September is the nothing month - it seems to be the last sigh of procrastination before settling back into something like a working schedule from October through November until the second half of December - and then everything closes again for Christmas! Do these Italians ever do more than three consecutive months of work? Probably not...So Ali and I find ourselves in the situation of Ferragosto being well and truly over - it was August 15 - yet the music bars and the gyms and the african dancing courses are only just starting to re-open, get started, be announced. What was everyone doing during September?
At least October is when I can look forward to regular time in the climbing gym, and Ali can look forward to having a teaching schedule that's regular enough to organise some free-time activities among the choices of joining a band, african dancing, venetian rowing, and "contemporary" singing...
Next week we're off to Oktoberfest in Munich, and Stevie Wonder - should be fun.
Thursday, 18 September 2008
Tuesday, 9 September 2008
Review "The Wrestler" by Darren Aronofsky
This film is tough. Anyone who's seen "Pi" or "Requiem for a Dream" will know that Aronofsky doesn't hold back when it comes to telling a story, and "The Wrestler" follows in that tradition. I can't comment on "The Fountain" because I haven't seen it, and only found out about it last month.
"The Wrestler" tells the story of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, 20 years after his peak as a pro-wrestler. He still wrestles on weekends, in the local scene, but he's a shadow of his glory days - emotionally, financially, physically. The Ram works out the back of a local supermarket, lives in a caravan, has trouble keeping up with the rent, is a regular at the local strip club, lives from day to day, weekend to weekend, fight to fight. Things change when he has a heart attack and is told he can't wrestle - this brush with death leads the wrestler to think about what he is left with when wrestling is taken away. He also seeks to re-establish contact with his twenty-something daughter who has long since moved out and moved on from a father who was never there for her.
This story is paralleled with that of an aging stripper at the club that Randy frequents. Once again, the film explores the options of people who have been used up by their occupations, and are rapidly approaching the point at which they're about to be spat out of a machine that has no more need of them. In the case of the wrestler, there's no plan, no idea and no opportunities - just a big black hole of a world that has moved on way beyond his 80's cock-rock glory days. The stripper has it together and plans on a different job, moving into a house in a different suburb and finding a reasonable school for her son to go to.
The film doesn't go into much of the detail of the wrestling world: very quickly it comes out clean regarding match-fixing if you could even call it that - performance is probably a better word - and doesn't go into the financial exploitation of the wrestlers at all. All of the wrestlers who have it together certainly aren't relying on the sport as their main income. Instead the main theme of the film is that of people who are capable of maintaining control over their circumstances, adapting to change and challenges and not being consumed by their weaknesses, flaws, doubts, fears and addictions. "Pi" and "Requiem for a dream" have already covered that territory well enough, and in a way it feels that perhaps "The Wrestler" hasn't sufficiently distanced itself from that familiar territory. Perhaps after "The Fountain" Aronofsky decided, or was persuaded, to go back to what works and/or what he's known for.
Make no mistake that "The Wrestler" is a fine film and Mickey Rourke's performance is visceral and splendid. The film is violent in parts, not when you expect it to be, and it sets itself in Aronofsky's familiar territory at the unacknowledged and unmentioned fringes of society. There is an abundance of hand-held camera scenes following the wrestler about - giving a similar feel to "Rosetta" or other dogma-influenced films - but the editing is spot-on and the score will remind you how far the rock guitar has gone since the 80's (depending on what you're listening to now...).
Did it deserve to get the Leon d'Oro? Having missed Miyazaki's "Ponyo by the sea" and Barbaret Schroeder's film, I can't say - although as far as displays of filmmaking go, Takeshi did just as well as Aronofsky in my opinion. Mickey Rourke did deserve some acknowledgement of his sensational performance, far more than anybody associated with the terrible "Papa di Giovanna". Based on the few films I saw, I'd have to accede to the viewpoint that the 65th mostra features some fine films but nothing really new (perhaps Schroeter's impenetrably dark queer-fetish "Nuit de chien" came close as a contribution but it leaned a little too heavily on "Eraserhead" and "28 Days Later..." for my liking).
