Before & After

B E F O R E
_____________________________________
FADE IN:

INT. LAURA’S HOUSE - BEDROOM - NIGHT
The room is a total mess.
An ashtray filled with cigarette butts sits on the bedside table, next to a a bottle of prescription medication.
The cigarette butts have lipstick strains on them.
A photo of LAURA (29,) elegant, with sadness hiding behind a smile and JOSH (4) full of life, with shiny eyes and a wide, pure smile.

Dressed in a black suit, pale and well groomed, FRANK (30) sits in a chair, holding a toy car.
The phone suddenly RINGS and He scans the room from one side to the other.
He stares at the picture on the bedside table, gets up, sets down the car and retrieves it.
The phone keeps RINGING.
A BEEP as the answering machine picks up.

LAURA
(filtered)
Hi, you’re calling Laura McKenzie.
I’m not home right now, please--

Frank turns the machine off. He looks at the LCD screen on the phone.

“3 MESSAGES; 0 NEW”

Frank takes his finger to the PLAY button. He hesitates.

He opens a drawer of the bedside table and takes out a wedding ring. He then looks at the wedding ring on his finger.
Frank goes back to the answering machine and pushes PLAY.

MACHINE
(filtered)
Message one. November 20th, 1 PM.

FRANK (V.O.)
(filtered)
Hey. I know you probably don’t want to hear from me so soon.
(beat)
Maybe it’s a good thing the machine answered... right?

He puts the new photo on the bedside table, then puts old one in the drawer.

FRANK (V.O.) (CONT’D)
(filtered)
How’s Josh doing? I miss you both.
I’m trying, Laura.

Frank arranges the messed up bed.
He throws out the ashtray, complete with the cigarette butts, then the pills.

FRANK (V.O.) (CONT’D)
(filtered)
Lots of resumes, no callbacks...
I feel I’m in a limbo here.

He goes to a big mirror at the dresser and looks at himself.

FRANK (V.O.) (CONT’D)
(filtered)
I’ll go now. Please call me back...
I miss you.

BEEP.
A noose hangs from the ceiling.

CUT TO:

INT. BEDROOM - DAY
Laura lies on the bed, perfectly still and looking into the camera.

CUT TO:

INT. BEDROOM - DAY
Josh’s toy car sliding slowly on the floor. A faint child’s voice making ENGINE SOUNDS.

CUT TO:

INT. BEDROOM - DAY
Frank stares at the wall. Photos.

MACHINE
(filtered)
Message 2. November 24th, 2:15 PM.

Frank’s hands subtly shake. He leaves the room.

FRANK (V.O.)
(filtered)
Hey.
(beat)
I’m on my way to an interview...
A big company.

Frank returns with a chair.
He looks around.

FRANK (CONT’D)
They said they value a young,
committed man like me.

He sets the chair down on the floor under the noose.

FRANK (V.O.) (CONT’D)
(filtered)
I will make things right.

Frank sits on the bed and arranges his tie.

FRANK (V.O.) (CONT’D)
(filtered)
Anyway, I just wanted you to wish me luck.
Call me when you get this.

BEEP.

CUT TO:

INT. BEDROOM - DAY
Laura on the bed, staring straight ahead.

CUT TO:

INT. BEDROOM - DAY
Josh’s toy car. It’s steady on the floor.
The light dims.

CUT TO:

INT. BEDROOM - DAY
Frank Shakes the image from his mind.
He stands and leaves the room again.

MACHINE
(filtered)
Message 3. November 28th, 4 PM.

The room is still and spotless.

FRANK (V.O.)
(filtered)
I need you.

Frank enters the room.
He’s carrying a body completely wrapped in linens.

FRANK (V.O.) (CONT’D)
(filtered)
You and Josh...

Frank puts it on the bed.
He leaves again.

FRANK (V.O.) (CONT’D)
(filtered)
I think I can...
I’m ready to look after you.
(beat)
We’re supposed to be together.

A faint CHILD’S LAUGH...

FRANK (V.O.) (CONT’D)
(filtered)
I want you to know...

Frank returns, carrying a much smaller body, wrapped in linens.
He carries it to the bed.
The toy car sits alone on the bedside table.

CUT TO:
INT. BEDROOM - DAY
Laura on the bed... Dead and bloody.

CUT TO:
INT. BEDROOM - DAY
Frank sets the small body down next to the large one.

FRANK (V.O.)
(filtered)
I love You.

Frank grabs the picture from the bedside table and sets it on top of the bodies.

FRANK (V.O.) (CONT’D)
(filtered)
See you soon.

He stares straight ahead into the camera. Eyes cold and empty, void of life. He blinks.
BEEP--

MACHINE
(filtered)
End of messages.

FADE TO BLACK.

THE END.

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A F T E R
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PS:
Any kind of feedback will be greatly appreciated. Use the comments section in blogger or youtube. All positive and negative comments will help me grow as a filmmaker.

Detour-ish (A Teaser)

INT. HOTEL ROOM - BATHROOM - NIGHT

The ash tray is filled with ashes and two cigarette butts. Laura puts her lit cigarette on the ash tray. She’s looking at herself on the mirror. She grabs her tit and releases it and watches how it hangs down. She looks at her ass, her big ass. She then touches her thigh and blows the smoke on the cellulite. She’s sad.

Eddie is BANGING at the door, telling her that it’s ok, they should go back to the bar and have some more drinks.

