La Turbulence des Fluids (Canada, 2002)

This film from Québec explores the possibility of a drastic change in the tide waves along the St. Laurent river. A woman specialist is called to investigate. She travels from Japan back to her hometown, Baie Comeau, in Québec, to help scientists understand this strange phenomenon. During her stay in this small city, she gets to meet interesting characters, along them a mysterious Marc Vandal, for whom she quickly falls in love. In the meantime, everyone in town seems to have been affected somehow by this sudden stop of tidal waves, in their personality and state of mind. We soon realize that Marc has a tragic family story behind him, which I will not write here because I would be giving off the whole story. The final earthquake sequence tells us this story is quite implausible, though a very interesting and suspenseful one.

Lili Marleen (West Germany, 1981)

Director H.W. Fassbinder lived a crazy life. He died very young and during his life, his more than 20 films encompass a whole history of German cinema. He was able to revolutionize German movies with his unique style. Fast cuts and scene transitions, groovy sounds and tragic plots all combine in his films. This is perhaps one of his more controversial productions. Lili Marleen is a young German cabaret singer who becomes famous overnight thanks to a melody that becomes all of a sudden the hymn of German soldiers during World War II. Based on a true story, we see how Lili gets to meet the Führer. Just as she becomes famous, her fame vanishes once the war is over. She flees to Switzerland with her fiancé. This is a very interesting view of Germany during the Nazi regime. But if you want to learn about contemporary German cinema, Fassbinder is a must.

My Ipod

Yes, I bought an Ipod. After months of strenuous deliberation and consulting with friends, I decided it was the right choice. Now that I have it, I actually think it was a good choice. On the other hand, I was confident I wasn’t going to need the whole 20 GB memory, but I’m on 4GB now and not even half done with all my CD’s! I hope I can fit them all in. You need a tutorial to better understand your Ipod’s functions? It couldn’t be easier: go to the Ipod website at apple.com. You want to change the color of your Ipod or add an accessory? There are heaps of companies who manufacture every kind of accessory you can imagine; but the official Ipod magazine to find out more. OK, that was enough Ipod publicity for today.

Life is a Miracle (Zivot je Cudo) Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2004

Luka lives with his wife and son Milo in Bosnia. Right before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1992, Milo is sent to the army. Luka’s wife cheats on him and goes to live with a Hungarian immigrant. Once the war begins, Milo is captured and sent to jail. One of Luka’s friends brings a young and beautiful Muslim girl who he kidnapped. The plan is to keep her in the house as a hostage and later use her to free his son, in a sort of exchange. Unfortunately, or fortunately for Luka, he falls in love with her, and when the war is over, and people go back to their original towns, she must leave, and his wife and son come back to him. Luka feels sad because he has now lost his new love.

As is Director Emir Kusturica’s style, the film is full of parties and people dancing, drinking and celebrating for every possible reason. The two and a half hours of the film go by quite fast, thanks in part to the many action scenes. Kusturica has been greatly influenced by the tragic Civil War of his country, the former Yugoslavia. He expresses his points of view in this and other previous films, like Underground, for which he won the Palme d’Or in Cannes.

My Top 30 (week of 3 June)

1. Beverly Knight – Keep The Fire Burning (Remix)
2. Lemar – Time To Grow
3. Basement Jaxx – Oh My Gosh
4. Rob Thomas – Lonely No More
5. Mariah Carey – It’s Like That
6. Akon – Bananza (Belly Dancer)
7. Amerie feat. Eve – 1 Thing
8. Gwen Stefani – Hollaback Girl
9. Selma – If I Had Your Love
10. Anastacia – Heavy On My Heart

11. Mario – Let Me Love You
12. Ashanti – Only U
13. Good Charlotte – I Just Wanna Live
14. The Chemical Brothers – Galvanize
15. Usher – Caught Up
16. Lisa Stanfield – Treat Me Like a Woman
17. Snoop Dogg – Signs
18. Nelly – Flap Your Wings
19. Daddy Yankee – Gasolina
20. Rupee – Tempted To Touch

21. Mustafa Sandal feat. Gentleman – Isyankar
22. Baby Bash – I’m Back
23. Jem – They
24. Chipz – Chipz In Black
25. Lunik – The Most Beautiful Song
26. Nu Pagadi – Sweetest Poison
27. Tiziano Ferro – Ti Voglio Bene
28. Ashlee Simpson – La La
29. Jet – Look What You’ve Done
30. Nelly – Over And Over
31. 50 Cent – Disco Inferno