Now that we've figured out the abbonamento system and the "four different ticketing arrangements for three cinemas" anti-system, I think I'm actually looking forward to next years' film festival...
"The Wrestler" tells the story of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, 20 years after his peak as a pro-wrestler. He still wrestles on weekends, in the local scene, but he's a shadow of his glory days - emotionally, financially, physically. The Ram works out the back of a local supermarket, lives in a caravan, has trouble keeping up with the rent, is a regular at the local strip club, lives from day to day, weekend to weekend, fight to fight. Things change when he has a heart attack and is told he can't wrestle - this brush with death leads the wrestler to think about what he is left with when wrestling is taken away. He also seeks to re-establish contact with his twenty-something daughter who has long since moved out and moved on from a father who was never there for her.
This story is paralleled with that of an aging stripper at the club that Randy frequents. Once again, the film explores the options of people who have been used up by their occupations, and are rapidly approaching the point at which they're about to be spat out of a machine that has no more need of them. In the case of the wrestler, there's no plan, no idea and no opportunities - just a big black hole of a world that has moved on way beyond his 80's cock-rock glory days. The stripper has it together and plans on a different job, moving into a house in a different suburb and finding a reasonable school for her son to go to.
The film doesn't go into much of the detail of the wrestling world: very quickly it comes out clean regarding match-fixing if you could even call it that - performance is probably a better word - and doesn't go into the financial exploitation of the wrestlers at all. All of the wrestlers who have it together certainly aren't relying on the sport as their main income. Instead the main theme of the film is that of people who are capable of maintaining control over their circumstances, adapting to change and challenges and not being consumed by their weaknesses, flaws, doubts, fears and addictions. "Pi" and "Requiem for a dream" have already covered that territory well enough, and in a way it feels that perhaps "The Wrestler" hasn't sufficiently distanced itself from that familiar territory. Perhaps after "The Fountain" Aronofsky decided, or was persuaded, to go back to what works and/or what he's known for.
Make no mistake that "The Wrestler" is a fine film and Mickey Rourke's performance is visceral and splendid. The film is violent in parts, not when you expect it to be, and it sets itself in Aronofsky's familiar territory at the unacknowledged and unmentioned fringes of society. There is an abundance of hand-held camera scenes following the wrestler about - giving a similar feel to "Rosetta" or other dogma-influenced films - but the editing is spot-on and the score will remind you how far the rock guitar has gone since the 80's (depending on what you're listening to now...).
Did it deserve to get the Leon d'Oro? Having missed Miyazaki's "Ponyo by the sea" and Barbaret Schroeder's film, I can't say - although as far as displays of filmmaking go, Takeshi did just as well as Aronofsky in my opinion. Mickey Rourke did deserve some acknowledgement of his sensational performance, far more than anybody associated with the terrible "Papa di Giovanna". Based on the few films I saw, I'd have to accede to the viewpoint that the 65th mostra features some fine films but nothing really new (perhaps Schroeter's impenetrably dark queer-fetish "Nuit de chien" came close as a contribution but it leaned a little too heavily on "Eraserhead" and "28 Days Later..." for my liking).
Now that we've figured out the abbonamento system and the "four different ticketing arrangements for three cinemas" anti-system, I think I'm actually looking forward to next years' film festival...
