Top 10 of 2014

It is time to let you know my favourite pictures of 2014, dear readers! 
Zazie last year has seen 80 films, coming from every corner of the planet.
Of all of them, she can’t stop thinking about the following ones:

10 - '71 by Yann Demange (UK/Northern Ireland)
A young British soldier left in the middle of the Belfast Catholic enclave in the ‘70s. 
It is breathless, superbly filmed and played by an actor whose name you’ll often hear in the future: 
Jack O’Connell. 

9 - Party Girl by Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq, Claire Burger & Samuel Theis (France/Germany)
Angélique has been a stripper all her life and she had different children from different men. Now she’s old, but this doesn’t mean she is wiser. You can love her or you can hate her, but you can’t forget about her. And, détail qui tue: this is a true story, played by the real Angélique, filmed by one of her sons.
Caméra d’Or at the last Cannes Film Festival. You bet!

8 - Nightcrawler by Dan Gilroy (US)
Louis Bloom is looking for a job and he finds one: he patrols LA streets at night searching for accidents, fires, dead people. He films everything without a shadow of emotion.
He is a modern monster, a product of contemporary society, an adept of the "business plans".
Jake Gyllenhaal delivers the performance of his life as this (in)human vulture.

7 -  Ida by Pawel Pawlikowski (Polland)
1962. Anna has never left the Polish convent where she spent all her young life. Before taking the perpetual vows, she visits her only relative, aunt Wanda. Together with her, she will venture into the real world and into their family history, discovering a dark secret. 
Essential, filmed in a magnificent black & white, an incredible portrait of two amazing women.  

6 - Deux Jours, Une Nuit by Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne (Belgium)
Sandra, a Belgian mother just recovered from a nervous breakdown, has only two days to convince her colleagues to renounce to a bonus in order to have her re-integrated at work. The Dardenne brothers deal with the economic crisis in their way: a simple but powerful story where the most important thing is people’s solidarity. Marion Cotillard proves once again that she's an actress of a superior kind. 

5 - Under the Skin by Jonathan Glazer (UK)
The weirdest cinema object of these last years: a young woman drives in her car through the Glasgow streets. She is looking for men, but sex is not her final purpose. It is very slow, it is very strange, it is maybe going nowhere but you follow Scarlett Johansson in the cold and gloomy Scottish land as there was no tomorrow. So unpredictable that it gets under your skin, as the title promises.   

4 - Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson (US)
Everybody would like to live in Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel: it is full of bizarre and fascinating characters, the décor is to die for, the rhythm is frantic and the concierge, M. Gustave, is the classiest and the most reliable man ever. Ralph Fiennes shines brighter than anybody else in this irresistible and glamorous whirligig.  

3 - Boyhood by Richard Linklater (US)
As a modern Antoine Doinel, young Mason is followed by the camera of Richard Linklater from the age of 5 till the age of 18. We see him and his family (divorced father and mother and an older sister) growing up and aging literally in front of our eyes. It is life (and cinema) at its best: true, emotional, intelligent and funny. We are not alone in this world: it is so good to know it! 

2 - Winter Sleep by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey)
Watching a movie by Nuri Bilge Ceylan means something more than simply watching a movie. You are carried away in a parallel world: it is like reading a Tolstoj novel in the space of 3 hours. The psychological portrait of all the characters is so profound, complex and real, that you are submerged by a new kind of gratitude. The one you feel in front of masterpieces. 
Palme D'Or at the last Cannes Film Festival. You bet (twice!).

1 - Mommy by Xavier Dolan (Québec)
Have a look at the picture here below. This guy is about to do the most revolutionary and jubilant cinematic gesture of 2014. I'm lacking words to describe the effect that this movie has on me. 
Xavier Dolan is a larger-than-life director whose talent will grow in the years to come. 
He's a force of nature, a forerunner, a genius.
Lovers of minimalism in life and movies, please keep off, we're busy crying on a Céline Dion song. 
And, damn, we love it!

And if somebody is curious to know: no, I didn't see Gone Girl by David Fincher, because life is too short to waste time watching movies of film-makers that depresses you. 
I preferred to watch Mommy twice. 
Do you know what I mean?

