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67 out of 77 people found the following review useful: The Re-Awakening Of The Giant, 19 June 2009 Author: marcosaguado from Los Angeles, USA
Enthralling, captivating. Buenos Aires, maybe? Black and White scope mostly, the limpid soul and devastating smile of Alden Ehrenreich. Coppola enjoys his freedom and so do we. At the base of it all, a juicy melodrama but the master flies over it with a tireless, youthful zest. Vincent Gallo seem a bit of an odd choice to play the title role and in fact I just found out that Matt Dillon was supposed to have played it. It certainly would have added up the romanticism and the sensuality that runs through it but, never mind. Alden Ehrenreich as Bennie is, quite simply, fantastic. Maribel Verdu another stand out as Tetro's loving if long suffering companion. Karl Maria Brandauer is horribly perfect, a character that emanates the kind of debauchery fame and rotten ego can provide. "There is room for just one genius in this family" I saw the film last night and it hasn't left me for a moment. I can't wait to see it again.
53 out of 60 people found the following review useful: Francis Ford Coppola in Buenos Aires, 22 June 2009 Author: the-ppfitzgeralds from Ireland
Thousand of miles away from Hollywood, the great Francis Coppola confronts something personal as a human being as well as a filmmaker. The story a young man looking for his older brother under the crippling shadow of a famous father. Hummm. Compelling, absorbing, mesmerizing at times. The younger brother is played with real magic by newcomer Alden Ehrenreich but for some inexplicable reason the older brother and title role is played by Vincent Gallo. He's an interesting guy but not at all the pivot that, clearly, the part required. I needed to feel things that Gallo didn't provide. He's just weird and even in the enormous emotional scenes (like the final one) he's not really there. I wonder why Coppola made this bizarre casting decision. The rest of the cast is fabulous and Buenos Aires breaths a life of its own even if, it didn't feel like Buenos Aires - I know that city pretty well - it looked at times like a border town in Mexico. Buenos Aires has an old fashion, seductive kind of elegance nowhere to be found here. I'm sure there is reason for it and I hope to discover it in my next viewing because this is a film I know I'll see many, many times. Another thing to cheer about, a strange and haunting score (it reminded me of "Apartment Zero" in more ways than one) and a sensational black and white Cinemascope screen. To be seen!
24 out of 33 people found the following review useful: cinema that throbs and kicks and is passionate - one of Coppola's triumphs, 22 June 2009 Author: MisterWhiplash from United States
Tetro may be the "best" film Francis Ford Coppola has made in twenty-five years. Whether this speaks more to the quality of his present state of direction as an artist or on the relative hits and misses of his career in the dregs of Hollywood (be it aiming high and just missing the mark with Godfather 3 and Dracula to stuff that went over people's heads like Youth Without Youth to even crap like Jack) is a combination. He's someone who attained financial success at a time, but then lost nearly all of it and along with it, arguably, some of his artistic merit. But after years of laying low and making wine, and making a whacked-out experiment that people either dug as an abstract piece or hated to hell ('Youth'), he comes out with Tetro like a porn star with a five-foot erection. He's got something to prove, if not to his audience then himself, and he proves it with a story that is personal and a film-making technique that recalls other masters but never too directly.Tetro is about family, a subject Coppola is, of course, well-versed in being it the notorious kind (of course, the Godfather) and the more low-level and oddly intimate (Rumble Fish). It's a story, as with Rumble Fish, told in crisp black and white widescreen with flashes of color for flashbacks which may or may not be real, and as homage to operas like The Tales of Hoffmann. The title character, wonderfully and intensely portrayed by Vincent Gallo, is in a creative exile in Buenos Aires, a once promising writer living with his doctor-wife (Maribel Verdu, great as always) who is paid a visit one day by a young man, his brother Bennie (baby-faced newcomer Alden Ehrenreich) who hasn't seen him in years. There's secrets withheld by Tetro, not least of which about their parents, and soon an unfinished, longhand written play by Tetro (real name Angelo) is discovered by Bennie in a suitcase. He'll finish his brother's play, but at what cost? The damaged, almost