There’s nothing quite like a week off to watch movies, sleep in, drink coffee and find a replacement for my favorite boots which are wearing out.
No luck finding the boots yet, but the rest is working well.
Tuesday was an evening for love stories.
Edward Norton is one of the finest actors about my age. I’m certain he’s done a bad movie, though I can’t think of any off the top of my head. “The Illusionist” continues this fine streak of films.
Norton plays Eisenheim the Illusionist, a popular stage magician in late 19th Century Austria. A cabinet maker’s son, Eisenheim is the childhood friend and teenage sweetheart of a Duchess whom he meets again about 15 years after leaving his home on the threat of his family being arrested if he continues his friendship with the young duchess. Things would be so much easier if the Duchess were not the intended fiancé (the engagement is not announced yet) of the fictive Leopold, heir to the Austrian throne.
I could babble about this movie all day. Edward Norton is intense and a bit creepy, Jessica Biel is radiant, Paul Giamatti as Chief Inspector Uhl is also a bit creepy but the picture of an honest but ambitious policeman, Rufus Sewell as the Crown Prince Leopold was cruel, arrogant and handsome. There’s 19th century stage magic (not camera tricks according to Neil Burger during the Q&A), beautiful city and countryscapes in and around Prague and a Phillip Glass soundtrack. What could be better? (OK, Rudy Dee in “No. 2” - but not by much)
One more thing about this movie that brought me great joy -- I love a movie that suckers me. This wasn’t quite “The Usual Suspects” on that account, but damn close. Also, how can you not love a movie with the character credit, Man who incites riot?
“One Last Dance” is the story of T, a hit man, who doesn’t drink or work Sundays whose only really friend is a cop, in Shanghai. T’s commissions show up in his mailbox, a name or in one case a question which needs answering and he does his job. The cop friend knows what he does, and doesn’t seem to mind much since most of T’s victims are scum.
T meets the sister of a rather goofy colleague and is smitten at first sight.
“One Last Dance” deals with morality in interesting ways. T and the detective play chess by mail, though they hand each other papers with the moves, and ask each other rhetorical questions. The rhetorical questions spill over into the rest of the story, and the most important one T asks is something like “Who is responsible for a murder, the man who pulls the trigger or the man who commissions the hit?”
I’ve seen Francis Ng, T, in other movies, and he generally has played a frantic goofy character, (in the Q&A director Max Makowski described him as the “Jim Carry of Hong Kong). He’s got a recognizable face, but as the restrained, perfectly dressed and coifed T he’s showing his ability to be a romantic lead.
This is a desperate, romantic, tragic, funny movie.
“One Last Dance” is neither as odd nor as funny as Makowski’s 1998 “The Pigeon Egg Strategy” but has elements of both. Makowski is a director/screenwriter worth keeping an eye on.
Well, it’s official I have a top four: “Eve and the Fires Horses”, “No. 2,” “Off the Black” and “The Illusionist” -- in no particular order.
I may head up to Park City Thursday since there are a couple of documentaries I want to see which are both playing. Wish me luck in the ticket line.
25 January 2006
24 January 2006
Sundance 2006 part the third
First things first. I have no brain. It was William Hurt in “Kiss of the Spider Woman”. “Cannery Row,” that’s where I first remember Nolte, that and “48 Hours” which came out the same year according to IMDB.com.
All these years I’ve been pressing my luck with Sundance and the U.S. Film and Video Festival before that. (Remember the Elk’s Theaters?) I don’t think I’ve seen half a dozen dogs.
And the lucky streak continued Monday.
I’m not a huge fan of Ashley Judd, but my respect for her work has gone up a notch or three after “Come Early Morning.”
She is lovely and very tired seeming as Lucy, a building contractor who drinks too much and ends up in the wrong bed with the wrong man far too many days. She also isn’t very good at sneaking out in the morning without waking them up. Even when she finds someone who may be right it’s difficult to break the habits of an adult life time.
