My HIMYM Playlist

HIMYM is going to end in less than 24 hours. For those of you who know me, you already are aware I'm going to mourn forever. Better with some ice cream and alcohol.

For those of you who don't, well, let's say I spent my afternoon creating a playlist on Spotify with my favourite songs, picking out from all the 9 seasons and feeling blue. If you're anything like me, and you're going to be desperate too, there you go. Nothing is better than a good playlist of songs recalling beautiful and sad memories at once.

https://play.spotify.com/user/11126830844/playlist/0QggwUVSExxTjgbHuMH3W0

Girls

Girls season finale. Did I like it? I did. A lot of things happened during this season 3. Charlie and Marnie broke up. I used to think Charlie was the cutest guy on Earth and Marnie didn't deserve him, before learning he's a jerk. Or maybe being with Marnie isn't that easy as she's a huge control freak. Anyway, I would like him to come back next season, you hear me, HBO? So maybe Marnie will stop trying to be with all the guys she can't have just because she feels insecure. Adam gets a role on a Broadway production. I can't believe it, considering he spends half his life on a couch doing nothing but jerking off. Hannah still strives to become a writer and not being consumed by ambition and jealousy. Jessa finally admits she's a junkie, which makes her the most honest character of all. I love the fact she tries to help Beedie killing herself, that's very sweet and brave of her. I don't love exactly when Beedie changes her mind after having swallowed the whole contents of her pill jar. I guess it's not easy, but euthanasia is really something you should focus on before it is definitely too late. Shoshanna? Well, I don't like her much, first of all because I can't stand her tone of voice. And guess what? She dumped Ray like he was the greatest loser of all time and then, when she finds out he'd slept with Marnie, she wants him back! Definitely too easy.

Not a single good thing happened in this season finale, except maybe for Hannah being accepted at Iowa Writers' Workshop (any place left? just wondering).

That's the point with Girls, it always has. I've been watching it since the first episode was released and I can remember I was so excited because I felt it was something I belonged to. Something which was so close to real life of young people it hurt like hell watching. I guess this is pretty unexpected for a TV show, to be that real. We mostly want to be entertained when we turn on TV. Girls isn't entertaining at all in the way we would like it to be. Not in the sense it's not funny, because it is. Lena Dunham is one of the most talented writers of her age. I'd be the happiest person alive if I could get some of her writing talent one day. Girls is more like a punch in the face. You didn't see it coming and when you get someone's just hit you, you're ready to hit back. Then, you realize you're only going to crash your weak fist in your reflection in the mirror and you feel numb. I think it's one of the few shows which can picture perfectly what's like being 20-something today and not make you feel like everything's easy because it's not, really. And the soundtrack is pretty amazing, which is definitely a bonus. Everytime I watch an episode I tell myself I'm going to download all the beautiful tracks in it, but obviously I forget to. The only thing I know for sure is that I do want the job of the guy who's paid to pick out the songs. It must be one of the best jobs in the world, just think about it. You're at your desk with you coffee mug listening to new bands and match them with different scenes. Then, once approved, you go home with the awareness that people will feel sad for a song which made you feel sad in the first place, or in a good mood for another song which made you glad. It's like being the God of tunes. You play with people's feelings and they don't even know. But maybe my imagination is running a little bit too wild.

I am happy there's going to be a season 4, anyway. I must admit I've cried sometimes while watching TV shows or movies because I was sorry for my favourite character and experiencing a deep empathic moment. I am a sensitive person, don't blame for that. Girls is different. The times I've cried for it I did it because I was feeling sorry for myself, no favourite characters involved. I haven't a favourite characters among the four of them, actually. This is another thing I do love about Girls. Hannah, Marnie, Jessa and Shoshanna are far from being perfect. They're full of flaws but that's what makes them real. I love all the Girls in different ways, but none of them is exactly a role model and that's a good thing because neither are we. I don't need to watch another Tv show with a supergorgeous, fairylike protagonist (Rory Gilmore, I still love you, anyway) and feel like my life's crap when I can see how Girls' lives are as crappy as mine.

This is a pretty selfish thought, isn't it? I've never said I am not a self-involved bitch but Girls taught me it's almost okay to be that way.