bi-polar writer, the insistent and impressionable brother, the strong but uncertain woman, these characters are fully realized by Coppola, and then on top of this comes a sort of terrific puzzle that is constructed through Tetro's unfinished play: what about their father, a famous composer (Klaus Maria Brandeur) who split them apart, possibly, or possibly not? What about their mother, who died in a car accident? What about the bond between Tetro and his former mentor, "Alone", the dubbed "most important critic in South America" who has created a pretentious empire around herself? Questions arise, and Coppola rises to the challenge of giving the audience answers but not spoon-fed. It's first and foremost a story of family, of brothers who love but have to find ways to contend with their damaged selves(inspiration being Rocco and His Brothers mayhap), and it's here that it's just about classic, on par with Rumble Fish if not even deeper and wiser about the effect of parents, or lack thereof, in lives spent and possibly wasted.The writing is immensely interesting, always, even when Coppola may fall into over-indulging in his fantastic self-indulgence as an artist, such as with the operatic flourishes towards the end (this may not make sense, but compared to the WAY over indulgence of the hard-to-defend Y.W.Y it will). If anything the little imperfections, those brush strokes that go so high with the colors and shadows and impressionistic lighting that he and DP Mihai Malaimaire Jr engage in (one who hopefully will be getting more work following such spectacular work on a mix of 35mm and HD) along with Walter Murch's dependable editing, make it an even stronger work. It should feel a little messy here and there, because its subject matter is about finding a sense of purpose, in each other and in one's art. One feels Coppola working through a history of close but torn family ties, of losing loved ones (i.e. his own son), and at the same time a love of them all and of cinema peeking through in nearly every scene, even the ones where it doesn't look like much is going on.Tetro is the antidote, basically, for this month's Transformers sequel. If you need to find the polar opposite of a picture based practically on just making money and reeling in the crowds with its dumb giant robot battles and preposterous and shallow theatrics, look no further than a picture which cares about its characters, its multi-faceted story and themes, and about projecting a technique that hearkens back to cinema of the 50s and 60s while sticking to an originality by its filmmaker. This will likely stay with me for a while, which is what Coppola's most profound works have done.
23 out of 33 people found the following review useful: Stunning; Absoltuely stunning..., 30 June 2009 Author: ericberber9 from United States
I am not a film major. Hell I've never even been to college. Through my horrible grammar and misspellings, you will take note of how I even barely got through high school.There are films out there that have puzzled me (anything by David Lynch), films that have made me laugh (Dumb and Dumber was my favorite) and foreign films that I once considered to be the way films should be made (Let the Right One In, Ichi the Killer). I've seen films that have bored me (Gummo, Brown Bunny) and have had my guilty pleasure(unfortunately, Transformers 2.But never, NEVER in my life have I seen a film that has engrossed me like this has. I have never walked out of a theatre in absolute awe. Never have I truly been able to say that a film made me laugh, made me cry, made me FEEL true emotions for a character. Such beautiful cinematography, such bold yet unobtrusive dialog... no one character "steals the show".I sat in that theatre for 143 minutes and not once was I bored. Not once was I annoyed by a character, or a one-liner. Not once was my jaw not dropped.This film is what a film should be... what films were meant to be. There are movies out there for entertainment but every once in a while, there is a film that comes along that changes the way you feel about entering a theatre all together.I viewed this film with 10 other people in a small college theatre that will only play this film for one week. And the only reason I came to watch it was because my girlfriend absolutely adores Vincent Gallo (which he is amazing in) and no other reasons than that.I don't know what else I could say about this film that could praise it any more that I have. I love this film. It's the greatest movie I've ever seen. That may not seem like much to you since you all have possibly seen similar movies in film class, or through word of mouth. But for the average joe such as myself, this film is a masterpiece.Bravo, Copolla. Bravo.
