The producers of the new ‘The Naked Gun‘ insist on calling their film as a ‘reboot’ rather than a ‘remake’ of the original series. I’m not sure that I understood all the subtle differences between the new cinematic category and the one I already knew. If I had to choose an alternative title, it would have been ‘The Naked Gun – New Generation’, because in one of the most successful scenes of the film, the police officers of the famous Los Angeles police department pay homage and seek encouragement from the portraits of their fathers, in fact the heroes of the episodes of the old series. The goal of making the new film is the same as the previous ones: to bring in as many viewers as possible who will have fun enough to tell further and bring in more viewers. The script is written by writers with experience in the satirical programs Saturday Night Live and the direction belongs to one of them – Akiva Schaffer. It is rumored that at least one of the authors of the previous series is not too happy with the new direction the series is taking, but it no longer belongs to him. After all, ‘Naked Gun’, in its time, also quoted, parodied and distorted its predecessors. For me, the goal (85 minutes of entertainment) was achieved.
The detective story is irrelevant, as in most films of this genre. We are dealing with a bank robbery, a possible murder and a suspicious traffic accident. A vamp also appears (in the style of the detective Marlowe movies) who turns out to be the sister of the fresh corpse. Between her and the main hero detective, an idyll of those that destroy everything around will develop. We are in the third decade of the third millennium, so absolute evil can only be embodied by a large corporation and its boss. What matters are the jokes, and they must follow each other at a pace fast enough to not allow the silence between the bursts of laughter to linger in the cinema for more than a minute at most.
Why did I like it? ‘The Naked Gun‘ does not seek to revolutionize the genre, it is consistent with the films in the previous series and therefore about what I expected. Several jokes are anthological and I am convinced that they will even appear in future anthologies of comedies of the 2020s. The mixture of clownish physical humor with verbal humor is well dosed, in such a way that, I think, fans of all genres will be satisfied. Of course, some jokes risk getting lost in translation, whether it is puns in English, or cultural or cinematic references that may go unappreciated by those who ignore the sources. The next joke, however, will not be long in appearing. I appreciated the fact that the screenwriters avoided loading the film with too much humor related to technology or with political allusions to our complicated contemporary reality, leaving the chance for today’s viewers and those over a decade or more to enjoy it. The main performers are excellently chosen. Liam Neeson gives consistency to the role precisely because he doesn’t try to do anything else than he has done in many action films in which he has starred in the last two decades. I feel like watching one or two of them again and looking there for the sources of his parody and well-camouflaged humor so far. So much has been written about the chemistry of his relationship with Pamela Anderson that I would have nothing more to add here. I am really curious if the actress manages to relaunch (some will write to launch) her film career. To all those looking for cinematic entertainment in this hot summer, I recommend watching ‘The Naked Gun‘. For younger people who haven’t seen the original, I recommend that they look for that one too.
Some of the most scathing cinematic critiques of the bourgeoisie and the social order it dominated were created in the years after the student uprisings of 1968. They did not always take the form of explicitly political films, and one good example is Claude Chabrol‘s 1970 film ‘La rupture‘ (‘The Breach‘ in the English distribution). On the surface, we are dealing with a plot almost like some of the films made by Hitchcock two or three decades earlier about an apparently normative family and a woman who faces alone the hostility of the environment around her. However, underneath this story (inspired by an English novel) there is a much stronger psychological tension and a drama that at times borders on tragedy. What begins as an homage to Hitchcock ends up being a further reverence for another of Chabrol‘s cinematic masters – Fritz Lang. All sprinkled with quotes from the films of the two (a cameo appearance by the director or a balloon seller with a symbolic role). If we were to look for an alternative name for this film, it could be ‘The Indiscreet Wickedness of the Bourgeoisie’.
‘La rupture‘ begins with a shocking scene of domestic violence. Hélène and Charles’ marriage is no longer working. Perhaps it was not destined to work from the beginning. He comes from a very wealthy family, has aspirations to be a writer but does not seem to have published anything yet. In addition, he takes drugs and is violent. The one who suffers is their little boy who ends up in the hospital after his father has a fit of rage. Charles’ parents and especially his father – a manipulative businessman – never agreed to the marriage and are now taking advantage of the marital crisis to force a divorce in which Hélène will be found guilty. To do this, they hire the services of a rather dubious guy, ready to do anything for money, with the mission of compromising the woman. It is not easy, because Hélène, despite her modest and somewhat disadvantageous social origin (she is a former nude dancer) is a woman of impeccable morality, ready to make any sacrifice for her child and who even retains affection for her violent husband. The conspirators will devise a plan ‘like in the movies’ to achieve their goals.