Her

I hope you all agree that Her should have won more than just one Academy Award. I can suggest the one for Best song, which went to the very annoying Frozen song. Honestly, I really can't see what you all are concerned about. An average Disney movie, not even the best one so far, beautiful location as I love Nordic countries, but that's all. The song is quite good, is very Disney, but an Oscar for that? No way. Karen O deserved that, if you guys from the Academy didn't want to be politically correct and gave it to the Mandela song by U2 which was actually pretty good.

Was The Moon Song the only thing I enjoyed of Her? Hell no. The story is beautiful and romantic without being cheesy or banal and I guess in the end the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay was the most appropriate for such a kind of movie.

I even faced my hatred for Scarlett Johansson (which has nothing to do with the fact she's undoubtfully gorgeous and she's got a breast I can never ever grow, no matter how many pregnancies I'll have) and really liked her voice performance. The movie is set in a future but not scary Los Angeles where computers, apps and softwares are a huge part of daily life for everybody. A green-eyed and moustached Joaquin Phoenix is Theodore, a sensitive guy whose job is making up letters for every occasion at BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com. That sounds a bit like Tom and his greeting cards from (500) Days of Summer, and the tendency to melancholia and unhappy love is quite the same. Theodore is getting divorced and hasn't had a date in ages. He seems so unwilling to start a relationship he (spoiler!) even rejects Olivia Wilde and we all know that nobody could do that and be in his right mind. Theodore feels alone and buys this new operative system with a consciousness, programmed to be like a real person. He's charmed by Samantha's non-metallic, hoarse voice and they start a relationship which eventually turns into love. Now don't imagine any kind of relationship between a sort of robot and a human being, because it's not. Samantha talks, makes jokes, laughs, gets angry and feels like a person and maybe that's the point. The film isn't a love story between a man and an operative system, it's a love story - fullstop. That's why I don't think Theodore chooses Samantha because it's easier and less complicated than dating a person with a body. He chooses to be with her after having experienced all the other possibilities reality can offer to a quite handsome, even if moany, man. And that's the core of pure and mature love. I guess instead she loves him back because she knows little else and starts getting away when she comes to experience how wide the world can be, especially if it's an infinite, borderless virtual one.

The movie really broadens your mind about the way people act in relationships and deal with love. I left the theatre and felt like huge, thinking of all the connections we make in our lives and how we really need to experience the sense of possession to feel we're in love with someone. This kind of awareness leaves you speechless, while images of a beautiful LA roll on the screen, made even more beautiful through a great colour grading which guessed right the perfect tint. I've never been a LA person as I picture myself more like an East Coast girl, but Spike Jonze made me enjoy the sunny skyline like no director before. Plus, am I the only one thinking he's hot? Because, let me tell you that, he is and I wouldn't mind at all if he played any song on the uke for me. No offense, Joaquin.

There's only one Kate in London

Il n'y a que Kate Moss qui est éternelle.

This guy from Belgium, Stromae, sings this line in his song Tous les mêmes. I don't like him that much, but this sentence struck me because it's so true and by the way this post is not about him, it's about her. Or better HER.

She turned 40 last January and she's still amazing. I turned 2+4 a few weeks ago and I'm terrified about spotting a wrinkle anywhere on my face. Kate is like some sort of goddess with no age. She still looks like the girl on the beach as in Corinne Day's pics and anyone who saw the film About Time will understand me.

Anyway, I won't bother any of you with facts you all can see, particularly on this Playboy cover.

Kate is not that tall, not that curvy, not that traditionally beautiful, yet I do adore her. I can't even remember where my adoration comes from, I can only recall memories of a younger me buying obsessively Rimmel mascara and lipsticks to get the London look. I learnt it's something you can't buy, it's just something you have or not, and I still have to decide if I can get some.

So now imagine when I got to London nine months ago now (sigh) and I was having this interview for an internship with the coolest boss in the world, an English photographer who also happens to be one of the best persons I've met so far in my life. I had applied as editor for the blog he runs together with a website providing London pics to magazines, newspapers and other websites. We were chatting drinking coffee and he told me, totally unaware of my addiction, that one week earlier or so he and his assistant had shot Kate Moss (no guns involved) for some holography picture. They helped this cool guy Chris Levine (the creator) with Jeff Robb (the maker), who already took the holography of Queen Lizzie currently at the National Portrait Gallery. My face when I realize that if I had got to London a bit earlier I could've helped them with the shooting was priceless. The face I put up when he told me she was supernice and "tiny, just like you" was even more ridiculous, as I tried to conceal and not to look too excited about it.

