Madlib

“I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself.” - François Truffaut

Mayer Hawthorne

(foto - Charlie Whatley)

1) Bento*

«O povo tem sempre razão mas por isso é que se diz que o Sporting não é um clube do povo. Em 2000, Luís Duque anunciava a saída de Inácio a uma sala de imprensa cheia de povo verde e já com Mourinho, entretanto despedido do Benfica, secretamente contratado. A determinada altura gritou-se "ó Duque, todos menos o Mourinho, o Mourinho é que não", e Duque manteve o Special One em segredo até ao dia em que não aguentou mais esperar para gritar que teve razão antes de toda a gente. Ontem Bettencourt não cometeu o mesmo erro e lavou as mãos da decisão de despedir Bento. Foi Bento que despediu o Sporting da sua vida. Com quatro meses de atraso. Bento foi o melhor treinador do Sporting dos últimos 20 anos. O tempo dar-lhe-á razão, como um dia deu a Luís Duque.»

(João Almeida Moreira, num i antigo que para aqui tinha)

(...)

2) Nani

«Com alguns momentos menos bons pelo meio, como a fase dos assobios.
Foi uma fase má. Cada dia que ia para um jogo pensava que não conseguia. Pesavam-me as pernas. Os adeptos estavam mal habituados. Eu não era um goleador, um Liedson. Na primeira época, fiz um bom trabalho. Na segunda, comecei muito bem, a marcar golos, a oferecer vitórias como a do Nacional na Madeira. Mas depois a equipa começou a baixar de rendimento, por causa do relvado também, e começaram a cair em cima de mim. Vieram os assobios e eu caí na depressão: não conseguia fazer absolutamente nada.

E o desentendimento com Custódio?
Foi assim: era uma semana em que eu estava a treinar de uma forma espectacular. Ouvia o Paulo Bento: "Isso, Nani, isso! Espectáculo." Só que, dois dias antes do jogo, sofro um toque no joelho num treino e no último treino da semana, quando sai a convocatória, eu não estive tão bem e ouvia algumas bocas, que eu estava a relaxar. Depois, nessa sessão, o Paulo Bento fez-me trocar de colete com o Carlos Martins e fiquei a exercitar-me com os suplentes. Percebi que não ia ser titular e fiquei com azia. Deixei de passar a bola, a querer fintar tudo e todos e a perdê-la de forma estúpida. Há um lance em que a bola vai adiantada e o Custódio entra de carrinho e eu piso o gajo de propósito. Houve bate- -boca. O Paulo Bento vira-se para mim e diz: "Acabou!" E eu: "Foda-se, ele é que está a falar, não sou eu." O mister disse--me para pegar nos calçõezinhos e ir para o duche. E pronto.»

(Nani, o mais talentoso jogador a passar pelo Sporting nos últimos cinco ou oito anos, numa bela e cândida entrevista ao i - Nani, não esquecer nunca, um tipo sempre que possível assobiado pelo bestial público que povoa Alvalade)

(...)

3) Blazevic

«Foi treinado por Blazevic no Euro-96 e no Mundial-98. Como o define?
É um treinador peculiar. Não sei se bom ou mau, mas era aquilo que nós, croatas, precisávamos naquele tempo. Ele pedia-me o mundo, o universo e um pouco mais. Depois, eu cumpria a missão e ele autorizava-me a ir relaxar para um nightclub. Ainda hoje falei com ele por telefone.

Qual é a sua principal qualidade nas palestras?
Cuidado com a pergunta. E cuidado com a minha resposta. Como posso explicar? Hããããã, amanhã vocês são o Brasil, o 'fucking' Brasil. Ouve, uma vez jogámos com a Estónia e ele falou com tanto fervor que parecia que íamos jogar com o Brasil. Eu olhei para ele e perguntei a mim mesmo: "What the fuck are you talking about?" [O que raio estás para aí a dizer?]. Ele mente e nós acreditamos.»

