Hot off the press!

Back in 1998, I was floundering about for a dissertation topic when I took a graduate level French course on Cahiers du Cinéma with Carina Yervasi and was introduced to the concept of film journals. By this point, I had already learned a great deal about Latin American film history and, as a final project for this class, I decided to examine each and every page of Cahiers to look for material on Latin American film. This proved to be an arduous project -- but, oddly enough, also an exhilerating one, of sorts. (That paper is still in my electronic "trunk" of sorts, trying to burst its chains to try publication again. Quieto, quieto, soon, my friend...) I started looking for Latin American film journals written around the period of the 1960s and 70s, a high point of filmmaking from the region and discovered that the only one to survive the period of New Latin American Cinema from beginning to supposed end happened to come from Lima.

Lima? Peru?? Home?? But were there any movies made around then? Then why would one of the most respected film journals in Latin America come from a place that really didn't make any movies? It didn't make any sense.

Eleven years later, you can finally really read what I learned. Behold: my book. Finally. I hold the first copy, before the go on sale for real at the end of the month (although Amazon has it available at a discount for pre-order now! I know, I hate Amazon -- but, hey, discount!). In this picture, you can also see the snazzy cover art. I have to say: UPNE definitely knows how to make a pretty book. They rock.

Eleven years. Given that I've already started the next project, here's hoping it's not another decade until the next one. Huzzah!

The Big News

From the beginning of this blog, the masthead has read "Musings on movies, fatherhood, the pre-tenure stresses, life in Takoma Park and other randomness."

The careful reader will observe that the masthead has now subtly been altered.

Because I am "pre-tenure" no more.

(aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!!! ohmygodohmygodohmygod!!)

Thank you, thank you, un millón de gracias to everyone who has helped me through this.

Perhaps needless to say, I don't think my grading will be done by tomorrow.

I am turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding

Yes, well, I dare anyone to say the above isn't true.

But that's not the reason I'm posting it here. It also happens to be a line from Walt Whitman's massive poem "Song of Myself." Despite the fact that I was an English major in college, have a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and currently teach literature at a university, I had never read Whitman's poem. This is a major oversight, one that I cannot even justify by my emphasis in Latin American literature -- for I knew that José Martí's "Our América" is a response in the tradition of Whitman. I cannot even justify this as an oversight on the film front. After all, upon coming back to the United States for college, several of my friends wrote to me back in Lima that I had to see this movie which was all about me; when I went to see it, I discovered that ol' W.W. lorded over the English classroom like a spectre, sounding his "barbaric yawp" like the "sweaty toothed madman" that he is.

In any case, the oversight has been corrected in a most wonderful way.

On Friday, my colleague Linda Voris hosted a one-time public reading of "Song of Myself." It was possible to say that she decided to do this "just becuase," but she explained at the outset that this whole endeavor was inspired on Obama's inauguration day and the fervor his election alone generated. Each participant selected one of the 52 sections of the poem.

My colleague Katherine (who, mind you, we only just discovered was also an English major at Dartmouth at the same time I was!) threw down the gauntlet when she announced her choice, lamenting that "I would love to do #24, but I think that one should be read by someone manly." Naturally, I took this as a challenge; naturally (and blindly, really), I chose that selection.

I would suggest trying to read it out loud for yourself to see if you get the same results. I only read it once to myself the night before while watching ER, and discovered I really could not read it any other way with with a low, gravelly voice. It was all about sensuality, the corporeal -- and it was really fun to read:

I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whateve I touch or am touch'd from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles and all the creeds.

If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it,
Transluscent mould of me it shall be you!
Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter it shall be you!
Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you!
You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life!
Breat that presses against other breasts it shall be you!

I mean, really. You don't get better than this. No wonder why I am a Unitarian. I even got to do an encore when a couple people didn't show up and I got to pinch-hit with #42 as well. This particular section got a big laugh:

I know perfectly well my own egotism,
Know my omniverous lines and must not write any less,
And must fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.

The entire reading was really a magical experience, one I haven't had with poetry for a long time. All the different voices -- men, women, all with different accents and inflections -- made for a really exciting evening, one that finished in three hours, which was much shorter than I imagined. I wonder if it is a common occurrence to read Whitman like this -- or whether any other poets merit such a reading. Certainly, I'm using a bookstore gift certificate that has been burning a hole in my jacket pocket to buy some Whitman before I lose all this feeling.

And as for my section? Let me put it this way: three students came up to me afterwards to tell me that they were going to have a hard time coming to my class again next week; a fourth said he now never plans to miss any of my classes again.

What I get for not updating this blog more frequently

Yesterday was my second day of class in the new semester. I teach my upper-level class in the early afternoon, half of which have taken one of my classes before; in other words, they know me and my idiosyncrasies fairly well. My introductory film class, however, meets at 8:30AM. I hate teaching at this time; they hate taking classes at this time; we all nonetheless try to make it all work.