La Dolce Vita (che se ne va)

Ammettiamolo : non è stato il miglior inizio d’anno possible.
Aver vissuto quello che abbiamo vissuto a Parigi la scorsa settimana, avrebbe rattristato davvero chiunque. Per qualche giorno, tutto è passato in secondo piano: le nostre vite, i nostri problemi, il nostro quotidiano. Atterriti, sommersi dagli eventi, ci siamo trascinati stremati fino alla manifestazione di domenica pomeriggio. Che certo è stato un momento bellissimo: tutta quella gente per strada, quel desiderio di restare uniti, compatti, quel sentimento di dover dire qualcosa di importante al resto del mondo.
Negli stessi drammatici giorni degli attentati, sono morti a distanza di poco tempo l’uno dall’altra due attori che appartenevano un po’ ad un’altra era, sia del cinema che del mondo: Rod Taylor

e Anita Ekberg

Australiano il primo, Svedese la seconda, avevano fatto fortuna, rispettivamente, a Hollywood e in Italia. A sentire della loro scomparsa, mi sono rattristata ancora di più.

Era un po’ come se l’ultimo barlume di innocenza e spensieratezza se ne fosse andato via da qui, trascinato insieme a tutto il resto in quel baratro buio e profondo a cui assomiglia sempre più spesso il mondo moderno. La Dolce Vita (1960), il film che ha creato il mito della Ekberg, è sì uno dei film più disperanti della storia (l’ho rivisto di recente e sono rimasta impressionata dalla sua angosciosità), ma nel nostro immaginario collettivo sarà sempre legato al mito dei paparazzi, di Via Veneto, di Roma quando era la città più bella del mondo, dell’Italietta della fine degli anni ’50, di un paese in cui c'era ancora speranza, il boom economico, Cinecittà, Hollywood sul Tevere, e dove due si potevano buttare nell'acqua della Fontana di Trevi dando vita ad un'immagine iconica riconoscibile da chiunque in qualunque parte del pianeta Terra:

La Ekberg, Dolce Vita a parte, non ha fatto una grande carriera. E lo stesso si può dire di Rod Taylor, che viene soprattutto ricordato per il suo ruolo in Birds (1963) di Alfred Hitchcock:

Io però l'ho notato in un altro film, sconosciuto ai più, scoperto per assoluto caso quando ero molto giovane e che ho sempre adorato: Sunday in New York (1963) di Peter Tewksbury:

Sunday in New York è una commedia romantica di quelle che si facevano solo una volta: ben scritta, con dialoghi brillanti e intelligenti, situazioni buffe e una morale da e tutti vissero felici e contenti. 
Che sollievo! Qui, come simpatico bonus, c'è un'ambientazione anni '60 che è seconda in delizia solo a Mad Men. New York non è mai stata così bella, e l'appartamento in cui si svolge quasi tutto il film è talmente meraviglioso che il desiderio di trasferirsi subito a vivere lì e farsi un Martini Cocktail sorge spontaneo dopo due secondi netti che lo si guarda. 

L'alchimia tra i due protagonisti, Rod Taylor e Jane Fonda (di una bellezza strepitosa), dà il tocco finale al tutto.

Ho iniziato a sognare di vedere New York guardando quel film, e posso assicurarvi che ancora oggi, e ogni qual volta mi è capitato di andarci, la domenica è il mio giorno preferito per stare in città. Passeggio per le strade di Manhattan e ripenso alla canzone di Peter Nero che fa da colonna sonora al film, e mi dico che la vita è ben strana. 
I film ci guidano, ci trasportano, ci accompagnano, e non ci lasciano mai.

La Dolce Vita se ne va, il cinema resta.

Top 5 TV Series of 2014

As you probably imagine, not only Zazie spends much of her time in the dark of cinema theatres, but also when she’s home, she can’t help herself but spending time watching TV series.
TV Series are the new Movies, let’s admit it. 

