Poland is the largest Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) economy, with a stable banking sector, active capital market organised by the leading stock exchange in the region (Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE)) and an established legal framework adjusted to European standards. Poland has consistently maintained growth during the past 25 years, including during the recent world financial crisis. A positive macroeconomic environment and a well-developed and cost-effective labour market support the strengthening of Polish businesses, creating many unique opportunities for investors.
Management equity incentive programmes are commonly used to align investors' and managers' interests. Typically, the structures used for such programmes are based either on convertible bonds or subscriptions warrants entitling managers to subscribe for new shares in the company's share capital upon fulfilment of the conditions described in the incentive programme. Managers usually benefit from a discount amounting to the difference between the subscription value of the shares and their fair market value. In the case of listed companies, managers are often entitled to subscribe for shares for a pre-determined fixed price. The goals that managers are to achieve depend on the investor's objective in the investment; typically, goals in private companies include reaching a certain EBITDA or amount of income.
Other incentive programme structures may be based on, for example, share options or phantom shares.
In the case of investing in original owners' businesses, the sale process often involves prior restructuring of the target. This is because many of the 'family' businesses, especially those that were established in the 1990s, continue to be run as private businesses of individuals (primarily due to tax reasons). A change in the form of running a business and the enterprise's contribution into the company requires diligent separation of business assets from personal property, and identification of debts connected with the business.
The vast majority of investors' targets in Poland are companies governed by the Polish Commercial Companies Code (CCC). Thus, the CCC creates the basic legal frameworks regulating control over a target and the rights of a minority investor.
Companies under the CCC are divided into two general classes: partnerships (registered partnerships, professional partnerships, limited partnerships and partnerships limited by shares (SKAs)) and commercial companies (limited liability companies and joint-stock companies). Except for SKAs, partnerships are tax transparent; however, no corporate veil is in place to protect the partners. On the other hand, running a business in the form of a commercial company is connected with double taxation (first to be paid by the company and then by the shareholder) but provides the shareholder with the benefit of the corporate veil. In consequence, a business whose scale may attract private equity investors is usually conducted in the form of a commercial company rather than a partnership (with the significant exemption of first-generation 'family' businesses).
Another significant factor that influences the preferable form for conducting business are the statutory restrictions on how Polish law-governed investment funds invest. Under the Investment Funds Act (IFA), closed-ended investment funds cannot invest in partnerships, while open-ended investment funds cannot invest in partnerships or limited liability companies. Although these restrictions apply only to Polish investment funds, other private equity investors often also prefer to invest in commercial companies.
In Polish joint-stock companies, the level of a shareholder's control over the company is connected with the percentage participation of the shareholder in the total number of voting rights. In a private joint stock company with 'default' corporate governance rules derived from the provisions of the CCC, a general assembly (which consists of all of the shareholders) appoints the supervisory board members (while the supervisory board nominates the management board), has the power to dismiss members of the supervisory board and management board, and has the power to adopt critical resolutions for the company. Obtaining basic control over the company requires the acquisition of more than a 50 per cent stake; however, some important resolutions require a higher majority.
Reaching a 50 per cent plus one share shareholding allows the shareholder to appoint the majority of the supervisory board, and indirectly gives the shareholder control over the personal policy of the company. The CCC prohibits shareholders from giving management or supervisory board members binding instructions; however, due to the fact that the general assembly has the power to dismiss the company's managers, shareholders have in practice indirect influence over the policy of the supervisory and management boards.
m change a public company into a private company (the required majority of votes is four-fifths).
The CCC provides for several regulations aimed at protecting minority shareholders. Most notably, shareholders with at least a 10 per cent shareholding may request that an extraordinary general assembly be convened and have influence on the agenda of each general assembly. A 20 per cent threshold of shares in the company allows a minority shareholder (or group of shareholders) to request a vote on the appointment of supervisory board members in groups. In the case of voting in groups, a group of shareholders may vote individually on the appointment of one (or more) supervisory board members, notwithstanding the provisions of the statutes governing the election of the supervisory board members; as a result, minority shareholders who are able to create a voting group may influence the composition of the board. Each shareholder has a right to challenge resolutions of the general assembly, management board or supervisory board. A minority shareholder's level of influence on the company may be further extended by the statutes of the company, which may, for example, provide for the shareholder's individual right to appoint a number of supervisory or management board members, or both, or convene a general assembly.
The CCC does not expressly state the fiduciary duties of a shareholder towards the commercial company or other shareholders. Shareholders exercise their rights by voting on resolutions at the general assembly. Resolutions may be challenged by other shareholders, and members of the management or supervisory boards (or both), which creates a mechanism of control over the majority shareholder's actions. A resolution may be challenged if it contravenes the statutes of the company or good practices and harms the interests of the company, or if it is aimed at harming a shareholder. The general clause of 'good practices' allows the majority shareholder's actions to be opposed in a wide range of circumstances if the company's or other shareholders' interests are harmed. Although there are no specific provisions of law governing the matter, legal doctrine and jurisprudence have developed the concept of a duty of loyalty, which shareholders (especially a majority shareholder) owe to the company and other shareholders.
Due to the nature of commercial companies, the liabilities of a shareholder towards a limited liability company or joint-stock company are, generally, limited to the proper fulfilment of an obligation to make a contribution to the company (in exchange for shares). In the case of an acquisition of shares, the acquirer is jointly and severally liable for the contribution with the seller. A shareholder is also responsible towards the company or other shareholders in accordance with the general principles of civil law (i.e., for damages caused by illegal actions).
Company officers (members of the management and supervisory boards, liquidators) are personally liable for the damage caused to the company by their actions or omissions contrary to the law or the statutes, unless they were not at fault. Company officers should perform their duties with higher standards of care connected with the professional nature of their positions; they should act diligently, reasonably, cautiously and with foresight, and anticipating the results of undertaken actions. They are also obliged to act in the best interests of the company (which is independent from the individual interests of shareholders) and treat shareholders equally. Management board members cannot conduct a competing business activity without the company's consent and are obliged to refrain from performing duties in the case of a conflict of interest. Shareholders, the general assembly and the supervisory board are not entitled to give the management board or its members binding instructions with respect to the management of the company's affairs.
Management board members in limited liability companies may become liable for the obligations of the relevant company – jointly and severally with the company – if enforcement proceedings against that company are ineffective and the managers did not timely file for a declaration of bankruptcy (the liability may be avoided if they demonstrate that despite the application not being filed, the debtor has not suffered damages).
Private equity investments (Polish or foreign) in regulated financial institutions are limited to smaller stakes and smaller target institutions by the current policy of the financial services regulator (KNF). This is largely because the suitability criteria applied by the KNF in assessing acquisition of controlling stakes usually include the requirement for investors to commit to a long-term investment horizon, as well as capital and liquidity support that is not compatible with many private equity investors' policies.
Poland, as a Member State of the European Union, forms part of the European Union's internal market and aims to guarantee, within the framework of applicable regulations, the EU's 'four freedoms' (i.e., the free movement of goods, capital, services and people).
While the obvious beneficiaries of Poland's membership in the EU are entities from the remaining 27 EU Member States, Poland sets out very few barriers for investors from non-EU countries, as evidenced below.
The principal remaining limitations on foreign investment are found in the Act on Acquisition of Real Estates by Foreigners (AAREF). Under the AAREF, if a foreigner (i.e., an individual foreign citizen, a legal person with its registered seat outside of Poland, or a company domiciled in Poland but controlled by a foreign entity) acquires real property or obtains control over a company holding real property, a prior approval of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is required (under pain of nullity).
The AAREF, subject to some minor exceptions, does not apply to foreigners from the EEA and Switzerland. It also does not apply to Polish law-governed investment funds (regardless of the sponsors' domicile) or to investing in public companies listed on the WSE. Other foreign investors may decide to operate through holding companies incorporated in an EEA country, usually in Luxembourg or Cyprus, to avoid the application and requirements of the AAREF.
The Act on Control over Certain Investments (ACCI) gives the government a tool to control investments (in particular, foreign investments) in companies that are strategic for national interests and security. In general, the regulation follows similar solutions established in other European countries. According to the ACCI, acquisition of a shareholding in companies indicated in secondary regulation issued by the government above certain thresholds (the lowest is 20 per cent) or acquisition of their enterprise require previous notification to the Ministry of the Treasury, which can oppose the transaction. Lack of notification or acquisition contrary to the opposition results in the invalidity of the transaction, and is sanctioned with a fine of up to 100 million zlotys or imprisonment for up to five years. As of the beginning of 2018, only seven entities (leading Polish companies in the energy and telecommunication sector) are subject to ACCI regulations.
Poland conforms to current global trends aimed at closing the remaining loopholes in the tax system through various regulations, such as the general tax anti-abuse rule (GAAR), transfer pricing documentation requirements, taxation of closed-end investment funds (CIFs) and the 'small' anti-abuse clause applicable to the exchange of shares and dividends.
Poland has participated in the BEPS project and has implemented Council Directive 2014/107/EU of 9 December 2014 amending Directive 2011/16/EU as regards the mandatory automatic exchange of information in the field of taxation (Poland started reporting from January 2017). Moreover, Poland has signed many double tax treaties (more than 80 conventions) and international agreements on the exchange of information on tax matters.
From an investor's perspective, the most crucial change was the introduction in 2016 of the GAAR into Polish tax law system. The GAAR was created as a new tool that tax authorities may apply to reclassify the business operations of a taxpayer who obtains substantial tax profits through tax-avoidance strategies. The clause allows the authorities to ignore artificial legal arrangements, which means that the taxpayer may be obliged to pay the avoided tax with default interest and become exposed to penal fiscal liability. To decide whether a legal arrangement is artificial, various factors should be taken into account, such as excessively complex transactions or the use of conduit entities. To protect taxpayers from the tax authorities' discretionary powers, the former may apply to the Minister of Finance and Development to issue an opinion that disallows the application of the GAAR. Since 2017 the tax rulings classified as tax abusive did not secure the taxpayers position in case of dispute with authorities. Following to the introduction of that rule, the tax authorities have conducted numerous tax audits and proceedings targeted at the past optimisation projects (e.g., concerning step ups on the value of trademarks, commercial premises and financial instruments). The approach of the tax authorities is currently much more aggressive than in the past and they are even trying to apply GAAR to tax years prior to adoption of this anti-abuse rule.