INT. HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT

Eddie is sitting on the edge of the bed, in his briefs, having wine. Laura steps out of the bathroom, looking far sexier and “younger.” She grabs her purse, and steps out of the room.

EXT. DOCK - NIGHT

Tomás and Tambor are setting up the little boat to leave the island. They are carefully putting the instruments in the boat. Tomás asks Tambor about Piojo. He answers that he hasn’t seen him in a while, that maybe he had to go jerk it off. Tomás laughs.

Tambor asks him if he saw the beautiful gringa that was sitting near the stage. Tomás nods, and mocks him about his lack of skill to handle a woman like that. Speaking of the devil, Tambor points to the beach. It’s Laura, lighting a cigarette.

EXT. BEACH - NIGHT

Laura shakily lights her cigarette. She SOBS. She represses a deep anger, an old sorrow. She just SOBS. She can’t cry. Tomás gently asks if she’s OK, if he can help her in anyway.

Laura is shocked. She thought she was alone. She’s embarrassed. She flees. Tomás asks her again if everything’s all right.

No answer.

...

A Different Drum

When I came back from the sleazy bar to which I went automatically every Friday by 4:05 in the afternoon, I found her in the threshold of my crisis. Everything seemed contradictory for me. If my predisposition of fucking the world indicated that I should simply fuck her, why did I hesitate? The conscience has never played an important roll in my impulsive decisions. My body, in its balance and natural harmony gives me signals... certain impulses.

What the majority of people would consider impulsive actions, not pre-thought actions, I consider them instinctive actions. And it's fair to give credit to your instinct. I don't want to minimize the brain's importance, the logic thinking. But there are more things. The problem is that the man insists on synthesizing: the less, the better. If I understand something, I stay there. The so called, comfort zones.

Anyway, in the end I didn't fuck her. I didn't follow my instinct, and I did follow some... guidelines... moral? I've always complained about the moral. I think it's bullshit for the minds and modern perceptions, having to feel ourselves tied to commandments of past societies. Societies that have a little or nothing to do with me. But my intellectual posture doesn't matter to her. She attacked me. Hard.

I asked her – with that vague idea I have of being a gentleman – to leave. I had no interest in fucking her. There was something very nasty in the idea of having sex with a .. dead woman... don't-- don't judge me. It's not something literal, what I mean is that it would've felt dead, empty. I don't know. I think neither my body, not my mind have to do with it, or anything of metaphysics in my decision and change. It's a third person.

Her name is Cathy.

She took me out of my comfort zone.

Regressions

Do you remember that old man with cloudy eyes? That old man that stuttered every time he called you. That great man whose wrinkled skin showed you, centimeter by centimeter, a story filled with struggles, happiness, frustrations, loves, forests, seas, and fruits. That old man who was young sometime before and whose hand you held as support not to fall. That man who you considered your hero at least once. The one you didn't see during the day sometimes, and you simply resigned to dream of during the night.

That kind and tender person which you ignored for the most part of your life. The one you denied. Do you remember in secondary school or high school? Remember how you blushed with shame... SHAME...because your friends might see you on that great man's side? Now you only have the memory, and you cry, and you talk about him, and you want to take his hand and make sure everyone sees you by his side.

But those gems are perishable. The things that matter, the things we care about and we stick to the most are destined to stop existing physically. And your are a perfect example of this eternal irony. The human as an eternal adolescent, who doesn't know what he/she wants, and never learns to value anything. What a sad story the one of the father that's always there for his kids, even when those kids don't want to know anything about their father. It's the “natural” road, unfair and hard. Because they are the ones that are only left with their white hair, their wrinkles, and their labyrinth of random and fantastic memories; the ones that stay alone at the end.

I see old people. Those men whose eyes hide piercing screams that cry for company... for the no-annulment. I don't even want to imagine the memories, regrets, laments, and cries that are trapped in their deathbed, when they're surrounded by faces and silhouettes that are now hard to decipher. They must cry in silence. Cry behind a peaceful face.

And you, as part of those undecipherable and unrecognizable faces, just observe with incredulity how something that seemed eternal extinguishes slowly, at the rhythm of the erratic shaking of his hands. And is in that final irony when, if you pay attention, you could hear a spectral whisper, filled with calm, that says: “you've had me for years... don't torture yourself... take my hand and we'll be in peace.”

_______________________________________

To my father,

Leonard Cohen said

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

I've never denied you, I've never been ashamed by you, I've always admired you.
But I cannot stop feeling that I owe you so much.
I hope there are no final moments filled with guilt or regrets.

I love you, I respect you, and thank you for everything you have sacrificed for your kids,
the ashes of your life, the poems of an idealist and a dreamer.

Eight

Do you believe in inexplicable connections, almost magical, with something or someone?

I don't know if it's an obsession of mine for trying to find a proof of transcendental elements in a world where the spiritual and the magic are judged as stupidities. But the eight has followed me... I'm sure, and I'm stubborn about it.

Salvador, my name, has eight letters.

Martínez, my second last name, has eight letters.

When I lived in San Nicolás, my house had the number 208.

My actual home has the number 208.

The apartment I live in is number 1808, in a building with number 588.

My first feature script is around eighty-something pages in its first draft.

My student number in ITESM was 595888.

My girlfriend since almost eight years and now fiancé is called Gabriela: eight letters.

The first phone number I remember was 76-88-83.

My musical idol is called Bob Dylan: eight letters.

My cinematographic idol's last name is Scorsese: eight letters.

