Tiago's brain dump

The history of the  Weimar Republic  is as short as it is fascinating. Established in 1918-19 by reformist civilian politicians who aimed at introducing modern democracy to a Germany used to nothing but the authoritarian  Hohenzollern monarchy , its formative years were far from the democratic-republicanist utopia its creators had aspired. With its economy crippled by the maintenance of the blockades imposed during World War I, famine was generalized; the humiliating terms of the  Treaty of Versailles  infuriated right-wing extremists, who brewed hate and antisemitism; political instability caused by power struggles among several party coalitions made it nearly impossible to run the young republic efficiently; lastly, the German people, once suppressed by absolute state power, commanded to follow and obey, felt severely at a loss about their newly given rights, retreating  instead into themselves, yearning for a strong leader to show them ...

Filmmaking is a collective enterprise, and it has been so almost since its inception. As every new storytelling tool demands additional crew members to oversee it, and since the cinematic grammar never stops evolving, movie production has unfolded into an endeavor that nowadays comprises  thousands  of people. Even though, as a consequence, the responsibilities delegated to each role in such massive crews can become considerably fuzzy, it is still  widely accepted  that a movie as a whole is (and has always been) the result of the creative vision of its director above everyone else: swap the producer, replace the editor or have the script altered during filming, and the ensuing movie will arguably still be the same overall; change its director, however, and you risk having an artistically fragmented mess of an outcome. That is, unless the true auteur behind that film is not its director, but in fact its  producer , something that was quite com...

Roger Ebert started his Great Movies selection by writing about Casablanca ; therefore, I think it is suitable for me to do the same :-) Such is the impact Michael Curtiz's Casablanca has had in Western culture that its story is known even to people who may have never really watched it: Rick ( Humphrey Bogart ), a bitter man who "sticks his neck out for nobody", owns a cafe in Casablanca, French Morocco, a gateway to America during World War II. One night, "of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world", Ilsa ( Ingrid Bergman ), the woman who broke his heart, walks into his cafe, accompanied by her husband Laszlo ( Paul Henreid ), a Resistance leader. He needs to flee to America, and for that, he needs some Letters of Transit that happen to be in Rick's possession. Rick must then choose between his love for Ilsa, or helping her and her husband flee to America, so that they can keep fighting against the Nazis. With a simple Google searc...