The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 4,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 7 years to get that many views.
Blancanieves
I have enjoyed writing about my favorite films of the year in 2010 and 2011. In 2012 there were fewer movies that made the top of my list, but those that did were truly original. I begin with a movie I saw on an airplane.
Magic Mike, directed by Steven Soderbergh, was a bit of light summer entertainment. Or was it? Even though the subject matter was far from previous subjects of Soderbergh’s movies, like drug trafficking in “Traffic” and environmental pollution in “Erin Brockovich”, Magic Mike deals with the seedy side of the American dream. Namely, everyone wants to be famous, but at what price? Is it your soul? Channing Tatum’s Mike takes the young Adam under his wing but watches as the young man loses his soul as he gets rich not only stripping, but dealing drugs. We see the familiar Soderbergh color palette- bright sunshine during the day and cold darks in nightclubs and darkly lit strip clubs. This is the best I’ve ever seen Matthe McConaughey act- the role seems tailor made for him- and the cast is stunning to look at, notably True Blood hunk Joe Manganiello.
I was in Spain for a week this fall, where I had the good fortune to see the new release Blancanieves, by Director Pablo Berger. When I first heard that it was a black and white silent film, I expected it to be a derivative of “The Artist”. Despite my reservations, the movie turned out to be thrillingly original, and thoroughly Spanish. This retelling of the Snow White tale makes the young Snow White the daughter of a champion bullfighter and a flamenco singer, and the seven dwarves are seven miniature bullfighters (see the image above). The movie’s pace is slow as the relationship between the young Snow White and her father and stepmother develops (played with wicked relish by veteran Spanish actress Maribel Verdú), and it builds to a thrilling climax. It is Spain’s entry for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. I hope it has a chance.
I am a big fan of thrillers- be they spy, political, psychological, you name it. Argo is the former, a spy thriller that tells the amazing true story of the rescue of 6 employees of the American Embassy in Tehran during the Iranian hostage crisis of late 70’s. Ben Affleck has turned into a master director of taut action films- Gone Baby Gone and The Town were all well-paced and well-acted, and Argo is no exception. Argo is an ensemble film, and so this movie is not a showcase for any one actor to show their chops. It is a remarkable story that is expertly told- and the airport sequence had me slinking lower and lower in my seat until I was nearly on the floor. If I have one criticism of the movie, I would have liked to have seen the real-life character of Tony Mendez, played by Ben Affleck as Tony Everyman from Anytown U.S.A., portrayed as a Hispanic man, which is who he was. I’ll let Moctezuma Esparza take it from here.
I was ready to like Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln when I heard it was in pre-production. So I was geared to like it. But the movie went above and beyond my expectations. I have compared it to a good college lecture as a way of letting some moviegoers know that it is not for everyone- there’s no explosions, and the action is mostly driven by dialogue. But what dialogue it is. While Spielberg justly gets credit for his expert direction and Daniel Day-Lewis for once again inhabiting the flesh and bone of his character, Tony Kushner deserves praise for adapting Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals” into a riveting political thriller, while breathing life into key figures from American history such as Mary Todd Lincoln, William Seward and Robert Todd Lincoln. The acting is superb, and the story- well, it shows that sometimes politicians have to get a little dirty to achieve great things.
L’homme qui voulait vivre sa vie has been translated into English as The Big Picture, but the right translation of the French title would be The Man who wanted to live his life. A much better title. I just saw this film a week ago, and have been unable to get it out of my head. It stars Romain Duris as a bourgeois professional living in an unhappy marriage. The chance to escape his humdrum life presents itself, and he takes it. I will admit that part of the pleasure of this movie was not knowing a thing about it before I saw it- I just felt like seeing a French movie. But I was spellbound by the thriller- how one accident leads a man to completely change his life, which at first leads to him realizing his dreams as a photographer but then leads him to live a life of constant fear of being found out. The man wanted to live his life- but what kind of a life is he destined to live?
And sadly I have to leave a dishonorable mention for “The Dark Knight Rises”. You can file it under, “Movies that millions of fans of The Dark Knight looked forward to and then were crushed by awful characters, improbably plot lines, and a perplexing ending”. At least the folks at Honest Trailers did it justice.
Nanowrimo!
It is December 3rd, so it has been 3 days since I wrote the 46th page of my novel. I have since added one paragraph. I wrote a little bit every day, except for maybe two or three days, although often this only amounted to one page per day. To what am I referring? National Novel Writing Month, of course.
