Aphrodite Tagios broke down in tears as cream-robed priestesses struck graceful poses on a grassy slope at the birthplace of the Olympics in a solemn ceremony that reminded her of her country’s glorious past and how far it has fallen since.

With debt-stricken Greece risking bankruptcy and an exit from the eurozone, many Greeks watched the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony in the ruins of ancient Olympia on Thursday with bittersweet pangs of pride mixed with sadness and anger.

”I wanted to scream to all Greeks that they have to remember the Greek spirit because we’re losing it,” said the 33-year-old Tagios, one of some 5,000 spectators who gathered on the slopes of an ancient arena to watch the ceremony unfold.

”The spirit that we saw here and what it represented – we just don’t have it anymore.” After an economic boom in the early 2000s, the country that gave birth to the Olympics today is mired in its fifth year of recession that has left one in five Greeks jobless.

While ceremonial priestesses danced in sandals and invoked the sun god Apollo to light the Olympic flame, Greek politicians in Athens, a four-hour drive away, squabbled over forming a new government after elections last week, pushing the country deeper into turmoil.

The once-mighty nation today depends on financial aid from partners to avoid running out of money, and its current state of affairs is particularly galling to local archaeologist Kostantinos Antonopoulos.

He gets a daily taste of Greece’s past splendour as he works amid the toppled columns and ruins of this small town where men from all over Greece first competed in 776 BC, in honour of the father of the gods Zeus, for a wild olive wreath.

Tucked away amid olive, pine and towering oak trees, the ancient arena where the high priestess handed the flame and an olive branch to the first torchbearer on Thursday was measured by Hercules, according to myth.

”I think every day — how is it possible that a country with this civilization, with this cultural heritage, ended up in a situation like this?” said the 38-year-old Antonopoulos.

Like many others across Greece, he has felt the blow from the crisis first hand. Multiple rounds of spending cuts imposed by Greece to get its finances on track have slashed his salary by 40 percent, leaving him with 800 euros to get by each month.

”We’re hanging on by our fingernails,” he said.

Reinforcing the sense of despair, armed thieves overpowered a female guard and looted a museum in Olympia earlier this year, making off with over 70 bronze and pottery artefacts.

The town’s mayor, Eythimios Kotzas, says Olympia is surviving the crisis better than many others in Greece due to a reliance on foreign tourists, who continue to arrive in buses and cruise ships.

However, locals say the Greek tourists who arrive rarely spend much money and the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony – and the crowds it brought to the restaurants and shops – was a welcome break.

”The Olympics are very poignant for us,” said Nikos Doulas, a 32-year-old as he sat in the town-centre restaurant that his grandfather opened in 1937.

”I am proud of the Olympics but disappointed by our present state. We are just not the same as our ancestors.” [Reuters]

From South Korea to Nepal and from Singapore to Canada, the world map at Spyros Tsiounis’s San Francisco home is dotted with 70 pins — one for each project collaborator.

Tsiounis, who works for a US production company, is currently using his spare time to coordinate a number of artists, producers and technicians working on an animated short called “Them Greeks.” The 6.5-minute movie tells the story of Norman, a miserable, anti-social man whose daily routine is seriously disrupted by a group of noisy, unruly Greeks in the basement restaurant downstairs from where he lives.

Featuring 27 characters, this is an ambitious project for its size and, naturally, it came with a number of challenges.

Money and time were both in short supply, so Tsiounis and his associates had to find a way to work together without the luxury of an actual shared working space.

“In the process, we realized that the Internet has the power to bring about a boom in independent animated cinema, in the same way that cheaper, smaller cameras and sound equipment brought about a boom in live action cinema in the 1960s. Until that time, making movies was possible only for a small number of studios. And so far, only a limited number of large studios have the power to make digital animation films.”

The core of the team behind “Them Greeks” is also based in San Francisco. This is no coincidence as, in contrast to Los Angeles, where “once you sign a contract with a company, anything you think or dream of within that specified time frame is property of that company,” the California mentality is different.

“First of all, anything you make at home is your own property. Secondly, you are allowed to work with colleagues as long as you agree that you will not do so during your office hours or using company equipment.”

With the help of voluntary work from professionals and animation students and using a virtual production process, the team has managed to complete half the production process at a relatively low cost — just “a few thousand dollars.”

