superfacilmente

It is not very important, but in the last week, I saw this advertisement for the film Ocean’s 13. I like the translation (Now They Are 13)

No es muy importante, pero en la semana pasada, ví este anuncio para la pelicula Ocean’s 13. Me gusta la traducción mucho.

Last night, I set myself a new mission. In order to hopefully finally start to understand the Porteño accent, I decided to start watching films made in Buenos Aires because while it has been hard for me to find many porteños willing to gab about their lives in my broken Spanish, movies provide a fine outlet to hear the accent and prepare me for full blown out conversations. I didn’t realize what I was in for:

Now for those unable to understand the Spanish, I apologize, but I have a feeling one of the reasons for the subtitles in spanish is that the characters in this well known Porteño film actually speak so quickly and with so many curses that when watching it with English subtitles I noticed full sentences were missing. It was extremely strange to constantly be rewinding and trying to actually understand what was being said, not to mention the dozens of words, literally, that stood for our favorite explicative, fuck.

That wasn’t the only word that seemed to pop up in different forms. I saw cigarettes were called cigarillos, cigaros and finally puchas (I think) which I had never heard before.

The actual film seems like a classic story in our movie lives. Coming of Age, the big score, and all that were factored into these young guys who robbed for a living, but did it badly and were constantly being chased after because of their scams. The scam that introduces the movie involves a cab driver getting “robbed” (the cabbie is in on the deal) along with his fair. That is perhaps the only successful robbery in the movie, especially considering one of the main characters has asthma which makes running and robberies hard for him.

Throughout the movie you get a great view of a slightly older Buenos Aires. The fact that the movie revolved around scams, which I suffered myself made the whole thing hit a little harder. However, the view of the city and of its people is very dark, callous even, as if all Porteños are out to rob and plunder from each othereven if it is for the most noble of reasons. it’s a very different view of the city than the one I think I would paint for it, of fairly gregarious and citizens that are usually quite “amable” for lack of a better word. I just find this aspect of the movie particularly fascinating.

It was also filmed ina s tyle that would make any indie buff proud. Aside from utterly depressing me, the movie was well done and a nice intro to the world of Argentinian cinema, though I have to say the world it created, from hanging out at the obelisk to the pizza places all was different from my Buenos Aires. Maybe I still don’t know them that well.

Today Kira and my “BFF of Buenos Aires,” the Am Civ major Iris invited us to her apartment for her and roommate Jess’ Latinamerican Idol party. We were supposed to dress as our favorite Latin-American Idol, but, having none, I just went and got to see the show (luckily the only person to dress as an idol was Jess who pulled off a very convincing Shakira).

Latinamerican Idol is disturbingly like its predecessors with a man who looks like Simon Cowell (plus 150 pounds or so) doing the insulting thing in an elitist Spanish accent to make up for Simon Cowell’s British one. Former pop sensation Jon Secada played the role of Randy Jackson, deferring to his two other judges often and giving steamy looks to certain other male stars (not to mention twitching occasionally). You might remember Secada from his one time hit, Just Another Day: (The Spanish Version is Below)

And the Paul Abdul character was perfect, saying muy bonito about every two seconds and spastically dancing along with the contestants whether they were good or not…

And of course there was the very tasty Monchi to make up for Mr. Seacrest (the girls all appropriately said “I’d like to take a Munchy out of Monchi.”) And the crop of would-be stars was pretty terrific including a tenor soprano (a rarity to find in the days post-eunuch) who had an amazing voice, but was not idol material, and with his long hair did seem to be both a man and a woman at the same time, and twin brothers who got into the idol contest because they harmonized so well. What the hell is up with that? I bet I could get into the idol thing then if I could find a singer to harmonize with (I guess he would have to be my twin).

One small interesting note is that though tackiness reigned wonderfully supreme in this south American version of the show, with the hosts (Monchi and his female companion) obviously being green screened and stuff like that, I did notice two really interesting things about the show.

1. Lots of guitars- The idol stars who got in could actually play guitar and stuff. Now I haven’t watched idol since them Clay Aiken days, but I found that noteworthy.

2. Nationality - Idol is actually a decent franchise because of this. People phoning into idol will vote down national lines, I assume. People want their country (Colombia, El Salvador, Peru, Argentina) to be the Latinamerican Idol. We could eventually see a WORLD IDOL competition where China would win by dint of having the most people, but the competition would be awesome…

Of course perhaps the highlight of the evening were our two hosts who introduced us to peach flavored wine and Maria Isabel (the 7 year old idol of Spain)

One thing I know is I will be texting my votes in to Latinamerican Idol this year. It’s a guilty pleasure I can enjoy outside of America

More taking advantage of this silly camera

This just popped up on the internet. Maradona, a famous football player here in BA, ran into some problems when he hit the ball with his hand. Everyone, except the now considered corrupt judges, saw it and Maradona went down in infamy (which he has apparently milked for a decade). Below, see how modern technology can point another Maradona in the making:

Hi Everyone,

Before my camera was stolen, I “stole” a photo of the exhibition on the terrace of the museum “Malba.”

I liked the work in the exhibit. There are photos on the website of Malba. I have the photos here.

But the more interesting exhibit was of actor, singer and director: Leonardo Favio. I want to study more about this personality of Argentinian history. I will write a large post with more information very soon, but for now I know there are many films of him on the web.

Hola. Antes mi camera fuerobado, yo robó una foto de la exhibición en la teraza del museo Malba.

Me gusta estes obras. Hay más fotos en el sitio de la Malba Yo tengo las fotos aquí.

Pero la exhibición más interesante fue del actor, cantante y director de filmes: Leonardo Favio Yo quiero estudiar más de este personaje en la historia de Argentina. Escribiré un “post” muy grande con más información muy pronto, pero ahora, yo sé hay muchas filmes de Leonardo Favio en el red.