Showing posts with label cultura. Show all posts

There was a recent showdown in Oscars documentaries between Colectiv and My Octopus Teacher. I rooted for Collective and it reminded me of a long running Italian TV series from my childhood, La Piovra. Caracatita a castigat si traducerea in romana pe FataCarte.

Duolingo (invite) sent me a new report placing me in top 1% users, which is a great opportunity to once again look at Romanian radio drama or theatre or teatru radiofonic. Traducere in romana in curand pe pagina de fatacarte Zamolxis.

There are many ways, these days, to celebrate April Fools Day. I'm going to share with you a James Joyce poem along with the story of having sent it. (If you’re looking for a more conventional April Fools celebration, check out 2009.)

I just learned of two significant Romanian movie events in Toronto: Porumboiu's Whistlers is having its (wide?) release and TIFF a "survey" of 50 years of Romanian Cinema.

I haven’t been able to find many movies with by Romanians or about Romanians at TIFF 19 (Toronto International Film Festival) I thought I mention them before the Festival is over.

I haven’t quite followed the morbidly insane “family coalition” initiative (w-coalitia), in all its pathology, but I recently discovered how some UniBuc prof has been using everything, including the Hamangia / Cernavoda sculptures for his fascist crusade against gays. And likely, from the same deep vein of christo-fascism, the nebulous coalition has managed (or is about) to pass a law to stick more Christianity into people’s faces under the guise of celebrating Brancoveanu Constantin, boier vechi si domn crestin (old boyar and Christian voivode).

Recently, a friend asked me to provide Romanian lessons. I directed her to Duolingo (invite) and, as I occasionally listen to Romanian eTeatru (or “teatru radiofonic”), it occurred to me that this is something worth sharing with the rest of the world.

I watched it a few days ago and promised myself I’ll write down my thoughts before this forgettable creation disappears from memory. On the plus side, I identified a Romanian actress in it.

This is an (Austro?-)German movie shortlisted for the Foreign Oscar and filmed in Bucharest. It’s great and rated 7.6 on IMDB, with a Metascore of 93. It is also remarkably warm and positive toward Romania.

I promised a reader to answer a thoughtful provocation on Herta Mueller and I finally keep (or try to) my word. I am replying to Mr Mihail Lungu in regards to how opportune and appropriate was my declared enthusiasm for her work and her Nobel.

Based on my mistaken belief that there may be people reading this, I go ahead with my recommendations, after the intro and Asia. PISA is not just a set of tests, it comes with suggestions and recommendations.

After briefly going through the just-published PISA 2015 results, here we expand on our knowledge of the top-performing Asian countries, which share some important characteristics.

I was going through a movie marathon when I started this article. I thought I’d seen something in Ghenea’s performance, then I wasn’t so sure. And time passed.

There was a time when talking about TIFF meant an image. Then, starting around 1975, it meant the Toronto International Film Festival. Then Romania thought that copying this name is OK, and now I find that I have to differentiate between tiff.ro and tiff.net. Here we are simply listing the Romanian movies at TIFF.net (in Toronto).

Recently, one of the few blogs I read went off-line, after publishing one episode of their epic sagas. It’s [sort of] about Dacians, and as a sign of solidarity, I’ve decided to give the non-Romanian world an idea about it.

The name would be longer, but I’m running out of space and patience. I don’t care much about MihaElan (yes, she lost the “n” but kept the “Schwartzenberg”) MRRR née Tiganu and yet the scandals she so often gets into have a dimension that has not really been explored in Romania, a dimension I find very interesting: women seem to be far more interested in her (both accusing and defending) than men. Why would that be? The other thing that irks me is censorship – something we should all fight foragainst, whether it comes from Mihaela Radulescu or from her post-op model Zoso. 

There are two subjects that seem to dominate the Romanian public sphere (I would say blogo.ro-oaie, but that's defunct): the religion choice in schools and the New York Times Op-Ed on corruption in Romania. I’m very tempted to make a nice hot stew out of both, but I’ll try to keep each to its own article.

Although I have written briefly about progressive rock, I shied away thus far from Romanian progressive rock. That's rather odd, considering that the apogee of that genre in Romania is universally considered to be the eponymous Zalmoxe by Sfinx, released (more like “censored”) in 1978.

It has recently come to my attention that today is St Andrew's day and also Scotland National Day. Tomorrow is Romania's. Or, since it’s unlikely I’ll finish this article and publish it today, subtract one day from all the temporal adverbs above. We will also learn here who put the ‘X’ in XXX.

My reservations notwithstanding, I suspect most of the people who voted for Iohannis do not really know who he is, apart from the fact that he is not Ponta. I'm trying to bring a bit more color and background to his wooden personality.