On translation

Kommentar und Übersetzung verhalten sich zum Text wie Stil und Mimesis zur Natur: dasselbe Phänomen unter verschiedenen Betrachtungsweisen. Am Baum des heiligen Textes sind beide nur die ewig rauschenden Blätter, am Baume des profanen die rechtzeitig fallenden Früchte.

(Walter Benjamin, Einbahnstrasse, 20)

Just a walk around the corner... in the galaxy!

Last night I saw a documentary program on TV featuring the adventurer Tadashi Nagase. Awesome. He spent 30 years walking around the globe, or 40,000 km, with all his belongings on a wheelcart that he pulled around everywhere he went. He had his last leg to finish from Manaus to Porto Velho in Brazilian Amazonia... amid the lairs of oncas (jaguars) and jacares (alligators). He belongs to the same generation as I (he is 50 this year); all these years that I spent in vain he kept walking, walking, walking, to the other side of the world. I was moved.

Why in fact couldn't I live like that?

At ABC

On Friday the 17th I had an in-store talk with Yoko Tawada on her new book AMERICA at the Aoyama Book Center. There were about fifty people in the audience and it was fun. We talked in front of nice shelves of foreign books. Yoko read three portions from her book and I read two pieces of my border poems (the same ones as I used for the soiree with Aimee Bender).

Reading a text is always easier for me than talking, which honestly is not for me. I am not a good talker, I have never been since my childhood; I tend to digress into a no-human territory. But this is something I have to overcome, I guess. Being a teacher. Being a performer, that is. But then, to sing is easier than to talk.

On Sunday finished proof-reading my new book "honolulu, braS/Zil." Yes, this is the title. A book filled with surprises. Hope you'll like it.

Same old, same old

Here is what Ricœur says about staying the same:

Que signifie en effet rester le même à travers le temps? Je me suis mesuré autrefois à cette énigme, pour laquelle j'ai proposé de distinguer deux sens de l'identique: le même comme idem, same, gleich---le même comme ipse, self, Selbst. Il m'a paru que le maintien de soi dans le temps repose sur un jeu complexe entre mêmeté et ipseité, si l'on ose ces barbarismes; de ce jeu équivoque, les aspects pratiques et pathiques sont plus redoutables que les aspects conceptuels, épistémiques. Je dirais que la traduction identitaire, la "déraison identitaire", comme dit Jacques Le Goff, consiste dans le repli de l'identité ipse sur l'identité idem, ou, si vous préférez, dans le glissement, dans la dérive, conduisant de la souplesse, propre au maintien de sois dans la promesse, à la rigidité inflexible d'un caractère, au sens quasi typographique du terme.

(Paul Ricœur, La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli, 98-99)

Tawada's new book

Last evening there was a symposium around Yoko Tawada's new book at the U of Tokyo. The participants were Yoko the author, Motoyuki Shibata, and Masatsugu Ono. The session was organized by Kan Nozaki. Shibata the little giant was as usual very impressive and witty. Ono, himself a novelist, was so refreshing I laughed out aloud a couple of times. Nozaki's moderation was simply impeccable.

Tawada's new novel is called AMERICA: hido no tairiku. The subtitle has a typically Tawada-ish double entendre: "a ruthless continent" and "a continent without roads." It's a continuation of a sort of her previous Yogisha no Yakoressha. Ono brilliantly analyzed the two books to which I had little to add.

After the session I went with some friends to the bistro on campus. The service was terrible, the food acceptable. There I ran into Karen Yamashita who came for a lecture by a UCLA professor. We took the same line going home.

What art is all about

Le Clézio's vision of art is EXTREMELY close to mine. Here is what he says:

Écrire pour agir. L'art est souvent trahi par les artistes. Voici peut-être le phénomène humain le moins individuel, le moins libre qui soit: l'art est expression de tout ce que la société a de pensée commune, de mythe, de réflexe de masse. C'est une mode, au sens le plus large du mot. (L'extase matérielle, 145)

On mimetism

Tout est rythme. Comprendre la beauté, c'est parvenir à faire coïncider son rythme propre avec celui de la nature. Chaque chose, chaque être a une indication particulière. Il porte en lui son chant. Il fait être en accord avec lui jusqu'à se confondre. Et ce ne peut être une démarche de l'intelligence universelle. Atteindre les autres, se précipiter en eux, RETOURNER en eux; il s'agit de mimétisme. D'abord être soi et se connaître soi, puis imiter ce qui vous entoure. (L'extase matérielle, 91)

Bataille on bataille

I casually took up an old copy of The Tears of Eros and read the following: something hard to believe,bien qu'il soit passionant...

Prior to the end of the late Paleolithic period, war seems to have been unknown. It is only after this time--or after the intermediary period known as the Mesolithic--that we find the first accounts of men killing each other in combat. [...] The victors annihilated the vanquished group. In the wake of combat they massacred enemy survivors, prisoners, and women. But young children of both sexes were probably adopted by the victors who must have granted them the same status as their own children after the war was over. As far as we can tell, judging from the practices of modern primitives, the only material gain from war was the ultimate growth of the victorious group. (57-58)

See the starangeness of the latter part of the above! "Probably adopted," "must have granted," "as far as we can tell," (can we at all?). This is not even a theory. Yet, it's fun...

Leiris on auto-ethnography

Evidemment, tu sais que la Règle du jeu a été écrite en grande partie d'après des fiches, eh bien le maniement des fiches m'avait été rendu familier par l'enquête ethnographique. Je crois que si je n'avais pas été ethnographe, je n'aurais pas eu l'idée de faire des fiches. J'aurais pris des notes, mais ça n'aurait pas été la même chose, ça n'aurait pas été ces fiches qu'après je pouvais manipuler, changer de place, etc. Et ce qu'il y a d'ethnographique dans cela se réduit à la manipulation des fiches.

(C'est-à-dire, 49)

Althusser as a young student

Tout ce temps de Marseille, je poursuivais mes exploits scolaires. Nous étions deux à nous disputer la première place en classe: un jeune garçon au visage ingrat, râblé, très fort en maths (où selon le j'étais plutôt médiocre), du nom de Vieilledent. Vieilles dents / vieilles maisons (Althusser: alte-Haüser en patois alsacien), étrange couple. Je me souviens qu'il tenta un jour de m'enrôler dans les jeunesses du colonel de La Roque, mais je ne marchai pas. Certainement pas par la conscience politique, mais par prudence, comme mon père.

(L'avenir dure longtemps, 105)

Janet Frame's Oamaru

On Friday finished writing my essay on Janet Frame's Oamaru; a little over 4200 letters (in Japanese). This is for Coyote magazine, but it turned out to be a little too subtle, I'm afraid. Haven't heard from my editor yet; maybe he didn't like it, and tant pis!

Anyway I owe it to my self to write a longer study on Janet Frame... What I have in mind is a study on three woman writers from different languages and regions of the world: Janet Frame, Clarice Lispector, Simone Shwartz-Bart. When can I begin working on it, is the problem!

