Cute Planet Puzzle is, um, a cute variation on a classic puzzle standby. Use the arrow keys to guide your little man around the screen and push gems of the same color together. This makes them disappear and magically tansports you back to the stage select screen. The first several stages are effectively your walkthrough so I’ll stop explaining and let you get to the playing. Enjoy!

At the outset, the film is about a choice that the protagonist, Alessandro (Ale or Sandro, for short) makes to free his older brother, Augusto, who, as the only healthy and financially capable amongst them, has born the brunt of responsibility for many years, from the burden of his ill and eccentric family. Wouldn’t it be better, he asks his older brother, if he did not have to support their blind mother and retarded, epileptic younger brother, not to mention Sandro himself with his attacks and their sister who is, well, lazy and weirdly sexual with all the brothers? Augusto does not take Sandro’s question seriously, but on the other hand, he doesn’t take it seriously, leaving us to wonder whether he really would just like to pick up and leave it all behind. Sandro’s initial plan of throwing his family off a cliff, himself included, while careening down a twisty road in the family car gets sidetracked, and everyone arrives back home safely, leaving Augusto with the knowledge that Sandro is, for the most part, still pretty incompetent.

But Sandro’s initiative in concocting such a plan and almost carrying it out proves to Augusto that he is ready for more responsibility and can take on some of the routine duties of the household, such as driving their mother to the family cemetery plot to visit their father’s grave. It is on one such drive that Sandro and his mother pull over at the precise spot where Sandro had planned to execute his entire family, save Augusto, to catch some fresh air. Sandro leads his mother to the edge of the cliff, explaining that there is a wall upon which she can sit, and then simply pushes her with one finger over the edge. This is no violent outburst, nor is it quite cold and calculating. He doesn’t really want to touch her, and this seems to be the point. It’s as if he’s waiting to see what happens too. The whole scene is like some strange ceremony where nothing happens and yet the consequences are incredible, some weird communion where the priest touches his finger to your tongue and you vanish into thin air.

Out with the old, and burn it! There are two scenes that stuck with me the most from Fists in the Pocket, and both are the aforementioned harbingers of something bigger going on. The first is when the family is mourning the death of their mother. The house is full of fellow mourners and the coffin is set up in the middle of the room with curtains drawn around it. Sandro relieves his sister, Giulia, of her duty of sitting with their mother, and she goes to sit on the other side of the curtain to talk to her brother. Hearing a noise, she looks over the curtain to see her brother doing calisthenics over their mother’s body, using the coffin as a balance beam. It seems that finally carrying through with his plan, if only in part, gave young Sandro a sense of accomplishment he had rarely before felt. Sandro reveals what he has done, Giulia is smitten, and the two later decide to begin cleaning the house, beginning with their mother’s room. It is snowing outside as they throw countless armfuls of furniture and papers and the rest of their mother’s possessions out into the yard. They set fire to the pile and watch it burn, laughing and happy with themselves. This scene is not merely celebration of the wanton rebellion of the young against the old, however. It is all so strikingly reckless and careless, and the camera lingers on the smoldering pile of rubbish long after the two have gone back inside as Leone, the retarded younger brother, comes by and begins to pick out what is salvageable, including his mother’s old reading glasses (we don’t know how long she’d been blind). It’s a stirring scene, to say the least, and I think it is important to note that Bellocchio was a young filmmaker at the time. Is there room for responsibility within revolution?

Sandro’s quest is for freedom. With their mother out of the picture, Augusto moves to the city, leaving Sandro and Giulia in the big country house, their only burden being young Leone. This is not a problem for Sandro, though, as he now knows how to relieve himself of his burdens. He gives Leone an overdose of his epilepsy medicine, and while he is passed out in the bath, simply pushes him under with his fingertips and holds him there until he drowns, some strange baptism in the church of the mind of Allesandro. Giulia realizes what Sandro has become, and falls ill. I won’t ruin the ending of the film, because it’s really worth seeking out and watching Sandro try to discover who he is and what he wants. There is a scene earlier in the film, after he has killed his mother, where he is at a party in the city at the apartment of his brother’s fiance. Everyone is dancing some ridiculous line dance and Sandro is sitting on a bench at the front of the room, facing them. He is apart from them quite literally, sitting and not dancing, but also socially, living secluded out in the country. He seems to disdain them all and yet also to want to be a part of their scene, having just before been approached by a young woman. It is unclear whether the freedom Sandro seeks lies in breaking free from his familial bonds to forge new bonds with people like this or, quite literally, breaking free of bonds entirely and killing them all, every last one of them.

I was amazed to learn that Fists in the Pocket was Marco Bellocchio’s first film. I don’t know why, as first films are often fine films. This was just so good. As so often is the case, this is likely due to the magnificent editing of Silvano Agosti. The film flows effortlessly, and no frame is superfluous. On Bellocchio’s part, and cinematographer Alberto Marrama, the film offers beautiful black and white that only enhances scenes such as the bonfire mentioned earlier. I would be remiss if I failed to mention the score by Ennio Morricone, exceptional as usual—I should devote a post to Morricone. Fists was a first for Lou Castel as well, the actor who played Allesandro. Castel was not an actor, and that probably brought an authenticity to the character that an experienced, and certainly a known, actor could potentially have spoiled. He was compared by someone in a special feature on the DVD to Marlon Brando, and I think that’s accurate, both in intensity and style, if not beefy good looks. While he may not have gone on to enjoy the same success as Mr. Brando, Castel is utterly captivating at the center of this strange menagerie, as are his supporting players, one and all, from the beautiful and absurd Giulia to the august Augusto to innocent Leone and blind Mama. What a tale!

Apparently our roof has been leaky since the building, but rather than replace it the county has been repairing it piecemeal for years. Last week another crew came in to “fix” the roof and after some significant overnight rain the section above the reference area finally gave up the ghost. At least the torrents of water missed most of the super-expensive reference books. Our Civil War collection was not quite as lucky.

Guaranteed fun for your Friday - so head on over and play to your heart’s content!

While I do try to keep the blog a generally politics-free zone, I don’t think my personal leanings are any real secret. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to hear a president speak and immediately reveal that he understands nuance, has grasped the magnitude of his position and has a clear and inspiring vision for the country. So if you didn’t stay up past midnight to hear the speech and you didn’t tivo it, do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing. Invoking Lincoln and evoking Dr. King, change has indeed come to America and not a moment too soon. Yes we can.

Part 1

Part 2

Move the outer boundaries of the square by pressing the arrows and the sides constrict accordingly. The only catch? If the moving squares inside touch a wall while you’re moving it the jig is up and you have to start back over. Squares get faster, smaller and more numerous as the game goes on so perfect your technique early and become a master of Shrink.

My initial reaction? Woo Hoo! Although I never latched on to Against the Day enough to finish, I still have plans. I read Mason & Dixon as a recent college graduate with nothing to do but drink good beer, watch bad TV and read huge novels.  The advent of parenthood has made it far more difficult for me to read these beasts. The new novel, according to rumor, is to be much shorter and hopefully something I can finish in under a year.

My next reaction? This could be poppycock. The Times’ post gives reason to hope that this is indeed true, but a Pynchon novel a mere two years after his previous one puts us in unfamiliar territory. Let’s keep our fingers crossed people.

And, to keep the blog visually interesting, I embed the photo that the Times’ author dug up from flickr user bjohnson. That pretty much says it all: