Produziu filmes como “La Strada”, “Blow-Up”, “Ieri, Oggi e Domani”, “Matrimonio all’Italiana” entre muitos outros. Trabalhou com Rossellini, Fellini, Antonioni, Godard e muitos outros. Disse, numa das suas últimas entrevistas, que toda a sua carreira foi dedicada a Sophia Loren.

A notícia no The New York Times

Baseado na short story de Agatha Christie, com um trabalho magnífico de Marlene Dietrich.

Chamam-lhe web social ou web 2.0 - não me perguntem que não sei o nome correcto ou exacto. Mas não gosto. Não gosto, mas sei que é preconceito meu. Quanto mais me dizem para socializar, menos vontade tenho de o fazer. Um pouco como o Miguelito do Quino, que ao ver uma placa, num canteiro de um jardim, a dizer “Não pisar a relva”, vai lá e mete o pé, dizendo qualquer coisa como “Não gosto que me digam que não devo fazer uma coisa que sei que não devo fazer”.

Depois há também o problema da atitude em relação à informação, no sentido lato: imagem, escrita, som, que reunimos ou que produzimos. A mim, faz-me confusão ter as coisas lá longe, num sítio que não conheço nem controlo.

Mas vou experimentando aqueles que me chamam a atenção e há alguns mesmo que vou mantendo. Aqui ficam:

Me @ Flickr - Fotografia. Há várias features interessantes (comentar as fotos, subscrever as feeds, agregar a foto a um mapa, etc), mas a mais interessante, do meu ponto de vista, é a chamada add note, que permite adicionar uma quadrado num objecto na fotografia e dizer alguma coisa sobre ele. Isto torna-se particularmente interessante porquanto, muitas vezes, acontece outras pessoas verem coisas nas fotos que nós não vemos. Aqui está um exemplo. O Flickr permite ainda adicionar pessoas como amigos e/ou familia, gerindo dessa forma as fotos que querem mostrar ou não a determinadas pessoas.

Add-on - Para Mac OS X existe uma app, Tickr, que permite ver em rodapé ou numa barra lateral do vosso desktop, fotografias adicionadas ao Flickr e que podem ser filtradas por palavras-chave, baseadas nas tags.

Me @ Last.fm - Música. Este site permite mostrar o que vou ouvindo no meu computador, com a opção de colocar gráficos em páginas web. Não é muito fiável, em termos representativos, uma vez que não ouço música apenas no laptop. É possível ouvir alguns albuns em preview ou uma ou outra faixa completa. Também aqui é possível adicionar friends e ver o que eles ouvem.

Me @ Del.icio.us - Bookmarks online, com possibilidade de ter bookmarks públicas ou não. Permite sincronizar as bookmarks com o browser.

Me @ Deviantart - Talvez o primeiro site-comunidade onde me registei. Permite colocar os vossos trabalhos online, receber e fazer comentários a outros trabalhos, bem como manter um journal.

Me @ Listal - Antes deste site experimentei o LibraryThing, mas que apenas dá para catalogar livros. O Listal permite catalogar, para além de livros, CD’s, DVD’s, filmes que viram, mas que não têm em DVD, televisão e jogos. Podem classificar os itens de 1 a 10, escrever comentários, construir listas de favoritos e, uma feature muito apetecida por gente como eu que tem livros tão antigos que não se encontram as capas na web, é possível fazer o upload da capa do livro, do cd, etc.
Parece-me um site ainda em desenvolvimento. Há poucos dias tinha uma opção de import e export, nomeadamente para a Delicious Library (infelizmente não para a Bookpedia), que agora não encontro, pelo que é possível que não estivesse a funcionar ainda muito bem. Também aqui é possível adicionar friends e é possível colocar os vossos itens numa página web.