From that moment on I spent a significant part (more significant than I would admit) of my summer chasing Kate, trying to spot her in Primrose Hill, where she lives, and in one of her favourite pubs nearby. Nothing. And then, wandering on the Internet, I found out she'd been spotted on some yacht in Calabria. Can you believe that? I couldn't.

Timing between me and Kate has never been right.

There was an exhibition in London for her 40th birthday in January and February and of course I went back there in March. And Topshop will launch a new collection designed by Kate in April.

A few months later, timing is still a bitch.

However, when I got back home to Italy last fall I hadn't bumped into Kate. That was one of my summer's biggest regrets. But then one day, my boss from the internship emailed me and ask me for my postal address, which I gave him. A few days later, my mom handed me a small yellow packet. It said DO NOT BEND in red.

Remember Kate's holography? The original, big one was sold at Christie's for £115,875. The envelope contained a smaller yet precious version my boss sent me.

My adoration was complete.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Let's picture a table reading with Wes Anderson. I can see a bunch of old friends getting back together for the first day of school. They sit quietly. Then two of them glance up (usually Jason Schwartzman and Edward Norton), grinning at each other and they start throwing paper balls. Someone draws stylised genitalia (or even realistic genitalia, don't ask me why but Owen Wilson seems a pretty talented artist to me) on a colleague's script (I'd say Tilda Swinton's) and they laugh and giggle until long-haired Wes calls them all to order.

Okay, maybe this vision is way beyond every professional actor's imagination, but let's pretend it happened. And I bet it was just like that during the making of The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The events are introduced by The Author (inspired by the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig), recalling a visit to the Budapest Hotel in the late 1960s, a decade in which its glory days are over. We follow the Young Author Jude Law meeting Zero Moustafa, the owner of the Budapest who's willing to tell him about his life and the reason why he doesn't want to close down the hotel. And that's when the real story begins.

Ralph Fiennes (he has the nose in this one) is Monsieur Gustave H., more than a concierge of a super luxurious hotel in the fictional Republic of Zubrowka in 1932. He makes sure everything's perfect and guests are happy, especially if they're needy and blonde. He also mentors Zero, the new shy lobby boy apprentice, starting sort of a friendship with him. But tragedy awaits. War is getting closer and it's not easy for anyone to pass the border. But this is little trouble for Gustave, more concerned about the mysterious death of one of his special guests, Madame D. She is found dead in her mansion and the concierge is convicted for murder, but ready to prove his innocence with the support of Zero and his girlfriend Agatha, who also happens to be a very crafty baker at Mendl's and will provide help in an unexpected way.

The film is extremely funny in that peculiar Anderson style we all know and love. Dialogues between Zero and Gustave are so witty and cynical it was hard for my armchair neighbours to watch themselves. There's also some average bloody scenes, cut off fingers and A LOT of dead bodies. And after all that, you're all craving for your happy ending, right? Well, you shouldn't. Moonrise Kingdom taught us it can't rain all the time and sun will always come up in the end and stuff like that. We all exited the theatre in a positive mood in some sense. Uh-uh. The Grand Budapest Hotel leaves you with some gracious sadness, if such a kind of sadness has ever existed. You find yourself thinking about the passing of time and how things change, sometimes not in a good way. You understand why the art of telling a story is important to keep people alive even if they're not and how you can be attached to places reminding you of what you loved the most. The best thing (which is my favourite thing in every Anderson movie) is that you don't even realize you're getting sad while watching. There could be blood, and death, and breaking up but all of these things together are presented in such a visual perfection and harmony you can't help yourself enjoying them and know they are right where they're supposed to be. Plus, you don't have time to get really desperate because you're too involved laughing at those wonderful lines and appreciate the perfect ensemble of characters written for the first time by Anderson alone.

It worths every penny of the 12.50 I spent to watch it. Anyway, if going to the cinema was a little less expensive in England I'd be a lot happier.

How am I supposed to live after HIMYM finale?

How I Met Your Mother is going to end. I remember what my first thought was when I read creator Carter Bays’ announcement on his Twitter about the last episode EVER, airing on March, 31st: AND NOW?
CBS has announced that they’ll shoot a pilot of How I Met Your Dad starring Greta Gerwig, but I’m not quite sure how fans will react to this.

