Faccio una premessa  

«Signori Senatori, Signori Deputati. Prima di enunciare i sacrifici che chiederemo ai nostri datori di lavoro, gli italiani, vorrei rammentarvi un aneddoto di 140 anni fa che ha per protagonista il mio predecessore più illustre, Quintino Sella, anche lui alle prese con il totem del Pareggio Di Bilancio. Recatosi alla Camera per esporre i suoi celebri tagli “fino all’osso”, l’illustre ministro propose come atto preliminare una sforbiciata allo stipendio dei parlamentari. Qualcuno gli fece notare che sarebbe stato un risparmio ben misero, se paragonato all’entità monumentale della manovra. Non ho trovato il testo stenografico della risposta di Sella, ma testimonianze unanimi riferiscono che il senso fu questo: “Lo so bene. E però toglierci qualche soldo dalle tasche ci permetterà di guardare in faccia i contribuenti mentre li toglieremo a loro. Una classe dirigente deve dare l’esempio”. Lo fecero fuori alla prima occasione. Ma dopo un secolo e mezzo lui è ancora Quintino Sella. Mentre noi cosa saremo, anche solo fra sei mesi, se ci ostineremo a rimanere sganciati dalla vita dei cittadini comuni? Sono qui a chiedervi di compiere un gesto. Minimo, purché immediato. Dimezzarci lo stipendio. O almeno raddoppiare i prezzi del ristorante del Senato, dove la spigola con radicchio e mandorle costa 3 euro, e le penne all’arrabbiata 1,60. Altrimenti, Signori, la gente diventerà così arrabbiata che le penne finiranno per spiumarle a noi». (Brano, misteriosamente scomparso, del discorso pronunciato ieri mattina dal ministro Tremonti davanti alle commissioni parlamentari).

Il menù low cost del Parlamento fa infuriare il Web

Massimo Gramellini "La Stampa"

Piccadilly, 1928

L'année dernière j'avais vu sur youtube un film muet que j'ai beaucoup aimé, "Piccadilly", 1928
Je copie ici l'article concernant ce film que j'ai trouvé sur le site de TCM :

"Best known for her portrayal of Marlene Dietrich's fellow prostitute in Shanghai Express (1932), Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong (1905-1961) has been rediscovered by contemporary audiences. The Wong revival began in 2003, with three biographies of the actress, and the release of a restored print of her final silent film, Piccadilly (1929). A British production, Piccadilly was directed by the German filmmaker E. A. Dupont, and stars Gilda Gray as an aging dancer in a London nightclub owned by her lover, played by Jameson Thomas. But it's the third-billed Wong who steals the show (and the lover), as Shosho, a scullery maid in the club who replaces Gray as the star attraction. Wong plays Shosho as a fascinating mix of greedy child and thoroughly modern femme fatale, years before the advent of film noir. She is cool, confident, manipulative, and frankly sensual - a performance that is all the more remarkable at a time when Asian women (including Wong herself) were usually stereotyped in films as evil Dragon Ladies or submissive Lotus Blossoms.

Wong was born Wong Liu Tsong (her name means "Frosted Yellow Willows") in Los Angeles, where her parents ran a laundry. Fascinated by films from an early age, she began acting at 14. A small role in Douglas Fairbanks' The Thief of Bagdad (1924) led to stardom, but fed up with the stereotypical "exotic Oriental" roles, Wong went to Europe in 1928, hoping for better parts. After making two films in Germany, she was cast in Piccadilly by Dupont, who had been working in Britain since 1926.

Dupont, a film critic turned screenwriter and director, had demonstrated a brilliant visual flair with the German film Variete (1925), and had been signed to a contract by Universal. But his stint in Hollywood was unsuccessful, and he returned to Europe. Like Variete, and his earlier British film, Moulin Rouge (1928), Piccadilly demonstrated Dupont's mastery of camera movement and lighting. From the opening scenes, shot in art director Alfred Junge's enormous and complex nightclub set, through noirish scenes of London streets and alleys, Dupont's direction and Werner Brandes's fluid camerawork are stunning.

Although overshadowed by Wong, Gilda Gray gave a strong performance as the aging dancer threatened by her younger, more glamorous rival. The character must have hit uncomfortably close to home. Although she was only a few years older than Wong, Gray had been living hard for more than a decade. Born in Poland (her real name was Marianna Michalska), she emigrated to the U.S. with her family as a child. By the time she was 15, she was a wife and mother, and was singing in her father-in-law's Milwaukee saloon. That's where Gray claimed she invented a dance she called the "shimmy" in 1916. The sexy dance was a sensation, and she left husband, family, and old name behind, and made her way to New York, eventually becoming a star of the Ziegfeld Follies. Signed to a contract at Paramount, Gray made only a handful of films. The part of Mabel in Piccadilly would be her last starring role. In 1929, Gray lost her fortune in the stock market crash, and in 1931 she suffered a heart attack. Her career never recovered from these blows. She died in 1959.

