Sweet Land- a great movie

Last night I saw one of the most wonderful movies I have seen in years. Maybe the most wonderful. It's a small movie called "Sweet Land". It tells the story of Inge, a mail order bride from Germany who arrives in Minnesota in 1920 and faces discrimination because of her nationality. She meets the man who sent for her, a shy, hard working farmer but can't consummate the marriage because authorities don't want to give her a marriage certificate. I know this makes the movie seem heavy handed, but it isn't. This is a sweet, simple, touching story about love. The acting is great, the photography, breathtaking. This is such a special movie. It's on DVD now. Dont miss it for the world.

about forced vacations

I am obssesive with my vacation days. I want every one of them to be special. Which means that I want to spend every one of them traveling. Just being away from home. And I had already made my vacation plans so I wouldn't have to spend a single day at home. But this week, the company that I work at forced me to take two days off. Something that made me really upset. I tried fighting it. I said I would work both days and that this way I could keep my plans unaltered. Slowly I realized you can't fight City Hall. The administration's silence on the matter of my complaint meant one thing. Hey buddy, you take the two days off was the message. And I acted accordingly.

Strangely enough I have enjoyed the time away from work. I have been going to the beach. I have been doing some reading and here I am doing a little bit of writing. Every day has been a lazy one. It's been nice to see the hours go by. In peace and quiet. It's also been great that San Juan is basically empty these days, everyone is on vacation elsewhere. So taking the days off was good, after all. Maybe it's better not to plan things so much and just go with the flow and enjoy.
Still, taking a plane somewhere would have been nice.

about movie crushes

I must have seen Kay Lenz in "Breezy"on tv when I was 11 or 12. I remember not noticing at all the middle age crisis theme of the movie and being simply fixated on actress Kay Lenz. I thought she was everything I would want in a girlfriend when I was old enough to have one. So to me, it was more much of a "pre teen" crisis movie.

I had totally forgotten about this movie, until I saw it pop up in an Encore premium channel the other day. So many years later, the whole feeling of the movie changed so much. Now being in the early stages of middle age, the movie becomes much more relevant. And Kay Lenz becomes the girlfriend I cannot have because, well, I would be old enough to be her father.

Still, this is a very cool movie. It was directed by Clint Eastwood, not especially know for romantic flicks. And he shows here the low key approach and beautiful subtleness he would show decades later in movies like "Letters from Iwo Jima". William Holden and Kay Lenz are very good in it. And the whole hippie era environment gives it a sort of naive, romantic feeling. This is a really special little movie.
And it has Kay Lenz in it (did I mention that?)

Movies- "The Hospital"

I made my mind to write again. First up,movies. I recently saw two interesting movies from the early 1970's who dealt with a theme seldom touched by today's high adrenaline cinema": the plight of the middle aged man. First, "The Hospital" a movie starring George C. Scott that talks about the plight of our health care system decades before "Sicko" did. In a NYC hospital, chaos reigns, patients are mistreated and there may even be a serial killer loose. The movie also deals with the middle age crisis of a man who relializes that his life has gonewrong in so many ways. Alcohol seems to be the way out. He even considers suicide...until he meets a woman who makes him realize life is worth living. Kind of a corny way out. But still the movie is brave enough to deal with depression, impotence (pre-Viagra days) and divorce.

1970's movies

I have been watching a lot of movies from the 1970's again. Thanks to the Onelink DVR I am able to record these movies when they are shown at odd hours in the morning or really late at night. I have watched a couple of George C. Scott movies (nobody under 40 will know who he is) and I saw an amazing romantic film directed by Clint Eastwood in 1973.

I will write in detail about them later tonight. I have to be going to work now.

Dunbar's closes doors July 31

An Ocean Park institution is gone by the end of the month. Good ol' Dunbars closes down. Someone told me the owners of the site (Dunbars rents from them) want to build a huge building that will take most of the block. So the owner of Dunbars had to close it. A real shame. So go there this month and enjoy their amazing wings for the last time.

A Mighty Heart -the other movie playing in San Juan

Contrary to popular belief, there was another movie playing in town besides "Transformers".It was "A Mighty Heart", the kind of intelligent, wellmade movie that in the 1970's would have played in first run, mainstream theaters but now only plays at Fine Arts. So thousands miss out on seeing a thought provoking movie. Angelina Jolie plays Marianne Pearl, the wife of Daniel Pearl, a journalist kidnapped in Pakistan. The movie is shot documentary style and there are moments in which you forget you are watching a movie and beleive you are watching the actual thing. It reminds me of "United 93", although that film was superior. The movie has suspense (althogh we know the final outcome and it is entertaining.
Try to catch it. And yes, Angelina Jolie is excellent in it.

Black Snake Moan. Not your average movie.

Like everyone else, I was hoping to go the beach on the 4th of July. But I have a bad cold and am spending the day in bed, watching movies on DVD. First one watched was this
offbeat movie. A black man. A sexually obsessed white woman. chains. The Deep South. The Blues. Justin Timberlake. Add them all and you have a pretty entertaining movie about the reddeming power of love. Samuel Jackson, Christina Ricci and Justin are all excellent. And the movie keeps you guessing as towhere it is heading. Of course, the movie was a flop at theaters (it was never released in Puerto Rico). Audiences accostumed to cookie cutter movies would not know what to make of a strange movie like this.

Ratattouille and Army of Shadows

After the nightmarish workdays I've had, I was finally able to sit down and watch a couple of movies. First I saw "Army of Shadows", an excellent 1969 movie abour the French Resistance during the Second World War. Being true to life, this movie is not a series of action scenes, but a study about living under occupation. The paranoia. The suspicion. The fear. This movie was directed by Jean Pierre Melville, one of the best European directors of all time. A thoughtful, suspenseful and well made movie.

Then I saw "Ratatouille", quite possibly the best Pixar movie ever. This is such a sweet, funny, exciting movie. It puts to shame all the Shrek movies. This is not about cheap, obvious jokes but about wonderful storytelling. The animation is also outstanding, one is in awe of such magnificent work. Go see it.

Bye, Bye DMAX/ I am so happy

Last Friday I changed from DMAX to Onelink Internet. And I am enjoying the Internet with the wonder that I felt the first day I went online. Onelink is so amazingly fast.
I realized how I was wasting my money with a DSL connection that sometimes never reached beyond 180 kbps. And I was tired of calling DMAX and have them tell me that there was nothing wrong with their system, that it was my computer's fault, when I knew friends that were going through similar slow conections. So fuck DMAX and Telefonica or however it is called these days.

writing

It's been quite a couple of weeks. Working until late(had a record saetting 26 hour workday) and basically had no desire to get home and write. I didn't see any moves during this time because I was too tired to be able to enjoy one. But today I feel like writing.