City Island (or a movie that makes me wish I was in New York NOW)

I have been a movie...lover all my life. The first person that introduced me to the wonderful world of movies was my grandmother. We used to sit together and watch black and white Greek movies. Back in the 60s, movie going was the only entertainment for the people in my granny's village, so every time an old movie was on TV we would sit down and she'd tell me all these stories about how she and grandpa would go to spend their last money to watch Jenny Karezi and Melina Merkouri on screen.



Growing up I realised that I was as interested in the process of writing and making a movie as I was in watching the actual thing. So I took several courses in the university regarding films and the English language as well as subtitling courses.

All the above became just a memory once I started working. A memory that I had forgotten until I discovered Raymond De Felitta's blog. For the first time I was able to follow the steps of movie making, to 'master' the terminology and 'watch' the process of creating a movie from the beginning to the end result.



City Island is Raymond's gift to all of us movie goers and lovers. A su-real aspect of life as we (don't) know it (?).The creator offers us the ability to become voyeurs in someone else's family, a family that functions within the boundaries dysfunction(re)ality (or within dysfunctional societies, maybe?). Could this family be...our own :)?

I haven't watched city island (yet) but I envy all of you in the US and especially in NY that you get to watch the film open on March 19th. This post is my tribute to this film and if I informed even one of you blog friends to go watch it I am happy. Good luck City Island and Raymond! Let the blogathon...continue!!

I leave you with a clip from 'The Thing About Folks', a movie by Raymond De Felitta that I've bought, watched and enjoyed! Take care all!

"Rear Window"

So I am home with the flu, haven't been out of the apartment for...3 days now(!!) and the only thing left for me to do, actually, is...stare out the window and think...


While sitting and starring (and coughing:-) I remembered something, someone I know, said to me once. "I believe that there is a 'Peeping Tom' hidden in all of us" he said. "Oh come on" I responded..."first of all define 'Peeping Tom' and second of all...what do you mean by that?". "Well" he said "take movies for instance...isn't that a way of 'looking' into somebody else's life, from a distance, in the safety of your couch. Isn't this a way of satisfying our need of knowing and taking a glimpse through the peephole, without feeling guilty that we are doing something wrong?"

OK, I don't remember how this conversation ended but I remembered 'Peeping Tom' now that I'm looking out of my window. I see all these apartments around me and the parallel lives of people living next to me. I see a woman putting her son down to sleep and I smile (such a pretty site), I see a man in his kitchen preparing dinner (wonder what it is-I'm a bit hungry), I see a...omg I am the 'Peeping Tom' my friend was talking about!!

OK maybe I'm not but you got my point. To prove my friend's point though I got the perfect man with the perfect story...Alfred Hitchcock said it before me and better than me. Here is the story of a man 'trapped' in his house with a broken leg (like me with the flu!). What he does to spend his time? He looks out the window. What he sees? Things that are beautiful, strange, funny, sad, interesting, bad, sweet, lonely. He glimpses at life unfolding, through the frame of his window (well he solves a murder case while he is at it but remember...that is why they are called movies ;-)

So what's happening outside your window?

Take care now
peace and love
xoxo