I had my computer open and up on the big screen in the room, showing some clips and the trailer for Singin' in the Rain. In discussing trailers, one person mentioned Don LaFontaine, the voice-over artist for trailers who recently passed away; reminded by the mention of his name, I asked if anyone had seen the trailer for Comedian, the Jerry Seinfeld documentary. No one had, so I said, "Give me a moment to open my browser. It's definitely worth it." I pulled up the browser and continued with whatever I was saying while I was waiting for Firefox to open.

In the middle of a sentence, however, the entire class started laughing. I stopped, turned around.

Naturally, my browser opens on my blog. If you scroll down to see the posting immediately before this one, you'll see what was displayed on a very large screen behind my head. Photo included.

I turned back, very red in the face, and said, "I can explain that..."

Let's see if that shows up on evaluations.

Do ya think I'm sexy?

This is my official photograph for the university. It's a couple years old, but it gets the point across. I'm not going to sell any magazines, it's true, but I do OK.

Oh, except, wait. I forget that the above photograph demonstrates that I'm sexy as all get-out.

Granted, perhaps you could just learn that from my wife after a couple shots of vodka. But according to a new poll, apparently it's not just me, but my profession that makes me sexy. I received this from another professor in my department, and responded that now I really need to hit the gym this semester; another person replied, "Why bother? Just wear your glasses!" (To wit, Angela has actually rejected my tentative flirting with contact lenses, since she indeed thinks glasses are better.)

So how do I translate this to higher student evaluations? Hmmm....

The snow always shines on TV

Earlier this month as the holiday season came upon us, I was chatting with my dean about favorite holiday flicks; my head currently embroiled in Ernst Lubitsch films, I mentioned The Shop Around the Corner as a favorite. "For me," she said, "I love nothing better than the hokey wonderland that is White Christmas. I just love that film."

"If you can believe this," I said, "I've never seen it."

Her jaw dropped. Indeed, somehow I have never managed to catch Bing, Danny, Rosemary and Vera-Ellen do their post-WW2 tinsel-wrapped spectacle in any form (television, video or otherwise). I have no idea why I missed this, since I'm a sucker for everything that the movie stands for: musicals, Bing Crosby crooning, implausibly mild Vermont winters, etc. My dean (who is not a film expert, mind you) was genuinely upset that I had not seen this; within two days, a DVD copy that had been lying around her house appeared in my departmental mailbox. The end-of-semester grading mayhem quickly commenced, however, and I didn't get to watching it, despite her constant cajoling in the hallways, until a few days before Christmas, with my parents in town and a cold wind blowing outside.

Since I'm still ovewhelmed by holiday cooking, I'll say that my first response is that White Christmas is something like a meringue: a light, fluffy, pretty confection that isn't very filling. I was stunned to find that a drag routine done by two of the most popular jocks in my Peruvian high school was lifted verbatim from this movie (costumes and all!); I was less stunned to discover that Donald O'Connor was originally slated to do Danny Kaye's part, given its similarity to his role in Singin' in the Rain.

I decided to post about the movie after reading a holiday posting by Glenn Kenny on the film, mainly because one particular aspect piqued my professional curiosity and has stuck with me. The plot finds Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye up in Vermont at Christmastime, where their beloved general has fallen on hard time following the War while running an inn; to cheer him up, the boys decide to ask all the members of their infantry who live in New England to come to Vermont for a surprise. In order get them there quickly, however, Bing decides to go to New York and appear on the Ed Harrison television show (Harrison also being a fellow infantryman, coincidentally enough) to encourage them to come. Everyone watches this show, including the general (Kaye must fake a knee injury to get the general out of the room from where the television set is located) and Rosemary Clooney, who watches backstage from the nightclub act that she is doing in New York when she mistakenly thinks Bing is using the general's plight for cash.


This use of television fascinates me and I want to investigate it more. For one thing, using television as part of the plot seems to run counter to the entire point of the movie in the first place, since the film was known and marketed at the time for being the first to be filmed in Vistavision, Paramount's entry into the widescreen market. From what I understand (and it's been a while since I've read Bolton's book on widescreen), this technological innovation was meant to combat the encroachment of television into the entertainment market. (Drive-in theaters and 3D also were technological innovations, but widescreen is the most interesting to me). It is therefore somewhat surprising for me to see a television screen within a wide theatrical screen. From an international perspective, this might have been the first time that some countries would have seen televisions and how they might be used; according to this, television didn't arrive in Peru until 1958, and this movie was released four years earlier and was undoubtedly screened there. So what was the general reaction to seeing television in this film? And what about in the United States? Why did Paramount choose to include the use of television as part of the plot, when the movie industry was trying to combat television? How many other movies in the 1950s did this? What kind of relationship between TV and movies existed for this?