There are many things that connect me to that number. Why? I don't know, and I'm not interested in knowing. Is part of giving life the credit of its capability to surprise. I'm sure that if I make a deep analysis of my life and what surrounds me, I would find many other things.

Blessed eight, until now it has been a great trip. Lets stay together.

Brainfuck

December 2009. The screen was there, desolate, sad, cynical. My sight wandered between one window and the other, continuously. Something like the people with the habit of changing the TV channel again and again, without stop. Is like trying to catch the most amount of images possible. Make them yours, be jealous, not letting them go. And above all, give them no truce.

The pages of what was priority stayed, as a couple of weeks ago, at the end of my interests at the moment. Coffee, facebook, twitter, view to the urban landscape, the analysis in Senses of Cinema is fuckin' great, coffee, facebook, twitter, what the fuck do we hand in tomorrow?

A very dear friend of mine and very putilla coined (or at least introduced me) a term for the people of the current generation, in which the social webs and other spaces, not only work as a tool, but create little things... little pleasures, very very addictive, that make you become a captive client/user. That term is digital autistic. What an appropriate term!

The worst is that digital autism doesn't seem to be the exception, but the rule. Either because you're a laptop slave thanks to your profession or study, or you simply have the possibility to access social webs by cellphone or other media the activity that appears every 5-10 seconds, is frankly scary.

I don't want to get to the point of having a blackberry or iphone in my hands. The worst thing is I will. 2010 looks like we'll be one step closer to being Wall-E-esque people. We're getting there. I have no doubt. People tend to think that I'm kidding when I say Wall-E is a prophetic movie. I think they're in denial.

I hope society proves me wrong... I don't think so. We've already crossed the point of no return and there's nothing left but to keep on with the same ridiculous obsession for the quick, the immediate, the quantity and no quality... Artificial autism. Good, we're on our way.

Disgusting!

A Start From Scratch

The hangovers continued, the insomnia nights, the days of dreaming, the combination of Vitamin C and E for a better immune system, the hours stuck in front of a laptop trying to write and only getting to be a big virtual voyeuristic, the LBSII pills for a lazy bowel.

Stories in my head pounding randomly during the day, stories that find their way out in the most imprudent moments, my attempt to trust in my memory and that my ADD doesn't get in the way when I get the chance to vomit on the keyboard everything I need to, seven years of an uninterrupted love relationship, its formalization, the support and stimuli necessary, the muses.

The honor of having people by my side who ignorant people call crazy but are geniuses, the drunk gatherings with my blood siblings, the drunk gatherings with my chosen brothers, the mediocre movies, the trash movies, the movies with soul, the soulless movies, the movies that tear your soul apart, a new country, a new city, new people, re-encounters.

And the drinking gatherings continue, and the hangovers, and here I am again, in front of a laptop with nervous and hesitant fingers, and everything starts over again from scratch.

The Man Who Hasn't Met Nacho Vegas

After much thinking, I dared. I had to vomit about this. I dare to talk about music, even though I don´t know much about it but what I get from my ears, brain (or whatever my skull is protecting in there), the heart and the guts. Aphex, whenever you feel it convenient, correct me in your blog. Tambor, Esquer, Karnal... I'm sorry if I fail you.

I think there are very few times in life when one comes front to front with revelations of any kind. In this case, the revelation happened some time ago... and it was musical. Especially in a generation like ours which, even if tried hard, cannot be classified or named, simply because there's no identity at all. In this generational crisis that steals, borrows, or simply recycles past cultural manifestations, sometimes the singer-songwriter (for me a necessary combo), comes out with a style frankensteinely unique.

That singer-songwriter, who emerged from the underworld of our generation, is not a Mexican and much less a gringo... he's from Sabina's land and his name is Nacho Vegas.

I first heard him in a gathering with my three brothers. The song: Gang Bang; the album: Enrique Bunbury's Freak Show. Really?! Accordion, waltz, the burlesque, the neon, the night. The song was a duet with Enrique Bunbury, who I also consider a totally underestimated monster.

And that contrast in their voices and the perfect match in the stanzas was gripping. It was a feeling similar to the first time I heard Esa Noche by café Tacvba, but also the fist time I heard Regan speak with her possessed voice in The Exorcist. It was my inner self of a character many times seen in big movies. Keeping on with the comparison with movies... Gang Bang is Music Noir.

Nacho Vegas is like Chavela Vargas' lost child. While she cries and suffers without hiding, with exposed flesh in a Mexican folk subtly deep, Vegas represses the yell and his voice comes out like a mild cry... like an spectral lament at night, in the distance, that is there for the simple reason of the inevitable... to see who listens.

Nacho Vegas is folk. Is returning to music for urgency. It's not ornamental music. He is a troubadour as much as Sabina is a rocker. His album shared with Enrique Bunbury, El Tiempo de las Cerezas, is a masterpiece of the bohemian, the cabaret, the sorrow, the alcohol... the night. A brother said, pretty drunk by then, that this album is so special and unique that if you put it against Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, you will not know which one to choose. At that moment, I suggested him to be more careful with his words... but drunk people and kids always say the truth, and my brother is both.

Vegas is so special and fucking crude that he resonates in different human fibers, making him shine with own light and never be eclipsed by anyone.

One of the things that calls my attention about Nacho Vegas is that his songs, like Sabina's, Cohen's, Dylan's, and Pink Floyd's, are movies by themselves. They tell stories, and in three to five minutes, they take you in a roller coaster of emotions that very few artists achieve nowadays. And the strongest thing about this is the amount of people that could identify with these monsters half song, half movie.

