It’s been a long time since the city of Rio de Janeiro formed the backdrop for a major work of feature film animation.
The last time was when Walt Disney released The Three Caballeros, back in 1944.
That’s about to change.
Carlos Saldanha’s Rio will be debuting in April.
Saldanha is a Brazilian animation director, a native of Rio de Janeiro, who’s been working in the United States since 1991.
You might not know his name, but the odds are you’ve been exposed to his work.
Like the scrat.
The scrat is Saldanha’s saber-toothed squirrel from the Ice Age series.
The one that loves acorns even more than he does the scratte, his female counterpart.
Now, Saldanha is hoping that Blu will become equally well-known to the movie-going public.
Blu is nerdy “flight challenged” macaw who, as the film begins, is living happily in his cage in Minnesota.
Happily, except for one thing: he believes he’s the last of his kind.
But then it’s discovered that there is another surviving bird of the same species.
She’s a female, and she lives in Rio de Janeiro.
Where he goes to find love.
To get the visuals right, Saldana brought a gang of animators, writers and artists to Brazil.
Where he put them through an intensive course of study in one of the most photogenic and three-dimensional cities in the world.
They flew over the city by helicopter.
They participated in a rehearsal of a samba school.
They went up to Pedra Bonita and risked flights on the hang gliders. (This is work?)
You can’t tell a story about Rio without music, so there’s a lot of that, too. And, to execute it, Saldanha was able to count upon the collaboration of one of Brazil’s musical greats, Sergio Mendes.
The movie looks like it’s going to be great fun, but under it all is a serious message, one with which I’ll be dealing in my December release, A Vine in the Blood.
It’s the trafficking of exotic animals.
And by the time I launch the book, no one will ever believe I wasn’t inspired by the movie.
The world premiere of the movie will be in Rio de Janeiro on March 22nd with the full cast. Here's one of the trailers:
Salvador is the capital of the BrazilianState of Bahia.
And has the distinction of having been the capital of the nation for many more years than either Brasilia or Rio de Janeiro.
Back then, the Portuguese empire was nominally, and almost exclusively, Catholic.
A fact which led to the construction of many, many churches.
In the old city of Salvador, the residents say, there was a different one for every day in the year.
Let me show you a few of them.
In the archives of this blog, you’ll find an article about Brazilian Wish Ribbons and how they are linked to a certain statue.
The statue is to be found here, in the Basilica of Our Lord of Bomfim. It’s the most popular church in the city, but it is, by no means, the oldest, or the most beautiful.
The Monastery of Our Lady of Mont Serrat is located on a peninsula extending into the sea and contains some splendid seventeenth century woodcarvings.
The Church of Lady of Rosário of the Blacks is in the historical heart of the city on Pelourinho Square. Pelourinho means pillory and it was here, right in front of the church, that slaves were publicly whipped and subjected to other punishments.
The construction of the building was carried on at night by slaves and free blacks. The black priests of Bahia are always ordained in this church.
The Church of Our Lady of Victory was founded in 1531.
The Church and Convent of São Francisco is considered to be (literally) the jewel of all of the churches in the city. Not so much for the outside…
…as for the interior. The “Church of Gold”, as it’s sometimes called, is considered to be the most magnificent example of baroque art in all of the Americas. That’s the real stuff you’re looking at. It’s on the walls, the columns, the roof and the altars. It’s everywhere. And the gold isn’t all. Numerous tiles adorn the corridors. They depict the entire Bible – both the new and old testaments.
Finally, if you want a great façade, it’s got to be this one:
The Church of the Third Order of São Francisco.
All of these carvings were, for many years, covered with a layer of smoothed stucco.
People had forgotten about what lay beneath.
Then, one day, an electrician was called-in to install some wiring.
Turns out he was drunk, and he had a sledgehammer.
He hit the façade much harder than he’d intended to.
As a matter of fact, you might want to do that anyway. Because the embedding cuts off the right side of the image.
Okay, you’ve seen the video?
Now admire the poster.
Think you now know what the cala boca galvão movement is all about?
Well, you don’t.
Here’s the real Galvão.
That’s right, a person, not a parrot.
Galvão Bueno is Brazil’s leading sports commentator.
He does play-by-play on all sorts of sports.
Especially football (soccer).
The thing about Galvão is that he talks a lot.
Some people like it.
