LittleCamels.com

I don’t like to talk about politics. I’ll try to stick with the facts, then.

There has been a lot of moaning about the bill on publications announced by the Italian Government (no English there, sorry) on requiring any blog and Internet journal (in law language, “any website with a purpose of information, education, dissemination or entertainment“, Art. 2, Par. 1 of the above mentioned law) to subscribe to a national register (Art. 6 and 7 of the same law), as well as to name an editor in chief responsible for the information published.

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Mutta varokaa kielimerkkejä:

Opettele gorgiaa!

Let’s keep up this documentary trend!

• Last Party 2000 (US, 2001): a documentary featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman hitting the road and watching what’s going on in the months before the American elections of year 2000 (Al Gore vs. Bush). Many interesting things: seeing the film after seven years gave me the picture that is has been a loooong time ago and the world has really changed. People claiming that Al Gore is not a friend of the environment. Then you see a Michael Moore strongly supporting Ralph Nader, the independent candidate. Still about Moore: he has good points in his films, but in his later productions it seems to me he has become more and more biased as money flows more and more in his pockets. It’s nice to see Hoffman leading this documentary unpretentiously, that is, just trying to understand why things are going so crazy on the other side of the Ocean.

Tässä limoncellon (etelä-italialainen jälkiruokalikööri) valmisteluohjeet niin, kuin iskäni Paolo minulle kertoi.

Aineet:

• 1 litra pirtua
• sitruunakuorta (4-6 sitruuna koosta riippuen)
• 1,5 litraa vettä
• 1 kilo sokeria

Valmistaminen

Laitetaan pirtua lasi- tai muovitölkkiin, ja sinne lisätään sitruunan kuorta (pelkästään ulkokuorta, eli keltäinen ohut osa, ilman sisäistä valkoista).

Suljetaan tölkki ja odotetaan 10-12 päivää, sitten siivilöidään se (esim. teesihdillä)

Lämmitetään vettä niin kauan, kuin pystyy sulattamaan siihen sokeria.

Annetaan veden ja sokerin sekoitus jäähdyttää ja sitten sekoitetaan pirtun kanssa. Pulloitetaan. Juoma on valmis. Kippis!

Huom.: veden määrä voi olla vähemmän tai enemmän, liköörin vahvuuden mukaisesti.

Limoncello maistuu parhaiten kylmänä.

Now it’s time for a documentary that was shown tonight on YLE2:

• Bloody Cartoons: what happened after the cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad were published on a Danish newspaper? This documentary is based on the journey of a Danish journalist in several countries in Europe and the Middle East, interviewing the key people involved in the aftermath of the publication, and mainly trying to find an answer to the question: were the riots spontaneous, or was is a scapegoat to just inflaming the rage of Islamic extremists? And furthermore, is it really forbidden to depict the face of Muhammad in the Islamic culture?
  I wish these documentaries could have a better marketing, but I’m afraid a few people will have the chance to see it.
  However, I hope Why Democracy? (the documentary series, which Bloody Cartoons belongs to) will have a broader audience thanks to the interesting issues that are taken into consideration.

How to make a big boy happy:

No, I don’t get money for this advertisement

I really, really can’t complain of the quality of films I have seen recently!

• The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen, Germany, 2006): an Oscar-winning film telling the story of a cold Stasi agent, back in the eighties in East Berlin, spying the life of a theatre dramatist, suspected of conspiring against the DDR.
  But the spy’s coldness gets really hurt as he gets deeper into the lives of the people he is following by listening their conversations through the microphones and cameras installed in the dramatist’s house.
  Well, it is a long film (over two hours), but I noticed that just when the lights went on: I got really involved and, as the film goes on, I realised that, while the spy gets deeper into the lives of others, I became myself a spy, looking at the lives of the people in the film. Wonderful experience. If more films were like this one!

And here we are with the films I’ve seen at Rakkautta ja Anarkiaa, the Helsinki International Film Festival 2007:

• The Boss of it All: a comedy by the CCDFD (completely crazy Danish film director) Lars von Trier. The situation takes place in an IT company, where an actor is asked to act as the director of the company, as nobody knows him, since the employees were told he lives in the States. It made me laugh. Really. Von Trier is crazy. I still wonder how he can still hang around.
• Terror’s Advocate: ever heard of Jacques Vergès? You haven’t? And what about Magdalena Kopp? Nothing? And Carlos the Jackal?
  Well this documentary is a long interwiew to the controversial French lawyer Jacques Vergès, who has been working in several critical environments, starting from the Algerian war
• Dasepo Naughty Girls: a South Korean musical/comedy film about naughty girls. One reason more to say I will never understand Far-East films
• The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema: nothing pervert, this is a long documentary about the psychoanalysis of films. The Slovenian sociologist Slavoj Žižek explains in a very intriguing way how films catch our attention, and what is the psychology behind it. Spanning from old films to newer ones, showing bits of them, he gets straight into how the human being behaves and reacts. Have to see it again, really full of good knowledge
• Smiley Face: an American comedy about a (really) stoned girl. A non-pretentious low-budget film. Just a good laugh.