It’s really not hard to understand why Lucy is how she is. She works full time, practically running the business, she takes one grandmother shopping and to her husband’s grave, she visits her other grandparents who have probably been fighting all of the 55 years they’ve been married, visits an uncle, is trying to reestablish relations with her alcoholic father by going to church with him, and hangs out with the old men at the bar until an interesting/interested young one comes along. She knows her life is a mess but is so stuck being dutiful, though I don’t think she resents her role, that she drinks. Strong people have been driven to drink by less.
There’s no magical Hollywood ending to “Come Early Morning,” but things are looking up as Lucy watches the sunset just before the credits roll.
“Eve and the Fire Horses” is beautiful. Set in about 1972, it is the story of Eve, a five or six-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl dealing with the death of her Grandmother, her slightly older sister’s fascination with Christianity (Catholicism specifically) and her mother’s debilitating depression after a miscarriage.
Being Buddhist, Eve’s father told the girls that their Grandmother would be reincarnated as a goldfish. The nun at Sunday School tells them that since she was a heathen she is in hell. Eve and her sister, Karena, decide that since their Grandmother was good, she must be in limbo and that if they do good deeds and pray she’ll go to heaven.
Karena dives headlong into Christianity with an interesting child’s interpretation of what things mean. Eve, again with the interpretation of an imaginative child, manages to reconcile Catholicism with her parent’s Buddhism. In grand moments of magic realism, Eve sees the Buddha and Jesus dancing in the living room and has conversations with her Grandmother’s Goddess statues come to life. Though the Goddess who gives her advice is a bit of a trouble maker.
I want to say so much about this movie, it’s one of those that I liked right away, but am liking even more twelve hours after watching it. This is one I would pay to see again without question.
Monday’s theme, as much as there was one, was daughters coming to terms with changes in their lives and families and the love of Grandmothers.
I haven’t had a grandmother since I was very young, but I’ve been lucky enough to have a great aunt who treats my mom like a daughter and me like a granddaughter and have had many wonderful older women in my life who have cared about me as if I were family.
So, with “Eve and the Fires Horses” I now have a top three with “No. 2” and “Off the Black” as the others.
All these years I’ve been pressing my luck with Sundance and the U.S. Film and Video Festival before that. (Remember the Elk’s Theaters?) I don’t think I’ve seen half a dozen dogs.
And the lucky streak continued Monday.
I’m not a huge fan of Ashley Judd, but my respect for her work has gone up a notch or three after “Come Early Morning.”
She is lovely and very tired seeming as Lucy, a building contractor who drinks too much and ends up in the wrong bed with the wrong man far too many days. She also isn’t very good at sneaking out in the morning without waking them up. Even when she finds someone who may be right it’s difficult to break the habits of an adult life time.
It’s really not hard to understand why Lucy is how she is. She works full time, practically running the business, she takes one grandmother shopping and to her husband’s grave, she visits her other grandparents who have probably been fighting all of the 55 years they’ve been married, visits an uncle, is trying to reestablish relations with her alcoholic father by going to church with him, and hangs out with the old men at the bar until an interesting/interested young one comes along. She knows her life is a mess but is so stuck being dutiful, though I don’t think she resents her role, that she drinks. Strong people have been driven to drink by less.
There’s no magical Hollywood ending to “Come Early Morning,” but things are looking up as Lucy watches the sunset just before the credits roll.
“Eve and the Fire Horses” is beautiful. Set in about 1972, it is the story of Eve, a five or six-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl dealing with the death of her Grandmother, her slightly older sister’s fascination with Christianity (Catholicism specifically) and her mother’s debilitating depression after a miscarriage.
Being Buddhist, Eve’s father told the girls that their Grandmother would be reincarnated as a goldfish. The nun at Sunday School tells them that since she was a heathen she is in hell. Eve and her sister, Karena, decide that since their Grandmother was good, she must be in limbo and that if they do good deeds and pray she’ll go to heaven.
Karena dives headlong into Christianity with an interesting child’s interpretation of what things mean. Eve, again with the interpretation of an imaginative child, manages to reconcile Catholicism with her parent’s Buddhism. In grand moments of magic realism, Eve sees the Buddha and Jesus dancing in the living room and has conversations with her Grandmother’s Goddess statues come to life. Though the Goddess who gives her advice is a bit of a trouble maker.
