Marcello Mastroianni’s sweet life

I just watched Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (the sweet life) again and couldn’t help taking pictures of the iconic scene I like most; the film has lost much of its ability to shock but it remains a visual delight:

Anita Ekberg is beautiful in a midnight splash in the Trevi fountain basin and Marcello Mastroianni plays one of his best roles as the quintessential Latin Lover, a gossip columnist torn between the sweet life and his more intellectual aspirations.

The Trevi Fountain scene is amazing when you find out that because of the cold, Mastroianni is wearing a wetsuit under his clothes and she has gulped down a bottle of cognac; Ekberg stood in the water for hours with no problem:

The handsome Mastroianni remains one of the icons of Italian cinema. It was his role as a womanizing tabloid reporter in this 1960 film that won him worldwide acclaim. I love watching old movies with 21st century eyes.

So what happens when the self-deprecating charmer of Italian films,

meets the most beautiful French woman, Catherine Deneuve?

Chiara Mastroianni!

A few shiites, a few jews and some Carthusian monks

I just saw this wonderful film, Starting out in the evening, about an old writer who has outlasted the social order in which his life made sense. How can you go wrong with New York in the fall and tons of books? I can’t believe that the lead actor is the same guy who played in Superman returns.

starting out in the evening movie

I am a movie junkie but so much of what’s being produced now is blissfully forgettable; I know I like a film if I keep thinking about it the next day and when I start talking about it to others. These are a couple of them: The lives of others which got an oscar is about the constant question of how a good man acts in circumstances that seem to rule out the very possibility of decent behavior. The actor, Ulrich Muhe, was amazing – unfortunately he passed away in July.

lives of others ulrich muhe

The one movie I will always remember is Into great silence. The film is an eloquent achievement in capturing the slow and delicate rhythm of the Carthusian monks’s daily lives in silence – a great meditation if you are stressed out. “Silence. Repitition. Rhythm. The film is an austere, next to silent meditation on monastic life in a very pure form. No music except the chants in the monastery, no interviews, no commentaries, no extra material.”

into great silence

I enjoyed Children of Men, a superbly directed political thriller – London has never looked this scary…

owen in cildrenofmen movie

My favorite of all action movies was The Bourne Ultimatum. An unusually smart work of industrial entertainment with the great Matt Damon – as good here as he was in the two previous Bourne films. The music is so interesting I had to shell out a buck for Moby’s “Extreme Ways”.

bourne ultimatum matt damon

All and all it’s been a good year for the low budget films and this makes me very happy. I am planning to see The diving bell and the butterfly, American gangster, and Persepolis.

satrapi persepolis

I also hope to be able to find Primo Levi’s journey. (I am insisting that he didn’t commit suicide!)

primo levi

I am trying to get a copy of the documentary, Out of place: Memories of Edward Said . He remains controversial even after his death.

edward said

and…maybe Beowulf for fun.