10 Books for ABC

Aoyama Book Center, the bookshop, asked me to choose ten books for its new year's sale. I chose the following titles as: 10 books written by women writers that I respect. Of course the list might have been different if I were asked to make it on another day. But for now, it goes like this.

Aimee Bender, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt.
Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine.
Sharon Creech, Walk Two Moons.
Janet Frame, The Lagoon.
Esther Freud, Hideous Kinky.
Jamaica Kincaid, At the Bottom of the River.
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping.
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony.
Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping.
Karen Tei Yamashita, Tropic of Orange.

Adobo

Last evening Karen cooked for us delicious adobo, thus reminding me of the long-forgotten (by me) Filipino national dish. It was really good. Gostoso, mesmo.

I am now trying to remember its recipe. First you cook onion and garlic (chopped or whatever) with soy sauce and vinegar. In this sauce you cook either chicken or pork until the meat is tender. Finish it with a tablespoon-full of paprika for color. This is it. Karen put some coliander to give it a green accent. Peace.

I used to use the adobo mix they sold at the Asian grocery store. This was when I lived in Tucson. But there is no need to use the mix anymore. I can make it any time, any day, with very little effort, and some cooking time. Satisfaction guaranteed.

Para viver uma viagem sem fim

Friday evening gave a talk at Meiji for a very general audience. The average age was probably in the sixties. But it was enjoyable. Attendance was not bad. A little less than a hundred, I think. My talk was titled: To Live a Journey with No End. It was tha last of the weekly series with four speakers around the theme of "Why Do We Go On Travelling?"

Here is the outline of my talk:

1. Introduction
-Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)
-Ukiya Tojiro (1942-1965)
-Miyamoto Tsuneichi (1907-1981)

2. Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989)

3. J.M.G. Le Clezio (1940-)

4. On "World Photography"
-Yann-Arthus Bertrand (1946-)
-Sebastiao Salgado (1944-)
-Uwe Ommer (1943-)

5. On My Own "Travel Writing"
-The Chinese Tahiti (1992)
-The Aomori Note (2006)

Time being limited to 120 minutes with 15 minutes of Q & As, I couldn't get to the part 5. But in general it was well organized and I kept time as was expected.

For Chatwin and Le Clezio I owe them both a full-length study, respectively.

Conversion, of a sort

C'est depuis ce jour-là que je n'ai plus de projets... Que je vois ça et là des objets de souci, mais sans me soucier... Et que j'ai renoncé à faire de mon plein gré le moindre bruit sur la terre... Tout va de soi... Mon temps se passe entre ce qui me vient et ce qui m'arrive. (Maurice Clavel)

Bringing Up a Baby

My friend Kan Nozaki's book Akachan Kyoiku (titled after the American film Bringing Up A Baby) received this year's Kodansha Prize for Essays along with Kazuya Fukuda. It's a lovely book telling the days of a middle-aged French lit prof with his new born son... full of joy, laughter, and discovery.

Not knowing how to congratulate him, I wrote three haikus that I sent him by e-mail. Here they are (in the original):

Infant Joy! 躍り秘めたる　土ふまず

この掌に降りておいで　かかとの光

葉脈と指　いのちの脈絡　みどりご力（りょく）

Not bad, eh? Congratulations to Kan! (Whose name literally means JOY.)

Hispania etc.

On Saturday I was on a panel at the Association for Hispania Studies' annual conference, held at Doshisha U in Kyoto. The subject of the panel was multilingualism and literature, for which Tadashi Wakashima (translator of Nabokov's and Cabrera Infante's works in English) and myself.

Prof. Wakashima was a very nice guy exuding with intelligence. He has his B.A. in math and he then turned to the study of American lit after reading Richard Wright's Native Son. He's never been to the mainland US. AWESOME. His talk, largely autobiographical, was so interesting and full of fun. I talked on Edouard Glissant's second novel (1964), Le quatrieme siecle. There were various points that I didn't understand, but I put together ideas around the themes of landscape, naming, and language (including multilingualism).

Fumihiko Takemura (translator of Octavio Paz, among others) and Takaatsu Yanagihara (a specialist of Alejo Carpentier) joined us as commentators. The session was chaired by Kenji Matsumoto, and the conference was organized by Kenji Inamoto. My thanks to all.

The loom of languages, poems

Yesterday I went to Waseda for the first time in some years. I liked its college-town atmosphere. There was an open-air used-book market going on, but didn't have time for that. I went for an open dialogue between two poets, Gozo Yoshimasu and Ryoko Sekiguchi, hosted by Jun'ichi Konuma.

The talk was around their new book of collaboration: Hata (The Loom). It's based on their correspondences around some fundamental issues of poetics. Very stimulating. When you think of the loom the image of the shuttle also comes to mind. It's just like that, that quasi-eternal aller-retour of words, ideas, and images, that make the unexpected surface.

Listening to the two master poets, I was deeply ashamed of my being not serious enough about the business of poetry. WHAT AM I DOING HERE? Konuma also is going to publish his new collection of poetry (his fourth and the first in 12 years or so) .

Got to do something about my writing life.

Kant, 72 times and still

Heard a good bit of story about Eugen Heligel (1884-1955), the German pholosopher who lived and taught in Japan between 1924 and 1929 or so. He taught philosophy at Tohoku U (in Sendai).

When asked by students "How many times have you read Kant's Critique of the Pure Reason?" he answered: 72 times, and I still don't understand. I am now reading it for the 73rd times.

How encouraging! Yes, the only way to break through the shell of older understanding is to keep re-reading a work infinitely.

Keep this in mind.

A Christmas Book

Hear, hear. My new collection of essays will be published as a Christmas book this year. It's called HONOLULU, BRASIL and gathers a little over 30 pieces written for different occasions between 1999 and 2006. I am trying to keep the price as low as possible so that my younger friends can buy them; in the range of 1,500 to 1,800 yen, hopefully. It's fun to read, easy to read, full of kicks, tricks and bites, yet very tender and sweet. Like Honolulu. Like Brasil do meu coração.

The Aimee issue

The literary monthly Subaru will feature in its next issue (out on the 6th Oct) Aimee Bender, our friend and a great writer by any standard. It will run for more than 50 pages; very unusual.

There will be four short stories by Aimee, her travelogue to Japan, a dialogue with psychiatrist Naoko Miyaji, and my own interview with Aimee. Those of you who read Japanese MUST get hold of a copy. It's worth the effort.

There's only one question I forgot to ask Aimee: Do you listen to Aimee Mann?

Banana Yoshimoto kindly wrote paragraphs to begin the feature part. Mahalo, mahalo, mahalo plenny!

Autumn already!

Geez, half a year has passed in a zip. Now I'm hoping to resume quoi que ce soit. Sans blague.