(Slaven Bilic entrevistado por Rui Miguel Tovar, no i de anteontem)

(...)

4) Guti

«No me veo con 60 años en una discoteca hasta las seis de la mañana, me veo ahora»

(Guti, 33 anos, um tipo inteligente)

(...)

5)


(...)

*Este blogue gosta de Paulo Bento. Gosta de gente corajosa e de carácter e que te olha nos olhos para dizer as merdas que o cérebro lhe diz para dizer. Que Bento tinha pouca ou nenhuma margem de manobra para continuar? Sim, era uma evidência. Que Bento deu tiros nos pés? Sim, em ser conivente com a contratação de medíocres ou medianos jogadores; em acreditar que podia fazer igual aos outros (Benfica e Porto) com o desequilibrado plantel de que dispunha. Mas que ninguém seja ingrato, que ninguém tenha memória curta. Bento, sempre refém do mísero orçamento que muitos julgam poder desvalorizar, fez milagre e mais milagre em quatro anos e em idênticas condições (planteis sofríveis, rivais directos financeiramente mais fortes). Acreditou este ano noutro milagre que não veio nem viria. Bento foi mesmo o melhor treinador do clube nos últimos 20 anos. Quem não entender isto, quem não o souber respeitar, merecerá sempre pouco ou nada. Merda para a gente ingrata, para os revolucionários de pacotilha cheios de certezas, de planos infalíveis. Se Bento não era já solução para os mais graves problemas do Sporting, não seria, por certo, 'o problema' maior deste Sporting. Esse é básico que dói, o mesmo da última década (desde 2001/02, época de Bölöni (ou época de Jardel, se preferirem)): dinheiro. No caso, a falta dele para se poder atacar o mercado em condições de clube que se diz grande. Hoje, financeiramente, o Sporting está longe - longe é eufemismo - do estatuto de 'grande'. Enquanto isso não for resolvido que venha Carvalhal, que venha Villas Boas, que venha Jesus ou Mourinho. Dará parecido.

Arnaud Desplechin interviews Wes Anderson [aprovo todas as perguntas]

ARNAUD DESPLECHIN: When do you finish shooting?

WES ANDERSON: We finish shooting tomorrow.

DESPLECHIN: Tomorrow? Are you depressed?

ANDERSON: We’ve been shooting for one year, so I’m not depressed yet.

DESPLECHIN: And you don’t have a wrap party?

ANDERSON: We had a wrap party.

DESPLECHIN: You already had it?

ANDERSON: Yeah. The wrap party had been scheduled in advance, and we went over schedule. It’s been a very long time shooting. The thing is, with the animation, you finish shooting, and then the whole thing is done. Everything else has already been put into place, so shooting is the last step, although we were mixing today on rue d’Enghien.

I do feel a bit like my characters from one movie could walk into another one of my movies and it would make sense.—Wes Anderson

DESPLECHIN: The weather in Paris is terrible now, quite depressing. I was just wondering, while sitting at my desk depressed by the weather, what kind of weather you had growing up in Texas.

ANDERSON: Well, Texas is hot. I went to school in Austin, but I grew up in Houston, which is on the Gulf of Mexico. It’s hot, hot like India, and humid, and full of mosquitoes.

DESPLECHIN: And you don’t miss it? [Anderson laughs] I ask because I am looking out the window and this city is all gray, and I don’t understand how you could stay in such a city. It’s quite different from where you are from. So you went to school in Austin?

ANDERSON: College in Austin. Then I lived in California for a while. Then in New York.

DESPLECHIN: Where did you meet Owen Wilson?

ANDERSON: In Austin. We must have been 18.

DESPLECHIN: And you both wanted to work in cinema?

ANDERSON: I guess we did. I don’t know. I was studying philosophy, and he was studying English. But we met in a playwriting class. We first started talking about writers, but we also talked about movies right off the bat. I knew I wanted to do something with movies. I don’t know if he had realized yet that it was an option.