We'll see. Give me your thoughts, if you want, and let's see what happens.

Back from outer space (or maybe just Macchu Picchu)

I'm so very sorry that it's taken me this long to get posting again. In all honesty, I simply vowed that it wasn't right for me to blog while I still had some papers due back to my students. It's been a rougher semester than what I originally planned. Among other things, the infamous tenure file got submitted and I had to quickly race through edits on the book. Speaking of which, as it turns out, if you think I'm not legit about this whole getting published thing, I apparently now have an official ISBN! How exciting! You can now even read the synopsis, and even pre-order at Amazon! (Hopefully by the time a cover is designed and/or the book actually gets published, the powers that be will have figured out that my middle initial isn't "R." Sigh...) I can't think of anything more fabulous than that.

Well, maybe I can. Because you know what would be really fabulous? These days, I've been getting into Bollywood movies a little more. I even showed Dil se... to my general class this semester. What a shame, however, that I can't combine my growing interest for Bollywood films and my Peruvian heritage. I mean, wouldn't it be cool if, say, a Bollywood film were to film in Peru or somethng? Maybe some giant science fiction flick starring worldwide goddess Aishwarya Rai frolicking around Macchu Picchu with some alpacas frolicking in the background?


Well, well. Dreams really do come true!

And this flick might even be better than the last science fiction film set in Peru (which, mind you, encouraged the main Lima newspaper El Comercio to create a brand-new "no-stars" rating). The only reason to apparently see that flick was to catch super-telenovela hunk Cristian Meier naked. That, and a fake UFO over Maccu Picchu.

CAMERA

CAMERA
D: David Cronenberg, Canada, 2000, approx. 7 minutes.
Source: Viderdrome (Criterion Collection version)

A narrator starts to tell a story off-camera: "One day, the children brought home a camera." It's a simple statement; it starts simply, with a man -- no, not a man: an actor. Images of the children with the camera are intercut with images of a nice gentleman with graying hair, shot with a video camera in medium shot. As he continues, however, the (video) camera starts to push forward, so that the man is in close-up when he announces something unexpected: "When you look at it in a cold light, photography is death."

Camera continues a fascinating interplay of images as the actor delivers a monologue about the "dangers" that the Camera proposes. The children matter-of-factly do all the tasks needed to make a movie: check lights, process film, measure the f-stop; these are all shot in a very matter-of-fact manner as well, with relatively "normal" lighting and camera distances. These are all in stark contrast to the images of the actor, who the video camera moves into shots so close that we as viewers feel uncomfortable. The actor appears unattractive, even sinister: the light from the windows appears too harsh, his eyebrows are thick and menacing. The actor is also edited in an odd manner: often, we are presented with jump cuts to sudden extreme close-ups of his eyes. The images are not necessarily horrific, yet the tone established throughout this piece is horrific.

In many ways, Camera is an interesting precursor to Cronenberg's 2005 feature film A History of Violence, which cannily comments on the movies in a similar way. In that film, scenes of violence and gore which would otherwise titillate the viewer are presented in a stark, cold manner than unnerves even the most seasoned viewers, making us question the very nature of the horror film genre. (One can argue he this is a common preoccupation for the director, also seen in eXistenZ, Naked Lunch and especially the brilliant Videodrome, which also featured Leslie Carlson, the actor featured here.) In Camera, Cronenberg does not present any gore and yet the whole film is structured to terrify. I particularly like this piece because the link between photography and death so clearly derives from Roland Barthes' tragically final work Camera Lucida. These ideas were not academic for Barthes: the work is inspired by his mother's death, and every photograph of her does not remind him of the joy that her life brought, but instead serves to mock him, reminding him that she is dead. Cronenberg highlights something very similar: the life captured by motion pictures only demonstrates that such moments cannot be repeated and taunt us with what once was and can never be again.

Camera becomes truly haunting in the last minute or so, when the children bring the large, old 35mm camera into the room with the actor. They apply make-up, change everything around and then a young boy (bespectacled, like Cronenberg) says, "Action." And suddenly, the image changes: it is warm, gorgeous, widescreen. And suddenly we realize that the harshness of everything that has come before is largely due to the use of video instead of film. (This section was actually filmed with the very camera seen throughout the short.) And yet, as soft and beautiful as this looks/sounds/feels, we are acutely aware of everything that the actor has noted before this. He repeats his initial line -- "One day, the children brought home a camera" -- but the line is changed, no longer innocent. And this time, the shot hangs on just a little too long. It catches the actor's face in a private moment: in the last seconds of the film, Carlson's face breaks for just a moment, his eyes watering and distant, filled with despair. The film cuts away to black -- and the effect is terrifying. Can we watch movies again the same way?