Nacho Vegas gets to the overwhelmed human passions like Cronenberg and Arnofsky in Gang Bang and Canción de Isabel; he gets to sexually and spiritually raped worlds like Almodóvar in the great Historia de un Perdedor and the hallucinating Mi Marilyn Particular; he gets to very deep human textures, covered by an exterior layer easily confused with banality, the same as Billy Wilder, in songs like El Cazador and El Hombre que Casi Conoció a Michi Panero.

I knew Vegas because of Bunbury, and when they did the album together, that album that will stay in my top 10 forever, I immediately fell in love for his creations. He's immediate, he's urgent, and he's weird, classic, and genuinely talented

"¿No veis que yo le rezo a un dios, que me prometió,
que cuando esto acabe
no habrá nada más?
¡fue bastante ya!"

-Nacho Vegas, El Hombre Que Casi Conoció A Michi Panero

Excuse Me, Sr

Excuse me, Sr, are you a cop? Pardon me, I've noticed your badge. I see you're traffic officer. Monterrey Traffic Department. You must feel extremely powerful, no? Important, maybe? Yes.

I see you don't feel like talking.

Remember that night? It was nearly 12:15am. Gray Toyota. Broken light. How do the transit regulations work? How does a person driving a car with a broken light ends up becoming, along lots of punches, into a drug dealer?

Do you know Kafka?

Of course not. How could you know him? Excuse me, Sr. I didn't intend to offend you. You only know about cowboy magazines, or joke books, maybe.

Do you know what happens to a person when, one night, after finishing his thesis... I'm sorry, do you know what a thesis is? No, of course not. A thesis is a final document that many universities require in order for someone to graduate. Graduate! From architecture, in this case.

Well, do you know what happens to a person after that, being punched and accused to be a drug dealer, and exposed to the media by a negligible being who feels powerful for being dressed with a uniform made out of second hand fabrics?

Did you listen? Kafka again.

Well it's good that a person like you is used to Kafkian processes. Your -how should I call it?- Expertise... would help you understand that a person in that scenery, exposed in the media, unfairly accused... a person like that looses much more than his family, title, or his reputation.

A person like that looses something unfixable in his essence. I don't know what it is. I just know that something disappears. A person like that has nothing to loose. A person like that transforms.

I'm gonna to take the blindfold off your eyes. Your sight's gonna take a while in getting used to the light. It's just a matter of seconds. Before that, however, I want you to bring to your mind the last memory you've got of your children.

Excuse me, Sr, can you see now?

Look at them... your kids.

I suppose those pieces of meat, guts, organs, and hair don't look a lot like the image you had in your little head. Do they?

Kafka!

In A Beautiful Pilgrimage

So yes. I saw her crossing the street and I immediately started chasing her.

There was no reason. Why do we insist on finding reasons for everything? I've always thought they're useless. Something that's completely logic and reasonable for someone (such abstract words!); could seem the most primitive, sickening, and dark thing to somebody else. I don't waste my time looking for reasons for what impulsively comes out from my heart. (does it exist?)

I chased her. Because I just felt like it.

I followed her along main avenues (I felt judged by the multitudes), along commercial streets (is it that people won't conceive anything else to do on weekends but consume?), along narrow and claustrophobic alleys (much better, now we have something in common), I followed her at a safe distance. And she kept walking, non-stop, without turning around, like if she had her eyes fixed in something that I couldn't guess.

And yes, I tried to guess: I imagined her arriving the kinder garden to pick her kids; or meeting her husband and have an improvised kiss in the middle of the street that would remind me to Doisneau; or even better, that she arrived to leave her kids at home with her husband, said goodbye, met with her young, beautiful, dominant lover, and had an improvised kiss in the middle of the street that would remind me to Doisneau.

Nothing, no husband, no kids, no lovers, no improvised kisses. Just her and her solitude ahead; I and she before me. Is it that she pursued her destiny? And I? I don't know. Three hours of quick walking make anyone tired, even a walk-junkie as myself.

But she kept walking at that fast pace. She, with her short dress that showed that sweet cellulite of a mature woman, of a woman who has lived, who has world, and above all who walks a fucking lot. She with her high heel shoes that made her show off that beautiful calf, as the lyrics of that Bronco song said. And I with those callosities that gave me the cramps like small electric discharges. Five hours and she wouldn't stop.

But, how could one let someone like her escape?! I saw her when she came out of that lingerie shop. I, who love, who fantasize with the women who enter a lingerie shop uninhibitedly and take their time picking thongs, hoses, garters, bras. Those women who raise the items towards the light, look at them, and imagine themselves wearing them. And while they do that, I, with my wrinkled cigarette, almost smoking the filter, imagine them.

I imagine their lives, their tastes... I think that a woman's underwear says a lot about her. I imagine everything about them before they decide to enter the shop. I imagine and never guess. But this time was magical. I did it, I saw the lost look of this beautiful forty-year-old and I imagined her in underwear.

I had that image in my head, mixing with the smoke of the tobacco and filter of my cigarette. And while the image focused, she picked those items which revealed before my fantasy. She chose everything that I imagined and put it in the bag.

How to let someone like that go away?

I don't know... it's been a day and a half, and I keep walking. She's still there, before me, at the same distance.

She walks and walks, and I follow and follow. The view of that human woman, without perfections, makes an eternity of pilgrimage worth it.