I had always wanted to try it, and actually did try two years ago. I had the brilliant idea to write a semi-autobiographical story retelling the story of my recent breakup. Yikes. I made it 13 pages. Finally, this year, the project gestated over several months. I had an idea, and it would bear enough fruit to become not just a short story, or a novella, but a real novel.
Well, like Kristin Claes Matthews, I got embarrassed to tell strangers what the story is about (some friends knew). I will be as cryptic now as I was with them: it’s based on the true life story of a real woman who is really alive and who has an unusual life story that always fascinated me. It infuriated me, so I thought I would explore that. When I saw a special about her legal troubles on 60 Minutes ages ago, it stuck with me. How could someone do such a thing? The arrogance! And she probably had no idea she was being so arrogant! I figured I would use a flashback structure to go back and forth between her present day in a foreign prison, and to her past to explore the path her life took to get her to that foreign prison. But enough about my plot.
So in order to successfully complete NanoWrimo (and that is pronounced Nano-reemo, cause originally I had no idea), you have to write 50,000 words, which should come out to approximately 175 pages. So yes, I only wrote a little more than 14,000 words- not even halfway there- and this came to 46 pages. As I mentioned, I wrote every day, but just a little bit. Not enough. I couldn’t help thinking, damnit, is this ANOTHER thing I couldn’t see through to completion? And then I thought, you know what? This is the most I’ve ever written in my life. I like that the purpose of NanoWrimo is to get would-be writers past the roadblock of ‘never good enough’. It is about quantity, not quality. So I got used to the idea of producing a bunch of text that wasn’t necessarily accurate, or good, but it would give me a pulpy mass that I could later go back and revise. Plus, there were a few sentences here and there that are actually kind of good. And who knew there were so many synonyms for “said”?
It was fun, and I hope to continue it. Maybe I’ll finish this thing by my birthday in March. And thank you, folks behind NanoWrimo, for this idea to turn would-be writers into actual writers with no excuses.
MIIS Be the Solution
I am a proud graduate of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, Class of 2007. I have been pleased to see the growing partnership with Middlebury College take root, and I am glad to see a widespread marketing campaign for the first time that I recall (or at least one that is reaching my eyeballs). Now I work in digital marketing, so I know that a lot of thought has gone into the digital ad campaign seen at left. Surely this image has been tested and analyzed and proven to be the most effective. I have, however, had some reservations about the photo that has been central to this campaign.
I don’t know if this photo is only being used in the San Francisco Bay Area or if it’s national. I am sure that the Bay Area is full of educated, well-travelled, idealistic young people who would be ideal candidates for the largest school within the Institute, the Graduate School of International Policy Studies. Nevertheless, you may never know by looking at this picture that 40% of MIIS students are international. They study at the Institute for two years and then return to their home countries to apply the skills they’ve acquired during their Master’s. I know it’s unrealistic to expect a locally targeted ad campaign to highlight this kind of student, but the ad featuring IPS Class of 97’s Richard Crothers is rich in symbols. These symbols, I suppose, are meant to appeal to a certain prospective student.
But peruse the excellent blog Gurl Goes to Africa for a primer on the history of people from the Global North (U.S.+Europe) seeking redemption on the African continent. You don’t need to be Colonel Kurtz to know that. Examine the pictures on the Gurl Goes to Africa blog for a moment- the picture of privileged white people showing their friends back home how remarkably human the Africans are, the images of condescending Western attitudes (look, they’ve never seen a camera before!), and ask yourself if the photo of Crothers with the young African children isn’t meant to appeal to this same desire. If you want to help the little African kids, then perhaps a MIIS education is for you.
Bono in Africa
I encourage the Monterey Institute, my alma mater, to take a critical look at the use of the tired trope of the white savior in Africa not to denigrate the work of IPS graduates in the field, or of Mr. Crothers in particular. I applaud their work; what they do makes me proud to be a graduate of this fine institution. I merely criticize this image, of the many that could have been used. Again, I imagine that, as with any digital ad campaign, it has been fine-tuned, and this image has simply been found the most effective. Yet I would encourage the Monterey Institute of International Studies to test out a different photo. They could perhaps feature the story of Maame Afon, Class of ’05, featured on the MIIS website. She is pictured with young African girls like herself. Would such an image prove as successful for MIIS as the one currently being used? I would be curious to know.
The Lebanexican 