mumobo - Just music, movies and books

Some Stuff For The Loyal Mumobbits

alexis — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 19:28:19 +0000

I've just setup a mumobo shop at Cafepress where you can get t-shirts, mugs and other items with the mumobo image. There are some sexy things for that lady and also for the toddle in the house.

If you want to show mumobo some love take a look, you may find something you like. I'll be adding some more things soon. If you have some ideas drop me a line.

By the way, this is the first time the mumobo girl appears online.

Enjoy!

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Can You Kill a Man By Magic?

alexis — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 20:29:53 +0000

A fantastic alternative history in Regency England amid magicians, fairies and a lot of manners.

Susanna Clarke's debut novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, is a wonderful book that mixes literary elements from Jane Austen and Charles Dickens in an otherlandish tale reminiscent of Tolkien and the magical realism authors.

Susanna penned her big work, almost 800 pages, over a 10-year period, “a crazy amount of time to spend on anything, except building a cathedral, growing a garden or educating a child,” she admits.

The novel has attracted a vast readership, including many persons who didn't care much about speculative fiction and have found something very special in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, something that transcends genres.

In 2005 the novel won the Hugo Award as best novel and the World Fantasy Award.

New Line Cinema has already acquired the film rights, they were behind the highly acclaimed Lord of The Rings, and the first draft of the adaptation has already been completed by Oscar-winning screenwriter Christopher Hampton. Susanna Clarke will act as a producer.

Some online communities are already calling for Johnny Depp or Paul Bettany to play the role of Jonathan Strange. I second the suggestion of Depp, not as Strange but the gentleman with thistle-down hair and would like to add Geoffrey Rush as Gilbert Norrell.

But why such a buzz? What's this book about?

Once Upon a Time

As the title suggests, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell tells the story of two men, but not any men: two English magicians.

It all begins in the early years of the 19th century in York, where we find a group of fine gentlemen talking about, but not making, magic. These guys like to spend endless hours discussing enchantments, old dusty volumes and long dull papers.

They are theoretical magicians, a sort of antiquarians who “did not want to see magic done; they only wished to read about it in books,” for magic has disappeared from England since the Raven King left almost four centuries ago.

Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians.

Making magic is considered unrespectable, that's why these gentlemen are so disgusted when a new member of their very exclusive club starts questioning why it's no longer practiced in England. He later finds a man, at Hurtfew Abbey, who claims to be a practical magician.

And it's time to say hello to Mr. Norrell, an antisocial wealthy man who you will soon learn to hate. Clarke has made a great job in creating him, she recalls: “I was trying to conjure up an English magician who had a library, and then there he was. I saw him very clearly, small, nervous, librarian-like, friendless, book-obsessed.”

Mr. Norrell has assembled a rich library of ancient books containing the secrets of England's magical past and can actually perform magic. The reclusive magician intends to bring magic back to England under the strictest control, practiced by only one man: himself.

To reach his goals, Mr. Norrell moves to London with his loyal and surly servant, Childermass, and attempts to attract the attention of powerful politicians and members of the elitist society at a time when most everybody is more worried about Napoleon and his armies spreading all over Europe than listening to a bookwormish guy talking about fairies and enchantments.

This is just the beginning of a series of bizarre events in the story. Clarke uses spelling typical of the period and an exquisite deadpan humor in every scene, creating a funny novel in a quite elegant way.

What a Magician Ought To Be

Even if his name is the first in the title and there's a reference to one of his works just starting the book, as one of many footnotes that I'll discuss in more detail later, Jonathan Strange does not appear in the story until you've read a lot of pages.

A very smart choice by Clarke. I detested Mr. Norrell so much at this point that meeting the charming, passionate and young Jonathan Strange was like Spring arriving, even with most of the novel occurring in Winter.

But I'm not the only one attracted by the new aspiring magician in town, "Strange was everyone's idea of what a magician ought to be," writes Clarke. The well mannered Jonathan Strange and his beautiful wife, Arabella, are soon accepted in London's circle of power.

