Can't Stop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjcT-ty_3Vs

Don't die: you know the truth is some do. Go write your message on the pavement, burnin' so bright I wonder what the wave meant. White heat is screaming in the jungle, complete the motion if you stumble, go ask the dust for any answers. All on a spaceship persevering, use my hands for everything but steering. The world... I love, the tears I drop to be part of the wave can't stop: ever wonder if it's all for you. Can't stop the Gods from engineering.

Children Of The Revolution

How has communication changed. In the past, our grandparents sent each other endless letters; today, we're sharing status on Facebook. Today, we hope the other will notice the catchy sentences we dedicate to him quoting a television show or a song. Today, if we want someone to indirectly understand something, we share a link on our personal profile.
And that's not all: as I mentioned before, nowadays quotes from Shakespeare rather than Wilde are increasingly rare. I myself have often started my posts here writing quotes from many different TV series or posted lyrics and music videos to express my several moods. Yes, because the truth is that if you are not really into talk or write about yourself, hiding behind phrases written by others and let them speak for yourself (or, even better, to tell you)...It is so bad easier. Perhaps coward, perhaps even absurd, but always easier. And it's good, because some of these sentences are not maybe written by Dorothy Parker, but they are equally wonderful indeed.
And today, after all, communication has become even this: to treat lyrics as if they were amazing poems, film scripts as if they were the greatest prose novels of the past. Frankly, I have always believed that "common" people (so, you know, a singer rather than a poet of the Romantic Age) were those closest to "common" mood and thought of all of us. I find myself much more easily in a dialogue from "Grey's Anatomy" or in Aerosmith's songs rather than in a Leopardi's poem. And I'm not afraid to tell it. And these are the reasons why I often choose to let them speak for me; often, you've got the feeling that a song just knows you so well, so deeply, more than how a real person who actually knows you is able to do, that you feel as you could have written it yourself. Or, better yet, that the singer wrote it just thinking about you. For you, only and exclusively for you. I love going to concerts and I've hated study poetry. I love prose but I rather a "real" book, "raw", "stark" and closer to me by Salinger than a novel by Manzoni. And, I repeat, I'm not afraid nor ashamed to tell it.
The methods of communication have changed as well as have changed (also and especially) its contents: I think to know both is fundamental, those belonging to the past and those produced by our present and imminent future, because only then you could choose and have a preference. I believe it is fair and important to study our past among school desks, but we should give more room to both present and future: I do not expect in a book of English literature to be included The Beatles' lyrics (well, maybe... Yes, I do.), but at least that it didn't stop at the first, remote, half of the 20th century as mine did.
Here's the truth: life changes, but, more often, we didn't together with her. We often stay anchored to our past that, however glorious might have been and still remain, it's always "past" and cannot be so badly integral part of the present, often choking, swallowing it. For example, I think school books are still too bourgeois in their dealing with very dated, courtly, complex topics: simplicity, however, is not always a bad thing. Sometimes communicate in a "popular" way, in its considered derogatory meaning, is the best way instead, the more pure and beautiful one to touch people's hearts. Yes, people: how can be actually negative the fact that someone or something wants directly talk to people? Books, poems, paintings, even historical events, they all need an audience to exist and survive in time: so why do we treat who or what tries to get into public's souls in a natural, spontaneous way as a zero, considered that public would do right the same, just because he/it chose a different way to do it? I know lots of singers, writers, painters and what else who might not be technically as good as D'Annunzio and Monet, but that, personally, I like so much more.
It's all about tastes, always, as it is for all the things of life, but because the idea of subjectivity don't die we need the alternative to resist, we need a World in which it is always possible to choose between this and that, not one in which there is only and always someone else doing it for us. Or, even worst, a World in which there's no chance to choose at all but only a oneway for every inch.
Freedom is, above all, right that: to be able to choose, to be entitled to claim that, in our opinion, Sinatra would have just painted Mozart'ass, that Warhol's reproductions and Lichtenstein's comics are a thousand times better than Caravaggio's Jesus Christ & C., that Baudelaire's got no chances at all comparative to Salinger. Free: we are and we are deeply into stay so.
And Beauty, in the first place, and feelings she gives us are among the most subjective things in the whole World. And as we are free to say if we find George Clooney attractive or not, we want it to be too in thinking and saying if we find "I Promessi Sposi" a masterpiece or just a bullshit.

"Things have changed. People don't just meet organically anymore. If I want to make myself more attractive to the opposite sex, I don't go get a new haircut: I update my profile. That's just how it is."

(From "He's Just Not That Into You")

How Many Times, How Many Lies

"As doctors, we're trained to be skeptical, because our patients lie to us all the time. The rule is: every patient is a liar until proven honest.
Lying is bad. Or so we are told constantly from birth. Honesty is the best policy, the truth shall set you free..."I chopped down the cherry tree!", whatever.
The fact is, lying is a necessity. We lie to ourselves because the truth, the truth freaking hurts. No matter how hard we try to ignore or deny it, eventually the lies fall away, whether we like it or not.
But here's the truth about the truth: it hurts. So we lie."
***
"Pain: it comes in all forms. The small twinge, a bit of soreness, the random pain that we live with everyday.
Then there is the kind of pain you just can't ignore, a level of pain so great that it blocks out everything else, makes the rest of your world fade away until all we can think about is how much we hurt, how we manage our pain is up to us. We anaesthetize, ride it out, embrace it, ignore it, and for some of us the best way to manage pain is to just push through it.
Pain: you just have to ride it out, hope it goes away on its own, hope the wound that caused it heals. There are no solutions, no easy answers. You just breathe deep and wait for it to subside. Most of the time pain can be managed, but sometimes the pain gets you when you least expect it, hits way below the belt and doesn't let up. Pain you just have to fight through, because the truth is you can't outrun it, and life always makes more."

(From "Grey's Anatomy")

I hate lies. I hate illusions. I hate hope.
I like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin too: "He that lives upon hope will die fasting."
I can't bare that, I have never been able to. I'm not able (not interested in learning it either) to manage something above which I don't, I can't, have control. I love certainties, to know all about something instead of knowing just half of its truth.
Truth. Yeah. Truth is something we are forced to live always with: we must accept that and sooner we do, better we do live.
I really cannot understand why people have been programmed to be able telling lies too. It's a bullshit, a mistake. A great one. And I love, I swear I do, deeply, people who not only always tell you the truth but also stop you from lying to yourself. Yeah, because *we* are, in the first place, the people we own the truth, even before own it to others. How can we actually be honest people to someone else if we are not even capable of being it with ourselves? We are big people, we must know how to deal with the tragic truth, no matter how ugly that can actually be: we can't really think, and, worst, be sure of it, that lies, illusions, hopes will protect us forever. How? How long? If you can't stand truth you can't stand life either. Because truth is a oneway to truly live, the one and only key to every door. It's the stairway through which we can really feel good, be fine.
Truth is the one and only escape from pain. It is not because it promises us a fast and painless way out: it is because only when we know everything there's to know we can really know what we are fighting against, our enemy, and, then, start our rehab. There's no sense at all in suffering for something which isn't real or that is just incomplete to our awareness.
I'm thankful to everyone who still believe in this apparently arcane practice called "truth". "The importance of being Earnest" is something some people have never known at all, some other have just forgot, leaving it back on their ways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhPAK8HjcPI

Where The Streets Have No Name

http://www.aliceinwonderweb.com/index.php?q=image/view/101

You know you're from New York City when...

you live in "New Yawk", not New York;

you can get into a 4-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park at 3:30 on the Friday before a long weekend, but can't find Wisconsin on a map;

you think Central Park is "nature";

hookers and the homeless are invisible;

you've considered stabbing someone just for saying "The Big Apple";

the middle finger is a form of communication;

you believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multi-lingual;

your door has more than three locks;

you consider eye contact an act of overt aggression;

she subway should never be called anything prissy like "the metro";

you think $7.00 to cross a bridge is a fair price;

you secretly envy cabbies for their driving skill;

you call an 8' x 10' plot of patchy grass a yard;

a slice of pizza is dinner at least once a week;

"mad" is an adverb;

being truly alone makes you nervous;

you don't notice sirens anymore;

you're suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you;

you run when you see a flashing "Do Not Walk" sign at the intersection;

you're 35 years old and don't have a driver's license;

you're away from Home and you miss "real" pizza;

someone bumps into you and you check for your wallet;

you cringe at hearing people pronounce "Houston St." like the city in Texas;

film crews on your block annoy, not excite you;

you take a taxi to get to your health club to exercise;