So far, the most effective structures for tax optimisation of business activity carried out in Poland have been based on Polish CIFs. However, from January 2017, this is mostly not possible. The government has decided to exclude the income tax exemption for CIFs (the Polish FIZ and similar EU-based investment funds) with respect to income generated through tax-transparent partnerships, disposal of interest or shares in such partnerships, and other income related to participation in such partnerships (including passive income). This means that such income is now subject to 19 per cent income tax.
A full tax exemption will be still available to Polish open-ended investment funds and special open-ended investment funds (SFIOs) unless a SFIO applies investment principles and limitations relevant for CIFs. Comparable EU-based investment funds fulfilling certain conditions will also retain the income-tax exemption.
The main purpose of the taxation of CIFs is to eliminate those structures in which Polish and foreign CIFs participate with the use of fiscally transparent entities, utilised for tax the optimisation of taxpayers' profits generated from the current business activity. Such an activity is against the primary purpose of establishing the tax exemption of CIFs, that is, exemption from the taxation of the taxpayers' investment activity conducted through such CIF.
Various tax optimisation solutions regarding contributions of assets to companies, with a portion of the contribution allocated to the share premium, are also now ineffective. Until 2017, the taxable revenue from a contribution of assets had been limited to the nominal value of shares received in exchange for an in-kind contribution. However, from 2017, the revenue achieved by the entity making the in-kind contribution is the market value of the contributed assets.
A more detailed description of justified economic reasons warranting preferential taxation of mergers and demergers of companies has also been introduced. This 'small' anti-abuse rule has been also expanded to the exchange of shares (and previously in 2016, to dividends). These exchanges will not be longer tax neutral if there are no justified economic reasons for them. The tax authorities may challenge the tax neutrality of share exchanges when these are done with the sole purpose of enjoying tax benefits and not for justified economic reasons.
As for transfer pricing documentation, more comprehensive information on related party transactions should be disclosed to the tax authorities. Under these new provisions, taxpayers are obliged to prepare more extensive transfer pricing documentation (in particular, local files are expanded). In most cases, benchmarking studies would be necessary.
revenues from commercial premises are subject to lump sum tax with no tax costs deductible.
Poland has commenced its battle to prevent tax avoidance and tax evasion through introducing numerous regulations designed to combat these negative phenomena. It is no exaggeration to state that Poland is becoming a less tax-friendly country, which in practice eliminates the possibility of tax optimisation. Additionally, the aggressive approach of the authorities is present not only in income taxes but also in VAT and transfer tax.
A growing number of Polish public entities engage in fundraising and investing. The first public source of financing on the private equity market was the National Capital Fund (KFK), a fund of funds sponsored by, inter alia, the government. The KFK manages €110 million of funds and is focused only on small venture capital investments, providing up to 50 per cent of their acquisition financing. Another public entity operating on polish market is Polski Fundusz Rozwoju (PFR), established by the Ministry of Treasury with the State Treasury and Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego as stockholders. PFR holds the means of approximately 2.8 billion zlotys, provided for five funds of funds. Open pensions funds are, in turn, restricted from investing on the private equity market.
The typical structure of financing consists of an investor's equity, banking loans (senior debt in the case of other financing) or other sources of financing (e.g., bonds). According to market surveys, 71 per cent of private equity investors consider that debt financing is easily available and does not pose an execution risk.17 A quarter of respondents claimed that debt financing is difficult to obtain, although promising prospects can be sure to succeed in that field. Only 4 per cent of respondents stated that debt financing is very hard to get and constitutes an investment barrier. The Polish banking sector is relatively strong, having avoided the global financial crisis. The level of leverage in Poland (and in the CEE generally) has never reached the pre-crisis levels achieved in western Europe. In addition, the percentage participation of equity in capital structures in the CEE (including Poland) in 2014 was reported to be 20 per cent higher than in Europe;18 the typical loan-to-value ratio for investments in Poland does not exceed 50 per cent.
Polish investment funds are subject to limitations on incurring debt. Closed-ended funds may only obtain loans or credit from banks, foreign banks or credit institutions.19 Other debt financing available for closed-ended funds is the issuance of bonds, but only with a value not exceeding 15 per cent of the net value of the fund's assets. The total value of debt incurred by closed-ended funds (both in the form of credits and loan facilities and bonds) must not exceed 75 per cent of the net value of a fund's assets. Debt financing restrictions are more stringent in the case of open-ended funds, which may only obtain credits and loans of a maximum value of up to 10 per cent of a fund's net assets, with the repayment date being no longer than one year after acquiring the debt financing, and only from Polish banks or credit institutions.
In terms of legal documentation, facility agreements are typically patterned after the Loan Market Association standard documents with the usual set of clauses. Security documents are in turn local, but there is a well-established practice with regard to both their structuring and the composition of a security package. Depending on the available assets, the package usually consists of a share pledge, asset pledge, account receivables pledge or assignment, and mortgage. It is often coupled with a corporate guarantee and a voluntary submission to enforcement, which is not a security instrument in the strict sense, but allows for faster satisfaction of the creditor.
Key legal terms of control transactions on the Polish market are rather standard. The most important points are the mechanics of the transaction, conditions precedent, shareholders' mutual obligations and corporate governance, as well as the sellers' liability for representations and warranties.
The scope of legal documentation required to effect takeover transactions varies for investments in which the investor acquires 100 per cent of shares, and those in which the investor acquires a controlling stake but the other shareholder (or shareholders) remains in the target company. The latter requires execution of an investment agreement regulating the mutual commitments of the acquiring investor and the shareholder regarding their involvement in the target company and describing its corporate governance structure. Under Polish law, investment agreements are of contractual effect only, meaning that voting contrary to the agreement constitutes a breach of an obligation towards the other shareholders, which may result in liability for damages or an obligation to pay contractual penalty, but which is valid and has no impact on the effectiveness of the adopted resolution. Thus, the parties will usually strive to specify additional rights of the shareholders directly in the company's statutes, because a resolution adopted in breach of the statutes may be effectively challenged before a court. Commonly, such additional rights of the shareholders will include the right to appoint some of the management or supervisory boards members (or both) to monitor the company's regular business activity; and the establishment of a blocking minority to protect the shareholders from a loss of investment value (e.g., in the case of the adoption of resolutions approving the disposal of key assets) and from the dilution of their corporate rights. On the other hand, the controlling investor will usually aim to structure the statutes in such a way that the company officers appointed by it may freely conduct the company's day-to-day business, and to have the majority required to adopt most of the resolutions to avoid deadlocks. Investment agreements will also typically provide for regulations facilitating an exit from the investment, such as tag-along and drag-along mechanisms, rights of first refusal and provisions facilitating a possible IPO in the future (e.g., regarding the obligation to adjust the statutes accordingly).
Other key terms of a share purchase agreement include representations and warranties, which are usually extensively negotiated between the parties as the scope of liability of the seller depends primarily on the wording of the contract in this regard, as well as conditions precedent, which determine the mechanics and timing of the closing of the transaction. Typical conditions precedent include subscription for shares in the increased share capital, registration of amendments to the statutes with the commercial registry and obtaining concentration approval from the antitrust authority.
Liability caps range on average between 15 and 25 per cent of the purchase price (with, however, 100 per cent of the purchase price as the cap for liability on title). Representations and warranties insurance is more and more frequently considered as a possibility; however, it is still not much used in practice.
In 2016, the new legislation on agricultural lands entered into force and, unexpectedly, had an impact on transaction mechanics. The Polish Public Agricultural Lands Agency has a priority right in the case of any sale of agricultural land. To prevent circumvention of this right, the new regulations also provide the Agency's priority right with respect to shares in a company that holds any agricultural land. The size of such given company, the structure of its assets, and the value or area of the given agricultural land are irrelevant for the application of the priority right. On the other hand, there is no register of agricultural lands in Poland, and in certain cases it is not clear whether such land is in fact agricultural. As a result, in the case of any share deal, a due diligence of a company's real estate is required and, if the company holds agricultural land, non-performance of a priority right by the Agency is a condition precedent.
Polish investment funds operate in accordance with the IFA. There are three basic types of investment funds: open-ended, specialised open-ended and closed-ended. Each investment fund type must be managed by an investment fund management company (TFI). Both investment funds and TFIs are subject to the supervision of the KNF. Establishment of a TFI or an investment fund requires a licence from the KNF. The IFA provides for a number of limitations as regards types of investments that an investment fund may carry out, as well as requirements as to the diversification of risk. If a TFI or an investment fund managed by a TFI breach a provision of law, and especially of the IFA, or infringe a fund's statutes or the terms and conditions of a licence (e.g., if the investment fund invests contrary to the IFA or its statutes), the KNF may impose a financial penalty of up to 500,000 zlotys on the TFI or cancel the licence.
Alternative investment companies (ASIs) are additional category of investment vehicles and are deemed alternative investment funds under AIFMD. ASIs are generally non-regulated investment vehicles in the form of 'ordinary' commercial companies that are governed by the applicable rules of the Commercial Companies Code.
Larger-scale transactions that may influence the market come under the purview of both the Polish and European competition authorities (the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) and the European Commission, respectively). Any M&A transaction, subject to statutory turnover thresholds, may require competition clearance. If the turnover thresholds are exceeded, Polish antitrust law requires prior notification to the UOKiK on the intention of concentration. Until the UOKiK issues a decision allowing the transaction (or the lapse of the statutory deadlines for the UOKiK to issue the clearance, which are one or four months depending on the complexity of the transaction), the acquirer should refrain from closing the deal. Antitrust issues are especially relevant in the case of a trade sale exit.
We believe that, overall, the Polish private equity market has significant potential for further growth.