22 out of 36 people found the following review useful: Doesn't work..., 21 June 2009 Author: motif from United States
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
As a lover of Coppola's Great films, I'll watch anything he does, no matter how many misfires he produces. And I hate to admit it, but for me, Tetro was a complete misfire. I'm actually surprised at all the strong reviews and I wonder if people saw the same movie as me.The film's Art House all the way. Black and white, staged like a play, BIG Greek and literary themes driving the story, to obvious devices like a cat named "Problema", a man in a cast until his brother arrives, symbolically driving the character arcs and story.Coppola obvious loves theater. The film is filmed with theater pieces throughout the storyline and the movie itself feels like it belonged on stage.This is all good if it works, but it didn't. The film was redundant, the characters cliché's, the dialogue uninteresting....and the acting of the two male leads was completely undramatic. Nothing against anyone personally, but to me, Vincent Gallo is just not a good actor. He's personae. Coppola failed because he cast an actor who looks and feels exactly like the self-indulgent "artist" that Coppola was trying to characterize in Tetro. The result was that there was nothing fresh in this film, especially in the characters. (The lead actress was strong, and she overshadowed both the men on screen.) I think Coppola is rediscovering his craft, and it's starting with story telling. The film is extremely ambitious as it tries to tackle the father and son dynamic for the 1000th time in literary history. It's hard to forgive, or miss, sub-par and redundant writing in this genre and Coppola unfortunately brought nothing fresh to the literary table. What he did bring fresh, if anything, was art house to the American public, but unfortunately the film isn't strong enough to break into mainstream America. Not even close. The film attempts to be serious and viewers who see Coppola's name over a black and white dramatic piece about fathers and sons will pretense a masterpiece...just because. But it's not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination.Imagine the best of American black and white films that were either derived from the stage or a homage to plays and classical dramatic writing. Tetro could be A Streetcar Named Desire if it worked. But it's not even close. Streetcar had acting, it had characters, it had fresh dialogue, it had real drama. Nothing in Tetro could measure to these standards - not even the self-conscious cinematography. The main male actors bring nothing to life in this film because they don't know how to and because the writing gets in the way. Anyone who thinks this film is great, please go back and watch these movies and remember what great character driven dramatic cinema should be. Let's not reward on intention, but on execution.Coppola should have rewritten this script for another year before he filmed it and recast it with serious actors (V Gallo doesn't even read scripts he receives, he just reads his parts). He would have achieved something much better than what he did here.Everyone bitches about the studio system, but, I hate to say it, Coppola was at his best when he worked with the talent the studio system affords and attracts.As a human being, good for him that he can make films on his own terms, all the power to him. But, go deeper next time Francis and perfect your script before you shoot it and find real actors to pull it off.
6 out of 9 people found the following review useful: Do not believe the critics, go and see this movie, 10 August 2009 Author: pefrss from Las Vegas
A local film critic labeled this film "asinine" and as I came to mistrust this critic in the past I went to see the movie despite. As I live in Las Vegas, movies which do not deal with a lot of explosions ,detonations , crude humor and sex are usually not well attended. That means that most of the time I find myself in the movie theater with maybe three to five other people. This time there were five people beside me, at a showing at 8.oo pm on a Friday night. It was the first movie in a long time I really enjoyed. And I will enjoy it again. This one will go in my DVD collection. What a beautiful movie !! Shot in mostly black and white it is a piece of art with every scene a visual delight. The story could be that of Oedipus, only in this case the father marries the wife of the son and the son only dreams of killing the father, but in reality causes the death of his mother. The father is overpowering and very well played by Klaus Maria Brandauer. It is a real family drama. The whole cast is outstanding, the only small criticism I have is that the title character Tetro looks so different as an adult from the teenager that it is difficult to make a connection.There are some beautiful scenes shot in color out of the opera "The Tales of Hoffmann'' and interesting views of Buenos Aires' every day life. I always considered movie making an art form. Coppola succeeded in making a piece of art. It is only very sad that the critics obviously are only able to look at the box office success of movies. Unfortunately they seem to be in the pockets of the studios and help to lower the general taste of the public, which is already low enough, movies making fun about bodily functions and movies about mass mutilations and rags-to-riches-fairy tales will attract a huge audience, while a movie like Tetro will only generate negative responses by the reviewers or none at all, to make sure that nobody will see it.
