CRYSTAL BONES (Part one) Michel came from an italian-french family with a music background. He spent all his childhood putted into a plaster cast, between home and hospital. He was affected by osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic desease that causes brittle bones. The effort that his mother made to give his birth broke all his bones. He used to watch television all days and one night, when he was only four, he saw a Duke Ellington’s concert. From that moment he only wished to play the piano. His family was not so rich and his parents couldn’t buy it. One day his mother gave him a piano toy. He started to play it but he didn’t like its sound that was completely different from what you have heard on TV. He was so angry that he demolished it by an hammer: he wanted a real one. When finally his father bought him a real one he took piano lessons for ten years until he took a music degree. He played the piano for ten hours a day and felt it was for only ten minutes. His hands are the only things in his body that didn’t break. They were quite big, strong, agiles. He understood that they were the only ones that could let him to build his life and didn’t suffer his desease. For his short stature he couldn’t reach the pedals so his father built a special wooden device for him. When he was eighteen, alone and unable to walk, he went to United States, the place where jazz music was born. There he was successful in becoming one of the greatest piano player in the world and playing with all the best musicians.

BIRTHDAY’S PARTY Today is Bob’s birthday. It’s a special moment for him because he becomes fifty years old. He loves the mountains and the snow so he wants to celebrate this day in a small place located at an altitude of almost 2000 meters. It’s for about a month that he had worked for this; he had tried to do all his best to make this day very special for him and all the people that comes with. I saw him many times in the last few days and he always looked like worried. He sometimes asked me for having some advices or knowing my opinion about what you had organized. I’m proud of this because I could help him about this party. Bob isn’t a too common man, he’s very shy, especially with women; sometimes his way of acting makes him quite queer and unpleasant but I know that it’s only for his shyness, probably because I’m quite shy too. He still lives with his parents but he should find a girl that could make his life better. Everyone needs a person to stay with: it’s the human nature.

The Great Beauty “The Great Beauty” is a quite strange movie because it hasn’t a real plot. Through the description of the decline of italian upper middle class it wants to put in evidence the decline of all italian society. This class moves around the leading actor, Jepp Gambardella played by a great Toni Servillo, a reporter and writer who from forty years is looking for this great beauty that gives him the starting point to his second book. But he can’t find it, even if he lives surrounded by all the wonderful roman beauties, because he lives only at night, from one party to another one, meeting a collection of snob people who only like to eat, drink and speak each other about frivolous topics and where the only important thing is how you appear. Only at the end of the movie he understands the emptiness of all his life and that at the age of sixty-five it is not late yet to begin a new way of life. I found it quite sad and gloomy, but dreamlike too, with the presence of a dwarf, a giraffe and a group of flamingos that remind me clearly Fellini’s movies. The daylight that shines over all the wonderful monuments of the city of Rome, full, as always, of tourists from all over the world, is the only way of hope that it gives us. It seems to show us the way to change our current complicated situation: with all the beauties that we have in Italy we could all live serenely and be the most beautiful and envied country in the world! I can’t say that it isn’t a good movie but I prefer other types of movies. I am curious to know other opinions about it, especially from people from other countries, so, if you have watched it, please send it to me.

Movies I love watching movies, but I rarely go to the cinema, perhaps because I’m a bit lazy. I prefer to watch them on TV, especially on mine because it is big and has wonderful colours. In the evening, especially after an hard day of work, I love to lay down on the sofa, turn on the TV and the home teatre and watch a good movie. This evening I’ll watch the italian movie that won the Oscar Price few days ago “the great beauty” directed by Paolo Sorrentino. Next time I’ll give you my judgement about it.

English friends Hello everyone, I'm from Rome and I want to meet new friends that speaks a very good english from all over the world. Don't esitate, contact me.