Sanfranchester is a place made of akasha. It is a place accessed by a curious person living in Manchester, a place made from experience-recollection of Manchester and San Fransisco, their history, their culture, places interlinked. It is part of a curious world indeed, a realm of fables on and around the chess board, wherein is played the great game of love generating form of storylands, storylands of akasha, storylands that adorn the history of our world for mysterious reasons, worlds that are real. Sanfranchester is a place not just found within the strange Mancunian’s heart and mind, it is found also in others in Manchester and places elsewhere. Enter if you like, your world will never be the same again.

This Mancunian is called Beatfreak, one of many sucessors of the age of the Beats and the Freaks of the 50s and 60s, who in turn were sucessors of the Bohemian-Avant Garde-esoterica amongst whom were symbolists and surrealists and others.
Beatfreak had linked up to a group of strange beats and freaks of the past, who dwelled in the hidden corners of history, dwelling in hermitages made from the rejected corner stones of new discoveries of the old found in the 1950s and 1960s which have been even further elaborated upon in more modern times and extended, various things confirmed an new insights gained as new things have ben discovered.
Beatfreak had met this curious group on the akashic plane of free creativity and love during an extended voyage into otherworld. His akashic space ship was his vehicle and he had a secret parking port underneath his apartment an this specal ship could fly the spaces unhindered by the walls of buildings, invisible was his craft but not to akasha dwelllers nd visitors. Akasha had two types, those who lived there, and those who visited, Beatfreak like certain others in the strange woodwork of Manchester was a visitor.

Beatfreak had met a group which hailed back to a certain Pascal Beverly Randolph who existed in both regional lodge times of the PBR days, which were the mid to late 1800s and those later, extending into the early to mid 1900s.  There were, on the akashic level, PBR Rosicrucian lodges in San Fransisco which were havens of oriental interests and conssted of chess playing hash pipe smoking savants of the great mystery, a mystery concerning chess. This type of hash smoking chess playing alchemical Rosicrucianism established by akashic followers of Pascal Beverly Randolph, or PBR, whose motto was Try (a century later screamed in loving ectasy by Janis Joplin in her own way) was an inheritor of strange oriental mysteries which weave in and out of Syria as we shall see and one of which was to do with alchemical elixir matters concerning the sacrament hashish, used in combination with magnetistic visions in mirrors made of a strange black material. Magic mirrors, like that which Alice travelled to her Wonderland, aided hashish visions of not just these akashic PBRrs but ones in history too, sharing such a system with  magnetists that were associated with the earlier Memphis and Misraim Masonic rites, Cagliostro, as well as  Martinist-Boehemist lodges and other such latter day Rosicrucianism of the time, all entwined with a Scottish Rite masonry gone freeform with the new trends of Egyptian fascinations and the powers of new intuitions of the creative imagination. These were the days well before Crowley and others posed as true successors and liberators of that kind of stuff, which was also the stuff of early Bohemia with strange tangled roots even further back. The hashish smoke in the pipes of the akashic lodges however was in fact the very substance itself of the dreams, visions and experiences of hash smokers of the world we live in.
PBR was part African and did things for the cause of Africans in American history. He was born out of the very lands as depicted in the film the Gangs of New York, the Bowery depths of New York, which later became a kind of New Haight Ashbury in some ways competing with Haight Ashbury an drawing on different things also. He is considered by some to have been the first African American novelist. He was a free form Rosicrucian of the literary plane, although having contacts with real Rosicrucians of his time and having access to their works, as well as travelling in certain places in the Midle East an learning about the Druze, the Nuasiri and other strange sects on the fringes of the Christian, Jewish and Islamic realms, he didnt actually in fact join and represent any pre-existing Rosicrucian organisation, yet he crated his own.  He taught Middle Eastern traditions which drew from Tantric traditions from India. His sexual tantra however imperfectly understood at the time, and filtered through the Arab world’s strange fringes was exactly a hundred years before the era of the beat and the freak. He is a major foundation layer of the sexual yogic union filtred through Bohemian creativity which has become eclipsed by the dominance of OTO and Crowley lodges, which through various twists and turns lost some of his original vision.

