home movies

saw too many movies this weekend. i will make a little outline and fill it in:

hijos de la guerra - children of the war, a latino film festival entry about the big salvadoran gang ms-13. it covered the history of it from the '80s to today and had great, terrirying footage of riots inside prisons and massacres in the streets and gang jump-ins, but about 85% of it went unidentified and really lost impact that way for me. as many of the voiceovers were unidentified as well and it just lent this air of vagueness and inaccuracy that was kinda irresponsible considering that the filmmaker was trying to fight a myth about these guys and the fact that they're blamed for all of central america's ills as of late. you fight myths best with accuracy and some real reporting. central america was a mess before the gangs came about. instead of ms-13, perhaps he should have considered doing what the beginning of the film promised, dealing with how governments, the us and those of central america really created this monster. he has access to the gang members but doesn't really dig into how corrupt the governments are. there is a discussion of the war in the 80s that's not that satisfying and the mention that politicians in CA use the promise to wipe maras out for votes but don't get into that the maras probably do some jobs for the government/military/police and/or probably fight the gov/mil/pol for shit like drug trafficking routes and profits. the film does go into the idea that the mara is not nearly as organized as it's described but doesn't frame itself that way overall. you do get the sense of them as a menace and you never ever want to visit this part of the world ever in your life, which most people can avoid, but i can't so i want to know how to deal with this in some realistic way. the friend i went to see it with thought it needed a real narrator to bring it together, like some michael moore. we did appreciate the footage especially the sight of deported criminals, dudes in shackles crossing the tarmacs in the us and the third world, good visuals for a broad story that's been in the news for years. but maybe a movie about the really organized gangs should be considered, these governments of the americas.

nanny mcphee - saw this getting ready to go hang with my niece for the weekend. boy does she need a nanny mcphee like a muthafucker. was feeling that emma thompson wrote the thing and it was her baby. did not know that. the wedding dress made of snow at the end was fabulous but i am disappointed by the idea that only the powers of a magic witch could correct the buck wild children.

zodiac - my father and i watched this into the wee hours of sunday morning. it was hella long but there were many reasons to keep watching, a scary, fame-hungry killer, a complex plot, and a few meng sangwiches i was putting together in my head there, jake gyllenhall and robert downey, and, don't really think he was that hot but i was liking his commitment to his work in the movie there, so mark ruffalo and jake gyllenhall were making a good sangwich too. basically you could add jake to many sangwiches and they would probably work, he has been sangwich-worthy since brokeback. anyway, the movie, it is a mystery and all and i don't always understand those and this one is particularly labyrinthine (i think that is a word), but even when i was lost i was enjoying it and truly frightened often. one scene in particular scared the hell out of me but then confused the hell out of me cuz they dropped some of the plot as well as some characters after it. i had to get on imdb and ask some people on the board about it and there was agreement on this confusion. it made me feel good to know that i had understood this genre, with which i often have a hard time, enough to know that it was wrong somehow, that there was a hole where i thought there was a hole. my father dug the scary confusion too and that along with my mother being back from honduras and taking care of him the only way he prefers patched up our relationship a little, which has been shaky cuz i can't be the nursemaid he married.

little miss sunshine - saw the last half of it the other day on hbo and all of it tonight. the last half alone won me over. this is one of those films i resist cuz of hype and see secretly at home many months after its cultural peak. i was such a big fat sucker for it, a privately in-my-own-home laughing/crying/clapping talking-to-the-screen sucker. i mean it's about american failure, my secret favorite subject, one i can barely write about but this writer gets it on the money, the actors get it, the directors, excellent. even the frickin yellow van they're driving in, gets it, it's a character and a half. i called my mother around the time it started to check in on her cuz she had dropped me off uptown and drove back home and i could hear the movie on the other side of the line. i had it on and hers was echoing steve carrell and greg kinnear. i was all "are you watching that? watch it, it's fabulous" and i talked to my brother and told him to watch it too, that it was all about our family, who i like to call the potentials. i was trying to figure out what character i was and it took about two seconds. i was the gay suicidal ph.d. of course. i could be the little girl too though, especially her concern with being a loser and i wished i had a fabulous heroin-addicted grandpa who knew just what to say to her cuz he's got all the perspective in the world being old AND on drugs. but i let the little girl be my niece and the grandpa be my father cuz they where the exact same striped pajamas and v-neck hanes t-shirt, not cuz my father is so positively affected by the prescription drugs he takes. he is negatively affected in that he lives in delusions such as me being a "good" daughter and hopping to his every command and still believing i might join the military or move back home or some such nonsense. so glad ma is back to take care of that monster she made. i am just monster jr., she knows that. finally hanging with him for a civil minute, my father would call me by my mom's name, vilma, the same way my ma calls me my father's name, mando. they are each other's conversation partners but i also like to think that perhaps i am enough of both of them that they call me by each other's names. i am vilmando.

