Invictus

The new movie of Clint Eastwood is ambientada in the first year of government of Nelson Mandela. The president of South Africa, in his emulation for joining a people at the edge of the civil war, uses the world cup of rugby that has to be played in his country. Risky company if it is born in mind that this sport was a symbol of the white oppression in the apartheid.

If by something Eastwood has been meant throughout the latter years in which he has devoted himself to direct his movies it is for being one of these outstanding figures who guarantee the highest level to you. Invictus is not an exception. Without stopping being the typical sports movie, it has something that makes her different.

On the one hand he would emphasize that the production design is impeccable. Every plane, every phrase of the script, every detail in the art has a justification. Nothing remains, nothing is missing. Quite in his measured joust.

The sports movies usually remember me in major or minor measurement to the movies of masses of the 20s and 30s, when the Soviet movies (for definition without individual protagonists) and the Nazi (especially in the always appealed documentaries of Leni Riefenstahl).

Those two movies, which were separating in many things, were joining in the leading role that assumes the mass as group capable of changing things. Of course, it was separating in that one was exalting only the mass as revolutionary element and other was using it to exalt a leader.

The sports movies tends, for definition, it is to be closer to the facismo for that one of that a few heroes in the field of game make to vibrate to the mass. In this case, what happens is showier because the movie is located with entire equidistance these two cinematographic models.

It is true that the team (led by the captain interpreted by Matt Damon and the black only one that dresses the green T-shirt and gold) and Nelson Mandela (interpreted by big Morgan Freeman), they are the protagonists of the movie and those that the movie dignifies.

But also the fact it is that like the really excellent of the movie there is like a people, which only was lacking the rifle to face definitely, it ends up by being reconciled. No value had had the risks that (at least in the movie) it assumes Order it and the victory of the national team of rugby, if one had not achieved that blacks and white persons were happening of the hand in the search of a common target; the victory in the world cup.

This is, undoubtedly, the distinguishing element of the movie. He accompanies a few interpretations of high level to all this. Matt Damon is more than correct in his representation of François Piennar. Although personally he is an actor who has cost me very much that I liked, I have to admit that every time the best hae.

But over all big Morgan Freeman stands out. Spectacular the stamp that it has obtained imitating that of the proper one Order it. For it, I recommend to see it very much in original version. For those that you should not be accustomed, think that they do not speak too rapidly and many scenes, to the sports being, they are of “action“ and one speaks little.

The decision to turn into movie the book The human factor of John Carlin was containing, at least, 3 risks;

Invictus, with personages so known in the real life was demanding a very meticulous casting to meet on the suitable actors of level. Since I have already justified, I believe that Clint Eastwood gave in the nail. Perhaps it did not also have it difficult bearing in mind the times that it had already worked with Freeman.

Another risk was that a personage as Order it is deeply anticinematographic. At least the image that we have of him is that of a big person, started to the others, arranged to everything for reconciling two conflicting families, which it turns into someone very flat and little given to the conflict.

The solution finds it in giving leading role to the people of the street, to the South African village. But it was containing a difficulty; how can you speak about so many people simultaneously and, simultaneously, give little depth to the "mass"?

Eastwood solves it with big workmanship. The agents of his personal safety it is composed by targets and blacks who will be evolving the same way as the history advances. And to underline the fact that the change does not take place only between the persons next to the mythical politician, he adds two more elements; a mass that at first boos it and that in the end there choruses his name and a nice child who pushes the T-shirt back before the world cup and finishes embraced the team in the last minutes of the final.

Finally, the historical thing is usually insipid. That usually goes to that the real historical facts ficcionizan to make them more "agreeable". On the other hand, in Invictus, it gives the sensation that has wanted to respect the historical situations that happened without resting on things that they did not spend.

For example, it had been much easier to write the script that the president and the captain should see more times than it goes out in the movie. He had had more time to construct a relation that, in fact, is sustained in the distance.

Nevertheless, Eastwood has been capable of making use of elements that should have happened in the reality to give relief to a friendship that goes further away. The visit to the prison and the later reflection that Damon does with his fiancée in the room of the hotel.

It seems that the American director reinforces his interest in the racial conflicts in Invictus after triumphing with Big Torino and, otherwise, in movies like Flags of our parents and Letters of Iwo Jima. Personally I believe that this time has reflected better in conflict than in Big Torino, in a great speech less maniqueo.

In what it never fails Clint is in explaining well what one proposes to make to come to the spectator. And there does not fit any doubt that Invictus is not an exception. If you have not seen it, do not get lost it. In my opinion, one of his most interesting movies.