The Lady Vanishes, UK 1938

Alfred Hitchcock is considered the master of suspense. With this black and white feature, The Lady Vanishes, he earns a reputation for making what seems a normal story into a conspiracy plot full of secrets. In a remote Alpine resort hotel, Iris meets Miss Froy, a friendly English lady who is travelling alone. When both take the train the next day to go back to London, Iris is accidentally hit with a stone. Once inside the train, she faints and feels week. Miss Froy takes care of her. When Iris wakes up, Miss Froy is gone. From this point on, the film turns into an investigation into the disappearance of this passenger. Iris meets a couple of people who help her out. There is the strange psychiatrist who believes Miss Froy is just a product of Iris’ mind. With the help of another passenger, they discover that several persons are involved in the possible kidnapping of Miss Froy. The film delivers good acting and plot twists, ending in a shooting scene that puts everyone’s lives in danger.

Un Deux Trois Soleil, France 2002

This is a French love movie, but a very unique one. Natalie lives with her mother, but she hates her. Her mother is all over her, taking care of every single detail in Natalie’s life. We then meet her father (Marcello Mastroianni) an alcoholic fellow who is always drinking small “aperos” and “pastice” in the neighbourhood café. In some scenes, Natalie acts extremely childish, as if she were 5 years old. At other scenes, she acts as a grown-up spoiled teenager, or even an insulting adult. She then meets Paul, a teenage thief with no aspirations or future. References to sexual acts are made throughout the story, and characters appear and disappear in the same scene: they appear in the corner of the house, peek in the room thru a window, and so on. You can say dream and reality are sometimes mixed together. An overall strange film about teenage love and growing up in the suburbs of Marseille.

Visitor Q, Japan 2000


Director Takashi Miike is a controversial fellow. His movies are all different, although the violent and provocative scenes are always present. This is a story of really dysfunctional family: a father who rapes his daughter, the mother who is high on drugs and prostitutes herself during the day, the son who makes up every possible excuse to beat her mother up with a whip. What else can I say? If this is not dysfunctional enough for you, then I don’t know what it is. Some elements of Miike’s works are visible, like dialogues with few words, lack of score music, the sound of drums in crucial scenes, and his obsession with milk from women’s breasts! Yes, you read correctly, but you should see it to believe it. The movie keeps you gasping and guessing until the end, and all the while I was thinking “only in Japan can anybody shoot these kinds of films” Good for them.

Italian for Beginners (Italiensk for begyndere) Denmark, 2000

Director Lone Scherfig follows the strict guidelines of dogma films (Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, Breaking the Waves) to show us the story of two sisters living in a small and peaceful Danish town. They reunite when their mother die. They did not know they were sisters until they start talking at their mother’s funeral. Along come other interesting characters, the bad-tempered waiter at the coffee shop, who constantly shouts at his clientele, the Italian kitchen aid or Mr. Mortensen, who falls in love with the Italian ragazza. In between, some of the characters are learning Italian once a week. So, you get to hear a lot of their conversation, although basic, in Italian. The last scenes shot in Venice are the perfect setting for the happy ending that director Scherfig makes us witness. This is one of my favourite dogma films because it is more of a comedy, unlike many dogma movies, which are quite dramatic and unsettling.

Want to know more about Dogma films? Check out this site.

My Top 30 (week of 22 May)

1. Mario – Let Me Love You
2. Ashanti – Only U
3. Good Charlotte – I Just Wanna Live
4. The Chemical Brothers – Galvanize
5. Usher – Caught Up
6. Lisa Stanfield – Treat Me Like a Woman
7. Snoop Dogg – Signs
8. Nelly – Flap Your Wings
9. Daddy Yankee – Gasolina
10. Rupee – Tempted To Touch

11. Mustafa Sandal feat. Gentleman – Isyankar
12. Baby Bash – I’m Back
13. Jem – They
14. Chipz – Chipz In Black
15. Lunik – The Most Beautiful Song
16. Nu Pagadi – Sweetest Poison
17. Tiziano Ferro – Ti Voglio Bene
18. Ashlee Simpson – La La
19. Jet – Look What You’ve Done
20. Nelly – Over And Over
21. 50 Cent – Disco Inferno

22. Keane – This Is The Last Time
23. Lemar – If There’s Any Justice
24. Girls Aloud – Wake Me Up
25. Akon – Locked Up
26. Ciara feat. Missy Elliot – 1,2 Step
27. T.I. – Bring Em Out
28. Xzibit – Hey Now (Mean Muggin)
29. 50 Cent feat. Olivia – Candy Shop
30. DJ Bobo – Pirates of Dance
31. Britney Spears – Do Somethin’
32. Amel Bent – Ma Philosophie

This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (Esta Noite Encarnarei no teu Cadáver), Brazil 1967


How about a Brazilian Dracula? This is what the film is about, but forget fangs, bats and mirror reflections. Our Brazlian Drac is more worried about the menacing influence of religion on people’s mind. In fact, half of the film our main character, Ze do Caixao, played by the director himself (José Mojica), gives us long speeches about morality, the dangers of religion, and the eternity of blood !! Throughout the film, he terrorizes a small town by kidnapping beautiful babes and making them suffer. How? Throwing some venomous spiders where ladies in distress are kept, and killing them with snakes. It all takes place in his basement, cauldron, or whatever you want to call it.

