I'm deleting all posts relating to my job fiasco, apart from some which had philosopical content. Not to forget, because I've saved them elsewhere. Possibly as a symbol of a new start, which I don't really believe, because my ghosts are still all there, leering in my face. I'm voluntarily turning my back on them in the hope that I'll catch some solution with the corner of my eye.

This thing hit me harder than I'd ever imagined. I won't go into details, but I'm still hurt and afraid and angry. I'll go on with my behavioural therapy - which seems to be reaching some nucleus of pain, because it hurts more torturously the deeper it goes - but that's not what I'll write about here. Those posts were my only vent when I was literally, physically trapped. Now I want to write about boldness of heart through my reviews, occasional philosophy, the little things I love. No hatred anymore, please.

I went to that convention at the end of April. It was ok because I wasn't too scared. I wrote a report when I was there but that's too cerebral. The bottom line is I was reminded that there are people who love me, and that is a nice feeling. A brilliant friend was making and selling pins about out most diverse passions and so now watch me parade about declaring, among others, my allegiance to 300, AC Milan, and Italia (the soccer team, but the country for extension). I was scared when I started because I feared that people would insult me for it, but for now it hasn't happened.

I also did go to Ravenna for the fourth time, and of this event I do have a journal ready, which I'll post soon. Drat, I love Milan, but why must Ravenna be so far away, if it's such a balm for my heart? Our Duomo isn't too shabby, but its story is much less tragic. Yeah. Tragic stories, another thing that cheers me up. I'll be making many additions to my "dragon" and "horse" journals.

What's up with soccer? Long story. I've always loved watching matches with my dad, a long-time milanista. Lately I've used that as a method of bonding with a family that I love beyond everything but which I must learn to consider with a little less distrust - or blind trust - it's complicated. I had fun this summer with the World Cup. And I found someone to cheer for. He's been a wonder boy and a pretty face for about ten years and I never cared for him (couldn't tell him from Nesta). Now they say he's "broken", they say he's "old" (he's younger than I am), and so automatically my support for him kicked in. Add that now he has the perfect, "mediaeval", lean and weathered face and physique to look like one of the characters in the "Horse" (can I ever get an actor, dammit?) So I started following him, and he picked himself up big time.

You may be surprised - if there's a world that is full of violence, conflict and backstabbing, it's soccer. Hey, yeah. Because when I study the Ostrogoths I have these pink glasses, see. At least soccer players don't cut each other in half (though people die outside the fields and shamefully not enough is done to avoid or punish these facts). But there's an undercurrent of insult and spite that is really grating for me, because I simply am not like that. Well, so what? I can find that a well-executed score is as pleasing to me as standing breathless in front of the tomb of a murderous king or the mosaic of an even more murderous emperor.

Maybe the bottom line of these tortured days is this, that from now on I'll find my peace wherever I like, my "clean, well-lighted place", my Isle of Innisfree, and I won't care about the rest. Nothing comes anymore between me and the few things I love.

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There's a nurse or whatever here whom I can't stand. This is not nice on my part, but writing it here prevents me (maybe) from telling her she's an ******* to her face. She comes in and just HAS to make her intolerant political-religious comment to her buddy-buddy my boss, no matter who is in the room or what they might think. Oh, of course saying hi to me is out of the question, since she discovered I'm one of the lepers on the other side.

Were it an attempt of an intelligent debate, I'd be all for it. "Hey, what do you think about..." Nope. It's just platitudes, platitudes, "I-know-everyting-because-TV-tells-me-so" platitudes. BOOOOOOORRRIIIINNNNGGGGG. Aaaaaarrrggghhh. *dies*

Thinking back on 300... We're all comrades on this Earth, especially if one, like many I know, considers it as a horrible place and humanity a mass of beasts (except him- or herself, of course). More people should take a leaf from Leonidas' book and lift their shield to protect the guy/girl by their side.

And of course, these are the same persons who bemoan the behaviour of people in power, "they are criminals, they exploit others etc," and do not accept them as belonging to humanity, then are all shocked because a movie like "300" de-humanizes the enemy. Makes sense.

