È molto facile dimenticare che i film sono fatti da artisti. Dietro al lavoro di chi cerca di raccontare storie che possono coinvolgere tutti, c’è una vita passata a seguire un percorso creativo che in pochi condividono. Chi racconta storie che parlano del quotidiano vive un quotidiano molto diverso dai più. Parla e capisce un linguaggio che in pochi capiscono completamente, si sviluppa in circoli piccoli, in anni di frequentazioni, cambia a seconda dei tempi e dei luoghi, ed è difficile da condividere con chi non vive quel percorso.
Il Cigno Nero è un film che parla di artisti, ed è fatto da un artista il cui interesse per i caratteri ossessivi si è rivelato sin dal suo primo film, π. Darren Aronofski ha passato gli ultimi dieci anni a trasformarsi in uno degli autori cinematografici più importanti della scena mondiale, e con The Wrestler, il film che ha preceduto Il Cigno Nero, ha dimostrato di poter raccontare storie estreme in maniera intima e familiare. È impossibile sapere se la sua ossessione nell’immergersi nell’arte sia anche parte del suo quotidiano, ma in pochi possono negare che il suo talento nel raccontare i dolori e le gioie del creare arte sia assai raro. Read more »
Questo pezzo è il primo di una serie di recensioni riproposte dalla rubrica Cineteca di Sardinews, che curo da qualche anno.
Il genere documentario è tornato alla ribalta da quasi un decennio, grazie al successo dei film “di denuncia” di Michael Moore. Il fenomeno ha colpito anche l’Italia, ma Videocracy è un caso anomalo: un film sull’Italia, diretto da un italiano, prodotto e concepito in Scandinavia. Diretto da Erik Gandini, italiano trapiantato in Svezia da più di vent’anni, con una coproduzione svedese e danese, il documentario è un viaggio nel mondo della televisione italiana, un racconto dell’impero culturale con cui Silvio Berlusconi ha plasmato il paese di cui è divenuto presidente. Read more »
Posted in English, Movies on Wednesday, July 28, 2010 by zionsiva
Warning: the following post contains potential spoilers for Inception and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
In a future where men can share dreams and explore them with their conscious mind, a team of expert dream explorers is trying to plant an idea in the mind of the heir of a big corporation. It’s a long shot: according to many, planting an original thought in someone else’s mind is impossible. But Cobb, the main character or the movie, played by Leonardo Di Caprio, needs this mission to work to go back home to his kids. He needs to design a plan and create a world to make it work. This is the main plot behind one the best movies made in recent memory. It’s also a concept that, as pointed out in this excellent review on Kotaku, could sound very familiar to anyone who ever played a video game.
Music press is quite deceptive. It can create phenomenons just to boost sales, becoming little more than gossip in the process. And when it came to music writing in italian newspaper, the situation could be quite bad. The average age of the journalists would make irrelevant most articles, all filtered through the lenses of a bunch of people who look with suspicion anything released after 1978. And it was very hard to read about something other than classic rock.
But luckily, there was the odd stroke of genius. “Musica”, bundled with Repubblica each wednesday for most of the 90′s, had solid reviews and could often look out of the box. And when it reviewed Voodoo, in one of the most glowing reviews I’ve ever read, I know I had to get it. Something in the review was telling me I had to have it. Then I saw the “Untitled” video on MTV. I never saw anything like it, but most importantly, I rarely heard anything with that kind of intensity.
I got the record in a shop I never used to go to, right in the center of Cagliari, one saturday after school. I never heard of D’Angelo, I remember being puzzled reading the liner notes, a fascinating and confusing stream of consciousness, and being surprised to see such reverence for Prince, an artist I never really listened to. I also liked the tribal feel of the packaging. Soul and Hip Hop were going for a sleek, clean feel. I could tell that this one was trying to change things, to make a statement. Once I put the CD in the player, and my mind was blown. I never listened to anything like it before. The whole record SWEATS in you ears. When anyone talks about “organic” sound, that’s always the first record I think of. The performance are all amazingly groovy. It’ almost hyperreal: it feels like the musicians wanted the record to sound like a living being. It’s one of the few record that I still can’t remember by heart even after listening to it close to a hundred times. Its beats and its grooves go right into your skin and they stay there, never blowing in your face, going deeper each time you listen to the songs. After listening to the album, the liner notes and the overall style of the packaging started to make a lot more sense. D’Angelo and the musicians working for him wanted to get back to the roots by recapturing the intentions that made soul great while still looking forward.
This was the record that made me really appreciate soul music. I grew up listening to Michael Jackson, and I was always fascinated by r’n'b and the Motown sound, but this was the first time someone taking that seriously. It’s still one of my all time favorite records. Voodoo is timeless. It was way ahead of the time, and it can’t quite age. It’s a celebration of human rhythm, of joy and life. I am now a big Prince fan, I consider him a genius and an amazing musician. Still, I’m not sure he ever recorded a record as good as this. 10 Years from the release of Voodoo, I just hope to get to experience a new D’Angelo record once again. Soon.
