ronin53's PhotoBlog

SQUARE COLOSSEUM...

2008-10-06T16:07:59Z

The Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR) is a large complex, now a suburban area and business centre, in Rome, Italy. It was started in 1935 and planned to open in 1942. In urban planning terms, E42 was designed to direct the expansion of the city towards the south-west, connecting it to the sea. The planned exhibition never took place due to World War II. After a period of controversy over its architectural and urban planning principles, the project to design EUR was commissioned from the leaders of both of the rival factions in Italian architecture: Marcello Piacentini for the "reactionaries" and Giuseppe Pagano for the "progressives". Each of them brought in their own preferred architects to design individual buildings within the complex. EUR offers a large-scale image of how urban Italy might have looked; wide axially planned streets and austere buildings of either stile Littorio, inspired by ancient Roman architecture, or Rationalism, modern architecture but built using traditional limestone, tuff and marble. The most representative building of EUR is Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (1938-1943), an iconic project which has since become known as the "Colosseo Quadrato" (Square Colosseum). After the war, the Roman authorities found that at EUR they already had the beginnings of an out-of-town business district that other capitals did not begin planning until decades later (London Docklands and La Defense in Paris). During the 1950s and 1960s the unfinished buildings were completed, and other new buildings were constructed in not dissimilar styles for use as offices and government ministries, set in large gardens and parks. EUR includes the Museum of Roman Civilization , the Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography and the sports arena PalaEUR (now PalaLottomatica), designed by Pier Luigi Nervi and Marcello Piacentini for the 1960 Summer Olympics.

SHOOT-OUT

2008-10-05T16:40:33Z

I was quietly and pleasantly spending my morning with Umberto (my friend photoreporter) as he got a call: someone had been shot in the parking lot of a wood warehouse in the country not that far from the place where we were having a coffee. We ran, we got there few minutes later the shoot-out and this is the reportage I took with my “little” Lumix FX150 (I never go out without a camera). By the way, the story seems to be the following: Francesco Ruscitti had a fight with two men and, suddenly, one of the two took a Beretta cal. 9 and struck him in the leg then ran off with his accomplice. Just a warning, not a murder try, Carabinieri say but the thing is that too many guns are in the wrong hands in that area…

A DESPICABLE PROJECT

2008-10-04T15:19:00Z

The new Italian Minister of Education is a young idiot teocon fan of Berlusconi and she is trying to bring in a despicable reform for all the primary schools. Her project is clear: to favor the private schools against the public ones. As any stupid liberalist (not liberal !!!), she is doing her worst to support her own political views and to send back the public schools to last century and even further back. The reactions from teachers and parents and students are strong and very determined to go on a general strike if she will insist on this crazy project. In many schools, last week, doors have been set open all night long, a sort of “white night” to discuss and organize demonstrations in any region, all over Italy. In Ostia, a demonstration took place on yesterday and (despite the desire of government) there were many more participants than expected.

MAYBE OLDER, SURELY NOT WISER

2008-10-03T14:40:15Z

In a month (more or less) it will be my 55th Birthday and I’m wondering why the older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom… As Mr. Ogden Nash (US humorist & poet [1902 – 1971]) said: “Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.”

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THE GREEN RAY?

2008-10-02T14:24:47Z

The Green Ray (French: Le Rayon vert) is a 1986 film by Éric Rohmer. It is named for the novel of the same name by Jules Verne. It was shot in France on 16mm film and much of the dialogue is improvised. The movie opens at the start of Delphine's summer vacation. Her travel companion has ditched her and she mopes around Paris, depressed and self-pitying. Her friends urge her to get out there and meet new people. She visits several locations, but can never seem to find what she wants: happiness and true love. At Biarritz train station she meets a young man who is travelling to Saint-Jean-de-Luz. She goes with him and together they fall in love in front of the warm glow of sunset; and le rayon vert (the Green flash). The film won the Golden Lion at the 1986 Venice Film Festival.

LOOKING FORWARD...

2008-10-01T18:42:49Z

In 1929, Meyer Mishkin owned a shop in New York that sold silk shirts to workingmen. When the stock market crashed that October, he turned to his son, then a student at City College, and offered a version of this sentiment: It serves those rich scoundrels right. A year later, as Wall Street’s problems were starting to spill into the broader economy, Mr. Mishkin’s store went out of business. He no longer had enough customers. His son had to go to work to support the family, and Mr. Mishkin never held a steady job again. Moral is obvious enough. Many people in Washington fear that the country is starting to spiral into a terrible downturn. And to their horror, they see the public, and many members of Congress, turning into modern-day Meyer Mishkins, more interested in punishing Wall Street than saving the economy. (from THE NEW YORK TIMES)

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

2008-09-30T17:56:03Z

How sad is to look at a very young overweight girl furiously eating a big burger at a famous fast food place... I was there at 4.00 pm (!!!) to drink a coffee with a friend and I'm wondering why she was so hungry and, apparently, very depressed.

SOMEWHERE UP THERE...

2008-09-29T16:22:37Z

On Sept 29, 1995, the President of U.S.A. Bill Clinton admits for the very first time the existence of the secret military base called Area 51...

ITALIAN FOOD & LOVE...

2008-09-28T18:21:09Z

Regina Pacis Fair, flea market, great food from Puglia: focaccia e pane di Altamura, cavatelli, orecchiette, caciocavallo, burrata, Primitivo di Manduria, Moscato di Trani, taralli scaldati... As George Millerr said, "The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again." But George Bernard Shaw, the Irish dramatist & socialist (1856 - 1950) wrote in his work "Man and Superman" (act 1): "There is no love sincerer than the love of food."

SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES YOU...

2008-09-27T18:47:54Z

As the rest of the world, I got the bad news of the day: Paul Newman, one of the last of the great 20th-century movie stars, died Friday at his home in Westport, Conn. He was 83. Since I was a child I was impressed by his blue-eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character was Hud, Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy. He acted in more than 65 movies over more than 50 years, drawing on a physical grace, unassuming intelligence and good humor that made it all seem effortless. Yet he was also an ambitious, intellectual actor and a passionate student of his craft, and he achieved what most of his peers find impossible: remaining a major star into craggy, charismatic old age. In my opinion, one of his best movies still is “From the terrace” (a 1960 motion picture directed by Mark Robson) that tells the story of a wealthy Pennsylvania boy who goes to New York City and marries into an even wealthier family: Paul Newman acted as an ambitious young executive, who climbs to the top of New York's financial world as his marriage crumbles. More than a movie star and a sometime stage actor, Mr. Newman was an entrepreneur, a philanthropist and, after he turned 75, a racecar driver. In 1995, as a 70th birthday present to himself, he raced at Daytona. When he won his event, he made the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest winner in his race class. “We are such spendthrifts with our lives,” Paul Newman once told a reporter. “The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.” Somebody up there surely likes you Rest in peace