O poema foi escrito por Tim Burton, inspirado pelo “The Raven” [Nesta página da wikipedia encontram vários links no final para edições do Projecto Gutenberg, ilustradas por Gustav Doré e Édouard Manet, bem como uma declamação do poema e uma tradução para francês de Mallarmé"] de Edgar Allen Poe. Neste site encontram vários links e informação sobre esta curta, em stop-motion (o site não funciona muito bem em firefox)

Vincent Malloy is seven years old
He’s polite and always does as he’s told
For a boy his age, he’s considerate and nice
But he wants to be just like Vincent Price

He doesn’t mind living with his sister, dog, and cats
Though he’d rather share a home with spiders and bats
There he could reflect on the horrors he has invented and wander dark hallways alone and tormented

Vincent is nice when his aunt comes to see him
But imagines dipping her in wax for his wax museum
He likes to experiment on his dog Abocrombie
In the hopes of creating a horrible zombie
So that he and his horrible zombie dog
could go searching for victims in the London fog

His thoughts aren’t only of ghoulish crime
He likes to paint and read to pass some of the time
While other kids read books like “Go Jane Go”
Vincent’s favorite author is Edgar Allen Poe.

One night while reading a gruesome tale
he read a passage that made him turn pale
Such horrible news he could not survive
For his beautiful wife had been buried alive

He dug out her grave to make sure she was dead
Unaware that her grave was his mother’s flower bed
His mother sent Vincent off to his room
He knew he’d been banished to the tower of doom
where he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life
alone with the portrait of his beautiful wife.

While alone and insane incased in his doom
Vincent’s mother burst suddenly into the room
She said, “If you want, you can go out and play
It’s sunny outside and a beautiful day.”

Vincent tried to talk but he just couldn’t speak
the years of isolation had made him quite weak
So he took out some paper and scrawled with a pen:
“I’m possessed by this house and can never leave it again.”

His mother said, “You are NOT possessed and you are NOT almost dead
These games you play are all in your head
You are NOT Vincent Price, you’re Vincent Malloy
You’re not tormented or insane, you’re just a young boy
You’re seven years old, and you are my son
I want you to get outside and have some real fun.”

Her anger now spent, she walked out through the hall
While Vincent backed slowly against the wall
The room started to sway, to shiver and creak
His horrored insanity had reached its peak
He saw Abocrombie, his zombie slave
and heard his wife call from beyond the grave

She spoke through her coffin and made ghoulish demands
While through cracking walls reached skeleton hands
Every horror in his life that had crept through his dreams
swept his mad laughter to terrified screams

To escape the badness, he reached for the door
but fell limp and lifeless down on the floor
His voice was soft and very slow
As he quoted “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe:
“And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted…Nevermore.”

(note: I am writing this in English since it is related to this post. This post is only about his title. There were a lot more things to say about this movie.)

I am not sure about the doubts of the fact that most people do not talk about Metropolis as a dystopia like they talk about “1984″, “Brave New World” or the others referred in the post. This could be due to several reasons in my opinion.
Maybe most people did not have seen Metropolis. Maybe Metropolis hadn’t a movement. I have to explain this. During my lifetime I saw several movements, the “Kafka movement” - I went to sleep one day and in the next day when I woke up everybody loved Kafka; the Russians movement, etc. The “1984″ and “The Brave New World” were talked in this way too.

[I had to check my definition of dystopia because I was not understanding the real question here, so if you go to the root of the word you see that a dystopia is an abnormal place or a place where something abnormal occurs. But most of the definitions that I found add this thing of fiction to the word. I had to say this before return to my opinion]

But if we suppose that this kind of hypothesis is not correct and we assume that people saw Metropolis - because you have to see it - we could think in another reason: maybe people do not recognize the frame of Metropolis as abnormal. And this is really sad.
I am using “1984″ and “The Brave New World” for comparison because I know them. I do not know the others mentioned in the post.
In the case of “1984″, you have this Big Brother issue, new habits and you have a new language, so it is easy to people to recognized it as abnormal, and this story has another point favoring this: it deals with people’s fears.
In the case of “Brave New World” you have moments of totally reverse of values (the fact that a girl should like several boys, the words mother and father being obscene, people are made according to the necessity of work) that are easily recognizable by people as abnormal.

Let’s see what we have in Metropolis. I am going to start with the thing that people could find more different or abnormal and it could be the robot that act like a person. Although, with this things going on about machines doing things that we never thought as possible, I am not so sure if people consider this as real abnormal thing, now. [Wow, so many 'things' in this paragraph! :-)]
But I see the robot as a tool that is introduced to make the development of the problem, that must be solved in the narrative, faster. I do not see Metropolis with a focus on the robot, I see it in a wider angle.
So, for me the frame of Metropolis is a society that is supported by slaves. And for me this is abnormal.