When Mr. Norrell realizes he could benefit from Strange's magical and social skills, they become master and student. The two magicians will join forces with the most important figures of their time to fight against Napoleon.

The discussions between the two magicians and the government officials, looking for the best ways to use magic in the war, are hilarious.

More Than Abracadabra

The magic in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is not of the obvious prince-into-frog kind; supernatural elements appear slowly and sparingly, following a very well thought pace.

When Jonathan Strange starts reading and asking more about the mysterious Raven King, the only human who ruled England and Faerie, the most powerful magician of all, and Mr. Norrell, always mistrustful (and possibly smarter?), insists in keeping magic secure, better leaving some questions unanswered, a conflict starts to build. Each man has a different idea of how English magic should be approached.

Strange honestly respects his old colleague but can't resist studying the darkest paths of magic, taking a journey that will put their whole world at risk and him and Norrell facing a more dangerous foe than the powerful Corsican, a fairy referred as the gentleman with the thistle-down hair.

The magical world of men and fairies is richly described in many passages, sometimes with an almost obsessive scholarly devotion and you will soon find many tales within the tale.

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Tales Within The Tale

alexis — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 20:23:05 +0000

There are many strands of magic and history in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

Most experienced readers won't have problems to enter Clarke's magical kingdom, but I've known about some unable to finish the book, even citing that it was boring, too slow, hard to grasp or distracting at some points.

Some press published this novel as “Harry Potter for grown-ups”. Bullshit! Nothing further than the truth. If you expect finding Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell constantly moving their wands (which they don't need or have) like Harry and Hermione, you better look somewhere else.

This may not be a book for everyone and it certainly contains many unexpected elements, which make it much more delightful than many others I've read.

It's a long novel, but so it was one of my all time favorites, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, a book I met every night during many months.

He who says a long novel is boring just because is long doesn't know what a great book can do, or maybe is looking in the wrong places.

Mr. Strange and Mr. Norrell invite you to sit in your favorite couch with a big cup of coffee, or any other beverage (tea, perhaps?), and a few snacks, to immerse in their fantastic world. I settled down there for such a long time that I didn't want the story to end, and that has been one of the most unusual critiques that Clarke's novel has received from many of her readers, including a few famous writers: the book ends too soon. It's a great companion.

The many plots and characters are built slowly and there are parts where very little seems to happen, but it's all part of Clarke's craft and works quite well.

Occasional readers may be distracted by the copious footnotes. Some are just bibliographic references to magical books or obscure spells, but then we have the longer ones, some resembling small stories or essays; tales within the tale.

Yes, many of the footnotes are long digressions, but I got used to them and even expected them in many parts of the story. I found them charming.

They are also a clever way to present unknown information to the reader without making the characters look silly explaining everything between them over and over again.

The footnotes play a very important role in the novel, supporting the narrative to create a fantastic milieu where magical and historical events mix so well that you'll start wondering what is real and what isn't.

The narrator of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell does a great job, transforming herself (Clarke says it's a she) in a very important and entertaining piece of the puzzle at many times.

Zeitgeist

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is much more than a neat tale. It is a ride from the wild English North to the mundane London, to the many battlefields where the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon fought, to the Venice where Strange meets Lord Byron and the darkest roads of Faerie.

The elegance of men and women of the capital contrasts with the tragedies Strange witnesses during his military adventures along Wellington and the eternal ballrooms of Lost Hope. Worlds are colliding everywhere; English and French, men and fairies, past and present and, of course, Norrell and Strange.

Austen's England is admirably depicted and wickedly spiced by Clarke's tremendous imagination.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell does a very good job painting a credible picture of an era.

A Fine English Novel

Neil Gaiman, a good friend of Clarke and author of American Gods, defined her work as “unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years,” and Time magazine was even clearer when calling the novel a "masterpiece of the genre that rivals Tolkien."

And they are right; I was so absorbed by the world of magicians and fairies as I was when roaming around Middle-Earth.

Susanna Clarke's wit, precise use of words and obvious love of literature (notice how important libraries and books are for Mr. Norrell and Strange) have created a remarkably original and compelling piece of art.

