Sunday catch up.

Good afternoon everyone! I finally found some spare minutes to dedicate to my blog... The weeks pass quickly and I've noticed that I haven't been able to put more than 1 post a week recently.. That's sad, but here in Sicily, it's all about summer: the tourists come in summer and so do the American students who come to my school... Right now, for example we have a special program whose main subject is Nutrition in Italy. It's all about the way the Italians eat, what they eat, why they eat it, is what they eat healthy or not (comparing to American food, I'm sure they don't need to study a lot to find the right answer; of course no offence!), they are going to study the Mediterranean diet, it's elements, benefits and drawbacks, etc. In fact, tomorrow they are going to visit one of the big supermarkets to find out what the Italians stuff their fridges with... I can tell you/them: right now, it's definitely gelato : )

On another note. Look what I received for my name day from my bf's parents this week:


I feel so embarrassed since I never really celebrate my name day, it's always too complicated to choose the right day you should be celebrating your name day on. In Poland the same name is usually repeated several times during a year but the tradition says you should be celebrating it on the first date calendar indicates after your birthday. The problem is the first date that the calendar indicates is not famous at all for my name so no one would really remember it. Therefore it's kind of perplexing... Anyway, I loved the earrings, they're silver and the flowers are made of jade! : ) On the other hand, I wonder if jade will be lucky for me... What I mean is that several months ago my Mum bought me a bracelet, earrings and a pendant, all made of coral and to my surprise it turned out it's not for me at all. First I lost an earring, then after some weeks the bracelet and then another earring... The things didn't want to "stick" with me... Strange but I believe it's true...

Well, anyway, today on the beach I read Vanity Fair and these are the intresting things I found:

1. How do you like this Dior spot with Marion Cotillard (she played Edith Piaf if you remember). Very Hitchcock style, don't you think? This spot is called Lady Noire but at the end we can see there'll be another part of the film called Lady Rouge. I forsee it will be in colour, in the 50's style, and Cotillard will look like Kim Basinger in LA Confidential. That's my guess. Cannot wait to see if I'm right.

2. Did you know that in England until several weeks ago there was a radio that played 20 min piece in loop from 6.00am to midnight?! It wasn't a song though, it was a songbird recording registered 20 years ago by Quentin Howard (creator of the radio station) in his garden. The radio conquisted 500.000 listeners but had to stop and was taken over by another station called Amazing Radio (which plays normal rock, jazz music)... If you're curious about the "bird piece", go to this website.

That's all for me today. After Ella's review (thanks!!!), I may go to the cinema this evening to see Hangover : )

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Miscellaneous...

This weekend was really crazy! Because of some emergencies at school I didn't sleep as much as I wanted to but I went to see the closing ceremony of the Taormina Fest and I must say I was nicely surprised and slightly disappointed at the same time. It was quick (35mins) and quite formal. No "red carpet" shots, they showed directly the ceremony and the opening short film was really amateur... On the other hand I liked the girl who conducted it and the interpreter was a professional. Jessica Lange received a "Taormina Art Award" which wasn't neither a statue nor a golden plate but a cross made of some precious stones... Originality? Therefore I still cannot judge and say whether it will become an important event in my calendar... Let me decide after the next year's.

Today little something for everyone.

1. Film

Have you already seen the first pictures from the newest Tim Burton's film "Alice in Wonderland" featuring Johnny Deep, Helena Boham Carter and Anne Hatheway and which will hit the cinemas in March 2010?! Just take a look at these:

For more "crazy" pictures go to USA Today.

2. Fashion

I'm sure you have already encountered some of the beautiful shots of Emma Watson's campaign for Burberry. There's also a short film "behind the scenes". She looks just great not only in the pictures so maybe Photoshop wasn't used this time..?