To put things into perspective, Tsiounis says, “for a studio like Pixar, a minute of animation film of this quality costs between 1 and 1.5 million dollars.” That means that had they taken the traditional path, their short film would have cost more than 7 million dollars.

The invitation to take part in the making of the movie is still open at http://www.themgreeks.com. If you wish to support the production, visit http://www.indiegogo.com/Them-Greeks-1.

The truth is the film is more in the style of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” than of Nomint’s “The Greek Crisis Explained.”

“Them Greeks” was not borne out of reaction to the Greek crisis, as the idea of Norman and the basement taverna were conceived before the crisis. As a result, “we cannot be sure what sort of connections people will make,” the director says.

On the other hand, Phillip Williams, the American producer of “Them Greeks” and a fan of Greek-American culture, likes to see things in more simple terms: “This is not a Greek tragedy, but a Greek comedy,” he says.

It’s too early to say if Norman’s story has anything new to add to the way Greeks are perceived by the rest of the globe, but the man behind the project certainly has something to add to the world of digital animation. The virtual production process could be an example for many Greeks who feel trapped, as it were, regardless of their professional background. Opa for that.

Source: ekathimerini.com

A François Hollande win in France would challenge the EU’s austerity agenda – but if the Greek left does well it could set Europe on an entirely new path

Sunday may be the first day of a European spring. In the French election a victory for François Hollande, a socialist who has rejected the fiscal pact, would be the first challenge to the policies Angela Merkel and EU technocrats have imposed on Europe. B ut the result of the Greek elections may have even greater symbolic significance.

The first act of the ongoing Greek tragedy ended last November, with the resignation of the Papandreou government. Popular opposition to austerity – along with Merkel’s and Nicolas Sarkozy’s fear of a Greek referendum on euro membership – brought him down. The Greek elections will mark the end of the second act, with a cast of dominant parties and politicians exiting, stage right.

The caretaker government, led by Lucas Papademos, is a coalition of Pasok and New Democracy, the dynastic parties which have ruled Greece for 40 years and brought it to its present predicament. Their election campaigns have brought surrealism to the hustings. The overwhelming rejection by the Greek people of the IMF-EU measures has forced the two governing parties to argue against the very policies they themselves ushered in and are still implementing. Imagine if not a few but every Lib-Dem and Tory politician were to campaign against coalition policies.

The opinion polls are disastrous for both parties (New Democracy has about 20% of the vote while Pasok has fallen from 44% in 2009 to about 15% at the last count). Despite the fact that the electoral system offers an astounding 50-seat bonus to the party with the most votes, it seems that no single party will have a working majority in the next parliament.

The only way the two formerly great parties can continue their austerity measures, as commanded by Berlin and Brussels, will be to form another coalition government – if they can manage to scrape together the requisite 151 seats between them. The campaign has been characterised by a desperate attempts to promote nonexistent differences and by vitriolic attacks on each other; but the reality is that these two formerly great parties are more dependent on one another than ever.

Part of this picture – its most worrying aspect – is the rush to the right by mainstream politicians who, imitating Sarkozy, compete to display their nationalist credentials. Coalition ministers Michalis Chrysochoidis and Andreas Loverdos have spread panic about immigrants as criminals and carriers of infectious diseases, and have set up detention camps in order to contain this “threat”. Amnesty International has called the idea deeply alarming and discriminatory”. Meanwhile Athens’ Mayor Kaminis has, with Chrysochoidis, organised campaigns to “cleanse” the city of migrants, while the coalition plans an anti-immigration wall on the Greco-Turkish border.

This attempt to mobilise the politics of fear is risky. It plays into the hands of the far right and might well see the openly extremist Golden Dawn party, which organises violent attacks on migrants, entering parliament – a bitter irony for the country that had the most successful resistance against Nazi occupation in Europe.

The entire system of power in Greece is on the edge of nervous breakdown, and the dangers from the far right are all too evident. But the fall of the Greek elites could yet be the beginning of a quite different third act, one which would bring the Greek tragedy to a cathartic close.

The New Democracy party is likely to come first on Sunday, scooping up the 50-seat bonus; Pasok will probably come second. However, the radical left party, Syriza, expects to come third. This could make things interesting. Under Greece’s constitution, Syriza, as the third party, will be asked to form a government if the first two parties can’t because they have fewer than 150 MPs between them.