Poland is typically the largest CEE private equity market. Poland still hosts the highest number of companies invested. At the same time, the value of private equity investments in Poland amounted to 0.172 per cent of the country's GDP, which is still less than the European average of 0.33 per cent. These two factors, when combined, suggest that the already large market should continue to expand. A high average rate of return on investment adds to the positive picture of Poland as the place to invest.22 The general impression of market participants and observers is that the private equity investors are taking a bigger and bigger part of Poland's M&A market. As a result of investments in recent years and continued interest of private equity investors in Poland, sales between private equity funds are more common.
1 Marcin Olechowski is a partner, Borys D Sawicki is a senior counsel and Jan Pierzgalski is an associate at Sołtysiński Kawecki & Szlęzak.
2 2017 figures are not yet available.
3 Central and Eastern European Private Equity Statistics 2016, Invest Europe, August 2017.
4 European Private Equity Activity Data 2007–2016, Invest Europe.
9 Rynek private equity w Polsce 2016, KPMG.
13 In accordance with an interview with a Polish Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (PSIK) representative.
14 CE Private Equity Confidence Survey, December 2017, Deloitte Poland.
17 KPMG Poland; see footnote 5.
18 Time for another look – Central & Eastern Europe Private Equity, 2013, PSIK.
19 According to the Polish Banking Law, credit institutions are entities whose registered office is outside the Republic of Poland, but in another Member State of the EU, and who are conducting an activity in their own names and for their own account, on the basis of the authorisation of the competent supervisory authorities, consisting of accepting deposits or other resources entrusted under any redeemable title and consisting of granting credit or issuing electronic money.


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Home/Politics/Rediscovering Natalia Ginzburg | The New Yorker
Rediscovering Natalia Ginzburg | The New Yorker
western July 22, 2019
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Rediscovering Natalia Ginzburg The New Yorker
In an early novella by the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg—it has just been reissued by New Directions, as "The Dry Heart" (translated by Frances Frenaye)—the narrator walks into her husband's study and finds him sketching. He shows her his drawing: "a long, long train with a big cloud of black smoke swirling over it and himself leaning out of a window to wave a handkerchief." In other words, goodbye. He laughs. She doesn't. "I took the revolver out of his desk drawer and shot him between the eyes."
About time! For their entire marriage, four years, she has cowered before him: "I was always worried about my face and body, and when we made love I was afraid he might be bored. Every time I had something to say to him I thought it over to make sure it wasn't boring." Eventually, he takes to sleeping in his study, though he occasionally calls her in, to have sex, and then, presumably, sends her out again. "Why don't more wives kill their husbands?" the book's jacket copy asks.
Maybe they will, because there's a Natalia Ginzburg revival going on, abetted, perhaps, by the huge success of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet. Before that series was published in English (2012-15), who, among the people you know, was talking about modern Italian fiction? True, people talk about Primo Levi (a new, complete edition of his works came out in 2015, under the editorship of Ann Goldstein, Ferrante's translator), but for reasons as much historical as they are literary. Levi was a prisoner in Auschwitz, and wrote our greatest book on that subject. But the rest of Italy's stellar postwar generation—Carlo Levi, Alberto Moravia, Cesare Pavese, Elsa Morante, Giorgio Bassani, Ginzburg—have been widely neglected in recent decades.
Now, at least for Ginzburg, the wheels are turning again. This year has seen not just the republication of "The Dry Heart" (originally "È Stato Così," or "That's How It Was," 1947) but also a new translation, by Minna Zallman Proctor, of Ginzburg's more mature "Happiness, as Such" ("Caro Michele," 1973). Another novel, "The Manzoni Family" (1983), will be reprinted in August. Most important, her masterpiece, "Family Lexicon" ("Lessico Famigliare," 1963), was brought out by New York Review Books in a fresh translation, by Jenny McPhee, two years ago. There's still work to be done, though. Several of Ginzburg's books remain out of print. The only English-language biography I've found, a translation of a German book by Maja Pflug, is not in print, either. And it amounts only to some two hundred pages—this for a woman who lived and wrote into her mid-seventies.
It's good to have "The Dry Heart" back, good to see what Ginzburg, whom few people encouraged to write, did at the beginning—quite different from what she did later. Ginzburg became famous for her ability to conjure up a mixed emotional atmosphere, poignant yet unsentimental. (Chekhov was a favorite of hers.) "The Dry Heart" is not very mixed. Although it is not without comedy, it is a cold, angry book. The main reason, unquestionably, is that it was written in the shadow of Fascism, a matter that, for Ginzburg, cut very close to the bone.
Born in 1916, Ginzburg came from a large, fractious, high-I.Q. family based in Turin, an industrial hub, the headquarters of Italy's automotive industry (the flagship Fiat plant is there) and of Olivetti business machines. It is also an important center of learning. Ginzburg's father, Giuseppe Levi, was a professor of neuroanatomy at the University of Turin. (Three of his lab assistants went on to win Nobel Prizes.) Paola, Natalia's beautiful older sister, married a future president of Olivetti. Of her three brothers, Gino became Olivetti's technical director, Mario a journalist, and Alberto a doctor. Natalia, the youngest by seven years, didn't have much formal education; her father wouldn't let her go to elementary school, believing that children picked up germs there, and she dropped out of college.
In the nineteen-thirties and forties, Turin was a hotbed of anti-Fascist activity, and almost everyone in the Levi family was part of it. Relatedly, they were Jews. (Or Giuseppe was Jewish; the mother, Lidia, was a Gentile.) They suffered for it. The Germans were not the only people in Europe who thought that opposition to Fascism was a Jewish plot. Natalia's brothers were in and out of jail for seditious acts. Giuseppe lost his job at the university and had to move to Belgium in order to go on teaching. Natalia's first novel appeared, in 1942, under a nom de plume, because Mussolini's racial laws forbade Jews to publish books.
Most of the family's friends were, like them, high achievers—publishers, writers, professors, scientists—and anti-Fascist and Jewish. But probably the most notorious Resistance fighter in this circle was Leone Ginzburg, an Odessa-born Jew who was a professor of Russian literature at the University of Turin. He was a leader of the Turin branch of the anti-Fascist organization Giustizia e Libertà (Justice and Liberty), to which the Levi men belonged. He, too, was dismissed from his university position. Eventually, he stopped visiting the Levis' house, because he felt that his presence there endangered them, but he obviously managed to see Natalia, because in 1938 she married him. They had three children, the eldest of whom is the eminent historian Carlo Ginzburg.
Leone, Natalia recalls, was arrested whenever an important politician came to town, and certainly whenever the King, Victor Emmanuel III, visited Turin. "Accursed king!" her mother would say. "If only he'd stay at home!" Finally, in 1940, Leone was sent into confino, or "internal exile," meaning confinement to a town so poor and isolated that, in the government's view, the accused could do no further damage from there. But Leone, in confino, went on doing what harm he could to the authorities. In 1943, when Mussolini was deposed, Leone decamped to Rome, to supervise an underground press. But after five months he disappeared. According to prison records, the cause of death was cardiac arrest combined with acute cholecystitis, a gallbladder infection that is often the product of trauma. That is, Leone probably died under torture.
From these griefs, suffered when she was just beginning to write, Natalia learned that unhappiness, though it feels quite powerful, doesn't always help one write well. As she said in her essay "My Vocation" (1949):
When we are happy our imagination is stronger; when we are unhappy our memory works with greater vitality. Suffering makes the imagination weak and lazy. . . . A particular sympathy grows up between us and the characters we invent—that our debilitated imagination is still just able to invent—a sympathy that is tender and almost maternal, warm and damp with tears, intimately physical and stifling. We are deeply, painfully rooted in every being and thing in the world, the world which has become filled with echoes and trembling and shadows, to which we are bound by a devout and passionate pity. Then we risk foundering on a dark lake of stagnant, dead water, and dragging our mind's creations down with us, so that they are left to perish among dead rats and rotting flowers in a dark, warm whirlpool.
Change the "we" to "women," and that's basically what Virginia Woolf said in "A Room of One's Own," twenty years earlier. Women, if they want to be artists, should stop sloshing around in their emotions. No doubt that statement disappointed many female writers at the time Woolf made it, and it is probably not popular even today. (I wonder what the male-female ratio is in those courses on writing "personal essays.") But Ginzburg learned the lesson fast. In 1944, she wrote "Winter in the Abruzzi," an essay about the time she and her family spent in Pizzoli, the poor, chalky-soiled town that was the site of Leone's confino. Miraculously, she makes it a kind of happy tale. She talked to the children about life back in Turin:
They had been very small when we left, and had no memories of it at all. I told them that there the houses had many storeys, that there were so many houses and so many streets, and so many big fine shops. "But here there is Giro's," the children said.
Giro's shop was exactly opposite our house. Giro used to stand in the doorway like an old owl, gazing at the street with his round, indifferent eyes. He sold a bit of everything; groceries and candles, postcards, shoes and oranges. When the stock arrived and Giro unloaded the crates, boys ran to eat the rotten oranges he threw away. . . . At Christmas the men returned from Terni, Sulmona, and Rome, stayed for a few days, and set off again after they had slaughtered the pigs. For a few days people ate nothing but sfrizzoli, incredible sausages that made you drink the whole time; and then the squeal of new piglets would fill the street.
The oranges the town's boys grab at are rotten, but they are probably pretty good all the same, or better than no oranges. The men of the town come home from the cities where they went to find work after the harvest was over. For days everyone eats sausages, and the streets are filled with the cries of newborn piglets, the makings of Christmas sausages to come. Crocetta, the Ginzburg family's fourteen-year-old maid, runs around town, trying to borrow a pan big enough for making dumplings. Crocetta also tells the children stories; for example, one that many people know as "The Juniper Tree," in which a woman cuts off her stepson's head and cooks it and feeds it to his father. The eight pages of "Winter in the Abruzzi" may be the most beautiful piece of work Ginzburg ever produced, full of oinks and smells, fellowship and cruelty.