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Review "Achilles and the Tortoise" by Takeshi Kitano
Ali and I saw this film in Mestre with Raph, who came down from Geneva for the weekend. The Venice film festival process is interesting to examine - it is more or less a moneymaking machine (Don't know who for, the Venice city council I assume) - with the public, press, industry folk all paying for the privilege of doing deals with other industry folk and watching some moofies. I guess the stars are the only ones who don't have to pay. There are about 20 films in the competition, but they show other films which are being released this year, such as the Coens' "Burn after reading", shorts, re-prints of classic films (such as "The bicycle thieves") and tie-in with other film festivals (Such as the Udine Far East film festival contribution "Monster X strikes back: Attack the G8 summit!"). All up that means that about 30 films are showing each day on the Lido, 4 on Venice and 4 in Mestre (on the mainland). The films that are screened on the Lido usually screen in Venice and Mestre the following day. That's why we found ourselves in Mestre on a Saturday afternoon watching "Achilles and the Tortoise" by Takeshi Kitano. Good aspects of being in Lido to watch the film are that the cinema is quite new with good aircon and comfy seats. Another bonus of the Cityplex Palazzo in Mestre is the high-class gelateria two doors down from the cinema (GROM - highly recommended!). The cinema itself was very stark - you get your tickets on the street from a window, tiny candy bar, then go upstairs straight to the projection room. No chairs, nowhere to wait, nothing to read. Very accommodating...
Takeshi Kitano's "Achilles and the Tortoise" is the latest in his current series of "sentimental" films (Margaret Pomeranz's word) which can be described as slow-moving and dreary sketches of ordinary life (in Japan, anyway). I disagree - the films that Kitano makes have the quality of expressionist paintings - and a bit of wikipedia searching showed that since a motorcycle accident Kitano has taken up painting and his recent films contain his paintings. In A&T the paintings are the film, it's subject is a man whose only aim in life is to make art: painting, drawing, sculpting obsessively. If anything the film shows how oblivious the artist is to everything else in life - the great changes in Japanese society from the artist's birth in the fifties through to now, when the film ends.
The artist is the son of a wealthy Japanese silk merchant, a patron of the arts whose house is filled with modernist paintings and regularly visited by modernist painters. The boy spends all of his time painting and drawing: chickens, rabbits, trains (a surprising flashback to the art brut experience). The artist's social status makes him an untouchable - allowed to wander out of class 'to go drawing' whenever he wants to. It's obvious the boy has talent, the paintings are bright, expressive and juvenile but clearly they have merit.
The artist's situation changes suddenly when the silk business collapses and the creditors step in - his parents go harakiri and the artist suddenly finds himself living with an unpleasant uncle
doing farm chores and denied his pastels. Even in this environment the boy finds bohemian friends and manages to find plenty of opportunities to do art. After a couple of months, the uncle has had enough and the artist gets shipped off to an orphanage in the city. The artists return to the city is closed by the death of his bohemian friend - a half-blind peasant who sits besides the fields and draws day after day - who's hit by a bus.
The overwhelming frequency of suicides in the film is startling. This may be from the cultural aspects of suicide in Japan, or a larger reference to the practice of art as a consuming passion, one which sees them close to the edges of society, acceptability, sanity. The film is a very personal and emotional view of a life lived with passion and determination - the artist is consumed by his work and it oftens drives him to the limits of survival...his university street art period in the 70's, and later experiments in shock art with his wife being very funny episodes in the film. The appearance of the Tokyo Shock Boys repeats this theme of people committing themselves viscerally to their passions - or alternately of people being consumed by their passions, losing reason and ending up dead in a bath while trying to find inspiration from oxygen deprivation. Takeshi straddles this line - while showing huge sympathy and solidarity with the artist and his wife he also acknowledges their daughter's shame, distance and embarrassment deriving from the antics of her certifiable parents.
The title of the film, "Achilles and the Tortoise" refers to a greek philosophical conundrum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_and_the_tortoise) which is used as a metaphor for chasing an unattainable dream. Ultimately it is the unreasonable that makes things interesting, that produces change and confronts the assumptions and complacency of our lives. Kitano's film is certainly sentimental, but it is equally beautiful and heartfelt. In my opinion it would have been one of the contenders for best film or at least best screenplay.