I wanted to tell them so, but I was afraid that if I opened my mouth I'd have torn her throat open with my teeth. This, too, is not nice. I was good because I kept my silence, but now I feel like bursting. Thank goodness for AW journals. I have to find a way to see her, too, as a comrade to protect with my shield AND also protect my liver and other assorted inards from shrivelling out of frustration. But how?

No really, I loved it. When I got out of the theatre I felt a bit empty and did not think I wanted to see it again. Now I believe I just felt it was too short. I wanted more interaction and camaraderie among the Spartans, and more depth to the Persians. Then again it comes from a graphic "novel" which is only a handful of pages. If they wanted to enlarge the queen's role, they could have done better than the heinous seduction subplot. A Spartan woman does not stoop to compromises; that's what the movie is all about. And any hint of rape turns me off much more than all the blood, gore and hacked limbs you can think of.

Also, though I do think they are nothing else than Orcs in the movie and I prefer well-rounded bad guys - it adds to the poignancy of a story - I don't get the protests about the Persians. It's like the Italians went up in arms every time the Romans are depicted as the bad guys. And I'm waiting for the Germans' protests if the barbarians in the "Last Legion" movie are a homogeneous mass of drooling, grunting, destroying beasts like in the novel.

Also (last one), all those people who tried to give the movie a political colour, and swinging wildly from left to right... I hate these labels, but it shows that the movie is effective, if people saw so many different things in it. If there were hints of modern politics, they were the parts that convinced me less. Leonidas waxing lyrical about a "new age of freedom" sounds funny when one thinks the Romans are behind the corner for Greece. And Dilios' rant at the end about theocracy or whatever makes me think, yeah, what next, will you be taking on the Egyptians? The god-king was quite a normal concept in those times - it's just you Spartans who have a king strolling about in his underwear. So, too preachy for my taste.

Now the best parts. The technique was very interesting. The comic was used as storyboard and most scenes are identical. One scene from above shows a cat in the corner of a roof - I died of laughter discovering there was the same cat on the same roof in the comic. Butler IS the comic's Leonidas. Incidentally, it's just a coincidence that I keep reviewing Gerard Butler movies. I'm a manly Saxon and thus have towards him just a professional interest, of COURSE, and besides Desdemona would kill me... Anyway he changes his face whatever part he plays: he's truly interesting to watch as he totally loses his round-faced Scottish self into the character.

The fact that it looked like "Lord of the Rings" was a plus for me: as though we were forced to see Sauron wn this round (and Faramir save Middle-Earth - nice piece of casting with David Wenham). The Ride of the Rohirrim will always be the best for me, but 300 was a Pelennor Field stripped to the bare bones. Leonidas' death ups the ante on Boromir's death and I heard some sniffling in the theatre. I kept my cool but once outside I discovered I had pulled a couple of muscles and I kept telling my friends "now I kneel and you jump over me" whenever we found roadworks.

Then there's the theme of courage. I felt a thrill, the thrill of understanding, when I realized how many cowards there are in this world. I put myself in the category too, but I recognize the existence of cowards who LIKE to be cowards, putting the blame always on others and making like impossible for their neighbour. And I hope I'm not one of those. The Spartans are not an unfeeling war machine made of pumped-up fanatics, or their courage would have no meaning. I think this is the significance of the scene when the captain breaks down after the death of his son. It's obvious he had been terrified of this all the time. Yet they both went and did what they had to do.

Was it necessary? As debatable as this may be, how many of our daily gestures of courage are totally useless, and yet we do them? Pessimist might say all life is a pointless exercise. Do we manage to do this with a smile on our face, with RESPECT AND HONOUR for the comrade by our side? This is what we have to strive for, I think. Leonidas and his Spartans are not a bad model for this.

Yesterday my boss was lovely as always. She tells me to write letters and then has no time to read them. Which is understandable, but I'd like a "please, put it there and I'l look at it later" rather than "AAAAH I CAN'T DO THIS IF YOU ALL KEEP GIVING ME THINGS TO DO (uh, newsflash - it's your damn job) PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE" *whine, sniffle*. So I wrote the letter and put it on MY desk. Finally she gave a cursory look at the letter and signed it. Three months from now she'll be able to dig out the copy and say it was all wrong - it's happened already.