It ends in sorrow. In the fall of 1943, after Germany began to occupy Italy and the Italian commanders fled to the south, Leone wrote to Natalia telling her to go to Rome, with the children, as quickly as possible. But how was Ginzburg to get out of there, with three small children? In a hilarious episode, a friend in the village convinces the Nazis that Ginzburg is a poor, sad refugee who has no papers because they were lost in an air raid. She has to get to the capital. Can they help? And so this woman, the wife of a famously militant anti-Fascist, is driven to Rome, with her children, by a bunch of Nazis in a military vehicle. Presumably, she thanked them very much. She had three weeks with her husband before he was arrested again, for the last time. He was thirty-four. Natalia wrote:
My husband died in Rome, in the prison of Regina Coeli, a few months after we left the Abruzzi. Faced with the horror of his solitary death, and faced with the anguish which preceded his death, I ask myself if this happened to us—to us, who bought oranges at Giro's and went for walks in the snow. At that time I believed in a simple and happy future, rich with hopes that were fulfilled, with experiences and plans that were shared. But that was the best time of my life, and only now that it has gone from me forever—only now do I realize it.
This, finally, is the heartbreak that in her writing Ginzburg staved off with the oranges and the piglets.
Many of her readers, knowing what she had been through, wished she had shared her sorrows with them more often. But in her time Italian literature was still largely a men's club, and therefore Ginzburg had wanted, as she later flatly stated, to write like a man. Besides, emotionalism was not in her nature. As her granddaughter Lisa Ginzburg wrote, her ways were "always sober and austere."
You can get a sense of this from her appearance in her good friend Pier Paolo Pasolini's film "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" (1964). For this movie Pasolini used mainly nonprofessional actors, people with plain faces, in dusty clothes. Ginzburg he cast as the woman who, in Matthew 26:6-13, intrudes on Jesus' dinner with Simon the leper and anoints Jesus' head. Anyone who can stream this film should do so. It is interesting to see Ginzburg's face: one critic said that she looked more Inca than Italian. Movingly, one can sense her embarrassment at being in a movie, and in a slightly naughty role. The woman with the jar of ointment has often been said to be a prostitute; the disciples object to her presence at their gathering. But Ginzburg's Mary is blunt, not seductive. She looks as though she were giving Jesus a shampoo.
In a radio interview in 1990, a year before she died, Ginzburg, likable and laconic—the interviewers probably talk more than she does—mentioned how much she admired her friend and fellow-novelist Elsa Morante for being able, in her fiction, to use the third person confidently. She herself didn't have that ability, she said: she couldn't "climb up on mountains and see everything from above." But neither was she able to deploy the first person easily. Ginzburg was a moralist, which is a hard thing for a modern novelist to be, and, partly for that reason, she didn't like to declaim, or to let her characters do so. She needed to break up the voice. Two of her novels are epistolary, so that the characters take turns speaking in the first person. Another way that she avoided an overbearing "I" was simply with the terseness of her prose. (In some passages, she averaged perhaps twelve words per sentence.) When interviewers asked her about this, she would often reply that she was so much younger than her many siblings that, as a child, if she had something to say, she had to say it quickly, before somebody interrupted her.
Whatever her griefs, Ginzburg made a life for herself after Leone's death. In her earlier years, she had done some work for Einaudi Editore, the celebrated publishing company established in Turin, in 1933, by Leone and Giulio Einaudi (the son of a future President of Italy), together with Cesare Pavese. Now she went back to work there. In 1950, she got married again, to Gabriele Baldini, a professor of English at the University of Rome, and she moved to the capital to be with him. (She writes about Baldini in a tender essay, "He and I," collected in "The Little Virtues," a book of beautiful short pieces that also includes "Winter in the Abruzzi.") In 1983, Ginzburg was even induced to run for a seat in the Italian parliament, as the candidate of the Independent Left. She won and was later reëlected. All told, however, she had bad luck. Baldini died young (in 1969, at the age of forty-nine), and the two children they had together were both born severely disabled. The first, a boy, died within a year. The second, a girl, Susanna, lived, and Ginzburg kept her at home. I have read no description of how this was for her.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that critics overstress the theme of sorrow in Ginzburg's works. She always knew how to convert the griefs into some sort of beauty. In "Happiness, as Such," she pulled off a wonderful act of virtuosity, an epistolary novel in which a young man, Michele, is the subject of a series of letters written to, by, and also about him, by his mother, his sisters, a friend, a former girlfriend, and assorted others. Most of these people are comically selfish; they want what they want from Michele. And where the hell is he, anyway? As it turns out, he has had to leave Italy, where he was involved in left-wing causes. He writes to his sister Angelica to please go get the machine gun out of the stove where he stored it, in his kitchen, and throw it into the river. In another letter, he tells his friend Osvaldo to go to the same apartment and get the white cashmere scarf with the blue stripes out of the bottom drawer of a bureau. It will remind Osvaldo, he says, of the walks they used to take along the Tiber. Osvaldo replies that he looked for the scarf but couldn't find it, so he went to the store and bought another scarf. It probably wasn't cashmere, and didn't have stripes, but it was white. Michele is killed in a demonstration. By then, ironically, he seems to have given up politics. Everything in the book is a little sad and a little funny.
This tone, a kind of melancholy touched with poetry, is carried forward in Ginzburg's greatest book, "Family Lexicon," which she said was to be read as a novel even though everything in it really happened. The title means, sort of, "the way we used to refer to things," and most families probably have such a lexicon. If Natalia arrived at the dinner table in an adolescent funk, her mother would say, "Here comes Hurricane Maria." An uncle who was a doctor specializing in the treatment of the insane was referred to as "the Lunatic."
Ginzburg is best when writing about her parents. Her father, Giuseppe, a loud, choleric Triestine, always took a cold shower in the morning:
Under the water's lash, he'd let out a long roar, then he'd get dressed and, after stirring in many spoonfuls of sugar, he'd gobble down great cupfuls of that cold mezzorado [yogurt]. By the time he left the apartment, the streets were still dark and mostly deserted. He'd set out into the cold fog of those Turin dawns wearing a large beret that formed a kind of visor over his brow and a great big raincoat full of pockets and with many leather buttons. He'd go out with his hands clasped behind his back, his pipe in his mouth, his stride lopsided because one shoulder was higher than the other. Almost no one was on the street yet but he still managed to bump into whoever happened to be out then.
The mother, Lidia, a Milanese, is the opposite: immovably serene, playing solitaire and chatting with the seamstress when she is not journeying happily here and there to bring clean clothes to the men in the family who are in jail. Lidia loved to tell stories:
She would turn to one of us at the dinner table and begin telling a story, and whether she was telling one about my father's family or about her own, she lit up with joy. It was as if she were telling the story for the first time, telling it to fresh ears. "I had an uncle," she would begin, "whom they called Barbison."
And if one of us said, "I know that story! I've already heard it a thousand times!" she would turn to another one of us and in a lowered voice continue on with her story.
"I can't even begin to count how many times I've heard this story," my father would shout, overhearing a word or two as he passed by.
My mother, her voice lowered, would continue on with the story.
In 1934, Natalia's brother Mario was the star of a scandal in which he and an associate were caught at the Swiss border trying to bring anti-Fascist literature into Italy. The other man was arrested, but Mario jumped into the Tresa River and swam for the Swiss shore. "In the water with his overcoat on!" Lidia exclaimed when she was told. She regretted that her menfolk were always being locked up, but she was proud that they were incarcerated with distinguished people. When her son Alberto was sent to prison with his friend Vittorio, she said of Vittorio, "He's just done very well on his law school exams." This theme, of the blindness of European Jewish families to the actual, mortal threat of the Fascists, has been sounded before, but rarely with such flair. "I wrote poems for Mussolini," a woman the Ginzburgs knew in Pizzoli says. "What a mistake!"
The dinner table was the scene of loud arguments. The small Natalia sat there, listening, and what people said she stored away. Her later life, too, was grist for this poet of remembrance. (She had translated Proust's "Swann's Way" for Einaudi.) I especially treasure her 1957 essay "Portrait of a Friend" (also collected in "The Little Virtues"), about Cesare Pavese, who took an overdose of barbiturates in Turin, in 1950, at the age of forty-one.
He died in the summer. In summer our city is deserted and seems very large, clear and echoing, like an empty city-square; the sky has a milky pallor, limpid but not luminous; the river flows as level as a street and gives off neither humidity nor freshness. Sudden clouds of dust rise from the streets; huge carts loaded with sand pass by on their way from the river; the asphalt of the main avenue is littered with pebbles that bake in the tar. Outside the cafés, beneath their fringed umbrellas, the little tables are deserted and red-hot.
None of us were there. He chose to die on an ordinary, stiflingly hot day in August, and he chose a room in a hotel near a station; he wanted to die like a stranger in the city to which he belonged.
Although Pavese was eight years older than Natalia—he went to school with her brothers—he became not only her colleague at Einaudi but also a close friend and, through his novels, a significant influence on her. His death was a terrible blow, and, as usual, one admires the restraint of her report. One must also admire the portrait of Turin. She makes the city absorb all the desolation that she is too delicate-minded to tell us was Pavese's. But the city is also beautiful, in an eerie way: "very large, clear and echoing, like an empty city-square." (It seems like a de Chirico.) And Pavese is not just a man who killed himself. He is also a person who was young once. He loved cherries, Ginzburg says, and used to come over to the Levis' house in the evening with a pocket full of them, which he would then distribute. Usually, when Pavese is spoken of, he is the man of the bleak books and the death by Seconal. But, thanks to Ginzburg, I now see him, sometimes, dangling cherries in front of a young woman. Later, he was one of the few people who urged her to write. When she was living in the Abruzzi, he sent her a postcard: "Dear Natalia, stop having children and write a book." She had more children, but she also sat down and wrote more than a dozen books. ♦
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Premier League Picks: Matchweek 19
Austen Cain, Contributor January 2, 2023
Premier League Picks: Matchweek 19. Photo by SportsKeeda
PREMIER LEAGUE PICKS: MATCHWEEK 19 – Last weeks' predictions were, well, rough. Let's just skip this intro part and try to get back on track.
Everton (16th) vs Brighton & Hove Albion (9th)
Photo by NBC Sports
Date: Tuesday, 01/03/2023 at 2:45 PM EST
Pitch: Everton – Goodison Park, Liverpool, England
Odds: | HOME: +240 | TIE: +240 | AWAY: +115 |
Current Form: | Everton (DLLLL) | Brighton & Hove Albion (LWLLW) |
Everton 2-3 Brighton 01/02/2022 Premier League
Brighton 0-2 Everton 08/28/2021 Premier League
Everton managed to bounce back after their defeat to Wolverhampton by miraculously getting a draw against star-studded Manchester City. But I am still not convinced by Everton.
