Category: Life in General

By Posted on Posted in Anton Corbijn, Depeche Mode, Life in General, Memento Mori Tagged with , , , ,

Ok, I’ll start by admiting. I’ve been AWOL from this site for almost the entire year. And what a year it’s been! We got a new Depeche Mode album (and a helluva a fine album). We also got treated to another great tour, which is still on-going (and of course I have plans to catch up with it in 2024). I obviously saw the band a couple of times (yes, I met Martin and he was the sweetest guy in the world). So why was I so absent from this blog so much? Well, dizzy Mr Busy, too much rush to talk to Billy. All the silly frilly things have to first get done. In a minute sometime soon, maybe next time, make it June, until later doesn’t always come. One of the best side effects of a DM tour is meeting with friends from all over the world. Me and the other Spirits also amanged to arrange a mini-reunion (during a DM show, of course) of our own. We didn’t get physical singles from “Memento Mori” (apart from the odd German 7″s and the newly announced white label series). To be honest, with the 12″ Singles box sets being released at the current pace, we’re going to reach MM in 2024 anyway. Since we’re talking about re-releases, “Strange” and “Strange Too” finally got their long-awaited DVD/blu-ray release. I don’t know about you, but I’m very excited for what 2024 will bring.

And yes, the title of this post and the accompanying image would have made more sense if I had pressed “publish” before January 1st, 2024. But you get the spirit. Raise your glasses and let’s have a black celebration!

By Posted on Posted in Anton Corbijn, Books, Depeche Mode, Film Tagged with , , ,

autograph of Anton CorbijnYour favorite photographer dash director had a RSVP signing session at the local fancy Taschen shop here in the village of Buh Leen. It was supposed to be from 18h to 19h. However, arriving at 18h meant you had go to the end of a line that actually had no end in sight (literally). But it moved fast and just TWO hours later (that is a few minutes in Berlin waiting lines) it was my turn.

I should note that It was very nice of the guest author not to storm out of the store when the clock hit 19h and really stayed longer autographing for every one who arrived until 19h (the line wasn’t infinite, though).

So I finally got to meet Anton Corbijn for the first time in 3 years. He was surprised (because I just appeared unannounced like everyone in the line). In fact, his joy felt almost like nostalgia, as if the project had been ages ago, when, in fact, we last met in October of 2019 in London. (now I got nostalgic about life in 2019). I got to send greetings on behalf of the other SPiRiTS and we even had a chat about the superb work of co-directors Pasqual Gutierrez and John Merizalde in the film.

Meeting Anton CorbijnI didn’t prepare anything special for him to write in the autograph. I could have done it, though. They were taking notes on post-its, but I decided I’d just let the moment flow. I did have “Dear Daniel, f*ck off! Love, AC” as a back up and I did suggest it. It was incredible how he was in such a great mood after the repetitive work of autographing for two hours straight. But he was concise, since he had already made an autograph that had taken almost the entire page. The result is the picture above.

I have 4 of his books in my shelf (well, DMAC XXL edition is not technically on a shelf) and three of them are autographed. First, during in a brief moment while filming, he wrote “Daniel, enjoy the music as much as the pictures, AC” on my “1-2-3-4” (I think he was under the impression I adore him and DM only; not just every artist featured on that book). The Gutemberg Bible edition of DMAC already came autographed. And now the XL edition of the same book. Only my restored copy of the rare Strangers that I bought for 1/3 of what it’s worth remains in pristine condition. No scribbles or doodles on it so far.

By Posted on Posted in Depeche Mode, Depeche Mode Facebook Takeover, Life in General, Music, The World We Live in Tagged with , , , , ,

I was lazy enough to let Glen Hammarstrom’s first edition of the Breathing in Fumes Podcast Live Brunch pass and not post about it here. This time I won’t. Head over to Twitch at 10am PST, 18h UK, 19h CET, next Sunday, May 17th, for a daily dose of DM in that awesome mix magic that only Glen knows how to do.

Since we’re at it, Glen’s regular episodes of the Breathing in Fumes Podcast are a must, in case you don’t already follow them. You can go check them out on his site. And you can follow updates on all platforms known to mankind as of the writing of this post such as iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, iHeartRadio, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Soundcloud., and Youtube.

And by the way, the 12th episode below features special guests: David McElroy and yours truly having some fun about lots of things, including surnames. Be sure to check this and all others!