Chabrol‘s filming style in ‘La rupture‘ is ‘slow-burner’. The story develops slowly, the situations and characters are carefully constructed. However, these are not ordinary situations, many of the characters are colorful and eccentric, and when we are dealing with an apparently banal character (for example, a hospital physician who seems to fall in love with Hélène) we can suspect that the intention is parody. Stéphane Audran (Chabrol‘s wife at the time) creates one of her best roles here. Jean-Pierre Cassel gives life to the evil schemer who tries to compromise the heroine and proves that he had at least as much talent and charisma as his famous and contemporary to us son. Michel Bouquet perfectly plays the kind of role that made him famous – an evil big bourgeois. Around them and especially in the guest house across from the hospital where the injured child is hospitalized, where much of the story takes place, a gallery of picturesque characters revolves, including three old women who play tarot cards about whom I would write that they are stolen from the Coen brothers’ films, if I didn’t know that the brothers would only debut in about 14 years. I also liked Pierre Jansen‘s music that accompanies the visual part with dramatic and expressive counterpoint. The ending slips into oneirism and I won’t say more so as not to spoil the pleasure of a viewing or re-viewing that I recommend.
It’s hard to believe that Fritz Lang‘s ‘M‘ was made in 1931. This film is so bold, unconventional, inventive, stylish, dark and scary that even today, if it were projected or released with minor changes and modernizations, it would stir up controversy, alienate certain categories of viewers and win many admirers among other groups of movie fans. It is a film that can be categorized (if we really have to categorize it) as a psychological thriller like ‘Silence of the Lambs’ and at the same time as a document about Germany during the years of the rise of Nazism, a historical period that never ceases to intrigue and fascinate. After watching this film we can go back and better understand the works of filmmakers such as Lars von Trier or Darren Aronofsky.
‘M‘ tells the story of the investigation and public hunt for a serial killer who lures and kills little girls. This formula – inspired without respecting the details of real cases – will be continued and diversified, up to the Scandinavian thrillers or films like ‘Zodiac’ in the new millennium. There is not much suspense about the identity of the murderer, which is revealed to us quite early. The emphasis is placed by the screenwriters (Lang and his wife) and the director on how crimes change the society and how the community organizes and responds to identify and capture the murderer. The result is impressive.
1931 was one of the first years of sound cinema and the process was quite expensive to require licenses for every minute of soundtrack. The producers only had funds for about two-thirds of the total duration of the film, which is a little more than two hours in the version that was reconstructed after many decades of censorship and changes. Fritz Lang, making his first ‘talkie’, transforms this limitation into an artistic process, letting some of the action scenes unfold as silent film episodes. He is helped by the exceptional cinematography signed by Fritz Arno Wagner, who had created – among other things – the elongated and frightening shadows in ‘Nosferatu’. The gallery of characters created by the screenwriters is also exceptional. In catching the murderer, the police are involved, as well as crime organizations (disturbed in business by the increased police presence on the streets) combined with beggars’ unions. The cinematic portraits immediately reminded me of the paintings of George Grosz or Otto Dix. In fact, they are imagistic representations belonging to the same trend – German expressionism. Peter Lorre was at the beginning of a career that he would continue for decades, but his role in this film is probably the one that will remain in the memory of most cinema lovers. ‘M‘ will be the penultimate film that Fritz Lang makes in Germany before the Nazis rise to power and his American exile. They will ban the film shortly afterwards. Not without reason, because with this dark thriller Lang has created a truthful image of the mass psychoses that made the rise of the dictatorship possible. It is a revolutionary film in attitude, in visual power and in the amount of artistic innovations it brings. Lang‘s masterpiece and one of the best films ever made.
Richard Curtis is one of the most successful screenwriters in the ‘feel-good’ romantic comedy genre. Some of its remarkable successes are due to his writing. He has only dared to sit in the director’s chair three times in order to bring the scripts of the feature films he wrote to the screens. The last time it happened was in 2013 with ‘About Time‘, a film that combines the idea of time travel with the romantic genre in a rather original way. I don’t have much to complain about director Richard Curtis, but I think he would have a lot to discuss with screenwriter Richard Curtis. The film starts from an original idea, develops it quite well for some of the time, but from about halfway through the screening I had the feeling that the author of the text had pretty much finished what he had to say and the actors and director were left to puzzle over how to fill the rest of the length of a feature film.