They are still winless in their last 5 matches and they needed a wonder goal mixed with some luck to snag a point against Manchester City. Everton need to get back to winning ways as they are only 1 point clear of relegation zone.
Townsend, Garner, and Onana are all sidelined with injuries, wile Michael Keane is also unlikely to recover in time to face Brighton.
Brighton, on the other hand, will look to bounce back after their 4-2 loss to Arsenal.
Brighton have shown to be a better team in the 2023 campaign, and I predict them to pick up all three points from this match.
Brighton will be without Adam Webster, Jakub Moder, and Danny Welbeck. Brighton is an ambitious team that isn't afraid to attack. Everton will likely deploy the same tactic they had against Manchester City and defend with all they've got, but I can't see it working out for them two games in a row.
Although Brighton do score freely, they also concede freely. Brighton's 4-2 loss against Arsenal was their sixth straight EPL in which both teams have scored and in which there have been at least three goals. So I do expect both teams to score.
PREDICTION: EVERTON 1 – 2 BRIGHTON & HOVE ALBION
Southampton (20th) vs Nottingham Forest (18th)
Photo by The Telegraph
Date: Wednesday, 01/04/2023 at 2:30 PM EST
Pitch: Southampton – St. Mary's Stadium, Southampton, England
Current Form: | Southampton (LLWLW) | Nottingham Forest (DLWWW) |
Nottingham 0-3 Southampton 01/14/2012 Championship
Southampton 3-2 Nottingham 09/10/2011 Championship
Southampton is looking for their first point since Manager Nathan Jones took over.
Following their loss to Fulham, Southampton are currently on a 5 game Premier League losing streak and are stuck at the bottom with only 12 points.
However, there is no better team to get back on track than against Nottingham Forest. Larios, Livramento, McCarthy, and Walcott will most likely all miss this match.
Nottingham Forest continues to be a thorn in their opponents side at home when they managed a draw against Chelsea on Sunday, but they struggle when they have to travel and they have only collected 2 points out of a possible 24 in away matches.
Biancone, Kouyate, Niakhate, and Richards will all be sidelined for Nottingham Forest.
Given Nottingham Forest's form in away games, I do not see them spoiling Southampton's party at St. Mary's.
PREDICTION: SOUTHAMPTON 2 – 1 NOTTINGHAM FOREST
Leeds United (14th) vs West Ham United (17th)
Photo by Leeds United
Pitch: Leeds United – Elland Road, Leeds, England
Current Form: | Leeds United (DLLLW) | West Ham United (LLLLL) |
West Ham 2-3 Leeds United 01/6/2022 Premier League
West Ham 2-0 Leeds United 01/09/2022 Eng. FA Cup
Leeds United 1-2 West Ham 09/25/2021 Premier League
West Ham 2-0 Leeds United 03/08/2021 Premier League
Leeds United will take on West Ham United at Elland Road on Wednesday.
Leeds United did well to hold an in-form Newcastle to a goalless draw at St. James' Park, but the fact that Newcastle dominated the game and just couldn't capitalize has to be noted. With no injuries and success at Newcastle, I expect manager Jesse Marsch to change his team or tactics this week.
West Ham on the other hand, have been completely out of form as of late.
They have lost their last five league fixtures. With their 5th straight loss and the likes of Maxwell Cornet and Kurt Zouma being out due to injury I can't imagine West Ham picking up more than a point from this one.
Leeds have been very convincing at home and I expect them to be the same this week. Both teams are still under pressure, but Leeds managed to ease a bit of that pressure against Newcastle. But still, neither team is in good form and both will be desperate to avoid a loss.
This game is too close to call in my opinion, so I'm going to sit on the fence. Although, if I had to pick a winner, I find it hard to see West Ham winning a game right now.
PREDICTION: LEEDS UNITED 1 – 1 WEST HAM UNITED
Aston Villa (12th) vs Wolverhampton (19th)
Pitch: Aston Villa – Villa Park, Birmingham, England
Odds: | HOME: -110 | TIE: +260 | AWAY: +300 |
Current Form: | Aston Villa (WLWLW) | Wolverhampton (LWWLW) |
Head to Head:
Wolverhampton 2-1 Aston Villa 04/02/2022 Premier League
Aston Villa 2-3 Wolverhampton 10/16/2021 Premier League
Aston Villa continue to be super unpredictable and inconsistent.
They picked up an impressive win at Tottenham on New Year's Day which kept them toward the middle of the table.
They have shown to be a much better side under Unai Emery and have managed to pick up 3 wins from teams in the top half of the table in their last 5 games.
Jacob Ramsey and Diego Carlos remain injured, but Watkins is fit and he will be the player to watch for Aston Villa. If Villa can keep him involved around the box then I think they will fare well.
Wolverhampton have looked better in their 2 games under manager Julen Lopetugi, but they are still finding it hard to score goals.
They have a poor away record this season and have only managed to win 1 away game in 8 showings.
With that being said, I find it hard to see a way where Wolverhampton will have enough to pick up any points away at Villa Park.
PREDICTION: ASTON VILLA 2 – 1 WOLVERHAMPTON
Crystal Palace (11th) vs Tottenham Hotspur (5th)
Photo by Football London
Pitch: Crystal Palace – Selhurst Park, London, England
Current Form: | Crystal Palace (WLLLW) | Tottenham Hotspur (LDWLL) |
Tottenham 3-0 Crystal Palace 12/26/2021 Premier League
Crystal Palace 3-0 Tottenham 09/11/2021 Premier League
Tottenham Hotspur continue their defensive woes.
Their 2-0 defeat to Aston Villa made it 7 consecutive Premier League matches in which they've conceded 2 or more goals and 10 straight games (in all competitions) in which they've conceded the first goal of the game.
Tottenham are desperate to return to winning ways, and given Crystal Palace's display in their win over Bournemouth, both teams to score should be a solid betting option.
Bentancur, Richarlison and Lucas Moura are all sidelined with injuries and unlikely to ply against Crystal Palace.
Crystal Palace did well to bounce back from their 3-0 loss to Fulham, by beating Bournemouth 2-0.
If they are able to defeat Tottenham, it could see them go into the top half of the table.
Crystal Palace's Tyrick Mitchell and James McArthur will both miss the game against Tottenham, but James Tomkins will return from his suspension.
Eberechi Eze has continued his good form and will be a player that Tottenham will have to keep an eye on. He now has 3 goals and 3 assists this season.
Crystal Palace has played well against some good teams, but at the same time they've lost to some pretty bad ones. I think Tottenham will go down a goal but once again bounce back and get 3 points.
PREDICTION: CRYSTAL PALACE 1 – 2 TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
Chelsea (8th) vs Manchester City (2nd)
Photo by Sussex Express
Date: Thursday, 01/05/2023 at 3:00 PM EST
Pitch: Chelsea – Stamford Bridge, London, England
Odds: | HOME: +440 | TIE: +300 | AWAY: -165 |
Current Form: | Chelsea (DWLLL) | Manchester City (DWWLW) |
Manchester City 2-0 Chelsea 11/09/2022 Carabao Cup
Manchester City 1-0 Chelsea 01/15/2022 Premier League
Chelsea 0-1 Manchester City 09/25/2021 Premier League
Manchester City 0-1 Chelsea 05/29/2021 Champions League
Chelsea have been a bit inconsistent as of late and are having trouble finding rhythm in the final third with only 5 goals scored in their last 6 games.
They will try to keep their Champions League hopes alive and it seems unlikely that they will play for a draw, especially with Manchester City showing some vulnerability.
Chelsea however still remain injury ridden with Mendy, Loftus-Cheek, Kante, James, Fofana, and Chilwell all remaining sidelined. I think Raheem Sterling will need to step up by scoring in back-to-back games and show his former team that he's still a quality player.
Manchester City on the other hand has now picked up only four points from their last three EPL games and could be ten points adrift of Arsenal by the time they kick off at Chelsea. Erling Haaland continues to be a goal scoring machine, but Manchester City need someone else to step up and help Haaland out. I can see Chelsea doing all they can to neutralize Haaland to keep the game tight and low scoring.
Picking a winner here is tough. Stamford Bridge is a tough place to play and both matches between these two teams last season ended in a 1-0 result. I expect this to be another tight match with both teams getting on the score sheet.
PREDICTION: CHELSEA 1 – MANCHESTER CITY 1
Click here to read more from Godzilla Wins!
Austen Cain, Contributor
Austen Cain is a regular contributor to Godzilla Wins. In his column "Premier League Picks" he will cover the top Premier League soccer matches offering insight, stats, and odds on each match. Soccer has been a huge part of his life since he was 3 years old. He grew up in Eastern Tennessee where the only time you're taught to kick a ball is between two uprights and even though his father never went to his games, he still found love in the sport the moment his mother put that Barcelona onesie on him. He is a soccer fanatic that loves both watching and playing the game. He's also an engineer that is obsessed with numbers and statistics. With those powers combined he is THE Senior Premier League Analyst.


Analysts say the trip, which is set to be Kim's first to Vietnam, could offer the North Korean leader a model of post-war economic transformation under a communist state with capitalist leanings. He added that his "relationship with Kim Jong Un is a good one".
The precise location for the summit - to be held on February 27 and 28 - has not been announced, though both the capital Hanoi and beach resort town Danang have been rumored.
The last top North Korean leader to visit Vietnam was Kim Jong Un's grandfather Kim Il Sung in 1958, though several senior officials have visited since then.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (pahm-PAY'-oh) told Fox Business Network the Trump administration is "very hopeful" that Kim will fulfill a commitment to denuclearize. "We expect Vietnam to be a perfectly suitable backdrop to a new history to be written between North Korea and the United States".
Trump voiced guarded hope that intensifying negotiations with Afghanistan's Taliban would bring for a "possible political solution" to end the longest-ever USA war.
