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In a previous post, I commented on the use of ekphrasis in the Bob Dylan bio-pic “I’m Not There.” I tried my own example of this long before I even knew what ekphrasis means. See it below:

All Along the Watchtower

“There must be some kind of way out of here,” said the joker to the thief. The joker’s bushy brown hair was very greasy, but still seemed full-bodied despite it. He sat at a table in the tavern, in clothes that weren’t filled with the bright colors and life of a joker, but rather the plain and shabby clothes of a traveler, a nomad trying to find the answers to life, or at least trying to get money. His skin was already starting to wrinkle and his small eyes were eerily bright next to his pale skin. As usual, stubble was starting to grow on his face. A man like him could not shave often.

“There’s too much confusion. I can’t get no relief,” the joker added, raising his mug to his face. He then stared around the room. It seemed foggy with cigar smoke, almost unreal as if they were dining outside and the smoke was fog.

“Businessmen they drink my wine. Plowmen dig my earth. None will level all of mine. None know what it is worth.” It had been earlier that day when he had lost his job. He had been dismissed from his latest court. The prince had not been impressed with his work. He had seemed panicked, and had called the joker into his presence. The songs of the joker had then suddenly angered him. When, he had done one of the prince’s favorite songs, “John Brown”, a story of a man who went to war, the prince had started screaming at him. He said that the music was horrible. He seemed so apprehensive, and had exploded with insults of the joker and his music, as if the songs that the Joker knew the prince loved, had caused him to now see a ghost and make his apprehension peak. He had then told the joker to leave. He could never see the prince again. It was a pity. The joker had liked getting such attention for his songs before that fretful day in the prince’s court.

“No reason to get excited,” the thief he kindly spoke “there are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.” The thief’s voice was gruff and low. His dark skin almost seemed to shine in the smoke-filled bar. He had hair similar to the joker’s but it was darker and a small moustache adorned his face. He had been through much with his friend. He knew the troubles of life, and took advantage of them. He was able to do the immoral and take from anyone, and use it to his advantage. He was the best and most unique of thiefs. He was now clothed in the riches of the nobles from which he had stolen.

“But you and I we’ve been through that and this is not our fate,” the thief added. He and his friend had traveled the world. He only wanted to remind his friend that they had seen much and that this was merely one problem that they could overcome. They could always overcome problems, as long as they were together. Even the poorest men, when they have friends, can overcome everything. “Now let us stop talking falsely now,” he laughed, “the hour’s getting late.”

They laughed together. The room seemed less foggy and clearer as they drank and joked. They stopped thinking about the past and got ready for the future. They would leave this town tomorrow. They had nothing left here. They would leave this place and start anew in a new town with a new prince and a new life.

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The guitars will blend together. They create a cacophony of sound that is beautiful, yet eerie. Listen closely to the words. They paint a story, a story that maybe had been told by many before it was recorded. Of course, there have been already two men to repeat this story that have been famous, first a joker and poet of America, and second his thief who changed the face of the song and of music. And there are millions of tales from the past, in the present, and future, that will continue to tell the tale of jokers and thieves, and of princes who must wait for an attack
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All along the watchtower, the prince has kept the view. All of the women came and went, barefoot servants too. He stood immobile, his light blonde-brown hair and lavish clothing covering his large stomach. He had a look of pain as servants left. Something was coming. The rumors from travelers, the courts, his advisors, they all pointed towards this, towards tragedy, towards legions and invasion. They were coming for him. He couldn’t handle it. He didn’t know what the world was going to bring to him. He had been selfish and now he waited alone for the attack. For the soldiers on He had been selfish and now he waited alone for the attack. For the soldiers on horseback, and his death. He had nobody to help him or comfort him in his time of need. In the past, he would have had the joker sing a song to him. However, even the joker’s songs seemed to laugh at his fear and tell him of danger causing him to explode that day and in anger he had dismissed his beloved jester. He stood, staring into the foggy black night, illuminated into an unreal oblique world by moonbeams, alone.

Outside in the cold distance, a wild cat did growl. Two riders were approaching, and the wind begins to howl.

While I sit and wait to get back some important pictures (so I might continue writing what I can about Buenos Aires from miles and miles away) I like to spend quite a bit of my time at the movies. I spent a majority of the new year attending this film or that and one of the big budget films I chanced to see was Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story produced by the venerable Judd Apatow, who makes about two movies a year this point, but can be remembered for the 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad, Taladega Nights and, perhaps less known for his fantastic tv shows Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. Raunchy Mr. Apatow helped make a raunchy music mockumentary, which was enjoyable, though perhaps less so than his previous pieces. See the trailer below.

However, in a spectacle that seems only possible in New York, Mr. Cox found his way onto the big stage live at the Knitting Factory. Some of the clips are below.

and

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All I can ask is when Spinal Tap will grace a New York stage?

An integral part of New York is the film world there. It was often spoofed in shows like Seinfeld:

Sadly, that’s the best example I could find, but I assume just about everyone has seen those characters waiting on line for the movies.

So, upon my return to New York, I have started to once again take in the movies at a blistering pace, having seen Beowulf, Lars and the Real Girl, The Golden Compass, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, The Savages, No Country for Old Men, and finally I’m Not There..

The last of these, which I suppose I am lucky to see because New York provides so many different venues (and where I live in Lower Manhattan you can literally see different movies at different theaters), really stands as perhaps the most unique and experimental of that sizeable list of films.