This entry is part of the Movies About Movies Blogathon hosted at GoatDogBlog -- please feel free to visit the other entries listed on that site. This is also cross-posted as the first entry at the newest incarnation of The Short Films Blog, the blog associated with my course this semester. New entries on short films will appear every day until December 11th, with students starting to post next weekend. Please visit there often -- and comment on the students' work, since they earn extra credit for more comments!

Just like Casey Kasem...

Right now, we are counting down to several things:

• The first day of classes, for the whole family;
• The first day in "Green Room" (aka the Big Kids' Room), for Xan;
• J&A's departure for Telluride, which happens during the first week of classes; and
• the relaunch of this.

We can't do anything if you want to participate in the first three; for #4, however, please e-mail me if you're wondering how you can participate in making my students' lives that much better or worse. (Yes, grading is involved. Señor Pájaro, here's your chance!)

Attention: Worlds officially colliding

I read Entertainment Weekly's Popwatch blog semi-religiously. It keeps me in touch with what's happening in pop culture, it occasionally has some great things to dish about and it produces America's Next Top Doll, which makes me bust a gut every time.

Today, they brought up the Slayage Conference on the Whedonverse happening right this second in Arkansas. This is a fab conference, with lots of really fun Buffy geeks. I should know: I went to the first one in Nashville several years ago. I'm even an official "Buffyologist" since the paper I presented there subsequently was picked up and published in Slayage. And yes, it's part of the scholarship material of my tenure file (which, incidentally, went to outside readers this morning). I am very proud of my little piece on the treatment of race in the American musical genre and "Once More (with Feeling)" I am also particularly proud that one of my graduate students is there right now (hi, Lauren!) and can't wait to chat with her about her experience.

But I digress: back to Popwatch. I decided to leave a comment on the article earlier in the day. I checked back again tonight, just to see what else had been posted about the conference. And in the comments, I discovered the following comment left by someone named Alissa:

Middento is a professor at my school. This popwatch comments section has become too surreal.

Ah, the 'verse is small indeed. Not to mention surreal.

The birth anouncement

Please welcome the birth of Writing National Cinema: Film Journals and Film Culture in Peru, which will be published by the University Press of New England sometime in 2009. The author, Jeffrey Middents, reports that he is exhausted but doing fine.

O Happy Day!

Cuarón! No, Cuar-off. No: on. Off. On again! Off? Sheesh...

Last year, I managed to successfully teach a summer course on auteurs. I had long loathed the idea of teaching a whole course about a single director, yaaaawn, but I thought that six weeks would be kinda brisk and fun. The course is actually more about general auteur study than anything else and each student has to pick their own director of choice to follow; as a class, however, I choose one director to follow as a case study. Last year was an easy choice: Pedro Almodóvar, chosen because now I could order all the wacky early stuff I had always wanted to see and so that I finally wouldn't have to choose whether I should screen Hable con ella or Todo sobre mi madre.

This year, I decided to put myself on a bit of a limb and chose Alfonso Cuarón. If Almodóvar was a risky choice of sorts, Cuarón is even more so, particularly since he only has a few features to his name thus far. This choice was inspired, however, by an offhand comment at an SCMS panel on Children of Men that I attended, where a panelist said, "When I went to see the movie, I wanted to know whether I would be getting the director of Y tu mamá también or the director of Harry Potter." And all I could think of was, But it's so clear it's the same guy. Hence: a good choice in my mind for an auteur study.

There is another reason: in doing the very preliminary research on Cuarón, I discovered there was very little written about him. Given my decade-long exploration of Peruvian cinema and my new fascination with shorts, hearing the phrase "barely anything written" was music to my ears and I made an initial pitch with a press at SCMS to write a book on Cuarón and they seemed receptive to the idea for a series on contempo directors. When the recent horrific snafu happened with the Peru book (still unresolved, though an answer may come forth next week, keep those fingers crossed), Angela suggested that since I actually tend to write conference papers with 48 hours to spare (it's true), why not try writing at least a draft of the whole book as I'm teaching the course. Not a bad idea, I thought. So my ulterior motive for teaching this course (much like the shorts course from two summers ago, now turning into a regular course for this fall) is to prep a larger academic work.

All great ideas, except for one thing: where are the students?

When summer registration was just beginning, I was pleasantly surprised that I had six students right off the bat; within a few days, I had 8. This was great: the last two summers, my classes had 7 students, then 6. (This, while a couple other literature courses had 20.) Now at least I wouldn't have to worry about my course. I turned my attention to the end of the semester.

Right before graduation, I got ready to send an email informing the class about the textbook we'd be using, in case they wanted to purchase it online or something. I looked at the roster and, to my horror, the list had not expanded, but shrunk in half. 4.

There was no way they would let the course run at 4.

