 Hello, welcome to Solioid Mirror. I'm your hostess, Betty St. LeVoe. On this show, we discuss film terms, film definitions, and then we go straight to the movies. Today, we're doing the mixed bag part two, and it'll be our last part. I'm discussing three movies I discussed last week. Adolz Vita by Frederico Fellini. They live by John Coppita, and Bernardo Burrucci's very beautiful, magnificent Last Emperor. Okay, so let's start off. Now, years and years ago when I was little, we lived in Europe for eight months, and we lived in Italy for half that time, and we lived in a village, fishing village, called Posa Scoro, which my friend Alexandra, who grew up in both Rome and Berry, says, is now incorporated into the city of Rome. So whenever there was a wedding in the, because it's a little village, it was off season, people would beep. So one morning, it was beep, beep, beep, beep, it was six o'clock in the morning, so it must be a wedding, but I suspect it was the filming of Frederico Fellini's last scene of Adolz Vita, where there's this big party at a certain castle, I wrote down the name of the villa, and they all, this is, I'm not gonna blow the end, but I just wanna describe what's going on. They all wander down the beach, and they find something laying on the beach. So one of the reasons why Mr. Fellini made this movie was that it was loosely based part of it on the mysterious death of Wilma Montessi, who, according to who you read, was either 20 or 21. She left her parents' apartment, 5.15, at night to go wash her feet some half hour away in the beach at Ostia. She lived in Rome. So her murder was never solved, and she was not sexually assaulted, but she was definitely dead. And so people were like, oh, the police were like, oh, maybe she had menstrual cramps and fell in the water and drowned, angle-deep water. At any rate, the investigation was not sped up to the public's liking, they couldn't find a killer. But what occurred was that several people came forward saying that they had seen Wilma. Now, the gal was a respectful, lower-middle-class woman. She was engaged to a policeman, and one would scarcely think that she would be hanging out with low-life types. Well, she probably hadn't been hanging out with low-life types because the aristocracy of Rome and some of the elite were drawn into the case. So it was a very, very big deal in the 50s, and Wilma is a saint of the house St. Louisville. So because of the way the mystery wasn't solved, Federico, I think, quite kindly, talked about the rise of, in his movie, La Dolce Vida, talked about the rise of celebrity, talked about the dark-rise celebrity, and it was mentioned on, not by Karen Pincus, who wrote the excellent, the Montesi scandal, the death of William Montesi, and the birth of the paparazzi in Fellini's realm. There's a quote off of, I think it's Cafe Art for Housewives blog, stating that Wilma was born in the 10th year of Fellini's reign. And even though after he was gone, the powers that be were using propaganda to distract the population from economic blows that happened after World War II. So there was a rise of celebrity in Italy, and Federico chronicled that in this movie. So Wilma and the movie ties together. So that's what I couldn't talk about last week. I would have been talking for about an hour. So she had been seen in a car entering an old royal hunting reserve, and the driver was Prince Melizzo of Hesse. The Hesse's are related to the Windsors in England, the German Princelings, nephew, loosely of the last king of Italy, but he was also related to very many people. Now, the lodge in the paper it's called Capocotta, which means crooked head, but it's actually Capocotta, which means goat in Italian. And it was sort of next to aligned with the Castile Porziana, both shooting hunting lodges. So she was found somewhere near there, and it was suspected that she had met by a foul play from the elite. So aside from looking at the beautiful Portable Dolce Vita, I would love people to read Karen Pincus' book. It's published by the University of Chicago Press. And I have the date when it was published. I think it was 19, it was 2001 or 2003. Death and the Dolce Vita, Death and the Dolce Vita, the dark side of Rome in the 1950s by Stephen Grundel is another book that was written in 2011 at 153 pages. But when I read the review in the spectator, the spectator was sort of dismissive talking about Wilma, his name is his last name is Chancellor, the reviewer. And he's sort of said about the book, well, who really cares now? But the case is still unsolved. And when Wilma died, many young women came out to the funeral in support of her knowing that she'd been a good girl. Okay, all right. So the word paparazzi has several, it has several root sources. And there was an excellent movie by Cole Hauser that came out about 10 years ago called Paparazzi. That was pretty good. It's like exploitation filmmaking. But no one really uses that word a lot in this country. I think we use it more over in Europe. So Coriolana Paparazzo is the man who the name came from. And then a friend of Fellini's, Tazio Cicciarulli related to Fellini about all the fistfights he'd get into and tussles with people as he was trying to take their picture. Peter Bondanella, who is a Fellini scholar, also references the word papatacil, mosquito. And then there's papataciel, tiny mosquito with large rings. And then George Gissing's travel narrative by the owner C has Coriolana Paparazzi as a character. So, there