Visits

Is there anything true about reincarnation? I don't know. What I know about the concept is that one way or another, many societies/cultures/religions in history have theorized about it. I know the inherent kindness of the Buddhism, whose followers firmly believe in the cyclic journey of the soul until it reaches the state of purity and climax: the nirvana. I know that the concept has been part of innumerable film premises throughout the young cinematographic history.

I know that the majority of the new generation have grown and have been growing with an obsession for the alternativeness and for the need of differentiation. In that obsession, the resistance to certain religion is strongly attached. The atheism has become a fashion. It has become just that of which lots of atheists ran from.

I know I'm catholic from education and from family. I know that I've set up my own personal Jesus in which I want to believe. I couldn't care less about the church, the priests, and any human and institution who thinks that has the hand in religious aspects and imposes rules, interpretations, symbolisms, etc. And I want to believe there's something beyond; that in the death, like the Scorsesian Christ says: “Is not a door which closes. It is a door which opens.”

I have schizophrenic chats with my dear departed. I talk to them and try to imagine what would they answer. But maybe I'm not imagining! I believe there's something stuck in the Mexican collective subconscious that relates strongly with death. And this goes much more farther that the stereotype.

I've heard all kinds of ghost stories. When I was little I had the obsession of listening this kind of tales and then stayed up all night. Now I beg for those sleep hours lost. But those hours of insomnia where no lost time. Those where hours in which I imagined what I've had heard, in images. They where also hours of reflexion and premature analysis. Many of the stories that worried me the most and disturbed me where the ones that had to do with visits of my dead relatives.

A few weeks ago, I was walking to my apartment. The noise of the city has become overwhelming considering the great amount of stories and characters moving and acting inside my head. It was then when it happened; something I see as someone's visit. Or at least I want to relate it with someone's visit. I was walking a block away from my destiny, when a jogging woman with her dog crossed my way. The dog was a white boxer with a black stain on its right eye. I starred at the dog 'cause I simply can't ignore those animals. When they turned to their sidewalk and I kept going straight, that dog turned its head and saw me. And when we were looking at each other, the dog didn't look to the front anymore. It kept looking at me and I did the same. The dog didn't jog with its owner anymore, he just looked at me, and you could see nostalgia in its look. Those things that you just feel. And that way we walked for a whole block, it kept ignoring the jogging, and I stayed fascinated by the experience.

I have a picture which I wanted to publish here, but I didn't find it. In this picture I appear incarnated in a 4-year-old boy next to a hallway to the patio of a middle-class house. I appeared with a smile that I haven't seen on me in any other picture until now: because those were the times in which the emotions flowed without filters. And behind me, with a nostalgic and heavy look, watching me, was El Pirata, my fisrt dog: a white boxer with a black stain on its right eye.

I think that if someone had taken my picture a few weeks ago, while that happened, I would've repeated that pure and genuine smile.

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.

No Rejection (A Teaser)

Thomas threw the joint away, got up, took the dead rat besides Terry and walked away. Terry got up, his ten years of age on his back, and followed his old master.

Thomas put the rat in rectangular piece of wood near an old oak. He took his old knife from his old jeans and started skinning the animal. It was a medium-sized rat, enough for him and Terry to have a good lunch. He got the peeled skin and placed it carefully in a thin branch of the big tree. Terry, with his ever glowing eyes, looked patiently while his master did his part of the job.

Terry was not the only one who hunted. But in the mornings, he had this valuable habit of proactively rushing to the bush and bring out something to eat. Sometimes he would bring a snake, a skunk, an opossum, and if they were really lucky, even a boar. This time of the year, though, a rat or a wild rabbit were the most common dishes.

Just as the days were beautiful, the nights could not get any better. Dark nights with a clear moon and a splendid, spectacular, roof of constellations were common in the summer. Coyotes howling at the emptiness, at the inexorable wilderness, would be, when they were spiritually tuned, the intros to a 60’s song that Thomas would start singing. The song for the night: Lou Reed’s Perfect Day.

Thomas would sit there, in a rusted rocking chair, near the old cabin. There he was, caressing Terry, enjoying the day’s blessings and living life and not regretting anything, and loving and protecting each other. Night is still night anywhere you go.

Terry was gone. Was it that late? He got up, and started whistling Terry’s tune. No dog could be seen. He went inside the cabin and took a pair of old, weary binoculars. No Terry at sight. Thomas then went to the well.

He started the ascension process. He was almost done when he heard a high-pitched bark and felt a strong push from behind. The bucket went down, and he turned around. Terry was home. And he brought no animal. An extremely emaciated, blue-grayish, severed head was just at Terry’s paws. The face lacked any reminiscence of humanity. Lips all gone, yellow, rotting teeth, a dried up tongue, two holes where a nose should be, and empty eye sockets.


...

True Fucking Blood

Let’s leave something clear from the beginning. I don’t watch many TV series. In fact, I don’t think I can tolerate watching series on TV. I always buy them on DVD and most of the times I start watching the series when there are already two or three seasons in that format. There are only two cases in which I bought the first season without the second one was yet on the market. And those two cases are product of the enormous respect and admiration that I have for one series in particular: Six Feet Under. Those two cases are Dexter, who is brought to life by an excellent Michael C. Hall (David in SFU); and True Blood, new series by the creator of SFU, Alan Ball. Both series are excellent in almost any aspect that deserves revision.

Dexter was nominated to the Emmy, as expected. True Blood, on the other side, was totally ignored (with some exceptions in minor nominations).