Takeshi Kitano's "Achilles and the Tortoise" is the latest in his current series of "sentimental" films (Margaret Pomeranz's word) which can be described as slow-moving and dreary sketches of ordinary life (in Japan, anyway). I disagree - the films that Kitano makes have the quality of expressionist paintings - and a bit of wikipedia searching showed that since a motorcycle accident Kitano has taken up painting and his recent films contain his paintings. In A&T the paintings are the film, it's subject is a man whose only aim in life is to make art: painting, drawing, sculpting obsessively. If anything the film shows how oblivious the artist is to everything else in life - the great changes in Japanese society from the artist's birth in the fifties through to now, when the film ends.
The artist is the son of a wealthy Japanese silk merchant, a patron of the arts whose house is filled with modernist paintings and regularly visited by modernist painters. The boy spends all of his time painting and drawing: chickens, rabbits, trains (a surprising flashback to the art brut experience). The artist's social status makes him an untouchable - allowed to wander out of class 'to go drawing' whenever he wants to. It's obvious the boy has talent, the paintings are bright, expressive and juvenile but clearly they have merit.
The artist's situation changes suddenly when the silk business collapses and the creditors step in - his parents go harakiri and the artist suddenly finds himself living with an unpleasant uncle
doing farm chores and denied his pastels. Even in this environment the boy finds bohemian friends and manages to find plenty of opportunities to do art. After a couple of months, the uncle has had enough and the artist gets shipped off to an orphanage in the city. The artists return to the city is closed by the death of his bohemian friend - a half-blind peasant who sits besides the fields and draws day after day - who's hit by a bus.
The overwhelming frequency of suicides in the film is startling. This may be from the cultural aspects of suicide in Japan, or a larger reference to the practice of art as a consuming passion, one which sees them close to the edges of society, acceptability, sanity. The film is a very personal and emotional view of a life lived with passion and determination - the artist is consumed by his work and it oftens drives him to the limits of survival...his university street art period in the 70's, and later experiments in shock art with his wife being very funny episodes in the film. The appearance of the Tokyo Shock Boys repeats this theme of people committing themselves viscerally to their passions - or alternately of people being consumed by their passions, losing reason and ending up dead in a bath while trying to find inspiration from oxygen deprivation. Takeshi straddles this line - while showing huge sympathy and solidarity with the artist and his wife he also acknowledges their daughter's shame, distance and embarrassment deriving from the antics of her certifiable parents.
The title of the film, "Achilles and the Tortoise" refers to a greek philosophical conundrum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_and_the_tortoise) which is used as a metaphor for chasing an unattainable dream. Ultimately it is the unreasonable that makes things interesting, that produces change and confronts the assumptions and complacency of our lives. Kitano's film is certainly sentimental, but it is equally beautiful and heartfelt. In my opinion it would have been one of the contenders for best film or at least best screenplay.
Sunday, 31 August 2008
Review: "Burn after Reading" by Joel and Ethan Coen
Ali and I saw the Coen brothers' "Burn after Reading" last Thursday night in the open-air cinema at Campo San Polo. The venue was filled to capacity - that being about 700 people - of which I'd be interested to know how many were Italian and how many Venetian residents. The majority of films in the competition are only shown for two days (some for three days) and "Burn after Reading" had already been shown the previous night, to open the festival, so this was the last opportunity to see it until release which will happen in the US in a couple of weeks. Accordingly there was a long long line of people waiting for tickets, but that line could be avoided by buying an abbonamento for 6 tickets (total price 30 euros). The line had started forming about 6pm for the 7.30 opening of the ticket office to the 9pm film screening, so the abbonamento was a great idea and we could have a pizza between getting the ticket and watching the film.
The film centres around Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand who work in a gym as an airhead sports-junky personal trainer and single, body-image obsessed public relations officer, respectively. Things go wrong for the two when they discover the memoirs of ex-CIA agent Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich, disturbing as ever) and see that as the way to money and elective surgery. Well, "things go wrong" is a subjective concept in a Coen Brothers' film, since being in the film in the first place means your character will probably end up dead, like the statistically ill-fated Star Trek ensign. The two attempt to blackmail the CIA agent, then resort to even more desperate and hilarious gambits as things go steadily pearshaped. Frances McDormand is great as the Coens' archetypal protagonist, singlemindedly pursuing her objective of destructive surgery. Brad Pitt owns the screen with pure charisma, playing the airhead with panache and boundful energy.