My own Lost theory

Since you know many, I am corrupted of Lost, series that begins his last period tomorrow. It was difficult to me to decide to see it very much but the circumstances facilitated that it was gobbling it in a very little time up to the 4th period. The fifth one I already saw it as the episodes went being released. And I wait with big anxiety for the new period.

I could not have avoided, imagined than like all the faithful, to try to discover how it will finish the series. I have a proposal and I feel like sharing it. I do not have it nor designs if it will go round there or not. But yes that I warn you to that you do not like reading theories that you do not continue (and let's not say already those that you have not come at the end of the 5th one). I do not have it nor designs if he has published or not theories similar to mine because I belong to those that he denies to himself to read them.

The end of the 5th period supposed one I break with the last episode with Jacob's appearance. It seems obvious that the history has to take a draft. At least, the interests of the people have changed. Preguntémonos why.

Till now it was worrying us; how can happen the things that happen in the island? What happens is that, in the moment in which we accept that there is a species of divine or semidivine beings who control the island, this question stops having importance. That's why the spectators (at least the people that I know) now worry about the ending of the protagonists; will they have to sacrifice themselves? Will they return to the point where they were without know and as if nothing had happened?

Let's give a step backwards and hagámonos two key questions; what do we know? and: Of what has the series gone really?

We know that the island is controlled by two antagonistic personages where, at least one of them, there is corporizado, at least once, in a dead person. We know for the trailer that everything has been a species of game of chess, where the protagonists have been only pieces. He remains reinforced by two elements; it obviated one, the trailer of the sixth period. Much subtler other and that demonstrates that the ending is clear from the first; the Nankin game (is it called this way?) that John plays with Walt. Is it chance that Jacob and “other” is dressed by one of black and other in target? And that John is white and plays, precisely, with the black child? I doubt it.

And on what has it gone really? Let's do an effort to forget the aventuritas, the clash between “natives“ and “others”, atomic bombs, pirates … In my opinion, if naked Lost, what stays is; reason vs. faith. He would say more; the perpetual clash between Jack (reason) and John (faith). Not only that, the first episode of the second period, as announcement of the real subject-matter of this cycle of episodes, there is entitled scientist, man of faith.

And now what do we have? It turns out that we meet two conflicting divinities, like John and Jack. Moreover, one of them is corporeizado in John. This corporeización has "killed" Jacob (that in the last episode they have presented us a little like the causer of the evil). And here the following logical step comes, for me; if John and Jack have symbolized the clash, John is now “other one” divinity (I do not know how it is called) and Jacob has lost his body … Jack will "assume" Jacob's role and will face definitely John.

What happens is that Jacob has been presented like the villain and that is incompatible in spite of granting this roll to Jack. I know by intuition that this is only another trick of the series and that they will end up by turning it. In fact, let's not forget that the (resuscitated) father and Jack's sister run for the island. It seems very probable that they play a key role in this change.

And what luck will the protagonists cover? If you me it ask like spectator about my answer it is “I do not have it nor designs” and I die to know if Jack and Kate will finish together (the same I feel for the rest of plots). I incline for thinking that they will finish together. I see difficultly to justify (although not impossible) the this idea that have commented to me that could return to the point where they knew about forced form and should live through his lives as if they were not known. I incline for thinking that they will go out with some short song that they will not have insinuated but not expressed clearly in order to we surprised.

But if the question you do it of how will the protagonists finish to me like scriptwriter; it is irrelevant. Any end is valid. And nobody is going to finish unsatisfied according to the end of the personages if the important thing (what I propose like clash between Jack and Locke, but that could be another thing) is well raised. The only thing that I see forced (and I admit that it does not have why to be like that) is that it has to finish well.

What does to finish well mean? Very well, that finish happy, that have learned something of this process although they should not remember anything. It can be simply, even without being known, Jack and Kate are turned as if the face they was sounding and that was allowing them to reconstruct his ruined lives. The fiction has these things …

Solutions there is thousand; from expositions some trasnochados type Matrix (the whole world is a lie of these two divinities or of his "parents"), an indicative sleep in full flight that closes the series of circular form, or that they lower a Gods' heap to the purest style Jasón and the Argonauts (do you remember those gods moving the human beings in a board as if there were pieces of a game?) …

Anyway, the scriptwriters have ahead the highest risk of falling down in a Deus ex-crane, of which I have already said often that it is necessary to flee as of the pest. Talking each other of Lost and of it weighed that the faithful are / are, much more. I have already explained it one day, but just in case you have landed here for the first time, a Deus ex-crane is a solution without cause, as if God was going down and extracting us of the entanglement. In fiction, everything has to have his cause. Nothing of takes narrative short cuts. And when you have so to hand divine beings, as it says the title, The temptation lives above and it is very strong.