I really don’t understand why. I’m not going to compare it con the other series nominated because I simply don’t know them. But I think that any person, sober or in drugs, can recognize the great quality of material that HBO gives us week after week. HBO is already a warranty of greatly manufactures series, no inhibitions, and excellent stories. Some examples: The Sopranos, Rome, Six Feet Under, Entourage. And with True Blood they didn’t get off key at all. In fact, with no fear to make a mistake and trusting in the great capacity of Alan Ball, they have risked themselves with a proposal that will elevate the standards of their future offers.

What makes True Blood so brilliant? Everything… with no exaggerations. Technically it is impeccable, but is the story itself, its thematic, and the beings that give it life, what really makes this series something very special.

The series is based on a novel saga called The Southern Vampire Chronicles, and it’s located in the town of Bon Temps, Louisiana. The vampires have “come out of the coffin” and are trying to mix in with society. This is possible thanks to the development and comercialization of the synthetic blood called TruBlood, with which the vampires ensure their good nutrition without risk for the society.

Among the society, there are three sides: the pro-vampires, the anti-vampires, and the neutral. There are vampires that respect society, while there are others who can’t let go off the organic food. As part of the society there’s also a new “drug” that is in vogue: V, vampire’s blood.

In this context, the series follows the fates of Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress with the capacity to hear people’s thoughts. She gets to know Bill Compton, a vampire interested in mixing in with society. Sookie has a fascination towards these beings which increases in Bill when she discovers that she cannot listen to what he thinks.

The story itself sounds very well-worn. It is, no doubt. Many people actually compares True Blood with the vomitive Twilight (it was a real effort to put those two titles in the same line). The similarities are there, no question. Nevertheless, its thematic line is what makes this series something that connects with the audience. Obviously, and like in every story, there exists a subtext much greater than what is seen on the surface. True Blood is a story with vampires, lovers, villains, heroes, sex, drugs. But it is a story about prejudices, phobias, minorities, and polarities.

The vampires are a materialization of those subjects that we as a society have encrypted in a collective consciousness and before which there is an immediate reaction. That is what makes the true identification possible of the audience with the story that develops in that town. The series, chapter by chapter, feels urgent.

This story falls over the shoulders of its characters. Each and every one of them is of the best that I’ve seen on film or TV. Alan Ball is just a master storyteller. But the most important thing is that every one of the characters that appear in this series is a real person, vampire or human. A sensation of multidimensionality, deepness, and authenticity exists in every person that appears in the story. Everyone has their stories, their obsessions, their fantasies, and the most important: all of them are imperfect.

This last quality is something that identifies us with them, and makes them all matter to us. The imperfection of the man is something that attracts us, traps us, and obsesses us, because at the end of the line we see ourselves reflected. It is through those imperfect beings that our own internal struggles, as an audience, are made relevant and recognized. Also, it is through the struggle of each character for being better (because none of the characters is passive), that our personal battles make sense.

If you suffer of my same problem (not tolerating the suspense week after week, between season and season), definitely wait for the seasons 2 and 3 on DVD to be on the market. Really. I can’t emphasize enough in this point. If any “ACTII-series” like Lost or Prison Break causes you problems at the end of each chapter, True Blood leaves you with a sensation of emptiness and need few times seen. The series itself is a movie of 10 ½ hours. Just like that, with no exaggerations. Each chapter starts where the last one ended. And each chapter ends in what is known as cliffhangers (those moments of “cut to commercial” that make you dribble to see what’s next), very effective and powerful cliffhangers.

True Blood is, without doubt, a jewel of TV. It is necessary, very fun, and very compelling. Why it was not nominated to the Emmy? I don’t want to speak more than enough; I would have to know the other series to see if they are in the same level. I don’t think so.
And no, I don’t agree… it has nothing to do with the “movie-I-shall-not-name”. It’s everything that SHIT couldn’t be.

Entre Caderas, Corazones y Divagaciones

So, I won't translate this specific post because it is too personal a message to have something lost in translation. You can, if interested, tell google to translate this... hopefully it'll make sense.
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No tengo idea por qué no puedo sacar suficientes palabras. Es más, no importa si son suficientes o no, pero sí tienen que ser relevantes... no tienen que ser relevantes, tienen que ser urgentes... ¡¿tampoco?! Quizás emotivas... no, eso implica precondicionarte, y eso implica deshonestidad... tienen que ser entrañables... pero mi entraña y tu entraña son diferentes... pero se complementan... te tienen que llegar al corazón... ¡¡¡Carajo!!! Puedo escribir para cine, puedo escribir para televisión, puedo escribir divagaciones, pero nada que te llegue al corazón. ¡No es justo! Quiero regalarte una canción, o mínimo un grito con algo de sentido... no puedo... ¿Cómo llegar a un corazón ingeniero? Es muy complicado para mi corazón caótico.

Aunque... calma... creo que lo escucho... late al ritmo de unas hermosas caderas; se exalta al oír la palabra Gaby; y creo que está algo robotizado... automatizado para bombear sangre extra ante tu presencia. Te metiste en mi sistema y lo modificaste irreversiblemente... ingeniero tenías que ser.

El título que hoy te dan es simplemente una certificación redundante a tu capacidad.

Lo único que no lograrás es hacer que mi corazón hable en código binario... lo siento, preciosa... los ingenieros no son tan chingo10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010
10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101000000000000011
111111111111

...

System Error

...

Gaby.exe needed

...

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¡Felicidades en tu graduación, cabrona! Estoy orgullosísimo de tí.



