Italia – Page 2 – An Echo That's Reversing

The Year of Italy

I started at some point to give years names. This may have/probably has been inspired by the completely unfortunate aspect in the novel Infinite Jest where the US sells years to corporations in order to make money. After corporate purchase years would become: The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, or The Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster, etc. It’s a bleak mirror within a literary conceit of pretty much what we’ve become.

So, less bleakly, I started to give my years themes. This, 2025, is The Year of Italy.

Italian giallo and gothic horror (2nd session)

Since I’ve seen most of the streaming giallo films with Italian audio and English subtitles, I decided to see if I could find the Arrow Video giallo boxed sets, or at least some of them, for a decent price. Each has three films on Blu-ray but people try to sell them for wild prices like $100 and more. No. Luckily Arrow has most of them for $35 (well, all but one is sold out so I must’ve gotten really lucky). As a bonus, I picked up their Sergio Martino collection. One of the Martino films is also in the White collection (Morte sospetta di una minorenne) so that’s 17 films, 6 I’ve already seen. This will keep me busy.

Italian giallo and gothic horror

Back in July 2020 I burned through watching around ten or so giallo films over a couple of weeks, resurrecting my interest from years prior. A week ago I had a similar urge but this time to watch some 1950s/60s gothic horror–castles, curses, brooding women–and wanted to find movies in Italian with subtitles in order to get better listening and hopefully understanding. Some words and phrases will be less useful (i vizi morbosi, il mulino, lei è un strega) but there will otherwise be simpler dialog that uses probably 50% of my current vocabulary, and maybe repetition will help me pick up new words and provide examples of simple conversational phrases in context.

Dov’ero io? Italia nei circonscrizioni di Nuovo York

Back in my takin’-Italian-lessons days my teacher sent me a message that Carmen Consoli was touring in the US for the next several months. A few lessons prior, she had given me homework that included some of the history of Italian popular music from, say, the 1940s to the early 2000s. Many of her lesson slides had dated information so there were no artists included from the 2010s… and certainly not the 2020s. The newest artist that was referenced, and simply from a photo, was Carmen Consoli, active from the mid-90s to around 2010. I did a quick search and listened to ripped albums on YouTube (do albums exist in any other form?) which really hooked me, maybe/probably more because it was alt-pop in Italian than that I liked the music.

Alla fine, durante della pausa

A month ago, April the 11th, was the final lesson–for a few months–with my Italian tutor Marina. The day before was our one year anniversary.