Tim, the film’s main character, learns from his father, the morning after his 21st years celebration, that the men in their family have the talent to travel through time. Nothing spectacular from a historical point of view, so as not to cause global catastrophes, but they can correct small personal misfortunes, such as missed opportunities with a girl they really liked. He puts his talents into practice, with mixed success. The important breakthrough comes when he meets Mary, the woman of his life, whom he conquers with the help of small corrections of destiny. And yet, limitations cannot prevent greater misfortunes. Perhaps, after all, to live an ordinary life, with its great joys and small troubles, is still preferable.
The formula works wonderfully in the first part of the film, but then it bogs down in the middle. Curtis the screenwriter seems hesitant to make his characters unhappy for more than three minutes. The conclusion is that in life, as in film, too much happiness is not good for the cinematic narrative. In addition, there are a few time travel paradoxes that beg to be ignored, but that’s only possible up to a point. Director Curtis is neat in execution but he seems to be out of ideas and doesn’t really say anything new from the middle of the film to the end. There are many funny details and quotes from other films (a poster for ‘Amelie’ – the ultimate feel-good film for example) or books, but that’s about it. We feel good as spectators, maybe even too good. I wasn’t thrilled with Domhnall Gleeson‘s performance in the lead role and, in addition, he seems a bit young for the role and a bit unchanged throughout what would be a decade of action. Rachel McAdams is pretty and likable, but the one who explodes on screen is Margot Robbie. The future star was in one of her first major roles and she overshadows the main heroine as a presence, even though she has a much smaller supporting role, making us doubt the hero’s romantic decisions. The acting delight is provided by Bill Nighy, an actor I love very much. In the role of the father he is amusing, subtle and touching, in the tasteful tradition of British comedies. However, even he cannot save the film, in my eyes. ‘About Time‘ is like a cake too sweet to leave a pleasant impression.
Films about migrations, emigrants and immigrants are an important genre in world cinema, but not in Romanian cinema. ‘Jaful secolului‘ a.k.a. ‘The Heist of the Century‘ (which also circulates worldwide with the alternative titles ‘Traffic‘ and ‘Rheostat‘) has as its main theme the fate of Romanians living and working abroad. The dispersion of the population in search of a better life (especially from an economic point of view), made possible by the opening of European borders, is the dominant social phenomenon of the last 35 years of Romanian history. It also happens in most, if not all, countries of former Eastern Europe, but it reaches record numbers in Romania. And yet, Romanian cinema has produced surprisingly few films that look into the personal traumas and socio-economic dissonances of this migration. One of them was the debut film, over a decade ago, of Teodora Mihai, who also directed ‘Jaful secolului‘. The script is written by Cristian Mungiu, the filmmaker who paved the way for the successes of the Romanian New Wave two decades ago. Mungiu is also a co-producer of this film, which is actually a co-production of film studios from Romania, the Netherlands and Belgium. Among other co-producers we find the names of the Dardenne brothers. Unlike the films that made Mungiu famous, ‘Jaful secolului‘ does not look to the past and (even though the story is based on a real event that occurred in 2012) is completely immersed in the present – a painful and complicated present for the film’s heroes.
The script is inspired by an art theft in Rotterdam, a case that has not been fully elucidated to this day. At that time, seven famous paintings worth tens of millions of euros were stolen from an exhibition. It seemed to have been the work of professionals, who had operated with formidable speed, demonstrating a good knowledge of the places and disappearing before the police could show up and secure the area and the escape routes. The traces soon led to a gang of criminals from Romania. Screenwriter Mungiu started from these facts and built a fictional hypothesis not so much about the way the criminals acted, but about the reasons that led them to commit the theft. The first part of the film is a combination of a heist plot about the planning and execution of the theft, combined with the story of the young couple formed by Natalia and Ginel, who left Romania for Western Europe to overcome the economic difficulties at home. In the second part, the action moves back to the town on the Danube where the two take refuge together with their loot, after the heist story goes wrong.
From the Western viewer’s point of view, it could be an immigration film combined with the story of a famous theft at the time and the complicated investigation that followed. None of these narrative threads are conventional, however. What primarily interested the filmmakers was the meeting between the two cultural and historical hemispheres of Europe. The tolerant democracy of the West, which accepts foreign economic immigrants on condition that they respect a set of rules that include social and economic distancing and differentiation, meets the feelings and resentments of Eastern Europeans who are forced to accept socio-economic inferiority and feel misunderstood and unaccepted by the majority society they have arrived in. Corruption and abuse exist in both societies and they only exacerbate the differences and conflicts. The motivations for the theft are completely different from those suspected by the investigators and probably most viewers.
