Erotikon (Seduction) 1929

What a delightful surprise to watch a black white silent movie Erotikon (seduction) 1929 by Czech director Gustav Machaty.

Many modern cinema elements in the movie:

The framing,
editing,
camera movement,
montage

Need to study more about this movie, but it is quite impressive in
framing the woman at the edge, to make the man dominate the frame
cut of more closer shot of one person VS less close shot
Dissolving from one person's eye to another person's eye that the first person is looking at - it gives very direct sensation, much more efficient than cutting to it.
when woman's father looks at his wife's pic, the picture is dissolved into his head, very impressive

Gustave's another movie Ecstacy (ekstase) is very controversial - hope I can find where to watch it.

狼奔豕突

This chinese word "狼奔豕突 (Lang Ben Shi Tu)" is describing the scenes rascals running all over the places, either molesting people or running away.

I use this word to describe people's (mostly pedestrians') status in Guatemala.

There are no good sidewalks in a lot of roads, sometimes there are walking bridges but faraway. So when people have to cross the streets where there are no traffic lights and walking bridges, they run - when a lot of people doing this at the same time towards different directions: it is 狼奔豕突.

George and I 狼奔豕突 all the time in Guatemala, just as everybody else. YOU HAVE TO.

Movies and Guatemala view 1

This week, we watched a few new good movies:

Fassbinder's The bitter tears of Petra von Kant, reminding me Bergman,  theater play, and is it reflection of his own life experience (of course yes i would say). Rich film language. Incredible blocking/lighting

Hitchcock's Rope

You have to say, Hitchcock Sabe Americanos!

Orlson Welles's The immortal story - rather short, but you can see his trademark style 

Karel Kachyna's The Ear  - a very enjoyable movie - not in a very deep way, but well done dark humor, reminded me Milos Forman, who is also from Czech

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A few days ago we visited Terminal area in Centro (south of centro Guatemala city). Many vendors, whole sale people with trucks, rough looking homeless people, sex workers, drunkards laying on the streets, strong pee smells, all over the place. 

Guatemala is like everywhere else - straight men got all the privilege and pleasures - open and permitted prostitution, every-so-often football games, and of course, liquor. Women are not allowed to have legal abortion, so they will cook and have kids. There are many single mother families, just as in Mexico, if not more. It appears this bad cycle is quite common in Guatemala AND Mexico: deserted woman - single mom bringing up the kidS (many) - Mom became religious and more controlling the kids - kids grow up to be another conservative man.

Gays in guatemala are incredibly different from any other countries I visited. On grindr, the most common words are "discreto, no obvios". There are incredible amounts of profiles that have no face pictures (reminding me Asia), with intentional-incorrect information in the profile (I suppose that so nobody will find out who they are), incredible amount of flake-ness, unfinished dialogue, weirdly disappearing people. Very seldom to see gay men are looking for a boyfriend, a relationship, love. 

Incredible amount of extreme religious force were observed in Guatemala and El Savaldor, mostly the evangelical and mormon preachers all over the place, especially in regular poor people's house. In San Salvador, there is this covenant church from this family's garage having preaching going on and on all nights, with very loud speaker, going to after 11pm in the weekends, and it scared all the wild dogs away too, which is the only plus side...

The 10 day driving trip in Guatemala is unforgettable: Lake atitlan (Pana), the natural reserve hiking trail (coffee bean trees and rope bridges), the avocado tree in the hotel garden, Xela, the first gay bar in history, the driving south from Xela along the river, the fancy highway from Gautemala city to the south beach VS many bumps on other highways (mostly built by local village men to slow the cars so they will have some business, in our case mostly watermelon sellers), village men fixing the road holes by filling in dirts asking for donations, the pineapple vendor, and rain forest views in Izabal, and the weird airbnb in a restaurant - george and I went inside the restaurant at night - it is open but nobody there, no lights, no other people, with two short piers going into the lake/bay. Ahhh the firecrackers!!! all over the place, the castle (good for hide and seek game i guess), I couldn't barely walk in the bay area as so many stones in the waterbed, TIKAL, is really something... Grande grande grande...Puerto barrios, such a running down city, remembering crossing street of loud evangelical church, are the sex workers, they waved to us and everybody cheered when I waved back..the trip to Livingston, the black tourist guide, the beach, and very bumping boat ride!

Can't forget how badly people drive in Guatemala, they are worse than Chinese! Finally...

Movie talk 77

Smiles of a summer night (Bergman) 6
Paradise Love (Ulrich Seidl) 7
Cannibal tours 7
Heading south 6
'Night mother (Tom Moore) 8 oh boy, everybody should see this movie

Peru May 5 - 15th

Dig a hole will fill this later

first night stay in hostel close to airport, oh boy, a lot of wild dogs and their shit

Flying to Cusco next day
Machupicchu the day after
Another day in Cusco

Back to Lima

San Jose, Costa Rica

2012 November

San Jose is small

B - two places
The park, met the chinese speaking Costa Rican and his taiwanese teacher
The street protestors!

Mexico city 4th, 5th, and 6th visit

2013 August, November and 2014 January

Zocalo visit every time, saw kids display, outdoor skating and military show.
Discovered:
Garibaldi - Mariachi's plaza and Cabrito market and the bakery shop
Museum of popular arts at Coyancan
Blue house at downtown, inside mural and restaurant, bar and the narrow porch
JW person sent info in chinese outside Blue house
Badminton at YMCA close to hotel Fontan
Basilica the plaza and the park going up to the church
Metro bus from aeroporto to hotel, not recommended
PUEBLA (museum of revolutionary)
OAXACA
etc

People:
Julio
Richard/Ricardo
Guillermo
Liang
Axel
Crustian
Gabriel
and anonymous ones

Movie talk 76

Walkabout (Nicolas Noeg) 8 (wow new film language, need a copy)
After hours (Scosesse) 6 (ok do we need to be surprised all along the movie?)
Frances Ha (Noah) 6 (The only good thing about this movie is how young generation - or maybe some of them -lives their lives in USA)
Barbarian invasions
An angel at the table (Jane campion)
The decline of the American expire
Le Grande Bouffe
Audition
Closely watched trains
Jesus of Montreal
La Vie de Jsus (life of Jesus)
Picnic at hanging rock
The city of your final destination (Jame Ivory) Revisit
Death in Venice (Visconti)
Mahler (Ken Russell)
American Gigolo
Germany, Pale mother
The damned (Visconti)
Women in love (Ken Russell)
La Caza (Carlos Saura)
Memories of underdevelopment
Yeelen (Solomani Sise)
Local hero (Bill Forsyth)
Deus e o diabo na terra do sol
He who hits first, hits twice (Santiago Alvarez)
Timecode (Mike Figgis)