7 out of 11 people found the following review useful: A promising young filmmaker of seventy, 30 June 2009 Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California
One thing that's clear from 'Tetro', Francis Coppola's beautiful, disturbing, very personal new film (a great improvement over his 'Youth Without Youth' of two years ago) is that whether its themes are autobiographical or not, they show a man who still has strong feelings about family and a wealth of artistic ideas about how to act them out. Family seems a poisonous and irresistible thing. When Vincent Gallo tells Alden Ehrenreich at the end of the film, "We're family," it sounds as haunting as "Forget It, Jake - It's Chinatown" at the end of Roman Polanski's movie. Family, like Chinatown, is a place of mysterious trouble, of rivalries that come back to haunt you, of resentments and terrible deceptions.There's a lot of pain about failed ambitions too. Tetro (a mean, brooding Vincent Gallo;"tetro" means 'sad' or 'dark' in Italian), a would-be writer, is hiding away in Buenos Aires, the birthplace of his father, when his younger brother Bennie (excellent newcomer Alden Ehrenreich) appears one night in the pristine white uniform of a cruise ship employee. The action thenceforth is an off-and-on wooing of Tetro by Bennie. Bennie wants to recover his childhood when he worshiped Angelo, as he was then. "Angelo's dead," Tetro repeats. Bennie has felt abandoned for a decade. He is almost eighteen, and ran away from military school and lied about his age to get the job on the ship. Now Tetro does not welcome Bennie at all and keeps saying he ought to stay with someone else or return to the boat, which is docked for repairs.The 'Godfather' films are full of brother and father rivalries too, but because this film is about waywardness and is in coldly beautiful digital black and white with moments of intense color, it more strongly recalls Coppola's similarly color-highlighted black and white version of S.E. Hinton's 'Rumblefish,' where Mickey Rourke played the dangerous, disreputable but romantic older brother and Matt Dillon the younger one who has missed him.This certainly isn't Tusa, though. It's Argentina, but also an alternately windswept and mountainous Patagonia, and a world of pure cinematic imagination highlighted by trips into intense Fifties Technicolor with The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman and Copola's own strange evocations of that lushly artificial style. Flashbacks in less intense color recall the father -- perhaps one should write "the Father" -- Carlo Tetrocini (Klaus Maria Brandauer), born in Buenos Aires of Italian family, a composer and orchestra leader hailed as a genius. Carlo has stifled the ambitions of another musical composer brother (played by Brandauer in heavy makeup) and seems to have driven Tetro (Gallo) mad. Tetro lives a bipolar, cosmopolitan life with a warm and sexy Spanish lady called Miranda (Maribel Verdú: we know her from 'Y tu mamá también' and 'Pan's Labyrinth') who discovered him when he was in an asylum and she was a visiting entertainer. Tetro has all but abandoned his magnum opus, a play he can't finish, and works in a theater where he does the lighting.One can hardly attribute the resentment of the father to Coppola himself; his own father was a minor musician best known for composing music for Coppola's films. Perhaps he himself is the evil father? But then what to make of Sofia Coppola, the acclaimed and successful daughter, a fine director in her own right? The Oedipal themes that arise may be more universal than autobiographical. The mother in Tetro however, is partly missing from the equation, a shadowy figure who who died in a car accident when Tetro/Angelo was driving. There are so many references to accidents one begins to fear one every time somebody goes out. And indeed walking a dog proves dangerous.Bennie discovers Tetro's hidden manuscripts, which, like hidden memories, are written in mirror writing he says is "military school code." Among various Argentinian friends the youth meets "the most famous critic in Latin America," a woman who calls herself "Alone" (Carmen Maura, another Spanish actress, whom we know from films by Pedro Almodóvar). When Benie first arrives, Tetro has a broken leg. Later he breaks a leg himself, and while recovering he transcribes the MS. into normal writing and adds an ending. "Alone" runs an arts festival in Patagonia, and he has the unwitting collaboration translated into Spanish and enters in the festival competition, which it wins. Tetro rejects all this. Gallo's evocations of depression, anger, and hostility are extremely realistic. His final revelations and eventual warm acceptance of Bennie, whose accident causes him to miss his boat, are perhaps less convincing, though his performance is strong. Ehrenreich, who sometimes resembles a young, but more physically solid Leo DiCaprio, is touching and appealing.It's not clear at first what the Powell/Pressberger 'Red Shoes' and 'Tales of Hoffman' have to do with the story, except that Tetro took Bennie to see them. But they illustrate a sensibility so steeped in cinema that it can't evoke emotion without remembering films. Everything in Tetro is highly artificial, or simply cinematic, but also convincingly emotional. The tensions between the brothers have been compared to those in Kazan's 'East of Eden,' and Coppola indeed thought of Kazan in making this film and has spoken of a felt rivalry with him. The Patagonian arts festival sequences recall both Fifties comedies and Fellini. For all this artificiality, the film stirred up plenty of discomfort in me. One can perfectly well awaken painful emotions by mimicking old films, as Todd Haynes did in his odd pastiche of Douglas Sirk, 'Far From Heaven.' 'Tetro' doesn't feel resolved; it has a little of the rambling incoherence of 'Youth Without Youth,' except that it is so much more intensely felt. Above all it is a unique work that is beautiful to look at and keeps one guessing. Coppola has said this is the kind of movie he wanted to make when he was young. Very well, it's a bit late for that; but why not?