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Taormina Film Fest 2009

Wow, I dreamt about Cannes, Venice and Los Angeles without even considering Taormina which is only 1.5 h away from where I live now! The event, despite its 55 years of history, has never reached the prestige and splendour of the other European film festivals. Well, I have a feeling this year is going to become a turning point in its career... Let me just mention some of the names of starts who will take part during the event: Catherine Deneuve, Jessica Lange, Emanuel Ungaro (who is going to give a lecture on the importance of fashion in movies) or Sandra Bullock (who couldn't make it for the opening but who has sent a video message, which considered the circumstances already equals great success).

What's interesting, apart from Taormina the films will be shown in 3 different locations/cities of Sicily: Palermo, Palma di Montechiaro (which I have no clue about where it exactly is) and... YES!!! Siracusa! Each city is going to show movies belonging to a different category, i.e. Palermo will be hosting films which belong to category entitled "Young American Comedy", Palma di Montechiaro will show movies whose leading element and the main subject are "Strong Women", whereas Siracusa is going to show movies from "Brasile!" Of course in Taormina it's possible to watch all of the presented movies.

The films I'd love to see most are:

• The Proposal by Anne Fletcher (USA, 2008) with Sandra Bullock
• Crossing Over by Wayne Kramer (USA, 2009) with Harrison Ford
• Gray Gardens by Michael Sucsy (USA, 2009) with Jessica Lange & Drew Barrymore
• Revolution Revisited by HughHudson (USA, 2008) with Al Pacino, Donald Sutherland & Nastassja Kinsky
  

What's the most important, however is the fact that all of these films are going to be shown in orginal versions with Italian and English subtitles. NO DUBBING! You may think I'm crazy, but since I moved to Italy I haven't been frequenting the cinema very often because of the fact that everything is dubbed! In Poland there are always subtitles (unless it's a cartoon movie for children).

Well, it's difficult for me to go see the films during this week but I'll at least try to see the closing ceremony and take some pictures from this honourable event for you! : ) Let the show begin!

PS. Those of you who are interested, can go to this website for details.

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Greek Theatre.

So I haven't been blogging/commenting on your posts recently and as you can imagine it's all because of work and the tremendous confusion we're having in this period. Fortunately this period is slowly coming to an end and even though the new students are coming at the end of June, this time they're going to be 55 instead of 104 which gives me some hope for less franatic days...

Anyway, this week, apart from school, I went to the famous open air Greek Theatre. Ever since 1914 the theatre is the location for famous ancient tragedies for two entire months: May & June. There are usually 2 alternating plays staged every year. This year you can see "Medea" by Euripides and "Oedipus at Colonus" by Sophocles. I saw the latter one and I truly loved it. The 6000 seats the Greek Theatre has to offer were filled completely. People travel from all over the world to admire this original amazing stage, the famous Italian actors (the plays as you can imagine are in Italian but you can buy or download the translations in other languages) and the beautiful scenography and the scenery that the stage is immersed in. I took some pics that you can see below but if you're looking for some more professional shoots, go here. By the way, it was my collague, a professional photographer ML who took the pictures this year and I'm so incredibly proud of her!





On another note, I have just received an award from Jordan! Thanks SO much! : ))


Now I Pass it on to: Al, Ella, Mellisoo and Mary Evelyn : )

And I'd like to welcome Ady and Diamond and Kimberly! :) Thanks for joining! : )

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Where do you want to live?

The Economist has just published the ranking of top cities with the highest liveability. It turned out that 6 cities (!!) in Canada and Australia are in the top ten! Unbelievable.

There were 140 cities (worldwide) taken under consideration. Each city was assigned a score for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories:

stability

health care

culture and environment

education

infrastructure

The categories provide an overall rating of 1–100, where 1 is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal.

It turns out that the best place to live in is Vancouver (isn't it too cold?) with a rating of 98.0; Sydney and Zurich, sharing ninth place, achieved a score less than 2% lower than Vancouver’s.

Here's the top ten list:


As for the Italian cities, of course only Roma (no.52) and Milan (no.50) were considered in the survey. But can you imagine that London was on position no.51 and New York no.56?! Amazing!

