I Want My Scalps!

Let's start at the beginning. This movie is something that should be called by now a Tarantino Flick. Yes, it is a sub-genre, and many people who are not Tarantino could try to make a Tarantino Flick. This categorization, brings some heavy baggage along.

What to expect?

Many things could come to mind: a good story, excellent dialogue (already called Tarantinesque in the academic jargon), compelling characters, winks to film itself, an incredible combination of score or soundtrack with images, chapter division, among others. Even though all those things come to mind, the only thing you are certain about a Tarantino film is that it will be genuinely entertaining.

Tarantino makes films with the spectator in his head. He sets out to make the greatest movie he would like to watch. In the case of Inglourious Basterds, he succeeded. He brings us, as the advertising materials bragged, his own vision of the Second World War. In this movie, he chose a context and specific characters, and used them as part of his completely fictional film.

Inglourious Basterds is a movie about a group of jewish-american soldiers known as "The basterds", lead by Lt. Aldo Raine (an exquisite caricature played by Brad Pitt), that are chosen to kill nazis and "gather 100 nazi scalps per soldier", in occupied France.

I'm not getting into much detail about the plot and subplot because that would mean to ruin the surprise factor. With the basic premise of the film, and what has been seen in the trailers, one can imagine a whole adrenalin rush throughout the film. The truth is that it doesn't happen. The movie has long dialogue secuences very much in the style of its director, and the locations, generally, can be counted with the hands' fingers. It's not a war movie, I insist, it's a Tarantino Flick.

Inglourious Basterds is a movie that with its two and a half hours length, left me wanting more. You are left wanting more Basterds, more Nazis, more Brad Pitt, and more Cristoph Waltz (WOW), more brutality, more scalps, more.

Another thing, and this is me playing the prophet without credit, but I think the movie has scenes which in a few decades will be classics.

"I think this might just be my masterpiece..." With all due respect, Mr. Tarantino, I don't think so, but there's no doubt you do have style. A lot.

Oxide

It hit me today. Since april 2007 (approximately) I haven't directed any project. I haven't been away from the production environment, from the set, from the headaches, from the adrenaline. But it's not the same. Definitely. Today that I'm 100% into inspiration and writing, into creation in paper, I feel that need to direct.

I feel that strong need, as if it was heroine (I haven't tried it but "Take the best orgasm you've ever had, multiply it times a million, and you're not even close..." sounds like it's good) to have my fix; to organize a work group, my crew; to go through the script with the writer and actors; to spend long hours writing and rewriting my shotlist, because the story I saw in my head at 10pm is not the same as the story I see at 1am; to have my Iñaki's cocktail (coca-cola and redbull) in the morning and drink coffee all day; to talk with my actors during the shoot, with no other directing tool but my instinct; to see from the viewfinder or the videoassist monitor how all that I imagined comes to life before my eyes... alive, completely organic.

Today it hit me. It's not cool at all. In a couple of weeks I might shoot an experimental short film with a friend, a writer, but it's not the same. That need to experiment, definitely comes from a different, much more different place. Today I heard about a friend that went into production of a short film. Just a couple of weeks ago, he told me about this idea. And now, he already did it. That was a powerful catalyst. And now I feel more needy than ever. I have many words that scream for a metamorphosis. They want to be images, and I have denied that right to them. At the moment I feel comfortable with the workload of my next term, I'll gather a group of actors, a decent cinematographer, a great colorist, and I'll get back to work.

My technique needs to be polished, and my instinct need to mature.

I feel rusty.

Let The Right One In

I have no idea why did it took me so long to watch this movie, which I consider is among the best movies of 2008 and the present year. A friend had been insisting me to see it. He handed it to me and, for one reason or another, I never saw it. Months later I'm in Vancouver and I don't find the CD in which he burnt the movie. I decided to buy it. I'm now happy as hell to have seen it in original DVD format with a home theater and a decent monitor. Joe, my recommendation now is that you buy the movie so you can watch it in a decent format.

"Let The Right One In" is an excellent film that pushes you inside its world and hypnotizes you. This is achieved thanks to its effective atmospheres, great acting, its semi-slow pace, and obviously, the incredible story that is told. It's a story that doesn't compromise with anything and has no self-censorship. It's a story that grabs you, shakes you, and at the end, you still feel it... tearing your insides.

The movie tells the story of Oskar, a 12-year-old boy, victim of the abuses of his school “friends”. Oskar dreams about having the courage to defend himself. He dreams about killing that what bothers him. And between his fantasies and his games and his loneliness, one night he meets Eli. Eli is a vampire girl. They fall in love, but they do like only a kid can love: purely.

The movie is grim and also points in philosophical questions of “vampirism”. It's not that easy for a person who really has a variant in his/her essence to present him/herself before society. Like Roger Ebert said, "it's very easy to go around with your pose of goth kid, but things get hard when you have marks of fangs on your neck to show-off.”

The director of the movie didn't risk at all in telling the essence of the story. He didn't go for the cheap scare, the gratuitous blood spurt, or the extremely macabre takes. He decided to show the drama of the struggle and the impotence of the kid who has no arguments to defend himself, and finds a ray of light in a vampire girl. And he achieves it. The movie scares when it has to, but it does because you already have on you all the emotional baggage that those kids project.

We've been Oskar or Eli in a given moment. Or they are those kids which we, from our desks at school, saw them being bothered. Or they are those kids which we bothered. That connects you to the protagonists, and when you get scared, you really do, because you have seen that. You've lived that. The outsider or the misfit themes are related to all of us.