The film benefits from some remarkable acting performances. Anamaria Vartolomei is a rising star of European cinema and this role in a (partly) Romanian film only adds value to her successful creations of recent years. Ionut Niculae and Rares Andrici both manage to give life to two viable and credible characters. A gallery of well-drawn authentic figures surrounds the heroes during the period they live in the Netherlands and in the hometown where they return. I cannot say the same about the investigators who resemble too much the clichés of investigators and prosecutors from many other Romanian films. I liked the cinematography less. I think it wanted to suggest the cold and indifferent light of the European northwest where the first part of the action takes place, the freeze and poverty of the Romanian environment in the second part. However, too many scenes take place at night, the darkness uniforms and makes the action at certain moments difficult to follow. ‘Jaful secolului‘ (I like the Romanian title much better) is a well made and important film, with a theme that is painful and urgent for both hemispheres of the continent.
‘Germany Year Zero‘, filmed by Roberto Rossellini in 1947 and released in 1948, is one of those films about which entire bookshelves have been written and can still be written. In less than 80 minutes, this film manages to be the ultimate document about Germany in the years after World War II and one of the most remarkable films ever made about the disasters of war, about destroyed childhoods and about the harmfulness of totalitarian ideologies. It is a film that has been disputed, contested and boycotted: the German public did not see it for three decades, with the exception of a single screening in 1952. It is considered one of the masterpieces not only of Rossellini’s career but also of the entire neorealist movement, although in its production it violated some of the fundamental canons of neorealism. More than anything, it is a cry of deep human pain, expressed through the means of cinema.
Roberto Rossellini, who had lost a nine years old son the year before, chose to have in ‘Germany anno zero‘ as its main hero a twelve-year-old boy who survives in the ruins of Berlin. Edmund is the youngest brother in the Köhler family. His mother is dead, his father is ill. The older brother is hiding from the police, he fought in the German army ‘until the bitter end’ and he fears imprisonment in the camps. With three food coupons for four people, existence is difficult. The middle sister is forced to go out at night ‘for fun’ with the soldiers of the occupation armies, and Edmund tries to help the family by working (although he does not have a permit due to his age), selling objects on the black market, being an accomplice in thefts. He no longer goes to the school where ‘democracy’ is taught. The building in which the family lives is half in ruins, and in fact there does not seem to be any intact building left in the area of Berlin where the filming was done. The other tenants are also decimated families or refugees, always looking for food, in danger of being disconnected from gas or electricity because there is no money to pay for it. The meeting with his former teacher, still an adherent of Nazi ideas, infests the child’s mind with ideas about the survival of the strong in a world in constant conflict. The consequences of this ‘life lesson’ from the past will be tragic.
Rossellini used in this film, as he did in many others, amateur actors, to whom he gave minimal script instructions and granted them freedom to build their lines and details of the characters. This procedure, still considered modern today, gives the feeling of authenticity and true experience of the characters. The amateur actors were themselves survivors of the war, the deprivations and traumas they brought to the screen were reflections of their own experiences. Filmed two years after the Holocaust and the crimes of war, the film indirectly reminds them: German society is still deeply divided, psychological wounds are open, many of those who survived physically still carry in their souls the poison of the criminal ideology that had triggered the conflagration. Children are also late victims, their childhood is stolen, their coming to age is polluted. Those who had instilled the concepts that had led to the disaster continue to deny their responsibilities. Physical and spiritual recovery had not yet begun. The footage brings Berlin in ruins and its inhabitants to the screen like ghosts still haunted by the past. They are authentic, even if the actors played most of their roles in studio conditions in Italy. ‘Germania anno zero‘ completes and concludes Rossellini‘s trilogy of war films. It is also an exorcism of his own demons. The first two films had been dedicated to Italy during the fascist period and that of the occupation at the end of the war. With ‘Germany Year Zero‘ the Italian filmmaker returns to the roots of the conflict, in a way closing the historical circle by describing the disaster suffered by those who started the conflagration. It can also be seen as a historical warning, valid today more than ever.