2 out of 4 people found the following review useful: Tetro, 9 October 2009 Author: Costigan_Corleone_Bickle from Canada
Tetro is being relentlessly marketed as Francis Ford Coppola's first original screenplay since the release of The Conversation in 1974. This deserves to be a big movie event for that reason alone, and I think the extent of its originality exceeds anything he's done throughout his career. I consider The Conversation to be a visionary masterpiece, but the influence that Antonioni's Blowup has on it is visible. Stylistically speaking, Tetro certainly has its inspirations, but thematically it is Coppola's piece in every way. This is a man who, throughout the course of his filmography, has been exploring the dynamics of family, particularly of the dysfunctional variety. We saw the theme in his Godfather trilogy, in his adaptations of Rumble Fish and The Outsiders, and even in lighter pictures like Peggy Sue Got Married. Tetro feels like it brings closure to this artistic fixation.Two years ago, Coppola made it clear to people that he was venturing into new territory with Youth Without Youth. Youth was a challenging and flawed picture, but it was beautifully made and I forgave its shortcomings. To exhaust an overused term even more, Tetro is a "return to form". This film is in every way the work of a master, who relishes in the potential of cinema in its many shades. A lot of critics expressed distaste for the operatic nature of the drama, the unconventionality of the structure and the surprising bursts of bawdy humour. However, it is the incorporation of all these unique ideas that makes the movie so exciting and powerful. Tetro is brilliantly overwhelming and purely theatrical.The film begins with a young man named Bennie (newcomer Alden Ehrenreich) walking in the streets of Buenos Aires, and arriving at the home of his long-estranged older brother, Angie (Vincent Gallo). When he knocks on the door, Angie's beautiful girlfriend Miranda (Maria Verdu) greets him with immediate hospitality. Bennie, who works as a waiter on a cruise ship, is stranded in Buenos Aires while the ship's engine is under repair. Miranda tells Bennie he can stay at their place, but Angie (who now insists on being referred to as Tetro), won't even leave his bedroom to say hello to his brother.Some family conflicts in the past have wounded Tetro deeply. He responds to everyone with a different degree of anger, especially the younger brother he hoped never to see again. Bennie is an interesting protagonist, because he knows very little about himself but ends up revealing a lot about the characters surrounding him. He is an angst-ridden youth with a quirky sense of humour, and his tenacity ends up causing dissent with Tetro. The film exposes snapshots of their family history through flashbacks, and gradually the layers of conflict begin to reveal themselves.The focal segment of the film is so visually sumptuous that I would have to agree with Coppola's opinion... this is the most beautiful movie he has made. Shot in digital black and white by Youth Without Youth cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr., Tetro is full of fascinating compositions and awe-striking use of lighting. Allegedly, the look of the film is inspired largely by Kazan's On the Waterfront, and the classic pictorial sensibility translates excellently. The original score by Osvaldo Golijov serves as an ideal companion to the look of the movie; the sensory experience is downright haunting.All of the technical mastery would go to waste if the performances and the writing weren't satisfactory. The screenplay is one of the great original works of the decade. I have heard claims that the narrative is uneven, but I never got the sense that Coppola's control lapsed. This is a steadily paced, constantly engaging movie that manages to say so much within the story of one badly damaged family. The power of the conclusion is so great that it ends up transcending the confines of its themes.The acting is Oscar-worthy (a term I hate to use, but I feel is justified in this case). Vincent Gallo is notorious for his off-screen antics and extreme personality. In a lot of cases, his characteristics have probably overshadowed his work. That's neither here nor there, because he is a brilliant actor and this is a great performance. The amount of complex undercurrent and conflict in the character Tetro is enormous. He's playing a man whose presence has to be felt at all times, and whose somewhat harsh actions need to feel justified. Gallo does him justice in one of the finest pieces of acting this year.Alden Ehrenreich is a lucky man to have landed his debut performance in a masterpiece directed by Francis Ford Coppola, but he deserved the role and he is a welcome addition to the list of young American stars. He is already being hailed by countless critics as the "new Leonardo DiCaprio", despite the fact that DiCaprio is still alive and working. Aside from a physical resemblance, the two actors have very little in common. Ehrenreich has a certain natural quality about him that immediately makes us believe. He feels out of sorts and intimidated by his situation, and he also has strong on-screen charisma. On top of his knack for performance, he looks like a movie star. I hope and expect to see him doing big things in the future.Coppola isn't just exploring new artistic possibilities... he's revisiting themes and crafting them in a new way. This is an expressive, boldly non-mainstream piece that won't receive the immediate credit it deserves. I think it deserves to garner lots of awards, show up on top 10 lists of the year 2009 (and the decade), and reinforce to audiences just how great of a storyteller Coppola is. It probably won't do any of those things, but for me it's a rare and exciting film that I personally rank among the director's best.