By Posted on Posted in Life in General, Music Tagged with , , , , , ,

I know I’ve been absent from here and for the most contradictory of reasons: the partial lockdown which I turned into my own self quarantine. I’ve just reduced my trips outside to the essential. But like every sane and insane person in the world, this is obviously affecting us on a psychological level. Even being at home longer made me less productive. But moving on…

Umberto Tozzi (along with Laura Branigan, of course) must be my own personal frequency illusion bias (aka Baader-Meinhof phenomenon). One line from a Brazilian cover version of his 1982 hit song “Eva” got stuck on repeat on my head these days. The cover is not a word by word translation, but the lyrics follow the same apocalyptical idea. It translate into “it’s the end of the human adventure on Earth”. That’s when I reached to my Spotify to find out it was the name I had given to the very first playlist I put together on that platform a few years ago and never finished it (a playlist is never finished, is it?).

So I crawled out of my inertia and continued with the end of the world theme. I dropped the title in Portuguese (and couldn’t find an equally dramatic in the Italian original). I just went a bit more poppy and came up “It’s Pandemonum!” taken from the 2009 Pet Shop Boys song (here in a live version interpolated with “Can You Forgive Her?”). I tried to not overkill it with too many obvious choices (including Depeche Mode). I went for some covers or alternate versions instead of originals. I also had to make some concessions given what was available on my end. After so  many versions, I settled with this, which is more uplifting than when it started. I hope all 30 songs are available everywhere. Well, give it a try. “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. I just want you to have some fun.”  ;^)

Also, feel free to drop a suggestion in the comments below.

By Posted on Posted in Depeche Mode, Film, Life in General, Televison Tagged with ,

Do you know when you binge watch the first season of a show and then eagerly awaits for the following season and then gets very disappointed? I just finished the 2nd season of “You” on Netflix and, boy… what a disaster.

Spoiler-free long story short: “You” follows the anti-hero Joe Goldberg, a very romantic type of guy, who is also a very careful virtual and non-virtual voyeur, stalker and eventual serial killer. A good proposal in these days of internet over exposition and #metoo campaigns. It’s a little like “American Psycho” and “Dexter”, updated to the late 2010’s. The show premiered on Lifetime in the US and didn’t make much of an impact, so much that it had been cancelled, picked up by Netflix and granted a 2nd season even before the first one had aired on Lifetime. It was indeed more successful on Netflix in late 2018, with the 2nd season arriving roughly one year later in December 2019, now as a Netflix exclusive.

But the feeling you get is like no one really was counting on the show getting a second season (despite season 1 ending on a mid-sized cliffhanger). Season 2 shows a very irrational Joe, leaving so many traces behind that it’s hard to believe it’s the same character. In real life, his constant usage of his victims phones passing himself for them would have granted him a court order for the police to locate when and where they were used, eventually adding 2+2 and he’d have been caught halfway through the season. There are other inconsistencies with the character’s rational behavior from season 1 that ruined it for me. When I finally got over with it, I was happy to see it ended in a much more light cliffhanger, tipping it could simply end there without a 3rd season. However, much to my dismay, Variety has confirmed today that it has indeed been granted another season.

It may be the case I simply abandon the show. It wouldn’t be the first time. I confess I don’t know when I gave up on “Fringe” (and that was a lot like “The X-Files” good days meet “Lost” good days – two shows that didn’t know when to stop and I did watch all seasons, only to be disappointed at the end). Or the comedy “That 70’s Show”, which I never saw all the way (and we’re taking about old days of linear television, not today’s streaming and binge watching habits). With “Heroes”, I do remember. It was sometime between seasons 3 and 4 when my patience with it was over after this sci-fi show became a parody of itself.

Which brings me to an opposite situation: when a show I like doesn’t get renewed and the final season had already been filmed and it ends full of loose ends. It happened to the Wachowskis’ “Sense 8”. I could “sense” the show would get cancelled because it looked like one absurd burden to shoot each season in multiple cities across the world with the entire cast coming along and in a completely non-linear way, since all characters could “jump” from one place to another and back during all episodes. So logistics and direction-wise, for a TV-show (ok, “Netflix” show), this must have cost a fortune, needed a beast of planning ahead and didn’t have the desired return to justify such costs. It was, however, granted a final 2-hour special episode to give it some closure. Much like “Farscape”, which was even scripted for 5 seasons, but still got killed after season 4. It took two years for the creators to secure the rights, shoot and air a one-off series finale made-for-TV movie.