DESPLECHIN: I think I read somewhere that in college, you were working on Proust?

ANDERSON: No, I was never working on Proust, but I read Swann’s Way, which made a big impression on me . . . At that time, literature students in America didn’t seem to read Proust—at least not where I was going to school. It took me a long time to finish reading the first book, and I only read the one.

DESPLECHIN: I never read it at all.

ANDERSON: You didn’t? [laughs]

DESPLECHIN: Because in my family it was a snobbish thing—you know, to read Proust. I thought if I read this book, it would take something like one year. Instead, I could spend the year reading strange, odd books that my father or sisters wouldn’t read. Plus I wanted to work in cinema, so I didn’t feel that I should start with a serious thing. I was supposed to focus on futile things that belong to popular arts. It was really an impression that I imposed on myself. I will never read Proust as a commitment.

ANDERSON: You still hold to that?

DESPLECHIN: Yeah. I read 10 or 12 books about Proust to know the different books. I mean, it was a sort of stupid decision to make as an adolescent— against the teacher and for the cinema. But it has to do with the fact that I’m French. Proust was sacred, so I didn’t want to be a part of it.

ANDERSON: The opening of Swann’s Way is about being on the verge of falling asleep. The book is filled with images that have never left my mind.

DESPLECHIN: So when you started to write films, was that the moment you and Owen split parts, where one would be the director and the other would be the actor?

ANDERSON: Well, we started writing together. I was always going to be the director, but he didn’t really want to be an actor—or I don’t know if he knew he wanted to be an actor. As far as he was concerned, he was strictly a writer.

DESPLECHIN: Does he still consider himself strictly a writer now that he has become such a big movie star?

ANDERSON: Nope. [laughs] Now he considers himself an actor, too. But he’s a very good writer.

DESPLECHIN: You wrote Fantastic Mr. Fox with Noah Baumbach.

ANDERSON: Yes. We wrote most of it in New York, some of it in Los Angeles, some of it in England. Actually, we wrote for a little while at Roald Dahl’s house, in Buckinghamshire. And we wrote a little bit in Paris, too.

DESPLECHIN: I thought you were trapped here, that you couldn’t escape from this rain. But you still can escape to New York and places like that.

ANDERSON: I can go to different places, yes. I live in New York most of the time.

DESPLECHIN: Would you call what you are experiencing—jumping around from one city to another—nomadism? Or would you call it an exile? Either way, to me, it is a typical American thing, these ideas.

ANDERSON: The thing is, you’re French. You’re French for generations. You’re genuinely French.

DESPLECHIN: I’m not that French.

ANDERSON: Well, you’re quite French. But most Americans will say, “I’m Swedish.”

DESPLECHIN: Are you Swedish?

ANDERSON: Yes, I’m half Swedish, half Norwegian. If somebody asks you what your background is, you don’t have to go back very far before it’s outside of America—unless you’re part Cherokee or something. Anyway, I certainly don’t think I’ve chosen to be nomadic. I always wanted to live in New York, and it took me a long time before I got there. But once you start moving around a lot . . . I don’t know. The difference between exile and nomadism is probably just your mood.

DESPLECHIN: You’ve seen a lot of movies. I wonder if you learned to watch a lot of films from someone like Martin Scorsese. One could say that there are two kinds of directors: those who love to see films and those who actually don’t see that many.

ANDERSON: If you are going to pick directors that make you feel like you should watch old films, I think that would be Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich. There are so many films I was introduced to by them in one way or another. For example, on the laser-disc commentary of Raging Bull [1980],Scorsese mentions something about MichaelPowell, and I had never heard of the Powell and [Emeric] Pressburger films before. From Bogdanovich, I think I first learned about Howard Hawks and LeoMcCarey. Bogdanovich saw everything. He had this metal file cabinet with drawers filled with notes. Every time he saw a movie, he typed up a little card that would list the title, director, writer, description, the date he saw the movie, and what he thought. He’d give it a rating. Then if he saw it again, he’d take the card and add a note: “I saw it again, and actually I thought it was a little better this time.”