These include, on Pyongyang's part, the closure under global observation of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, Tongchang-ri missile launch site and Yongbyon nuclear research facility, and the discontinuation of all nuclear activities. The U.S. and South Korea are attempting to push Kim to abandon his country's nuclear weapons program in exchange for lifting sanctions and normalizing relations with North Korea's repressive government. "It is worth noting that Trump's decision to talk directly to Kim Jong Un has marked a dramatic turn in North Korea's attitude".
In the months following the Brexit vote, the European Commission chief, Jean-Claude Juncker, blamed Brexit on "40 years of lies" by British politicians.
If Monday's show cause hearing goes against Weir, the horses entered for Saturday will have to be transferred in order to run. Officers also located an unregistered firearm and a small amount of cocaine while searching the properties.


text:
This is a Bass Solo on a Jazz Rendition of the tune "I Don't Want to Set the World On Fire".
Atlantic City, NJ festival, where Christopher Dean Sullivan's Jazz Journey project was the Headliner.
Performing with Mala Waldron on piano, Angel Rose vocalist, and Bobby Sanabria drums.
Videographer: Myles Corrigan
The critically acclaimed
bassist Christopher Dean Sullivan has shared the stage and/or recorded with Archie Schepp, Sheila Jordan, Yusef Lateef, Freddie Hubbard, Christian McBride, Carl Grubbs, Irene Reid, Charli Persip, Eddie Henderson,
Billy Hart, Carter Jefferson, Vanessa Rubin, Stanley Jordan, Jon Faddis, Charles Gayle, Odean Pope, Cecil Payne, Roger Humphries, Joe Mcphee, Najee, Joe Lovano,
Horace Parlan, The Cotton Club All Stars Show Band, Pete Seeger, Grant Green, Horace Parlan, Della Griffin, Henry Grimes, Pucho and the Latin Soul Brothers,
Israel "Cachao" Lopez, Stanley Turrentine, Johnny Lytle, to name a few.
Christopher's discography is varied, covering 45's, albums and CD's. Christopher Sullivan has appeared in TV commercials and movies; the original "Dawn of the Dead", and "The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh", as well as photo shoots for magazines, such as Vanity Fair with Grammy Award winner Janet Jackson. In Pittsburgh, PA, Christopher Dean Sullivan produced and hosted his own Warner Communication Award winning television show "The Tree of Arts Alive", which became a component of The Jazz Workshop Inc., where Chris was also a bass and music theory instructor, under the directorship of founder and saxophonist, Harold Young Sr. The award was presented for the best in culture and arts programming. Mr. Sullivan continues to work and collaborate with the Jazz Workshop Inc. Chris Sullivan continued to received various New York State community and arts services, municipal, congressional, NYS Assembly Merit, and Senate Proclamation awards, as well as the New York State Orange County Arts Council Champion for the Arts Award.
Mr. Sullivan acquired his Family Development Credential (FDC) through Cornell University; he created and facilitates character development and conflict resolution programs for public schools and other instruction / educational institutions in Pennsylvania and New York States. This program is intertwined, as a component, in his music and consultations, based on understanding the psychology of sound and vibration.
He also has acquired a New York State School Age Child Care (SACC) Credential. He attended Pitt University for Mechanical Engineering, as well as Robert Morris College for Business Marketing. Other Accomplishments of Christopher Dean Sullivan include:
Music Performance Artist
Artistic Director, Willie the Lion Smith Goshen Jazz Festival of Goshen, NY
Director of Music, Cornerstone Arts Alliance, Goshen, NY
Psychology of Sound and Vibration Counseling/Consultant, R.A.V.E. @ L.E.A.P., NYC
After School Director @ LeAp's Artistic Resolutions To Education (A.R.T.E.)
Teaching Artist, Psychology of Sound and Vibration Counseling/Consultant, through The Empowerment Center, Mt. Vernon, NY
Teaching Artist, Learning through an Expanded Arts Program, New York City
Musical Director, Conductor, Composer, Arranger at Famous Rider Theatre, Pgh., PA
C D SULLIVAN MUSIC, BMI, Publisher, Sea Storm Publishing~Co-Owner
American Federation of Musicians – Local 238-291
Student Manager at Carmel School District, Putnam County, NYS
Student Supervisor at Monroe Woodbury School District, Orange County, NYS
Clinician / Consultant / Resource Coordinator for The Jazz Workshop Inc., Pittsburgh, PA Christopher Dean Sullivan also leads his own music ensembles and projects, performing traditional jazz, tributes, original compositions, and contemporary music with jazzy R&B flavors. He continues to perform within the American World Music Genre.
Vanity Fair Photo Shoot with the Cotton Club All Star Show Band and Janet Jackson
Photo by Annie Leibovitz
Atlantic City Jazz Festival Headline Performance
Opening with his Christopher Dean Sullivan Trio
for the Tribute to Dinah Washington Show in NYC
Publicity Management
http://tmoentertainment.webs.com
NYS Senate Proclamation Award
NYS Assembly Merit Award
O. C. A. C. of N. Y. S. Champion for the Arts Award
Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition of Outstanding and Invaluable Service to Community
Boys and Girls Club Outstanding Service in the Arts Award
City of Newburgh, NY Certificate of Recognition for Dedication of Supporting the Arts
Orange County Executive Certificate of Recognition for Contribution in the area of Arts
City of Newburgh Artist Appreciation Award, Newburgh. NY
NAACP Staff Advisor Award, Woodbourne Correctional Facility, NY.
Award for Outstanding Commitment to Activities to Enhance the Hispanic Community, Woodbourne Correctional Facility, NY
Award for Excellence in Community Television Programming for Arts and Culture. Pittsburgh Warner Cable, (TCI Cable,) Pennsylvania
Partial List of festivals the venues Christopher Dean Sullivan has performed with his own ensembles and others.
* Mellon Jazz Festival, Pgh. PA
* Yoshi's Jazz Club, LA Cal.
* Chicken Bone Beach Festival, Atlantic City, NJ
* Blue Note Jazz Club, NYC
* Tarrytown Jazz Festival, Westchester, NY
* JVC Jazz Festival, NYC
* JazzBina Pula Festival, Croatia
* Carnegie Music Hall, Pgh. PA
* Hot House, Chicago Ill
* Newburgh Jazz Series Concert, NY
* Horse Shoe Casino, Cin. OH
* Leverkusen Jazz Festival, Germany
* Ljubljana Jazz Festival, Slovania
* JazzFest Berlin, Germany
* Goshen Jazz Festival, NY
* JWI Trilogy Concert Series, Pgh. PA
* Seabreeze Jazz Festival, FL.
* Hudson Valley Jazz Festival, NY
* Radio City Music Hall, NYC
* NYCB Theatre at Westbury
* WAMC Live Radio, Albany NY
* WKCR Live Radio, NYC
* The Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz,
* Flint Jazz Festival, Flint MI.
* Classic R&B Festival, Symphony Hall, Newark NJ
.* Jazz In the Valley Festival, Poughkeepsie, NY
Various other Jazz and R&B venues through the US and abroad.
FMR Records: Collaborative Recording
SyncTimiCity: Records Collaborative Recording with Christopher Dean Sullivan's CSQ Project and
vocalist Barbara Sfraga
Drimala Records: Collaborative Recording
Soul Note Records
Chris has recorded on, and produced, various collaborative recordings with other critically renown music aficionados, which include: Odean Pope, Christian McBride,
Michael Marus, Joe Giardullo, Billy Hart, Carl Grubbs, Eddie Henderson, Sheila Jordan, Alan Glover, Bob Gluck, John McLean, Paul Wertico, Roy Campbell, Poets; E.J. Antonio, Golda Solomon,...and others.
More Recordings
Christopher Dean Sullivan continues to lead his own music projects, which consist of Jazz, , Latin Jazz, R&B, New Orleans, Brazilian Jazz, and Jazz Moods (Jazzy-R&B mix)
He also coordinates and produces musical tributes, such as Tribute to Dinah Washington featuring Lillie Bryant-Howard, Tribute to Freddie Hubbard, and others.
He also performs with open compositional ensembles with spoken word artist.
What the Critics Say:
"Christopher Dean Sullivan makes a strong case for his essential presence in the ensemble with, yes, some ostinatos but also with an openly free interactive melodic sense that goes perfectly well with the wide-ranging ideas expressed by his bandmates."
~ Grego Applegate Edwards, Gapplegate Music Review
"Christopher Dean Sullivan, an experienced bassist with versatile styling."
~ Leonid Auskern, Jazzquad
"... Sullivan plays not just the upright bass strings but the bass itself, throwing himself into the performance not to draw the spotlight, but to impart a palpable joie de vive to go with his rhythmic, rippling
(think Charlie Haden, somewhat) bass tones."
~ Mark Keresman, JazzReview.com
"…Sullivan's a bassist whose authoritative and bluesy bending's of the notes honor his affection for legends such as Slam Stewart as well as Ray Brown."
~ Steve Monroe, Jazz Journalists Association
...."Sophisticated Lady receives a swinging treatment, calling forth a sweet bass solo from Sullivan"
~ Philip van Vleck,
BILLBOARD critics' choice
"...Sullivan supports with underpinned emotive interaction…" "Before long, piano and sax head off into almost opposite directions, with Sullivan often the only sonic connection…"
~ Doug Simpson, Audiophile Audition
"Sullivan's bass solo on this piece is a full expression..."
~ Chuck Vecoli - Jazz Review
"Bassist Christopher Dean Sullivan plays with a natural looseness, easily adapting
to the great variety of prevailing
directions of the tune."
~ Karl Ackermann, All About Jazz
"…and bassist Christopher Dean Sullivan instinctively play into,
instead of enslaving to and letting dissipate."
~ Cheryl K. Symister – Masterson, Chronogram
"…Gluck and Sullivan – who undertakes a brief but potent bass spotlight – use as a base for their shifts in phrases, improvisations and free jazz designs."
~ Doug Simpson - Audiofile Audition
"…big-toned, eloquent bass of Christopher Dean Sullivan, allow them to freely elaborate…"
~ Gregory Applegate Edwards: Grapplegate Music Review
"Chris is one of the most dynamic musical professionals in the business. He has an unmatched bassist talent and quality production ability."