we go. And thank you, Federico. So, I think that page is done. The producers of La Dolce Vina were Giuseppe Amato, Angelo Rizzoli. The screenplay and story were Ineo Fellino, Federico Fellini and Tolilo Pinnelli An uncredited part of the script went to Pier Paolo, Pasolini, we'll review some of his movies sometime on the show. And Brunello Rondi. Bassano di Sultri was the town where the party in the castle happens. And the false miracle that happens in the middle, there are seven different vignettes, actually occurred in real life at Morata Alta, Neuteri. The founder Trevi Sain with Anita Ekbert and Marcello Mastrioni. Fellini said that Anita was, it took a week to shoot that scene with them in the fountain. And that Anita was able to spend several hours under the water in her dress. But unfortunately, Marcello had to wear a wet suit and it was only by getting me to drink an entire bottle of vodka, or almost all the vodka, that he was able to complete the scene. So, that was pretty a hard shot. They like to say that Woody Allen's celebrity is a New York re-walking, but it's a poor comparison. And it has nothing, it doesn't even smell like adults' feet, I'm sorry. It doesn't even smell like a good life. All right, celebrity is good in a different way, but it has nothing to do with the excitement and the glamour that these people in Fellini's movie are exhibiting. It was nominated for four Academy Awards. It won for Best Costume Design, Black and White. It won the Golden Palm at Cannes in 1960. Entertainment Weekly calls it the sixth greatest movie ever. An Empire Magazine states is the 11th best movie in world cinema. The movie was released February 5th, 1960 in Italy, April 19th, 1961 in the U.S., and I believe that was the day of Wilma's funeral, I think, back in the 50s, I believe. It's 180 minutes, and I think it grows 19 and a half million dollars. All right, check that one out, you'll love it. And subtitles are, I think it's a criterion version that I borrowed from Kellogg Hubbard, thank you again, library. Check that out, the subtitles pop right up. Okay, so interestingly enough, our mixed bag collection today has tales of love, death, and betrayal. And so the second movie that we're gonna check out is They Live, which has lots of betrayal and lots of death. Okay, Roddy Roddy Piper, who John Carpenter stated, unlike most actors, Roddy's entire life is on his face, leads this plot about intergalactic domination on Earth. So let's go to those notes real quickly. This movie is based on a short story written by a man with the last name of Nelson, Mr. John Carpenter bought the rights to the comic book and the short story, because I think the short story appeared in a science fiction magazine, so he bought the rights, so he was able to make the movie. So, oh, I hope I've got my carpenter notes here. Oh, right on, yes, okay, there we go. I have a lot of notes today because a lot of this information's very condensed. Okay, so let's talk about the hero in movies and books who is the unnamed one. Rebecca, the book by a daft named Demare is a classic example. We never learn the narrator's name. Another great example is genius Phoebe Wallabridge's Fleabag, which you can catch on Acorn. She shot six episodes last year and she's gonna do another season next year. Her character in her series is also named, her family and friends usually just say doling, doling, which is pretty sure darling, hello doling. And so she's Fleabag in the subtitles, but she's an unnamed entity. It's the same with Roddy Piper and they live, but in the credits, Mr. Carpenter put John Nada, which means Nada is nothing in Spanish, but it took me a couple times to check out that the fact that our unnamed hero is one of those heroes that, hmm, you know, what's his name? So, Larry Frankel produced this, the screenplay is John Carpenter writing as Frank Armitage. The music is by Alan Horvath and John Carpenter. It was released by Universal Pictures and it stars along with Roddy, Keith David, Raymond St. Jock, Meg Foster, George Buckflower, Peter Jason, Cy Richardson, Norman Alden and Susan Blanchard, many of whom also show up in other movies that Mr. Carpenter directs. This particular movie, it debuted number one of the bullet. It knocked it right out of the park and Mr. Carpenter said, hmm, this disproves the Hollywood adgers that people don't wanna be enlightened. Okay, so it grows 4.8 million for its first weekend, which was incredible back in 1988. Now, and it was only made for a budget three million, which is wonderful, all right? So Mr. Carpenter thought of the plot of the earth being hypnotized by aliens because he, and I'm reading a bit from Wikipedia here, not from another article. He had disliked the components of Reaganomics and so his MacGuffin is the use of the sunglasses and if you haven't seen the movie, you'll see what the MacGuffin is via the sunglasses. He wrote the part of Frank, Keith David's part, especially for him because he said, oh, Roddy, unlike most Hollywood actors have life written all over them, he need someone who could be more than a sidekick and hold his own. So he'd work with Keith David on the thing and he put them in the movie. It was Saturn Award nominated for Best Music and Best Science Fiction Film and it's presently, thank goodness, the remake is in development hell with Mr. Carpenter as a producer. They don't really need to remake the movie but if John's at the helm, I'm not going to complain. All right, so Frank, Keith