You know, in Japan as in any other parts of the world there are a lot of funny English, para-English, pseudo-English, sentences and phrases written on garments. I found a super one yesterday.

It's a jacket for young women and it goes like this:

You who fell in love are BAD
You are defeated

Lovely, eh?

Death, death, everywhere

Back in Tokyo and I felt so hungry for Joyce, so I reread Dubliners over the past four or five days. To give my reading life a bit of a structure, I think I'll keep reading Joyce poco a poco this year.

His soul approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling. (The Dead, 223)

Thus one acquires a regard d'outre-tombes. Yet I wonder: can we ever get away from the spells of the dead and CREATE anew, not just PRO-create in an eternal repetition?

At Tower Records, Shinjuku

For the first time in about 14 or 15 months, I went to Tower Records. The last time I was there to meet with my friend Michael Richardson. I meant to browse only, but ended up by buying many CDs and such. Nothing is more eloquent than the list of what I have bought--a consumerist state of mind. A pure gaspillage:

1~4. Four albums by Bob Dylan (Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Self Portrait, Planet Waves). All in a mood of mourning to a deceased friend.

5. A Paz, by Noriko Ito.

6. Nos Somos o Sucesso, by Trio Esperança.

7. Bossa'n Marley, Bob Marley songs performed in the style of bossa nova.

8. Nos bastidores da bossa nova, a book by Hidenori Sakao.

9. A little booklet called Bossa Nova, which tells about the history of bossa.

What am I doing here?

Back to the basics

Been away from here for a while. After my relocation to Tokyo, I've been sooooooo depressed that I didn't care to write nor read. C'est une ville haïssable, Tokyo. But I'm now back in action. Check it out. Here I am. Les jours s'en vont. Je demeure.

Truly, Madly, Deeply (Anthony Minghella, 1991)

This film is almost a one-woman show by Juliet Stevenson and as such it's powerful and touching. The lesson is that if a person alive has to give up the dead, the dead also has to give up the living one day. And the ultimately universal (so it seems) imagination to posit the dead's realm to somewhere above the clouds presents the only convincing moment of this rather whimsical story.

Ali G Indahouse (Mark Mylod, 2002)

Dahouse here is the House of Parliament, and Ali G is a member of the parliament. Very funny, but it doesn't have that charm of his TV interviews. Jokes are mostly sexual and they are very old fashioned. What makes it so funny, then? The whole film is a parody of a self-parodying, commercialised culture of American hiphop and gangsta rap. What's the point? The success lies in transpositionand nothing else. Occasional references to homosexuality is rather disgusting.

Ali G, innit.

This is a series of interviews conducted by Ali G, a character impersonated by Sacha Baron Cohen. Splendid craziness. Or as he says, Wicked! A series of impossibly stupid questions to a variety of people who seriously answer them; the whole thing is so British. Here lies my future locution. Boyakasha!

The Serpent and the Rainbow (Wes Craven, 1987)

This is at best a second-rate horror and it's quite abominable but it has it's uncomparable merit, too. It's a magnificent Haitian tourism film. The voodoo is there, the notorious Tonton Macoutes is there; the historical backdrop of the fall of the Duvalier regime is authentic. The story is about an American anthropologist's nightmarish experience of being buried alive in his quest for the secret of the zombie. Little if any film has treated this real phenomenon in a more plausible fashion. An interesting film, hence. Cathy Tyson (of Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa) plays an important role here, but not as attractive. The guy who played the role of the anthropologist is simply tepid.

I want to see Haiti in a more realistic way.

The Best of Not the 9 O'clock News Vol. II

I'm drunk. This is the vintage performance of Rowan Atkinson from the early 1980s. Excessively funny. The only thing I can say at this moment is: glad not to have been born in the UK! Their sense of humour is outrageous. Well, but I have to admit that I've missed a lot by not knowing this hysterical BBC program as a young college boy...

Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby (Danny Mulheron, 2005)

This is a TV series: 7 episodes of 25 minute-long. It's about an old teacher at a Cathoric all-boy school somewhere in rural New Zealand. He is highly politically INcorrect and utters every imaginable abominable lines; racist, sexist, no-consideration-for-others, old-fart school. But by and by his remarkable honesty becomes gripping. Students, verbally and physically abused, become very attracted to him through many fatal incidents. My Gomsby now proves himself to be the most memorable teacher for the bottom layer of the student body, which consists largely of island boys (not only the Maoris, but the Samoan, Tongan, and other Pacific islanders). The last five minutes of the final episode is simply moving.

A strange country New Zealand is. It is now on its way to create a truly multicultural society. And in that, somebody like Mr Gomsby can be paradoxically refreshing and can offer a core of crystallization, so to speak!

Twister (Jan de Bont, 1996)

Tornado is an essential component of American imagination. This film follows a team of scientists who try to establish an early (15 minute) warning system when the tornado hits. The film stinks at many occasions, but there are moments of brilliance. We are so accustomed to hold natural phenomena in awe that when the scenes of demolition by the wind is deployed in front of our eyes we stay focused, we marvel at them. An interesting film. But I could have wished for more.

Se7en (David Fincher, 1995)

The film depicts a serial-killer whose staging is based on the seven sins: gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, wrath, pride, lust. The tension builds up rather slowly, and the artificial nature of the murderer's protting makes everything look forced. Its gruesome scenes are often disgusting. What is lacking from this film is a sense of humour that in Fincher's later work Fight Club occupies a special place. It's a strong stuff, I admit, but if asked if I liked it or not, my answer is very predictable.

The Man Who Wasn't There (The Coen Brothers, 2001)

Another thorough masterpiece from the Coens. Not a dull moment throughout. It's quite amazing how they can sustain the tension from the beginning to the end, with all the unexpected turns at every possible corner. The modern-day Hitchcock they are. The film's white and black imagery is superb. A triumph.

Walk the Line (James Mangold, 2005)

This is a biography film of Johnny Cash, focusing on his obsessive love toward the fellow singer June Carter. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon are both good, but the story is extremely boring. If we put the name "Johnny Cash" between parenthesis, this would be a downright failure. We never know whence the obsession comes from. And Johnny the singer's charisma is hardly perceptible, although Joaquin is doing a very good job of impersonating. As for Elvis and Roy Orbison, we didn't really know who they were.

I would have appreciated better if the film focused on Johnny's musical tension with Bob Dylan.

The Day After Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich, 2004)

The whole of Manhattan under the ice. Wow. This is exactly the kind of vision I had when I was fifteen (about Tokyo)... And very well rendered thanks to today's digital image-generating machinery. The story is absurd, of course, and I don't really buy the possibility of minus 150 degree ultra-cold air mass descending within minutes. Can it really happen? Can it? And the wolves are quite dissapointing for somebody who live under the totem of the wolf. Still, this is a fairly enjoyable film and the message comes through very clearly. America, stop wasting the planet's resources! This from a German director. I'm glad.