English fantasy and science fiction have always been different; Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell definitely is.

The Cast

Our gentlemanly magicians are accompanied by an extremely well-drawn group of characters, including historical figures such as King George III, Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington and Lord Byron.

From these I liked Wellington the most; he keeps looking for new ways of applying the skills of Strange to his military campaigns and at one point asks: “can a magician kill a man by magic?" to what Strange replies, "I suppose a magician might…but a gentleman never could."

Wellington's pragmatism shows when a few dead corpses, reanimated by Strange, start speaking “one of the dialects of Hell”. “They have learned it very quickly... They have only been dead three days,” the Duke comments.

Miss Pole and Arabella, Strange's wife, are the only women in the novel and they act according to their social status, at least until a certain gentleman starts playing games with them. I disagree with those saying women in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell don't have an important role; Miss Pole and Arabella are, I think, central to the story.

Then we have the servants, the deftly, autonomous and surly Childermass, who works for Mr. Norrell, and the competent and loyal Stephen Black, Sir Pole's Negro butler of majestic appearance, who develops a weird relationship with the gentleman of the thistle-down hair.

There he is, the gentleman of the thistle-down hair, the villain of the story, a fairy king with no name, or at least we're not told one. A powerful character who is as charming as cruel and is often seen through the eyes of Stephen Black, who accepts his presence as something quite natural; a very smart move by the author.

The two dandies surrounding Mr. Norrell are a precise example of society's hypocrisy, parasite-like beings who care a shit about others.

And there are two other magicians, Vinculus, a charlatan who nobody cares about, and John Uskglass, the Raven King, founder of English magic and ruler of the North for more than three centuries. They are also very important for the fate of our two heroes.

The man under the hedge, sir. He is a magician

Susanna Clarke skillfully weaves the actions of all them. “Writing often seems more like a process of unearthing detail, of archeology rather than making stuff up,” she comments.

The Future of Clarke's Magic

I was missing this book as soon as I read its last line. There are so many places to visit and people to meet in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that I put the book in my read-again list almost immediately.

The author is already working in the sequel and has said “the next book will be set in the same world and will probably start a few years after Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell finishes.” I'm looking forward for it.

At the end Susanna Clarke has fulfilled Mr. Norrell's dream by bringing magic back to England, and the world.

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Let This Beast Enter Your Mind

alexis — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 03:37:38 +0000

The fifth studio release of Mogwai, Mr. Beast, is not just another album, it's a very well thought adventure in music.

This venture can be classified as a bold attempt for greatness and the artists who worked on it weren't afraid to take risks, to experiment. It has the potential to be a polarizing figure in the music industry, much like the controversial effect online poker had on Internet entertainment, you'll either hate it or love it.

When I started working in this review, I never imagined that the mostly instrumental Mr. Beast could tell so much about the Scottish five-piece. Mogwai have revealed that they wanted to recreate the experience of their live act this time. I think they got it.

Mr. Beast offers their signature ear-melting bursts of sound along with delicate piano driven pieces, masterfully sequenced. You don't have to ask for heavy or light Mogwai; you get both in the package.

Mogwai's trademarked titles are the cover for the ten tracks that in little more than forty minutes demonstrate why these Glaswegian are one of the most admired post-rock bands in the world.

"We don’t really make any effort. It’s always usually some random nonsense that made us laugh", bassist Dominic Atchison admits when asked about the titles.

Mr. Beast opens with Auto Rock, where the subtle sounds of guitars wrap around Barry Burns' piano, following a simple but emotions-filled phrase. It sets the stage for the second piece.

Glasgow Mega Snake requires mega-volume. Ratchet up the volume; this song deserves it. Give that ol' Big Muff the power to run the show when furious guitars crash around.

The next movement is Acid Food, where computer generated sounds and a peculiar lap steel guitar dominate. There's something unmogwaian in this track: lyrics. But don't worry, they're meaningless (or I just suck and can't get it). The voice is another instrument; one more layer on the composition.

In Travel Is Dangerous, percussion, bass and distorted guitars take us back to the powerful Mog style, with Stuart Braithwaite singing about... something, and possibly using a vocoder (is it true they got it on Ebay?).