Director Mojica is one of those rarities in Latin American cinema. With almost no financial resources, he pulled out a couple of horror flicks in the 60’s and 70’s. What is really remarkable is his freedom. There seemed to be no censorship. There are explicit scenes of violence, sensuality and almost rape. For a movie shot in the 60’s, this must have been as controversial as it gets. Banned in Brazil and other countries, Mojica got recognition many years after in Europe and North America. Besides these horror stories, he did many Brazilian porno movies. A strange fellow, but an interesting one. He is now an icon among horror buffs.

The Secret of Vera Drake (Vera Drake), UK 2004

The plot of this movie is exactly the same as Chabrol’s Une Affaire des Femmes. A lady in her mid-fifties, mother of two youngsters, helps young women who are in trouble in postwar London, which means, she helps them abort. A very controversial topic, but it is important to note that abortion was already legal at that time in England. The problem was that this lady was doing it illegally, in that she went to the women’s homes. When one of them gets really sick and ends up in hospital, the authorities react and start investigating. Soon enough, they arrive at Mrs. Drake’s home, and right in the middle of a family dinner celebration. The sad thing here is, that Mrs. Drake was doing these abortions for free, while one of her best friends charged the “clients” and never gave her any money. At the end everyone learns the truth, and it’s a sad as it gets. The acting performed by Mrs. Drake, is extraordinary, portraying the real emotions of a woman who discovers she has been tricked for a long time. A very realistic and emotional film not to be missed.

Distant Lights (Lichter), Germany 2002


The story of a group of people with their own separate lives in the German city of Frankfurt an der Oder (not Frankfurt am Main, ok?) This German city borders with Poland, and as you can guess, the Polish want to cross the border, which they can do quite easily by just showing their passports, and find a better opportunity in the rich country of Germany. We get to see a Russian family that tries to cross the border at night. We witness how a German owner of a mattress store exploits her Polish employer by not paying her any salary. It’s all a reality that we do not get to see, but this part of East Germany still suffers the effects of 40 years of communist rule. Each story in Director Hans-Christian Schmid's film is told in parallel, making the film more interesting, and the soundtrack, with its piano and string notes, is really unique.

Une affaire de femmes, France, 1988


Director Claude Chabrol is the French version of Hitchcock. His movies are always full of bad persons, or at least with someone with bad intentions and cruel motives. In Une affaire de femmes, we find actress Isabelle Hupert taking care of her two children while waiting for her husband to come back from war. The year is 1945, and half of France is under German control. She finds a way of making some money in these difficult war times: she performs abortions in her house! Not only that, she makes friends with a prostitute, to whom she will rent one room in her house. In that way, the prostitute has a place to “work”, while Isabelle charges for the rental. All this happens without telling her husband, who one day returns from war, nor to her children.
The suspense elements will keep you guessing what will happen to Isabelle, because at the end her husband discovers what she does and calls the police. At that time, such “moral crimes”, as the abortion, were punished with the death penalty. This film could not find a US distributor. The subjects the movies deals with were, and are still quite controversial in the States. When it finally opened in USA, thanks to the French producer who came and opened a distribution agency himself, the movie was a huge success.

Juliet of the Spirits (Giulietta degli Spiriti), Italy, 1965


Federico Fellini ventured into the dream world of his characters in some of his films. In this story, Giulietta is a happy housewife who starts to suspect her husband is cheating on her. He makes up excuses to leave her alone in the house for several days, pretending he is on business trips. We then start to see strange characters appear in the house, who talk to Giulietta. We, as spectators, are soon drawn into these strange appearances, and it all looks like a circus show, with people appearing at every corner of the house, jumping and dancing all around. This is, of course, all in Giuiletta’s mind. This is interesting because Fellini wanted to show us what Giuiletta was thinking all the time with the help of these imaginary characters.

A private investigator soon confirms Giuiletta’s doubts about her husband: he is having an affair with a younger woman. Instead of freaking out and getting mad, she acts calmly and with no hurry. At the end, it seems these strange characters have helped her cope with her problem. At the end we see her leave the house. What will she do? Will she go away and leave everything behind, or is she just taking one of her usual walks thru her huge garden? Fellini will leave you guessing until the very end.