‘L’africain‘ is a film that had all the premises of a great success. It was released in 1983 as a kind of French cinema industry’s response to the trend of action films set in exotic locations generated by the enormous success of ‘Indiana Jones’. The producer was Claude Berri, an experienced and very talented filmmaker himself. The director, Philippe de Broca, already had two decades of experience in adventure films and Steven Spielberg himself declared his admiration for him and admitted that he had been inspired by his films. The lead roles were played by Philippe Noiret (after Jean-Paul Belmondo had turned down the role), who two years earlier had played another European role in Africa in Bertrand Tavernier’s excellent ‘Coup de torchon’, and Catherine Deneuve, who also already had exotic adventure roles in her repertoire (and would add others later in her career). Finally, the author of the story was Gérard Brach, one of the most inspired French screenwriters of those times. And yet, the film failed to become a huge success. The restored version seemed a bit tired to me at over 40 years after its release, and the impression I was left with is that each of the excellent filmmakers and actors who participated in its creation gave this film a little less than I expected from them.
Charlotte and Victor are a married and separated couple, in no hurry to sign the divorce papers. She works for Club Med and has the idea of building a hotel in the heart of Africa, for lovers of geographical isolation, exotic adventures with animals and contacts with indigenous populations and cultures. Victor has lived in that very part of the world for many years, is a kind of local entrepreneur, pilot of a small plane with which he flies over the savannahs, jungles and deserts, well integrated into local life, including through a relationship with a young woman who sings the blues like in New Orleans. The plans in Paris do not match the realities of Africa. Charlotte’s initiative is met with corruption and opposition from the locals, as well as by the poachers who illegally kill elephants and traffic in ivory. After trying in vain to convince her to give up her plans, Victor will find himself with Charlotte in an adventure from which their relationship could be renewed.
What did I like? First of all, the cinematography by Jean Penzer, who passionately and talentedly films the landscapes of a Africa that has since shrunk in size and diversity, and the aerial acrobatics of the plane piloted by the film’s hero. Everything is accompanied by the very appropriate music by Georges Delerue. I can only like Philippe Noiret and Catherine Deneuve, both of them put their comedic talents into action in good spirit, although the interaction between the two seems to lack magnetism. I liked the script less. I don’t judge it by today’s standards, I think the ‘colonial’ feel with the white characters in the center and the rest in the background is intended to be parodic and caricatured. The adventures the heroes go through, however, never managed to captivate me or make me worry about their fate. ‘L’africain‘ is a film full of reverences for well-known cinematic creations in the genre of exotic adventures or dramas set in Africa, but it doesn’t find the necessary balance between action and romance, between comedy, ecological concerns and political allusions, which could have made of it a memorable African cinematic adventure.
Probabil că mulți dintre cititorii rubricii CHANGE.WORLD împărtășesc opinia că anul 2025 este altfel. De obicei, când ajung la jumătatea anului și încerc să fac bilanțuri parțiale, senzația este că nu am simțit când au trecut jumătate din cele 365 de zile. Nu în 2025. Ba chiar dimpotrivă, îmi pare acum că a trecut mult mai mult timp și că acesta a fost împânzit cu evenimente tragice, absurde, uneori de neînțeles. Când sunt confruntat cu asemenea fenomene, privirile mele se îndreaptă spre bibliotecă. În cărțile bune am găsit și voi găsi măcar o parte dintre răspunsurile la incertitudini și dintre antidoturile la spaime și neliniști. Raftul de cărți pe care vi-l propun acum este un raft virtual. El include câteva cărți apărute în prima jumătate a lui 2025, toate legate de cercetările științifice, tehnologiile avansate și impactul acestora asupra vieților noastre, ale tuturor. Nu le-am citit încă, dar am recomandări autorizate despre ele. Le-am comandat sau le voi căuta în librării, în călătoriile mele viitoare. Sper ca raftul virtual să se transforme în raft real și până spre sfârșitul acestui an să citesc și să-mi împărtășesc impresiile. Lista este deschisă și cititorii rubricii sunt invitați să adauge recomandările lor.