DESPLECHIN: Do you do that?

ANDERSON: No.

DESPLECHIN: I think it’s a critic thing.

ANDERSON: Bogdanovich started it when he was, like, 15 years old. But I think he stopped the week that he went to Texas to make The Last Picture Show [1971]. He stopped as soon as he really became successful as a filmmaker. I think the first director I was ever aware of was Alfred Hitchcock—before I even understood the idea of a director. I was aware of Hitchcock because of The Alfred Hitchcock Collection. That was the first time I was aware that there’s a guy who is not in the movie who’s on the front of the box. He’s responsible. I loved those movies.

DESPLECHIN: Those were the first films that mesmerized you as a kid?

ANDERSON: Well, they were the first films I took note of and thought, This is interesting, and it was directed by this particular man. Before that I was interested in Star Wars [1977] and The Pink Panther [1963]. Actually, the first movie I saw when I got to Paris was one of the Pink Panther movies. I remember because I remember having to figure out how to say “Un billet pour La Panthère Rose . . . ”

DESPLECHIN: I’m not able to name the moment I wanted to be a director because I also didn’t know the word for that. I couldn’t distinguish between producer, director, and author. I just wanted to be the guy in charge—the guilty one! [Anderson laughs] But, you know, as a kid I was not precocious at all. I had such bad taste. I loved Hitchcock but for the wrong reasons.

ANDERSON: What are the wrong reasons?

DESPLECHIN: I don’t know. Today I try to see some of his films and, you know, I’m failing him because I’m not moved. But other times I’m shivering and crying because what he tried to achieve is so amazing. It’s such dedication. I think he’s almost a saint. I can see all the unbelievable emotion in it. Before, I thought the big thing with him was that he was clever. Actually, I don’t know what I love about him. Is it that he accepts that he’s stupid? That he’s clever? That’s he’s vulnerable?

ANDERSON: He follows the thing that he’s drawn to over and over again. Sometimes, if I have to do a scene that involves suspense or drama or just some basic genre storytelling, I think, What’s the Hitchcock way to do it? There’s a Hitchcock solution that’s clear and simple and sort of professional and says, I want the audience to feel something specific. Usually when I’m doing a scene, I don’t want it to feel specific—I want to make something that different people will feel in different ways. But the greatest thing about Hitchcock is that his scenes do have very specifically intended effects—even while the overall film would still be interpreted wildly differently from person to person.

DESPLECHIN: Are there other directors who you think about like that?

ANDERSON: Yeah. I mean, it depends on the thing I’m working on. One other director I feel thatI always think about when I don’t know how to approach something is Steven Spielberg. He would know how to do it. But, ultimately, if you’re asking me which director I think about in terms of just living my life—maybe this is crazy, but I’m going to have to say Stanley Kubrick, which I think is a bad sign because that is someone whose whole thing was about controlling his life. I mean, he apparently had a great family life, and he had his work arranged in a way that fit into the way he wanted to live. And people went to see his movies. And he only did the movies he liked to do. He didn’t do one movie for the money, so he could do the next one because he liked it. He only did the ones he wanted to do. He had total, utter, complete creative control over not just the movies but also the life of making them. He had a system, which you need because there are too many things to keep track of.

DESPLECHIN: I have a friend who visited Hitchcock’s house when he was really old. My friend had written a famous book on Hitchcock and was so proud to visit. Hitchcock showed him his basement. At this time, he wasn’t allowed to eat anymore because he was too fat. But he was keeping food in a basement storage area. He had enough to feed, like, 100 people, just to be sure he wouldn’t ever lack any food, which was absurd because he wasn’t allowed to eat it. He was just visiting his food. That’s beautiful, no?

ANDERSON: That’s beautiful, yes.

