Jules: Hello, George.
George: Hey Gorgeous. Having a good time?
Jules: Not particularly, but I did what I came to do.
George: What, you split them up?
Jules: No, I said ‘goodbye.’
George: Good girl. I’m proud of you. I’d be prouder still if you were dancing.
Jules: Oh, I have big plans for dancing. Just give me thirty, thirty- five years.
George: Oh, the misery, the exquisite tragedy…the Susan Hayward of it all. [laughs] I can just picture you sitting there alone at your table in your lavender gown…
Jules: Did I tell you my gown was lavender?
George: Hair swept up, haven’t touched your cake. Probably drumming your fingernails on the white linen table cloth, the way you do when you’re really feeling down. I see you looking at those nails thinking, ‘God, I should have stopped in all my evil plotting to have that manicure!’ But it’s too late now.
Jules: George, I didn’t tell you my gown was lavender.
George: Suddenly, a familiar song. Then, you’re off your chair in one exquisite movement. Wondering, searching, sniffing the wind like a daffelled deer. Has God heard your little prayer? Will Cinderella dance again? And then, suddenly, the crowds part. And there he is. Sleek. Stylish. Radiant with charisma. It’s only, he’s on the telephone. But then, so are you. And he comes towards you, the moves of a jungle cat. And although you quite correctly sense that he is gay, like most devastatingly handsome single men of his age are, you think, ‘What the hell? Life goes on.’ Maybe there won’t be marriage. Maybe there won’t be sex. But by God, there will be dancing!

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Update:

I forgot to say that the name of this post, which translates to ‘Portuguese house’, is a reference to a very known fado, sang by Amália Rodrigues, and which is also one of my family’s favorites. I like it, but my favorite one is Canção do Mar (Song of the sea), by Dulce Pontes.

She was pretty much respected, if not for her music, at least for the impact she and her contemporaries had on the popular reaction to the military dictatorship. Until last week.

Vanusa was invited to sing the National Anthem at a public agents’ event. When she started singing, she was pretty much tuneless. Ok. Then, she made a small mistake on the lyrics. That was also ok – especially because I think only about 2% Brazilians can sing the Anthem correcly. But then she got completely tuneless and she pratically rewrote the lyrics. It was awkward. When Vanusa ended the first part, many people started to applaud in the hopes that she would stop there, but she just went on as if nothing happened until someone interrupted her.

It’s pretty obvious everyone in that place was embarrassed. No one knew how to react. There’s a feeling here we call ‘vergonha alheia’. It’s that shame feeling you have for someone else’s mistake. I guess that describes pretty much what everyone felt then.

All this happened in March, but the video was released on the internet only a few days ago. It spread like a virus and soon everybody was commenting about it – and still are. There were a lot of people insinuating that she was drunk. Vanusa denied the accusations and said that the cause of her grothesque errors was the medicine she was taking fo her labyrinthitis. Nobody cares, though. It’s all about the mockering.

I must confess that I laughed very much when I watched the video. There’s no way to avoid it. It was arkward.

You can watch the video below. I’ll also post the lyrics the way she sang them, marking the places where she made mistakes (considering only the lyrics, because the melody is ALL wrong). The original Anthem and lyrics can be found here.

Ouviram do Ipiranga as margens plácidas
De um novo heróico e brado retumbante,
E o sol da liberdade, em raios fúlgidos,
Brilhou no céu da pátria nesse instante.

Se o penhor dessa igualdade
Conseguimos conquistar com braços fortes,
Em teu seio, ó liberdade,
Desafia o nosso peito a própria morte!

Ó Pátria amada,
Idolatrada,
Salve! Salve!

Brasil, um sonho intenso, um raio vívido
De amor e de esperança à terra desce,
Se em teu formoso céu, risonho e límpido,
A imagem do Cruzeiro resplandece.

Gigante pela própria natureza,
És belo, és forte, és risonho e límpido.
A imagem do Cruzeiro…

Terra adorada,
Entre outras mil,
És tu, Brasil,
Ó Pátria amada!
Dos filhos deste solo és mãe gentil,
Pátria amada,
Brasil!