Team Handed gets you into meditative state while a soft piano leads the way once more.

Mogwai have made of Mr. Beast a roller coaster of emotions and sound. Listen to the tracks in their original order. What used to be the style of one song has become the signature of a whole album.

Friend of the Night is a fantastic aural journey. Close your eyes and let your mind drift. I feel like I'm falling through my thoughts when I do it. Mesmerizing gorgeous piece.

Percussion and the omnipresent piano lead you and build a road in your mind during the first part, chasing a climax that it's not there yet.

When the change arrives the song starts again. You can see a light at the end now; a way out.

Crescendo asks you to follow it and now you don't want it to end. A wall of sound appears. It's loudest Mogwai. A magic moment. Uncontrollable and, for me, the highest moment of this beast.

Emergency Trap is another light cut with piano as the main character. A repeating sequence of sounds with guitars menacing to attack.

Folk Death 95, I love that name, has drums setting the pace for guitar driven melodies until the explosion occurs. Blurred noise that goes up to your brain.

I Chose Horses is a beautiful song that includes Japanese whispers by Tetsuya Fukagawa, of hardcore band Envy, and ridden by Craig Armstrong's composed keyboards. Touching. Hell yeah.

Omoku taresagaru yuuutsu no katachi wo omoiukabe

And what's Tetsuya saying? Even Mogwai don't know. They saw the translation in English but even so was hard to grasp. "Honestly, it’s quite deep, but I don’t know," Dominic Atchison said.

The mystery of those subtle and strange words is part of the magic and melancholy in the music.

The grand finale belongs to We're No Here, a suspense-building guitar riff, a powerful and dense march toward Mr. Beast's glory.

A dramatic ending for an epic album.

Ladies and gentlemen: Mogwai.

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Unless The Devil Is The Devil, God Cannot Be God

alexis — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 04:23:06 +0000

A clever and irreverent look at Christianity.

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is a funny and skeptical insight at religion and a mighty frivolous God; a profound work in the form of a well known story, told by Jesus himself.

Written by José Saramago, my favorite atheist and one of the best authors I've had the pleasure to read, this is a book as current now as it may have been two thousand years ago, when its protagonist roamed all over Palestine.

Despite his atheism, this Portuguese, who won the Nobel Prize in 1998 at the age of 76, clearly demonstrates his knowledge of Scripture and Christian history.

The Gospel uses Saramago's peculiar way of telling stories, an entertaining narrative thread with quoteless dialogues, full of wit, with characters who seem to be gossiping; telling us things that we aren't supposed to know. Simple but engaging.

The book begins like all gospels, with a young married couple, Joseph and Mary, going to register for the census at Bethlehem. They and baby Jesus are living in a cave outside the town while Joseph works in the reconstruction of the temple in near-by Jerusalem.

There, the deeply religious Joseph hears about Herod's plans of slaughter of children and quickly acts to save his family, but forgets completely of warning others in Bethlehem. This event will completely change the life of Joseph and his son, and it's here that Saramago's magic starts to shine.

The author has said that the "possibility of the impossible” is the subject of his books. He's a man who never stops asking “what if...”, and Joseph's fate in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is a clear example of that.

When Jesus grows he starts a journey to find the meaning of his life. He will spend some years as a shepherd apprentice with Pastor, a man who doesn't wear in black but it's easy to guess who he is, and later will meet Mary Magdalene, who will become a very important part of his life.

There's a point when Jesus seems to be happy, wishing to have a normal life to enjoy it with those he cares about, but his other father, the absolutely powerful one, has prepared something drastically different for him.

Jesus eventually meets God and discovers that he can perform miracles, more than enough to realize he's not just another Palestinian. It's a tragic and confusing moment for young Jesus.

In one of the most thrilling episodes of the novel, Jesus meets God and Satan on a misty lake. There, God explains his master plan, what is the purpose of Jesus' sacrifice. The son of God must die to conquer religious domination in the world. Millions more will have to die over the centuries in the Crusades, the Inquisition and a myriad of other saint wars (and perhaps a few thousands in planes crashing with big buildings) to fulfill daddy's stupid game.