Stuck on You (The Farrelly brothers, 2003)

How risky it is to produce a film with a pair of conjoined twins as its central characters. But again, the Farrellys made a film that is fun, touching, lovable, and unforgettable. I can't really locate where the charm comes from. But it's there, with a lot of laughter and occasional simple tears. Magical.

A lovely book!

My new book of translation is now published in Tokyo: Aimee Bender's first novel, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000). The cover is adorned with a lovely drawing by Midori Yamada. It fits the novel's story miraculously well, although drawn completely independent of the novel. The book looks really pretty. It's a strong work. The rest is up to you, possible readers!

Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971)

It's funny how we form a certain preconception by a series of hearsays about a film we haven't watched. This is a classic from my junior-high days and surely I have heard talks about it. I knew it was a love story of a peculiar kind; and I thought somehow it was set in the UK.

Watching this for the first time now, soon I find out this is in the States. On the East coast somewhere; but the scenery looks Irish or Scottish. A very good film as long as you don't psychologize or psychoanalyze it. No explanation grasps the rich overtone of the film and its strong undercurrent.

"I should like to change into a sunflower, most of all," says Maude. Approaching eighty and she's vivacious. I can't help but think of a million sunflowers near Oamaru, New Zealand. Cat Stevens' songs are quite nice, too. At one point we learn that she has multi-digit nunmbers tatooed on her forearm and this tells about her past in a Nazi concentration camp. No further explanation is given. Sadness remains.

Just like Being There, this is also a wintry film although filled with moments of laughter. I just learned (I had overlooked) that Sean Penn had dedicated his first film as director, The Indian Runner, to Hal Ashby. This makes me think that living in America, one's heart can only be wintry.

The Craft (Andrew Fleming, 1996)

Witchcraft is a science of the four elements and the power of nature within. The film begins with this in mind and it's pleasing to a certain point. There are some brilliant scenes: e.g. the beach and Nancy's walking on the water. But the finishing 25 minutes or so are strictly unattractive. The uses of snakes, rats, and bugs all contribute nicely to weaken the film's charm (wow, this is a magic-related word, "charm"!).

One big blunder I think is Sarah's rival Nancy's background. If she comes from such a poor, white trash background, how can she attend a very expensive-looking Cathoric prep school?

All the actresses are too aged to be high-schoolers, too. Rachel True, the black girl, is beautiful, but at the time of this film's production she was 29 or 30. Well. The movie is the ultimate witchcraft, ain't it?

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (Gus Van Sant, 1993)

So ambitious, so boring. It could have been a great film, if not for the word-heavy screenplay and the irrelevant narration (by the novel's author). I haven't read the novel but I get a glimpse that it must be fun to read. Then, by trying to follow the novel's development too closely, the film failed to find its own undisturbed pace. It lacks proper percussions, so to speak.

But as in many of Van Sant's films, outdoor sceneries are fascinating. Uma Thurman is also a great material, visually striking, if not exactly pretty. This film contributes well to the myth of the west. Of course, all the land we conceive in our heads are just images mediated to the bottom. And this west has its own charm.

I, Robot (Alex Proyas, 2004)

Directed by an Egypsian, this film is set in 2035 AD and Chicago is a hyperopolis then. I have never been an SF fan and I don't have any sensibility whatsoever toward things robotic. Starting from the famous Asimov's three laws that govern robots, the story is cebtered around the latest model robots revolution against humans and the struggles against them of a cop (himself a quasi-cyborg) performed by Will Smith. The US us attacked by the robots led by VIKI (the central machinic nervous system) because the US threatens other countries and pollutes the planet more than anybody else; how sensible. VIKI is finally disabled by Will Smith, but the aftertaste of this human triumph is not altogether good.


In fact, the film is somewhat groomy. The main purpose of robotics--to develop someTHING to replace human labout--seems to me to be a very decadent direction.

Hitch (Andy Tennant, 2005)

This is a very well-written story with just what you can expect from Will Smith. I have been a fan of him as much as I am a fan of Eddie Murphy (who is of my own generation) and basically I am trying to learn my English locutions from them more than from anybody else. The fresh prince (whom my son used to respect when he was six) is alive and well, here as a very probable improbable profession of the date doctor.

Eva Mendes (as Sara) is gorgeous and very Cubana.

A matchmaker who is so clumsy about her own affair is basically an Emma story (we have Clueless) but in this the transposition (female to male, white English to black American) is thorough, unexpected and funny. Another good piece from the director of Sweet Home Alabama!

Being There (Hal Ashby, 1979)

This is one of the most popular films in my undergraduate years but I haven't had a chance to take it in. Now I watched it. It's very funny. More than Peter Sellers himself, the dying man Ben is an awesome actor. Shirley Mac Laine masturbating is quite funny, too. The film is wintry and tranquil. It's a pure fantasy, isn't it, but I am led to think how in the world did the original author Kosinski want to write such a fantasy and did Peter Sellers want to impersonate the character at the end of his life.

Innocence of a retarded person is a very strong myth. In this Chance is akin to, for example, Sean Penn's Sam in I am Sam, among others. A genealogy of innocence is to be undertaken.

Sweet Home Alabama (Andy Tennant, 2002)

An incredible story of a fat liar Southern belle faithfully loved by two too-good-to-be-true guys and gets away with it. It's silly, of course, but curiously enjoyable.

Apart from the fun this film offers, I am moved by the simple fact that it's about Alabama. Back in the early 1980s I was an exchange student at Troy State University, Troy, Alabama. Nostalgia has a great shaping power for one's sense of identity, and on viewing this film I am constantly taken back to my own Alabama days! C'est larmoyant, à vrai dire!

Reese Witherspoon's accent as Melanie is authentic as she's from Louisiana. The same is true for the husband Jake (Josh Lucas who is from Arkansas).

Geez, it's been a quarter of a century... I wish I could go visit Troy, Montgomery, and other towns I knew!

In the film Southern nationalism is so thick, and the presence of blacks is so limited. That's Alabama, too.

The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001)

Finally. And e uma beleza! (It's a beauty!). So funny, so well conceived, so well staged, so well performed. And yet, and yet, it can't compete in my mind with the wakening freshness of Bottle Rocket. Whatever. All the characters in RT, including dogs and the falcon, are interesting.

I sensed for the first time in this film an affinity with Jean-Pierre Jeunet, not only for the story telling and the cinematography, but also for a subtle attitude toward life, or toward the depiction of human lives. Will have to think about it.

New York Stories (1989)

This is an omnibus film by three well-established directors, playing out each one's tune to their hearts' content. Nice combination.

Martin Scorsese's Life Lessons shows Rosanna Arquette at her best time (contemporaneous I think with lovely Desparately Seeking Susan).

I heard people criticizing Coppla's Life Without Zoe as child-oriented and damaging to the other two, but no, I think this is a wonderful piece of urban fantasy that captures a certain core feel of New York-ness.