This African American Rosicrucian was crafting his Rosicrucian novels while Charles Dickens was woodshedding with his ink and pen. His effects on the minds of many was later ‘corrected’ by the Theosophical Society, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, Brotherhood of Light, before the OTO and Crowley orders took all this filtered stuff in their own way. It was all this which later became the dominant force behind the esoteric of the latter day Bohemians, in the era before the beats, which was also the time when less conservative and antinomianianism moods crept in via Crowleyite and OTO type lodges. But nowhere was hashish used in tandem with Rosicrucianism more than in PBRs version.  There were those who claimed to suceed him, or borrow from him whilst leaving out the hashish sacrament too and a major branch of the American Rosicrucian organisations, which are at schism with one another uses PBR techings in its own way minus the hashish sacrament. Nevetherless not all latter day PBR’rs went down this edited non drug spirituality path. Some did some didnt and time rolled on by and the Rosicrucian lodges of Eulis in San Fransisco retreated onto the akashic plane, back to where they had originally emerged.
Akashic Rosicrucian lodges of hashish savants entwined with certain other curious souls besides Beatfreak, those involved with the nature mystics of the Californian wilderness, those on the edges of Mexican smoke trails..

(mencionada en la página 342 de La verdadera historia de las sociedades secretas)

Escrito atribuido a Hermes Trimegisto.

Aunque la Tabla Esmeraldina no es uno de los escritos del Corpus Hermeticum, sin embargo, desde que Marsilo Ficino tradujo aquellos extraños textos, ha estado asociada a ellos.

Edición del texto en latín de Chrysogonus Polydorus,
Nuremberg 1541.

A continuación, el texto de la Tabla Esmeraldina:

Thelema (ver Telema) ha sido traducido como “Voluntad”.

Más información en La verdadera historia de las sociedades secretas)

NEL QUARTO MISTERO RISPETTOSO si contempla Bella Swan che, insieme a Edward e Alice, si presenta al palazzo dei Volturi a Volterra (Italy).

La scena ricorda molto il romanzo IL PADRINO, quando don Vito Corleone, attorniato dal suo stato maggiore, riceve l’omaggio dei picciotti della mafia. Motivo del viaggio “mordi-e-fuggi” a Volterra: a causa di una serie di equivoci, Edward ha creduto che Bella fosse morta, per cui chiede la morte ai supervampiri etruschi (il suicidio è impossibile ai vampiri) e Bella con Alice lo devono fermare.

La domanda è: se persino io (nella mia pocaggine) riesco a inviare sms e foto, ci voleva tanto a mandare un messaggio di Bella “sono viva, amore mio!” e così evitare ’sto casino?

RISPOSTE:

A. Edward non sa usare il suo i-Phone.

B. Semplicemente, EDWARD E’ UN COGLIONE. Bellissimo, ma coglione. Ciò permette a moltissimi raga di immedesimarsi in lui.

C. La gita a Volterra è indispensabile per l’economia del romanzo; introduce una bella strage di turisti americani e questo piace molto agli estimatori del genere horror.

D. L’Italia ci sta sempre bene in una storia che gronda sangue e sesso; al pubblico americano piace immaginare l’Italia come la terra di Cagliostro, Machiavelli e Lucrezia Borgia (e naturalmente della mafia) perciò i vampiri ci stanno benissimo.

NEL QUINTO MISTERO DISPETTOSO si contempla Bella Swan che vuole diventare vampira, mentre Edward la prega di aspettare qualche anno.

L’equivoco è stato chiarito, i Volturi hanno decretato che Bella sarà la benvenuta nella comunità dei vampiri (lasciando alla famiglia Cullen la scelta sul come e il quando morderla), ma Edward non è contento.

La domanda è: perché?

RISPOSTE:

A. Edward è altruista: non vuole che Bella rinunci ai sapori dell’esistenza umana (il gorgonzola, ad esempio, o i tortellini in brodo o il recioto amarone) in cambio di una monotona dieta di sangue; sarà anche saporito il sangue, ma ci pensi nutrirsi di solo sangue PER L’ETERNITA’?

B. Edward ritiene Bella troppo immatura. Deve crescere, acquistare col tempo la saggezza e l’equilibrio di una vera donna. Magari tra vent’anni… (il guaio è che lei non vuole aspettare: vuole scopar abbracciarlo subito)

C. Edward è GAY (so che in America lo sospettano da tempo) o almeno ha forti tentazioni in tal senso; questo spiegherebbe il viaggio a Volterra: “se proprio non volete uccidermi, almeno accoglietemi nel vostro gruppo…”

D. Edward è semplicemente uno scapolone che sta bene da solo; da oltre un secolo ha le sue abitudini (il pianoforte, il baseball, ecc) e non è entusiasta della vita di coppia; l’amore è l’amore, certamente, ma vivere per l’eternità con una ragazzina che ti chiederà continuamente “MI AMI? MA QUANTO MI AMI? E MI AMI SEMPRE COME LA PRIMA VOLTA?”  non è il massimo(diciamo così); e non avrai neanche il sonnellino post-coitum (“ti è piaciuto, amore?” RON-RON-RON) perchè i vampiri non dormono mai…

IN SINTESI: questo romanzo è un cesso e non l’ho inserito nell’elenco di BOOKLAND (mentre TWILIGHT ce l’ho messo); spero che il film venga meglio.