DESPLECHIN: I wanted to talk to you about music in your movies. You have a very personal way of working with scores—such an exact taste and combination of songs.

ANDERSON: I like working on the music for my own movies—which is about the only music I’m interested in working on.

DESPLECHIN: Do you play an instrument?

ANDERSON: A little bit, but barely anything. For Fantastic Mr. Fox, we had Jarvis Cocker make a great song—he’s also the voice of one of the animated characters in the film. And, right now, we have Alexandre Desplat in the middle of doing the score. There’s much more music than I had any idea we were going to need. It’s like an hour or more of music that he’s written.

The first director I was ever aware of was Alfred Hitchcock—before I even understood the idea of a director. That was the first time I was aware that there’s a guy who is not in the movie who’s on the front of the box.—Wes Anderson

DESPLECHIN: Were you with Jarvis Cocker when he recorded the music?

ANDERSON: Yes. We recorded it in Jean Touitou’s basement studio. We have a French banjo player who’s very good. I don’t think there are that many wellknown French banjo players, but we found the best one.

DESPLECHIN: I was surprised when you said you studied philosophy and read Proust, because it sounds so serious. But your films are also quite entertaining. The first time I had to introduce one of your films in Paris, it struck me that that you are to American cinema what J.D. Salinger is to American literature. You create a sort of pure cinematic world and the characters connect from one film to another and the films together are drawing a world that is constantly expanding. It seems so close in style to what Salinger did.

ANDERSON: I do feel a bit like my characters from one movie could walk into another one of my movies and it would make sense, whereas people from other peoples’ movies would probably feel a bit uncomfortable there. [both laugh]

DESPLECHIN: But it’s quite rare, no? To have created such a collant world. It reminds me of Francois Truffaut because you need to create life, jokes, cries . . .

ANDERSON: Your movies have the same thing, except they’re more realistic, so it becomes more subtle.

DESPLECHIN: I wouldn’t say that.

ANDERSON: Well, I suppose I mean the characters in A Christmas Tale [2008] and Rois et reine [2004]—I can’t really say the r’s right in Rois et reine—they are part of an imagined world, but those characters feel more like real life to me.

DESPLECHIN: You have all these guys who are really big fans of your movies because there is something so intimate about them. Even if we don’t know a thing about you, there is something so revealing in your films, something we see about your life there. If there is another director who gives me the same feeling, it’s Quentin Tarantino. To me, you and Tarantino are two brothers in the American cinema.

ANDERSON: I feel like with Tarantino, when he was doing Pulp Fiction [1994], there’s all this genre that he’s working with in this inventive way. But you also kind of get the feeling that he’s been traveling in Europe and he’s never been there before and he has just come back to town to report on some of the things that have happened in his life. Your film Ma Vie Sexuelle [1996] has the complete feeling of somebody reporting about their life, but it’s not like a documentary-style movie. Was your life at the time anything like that movie?

DESPLECHIN: Not at all. But there is a truth that when you learn a character or write a scene for a film, you can make it part of your life. I had an actor who didn’t smoke before he was cast as a chain-smoker in my film. Now he does. But even from a line in a film—writing it or acting it—you can think, “I could say this and also be funny. The girls might stop and laugh and I could get laid.” It’s true: You find a good line and after that you try to use it in real life. So, in a way, you are taught by your own films and the characters you impersonate. When people see the results of your work, they guess they can see something about your private life.

ANDERSON: But when your experience of making the movie turns into your life—what Kubrick called “pure cinema” then—that’s probably a bad sign.

DESPLECHIN: Well, thank you, Wes. On va manger?

ANDERSON: Oui.

(daqui)

(...e agora junto-me ao clube de fãs de Patrick Petitjean. É uma criatura bonita, quase que me deprime:)

A última mulher de quem tentei ser amigo, achou que eu estava interessado em mais. Resultado: não ficou nada, nem amor nem amizade. A última mulher de quem estive interessado, achou que eu apenas queria ser amigo. Resultado: também não ficou nada, nem amor nem amizade.