America West of the Hudson is still theoretical to you;

going to Brooklyn is considered a "road trip";

you haven't heard the sound of true absolute silence since the 80s and, when you did, it terrified you;

you get upset that a cabbie is obeying all the rules of the road;

you don't even notice the nice lady walking down the road having a perfectly normal conversation with herself;

your local news is national news;

communicating with people on the road only takes one finger;

you order your dinner and have it delivered...from the place across the street;

you can tell a gunshot from a firecracker and not get scared, but when you go to the burbs you get scared of hearing a cricket;

you know the lights above the skyscrapers is the closest thing we have to stars;

rather than waiting safely on the sidewalk to cross the street, you wait inches away from speeding traffic waiting to cut through it;

when you are able to make a right turn at a red light...you think it's the best thing ever;

there is no "North" and "South": it's "Uptown" or "Downtown";

you have absolutely no concept of where "North" and "South" are and "East" or "West" is "Crosstown";

you know that a "regular" coffee is;

it's not "Manhattan": it's "The City";

and you expect everyone to know that;

you cross the street anywhere but on the corners and you yell at cars for not respecting your right to do it;

you return after ten years and the first foods you want are a "real pizza" and a "real bagel";

you can nap on the subway and never miss your stop;

the Deli guy gives you a straw with any beverage you buy, even if it's a beer;

your idea of personal space is no one actually standing on your toes;

you have never been to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building;

the subway makes sense;

you measure distance in hours;

you know four seasons: almost Winter/cold, Winter, construction...and the oppressive heat and humidity of the Summer;

you can recite all the words to Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York";

you take the 9/11 attacks personally;

you have an anger management problem;

you have no patience for impatience;

you have no tolerance for incompetence;

you would elect Robert De Niro or Joe Pesci for Mayor;

you would elect Giuliani for President;

you feel superior over all people from other states and, more importantly, New Jersey;

you believe you are tougher then anybody else from out of state;

you say "how you doin'?";

you curse more than you should;

you have a big mouth;

you believe the lightest snowfall is an excuse to do nothing;

you pay $5 without blinking for a beer that cost the bar 28 cents;

you've gotten jaywalking down to an art form;

"yellow" means go faster;

you know you're not mean: everyone else is just a sissy;

hating New Jersey is a way of life;

you meet someone from Jersey and you ask: "what exit?";

you're genetically engineered to dislike everywhere except The City;

you may live, work or go to school in another state, but you are New Yorker for life;

The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island are not "The City": that title is reserved exclusively for Manhattan;

you know that while Staten Island looks like it should belong to NJ, NY has it because they lost a coin toss many years ago.

Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLs-JP5FGAg

I hope you're feeling happy now,
I see you feel no pain at all, it seems,
I wonder what you're doin' now...?
I wonder if you think of me at all...?
Do you still play the same moves now?
Or are those special moods
for someone else?
I hope you're feeling happy now.

Just because you feel good
it doesn't make you right (oh no),
just because you feel good,
still want you here tonight.

Does laughter still discover you?
I see through all those smiles
that look so right.
Do you still have the same friends now,
to smoke away your
problems and your life?
Oh, how do you remember
me, the one that made
you laugh until you cried?
I hope you're feeling happy now.

Just because you feel good
it doesn't make you right (oh no),
just because you feel good,
still want you here tonight.

Just because you feel good
it doesn't make you right (oh no),
just because you feel good,
still want you here tonight.

I wonder what you're doing now...?
I hope you're feeling happy now.
I wonder what you're doing now...?
I hope you're feeling happy now.

("Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good), Skunk Anansie, 1997)

November Rain

Please meet the: "It's not your fault. I'm like fly paper for the emotionally disturbed" (from "Californication"), also known as the "Florence Nightingale Effect".
Do you remember prince charming? The blondie one with the white horse, the one so boring and expected? Good.
Well, forget him.
If there's the Florence Nightingale Effect there cannot be any prince. No prince, no horses, no tale, no castles: just pain, going crazy, feeling exhausted, sick and tired. And that's exactly what we really want when we're so F.N.E. stoned. Yeah, because its is the only spell we go through in this bedtime story horror of us, with the only difference that we don't need a Cinderella's kiss but a Tyson's smack right in the middle of the face to get finally aware of what everyone already knows but us. And that's all what we'll get: no exceptions, get over it.
Once upon a time there was a good, nice girl with a perfectly normal life who, suddenly, met him: here he comes, McHandsome, teh "too good to be true", as unbelievably beautiful as damned, teh jerk, teh bombastic bully, teh wannabe James Dean. And then is when her troubles begin.
Because that's the moment when the Florence Nightingale, winding and latent inside us all, marches out and ruin the naive, pure and clean life of our little girl, still convinced to be Cindafuckin'rella, not yet awakened and fell out of bed understanding instead to be just an ordinary, loser human being as everybody in the Universe.
Yeah, because that's when you start thinking, for the first time (but not the last of course) the worst thing you can actually think about: that you'll be his exception being able to change him.
No, dear, you are not, you can't change none but your hair stylist at most. You're screaming to her: "let it go sweetie! Run as long as you can, run fast and don't stop, don't turn back!".
But she's already gone, she's already not listening at her consciousness anymore. She's already to far away with her intentions to be saved while she's already wearing her nurse hat, freaking out to save him, teh love of her life.
She can't change nor save a man, but she doesn't still know that. And when she'll finally understand it, it will be inexorably too late to going back: he will have already completely changed she and her life. It will already be a disaster.
I'm a little Florence Nightingale too.
Today, a friend of mine told me he thinks it to be a feature of all Pisces. I guess he could actually be right. To us, it's just a natural thing: it's instinct, we can't fight it back because is just what we are, it's a force from the very inside which will always be a part of us. We are convicted to act like this each single time we love, it doesn't really matter if we're talking about a lover or a friend, a relative or someone we don't even known at all: we are forced, driven to act like this.
Probably, we are just a lost cause. And when it comes to love affairs it's even worst: we can't change our James Dean but we don't give up either until he steals and breaks our heart into thousand pieces. And, above all, we are not able to fall in love but with them. Prince charming who saves us, treating us like princesses, who loves us unconditionally and deeply, treating us in the right way, is just not for us.
But that James Dean won't change. A selfish is just a selfish, a self-centred is just a self-centred: he will not put us at the very centre of his life, we won't become his world, don't matter how much we can actually love him: we'll be always the only one to go all in with the entire packet: heart, soul, body and mind. If he's a jerk, he will not be a jerk to everybody but you: don't even hope it. We are not so that special to be able to fix a mess like that: truth is there is nothing to fix, they are not broken, they're just what they are as exactly as we are. Just because this is every woman's dream it doesn't mean it will become real. A dream is just a dream, an illusion even worst.
Mr Big, Edward Lewis don't exist in the real life. Or, better, their surprising and positive evolution made of total love towards their women doesn't: live with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_B9uWjSrzs

Jealous Guy

We, jealous and possessive people, are very strange animals. To us a word, a look, a laugh are quite enough to swiftly freaking out and become a danger. To who? To those who dare just even say something about people and things we love and care the most. Jealousy and possession are truth believes, as well as religions, faith.
Today I was still looking into my mind for something to write about when, once again, my crazy attitude has given me the idea lending me a hand; it's hard to explain to others what is to be so jealous if they aren't, it's hard to explain what it means to want protect your loved ones from everyone else, from everything else in the Universe. The reaction just comes up: it's natural, you can't fight it back, never. And it's good, yeah, because no matter how mad is jealousy really able to drive you: without it you'll got just half of the feelings, of the passion you have into you, you will just be half of the person you are.
I'm so possessive of what and who I love so deeply and I'm not ashamed to tell you. I'm not morbid nor pathological, I'm just as a lioness who'll strike dead any potential predator who may cause harm to the love of her life. But still it's so hard to explain that to people who doesn't know you or, if they actually do, to be listened when you try to explain you haven't got by-ends. After all, it is hard to explain how you can love so much someone else in the first place if you're not talking to someone like you.
Love is possession, protection, love means to make mistakes because you're loving too much. And I'm talking about every form of Love: Love is to be lovers, Love is to be friends, Love is to be relatives, Love is to be so fond of something. And if you love, you are jealous and possessive, there's no escape. When you love, everyone must really pay attention to what they do or say about the ones you care about, to step into the territory your heart has made.
And truth is there's nothing better in life that feel like this for someone else and know that someone is feeling the same for you. We're so egoist animals, we are so used to and focused on put ourselves before everything and everyone else; so, when we love, we do it for real.
And watch your ass if you really dare challenge us into that.

"I know it's a cornball thing. But love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without.
I say, fall head over heels. Find someone you can love like crazy and who will love you the same way back. How do you find him? Well, you forget your head and you listen to your heart. And I'm not hearing any heart. 'Cause the truth is, honey, there's no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love, well, you haven't lived a life at all. But you have to try, 'cause if you haven't tried, you haven't lived."
("Meet Joe Black", 1998)

Smells Like Teen Spirit

Surfing the Net, now here they come da things-of-da-day.

