Che rides...

Thoughts on "The Motorcycle Diaries":

Cinematography of South America: gorgeous

Gael Garcia Bernal: también

Rodrigo de la Serna: very entertaining

La Poderosa (the motorcycle): hilarious

The story:  Interesting; rambling like a long road trip, with lots of the very small moments and discoveries that cumulatively add up to a portrait of a young man on a journey encountering things that will change him profoundly and set him on the path to the myth – but all before the myth: a sensitive, intelligent, complex, and sickly soul just forming, just becoming a man. I should also say it’s often very funny.

Resonance for today: The injustice in the world, sometimes appallingly cruel, will always call forth some movement to counter it. In this case communism, in the current world, terrorism. These movements create their own injustices, of course. But so long as the powerful refuse to recognize and address the real issues, to hold their own power and that of their friends as their own birthright with any means justifying the end of staying in power at the expense of others, we will continue to have revolutionaries – terrorists of our day – striking out to try to call attention to and redress the problems. (The movie, by the way, addresses Che’s life long before he becomes a revolutionary. What may happen with similarly bright young men today encountering today’s injustices, much of which they can point to the West, to the U.S., as either being responsible for or supporting?)

Venue: Avon Cinema on Thayer St. in Providence, near the Brown University campus – kind of what Harvard Square used to be before it yuppified, only much smaller. With actual parking within a couple of blocks of where you want to go!

 So, do I want to go to South America? You bet! But with more reliable transportation and a bit more cash, bourgeois as I am.

8:37:27 PM      trackback [] 

Maria Full of Grace

From a longer post:

Yesterday afternoon, in the rain, M made the relatively short trip up to Chelmsford and then we drove to see “Maria Full of Grace.” It’s about a young woman who becomes a drug mule as a way out of the bleak prospects of life working at a Columbian flower plantation. It’s harrowing at times, but a fascinating look at one immigrant’s dangerous journey to New York. The Columbian actress playing Maria gives a subtle performance as a quietly determined young woman who is uneducated but sharp enough to size up situations pretty clearly. But will her instincts and enough luck get her through? You pull for her all the way.

3:31:17 PM      trackback [] 

What is essential is invisible to the eye

Today is the birthday of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince (from The Writer's Almanac). For the entire book online see this site, and note that it reads: "This site is best viewed with the heart."

     "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
     "What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
     "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
     "It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

1:41:42 PM      trackback [] 

Movies this weekend

Last night I saw "Control Room," the eye-opening documentary about Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the US invasion of Iraq. It focuses on how Al-Jazeera (and other media outlets) covered the war, what they aired – which unlike US coverage showed a lot of bloody civilian casualties – and how they struggled with balancing their journalistic ideals with their Arab allegiances. It also showed the spin the US military spokesmen gave reporters. It asks what is more or less truthful, the coverage by Al-Jazeera or that of Fox News, and questions how much “truth” one can present in war coverage. It also presents some interesting alternative views of events, such as so-called Iraqis pulling down the statue of Saddam, which appears to have been staged. And there were several fascinating, complex characters as well.

Some ironies: The clips of Donald Rumsfeld saying of Al-Jazeera, “We are dealing with people who are willing to lie to the world to make their case,” got a big laugh from the audience in Cambridge where I saw it. Equally ironic was the clip of Bush deriding Al-Jazeera for airing footage of the American soldiers taken prisoner and then saying how well the US treats its prisoners and spouting platitudes about adhering to the Geneva Conventions.

After the movie, we walked a few blocks away and ate at The Helmand, appropriately enough. The Helmand serves delicious Afghani food and is owned by the sister of that most elegant of world leaders, Harmid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan. (Note to bald men everywhere: lose the baseball caps, here’s how you top a bald pate with style.)

If you get a chance, you should definitely see "Control Room." Oh, and eat at The Helmand, too, if you’re in the Boston area. Did I mention how delicious the food is?

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I saw “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” Friday night. I hadn’t seen either of the first two Harry Potter movies and have not read one word of the books, though intend to, but I still enjoyed this movie very much. I love the director, Alfonso Cuarón, of "Y Tu Mama También" fame, and my companion said he thought this one was better than the previous – more atmospheric and darker. My only problem was that I was so cold in the theater that I thought one of the Dementors had swooped in and sucked my soul right out of me. These movie theaters should hand out blankets like they do on airplanes, especially in the summer when they turn the A/C up full blast.

After the movie, I warmed up with a glass of wine and some yummy grilled fish at the nearby Outback Steakhouse while my companion tried out his pantomimes of characters (human or otherwise) from the movie for me to guess. I’m afraid I was very bad at it, mainly because I didn’t know who anyone in the movie was, really, this being my first exposure to the stories. The only one I could imitate was Harry (okay, just make two circles with your fingers and put them around each eye – I know, very lame). Then we came home and watched the Red Sox come from behind to beat the Giants, heh heh.