Pode ter sido por uma coincidência absurda, macabra, astrológica. Pode ter sido porque, em ambos os casos, as duas queriam simplesmente coisas diferentes. Ou pode ter sido por outra razão mais credível e mais trágica: a quase absoluta impossibilidade de tornarmos as nossas intenções claras para as mulheres. Talvez, mas só talvez, porque nem nós sabemos ao certo o que queremos. Entre homens e mulheres, as amizades tendem para não ser muito mais do que falhas de comunicação.

(Pedro Lomba)

Benedita Pereira

Sabem aquele anúncio da Vodafone em que um rapaz vulgar de Lineu sonha convidar a monumental Eva Mendes para sair? Pois bem, ele tem um amigo fotógrafo, e a irmã de um amigo de um primo desse fotógrafo parece que trabalhou na equipa de um filme em que entrava a Eva Mendes. Então o nosso rapaz contacta o primo do amigo, o amigo do primo, a irmã do amigo do primo, e finalmente chega ao produtor do tal filme, que lhe envia o contacto do agente da Eva Mendes. O rapaz, agora disfarçado de cineasta americano, vai aos States e tem uma longa reunião com o agente da Eva; este acabar por concordar com o suposto projecto e dá-lhe o número da actriz. E eis o rapaz, felicíssimo e ansioso, a telefonar à mulher dos seus sonhos: dois toques, ela atende: «It’s Eva Mendes». E ele desliga.

Confesso: já fiz isso com a Benedita Pereira.

(Pedro Mexia)

adenda: ler também isto

e outra: melhor definição de Facebook de sempre (Vontade Indómita) (e eu que também por lá ando)

hit-and-run

(...)

AMY: Because this is what you like, this. Not anything else. This is the fun part.

JOSH: That's not true.

AMY: Yes, it is. We're not in the dorm anymore. I get paid a lot of money to do an important job and I'm not into getting diddled around by guys like you.

JOSH: Okay, that's like the fifth time you've said "guys like you."

AMY: It is not.

JOSH: It's the second time.

AMY: Fine.

JOSH: What's with guys like me?

AMY: If this thing went five minutes longer than you wanted it to go you'd run for the hills. You're "Hit-and-Run Josh."

(The West Wing, algures pela 3ª temporada)

مراكش

saudinha.

passeata de carro com Mulatu Astatke ao volante

É comprar, é ler o ípsilon de hoje, páginas 24 e 26. O amigo Mulatu e a Sasha Grey foram as pessoas mais bonitas do mundo desta minha semana.

Também ando para aqui encantado com o gosto da Sasha Grey (via Provas de Contacto). Sou um pavloviano irrepreensível no que toca a estas coisas.

(E curioso à brava com o último Soderbergh:

)

há uma parte de mim, algures, que morre de saudades do Cintra...

"Mark Knopfler? Não duvido que seja um bom jogador mas temos o plantel fechado"

"Romário? Não, íamos era contratar o Rosário do Torreense, isso deve ser gaffe"

(...mas como não ter saudades deste homem?, um falador compulsivo, embora nem sempre inteligível. Um milagre ocasional.)

Joe Klein on Iran's Election (via roda livre)

Stars in My Crown, Jacques Tourneur, 50

Broken Flowers

Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics

The Good, the Bad and 'his Humphrey Bogart jacket open, his special smile'

It was a surreal day, an ominous day in Tehran yesterday, of censored newspapers and of soft words and threats against Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's political opponent, Mirhossein Mousavi. We didn't even know where Mousavi was – in custody or house arrest – nor whether a hundred of his election campaign workers had been arrested. It was a day heavy with plain-clothes policemen, blocked roads and jeering supporters of the government. No, there will not be another revolution in Iran. But this is not quite the democracy that Ahmedinejad promised.