(sursa imaginii: www.amazon.com/dp/1541606698/)
Într-o epocă dominată de incertitudini, o carte care mi se pare potrivită este ‘Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty’ (‘Demonstrație: Arta și știința certitudinii’), apărută în luna mai la editura americană Basic Books din grupul Hachette. Autorul, Adam Kucharski, este matematician de formație și profesor de epidemiologie a bolilor infecțioase la London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Cum a ajuns acest tânăr și strălucit cercetător în matematică profesor în domeniul epidemiologiei trebuie să fie o poveste interesantă în sine. Cartea se ocupă de o problemă fundamentală a științei și a filozofiei. Ce este adevărul? Cum decidem ce să credem și cum putem fi siguri că ceea ce credem este adevărat? Și cum îi convingem pe alții că ceea ce noi credem este adevărat? Timp de mii de ani, de la grecii antici trecând prin epoca de aur arabă și până la lumea modernă, știința a folosit diferite metode – logice, empirice, intuitive și multe altele – pentru a separa faptele de ficțiune. Întrebarea pare cu atât mai actuală astăzi. Răspunsul este în aparență simplu – raționamentul științific, cu regulile sale bine definite. Adam Kucharski arată însă că demonstrația înseamnă mult mai mult decât axiome, teorii și legi: atunci când demonstrăm că un nou tratament medical funcționează, când convingem un juriu de vinovăția cuiva sau decidem dacă avem încredere într-un vehicul autonom, evaluarea dovezilor este departe de a fi simplă. Pentru a descoperi dovezi, trebuie să ne luptăm cu o grămadă de erori și prejudecăți și chiar să adoptăm uneori incertitudinea – și asta cu atât mai mult atunci când metodele existente eșuează. Acoperind matematica, știința, politica, filozofia și economia, această carte oferă o cale de a găsi drumul către dovezi, dar și, la fel de important, o metodă de a depăși impasul atunci când fapte presupuse certe se clatină.
Sam Altman, co-fondatorul și liderul firmei OpenAI a fost comparat în revista ‘The Economist’ cu Prometeu. Precum eroul mitologic, Altman este creditat (nu chiar singur) de a fi adus cu Inteligența Artificială o forță care are potențialul de a schimba cu totul soarta omenirii. Direcția poate fi creativitate și calitate de viață, dar poate fi și distrugere. Nu este de mirare că nu au întârziat să apară și cărțile care îi sunt dedicate, deși la 40 de ani, câți a împlinit în luna aprilie a acestui an, biografia sa ar trebui să fie departe de vreun final vizibil. Pe 20 mai au apărut simultan două cărți consistente despre el. Keach Hagey, reporteră și jurnalistă de știință și tehnologie la Wall Street Journal, a publicat la editura W.W. Norton, ‘The Optimist’ (‘Optimistul’), un fel de biografie oficială sau autorizată, pentru care a avut acces atât la Sam Altman însuși, cât și la familia, prietenii și colegii săi, pentru interviuri. Karen Hao (free-lancer care scrie des pentru The Atlantic) a fost ținută mai departe de Altman și de OpenAI. Nu este de mirare că ‘Empire of AI’ (‘Imperiul IA’), apărută la Penguin Press, este mult mai critică la adresa lui Altman. Ambele cărți sunt excelent documentate și foarte cuprinzătoare. Cititorii vor afla despre domeniile diverse în care Altman a activat și a investit – de la aplicații bazate pe localizare geografică, trecând prin criptomonede autentificate biometric, tehnici de întinerire a celulelor vii sau fuziune nucleară, până la super-inteligență. Ambele autoare relatează despre personalitatea sa carismatica și talentele de comunicator, despre capacitatea sa de a convinge și de a discuta cu parteneri sau investitori din orice domeniu. Atunci când se ajunge la concepțiile și planurile sale de viitor, concluziile și prognozele din cele două cărți sunt foarte diferite. Se impun, poate, lecturi paralele.
Thomas E. Weber este un veteran al jurnalismului tehnologic, care a fost primul deținător al unei rubrici despre Internet la Wall Street Journal. Cea mai recentă carte a sa, lansată în luna iunie de editura ‘St. Martin’s Press’ – ‘Cloud Warriors’ (‘Războinicii norilor’) – este dedicată schimbărilor climatice, prognozelor meteorologice și revoluției care are loc în acest domeniu, propulsată de avansurile tehnologice spectaculoase ale Inteligenței Artificiale și dronelor care colectează și transmit date de oriunde și oricând. Într-o narațiune remarcabilă despre inovație și perseverență, jurnalistul veteran Weber îi poartă pe cititori săi în lumea pionierilor care creează aceste previziuni revoluționare. De la vânătorii de furtuni care se întrec în urmărirea de tornade și fizicienii care dezvăluie secretele atmosferei, de la oamenii de știință care studiază modul în care oamenii reacționează la avertismente, până la grupările umanitare care activează pentru a evita foametea, Weber exploră culisele pentru a arăta cum predicțiile se îmbunătățesc constant. El explică ce este necesar pentru a transforma aceste previziuni în acțiuni care previn tragediile și cum oricine poate deveni mai informat în materie de vreme pentru a se proteja în situații de urgență.
