{"id":73,"date":"2022-10-20T08:43:34","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T08:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/apresmidi.net\/europe2022\/log\/?p=73"},"modified":"2022-10-20T09:04:09","modified_gmt":"2022-10-20T09:04:09","slug":"land-of-the-golden-lion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apresmidi.net\/europe2022\/log\/2022\/10\/20\/land-of-the-golden-lion\/","title":{"rendered":"Land of the Golden Lion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tuesday, August 30 – Sunday, September 11<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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We stayed in Venice for almost two weeks, doing pretty much the same things each day: breakfast in our hotel, going to see a couple films on Lido, then finding some place to eat dinner. So we\u2019ll just list the films we saw, and the interesting places we ate. The Art Biennale was also happening, and we spent a few days looking at that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lindsay and Kevin were also in Venice the first few days we were there, and we ate and saw art with them. We also introduced them to Ray’s cousin Johan, who we spent time with the whole time we were there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We stayed at the same place we’ve stayed for the last several visits, Guesthouse Ca’ dell’ Angelo, not far from San Marco. We got there a day earlier than our reservation, but fortunately the room was available. At the end we tried to extend a day longer, but unfortunately we couldn’t, so we moved to a shared airbnb apartment a little closer to the train station. We had the usual airbnb hassle of getting the key, and ultimately it was the simultaneous arrival of some other guests which allowed us to enter the building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Films<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
  • T\u00e1r<\/strong> \u2013 Cate Blanchett gives a dynamic performance as an orchestra conductor.  (And she won the Best Actress award!)  The orchestra gives dynamic performances as well.  See it!<\/li>
  • Bardo<\/strong> \u2013 I\u00f1\u00e4rittu presents a self-indulgent beautifully shot semi-autobiographical film that goes on and on and on for three hours.  There is not any branch of Buddhism which places antarabh\u0101va in a sequences of Mexican and American parties.  Also, editing your own film should be illegal.<\/li>
  • Like Turtles<\/strong> \u2013 A delightful film about a wife\u2019s response to her husband leaving her \u2014 she goes into the emptied wardrobe and doesn\u2019t leave.  Her children, her daughter\u2019s boyfriend, and her mother take turns visiting her there.<\/li>
  • Pinned Into a Dress<\/strong> \u2013 A short about a drag performer and the pains of fashion.<\/li>
  • Three Nights a Week<\/strong> \u2013 A photographer who\u2019s drifting away from his girlfriend meets a drag performer, and falls for his out-of-drag persona.<\/li>
  • A Compassionate Spy<\/strong> \u2013 A documentary about Ted Hall, who as an 18-year-old brilliant physicist working on the Manhattan Project, realizes that the plans need to be shared with the Soviets in order to preserve world peace, and shares them without suffering any legal repercussions.  At the line \u201cwe could have murdered someone\u201d, Ray and I turned to each other and simultaneously said \u201con Fifth Avenue\u201d.<\/li>
  • The Happiest Man in the World<\/strong> \u2013 Also based on a true story, a woman at a speed-dating event in Sarajevo is matched with the soldier who shot her in 1993, when she was 16 and he was 17.  Chaos ensues.  What do the dating apps do about avoiding matches between Pink Pussy and MAGA hats?<\/li>
  • Branded to Kill<\/strong> \u2013 A restored yakuza movie from 1967.  Hitman #3 wants to become hitman #1, but is instead hunted by him.  Basically a comedy, bodies falling everywhere.  (Won a Orizzonti award).  Style above all.  Makes Sean Connery look like Jed Clampett, shot with a 20 million yen budget.<\/li>
  • Puiet<\/strong> \u2013 A short, with a kid wandering around in a field.  Would benefit from a plot.<\/li>
  • Eismayer<\/strong> \u2013 The true story of an Austrian drill sergeant, with a wife and kid, who falls in love with one of his recruits and slowly comes out.  They are joined in a civil union.  Apparently Austria is not a place that cares about fraternization between ranks, never mind the gender.<\/li>
  • Music for Black Pigeons<\/strong> \u2013 A documentary about the Danish guitarist Jakob Bro and the musicians he has performed with.  Ethereal ECM music throughout, and interviews with each of them sharing their thoughts on what making music is about, which results in little useful and sometimes prolonged silences.  Cousin Johan commented, “Asking a musician to explain in words how it feels to make music, is like handing a writer a guitar.”<\/li>
  • Reginetta<\/strong> \u2013 A short about a woman who is told she could be a beauty queen.  Her family subjects her to tortures to make her more beautiful in their quest to share in her winnings.  The long version may be found in Pasolini’s Sal\u00f2, where families also fall all over themselves for their kids to win the honor of being given to fascists to kill.  I’ll bet the same dynamic was happening with the child mummies of Llullaillaco.<\/li>