Check this hilarious interview by journalist Pedro Pinto from CNN with Swiss tennis champion Roger Federer.
He's just the Number one, inside-out tennis courts. I adore him, he's both an immense athlete and man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsbpuvM0HaE

Watch the previous video, see Roger's smile has made come up to my mind this amazing masterpiece by Guns 'n' Roses.
I think this to be the song of happiness, of joy; I think it is the right representative of a smile, of a childish and funny attitude. I think it is the finest example of freedom, of feeling good, of breathing fresh air and calming down.
I think there's so much in this rhapsody; I think we all have been (and still we are) the sweet child o' someone (or, maybe, just o' ours).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-AYAv0IoWI

Finally, here's a gallery of photographs by Reuters Agency, hosted by Italian newspaper "Corriere della Sera" website, representing the most significant events since the very beginning of the New Millennium 'till today.

http://www.corriere.it/gallery/esteri/11-2009/reuters/1/reuters-decennio-immagini_06795fde-d8d9-11de-a7cd-00144f02aabc.shtml#1

Sullen Girl

It was November 25 of 1960 when three Mirabal sisters, political activists in the Dominican Republic, were brutally murdered on orders of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.
Since 1981, women's activists have marked the day of November 25 as a day against violence; then, in 1999, the United Nations General Assembly designated it as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (Resolution 54/134). The UN then started to invite both governments and associations all over the planet to organize activities designated to raise public awareness about this huge problem: women all around the world are subject to rape, domestic violence and other forms of underhand and dirty violence.
Nowadays, nothing has quite changed from that day of 1960: women are still victims of this revolting violence and the issues about are always the same old ones. Feelings of women about an abuse are sadly still shame, guilty, dirty, even sin and those who find the strength to say stop to this freaking, absurd pain are still not enough and they won't until every single woman will have that strength.
Today is the twenty-five of November and, as always but, if possible, even more, our hearts must be turned to all those women who still feel so lonely, so lost and left out on their own in their sorrow, to say them they're not and never will be alone.
Now, I wanna show you all this Italian poster for a campaign about violence against women which last year has shocked self-righteous all over the Country itself.

*http://www.aliceinwonderweb.com/index.php?q=image/view/95

The image is wondering "Who pays for man's sins?", claiming that "Only 4% of women victims of sexual violence reports its executioner. The others pay for him too.".
Well, sad to tell you that in a "civil" Country what has really shocked people (conservative politicians above all) has once again been a useless and really pathetic polemic about a hypothetical "blasphemy" rather than the fact the women are still victims of beasts that someone has still the courage to call "men" and treat as "human beings".
For what concern me, I'm shock and sick of this reaction, shock and sick of the problem to be the respect for the Catholic iconography rather than for people.
I'm sick and tired of people like these: because you are at fault if an abuse is not reported, because you are at fault, you dumb phonies, if the fear of being judged comes first even where you're victim of a cruelty like that; because you are at fault when instead of help and encourage people, instead of speak out loud how something like that is wrong and awful you lose precious time and resources to fight an idiot struggle which doesn't even exist.
Feel guilty every time a woman is crying because she doesn't know how to escape from this fucking inhuman shit, feel guilty every time a little girl is thinking that's the normality of things, feel guilty every time a young woman is thinking she deserves it and suffers closed up into her annihilating silence.
Feel guilty, because you are as sick and disgusting as the monsters who take away those women's lives.
We're tired of you too: you've got all our contempt.

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv1N6TVCnLs

Losing My Religion

"In some ways, betrayal is inevitable.
When our bodies betray us, surgery is often the key to recovery. When we betray each other, the path to recovery is less clear.
We do whatever it takes to rebuild the trust that was lost. And then there are some wounds, some betrayals...that are so deep, so profound that there is no way to repair what was lost.
And when that happens, there's nothing left to do but wait."
("Grey's Anatomy; From a Whisper to a Scream")

...and, sometimes, even time is not enough. Is it truly possible to always rebuild something which has completely gone to pieces? Sometimes, what is broken cannot be unbroken; Shakespeare once said, through Lady Macbeth, that "what's done cannot be undone" and that's for sure. And when that happen you're not always able to forgive it.
"Can we really forgive if we can't forget?" (from "Sex and The City") is another good point. Probably, after crime there must always be punishment; maybe, sometimes expiation will just not be enough, because there are some betrayals which make you lose all the trust, all the esteem and respect you had for someone: because faith, confidence, is something too much fragile, too much delicate to get destroyed with no leaving consequences at all behind itself. And truth is that when there's a loss of trust, there's always a bloodshed.
And sometimes, together with time, even love is not enough, because, if this is actually possible, the importance of respecting the trust that others's got in us is more important than love itself. And the reason why to that it's quite simple: without respect, dignity, confidence there cannot be fondness. Because no matter how much you still love someone: there are times in which you are just not able to let go the fact you can't have faith in that someone anymore, you are just not able to accept to live in the doubt that, maybe, you only need some more time to get things right, once again. Sometimes, the chance of 50%, the comfort idea that time, sooner or later, will heal everything are not enough to you to risk your feelings again, to risk your forgiveness, your forces to retry and give another opportunity to make things right.
Forgiveness is a serious thing and we're not always in deserving of receive something so bad great.

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UkKTlzyLhQ

Qualcosa Che Non C'è

I've tried to translate you this amazing pearl by Elisa from Italian to English.
Usually I'm against lyrics translations, but, today, I really want you all to understand it.

Enjoy it and let your souls to just be rocked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMAAUvmgyp4

"All this time asking myself
what is that doesn't leave me alone,
all these years asking myself
if I'm really doing well
like this,
as I am,
so...

So, one day
I wrote in my notebook:
"I will make the world dreaming with music",
not so much
from when it was enough to me
to make a jump
to reach happiness
and truth is that

I've waited so long
for something that there isn't,
instead of watching the sun rise...

This has always been a way
to stop time
and speed,
people's quick steps,
carelessness,
words said
without humility,
heartless, just like that,
just to make noise.

I've waited so long
for something that there isn't,
instead of watching the sun rise...

And miraculously
I didn't stopped dreaming
and miraculously
I'm not able to stop hoping...

And if there's a secret
is doing everything
as if you're seeing just the sun...

A secret is doing everything
as if,
doing everything
as if
you're seeing just the sun,
you're seeing just the sun,
you're seeing just the sun...

And not
something that there isn't."

Let It Be

Why people are never able just to let go? I am; when I close a door, I'm used to close it once and forever, I do not keep going on reopen it.
I know, memories hurt and die hard as well as old habits, but I think sometimes a memory is just a memory and must remain just that, with no more present nor future, just a past.
I think when something finishes is because it wasn't meant to be but only to have an end. "We're so 'over' we need a new word for 'over'", Carry once said on a "Sex and The City" episode; she's right: some things, some relationships are just magnets to catastrophes and nothing else and it's better for everyone to hurriedly cut them down.
Why we should keep going on in phoniness, with no feelings at all? Is it just because we are so cowardly afraid to face "the tragic truth", to accept changes and assimilate the fact that from today that present-thing will just belong to the past? I rather learn how to manage the hardness of remember with no pain than live in a habit just because of a pathetic inertia.
And I would give anything to avoid the embarrassment of having to explain this to someone while he's acting, towards you, right the opposite.
Let it go, take it easy...if something in life doesn't go on naturally but just if there's someone who is forcing it everyday, it is just not meant to be, get over it, resign yourself to that. This is not life, it is to go against its own natural course, to uselessly fight against our destinies.
I don't want, nor like, to live like this. I want to badly, strongly, believe in things, in relationships that don't need for you to check them every second to go in the right way; I don't want to have to always join something with glue, I don't want to live on things by an unstable balance.
"Love means never having to say you're sorry."
C'est la vie.
(...and, in that case, Facebook is really the worst pain in the ass ever.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qskyTSFw4yE

How You Remind Me

http://www.aliceinwonderweb.com/how_you_remind_me_pic

"Now your pictures, that you left behind, are just memories of a different life."

(Rainy Pittsburgh, 2009, by me.)

Hole In My Soul

Why we get tattoos? Quite useless question.
I guess it's like to presume to be finally able find out what was first between the chicken and the egg.
When it's not all about just an aesthetic reason why, I think there's only a possible, true, answer.
We get tattoos because we see in them just another way to trying to temporarily and illusionally fill up the hole we carry inside our souls.

Work

...now working on:

QuiToner Blog http://blog.quitoner.com/

and

(only writing translations from Italian to English) Virturbia http://www.virturbia.com/

...check them out!

Happiness Is Home

http://www.aliceinwonderweb.com/sites/default/files/images/ny_nu_3.png

http://www.aliceinwonderweb.com/sites/default/files/images/newyork.jpg

I Want To Go Home

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsriVbQDnCY

All You Need Is Love

I dunno, maybe it's because of The Beatles' shirt I'm wearing today which claims "Love is all you need", maybe it's because of the sunny but coldy day there's outside, maybe I'm just in the right mood...but what I surely know today is that I wanna talk about Love. Yeah, because no matter how cynical we can and are able to be: everything in life is about Love, everything we are is because of Love. About the Love for our ones, the Love for our families, the Love for our friends, the Love for our lil' puppies, the Love for our passions and for what we do, the Love for ourselves...everything, everything, is about that.
Love is the strongest force, the only thing in life which can actually change us. Well, not exactly "change": I think people cannot change, I just think that something like Love can take out from us our better part, something we already have and we already are; that side which is always hidden except when it comes to Love. Frankie goes to Hollywood were right when they sang "the power of Love: a force from above cleaning my soul...purge the soul, make Love your goal".
I think Love is, above all, feeling Home. There's a song by Elisa called "Happiness is Home"...well, I believe Love to be right that, because Love is happiness and happiness is feeling Home indeed. It's really hard to describe a force so unbelievable, so great to be the one making the all World go around; let ourselves living it is just so badly easier.
Even when we're scared to death, even when we're still picking up the pieces of our broken and damaged hearts, even when we're still mending our wounds, find some other Love and let it heal us is the only true treatment we want, the only true treatment which can work. Love brings Love and only other Love can mend the ruins that a previous one left into us. Love is the only thing you must never regret because, no matter how things have gone, Love always makes a better person of you, always leaves something to you.
(...by the way, on air right now in my earphones "All I want is you" by U2: check it out!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7UgPK0HgLQ