4 out of 8 people found the following review useful: Tetro, 26 August 2009 Author: cultfilmfan from Canada
Tetro is one of the more complex and realistic character studies to come out this summer, or let alone this year so far. The film has a slower pace and there is not a lot of action and it is very artistically done, which will draw many filmgoers in to see it, but at the same time will probably leave others bored and restless. The plot which I will not give too much away about, consists of a young man investigating the secrets behind his brother's moody behaviour and the torment he has gone through with his father and why he refuses to tell him anything about his father and why he has distanced himself from the family. The film is a fairly well constructed look at families and some of the dysfunction and other problems that go along with it. The film slowly starts to reveal more and more about these characters and their pasts as it goes along and all the while keeping the viewer in suspense and intrigue. Tetro is definitely a smaller film that unfortunately will probably go unnoticed by a lot of people, but I think with the right audience it could and should become a hit. The direction is very stylish and I loved the black and white cinematography which looks gorgeous here and the few scenes actually shot in colour look great too. The script is very intelligent and deconstructs characters and human nature very well and the performances by the main cast all deliver great performances, so everything comes out as a stylish and intriguing art film. Like I mentioned earlier, the film is a little bit slower moving and with it's very unique style and pacing, it did take me a little while to warm up to it and get absorbed into it, but I eventually got right into it and enjoyed it very much. I mentioned in last week's review of Inglourious Basterds that I really liked the film because it had a European feel to it and was very unlike a regular Hollywood film. I would have to say the same about Tetro. It was made by American people, but shot in Argentina in Spain and just how everything is set up and delivered it feels like a European film and borrows the same type of narrative and storytelling that I have seen in so many international films. I happened to really like that about both those films. I saw Tetro in a smaller art house cinema where people who are into those types of films would most likely see it and again I think they would be the perfect audience for this movie. Because of the power of the script, direction and performances, Tetro will stay with you and will have you replaying moments after you have seen it and will probably leave you with some questions of your own because of the complex and sometimes philosophical nature of it. To the right crowd, Tetro will be deemed a masterpiece and I do not know if I belong to such a crowd, but nevertheless I thought it was great and worth checking out for the more adventurous and patient viewers. One of the best films of the year.
4 out of 8 people found the following review useful: oh Coppola :(, 16 August 2009 Author: zanzibar1 from Guelph
is there a less appealing actor than Gallo? the dredges of cable TV at 2am could hardly locate an odder character who wants fame. his output has been perverse and peripheral for so long. people are waiting for Coppola's return, and he'll get there I'm sure. Youth Without Youth was beautiful but still not the right project for this supreme team of filmmakers.....perhaps some good old studio pressure, like the variety that reportedly made The Godfather such a difficult shoot (full of firings and re-hirings), but such a classic result. the sequel was superlative, and perhaps the perfect mix of Coppola with more freedom, which he deserves, but also facing some scrutiny, likely from some unsavory money men but still...he'll get there. When he celebrated Sophia Coppola 'finally joining the family business' at the Oscars, I was smiling for days!
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