Characters #4: Retaux de Villette

Like almost everyone else involved in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, Retaux de Villette left a first-hand account for posterity. Memoirs were something of a vogue, and nearly everyone had one–Madame de La Motte, Monsieur de La Motte, and Comte Beugnot to name a few involved directly in the affair. Villette’s memoirs were published in Venice in 1790 under the name “Mémoires Historiques des Intrigues de la Cour”.

The “intrigue” is, of course, the Affair of the Diamond Necklace which Retaux de Villette had a very intimate involvement in.

Villette, a tall blonde-haired blue-eyed young man had known Nicolas Marc-Antoine de La Motte since childhood. They were both born in Bar-sur-Aube and both went into the cavalry at the garrison of Lunéville. Villette was relatively well educated and accomplished, with a good voice, the ability to play the mandolin almost professionally, and some real flair for penmanship and writing. He was published in a few European newspapers such as the Gazette of Leyden.

His relationship with his friend Nicolas’s wife (Jeanne de La Motte-Valois) is a little sketchy. But it seems fairly likely that there was a ménage à trois between them. He certainly was named Madame de La Motte’s “personal secretary”. Certainly he was good with a pen, but one suspects that “personal secretary” was as much a euphemism as a job title. Villette himself admits in his memoir that he “loved Madame de La Motte to distraction”.

In any case, Villette was always in financial trouble. According to a friend of Madame de La Motte’s, a young lawyer named Jacques Claude Beugnot, he lived an itinerant lifestyle, leaving a trail of debts and running from them. He therefore had something in common with Mme de La Motte: financial desperation. It wasn’t much of a leap, therefore, for the two to go from (probable) lovers to co-conspirators . . . with M. de La Motte in on it, too.

Villette was her accomplice in many of the schemes Mme de La Motte used to fool Cardinal Rohan. She made sure to appear as though she were leaving the Petit Trianon, so as to appear to have just come from Marie-Antoinette’s ultra-exclusive haven. She met Cardinal Rohan (who was in disguise) at a predestined spot and, when he asked, told him the Villette was “Desclaux”, the queen’s confidential messenger. This would be a very important element later on.

Villette was more than a prop, however. His facility with a pen made him an expert forger. To convince Cardinal Rohan to give money to Mme de La Motte, letters were forged on gilt-edged stationary. The forger was none other than Villette. On the final contract authorizing the sale of a 1.6-million-franc, 2800-carat necklace, he forged the name “Marie Antoinette de France”–which means nothing, as a queen would never sign “de France”. In his memoirs, Villette claims that Cardinal Rohan was present and suggested the addition of “de France”. Villette really had no reason to lie here, and the Cardinal had every reason to lie about it. The truth is foggy, but I tend to believe that Cardinal was not there.

The Grove of Venus scene occurred in the summer of 1784.  In order to further convince the wavering Cardinal of the veracity of her relationship with the queen, Mme de La Motte arranged a rendezvous between him and the queen. Of course, the woman in the scene was not the queen, but a prostitute named Nicole d’Oliva. Retaux acted as lookout. Nicole d’Oliva remembers seeing him in the darkness of the gardens, but only learning his identity later on. After the Cardinal had been given a rose by Nicole (“the queen”), Villette raised the alarm and the Cardinal, Mme de La Motte, M de La Motte, and Villette all fled.

The necklace referenced above was the prize in this game of forgery and deception. Together, Villette and the La Mottes convinced Cardinal Rohan that he had been selected by the queen as a go-between in the purchase of a massively expensive diamond necklace. The Cardinal was gratified to be restored to the Queen’s favor after years of being out of favor. Mme de La Motte intended to steal the necklace. To accomplish this, the Cardinal had to believe he was handing the necklace over to a trusted servant of the Queen. Enter Villette, whom Mme de La Motte had already told the Cardinal was the Queen’s messenger. After negotiating for the necklace, Rohan received it and handed it over to Villette in the presence of Mme de La Motte. This, at least, is what can be deduced from all the reports.

The necklace disappeared. “As early as the month of February,” according to Counselor-at-law Target, ”Sieur Retaux de Villette was picked up for questioning by the Paris police . . . on the subject of a considerable number of diamonds found on upon his person.” He was allowed to go. Indeed, he was able to escape to Switzerland, but when the plot was uncovered, he was arrested in Geneva and “dragged off to the prisons of Paris”. He claims in his memoirs that he kept silence, but the police report shows that he made some rather lurid revelations about his very physical relationship with Mme de La Motte. He admitted to forgery but professed to be nothing more than a unwitting pawn, an eighteenth-century Xerox machine.

