![]() ![]() The director usefully points out the tricks performed by Paradisi to make the pro-fascist crowds at the time much larger than they were, to help build the legend of an Italy unified behind Mussolini’s forces. ![]() The march, explains Cousins in his narration, had to be “golden, Virgilian … anointed, elevated, rigorous.” The new documentary points out that it was probably shot on October 30-31, because it poured on the previous days and rain-soaked, muddy figures were not considered “heroic” enough. A Noi!, for example, claims that one of its scenes of fascist marchers occurred on October 28-29. Cousins takes interesting pains to point out the distortions and deceptions in Paradisi’s work. The association of Trump (and later, Bolsonaro, Le Pen, Meloni, Modi, Orbán, Germany’s AfD, etc.) with Mussolini and fascism is appropriate and necessary, but since this is accompanied by serious errors or omissions of critical facts, the value of the connection is largely lost, or its genuine significance obscured.Ĭousins makes much of Umberto Paradisi’s A Noi! ( To Us!, 1922), an official National Fascist Party propaganda film, which purports to document Mussolini’s March on Rome. Joining Case on the soundtrack are the Souvenirs, whose songs reportedly play at key moments in the film.Mussolini (second from left) inspects Blackshirts before the March on RomeĬousins opens his film with the February 2016 incident in which Donald Trump retweeted a phrase widely associated with the Italian dictator, “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep,” and subsequently defended his action. ![]() The Sam Raimi film stars Cate Blanchett, Hilary Swank, Greg Kinnear, Katie Holmes, the great Keanu, and that Scientologist freak Giovanni Ribisi. ![]() Two Neko songs appear on the soundtrack to The Gift, out soon on Seattle’s Will Records (which means that Neko probably won’t get paid, at least not for several months). Bassist Bill Herzog tells a Gnome Gnotifier that Case and Company will stop in Tucson for a spell to record with the fine, fine folks from Calexico. The Chicago-via-Seattle crooner’s on yet another cross-continent dash with her Boyfriends, slated to reappear in town January 15 to open for the Jayhawks at the Showbox. Man, Neko’s everywhere in the news this week. Of course, you already knew about these records because they were in the Weekly‘s year-end lists two weeks ago. Writer Jon Pareles cited Death Cab for Cutie’s We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes, while Neil Strauss selected Mass Romantic, by Vancouver band the New Pornographers (featuring Neko Case). The Times has learned its way around the Northwest since then, as evidenced by last week’s “Worthwhile Albums Most People Missed” list, which included two of the best low-on-the-radar records to come from these parts in 2000. It’s been almost nine years since The New York Times misguidedly printed Megan Jasper’s “Lexicon of Grunge,” a hoax the Seattleite cooked up to mess with clueless media types (the Gnome’s favorite entry? “Swingin’ on the flippity flop,” which in Jasper-speak meant “hangin’ out”). ![]()
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