[End of the first part.]

Deitado eternamente em berço esplêndido,
Ao som do mar e à luz do céu profundo,
Fulguras, ó Brasil, florão da América,
Iluminado ao sol do Novo Mundo!

Do que a terra, mais garrida,
Teus risonhos, lindos campos têm mais flores;
“Nossos bosques têm mais vida”,
“Nossa vida, mais amores.”

Ó Pátria amada,
Idolatrada,
Salve! Salve!

[This is where she was interrupted. The Anthem has three more stanzas. You would say that there aren't that many mistakes, but if compare the video to the original song, you'll understand.]

“Actress Hitomi Kuroki took her first air trip in her final year in high school. She traveled alone from her native Fukuoka to Osaka. The purpose of the trip was take entrance exams at Takarazuka Music School (TMS), a premier training ground for aspiring Takarazuka revue starlets. She had the blessing of her parents, who had decided their daughter could at least give it a try before she left high school.

According to her book “Watashi ga Naku Toki” (When I weep) from Gentosha Inc., Kuroki herself knew at the time that she would get over her infatuation with TMS once she saw how out of place she would be there. And she recalls that when her flight was taking off, Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony” (The Destiny) was playing on the in-flight music channel she was tuned to.

Kuroki passed the exams, which put her among an extremely talented minority. There are preparatory schools for TMS, where intensive singing and dancing courses are offered. Girls aged 15-18 are eligible for enrollment at TMS, but since competition to get in is so severe–only 1 in 20 succeeds–many girls fail the entrance exams and eventually quit.

But TMS is overhauling its entrance tests next spring. It will do away with the compulsory singing and ballet tests, and the preliminary test will be in interview form to evaluate the candidates’ looks and “star quality.” In the follow-up test, the candidates will be judged on their singing and ballet, but the focus will be on whether they have basic abilities.

According to TMS, the overhaul is aimed to throw the doors open wider. Girls who have been thoroughly trained in the “entrance exam technique” are certainly skilled, but they all tend to look the same, down to their hairstyles. Rather than attracting only these cookie-cutter candidates, the school would like amateurs to try out so that truly unique talents might be discovered.

I recently visited a prep school in Tokyo, where black leotard-clad girls were undergoing intensive training despite the summer holiday season. The school’s director, a former Takarazuka revue member, noted: “People talk about discovering diamonds in the rough, but you can’t really spot a future superstar from among total novices. If TMS wants to attract more candidates, a quicker way would be to get more high school girls to see Takarazuka shows on their school trips.”

TMS’s motto is “Kiyoku Tadashiku Utsukushiku,” which translates as “with purity, righteousness and beauty.” But the school is better known for the rigid discipline it expects of its students during their two years there.

Numerous paths are available today for young people aspiring to show business careers, but about 1,000 teen girls still keep knocking on TMS’s heavily guarded doors.

Seen from the outside, Takarazuka’s legendary status appears to be quite intact, but I suppose people inside think differently.

The bigger the fantasy, the more work it seems to require to maintain it.“

The Asahi Shinbun – 28/07/2008

“Judge me for my own merits, or lack of them, but do not look upon me as a mere appendage to this great general or that great scholar, this star that shines at the court of France or that famed author. I am in my own right a whole person, responsible to myself alone for all that I am, all that I say, all that I do. It may be that there are metaphysicians and philosophers whose learning is greater than mine, although I have not met them. Yet, they are but frail humans, too, and have their faults; so, when I add the sum total of my graces, I confess I am inferior to no one.”

I was quite offended, 1. because it didn’t make any sense for me, and I took it as an offense to my generation; and 2. because I’m a huge geek and if you mess with Google, you mess with me (lol). But then I saw a number of my friends not wanting to read too dense or long texts, and it got me thinking about it.

And then, something worse came out.