"Es una mujer bonita, la que anduve pretendiendo,
la seguí por ocho meses, y apenas me está queriendo.

Chaparra de mi amor,
no me hagas sufrir ya tanto"

-Ramón Ayala

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Why?

I don’t know how it started. I love porn, like any normal guy. I used to hear things about it being addictive, and that there were this “porn-addiction therapists”. I never got it. Ridiculous, childish, stupid. Another fucking invention to bring paranoia.

Why mess around with sex? It is the most perfect relationship humans can aspire to. That bond, the sudden change of atmosphere it produces. Moods, context, crisis, depression, and the now famous “stress”. All those concepts are minimized almost to the point of extinction if you have a partner. A guy or woman that wishes to share a sexual encounter with you. It is perfect. Rosanna was perfect.

I love sex. Its infinite, hedonistic, magical, and animal values. When both souls share that moment, a strange scent fills the air. And those souls are naked, really naked. They stand side by side: human, vulnerable, and fragile. But sometimes, to some people, sex becomes something infinitely sick, hedonistically nasty, magically perverted, and devolutionary animal. Rosanna embraced sex.

I never understood the almost inherent repulsion to sex and sweat and flesh. People start giving other names to original, beautiful words. “Your thing”; “your private part”. Makes me sick. Penis, vagina, anus, breasts, semen, clitoris. People are constantly trying to dismantle, to castrate all these beautiful, noble words. Suddenly everything related to the coital act becomes dirty, shameful, and overwhelmingly evil. Rosanna was overwhelmed by my appetite.

I love sex, real sex. And real sex introduced its beautiful cousin to me. Her name: amateur pornography. I don’t know when I got into this. I’ve always been attracted to voyeurism. There’s some magnetism when it comes to open windows, open doors. I have to look inside. I’m not the kind of person that will repress any instinctive emotion or action. If they exist, there is a reason. There must be a reason. I’ve followed my gut and my instincts my whole life, and I don’t regret it. Rosanna was my whole life, and I regret it.

Someone enters your life, and something changes. Something primal, deep. I feel that it is a permanent, irreversible change. You leave a door or a window opened and the intruder, voyeurist, peeks in, and enters. But it was fine with me. And Rossana seemed to be ok with me. She seemed happy. Many women spend their days complaining about a fucked up sexual life. It is ridiculous. More ridiculous is a sexual free spirit like Rosanna to betray her essence. The fucking intruder came in, fucked you, and suddenly left. Just like that.

Now I remember. I don’t know why I couldn’t bring another woman to bed, ever again. Everybody looked at me really weird. I felt an outcast, a misfit, a leper. I never had any trouble seducing women. That was, I can say, my only real natural ability. I had the power to lure, to seduce, to entice. And Rossana left, and I guess my powers couldn’t stand the fact of losing her. They vanished.

And since then, every night, I would see myself alone, defeated in bed. And I would start jerking off. And my penis would stay flaccid. I would concentrate on her image, on those nights. But there was no contact, with no flesh there is no blood, and with no blood there is no hard on.

One day there she was, in my favorite bar. She never went there! Why the fuck would she come here!? Rossana’s right hand met a male hand that was not mine. The male hand made its way delicately, up her arm to her shoulder, then to the neck, and dived all along her back to her ass. That ass I had caressed, kissed, and adored just a couple of months back.

I was there just drinking my pain away. But I never had the balls to get up and talk to her. The beer cans became all kinds of weird words and symbols. The couple, Rossana and the guy of the hand, left. I paid and followed them.

They were touching each other as they walked. The motherfucker would not keep his hands to himself. But he didn’t know her, he didn’t know where she liked to be touched. I knew.

I watched the paint peeling off the walls, the roof, my skin started peeling off my body. Waves of cockroaches started invading the house, slowly first, massively later. I got used to share everything with them. Yeah I was not alone...

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Latex

And after a devil-sized drinking reunion, just in the middle of Downtown Vancouver, I saw them again. A reunion that, according to me was not going to happen, because of my weakness and lack of sleep. It was a Friday after school. All week long I had been surviving with the help of coffee and in a constant state of zombiefication which I still don’t understand. I really didn’t have great amounts of work, there was simply something inside me that made my movements weak and clumsy, and my walking slow and confused. There were moments in which I simply stayed lost in a white, blue, green, or black limb of my laptop’s screen.

Ok, after that devil-sized drinking reunion just in the middle of Downtown Vancouver, I saw them again. And I say devil-sized because it really was. In fact, every drinking reunion in Vancouver on Friday is, irremediably, devil-sized. If the responsibilities end at 4 p.m. or earlier, at that time we are in the most-voted bar asking for the first pitcher. That night we started a bit before 4 p.m. in one of the cheapest bars of the area. There were all kinds of chats. That we’re so fucked; That we all need to sleep; That we should go to Vancouver Island next weekend; That there are some motherfucker friends with black vibes; That I am a socialist and that if I inspired my look in Che Guevara. They’re writers but oh, they sure talk.

Well, after that devil-sized drinking reunion in the middle of Downtown Vancouver I saw them again. I’ve already seen them a few weeks ago. It was Saturday or Sunday, there’s no other way. But in a Saturday or Sunday I realized that Vancouver was a city of condoms. Just like that. There were condoms everywhere. There was a pink one stuck on a fence by the Waterfront; There was a yellow one thrown on the street on the way to a pizza place that sells 2 slices and a coke for $3.50. There were many others thrown all around in Gastown, transparent, rotten, fresh. They were everywhere, like Saba in Y Tu Mamá También. But there was one that got my attention. It was in Melville St. It was a condom in an intense yellow color that looked as if it was just dumped on the sidewalk, with the ring bending towards the street, dripping semen. The semen strained by a small crack in the pavement. For me, it was like an image taken from The Wall.