So on a private note, I want to say: "Al, you're SO lucky! Congratulations!" : )

And what about you? Where would you like to live? Do you like the city you live in at present? If not, what is the place of your dreams? In my Top 5 there would be definitely: Milan, London, Paris and New York.

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Stars sans fards?

I don't like to be repetitive but couldn't really not talk about all this Photoshop/make-up craziness one more time.

Do you often go out without a trace of make up? I do. I'm quite tired of putting it everyday during weekdays for work and so I try wearing none (or almost none) during the weekends. I like my face to breathe and look natural, especially now, when the sun is high up in the sky and my complexion start to obtain this natural-peach colour without any particular effort. Of course I put some bronzer in the evening but in general, I try to avoid it at home or when I buy corn flakes at the local greengrocer's. I think most of the stars and celebrities do the same even though we always see them with perfect make up on magazine covers. But do they always look like this (apart from the official gala dinners, film shows, concert, beneficiency gatherings etc )? Some might claim they do. Well, French Elle decided to rebel against this fallacy and in the April issue you could see these:





Eight world-known celebrities (including Eva Herzigova, Monica Bellucci, Sophie Marceau, and Charlotte Rampling) decided to present themselves without ANY make-up at all and what's more without any Photoshopping and retouching! The campaign called "Stars sans fards" (an expression which literally means "without make up/rouge" and which is also a French idiom that we can translate as "openess") is a kind of watershed in the history of fashion/make-up industry. Of course we shouldn't forget about the Dove's compaigns which feature "normal girls" in "normal shapes and forms" and which refuse to show always-looking-good celebrities:


On the other hand there are the "stars without make up stories" in which as someone nicely put it here: "there's always a GOTCHA! element, a message that says: Our gift to you: Derive pleasure from how ugly this person looks without cover-up for her zits!"

Elle though has finally noticed that these gorgeous dolls we admire so much are just "normal" girls after all who sometimes wake up with pimples, large pores, dark eye circles etc. And despite the fact that I adore fashion, beauty magazines which teach new make-up techniques, I loved the idea to show the real side of these beauties. I mean, are they less beautiful now? Not at all. The idea of Elle is innovative, fresh and very vogue. I like it!

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A message of light.

According to Wikipedia: Enel (Ente Nazionale per l'Energia eLettrica) is an Italian energy provider and the third largest energy provider in the world (includes 22 countries now). It has just launched a new spot:

At first I didn't really understand it, then after having seen it a few times in a row on YouTube, it just dawned on me: it's indeed a message of light! The girl sends a message to her Dad by turning on the light in her bedroom and with luck and help of other people it finally arrives at the destination: her Dad in the end says: "Buonanotte anche a te" ("Goodnight to you too"). I was enchanted! It's so sweet: the immages, the light, the music everything matches and becomes an integral unity, don't you think? What's more after the second time I saw it I noticed the word: "restauracja" (Polish word for restaurant) and thought Enel had invested in Poland as well and that I could add this ad (sorry for the homophone) to my previous post about the microwave : ) I checked on Wikipedia and it turned out it was Slovakia, not Poland that has some Enel power plants (Slovak and Polish are very similar). Anyway, it's close to my heart because this spot too arrives at the conclusion that the world is small, more and more people travel for work, for family, for pleasure but thanks to the highly developed technology we're able to keep in touch, we can call, we can send emails the distances become shorter and shorter. Thanks to the Internet I can talk to my parents several times a week and I pay almost nothing for it. I can take a plane and after approx. 3 hours I'll be in my country. I feel grateful & lucky. Isn't it great?

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Manga.

I'm not a fan of Manga. Never was really. From the characters I can name only Picacchu (do I spell it correctly?) and of course there was Dragon Ball! Then I saw this funny website where you can actually "create" your own character. I must say I had a lot of fun doing it : ) This is the result:

Try yourselves, it takes only few minutes and you can use it as your profile picture : ) I'd love to see your Mangatars!! : )

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