The fascinating presentation for Google Wave has been watched by millions of people in just a few weeks. It’s an hour and a half long video, a whirlwind of ideas and possibilities that paves the way to a new way to work and network. It’s exciting and compelling, even though it only shows just two people typing and editing text. Not the exactly what should make for a great video.
Video and audio are more effective that the written word, more direct and suggestive. It’s easier to manipulate people through these means, and many people are thinking that, as time goes by, writing will become less and less important . In a very interesting indie movie released last year, Sleep Dealer, one of the characters wants to become a writer, and sells her blog posts. But her “writing” consists in recording her voice while a device captures the images in her brain, converting them to video. It seems perfectly natural: writing images and writing words is not that different. One can hardly think that the most important moments in our future history will be shared with the written word. Read more »
Questo è un repost di una traduzione dal sito dell’Unità: per questioni tecniche quella versione è stata pubblicata in un format leggermente confusionario. Consiglio l’uso dello scripplet Readability per rendere più scorrevole la lettura.
Mi è stato fatto notare che l’uso di “consistente” per tradurre “consistent” non è corretto, ma continuo a credere che sia la scelta più efficace per dare il senso del concetto originale, piuttosto diverso da coerente, affidabile e costante.
John August è uno sceneggiatore e regista americano. Ha firmato Big Fish e Go, ed ha diretto The Nines. Questo è la trascrizione conferenza data tre anni fa per gli studenti dell’Università di San Antonio, disponibile in originale sul blog dell’autore, johnaugust.com. August demolisce il diffuso luogo comune secondo il quale la scrittura online non andrebbe affrontata con lo stesso rigore che si riserva a quella su carta. Crediamo che l’attualità delle tesi espresse da August ormai tre anni fa sia la dimostrazione di quanto sostenuto nella conferenza: Internet sembra privilegiare il presente, ma ha una memoria lunghissima. Ed è proprio la vastità e la durata della sua memoria a imporre agli autori, anche a quelli che si cimentano per la prima volta nella scrittura online, di essere rigorosi e, appunto, professionali.
Ringrazio l’autore per aver autorizzato la pubblicazione.
Joss Whedon is one of the very few real auteur in television. Like Aaron Sorkin and Judd Apatow, his style is immediately recognizable, and his fans are many and passionate. But he’s not as lucky with ratings. Dollhouse, his new TV show, seemed to be doomed even before it aired. Rumors about conflicts between the creative team and the network have been around for quite some time before the first episode hit TVs. Its concept its not exactly easy to pitch to audiences: the series revolves around a secret corporation that deals in erasing people’s brain to use them as “dolls”, blank people that can be programmed to do practically any task a rich client wants done. Read more »
Questo post di Luca Sofri mi ha fatto tornare in mente molte sensazioni che non mi abbandonano nonostante io non viva più in Italia. Informandomi ogni giorno sui fatti che muovono il mio paese non posso fare a meno di provare sensazioni molto simili. da quando a vivo all’estero mi sembra sempre più evidente che il problema principale dell’Italia sia talmente ovvio da essere invisibile, il tipico elefante bianco. Read more »
For a while now I’ve been noticing an interesting trend: game journalism, often stagnating in its written incarnation due to oversaturation of content and an excessive reliance on formula and votes, is now living a second life through audio and video podcasts. The same people writing in some of the most important media outlets in the world, once freed from the restraints of the review/preview formula, give some of the most interesting (and fun) insight on games that I’ve seen in years. So, when I heard the terribile news of the UGO/EGM buyout, I was definitely saddened by the news of an historical magazine being shut down for good, but I was even more bummed out because that meant the end for the amazing podcast produced by the 1Up team: 1Up Yours, 1Up FM., and the 1Up Show. I thought my gaming info would be much poorer due to the layoff of the talented people that made these show a reality, but it seems that, luckly, I was wrong. Read more »
2008 was a good year for movies. It’s interesting that most critics seem to feel that it was not as interesting as 2007, for the lack of big masterpieces like There Will Be Blood or No Country For Old ean. Thing is, we had masterpieces this year, but they were “genre” movies. But more on that later. I’ve coupled most of the movies to make things snappier.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall / Tropic Thunder
The last few years have been great for comedies, and Judd Apatow is the man behind this great streak of funny, poignant and always interesing movies. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is amazingly funny and very, very well done, another proof that Apatow’s movies are consistently good without being at all formulaic, probably because he really trusts his protegees, like Jason Segel this time. Tropic Thunder, though, goes beyond that, and shows Ben Stiller at his best in a movie that puts him back at Zoolander heights. Very few authors can marry extreme intelligence with absolute idiocy like this man. Kudos.
È molto facile dimenticare che i film sono fatti da artisti. Dietro al lavoro di chi cerca di raccontare storie che possono coinvolgere tutti, c’è una vita passata a seguire un percorso creativo che in pochi condividono. Chi racconta storie che parlano del quotidiano vive un quotidiano molto diverso dai più. Parla e capisce un linguaggio che in pochi capiscono completamente, si sviluppa in circoli piccoli, in anni di frequentazioni, cambia a seconda dei tempi e dei luoghi, ed è difficile da condividere con chi non vive quel percorso.