As Time Goes By

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Py5aPLG348

Walk This Way

"Tananana...Dude looks like a lady..." what a coincidence: I think of writing about them and they start singing in my earphones at the radio. I read today about Steven Tyler's latest news.
First of all, you have to know that there's an Italian movie of some years ago called, in its translation, "I will marry Simon Le Bon". Yeah, because in the 80s we all remember the eternal fight between Le Bon's fans and Hadley's ones from Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet. Well, always prefering rock music to everything else, my personal movie, since I was a baby, would have been "I will marry Steven Tyler". I love rock music in its every single chord and it's very hard to find a rock band or singer who I don't like at all...but, before everyone, there's always been Steven to me. Usually I'll find silly to talk just about the frontman and not the all band, but the point is that, never as today, trying to imagine Aerosmith without him forever make me wanna say that yes, they're great and always will be, but without "The God among mortals", "The Demon of screamin'", they will be as exactly as Queen without Freddie Mercury, Guns 'n' Roses without Axl, U2 and Rolling Stones with no more Bono nor Mick...I mean, c'mon, how is this actually possible and how could they actually don't just fall apart? To not mention the fact that finally see them live is a great dream of mine...and I can't really believe that this could remain a dream forever and nothing else. I hate to be so damn young, I hate to live here (well, that's for several reasons, not just because Aerosmith don't come here of course)...every type of riffraff comes play to Italy...then why I'm forced to never see they, you know, for example in my Stadium, my "Home", San Siro?
My passion, my love for Aerosmith definitely go back up the first time I ever listened to their amazing "Crazy"...then I remember the heat with "Janie's got a gun", the anger because lots of folks in the World think that "Aerosmith = I don't want to miss a thing" and that's all...then the first time I went to the Hard Rock Café in Boston...there, everything speaks of them...and then the first time I've listened to the a cappella part of "What it takes" live... How couldn't I have fallen in love?
I don't care about who says they have never been "rock 'n' roll" enough, I don't care about who claims they aren't "Aerosmith" anymore...after almost 40 years you know, the bullshits said are always the same and always die hard, but we know, people are so good at talk as well as talk is cheap.
And I...I just do care about music, feelings, "sweet emotions"...and when I hear, when I feel Steven's voice...there's all of this and that's quite enough to me to start shaking, to just feel so damn good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Ur7koy6d0

Blues in the Night

Mario Biondi is an Italian singer, born in Catania on 28 January 1971; still young, he sings in various small choruses.
After a long series of featuring with both Italian and international artists and a small production of disco music, during 2006 he hits the success with the album "Handful of Soul" (of 2004).
His deep and warm voice reminds of great interpreters soul and rhythm and blues music.
Then he stay on scene with a double disc made of live material, called "I Love You More Live" and now, on 6 November, he has come back with a new work: "If", with three covers and eleven new tracks, with 70.000 copies pre-sold.
While he dreams of singing with Whitney Houston, we can enjoy his last masterpiece...
Here's the tracklist: "Serenity" (original title: "Sudden Senility" by H. Geller), "Something That Was Beautiful" (written for him by Burt Bacharach), "Be Lonely" (the first single, on radio now), "Love Dreamer", "Blackshop", "If", "I Wanna Make It", "No Mo' Trouble", "Ecstasy", "I Know It's Over" (English version of Italian song: "E Se Domani" by Carlo Alberto Rossi), "Winter In America" (cover of G. S. Heron's one), "Everlasting Harmony", "Cry Anymore", "Little B's Poem" (cover of R. Hutcherson's one) and "Bon De Doer".

...let's check him on http://www.soulseduction.com/search/result.php?resultid=8223333&ptitle= ...

...let's enjoy him singing Lucio Battisti's "Prendila così".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFSEWH8kObs

Into the Groove

I often write about figurative arts and, today, finding a very interesting website, I will do the same again.

On http://www.fubiz.net/ indeed, you'll find some really nice both works and ads.

On propose of ads, there is, f.e., the new one signed by McDonald's called "Love free Wi-Fi": that's because it's been announced free wi-fi will be reachable in every McD's.
http://www.fubiz.net/2009/11/05/mcdonalds-wi-fries/2009/11/05/mcdonalds-wi-fries/

It is truly possible to draw only by memory an entire City? Even more: a very big one...?
Yes, it is, if you're Stephen Wiltshire.
http://www.fubiz.net/2009/11/04/new-york-from-memory/2009/11/04/new-york-from-memory/

...and, last but not least, from Spain and designer Sébastien Campion's idea, here the funny "Urban Cursor".
http://www.fubiz.net/2009/11/03/the-urban-cursor/2009/11/03/the-urban-cursor/

Because the Night

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEXJJfVBrfs

When "Art" Takes Over (the II Part)

...and in this part is now at Williamsbourg photographer Jacob Pritchard.
Embracing, working with their laptops, sleeping, lying close their cats...lovers, friends, workers, dreamers...this is what his captures are about: stolen shots of an ordinary Sunday morning in the rooms of some young New Yorkers.
Pritchard's idea, who now lives himself in NYC, in the Brooklyn area, is expressed in the "Pictures in bed" series, in which he takes pictures of some of his friends living their intimacy then letting them choose which captures will become part of the series and which ones won't.
Pritchard installs both camera and lights on the ceilings of their rooms, with a fixed framing above their mattresses and he sets it to a device which let people take pictures directly from their bed.

Here some shots from the gallery "Pictures in bed"
http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/sex-dating/79379/pictures-in-bed-series

Jacob Pritchard Website
http://www.jacobpritchard.net/

Gift

On November 13 Elisa's new album, "Heart", will be released on the Italian market and "heart" indeed is the right word to use to describe this amazing woman, to honor her voice, her songs in both lyrics and rhapsodies, her live exhibition.
When I listen to her I realize what really means to have poetry in your voice, in your person and how you can get it in your life as fan; when I listen to her I realize what really means to have such lots of feelings and a great soul inside and be able to give all of them, with all of what you are, to your audience. I shiver when it comes to Elisa: she sings my life, she especially write my life as I will never be able to do. She just tells the truth, she tells life as none; she gives life to us as none.
I've been to different concerts in my life, but I've never seen (well, "listen" would be better) anyone like her. As I'm writing about, she's singing in my ears. She's so gentle, as a whisper into the wind stronger than everything else, she's "so delicate, so pure"; she's just disarming, she's got angels' harmonious voice. And she's all of this not only as singer but, above all, as person, as human being; yes, because she's a rare person right as she's a rare singer. Because we all know that you cannot be so beautiful on your art if you're not like that in your life too. And she's a songwriter, a musician, not only a great interpreter.
I have her words on my forearm, impressed with the ink of my first tattoo, words of life on which I'm always hold on to, as I was in that period, when I got it, when to me it was all really hard and when, from that exactly moment, I've ratified my rebirth; I was taking a vow with myself as I decide that "Heaven out of hell" would become my own and only belief.
And, giving room to polemic, I really can't stand, for all those reasons, Italian people who're just able to listen to Laura Pausini snubbing Elisa "because she only sings in English". First of all, that's not true, but even if it was, what will be the drama? Or, better: what's wrong with you? I mean, only a deaf could not recognize her greatness. She's unique and I'm so proud to be so influenced by her, to know her since I was a kid, to say to everyone I know to listen to her because there's nothing else in the entire world as awesome and all-worthy as her music.
When I listen to her I feel as I would have no limits nor fears, no thought nor troubles anymore, at all, as life would just be a sweet emotion which flows into your veins while you feel totally alive, as everything would just be in complete freedom and beauty as exactly as her touching voice. I never listened to something even just similar to her, I think that her power is this indeed, being such magnificent, astonishing, a true God's gift to all of us who are so lucky to know her and her music.
Maybe she's not a great star of popularity such as Madonna all over the world or Laura Pausini itself in Italy, but, to me, shivering as I'm listen to her "Life goes on", she's definitely the reason why music exists, the explanation to the right idea that music can actually save your life, that music can make you always walk on, because in a song you can find the strength to move on when your all world is falling apart in front of your eyes. Yes, she's a gift and, frankly, we don't give a damn if media doesn't cheer her as they does with easy pop-gossip stars. An Artist doesn't need, doesn't want this treatment. And we don't either. And I'm sick and tired even of people who say that with her new singles she's getting too much "commercial" and she's not Elisa anymore. These are just bullshits. And they know it. They're just playing at "fans"' favourite game: claim that the new will never be as the old. I don't care. I love Elisa and all the reasons I wrote before are quite enough to me to think she's someone who had really changed my life and someone who I could never live without. She's just the deepest and pure idea of no need anything else but those few things which are quite enough to you to stay alive and carry on.

