The subject isn’t the plot contraption. Plot is the excuse for De Palma’s only two ambitions: choreographing visual sequences and photographing hot women. In certain films, he gets exactly what he wants. Here not so much. Yet even then the Frankie Goes to Hollywood music vid kills.

You wonder why he keeps getting work. Not as if there aren’t millions of working videographers who could effortlessly make commercial movies sprinkled with a little indie quirk for a fraction of his salary.

It’s SO important to say this, precisely because so many smart and cool people will be put off by the language and sentiment, chiding it, saying it’s corny. But we gotta own the idealism and the sense of mission.

Like so much American culture war bullshit, the anti-science obscurantism will radiate out to other countries, particularly those with far-right parties resembling the GOP (the UK, France). Yet my experience living through Italy’s dedicated and socially cohesive response continues to surprise me.

I think the revisionism is a US thing. In Naples, a year after the beginning of the pandemic, strangers would excoriate you in the street if you pulled your mask down under your chin. The center of Rome was empty even after the government green lit reopening of restaurants and museums.

Among the quotes that Montaigne inscribed on the ceiling of his library, he placed Terence’s “Nothing human is alien to me” above his writing desk. Greatest tribute possible.

I was living in Paris when Anne Hidalgo closed the banks of the Seine to cars in spite of an absurd public outcry. The very morning that they were pedestrianized, the banks were filled with moms pushing strollers, joggers, amateur photographers, tourists, etc. The city has never looked back.

Meh. But fewer cars is always a win.

Charging for the Pantheon took away one of the city’s great joys. Yet here it makes some sort of sense given that the entire area is intolerably overcrowded and kitschy.

The sheer existence of Intolerance is proof of this.

Conversations with Italians I’m meeting for the first time go like this for me: smug insistente on responding in English for a couple of minutes, followed by a warm curiosity and eagerness to know me once they see that I can converse in Italian.

Fair enough. I’m not well versed enough in the UK’s music scene to know if it perceives its traditions as strongly linked to Europe or not.

Love your conclusion here! When I attend lectures from writers and academics, and they inevitably get asked “what gives you hope?”, I am always surprised (and disappointed) that no one responds with “the anger and activism of ordinary liberals.”

I don’t intend to be sly. When I look at the giants of pop music that in particular the UK and the US have produced, it’s surprising to me given how musical European countries are. The classic French bands like Indochine or Téléphone are enjoyable yet rather forgettable, imho.

Honest question: is there a similar political economic reason why European pop music is so bad in comparison to Anglo-American popular music?

Notable that his mentors, his father and Norman Lear, lived long enough to be role models of integrity throughout virtually his entire life.

Ciao CBS! Broadcasting is a profession.

It was lovely to see how excited Romans were to discover a new part of their city.

I’ve wondered about this default position. I have a brother who’s estranged from the family for 10+ years. No abuse involved, simply humiliated by his own screw ups. It’s an open wound in the family. Yet I wonder what my brother says to his girlfriends and friends to normalize it.