tragic putas

for movie night tonight i saw princesas. it's from spain and it's real name was putas. it's about this one spanish prostitute who becomes friends with a dominican prostitute. i think it was set in madrid but i'm not sure. anyway, it was a little long, the spanish hooker is a little too philosophical and her lines could have definitely been edited cuz she even repeats herself and it gets too sentimental that way but overall i liked the ladies who played the roles a lot. they were just likable but i guess hookers should be. the dominican girl was very fine and she was good even though her character is seriously downtrodden. i guess that was the point, her existence is far rougher than the spanish girl's cuz she's illegal and mulata and all of that. oh yeah, she is a tragic mulata, and a tragic immigrant. it gets bad for her and there are some really painful scenes that she seems to bounce back from awfully quickly so it never quite gets so bad and i was glad to be spared great tragedy. it was like everyday tragedy, which could be sadder in some ways. besides being about the plight of hos, it's definitely all about racism and immigration in spain, and how it affects the hooker community. there are scenes with a group of white spanish hookers chilling in a salon looking out at all the african and caribbean hos on the plaza working streets they used to, the white hos gettting all mad cuz those bitches make it like a jungle out there and many such comments about savagery and dirtyness. and then there is the main character who is like them but not and becomes friends with the downtrodden dominican ho. they both have their dramas with the mens but of course the dominican has it worse with some scary spaniard taunting her with the idea he can get her her papers and that gets crazy and there is one scene where basically she has to do what it takes and her face is just hard to look at. but it was all of interest to me to see this spain, i'm into all things spain-ish lately with my recent trip and it's all informative for me.

spain has been making an appearance in my life this week. i forgot i had this on my netflix queue and it came just as my freng goes to barcelona for the week and the dude i stayed with in madrid came to new york and brought with him the fabulousness of cheese and ham that i've been savoring for the past two days. there's a bottle of wine too that i am too thrilled to possess. i would love to go again and be mistaken for an immigrant taking some spanish hos' work. i was thinking about how them dealing with the immigrants out there. i did think i would pass cuz i have gotten shit in america for being light but the spanish are still europeans and they know a foreigner, especially from latin america, when they see one. i don't have to be a mulata, i can a mestiza and be different. i was asked more than once about my face and features and what i am, they knew i wasn't them. their faces are harder, more angular, mine is softer and chunkier like the indians lurking in me still despite my pale skin. there was no passing. there was no tragedy either, just the one of not getting any while i was out there but that was for lack of trying. all those spaniards are hos, men and women alike, ready to go. "follar o no follar," as my buddy out there recalls of their straightforwardness. to fuck or not to fuck, truly the question. she is worried that she will be confused for a dominican whore but it's probably that or spinster, no in-between when you're not a youngun anymore. let's hope we get confused for whore.

consuming the street

so i decided to step out of my cave and satisfy some cravings. this is what i was missing out on the street below:

a few of the ladies on their usual stoop but then
a row, i counted at least eight, folding beach chairs with asses in them
against the wall of the building
there were about ten other people standing around them
there was the whole backseat of an suv ripped out and positioned near the bodega
soft like movie theater seating, gray and fuzzy, comfy for the corner boys

there is an unbelievable breeze out there
and everyone was out on their porches
their concrete porches
talking shit
watching everyone
like they did
way south
of here
letting the breeze stroke them
through the slow night

so much thicker here though
more people
more gray
less green

me i was out there in basically pajamas
a long white shirt
and loose grey pajama pants
i think they're workout pants
but i wear them sleepily
the only lady i saw
dressed like me
was the young lesbian
who lives on my floor
i won't explore that