Religion as the ultimate weapon of mass control.

One has to be God to countenance so much blood

Saramago needs a few more pages to list some of the horrible deaths that God foresees; the martyrs of religion. Satan needs just a sentence: "… the end justifies the means." Devil and God seem to be a couple of good 'ol pals pretending to be otherwise, with the former being, not surprise here, quite charismatic.

Jesus' life is terribly transformed. What a son of God's got to do? What a good man's got to do?

In his 2003 book Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, U.S. literary critic Harold Bloom declared Saramago "the most gifted novelist alive". After reading The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is hard to disagree.

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Wise Guys Never Pay For Drinks

alexis — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 04:48:26 +0000

Two of my favorite actors, Depp and magnificent Al Pacino, shine in the story of Joe Pistone.

Pistone was the now famous undercover FBI agent who infiltrated the Mafia.

Brasco, a 1997 film directed by Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral), is not your usual mobsters movie. There's a lot of emotion here, personal emotion I mean, not just the usual dose of guns, blood and Italian food.

Johnny Depp is very credible and gets the job done quite well, transmitting at every time the tension around Donnie Brasco, Pistone's secret identity, in his dangerous mission right in the heart of one of the five families of the New York Mafia during the late 1970s.

Donnie befriends Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino) and starts climbing positions in the organization.

At some point in the movie you start rooting for Lefty. He's an unusual role for Al Pacino, who's been a Godfather, a drug dealer and something in between (remember Carlito's Way?)

Lefty is a long time middleman eager to please his bosses in the Bonnano family, but he's just a loser who's never been ascended and everybody goes over him. Lefty is getting sick of being a nobody and his “career” is going nowhere, so, when he meets Donnie he decides to become his mentor and sponsor him into the mob. Lefty will help Donnie to become a wise guy, a connected guy.

Donnie Brasco is supposed to be a dealer of stolen jewelry or, as Lefty is told when he notices Donnie, “Donnie, Don da'jeweler.”

The beauty of this flick comes from the relationship between Lefty and Donnie. Donnie knows Lefty will pay the price when his real identity is eventually discovered, but he has a mission. A mission that will take away six years of his life and will threaten with destroying everything he loves and care about. Is this sacrifice worth taking?

At one point Pistone's wife (Anne Heche) accuses him of becoming like the mobsters he's trying to put in jail. "I am them," he answers. Sad but true; Pistone was so involved in his character that even some agents in the FBI thought he was a real wise guy.

Donnie and Lefty's boss is Sonny Black, an always appropriate Michael Madsen, and every Tarantino's fan knows there's nobody better than Madsen to play a sumbitch mobster.

There are some funny parts in the movie, like the explanation about what forget about it is, but this is a tragic story after all, even more if you consider that it's based in real facts, a story told by agent Joe Pistone himself in his book Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia, which I haven't read yet but it's high on my to-read-list.

I consider Lefty's scene preparing to meet his destiny a classic. Al Pacino at his best. You can feel his sorrow when he puts his wallet in the drawer.

And listen to me, if Donnie calls... , tell him... if it was gonna be anyone, I'm glad it was him. All right?

Brasco shows us what the real mob life is like. It's not Don Corleone buying fruits. It's a treacherous world when money is everything and finding a friend like Lefty just happens once in a lifetime.

Brasco is a story about loyalty, or the lack of it, friendship and sacrifice. A beautiful story that I'll never get tired of watching.

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From Butterflies to Tornadoes

alexis — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 04:46:06 +0000

Ray Bradbury's fascinating short story, A Sound of Thunder, inspires this movie involving time travel and alternative realities.

One of chaos theory's premises is sensitivity to initial conditions; how one system can drastically change due to small changes. This concept is known in popular media as the butterfly effect and is the basis for this 2004's sci-fi drama starred by Ashton Kutcher.

As a sci-fi fan I liked the movie.