Woody Allen's Oedipus Wrecks is so crazy and hilarious that makes me want to watch more of his films, when I have been out of touch with his work for such a long time. This apparition of the Jewish mother in the Manhattan sky really kills me.

Jewish sense of humour... what is it? I am even reminded of Aimee Bender's joyful short story "Mazipan" for its absurdity. Will come back to it when time comes.

Bend It Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha, 2002)

Hilarious, exciting, charming, and touching. I think I'll write an essay comparing this with another fascinating Indian girl movie, Anita & Me. It's filled with vivacity and humour, and it makes us curious about the life that's behind the African-Indian immigrants in the UK.

I enjoy so much the parallel scenes of the wedding and the football match. Such colorful cultural displays on both sides! Then I am brought to think upon it.

I will probably never get to know an Indian family like this and I will probably never attend their wedding. So what I enjoy on the screen (their dances, songs, proxemics, mannerisms, cuisine, etc.) are really all representation of representations. Still I get pleasure out of them. Is this all in vain?

I don't think so. To have a glimpse of a culture, even in a highly mediated form, is not bad at all. It's entertainment in the best sense. It's up to you how you make use of the knowledge you receive from it. To a good cause? If possible. To be lost in oblivion? If inevitable.

But education usually is never free from such and such representations working wholly, in their unarticulated totality, on you. Hmmm. Do we ever learn anything about the actual world from a film?

Good Will Hunting (Gus Van sant, 1997)

A good, beautiful film, but the story is little plausible. I don't feel any traces of insights into math or psychology. It's just every schoolboy's image of what mathematics and psychology are. And a heavy dose of psychologism, too. Explanation is something we need last, preferably out of the screen.

Apart from that this film captures the images (illusions, maybe) of the Boston/Cambridge area nicely and it's a different kind of campus movie. Especially beautiful is the scene when Will sits on the riverside after telling the girl goodbye and the sky is blue and there are a lot of white clouds. This is the kind of shot we need. Very understated. Very nicely done.

The Jerk (Carl Reiner, 1979)

This is Steve Martin's film-starring debut, I am told. It's silly and funny but not so dumb as Dumb and Dumber; in fact, in this strain of non-sensical comedy Steve Martin is mostly surpassed by Jim Carrey. But the beauty of this film lies in its starting point; that the white guy is actually an adopted son in a poor Mississippi black family!

Steve Martin's hair is prematurely gray. (He was barely in his mid-thirties at this moment.) Next time I'll watch this with Bulgarian subtitle (not that I can read and understand it).

Finding Forrester (Gus Van Sant, 2000)

A fine story told with integrity, precision, and elegance. Nothing is more touching than an unlikely friendship; movies have proved this over and over again. This is another triumph of the film that it is a medium destined for friendship.

The song used at the ending, a solo by the late Israel Kawakawiwo'ole (Brudda Iz) is beautiful. This makes me take up the ukulele once again.

Windtalkers (John Woo, 2002)

A great film about the futility of the war. And that set in the most futile of all the futile combats--that in Saipan. How many people got killed there on both sides? The violent depiction of this film can only be realistic. A rare moment of beauty is when one of the Navajo men and a white guy play together an improvised melody; one with the Navajo bamboo (?) flute, that strongly resembles the Japanese shakuhachi, and the harmonica. The Navajo language being one of the subjects is very well represented (probably for the first time in film history) and the Navajo values are rightly featured. Nicolas Cage is great.

Saipan is no joke. Many aspects of the contemporary US foreign policy are determined by the US's trans-Pacific relationship with Japan in the last century. The US, or at least a part thereof, never hesitates to demonize and kill the enemy. They overkill. Overly destroy. And they claim justice. Japan may have done something similar, too. The island of Saipan even today need a work of serious spiritual apaisement. I don't doubt the director's serious anti-war intent, but movies are funny. There must have been those who shouted "Kill the Japs" among the film's innocent spectators.

It's fun to watch that Nicolas Cage speaks fair Japanese in this film. It's strange that this film shows no African American among the marine.

Strange coincidence

If you licked something really cold, your tongue would stick to it. You see it in Dumb and Dumber (on the ski lift). Then again in Slap Her, She's French! when the little Geneviève licks the ice-ass of a cow. Of course there must be many who have watched these two films and remarked this little bit of coincidence. But why in the world should I watch them consecutively? This is a strange coincidence without any meaning in it...

Kingpin (The Farrelly Brothers, 1996)

Another nice comedy from the Farrellys. It makes bowling look so much fun (just like The Big Lebowski) and Amish look so interesting (just like The Eyewitness). Bill Murray has a pattern now about his paternity problems. It's so weird that director after director bring up this association. Deformity, deficiency, and love are the three words to describe what the Farrellys are after.

Shallow Hal (The Farrelly Brothers, 2001)

"Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder," says old wisdom. What if you pushed this logic to the extreme? This film is the result, it's a thought experiment. It's fun and in parts touching. Their recurrent theme of the physically handicapped (either by birth or by life history or by accident) is given a full voice and representation. How far do you go, you wonder. But they know how to wrap it up nicely, too. I liked it. But to say that Gwyneth Paltrow is very pretty already contradicts the story's spirit.

Slap Her, She's French! (Melanie Mayron, 2002)

It's a good comedy around the war of meanness between two high school girls, one Texan, and the other a French foreign student. All possible stereotypes are cleverly exploited to make you laugh. Then by and by you'll notice something's fishy about this "French" girl... She's got a French accent, all right, but she says "sophistique" (sophist-like) for "sophistiqué" and "Entendez-vous" pour "Attendez" (on the phone). And as it turns out, she's... Good enough to spend an hour and a half. It's very convincing, too, that such a story can take place only in Texas! (The only other state I can imagine it happening is Wisconsin...)

Dumb & Dumber (The Farrelly Brothers, 1994)

Finally I watched this classic... Good but a bit primitive compared to the refinement of There's Something About Mary. The parakeet incident--selling a dead parakeet to a blind boy--is downright outrageous to my real-life standard, but then I don't know why I feel such a repulsion against this one point. In their other films the humours they show with handicapped people are not this crude. Well, in other moments in my life I would have taken it otherwise. All I can say for sure is after this the Farrelly brothers get better and better.

Reality Bites (Ben Stiller, 1994)

I like Ben Stiller, I really do. I also like Wynona Ryder (especially in Jarmush's Night on the Planet) and Ethan Hawke (especially in Snow Falling on Cedars). BUT. This is a terrible film. The story stinks. There is no sense at all about the flow of music. It's haphazard at best. Dialogues can be interesting and they may serve as a valuable source of information on how American brats spoke in the 1990s, but they lack in organization. The use of the video is also too tentative. This doesn't have the kind of integrity that a decent film has. Danny de Veto (one of the producers) must have been very UNHAPPY to see this. Of course, Ben Stiller has grown up since then. But, boy, this is a terrible film.