Three future stars also had small or bit parts in Piccadilly. Cyril Ritchard, later an award-winning Captain Hook in the Broadway musical Peter Pan, plays Gray's dance partner. Charles Laughton makes a memorable film debut as a nightclub patron who complains about a dirty dish, setting in motion the club owner's first meeting with Shosho. And Ray Milland can be glimpsed as another nightclub patron.

Piccadilly received excellent reviews, most of them praising Wong's performance. But more and more films were being made with sound, and a few months after Piccadilly's premiere, a version with a sound prologue and synchronized score was released. Even so, Piccadilly was not widely seen. It disappeared for more than 70 years, until the British Film Institute restored it in 2003.

Wong became the toast of London, and starred in a play with a young Laurence Olivier, and another film in Germany, before returning to the U.S. in late 1930. For the next several years, Wong made films in Europe as well as the U.S., but she never again had a role as good as the one in Piccadilly. Her last film appearance was as Lana Turner's maid in Portrait in Black (1960). Dupont followed Piccadilly with his first talkie, Atlantic (1929), made in both English and German versions. He returned to Hollywood in 1932, but made mostly "b" pictures. Unable to get work after being fired from a film in 1939 for slapping one of the Dead End Kids who had made fun of his accent, Dupont returned to journalism, then worked at a series of jobs, making only an occasional film or television program until his death in 1956. "

Director: E.A. Dupont
Producer: E.A. Dupont
Screenplay: Arnold Bennett
Cinematography: Werner Brandes
Editor: J.W. McConaughty
Art Direction: Alfred Junge
Cast: Gilda Gray (Mabel Greenfield), Jameson Thomas (Valentine Wilmot), Anna May Wong (Shosho), Cyril Ritchard (Victor Smiles), King Ho Chang (Jim), Hannah Jones (Bessie), Charles Laughton (Night Club Patron).
BW-109m.

by Margarita Landazuri

Image credit: Edmund De Waal

• The Hare With Amber Eyes

  By Edmund De Waal

  FSG

The author, a celebrated British ceramicist, has written a winning hybrid: a rueful family memoir, a shimmering meditation on loss and the reverberating significance of cherished objects, and a vividly episodic history of 19th- and 20th-century Europe. De Waal’s matrilineal antecedents, the Ephrussi clan, were pan-European Jewish grain merchants and bankers, originally from Odessa. Charles Ephrussi—art critic; boulevardier; one of the models used by his friend Proust for Charles Swann; patron of Degas, Manet, Monet, and Renoir (he appears in top hat in Luncheon of the Boating Party)—succumbed to the French enthusiasm for Japonisme, and bought an exquisite collection of 264 netsuke (lifelike figurines, such as the hare of this book’s title, carved from wood, bone, and ivory, used as toggles on kimono sashes). In 1899 Ephrussi made the collection a wedding present for his favorite cousin, Viktor, of the Viennese branch of the family, and his bride, Emmy, who installed the figurines in her dressing room, where they became beloved playthings for her children as they watched their mother prepare for soirees and balls. With the Anschluss, the Nazis seized all the Viennese Ephrussis’ money, property, books, and art (the choicest treasures were photographed and cataloged for Hitler, so he could select among them)—except the netsuke, which were hidden by a loyal servant. A few months later, Emmy, trapped in Slovakia, killed herself. Her daughter—the author’s grandmother—made it to Britain, and after the war retrieved the collection. De Waal dexterously interweaves his family story with political, social, and art history, as he re-creates the oriental exoticism of 19th-century Odessa, the decadent charm of Belle Époque Paris, the febrile glamour of late Hapsburg Vienna, and the looming dread possessing that city in the late 1930s. De Waal, whose father was the dean of Canterbury, has in this book also written a contemplation of the potentialities and limitations of Jewish assimilation, as well as a plangent consideration of the pleasures and fleetingness of aesthetic and familial happiness.

Anna  : - a young woman in Haiti who is trying to complete her education is hoping to get a used laptop."
Nazneen: - may have one for the young lady but will only get info after jan 6th..."
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 Cathy : - well you just never know what a day will bring, there I was swanning about Am., happy as a lark, when my bag was stollen. it wasn't enough for the ####er to take my bag but he punched me in the face repeatedly. i look like I've done a few rounds with Mike Tyson. i guess it could have been worse ! Happy new year to you all."
Cathy : - thank you all, you lovely people for your good wishes and endless offers of help. am doing much better today although i do resemble the elephant man ! spent the night in a cycle of flashbacks/tears, flashbacks/tears. however, life is for the living so i'm just going to get on with it. am feeling the love, people and am so grateful to you all. here's to a magical 2011xx
Patricia : - Hope u feeling okish
                 And a good bit better
                 See u early in 2011

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