Many critics wrote it was a bad flick. I disagree, it's an entertaining one. Perhaps some reviews were affected because Kutcher was in the movie? He does a credible job as a stressed and confused young guy, quite different from That '70s Show Kelso.

The Butterfly Effect tells the story of Evan Treborn (Kutcher), who experiences a series of traumatic events during his childhood, events he can't remember at all as a twenty-something psychology student.

The only thing Evan knows is that he used to black out at peak stress times, this made his worried mother took him to a shrink who recommended Evan started writing a journal to keep his memories.

One day the apparently cured Evan discovers that reading his journal he can travel back in time to those moments he had forgot. Actually, his consciousness is the one that travels into his younger self. Is that why Evan as a boy wasn't there to remember in the first place?

This way he remembers about his old town friends: his almost-girlfriend Kayleigh (Amy Smart); her young psycho brother, Tommy (William Lee Scott); and the quiet Lenny (Elden Henson).

But these travels are something more that reliving past episodes. Evan's present mind can act and make different choices as younger Evan. The problem is that even the smallest change has a huge impact in the present, as the butterfly in the theory while flapping its wings, often making things worse .

Evan Treborn, the name is a wordplay of “event reborn”, will keep returning to his memories and trying to fix his life and those of his friends creating new realities. In one he's happily in love with Kayleigh until crazy Tommy appears; in another Kayleigh is a prostitute.

If anyone finds this, it means my plan didn't work and I'm already dead

The movie plays with the predestination paradox and is a very interesting thought exercise. James Cameron's Terminator is one famous example around the concept too.

There are some flaws, of course. It's almost impossible creating a story about time travel, which is currently just a theory in quantum physics, and being accurate.

For example, it seems changes only affect the present of Evan and his friends, the world as a whole is always the same. Or why does Evan always remember everything when supposedly once he changes something many things didn't happen. How can he remember something that never happened? Crazy, isn't it?

The Butterfly Effect is the debut as directors of Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, who wrote the screenplay of 2003's Final Destination 2. Yes, that one sucked big time.

When I saw the movie for the third time I noticed the "Bradbury University" pennant on the wall of Kayleigh's room; a clear reference to Ray Bradbury's story.

I think this is the first movie I watch involving a genetic disease related to time travel and its consequences (it seems Evan's father also had it), a concept also explored in the beautiful story of The Time Traveler's Wife.

The many outcomes of each change in the past are highly dramatic and many of them will find you screaming at the screen: “holy shit! Now he's really fucked everything!” If only for that, you should watch this movie.

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Música, libros y películas

from alexis on Thu, 2006-09-07 04:08

Artículos muy personales sobre música, libros y películas que me acompañan día a día (contenido en inglés).

I'm Robbing a Bank Because They Got Money Here

alexis — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 04:43:54 +0000

A poorly-planned bank robbery raises questions about social issues, the government and the role of the media in the United States.

Dog Day Afternoon, released in 1975 and directed by Sidney Lumet, was based on a Life magazine article from 1972 titled “The Boys in the Bank”. The article related the story of John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile, two armed men who entered a Chase Manhattan bank in Brooklyn on August 22, 1972.

Wojtowicz was renamed Sonny Wortzik for the screen and is played by Al Pacino. He's the “brains” of the operation.

Sal, an unstable guy that is clearly dumb but keep us all the time afraid of what he could do, is interpreted by the late and great John Cazale, a good friend of Al Pacino since they were teenagers.

The movie starts when Sonny and Sal arrive to the bank at closing time accompanied by a third man, Stevie, who decides he can't be a part of the job and asks Sonny to leave. The perfect way to not start a bank robbery.

Sonny, a former bank teller (he's many other things too), and his partner will soon find that there's no money in the vault and before they know it they have the employees of the bank hostage and are surrounded by an army of cops, FBI agents, media guys and the usual crowd of on-lookers.

It's not a bank robbery anymore; it's a circus. Playing live on TV all over the country.

Watching some so-called wars and other stupid events on TV may be seem normal in 2006, but in 1972 it was pure novelty.

Jack Nicholson took the Oscar home that year but Al Pacino's Sonny is possibly one of his best performances ever. It was ranked #4 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time.