The charismatic young leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, has promised to cancel the austerity package and negotiate a debt reduction programme, placing growth and EU reform at the heart of the party’s manifesto. He also proposes a coalition government of left parties, supported by popular mobilisation.

This is possible. Taken as a whole, the anti-austerity vote is the largest, with the three left parties – Syriza, the Communists and the Democratic Left – jointly polling at about 40%. If the winning parties cannot form a government, Tsipras will invite them, along with the greens and anti-austerity elements on the centre right, to join forces to ensure that austerity is mitigated. This is the first time a radical left government has been seriously on the cards in Europe. However, Tsipras has a problem: both the Communists and the Democratic Left reject such a proposal. Indeed, the Communist leadership has turned Syriza into its main target. The Democratic Left, meanwhile, supports the EU uncritically.

But the tectonic plates of society and politics are shifting. The many thousands who filled Syntagma and other squares last year were a leaderless movement without party or common ideology. Seasoned trade unionists and militants acted alongside first-time dissidents and protesters to change politics. They now have the chance to supplement their version of direct democracy and social solidarity with parliamentary representation. The election on Sunday could see not only the collapse of the political elite but also a redrawing of the political map, with the left replacing Pasok.

Post-civil war Greece exiled, imprisoned and persecuted the left, confining its parties to symbolic and ineffective opposition. This period is now coming to an end. A new hegemonic bloc combining the defence of life, democracy and independence is bringing together people who historically found themselves on opposing sides.

As the popular anti-austerity feeling turns from the negation of “enough” to a radical governmental proposal, a new democratic model is emerging, and with it a historic opportunity. If 6 May leads to a French socialist president and a strong result for the Greek left, the scent of spring will travel from Paris to Athens. This weekend, the French and the Greeks are voting not just for their own countries but for the future of Europe.

Source: guardian.co.uk

Small courtyards brightened up with pots of flowers, cobblestone alleys with whitened borders and the deep blue of the Aegean on domed roofs and wooden window sills, are no longer the privilege of visitors to the Greek islands alone but also of those to Thailand’s popular coastal resort of Cha-am, where the Thai’s love of Greece is not just expressed in post cards and posters, but in a replica of neighborhoods of one southern Aegean island in particular.

Santorini Park, a giant theme park modeled on the popular island destination, is due to open on May 5 on an expanse of 6 hectares, complete with models of traditional Cycladic houses, alleys and climbing bougainvillaea. The designers of Santorini Park, however, have not allowed reality to restrict them and have also their own twee brushstrokes to the phantasmagoria, including ancient-style statuary and pop-art features, as well as artificial waterfalls and fountains.

More than a series of sets for the perfect photo-ops of a “Grecian holiday,” Santorini Park promises to be a shopper’s paradise, bringing together 140 stores carrying top brands in apparel, footwear, accessories, artwork and more, as well as plenty of family entertainment and food options.

Besides dozens of restaurants, cafes and sweet shops, Santorini Park has a 40-meter windmill, a bell tower and an Italian-style carousel, and is surrounded by greenery.

The company behind Santorini Park is Pena Group, a southeast Asian leader in retail centers. The cost of the two-year project ran to 12.2 million euros.

Local authorities on Santorini were not, however, contacted or consulted on the construction of the park, neither by Thai authorities nor by Pena Group.

The residents and municipal authorities of the island found out about Santorini Park through the press, while there are differing opinions in regards to the impact the development may have on the island.

Some argue that although Santorini Park is half a world away, it will generate tourism interest in the island through indirect advertising. Others believe that Santorini has more to lose than to gain from the development.

The mayor of Santorini, Nikolaos Zoros, is of the latter opinion.

“Sure, the name of Santorini will be heard on the other side of the world, but the whole esthetic aspect is very serious,” Zoros told Kathimerini, adding: “I am always somewhat guarded about things that are not originals, but copies, and so in this case also I would prefer to see what it looks like before stating an opinion. What is certain is that the choice of Santorini as a model shows a preference and a love for our island and our country that is very welcome at this difficult period.”

Source:  ekathimerini.com

During the recent debate in the parliaments of many eurozone member states regarding the approval of the new €130bn loan to Greece, some members questioned whether the country had been ready to participate in the euro at the time of its entry.