A dash of "Intolerable Cruelty" is brought about with the converging plotline of Malkovich, his adulterous, bitchy GP wife (Tilda Swinton), a compulsively-cheating retired secret service agent (George Clooney) with whom Swinton is having the affair, and his wife who writes childrens' books (Elizabeth Marvel) - her month-long book tour allows Clooney's character plenty of time for infidelity. Divorces, fights, lawyers and financial double-crosses ensue in the hilarious yet disturbing Coens' style.
The Coens' film noir leaves me always thinking about guilt, blame, circumstance - there's usually an innocent or two in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like an experiment in natural selection - the innocent, the compulsive, the corrupted all go without judgement. All of that is balanced by the Coens' skill in crafting a compelling and at times hilarious story. Even if you are left emotionally destroyed, unable to sleep and cogitating pointlessly, you are still warmed by the experience of watching such artful filmmakers do what they do best.
There is one more external narrative to the film, which I won't go into. You'll find out about it when you see it - and enjoy it.
The film centres around Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand who work in a gym as an airhead sports-junky personal trainer and single, body-image obsessed public relations officer, respectively. Things go wrong for the two when they discover the memoirs of ex-CIA agent Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich, disturbing as ever) and see that as the way to money and elective surgery. Well, "things go wrong" is a subjective concept in a Coen Brothers' film, since being in the film in the first place means your character will probably end up dead, like the statistically ill-fated Star Trek ensign. The two attempt to blackmail the CIA agent, then resort to even more desperate and hilarious gambits as things go steadily pearshaped. Frances McDormand is great as the Coens' archetypal protagonist, singlemindedly pursuing her objective of destructive surgery. Brad Pitt owns the screen with pure charisma, playing the airhead with panache and boundful energy.
A dash of "Intolerable Cruelty" is brought about with the converging plotline of Malkovich, his adulterous, bitchy GP wife (Tilda Swinton), a compulsively-cheating retired secret service agent (George Clooney) with whom Swinton is having the affair, and his wife who writes childrens' books (Elizabeth Marvel) - her month-long book tour allows Clooney's character plenty of time for infidelity. Divorces, fights, lawyers and financial double-crosses ensue in the hilarious yet disturbing Coens' style.
The Coens' film noir leaves me always thinking about guilt, blame, circumstance - there's usually an innocent or two in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like an experiment in natural selection - the innocent, the compulsive, the corrupted all go without judgement. All of that is balanced by the Coens' skill in crafting a compelling and at times hilarious story. Even if you are left emotionally destroyed, unable to sleep and cogitating pointlessly, you are still warmed by the experience of watching such artful filmmakers do what they do best.
There is one more external narrative to the film, which I won't go into. You'll find out about it when you see it - and enjoy it.
Venice film fest part 1
The 65th Venice film festival (Mostra internazionale d'arte cinematografica) landed on Tuesday, meaning that film industry blow-ins, a couple of overpaid ad-men and a lot of jaded paparazzi get to enjoy the venice humidity between their hotel rooms and their restaurants. Did I mention the jaded blow-in residents?
First rule of enjoying the film festival is to remember that this is Italy - in a country dedicated to appearances, you're nobody. So today we went and visited the palazzo del cinema - waste of time. Great to see that the building does actually get used for two weeks of the year, because it's boarded up, closed for the other 50 weeks. Forget about going there to watch a movie (or even a film with subtitles) any other time because it's closed, because you're nobody and the subjects of Loreal ads are elsewhere. On a Sunday, there's not much to do there other than buy a "mostra" logo-ed beach towel or cloth bag or get something from the bar. The usual posters and stands by Loreal and Lancia saying "go away" and plenty of security to reinforce the feeling. The best thing you can do is write a little comment on a piece of paper and have it posted on a marquee - some of them are very apt, like the once that had a group of stickpeople at the entrance of the mostra saying "vaffanculo troppo caro".