Then, after that devil-sized drinking reunion in the middle of Downtown Vancouver I saw them again. There they revealed before me, in a road parallel to mine. Everybody walking around Downtown, stepping on them, kicking them, dragging them along, and suppressing them. They were there, but they didn’t move. People moved them. They didn’t let them establish their condomistic colony. Among those streets under construction, the condoms were victims of uncountable abuses.

But, when turning left on Melville, I had no choice but to stop and admire. From a crack in the pavement, close to the sidewalk, came a thin green stem that ended in a strange flower. On top of the flower was, clean, with no bothers, a condom in an intense yellow color.

The Fucking Stupid Piece Of Shit Twilight

There are many things I don't understand. Many of the movies that get produced are shit, I know that. And complaining is no good because, unfortunately, many of those movies are a box office success. Then the Hollywood machinery adapts to this, and start producing pieces of shit because... they work money wise and it makes for a good business. It's the same story as with the mexican TV industry: telenovelas (soap operas) and reality shows. Enough about that. I don't want to start a diarrhea-like post on that subject matter. I don't have the energy to fill out pages and pages about it. Let us continue then:

Twilight. Without exaggeration, I think it is one of the worst movies I've ever seen through the 25 years I've walked the earth (and I've seen my share of excrementous films). I really think that pieces-of-shit-movies like: 13 Ghosts, Pearl Harbor, Jackass 1 & 2, Spider Man 3, among other pseudo-films, have metamorphed into real gems when compared with the twilightian shit. I pushed myself to watching it all the way to the end for two reasons: one, there are times when you just can take shit over shit, and there is this thing that is born within you, this thing that asks for more and more. The second reason is that I was reading a fragment of the screenplay and I found very interesting the way it was written: in a TV series format. But it sucks. And I knew that since the very first scene. I will vomit now, and I'll try to be brief:

The story sucks. There is this very interesting and kick ass concept in the film, but it is very subtle and was not used well: the explanation of the existance of fantastical creatures through legends of native americans. But this was used just as an ornament and personally, it was the best part of the movie. The story itself is a veeery gayish, weak, artificial, and with no depth, tale of love between a human girl and a vamp¡&3. It is a teen movie with vamp¡&35. And like most of the teen movies, it's a crap, and does not add anything art wise. And it's fucking lame.

The cinematography is very flat, and does not take advantage of the photogenic rural landscape of the US northwest. Mediocrily, at best, it creates the atmosphere for the different locations, but simply in a very by-the-book and conformist plane.

The Special Effects. I just can't believe this piece of shit was produced in the year 2008. The effects I see on the X-Files show seem very vanguardist compared to the ones used in twilight.

The directing of the film is simply and plainly bad. It is not mediocre, don't try to help it, it is bad. I don't wanna know, so I don't get a heart attack, how much did this movie cost. But I suppose it had a big budget. And the film feels as its screenplay: as TV series (a bad one, because there are many good ones). Exaggeration in the use of close shots, annoying and monotonous performances, boring and basic scene blocking, are the ingredients that this director whose name I rather not mention, combines in the film.

The performances of all actors of the film are flat and weak. But the two leading actors are the worst. The fucking bitch, the one that is a human and wants to fuck the vamp¡&3 , sucks big time. Her performance is worthy of the shitty US film The Unborn (2009). Her acting is very monotonous (I dare you all to find a different emotion than the one she conveys at the beginning of the film), is boring as hell, and does not create the least amount of empathy. For all I care, I wish the werewolves raped her, I wish her father dumped her to the streets, and that the shitty blonde vamp¡&3 got her, sucked her blood, and threw her in Point Pleasant so the Mothman can have her as his meal. (And please, I wish she never gets to Vancouver...).

The shitty pseudo vamp¡&3 that now wets every pubescent and teen vaginas everytime he appears on TV or the web is, without any doubt, the worst vamp¡&3 in history. I have seen abominations such as John Carpenter's Vampires, or From Dusk Till Dawn 2 & 3, but I've never seen a version of this interesting creature, as excrementous, corny, artificial, and stupid, as the sex symbol's performance. In every shot he appears, the fucker acts as if he were in a fucking clothing tv ad, or something worse. His acting, never the less, is very ad hoc to what his bitch human lover performs.

Where the fuck did the real vampires go? It was very sad for me to see how the people behind this film completely destroyed the vampire concept. Fucking metrosexual, boring, corny, artificial, and flat vamp¡&35... Why the fuck do these people attack a traditional concept that is worthy of respect?

What else can I say? twilight is a piece of shit that I am very happy I didn't watch at the theatre. And I'm very glad, I say it openly, that I downloaded it. Yes, I have to watch out for my economy, and acting against my principles, and giving a great demonstration of how I am not a man of my word, I have started to download movies, but I swear to buy every single one I have downloaded. And twilight was the one that introduced me to the new, and not so presumable world of illegal film downloads. Do not watch this film, and if you do, I hope you agree with me. If you disagree, then great... that's why movies are made, so everyone can see something different in them. But if you disagree, even if I respect your opinion, do not dare to give me any recommendation about what film to see.

And I'm a man of my word.