Utu (Geoff Murphy, 1983)

Should there be a justifiable "national" movie anywhere in this world, this is it. In the bloody history of numerous murders between Pakehas and Maoris, this film offers one clear message; that a Maori warrior cannot be sentenced by the military court of law. In the final instance, his execution is retrieved into the realm of traditional ceremonial honouring beyond simple, individualist revenges. It moves you in a strange way by showing how the land of these islands were conquered within the western space of law and how such a space of judgment itself is in contention even today.

I watched this first time at the U of Hawaii in 1987 where I was a graduate student in anthropology. My friend Akihiro Kalama Inoue reminded me of this recently. After almost twenty years, it is my joy to be able to watch this again to commemorate the Waitangi Day, which was yesterday. This is a must for everyone even remotely interested in the history of this country: Aotearoa-New Zealand.

The River Wild (Curtis Hanson, 1994)

At first I thought this was a family-adventure-comedy, but it was not. It was a thriller and the storyline was rather horrendous. As soon as the dog dissapeared, we knew it would appear again, and as soon as the good ranger appeared, we knew he would somehow be eliminated in a brutal way. And the ranger was Native American, too.

Maryl Streep shows a good command of the raft and the breath-taking power of the water makes this an interesting film. Is this the Snake river? I've got to go there.

Dirty Pretty Things (Stephen Frears, 2002)

A kidney sells for 10 grands in London. And the sellers are illegal immigrants who yearn for a passport, and the money goes to those who stand in-between. The underground business of human organs preys on the weakest, the invisible, the silent.

This is a love story of two illegal immigrants, a Nigelian man and a Turkish woman, who work at the Baltik Hotel. Audrey Tautou is the Turkish girl and she is rather convincing. Not a bad film and it's doing a good job of focusing on friendship among the weak. "Good at chess usually means bad at life." Rings true.

Adaptation. (Spike Jonze, 2002)

To the extremity of self-referentiality... only some Japanese I-Novelists and Charlie Kaufman can come up with something like this.

I keep wondering, how the author Susan Orlean thinks about all this, with Meryl Streep playing her and all? The final scene with flowers is very strong and fulfills the writing seminar instructor Mckee's theory in the story. I particularly like the way the time is manipulated. You can easily think of it, but it's another story to actually put it into practice.

Awesome in many ways. It can be demanding on the side of the viewers without much reward for it. Still, a very interesting and hilarious work.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (Beeban Kidron, 2004)

A reasonablly good and enjoyable film, but the use of Thailand is typically derogating. Renee Zellweger will be remembered as Bridget in our afterlives, but I prefer her in the pre-Bridge days. Sorry to be so frank.

I am more interested in the director's name. Beeban? Where is he from? He seems to have directed a decade ago the TV movie Oranges are Not the Only Fruits, which of course is based on Jeanette Winterson's novel. I have to check it out.

Me, Myself & Irene (The Farrelly brothers, 2000)

This film has got a great tempo and an incredibly good selection of songs. All the possible finesse is put into making the story flow. Jim Carrey is simply incomparable. And Renee Zellweger shows her subtle facial dramaturgy in perfection. Not particularly beautiful, she's so charming. Three kids are fine, too, and the appearance of the black dwarf and the too-white albino (like the Winter brothers) are also an integral part of the directors' will to fight against the general discrimination toward "unusual" looking people. By any standard, this is a great film, if I'm not totally in sync with their sexual jokes! Most of all, this is the first time I took interest in that big small state (or whatever): Rhode Island!

Falling Down (Joel Schumacher, 1993)

Very strong performances from Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall. Begins with a slight racial overtone, which is then absorbed into the main character's psychopathology. It makes the story more convincing but less interesting. You feel as if at a certain point the social dissapeared and the individual surfaced, even with that brief description of the pro-nazi shop owner. Finally the man's fall is blamed on the society in a rather tepid way. However, the sequences of the last ten minutes or so are very fine, if a little unnaturally contrived. I didn't know Trevino could be an Italian name. I didn't know that Italians would move to Venice beach!

Loser (Amy Heckerling, 2000)

A cute little love romance at NYU, but a little on the drab side considering this is from Amy Heckerling, the master filmmaker with that incredible Clueless and, much earlier,that lovely Fast time at Ridgemond High on her cv. But some details are so good; like the episode with a new-born kitten or the fight in the library. I mean, these could have been totally different if taken by another filmmaker less thoughtful. On the other hand, the final scene is but a fantasy only a mid-twentieth century American could love.

One Hour Photo (Mark Romanek, 2002)

This is a fear materialized--the kind of fear we all slightly feel toward the shopping mall photo labs. The time of stalkers, indeed. And when they try to be too intimate, we can't but be defensive. But our photos are in their hands, all exposed, vulnerable, defenseless... like a child.

Robin Williams is super again as a psycho (as we have seen in Insomnia), gentle and calm, with hidden violence and weird obsessions. It's very American, very sick. And near the end we learn what is behind the protagonist's personal history; a sexually abused childhood for which photography played a cruel role.

It's well thought, well executed, but this psychological explanation rather puts me off. But then, the director Romanek did have a social message. With more and more family photos taken digitally, the high-speed photo processing is almost a history. We don't know what's taking place behind our social facade. Who's taking advantage of whom, manipulating images.

It's gluesome to think about, but this film is already a kind of testimony to a culture outliving its destiny.

A Room for Romeo Brass (Shane Meadows, 1999)

Set in Nottingham, this is a story of friendship between two 12-year old neighbouring boys. One is Gavin, white, a little crippled, the other is Romeo, of mixed-blood with a white mother, a pretty white elder sister, and an estranged white father. To the end you are left wondering about Romeo's paternity and the reason for the film's title. You get no clues anywhere. The film is equally focused on both Gavin and Romeo.

There is this very strange guy who at first helps the boys then has a crush on Romeo's sister. The guy's got no chance and turns violent. He is a self-contained bully, essentially, and finally gets what he deserves from Romeo's father. You are left wondering again--this time murmuring: So what is this film all about?

It maybe about the kind of violence, physical and metaphysical, a 12 year-old goes through everyday in rural England. But the story is too blurred and the developpment is rather dull. And yet, and yet, the film has a peculiar kind of charm.

I'll have to watch it all over again to know anything about Romeo's position in the family.

Anita and Me (Metin Hseyin, 2002)

A lovely, lovely film. The story is set in 1972 and about the friendship of a young second-generation Indian girl (Meena) with a pretty blond English girl (Anita) in a small rural town called Tollington.

The difficulties and envies encountered by your regular immigrant adolescent are all there. But what makes this story so special is the situation of the local girl on the host side of the divide. Anita's family has fallen apart, there is not much future for her, all the social mobility denied in advance. For a diligent, smart, and hard-working immigrant family, Meena and the parents are entitled for upward mobility and they do achieve their goals. On the other hand, the poor local whites are left behind, knowing not what to do in the face of changes, and the situation is epitomized in Anita's life, who just stands there watching when the "Paki-bashing" boyfriend and his gangs kick an Indian man to death.

