Finocchio

Philadelphia Freedoms

It has been a wonderful and uplifting weekend here in Philadelphia.  Whatever the real-world limitations to Live 8, it's aspirations are laudable.  It also led off a festive atmosphere in the city, which continued through Monday evening, with a AIDS benefit concert by Elton John, Patti LaBelle, Rufus Wainwright and Bryan Adams, concluding with fireworks.  The crowds stretched down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway from the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to roughly 14th Street.

Without so much a time to take a breath, the city will now launch into the 11th Annual Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, headed by Ray Murray, founder of TLA Entertainment Group.

Desert Island Discs -- Gutenberg Version

Care of Downtownlad, comes a terrific book meme.  And since I have always been a sucker for puzzles, games and quizzes ("Desert Island Discs," "Texaco Opera Quiz," etc.), naturally I was entranced.

The first question is especially intriguing, since I take it to be about what is perhaps my favorite scene from Truffaut's filmed version of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.  In a society in which print is forbidden (as well as reading and introspection generally), a society of readers/outcasts escape to the hinterlands where, in order to preserve written culture, each person is designated as the embodiment of one specific book, which he/she commits to memory.  In the final (and immensely charming) scene of Truffaut's film, the members of this literary society stroll through a gray, snowy wood, each giving voice to his/her book.  Madame Bovary, David Copperfield, etc.  (The film has the additional fascination, for those of us easily fascinated by such things, of substituting auditory credits -- no written words pass across the screen).

This living library is second only, among book-or-library-inspired scenes in films, to Bruno Ganz and his fellow angels watching solicitously over a library's readers in Wings of Desire.

In the book meme, one simply answers seven simple questions:

(1)  You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

(2)  Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

(3)  The last book you bought is

(4)  The last book you read

(5)  What are you currently reading?

(6)  Five books you would take to a deserted island

Well, to take a stab at some answers --

(1)  You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be? This is something I would have to live with and live as.  Borges's Labyrinths or Voltaire's Candide.

(2)  Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?  (Aren't all of our crushes on fictional characters?)  Yes, Bruce Chatwin, who was always his best creation.

(3)  The last book you bought is: Harriet Rubin, Dante in Love -- The World's Greatest Poem and How It Made History

(4)  The last book you read:  Michael Chabon, The Final Solution

(5)  What are you currently reading?  Harold Bloom, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?

(6)  Five books you would take to a deserted island: 

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Dante, The Divine Comedy

Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

Freud, Interpretation of Dreams

Rilke, Complete Works

These are, in some ways, pragmatic choices -- rich, capacious.  They provide the materials for generating more stories.

Food In The Movies

I have been continuing to think about food in the movies, especially where food signals or signifies something (or is assumed to do so).  The Cuban film Strawberry and Chocolate would be an example of this, in which a character's preference for strawberry ice cream (even when chocolate is available) signals his homosexuality to other characters.  A bit like sitting in a hotel lobby with Plato's Symposium open in your lap, the bookish equivalent of a green carnation in the lapel.

Perhaps most intriguing of all are those movies in which the food is imaginary -- either completely so or imagined to be something else.  Charlie Chaplin dining on a boiled shoe in Gold Rush is paradigmatic.  The delicate spaghetti of laces, the thin cutlet of sole.

Foodie Movies

Those charming foodies -- we adore them.  Readers of Chocolate & Zucchini have been compiling a list of their favorite "foodie" movies.  The list thus far includes:  Tampopo, Babette's Feast, Big Night, Like Water for Chocolate, Chocolat, Eat Drink Man Woman,Touch of Spice, A Chef in Love and Who's Killing the Great Chefs of Europe.

No doubt it says something deeply unflattering about us, but the movies that immediately came to mind were, well:  Eating Raoul, Delicatessen, The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover, Suddenly Last Summer and, of course, Soylent Green.

Your suggestions?