I’m gonna try to resume it all. Basically, Xuxa, a highly controversial Brazilian celebrity, opened a Twitter account a few weeks ago. Last Monday, her daughter, 11-year-old Sasha, decided to make a post. She wrote:

Sou eu Sasha. Estou aqui filmando e vai ser um ótimo filme. Tenho que ir… vou fazer uma sena com a cobra.

It’s me, Sasha. I’m here filming and it will be a great movie. I have to go… I’m going to shoot a scene with a snake.

The thing here is on the word ‘scene’, which in Portuguese is translated as ‘cena’. Notice that she wrote it with an ‘s’ instead of a ‘c’. This was enough reason for thousands of people to start sending them messages expressing their disapproval on the girl’s bad ortography. Now, ok, I can understand that it is quite shameful that the daughter of a millionaire star, who one would think would receive the best education possible, doesn’t know how to write basic words, but I think it’s very much ironic that Brazilians feel so annoyed by it considering the very low quality grammar I see everywhere. But ok.

So, it would be only another great day for the comedians everywhere – a very famous TV group, of which I’ve already talked about before, started a tag (#çaxaday, a very bad way of writing ‘Sasha Day’) on Twitter making fun of the whole thing -, if it wasn’t for a blog that makes up stories about celebrities. The author of the blog posted a joke saying that Xuxa would sue Twitter and try to ban its services in Brazil. But, you know, there was this red warning under the post saying that everything that is posted on the blog is a big bad joke.

But people don’t like to read. They couldn’t even read the whole post! And then, of course, the news spread like a virus, and everything that we, people who did see the red warning, did was useless. In the beginning of the afternoon, a friend said: “soon the papers will be publishing it”. She didn’t know then how right she was. Not only did the news websites publish the story, they published EXACTLY like it was posted on the blog. Without giving it the credits. Can’t believe it, huh? You can compare the links, and I’m going to publish some printscreens just in case they regret that and decide to leave you in a 404 alley.

The original post

The ‘Meio Norte’ news

I’m particularly annoyed by the paths Brazilian journalism is taking. It’s becoming completely amateur. It should be seriously discussed. And I think that this whole situation will give a lot of food for thought for specialists. It involves children’s (bad) education, premature stardom and public exposure, the internet as a trustworthy tool for news, our capacity of reading something with more than 500 characters, bad journalism, working ethics. But the main point here is that we don’t know how to deal with the internet yet. We are still lost in a huge mass of information and hyperlinks, and we don’t know what to do with them, we don’t know whether to trust them or not. We will need to change our habits to prevent getting dumber. After all, Carr was right.

At first, I did indeed like it. It is based on the history of Wu Zetian, the only de facto woman ruler of China to assume the title of Empress Regnant. At the time, I was looking for some nice sources about her, and this book was a gift from heavens, so i was very pleased. But with time I began to get bored. Seriously. Shang Sa’s writing is too much poetic. Too much. And she doesn’t make a single critic to Wu’s reign. Ok, it is a novel, and it is told in first person by Wu herself. Still, what’s with the whole unstoppable praising? I’d rather see the empress as a person who had ambitions and did whatever she thought necessary to achieve them. Let’s stop that women-never-want-power thing, please.

Also, one last thing that displeased very much: in the beginning of the novel, Wu has a number of affairs with women. Nice. I liked it. Until she had an affair with a man, later in life, that changed everything. Ok, that happens. But is the omg-I-didn’t-know-what-was-real-sex-until-now really necessary? (I was going to reproduce the original part here, but I can’t find it now; sorry) It’s very disappointing.

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SA, Shan. Empress : a novel. New York, N.Y.: Harper Perennial, 2006. 324 p. ISBN: 978-0-06-114787-6.

Last Sunday I decided to start. The Godfather was my first choice. Yes, call me a heretic, but I had not watched it yet. I started searching for it on the internet, but couldn’t find a version in any language I could understand. I got pissed and went to a rent shop the next day. I rented the whole trilogy. When I was preparing to leave, I spotted Der Untergang and couldn’t resist. This way, I came home with four movies for the week.

