Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Humphrey and Lauren’s First Time: To Have and Have Not (1944)

I spent about two hours in the company of Bogart and Bacall.
To have and Have Not in Italian was called Acque del Sud (Southern Waters), and it was one of those movies that once were a staple of afternoon programming, before TV stations discovered the joys of reality and talent shows.

Of course, To have and Have Not is Faulkner adapting Hemingway (that’s TWO Nobel-prize winners for the price of one), and Howard Hawks directing.
You can’t get any better than that.The plot is thin – and there’s not much of the original stories by Hemingway in it – but there are a number of elements that make this one of my favorite movies. Continue reading →


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The 11th again

age_44_on_birthday_cake_postcard-r975397831ede41be84f467a9d5c2478b_vgbaq_8byvr_324For us is different.
It’s the 11th of September and everybody’s asking about where they were on that day, in 2001.
I remember very clearly – I was standing in the outlet of Comba, one of Turin’s best confectioner. I was there to buy a birthday cake for my brother.
They had a TV on, and we saw everything while it happened.
But that’s it – I was in line to buy a cake.
Because to us, September the 11th is still my brother’s birthday.

Now that you have a brother, my mother told me, you’ll never be alone anymore.

She was right.
Happy birthday, brother!


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We have faith in Mustard

Guillermo del Toro’s triumph at the Venice Film Festival took the Italian media by surprise.
True, some wankers protested for The Shape of the Water being a commercial movie, but the real fun began when an online news service announced that Benicio del Toro had won instead, publishing a photo of the actor instead of the photo of the director.

But the top was the Italian interpreter, that translating live the director’s acceptance speech, blundered and translated

I have faith in monsters

as

I have faith in mustard

Which was only broadcast live worldwide, so it’s not that serious, right?

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The return of “Pizza, Chinese or Kebab?”

mod-pizza-maddy-default-e1479167621575I am always looking for new directions in which to expand the offer of this blog, and the Autumn is the perfect time for experimenting.
So here’s one of the many things cooking.

Two years back on my Italian-language blog I did a thing called Pizza, Chinese or Kebab? – it was a series of very informal interviews with creators (writers, graphical artists, bloggers), trying to move away from the typical, and boring

“my, you’re so cool/what’s your inspiration?/what’s your next project?”

sort of interview.
I stole the format from Empire magazine’s interview page How much is a pint of milk?, and adapted it to the crowd I usually hang out with online. Continue reading →


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Somewhere, beyond the sea…

I’m stealing an idea from my friend Claire, over at the Scribblings blog, and I’m doing a post about the sea and I.
After all, the sea is quite on topic hereabouts – we talk adventure and exoticism, and the sea is one of the many ingredients of many, many adventure stories, and quite a lot real life adventures too.

the sea2

So, I’ll start with something close and personal.
My father was so taken with the sea, that he actually ran away from home to join the navy when he was 16.
His five minutes of C.S. Forester ended with his family going to Genoa to bring him back.
He never sailed, never served in the navy or anywhere else.
So he decided I should become a sailor.
When I was five. Continue reading →


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Keeper of the winds

AeolusAccording to Greek mythology, Aeolus was “the keeper of the winds” – is in this role that Odysseus meets him in the Odyssey.
The bit about being the god of the winds came later – originally Aeolus was just a guy with a job, keeper of the winds.

Now, the Italian version of the keeper of the winds’ name, Eolo, is also the name of a company that provides radio-based web connectivity in those areas of the Italian peninsula where the 21st century has yet to come: the deepest caves where the troglodytes dwell, the most forbidding high reaches in the Alps where the mysterious barbegazi roam, and the Belbo Valley in Astigianistan, home of the bumpkins.

Five days ago we signed a contract with Eolo, and today a cheerful and skilled technician climbed on our roof and installed a small dish receiver, and suddenly we jumped from 80 Kbs per second to 20 Mbs per second.
Just like jumping from 1992 to 2010 in a single mighty leap.

So now here I am, suddenly with the full power of the web at my fingertips – or something equally emphatic.
I am planning a few online activities – like running demo games of my settings, or do online courses.
But the best, and simplest way in which this will change my working days is the fact that now web searches, map-checking and photo-referencing will take a few minutes and not a couple of hours.
I’ll have more time for myself.
Or more time to write.

It’s going to be fun.