The latest incident where this has happened with a show I liked was “Berlin Station”. Loosely based on real life event as the kick off for each season, it follows CIA agent Daniel Miller (the name also got my attention immediately) who’s been recently assigned to the Berlin office of the agency located inside the American embassy in Berlin. Season 1 deals with a whistleblower and was shot on location in Berlin and in Babelsberg studios here on neighboring Potsdam. Season 2 benefitted from actress Ashley Judge joining the cast, and had an extreme-right wing party running for the general elections in Germany, but a lot of the action moved to Spain and I dubbed it “Valencia Station”. Season 3, or “Tallinn Station”, had a lot of exterior “Berlin” scenes moved to Vienna and Budapest (I can tell) while dealing with the issue of Russian influence on the Baltic countries while messing with NATO dysfunctionalities. Here’s where the show got cancelled and we never got to really grasp a proper ending for the storylines.

So much like these last two examples, I don’t have a proper ending for this post, except a reminder that “Spirits in the Forest” will air on ARTE on Jan, 24th both in Germany and  France (although slightly later in France, so technically on Jan, 25th), so make sure to watch it either when it airs or later on their website where it should be available for streaming for a couple of months. See you!

By Posted on Posted in Life in General Tagged with ,

19.08.2013: I was already being welcomed at the Frankfurt Airport.

Today marks the 6th anniversary of my permanent arrival in Berlin. I had visited the city four times in the previous two years. There was almost this voice in my head: “if you build Berlin’s new airport, AirBerlin will come to Rio with a non-stop flight to pick you up”.

To no one’s disappoint, Berlin’s unfinished airport’s current opening date should be fall 2020. The original plan was to open it some time in 2010, but then the delays started. In one of my trips, I even got to get a flight ticket with BER written on it as my destination. About one month before the trip, Lufthansa emailed me saying the destination would be at good old Tegel airport instead. The airport has had so many unfulfilled openings, that no one takes whichever is the current one seriously (me neither). Along with the eternal delays with the airport, AirBerlin ended up filing for bankruptcy because they were counting on the new airport . They even did actually have plans for a Berlin-Rio non-stop flight. But it never materialized and it’s all history now. A buried past for AirBerlin and a mysterious future for Willy Brandt Airport, Berlin-Brandenburg (in case you were curious to know the full name of what Berliners simply call B-E-R).

Enough with Berlin trivia. If you want to get to know tons of information about the city that not even Wikipedia will tell you, I strongly recommend Notmsparker’s books.

There are many first-world-problems to whine about Berlin. “Berlin is not Germany”, some will say. They’re not that wrong. But to me, it’s almost like a Dorf (a small village) with the infrastructure of an European capital. Yes, there are stereotypical yoga-vegan-punk Berliners. But part of the German way of life is present, nonetheless. People say good morning, hello, thank you. The “bitte” culture is nice. I sometimes say it two or three times in one sentence just to be sure. But, hey, Germans, it’s not that us, foreigners, are rude for not saying the almighty “bitte” once in a while. Its just that sometimes it’s already understood in our mother tongue’s spoken language. The intonation implies everything. And sometimes one language interferes with the other and the bitte gets lost in translation. But when in Rome… I mean, Berlin…

Also, traffic is not an eternal gridlock. I laugh at the face of Berliners that complain about traffic. The maximum speed limit is 50km/h (I think there is one avenue that has an old limit of 60km/h, a relic from East Germany times). I had to cleanse myself of all the rage I had built upon the vicious circle of hate that is the traffic of Rio. People drive badly, so you drive even worse, which will lead someone else to drive badly… you get the point, right? Leave all that behind and simply drive calmly and with attention, specially with bicycles. And what’s not to love in a flat city much more welcoming to bikes? They’re not perfect, but don’t get me started on Rio’s bike situation.

There are some trade-offs, of course. The consumerist mentality is quite different. Apart from a handful of times per year, normal shops are not allowed to open on Sundays. Movie theaters have almost half an hour of advertising before the film starts. And, despite the magical convenience of simply hopping into a train or subway without barriers on the platforms, Murphy’s law says you will be controlled exactly on that day you forgot your monthly ticket expired the day before. And obviously, the one thing from Rio de Janeiro that Berlin can’t top: all seasons are more or less the same. In Berlin, it’s like living in 4 different planets every 3 months. But I will always have room for both cities in my heart. Rio, ich liebe dich, mas Berlin é a minha amante. pobre, mas sexy*

*(Rio, I love you, but Berlin is my poor, but sexy mistress)