The trial that now took place was the trial of the century. The Cardinal, Mme and M de La Motte, Nicole d’Oliva, an occultist name Count Cagliostro, and Retaux de Villette were all put on trial for the theft of the necklace and the crime of lèse majesté (criminal disrespect for the person of the queen–in this case, referring to the Grove of Venus scene). Villette’s role as forger and accomplice was made fully public. On May 31, 1785, the trial ended with Villette banished from France for life, his belongings forfeit to the king. He went to Venice where he published his memoires, where he later died (I could not find an exact date).

The Characters #3: Count Cagliostro

It has been ascertained that Count Alessandro di Cagliostrowas almost certainly Giuseppe Balsamo, an Italian adventurer and occultist who made his way by tricking wealthy people into believing in all kinds of fantastic tales and in his own spiritual powers. In other words, he was a con man and a cheat.

This begs the question, What in the name of all that is [un]holy does a man like this have to do with a jewel heist perpetrated by a desperate and very obscure scion of a defunct royal house?

First, to begin at beginning; if Count Cagliostro was the Giuseppe Balsamo that he is believed to be, he was born in 1743 in Sicily. His lineage was very humble and his family not particularly wealthy. He did, however, receive a good education and began early to trick and swindle the wealthy people around him [some interesting stories are included in this Wikipedia article]. The story would be that the coarse and crude Italian “metamorphosed” (as Frances Mossikerputs it) into the sophisticated, unctuous, sought-after, and influential Count Cagliostro. Frances Mossiker, for one, has her doubts that Giuseppe Balsamowas Count Cagliostro.

However, it is established fact that Count Cagliostro toured Europe extensively, selling his act. His act was that of a mystic and occultist. He was “apostle, prophet, adept” and “Grand Cophta to the Masons”. He claimed to be an Egyptian (a very old Egyptian) and an initiate into the secrets of nature. He could cure disease and prolong life.  He lived in opulence, but apparently no one could ascertain the source of his wealth, though it hardly takes much brain power to assume that his many wealthy admirers had something to do with the affluence, no matter how clever he was at keeping his money flow cloaked in secrecy.

He kept everything cloaked in secrecy, the better to create an air of mystery. Doubtless, he had learned some convincing parlor tricks and was able to fool people who were largely uneducated and superstitious. To this day, people are susceptible to suggestion; they see and hear what they wish to see and hear. In the late eighteenth century, science was in its infancy and old mysticism remained. France still adhered to the Catholic faith, which tells of the miraclesof transubstantiation and the saints. Surely a little of this belief in the miraculous bled over into the acceptance of Count Cagliostro’s occultism.

In September 1780, Count Cagliostro arrived in the city of Strasbourg in France, the home of Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan. The Cardinal, like many other welathy, important, and trendy personages throughout Europe, believed in Cagliostro. At first, Count Cagliostro played hard to get–a useful method of winning trust. Soon enough, Cagliostro and his wife–who was lovely and illiterate–were ensconced in the Cardinal’s chateau at Saverne. He became one of the Cardinal’s closest advisers. His presence there became a source of curiosity. This interesting first hand account is from the Baronness d’Oberkirch (again, I am indebted to Frances Mossiker’s book):

Just as soon as we returned from our trip to Germany, we went immediately to Saverne, where His Eminence had built and decorated a palace fit for a sovereign. . . . It was three o’clock in the afternoon when we arrived, and His Eminence was just coming from his chapel, wearing a scarlet moiré soutane and an absolutely priceless rochet of English lace. . . . The Prince came forward, in his hand a rare and magnificent illuminated book of devotions. . . He was describing a recent trip to his diocese across the Rhine when he was suddenly interrupted by a footman, who, flinging widenot one but both the double doors–the highest mark of honor–announced, “Hos Excellency, Count Cagliostro!”

I whirled around in my chair. I had heard talk of this adventurer, of course, ever since my return to Strasbourg, but I had not yet seen him. I was absolutely stunned to see him make this kind of earnest entrance into the Cardinal’s salon, to hear him announced with such pomp and ceremony; still more amazed when I witnessed the welcome the Cardinal gave him.

While not actually handsome, his face was the most remarkable I have ever seen. His eyes, above all. They were indescribable, with supernatural depths–all fire and yet all ice. It seemed to me that if any two artists sketched him, the two portraits , while having some slight resemblance, might yet well be totally dissimilar. . . .

Cagliostro had fixed his eyes upon me from the moment he had entered. My husband must have been making signs to me to suggest our leaving, but I never noticed at the time. I was conscious of only one thing: Cagliostro’s eyes boring into my brain like a drill. I can find no other expression to fit the sensation.