So the thought struck me - my goodness, am I Cassiodorus to her Theodoric? Such a thought could turn me off forever! At least Theodoric had balls, and I'm not speaking of the evident gender difference. But if I start seeing him with my boss' face... no no no, think mosaics and Istrian stone, mosaics and Istrian stone, mosaics and Istrian stone...

Yeah, what's up with that? A friend lent me the DVD of the musical and I was transfixed. It seems that with A.L.Webber you either love him or hate him. I've loved him since I heard "Cats" in high school. I find that each of his musicals has a distinctive quality, and I even liked "Phantom" less than others - too operatic, weak lyrics apart from the humorous or satyrical ones ("Prima Donna"). But I think that the title song is one of the greatest ever. It was for me the soundtrack of a RL love story. Imagine if Christine had fallen head over heels in love with the Phantom and followed him gladly to his lair, only for them to discover that when they did not speak of music they did not have much else in common. It's nice to discover that the good memories are still firmly in place and that I still adore "our strange duet".

I've read the Leroux book but can't find it now, so I can't make meaningful comparisons. It's not a great movie: it can be a grand movie. It's not scary at all, but how can it be scary when everybody is singing? It crashes on you like a Swarovski chandelier, leaving you dazed and covered in glitter. Any bad direction by Joel Schumacher was lost for me amid the gleeful, overladen kitsch. The big surprise, however, was the Phantom himself. I guess it's a role that can make or break the show. I thought Gerard Butler was breaking it - too young, too handsome, too weak a voice - and then thought about it and changed my mind.

The voice, OK, he's not a trained singer and this is a very operatic score, but he makes up for it with Scottish passion. As for being young, I find this meaningful. Schumacher geared the movie toward youth and sensuality, and I think it makes sense. Christine IS in love with both: childhood sweetheart Raoul, bad boy Phantom. It happens. All three share a kind of purity: well, we don't know how experienced Raoul is, but the Phantom certainly is not, and he tries to make up for it with posing and that awful "Don Juan Triumphant" which is about as subtle as a high-schooler trying to snap a bra. "Plans and maids are laid"??? And yet I find it sort of endearing - he's barely past the stage when he would pull Christine's hair and put chewing-gum on her chair to show her he loves her. Face to face, without words, his passion is much more immediate and effective. The glance Christine steals back before leaving forever seems to me one of regret. She could not have both, also because one, uh, was insane, and this is part of her drama. This is much more tragic than the death of the Phantom in Leroux' novel.

Insane, but was he? Here we come to the actor's handsomeness. With his skill in theatre tricks, the Phantom manages to look stunning with a wig, some flesh makeup and a tiny mask, and the viewer is perplexed. If he ventured out like that he'd become the darling of Paris, so what's the big deal? Ah, but Christine says his ugliness is inside. It was put there by the cruelty of those who raised him and by years of tortured musings, to the point that he cannot believe anymore he is not a monster. His ancestor is Shakespeare's Richard III:

Why I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to see my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

His descendant is Stephen King's Harold Lauder in "The Stand". He begins as a fat, greasy, socially inept teenager, and through hardships he becomes a handsome and competent young man. And yet he remains "a villain", stuck on his hopeless love for Frannie and unable to live for himself.

Are all these characters irretrievably bad in their soul? Could something have gone differently? Gerard Butler's Phantom certainly seems to me tragically on the edge of redemption. Can peace of mind be found in bringing roses on the grave of the woman you loved?...

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aka "Crime in the times of the cell phone". I liked this movie, more than all of those I watched lately. "Lady in the Water" and "Pan's Labyrinth" irritated me. "Flags of our Fathers" (by Eastwood!) left me with nothing and I can't even understand why. "The Prestige" kept me thinking for a few days, but it was just an intellectual pursuit, I couldn't relate to the characters. Actually the movies I really LOVED these latest years are "The Two Towers" and "Million Dollar Baby". I thought that I had stopped liking movies because I was just in the wrong frame of mind. Good to know I can still walk out satisfied from a movie!