Fanny and Alexander, 2003, Sweden

This film from Ingmar Bergman explores the life of an aristocratic family living in a small Swedish town during the 1900’s. The three-hour long film tells the story of Fanny and Alexander, two children, brother and sister, who witness their father’s illness and death. Their mother than marries a priest (!) and they all go to live with him. They soon realize that their stepfather is a cruel and harassing son of a b…. :) It is interesting to see all they go thru to escape from him. The cruel punishments that the stepfather inflicts on Alexander are difficult to watch, but it is all in the tradition of Swedish realism (see Ondskan). The first part is quite boring because they sing and dance while celebrating Christmas and New Year. This has little to do with the main story. The second part, on the other hand, is a good improvement from the beginning. This is an interesting family saga from one of my favourite film directors.

Top 30 (week of 27 March 2005)

1. Mustafa Sandal feat. Gentleman – Isyankar
2. Baby Bash – I’m Back
3. Jem – They
4. Chipz – Chipz In Black
5. Lunik – The Most Beautiful Song
6. Nu Pagadi – Sweetest Poison
7. Tiziano Ferro – Ti Voglio Bene
8. Ashlee Simpson – La La
9. Jet – Look What You’ve Done
10. Nelly – Over And Over
11. 50 Cent – Disco Inferno

12. Keane – This Is The Last Time
13. Lemar – If There’s Any Justice
14. Girls Aloud – Wake Me Up
15. Akon – Locked Up
16. Ciara feat. Missy Elliot – 1,2 Step
17. T.I. – Bring Em Out
18. Xzibit – Hey Now (Mean Muggin)
19. 50 Cent feat. Olivia – Candy Shop
20. DJ Bobo – Pirates of Dance
21. Britney Spears – Do Somethin’
22. Amel Bent – Ma Philosophie

23. Saybia – I Surrender
24. Sarah Connor – Living To Love You
25. Avril Lavigne – Nobody’s Home
26. Blue – Get Down On it
27. Mousse T – Right About Now
28. The Game feat. 50 Cent – How We Do
29. Destiny’s Child – Soldier
30. Jennifer Lopez feat. Fabolous – Get Right (remix)
31. Riot Act – California Soul
32. Papi Sanchez - Enamorame

Ararat, Canada 2003


For Canadian director Atom Egoyan, this story is very personal. It deals with his past relatives and culture, the Armenians. The film deals with the Armenian genocide of 1915, when the Turkish army systematically killed more than a million Armenians east of Turkey. Up to this date, the Turkish government denies these events, but the account of many witnesses is enough for director Egoyan to make a story of an Armenian family living in Toronto, descendants of the painter Achylle Gorki. The film explains the tragic events of 1915, and how Gorki escaped the massacre. The existing conflict between Turcs and Armenians is also exposed, and how these events still affect the lives of many people.

The 2-hour long film is very interesting, especially if you are like me, and don’t know anything about this genocide. This remains, according to critics, Egoyan’s most controversial film.

The White Sheik (Lo Sceicco Bianco) Italy 1952

Federico Fellini is perhaps the most famous Italian director of all times. His film TheWhite Sheik, is a little comedy piece about a couple who travel to Rome to meet the husband’s family. The wife feels a little awkward with this visit. While her husband takes a nap, she escapes to visit the editorial office where the famous short stories of “The White Sheik” are written and published. She is a fan of these stories, and needles to say, in love with the Sheik. Soon enough, she is taken by the crew to see the filming of a Sheik movie. She meets him and fall in love. Meanwhile her husband goes crazy trying to find her in Rome, while making up excuses to his family for her mysterious absence.

I love when the wife makes references to dreams, and how life is better in dreams. She is a dreamer alright, and she escapes from reality by visiting the film location for the Sheik movie outside of Rome. Fellini will later introduce more concepts of dreams and realities intertwined in the plot of his movies.

Miquel Barceló

Esta muestra exhibe diversos trabajos realizados por el artista en las más de dos décadas de su trayectoria. La obra de Barceló refleja un notable interés por los motivos procedentes de la naturaleza terrestre y marítima, tratados con una paleta densa y espesa, generalmente oscura. Una de sus principales características es el tratamiento de la materia pictórica, que empasta para lograr efectos de relieve. De este modo, la representación convencional del objeto pierde importancia a favor del propio proceso pictórico, con el que el artista pretende superar dicha representación para llegar a su esencia.

Museo MARCO, Monterrey, hasta mayo de 2005