So it seems to me that the mostra is the quintissential experience of Italian style over substance. Where Italy once had a groundbreaking, vibrant and truly innovative and meaningful film industry it now has dreadful placement-laden films filled with recycled face-lifted tv stars and mouthless bimbos, in cineplexes that show nothing challenging or inspiring. Perhaps the apex of this disregard to film culture is the dubbed film - why is it so threatening to show films in their original language and add subtitles? Why is it so difficult to show films in english, or with english subtitles, in a city so given over to tourism as Venice? Why is the palazzo del cinema so criminally underused as to be left empty for 50 weeks of the year, when on Thursday night over 700 people turned up to Campo San Polo to see the Coen Brothers' "Burn after reading" in english? For the city that has hosted an international film festival for the past 65 years, isn't it incongruous that there's only one cinema in the town, and no films screened with subtitles? How does the Italian film culture rejuvenate itself if there are so little opportunities for the public to see and enjoy films? Why are the cinemas treated as little more than viewing rooms, lacking couches, information, cafes, events...The stunning contrast between the availability, activity, patronage and enjoyability of cinemas between Australia and Italy mirrors the culture you find in those countries' film culture and filmmaking.
I think Ali has a similar gripe about the swimming pools...it might be argued that if Italy opened its swimming pools for the other 9 business hours of the day, then maybe there would be more Italian swimmers at the top of sport. Maybe if Venice opened its film palazzo for the other 50 weeks of the year, it would be a good start toward making exciting films again.
First rule of enjoying the film festival is to remember that this is Italy - in a country dedicated to appearances, you're nobody. So today we went and visited the palazzo del cinema - waste of time. Great to see that the building does actually get used for two weeks of the year, because it's boarded up, closed for the other 50 weeks. Forget about going there to watch a movie (or even a film with subtitles) any other time because it's closed, because you're nobody and the subjects of Loreal ads are elsewhere. On a Sunday, there's not much to do there other than buy a "mostra" logo-ed beach towel or cloth bag or get something from the bar. The usual posters and stands by Loreal and Lancia saying "go away" and plenty of security to reinforce the feeling. The best thing you can do is write a little comment on a piece of paper and have it posted on a marquee - some of them are very apt, like the once that had a group of stickpeople at the entrance of the mostra saying "vaffanculo troppo caro".
So it seems to me that the mostra is the quintissential experience of Italian style over substance. Where Italy once had a groundbreaking, vibrant and truly innovative and meaningful film industry it now has dreadful placement-laden films filled with recycled face-lifted tv stars and mouthless bimbos, in cineplexes that show nothing challenging or inspiring. Perhaps the apex of this disregard to film culture is the dubbed film - why is it so threatening to show films in their original language and add subtitles? Why is it so difficult to show films in english, or with english subtitles, in a city so given over to tourism as Venice? Why is the palazzo del cinema so criminally underused as to be left empty for 50 weeks of the year, when on Thursday night over 700 people turned up to Campo San Polo to see the Coen Brothers' "Burn after reading" in english? For the city that has hosted an international film festival for the past 65 years, isn't it incongruous that there's only one cinema in the town, and no films screened with subtitles? How does the Italian film culture rejuvenate itself if there are so little opportunities for the public to see and enjoy films? Why are the cinemas treated as little more than viewing rooms, lacking couches, information, cafes, events...The stunning contrast between the availability, activity, patronage and enjoyability of cinemas between Australia and Italy mirrors the culture you find in those countries' film culture and filmmaking.
I think Ali has a similar gripe about the swimming pools...it might be argued that if Italy opened its swimming pools for the other 9 business hours of the day, then maybe there would be more Italian swimmers at the top of sport. Maybe if Venice opened its film palazzo for the other 50 weeks of the year, it would be a good start toward making exciting films again.