"Heaven out of hell", live in Milan on 2007.
And, for the record, I was there and she's the only one who has ever been capable to move me deeply during a live concert.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd-A-ZSfPJ0

A Man and a Woman

Sense and sensibility.
As women, is it true that we are always led by sensibility? Personally, I do not: my mind leads me more than my heart does. But, even more than that, I'm wondering if, as women, we are really as perspicacious as everybody maintains, if we are really able to understand in its right way a feeling, a look, a different way that today someone has had to talk to us. Are we those special creatures, speaking about that, indeed? This writing doesn't want to be a manifest to the presumed superiority of female sex at all; I just want to make clarity on propose because since I was born I've always been said how lucky I am to be a woman because of our famous, precious and unique sixth sense. But I'm not so bad sure about that. Or, maybe, just every woman's got it but me.
It is just a legend the unbelievable woman radar or it truly exists? There's a song, in Italy, which says that women always know it and always know it inevitably before others. Once I wouldn't have had any doubts answering how all of this is just a great bullshit. But now, now is different; now I'm not that sure anymore about my old firm beliefs.
Maybe because I finally made it up with myself and the fact that I'm a woman, not a man; maybe because I finally gotten that there's no shame in that, because men's world is not always as brighting as it seems. Maybe because I used to be the "lady who's sure all that glitters is gold" and now I'm not her anymore; maybe because I understood that there's no sense in fighting your gender to be closer to the other, because as women we have lots of companions to be ashamed of, who daily destroy our name, as exactly as men's got their troubles too in that sense.
It's not about being a woman or being a man, it's just about who we are, as people, as individuals, not as woman or man. Yesterday I could not stood women who thought to be better than men, now I could not stand men who feels better than you just because you're not "one of them" either.
There are special women as there are special men, there are ugly woman as there are ugly men, because it's just a matter of person, of human being, because it's not about guys or dolls.
Maybe it's all about what I said before: sense and sensibility. We are not leading more by mind or more by heart on the base of our sex; it's just about our attitude and features.
What I know is that in this few lines I've repeated the word "maybe" too many times. So what do you think, are women more sensitive than men by default or it is just another urban legend?

Heal the World

Road traffic accident fatalities this year: 1,039,139
Deaths caused by alcohol this year: 1,472,328
Deaths caused by malaria this year: 825,123
Deaths caused by HIV/AIDS this year: 1,668,297
HIV/AIDS infected people: 32, 578, 516
Deaths of children under 5 this year: 9,024,797
People with no access to safe drinking water: 1,436,515,970
People who died of hunger today: 12,544
Undernourished people in the world right now: 1,018,890,600
Desertification this year (hectares): 12,119,068
Forest loss this year (hectares): 9,207,918
Deaths of mothers during birth this year: 515,707

...and most of those data have changed more than twice as I was watching at them.

Thanks to http://www.worldometers.info/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpz5eD9L4dA

Freedom

"Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
("The Universal Declaration of Human Rights")

In Italy, there is this issue about freedom of press; according to lots of people, it seems to have been pretty away from the Country in the last years.
I think this is an extremely urgent and relevant theme and I dislike who use it as a chance, a pretense to going against his political enemies. I think is not right to claim and fight for a war in which you're just doing your interests and nothing else. I think freedom of speech to be a real problem for too many Countries: we're in 2009 and still it is not true that all humans are equals and have the same rights.
Speaking about that, I know there are surely more important themes to be worried and to care about, but I really believe freedom to be the heart of everything, in every case, everytime, in press such as in religion, in thoughts such as in written words. I feel emotionally this topic even more because of what I love the most, to write, but, apart from that, I'm not even able to imagine to live in a Country where I couldn't express my ideas and fight for these, in a Country where I couldn't write about what I want, in freedom, without censorship, without being controlled from Government, State and their forces. And we all know quite well how there are lots of people forced right in that situation and when I say that I despite who makes his own interests to the detriment of others I mean exactly this. In other Countries, people are alienated just because they don't want to give in to their right to think and tell, people are even tortured and killed because of this tendency and, sadly, nowadays not to give up and stand up for our freedom (what really makes of us human beings) has become something in which we must have a lot of courage and strength: it is not a natural thing, as it should be, anymore.
But in Italy too there are really sad cases on propose: writer Roberto Saviano cannot think, talk nor write in full honesty about the situation of his own Hometown without being threatened of death by criminal enterprises as Mafia. This is what I want to call a "problem"; not to complain about a politician who expresses his disappointment about what you wrote or about your television show. A "problem" is another thing: ask Cuba, China and so on.
And be thankful that your major (and only one) "problem" is a politician who boycotts your works instead of being just a dead man walking.

Dancing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J26naMJlSCY

Time is gonna take my mind
and carry it far away where I can fly
The depth of life will dim my temptation to live for you
If I were to be alone silence would rock my tears
'cause it's all about love and I know better
How life is a waving feather

So I put my arms around you around you
And I know that I'll be leaving soon

My eyes are on you they're on you
And you see that I can't stop shaking
No, I won't step back but I'll look down to hide from your eyes
'cause what I feel is so sweet and I'm scared that even my own breath
Oh could burst it if it were a bubble
And I'd better dream if I have to struggle

So I put my arms around you around you
And I hope that I will do no wrong
My eyes are on you they're on you
And I hope that you won't hurt me

I'm dancing in the room as if I was in the woods with you
No need for anything but music
Music's the reason why I know time still exists
Time still exists
Time still exists
Time still exists

So I put my arms around you around you
And I hope that I will do no wrong
My eyes are on you they're on you
And I hope that you won't hurt me
So I put my arms around you around you
And I hope that I will do no wrong
My eyes are on you they're on you
And I hope that you won't hurt me.

("Dancing", 2002. Elisa.)

Je t'aime...Moi non plus

(...also known as "Just an Illusion"...)

"I have a theory about how this all started. Uh, excuse me, but what the Hell?! Where did that rumor start? Because moms have been spreading it for years. Do you understand what this means? We are all encouraged to believe that if a guy acts like a total jerk that means he likes you. Sure, that's a lesson that might serve us as five year olds, but many of us keep believing this advice, well, into adulthood. Then, as we get older, we carry on this tradition of misreading the signals men send by encouraging our friends to do the same. Why do we say this stuff to each other? Why do we tell each other these lies? Is it possible that it's because we're too scared, and it's too hard, to say the one obvious truth that's staring everyone in the face?"

First: "But what if I'm the exception? - You're not. You're the rule. And the rule is: if a guy doesn't call you, he doesn't want to call you."

Second: "Trust me: if a guy is treating you like he doesn't give a shit...he doesn't. No exceptions."

Third: "Maybe his grandma died or maybe he lost my number or is out of town or got hit by a cab... - Or maybe he is not interested in seeing you again."

Fourth: "If a guy wants to date you he will make it happen."

Fifth: "If a guy gives you his phone number, instead of taking yours, he's not interested. And, if a guy wants to see you, he will see you."

(From "He's Just Not That Into You", 2009)

Yeah, we all deceive and convince ourselves that for us will be different, that we're gonna definitely be the exception.
But, in a World where we are all rules, why should we believe to be that exception? Is it for true that people who are rules at the beginning become exceptions at the end and other way round?
Yes, absolutely. In a movie, in a book, in a song, in a tale.
But what when we are talking about reality of true life?
Because in life, sometimes a rule is just a rule, it doesn't become anything else and your story ending is not that happy as exactly as he was just not that into you.

A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes

I'm a real nostalgic of The Lion King great times, when Disney movies were still simple, almost stark in their graphics and drawings, and, exactly for that, unforgettable and charming for grown up people as well as for children. I think Disney still knows how to make such a spell with its productions, but I also think that times are really changed a lot. Even children's best friend went undergo a change, following the natural course of inevitable time development, changing in stories as well as in technologies.
On Friday night, with all my almost 20s, I saw "UP", Disney Pixar tenth full-length movie; I liked it, but I found out just one feature of old Disney movies (and I could say "my" Disney movies), which is exactly the reason why I was remain at Peter Pan and not Ice Age. This feature is the fact that they are (and, probably, always will be) even better if you're not a child anymore. With its so topical and hard matters, UP is surely enjoyable for kids, but if you see it with your grown old eyes you can no doubt appreciate it more. In this viewing we have abortion, death, cruelty, hard relationships with parents, loneliness, difficulties of both childhood and oldness...nothing is left behind. But what can a child actually understand or elaborate in the right way of something like that?
I was just 4 when I saw The Lion King for the first time; now it's my favourite movie ever, but at that time I was just able to be so sad because of Mufasa's death, in front of Scar's cruelty and Simba's loneliness and guilt; I think just Timon and Pumbaa's presence comforted my sense of disorientation and save my childhood! When you're just 4, how can you metabolize a story in which a baby loses his father because of the envious uncle who blame his own nephew for that too? C'mon! Alright to be precocious, but there's a limit to everything. For years, the wildebeest stampede scene has scared the hell out of me and Mufasa's death moment has made me cry a flood of tears.
Fact is, Friday night I had a great time, but I was sad too, because the story of this cute old man, who could absolutely be our all grampa, is very moving...and maybe that's exactly the problem: since Disney exist, we keep on seeing in its characters people we love and care the most; we just empathize with them. But "we" means we who are not children anymore, except for the kid we still carry inside our heart.
So, and I speak from my almost 20s, just long live to Disney and its magic.