I had a teacher, during my degree, that used to say that because people see abnormal things so many times, they start to consider them normal. She use to give the movie’s example. So, we have a movie and a hero, the good guy, and this guy kills people (Did you noticed the paradox? The hero, the good guy, kills people). Of course that you can say “but he kills people for good reasons”. I do not think there is a good reason to kill a human being.

Maybe, because we have in our history, societies very similar, in structure, with that one, people just do not find it so abnormal. But for me it still is. So, of course, that for me, Metropolis is a dystopia.

I had something more to say, but I can not remember now, I didn’t slept today again, my English is getting worst and I just hope that this text makes some sense.

BTW, Metropolis is the best silent movie I ever saw, too. Because of the integration of the form and the content. But it is not the most beautiful one. That one belongs to Murnau …

eu já tinha ralhado sobre isto.
isto significa que os dvd’s que são publicados numa determinada região, não são necessariamente publicados em todas.
isto significa que nem todas as pessoas têm acesso aos filmes publicados.
quem é o gajo que decide isto?
quem me garante que amanhã, pessoas de determinada região estão a ver os filmes que alguém decidiu serem _melhores_ para eles?
quem me garante que amanhã, pessoas de determinada região não estão a ver os filmes que alguém decidiu não ser _bom_ para eles?
eu gostava de ter tempo para fazer uma análise comparativa aos filmes publicados em cada região, não só em termos de estarem ou não publicados, mas quais as diferenças de edição para edição.

- Um brinde à amizade!
- Já poupaste o suficiente?
- Claro.
- Óptimo! Para onde vais a seguir?
- Para um sítio chamado Ushuaia
- Faz lá muito frio
- Dizem que é o fim do mundo. Gostaria de ir até lá. Já lá foste?
- (abana a cabeça, em sinal negativo) Há lá um farol dizem que as pessoas com problemas amorosos podem deixar ali todos os seus problemas
- É por isso que vão até lá?
- Talvez, não sei
- (tira um gravador do bolso) Diz qualquer coisa
- O quê?
- És o único amigo que tenho aqui. Será uma lembrança de ti, não gosto fotografias
- Não sei o que dizer
- Qualquer coisa. Desde que seja do coração. Mesmo que seja triste. Levá-lo-ei para o fim do mundo
- (abruptamente) Não estou triste
- Então algo alegre. Vá lá, eu vou dançar

Happy Together - Wong Kar Wai

Foi através do blog deste cavalheiro que soube da existência do primeiro filme de animação 3D, livre.

Elephants Dream is the world’s first open movie, made entirely with open source graphics software such as Blender, and with all production files freely available to use however you please, under a Creative Commons license.

Hoje o meu dia não podia ter começado de melhor maneira (apesar de só ter chegado ao departamento ao meio-dia e meia): banho tomado, aqueci leite, fiz torradas, coloquei o café (que os pais mandaram de Portugal) a fazer e… abri o PÚBLICO. Isso mesmo, leram muito bem, o PÚBLICO do meu dia de anos!

A minha pequenina enviou-me isto tudo que vêem na foto, dois tipos de chá verde, um pacote de açúcar, valdispert, que me queixei que não durmo, programa do TAGV e FNAC, cd Camera Obscura, panfleto do Day Dream Tour da Jacinta - no TAGV, dia 22 de Novembro, um moleskine de reporter e … um linda cartinha só para os meus olhos. Obrigada, pequenina

Então vocês tiveram “As coisas lá de casa”, “A suspeita” e O Wordsong - Pessoa em Coimbra e não me diziam nada?

(Note: this was written yesterday night and I was completely unaware that IT WAS Oscar night. Serendipity… I left the text unaltered. I’m glad for the outcome: 3 awards including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay)

Yesterday I finally saw the, by now famous, 2004 movie by Paul Haggis, Crash.
There’s no mistaking it as one of the best movies of this young century and I’ll be secretly pushing for it on Oscar night.

Counting on a vast and competent cast, Crash reminds us at times of P. T. Andersson’s Magnolia albeit profiting a lot on the shorter duration and the popularity, universality and reality of its central theme: racism.

Through the eyes of several different characters living their daily routines in modern Los Angeles, the viewer is constantly confronted with examples of intolerance. Haggis opts for a magnificent approach at times showing us the pitfalls of intolerance and at times the immense advantages of rennouncing it.