In the mid-1990s, Greece made a formidable effort to meet the convergence criteria. It employed all available means: budgetary policy, monetary policy, income policy and extensive privatisation of banks and public enterprises. By any measure of fiscal performance (cash or national accounts), the government deficit fell by 10 percentage points, from 12.5% of GDP in 1993 to 2.5% in 1999, the year whose economic statistics were used by the European Council at Santa Maria da Feira in June 2000 to endorse Greece’s eurozone participation.

Greece’s performance was also positive with regard to the other nominal convergence criteria (inflation rate, long-term interest rates, public debt and exchange rate). It is worth recalling that the decision endorsing Greece’s eurozone admission was made after exhaustive scrutiny of the Greek economy and respective reports by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the Economic and Financial Committee.

It is also worth noting that, in spite of the tight budgetary and monetary policies, which were essential in order to reduce government deficit and inflation rates, GDP growth rates started to improve. From negative growth in 1993, it rose to 4% by the end of the 1990s and remained at that level until 2007. Private investment increased and foreign capital flowed into Greece due to the reduction of inflation, and due to the fall of interest rates to single-digit figures after 20 years of double digits.

Those who claim that Greece should not have joined the euro area name three reasons. The first and most well-known is that Greece supposedly falsified its economic statistics in order to gain EMU entry. In 2004, four years after Greece’s eurozone application had been endorsed on the basis of those statistics, the newly elected New Democracy government decided to change the method of recording defence equipment expenditure, so as to lighten the budgetary burden during its term of office.

This change meant recording expenditure upon payment of the deposit, instead of recording it upon delivery, as had been done by the government until then. However, this change had the effect of increasing government deficits prior to 2004 and thus damaged Greece’s reputation. The allegation that Greece had entered the eurozone by falsifying data made headlines in numerous newspapers around the world. Unfortunately, the assertion was also adopted by many politicians in the eurozone and is repeated to this day.

But the allegation indicates ignorance, not to say hypocrisy. Because even including defence expenditure upon order and not delivery, under the new recording method the revised state deficit figures in the critical year (1999) became 3.1% of GDP against 2.5% of GDP previously. The precise figure was actually 3.07%, according to Eurostat (AMECO). This deficit is still lower than the equivalent revised deficits of other member states that were assessed on the basis of 1997 statistics, and which formed the first wave of member states that created the euro area in 1999. The AMECO website shows that many other member states entered the euro area with state deficits that were higher than 3.1% of GDP. But there is little public reference to this fact, even though many of these now manifest similar problems to Greece.

The responsibility for this certainly lies with the New Democracy government of Greece at that time. However, it also lies with AMECO and the European Commission, which simply adopted the (revised) budgetary data issued by the Greek government of the day. They did not ask the Greek central bank, or the previous government, for their views. What happened later, in 2006, was in complete contrast: AMECO decided that the correct method of recording defence equipment expenditure was upon on delivery of equipment – the very same method that Greece had used prior to 2004. Despite this decision, however, AMECO did not retrospectively correct the figures: Greece’s government deficit remained at 3.07% of GDP in 1999 when it should have been adjusted in line with the new decision. The insignificant divergence of 0.07% of GDP from the treaty limit, which was adopted uncritically by the administration of the eurozone, thus became the reason to disparage a very formidable effort of economic adjustment.

On this subject, we also note that an attempt has been made recently to defame Greece in connection with a conventional currency swap between the Greek economy ministry and Goldman Sachs at the end of 2001 – one out of hundreds transacted at that time by all member states in straightforward acts of public debt management. Once again, it was said that Greece had cooked its books so as to enter the euro area: again this became a headline and was adopted by many politicians. Yet the fact that the swap took place two entire years after 1999, the year on whose economic data Greece’s entry to the eurozone was decided, and one year after the European Council of Santa Maria da Feira endorsed Greece’s entry, appears to have been forgotten.

The second reason cited was Greece’s alleged extravagance and excessive deficits. But the principal causes of the crisis in Greece and other states on the eurozone’s periphery were their large and increasing current account deficits, their loss of competitiveness and, more crucially, the different levels of development of the north and the south – rather than the administrative incompetence of their leaders. The south buys high-quality, hi-tech industrial products from the north. The north buys far fewer goods from the south.