...that's what I'm talking about: a great lesson from the great Lion King...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykbx-yzFgBo

Amazing (the II Part)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bGdM_hF__E

Amazing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aSbKvm_mKA

Starman

Yesterday I was wondering something: why are we so into Horoscope? I mean, I think there are really a lot of people searching for advisers, safeties or just easy answers in Stars and their Signs...even if still a lot of people doesn't admit it and claim they are immune to this kind of thing.
I'm a really pragmatic and realistic person, even too much, I'm used to often go beyond the border of pessimism, but even if I don't believe so much in Daily Horoscope you find on tabloids, I do believe instead in the fact that our Sign define lots of our features, influencing our attitude, influencing who we are and that, sometimes, it can give us and others reasons why of the most hidden, unknown and scary side we carry inside our heart, soul, mind. So, "Yep. I'm a believer" and I'm not afraid to tell it; I don't believe in God and in other many common things in which people are taught and used to trust since birth, but I do believe in Horoscope, I do believe in Destiny and Karma. I believe an Energy to rule our lives, to rule the entire World, I strongly believe that there's a reason why for everything, 'cause nothing is ever left to chance. I deeply believe that often is quite useless to fight against our Destiny because there are struggles we are not able nor supposed to win, struggles for which our Will is never enough; I truly believe that what goes around always comes around: if it's not today, it will be tomorrow.
But, coming back to my first question, I can say that years ago I start to trust our astrological profile, because I found out a lot of myself in both my sign and ascendant descriptions (Pisces and Scorpio, by the way). We can't explain it, but there's definitely something magic about, something you can feel, perceive; it seems to be on therapy and get our personal analysis from someone who knows us surprisingly just so bad.
As I said before, I will never do or not something just because an Horoscope of the day says me that it will be a success or a fail, but I surely like lost myself in this arcane science and let someone else read out what I am inside; it's charming, don't cha think? And, after all, maybe that's the true explanation about our being so curious and interested in Stars. I often would like to send my Astrological description as answer to the question of who I am, as answer to people how doesn't understand you at all...I think it would solve lots of issues for real.
Then, what about you? Why do you believe in Stars? And don't say you don't: you do believe in religion, you do believe in love, peace, change, you do even believe in superstition...in utopia...So why shouldn't you believe in Horoscope too?

(They) Are Golden

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gnFY4X2EXrisC5pazPN_zjbgXLFA

If I think about the fact that I take the elevator for just two floors, about the fact that I pant as soon as I run for a block...well, it really makes me shudder.
Talking about young people, I'm sure I'm not the only one to have these issues, not the only one in boasting a physical condition which just sucks.
Instead, they're amazing; they truly are. But, you know, older falks are always better than us. In everything and everytime.
So, lot of honor to them: our grampas, our parents, our uncles. If we are the future it's just because of them: they are our past and in being it they still linger, and will too, in both our present and future.
Truth is that without them we'll be absolutely nothing at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvJPxGqYzqw

Man in the Mirror

"They start with votes as soon as you're born: if you come out with all the right pieces, if you cry strong enough and you're above 4 Kg you can even take a 10; otherwise, they go down. If you're precocious, if you're one of those who start walk and say "mum" before 10 months ago...they can even give you a 9-9 1/2; otherwise, they go down again. Useless to say that as you grow up and start to go to nursery...well, here gets tough and votes just start to increase. At school, obviously, you must face the escalation, the compilation, the festival of votes! But maybe, the worst is yet to come, because then there are girls you date who give you votes for the car you have, the house you live in, the work you do.
We are here to take and give votes; there's nothing wrong about it...if there's nothing wrong about stop doing what you want for only doing what makes you get good votes.
From zero to ten I've got a present from 6...-...-. (...) My remote past is from 8 1/2; the more recent from 6. (...) I've got an I.D. which sometimes I consult: lucky you if you always know who the hell you are.
(...) I've got a future from 9. Or 4. It depends on how I wake up."

"DaZeroADieci (From zero to ten)"

That's right, that's true. We are here to be judged, because even if we don't do it to others, there will always be someone who does it with us. We get votes, we must always say "I'm sorry" or "I apologize" for what we are, for what we do, for what we think, say, feel; we must tell ourselves to others, we owe everyone explanations and reasons why, we can't be ourselves without pay at least a consequence of our behavior. Maybe we're just born to say "I'm sorry", to feel guilty, asking for forgiveness all life long; or, maybe, U2 were right about it and about blame, disappointment, the game of playing Jesus and heal others because we're too afraid, because we're just cowards when it comes to think about us and judge our souls. It's so easy to destroy others in front of us because we see our weaknesses in them, while it scares the hell out of us to admit that we are at fault and none else. It's a lesson to learn: we must look at ourselves in the mirror, not to other people. Even if it's hard: we are big girls, we are big boys, we must know how to survive even with the worst enemies of ourselves. Us.

http://www.youtube.co/watch?v=DMKnRFq6DGg

Nothing Else Matters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKNaUe7Ijfg

Rebel, Rebel

Please meet Holden Caulfield, TEH rebel. The guy here is the protagonist, the essence of American writer J.D. Salinger’s masterpiece: “The Catcher in the Rye” (1951).
“Holden TEH rebel” I said before, well, he is: he is an adolescent but he’s not James Dean, he’s not a “rebel without a cause” nor a pretender who fakes his own rebellion for fashion. Some critics said, wrote that Holden Caulfield and his own life are just failures, others affirm that the days reported in the book are just a phase to him, others again that Holden is the only true adult of the story in seeing and understanding things that a lot of grown up people just don’t.
Well, I disagree: I think Holden is not a failure, I think Holden is not just a confused adolescent living a momentary period of his life at all and that yes, he’s an adult, but, according to me, this isn’t the major theme of the novel. I think Holden is so much more than this: he’s a fighter, he’s a person who mocks the ones he calls “phonies” with their own daily bread, the hypocrisy; he doesn’t have respect for fake people and that’s why he lies to them, not for adolescent reasons, not just to have fun. He always fights what he just despises, avoiding being like people he refuses: that’s what makes of Holden a rebel, but, above all, what really makes of him a great person, a rebel with a cause, is the relationship with his little sister Phoebe.
Phoebe is true, she’s just a child but she’s so damn smart, so brilliant, so wise, she’s just what Holden is not, what probably he will never be; Phoebe is Holden’s projection, she’s his rational part, she’s his shelter and he’s so in love with her, so respectful toward her that he would never lie to her, because she doesn’t deserve it and because she herself would never lie to him, to her brother, to the blood of her blood. This relationship is what makes of Holden a better person, it’s what gives meaning to this young boy’s life and what gives him strength and courage, hope and faith; this relationship is what makes him aware of his own mistakes and limits, but more than everything it is what always reminds him that it’s worthy being a rebel who fights, who never surrenders, who never gives up if this means making of the world a better place in which to live, to dream, to hope and fight and, above all, making all of this for those people who love, protect and care about you the most.
I sincerely believe that who doesn’t recognize the greatness of a person, of a life like that of J.D. Salinger’s literary creature is exactly who we really must fight against: our enemy is the phony society with its false principles and values which alienate the ones who are considered to be different and dangerous or just childish rebels because of their fighter souls, because of their freedom, because of the truth in both their feelings and actions, because they never accept something just because it is what the mass accepts, because they still have the courage of their own ideas.

Everybody Knows

This time has been up to David Letterman. Private life becomes public and everyone point finger at you, they judge you, the Saints, the good men who never make mistakes, men without weaknesses; they talk about you all the time.
I think it's not right. I think it's right for people to know you even in your private when things you have done are crimes or something really ugly that can make them change their minds about you, when you are a politician or when it's you that call paparazzi and journalists every day to be the only one centre of public attention.
There aren't other cases; private life of someone like Letterman must stay private. Above all, because sometimes you just can't avoid the news to become public, I think the worst thing is the speculation that comes after. There's nothing worst that spend all your day talking about someone else's life, public or not. I really hate judgements, I think we're always nones to say how others must live or act, I hate who doesn't think about his own business. I really care about my privacy, sometimes I get even obsessed and paranoid about it; I think I could never be famous, the price to pay would be just to high. And to me, it doesn't worth.
(I apologize for today very short post but I've got Block. Again. Again.)

Money for Nothing

Is dated 1985 the idea that "we are livin' in a material world and (we are) material girl(s)". More than 20 years later things aren't change yet and the question here is an ancient, a very, very old one: can money buy everything? And with everything we're of course talkin' about love too. Another date: 1993. It's in 1993 that director Adrian Lyne brings on scene a story based on this endless question in "what was first: the chicken or the egg?" perfect style, with his movie "Indecent Proposal", where a millionaire tries to buy the love (or, at least, one of her nights) of a young woman and wife, apparently destroying a great love, right the one you see on the screens, the one which pass from fulfil your heart to break it in a dime.
The question is: is the end of Indecent Proposal applicable to reality or not? I think people often forget about the most significant part of this movie; they all say Diana accepts John's money (and her husband too, even if with second thoughts) and that, at a certain point, she ends with falling in love with him, forgetting her loving husband. But what about the end? The end tells us another story, a different one, the one who people tend to forget: it tells us of a Diana keeping back to David, the story of two soulmates that, after all, had never stop looking for each other. To belong to each other.
So maybe that's the lesson, that's how things in life just go, even in a material one, even in the case where money could actually save you and the one you love from hard times (as in the story of Diana and David where there's a true need of money, due to necessity and not to a greed feeling); maybe, sometimes, money can really buy you for a while, but the redemption way to coming back feeling fine with ourselves is right behind the corner as the chance to save yourselves from getting totally lost. Maybe the rebirth is not so far as you believe. Maybe, for a while, maybe 'cause you lost your mind or just because you're tired of doing sacrifices to get nothing in return, you start to be for rent, even for sell to the highest bidder; but if you're a good person (because of course it depends on who you are and always have been) you can save yourself and, like in the movie, your feelings and love too.
It's never too late, we all make mistakes and the only ones not excusable are the ones during which you keep don't figure out that you are wrong, when you keep not to apologize though you've caused pain to the ones you love the most.
After all, in life it's always all about choosing and feeling fine with ourselves and the ones we care about, 'cause they are the court of our existences.

