BEFORE SCROLLING TO THE WEB PAGE BELOW ABOUT TINTO BRASS, 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

Part Seven
EROTIC AND COMMERCIAL EXPERIMENTS

Jump ahead to:

Miranda

(1985)

This was obviously an attempt to capitalize on the success of The Key, and it worked! The Key had a depth and complexity that an artist can attain perhaps once in a lifetime — if he’s lucky. Miranda doesn’t even try to come close, but it’s certainly charming. The sex-film industry concentrates on corporate-ladder-climbing hard-bodied early-twentyish kids with only one thing on their mind — and it has a propensity to present sex as a freakshow. Miranda, on the other hand, deals with ordinary-looking and more mature folk in ordinary situations, and presents sex as natural and unsensational, as a positive expression of affection. The film is filled with wonderful set pieces and vignettes. In the early 1950s innkeeper Miranda hopes that her MIA husband Gino will one day return. Still in the town are leftovers from the war — American servicemen, some young French women, and various other international travelers, all of whom are at complete ease with one another. Scenes of a country sunrise, singing at the inn, dancing at a picnic, dashing about town in a motorcycle, evoke a wistfulness that is rare in movies. And the bit where Miranda and her friend Leda fantasize about what the guys on the beach look like without their swimming trunks is a scream. If you’re attuned to quiet, understated, leisurely, unpretentious entertainment, this one’s for you.

REVENGE: At the end of the film, on the monument to those departed in battle, in addition to the name of Miranda’s husband (Gino Rostagni) are the following names: Enrico Bottoli, Luciano Maffezzoli, Stefano Panizzi, Marino Rasoli, Guido Ravasi, [???] Sanfelici, S[???] Scaroni, Pavel Soliani, Cesare Spegni, Aldo Orlandelli, Tullio Cosulich, G. Rondi Don, and Callisto Kezich). In the supplemental section of the American DVD released by Cult Epics, Brass explained that three of those names (Rondi, Cosulich, Kezich) are plays upon the names of critics who had lambasted The Key. It’s nice to have the last word, isn’t it?

Five cameras to shoot Malisa Longo’s lengthy striptease, and this is all that’s left of it
We joined the Navy to dance	A scene taken directly from Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees — family connections, you see
	Jean-René Lemoine (in the white suite), one of the most appealing actors ever to grace a cinema screen. He pops up again in Così fan tutte.

CURIOSITY: A sequence of sound effects during the ice-cream-parlor scene is lifted from NEROSUBIANCO.

The original announcement of the only authorized DVD edition of Miranda, but this artwork seems to have been rejected in favor of the design on the right. The notation on some official sites that the DVD is 1.85:1 rather than 1.66:1 is dead wrong, so don’t worry. (Region-2 PAL DVD, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)	The same as the video on the left, but this is definitely the artwork that was approved and actually issued on 11 October 2006. (Region-2 PAL DVD, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)
A box set, which was to be released on 6 December 2006. Sadly, plans were changed, and instead we’ll get the box set to the right. (Region-2 PAL DVDs, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)	This is the box set that will actually be released on 6 December 2006. (Region-2 PAL DVDs, which will not play on most US/Canadian equipment.)

The police return from La vacanza to gun down Jack in Miranda
Arrow DVD “Full-Screen” but needlessly column-boxed to about 1.25:1.	Cult Epics DVD 1.85:1 with a black border on the bottom.	Raro DVD 1.66:1 with black borders on the sides. All the action is there, but the image is so overly color-corrected that the sky disappears.

Giovanni Bertolucci presenta
un film di Tinto Brass

Miranda

Copyright © 1985 by San Francisco Film srl

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