Suddenly, Cagliostrointerrupted the Cardinal and spoke abruptly:

“You lost your mother long ago. You hardly remember her. You were an only child. You have one daughter–and she will be an only child. You will have no more children.”

I started in surprise and looked over my shoulder to see who is was to whom he was talking, for I simply could not believe that he had had the audacity to address me, a woman of quality, directly (a surprise I have no got over to this day).

In fact, Cagliostro was correct about what he supposedly predicted.

It was while under the Cardinal’s protection that Jeanne de La Motte-Valois apparently accompanied her patroness, the Marquise de Boulainvilliers, to meet with Count Cagliostro. The Marquise believed in his powers and went to Strasbourg to be healed, taking along Jeanne, who met both Cardinal Rohan and (probably) Count Cagliostro at this time.

Some time later, after the Marquise’s death, Madame de La Motteonce again reappeared, this time calling herself a good friend of the queen’s. Count Cagliostro apparently read the signs and declared the omens to be good: the supposed correspondence with the queen (conveyed through Madame de La Motte) would bring about great political gains for the Cardinal. This, along with Madame de La Motte’s careful manipulation of the situation, convinced the Cardinal of Madame de La Motte’s veracity.

Of course, it was all a plot to bilk the Cardinal of his money and, eventually, to steal a massively expensive diamond necklace when the opportunity presented itself. This plot dragged in the queen, whose name Madame de La Motte used to gain the Cardinal’s confidence. As soon as the top was blown off the entire affair and the whistle was blown, Madame de La Motte wasted no time in implicating Cagliostro.

If nothing else, Cagliostro made the trial interesting. He had a flair for the spectacular (in the sense of “making a spectacle”). While being questioned, Cagliostro remarked that he could think of no misdeed to account for his arrest, unless it were the assassination of Pompey Magnus, although he had done that only on Pharaoh’s orders. The interrogator replied dryly that he would refrain from going into criminal matters that had transpired under his predecessors in office.

Whatever his role may have been in the jewel heist, Cagliostro was acquitted. Either the parlement acquitted him for his sheer cheek and entertainment value, Cagliostro managed to cover his tracks sufficiently, or perhaps Cagliostro was only guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was asked to leave France anyway by a king whose wife had been thoroughly insulted. He began his travels throughout Europe once again, getting up to all of his old tricks. Cagliostro ended up finally in an Italian jail. In December 1789, he and his wife were locked up in the papal Castel Sant’Angelo after being apprehended by the Inquisition. They were sentenced to life in prison. Cagliostro made inscriptions upon his cell’s walls; the last one dates from March 6, 1795, and in October he was reported dead. The Papal states were invaded in 1797, but those who went to free the Count were told he had recently died. His exact date of death seems to be unclear.

The involvement of  such a person as Count Cagliostro in the Affair of the Necklace gives it something of a carnival feel, like an insane stage play gone wrong. Imagine David Blaine or Kris Angel being involved in a theft of Fort Knox involving a strumpet who turned out to be related distantly to the Kennedys, and somehow implicating President Obama. Oh, and a common hooker was plucked off the streets to play the part of Mrs Obama (actually, here the analogy fails because Mrs Obama is highly respected and Marie-Antoinette had a salacious reputation). Truth really is stranger than fiction.

The grand old man of pit-diving, Iggy Pop, has gotten in touch with his inner chanteur.  His new album, Préliminaires (officially released in the U.S. today), is ballad after ballad.

But perhaps as interestingly, The Shirtless One’s newest has lyrics based on French author Michel Houellebecq’s apocalyptic clone saga The Possibility of an Island… and so takes its place as the latest in a distinguished line (Dylan, Bowie, Pink Floyd, et al.) of rock albums based on important works of literature.

As we hum along, we might tip the birthday beret to Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, born on this date in 1744.  In one popular version of his life, he was he was a nobleman and great magus; in the other, a scheming fraud. The latter holds that Cagliostro was born Giuseppe Balsamo to a poor family in Palermo, Sicily, and that, when his father died, he was educated at the expense of some of his mother’s relatives. It has been said that he robbed his uncle, forged a will, and spent time in Palermo’s prisons more than once.  (Indeed, his reputation as a charlatan is so great that he shows up as a crooked character in Marvel’s Dr. Strange) In any case, it does seem that he was a “man of the era”– he knew and mixed with illustrious contemporaries like Mozart, Goethe, Casanova, and Catherine the Great…  but apparently not his fellow noble and birthday buddy, the Marquis de Sade (who was born on this date four years earlier, in 1740).

Alessandro di Cagliostro

il tremendo e gigantesco gatto Mogano,così chiamato per la farlocca tinta nera che si porta appresso,figura tra i nemici del Quachete.

