FELIZ ANO NOVO / HAPPY NEW YEAR

Desejo um extraordinário ano de 2011 para todos, com tudo de bom!!!!!
I wish an amazing year of 2011 for all, with the best of the best!!!!

Feliz Natal / Merry Christmas... with peace, health and lots of love!!

Anna Karina

 

Anna Karina 

Biography

Anna Karina (born Hanna Karin Blarke Bayer September 22, 1940) is a Danish born film actress who works in France.
Her father was a ship’s captain. Before Anna turned one, he had left her mother. After being raised by her maternal grandparents, where she stayed until the age of four, she spent time in and out of foster homes, before returning to live with her mother from the age of eight. She has described her childhood as “terribly wanting to be loved” and made numerous attempts as a child to run away from home.
She began her career in Denmark, where she sang in cabarets and worked as a model playing in commercials and short films. She came to Paris in 1958 at age 17 where she met Pierre Cardin and Coco Chanel, who convinced her to change her name to Anna Karina.

As a rising fashion model, she was noticed by Jean-Luc Godard, then a film critic for Cahiers du cinéma. Her first film appearance, although unauthorized, dates from 1959, when a soap advertisement in which… read more

"Anna Karina (born Hanna Karin Blarke Bayer September 22, 1940) is a Danish born film actress who works in France.

Her father was a ship’s captain. Before Anna turned one, he had left her mother. After being raised by her maternal grandparents, where she stayed until the age of four, she spent time in and out of foster homes, before returning to live with her mother from the age of eight. She has described her childhood as “terribly wanting to be loved” and made numerous attempts as a child to run away from home.

She began her career in Denmark, where she sang in cabarets and worked as a model playing in commercials and short films. She came to Paris in 1958 at age 17 where she met Pierre Cardin and Coco Chanel, who convinced her to change her name to Anna Karina.

As a rising fashion model, she was noticed by Jean-Luc Godard, then a film critic for Cahiers du cinéma. Her first film appearance, although unauthorized, dates from 1959, when a soap advertisement in which she appeared as a model was included near the end of Guy Debord’s On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time. The image was accompanied by Debord’s voice-over “The advertisements during intermissions are the truest reflection of an intermission from life.” According to Godard’s biographer, Colin Macabe, Godard was in the middle of casting his debut feature film, A bout de souffle, that same year when he saw Karina in a series of Palmolive ads in a bath covered in soapsuds. He offered her an important part in the film, which she turned down because of a nude scene. When Godard questioned her about her refusal, referring to the supposed nudity in the Palmolive ads, she is said to have replied “Are you mad? I was fully clothed in those ads — the soapsuds went up to my neck. It was in your mind that I was undressed.” The character Godard had reserved for her did not appear in the film. However, she eventually accepted his offer to play a major role in Le Petit Soldat (1960).

Godard and Karina married on 3 March 1961, during the shooting of Une femme est une femme, and divorced in 1968.

Karina was awarded best actress at the Berlin Film Festival in 1961 for her interpretation of the character Angela in the film Une femme est une femme. Her acting career was not however limited to Godard’s films, and she went on to a successful collaboration with other well-known directors. Her role in Suzanne Simonin, la Religieuse de Diderot (1967) by Jacques Rivette is considered by some as her best performance. She also acted in Luchino Visconti’s L’Etranger.

In 1973 she made her directing debut in Vivre Ensemble in which she also acted. She wrote and acted in Last Song in 1987. More recently, she appeared in Haut, Bas, Fragile (1995) by Jacques Rivette and sang in The Truth About Charlie.

Karina has also maintained an important singing career. At the beginning of the 1960s, she scored a major hit with “Sous le soleil exactement” and “Roller Girl”, both songs taken from the musical comedy “Anna” by Serge Gainsbourg in which she sings seven songs alongside Serge Gainsbourg and Jean-Claude Brialy. More recently, she recorded an album entitled “Une histoire d’amour” with Philippe Katerine, which was followed up by a concert tour. Karina has also written three novels and made several appearances on television. In 2005 she released “Chansons de films”, a collection of songs sung in movies. She is scheduled to write, direct and star in “Dame de Coeur”, a musical road movie to be filmed in Montreal."

Rotten Tomatoes

WATCH: http://mubi.com/cast_members/2867

The Truth by Alain Badiou

"Truth is the subjective development of that which is at once both new and universal. New: that which is unforeseen by the order of creation. Universal: that which can interest, rightly, every human individual, according to his pure humanity." 

Alain Badiou

The History of SUSHI

 The History of SUSHI

"We can trace sushi's origin back to the 4th century BC in Southeast Asia. As a preserved food, the salted fish, fermented with rice, was an important source of protein. The cleaned and gutted fish were kept in rice so that the natural fermentation of the rice helped preserve the fish. This type of sushi is called nare-zushi, and was taken out of storage after a couple of months of fermentation, and then only the fish was consumed while the rice was discarded.