I want to say so much about this movie, it’s one of those that I liked right away, but am liking even more twelve hours after watching it. This is one I would pay to see again without question.
Monday’s theme, as much as there was one, was daughters coming to terms with changes in their lives and families and the love of Grandmothers.
I haven’t had a grandmother since I was very young, but I’ve been lucky enough to have a great aunt who treats my mom like a daughter and me like a granddaughter and have had many wonderful older women in my life who have cared about me as if I were family.
So, with “Eve and the Fires Horses” I now have a top three with “No. 2” and “Off the Black” as the others.
23 January 2006
Sundance 2006 part the second
Did you like that tease at the end of the last post? Let’s revisit...
Sunday was lovely, I could've stayed inside drinking my morning coffee, but instead chose to sit in the sun and watch the first two movies at the Broadway line up while I waited for mine to start.
Mine was “Adam’s Apples” a Danish film about a neo-nazi on probation who is to stay at a rural church with a minister who is in denial about his life, a former tennis player who was in prison for kidnap and rape and a middle eastern immigrant who committed revenge armed robbery on one particular oil company’s mini-marts, because he’s political and accuses the company of stealing his father’s land. There’s also the pregnant woman who ends up at the church because she doesn’t know what else to do.
Adam, at the minister Ivan’s behest, sets himself the task of making an apple pie with apples from the tree in the churchyard, as soon as the apples are ripe. There’s a reason why Adam’s bible keeps falling open to the Book of Job. There are crows, worms, whatever can happen to a tree, forced acknowledgment of the denied tragedy of Ivan’s life, an interesting misreading of Job and more as Adam tries to crack Ivan’s cheerful faith.
I don’t like the characters in “Adam’s Apples” but I found that I cared about them in this just short of tragic comedy.
I wasn’t really please with the Shorts Program II, a series of documentary shorts. None of them were bad, as has happened in past shorts programs, I just wasn’t really engaged despite it all. The best of the bunch was “Rape for Who I Am” which discusses the instance of lesbians in South Africa being raped for being gay and the lesbian community’s efforts to draw attention to these rapes as hate crimes. The other one I really liked was “No Umbrella -- Election Day in the City” about problems with the 2004 election in Ohio and the efforts of one octogenarian councilwoman to get more voting boots at a very busy district. I wouldn't want to argue with her, she reminded me of some very fierce older women I love and respect.
This has been one of my best Sundance weekends in years. I hope the rest of the fest continues on the same note.
Do you remember “Kiss of the Spider Woman”? It’s hard to believe that Nick Nolte is the same actor, only the quality of his performance is a giveaway.
Nolte plays Ray, a drunk, ill, part-time high school umpire in “Off the Black” (it’s a baseball term see the movie or look it up) Trevor Morgan plays David, a promising pitcher whose team doesn’t make the playoffs because of Ray’s call. In a fit of adolescent vengeance David and two friends vandalize Ray’s house. David gets caught and told if he cleans up the police will not be called and if goes to Ray’s 40th high school reunion pretending to be his son David’s father will not be called about a broken car window.
The friendship that develops between Ray and David is like a warped ideal of the father-son relationship. Maybe more uncle-nephew since they can talk more openly than most parents and children I have known. After all it’s Ray and not David’s father who takes David fishing for the first time. David’s relationships with his father and his sister are not explored deeply, but it is not ignored.
This one will make you laugh and made grown men cry. This is a chick movie for guys, and that’s not bad.
I ended the evening with “Little Miss Sunshine” which I read this morning (Monday) has been picked up for something like $10 million.
It’s the story of an extremely messed up family. They almost make the non-related family in “Adam’s Apples” look good. There Olive the seven-year-old wanna be beauty queen (who actually looks like a very cute little girl and doesn’t have that creepy plastic look), her teen-age brother Dwight who hasn’t spoken to anyone in nine months, Uncle Frank who is just out of the hospital after trying to commit suicide, dad Richard a failing motivational speaker, Richard’s heroin-snorting porn-loving father (Alan Arkin) who is working with Olive on her talent routine and Sheryl the mom who’s trying to hold the family together.