I think the Oscars for editing, screenplay, direction and movie overall were spot-on. I admit I haven't seen the other contestants. But this movie felt to me as a terrific lesson in storytelling. It has holes large enough to fly a space shuttle through; but I didn't notice them because I was too busy trying to anticipate what would happen next, and failing. And enjoying the pattern of symmetries and continuous echoes that keep the movie tightly woven. I like the fact that sometimes they give the Oscars to these movies that don't have a particularly earthshaking social or philosophical content but are simply well-made stories. Then again, it's Scorsese, he knows something about telling stories. The movie reminded me of Cameron's "Titanic", not because there was Leonardo Di Caprio in it, but because that, too, was a movie that in my opinion deserved to win because it was great cinema. It had no story worth mentioning, but it carried the viewers into another world, with a similar net of visual echoes and symmetries. That's what movies are about, I think.

Of course "The Departed" has content too. Good and evil. Loyalty. Family heritage. Identity. What makes one what he is. This already would have hooked me; then there's this stunning texture of continuous echoes. The symmetries start with the protagonists: Sullivan (Matt Damon), the protegé of mobster Costello (Jack Nicholson, gleefully chewing even the concrete under his feet), is a mole within the Boston police; and Costigan (Di Caprio), good cop from a shady family, is undercover among Costello's men. They are both trying to bust the other without knowing each other. They love the same woman (the weakest character, in my opinion, but a love scene set to "Comfortably Numb" is brilliant in itself). Actually it takes a while to really understand, let alone who is on whose side, but who is really a nice guy or a bastard - just like in real life. Sullivan is not an all-around bad guy; at one point he is besieged by doubts. One looks for reasons to doubt the captain (Martin Sheen) because he just can't be the human, honest, old-school cop, and instead he is, and pays for it. It takes the whole movie to realize that Dignam (Mark Wahlberg), despite his ugly, vulgar attitude, is all the time on the side of the angels - actually, he is the avenging angel of the story.

The movie has been likened to a Shakesperian tragedy - the ruthless and at the same time compassionate attention to human nature, the complexity of relationships, the hurtling towards doom despite every effort. I think there are also deliberate refences - does Costello quote Shakespeare when he mentions the heavy crown? He surely mentions Gloucester, which brings to mind "Richard III". Dignam sweeps in like Fortinbras after a shocking, wholesale slaughter worthy of "Hamlet".

Yes, as I said, it IS Scorsese. The movie is brutal, foul-mouthed, wading in blood, but the hand of a consummate director is a pleasure to watch. The scene where Sullivan finds Costigan's number on the captain's bloodied cell phone and calls him... it nailed me to the chair in a way I had never felt since Arwen's vision in "The Two Towers". (What can I say, Elven widows and Irish cops can equally astound me.) Costigan picks up, shocked at seeing his dead mentor's number. He believes in ghosts for a moment, but he quickly realizes what is actually happening. He keeps silent. Sullivan is silent at the other end. They don't know each other but know the other is the one each is looking for. Wrenching close-ups. Feels like ages. Costigan hangs up. GOOSEBUMPS.

No chance of not getting emotionally involved here. I related uncomfortably to Costigan. Di Caprio impressed me: decidedly not a pretty face anymore. Wisely, Scorsese avoids the "Oh God I'm turning bad" theme and concentrates on a larger, more basic issue: his identity. Costigan never kills anyone for Costello, never for a moment believes Costello may be right. He is just breaking under the long strain (Scorsese shows subtly the passing of months with the parallel evolving love story of Sullivan) of pretending to be someone else. He hangs on by the skin of his teeth, never threatening to turn bad... just insane. In the end, he cares nothing about being reintegrated and going back to be a normal cop - he wants a normal LIFE. He wants to be himself.

I think I should consider the end as uplifting... he almost does obtain his wish, nevermind the final bloodbath. He goes as far as he can. This, and the whole movie, gave me a lot to think about, as inspiration for my stories and life in general.