True, we met Ahmedinejad the Good yesterday, preaching to us at an elaborately-staged press conference, talking of the noble, compassionate, honourable, smart people of Iran. But we also met Ahmedinejad the Bad, swearing to thousands of baying supporters that he would name the "corrupt" men who had stood against him in Friday's election.

I'm still not at all sure we met President Ahmedinejad, always supposing we believe in the 63.62 per cent of the votes that he claims he picked up. For what do you make of a man who five times refers to the presidential poll as a football match and then utters – in front of us all – in the softest of voices and with the gentlest and most chilling of smiles, a terrible warning to the mysteriously absent Mousavi. "After a football match, sometimes people feel their side should have won and they get into their car outside and drive through a red light and they get a ticket from a policeman. He didn't wait for the red light to change. I am not at all happy that someone ignores the red light." We all drew in our breath.

Less than two hours later, before the sweating thousands of his supporters in Val-y-Asr Square, we saw Ahmedinejad the Bad. "They are branding us as liars and corrupt," he screamed. "But they are themselves corrupt. I am going to use my position as president to name these people..." The crowd roared its approval. Of course they did. They all held Iranian flags or pictures of their pious leader amid heavenly clouds.

The day started badly with another of those dangerous, frighteningly brief statements from Tehran's loquacious police commander, Bahram Radan. "We have identified houses which are bases for the political mobs." This was the only reference the authorities would make about the outrageous street battles in which Radan's black-clothed cops beat Mousavi's supporters insensible on the streets of Tehran.

Then there was the front page of "Etemade Melli" – "National Trust" in English – which belongs to another of Ahmedinejad's enemies, Mehdi Karoubi. After the election results at the top of the front page – Mousavi officially won only 33.75 per cent of the votes and Karoubi 0.85 per cent – there was a caption: "Regarding the election results," it read, "Mehdi Karoubi and Mirhossein Mousavi made statements which we cannot publish in our newspaper." Beneath was a vast acre of white space. You could doodle on it. You could construct a crossword on it. You could draw a red light on it. But you couldn't read those statements.

And just to rub home the message – which we heard in various forms all day – a postage-stamp size photograph of Tehran's cops running down a street appeared at the top of page two with two worrying sentences. "The Public Security Police have delivered a statement, stating that any kind of gatherings, demonstrations or celebrations without a licence are forbidden. Any kind of gathering would be unlawful and the consequences will lie on the shoulders of the candidates and their campaign offices." We all knew what that meant; indeed, we approached Ahmedinejad's press conference with the absolute conviction that there would be more threats; there were, but they couldn't have been made in a kinder, more sinister way.

He sat before a vast spray of red and white roses, his back to a poster of a snow-tipped mountain, an Iranian banner floating in front, his Humphrey Bogart jacket open, his special smile – the UN smile, the CNN smile, the humble worker smile, the sportsman smile, the wisdom smile, we all know it – amid his whiskered features. There were prayers. And then came Imam Ahmedinejad. The Iranian people won the elections. It was their role to rule. "In countries where there was liberal democracy, the people are pushed out of the system and the professionals take over but in Iran, a democracy rules which is based on ethics."

It went on like this for quite a while. Iran loved all peoples. It would help all peoples. Iranians loved each other. They were unified. They would always stand together. "We are a noble people, we are smart people and the Iranian people believe in right and righteousness. The Iranian people hate lies and are satisfied with their lot... but we stand up to bullies and arrogance... the Iranian people will never be afraid of threats," he continued.

Readers will decode this as they wish. Clearly Ahmedinejad had read through Barack Obama's Cairo speech very carefully – indeed, he sometimes sounded grotesquely like the American president – and some of his "change" motifs fit rather well with the new US administration.

Bullying was in the past. We needed dialogue with all issues on the table. Post-World War Two political systems had proved anti-humanitarian. "The time when a handful of countries came together to decide the fate of a smaller country was over. It is finished."