And, of course, this was one of the only times I actually had all of my materials done ahead of time. Crapola. Why had this happened? Since most of the students who had dropped were from the MFA program, my first instinct was that the Mean Girls (TM) who had sabotaged my evaluations in the fall were now telling everyone to avoid my course. (Curses!) Then, I realized that was paranoid and the likelihood is that it's the economy, stupid, or something like that. Indeed, virtually all the summer courses in the department were drastically underenrolled.

Over the last week, the course fluctuated. We got as high as 6, which I felt comfortable would be allowed to go, but then dropped down to 5 again. I still had no idea on Friday whether or not the course would run and the administrator in charge of this (a pal) also had no clue, that decisions would be made on Monday. I broke the news to the class that we were on the bubble, asked them to ask friends if need be.

I looked yesterday morning: one more had dropped. Back to 4.

The administrator said that he could argue 5, but not 4 -- but that he would hold my course from cancellation on the off-chance, mainly because I knew at least one student might need it to graduate.

This morning, still at 4. The administrator sent me an e-mail saying it was off.

By this point, I had resigned myself. In the shower, I thought up of how I can teach the course in the spring anyway and how to teach it as a full-length course by adding Alejandro González Iñárritu to the mix and cribbing some ideas from a similar course taught by a friend on the Coen Brothers. I thought, hey, who says I can't still watch the movies and write the book? I'll invite friends for a summer film series and they can help me find things. There will be wine and food and great conversation every Wednesday. I'd miss the summer salary -- but this would be fun and productive! And I haven't had a summer like this in a few years? I toweled off, feeling happy with what I was doing with the summer, ready to start fresh. I logged online to get my class' emails so that I could let them know it had been canceled.

There were now 5 students.

Sometime in the hour it took me to shower and have lunch, another student had come into the course. I called the administrator. He said, "Congrats! Your course is a go!"

And as I watched the paycheck come back into view as the summer film series in my house faded away, I wasn't sure exactly how I should feel.

An invitation to manipulate

Now that the semester's over, I have two academic things on my plate this week: (1) finish up my syllabus for my course on Alfonso Cuarón which is due to start in a week, and (2) finish up a long-overdue article on Peruvian director Luis Llosa.

This is a necessary introduction for the surprise discovery that I had been tagged in a meme. And from none other than Film Experience guru Nathaniel. (Ohmygosh, hi Nathaniel! *pant pant* big blogger looking at little ol' me, try not to sweat or vomit *pant pant*)

Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Locate the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing...
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged me.

There happen to have been two books in my bookbag, which I was just packing up in order to go to bed. The first, Ricardo Bedoya's 100 años del cine en el Perú: Una historia crítica, amusingly has photographs on page 123, so I had to go to page 127 to find text. As such, this is what I get

Así, el factotum de Amauta Films -- que por entonces substitía como empresa dedicada al negocio de la distribución de cintas extranjeras, principalmente mexicanas -- Felipe Varela La Rosa intentó regresar a la producción, para lo que formó la empresa Nacional Films del Perú, asociandose con Ismael Bielich, Kurt Hermann y Federico Uranga. En el distrito limeño de Barranco, emprendió la instalación de estudios y laboratorios con los que se propuso prestar servicios a empresas que intentaban probar la eficacía del apun incipiente negocio de la publicidad fílmica y mantenerse en la producción de noticiarios y documentales. En la nueva experiencia apareció acompañado por Kurt D. Hermann, director de producción de la nueva compañía, Guillermo Garland y por los técnicos Pedro Valdivieso y Julio Barrionuevo, responsables de fotografía y sonido que habían iniciado su carrera en Amauta.

Hm. What do we learn from the above?

1. Film history in Peru in the early 1940s involves something called Amauta Films.
2. Spanish sentences are really friggin' long. (And yet, is anyone else glad that neither Saramago nor García Márquez was near me right now?)
3. And often really boring.
   
4. I am a big geek.

I expected the other selection to be even more tedious -- and yet, out of context as it is, it is more fun and profound. The book is the textbook I have assigned for my class, Auteurs and Authorship, a collection of essays edited by Barry Keith Grant. The essay that encompasses page 123 is Claire Johnson's "Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema"; the three sentences selected happen to comprise one of her own writing and two quoted from Hans Enzenberger:

There is no such thing as unmanipulated writing, filming or broadcasting. The question is therefore not whether the media are manipulated but who manipulates them. A revolutionary plan should not require the manipulators to disappear; on the contrary, it must make everyone a manipulator.

Gotta say, I like that one much better. Plus, this bestows upon all of you the power to manipulate the media however you choose.

Oooh, now it's time for my favorite game of tag! Let's see what Zunguzungu, StinkyLulu, the Magiares, Manasse and that Desperate Hausfrau have to say. Not quite the usual suspects, but all smart folks, which should make this even more fun.