Thursday, 28 August 2008
Holidays holidays holidays holidays....and more holidays! The last couple of months have been pretty busy with so much holidaying and "relaxing myself" (one of my favourite incorrect italian - english translations made by my students) and even "making my skin brown" by "taking the sun". Ahhh yes. Respect to all my students for helping me understand how to have a fantastic holiday Italian style!
So, a cunning plan concocted by Paul and myself some time ago was to ship me off to his relatives on the eastern coast of Italy to a town called San Salvo in a region called Abruzzo for some intensive Italian speaking, eating and tanning. So I went to stay with the lovely Anna-Maria and family for the first week of August and I believe I achieved all three goals.....yes, I even obtained a luke-warm tan.
I was very grateful to receive such warm hospitality and my own personal guide, Andrea, the youngest son, who had returned from university for the summer holidays. I easily slotted into his holiday lifestyle for the six days of my visit. Get-up when you wake-up, watch the Italian MTV channel over breakfast, go to the beach, lie in the sun, go for a swim, lie in the sun some more, go for a walk, go back home for the family lunch, have a siesta, get-up when you wake-up, go back to the beach.....as above.....then go back for the family dinner, go for a walk or go back to the beach bars for a drink, go home to sleep, get-up when you wake up, go to the beach....etc. etc.
It was interesting to partake in the Italian beach culture which to me, is quite different from the Australian culture. It seems like a much more ritualistic activity in Italy invovling being beautiful, renting a spot on one of the privately owned sectons of the beach (you rent an umbrella and beach bed for a month or two which remains your exclusive spot for the whole of summer if you want), and finally, being beautiful. There is then much concern with tanning - even little children have tans which can be a bit confronting for a pale-skinned aussie like myself coming from a culture obsessed with avoiding skin cancer. No baggy tee-shirts or one-piece bathing costumes for any female under the age of 50 to be found. My bathing shorts must have been a humourous talking point for those on the front row.
The Adriatic sea is completely calm given it's sheltered position so no body-surfing, boogie boarding etc. My surfing dreams are unfortunately yet to be realised ;) It was of no surprise then that the translation of "I'm going to have a swim" is "faccio un bagno" - the direct english translation being "I'm making a bath". So anyway, I got right into making my baths and making my walks. I even "made" a shower of two at home.
So we spent a lot of time umbrella-hopping....Andrea was well connected down on the beach so we had a choice each day of people's spots that we could crash. I did get a little tired of pop music being blasted out of speakers onto the beach and the circling advertising cars blaring out messages about pizzas etc. Gave me a strange feeling of being exposed to propoganda messages circa WW2 but Paul and I don't know where this association comes from....can't recall being around for WW2.....maybe it was a film?
What else? The food was amazing of course, including my first porchetta party experience with an entire roasted pig.
I also had a fantastic trip out to the tremiti islands with Andrea where we took a boat around the islands into caves and dived off at a secluded spot with perfectly clear water. However the highlight was returning to the mainland 10 hours later to discover that what was once a carpark when we left had been transformed into a market.....with Andrea's car now right in the middle of it! Damn these agriculturalist, cottage-industrial, impromtu, keepin' it local-style Italians! We sheepishly appologised to the stall owners before making a quick getaway down the middle.
All in all, a fantastic experience and I'm looking forward to my next trip down south!
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
Crazy days
The weather here in Venice seems to be settling down a little after crazy days of bright sunshine interrupted by clouds and the odd spot of hail. It's no longer stiflingly hot and humid and there seems to be a bit of moderation in the winds, so it's still nice to eat out on the fondamenta in the evenings but you don't feel compelled to drink litres of water in the process just to stay hydrated...
But rather than talking about the weather, I'd like to note that we've enjoyed visits from Happy Paul and Nic, Wim and Michiel and (still here) Renee and Eric. Having that many visitors in two weeks has made life a bit crazy but a lot of fun and it's always appreciated. We've been able to take advantage of the moment to travel around a bit as well as drag, push or cajole people into going to Padova whenever possible.
Photos up soon, as well as a special Redentore blog by the justifiably verbose Alison Brown.
Ciao, Paul.
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