I am set to have a 4th night out with the telescope tonight. As usual I am rather excited about it. Another late night, though this should be the last, as next month the sun will setting even earlier than now.
We managed our first hill climb workout today at Malden Hill Park in Windsor. 5 weeks of local training, then one week of hiking as we drive west, then the big stuff for week 6. Rather excited about that, too.
My last surviving uncle passed away this week. Uncle Bill gave me my first high-paying job as a teenager, and I learned to drive 3-ton trucks towing trailers, too. He owned a construction equipment rental company. He and my dad built camps together on adjoining lots at Lake Penage when I was 9 or 10. Bill was a big guy, and always moving, never liking to sit still. He was a pretty amazing man, and I'm proud to have had him as my uncle. He chose assisted dying, as his Alzheimer's condition was worsening by the day. He passed away surrounded by his three sons. Bon Voyage, Uncle Bill!! His ashes are to be scattered at Lake Penage.
In film news, Fellini's La Dolce Vita has always been on my top ten list since I first saw it many years ago. The character of Marcello is a fascinating one. On the surface he is a womanizer of the worst kind, and it's almost painful seeing him lusting after Anita Ekberg as she casually and coolly keeps him at bay. Sending him out to find milk for a kitten in the late hours of a Roman night is the final straw. Marcello is a journalist who is always threatening to write a novel, but never manages to get around to it. He has deep feelings, but has no one to express them to, or talk about with. He is saddled with a neurotic, shallow, and overly motherly girlfriend, and has no close friends in whom to confide. The movie charts his rapid decline into mid-life chaos. By the end of the movie he has reached the bottom, with nowhere else to sink. He has chances at redeeming himself, but they never pan out. His best chance is a fellow writer and intellectual. When they meet up one night Marcello is invited to a get together at the writer's home. The scene contrasts sharply with the usual parties that Marcello attends. He is impressed with the man, and wants to talk more with him. They both agree that this would be a good thing. But when the writer kills himself and his two angelic children, Marcello is shattered, and there is no turning back from self destruction for him afterwards. He meets with his father and wants to spend time with him and talk, but his father never had time for him and his Rome visit proves no exception. Again Marcello is left alone. He has one casual girlfriend that he thinks he could make a serious relationship with. She leads him on one night, but quickly abandons him for a quickie with another man at the party. Poor Marcello. Then there is the angel from Perugia, a young girl who works at a cafe on the beach somewhere. He tells her she looks like an angel from a Renaissance painting, and she does. In the final scene she tries to communicate with him, explaining who she is and miming a typist, to ask him how his book is coming. But he is far past the point of being able to hear angels, even if they are right in front of him. And so we have a very depressing ending.
Or do we? Just suppose that he has hit bottom, and that sometime afterwards he manages to climb out of his alcoholic haze long enough to write a very good short novel. The plausibility of this might not have occurred to Fellini, but it just might have been a subconscious idea with Paolo Sorrentino, the director of The Great Beauty. The film won the 2013 Oscar for best foreign film, and is also on my top ten list. This is our third viewing, and it becomes more and more spellbinding the more we watch. The character of Jep could be Marcello, as he celebrates his 65th birthday in Italian party style. Jep had one successful novel 30 years ago, but has not written another one. He is a journalist that covers art openings and events in Rome. The film is sheer poetry from beginning to end, with possibly the best musical score ever added to film. Many of the musicians appear in the film performing the music. Like Dolce Vita, this is a film about vignettes, vignettes of great beauty. Rome in 1960 and in 2013 are very different places, but Jep had adapted well. He has the most envious flat in Rome, a host of friends though none terribly close. There are moments of comedy along with the poetry, and moments filled with deep meaning. Jep as an older Marcello makes seeing both pictures back to back essential to understand the relationship. Of course Sorrentino, like most Italian directors, owes a huge debt to Fellini, and must feel him looking over his shoulder all of the time. Whether the director made Jep into an older Marcello consciously or not, it is hard to deny the connection. Though both movies stand perfectly alone as major masterpieces of cinema, when combined into one longer epic, the effect on viewers becomes transcendental. Deliriously so.
Mapman Mike
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