The family climbs into the VW bus for a trip from Albuquerque to LA when Olive’s regional second place is moved up in the Little Miss Sunshine contest due to a scandal with the regional winner possibly involving diet pills. Clutches and more die during the trip, but the family makes it to the contest just in time.
This film ends the way it should, rather than the way a main stream movie might have it end. Let’s just say, Grandpa is a heck of a choreographer.
I did like “Little Miss Sunshine,” but “No. 2” and “Off the Black” are my best of show so far.
Sunday was lovely, I could've stayed inside drinking my morning coffee, but instead chose to sit in the sun and watch the first two movies at the Broadway line up while I waited for mine to start.
Mine was “Adam’s Apples” a Danish film about a neo-nazi on probation who is to stay at a rural church with a minister who is in denial about his life, a former tennis player who was in prison for kidnap and rape and a middle eastern immigrant who committed revenge armed robbery on one particular oil company’s mini-marts, because he’s political and accuses the company of stealing his father’s land. There’s also the pregnant woman who ends up at the church because she doesn’t know what else to do.
Adam, at the minister Ivan’s behest, sets himself the task of making an apple pie with apples from the tree in the churchyard, as soon as the apples are ripe. There’s a reason why Adam’s bible keeps falling open to the Book of Job. There are crows, worms, whatever can happen to a tree, forced acknowledgment of the denied tragedy of Ivan’s life, an interesting misreading of Job and more as Adam tries to crack Ivan’s cheerful faith.
I don’t like the characters in “Adam’s Apples” but I found that I cared about them in this just short of tragic comedy.
I wasn’t really please with the Shorts Program II, a series of documentary shorts. None of them were bad, as has happened in past shorts programs, I just wasn’t really engaged despite it all. The best of the bunch was “Rape for Who I Am” which discusses the instance of lesbians in South Africa being raped for being gay and the lesbian community’s efforts to draw attention to these rapes as hate crimes. The other one I really liked was “No Umbrella -- Election Day in the City” about problems with the 2004 election in Ohio and the efforts of one octogenarian councilwoman to get more voting boots at a very busy district. I wouldn't want to argue with her, she reminded me of some very fierce older women I love and respect.
This has been one of my best Sundance weekends in years. I hope the rest of the fest continues on the same note.
Do you remember “Kiss of the Spider Woman”? It’s hard to believe that Nick Nolte is the same actor, only the quality of his performance is a giveaway.
Nolte plays Ray, a drunk, ill, part-time high school umpire in “Off the Black” (it’s a baseball term see the movie or look it up) Trevor Morgan plays David, a promising pitcher whose team doesn’t make the playoffs because of Ray’s call. In a fit of adolescent vengeance David and two friends vandalize Ray’s house. David gets caught and told if he cleans up the police will not be called and if goes to Ray’s 40th high school reunion pretending to be his son David’s father will not be called about a broken car window.
The friendship that develops between Ray and David is like a warped ideal of the father-son relationship. Maybe more uncle-nephew since they can talk more openly than most parents and children I have known. After all it’s Ray and not David’s father who takes David fishing for the first time. David’s relationships with his father and his sister are not explored deeply, but it is not ignored.
This one will make you laugh and made grown men cry. This is a chick movie for guys, and that’s not bad.
I ended the evening with “Little Miss Sunshine” which I read this morning (Monday) has been picked up for something like $10 million.
It’s the story of an extremely messed up family. They almost make the non-related family in “Adam’s Apples” look good. There Olive the seven-year-old wanna be beauty queen (who actually looks like a very cute little girl and doesn’t have that creepy plastic look), her teen-age brother Dwight who hasn’t spoken to anyone in nine months, Uncle Frank who is just out of the hospital after trying to commit suicide, dad Richard a failing motivational speaker, Richard’s heroin-snorting porn-loving father (Alan Arkin) who is working with Olive on her talent routine and Sheryl the mom who’s trying to hold the family together.