~ Aquanetta Wright, Ferry Godmother Productions
…"Spirit Unleashed" that was arranged by bassist, Christopher Dean Sullivan…Sullivan gets to feature his bass chops on this tune before Henderson and Hart join in with their trumpet and drum mastery. This arrangement puts me in a space of 'Sketches in Spain'; that kind of groove and freedom is infectious. Here is definitely music for our "Infinite Spirit".
~ Dee Dee McNeil / Jazz Journalist
"Christopher Dean Sullivan brings in the bottom as a third line-creating voice. He doesn't accompany as much as he contributes to the musical dialog."
"An extra twist is that this new music is largely acoustic rather than electro-acoustic and the richness of the textures, especially Sullivan's swooning double bass, is such that the music doesn't feel at all flimsy."
~ Kevin Le Gendre, Jazzwise (UK)
Clinics ~ Workshops ~ Assemblies
Music Camps ~ Residencies
Residencies and Workshop Programs to Constructively Enhance the Residence and Youth
in the Disenfranchised Urban and Rural Communities
The social and cognitive issues that plague our societies, neighborhoods, communities, and regions today are placing the children and young adults in a quagmire of dismay and confusion. There are children that are disenfranchised for real social education, not understanding that the future lies within them. This is based on not having a sense of their heritage, not knowing where they come from perpetuates the loss of where they are going. Thus bullying, aggressive behavior, lack of motivation, exercising manipulative reasoning, rudeness, and other components of discord becomes the life style. The parents of these youths are feeling helpless because of the continuing pressure of keeping up within all that they are being bombarded with, such as; bills, CPS regulations, new aspects of educational directions as the common core curriculum, influences outside the home that seeps into their lives on a regular bases, that subliminally effects their wandering behavior around their children, and not able to focus on themselves as role models. Statistics on all levels show that 70% of children born and raised in urban areas are to single mothers. There are divorce rates of over 60 %. Degradation of the social system is geared towards promoting provocative practices of young girls, and young men whose language skills develop at a decelerating pace of falling through the cracks. This, as well as relevant subliminal stimuli, has shown the reason for increased medication, incarceration, continual increase in crime in the neighborhoods, increase in school suspensions and failures, murders among youths due to gang and initiation violence.
The Jazz workshop Inc. has developed a program initiative towards giving Parents and their children outlets to express themselves constructively, while simultaneously explore the social, cognitive and creative aspirations that allows them to think of their future. We are dedicated to working with the parent and/or guardian, on understanding the various stages of their child's growth and assisting the parent in recognizing the affects that outside influences have on them and their child's daily development.
This program would offer counseling sessions in Character Development and Conflict Resolution, and marriage and relationship issues, as well as workshops in Community and Family Development. The program will prove to be beneficial to the child academically, socially and creatively and give to the parent/guardian and community surrounding agents a sense of ongoing support.
In order to adjust this paradigm we would develop and go into learning institutions; Elementary, Middle and High Schools, to directly address the fore mentioned behavior instabilities, as well as collaboratively work directly with school districts; doing PD's, after-school programs, parent workshops…etc., as well as collaborate with community CBO's, census bureau's, the business community, health clinics, police and parole departments, DSS, state/local governments and elected officials.
The Jazz Workshop after-school program is based on a set of coherent activities with a final goal and one or more programmatic objectives, and which seeks specific resources (human, financial, material) available to achieve the objectives and contribute to the attainment of the goal.
The Jazz Workshop after-school program is designed with one mission in mind - Provide students higher learning education through an arts medium.
The Jazz Workshop provides students the opportunity to extend their branch of academic learning, and Character and Cognitive Development through exposure to the performing arts. Avenues include: Music, Drumming, Dance, Spoken Word, Graphic Art design, video/photography, Acting/Theater, and other various specific arts forms that would be deemed vocational such as Journalism, Sculpture Building, Mask Making, Knitting, Fashion, Computer Gaming, and Studio Recording/Production.
Daily Literacy, Science-Technology-Engineering-Arts-Math (S.T.E.A.M.), Leadership with a mentorship component, and necessary Homework help is incorporated within the art disciplines. This fusion allows each child to explore their creative aspirations while retaining academic knowledge for long term success. Discussions in character development and conflict resolution are an integral component of the instructional approach. This gives each student a complete and wholesome understanding of their development as creative individuals, and provides the opportunity to work with the parents and community at large to be a significant part of their meaningful growth.
JAZZ WORKSHOP Inc. MUSIC PROGRAM
(For More Information Click on Above Link)
Interactive clinics, workshops and residencies will follow the American World Music Genre...Jazz, and other musical art forms and genres from its origins in the United States through its journey and integration throughout the world and will feature DVD presentations and master class interactive demonstrations. Clinic curriculum is designed according to the availability and space provided. Below is general information and format for all classes and grade levels as well as a 2 to 3 week music camp. The Jazz Workshop Inc. is a 501c3 organization and has been operating over 40 years.
Interactive music assemblies are conducted to educate students and staff of the American World Music Genre ~ Jazz. Demonstrations are done through performance and commentary between musical pieces. Discussions of the impact of sound and vibration in music of various genres, and how other world music is intertwined within the jazz improvisation approach. There are opportunities for music students to join in on a musical composition as well.
About the Workshops, Clinics and Master Classes
The goal is to develop the natural talent and lead the participant towards a direction of their own, positive, desire. This program will define the impact on the novice through the professional instrumentalist and/or vocalist. How far and quickly one accomplishes their goal is solely up to the individual and how diligently and consistent the participant practice the lessons given. One will learn the Fundamentals, Cultural Scale Structures, Chord Structures, Single Note Reading and Rhythms, Various Tunes, Improvisation, Various Styles, Writing, Orchestration, Time Signatures, as well as aspects of how the Psychology of Sound and Vibration affects every day behaviors and activities. The business of music is very much essential to the camp clinics and is offered during the master class sessions. Music of all genres, in many ways, has allowed us to become open towards understanding various aspects of the cultures that intertwines us, as well as, subliminally continuing to develop the character that lies within each one of us.
Various Music Genres, Songwriting, Theory, Ear Training, Performance, Music Business, Copyright, Booking, Management, Publishing, Publicity
All Instructional Formulas Shall Incorporate the Following Components
* Making of the component * Component Literacy * Making the component connection
* Community and culture resources * Careers and lifelong learning * Goal Setting
* Character Development/Conflict Resolution (Understanding the Psychology of Sound and Vibration)
* Community and Family Involvement
Presenting and performing with ensemble Arranging ~ Instrument Fundamentals
~ Call and Answer ~ Blending (feel the sound through visualization) ~ Natural Voice Harmony
~ Syllable-izing ~ Scale Scatting (emulate the instrument) ~ Melodic Rhythm Scatting ~ Choral Ensemble
~ Instrumental and Vocal Ensemble ~ Business of Music ~ Production
Weekly Music Workshop Residencies and Afterschool Programs
These Workshops are designed for all Instruments and Voices
Instrument Fundamentals
· Rudiments
· Range of instruments
· Exercises
· Sound Development
· Free playing (inside and out)
· Playing with space
· Playing with sound elements
· Point / Counterpoint
Psychology of Sound and Vibration
· Understanding the effect of sound
· Listening Skills
· Hearing vs. Listening
· Searching the Center
Interactive Ensemble Demonstration
· Performing in a Duo, Trio, Quartette, etc.
· Recreating a tune in the moment
· Head Arrangements
· Becoming the other instrument (Blending)
Music Camp Mission
Music mission is to promote and produce the continual growth of artistic awareness and appreciation within communities by unifying expressive musical art forms. The program will provide an accessible performance and instructional prowess for artists and art appreciators to join together for performances, gallery exhibits, lectures, workshops and showcases in an atmosphere appropriate for families and the youth of the region.
3 Week Music Camp Interactive clinics will follow the American World Music Genre...Jazz, and other musical art forms and genres from its origins in the United States through its journey and integration throughout the world and will feature DVD presentations and master class interactive demonstrations. Clinic curriculum is designed according to the availability and space provided. The following is the general information and format of the 2 week music camp: What Is Covered: Presenting and performing with ensemble, Arranging, Instrument Fundamentals, Call and Answer, Blending-(feel the sound through visualization), Natural Voice Harmony, Syllable-izing, Scale Scatting-emulate the instrument, Melodic Rhythm Scatting, Choral Ensemble Instrumental and Vocal Ensemble, Business of Music, and Production.
(Click on Above Link for More Information)
Today's youth, especially 6th through 12th graders are under many more influences that
would have them subliminally believe they have the right to conduct themselves
in a manner that parents, teachers and other adults today find themselves at a loss, at times,
when the behavior brings about consequences that works against constructive understanding.
The E.V.O.L.V.E. Life Skills Program prepare students, starting from the 6th grade, for the pitfalls in dealing with their time during middle and high school periods as well as informing the parent of what to look out for through their teenage years. For example:
signing themselves out of school permanently between 16 and 17 years of age Leaving home and returning when ready Speaking disrespectfully to peers and adults Confused about their position with peers seeking general understanding of growth
The problem with this and other types of relevant behavior is the lack of understanding their position in life. Understanding how behavior is affected through the Psychology of Sound and Vibration the student, parent and teacher come to understand how various stimuli affect the thought process that brings about particular behavior during the growth and learning cycle of parent and child, as well as school staff.
The E.V.O.L.V.E. Life Skills Program
This program will give Students tools to understand themselves as well as others. The program will also prepare them with the coping skills on what to do in various situations that will confront them during these formative years while at the same time give valuable information to Parents, Teachers and Support Staff.
E ~ ELECTS TO BE IN CONTROL OF SELF
V ~ VOICE THE PROBLEM AS YOU UNDERSTAND IT
O ~ OPEN UP YOUR MIND TO CONSTRUCTIVE DECISIONS
L ~ LEAD BY EXAMPLE
E ~ EMPOWERMENT THROUGH UNDERSTANDING THE SITUATION
There are 5 categories of focus:
Tolerance and Acceptance
World of Differences
Turning Point (Strategy Skills in Prevention & Intervention)
The following is an overview of the E.V.O.L.V.E. program and some of the tools that will be used and points addressed.
