Culture: Introducing Cervantes [To Jamaicans]

Author of the 2nd most translated book after the Bible, and considered by many to be the "father of the modern novel" Miguel de Cervantes is nevertheless largely unknown to Jamaicans. 

THE Embassy of Spain, in partnership with the Spanish-Jamaican Foundation and the Edna Manley School of Drama, present a dramatic play reading at Redbones Blues Cafe on Argyle Road in St Andrew, on Thursday. Start time is scheduled at 7:00 pm.

The event, which is free to the public, is entitled Cervantes Celebration and is part of the 400th anniversary celebration of the death of Spanish writer, who died in 1616 at age 68.

Directed by Pierre Lemaire, director of School of Drama at Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Cervantes Celebration will feature Michael String Bean Nicholson, Jean Paul Menou, and Edna Manley College’s drama students.

Carmen Rives, chargé d’affaires — Embassy of Spain, said the aim of the occasion is to introduce Cervantes to the Jamaican public.

“His writings deal with every day challenges of the human experience.

Rives said she’s hoping the occasion will be a personal one and that a discussion segment will be held after the readings.

“It’s all about enjoying Cervantes,” she added.

Cervantes is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language. In addition to Don Quixote, his other works include Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels), the Viaje al Parnaso (Journey to Parnassus), and Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (The Works of Persiles and Sigismunda).

He was born September 29, 1547.

TV: Winter is coming again.....next summer

HBO confirmed Monday that Game of Thrones’ seventh season won’t begin until summer 2017 and will include only seven episodes, as opposed to the usual 10. Rumors had been swirling about the shortened final two seasons 
(the eighth season will likely only include six episodes) and late start for weeks, but the network only now confirmed the changes. 

The next season will reportedly be shot in Northern Ireland, Spain, and Iceland. “Now that winter has arrived on Game of Thrones, Executive Producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss felt that the storylines of the next season would be better served by starting production a little later than usual, when the weather is changing,” said Casey Bloys, president of HBO programming. “Instead of the show’s traditional spring debut, we’re moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule.”

Freedom Sells.....But Who's Buying?

That's how it must have seemed to Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco Miranda(actually born in the Canary Islands) as he embarked on his quest to rid Latin America of foreign (read "Spanish")domination and create a republic from the base of the Mississippi to Patagonia governed by rule of law and the respect for individual freedoms.

In the wrong hands this could have turned out to be wretched exercise in Latin civics, but director Luis Alberto Lamata spins his true-life tale like the finest of swashbuckling political adventures, whilst maintaining an intimate feel for his hero. Miranda (a commanding portrayal by Jorge Reyes) opens the film in a physical and emotional funk: confined to a prison cell by the very people he banded together on the road to freedom (including an ascendant Simon Bolivar), he has only his trusted Man Friday - Salim, to relay on.

In comes a local priest, with an offer to write the general's awesome and multi-layered story for the world and future generations to remember. The over-protective Salim smells a rat, but Miranda is lured by the offer to immortalize him and his journey in words and thus begins a breathtaking (if at times a tad lengthy) odyssey across late 18th and early 19th Century Europe: Spain, France, Russia, England. America's in there too, with  Miranda contributing to the American and French revolutions before turing his full energies tothe cause that ignited him in the first place: freeing his homeland.

Here, the film becomes slightly less compelling, as apart from a fateful landing with his troops on what is now Venezuela's east coast, there is little to occupy the viewer satisfactorily apart from the inner conflict that now racks the priest as he seeks to sort out his now complete admiration for the man he was initially send to deceive and disgrace (and even kill, but we give away too much)

The appearance of Danny Glover, as a terror-minded free Black, is another sore point. Though the exchange between the two characters provides some nice insights, the overall scene is so contrived as to suggest that Glover's presence was almost solely for the purpose of attracting funding (who knows, he may well have funded it himself, at least in part).

