Ataraxia

  Death by Woody Allen, once a venerated film maker, rather controversial in the present, seeing that his private life casts a shadow, my reviews are at: https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html   7 out of 10   Woody Allen https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/annie-hall-screenplay-by-woody-allen.html was once nec plus ultra, crème de la crème, he could not go wrong, his comedies were sophisticated, challenging, dazzling, you could even enjoy a drama by this special auteur, or a thriller, murder mystery, as in…   Manhattan Murder Mystery, nevertheless, as some critics have pointed out, but not when those oeuvres were the toast of the festivals, even the Oscars, where the man has won four Academy Awards, in more recent years, some have observed (or is it most, maybe all relevant partis) that there is a redundancy in the scripts. Worse still, the film maker appears to encourage a sort of malevolent, pernicious relat...

  The Major and The Minor, suggested by a play by Edward Childs Carpenter, directed by Billy Wilder 9.6 out of 10 This release from 1942 has been included on The New York Times' Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made, although it could be more controversial today. There is after all a relationship between an adult, The Major,  and an alleged Minor, Susan Applegate aka the legendary Ginger Rogers, albeit the plot of the motion picture is more complicated. The heroine, Susan Applegate, tries to make a living far from her small hometown in Iowa, in the ferocious medium of New York, where she tries various positions, including that of masseuse. She is sent to offer her services to the married, but philandering Albert Osborne, who makes the joke 'you need to get out of the wet coat, into a dry Martini', but his overall intentions are not appropriate, on the contrary,  he is harassing the poor woman, to the point where she throws the egg meant for the head scalp over his face. She declare...

  Modern theater can be full of vitality, dynamic, virulent and enjoyable .   Look Back in Anger is proof to that statement, even if the action takes place mostly in a one room apartment. Jimmy Porter is married to Alison, but their relationship is on the edge. In the first place I thought the complications will be brought in by the presence of Cliff, a lodger that was trying to keep a balance and cool down the heated debates between spouses. It looked like on the face of things Cliff was friendly to both, but in secret he longed for Alison and her love. I was wrong in assuming that he will create havoc. Cliff is honest and tries to keep the two from hurting each other, without success. At one point Alison is hurt when a rough play is making her touch the heated iron used for clothes and Jimmy is thrown out. Jimmy is angry, as we can gather from the title and his behavior. The frustration could be psychoanalyzed, but it has to do with the rejection of the mother and father-in-...

 

  Usa interzisa aka The Forbidden Door by Gabriel Liiceanu Another version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at: -               https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEVa4_CsRStSBBDo4uJWT8BSWtTTn0N1E Gabriel Liiceanu is one of...The Smartest Guys in the Room. Any room. But unlike the men who made the headlines for the wrong reasons I the infamous Enron case, the philosopher is not just one of the smartest. He also has an impressive EQ. And what is more, he talks about ethics, values, good and evil, truth in an epoque of post truth. Together with his friend Andrei Plesu they represent what this country has best. They have been involved in public life and helped Romanian society find some of its lost moral standards. Gabriel Liiceanu and Andrei Plesu cannot be separated-I think- and we can look up to them as symbols of virtue, dedication and elites in the best sense of the word. We have two l...

  Tristan by Thomas Mann, one of my favorite writers, whose Magic Mountain is 29 th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, it is also one of the Top 100 Greatest Books of Ever Written as listed by The Bokklubben World Library, you may wish to check https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html   9 out of 10   Tristan https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/tristan-by-thomas-mann-magic-mountain.html is The Magic Mountain on a smaller scale, this is what I said in my previous review of this oeuvre, a novella, and I can see why, for there are similarities, even if The Magic Mountain is a magnum opus, while Tristan a short story   We have a sanatorium as setting for both narratives, and that reminds of my time spent in hospital, quite a few months, back when I was a student at the University – furthermore, in the case of The Magic Mountain, the backdrop, the high altitude of Switzerland, if I am not imagining this, I am not...