BEST OF 2014: DRAMA SERIES & MOVIES (PART I)

A list of  "2014 Best... "  but  where to start from? I love so many things - which you already know if you have had a look at my blog any time before! Books? Movies? TV drama series? British actors? English Literature? Teaching? Blogging? Travelling to the UK? I'll do my best to be direct and concise and I'll divide my list of "best" into more than one post, ok? Let's start with Drama Series and Movies. 

Best Drama Series

Outlander (Starz)

I can't deny it:  this is my new passionate interest (obsession?)  Reading Diana Gabaldon's book series (I'm on book 4 now), watching the series, learning bits of Gaelic, dreaming of Scotland, following the cast and writers on twitter ... my 2014 has been filled with Outlander emotions.

PERIOD & MORE PERIOD - AT THE CINEMA: IL GIOVANE FAVOLOSO

“Freedom is the dream you dream

While putting thought in chains again --” 

― Giacomo Leopardi, Canti

Il Giovane Favoloso directed by Mario Martone is an Italian movie which participated in Venezia Film Festival last September. I was lucky enough and I could see it in a special premiere for teachers in Rome, before  it will be released in theatres on 16th October.

The film is a biopic of Italian Romantic poet, Giacomo Leopardi (1798 - 1837). Italian students inevitably meet him on their path through high school and two are the chances: either they love him or they  hate him. Impossible to remain indifferent.

For me it was love at first line, when I studied his poems in my final year at high school. I felt like that genius young man from a distant time could read my deepest thoughts and put them on paper in powerful words.

Touching and at times disturbing, his pessimism and his humanity, his melancholy and his sufferings, have stayed with me while turning into an adult.  I still treasure those poems as remarkable moments of  self-realization and growth.

Said that, you may guess my watching this film couldn't be nothing less than an emotional experience: it was something like meeting Leopardi in the flesh and finally giving him a body and face, while in my mind he had only been a voice.