FelliniesqueThe RED QUEEN starring Liv Alexander, is a very unique feature film. It is the story of a group of rockers, fire dancers and actors -- all players in a magical game. It is a journey through uncharted territory, of dreams and reality. The settings are unpredictable and the implications are surprising. The movie is based on Dona Rose's avant garde screenplay. The camerawork, directing and editing is done by one filmmaker behind the camera. The music and songs are supplied by Myspace bands, friends of the filmmaker. This is my most felliniesque movie. The RED QUEEN is a very creative rock-n-roll musical. It is a surreal vision of the American underground, surfacing in style, song and dance. It is shocking, provocative and weirdly beautiful. This is a must have DVD for the Evolutionary Theorists out there -- way out there -- and true rock-n-rollers.
The RED QUEEN concept has been used in the new Johnny Depp movie Alice in Wonderland. Click on the link above and check it out. The RED QUEEN was invited to the Ava Gardner Indie Film Festival in Smithfield, North Carolina! It had its world premiere on November 20th, 2009. The Ava Gardner Film Festival is held in Smithfield, North Carolina every year. Ava Gardner, the great Hollywood movie star, was born in North Carolina. The Ava Gardner Museum is dedicated to her. Bob Fosse's ALL THAT JAZZ is one of the most felliniesque movies you will ever see. Fellini's 8 & 1/2 is Fellini's most felliniesque movie. Felliniesque is a style of filmmaking where dreams and reality are perceived as one experience. This website is the home of felliniesque filmmaking. Fellini would start a movie project by doodling a cartoon sketch first. He began his career as a cartoonist, a young man drawing cartoons of the American GIs after the war. He made some of them mad because he would always exaggerate some feature of their face, usually with a big nose. So the portraits would come out somewhat surrealistic. That's what I love about Fellini movies. He looked behind the facade and revealed what made the individual tick.At one time or another, I've seen all of Fellini movies.
The movie that Fellini is best known for in America, La Dolce Vita, released in 1960, is a celebration of life and love. It stars Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee, of France, and Anita Ekberg, the Swedish sex bomb. It's highly entertaining. In Italian, "La Dolce Vita" means "the sweet life." But Fellini once explained that the phrase in Italian implies a bitter-sweet life. In English, it has come to mean the opposite, that is, simply, the sweet life, without the twist of irony that the expression carries in Italian. There is the scene with Anita Ekberg in the fountain in Rome. She wanders innocently in the water, forcing Marcello to come and rescue her. They're both soaking wet ... but loving every moment of it. It's perhaps the most memorable scene in the movie. LA STRADA
LA STRADA is the movie that American audiences could identify with the most. Not only it uses two well-known American actors, it tells the story in simplistic terms. It is no wonder it won the Oscar for best picture of all Fellini movies. Fellini did not use big American stars again and he didn't work in America like Antonioni and Bertolucci. Fellini is just too Italian for American audiences. In a way I'm glad because he might not have made the great movies that he made. FELLINI'S 8½
Fellini began to feel guilty. Suddenly he came up with the idea for the story. He would make a movie about a director making a movie without a script. He came out of his office and went on the set. He asked Mastroianni to play the role of a director making a movie without a script. Mastroianni was used to it. Without batting an eye, he shrugged his shoulders and began to play the director. 8½ also won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
It stars Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee and Claudia Cardinale.
LE NOTTI DI CABIRIA (1957) is about night life and the world of prostitution. It's one of Fellini's
more sensual works. It portrays the world of a prostitute after the 2nd world
war in Italy. It stars Giulietta Masina as Cabiria. AMARCORD
The movie depicts life in Rome during the Mussolini years. It is
semi-biographical and very visual. The young hero of the movie explorers a
brothel and a music hall. Some incredible scenes of Rome are part of this
movie's grand appeal. FELLINI SATYRICON Fellini's Satyricon was a feast of images and scenes from ancient Rome. It was an exploration of the decadent life of the flesh. Yet it was done with such masterful flair, that it remains one of Fellini's most memorable movies. The movie came out in 1969, and it caused a lot of stir, mostly because of its outrageous portrayal of homosexuality. It was over-the-top, to be sure; but if you were a Fellini fan, then you knew how to take it. I was a film student at San Francisco State film department, so this was nothing unusual as a movie. Oh, how times have changed.
A journalist might ... say, "What was your intention in creating Spaghetti à la Fellini?" and I can't just answer, "I was hungry. So I invent an elaborate fiction about Escoffier appearing to me in a visitation.... The truth is, I can't explain why I make films. I just like to create images. ... It's congenial to my nature."
"When I make a film, what I strive for is to allow myself to be mesmerized like a dreamer, even though I am the one who made the dream." Fellini Satyricon
"I tell the truth, and the truth is never clear, while lies are quickly understood by everyone." Fellini 8 1/2 "Usually I am not looking for unforgettable faces. Unforgettable faces are easy to find. The difficult thing is to find forgettable faces."
Federico Fellini on Casting "My idea of casting goes beyond what is called typecasting. I search for flesh-and-blood incarnations of my fantasy characters.... I try to relax the actors ... so they lose their inhibitions, and if they are professionals, so they lose their technique." La Dolce Vita La Strada "I think I first really began to hate fascism when it cut us off from America and everything I loved -- American movies and American comic strips." Fantasy vs. Reality "I don't mind speaking autobiographically because I reveal less of myself talking about my real life than I do if I talk about the layer underneath, the one of my fantasies, dreams and imagination. That is the real person, naked. It's easy to wear clothes over your outer self, but it isn't easy to cloak your inner self." Fellini Eight and a Half
"The worst prison in which anyone can live is the one of regret. ... I believed that it was better not to make a film than to start something I didn't believe in perfectly. But now I have come to think differently. Even from making a bad film you learn something. And perhaps it takes you on a path to something better. ... I know now that I am in mourning for all those films I might have done which I never made, which never had their existence." Anita Ekberg and D. W. Griffith
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