ste-orlando

It is hard to think that a movie like "Matrimonio Alle Bahamas" comes from the same Country who gave us Vittorio De Sica's "Il Giardino Dei Finzi-Contini" and Bertolucci's "The Conformist". And what is even more appalling is that it is at the top of the box office charts while other much more valuable Italian movies lag far behind it. And it's the same, boring and predictable comedy on provincial Italian humanity abroad, this time in the setting of the Bahamas, although the movie was shot in Miami (previous installments took place in New York or in some fancy skiing location of the Italian Alps). Other than that, it's completely empty and repetitive. Massimo Boldi reprises his already seen of the mean-spirited, yet sweet Italian provincial, a taxi driver who leaves Milan to bring her beautiful daughter to the United States. There, the daughter falls in love and gets ready to marry. Taxi driver and wife leave for Bahamas to attend her wedding, but everyone's concerned that the differences in social status may create a huge embarrassment to the girl. No story, just a pretext for a torrent of provincial humor in depicting what appears to be the most exportable of Italian characterizations.

In the series "The Sleep of Reason", produced by and aired on Studio Universal, a British journalist investigates the murder of a woman and tries to explain that behind this homicide there is some kind of irrational explanation. The more he tries to collect evidence, the more he gets dragged into the world of the paranormal: mediums, ghosts, bi-location, transmigration of the soul. What I found it fascinating, compared to other similar kind of formats, is that here there is no effort whatsoever to scare, on the contrary everything is reported exactly as a real journalist would. This detached style of telling what is quite an incredible story is I think the strength of this product, halfway between a collection of independent shorts and a miniseries. "The Blair Witch Project" is probably the only other movie I have seen in years that has given me the same sense of realism, although its premises were completely different in its attempt to boost its own credibility, whereas "The Sleep of Reason" does not really deny its fictional nature. Rather, it applies a news reporting style to fiction in a way that makes the product's structure prevail over story itself, with "realism" becoming the grid through which the plot unfolds. While not immune from often severe dramatic inconsistencies and sometimes chaotic story lines, something to watch nevertheless.

Season after season, "House M.D." has managed to renew itself in a manner that is beyond mere innovation. Despite House's character remaining what made him so fascinating from the start, and despite the series format having substantially remained unaltered, there is such a new quality in all of the elements that surround the main character in the transition from season 2 to 3, and now season 4. Episode 1 of the fourth season, with the "mistaken perspective" on who the girl surviving the crash was, was an astonishing beginning for what often is, for many series, the season that will mark the end of their run. This also proves that Hugh Laurie's portrait of the amazing practitioner is strong enough to make this wonderful show stay on the air for many years to come, while others, like "Prison Break", appear to be going nowhere.