‘The Ideological Brain’ (‘Creierul ideologic’) a fost publicată în martie 2025, de editura Henry Holt and Co., și a fost deja declarată de către rubricile dedicate cărților din ziare precum The Guardian și The Telegraph ca una dintre cărțile anului 2025. Autoarea este Leor Zimgrod, doctor în științe, psiholog politic și neurocercetător care investighează de ce unele creiere sunt susceptibile la ideologii extreme și cum mințile se pot elibera de dogme rigide. Biologia în serviciul ideologiei – iată o idee controversată de-a lungul istoriei științelor de-a lungul ultimelor două secole, dar care acum revine cu argumente solide. Bazându-se pe cercetările sale de ultimă oră, ea expune interacțiunea complexă dintre cunoaștere și mediu care predispune unii indivizi la moduri inflexibile de gândire. Creierul uman se confruntă zilnic cu o serie de dileme: cum să obțină coerență din informații senzoriale fragmentate și cum să stabilească o conexiune cu alte persoane într-o lume din ce în ce mai atomizată. Ideologiile oferă o scurtătură, dăruind răspunsuri ușoare, scenarii de urmat și un sentiment de identitate comună. Dar ideologiile au și un cost: cer conformism și suprimă individualitatea prin reguli rigide, ritualuri repetitive și intoleranță. Odată ce ideologiile ne cuceresc mintea, ele transformă fundamental modul în care gândim, acționăm și interacționăm cu ceilalți, făcându-ne mai puțin sensibili și adaptabili. Explicând cititorilor experimentele sale inovatoare, Leor Zmigrod dezvăluie mecanismele ascunse care ne ghidează credințele și comportamentele și susține că opțiunile noastre politice nu sunt superficiale, ci mai degrabă derivate din structura minților noastre. Rezultatele ei arată că ideologii din întreg spectrul politic se luptă să-și schimbe tiparele de gândire atunci când se confruntă cu informații noi. Deși unii indivizi sunt mai predispuși la gândirea dogmatică decât alții, cu toții ne putem strădui să fim mai flexibili. Zmigrod explică în final cum ne putem păstra mintea deschisă în fața ideologiilor extreme. Idei provocatoare și revelatoare – abia aștept să citesc cartea și cred că voi avea și eu multe de întrebat și de dezbătut, poate chiar de contrazis.
Raftul meu – deocamdată – virtual nu poate fi complet fără o carte de ficțiune. Amatorilor serialelor de cărți și de filme ‘Jocurile foamei’ le este rezervată o nouă delectare cu lectura cărții ‘Sunrise on the Reaping’ (‘Zorii secerișului’), un roman distopic scris de autoarea americană Suzanne Collins și al doilea ‘prequel’ al trilogiei originale. Acțiunea se petrece cu 24 de ani înainte de evenimentele din primul roman, iar narațiunea explorează teme precum manipularea politică, puterea propagandei și complexitatea controlului societal sub un regim totalitar și se concentrează pe cea de-a 50-a ediție a Jocurilor Foamei. Criticii și cititorii l-au apreciat deja ca fiind unul dintre cele mai captivante romane ale seriei.
Aceste cărți se află, poate, deja în planurile editoriale ale editurilor românești. Până la publicare, edițiile în engleză – țipărite sau în formate electronice text și audio – sunt deja accesibile.
Să aveți o vară frumoasă, cu lecturi interesante!
Articolul a fost publicat inițial în revista de cultură ‘Literatura de Azi’
Peter Brook was one of the greatest directors in the history of theatre, but he experimented with film in the first half of his career. ‘Lord of the Flies‘ (1963) is his second and last full-fledged venture into the world of cinema – one of only two feature films he directed that had no connection to theatre. He chose to adapt William Golding‘s highly successful and influential novel (a book studied in schools in many parts of the world) with great awareness of the differences between the two arts. Decades later he wrote about this experience: ‘I believed that the reason for translating Golding’s very complete masterpiece into another form in the first place was that, although the cinema lessens the magic, it introduces evidence.’ For him the book vs. film comparison makes no sense. Does cinema really diminish the magic? Does the concreteness of the image kill the imagination? This very film is one of the proofs to the contrary.
