BEFORE SCROLLING TO THE WEB PAGE BELOW ABOUT LA DONNA È UNA COSA MERAVIGLIOSA, PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT THESE NEWS ITEMS, WHICH ARE FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYTHING I’VE EVER HAD TO SAY:

AMY GOODMAN:     A little-noticed story surfaced a couple of weeks ago in the Army Times newspaper about the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team. “Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months,” reported Army Times staff writer Gina Cavallaro, “the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” Disturbingly, she writes that “they may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control” as well. The force will be called the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive Consequence Management Response Force. Its acronym, CCMRF, is pronounced “sea-smurf.” These “sea-smurfs,” Cavallaro reports, have “spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle,” in a combat zone, and now will spend their 20-month “dwell time” — time troops are required to spend to “reset and regenerate after a deployment” — armed and ready to hit the U.S. streets....

FOR THE FULL STORY, CLICK HERE.

It gets worse:

NAOMI WOLF:     On October 1, 2008, President Bush deployed a brigade — which means three to four thousand warriors — somewhere in America. We do not know where they are deployed though citizens have informally reported to me having seen military vehicles and troops in Georgia and Alabama. We do know that their official mandate according to the first report is “crowd control” as well as action in the event of a mass civilian catastrophe. Initial reports described their technology “module package” as involving Tasers and rubber bullets.... The First Brigade is Bush’s force: they are not answerable to Congress or to the Governors of states: they are answerable to the Commander in Chief. In an Alternet posting, I interviewed Air Force Colonel (retired) David Antoon who noted that the troops must obey the president, even if he asks them to arrest Congress or fire on civilians or attack media outlets. If they do not obey orders, he notes, they face five years in prison.... Antoon himself calls the deployment “ominous.” Troops on our streets makes us something less than a democracy: one definition of a police state is when a leader sends his own military units into civilian streets. Meanwhile the civilian policing of citizens is becoming more brutal. Hundreds of preemptive arrests took place in St Paul, dozens of journalists were arrested.... In St. Paul, funds were sent in advance to pay off the lawsuits against police forces that were guaranteed to arise from the planned abuse of citizens. This sort of thing is happening across the country. The tactic has established a closed circle that has turned citizens’ law enforcement agencies into contractors of a state that is directing acts of increasing severity against US citizens. Now a military brigade is being deployed....

FOR THE FULL STORY, CLICK HERE.

Click here to see an interview with Naomi Wolf conducted in early October 2008.

For the past five years or so I hve been hearing rumors that Halliburton has been building (and has now finished building) 800 prisons throughout the USA, not yet functioning, but just waiting for the right crisis. I have not found reliable evidence for the specific quantity, readiness, functionality, locations, or details, but you might be interested in taking a look at page 5 of this Halliburton press release dated 26 January 2006: KBR has been awarded a contract announced by the Department of Homeland Security’s United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component. The Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contingency contract is to support ICE facilities and has a maximum total value of $385 million over a five-year term. The contract provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States, or to support the rapid development of new programs.... Now, really, what are the chances of “an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States”? And what are the “new programs” that could come under “rapid development”?

FOR THE FULL PRESS RELEASE, CLICK HERE.

NOW, BACK TO THE MAIN PART OF THE WEB PAGE:

Did you happen to record Monty Python’s Flying Circus when it was shown on PBS back in the 1970s?
Do you still have the tapes?
Is there a TIME-LIFE logo at the end?
If so, please write to me. Thank you!

THE WORKS OF TINTO BRASS

Appeasing Producers—Continued

La donna è una cosa meravigliosa

(Woman Is a Wonderful Thing, 1964)

Okay, I admit it. I’m a total sucker for these delightful light sophisticated comedies of the early and mid-1960s. And yet, except for a few little oddities like Dr. Strangelove and The Pink Panther and How to Steal a Million, they all seem to be forgotten. Check people’s opinions on the web, and you’ll find that the few who deign to comment don’t have anything good to say. Something tells me that this isn’t the entire story. If these films were to be shown again today, I think they would bring the house down. The film’s opening act, La balena bianca (The White Whale), is a true masterwork. The members of the Orfei Circus play themselves—sort of. Midget MC Eros is having a fling with a midget acrobat named Luciana. The trouble is that Eros is married to the fat-woman acrobat Ciccia. Eros’s numerous attempts to murder his wife are all in vain, as she is indestructible. Not only is the story brilliant and captivating, and not only are the circus acts top-notch, but the design, lighting, and cinematography are unbeatable. Visually this is one of the most hauntingly gorgeous movies ever made. The cinematographer was the great Gianni Di Venanzo, and his camera operator, Pasquale (or Pasqualino) De Santis, later rose in the ranks to become arguably the finest cinematographer of all.

The second story, Una donna dolce dolce (A Sweet Sweet Woman), can’t match up to the first, but it’s still a delight. Childlike wife Rossella, unhappy that her husband Carlo doesn’t want children, treats him as an infant, relegating him to the children’s den and treating him to countless gifts of baby toys. Tinto Brass, with what was then his trademark frizzy hair, plays one of the guests in Rossella and Carlo’s back yard who witness Carlo’s squirming embarrassment at his wife’s antics. He has a grand total of two lines.

Maddeningly, the two cartoons (which were in color in this otherwise black-and-white movie) that originally appeared between the two main stories have been deleted from the home video. Why? Probably just to annoy us.

With La mia signora, Il disco volante, La donna è una cosa meravigliosa, and Chi lavora è perduto all released in the last few months of 1964, Brass almost became a well-known name. The fame would die away quickly — only to rally some years later for very different reasons.

THE MUSIC:

A mere 43 years after the première, the soundtrack album is released. It includes the music for “Una donna dolce dolce,” not for “La balena bianca.” Oh well.... Still great to have, though.

CATALOGUE LISTING: ANICA — Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche Audiovisive e Multimediali.

Originally released on Thursday, 31 December 1964