Others go as far as accusing him of being a bombastic cliché machine and wish he’d shut up and let them enjoy the games.
The World Cup, as I don’t have to tell you, is being played out.
Galvão is calling most of the games.
We’re all hearing him a lot.
And, if you go into a Brazilian bar, or other public place, when a game is on, you’ll often hear someone say “cala boca, Galvão”, the literal meaning of which is “shut up Galvão”.
And, now, in a typical manifestation of Brazilian humor, non-Portuguese speakers around the world are being enlisted to participate.
Under false pretenses.
What they think they’re doing is supporting a movement to save a nonexistent parrot called the galvão.
What they’re actually doing is signing an electronic petition telling Galvão Bueno to shut up. And over one million of them have already done it.
As a footnote to the main event, other Brazilians have plugged in phony subtitles to this YouTube video. They purport to show Hitler reacting to the phenomenon. The Lady Gaga comment refers to a secondary hoax, now being spread, that Cala Boca Galvão is actually the title of a new song recorded by Lady Gaga. (The large titles are in Portuguese, but there are small ones, in English, above the image.)
Deadly Pleasures Magazine called her book, City of Silver, one of the best first novels of the year.
The Washington Post said, “As both history and mystery, City of Silver glitters.”
And I couldn't agree more.
One of the secrets about Annamaria is that she isn't Annamaria.
As Patricia King, her real name, she has authored five books on business subjects including Never Work for a Jerk, which was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and the current Monster Boss.
Annamaria/Patricia lives in New York City, and writes today about the place where her novel is set:
The Richest City in the World
Picture the most powerful city in the Western Hemisphere, the same size as London, a place that has dominated the economic life of the planet for a century. Its upper classes are mostly white, consumed with displaying their wealth in the form of the latest in luxury goods and sumptuous parties. The thankless or dangerous work is done by a brown underclass of people largely of South American Indian or mixed Indian and Spanish blood. At the moment, the city is on the brink of economic ruin, because its dominant men have manipulated the financial system in a way that will affect the economies of countries around the world. The troubled among its citizens console themselves with strong drink or fundamentalist religion.
Sound familiar? New York City in 2010, right? Well, yes, but it is also Potosi, in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru in 1650.
The most fundamental thing about Potosi is its position.At 13,500 feet, it was then and is now the highest city on earth.What could possibly have brought 160,000 souls—noblemen and beggars, the covetous and zealous—to live in a remote and desolate land where not a blade of grass grew, in thin,icy air, buffeted by awesome storms and bitter winds?Only one thing: Money.Literally, tons of it.
In April of 1545, the Spanish arrived and claimed a red canonical mountain that turned out to be the richest silver lode ever discovered. Despite the hostile natural environment, over the next century, the city attracted Indian and Spanish miners from all over the Altiplano and western South America.
At first, silver was so close to the surface that it had been exposed by erosion, and so pure that it hardly required refining. And the riches were shared among all—Indian or Spanish—who worked the Cerro Rico (rich mountain). Twenty percent of all that was taken was loaded on mules and llamas to make the three-week trip to the coast at Arica, where it was sent to the King of Spain.
The city that grew up at the base of the mountain became a lovely Spanish place with a cathedral, monasteries and convents, palaces of noble (actual or pretended) Spaniards and their wives, a theater, and a mint to stamp coins, which came to be known as doubloons in the pirate adventure stories of our childhoods.
The buildings were decorated by native artisans in a style called Mestizo Baroque: as ornate, complex and beautiful as Baroque churches in Rome or Vienna, but with motifs of jungle animals, exotic plants, and Indian faces.
By 1650, however, the veins being exploited were deep in the mountain, and the mine owners required mercury to purify the silver. To maintain the flow of wealth, the Spanish instituted a system of enforced labor called the mita, little different from, some say with no difference from slavery. The work was so dangerous that tradition says, in the villages where men were impressed into the mita, their relatives played dirges for them as they marched away.
Potosí still exists as a city of 105,000. In 1986, UNESCO declared it part of the Patrimony of Humanity. Its architectural masterpieces have largely been restored and can be enjoyed by visitors.
Miners still work the Cerro Rico. Until recently, they have taken mostly tin and copper from the mountain. But the media have reported that lithium, perhaps the metal of the Twenty-first Century , has been discovered there.
