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About Ennio Morricone's less known works and trivia related to Italian soundtracks
Ennio Morricone wrote a lot of soundtracks. This post wants to be a note about the ones which maybe aren't that famous outside Italy, but which are still worth being listened, at least in my opinion (other users are free to add other works to my list). So I will not mention anything he wrote for Sergio Leone's movies or for other famous ones like "The Untouchables", "Mission", or "The Hateful Eight" (although I will mention previous works which have been re-used in Tarantino's movies).

Talking about spaghetti westerns, a piece I enjoy is this one:

"L'arena" (from Sergio Corbucci's "Il mercenario" - later re-used in "Kill Bill vol.2")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpFVxlisWFM

There are a couple of comedy westerns in which Morricone played with classical music and inserted some famous pieces into his works:

"Cavalcata... per Elisa" (from Damiano Damiani's "Un genio, due compari e un pollo")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zekHLOsHojU

"Mucchio selvaggio" (from Tonino Valerii's "Il mio nome è nessuno" - a nice movie starring Henry Fonda)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uchuAFjGymc

Switching to other genres, I remember of another soundtrack which is whistled, written for Carlo Verdone's comedy "Un sacco bello":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p61liAjdBcY

Other soundtracks I like:

"Scuola di ballo al sole" (from Pasolini's "Uccellacci e uccellini" - to me it sounds very surf-rock :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD7Il_RMkNw

"Romanzo" (from Bertolucci's "Novecento"):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsBo3rN6Z1M

"Rabbia e tarantella" (from Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's "Allonsanfán" - re-used for the closing credits of "Inglorious Basterds"):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n95rXYOWP3Y

Morricone also wrote the music of some songs. One very famous in Italy (which wasn't written to be a soundtrack) is:

Mina - Se telefonando
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdlH__mFtYk

Another one, feat. Joan Baez, was written for Giuliano Montaldo's "Sacco e Vanzetti":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oday_Fc-Gc

"Cinema Paradiso" is a movie which I've mentioned countless times in the past, and which is quite famous, so this could be seen as an exception to the rule. Anyway you can test your knowledge of modern movies in this tribute the Simpsons dedicated to it :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxGCQkVeq_Y
16 августа 2020 г.
4
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some Italian songs about summer
Here's a playlist of some Italian songs which relate to summer. Hope you enjoy my selection!

Edoardo Vianello - Pinne, fucile ed occhiali
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siyZ41Iuhk0

Franco Battiato - Summer on a solitary beach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVNB8TJQ8bw

Giuni Russo - Un'estate al mare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5Lhf2e-19s

Negrita - Rotolando verso sud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EEyOYPq-kc

Max Gazzè - Vento d'estate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELv1ABkLdxc

Raphael Gualazzi - L'estate di John Wayne
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CZUY-bV0V0

Thegiornalisti - Maradona y Pelé
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3s0y-wve3E
21 июня 2020 г.
4
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Italy's Liberation Day
Today is Italy's Liberation Day or, as we call it, "Festa della Liberazione". I haven't read that much writers of the Italian resistance movement, but I read several novels by Beppe Fenoglio and his "Il partigiano Johnny" (eng. "Johnny the Partisan") is by no doubt a great description of how partisans spent their time on the hills of Alba and the Langhe (the novel is mostly autobiographical). Read it in your native language, though, because it isn't an easy Italian.
This suggestion just to remind that Alba hasn't always been the place where Nutella is produced.
Fenoglio fits perfectly in this site, since he was very passionate about English and American literature, and he used to write his novels in English and then translate them back to Italian.

No Liberation Day can be called that way without giving a listening at "Bella Ciao". One of most famous arrangements is the one of Modena City Ramblers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_SjXpsJHGU

(they have also recorded an outstanding adaptation of "Fischia il vento", the Italian version of Катюша, another tune sung by the Garibaldi brigades - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHkNhULgkdw - Moreover, even if this is off-topic, I would also suggest to listen to "I cento passi", a song inspired by the movie of the same name, but listen to it only if you have watched the movie, since it contains spoilers :)
Buon 25 aprile!
25 апреля 2020 г.
4
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A taste of Italian folkore - Songs in local languages
I know that some of the local dialects/languages spoken in Italy have their own section, notwithstanding not of all of them have it and anyway some songs are part of Italian culture in spite of the language they are written. Hope you enjoy my selection, beware that they aren't useful to learn Italian and that, for example, Northern Italians generally doesn't understand Southern Italian languages and vice versa.