Hook, line

Without going into too much detail yet (because, dear God, I don't want to jinx this), I got notification today that something I have been waiting for with bated breath might actually go through. The nibble on the line is more sure and solid. I've been here before, though, which is why I'm not saying anything for sure yet. I will find out in the next two weeks about this possibility.

Saying no more than this, if you've got some good thoughts, prayers, karma, crossed fingers or bonus points to send in my direction, I'll take 'em about now. (Thanks in advance. And yes, I will inform here if and when this goes through.)

My school spirit goes to 11

Seven years ago, when I first got to AU as a sabbatical replacement, the men's basketball team was on the verge of entering the hallowed March Madness dance. They had played wonderfully well, the clear favorite as they played the final game in the Patriot League against Holy Cross. They had not been beaten. Life was good. ESPN was coming to campus. There was an air of destiny.

I wanted them to lose so very badly.

Why the ire? For one thing, all the voice-mail messages. There were about three-per-day on my machine, popping up randomly before I could delete them. I've also never been a sport guy and, after Dartmouth, I really haven't developed any sense of school spirit around athletics. If I never went to a football game when I lived in Ann Arbor, you know that I'm not the athletics kinda guy. Seven years ago, I went to the pep rally (seemingly odd in this non-football school) with my teaching assistant, Stephen; both of us dressed in black and raised our pom-poms with a disaffected lower-case "rah" when they told us to cheer. I went home and was thrilled when the team lost, because that meant the hullabaloo was over.

Seven years later, the school is poised again. This time, I became aware of it when they started talking about in on NPR as the school to look out for. Uh-oh, I thought, here we go again. This time, it's against Colgate, but there is a rally planed this afternoon and tickets are available.

Here's the difference: I actually care this time. I want them to win. Perhaps this is due to the fact that I've had athletes in my classes on several occasions -- including the entire men's freestyle swim team for a whole year in two films classes. (I referred to them as a group as "da boyz.") Maybe I'm developing school spirit after all.

Or maybe it's that I can finally have a reason to have a public screening of This Is Spinal Tap. Since there is, miraculously, a connection:



UPDATE -- Oh my God: they did it!

On Eduardo Noriega

This weekend was the SCMS annual conference, held this year in Philadlephia. I have had the good fortune to be able to present at the conference every year (except 2000) and it regularly becomes the energizing academic force for me every year. This year, blogging came into play as well: I have recently read about bloggers meeting other bloggers but hadn't done that myself until Stinkylulu sent me an email asking if we should meet while at SCMS -- and suddenly, I realized that several of the film blogs I've been lurking around were also written by young film nerds academics like me! It was a blast meeting Lulu and Nick (and QTA, whose own blog is now defunct because of silly pressures like having to write one's dissertation and all). Plus, I went to a couple panels directly related to blogging on films, so we'll see how this affects this space as well. (Although Nick and Lulu both said that the Xan-pics need to keep coming as well.)

My own paper was for a panel on the relationship between contemporary Latin American cinema and Ibermedia, the most prominent funding source for Latin American filmmaking, which happens to be located in Spain. The panel was great: one person wrote about the program itself, I gave some ideological implications resulting from the growing dependence on Ibermedia within Latin America, and a third offered a somewhat anthropological glimpse as an insider on a movie funded by Ibermedia. We had a robust crowd with over a half hour of questions (unheard of!) and a number of compliments after we broke.

And, of course, this meant that I talked a little about Eduardo Noriega.

You may or may not know that I am teaching a course on Stardom this semester and I am always tempted to discuss him because he fascinates me. He actually has made a number of films, of which I have seen four: Alejandro Amenábar's Tesis and Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes), Guillermo del Toro's El espinazo del diablo (The Devil's Backbone) and Marcelo Piñeyro's Plata quemada (Burnt Money). With those heavy eyebrows and strong facial features, he's natural hunk hunk burning movie-starness; what fascinates me is how these four films (a) know that and (b) subsequently twist the characters around how smoldering he is. In all of these films, he is either crazy or a murderer or both -- and yet somehow the viewer wants to let him off the hook anyway because he's, ya know, hot. Amenábar in particular uses him in this way, particularly as he is paired with phenomenal character actor Fele Martínez, who conspicuously plays the normal (read: not hot, but also not crazy) guy in both of those films. Angela and I talked once about how the relative hotness of an actor often helps us identify with a character quicker and easier, justifying decisions like casting Jennifer Connelly in House of Sand and Fog for a character who was originally plain and dumpy. (Christian Metz would, I imagine, have quite the field day with this idea. But I digress.)