...and to not mention "Roxanne". We'll talk about her another time...

City of Blinding Lights

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LERd2AU2s4Q

...tell by my attitude that I most definitely from The Empire State of mind.

Sunday Morning

http://improveverywhere.com/2009/09/27/thank-you-invisible-dogs/

On September 27, Brooklyn has been the set of a funny and different Sunday walk, of another "mission" by the group "Improve Everywhere", based in New York City and formed in 2001 by Charlie Todd.
Its slogan is "We cause scenes", in fact it is a comedic performance art group and the aim of this movement is to cause scenes of "chaos and joy" through what they call "missions", that is not-threatening pranks made in public places. This time it's been the turn of an amazing parade made by over 2000 people going up and down Brooklyn with their "invisible dog" leashes. As we can read in the article, the invisible dog toy was invented more than 30 years ago in a Brooklyn factory indeed and, judging from the success of Improve Everywhere's idea, it's been a curious and nice invention that nowadays is still able to draw close lots of people.
Take a look at their website, and you'll find out all the missions made by this team of maybe crazy, but definitely genius folks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RykH_6WChrk

When a Man Loves a Woman

I made a mistake, my usual one. I decided to want to know critics's thought about this movie, one of my fav, so I read what some of them wrote about it in their reviews. And, again as usual, I disagreed. If there's something I can't stand it's to read that a movie is quite good but not enough to be considered a great one, to be placed into the Olympus. Why? Who is at the decision of which movies deserve it and what movies don't, who has marked the thin boundary-line between the concept of deservings and undeservings? Anyway, I wont say anything else about banal film rating and said that, I'm here to write about a movie that, to me, according to which are my feelings and nothing else, is a great one indeed.
When we see a movie, when we read a book, when we listen to a song and we going on thinking about over and over again, it's a sign that it found a way into our heart, an indelible one, and to me this is the only thing that can really say if we're talking about something great or not. Nothing as that is actually a subjective issue and not an objective one.
"The notebook" by Nick Cassavetes, based on the namesake book by Nicholas Sparks, is a great work with a great director and great actors, a great story and a great Love. Or better still, here we feel like "behind every great love is a great story", as the tagline introduces us the movie itself.
There's something in this love, something which remains to us and that we jealously hedge in, there are two simple souls becoming heroes in their struggle against time, against life and its sorrows such as a heartless disease; they're winner too, because they takes over pain with the only strength of what left to them: their unique, precious, unbelievable feeling. There's magic, there's like a spell in this old-time narration, but there's no just emotion, there's more: there's a lesson for everyone to learn. It's a lesson of hope, faith, feeling, care, strength of someone who does have nothing anymore but each others to belong to, to make the journeys of life and death together, side by side. There are lives entirely lived, enjoyed and consumed to the backbone by passion, desires, dreams; there are a man and a woman here taking care of each others before themselves, two ones who were just meant to be.
This is what love is, the only kind that really exist, that's how it's possible to make it last forever, challenge chance, to go beyond time and space borders.
It's a love that makes of you a better person, a love that, when there is, there is nothing else: "I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who's ever lived: I've loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.", Noah, one of the protagonists, said. Because that's what life is all about: to feel, to breathe, to want, to love, to protect and respect someone else with whom you become a single person, because when you choose that someone for the rest of your life you choose "him" before "yourself", because you already know, from the very beginning, that now your life is made for two and not for one anymore; because you know that without your one you'll be however forced going on to live, and you will do it, but you will just not want to.
Because when all this happens you even start believing in miracles when you didn't, you become the most generous person when, before, you were just a common, humanely selfish man. Because when "two" becomes "one" it doesn't matter how many troubles there can be, to fight will always be better than give in and leave your feeling fade away; because when two becomes one and you realize that you're almost loosing the love of your life you're overwhelming by fear and you feel like your heart's been completely ripped out.
That's why Allie and Noah's story is such a precious and fragile miracle: it impress itself, leaving a scar in your heart, as only a meaningful life, a meaningful love can do.

"The power of love, a force from above cleaning my soul, flame on burn desire, love with tongues of fire, purge the soul, make love your goal."

People are Strange

Painted as a monster and nothing else for years, he's gone without the rehabilitation of his name, of his dignity as human being. Probably, in this world, he will never have a full rehabilitation, because people make up their icons as fast as they tear them down forever. As usual, together with death arrived crocodile tears too: Jordan Chandler and journalist Martin Bashir admitted they lied about Michael Jackson when the first accused him of sexual abuses and the second interviewed him on "Living with Michael Jackson" special; now, too late, as always, the world seems to have at last figured out that it was wrong, that has been Law itself to set he was innocent. But we know quite well the sad power of death and that it's always the best occasion to deny, to feel regret when it's too late, the best time to speculate. That's what the great human race always does: the uncontrollable attack first, the big remorse then. Above all, human race is a great contradictory one. To all, Michael Jackson was a guilty for sure, a dangerous freak with no right to speak, a guilty even if there wasn't even a proof that wouldn't had been dismantle.
Then what about Roman Polanski? He's a true guilty but c'mon, he's a poor victim of the System, a victim of the USA Government that 30 years later still insist in pursuing him. Just leave him alone you nuts people, how dare you?! Poor Polanski has already gone through too much pain, some papers have written. In addition to this absolutely craziness, famous people all over the world signed even a letter to support Polanski's cause, claiming that his arrest was unconstitutional and that USA must, as I said before, practically leave him alone.
It's been 30 years since he took a little girl, made her drunk and high then took her life away raping her. He must have scared the hell out of her, but, today as yesterday, it seems we just don't care. She said she has forgive him, but the fact she's been so strong doesn't mean she doesn't deserve justice. And she didn't have it, she didn't have justice for 30 long years, during which Polanski has going on living his days free and undisturbed, and she still doesn't. And today, in 2009, in civilized Countries, there's still someone to who being an unquestionable director it's quite enough to let him get away being a convicted. We are not talking about revenge (we would never dare ask too much seeing the world we live in); we are just talking about justice, we are trying to understand how it is actually possible that, once again, be a famous name means to win the "get out of jail free" card.
That's the reason why Linus was used to say "I love humanity, it's people I can't stand"; I'm not making a division between what is good and what is not, I'm just saying I hate incoherence and, even worst, the character assassination without right of reply and the persistence in acting like this, always, without even apologize. I'm against the incapability to recognize and admit the mistakes made, choosing not to repeat them in the same away over and over again.
When will people heal their cruelty and superficiality? Michael was right, we must heal the world, but, for once in our life, it'll be great if we learn before how to heal ourselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS56ni-OnNo

E' Solo un Rock 'n' Roll Show

One of the greatest Italian artist ever will finally be on a Europe Tour, a great chance to export abroad music you can definitely say a "good" one.
To us, Vasco Rossi is quite a monument, a legend, the father of at least three generation. He's the father of Italian Rock Music too, with the precious support of a band made by some of the better musicians all over the World. So yes, this will be a great, an important chance, even and especially because they all give their best on stage, used to performing live in front of sold out stadiums.
Once again I wont translate you anything of his magnificent lyrics: they are poems, in both words and rhapsodies, and as poems I think they must "live" in the language they were born.
I really hope this will be the opportunity to finally bring Vasco's music outside Italy, even if the language is always a problematic issue: I mean, Italians don't have lots of difficulties to understand Beatles, but it's right to say that one thing is Italian and another is English. Aside from that, I think language can never be a limit in art, so in music either. It's especially here, in music range, that when you're listening to a song you must surrender and just feel it into you; nothing else matters. After all, today it's so easy to find on the internet a way to translate a lyrics; in fact, music, movies and books are quite a really good way to get into a foreign language, a different culture, also a slang, all those things you're not generally used to.
I think self-learning is the best form to get into things which are actually unknown to you...together with travel a lot, self-learning is even better than school, I speak from my own experience: school only gives you the theory, but it doesn't give you the practice. It's good and necessary to have both, that's sure, but you can't have just theory. Above all, self-learning made by music, movies and so on, it's the best because it will always be moved by passion, love, interest: it's suppose that when you choose to learn something by yourself, not because of someone else's imposition, it's because you really care about this thing and you don't feel it, live it like a weight.
"Music makes the people come together", someone said...I think she was absolutely right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUUPxuUo5OA