the ladies on the street
were all wearing shit pressed tight to them
there were some girls about my size
not small
rocking tight shit
flesh revealed in all the right parts
i don't have the attitude for all that
but was as glad to see them unashamed
as i was to see the gay lady of my floor
similarly unpressed

the boys i barely paid attention to
as i expected them to pay little to me
in my loose-flowing garments
though i did see
the light-skinded jay-z
i always greet
in the bodega here below
and inside my building
he wasn't behind the counter this time
was just hanging as the guys do there
the corner social club

i was on a hunt for a haagen dazs ice cream bar
vanilla and dark chocolate
i settled for milk
in three stores they were out
cuz clearly the dark chocolate is the superior product
and will sell out

i was preparing for the rest of my night
a movie night
and stocked up on the ice cream
and some more power-crack to go with my popcorn
the power-crack is easy to find here
it's the hood
they got that magic red juice at the ready
for the street consumers

i was out there
consuming
the street
as i tracked down
my fix

a little more exciting
than the morbidity
the self-absorption
of the hiding day in the cave
the previous post

hiding day

i suck at keeping this but i'm trying again. try, try again. i'm having a day all to myself in my cave of an apartment. it's a pretty city day but i need my home. i need to recover from a long week of many things to do. inane work and not-so-inane work but all work and after it all all i want to do is destroy myself, just wreck from the outside in. that is work too. i was drinking and smoking for a good six hours, a work night. talking all this shit that revealed my insecurity as soon as i released it. but it was released and maybe that's all i want. release, for it to be gone from me. the rapist knows i need that. she knows she needs to prescribe no pills, i self-medicate. she knows i need a mother figure, someone who'll be nice, who'll nod her head kindly. she needs that check i provide too, as i need mine. we do what we have to to get our checks.

i am morbid girl today but so be it. the thoughts accumulate, the real thoughts, when you're alone and not beholden to someone else's wishes. sometimes i want to be beholden to something else, to forget me and what's in the nooks and crannies of my head but there is always some moment i have to return to me and it all weighs on hard. when i'm working an office job, that moment is saturday. the stop day, the stop and remember you're alone day, the stop and watch too many whatever movies are on, the stop and regret what came out of my mouth in the middle of the partying the night before, the stop. and then some crying, over some memory triggered by a chick flick i would never admit to seeing, over some thinking about what i haven't done for my family, what i haven't done for myself. and then back to the wrecking of the prior evening. digging into the bag for the medication, finding something better on the tv, something better to forget to.

i meant to leave the apartment at some point today. but it was hiding day really, i let my magical green couch of sleep suck me in. i need a hiding day every few days. don't know if that's a good thing but it's what i need.

word-eating maya

upon the recent dvd release of apocalyto, the film i railed against vehemently in a post somewhere below, i am writing to eat my words. i am also restarting this blog, in conversation with inkaquatic, who has put in her own two cents about the movie. i saw it in the theater when it came out in november. i had my arms crossed for the first thirty minutes, my mouth in a snarl. it was cutesy and odd at first. but when they get to the temples and then the chase, i undid my stance and leaned in, almost off my chair.

i relived that again with friends this weekend. it was even better in the 2nd go 'round, watching it without the possessive posture. rereading what i said about mel, i feel that i was only right to question what was gonna go down, especially after "passion," but perhaps being removed from the subject, not so close to it as he was with christ, served him better. he got so heavy-handed and preachy and violent and just forgot about story in passion and apocalypto was the place for him to explore what real, open ideas of humanity he seems to have. he put together ideas about the maya that i've read about in whole new ways, ways i could see clearly. i guess that can be the function of film, to uncomplicate. it isn't a historical document but it uses history very well. the temple scenes were as grotesque as they were gorgeous, i was totally torn by this gruesome empire and its fabulous fashions, all the jade bling that the ahaus (maya kings) rocked, i loved it and it hurt me.

it does get ludicrous but mostly holds together, especially that last hour in the jungle. the lead character learns to use the forest as the movie learns to use the forest and it's just magical. i could not fight that, it was real homage to a natural world and a smart way to go with the action and story, not getting to caught up in the details of history and using the drama of nature. i do still think that he is some kind of hollywood conquistador, and i will forever envy the white men with access to great storytelling devices, but at least this time he used his powers for good.