My paper, however, was not about Noriega's hotness (which is what I would talk about if and when I bring him up in class this semester) but rather his Spanish-ness. The image above comes from Plata quemada, which is actually an Argentine-Spanish co-production. While that production certainly gained cachet by casting Noriega after his performance in the break-out international hit Abre los ojos, doing so also slightly changed the narrative since the script (and novel) is based on a true story about two Argentines. My paper talked about his inclusion as such and the implications of diluting national cinematic identity when you throw a random Spaniard in a main role.

Naturally, I waited until the very last minute to finish my paper, which means I finished it very early Saturday morning before the presentation that afternoon. When I checked into my hotel, I had asked if there was a place to print nearby. They happily assured me that I could print there. Great, I thought, I'll just print it, grab something for breakfast and run to the first panel. Alas, when I came down to print, I discovered that the internal server was down and I wouldn't be able to print from the regular terminals -- but that there was one behind the front desk that I could print from.

It was only after I begun that I realized I was printing on the slowest printer ever. My 12-page document took 40 minutes to print. I was kicking myself.

Here's where things get a little spooky. While waiting for the interminable print job, I tried to find the printer application so that I could speed things up. In the process, I opened up the "Recent documents" drop-down menu. Clearly, whoever had used the computer before had been viewing some -- ahem -- naughty pictures of a sort, given some of the random document names that I saw on the list. While amusing, I would otherwise not note this -- except that smack in the middle of the list, I saw the name "eduardonoriega.jpg."

Now how weirdly coincidental is that? I'm printing a paper referencing this guy on the same computer that rather recently someone else is apparently ogling him -- which I guess only proves my original claim above, that he's a hunka hunka burning movie star. I think that for the next conference I go to, I'll try writing about some other semi-obscure randomly attractive actors that I like -- Emily Watson, Ricardo Darín, Shohreh Aghdashloo, maybe Maggie Cheung? -- to see if other hotel computers can be made to bend to my whim even before I arrive. (Or maybe I should just try to channel this to happen again. Because if they all show up at my hotel at the same time... well, I might just pass out in cinematic apoplexy.)

"Forget the Alamo"

The entry is part of the Endings Blog-a-Thon, featuring a variety of other blogs all talking about movie endings, which i find a fascinating subject. Thanks to Joe at Joe's Movie Corner for putting this all together.

And therefore, be forewarned that the very nature of this posting means here there be spoilers and please do not read unless you have seen the movie in question or don't mind the ending ruined.

Every semester that I teach the introductory film course, I pick a new slate of 14 movies to show over the course of the semester. Most of the students stay with me no matter what I teach, because, somehow, they trust me. Even the movies that confuse them -- Lucretia Martel's The Holy Girl (which I've written about before), Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (which I still don't understand why they don't like), Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (their dislike for this also mystifies me, yet it's happened three times) -- are accepted.

All except one.

This is a still from the final scene in John Sayles' Lone Star, one of the most impressive movies I have seen about the contemporary American condition. Featuring a complex tapestry of storylines centering about the town of Perdido on the Texan border with Mexico, the film also openly deals with complicated concerns about history and how nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Unlike other films which tackle RACIAL CONCERNS!! with bolded, italicized, capital letters by arming itself with a sledgehammer of stereotypes (hello, Crash!), each person in Sayles' Lone Star is a full-fledged character, even if they only have a single scene.

The movie begins with the discovery of a sheriff's badge and a bullet on a skeleton right outside the town limits. This sends the current sheriff, Sam Deeds (played by Chris Cooper), on a quest to determine whether local hero and lauded sheriff Buddy Deeds -- who happens to be his father -- actually deserves his honor, or whether he killed a fellow sheriff in cold blood. In the process, he unearths many long-buried stories about how the white, black, Mexican and native populations have not-so-carefully gotten along in the interim and how times really have changed.

Add into the mix a rather interesting and tender romance between Sam and schoolteacher Pilar Cruz (Elizabeth Peña). We eventually learn that she is widowed with a teenage son, he is divorced, and that as teenagers themselves they were deeply in love. Torn apart when his father and her mother, a Mexican immigrant, find them hot and heavy at a drive-in, they are forbidden to see one another until now. As the rest of the story unfolds, Sam and Pilar's story seems like an interesting diversion. At one point, we are even offered a very steamy lovemaking scene between Sam and Pilar with Freddy Fender playing in the background.

If you've seen other Sayles films, you'll know that that scene is a bit out of character for him. Indeed, the love scene seems otherwise typical for any other film, shot in a very standard style. But most of Sayles' films don't deal with love in quite this way, so this stands out, even if it doesn't seem that problematic or consequential at the time.

It turns out to be very important. The last scene is very simple: Pilar drives up to the drive-in -- long since abandoned -- to meet Sam for the first time since they had their fling, the very drive-in where their parents separated them so many years ago. And while there, Sam shows her a picture of her parents. That is, a picture of her mother and his father. Yes: at the very end, she -- and we -- find out that his father had been having a secret affair with the Mexican immigrant who he helped save as she was crossing the border. And that what they though was merely their parents' racist attitudes covered a bigger fear: that they would find each other and commit incest instead. May I remind you of the sensuous love scene I described above?