Let's begin with Sicilian:

Ciuri ciuri (traditional)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVPTX30Qw8s

Si maritau Rosa (traditional)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3-YxT_GKXE

Tarantella (this one is instrumental but very Sicilian sounding :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moxXpDYiLM8

Genovese:

Fabrizio De André - Creuza de mä
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78YNQ7zzxvQ

Fabrizio De André - A dumenega
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qiQZOBa9pg

Ma se ghe pensu (here performed by Bruno Lauzi)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCdgK0GQWfQ
21 марта 2020 г.
7
0
La meglio gioventù / The Best of Youth
Having rewatched it last weekend, I think this Marco Tullio Giordana's movie could be a good suggestion for learners of Italian that ask for Italian series. At least it gets close to them because, in spite of being released as a movie, originally it was thought as a miniseries of four episodes (the total length is more or less six hours), and so it was broadcasted on TV. The movie is about the story of a fictional family, and in particular of two brothers, spanned from the '60s until recent years, walking through all the key events of modern Italian history. It was released in a period in which similar titles were produced, that shares actors and that could be of some interest too: one is the director's former work, "I cento passi" (this one in my opinion is even better), and the other is "Buongiorno notte" by Marco Bellocchio.
A little grammar note, since we are on a language site: "La meglio gioventù" is named so after a book of poems by Pier Paolo Pasolini, and it is actually a poetic licence / a regionalism (the correct form is "La migliore gioventù").
Hope you enjoy it! If you watch it, feel free to comment here.
25 сентября 2019 г.
2
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Do you use teletext? Do people use it in your country?
Ok, I know it could seem a bit old-fashion but every now and then I still find it useful to know the schedule of TV programmes. And you?
(Italian language learners can browse the teletext of our public broadcasting company here: https://www.servizitelevideo.rai.it)
10 сентября 2019 г.
0
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The Italian Slavic language
Many people aren't aware of it (well, at least I wasn't :), but among the various local languages/dialects spoken in Italy, which are generally Romance languages, there is a Slavic one. In three little towns of Molise, a small region in the center of the peninsula, it is possible to hear people talk in the so-called "croato molisano", a variant of the Shtokavian dialect. However the community is very small, actually less than 1000 people. I wonder how easy is for Croatian speakers to understand this language. How much effort does it take to do it?
Aside from the wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavomolisano_dialect), I found a video about it (much part of the video is in Italian, but it can give you a taste of the language): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxPVZTDNEFI
30 августа 2019 г.
5
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How Italians grow up

"Zecchino d'oro" (Golden Sequin) is a children's songs festival broadcasted in Italy for a long time. Although having been criticized for putting children into a competition, it was always stressed that the one awarded are the authors of the songs, and not the children themselves. Anyway, I think that these songs could help learners of Italian language, because, having been addressed to children they are easy to understand and, moreover, they are quite catchy.

The songs are about various topics: some of my favourite ones are about cats - give a listen to "Volevo un gatto nero" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_aVNv_gNdM), "Quarantaquattro gatti" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jDOj0Xhcc8) and "Il gatto puzzolone" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXrU2ECBH-E). Over the years the festival turned toward more international themes, so you could find songs about international characters, fictional ones like in "Il topo Zorro" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk42ScNFw0I), or real as in "Napoleone va in pensione" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIlx_ILVEhQ). Russians might enjoy "Popoff" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOtqox2uB3Y), a song which shows us how being a Tsar's soldier with a physical aspect far from canonical standards can't be that bad, after all. Two other songs that pop up in my mind are one about a weird coffee recipe, "Il caffè della Peppina" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xL2Y2HKEI8), and another that suggest pasta as a sort of remedy for stress, "Le tagliatelle di Nonna Pina" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM_brCXj10I).

Feel free to vote your favourite!

22 августа 2019 г.
13
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Recursive videos

Years ago an Italian rock band published a song and, as usual, along with the song a video was released. Actually it was nothing special, just a camera filming the path a girl follows to go from home to a club in which the band is performing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvhycbsyX8k

It happened that even if not broadcasted as much as the one above, actually another version of the video was shot, this one starring not an actress but the real girl who inspired the song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D4dHIP1gLk

Some time later another similar video was released by another band, but this time the focus is on a man who walks after the girl:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMySFMKbIDw

(Italian learners could find this song a bit rude and childish - hope you won't mind, the band is well known for its humorous tones, maybe you can get a better idea of them by listening to their famous "La canzone mononota" / "The One-Note Song" here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxlncm).

Finally, even a rapper released another video in the series. Here the action is on him doing a sort of search to find clothes for a surreal costume. Obviously he walks the same path, but after the man who is after the girl:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktNAzte2MmI

Hope you enjoy the songs!

31 июля 2019 г.
0
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The Italian Ceremony of the Fan

This i a curious tradition of Italy. Today, the President of the Republic hosted the Italian association of the parliamentary journalists and, as usual, got a fan as a gift. Every year, three fans are given as gifts to the President of the Republic, the President of the Senate and the President of the Chamber of Deputies. This tradition dates back to 1893, when Giuseppe Zanardelli, the President of the Chamber at the time, during a meeting with journalists which took place in a hot summer day like these ones, noticed that some of them held a fan and, jokingly, expressed his envy towards them. So the journalists gave him a signed fan as a gift. Nowadays the fans are artistic fans, chosen through a contest in which students of arts academies take part. Unfortunately there isn't a gallery of all the fans, but you can get an idea by looking at google images:

http://images.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q="cerimonia del ventaglio"

25 июля 2019 г.
6
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