  • Skin Deep<\/strong> \u2013 A sci-fi film where people go to an island and swap bodies, and sometimes partners.  Requires a lot of suspension of disbelief.  It is the worst sort of film, every character dragged around by his feet in service of the auteur’s set-pieces.  We don’t need no stinkin’ motivation?  At the end, a straight cis white guy completely out of the blue becomes a woman because his girlfriend has decided she likes being a man.  Writers don\u2019t get to reinvent human responses the way they can introduce surrealist nonsense into objective reality.  Suremotionism doesn\u2019t fly.  Maybe in porn, or other specialized Christian or Communist propaganda.  If a rifle is to be used in Act III, it ought to at least cast a shadow on the wall in Act I.<\/li>
  • World War III<\/strong> \u2013 A comic romp from Iraq about a peasant who gets a gig as a security guard at a filming.  Then he becomes an extra, a prisoner in a concentration camp.  Then he is promoted to play Hitler.  Meanwhile, he\u2019s being extorted to \u201csave\u201d a woman he met in a brothel.  Chaos ensues.  (The actor won Best Actor in the Orrizonti competition, and the film won Best Film.)<\/li>
  • Luxembourg, Luxembourg<\/strong> \u2013 Another comic romp featuring two twin actors playing two twin characters in Ukraine.  One is a drug dealer \/ bus driver, the other is a cop.  They get a phone call that their dad is gravely ill in Luxembourg, and go up there to see him.  Chaos ensues throughout.<\/li>
  • The Matchmaker<\/strong> \u2013 An interesting documentary about a woman accused of recruiting other women to join the Islamic State.  She is awaiting trial in France.<\/li>
  • Hanging Gardens<\/strong> \u2013 A cute film about two kids who discover a sex doll in the trash heaps of Baghdad, and sell timeslots with her to local men.  The cuteness is tempered by the fact that they live in a horrific Islamic theocracy.<\/li>
  • No Bears<\/strong> \u2013 A film from Jafar Panahi, an Iranian filmmaker who is not allowed to make films, about him making a film from a village close to the Turkish border.  (These days all of his films are about restrictions on his making films.) The actual filming is happening on the Turkish side, though he is attempting to direct from the Iran side.  The poor connection is the least of his problems.  It won a Special Jury award.<\/li>
  • Closing Ceremonies:  Awards<\/strong> \u2013 This festival takes place in Venice, so you can understand that things are in Italian.  But it also features films from all over the world, and attracts filmmakers and actors from all over as well, as well as international tourists like us.  So all of the films have Italian and English subtitles \u2014 an extra subtitle screen is located beneath the main screen.  The awards ceremony takes place in the Sala Grande, the grandest permanent cinema used by the Festival.  And there is a large temporary theater, the Pala Biennale, built on the local rugby track, which for the awards was used as an \u201coverflow\u201d theater.  While the introduction of the awards had English subtitles transcribed onto the screen at the Sala Grande, those were not shown in the Pala Biennale.  The most offensive thing about the presentation was that when an award winner gave his\/her acceptance speech in English, there was a much louder simultaneous translation in Italian which completely drowned out the English, creating essentially music.  There were a couple winners we will have to make an effort to see, including the French film Saint Omer<\/strong>, and the Best Picture winner All the Beauty and the Bloodshed<\/strong>, a documentary about the life of Nan Goldin directed by Laura Poitras (which will be on HBO).<\/li>
  • The Hanging Sun<\/strong> \u2013 Based on a Jo Nesbo thriller (yet more macho religious fundamentalists mistreating women and children), this one a Western (mysterious loner shows up in small town) set on the coast of Norway, except, an imaginary country.  The son refuses to carry out a hit directed by his father seeks refuge in a remote village.  The frustrated woman likes that her son likes him, but Carrozzini lacks the balls to go full Lolita on the topic.  The Puritans have once again ousted the Elizabethans.  The 2nd of September was the 380th anniversary of the closing of the theaters.<\/li>
  • Best Director<\/strong> \u2013 We could have seen Bones and All<\/strong>, a cannibalism comedy directed by Luca Guadagnino, winner of the Best Director award, but we decided we\u2019d rather go eat dinner.  Even at that, places were closing and we found one that somewhat reluctantly served us.  We will be able to stream it before long.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
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    Daily Spritz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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    Waiting for movie stars<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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    Posing on the red carpet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Food Highlights<\/h3>\n\n\n\n