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

Erotic and Commercial Experiments—Continued

Paprika

(1991)

“Tinto Brass Reopens the Closed Houses.” That was the film’s byline. Brass wanted to pay homage to the brothels of his 1950s youth, and so he apparently reworked and modernized his Fanny Hill screenplay. He had the script completed at least as early as 1986, but couldn’t find the right actress to play the lead. Finally he saw a news photo of a tennis match, with Klaus Kinski’s ex-girlfriend Debora Caprioglio looking on. That was the face he had been looking for. He contacted the newspaper photographer, who gave him Caprioglio’s phone number. Brass called the number and Caprioglio’s mother answered. “Is this really Tinto Brass?” she asked. “Hold on! I’ll get my daughter for you right away!” Now that’s a great mom!

Brass had previously included copious nudity and simulated sex in his movies, but that was never his focus. His focus instead was on emotions — rather profound emotions. Many audiences, however, couldn’t tell the difference, and dismissed his films as works of pornography. To many people, apparently, a nude is a nude is a nude, and the presence of a nude definitively makes a work pornographic. With Paprika there was a distinct change, for its primary purpose was to explore eroticism and arousal, and hence it is arguably a work of sheer exploitation. But it’s exploitation with a purpose, for it seeks to present sexual arousal as equally important as any other human experience, desire, or emotion. Further, the examination of prostitution from the prostitutes’s point of view is, in part, genuinely frightening. To make his points, Brass needed to be extreme, but he also needed to be extremely humorous. Brass also makes an argument for the cultural importance of the brothel, which was a rather refined meeting ground for all levels of society in pre-prohibition Italy, and he laments its degradation into a seedy locus for a quick romp. The story itself is not notably creative, but it serves as a launching pad for an argument seldom made in movies before, and probably never made as forcefully. Fiancé Nino in need of money, innocent 18-year-old lass decides to move into a bordello for only two weeks to earn some money. When she has a surprise encounter with the future Mrs. Nino, she concludes she has no reason to quit her new job, and so tours the bordello circuit in Italy and France. Finally she marries a goofy old count who has the discourtesy to drop dead. The new countess returns to see her friends at her first bordello as it’s being closed by the government. On a superficial level, the movie appears superficial, and that was precisely the point. It would have been counterproductive for the movie to have noticeably lofty intentions. But the movie is a time-capsule into a slightly earlier age, an age that is largely forgotten already. And that is its importance.

WHERE HAVE WE HEARD THAT BEFORE? The title theme is a repeat of the funniest polka from The Key. Three themes from Capriccio are repeated, as well as two from Miranda and one from Snack Bar Budapest.

OTHER NOTES: How many other movies have a sex scene scored with an Edith Piaf song? The best piece of music, “Ciribiribin,” ends far too soon. I could listen to it all day long. I’d love to blast it on a concert-sound system in my neighborhood—all the time. No matter what else I or anyone else might think of this film, the use of that song gave me one of the loudest and hardest laughs I’ve ever had in my life. There’s almost as much blue neon in this film as there was in Snack Bar Budapest. There are two references to Salon Kitty: one in which Madame Collette performs a cabaret number, and another that repeats the most surreal scene in Salon Kitty, in which a prostitute (here played by Valentine Demy) gets rabies. The original was much better. This film has the ugliest guy you’ve ever seen, along with a bunch of the most unpleasant, including Paprika’s client/uncle. I’ve never seen John Steiner ham it up so much as he does here. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen any actor ham it up so much as John Steiner does here. There’s also a disturbing scene reminiscent of Rudolf Leonhardt and G. W. Pabst’s Das Tagebuch einer Verloren (Diary of a Lost Girl) in which it’s impossible to tell whether what we’re seeing is a seduction or a rape. After a short while it’s difficult not to feel sorry for all the performers in this film, because although this isn’t hardcore, in many ways it’s more extreme and much more embarrassing. Fans of T&A will probably get a great kick out of Paprika, more so than they would from any other Brass movie except possibly for Fallo.

Tinto Brass on the set — Valentine Demy on the left and Debora Caprioglio on the right	Tinta Brass as the bartender

MONEY: This movie made a mint. And it wasn’t just guys who made it successful. Gals apparently loved it too.

BERNARDINO ZAPPONI. This film first of two collaborations between Brass and Fellini’s frequent coauthor, who had previously penned such notable Fellini films as Toby Dammit (an episode of Spirits of the Dead), Roma, Casanova, and La città delle donne (The City of Women), as well as a Dario Argento film called Profondo rosso. Apparently this movie was inspired by a pseudonymous short story he had published. Tinto Brass read it, immediately recognized the style, called Zapponi and asked if he was the author, and when Zapponi confessed, Brass offered him a scriptwriting job. The two would work together again on the other of Brass’s two fluffiest films, Così fan tutte.

A REFERENCE: A train passenger is reading Ed McBain’s L’altra parte della città. I don’t know the significance of that.

British Region-2 PAL DVD, which will not play on most US equipment. English subtitles,

Augusto Caminito presenta
un film di Tinto Brass

Paprika

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