The tardy operation of public administration and institutions also gave rise to the claim that Greece, and possibly other member states on the periphery, should not have joined the eurozone. But the zone is not a club of advanced countries whose common interests are opposed to those of the countries that lag behind. It is a stage of development in the union whose purpose is to facilitate economic co-operation among its members, to create relationships that strengthen the common endeavour to grow, to achieve gradual convergence of their economies and to better exploit the opportunities presented by shared objectives and the abolition of borders. Since it is a joint plan for progress, its design should include both the powerful with their strengths, and the less powerful with their weaknesses. It must take into account the inequalities and the fact that the developed countries not only bear burdens but also obtain significant benefits, thanks to their financial services and exports.

The stabilisation measures in Greece since May 2010 have significantly improved fiscal performance and competitiveness, but they have also contributed to the deep and lasting economic recession, the rise in unemployment to 20%, and the impoverishment and destitution of part of the population. Greece is not solely responsible for this outcome. Since the economic policy mix imposed by the first loan agreement was not the most appropriate, the performance expected was unrealistic even for countries with far stronger economies than Greece. There is a widespread feeling that the conditions imposed were a punishment intended to teach other countries a lesson. The recession, initially predicted by the IMF to be -7.5% between 2009 and 2012, is now estimated to have reached -18%, resulting in a failure to meet other targets and generating intense social unrest.

Greece sparked the eurozone crisis but was not its cause. The cause lies in the fact that the eurozone is a fully fledged monetary union but an incomplete economic and fiscal union of member states with different structures: the more mature economies of the European north and the less mature ones of the European south.

The present crisis is only in part a public debt crisis, and that mainly concerns Greece and Portugal. Other than that, it is a crisis of the private sector and the banking system in several member states as well as a crisis of control and supervision by the financial and monetary authorities of the eurozone.

The European Union has not created an overall framework of economic governance – a method of dealing with the inequalities between its developed core and its less developed periphery. It has not worked systematically to truly promote economic growth. If this is not done, there will be more crises. The fiscal compact which, according to eurozone leaders, will stabilise their economies, cannot achieve that without additional measures for growth and convergence and, ultimately, without sufficient progress towards economic integration and political union.

Source:  guardian.co.uk

Jennifer Aniston Scouts Greek Location For Summer Wedding?

Jennifer Aniston and boyfriend Justin Theroux appear to be moving quickly with plans for a wedding, and it’s looking likely that the ceremony will be nowhere near their native Hollywood. Sources connected with the Elounda Beach Hotel in Crete, Greece, tell Tmz.com that Aniston was there recently to scout locations for the nuptials set for July.

The hotel offers a wedding package that comes it at just $2,300, which includes a dedicated consultant, a civil or religious ceremony outside of the Hotel’s Church, a bridal bouquet and a bottle of champagne. That’s the amount that Aniston made for roughly 2 seconds work on Friends. Having Aniston tie the knot in the hotel would certainly be a coup for bosses, though one insider says she is yet to settle on the property, adding, “She has connections on the other side of the island as well”. The Hollywood actress will know the area well, given that her father was born on the island. The couple appear to be deadly serious about their relationship with Aniston recently selling her two New York City apartments for $6.5 million to be closer to Theroux in Los Angeles.

A representative for the actress has played down the speculation, calling Crete as a possible wedding location a “fabrication”, according to the New York Daily News.

Source:  contactmusic.com

Santorini receives more and more distinctions over the last years, ranking it among the top world destinations.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye-DzOqAgO0

This time, it was BBC that chose Santorini as the most beautiful island in the world, in the travel pages of its website. Santorini is followed by Bali Indonesia in the second rank, Cape Breton Canada in the third position, Boracay Philippines in the forth and the Great Barrier Reef Australia in the fifth position.

Santorini feels like no other place on earth.

Here, 120 miles southwest of mainland Greece, everything is brighter: the whitewashed cube-shaped houses, the lapis lazuli sea and the sunsets that light up the caldera, is the BBC comment for this distinction.

No doubt such recognitions from international travel guides and tourist associations have raised the number of tourists visiting Santorini every year and have extended the tourist season. In fact, the first cruise ships arrive in Santorini in late March/early April and keep coming till late November.

Santorini island

History

The history of Santorini is not just the history of people. It is the history of a place which has the unrealistic distinction of constantly evolving and taking shape by itself.

In order to understand this, try thinking back an Aegean with Cyclades but without Santorini. Then imagine the island one day emerging from the seabed, rising, drying out and gradually being inhabited to become the home of a major culture.