During the whole film you'll be thinking “what the hell that guy's doing?” Pacino is simply magical, making us feel the tension of every moment. The way in which he gets his rifle out of a gift box is a sign of what's to come. And it's so stressing every time he walks out of the bank to talk to the cops. He's a clumsy criminal but we still love him.

Even the real John Wojtowicz wrote a letter from prison where he said Al Pacino's acting was “the best he’s ever done,” and that it made him “laugh, cry, sweat, and feel uncomfortable at times all in one movie. His characterization was flawless.”

Everything was in place in 1975 for Dog Day Afternoon to become a snapshot of the turmoil of its era.

Sonny's distrust of authority and his relationship with the crowd and the police, the existing social repression, the United States withdrawing from Vietnam (Sonny is a war vet), everything leads to a climax when Sonny starts chanting “Attica! Attica!” and the mass starts cheering; one of the most famous scenes in film history.

It's your job, right? You know, the guy who kills me, I hope he does it 'cause he hates my guts. Not 'cause it's his job

Director Sidney Lumet leads us through an exciting ride of emotions, non predictable events and well created characters. He touches controversial topics but never goes the this-is-right-this-is-wrong way. A movies that's also a fantastic flashback to the New York of the '70s.

The story was written by Frank Pierson and won the Academy Award for original screenplay. Every line of dialog is very well thought. You can watch and rewatch Dog Day Afternoon and always discover new details.

It's a movie that cleverly mixes humor and drama.

I enjoyed the part when the pizza delivery boy meets Sonny in front of the shouting public and couldn't stop laughing when Sal tells Sonny which country he'd like to go. Lumet later revealed that Cazale's character was not supposed to say a word; he and Pacino created a memorable and funny scene out of nothing.

The scene with Sonny and Leon (a key character in the story, played by Chris Sarandon) on the phone was also improvised. It's clearly one of the more powerful moments in the flick and we can't avoid suffering with Sonny.

You are absorbed by the unfolding drama since the first shot, amazing for a movie with no soundtrack, something most people won't notice at first. It's the result of great acting, location sounds and script.

Dog Day Afternoon may seem like a simple and entertaining movie at first sight, but it's much more than that. It's anti-establishment, it's a smart message for smart people, it's a piece of art that I'll always love.

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Why Enjoying Coke Is a Bad Idea

alexis — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 04:41:23 +0000

A fast-paced journey through the life of a real drug smuggler. Drama, black humor and plenty of coke.

Blow tells us the story of George Jung, a key player in the arrival of the Colombian cartels and powder cocaine to the United States. Based on the book Blow: How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million With the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All, by Bruce Porter, the movie presents a sometimes comical look of the events and doesn't need to be preachy to tell us that drugs, using or trafficking them, is not a wise.

But Blow is not only about George's life (played by Johnny Depp), is also a look at American culture; from the innocent '60s to the tumultuous '70s and the unkind '80s.

I liked the way how different outfits and haircuts represent George at different stages of his life. We see him going from cool looking beach boy to depressed father. Johnny Depp acting is a solid prove that he's the right man for the role.

George grew up during the '50s in a Boston suburb, with his hard-working, but poor, loving father (Ray Liotta in a touching performance) and kinda bitch non so supportive mother.

Decided to not being such a loser as his dad, George moves to California when he's eighteen, and starts smuggling pot with his friend Tuna (Ethan Suplee) and the help of a man named Derek (Paul Reubens).

Even if George's supposed to be one of the bad guys (remember? the ones who sell drugs?) he's a charming character and becomes our anti-hero.

His life will change when he goes to jail for the first time and knows Diego Delgado (Jordi Molla), a Colombian who tells George about cocaine being the next big thing and eventually introduces him to Pablo Escobar.

Cocaine was indeed the next big hit and George and Diego started making so much money that they didn't know where to store so many bills.

In real life Diego is supposed to be Carlos Lehder, I'm not sure why they changed his name in the flick. Maybe Lehder wasn't a Latin enough name for the movie producers.