It seemed endless. Democracy, ethics, human values, welfare, confidence, mutual respect, justice, fair play... From time to time it sounded like an updated version of Plato's Republic with the unwilling philosopher king behind the red and white roses.

But there was that infuriating refusal to deal with physical realities. When I asked Ahmedinejad the Good if he remembered the young Iranian woman dragged screaming to the gallows a few weeks ago, pleading with her mother by mobile phone to save her life seconds before her neck was broken by the rope, and whether he would guarantee that such a terrible event would never be repeated in the Islamic Republic, he set forth on an exegesis of the Iranian legal system. "I am myself against capital punishment," he replied. "I do not want to kill even an ant. But the Iranian judiciary is independent." And then he promised to talk to the judiciary about softening punishments and thought Iranian judges would benefit from "dialogue" with their opposite numbers in Europe and America. But the young woman so cruelly executed – for a murder she may not have committed – had disappeared from his response. She wasn't an ant. She had been in the hands of Ahmedinejad's noble, caring, compassionate, just Iran.

Nor was Mousavi an ant when CNN's Christiane Amanpour demanded Ahmedinejad the Good's guarantee for his life and those of his supporters. That's when we got the bit about the red light and all that it represented. Amanpour repeated the question. "Perhaps I missed something in the translation of your reply," she said sarcastically. "Perhaps you missed the translation that you didn't ask for a second question," Ahmedinejad snapped back. "No," said the imperishable Amanpour," this isn't a second question. I'm repeating the first one!"

Useless, of course, especially when the Iranian and Arab journalists arrived with their fawning questions, always preceded by congratulations for Ahmedinejad's real or imagined victory. In fact, the most frustrating thing about this performance was that he kept praising the massive turnout on Friday – perhaps more than 80 per cent – as his personal victory. But it wasn't the enthusiasm to vote that proved his presidency. It was the nature of how the result was calculated that enraged so many of Ahmedinejad the Good's noble Iranians.

But then, as they say, the mask slipped. Down amid the hot crowds on Val-y-Asr square – the scene of a huge 1979 Revolution massacre – Ahmedinejad the Bad was with us, screaming of his victory in confronting America.

"The enemy is furious because the Iranian nation is firm in its ideology... I will do my best to make the imperial powers and governments bow before you and bow before the nation of Iran."

His hand went up and down like a see-saw and the men and chadored women – some brought into Tehran by bus from the countryside, I noted from the registration plates – shouted "Ahmadi-, Ahmadi-, we are supporting you." And back came the vaunted boast: "America and other countries, you threaten Iran and you'll get your answer!" That's when he said he'd name his enemies.

So is it peace or war? It rather depends whether it's Ahmedinejad the Good or Ahmedinejad the Bad, I suppose.

For Mousavi's fate, watch this space.

(Robert Fisk)

"Se houver força suficiente entre os jovens que para que peguem no testemunho dos críticos italianos, que criem festivais, que façam trabalho de selecção, trabalho de estímulo, é possível que o entusiasmo deles seja recuperado. Quando as pessoas se dispersam, acaba-se tudo! Há uma velha fábula: um velho está a morrer e chama os filhos à beira da cama. Pede ao mais velho: 'Traz essas flechas; ata-as umas às outras e tenta parti-las'. O filho tenta mas não consegue. O velho diz: 'Parte-as uma a uma'. E então já as consegue partir. 'Se permanecerem unidos nada vos acontecerá'. Mas no contra-provérbio georgiano, o velho moribundo quer dar esta mesma lição clássica e diz ao filho: 'Vá, tenta lá partir as flechas'. O miúdo tenta e parte-as mesmo. Diz o pai: 'És um cretino e hás-de ser sempre um cretino!'.
Aqui está a resposta à vossa pergunta sobre o humor georgiano."

(Otar Iosseliani, Cinemateca Portuguesa)

E ainda não foi ontem que o vi. (Cartão daqui.)