AEROPLANE TO AEROPLANO

Robert McCall Green of Fear at 0 g. By Roberto Dal Bosco  (Translated from Italian by L. Pavese)   There is a great motion picture in the theaters: Gravity . Just for once, at the top of the box office there is a work of absolute great quality. Gravity is one of the most emotionally stirring movies of recent times. The story tells of the feats of two astronauts who, shipwrecked in orbital space, try in some way to get back to Earth. We should not reveal anything more, to avoid spoiling a movie that deserves to be seen. Although this is a motion picture with a budget of US$ 100 million, the movie --- which is a sort of cosmic chamber play --- features only two actors, George Clooney (very well cast in the role of the gung-ho self sacrificing American) and Sandra Bullock, who, these days, is a little marred by plastic surgery and too much physical exercise but is still able to move the audience as only great actresses can do. The director is Alfonso Cuarón, who...

Jijé Di Massimo Introvigne (translated by L. Pavese) Joseph Gillain (1914-1980), also known as Jijé, one of the greatest authors in the history of comic-books, was born one hundred years ago in Gedinne, Belgium. He was remembered in an exposition at the Maison de la Bande Dessinné (House of the Comic Strip) of Brussels, Belgium. (This article was written and translated by me at that time. L. Pavese). Jijé by Jijé T he exhibit is very rich with previously unpublished works and original drawings. Rino Cammilleri already wrote about Jijé on La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana at the time of the reprinting of the Italian edition of Jijé’s Don Bosco (ReNoir - Nona Arte, Milan, 2013); but the Brussels show places Jijé in the right context and helps us to understand him better. T he Belgian school of comics, whose other famous representative was Hergé (Georges Remi, 1907-1983), the creator of Tintin, is known as the school of the “clear-line,” as opposed to the two other...

     Not just I.N.R.I: what was really written on the Cross     di Ermes Dovico (translated and edited by L. Pavese)      On the cross on which the Lord was crucified the Latin acronym I.N.R.I (Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum), which stood for Jesus Nazarene, King of the Jews, was not the only visible writing.      In addition to the Latin inscription, Saint John the Evangelist says the writing was also in Hebrew and Greek. And the Hebrew version reveals the reason why the Jews tried in vain to convince Pontius Pilate to change it.      “Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, 'Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews.' Now many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.” (John 19, 19-20)      Before Saint John had written the fourth and last Gospel towards the end o...

     Giotto and the secret of the Marriage at Cana      By Massimo Introvigne      In these times, in which we are talking again about Dan Brown, it is worth remembering that, besides the nonsense of the American novelist, Christian art and literature are filled with symbols, secrets and mysteries. Sometimes, in a symbolic way, works of art provide an explanation of the truth of faith according to codes that we have now lost but were understandable to the people who lived at the time of the artists; and sometimes they reveal legends, which are not the truth of the faith — and often they’re not even true — but, compared to Dan Brown, they have at least the merit of a long tradition.      An interesting example is the panel of the Wedding at Cana, from the series of frescoes by the Italian painter Giotto (ca.1267-1337) in the Scrovegni's Chapel in Padua, Italy. It is a series of frescoes that we all presumed...