Next, picture another day on which half the island founders, taking its people and their achievements with it inder the ashes and the waves. When the turmoil dies down, new inhabitants come to the island, give it a name of their own and start again from the beginning . Now imagine another island rising from the sea, little by little, and taking the place of that which shank.

The history of Santorini is the history of a place which is not to be taken for granted and whose map must, from time to time, be scrapped and redrawn from the start. The first inhabitants of Santorini were pre- Hellenes who arrived around 3.000 BC.

The influence from Minoan Crete became clear when the excavations at Akrotiri began and an entire settlement with two -- storey houses containing wall paintings similar to those of Minoan palaces, was revealed beneath a thick layer of volcanic ash.

When this settlement was built, the island was called Calliste (Most Charming) or Strongyle (Round) because of its shape -- the volcano had not yet begun its catastrophic upheavals.

During the 13th Century there was a Venetian occupation on the island.

The Venetians fortified 5 different places on the island with Imerovigli as the capital. They chose Imerovigli because it is the highest point of the Caldera.

There is also a strange rock formation in the front of the village, called Skaros. Here is where they built their strongest of the five castles. The castle was destroyed in 1956 during a terrible earthquake that registered 7.8 on the Richter scale.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpR0R1kADbU

Modern Santorini

Santorini was united with Greece in 1912. Its major settlements include Fira (Phira), Oia, Emporio, Kamari, Imerovigli, Pyrgos and Therasia, and Akrotiri is a major archaeological site with ruins from the Minoan era.

The island’s pumice quarries have been closed since 1986, in order to preserve the caldera, while it remains the home of a small but flourishing wine industry, based on the indigenous grape variety, Assyrtiko ; vines of the Assyrtiko variety are extremely old and prove resistant to phylloxera, attributed by local winemakers to the well drained volcanic soil and its chemistry, and needed no replacement during the great phylloxera epidemic of the early 20th century. In their adaption to their habitat, such vines are planted far apart, as their principal source of moisture is dew, and are often trained in the shape of low spiralling baskets, with the grapes hanging inside to protect them from the winds.

Also unique to the island is the red, sweet and extremely strong Vinsanto; white wines from the island are extremely dry with a strong, citrus scent, and the ashy volcanic soil gives the white wines a slight sulphurous flavour much like Vinsanto. It is not easy to be a wine grower in Santorini; the hot and dry climatological conditions give the soil a low productivity. The yield per acre is only 10 to 20% of the yields that are common in France and California, and the island’s primary industry is tourism, particularly in the summer months

Source: greekexporters.gr

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a 2002 Canadian and American romantic comedy film written by and starring Nia Vardalos and directed by Joel Zwick. The film is centered on Fotoula “Toula” Portokalos (Nia Vardalos), a middle class Greek American woman who falls in love with a non-Greek upper middle class “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant” Ian Miller (John Corbett). At the 75th Academy Awards, it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. A sleeper hit, the film grossed $241.4 million in North America, despite never reaching number one at the box office during its release (the highest-grossing film to accomplish this feat)

DVD@AMAZON

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfYF3TAST5E

Plot

Fotoula “Toula” Portokalos (Nia Vardalos) is going through an early midlife crisis. At thirty, she is the only woman in her family who has “failed”. Her family expects her to “marry a Greek, make Greek babies, and feed everyone until the day [she] die[s].” Instead, Toula is stuck working in the family business, a restaurant. In contrast to her “perfect” sister, Athena (Stavroula Logothetis), Toula is frumpy and cynical. She fears she’s doomed to be stuck with her life as it is.

At the restaurant, she briefly sees Ian Miller (John Corbett), a handsome school teacher. This event, combined with an argument with her father, Gus (Michael Constantine), motivates her to begin taking computer classes at a local college. She also gets contact lenses, wears her hair curly, and begins to use makeup. Maria, her mother (Laine Kazan), and her aunt Voula (Andrea Martin) then contrive a way to get Gus to allow her to work at Voula’s travel agency.

Toula feels much better in her new job, especially when she notices Ian hanging around looking at her through the window. They finally introduce themselves and begin dating. Toula keeps the relationship secret from her family until some weeks later when Gus finds out. He throws a fit because Ian is not Greek, but Ian and Toula continue to see each other against Gus’s wishes. Ian proposes marriage to her, she accepts, and he agrees to be baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church and speak fluent Greek to be worthy of her family.