The family climbs into the VW bus for a trip from Albuquerque to LA when Olive’s regional second place is moved up in the Little Miss Sunshine contest due to a scandal with the regional winner possibly involving diet pills. Clutches and more die during the trip, but the family makes it to the contest just in time.
This film ends the way it should, rather than the way a main stream movie might have it end. Let’s just say, Grandpa is a heck of a choreographer.
I did like “Little Miss Sunshine,” but “No. 2” and “Off the Black” are my best of show so far.
Sundance 2006
Mmm Sundance.
The smell of the popcorn, the murmur of the crowd, the woman sitting next to me with the heavily perfumed lotion (I know it was lotion because she put it on during the movie -- who the hell wears perfume to a movie?)
Anyway.
It’s Monday and I’ve only hit 10 films. I was far too tired for a midnight on Saturday, what with sinus infection recovery and all. In fact, it’s been more than a week since I’ve had a beer. I wonder if my friends at the bar miss me yet.
So, Friday night I started the festival with “13 Tzameti” (Tzameti means 13 in Georgian). This is a rather violent, but wonderful little movie. The main character is a handyman who obtains a train ticket to Paris and paid hotel receipt that have been sent to his employer, who subsequently od’d. While he’s in the hotel the phone rings and he follows the directions out of curiosity. Let’s just say that people have an amazing capacity for cruelty and will gamble on anything.
This decidedly French film, whose director is Georgian, has a feel of late Film Noir and early French New Wave. The decision to film in black and white was a wise one, it keeps the focus on the story rather than on the blood.
So I guess Friday was my day for violence. My second film was “The Proposition.” Screenwriter/Music director Nick Cave even showed up in Salt Lake for a few minutes along with the film’s director and some cast and crew. They only gave an intro, which it was better than nothing, though a Q&A would’ve been nice.
This historical fiction, set in frontier Australia, is the story of the Burns brothers, who are accused of committing rape and murder of a frontier family. Captain Stanley captures two of them and makes a deal with the middle brother. If he kills or delivers the oldest brother by Christmas (less than two weeks away) the youngest brother, Mike, will not be executed.
This is pretty much a violent horrible story told in a beautiful way. The dust and heat of the bush, the sunsets (ah the sunsets - fantastic even by Salt Lake standards), the relationship between the tired, headachy captain and his beautiful young wife, the hate-love between the two older brothers and their love for the rather simple young Mike.
Of the films I’ve seen so far, this is the one I would be most surprised not to see in a theater near me.
Saturday dawned (at noon) with “Special.” A parking enforcement officer joins a drug study, mostly because he’s bored. His reaction to the medication makes him delusional and he comes to believe that his super hero fantasies are real.
Poor Les. He has a crush on the girl at the corner market, his only friends are two brothers who own a comics shop and the men in the suits really are after him.
Other people I’ve talked to have enjoyed the movie more than I did, and there was nothing wrong with it. I just didn’t care for it. Les didn’t move me. I felt sorry for the poor lonely bastard, I appreciated his motives, but he lacked depth. I was neither engaged nor repelled by him. He’s just someone I wouldn’t want sitting next to me on the bus, even when he’s not in his leather super suit.
Had won ton soup at P.F. Chang’s for a late lunch. Not bad, though a bit bland, a nice warm filling lunch for one.
“La Tragedia de Macario” moved me, proving I’m not cold hearted. Inspired by the true story of illegal immigrants suffocating in a truck in Victoria Texas in 2003, this film pulls hard as desperation leads people to their accidental deaths.
Macario is a day laborer on a farm in Sabinas Hidalgo Mexico. Every night his wife fixes beans and tortillas since that’s what they can afford, they argue when he tries to make jokes and then end up sleeping on the floor. When the boss sells his property, Macario and his friend are at loose ends.
It’s a sad hard world that makes $500 - $800 per month boxing tomatoes in San Antonio, Texas look like a good option for two married men, one with a sick child.
