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eBook – The Empire Striketh Back

eBook –  The Empire Striketh Back Full title :  William Shakespeare's The Empire Striketh Back By : Ian Doescher  Iillustrations :  Nicolas Delort Score : 9/10 Year : 2014 Publisher : Quirk Books  eISBN :  978-1-59474-716-8 Based on  978-1-59474-715-1 (hard cover) Pages : 176 *  Language : English From Goodreads : Hot on the heels of the New York Times best seller William Shakespeare’s Star Wars comes the next two installments of the original trilogy: William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back  (and not reviewed as yet,  William Shakespeare’s The Jedi Doth Return.) Return to the star-crossed galaxy far, far away as the brooding young hero, a power-mad emperor, and their jesting droids match wits, struggle for power, and soliloquize in elegant and impeccable iambic pentameter. Illustrated with beautiful black-and-white Elizabethan-style artwork, these two plays offer essential reading for all ages. Something Wookiee this way comes!  *** As he explains at the end, Ian Doescher
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Movie - Viaggio in Italia



Movie - Viaggio in Italia

English title : Journey to Italy

French Title : Voyage en Italie

Score : 1/10 

Year :  1954
Director: Roberto Rossellini
Cinematography: Enzo Serafin
Music:  Renzo Rossellini
Country:  Italy, France
Language: English. (a bit of Italian) 
Duration:  1h45 minutes (Italy) ; 1h28 (France) ; 1h20 (US) ; 1h10 (UK) ;
1h37 (IMDB) ; 1h20 (French DVD) 

Writers:  Vitaliano Broncati & Roberto Rossellini (story & screenplay) ; 
Colette (Novel "duo"- uncredited) ; 
Antoni Pietrangeli (screenplay collaboration- uncredited)


Full cast & team (IMDB)

Alex and Katharine Joyce, are unhappily married. They vacation in Naples in an attempts to find direction and insight, but bicker perpetually and spend most of their vacation apart from one another. 

On paper, this should have been a good movie, after all, we have Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders. But, I have to disagree with reviewers on IMDB, who praised it as a beautiful and patient movie - no, it lacks in pacing, right from their arrival, being stuck behind cows, and mirrored in the ending scene of them being stuck again - due to a religious procession. 

Cinematography is lazy, music in unremarkable, George Sanders looks like he wanted to be anywhere but there (and he actually hated the entire experience, it appears), Ingrid's character mutters to herself as she drives the car... 

The ending is more than unsatisfying, with a moralistic approach instead of a realistic one. 

Simply put, it's a waste of time and the only consolation was when the couple went with friends of theirs to see an archeological dig, and when Katharine with a friend visiting the catacombs. Other than those two moments, the rest was abysmally shallow, awfully edited and paced, and the couple kept bickering and being dysfunctional. I won't watch this again. 

What of all the various cuts and durations ? you saw in the technical details above, a span between 1h10 (UK) and 1h45 (Italy), what are the differences? I cannot say, but send you to wiki's page about the movie, and its section about the releases. 

Either way, the French DVD I watched this from is even more awful than the movie itself! 

***** 

Viaggio.. in the media

This DVD is EAN 3760019380124 (but the jacket printed 5060046672260,  which is erroneous) presenting the movie in its original black & white, sound mono in original English and original Italian versions, with the possibility of French subtitles.
Image quality is poor, sound rather mediocre and sometimes tough to understand the words - so I activated the subtitles, only to have regular gaps between text and audible dialogues... 
Bonus ? Roberto Rossellini's filmography - just go to IMDB for that! 

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