Self Esteem Confidence Building
Self-Awareness Interpersonal Communication
Self-Appreciation Sexual Harassment
Taking Responsibility for One's Behavior Bullying
Education, Grade Levels, Special Education, Alternative Placement
Minding One's Own Business
WORLD OF DIFFERENCE
Racial Relations Religion/Spirituality
Alternative Life Styles Cultural Awareness
TURNING POINT (SKILLS in PREVENTION and INTERVENTION)
Drugs Alcohol
Alienation Depression
Alternatives to Fighting/Violence Relationships Issues
Arguing Mis-communication
Rumors Responsibility in Anger Control
With the various functions of the educational mode during the first 13 years of development,
character building is becoming an essential part of the educational process.
The E.V.O.L.V.E. program will always bring the student back to self.
Participants targeted for this program are, but, not limited to:
Elementary through 12th graders
ALC (alternative learning center or in-school suspension)
Students who volunteer for program participation
Parents, School Personnel, Institutional Staff
The E.V.O.L.V.E. program goals are to continue a focus on self-image, decision-making, assertive skills, and social and communication skills along with managing and understanding stress levels. The program's objective is to consistently make aware and show the student the relationship of the various behavioral patterns induced by outside stimuli such as sounds, substance usage and other promiscuous activities as well as interpersonal relationships and roles of bystanders.
The E.V.O.L.V.E. program will continue throughout the school year, 10 months, once a week to 4 times a week, depending upon category of focus as well as the needs that are to be addressed.
When students have entered into the program, they will be monitored weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, determining parental involvement. This will help to insure the promotion of a continual constructive school climate.
Give the tools needed to deal with a variety of situations faced in an Elementary, Middle, or High - School setting, as well as in life within the community. This will include the skills to eventually make these decisions independently, helping students, parents and staff to become trusting and comfortable reaching out by communicating appropriately with others. Utilize the appropriate support personnel and programs already in place at the school and in the community, direct students and parents to a support network of organizations and individuals, such as a mentor and/or other constructive idioms. Provide the tools needed to become productive members of society. Initiate Motivational Groups (with regard to academic performance and attitudes within the classroom.) Understanding the importance in Respect for Differences. Conducting workshops for parents and school staff on trends, and what perpetuate the stimulus that may cause particular behavior.
Character Development is very Essential to the Instruction.
Each participant must understand how the components are relevant to self and how, no matter how far out of self a component may seem to take one,
it always comes back to the original source: The Participant.
The character module is exercised within the instructional component. The module will cohesively incorporate the following elements:
Listening Comprehension Acceptance Tolerance Understanding/Decisions Positive/Negative Attributes Anger Management Knowledge of Subliminal Inculcation Heritage/Culture
INSTRUCTION/DEVELOPMENT each instructional period would last not less than 1 hour and not more than 1 hour, 45 minutes, unless it is directly relevant to the project currently in production. In such cases, instruction and project participation becomes one in the same.
All components have an instructional module conducive to the age group
*********************************************************************************************************
"To Understand Is the Acceptance, this has neither Recourse of Agreement nor Disagreement, rather the Fulfillment of Knowledge without Judgment …Now the Work Begins to swift the Paradigm." ~ Christopher Dean Sullivan


We know that a chord is any number of notes sounded simultaneously. Well a triad is a three note chord.
We're going to start by looking at the tonic triad. You remember the technical names used to describe the position of a note in the scale. The tonic is of course the first note or root of a scale. So to build a tonic triad we will be starting with this note.
To build a triad we start from our root note, and add the third and the fifth above.


text:
"Am I awesome?"
The nature of Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West certainly lends itself to grandiose imagery. Every other page a poem describes the majesty of a mountain or the unbelievable beauty of Heaven. The descriptions spark the imagination, so it's no surprise that there are so many adaptations of the work. And with modern effects, it's easier than ever to depict these wonderful sights – or at least give it your best try. In 2014, prolific director Cheang Pou-soi thought he'd give it a whirl with his own take on the first few chapters of the book. It was successful enough to spawn two sequels, so let's see how it goes.
As you'd expect from a film about Sun Wukong, this one opens with … a battle between the Bull Demon King (Aaron Kwok) and the Jade Emperor (Chow Yun-fat given very little to do here). Strange start, but sure let's see how this progresses. After the war destroys most of Heaven, the goddess Nuwa (Zhang Zilin in a role taken from Chinese creation myths) restores it by turning herself into crystals – just go with it – and a piece of herself falls to Earth, giving birth to Sun Wukong (Donnie Yen). Ah, OK. Here we go! So after he bows to the four winds and … no? Oh, so Wukong meets a nine-tailed fox (Xia Zitong as a love interest to Wukong) and is approached the Subhuti (Hai Yitian) who brings him back to learn immortality?
The Subhuti then plays a prominent role throughout, going so far as to enter the gates of Heaven and talk to the Jade Emperor himself, which seems very out of character. Just what is going on here? So it's evident now that 2014's The Monkey King doesn't follow Wu Cheng'en's story all that strongly, instead choosing to sort of do its own thing with the plot points. By itself this is fine. The animated feature Hero is Back played very fast and loose with the mythology and still managed to work well. Chow's version did something similar, by taking familiar names and reworking them to tell his own story. Journey to the West has enough content in its 2,000+ pages to pick at and reshape. So why does this version feel so strange and lifeless?
It might have something to do with the lack of investment that the audience is bound to feel. The Monkey King's biggest foible is the way it treats its characters, rushing through exposition to get the audience up to speed with as little effort as possible. As a result, we have a mess of characters it's hard to give a damn about. The Jade Emperor is something of a kinder being in this version, very accepting of Wukong, but he loses all personality in the process. The Bull Demon King and Princess Iron Fan (Joe Chen) have more to them, but aren't as gravitating in their presence. Donnie Yen puts in a tonne of effort as Wukong, and his physical performance is a blast (ignoring the infuriating high-pitched monkey voice) – and of course he really knows how to throw down in the film's really fun fight scenes – but the script is so weak he doesn't feel like a real person. I'd be just as invested in a puppet show.
Maybe the disconnect comes from the fact that it's not really trying to tell a story, but rather is happy rehashing elements we already know from the book's opening seven chapters (basically everything from Wukong's birth to his imprisonment) and splicing in an original story about the Bull Demon King and his shady dealings with Erlang Shen (Peter Ho), who was an antagonist in the original story, sure, but never an outright villain. These new developments are as half-baked as the rest of the film, and so we're left with a product that wants to use our knowledge of the source material to bolster our connection, while throwing half that shit out the window. Combine this with the rather confusing opening that does nothing to establish characters or stakes, and, well … at least it looks interesting.
That's the best way to describe the visuals. Interesting. The CG is just that: a style that wouldn't fly at all in the west but does surprisingly well overseas. The CG works for this magical, high-concept setting and it's all very imaginative but it's also really easy to feel entirely detached from any of it. Even the comedic over the top shenanigans of Stephen Chow's version was kept grounded with real locations and environments. I'll give Cheang Pou-soi props for trying to depict the otherworldly beauty of Heaven to the best of his abilities but … it just all feels so fake and that really detracts from the point of it all. The Monkey King rushes through its story for cool action sequences and then wraps it all up in endless obvious green screen locations. Ultimately it's a Journey to the West film that looks cool but is so shallow and only barely scratches the surface of what makes the original story so endearing.
It expects you to have enough knowledge of the book to know what's happening, but be willing to accept this wild retelling. Without having seen any of the other films or read any previous material, there's no way to be invested in any of it. Within ten minutes of meeting Monkey, he runs off to train with Subhuti, then comes back, defeats a rock thing and vanishes again to get weapons for his brothers. There's no time to let any of it sink in. And every other scene is something to do with the Bull Demon King and … argh, it's all such a mess. It's a fun mess, I'll concede, but it's still a mess. Like its titular character, it barrels chaotically forward until it finds itself trapped, hoping for redemption when Tang Sanzang appears. Will the sequels fare any better? Let's hope so.
Verdict: Flashy but completely void of substance, The Monkey King isn't the worst movie, but it definitely fails more than it succeeds.
Overall entertainment: 5/10
Violence: 4/10
Sex: 0/10
Stuff happening: Loads
Closeness to source material: 2/5
CGI: Blinding/10
Weapons delivery: Giant tentacles are the way forward
Monkey sounds: Just shriek a lot. That's the same, right?
Writers: Why do these movies always need so many writers?
The Monkey King (2014)
Also known as: 西游记之大闹天宫, Dà Nào Tiān Gōng
Director: Cheang Pou-soi
Writers: Wu Cheng'en (novel) Szeto Kam-Yuen, Edmond Wong, Lola Huo, Dali Chen (screenplay)
Donnie Yen – Sun Wukong
Chow Yun-fat – the Jade Emperor
Aaron Kwok – Bull Demon King
Joe Chen – Princess Iron Fan
Peter Ho – Erlang Shen
Kelly Chen – Guan Yin
Zhang Zilin – Nuwa
Gigi Leung – Chang'e
Xia Zitong – Ruxue the Nine-tailed Vixen
Louis Fan – Juling Shen
Eddie Cheung – Li Jing
Calvin Cheng – Nezha
Him Law – Muzha
Hai Yitian – Subhuti
Published by siibillamlaw
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Posted on 22 Jan 2019 12 Mar 2021 by siibillamlawPosted in Action, Adventure, China, Family, Fantasy, Martial Arts, WuxiaTagged 2014, Aaron Kwok, Calvin Cheng, Cathy Leung, Cheang Pou-soi, Chow Yun Fat, Donnie Yen, Eddie Cheung, Gigi Leung, Hai Yitian, Him Law, Irene Wang, Joe Chen, Journey to the West, Kelly Chen, Li Ching, Liu Hua, Liu Ye, Louis Fan, Monica Mok, Peter Ho, Review, Wang Xizhi, Xia Zitong, Zhang Zilin.
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