Archive for March 2012
An American man in a foreign tongue in Casa De Mi Padre (My Father’s house)
By Jenny Alvarez
Photos by Alfonso De Elias
This film is coming out in theaters March 16th. If you want to watch a 2 hour Spanish movie with English subtitles, you will get to focused on The Alvarez brothers who are searching for a way to save their father’s ranch, but they find themselves in a war with Mexican drug lord. Armando’s younger brother Raul (Diego Luna) shows up with his new fiancée, Sonia (Genesis Rodriguez). Then they will find themselves in a war with Mexico’s most feared drug lord, the mighty Onza (Gael Garcia Bernal). However, is not the best film that I have seen, its humor is rude social criticism. Will Ferrell is unfamiliar with this type of Spanish soap opera, but a good point is that he tried to speak in Spanish (although it was by memorization). On the other hand, Director Matt Piedmont plays it silly, thanks to the use of miniatures and puppets, fake animals, and life-size dolls. Hilarious? Not exactly, it was odd and silly.
Casa De Mi Padre also provides a smart, humorous display about complex U.S. and Mexican relations and a subliminal message about family, love, unity, struggles and odd relations between two nations that go beyond border-crossing, expanding its repertoire to other ethnic stereotypes. Even Cristina Aguilera sings the little track at the beginning of the movie, the script of this Mexican ‘telenovela’ soap is really bad and the dialogue made me smile just a little, due is terrible and others may feel the same way. Certainly, it’s an homage to the Mexican spaghetti western with many mistakes and overacting but is a good opportunity to analyze life is a satire full of complexity and the idea for this film was brilliant!
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Footnote summarizes all the references of the relationship between father and son
By Jenny Alvarez
Photo: Cortesy
Footnote is the tale of a great rivalry between a father and son. Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik are both eccentric professors who have dedicated their lives to their work in Talmudic Studies. The father, Eliezer, is a stubborn purist who fears the establishment and has never been recognized for his work. While his son, Uriel, is an up-and-coming star in the field, who appears to feed on accolades, endlessly seeking recognition.
Then one day, the tables turn. When Eliezer learns that he is to be awarded the Israel Prize, the most valuable honor for scholarship in the country, his vanity and desperate need for validation are exposed. His son Uriel, meanwhile, is thrilled to see his father’s achievements finally recognized but, in a darkly funny twist, is forced to choose between the advancement of his own career and his father’s. Will he sabotage his father’s glory?
Their relation is very complicated between a father and son. Does Uriel give too much respect to his father? Is the price he pays too great? It’s much more a tragedy than a comedy (though it has very funny bits) and I found the focus on the word (as in “In the beginning was the word”) fascinating. “Footnote” is a decidedly male-centric film. Structurally, this film is divided into named chapters that make for cute markers but give it the not-entirely satisfying feel of a jaunty satire.
Eventually the movie focuses on an unknown that is stretched almost to the point of paradox: Is the quality of the old man’s work in academe really unsurpassed, or is it really unsatisfactory? The movie does turn out to be a fable, and a fable worth taking seriously. Finally, we won’t know the possible end but I figure out that love will win in this complex paradigm.
