One of the good things about Netflix is that one can get old movies that need another viewing. We revisited Antonioni's L'Avventura, (1960). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053619/.
We saw the movie quite a few years after it came out, on a quest to see Fellini and Antonioni and deSica and all the great Italian directors. By the way, don't bother with Stromboli, it was awful. The scandal surrounding the director (Rosselini) and Ingrid Bergman made the movie famous but not good.
Watching L'Avventura, we had flashbacks to Fellini, and even Chinatown (all the windows, doorways and arches) , and Last Year at Marienbad (long hallways). I had remembered the first part of the movie but very little of the second. All the great 60's movies (Chinatown was 1974, but the U.S. was still behind the curve cinema-wise, although The Graduate changed all that).
After watching the movie, we watched it again with the commentary, which of course mentioned some things that we had overlooked or simply not seen. Very interesting.
Monica Vitti looked alternately, like one of my friends from college and also like a Boston writer I know now. I want to see The Red Desert, but Netflix doesn't yet have it.
In the movie, we see a Sicily that doesn't necessarily look like a Sicily from guidebooks, and get to know an aimless, uppercrust society that was unfamiliar to Americans at the time, the idle, amoral rich. Now of course, we are awash with them, all the "celebrities" who do nothing or very little and, well, you know who I mean. There is something about having to go to work every day to survive that keeps one focused.
Being on a cruise aboard a private yacht is . . . how can I say this. . . the open sea and islands mingle with the idea of erotic possibilities. Which of course is what happened in the movie, and La Dolce Vita was omnipresent.
I don't want to give away the plot in case you haven't seen it, but instead of renting Dumb and Dumber or Cheech and Chong (you don't, do you?) pick up L'Avventura or La Dolce Vita, Blow Up, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Knife in the Water, 8 1/2, or any of the Italian or French New Wave directors, or the Angry Young Men in Great Britian, or Darling (Julie Christie). It is not only a mirror back into the 60's or early 70's, but a mirror of our recent history. And as with all mirrors, the image is not usually pretty. L'Avventura did interesting things with mirrors, too. Of course even the Elizabethans were hung up on that.
The more things change . . .
Grapeshot
Showing posts with label Chinatown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chinatown. Show all posts
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Year of the Rat
Horrible forecast for this evening's weather, and we were supposed to go to the New England Mystery Writer's meeting. The scheduled speaker was a PI, so it disappointing when stuff is cancelled.
I moved up our Chinese New Year dinner. Orange chicken, I think it's called. Every Chinese New Year we celebrate with a home-cooked feast. Always something yummy. I'm also sauteing pea pods and making a salad with the orange that will be left after the rind is used. And rice of course. Basmati, not Chinese, but who cares?
Sometimes we eat with chopsticks. When my kids were little, they would ask what the writing on the chop sticks meant. We always told them, "it says 'shut up and eat,'" which they believed. I suspect that I was not the kind of mother that will ever go down in history as the greatest. Hated car pools, and didn't much like birthday parties, after a bunch of 7 year old boys spent the greater part of the party on the floor wrestling. Having little kids is stressful, and it's 24/7, plus you can't turn off the beeper. Nope.
Back to Chinese food. Article in NY Times (I think) this week about how none of it is authentic, and I have known people to return from China and say the food was awful, so it's hard to know what' to believe, but the best Chinese meal I ever ate was in New York's Chinatown with someone who knows his Asian food and it was totally wonderful.
We have noticed that in Boston you can't get decent egg rolls, whereas every store front in Chicago had them. The worst I ever ate were homemade. One of life's mysteries. But I'm hoping the orange chicken, which I suspect is not authentic will be tasty. Tastes good and not too many calories and doesn't take all day to make is ideal. My aims are modest.
Since I first went to school and ate the school lunches that were usually yucko, I've liked a macaroni casserole made with ground beef, tomatoes and elbow pasta. When we came to Boston, I discovered they called it "American Chop Suey," which I had never heard of, but now it has a name. A pound of ground beef feeds us for 3 nights, and it's tasty with parmesan cheese and some red pepper flakes for zing. Comfort food.
Enough rambling. Time to do some writing. And then it's off to feed the cows before the storm hits. I think they are starting to accept the new young bull that appeared in place of the sweet faced young bull who sired all the current babies. So far he has kind of been taurus-non-grata with them. Cow culture is hard to understand. But isn't that also the case with our own culture?
Alors,
Grapeshot
I moved up our Chinese New Year dinner. Orange chicken, I think it's called. Every Chinese New Year we celebrate with a home-cooked feast. Always something yummy. I'm also sauteing pea pods and making a salad with the orange that will be left after the rind is used. And rice of course. Basmati, not Chinese, but who cares?
Sometimes we eat with chopsticks. When my kids were little, they would ask what the writing on the chop sticks meant. We always told them, "it says 'shut up and eat,'" which they believed. I suspect that I was not the kind of mother that will ever go down in history as the greatest. Hated car pools, and didn't much like birthday parties, after a bunch of 7 year old boys spent the greater part of the party on the floor wrestling. Having little kids is stressful, and it's 24/7, plus you can't turn off the beeper. Nope.
Back to Chinese food. Article in NY Times (I think) this week about how none of it is authentic, and I have known people to return from China and say the food was awful, so it's hard to know what' to believe, but the best Chinese meal I ever ate was in New York's Chinatown with someone who knows his Asian food and it was totally wonderful.
We have noticed that in Boston you can't get decent egg rolls, whereas every store front in Chicago had them. The worst I ever ate were homemade. One of life's mysteries. But I'm hoping the orange chicken, which I suspect is not authentic will be tasty. Tastes good and not too many calories and doesn't take all day to make is ideal. My aims are modest.
Since I first went to school and ate the school lunches that were usually yucko, I've liked a macaroni casserole made with ground beef, tomatoes and elbow pasta. When we came to Boston, I discovered they called it "American Chop Suey," which I had never heard of, but now it has a name. A pound of ground beef feeds us for 3 nights, and it's tasty with parmesan cheese and some red pepper flakes for zing. Comfort food.
Enough rambling. Time to do some writing. And then it's off to feed the cows before the storm hits. I think they are starting to accept the new young bull that appeared in place of the sweet faced young bull who sired all the current babies. So far he has kind of been taurus-non-grata with them. Cow culture is hard to understand. But isn't that also the case with our own culture?
Alors,
Grapeshot
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