BEST ISLANDS FOR 2014

Due to Trip Advisor’s Awards and the travelers’ choice, a Greek island is in the Top-10 of the Best Islands Worldwide.

At No.6 the island of Naxos represents the Greek blue and proves that it’s the most favored European island.

A big island in the heart of the Aegean Sea, with imposing mountain massifs and fertile valleys, inhabited by cheerful people with a tradition in music and dance, and full of beauty that enchants visitors.

Floating gracefully upon the waves like a fertile leaf. Naxos with its long history, important monuments and vibrant tourist life, occupies a distinct place among the Cycladic islands,

No matter how many days you spend on the island, there will always be more hidden niches to discover, beaches you haven’t seen, towers and fortresses you did not have time to visit, ancient temples whose secrets remain elusive. ..

For more Naxos click here

6 “GREEK” SONGS FOR OSCARS

Shortly before the 86th Oscar Awards Ceremony let's remember six songs that characterized the Greek presence in the great celebration of international cinema, either directly or indirectly.

1.         Ta pedia tou Pirea / The boys of Piraeus - Melina Mercouri

(Music – lyrics: Manos Hadjidakis)

(From the Film “Never on Sunday”)

Information

Film : Never on Sunday (Pote tin Kyriaki)

Director: Jules Dassin

Cast: Melina Mercouri, Jules Dassin, Giorgos Fountas

Year: 1960

Awards : The Film won Oscar for Best Music – Original Song and it was nominated for 4 more categories.

Tips: Manos Hadjidakis through away the golden statue and it was found incidentally.

I Am One Greece #onegreece

Lanthimos in Top-20 directors to watch for NYTimes

Lanthimos in Top-20 directors to watch for NYTimes

20 Directors to Watch

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/movies/movies-20-young-directors.html?_r=0

This is a list of 20 filmmakers to watch. Other than their relative youth — one turned 40 a few months ago, and several more will join him soon — they share little besides passion and promise. But bringing them together, and shining a light on their accomplishments and their potential, seems especially urgent as another new season of serious moviegoing gets under way. Here’s why: We are living in a time of cinematic bounty. In multiplexes and beyond, movie lovers have a greater, more dizzying variety of choices — and of screens, large and small — than at any time in history.

Yorgos Lanthimos

A group of four people — a cult, a start-up company or something else entirely — provides grieving families with the peculiar but surprisingly popular service of impersonating dead loved ones. A mother and father live with their adult children, who they have raised in isolation from society and educated in a belief system built around bizarre superstitions and an esoteric vocabulary. These are the premises of “Alps” and “Dogtooth,” the most recent features by the Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos. The world of his films is very strange but also uncannily recognizable. It is not a place of fantasy or allegory but a zone of possibility protruding at an odd angle from what we might understand as reality. He does not explain his surreal conceits but rather presents them with naturalistic rigor, as if he were shooting documentaries of his own dreams. Or perhaps of a culture’s nightmares.

While the political and economic unraveling of his homeland do not figure directly in “Alps” or “Dogtooth,” Mr. Lanthimos is part of a generation of Greek filmmakers who have come into their own in a period of profound and terrifying crisis. And the feeling of malaise, of living in a condition of hollowed-out meanings and foreclosed possibilities, haunts his characters, in particular the young ones. The adult children in “Dogtooth” inhabit a doomed wonderland, while the ghoulish entrepreneurs of “Alps” fall prey to the emotional chaos their project is designed to hold at bay.

To see more click here

Official web page: http://www.lanthimos.com    

70th Venice Film Festival poster pays tribute to Angelopoulos and Fellini

70^th Venice Film Festival poster pays tribute to Angelopoulos and Fellini

The cinema of Theo Angelopoulos and of Federico Fellini is celebrated in the image chosen for the new official poster of the 70th Venice International Film Festival.

Source: http://www.screendaily.com/home/blogs/venice-70th-poster-pays-angelopoulos-fellini-tributes/5058067.article

The festival, directed by Alberto Barbera and organized by the Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, will be held at the Lido from August 28 to September 7, 2013.

Created by Simone Massi - the animator, director and illustrator of the festival’s opening sequence - the image recalls a frame from the film by Theo Angelopoulos, Eternity and a Day (1998), starring Bruno Ganz. A man seen from behind waves his arms at a boat which, in the distance, is carrying a child and a rhinoceros.

A tongue-in-cheek reference to last year’s poster (which was inspired by Federico Fellini’s 1983 film, And the Ship Sails On), the poster “marks both continuity and a break with the past. It also invites viewers to look beyond, to roam using their imagination.”

The coordinated visual identity and image of the Venice Film Festival has again been handed to Milan’s Studio Graph.X, based on the drawings by Simone Massi.

To see more click here

Official web page: http://www.labiennale.org   

Greek triumph in backstroke at 4th FINA World Junior Swimming Championships

Greek triumph in backstroke at 4^th FINA World Junior Swimming Championships

4th FINA World Junior Swimming Championships 2013, Dubai

Source: http://www.fina.org/H2O/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4143:swimming-world-juniors-day-2-great-day-for-russia-8-medals-3-of-them-gold&catid=213:world-junior-swimming-championships&Itemid=773  

Apostolos Christou (GRE) swept through the pool with a fine sub-55sec effort in the men’s 100m back, ensuring a great start of the second day’s afternoon session. The Greek’s win was never in doubt, he clocked a new Championship Record. The battle for the silver was a tight one, Danas Rapsys (LTU) had the better touch-in ahead of Grigory Tarasevich (RUS), by 0.09sec.

«The Night Patrols»: Larry Gus new video

«The Night Patrols»: Larry Gus new video

Hear now: L.A. producer Madlib feted by Larry Gus on new mixtape

Source: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-madlib-larry-gus-mixtape-20130719,0,347016.story

Sometimes it can take a Greek to remind Angelenos — and the rest of the world — of talent living in our own vicinity. Specifically, producer Larry Gus, whose recent work for DFA has been on repeat for nearly the entire year, has collected into one essential mix the fantastic creative output of beat producer Madlib.

For those unfamiliar, the artist born Otis Jackson Jr. (but also known as Quasimoto, Beat Konducta and Joe McDuphrey, among dozens of other names) has over nearly 20 years produced countless deep, abstract jazz and soul-inspired grooves.

Artists including Mos Def, Erykah Badu, MF Doom, Ghostface Killa, Joey Bada$$ and dozens more have harnessed Madlib's beats for their rhymes, and Gus examines some of the best in a selection that blends foundational sample material with Madlib’s repurposing to craft what amounts to a sonic docudrama of a master musician.