The story is framed with a ballad, telling Macario’s story. Each verse acts like a chapter heading of the style, “Chapter 5 in which Macario prays to the Virgin Mary for advice.” It gives a very foreign feeling to an American viewer, but does not detract from the overall feel of the story. The ballad does not turn the movie into a musical in anyway, it just gives cultural perspective.
Remember how sexy Henry Rollins was twenty years ago?
After a supper break (ran home had a sandwich, not exciting) I hopped in line for “American Hardcore.” Unlike the first punk movement circa 1977, this was a very American musical and cultural phenomenon which ran it’s main course from approximately 1980-86. Based on Steven Blush’s book of the same name, this movie discusses the rise of hardcore American punk through interviews and show footage, I just can’t describe them as concerts. I saw a lot of the bands here in SLC at the Speedway, the Indian Center, the Barf & Swill, pardon, the Bar & Grill, concerts did not happen in those places.
Anyway interviews with members of Bad Brains, Black Flag, DOA, MDC -- you or and early forties and spent some time at places like the Speedway, make an effort and check it out. The film, of course, is not the complete story, for many reasons including not enough time for all the stories to be told, deaths and a few requests for interviews being refused, but it’s a good cross section of what Nancy Reagan wanted us to say “No” to.
I ended the evening with “No. 2.” This is my favorite so far, despite tough competition. (I hate the next adjective, but must use it in this case.) The incomparable Rudy Dee plays a Fijian matriarch in New Zealand who wakes up one morning and decides things are too quiet and she wants a party so she can name her successor as head of the family. She doesn’t want her children there, just her grandchildren and “no outsiders”. She wants dancing and singing and fighting, and her grandsons to roast a pig.
The first problems with the plan is a grandson and granddaughter who want to bring their girlfriend and boyfriend, then the butcher is closed and the pig is delivered live (much to Nanna Maria’s great-grandchildren’s delight), her children start to show up, one grandson (after a lecturer on compassion from the priest) decides the party needs to be bigger and starts inviting all of the family friends.
This is a grand story of family with everything Nanna Maria wanted, dancing, singing, swearing, fighting and a roast pig. It’s one of those grand food movies that makes you not just hungry for food but hungry for life.
As I said, I was too tired for a midnight show and am kicking myself for stopping at four on Saturday.
Sunday was lovely, I could've stayed inside drinking my morning coffee, but instead chose to sit in the sun and watch the first two movies at the Broadway line up while I waited for mine to start.
The smell of the popcorn, the murmur of the crowd, the woman sitting next to me with the heavily perfumed lotion (I know it was lotion because she put it on during the movie -- who the hell wears perfume to a movie?)
Anyway.
It’s Monday and I’ve only hit 10 films. I was far too tired for a midnight on Saturday, what with sinus infection recovery and all. In fact, it’s been more than a week since I’ve had a beer. I wonder if my friends at the bar miss me yet.
So, Friday night I started the festival with “13 Tzameti” (Tzameti means 13 in Georgian). This is a rather violent, but wonderful little movie. The main character is a handyman who obtains a train ticket to Paris and paid hotel receipt that have been sent to his employer, who subsequently od’d. While he’s in the hotel the phone rings and he follows the directions out of curiosity. Let’s just say that people have an amazing capacity for cruelty and will gamble on anything.
This decidedly French film, whose director is Georgian, has a feel of late Film Noir and early French New Wave. The decision to film in black and white was a wise one, it keeps the focus on the story rather than on the blood.
So I guess Friday was my day for violence. My second film was “The Proposition.” Screenwriter/Music director Nick Cave even showed up in Salt Lake for a few minutes along with the film’s director and some cast and crew. They only gave an intro, which it was better than nothing, though a Q&A would’ve been nice.
This historical fiction, set in frontier Australia, is the story of the Burns brothers, who are accused of committing rape and murder of a frontier family. Captain Stanley captures two of them and makes a deal with the middle brother. If he kills or delivers the oldest brother by Christmas (less than two weeks away) the youngest brother, Mike, will not be executed.
This is pretty much a violent horrible story told in a beautiful way. The dust and heat of the bush, the sunsets (ah the sunsets - fantastic even by Salt Lake standards), the relationship between the tired, headachy captain and his beautiful young wife, the hate-love between the two older brothers and their love for the rather simple young Mike.
