was awesome then I bet, she said. //

// (...) When asked of this strange behaviour, he then will defend himself saying: "They both were wrong."
"Do you have any idea of who's right, then?"
"I don't care, really!" he will answer with a smile.
"What do you argue for, if you have no idea, then."
"'cause! I enjoy to be different, and I want to be admired for it."
"But you don't get much admiration going to argue with people who have such strong opinions."
"I just want to be admired by the majority of a minority of the other side," he will answer.
That's how I am. It all goes back to when I was a teenager stuck in a too political family, and was usually considered "too much politically indifferent and substantially from the right" from my father his wife and my stepbrother, "just too much of a leftist" from my mother, and simply a misbeliever from my sister. Great days were those, I'm sure they're being kept somewhere to be repeated for me for my eternal damnation in hell. Not that the members of my so called family ever changed their mind about me in the meantime. But at least I don't get to talk with them much anymore. //

Dagospia.com featured today a bleak summary of the receptions of Roberto Benigni's 2005 movie "the tiger and the snow", out in the U.S. now.
It would be useless to link to the article since the bastards at dagospia hide their materials after few hours and you have to pay to read. A fair gist of the tenor of all U.S. critical response to Benigni's new film can be read at the reverse shot blog.

Have you read it? Ok. Well, let me tell you that not all of us "old-world cretins" are crazy about Benigni either. I have avoided anything from this guy since "Il piccolo Diavolo" and have no regrets.
When he got the award for "Life is Beautiful" and all the people in the U.S. went crazy about him, many here including me thought "how can those new-world cretins love that sort of stuff?". Because Benigni can be so rhetoric and bloated and self-indulgent and disloyal and unbearable. And Nicoletta is a stiff tragedy mask, everybody with a little taste knows that.

On the other hand, it is certainly unfair to tie forever one artist to his beginnings, but what Benigni did back in the seventies to the early nineties and around that time was pretty unique and fantastic. One of the greatest comic talents Italy ever had since the times of Totò (seriously).
The way he could demolish and make fun of everything... the range of voices and faces and inventions and crude imaginary he had was amazing....
I saw Benigni once performing on stage when I was a teenager or so --for a two hours show-- and came out devastated: in physical pain for how much I had laughed.

But all comic talents get bored of their role after a while, and after that everyone is easily disappointed.
I mean, I loved him in "Down By Law", mostly because of Jarmusch's genial touch. And the readings of Dante's work he made some time later were great stuff. But Benigni in the last years really took a regretful turn. It seems that he wants to be a sort of new moralistic Chaplin, but you can't be a new Chaplin by definition, and the memory of the world isn't that short, plus the world isn't that delicate or innocent anymore.

I am almost finished. I only wanted to add that the reason why I felt like writing this post is that the case of Benigni is a typical case where Italy's destiny in the world is so perfectly illustrated.
Italy has too many friends and admirers that are no real friends nor real admirers. They look at the boot in the sea seeing a myth and a fable and an idea that isn't real. Then comes the moment of revelation where the sloppiness and the provincialism and the conceit and mafiosaggine that all the admiration had overlooked tragically emerges.
So what I wish for my country are not more applauses, at least for a while. Instead I hope that Italy could one day cease to live on its past fortunes and start to honestly face a reality where the sheer word "Italian" doesn't make up for everything anymore. And where awards must be really deserved.

We argued for the second time about that Billy Wilder's movie "One, Two, Three". I flatly stated that the movie was sheer propaganda of the cold war. Russian are represented with the usual demeaning stereotype of the illiterate, greedy, corrupt thug. Or as naive idealists easy to buy. Nothing very distant from the representation of Russian people in any other western Hollywoodian movie of the last sixty years at that.
"Let's imagine they're not russians, but jews, or black africans," I argued. "Wouldn't you be ashamed and disturbed by it?"
"No. It's a comedy," she defended, "and well done too."
"True. I am not saying you couldn't laugh with it. But There is a comedy which after all starts from the things as they are, even if it ends by overturning reality completely. And a comedy which just destroys reality from the start, without appeal, with commonplaces, burlesque, caricatures. That's even worse than a serious propaganda movie."
"I can appreciate any kind of movie for its artistic values regardless the politics or the propaganda involved in it."
"Me too, mostly", I said. "But at least let's take some points away from the valuation we make of it"
"But why?"
"Because it allowed politics into arts!" I said. "It tried to play tricks on us! That's not good art in my book!"
"Uff, I hate it when you talk politics!"

At the end of this conversation, which could easily apply to the movie 'Borat' too, I wondered a little about my relationship with politics.
I am very sensitive to politics. I am not saying I have a great understanding of it, but I know where it can be found, how it operates. I can recognize it even if it's very well hidden behind different means, pretenses and results.

So what basically happens with politics is that I start talking about it not because I enjoy to, or because I have my idea and I want to be in the arena. I start talking politics simply when I feel attacked by it. When I perceive propaganda hidden behind informations, arts, entertainments. When I perceive aggressive politics against my rights or others' rights. It's more a reflex than everything else, and in fact the results are not very brilliant, since I am the first one who gets bored of arguing about politics.

As with the movie "One, Two, Three", nothing bores me more than seeing a form of art I love prostituted by politics. But what really makes me snap, is to see folks persuaded by it as if the politics or the propaganda were completely absent.

That really puts me in a desperate mood. Because I think there's always a struggle between arts and politics or religion, and in that moment I see the arts losing the battle.
In fact, Ideas always want to enslave Arts, and Arts always have to find new means to disclose their intentions beyond Ideas. This is always a result obtained with Form, because Ideas are not the essence of Arts. The only essence is Form.

An example? Take any religious picture of a master of the renaissance. No matter what any Scholar of Arts will tell you, the most important thing into it are not the allegories, the subjects or the ideas it conveys. The most important thing instead are the colors, the light, the way surfaces juxtapose, the composition, the design, etc.

Another example? What Kundera said of George Orwell's novel 1984 (I paraphrase): 1984 is not a good piece of art, not a good novel, because politics dominate the novel and not the other way around. This is true even if you agree with Orwell's visions and ideas, because it's a formal problem.
The simple intention of seeing a political idea prevailing in a work of art makes the work of art tinkle, like a bad coin.