I’m Not There really speaks for itself better than any one person would. The set of vignettes portray both fictionalized and real events in the life of Bob Dylan, accompanied by his music, which is performed by various bands and recordings by the singer himself. This fragmentation of his music and life is made even more complicated by the fact that first and foremost Dylan is never named, but given pseudonyms such as “Jude Quinn.” Furthermore, and perhaps most obvious, is that different people play Dylan throughout the movie.

I think that you can find plenty of reviews on the film. Many particularly point out the performance of Kate Blanchett as being particularly unique. Blanchett, in addition to being the only female form of Dylan, represents the time when Dylan went electric, a seminal change in the star. However, Blanchett’s Dylan is particularly narcissistic and “in your face.”

I think that the film itself is quite unique. Among other things, the vignettes intertwine, which makes the flow of the movie wonderfully disjointed. You don’t know which Dylan you are going to see when and though there is a rough chronology, it’s nicely interrupted by one Dylan or another.

However, for those looking for a Dylan biopic, I would not recommend this movie. It’s more like ekphrastic poetry. Dylan’s life and music inspire the characters and events of the story, which then can veer and interpret said music/events in their world by their own terms.

I wonder if Dylan as a general inspires these feelings over other musicians. I did my own ekphrastic interpretation of Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” in about 9th grade when I was feeling particularly precocious (fear not, it will find it’s way onto the site), and I can’t help but think that perhaps the reason Dylan was considered such a good poet was our ability to empathize with him, the nerdy kid trying to rethink himself and aspiring to the story he was creating for himself. I am not a huge fan of Dylan’s musical chops, but it seems that even there he managed to create a unique sotry for himself (going electric, etc.). It’s something to think about.

Also, how rare is it to see ekphrasis in the form of film. I mean, referencing films is one thing, but is usually less obvious than when we quote in word or song. Those who like the classical music probably are very common with this kind of work and most of us have at very least read Fan Fiction, perhaps the most ubiquitous form of ekphrasis today. However, I just don’t know of many ekphrastic films, and few that are so blatant.

However, it is nice to be back in New York and to see this favored form of experimentation

As many of us know who have been in the country for some time, the use of Vos as the personal form tú is common. Recently, as a way of teaching the form, my tutor has been showing my clips of a film that basically includes everything about in its title No Sos Vos, Soy Yo or “It’s Not You, It’s Me.” The film is basically about man who has become obsessed with the fact that his girlfriend said that he shouldn’t come to America, where she is living. He becomes obsessed and has to meet often with his psychologist who is played by one of the members of the comedy troupe Les Luthiers. There are some pretty hilarious scenes which are collected here. My favorite is when the main character, Javier, gets a dog to find a woman.

But it really is quality and teaches anyone who needs to learn a little about voseo, if you need it for your lessons or just so you can impress people. vos is pretty easy anyway. It’s pretty much the same as tú but easier!

Oh and here’s the trailer for No Sos Vos…

Fantastic Four is nothing new in this world. There have been about one hundred different versions of the team which was created in the 1960s with the help of comic book great Jack Kirby. Since the dawn of animation, the team has been out and about in different combinations. Here are some of my favorite:

This was the 1994 flop of a Fantastic Four Movie

Two Versions of the 1994 cartoon

Online Videos by Veoh.com

A 1970s Version of the Cartoon

A 1960s Cartoon Version

a 2007 Cartoon.

And of course the now ubiquitous trailer than has pervaded the fine city of Buenos Aires.

For those who imagine that BsAs doesn’t do their summer blockbusters justice, you are dead wrong. The city has been plastered with photos of the members of this Marvel team and the movie: entitled in Spanish: Los Cuatro Fantasticos y Silver Surfer. It’s really amazing the sort of media blitz and advertising going on. My favorite thing was the Life Size Silver Surfer in the lobby.

For those porteños who were eagerly awaiting the movie (and there didn’t seem to be many the day after opening night) but are afraid they are missing something in the translation, you are not. The movie is a hackneyed group of cliches and catch phrases to the point of nausea. As perhaps the only one of the recent comic movies to be adulted almost exclusively to children, the plot is both simplistic and convoluted, but at very least has some great action sequences and the super soft voice of Lawrence Sterne to play the voice of Silver Surfer, who, in his brevity, steals the show.

For me, the movie is just interesting because it got me thinking about two things. First how those Fantasticos might relate to the fair city of BsAs that I live in currently and secondly why they don’t translate so well into film. I think honestly, considering the latter of my two quandaries, that the four heroes, who have very distinct and contrasting characters, may be hard to capture in a couple of hours. Unlike Spider-Man, who focuses on just Mr. Parker, or X-Men whose message (Equality, Human Rights) superseded the bickering of a full team, the Fantasticos try to often to tell the stories of all four members at once, while at the same time throwing in a few too many quips about the one overarching message of the team (Celebrity superheroes). I think if they had focused on one member of the team, or just the message, the movie would have been much better.

As far as how this relates to Buenos Aires? That’s a bit harder. There seems to be little to no connection between the four very different team members and this city where they have been advertised on every street corner. Then I started to think of the different barios of BA and how they are all so different. San Telmo is very different from Microcentro which is astoundingly different from Palermo. Of course there are different areas in every city, but I find that here it is particularly interesting how stark the contrasts are in my expat eyes. In this way the city is almost a team of little individualist cities, mysteriously and inexplicably bound together, sort of like Los Cuatro Fantasticos.

Maybe that’s why Buenos Aires has been advertising them so much.

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.