There and Back Again

Reading: The Flanders Panel
Watching: The Dreamers, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, Bourne Supremacy
Pondering: The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn’t. (Jean-Luc Godard)

I went around the world this weekend just by watching 3 movies that were set all in different places of the world.

Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights which starred the lovely and amazing, Diego Luna, was set in 1950’s Cuba. It was shot, however, on location in Puerto Rico. The movie was sappy and corny with cheesy dialogues yet I enjoyed the movie a lot, to the point of thinking I might buy the DVD. (There! Another proof positive of my occasional silliness.) The dance sequences featuring the two leads - no doubles like Flashdance – and Latin-flavored soundtrack somehow made it enjoyable indeed.

On Sunday, I was transported to gay Paris in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, a movie about youth and idealism. With the 1968 Paris student riots as its background and in graphic vividness expected of any Bertolucci movie, the cast of characters (Michael Pitt, Eva Green and Louis Garrel) develops an attraction to one another based on a mutual love for the cinema. The ensuing relationship between the three introduces the characters, especially Matthew (Pitt), to sexual and emotional experiences like they’ve never experienced before. Shots of the Louvre Museum and Rive Gauche transported me to one of my favorite cities in Europe. Good story and great movie, in my opinion. Certainly worth watching (and owning).

On Saturday, my sisters and I went to see Bourne Supremacy, not because I’m crazy about Matt Damon nor Robert Ludlum (the author of the book the movie series is based from), but because of the movie’s villain: Karl Urban, a.k.a. Éomer from the Lord of the Rings movies. He was the only reason I went to see a Matt Damon movie on its first weekend when usually I’d just wait for its HBO-release. And let me tell you a badass kicking, black-suit/leather coat wearing, gun-waving and 100 mph driving Karl Urban was worth the price of admission and maybe a bucket of popcorn too if I bought one. Anyway, a huge portion of the movie was set in eastern, central and southern Europe (Moscow, Berlin and Naples) and the continuation of Jason Bourne’s story opens up with the trained assassin trying to lead a normal non-existence in India and ends with a view of New York – his new residence.

And to finish the weekend, I traveled back to Middle Earth and watched Frodo, Sam and Gollum trek towards Mordor and watch the rest of the Fellowship get back together and battle the forces of Saruman. I’m talking about Lord of the Rings here, for those who are not in the know…

So in two days I’ve been to Latin America, Europe, Asia and Middle Earth. Ahhh, only with books and movies can I do such whirlwind traveling like this and I love every minute of it.