Over time, it spread throughout China, and later, around the 8th century AD, in the Heian period, it was introduced into Japan. Since Japanese preferred to eat rice together with fish, the sushi, called seisei-zushi, became popular at the end of Muromachi period. This type of sushi was consumed while the fish was still partly raw and the rice had not lost its flavor. In this way, sushi became more of a cuisine rather than a way to preserve food.

Later in Edo era, Japanese began making haya-zushi, which was created as a way to eat both rice and fish; this dish was unique to Japanese culture. Instead of being only used for fermentation, rice was mixed with vinegar and combined not only with fish but also with various vegetables and dried preserved foods. Today, each region of Japan still preserves its own unique taste by utilizing local products in making different kinds of sushi that have been passed on for generations.

At the beginning of the19th century, when Tokyo was still called Edo, the food service industry was mostly dominated by mobile food stalls, from which nigiri-zushi originated. Edomae, which literally means "in front of Tokyo bay," was where the fresh fish and tasty seaweed for the nigiri-zushi were obtained. As a result, it was also called edomae-zushi, and it became popular among the people in Edo after Yohei Hanaya, a creative sushi chief, improved it to a simple but delicious food. Then, after the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923, nigiri sushi spread throughout Japan as the skilled edomae-zushi chefs from Edo, who had lost their jobs, were diffused all over Japan.

In the 1980s, in the wake of increased health consciousness, sushi, one of the healthiest meals around, has gotten much more attention; consequently, sushi bars have increased in the United States. With the introduction of sushi machines, which combines the mass production of sushi with the delicate skills used by sushi chefs, making and selling sushi has become more accessible to countries all over the world."

http://sushi-master.com/usa/whatis/history.html 
Image copyright c Carolina Quirino

Willy Hameister's 1920 "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari" / Murnau's film "Nosferatu"

Still from Robert Wiene and Willy Hameister's 1920 "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari"
Still from Friedrich Murnau's 1922 film "Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror"

Sonho. Não Sei quem Sou - Fernando Pessoa

 Sonho. Não Sei quem Sou

Sonho. Não sei quem sou neste momento.

Durmo sentindo-me. Na hora calma

Meu pensamento esquece o pensamento,

Minha alma não tem alma.

Se existo é um erro eu o saber. Se acordo

Parece que erro. Sinto que não sei.

Nada quero nem tenho nem recordo.

Não tenho ser nem lei.

Lapso da consciência entre ilusões,

Fantasmas me limitam e me contêm.

Dorme insciente de alheios corações,

Coração de ninguém.

Fernando Pessoa, in "Cancioneiro"

It's raining cats and dogs in Portugal...

It's raining cats and dogs in Portugal... But how beautiful these days are!!!!! (Obviously without the damages...) 

Image Copyright Carolina Quirino

To Be or Not to Be (1942)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035446/

Bom fim-de-semana! / Good weekend! :)

Bom fim-de-semana! / Good weekend! :)

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino
"The Son of the Sheik Ahmed", 1926, his final film.

Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926) was born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi in Castellaneta, Italy. (Coincidentally, the birth of film also occurred in 1895). Known as the "Latin Lover", he was one of the most popular stars of the 1920s, and one of the most recognized stars from the silent film era. He is best known for his work in The Sheik and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. On August 15, 1926, Valentino collapsed at the Hotel Ambassador in New York City, New York. He was hospitalized at the Polyclinic in New York and underwent surgery for a perforated ulcer. The surgery went well and he seemed to be recovering when peritonitis set in and spread throughout his body. He died eight days later, at the age of 31 causing mass hysteria among his female fans, propelling him into icon status.

"One of the biggest stars of the silent screen, had a fascinating life. He had rebelled against his father to run with a fast crowd in Paris, where he learned the tango, the dance that would establish his career. Arriving in the U.S. almost penniless, he had resorted to petty theft and blackmail to survive. And his Hollywood career had been marked by two disastrous marriages, a rapid rise to stardom, fanatical fans and a sudden death that inspired suicides and a mob scene at his funeral. (...)"

 

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing"~ John Keats~ 

“Rudolph Valentino had an air of sadness. He wore his success gracefully, appearing almost subdued by it. He was intelligent, quiet and without vanity, and had great allure for women, but had little success with them, and those whom he married treated him rather shabbily. . . No man had greater attraction for women than Valentino; no man was more deceived by them." ~Charlie Chaplin~  

"Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams." ~Rudolph Valentino~1923 

Rudolph Valentino", in http://www.myspace.com/rudolphvalentinofanpage, consultado em 1 Dezembro 2010.