David's character, Frank, last name is, oh, pardon me. He's named Frank but Mr. Carpenter put his name as the writer as Frank Armitage because of HP Lovecraft's hero, Henry Armitage in Done Which Horror. John Carpenter has always been fascinated by the unseen world, the world underneath and so has Mr. Lovecraft who, despite the fact being a racist, also has the same birthday, I do August 20th. So, it was shot in eight weeks in downtown LA and the fight took three weeks to rehearse which I'd like to, I can now watch that knowing about Kefabi and wrestling. Thank you, Roddy and Kevin Nash there. I was able to glance at this past week and be like, oh yeah, yeah, I can see where it's all staged. So, a couple years ago, this neo-nazi group was like, oh yeah, the movie's about us and John Carpenter was so offended. He goes, Nali, do I have to say this? It's about yuppies and unrestrained capitalism and that's what this movie's about. So, part of that, you can see the humor. It's like, capitalism, yuppies, there can be some funny stuff about the daily invasion part isn't the funny part but people trying to make that buck and for stupid reasons, that can be pretty funny. I think that that's it for that one. I didn't really have a lot to say about they live per se, only because I read it quite a bit on the show, I happen to like it a lot and will maybe be catching it Halloween, so you never know. Okay. The last movie that I wanna talk about that we also talked about very briefly last week was The Last Emperor, starring John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole, Ying Ruxing, Victor Wong, Dennis Dunn, Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also did the soundtrack with David Byrne and Gongsu, Maggie Han, Vivien Lu, Jade Goh, Lisa Lu and Henry Oh, Amongst Others. Okay, so it was produced by Jeremy Thomas who according to what I read, he single-handedly raised that $25 million almost all by himself. At one point, he started just looking at a phone book which that's incredible, what a great producer, I mean that's, you wanna get that movie done. And it was written by the director Bernardo Burrucci and Mark Pepello, added by Gabriela Cristiani, cinematography by Vittorio Storal, distributed by Columbia Pictures. It had four different release dates, one in Italy, one in New York City, one in LA and an unspecified place in the US which is given as December 18th, 1987. The movie was a joint co-production between the United Kingdom and Italy. The languages are English, Mandarin and Japanese. The budget was $23.8 million and it grossed $44 million at the box office. Okay, this was the first movie that when China opened up, this was the first movie that was made by foreign distributors, director and producer. And Bernardo Burrucci had given the government two choices, he either wanna do Man's Fate, a book by Andre Maleru, which I believe was decade to Jackie then Kennedy or movie about the last emperor and they chose the last emperor. Jeremy Thomas stated it was great working with the government, they made some notes, gave us some references, corrected some names, he said it was easier dealing with them than a studio, okay, which I found pretty funny. So the first, oh pardon me, it wasn't the first movie, I think, made in China by foreign distributors, pardon, it was the first movie that the Forbidden City was opened up to, pardon, excuse me for that. And the first 90 minutes are set in the Forbidden City. So there were 19,000 extras, part of the Chinese army was drafted to be extras, it won all nine Oscars had been nominated for best picture, best director, best art direction, best cinematography, best costume design, best editing, best score, best original score, best screenplay taken from another edition, okay. So this movie was like the bomb back then. I was looking to see it on the big screen, I think at the hop. So a little bit, oh, and it won four Golden Globes, I believe, at the 45th Golden Globe ceremony. So John Lone, whose original name is Geng Kwak Leong, has won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and an Obie. He was born in Hong Kong and he was an orphan and he was adopted by Shang and Yi's women. And then he took the name Lone to signify that he'd been orphaned, but he's been a dancer and working in theater since he was quite young. And Jaden Wong, who discovered him, also discovered Joan Chen, Bei Ling and Lucy Liu. And Mr. Lone hasn't been acting probably for like the last 10 years. So I think that actually does it for me. I just wanted to catch up with all the other intense information that went along with La Dolce Vita. They live and The Last Emperor. You've been watching me, Betty St. Levo, here on Celluloid Mirror. I'd like to thank St. Levo Consultations, St. Levo Lemonade Company for taking the day off today and Gender and Building for their continued support over the years. Gender and Building, Quality and Concrete, and my crew here at ORCA. I couldn't do it without you. And also, thank you Kellogg Hubbard Library because you've really have been helping me out with all those sources. And also, to my accredited writers today, please check out Karen Pinker's book about women Montessi. It's only 184 pages long, but I think that the information is intense. And last but not least, my very favorite film professor, Sharon Ardela-Walfield, Paris-Ochizani-Claire-Trout, made a ludicape next with eight myself on a silver screen until next time, darlings. You stay away from those bad movies. Ciao.