Well. After all this, Meena's feelings toward Anita is rather incomprehensible. Her attachment is too strong. That makes the story weak, after all. Yet there are many fine moments in the film and it's worth viewing repeatedly to learn the dialect of the mining region (I really had hard time following it).

"Stupid bloody wogs" is what a nice English lady says to Meena and her mother. I also learned that girlfriends call each other "wench."

The Milagro Beanfield War (Robert Redford, 1988)

This along with Local Hero is one of my all-time favourites. I watched it in Hawaii in 1988 and then visited New Mexico for the first time in 1989... My southwest days began.

Looking back, this is a great film, very well-conceived, well-sustained, and well-finished. I love every bit of it. And the visual is marvelous.

Ruben Blades and Christopher Walken are both still youngish. They are in their early forties. Now that I have passed their ages at this stage, I can't watch this film without a kind of nostalgia.

The impression that remains is that of the wind. It's the wind that tells the truth. See the sequence in which copies of the local newspaper, La Voz, are blown away to reach people.

The beauty of the tierra encantada is quite breath-taking.

Jumanji (Joe Johnston, 1995)

Watching this I thought the tempo was rather slow, but the children with whom I was watching this didn't mind that a bit and actually they seemed to enjoy the development.

It's a fantasy, all right, but the rules of the game are not very clear. From one segment to the other, a game needs to get a complete break. The game Jumanji doesn't have it and the "presences" from previous moves all remain somewhere. This is strange.

The old hunter near the end loses his state-of-the-art shotgun before disappearing himself. This is very weird, as the gun is from this reality and not the game's world.

Whatever. The idea is fun.

Mr. Spin

Went downtown today and there was the inaugural Harbour Festival going on. Quite by chanc we passed by a street performer named Mr. Spin from Adelaide. An incredible juggler and mono-cycle rider with an excentric laughter. We enjoyed his show so much that I ended up paying him 20 dollars to support him on the road. He gave us a DVD of his performance.

You can learn more about him by visiting the site: http://www.mrspin.net/

Then we went to see the show by a Chinese acrobat troupe at Sky City. This was so appropriate to commemorate the Chinese new year's day which was today. The performances were quite good, the talk by the MC quite dull, and everything was inbued with a sort of lethargy.

My son said he saw today the difference between individualism and totalitalianism. Well, yes, both performances were good, but we will remember Mr. Spin much better than the Chinese group.

At night saw fireworks from the north shore.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (John Hughes, 1986)

Good to see you again, Ferris. After almost twenty years, I remembered a lot of its scenes. Which means I must have liked it in 1986 and I think I did. On this second viewing, however, the funniest scene is the ending school-bus sequence. The story's got a great rythm to unfold itself, but no character is really sympathetic or attractive. This is such a succesful role for Matthew Broderick that even today when I see him I call him Ferris, the older. Not bad, though.

Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983)

This is one of my all-time favorites. I've watched it several times, but once again, it gives me an ineffable joy. How can I explain its charm? The story is very understated, no character stands out as very attractive, not much happens, the sense of humor is too subtle, but the overall effects are simply captivating. Mark Knopfler's music is perfect. When I die, it will be the tune I'd like to listen to for the last time on this earth! Scotland, ah, Scotland. It's like nowhere on the planet. A true sense of the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Housekeeping is another striking masterpiece from Bill Forsyth. But I can't find his trace in this millenium; what is he doing? Is he doing well? I hope he will come back to produce another great film in that vein.

The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)

Up to a certain point I was rather uninterested, as the passion depicted seemed too far-fetched. It looked as if made upon a preconceived notion that "passion is something like this, see?" and it was not convincing. It looked more like a demographic problem; a woman versus two men. What happens next is predictable. Only things that kept my interests were the episodes with the Maori (infuriated by a play of Bluebeard) and the fabulous Anna Paquin.

But then toward the end, for the last thirty minutes or so, the film showed its true color; violent, engaging, enraging, shocking. The burial of the piano in the ocean has something truly extraordinary in it. And the ending sequence has a sense of humour that's commendable. It's not a laugh-out-loud humour, you know, but something that saves the film's otherwise gloomy possible ending.

And the land of Aotearoa is beautifully conceived. Looking back from Holy Smoke!, the woman's urination is pretty funny. Is it a bit of an obsession for Jane?

A strong, powerful work. A classic.

Holy Smoke (Jane Campion, 1999)

Many interesting details, a great sense of color, an intriguin setting, but the overall story is simply not that interesting. A couple of excentric people following their own passions that leave us indifferent. They are both curiously devoid of any interiority, which is only born by the sense of the social. Maybe it depicts well the shallowness of the people who falls for the cult of any kind. The most memorable moment is when Kate Winslet pees standing, naked, in the desert. That's also a turning point in their relationship. From one cult to the other.

Charlie & the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burton, 2005)

Today 19 January 2006 the DVD went on sale, I bought it and watched it. It's a very pleasurable film, full of Tim Burton flavor, but it doesn't match Mel Stuart's 1971 classic Willy Wonka with Gene Wilder. The surrealistic is simply replaced by kitsch, and the incredible musical scores are replaced by nice but tame new songs.

Especially dissapointing is the Oompa-Loompa. After the shocking visual presence of the 1971 version, well, nobody can win. The ending is rather preaching (this, according to my son, is not even in the original novel). The world of pure imagination is rendered into a world of morality. Jonny Depp is a sane schoolboy compared to Gene Wilder's wild, lunatic, extravagant Wonka.

I mean, this is a good film in itself. And yet, the 1971 Wonka is simply unbeatable. I'd watch the Wonka over and over again. Charlie? Well, maybe in five years.

Insomnia (Christopher Nolan, 2002)

With Al Pacino and Robin Williams doing their all-out performances, the film can't fail to ignite. And the backdrop is Alaska's sheer beauty! Hilary Swank also is doing her job. Pacino is a veteran detective who suffers from insomnia in Alaska's white nights, named DORMER, which of course is ironical as it comes from the French word DORMEUR, "sleeper". This is s remake of a Norwegian film I am told and I would like to watch it, too, but this very high level of achievement by Nolan is probably well beyond the original.

Alaska is haunting. All I dreamt back in Alabama was going to Alaska...

Around the Bend (Jordan Roberts, 2004)

Convenience rules. When great-grandpa Henry (Michael Cane) dies in a KFC restaurant, it's only after he has written all the necessary instructions for his son and grandson to follow. He has even taken into consideration the death of his bulldog, Sky, on the following day after his master's death. Just before Henry's death his long lost son Turner (Christopher Walken) miraculously comes back. Following Henry's instructions for scattering his ashes (mixed with those of Sky) through Arizona and New Mexico, Turner and his son (abandoned as a baby and raised by the granpa) seek reconciliation. When the truth is finally revealed, Turner dies. Dogs come and go in and out of the picture. The kid also comes and goes, very conveniently. What kind of screenplay is this?