Sometimes it’s hard to find in cinema the same level of originality, boldness and amazement that you can find in television products.
There are so many jewels out there, that it’s basically impossible to see them all, but Zazie tried her best. So, starting from 2015, besides the usual TOP 10 of Best Pictures (wait, it will be published soon!), Zazie will share with you her TOP 5 of Best TV series!
Aren't you excited??!
One word before I start, for the TV series freaks like me: yes, I have seen True Detective and Fargo but for some reasons they didn't excite me as much as I thought. I liked them, I enjoyed to see them very much, but I forgot about them too soon. And this is not a good sign, as far as I'm concerned. 

Also, I would like to mention a couple of TV mini-series that really made my day:

Olive Kitteridge by Jane Anderson & Elizabeth Strout

Because I can't stop thinking about the incredible performances of Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins:

Quirke by John Banville, Andrew Davies and Conor McPherson

Because I can't stop thinking about Gabriel Byrne... (hey, I'm a blogger, not a saint!):

And here's my list:

5 - Transparent by Jill Soloway
From one of the scenarists of Six Feet Under (yes, she can!), the story of a dysfunctional but irresistible modern family in contemporary Los Angeles: the son is loosing his job and his mind over too many women, one of the two daughters doesn't know what to do with her life and the other one is leaving her family for another woman. The mother, divorced, is fed up of taking care of her second and very ill husband and the father, well, the father is a trans. Too over-the-top not to be irresistible, and Jeffrey Tambor yesterday night won the Golden Globe for this part. 
Well done, Maura!

4 – Mad Men/Season 7 (1st part) by Matthew Weiner
Waiting for the End of an Era, we witness Don Draper and his kind entering a new time in history: the ‘70s. Set between a cold and dark New York and a warm and sunny Los Angeles, the adventures of this bunch of advertising men and women is slowly but inexorably going towards the abyss. Nobody is doing the right thing, here. Lost in a changing and unrecognizable world, our heroes keep making mistakes and turning in circles. 

Where all this is going? To hell, most probably.
And I personally can’t wait to see it (even if, I know, I’ll feel like an orphan, afterwards).

3 - The Affair by Hagai Levi & Sarah Treem
From the creators of In Treatment (Santi Subito!), the story of a love affair that would torture anybody’s heart. Noah and Alison are both married but they can’t help themselves: they become lovers during a summer in the Hamptons. Questioned months later by a NY detective about the death of somebody they both knew, they talk about the same episodes but in a completely different way. 
Divided in two parts of 30 minutes each, reporting first Noah and then Alison’s version, this modern Rashomon is one of the finest things you can come across. Besides the great screenplay, the two (British, of course!) main actors raise the bar at the highest levels. 
Dominic West and Ruth Wilson (she just won a Golden Globe for this role) are so amazing that you want to fiercely believe in both their versions.

2 - The Knick by Jack Amiel & Michael Begley
Once we were butchers. 
In a Manhattan hospital at the beginning of last century, a group of brave (and a bit crazy) surgeons try their best to save peoples’ lives using new techniques.
Forget about ER, Grey’s Anatomy and Dr. House: things are much worse here. There’s blood everywhere, inside and outside the hospital, surgeons are under drugs or fighting for their (black) rights. It’s a mess, but it’s a great one. Steven Soderbergh is the magician behind the camera of each episode. The dark sepia light in which this world is living is intoxicating: you can’t get enough of it.
And Episode 7 is possibly the best thing I’ve seen this year.

1 – The Fall/Season 2 by Allan Cubitt
Yes, I know, the first season of The Fall was just a very good and intriguing new series.
The story of a serial killer in Belfast who’s attacking and viciously killing young women and of the Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson, called from London to investigate and solve the case.
This second series, well, this second one is something else.
The serial killer is not killing anymore, the policemen hating bad men finds out to have one inside of him (great John Lynch) and Stella (magnificent Gillian Anderson) is shining like a rising star, as her name promises: a single and very sexy woman obliged to live in a men’s world, not afraid of being afraid, not justifying herself for her commitment-free (and possibly bi-sexual) love life, not worried of being smarter and stronger than any other man around her.
As you’ve probably understood: this was love at first sight.