We will see already with what we surprise his creators. I do not know where I listened / I read / they said to me that, when J.J. Abrams assembled the scriptwriters the first day said to them; “This is the history of a few types that get lost in an island in which rare things happen and in the end what it spends is …”. So, judging by the imagination of the personage, the thing promises. 17 chapters and the answer.

P.D.: Looking for images of Jack and John I have been that one of the most recognized theories go in the direction that I indicate. What I have not seen is that they have done it from a point of view especially of script (as it is my case). It is possible that we all are coming to similar conclusions for different ways.

Lost and Internet

Today it starts the sixth and last Lost period, I recover an interview that they did to Damon Lindelof, one of 3 creators of the series. The journalist asks him for the influence that Internet has had in the series. He says that it is impossible to quantify the effect multiplier who can have had the network on the success of the work. What yes that, for him, is obvious (and I also believe it) is that the possibility of, as it is finished the episode, of sharing your impressions has changed the laws of the game.

To part of the part that more worries me, that is the relation with Internet, attracts attention of me that the people who is capable of creating these so round successes they have not just known very well what does differently from the product with which they have exploited. It is demonstrated by cases as that of Flash Forward that, thinking about how to repeat model, has provoked a very serious disorientation in the scriptwriters.

If you want, you can recover the entire interview in The Country here.

Cineforum Invictus; The sport and the politics

Not long ago I hung the criticism of the new movie of Clint Eastwood, of which it paints the portrait how Nelson Mandela, after gaining the elections in an absolutely divided country, uses the rugby as an of integration element.

The movie is very well executed. As I say in the criticism, it seems to me that it is the sports "typical one" in the sense that Eastwood does a very classic movies. But, simultaneously, it is "different", a contradictory duality that usually happens in his histories.

The movie made me think about a debate that sometimes I have had with the people. I did not know this aspect of the government of the mythical African statesman, and it is obvious that it is a clear use of the sport with political ends. On the other hand, the people tend to say that they should stay always separated.

You know many (and if I do not say it to you) that I am a Barca patient and it was over there ends of 60's the president Narcís of Careers dared to qualify to the Barca of “more than a club”. Approximately 5 years later Agustí Montal popularized it using it as an electoral slogan of a few elections that, certainly, won.

This phrase had political connotations. It was trying to express that when the culé was singing a goal, it was not only that what it was celebrating, but it was a way of expressing the dissatisfaction with the established diet and the idenficación with certain way of understanding Catalunya.

Many culers we keep on considering this identification to be current between the catalanidad and the club. But it bothers many because they think that it is not legal therefore he was commenting of the separation of these two concepts.

On the other hand, Order it there did not have any objection in making a political use of a selection of rugby, which had been a symbol of the oppression of the apartheid. Also was illegitimate that was making this use? For me, he adds a very interesting element to the debate. I have not had the opportunity to share it with anybody, so I do not know what would answer me anybody who should criticize this aspect of the barcelonismo about which I have spoken.

In my opinion, Order it it very was right. The reality is that the unit between sport and politics has been, is and it will keep on being a whole. Not in vain, most of the most important sports events are done under definitely political ensigns; the Olympiads, the world cup of soccer or the glass Davis … The people are faithful to Nadal, Alonso, Héctor Barberá … The identification only comes for an aspect purely politically; prodecemos of the same political entelechy.

That the Spanish selection gains the euroglass it is not a fact politically neutral. That the basketball players gain an European and sing; “I am Spanish” neither. That the adjectives that are used to define the selection (or the virtues of a team) are of the type; caste, race … has a clear ideological load for the one who wants to see it. It is like that and what I do not see why he should be a villain.

Much subtler is the identification between other clubs and his territories or the proper Spanish nation. Anyhow, it should be significant that in the Bernabeu and other stadiums there are Spanish flags. Also in it there is a political connotation, it is not recognized.

The question of the million is; why in a case does one speak about political use of a club and in other it sees like something "normally"? Jordi Pujol reminded to me in his memoirs a concept that he had forgotten; the banal nationalism, which is the form of nationalism so socially recognized that is not perceived as such.

This way, the acceptance as something normal that when one continues the world cup is identified by the selection of his country and not other one, or the sympathies for Alonso instead of for another pilot of the broiler of another country are two natural expressions of this banal form of identification. And not only it is not bad but he wakes up certain identity sense empático and positively.