Monday was The Godfather‘s day. Part I. I was eager to watch it because I bought the book last week (it’s an imported version, so it may take a few more weeks to get here). I watched it. And wasn’t much impressed. Or maybe I was too impressed. I even tried to write a post about it when I finished it, but I couldn’t. I was very pissed on the American portrayal of the Italians. Especially, Italian women. But then I chilled out and decided to watch the other parts to see how it would turn out.

On Tuesday, I was still very much angry at Puzo and Coppola, so I decided to move to Hitler to chill out a bit (very funny, I know). Der Untergang is excellent. I won’t say much more. I’ve seen bad critics but, seriously, you have got to be kidding me. Bruno Ganz is great. I guess that’s why many people were somewhat ‘scared’ of this movie. There was a real Hitler there. More importantly, there was a human there. It scares people to associate historical ‘monsters’ to normal people who eat, cry and love, because this way they would be associating these ‘monsters’ to themselves. And I think that is why it is so important to ‘humanize’ them. Because yes, we must remember that it could have been anyone with enough power and brain (or not) there. Power can drive people to insanity.

I was glad to see that Hanna Reitsch had a part in the movie. Yes, she was loyal to Hitler, therefore, the enemy, but she was a woman in WWII and, boy, that I can’t ignore. I respect it. Good job, Anna Thalbach.

One of the most shocking parts of the movie is doubtlessly when Magda Goebbels kills her own children. Last, but not least, I don’t really know what to think of Traudl Junge. The movie turns her into a saint, but… who knows? It’s really easy to regret everything when you’re old and dying and everyone around you condemns what you’ve done. But we will never know whether she really supported Hitler or not, I guess.

On Wednesday, time to go back to the padrino. The second part was… ok. It wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t much thrilling. But I must admit that I enjoyed very, very much De Niro as the young Vito Corleone. And hey, maybe it’s just my thing for Italian men, but Al Pacino and Robert De Niro were HOT back in the 70′s.

Finally, yesterday I watched the last part and I have to say that it’s by far my favorite. Everything about it. And as I was pretty much convinced of that already, the movie ended by the sound of Cavalleria Rusticana‘s Intermezzo, which is my favorite song ever. I couldn’t resist.

I want to talk about the impressions I had of the Hollywoodian Italian community, but I’ll leave that to another post.

I will end this one with a video of my favorite performance of Mascagni’s song. Enjoy.

The top musume/onnayaku (as you wish) hasn’t been announced yet. What the hell is the problem Tsuki has with their musumeyaku?! Seriously, get one FAST, people!

Kiryan’s first show as top will be on February 1st, 2010, at Chunichi Theater in Nagoya.

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Source: Takarazuka Kagekidan.

Let’s go to the point: Semiramide. Yes, Rossini, thank you very much. I like him because he’s not afraid of altos (hi, Mozart!).

This is the Met’s 1990 version, starred by June Anderson, who played Semiramide, and Marilyn Horne, Arsace. Anderson was gorgeus! My goodness! Although I don’t think her acting is the best, she is a great singer, that’s for sure. Horne is also great, but I might say that her chubby feminine face does not convince anyone one that she is an male assyrian commander/prince (come on, people! I’m a Zuka fan!).

Oh, and there’s Samuel Ramey. Love him. But I don’t know if I liked him as Assur. I don’t know. Maybe what I don’t like is Assur, after all.

One thing that I liked very much was the costume design. Of course there’s that end of 80′s/beginning of 90′s awkward fashion, but I liked ir anyway. I guess at the time it was astonishing.

Despite my little rantings, it’s a really awesome concert, worth every penny.

The other opera is ‘I Lombardi’, by Verdi, one of my three favorite opera composers (the other ones are Bizet and Puccini). I guess I’ll take a look at it by the weekend, if I finally get the chance (I love you, friends, but can I please stay on my own sometimes? Kthanx).