When "Art" Takes Over

When "art" takes over you know you can't deny. And art here is once again taking over in New York City, where we well know how everything is really possible: if you're looking for something and you don't find it in NY it just doesn't exist, it's said. Well, thanks to young artist Justin Gignac, to sell and buy garbage as art indeed is now possible too.
"He began selling garbage in 2001 after a co-worker challenged the importance of package design. To prove them wrong he set out to find something that no one in their right mind would ever buy, and package it to sell", it's written on Justin's website, and what more perfect than garbage to demonstrate his theory? He definitely won his challenge: from 2001, over 1.200 NYC Garbage cubes have been sold not only in the USA but all over the world. As if it wasn't enough, Justin's genius also decided to produce special edition cubes with garbage such as the one from the opening day at Yankee Stadium or from NY's Eve in Times Square.
The starting idea is obviously awesome, unique (and right, because Gignac's point of view on package was fair), but the most beautiful thing to me is that everything here belongs to New York; don't know how to explain it, but I wouldn't be so exited about Rome's garbage for sure...
First cube I saw had Sturbucks garbage inside: it's been love at first sight. I love Gignac's great idea and I heart New York so bad...I can't explain to others why I'm so amazed by this project, I'm just able to answer that I heart New York and everything that belongs to the soul, to the deepest part of the city is just so perfect to me, the best thing in the world.
Even its garbage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obbd7-hsn4Y
http://www.nycgarbage.com/index.html

Yes, We Can

On Monday eve, President Barack Obama has been hosted by David Letterman in his "Late Show": those two have been just hilarious.
But President Obama has been even more: he's been sincere, honest with his audience as always is. When he speaks he always seems so proud of what has happened to him; when he speaks he's charismatic, sure, a true leader among his people, always deeply interested in what he's doing. When President Obama speaks he always explain the reasons why of something, he will never say "it's just because I said!" as a parent does with his kids; on Letterman he has talked about his Country people and issues, he didn't faked and he didn't made a political campaign. He always acts like this, he always seems to be a citizen first and the President of the United States then; he always seems to be one of his people (and his people are the ones who trust him), close to and caring for them. He speaks to us about his family or the war in the same way: simply, purely, as a man, not a pretending superhero.
As I said, it's quite usual to see him acting like this, he always does, but it's not granted to be like this all over the world. In Italy is not that right. In Italy every moment, every thing that occurs is a good chance to make propaganda, to attack the other parties. Even when there's a time to club, Italy never does. Even someone's death becomes the opportunity to point finger against someone else, a chance to hide our own mistakes and faults; none, in Italy, ever take responsibility for what is happening. None, in Italy, will ever say: "mistakes were made". In Italy if you want an explanation you'll never get it from a politician.
When I look at President Obama I still see hope and honesty, integrity and the audacity of a dream, of a change as was before his election; I don't see anything of this in "my" political class. And I'm speaking of they all. As World citizen I feel safe thinking Barack Obama to be leader of the Free World; I wouldn't be that safe if he was one of "my" politicians.
Anyway, right yesterday I was writing about Italian Television. Well, not only we don't have Barack Obama as President, we don't have a David Letterman neither, so here we'll never see a show like that of Monday.
But after all, I feel Barack Obama as my real President, and to me that's all that matters.

From "Late Show" official website
http://www.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/

Top Ten Reasons President Obama Agreed To Appear on the "Late Show"

10. Heard the lady with the heart-shaped potato was going to be here
9. Thought it would be fun to watch someone else get heckled
8. Has something to do with that whole "Cash for Clunkers" thing
7. Every president since Teddy Roosevelt has been here
6. In this economy, someone offers you $600, you take it
5. We told him Megan Fox would be here
4. Needed a place to hang out until check-in time at his hotel
3. Honestly, I have no idea
2. Said, "Yes" without thinking... Like Bush did with Iraq
1. Wanted to congratulate Dave on the big Emmy win

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x7TnxzypN4

Ashamed

Everyone is talkin' about it. The proof? The video of the misdeed is jumpin' on YT from Sunday and both foreign websites and papers are writin' about. I'm doin' too, first of all because I love music, then because I hate unprofessionalism and fakes know-it-all.
Let's get to the point: how can a band punks so easily, so well a national TV show? Well, when it comes to Italy everything is actually possible.
Last Sunday, Muse were supposed to "play" on mime their new song "Uprising" in the Italian show "Quelli che il calcio"; they've obviously disagreed w/the idea that it's not possible for a band to perform live, so what did they thought? Let's mock who doesn't recognize the value of a live performance and how it's still so offensive for someone be obliged to mime. That's when Matt-the-singer becomes the drummer, Dominic-the-drummer becomes the singer...a mess; a funny mess for their fans, an embarrassing one for Simona Ventura and her staff. To see Matt's face and movements at the moment has been really priceless, to see Ventura interviewing Dominc believing to be talking to Matt has been even better.
The best thing about this show into the show is that music finally wins above those who pretend to be music fans or, even worst, well prepared about the topic.
If you're not Italian you probably don't have the pleasure to know Simona Ventura; unfortunately, we have this lucky break. The most worrying thing is that she's been one of the judges in the Italian edition of the English format "X Factor" for two long years; so, for two long years, she's been responsible for the future of lots of young guys that probably love and respect music much more than her. She's been, for two long years, on every screen and paper telling us how good she is in music and she's been, for even more time, on every screen and paper telling us how good she is at all, at doing everything.
Yep, but then you host someone on your show and you don't even know his face. Speaking about Sunday, not only their faces: she doesn't know Muse at all. She calls them "THE" Muse, she doesn't almost know their names (while, according to the questions she has done, she's pretty cool on gossip) and, possibly the worst thing of all, she's got an entourage exactly like her: none told her she was interviewing the wrong person, none told her about what was going on from the very beginning. Yeah, absurd but real.
She's just come out for what she really is: unprofessional. Let's even say she doesn't know for real one of the best known rock band of the planet, but how is it possible to invite someone at your place and don't even do a research about when you know that you're not prepared to that? By the way, it's quite clear how she's reading the Autocue while introducing them...
But, after all, this is just the Italian way; it's the Italian way for everything, the mirror of our professionals.
Someone's got Letterman, others's got Ventura. That's just the way it goes, life is a bitch, uh?
Anyway, today someone swears to have listen her exclaiming "John who?!" after someone told her about a certain Lennon...
Yeah, life is a bitch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oTt8Noi5Rk

Somewhere I Belong

When we say a place is our place, the place where we belong, we should have at least some reasons why to explain it to others.
These days I was watchin' my USA pics and I suddenly remember what I had almost forgotten: what I love the most about it, its sky and air.
Have you ever seen a most gorgeous sky than the one above the United States? It's overwhelmed with colors, even when the color is the gray, and they're simply amazing; it's immense, endless.
Have you ever breathe a better air than the one we feel in those lands? It's "full", good, penetrating, touchable.
Everytime I come back to the US I look up to that marvellous sky and I take the deepest breath possibly: just like that, I feel home.
Maybe I'm too influenced by the fact that I feel America to be my real Country, but before not to trust me at all, for the colors issue just take a look at these.
...and for the air...well, I can't be helpful; there's only one thing you can do about. And I think you know quite well what is it.

Dear Mr President

They're our fathers, our brothers, our husbands, our sons; They're our countries and it's taking them away from us.
We want the world "end" above all this; we want everyone to come home.
Everyone must come home.

Imagine

"One person's crazyness is another person's reality.", the thought of a man who has made of "crazy" stories and characters his own career and prestige. When I first read this quote of Tim Burton I immediately thought it would had been best start to talking about American director's new work, an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's novels "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass". In that sentence there's not only the pure heart of Jack Skellington's dad: I think there's that of Carrol's character too.
It's said that Burton's genius' new movie will be ready for American audience in 2010 but the film had seemed from the very begin to be born to met all the high expectations of director's past works; but why should this movie be so different from the others already made about Carrol's blondie little girl? Know that Tim Burton is at the direction is quite enough to me, in addition it's clear how all the typical features of Burton's characters are in Alice's original one too.
The all story has the taste of surreal, the magic poetry of fantasy and even the philosophical aspect of the unknown; we can't give a universal meaning nor a unique, conventional explanation to Alice's journey, we all have our own interpretation and our difficulties too in understanding an ancient tale which is not supposed to be explainable because sometimes the pragmatic meanings of reality make fade away the genuine childish beauty and the greatness of what sense cannot explain.
Lewis Carroll's masterpiece is one of those stories which seem to be wrote for children but that finally adults find out to love even more.
Burton has promised to respect Alice's true essence and always seemed very excited about the project; talking about the cast, once again we find Burton's muse and friend, Johnny Depp (guess his role? Yeah, of course the Mad Hatter) with the Australian actress Mia Wasikowska (in Alice's shoes) and the well known Anne Hathaway as the White Queen. The adaptation is set in Alice's future, she's a young woman and she's got no more memories by now of her old adventure, unaware that what is in the past sometimes can reach you again in your present or future life. Wasikowska said about that protagonist's return to Wonderland "becomes a rite of passage as she discovers her voice and herself.", preparing us to the evolution of character's personality and behaviour. The setting and the atmosphere too will be in true Burtonian style: pics of both cast and places reveal the usual care and beauty of director's others films with a sort of new fantasy halo which reminds a great but renewed elegance faithful to the first drawings retracting the young girl and her fellows; the make up, the costumes are so well finished as much as gorgeous. Surely everyone who recognize himself in reported Burton's quote will fall in love with his ultimate cinematic tell; Alice's life seems to be really meant to be closed to this great director's spirit and mind and this is exactly why, first of all, this movie has soon become a proclaimed success.