I promise you that this post is not born in order to that nobody feels annoying because I am not criticizing anything. On the contrary, I like. But I have to admit that it attracts attention of me powerfully (and it bothers me) the variable geometry of our perception of the asumible of a few beginning according to the proximity or distance of ours.

Watch Lost S06E08 Recon free

Dialogue of CARMEN JONES

Carmen Jones dressed in a black blouse and a skirt red passion, rushes towards an applicant to pilot of the American army who has just asked his fiancée of the people for marriage. Carmen Jones takes him of the belt that he is on bad terms put.

CARMEN JONES

(putting well the belt and to his span)

What is happening? Perhaps me are you afraid?

(approaching moreover to spend the belt to him behind)

Or …? Are you afraid of you?

The movies unsay of dad that it is finished

It does a pair of weeks it closed Miramax, one of the most important producers of last 3 decades. His specialty has been to produce movies of independent movies in USA. But his closing is much more than a closing. It means the end of a certain well-off independent movies. Perhaps wonder why.

Miramax founded it in 1979 two very well-known brothers; Bob and Harvey Weinstein. In his beginnings, they threw his first productions and distributed some European movies in America. But, in my opinion, the most important thing came when it was bought by Disney in 1993.

Suddenly it happened of producing movies with four five-peseta coins, financed movies the same way of "minority" cut but, of course, with all the money that it was necessary to have. This is what Salvador Llopart in The Avant-garde has hit in calling movies I ungave of dad. The image has seemed brilliant to me.

The Miramax banner we might say that it has been Tarantino, which has grown to his patronage. His movies, of court avant-garde but infested of stars, answer very well to this new style that was opened.

Immediately after this movement, many of the big producers realized similar movements; or they were acquiring an independent producer or, straight, they were creating his. Examples there are many.

Warner Bros. created a division for movies of less than 20 million dollars that there called Warner Independent Pictures, who ended up by acquiring New Line Movie theater. Paramount Vantage was created by the Paramount at the end of the 90. The list of created subsidiary companies is enormous; Go Fish Pictures, Fox atomic or Hollywood pictures are only some examples.

But now almost they all have closed (those of the previous list all). In fact, important it remains Sony Classics and small sew more. This way, it seems that Miramax initiated a productive model and it seems that also it has closed it.

Now it costs of believing that in the 40s the industry of the movies was who was financing largely the Second World War. His hegemony has been falling down. It would give for another post to speak about how the big producers, in fact, already have no autonomy to decide his strategy, since they depend on big conglomerates mediáticos.

Already bearing in mind the proper difficulties of the industry, now there has joined the financial crisis that has given the last thrust to the sector. In fact, the brothers Weinstein, when in the middle of this last decade they left Miramax, created The Weinstein Company. In spite of having values so recognized as Tarantino, Michael Moore or Rob Marshall and of all the knowledge that they have of the sector, it is at the edge of the failure.

Unfortunately, really either there are a lot of ways of financing movies outsider. Movies that there is not part of the structure of the big producers. This is a serious problem that has the movies in general and the North American in particular. In the fund, it is like finishing with the quarry or, what is the same, gait towards the creative stagnation (if it is that we are already not in this point).

Nevertheless, one never stops being an optimist. If in due time values like Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry found the way to be announced, I do not have you doubt that the young talents will finish with meeting on him also. Will it be youtube?

Of course, the movies as industry will have to appear how they facilitate this process that so much can enrich them. Or the pain can be even more intense.

Dialogue “24 hour party people”

JOURNALIST

Tony Wilson: What answers the fascism accusations?

TONY WILSON

What?

JOURNALIST

His group, Joy division, one calls like the women captured by the SS with the intention to breed Aryan perfect. Is not it disgusting?

TONY WILSON

Has it heard to speak about the situacionismo? Or postmodernism? Does it know the free game between important and significant? If! We have a band called Joy Division and also another called Durruti Column. Does it receive the irony?

Situacionismo: The movement situacionista is a current of thought that was born in the 50s and that it was defending that the human being had to generate situations much planned with concrete targets. At the bottom of his philosophy the idea was of that another world is possible. They were very opposite to the passivity and they are, partly, responsible for the May, 68. If you want, you can read his document fundacional. It is a movement essentially modern.

Postmodernism: One treats as a movement of typical movements of beginnings of the 80s and that is born of the disappointment of seeing that the world could not be changed as he was proposing the modernism.