8:54:39 PM      trackback [] 

Summer reading

I have about 80 pages left to go in Middlesex and could have stayed up reading it into the night last night except that my eyes were already tired from working at my computer all day. I recently reached a crucial, pivotal stage in the story, which means I don’t leave it entirely when I put it down. It stays with me, unsettling my dreams at night and making me feel during the day like I’ve forgotten something, like I had a conversation with a friend interrupted and I need to call her back. But this also helps me pick it up and get right back into it – say, a few pages while eating my lunch or a few paragraphs during commercial breaks in my telenovela. I think I’ll miss it when I’m done.

So what to start after this? I have a copy of The Lovely Bones I’m planning to read. I also want to read The Prince of Providence. Any suggestions? What’s on your summer reading list? Do you prefer fiction or nonfiction for summer reading? Light reading or heavy? Or is it any different during the summer from the rest of the year?

Update:

Yikes! The New Yorker summer fiction issue just arrived. I guess that solves that problem!

1:34:03 PM      trackback [] 

Wings of Desire

From a longer post:

Wings of Desire

I saw other winged creatures tonight on cable – they were showing Wim Wenders’ “Wings of Desire,” one of my all-time favorite movies. I saw it when it came out, in the theater, and it’s one of those movies where you walk outside afterwards and all the world has changed. Set in Berlin (1987 movie), it’s about an angel who falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist and decides to become mortal. He wants to experience the transient things of a mortal life – the actual taste of an apple or a cup of coffee, to know what color is, to feel the cold on his hands, and of course the experience of love. All the beautiful things that we take for granted, things that we fear losing and yet fail to fully appreciate when we have them.

I missed a lot of the movie this time, because I was home and therefore distracted with some of those very mortal things – making the spaghetti sauce, a little later than I planned; explaining to my housemate what she missed because she came in late; and talking with her about things of more immediate import than some of the endless ramblings in German (the angels listen in on the thoughts of mortals, but these being German mortals there is some heavy shit going on in there!). Peter Falk is wonderful playing himself. And Bruno Ganz, the angel who falls in love, may have the most beatific smile I’ve seen on screen.

By the way, there was a Hollywood remake you may have seen, “City of Angels” with Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan. I was prepared to hate it, but I think they did a pretty good job of transporting the basic story line to a completely different time and place and sensibility.

11:40:19 PM      trackback [] 

Good Bye Lenin! and Don Juan de Marco

From a longer post on June 1st:

Saturday night I went to see “Good Bye Lenin!” with some friends. It’s about young East German man, Alex, who tends to his mother, an avid socialist who had a heart attack and fell into a coma just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. When she wakes up, the doctors fear her heart is too weak to withstand the shock of finding out how much the world has changed. So Alex goes about trying to restore the past in their little apartment, including refilling old socialist-era pickle jars that aren’t sold anymore and so on. The well-intentioned scam becomes harder to keep up, requiring more elaborate ruses. It’s often very funny and at other times quite touching. We all enjoyed it.

Sunday night my housemate Kathy and I watched “Don Juan de Marco” with Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando on some cable station I’m now getting. What a wonderful movie! Kathy hadn’t seen it before, and I hadn’t since it came out almost 10 years ago. Funny, enchanting and romantic.

2:20:51 PM      trackback [] 

Reading: Middlesex

Passages of delightful writing in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex bring a smile to my face every time I pick it up. I’m not quite halfway through. Here’s a bit I just read… In the midst of telling the story of his birth – after the epic story of his ancestry – the narrator (a hermaphrodite) pauses to reflect:

Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever…

 – from Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

   winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction

2:40:41 PM      trackback [] 

I'm Not Scared

From a longer post, the movie review part:

I’ve had a very busy weekend to make up for a very slow week. Friday night I saw the Italian movie, “I’m Not Scared,” which I really enjoyed. The story is seen from the eyes of a 10-year-old boy and it’s a wonderful and dark tale, and the visuals of the fields that he and his friends play in and other scenes are beautiful and sometimes astonishing. It reminded me of a really good children’s book complete with gorgeous illustrations of the lands and some of the beasts that live on them, human and animal, all very real.

6:28:51 PM      trackback [] 

Bon Voyage

From a longer post, the movie part only!:

After dinner, we went to see “Bon Voyage,” which was quite the romp – a French farce set in the 1940’s in Paris and Bordeaux just before the German occupation – hey, how fun is that? Very fun, actually! Maybe it was more enjoyable because we weren’t expecting a lot, but I’d recommend it – very entertaining.

6:26:25 PM      trackback [] 

What Princess Bride character are you?

I love The Princess Bride! (Via Twilight Cafe.)

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti

7:54:34 PM      trackback []