Crash should not be confused with other more naive movies about the subject. Especially because it contains a delightful detail, which is the altruistic and brutally realistic idea of the pervasiness of racism and intolerance and what I like to term as the “wholeness of human character”, that is, the conclusion that no human being is only “good” or only “bad”, this meaning actually that “good” people, or people as so perceived, will end up doing very “bad” deeds and “bad” people, or people as so perceived, will end up saving the day.

In the end, Crash is thus also a movie about the randomness of life and human deeds. What Kundera would call The Lightness Of Being.

Tagline: “You think you know who you are. You have no idea.”

Les Invasions Barbares (2003) - by Denys Arcand (Le Déclin de l’Empire Américan), with Rémy Girard, Stéphane Rousseau & Dorothée Berryman

Having a difficult time accepting the reality of death and feeling regretful of his past, a man dying of cancer tries to find peace in his last moments. His estranged son, ex-wife, ex-lovers and old friends will all come to him to share his last breath.

Mar adentro (2004) - by Alejandro Amenábar (The Others), with Javier Bardem, Belén Rueda & Lola Dueñas

“When you can’t escape, and you constantly rely on everyone else, you learn to cry by smiling, you know? “

Life is just a simple game
Between up and down
Life is just a simple game
Makes things go around

What is down should go up
What is up must go down
God first showed us the endless sky
Then the underground

What is up and what is down
Who will buy and who will sell
Heaven sometimes covers us
But sometimes it is hell

The head is up and ass is down
Is it right or is it wrong
Sometimes It should go around
Ass instead of head

The ass is up and head is down
The same flash same sound
God first showed us the endless sky
Then the underground

Há viagens que nos mudam, outras nem por isso.

No meio dos dois actores, Alberto Granado

A mim, só me dizem estas coisas quando não podem falar…

“Virginia Woolf: This is my right; it is the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs, but the violent jolt of the Capital, that is my choice. The meanest patient, yes, even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity. I wish, for your sake, Leonard, I could be happy in this quietness.
[pause]
Virginia Woolf: But if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death.”

The Girl in the Café is a TV movie that was first aired in July 7th this year, right before the 2005 G8 Summit. The story is a simple love romance that ends with a “normal” woman attending the G8 summit and giving alot of the politicians there a hard time with her “simple” views of some of the issues being discussed there.
After the G8 summit this year seems we are closer to meet the Millennium Development Goals, but 2015? It would be so good to end extreme poverty and hunger. On a more “software oriented” side, it is interesting to look at the eight goal of the Millennium Development Goals and see how it fits so perfectly into Software patents, and patents in other areas. Kudos to the Brasilian government tha has said numerous times that it will allow brasilian companies to jump over any patents on medication that shows good results in the fight against AIDS.

The world is a small place. We need to find a way to work together to save it, and in the end save ourselvs.

” Fizeram um filme daquele livro que me emprestaste. Deve ser engraçado! ”

Poderia ser,mas infelizmente não tem piada nenhuma o filme. É tão mau que nem o consegui ver todo. Mas quem quiser tentar força pode ser que goste. Eu pessoalmente gostei da série da década de 80, ai com mais tempo para dedicar á história fizeram um trabalho bem melhor. Todas as adaptações são famosas por serem más. Esta com todo o hipe em volta dela não tenta nem um pouco contraria a ideia de que vamos ver um mau filme.

Olhem…. Comprem o livro e leiam.

A cerca de quatro minutos das 23h, na Antena 1, dou com esta música, no programa “Banda Sonora”. Pertence ao filme Footloose do Herbert Ross e data de 1984. Não me lembro do filme, li a sinopse e não me recordo, mas lembro-me de dançar ao som da música. Mais do que isto, não associava esta música a um filme. Que músicas conhecem que se tenham separado dos seus filmes?

“Holding Out For A Hero

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where’s the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and turn and dream
of what I need

[Chorus]

I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And it’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life

Somewhere after midnight
In my wildest fantasy
Somewhere just beyond my reach
There’s someone reaching back for me
Racing on the thunder end rising with the heat
It’s gonna take a superman to sweep me off my feet

[Chorus]

Up where the mountains meet the heavens above
Out where the lightning splits the sea
I would swear that there’s someone somewhere
Watching me

Through the wind end the chill and the rain
And the storm and the flood
I can feel his approach
Like the fire in my blood”