grime and beauty

yay j.lo! a decent spic movie! i am pleased. went to see el cantante with two buddies tonight. experts in spic matters themselves. we all enjoyed it. i did feel it was choppy in parts and it was missing that crucial childhood bio footage that music biopics seem to specialize in but mostly it was hot. marc was a really respectable hector. he was natural and inside the tortured singer man. and j.lo managed to make the movie about her and yet prop up her man. it was based on the wife character's interviews and she got to be the most fully puerto rican character she's ever been, a control freak drama queen, fine as fuck. she was cursing and drugging and fucking and laying it on it on thick with the accent and it was good. but i would have appreciated some more nudity. there was some nipple flashing thru a dress but really with all the other dirt goin on, nekkidness would have worked. marc was hot too and there was john ortiz as willie colon, a real papi. more flesh all around would have really made it four stars. it's amazing to think that spics are really coming full circle, that they can be portrayed as grimy and fucked up and heroic as anyone else. perhaps there is an arrival finally. i think no one will know it except spics but whatever, we know. we can move on from here, not be so fuckin prissy and uptight about what is often a grimy existence. a beautiful grimy existence.

afterwards the buddy experts and i had some beers and more. that movie left us all craving, addicts that we are, coming off watching this celebration of the tecato. and with every intoxicated sip, the recollections of the film got better. like i say it was choppy, there were things i felt were missing, like the childhood trauma that leads to the adult addiction, as in ray and the brother's death by washtub and the subsequent heroin addiction, walk the line and the brother's death by spinning saw wheel and the subsequent painkiller addiction. there is an allusion to a brother's death in cantante but no visuals for it. perhaps i shouldn't crave such cheesy formulas but the explaining it all away with the mention that "we don't talk about what hurts us," a line from either hector or puchi (the wife, j.lo), didn't quite satisfy. the buddy experts thought there wasn't enough dancing. it starts with some but not enough. i thought it was shrill a lot especially as it was dominated by the wife character. but it gets quiet in this hypnotizing way near the end and that was amazing. it was a scary quiet that was very necessary. there was the narration by the wife character that is dramatic and quiet in its way, cheesy but effective. she was old, j.lo was old and i was happy to see her comfortable in an old self. finally, beauty stripped, finally, some truth told. a truth very specific and because of that something that might work for everyone.

another expert friend told me some review said it had no sense of humor. i had to say that reviewer was probably white, american something. there was so much funny stuff in it. what i think was the mostly puerto rican crowd in union square was rolling. there were a million nuances that i think only a very latin film crew would have caught, funny nuances, tragic one. we're still such a mystery to everyone but ourselves. there are some white folks but whatever, it's not about them getting it. it's about us getting ourselves. that conversation with this "mainstream" is done. we're too many to not discuss us with us. if others want to eavesdrop, fine, but it's time. i'm amazed the time has actually come. good to see it.

i'm sure i will add more to this in a clearer state. i had to get something down now, fresh and inebriated. it's only right, in the spirit of the film. yay hot dirty j.lo. grimy marc. yay, pr and ny. long live.