The land of enchantment, Nuevo Mexico, offers its eternal, sheer beauty. The location is around Los Lunas, my mentor Rudolfo Anaya's landscape. The music could have been better. In fact, that's already an understatement.

Christopher Walken is great, of course, but there is nothing beyond that in this film. It's hard to believe this film won the "Jury award" at 2004 Montreal World Film Festival. The film runs a little over 80 minutes. Its length or lack theoreof is surely a virtue.

Starsky and Hutch (Todd Philips, 2004)

I was not a big fan of the TV drama Starsky and Hutch, so I wouldn't have watched this if it were not for the leading team: Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. Now, after watching it, I find these guys funny as ever. It was worth watching. The bad guy is Jewish and Starsky I suspect is Jewish (because of his strong attachment to his late mother). Snoop Dog is doing great, too, with that strange look. At the end the "real" Sta & Hutch appear. Nicely done.

Possum (Brad McGann, 1996)

This is Brad McGann's short film (15 minutes) about a boy and his younger sister growing up in central Otago (although not specified). The younger sister, Kid, can't speak. She only utters a series of animal sounds. She eats like an animal, behaves like a beast. Until one day she is found dead in a forest, trapped and bleeding. Stunning, powerful short. The boy wishes her back one day and keeps his window open at night. This imagination is as sinister as any, and as powerful as any. The film is permeated by the force of nature. Plants, animals, night... An unforgettable piece.

In My Father's Den (Brad McGann, 2004)

Paternity, paternity. As the title suggests this is its theme, but with a surprising reversal. It's a tragedy yet the ending is carefully arranged to give a little soothing effect. The whole picture is beautifully done. Desolate central Otago (I think the town is Roxburgh) is scaringly beautiful (a little like Arizona but much colder). This film surely tells about the kiwi spirit--excentric, gloomy, independent, filled with yearning for other places of the world, reticent, and ultimately sad.

The Station Agent (Tom McCarthy, 2003)

Talk about friendship. The most incongruous threesome (a dwarf train aficionado, a talkative Cuban hotdog vendor, and a middle-aged woman painter who can't get over her son's death) turn out to be the purest of friends. Added to the threesome are a lonely black school girl and a little silly librarian. The center of gravity here is Fin, the dwarf guy, and his deserted train depot. Somewhere in New Jersy. It's surprisingly fresh and heart-warming. The ending is brilliant.

Diarios de motocicleta (Walter Salles, 2004)

Looking at Alberto's face (the real Alberto's) at the end all the emotions intertwining history and the young man's dream come to fill you to the edge of the overflowing river, and you realize how powerful a journey the past 110 minutes or so have been. Following the chronology of the carnet de voyage, the film starts rather flatly. They it begins to accumulate intensity once they cross the border into Chile. From there, it's non-stop. They have to abandon the motorcycle at a point, but who cares, the voyage continues and so does the diary. Into an uncertain future.

America, the Americas. One common destiny. And that destiny, brought about by Europe's expansionism of the past five centuries, is what we of the other parts of the world also share in common.

The film makes me want to hit the road, to the high hills of Machu Pichu. One day, yes. But before that I have to revisit all my anchoring points in the America latina I knew when I was 25... São Paulo, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Caracas. I will. I hope. So that I can continue to hope, not to despair.

A Life Less Ordinary (Danny Boyle, 1997)

Immediately following Trainspotting, this is another delightful comedy by Danny Boyle. I liked it so much probably partly because I have a soft spot for both Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz (more for the latter than the former, of course). Holly Hunter in this film is an immediate continuation from Raising Arizona, it seems. And the final clay animation sequence is so cute. It's Danny's merit to have found a Scotland-like landscape in Colorado (this is my guess). It's stunningly beautiful. A filmmaker is a person who knows how to turn a landscape into a distant place. Four thumbs up, and I'm on my back!

Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur, 1998)

It's funny but I learned a lot about the politico-religious history of England from this film. How in fact sovereignty needs to be sanctioned by religious authority is a matter to be considered. What is also very intriguing is the way they switch between English and French in the 16th century. And all this put into a filmic text by an India-born director? Cinema is a strange, funny art.

Mallrats (Kevin Smith, 1995)

A terrible, terrible story of the incredibly deranged American consumerist youths, and I like it very much. It's all the more fun when you learn that the director is "Silent Bob" in the film... What kind of twisted, weird imagination he has... not unlike the woman producer/writer (what's her name) of superb Drop Dead Gorgeous. Dialogues are really enjoyable. Very shallow, but they ring true, and meticulously Americanized in every possible way. Shopping malls, the world's least desirable habitat for humanity. Yet there are a bunch of people for whom this is the most comfortable place on earth. They are brainless, pathetic, and a lot like you and me.

The Cat in the Hat (Bo Welch, 2003)

Superb sets and the sense for color make this a thoroughly enjoyable silly tale. Dr. Seuss coming together with Wayne's World with Wonka-like dreamy townscape... a sheer joy at moments. When the cat smiles widely there appears Wayne... hilarious! They should have asked Garth to make a cameo appearance!

Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998)

Bravo! The best film ever made set in high schools. Funny and full of emotions. It's quite interesting that Cousteau is already an obsession in this--as if to announce The Life Aquatic. Wes Anderson along with the Coen brothers are my kind of American filmmakers. How fortunate of us to have the likes of them as contemporaries!

City of Ghosts (Matt Dillon, 2002)

An impressive film set in Cambodia by the DIRECTOR Matt Dillon (his first), with James Caan and Gerard Depardieu, among others. The music is very nice and atmospheric. The song at the end is Joni Mitchel's Both Sides Now sung in Cambodian and it's very good. All in all, exoticism is rampant and the dark side of Cambodian history is conveniently exploited (see the episode around landmines). The father-son relationship and romances are all very shallow. The scenery is gorgeous, but you are left to wonder: what's the point? Unconscious repetition of colonialism is at times too much. Good actors, great locations, but the film doesn't quite live up to it.

Hide and Seek (John Polson, 2005)

Coming from the director of that curiously absurd, colorful, and impressive Siam Sunset, this is rather a dissapointment. With De Niro and Dakota Fanning nicely doing their job, this could have been better if not for such a messy screenplay. The main plot comes through well enough. We are led to believe that the daughter suffers from dual personality. Then the moment of reversal comes and we learn, with enough shock effect, that it's the father who is dual. Both roles are played superbly; Dakota Fanning especially is stunning.

Still, the daughter's overall reaction to her father's dark side (Charlie) is not very convincing. Even less so is the episodes of the neighbors who just interferes as cheap mystification.

Regrettably, not in the same league as Night Shyamalan. I'd love to see another film more in the vein of Siam Sunset!