I snorted ten grams in ten minutes once. I guess I had a high tolerance

Blow is a story of rise and fall. A glance at a world of corruption, addiction and betrayal. A world where good intentions are not enough to survive.

It's also the struggle of one man to fit and find happiness. Did he choose the right way? Is there a right way? The relationship of George and his father, who accepts and loves his son no matter what, is an interesting glimpse at this question.

At times George's story evokes Martin Scorsese's classics such as Goodfellas or Casino.

I think director Ted Demme, who died on 2002 of a heart attack possibly caused by cocaine (ironic, isn't it?), does a good job and makes us think about our choices in life while we laugh or suffer along with George.

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Where Have All The Humans Gone?

alexis — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 04:27:15 +0000

An epic about humanity legendary past, ultratech god like beings and poetry loving robots.

Ilium is the word used in Latin for the mythical city of Troy, center of one of the most famous wars in literature, and also the name of one of the most complex and original science fiction books I've ever read.

Dan Simmons, the mastermind behind the Hyperion Cantos and now author of Ilium, is some sort of shapeshifting writer. He's written fantasy, horror and sci-fi, and likes to include several literary allusions in many of his books. Definitely Simmons is a good storyteller and not afraid of challenging himself in each new work.

When I read Hyperion I was amazed by his ability to write tales within tales, the pilgrims' stories could be considered a whole book each, and interweave plots. Changing viewpoints and narrative styles many times in a book is not a problem for Simmons, as can be noticed in Ilium, a story with three apparently disconnected strands, in three different worlds (times?, dimensions?) leading us towards an unthinkable climax.

There's an Earth that reminded me of Bill Joy's insightful essay why the future doesn't need us. A post singularity world where Earthlings don't need to worry about anything and death can be reversed, even if you were eaten by a creature from the far past.

These easy-living hedonistic humans can teleport to many locations in the planet by using “faxing” portals, but they can't go places with no portals, and they are not fond of too much walking anymore. These are in certain way like Well's Eloi. They don't know about their world's geography or history and have completely forgotten how to read.

It's a world where these things, err... humans, can enjoy life thanks to their servitors, some kind of dumb robots, and the mysterious voynix, who seem to be their guardians and reminded me of Hyperion's Shrike.

As most of this domesticated humanity spend their time going from party to party and have no material needs, a small group begin to question their origins and start a journey to find the answers about their precisely limited population, controlled aging and promised afterlife.

A few hundred million miles away, in Jupiter's moons, a highly advanced species of AIs known as the moravecs (it's safe to assume the name was coined after Hans Moravec), identifies dangerous quantum activities in Mars, “a threat to the entire solar system”, and decides to send an expedition.

Here we meet two of my favorite characters in the book: Mahnmut, a lover of Shakespeare's sonnets, and Orphu of Io, a Proust enthusiast. These two will discover a bizarre host of events which takes us to the third plot.

I have been bound and servant to you, O Muse, you incomparable bitch. And I do not trust you, O Muse

A terraformed Mars where genetically resurrected scholars from Earth, who happen to be experts in Homer's Iliad, are studying the Trojan War. But studying is a misleading verb, these guys (who can't remember how or why they arrived here) are witnessing the real thing, the actual Trojan War, and reporting to their bosses: the Greek Gods. You know, Zeus, Aphrodite, the whole gang. Would these be the real deities or an alien race fooling around? Good question.

We see all these events through the eyes of one scholar, Thomas Hockenberry, who will play an important role when things start reeling in quite strange ways and a collision of cosmic proportions is imminent.

Ilium is a fantastic novel, the first of a two-part series to be concluded in Olympos, which I haven't read yet as I write this. It's beautifully written, contains well crafted characters and offers a plethora of ideas to ponder later.

Are these the real events of the Iliad? What happened to Earth? Who created the moravecs? Was Helen of Troy really such a bitch?

With references to nanotechnology, mythology, genetics, dystopia and literature classics this is a long and complex novel, one that you'll want to read at least a couple of times. It's also the perfect excuse to finally read, and try to understand, the complete Iliad, not just the cliff notes.

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