Still, there's no denying Miranda is a stylish and moving true-life account of one of the most charismatic, polarizing and seminal figures in Latin American history.
Bob Marley said "Now we'll find out who is he real revolutionary" He needn't have looked as far as Zimbabwe in the late 70s. History already offered up a bonafide example in nearby Venezuela.

From "The Valley" to "The Backwoods"

Ahh, the late 90s. An interesting time, to say the least for Hollywood. The Clinton Administration was in its scandal-ridden endgame, the "Towers" had not yet been hit and "globalization" not global terror was the main issue. Greed, to some extent, was still considered "good"

And its greed on the part of a pair of grifters (Charlize Theron and  James Spader) that drives the first half of this hard-hitting yet "heartful" caper from John Herzfeld. Withthe not-so-willing co-operation of a pre-Housewives Teri Hatcher, and more help on the side from Danny Aiello as a hitman, the pair are trying to pull offa trciky but lucrative bit of insurance fraud, one that involves murdering their collaborators husband. Eric Stoltz, Robert Carradine, Jeff Daniels, Marsha Mason, Glenne Headley (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) and a B-List "cast of thousands" round out the roster, and all of them are very good, great fun to watch as the plot careens and blasts its way to its near inevitable ending. One is reminded, especially in Spader's case, of just how solidly he built that bridge between "mainstream weirdo" and art-house hero. Theron, thin as a rake but achingly beautiful, puts her own considerable acting chops to a role that unfortunately diminishes over the course of the movie. Aiello and Headly shine as the "matched misfits" of the piece. The whole thing zips along so neatly that you forgive the director for his cheeky bit of rah-rah at the very end. A rollicking bit of entertainment that is so of its time, its timeless.

A world away from the smoggy freeways and canyons of greater LA, the forests of Northern Spain hold just as much Paddy Consdine and Virginie Ledoyen are a couple in disintegration - we learn that the recent loss of a child (miscarriage?) is but a part of their troubles. They end up in Spain's Basque country atthe urging of their friend - Oldman - who's established a cabin out in the wild Northern woods and who, of course, has his own issues to deal with.

On a hunting trip not too far (In this piece, all distances are "relative") they discover a child being horribly confined in a barn, cold, hungry, scared half to death. That event sets in motion a riveting sequence of pursuit, conflict and resolution involving - among others - a family of local roughnecks, one of whom takes too much of a fancy to the grieving mother, and is not the type to be denied his proclivities.

The two male leads are in top form here, but Considne's character undergoes a metamorphosis from wimpy follower to ruthless leader that would have been hard to swallow but for the sincerity of the interplay between him and the other characters. Oldman displays total commitment as always, and Aitana Sanchez Gijon, as his hen-pecking but devoted lady-friend comes across more convincingly than her counterpart.

Notwithstanding this, and the "strange" ending, Backwoods delivers for viewers in search of compelling action psychodrama, with healthy but considered doses of all those elements .

Of Saints & Sinners: There Be Dragons

"In a child's heart, many seeds; who knows which will bloom"

With strong shades of The Kite Runner, Writer-producer-director Roland Joffe (The Mission) delves into the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s to produce a stirring missive on faith, betrayal, shame, forgiveness and redemption.

The story actually starts in the 1980s, with a writer trying to piece together the strands of myth concerning a Catholic priest who braved both the Fascists and the Communists in doing good and ministering to the locals, the movie's main sub-plot.

The priest, we learn, is the childhood friend of a Fascist who has infiltrated the ranks of the Communists, seeking to avenge the death of his industrialist father. On the way he also falls in love with the paramour of the Communist leader.

Their adult paths scarcely cross and Joffe weaves a comp,ex yet compelling tapestry as the son slowly uncovers the sins of the father. In a film world where war scenes have overblown, technologically dictated snoozefests, the conflicts here retain the full measure of immediacy and urgency. The film's religious thread, while strong, never overwhelms, and the characters always come off as flesh and blood human beings rather than one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs.

Oscar Wilde is quoted in the movie ad saying "every saint has a past;every sinner a future." the two types meet, meld and transform each other in this slept-on gem of a movie.