Oltre a fare solo finta di essere nero riuscendo solo ad essere un po’ mogano,questo gatto oggettivamente puzza,e si è più volte reso partecipe di attacchi nei confronti della gabbietta del Quachete,sempre valorosamente difesa dal nostro Quachetone a colpi di orecchie.

Voci di corridoio e la stampa estera parlano in realtà di lui col nome,forse falso,di Cagliostro.

Ma eccolo in tutto il suo “splendore”:

il gatto Mogano sa sempre dove sdraiarsi per dare più fastidio:

In America si chiama THE VILLAIN ROLE. In italiano, il ruolo del cattivo, della carogna, di quello “che quando muore il pubblico è contento”.

Gli attori (per lo più) non lo amano. Alcuni GRANDI ATTORI lo hanno fatto molto bene: Orson Welles, Eli Wallach, Christopher Lee, Al Pacino, ecc.

Lo faceva BENISSIMO Gian Maria Volontè. Ve lo ricordate in “Indagine su un cittadino ecc?”

E a Hollywood spesso hanno pensato di affidare questo ruolo ad attori italiani.

Dopo farò alcuni esempi. Ma la domanda è: perché hanno pensato agli italiani?

Credo che nell’immaginario collettivo degli americani (non gli intellettuali, voglio dire gli americani “medi” dei paesotti e delle periferie, tutti TV birra e Reader’s Digest) l’italiano sia visto istintivamente come quello che ti pugnala alle spalle, BUGIARDO, DOPPIOGIOCHISTA E (naturalmente) MAFIOSO.

C’è una lunga, secolare tradizione di stereotipi che risale al teatro elisabettiano, alle leggende anticattoliche: noi siamo i MACHIAVELLI, le LUCREZIE BORGIE, i CAGLIOSTRO, i GESUITI ecc.

Ho in mente un post sulla saga del PADRINO. Mi servirà per approfondire il concetto. Per oggi mi limito a citare tre grandi attori italiani che hanno “fatto i cattivi” oltreoceano.

Vittorio Gassman – Andò in America alla fine degli anni ‘70 e interpretò (benissimo) alcuni villain roles: ve li ricordate Quintet (Robert Altman), La Tempesta (Paul Mazursky) e Pelle di sbirro (Burt Reynolds)?

Adolfo Celi – Un grande attore, per lo più noto per ruoli brillanti, ma capace di mettersi la maschera del Supercattivo contro James Bond in Thunderball Operazione tuono (1965).

Sergio Castellitto – Lo abbiamo visto di recente nella parte del malvagio re Miraz (e accanto a lui c’era Pierfrancesco Favino, un’altra bella “faccia da cattivo”) in un film mediocre. Ne ho parlato nel post http://ilbibliofilo.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/il-principe-caspian-contro-i-conquistadores/trackback/  e penso che l’interpretazione di Sergio basti da sola a giustificare il prezzo del biglietto.

Leopardnomicon

Necronomicon

The Necronomicon is a fictional book appearing in the stories by horror novelist H. P. Lovecraft. Among other things, the work contains an account of the Old Ones, their history, and the means for summoning them.

Lovecraft wrote that the title, as translated from the Greek language, meant “an image of the law of the dead”: nekros – νεκρός (“dead”), nomos – νόμος (“law”), eikon – εικών (“image”). A more prosaic translation can be derived by conjugating nemo (“to consider”): “Concerning the dead”.

Guard Mecha Nerval

Gérard de Nerval

Gérard de Nerval (1808 – 1855) was the nom-de-plume of the French poet, essayist and translator Gérard Labrunie, one of the most essentially Romantic French poets.

Gérard de Nerval Insanity

Gérard de Nerval’s first nervous breakdown occurred in 1841. In a series of novellas, collected as Les Illuminés, ou les précurseurs du socialisme (1852), on themes suggested by the careers of Rétif de la Bretonne, Cagliostro and others, he gave shape to feelings that followed his third attack of insanity. Increasingly poverty-stricken and disoriented, he finally committed suicide in 1855, hanging himself from a window grating.

Cagliostro sembra condannato a una perenne ambiguità biografica: maestro illuminato per alcuni, volgare impostore per altri.

Grazie all’esame di una imponente mole di documenti, questo volume si propone di offrire un’interpretazione più approfondita dalla quale la figura di Cagliostro emerge nella sua poco nota ma storica realtà:

quella di riformatore religioso e apostolo di un nuovo culto che mescolava temi della massoneria esoterica, dello spiritualismo occulto e tensioni filantropiche illuministiche.