I’ve always suffered because of TV shows finales. I was too young when Friends said goodbye, yet I was reasonably sad anyway. HIMYM has stayed with me in the good and the bad and now I feel I’m losing a friend (doesn’t sound weird, does it? I think it’s perfectly normal to develop a deep, awkward relationship with TV shows as if they were real, so don’t blame me for that). Just like a close friend, HIMYM taught me a few things I want to share with you.

1. Never go to a first date with unshaved legs

This one is easy. Even if you’re not sure about the guy or you don’t have enough time (find it!), you never ever know if your night out could take a good turn. So shave your legs preemptively and you’ll avoid ending up in the restaurant toilet begging the horrible waitress for something foamy. No, cream cheese is not an option.

2. Nothing good happens after 2 am

There are very rare exceptions: giving birth to a baby could be one of these, but not in my case as I’m not future Mrs. Mosby. When an idea comes to my mind after that time (I’d say even after 1 am, if I had spent the previous hour with a considerable number of drinks, “thank you, Linus!”) seems incredibly smart and puts me in a “IT COULD WORK!” mood. Inevitably, that same idea turns into catastrophe the morning after. So sleep your troubles away. There’s nothing like a good 8 hours sleep (okay, I won’t fool anyone, I usually sleep something like 5 or 6 hours per night, if I’m lucky, but it works quite well anyway) and focus on the point the next day. Your face skin will thank you.

3. Being friends with an ex is not impossible, it’s just freaking hard

Whoever said being friends with an ex is impossible? Well, most of the time it’s as hard as a brick in your back, but there’s a way. Ted and Robin stayed friends after their relationship. It wasn’t simple, mostly because Ted was so clearly still in love with her. However, I truly believe in their friendship apart from his feelings. I like the way they support each other. Someone may call it love, and could be, in a sort of way. When you do care for somebody you don’t want him or her to go away. After a break-up recovery time, of course, in which passive-aggressive voice messages (what if Robin had downloaded Girls’ Forbid app on her phone?) aren’t included. If it’s mutual, there’s a chance to make the friendship work.

4. Pause the fight

Fights could be tricky. You could say (read yell) things you don’t mean and that could be gross. I’m not always able to think rationally when I’m fighting over something I care about with somebody I care about, so I should try to use more Marshall and Lily’s approach. Pausing the fight doesn’t mean you’re faking peace. A little break lest you blow off some steam and think about the argument quietly so you won’t ruin everything. It could work for any kind of relationship: teen and parents, impulsive lovers, sharp-tongued friends.

5. Accepting 10 slaps in a row is wiser, but 5 to be issued from now to eternity is way funnier

Okay, slaps have increased in number during the years, becoming 8 (remember the Ducky Tie? Barney didn’t want to wear it, three more slaps for him). We’re still waiting for the last one to be issued after the hilarious Tarantino style Slappointment in Slapmarra episode in which Marshall learns the fine art of slapping in order to give his well-dressed friend a perfect 7th slap. Should Barney have chosen 10 slaps in a row? No. Anyway, I wouldn’t ever slapbet against someone with Marshall’s hands size.

6. Bass players are cool, cooler if they’re girls

I’ve always tried to find my place in the wide musical instruments world. As a child I tried with piano, but that was not just my style. And then it was guitar time. But, again, no. I decided at a very recent point in my life that bass could be the solution and, even if I can only play a couple of songs (for now!), I know it will work out. Plus, according to a very accurate research (test included two friends, one lover and, of course, Ted Mosby and his cliché sexual fantasies), guys find female bass players quite attractive, which is sort of a bonus.

7. To everything there is a season

This is probably my favorite line ever in HIMYM. For those of you who really are into the show, you’ll certainly remember it’s written right outside the church of the wedding-to-be between Barney and Robin. Waiting for our season could be disappointing and exhausting, face it. The perfect chance will come sooner or later to those who can be patient, they say. But if you’re not, just like me, well, you can help fate a little bit. It’s not over until it’s over, isn’t it? So try harder and harder, just like Ted did with Robin. I still ship them and I do hope they’ll find a way (even if I think The Mother is great), but I know you also have to be strong and let someone you love go, when the time comes.

That’s what I’m going to do with HIMYM. Let it go, mourn for a reasonable amount of time and after that, well, a look at How I Met Your Dad won’t kill me, right?