This cinematic version of the novel ‘Lord of the Flies’ is both faithful in spirit and free in form. To film, Brook selected a team of child and adolescent actors and took them to an island where he filmed for several weeks in chronological order of the events on screen. Every day he explained to the young actors the essence of what would happen that day and let them find their own gestures and words. This is how the story of the group of children from a very bourgeois English school who are evacuated from London during an unspecified historical war and who end up – without any adults – on a deserted island when their plane crashes in the middle of the ocean came to life. The children apply the survival skills learned at school or in the family, follow or invent rules of behavior, discover social instincts in themselves and try to apply them to the situation they suddenly find themselves in. However, conflicts, social differentiations, prejudices and especially the instincts of survival through force and at the expense of others soon appear – all those hidden ballasts and facets of human nature that are repressed by education. Within a few days, the social order falls apart, children reconstruct the division of adult society, those who try to act rationally to ensure the survival of the group become a marginalized minority, while fear, ignorance and idolatry generated by these appear, and violence becomes the mode of expression of relations between group members. A more eloquent metaphor of the dangers of the breakdown of the social structure is difficult to imagine.
Peter Brook shot about 60 hours of black and white film, and worked for a year in post-production to create the two versions that reached the screens. The post-apocalyptic theme was not entirely new when the film was made, but Brook‘s approach is profound and emotionally impactful, as well as politically charged. The technique of minimal directorial intervention by giving the actors almost complete freedom to interpret the scenes is still considered a novelty today, but it was imagined and used by Peter Brook as early as the early 1960s with very young and amateur actors. (Only two of the film’s participants pursued an acting career in the following decades). ‘Lord of the Flies‘ captivated and shocked me with the expressive power and direct emotion it conveys. Peter Brook broke new ground in theatre and left a significant impact on this art form. If he had devoted himself entirely or more to film, his influence on cinema would, in all likelihood, have been similar.
‘The Life and Death of Peter Sellers‘ is a film – for me – inexplicably underrated. Made in 2004 by director Stephen Hopkins, it brings to the screen the film career and private life of Peter Sellers, one of the most talented and interesting comic actors of the ’60s and ’70s, a personality with a very intense and very controversial public exposure. Biopics of great stars are not easy subjects, but here we are dealing, in my opinion, with an intelligent script and a good opportunity for complex roles and I mean not only the main role but also several of the supporting roles, in a movie that combines biography with film within a film, in a docu-comedy style very suitable for the hero of the film. At no point did I feel bored and I think that the image we form after watching the film about who Peter Sellers was is more complete and closer to the truth.
The film is based on a biographical book about Peter Sellers’ that is quite severe concerning the actor’s behavior in his private life. The story begins at the launching of Sellers’ career on the big screens, after he had already managed to create a name and image for himself on British television, and follows him over more than two decades, four marriages and other more or less serious love affairs, real or imagined. The resulting portrait is complex and fascinating. Peter Sellers is at the same time a womanizer but also a man who accepts and appreciates the support of his first wife, he is a negligent son at times but who is deeply marked by the deaths of his parents, he is a husband and father at times violent but also capable of gestures of great generosity. The mimicry of his acting method makes him live his characters and bring them even to real life. He loves, but in a chaotic way and with bursts of passion alternating with abysses of indifference. He has violent outbursts that he attributes to stress. He invests everything in perfecting his acting skills, but once he reaches the peak of his popularity, he begins to doubt the authenticity of his vocation and lives with constant anxiety about not repeating himself. Was he a great actor, but a detestable man? Stephen Hopkins avoids judging him and the mitigating circumstances he grants him are related to the acting profession. This was, perhaps, Peter Sellers’ ultimate love.
Stephen Hopkins found in Geoffrey Rush the ideal actor to play the portrait of Peter Sellers in all its complexity. It is one of the great roles of Rush‘s career, but if I try to remember all his roles, which one was not great? A gallery of characters evolves around him, most of them real – actors, directors, Sellers’ family and lovers. Each one is excellently outlined and this film is a very good opportunity for special creations in secondary roles, smaller or larger. Emily Watson is superb in the role of the first wife, who remained a loyal friend even after the breakup. Charlize Theron naturally enters the role of Britt Ekland, the Scandinavian star who was Sellers’ second wife. John Lithgow – an actor I like a lot – is excellent in the role of Blake Edwards, the director of the Pink Panther film series. Stanley Tucci takes on the huge challenge of bringing Stanley Kubrick to the screen. Only the actress who embodied Sophia Loren disappointed me. ‘The Life and Death of Peter Sellers‘ is one of those biographical films about the art of film and its heroes that manages to be good cinema, so a fitting homage.