Paolo Cortesi è scrittore e saggista, con decine di volumi e centinaia di articoli al suo attivo. Si occupa in particolare di storia delle fenomenologie culturali occidentali e di storia moderna e contemporanea. Tra le sue ultime pubblicazioni: Manoscritti segreti, Il libro nero del Medioevo (entrambi editi da Newton & Compton) e il romanzo storico Il fuoco, la carne (Premio Todaro Faranda 2003, Perdisa editore).

		Paolo Cortesi Cagliostro Maestro illuminato o volgare impostore?
		Newton&Compton Remainders Compralo su Macrolibrarsi

Começando a resolução de ano-novo que falei no post anterior, vamos aos primeiros mini-reviews do ano!

1 – Lupin III – Castelo Cagliostro – Rupan Sansei: Kariosutoro no Shiro – 1979 – Hayao Miyazaki

O Castelo Cagliostro

Apesar de gostar de animes esse foi o meu primeiro contato com o famoso Lupin, e minha impressão foi a melhor possível. O desenho é ágil, o enredo é inteligente, todos os personagens são carismáticos. Lupin é um famoso ladrão que e levado a visitar o Castelo Cagliostro para descobrir (e roubar) o segredo das famosas falsificações provenientes de lá. No decorrer do filme, vemos que o ladrão tem tem um interesse mais profundo em tudo aquilo.Lupin é um herói swashbuckler pra não botar defeito. E a direção de Hayao Miyazaki fecha o pacote com louvor.

2 – The Blues Brothers – 1980 – John Landis

The Blues Brothers

Eu deveria fazer um post só sobre este filme, mas não o farei. Não agora. Só vou te dizer uma coisa, assista. Dan Aykroyd e John Belushi, comediantes que ficaram famosos no Saturday Night Live e levaram para as telas os Blues Brothers, personagens do programa que eram os lideres da banda de rythim blues The Blues Brothers, composta especialmente para o programa e recheada de músicos de peso. Um filme com participações mais que especiais como James Brown, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles e John Lee Hooker, além de vários comediantes como John Candy ou ainda Carrie Fisher, a eterna princesa Leia. Assista. Me arrependi de ter assistido só agora.

3- Canibais – Undead – Michael Spierig e Peter Spierig.

Canibais

Deveria ter dado 5 espadinhas pra esse filme, mas ele tem um que de estranho que não me permite faze-lo. Mas o filme é um colosso. Meteoros caem do céu trazendo uma infestação zumbi, acompanhados de chuva acída, extraterrestres e muros gigantes. Um fazendeiro que faria o Batman ter receio poderá salvar o dia? Tem potencial pra ser um novo Evil Dead. Tem cenas de filme de terror, mas não é um terror. Tem cenas de Sci Fi e Zumbis, mas não é especificamente nenhum desses. O final é ótimo.Vale a pena.

25, Via Cairoli – Lecce

ore 22.30

Concerto

Vuaolè vocal quintet

I’ve watched a few animated movies lately. Not on purpose but the Netflix gods ordered my queue in such a way that I received South Park, Kung Fu Panda and Iron Giant in my mail cubbie in the past couple of weeks. Kung Fu Panda was excellent, South Park had its moments and I couldn’t quite understand the hubbub about Iron Giant.

Since I’ve watched many animated films and just about all of the so-called classics, I thought I’d revive the Top Four with a foray into the world of cartoons. Yep, cartoons.

1. The Incredibles

It looks like Pixar has changed the animation landscape to digital. Most of the studio’s films have been quality and, looking through some all-time lists, people seem to point to Finding Nemo and the Toy Stories as their best. The Toy Story movies are awesome (didn’t think much of Finding Nemo) but my favorite digitally animated or computer animated or whatever the Pixar genre is called is The Incredibles. Just an all-around fun movie with solid action and good humor. Kung Fu Panda may take the prize away in the future but so far the Incredibles has a place on my list.

2. Aladdin

Well, Disney could have provided this complete list but let’s not get all intimate with old Walt’s remains. I was surprised to see films like Bambi, Fantasia and Cinderella on the all-time lists. I guess they’re classics but they’re sort of boring. The Disney films in the 1990s are the true masterpieces in the portfolio. And anyway, among the old ones, the ancien regime if you will, Sword in the Stone and Robin Hood were much better than those sappy fairy tales. Of the newer films, Little Mermaid was good, Beauty and the Beast was better, Lion King was great but Aladdin was the best. An amazing villain, excellent songs, the best Disney character in history in the Genie and so and so forth. I checked it out the other day and it was every bit as good as I remember.