As the year passes, the wedding planning hits snag after snag as Toula’s relatives “helpfully” interfere. Her father insists on inviting the entire church to the ceremony, her mother orders the invitations but misspells Ian’s parents’ names, and Toula’s cousin Nikki (Gia Carides) orders tacky bridesmaids’ dresses. Toula is horrified to learn that her parents invited the entire family to what was meant to be a “quiet” dinner, and the Millers, not used to such cultural fervor, are overwhelmed.

The wedding day dawns with liveliness and hysteria, but the traditional wedding itself goes without a hitch. Gus gives a speech accepting Ian and the Millers as family and buys the newlyweds a house right next door to him. The film’s epilogue shows the new couple’s life six years later in which they have a daughter, Paris, whom they raise in the Greek style, but Toula tells her she can marry anyone she wants when she grows up after she says she wants to go to Brownies instead of Greek school.

Shirley Valentine-Bradshaw (Pauline Collins) is a 42 year old Liverpudlian housewife whose family pays her so little attention she frequently talks to her kitchen walls in order to keep a conversation going. When her flamboyant friend Jane (Alison Steadman) wins a trip for two to Greece, Shirley uncharacteristically puts herself first and accepts her invitation to join her.  DVD@AMAZON

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqQSBqsrsEI

Upon their arrival in Mykonos, Jane promptly abandons her companion for a romance with a man she met on the plane before it even took off. When the plane lands, Shirley sets off on her own, with Jane promising to return that night. Jane doesn’t surface for several days, but Shirley is fine on her own, exploring the island. Eventually she is “rescued” by her fellow Brits Jeanette and Dougie (Anna Keaveney and George Costigan) at lunch one day. During lunch, another British couple begins to disparage Greece as being too Greek. Shirley can’t stand more than a few insults before she blasts them all, letting them know that the Greeks are responsible for many modern accomplishments that they take for granted.

After dinner (at which she divulged what calamari is), she goes off alone and happens upon a taverna. She then asks the owner to help her fulfill a dream she’s had: drinking wine by the sea. The owner, Costas Dimitriades (Tom Conti), willingly helps her by moving a small table and chair next to the sea. After realizing that the grass is indeed greener, Shirley is worse off than before. Costas comes by and offers to walk her back to her room. Once there, he invites her out to his brother’s boat the next day. When she balks, he promises not to try to seduce her. Convinced that he only wants to cheer her up, she agrees. The next morning, as Shirley is preparing to meet Costas, Jane returns to the room, begging for forgiveness and not giving Shirley a word in edgewise. As Jane goes to change for their day together, Costas shows up and Shirley leaves with him, with Jane trailing behind in disbelief. Shirley then pawns Jane off on the uptight Brits as payback for leaving her alone. Shirley and Costas go out on the boat. Shirley goes skinny-dipping, revealing to the camera that she doesn’t want Costas to keep his promise from the day before. After she kisses him, he doesn’t.

Once Jane hears about what has happened, she believes that Shirley has fallen in love with Costas. However, Shirley reveals to the camera that she’s fallen in love with the idea of living. Shirley spends more time with Costas, yet she is despondent about having to leave soon. Once the time comes, Shirley gets as far as the airport before turning back. Once back at the taverna, she finds Costas handing the same line to another tourist as he did with her. However, Shirley isn’t upset because she didn’t return for him; she wants a job. Once Jane arrives at the airport back in Britain, she drops Shirley’s suitcase without a word to Shirley’s husband Joe, who is carrying an armful of flowers. He is shocked and embarrassed at being left and calls Shirley any time he can, from a variety of places. He becomes more and more desperate the longer she is away, as she becomes more content with her new life. Finally their son tells Joe to go and get her instead of insisting she come back. Hurt by his son’s words, Joe sets off for Greece.

Shirley, having received a telegram about Joe’s impending arrival, prepares for it. Costas is afraid of a confrontation with Joe, and begs off with a fake excuse. Once Joe arrives at the taverna, he walks by Shirley, not recognising her. She calls him by name and when he turns around, sees, as Shirley puts it, “not the wife or the mother, but Shirley Valentine”. After gathering himself, she pours him a glass of wine and invites him to sit with her at the table and chairs by the sea.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWKEltZAU8U