Here is the kicker: she is completely overcome, not believing that after all this time of unrequited love, they are still thwarted. He holds her hand as they sit on the hood of his car.

Sam: If I met you today, I'd still want to be with you.
Pilar: We start from scratch?
Sam: Yeah.
Pilar: All that other stuff-- all that history... to hell with it, right? Forget the Alamo.

And the movie ends.

It's important to know that I usually end my screenings by having a discussion immediately following the credits. Students have usually taken this moment to chat with one another about it and I then offer them the ability to share with everyone what they think, a la 60s cinephilia.

Here's the thing: this is the only movie which hasn't worked well under such circumstances. Upon further reflection, students are able to process the subtle layering of the movie, how this one very quiet scene sends a corkscrew through every other part of the movie. It turns everything around and manages to force us as viewers to reflect on each element of the movie as it has built up. It's a different kind of twist than what we are used to in things like The Sixth Sense or The Usual Suspects, but those movie also allow us with at least a couple shots in a montage to show us just how the twist affects the movie. Lone Star makes us think that for ourselves, which we eventually do. As such, it's an extraordinary piece.

But this ending really messes up your average undergraduate's mind, where all they can think is oh mah gahd, he just slept with his SISTER!!! I mean, heck, Chinatown gave us more time to deal with that. The fact that these otherwise really cool, normal, nice characters not only learn that they have committed an ultimate transgression but that they resolve to be OK with it and keep going -- to "forget the Alamo" indeed -- is just too much to immediately process. Lone Star has an ending that demands thought and time and, as such, stands above many other contemporary films.

Ahead and Behind

The grading piles left over from Thanksgiving are finally completed. I am as mystified as everyone else that it has taken this long. But I'm back and, while I have to now make it through the next week of final exams, I may be back to blogging at least a little more regularly.

To celebrate, Angela and I have thought about posting this Way-Too-Much-Information posting for some time now. So, here goes:

The Last Ten Places Xan Has Asked One of His Parents to Kiss Because He Has Hurt It (And Which We Have Subsequently Kissed, Despite Any Aversions)

1. Head
2. Finger
3. Head
4. Elbow
5. Head (hmm, trend?)
6. Head
   
7. Tongue ("Dada, I'th bith my thongue. Can you kith it?")
8. Back
9. Head
10. Butt (For the first time, but undoubtedly not the last: "Dada, kiss my butt!")

I would continue this posting, but I think I hear him crawling up to take a flying leap off the ottoman onto the sofa. Again.

No se lo digas a nadie

I'm raising my head up from the morass (four piles down, two to go) with news that is not news -- or, rather, that I got news that I don't want to publicly advertise yet because it's not definite yet. (No, nobody's pregnant.) Nonetheless, it points to some very good news. I'll just leave it at that

With one week before the semester ends, it's back to the grind.

There is no substitute........

While there is no substitute for the true author of this blog, there is also no end in sight to his backlog of papers to grade. So in the interests of not allowing a similar backlog of topics to stymie him when he returns to posting, Jeff is allowing me to procrastinate on my lesson prepping write an entry or two. Basically, I'll be keeping the chronicles of Xan's life up to date and avoiding any movie commentary. For those of you who don't know - I am "Wifeling," Mother-of-Xan, and She-Whom-the-Cat-May-Upon-Occasion-Actually-Obey.

Before putting up Xan posts, I'll start with a quick "life with Jeff" vignette. Specifically, a list of ways to tell that Dr. Middents is in grading mode:

1. The amount of hair product is drastically reduced and instead he controls the poof of his hair with a baseball cap.

2. When I wake up in the wee hours of the morning, he is asleep on the couch / dining room table / floor with a pile of papers on his chest.

3. His futile dialogues with the cat feature lines such as "Vega, would you give this a B or a B+?"

4. He reaches for his 25-pound dictionary, muttering "Oooooh, I absolutely do NOT think that word means what you think it means."

5. He cannot tell you how many papers he has left; he lists how many stacks of papers he has left (4 stacks now - 4 more to come by Thanksgiving)

6. He drinks coffee. Sometimes starting at 10pm. The man almost never drinks coffee.

7. His generally amicable TA says "You're STILL not done?"

8. He begins to sport a grading callous on his right pointer finger.

9. He tries to get his 2-1/2-year-old son to help grade, again.

10. He doesn't blog.

Yet this amazing man will still take Xan around campus to trick-or-treat and bring him to family orchestra concerts (posts and photos coming) - and even do dishes!

Anyone have any advice for Jeff as he grades?