3. Castle of Cagliostro

Hiyao Miyazaki reminds me a bit of Stanley Kubrick – one of those film-makers who have inspired a school of thought that maintains his every film is a classic. While they have made excellent films no doubt, I’m not about to pretend Kiki’s Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro or Howl’s Moving Castle are any good. I also think Spirited Away, despite being a beautiful movie, is over-rated… as is Princess Mononoke. For Miyazaki’s best work, look earlier in his career (hmm, sort of like Kubrick, eh?) to Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Porco Rosso and, my favorite, Castle of Cagliostro. The film uses a popular anime character, Lupin III, but transplants him into a delightful action movie with a great story. I never get bored with this movie.

4. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

This is the best animated movie ever. I can’t believe it doesn’t crack any Top 25 lists. First of all, this is the best Batman movie ever – better even than the recent Christian Bale movies which have been pretty damn good. It’s also the best superhero movie ever. It’s not the best movie ever. I’m not going that far. But, to use a word of literary power, it’s awesome. The film is saturated by the pure drama that is Batman and a brilliant portrayal of the Joker. Frank Miller may have reinvented Batman with his Dark Knight graphic novel but I think Batman: The Animated Series has done more to cement the current image of the superhero in the public conscious. The series revolutionized animation by drawing on black backgrounds, created the classic image of Gotham and influenced how we think of the main characters. Mask of the Phantasm is the culmination of the series, stuffing everything that was great about it into one excellent movie and reaching the apex of animated film along the way.

Spesso ho bisogno di ricordare uno o più termini linguistici che si riferiscono ad un tema, ad un argomento, ad uno specifico concetto.
Qual è il nome di quell’occultista esoterico che molti avevano paragonato per importanza a Cagliostro? Ricordo che aveva fondato una specie di esperimento sociale in Sicilia, dove però aveva scandalizzato gli abitanti del luogo…
Come si chiamava lo strumento utilizzato nell’antichità per orientarsi durante la navigazione? Ricordo che ne è stato trovato uno davvero sorprendente per l’età e per il dettaglio delle sue componenti…
Ma non mi ricordo altro.

Il primo strumento capace di individuare un termine partendo da un concetto (o meglio: da altre parole legate a quell’ambito semantico) lo mette a disposizione Google, e si trova all’indirizzo http://labs.google.com/sets.
Per ora è solamente in inglese, ma può essere utile soprattutto con i nomi propri. Occorre inserire nei campi della pagina qualche parola che si sa essere parte della “nuvola semantica” che si sta cercando, e Google pescherà tante altre parolette che potrebbero fare comodo.

Provo prima con ‘honda’ assieme a ‘ducati’, poi con ‘honda’ assieme a ‘mercedes’. Quanto è affidabile? Per ora poco: se cerco ‘medicine’, ‘cure’ e ‘placebo’ sto mirando ad un ambito musicale o medico? Continuate ad utilizzarlo, quando sarà grande potrà esservi molto utile.

Il secondo strumento consiste in un uso “alternativo” di Wikipedia; in questo caso abbiamo a disposizione anche l’italiano. Cerco l’argomento che mi interessa, ad esempio ‘Linea’. Vado su http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linea; ora cerco nel menu di servizio (sotto la voce “strumenti”) il link ‘Puntano qui’, e ottengo l’elenco di quelle pagine di Wikipedia che contengono un collegamento alla pagina sulla linea.

Per tornare agli esempi fatti all’inizio del post cerco l’elenco delle pagine che puntano alla voce “occulto” (http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciale:PuntanoQui/Occulto) e lo scorro; non trovandoci nulla che mi faccia suonare qualche cosa in testa provo con “cagliostro” (http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciale:PuntanoQui/Cagliostro), e a questo punto lo trovo: Aleister Crowley, nato Edward Alexander.

Per il secondo esempio cerco i link che puntano alla pagina relativa alla navigazione, e tra questi scopro la parola astrolabio. E’ lei.
Ma in questo caso posso spingermi oltre: visitando quella pagina, difatti, leggo che tra le voci correlate viene proposta anche la “macchina di Anticitera“, che è il più antico calcolatore meccanico conosciuto, scoperto nel 1900 ad Antikythera. Ecco fatto, trovato ciò che cercavo.

Quanto è attendibile? Ancora una volta, poco: si tratta di link inseriti da quegli stessi utenti che hanno generato i contenuti, quindi sono contenuti controllati, ma solo fino ad un certo punto, e occorre girare un po’ alcune delle pagine ottenute per capire come mai sono collegate all’argomento ricercato.
Per capirsi: credo sia ancora prematuro scrivere un qualche programma che permetta questo tipo di correlazione in automatico. Un mio spider ha raccolto in un DB tutte le voci di Wikipedia e le parole ad esse collegate, ottenendo una specie di “nuvola semantica”: ma molti collegamenti sono arbitrari e discutibili e andrebbero puliti a mano. Restiamo in attesa di vedere come evolvono le API di Wikipedia…