Of the films I’ve seen so far, this is the one I would be most surprised not to see in a theater near me.
Saturday dawned (at noon) with “Special.” A parking enforcement officer joins a drug study, mostly because he’s bored. His reaction to the medication makes him delusional and he comes to believe that his super hero fantasies are real.
Poor Les. He has a crush on the girl at the corner market, his only friends are two brothers who own a comics shop and the men in the suits really are after him.
Other people I’ve talked to have enjoyed the movie more than I did, and there was nothing wrong with it. I just didn’t care for it. Les didn’t move me. I felt sorry for the poor lonely bastard, I appreciated his motives, but he lacked depth. I was neither engaged nor repelled by him. He’s just someone I wouldn’t want sitting next to me on the bus, even when he’s not in his leather super suit.
Had won ton soup at P.F. Chang’s for a late lunch. Not bad, though a bit bland, a nice warm filling lunch for one.
“La Tragedia de Macario” moved me, proving I’m not cold hearted. Inspired by the true story of illegal immigrants suffocating in a truck in Victoria Texas in 2003, this film pulls hard as desperation leads people to their accidental deaths.
Macario is a day laborer on a farm in Sabinas Hidalgo Mexico. Every night his wife fixes beans and tortillas since that’s what they can afford, they argue when he tries to make jokes and then end up sleeping on the floor. When the boss sells his property, Macario and his friend are at loose ends.
It’s a sad hard world that makes $500 - $800 per month boxing tomatoes in San Antonio, Texas look like a good option for two married men, one with a sick child.
The story is framed with a ballad, telling Macario’s story. Each verse acts like a chapter heading of the style, “Chapter 5 in which Macario prays to the Virgin Mary for advice.” It gives a very foreign feeling to an American viewer, but does not detract from the overall feel of the story. The ballad does not turn the movie into a musical in anyway, it just gives cultural perspective.
Remember how sexy Henry Rollins was twenty years ago?
After a supper break (ran home had a sandwich, not exciting) I hopped in line for “American Hardcore.” Unlike the first punk movement circa 1977, this was a very American musical and cultural phenomenon which ran it’s main course from approximately 1980-86. Based on Steven Blush’s book of the same name, this movie discusses the rise of hardcore American punk through interviews and show footage, I just can’t describe them as concerts. I saw a lot of the bands here in SLC at the Speedway, the Indian Center, the Barf & Swill, pardon, the Bar & Grill, concerts did not happen in those places.
Anyway interviews with members of Bad Brains, Black Flag, DOA, MDC -- you or and early forties and spent some time at places like the Speedway, make an effort and check it out. The film, of course, is not the complete story, for many reasons including not enough time for all the stories to be told, deaths and a few requests for interviews being refused, but it’s a good cross section of what Nancy Reagan wanted us to say “No” to.
I ended the evening with “No. 2.” This is my favorite so far, despite tough competition. (I hate the next adjective, but must use it in this case.) The incomparable Rudy Dee plays a Fijian matriarch in New Zealand who wakes up one morning and decides things are too quiet and she wants a party so she can name her successor as head of the family. She doesn’t want her children there, just her grandchildren and “no outsiders”. She wants dancing and singing and fighting, and her grandsons to roast a pig.
The first problems with the plan is a grandson and granddaughter who want to bring their girlfriend and boyfriend, then the butcher is closed and the pig is delivered live (much to Nanna Maria’s great-grandchildren’s delight), her children start to show up, one grandson (after a lecturer on compassion from the priest) decides the party needs to be bigger and starts inviting all of the family friends.
This is a grand story of family with everything Nanna Maria wanted, dancing, singing, swearing, fighting and a roast pig. It’s one of those grand food movies that makes you not just hungry for food but hungry for life.
As I said, I was too tired for a midnight show and am kicking myself for stopping at four on Saturday.
Sunday was lovely, I could've stayed inside drinking my morning coffee, but instead chose to sit in the sun and watch the first two movies at the Broadway line up while I waited for mine to start.
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