...::: Viridiana :::...

Chaos at The Grove

Ten minutes twenty-five seconds into Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, a loud beep noise goes off. The screen goes black, a flash is snapped, and the audience starts to boo, they think something’s wrong with the projection and this kind of stint is not supposed to happen when you’re paying 10.50 plus dollars for 'the' movie experience. Well, they were wrong, it wasn’t the fault of the projectionist. A voice through loud speakers asked everyone to please stand up and walk to the nearest exit, the fire alarm had just been triggered.

Surprisingly, the crowds calmly headed to the back door exit, got some fresh air and walked around to the main entrance, where we joined hundreds of movie theater goers who were waiting, not sure for what, as we did not know if there was a fire being extinguished. Meanwhile Gretel, Nicole and Caprice started to chant “free popcorn, free popcorn, free popcorn,” and it picked up like the wave at the World Cup, culminating in applause, but management ignored the plea, and instead a concierge went up the stairs to announce that everyone would be receiving readmission tickets.

Great, but here comes the fun part. I go back into the theater and there’s someone sitting in my seat. Oh gawd, a tingling sensation of panic striked me as I walked over to her and him.

V (in a calm and amiable voice): “Hi, I apologize, but I was sitting here."
Her: “So?”
V: “I stood in line for two hours to get the seat, it’s not very nice to use a fire alarm to better your seat.”
Her (in a British accent): “Well darlin’, I’m sitting here now, you’re going to have to find another seat. *wicked grin*”
V: “Enjoy it.”

But I didn’t mean it. Secretly I wanted to kick her ass, like Uma Thurman did on Kill Bill, after all I do have a black belt in Tang Soo Do, and though I haven’t practiced recently, I was confident my instinct would reward me. I fantasized for a split second and found another seat. Then the guy next to me showed up, headed to his seat, and went through the same ordeal. Those two didn’t budge, they were insensitive rocks, we tried to make them feel inadequate, but it didn’t work. This reminded me of life lesson #109: it’s not fair. I’ve been doing a lot of growing up lately; as the number of life lessons learned is outrageously high for the number of days I’m actually living/existing in this planet. Someone, it seems, is trying to tell me something.

Les photos sont de moi. My camera goes with me everywhere. Blame the photojournalist in me.

Echo Park Film Center

Yesterday, I finally visited the Echo Park Film Center. I discovered it a few weeks ago, there was an article on the LA Weekly, which turned twenty-five last Thursday by the way. So I clipped the article and added it to my neat-places-to-visit list. Yesterday was their last screening of the year; they were paying homage to Jojo Hilsenrad, one of the cofounders three years ago. They are a non-profit organization, and one of their aims is to share cinema with the community, specially teenagers. I wish there had been something like it when I was a teenager, I would have liked it a lot. The place is small and funky. It’s not a theater, but a retail space. The outlet next door (33 1/3) sells artsy stuff: paintings, posters, postcards done by local artisans, books, magazines, etcetera. The center is sectioned into three parts, at the front they’ve got computers, old eMacs, which are used to teach kids editing, retail cases filled with camera stuff, and of course the donation jar. The middle is graced with movie theater seats, chairs and a rust colored wall with a shelf brimming with movies for everyone to see. At the back is the projector and bathroom. They accept donations by the way, they can always use computers, still-functioning dvd players and cameras. Or you can make a tax-deductible contribution.

We got a private screening, the cofounder, Ken Fountain, was a bit shy about it, he said, “We didn’t really expect a lot of people to show up to this screening, but it’s usually filled.” He was apologetic, and we were rather like, “Oh no, this is great.” The shorts were good. The first one titled “In the Shadow of Osama," which again made me realize how often I take my living conditions for granted. Surprise surprise, this happens often. The last short was a political animation. Jojo took an animated story, recent voice clips from political figures, such as George Bush and Blair, and put the two together. It must have been hard to make. He wasn’t there to talk about it, as he is in Oregon. Since they don't charge for movie tickets, they ask for a five-dollar donation per person at the end of a screening, which I was glad to give to Ken. He came over to talk and see if we had any questions, he was very nice. Oh yeah, at the beginning of the film, he offered us candy canes, which is very descriptive of the spirit and attitude found there. This project qualifies for CityWorks LA, which I am involved in, I’m going to talk to Leslie about it to see what we can do to help. :-)

There is a vintage Italian café next door (Downbeat Cafe) if you would like to have something to eat, I can vouch for the Mediterranean salad without artichokes, as they didn’t have any. Otherwise there’s Mexican food and goodies all over the place, as it’s located on Alvarado St.

Architecture Wars

Building a landmark is bliss at the inception and the conclusion, but don’t ask about the inbetween. Take for example the $274 million dollar Walt Disney Concert Hall, which is adulated now, however, it took Frank Gehry 16 years of disputing many aspects of his design, as there were many people who did not want it built. Then think of Maya Lin, who in the same way had to defend her vision for the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. Now flash-forward to the present and think of the most publicized architectural commission in the world—The World Trade Center. It’s no surprise then that Daniel Libeskind is fighting his own share of wars with the LMDC and Larry Silverstein, the ninety-nine year leaseholder of the WTC. Who incidentally got 7.2 billion dollars in compensation from insurance companies having only leased three months prior to the attacks. Lucky. Damn lucky.

It took 139 days for LMDC to declare that David Childs of SOM (hired by lucky Larry) would be the leading designer of Libeskind’s main skyscraper. The 1,776 foot “Freedom Tower.” The master planner was to cooperate with David Childs, whose architectural language is very different than Libeskind’s. I will add here that architects have huge egos that usually hurt innocent bystanders, just image what it must feel like to have someone else in charge of your joy-and-pride element. It’s not a secret that the collaboration between both architects has been unhappy. Tomorrow, the dysfunctional tower will be unveiled.

On another note, the memorial finalists were announced on November 19th. 5,201 entries were received from 63 countries and 49 states. Almost all of the designs use light as their main element, which is something that we did consider, but didn’t do anything about as we thought it would be either too discotheque-ish and/or too soft, that is, it would not represent the gravity of what happened. I would venture to say that one or two of the final submittals fall into this category. But that’s probably because I’m a bit jealous that our proposal didn’t get chosen (click on the thumbnail to have a closer look). Heh-heh. We will be featured in a book and in the museum though, so that’s very cool. There are rumors that the jury is not very happy with the overall results, which is not the fault of the designer’s, as there exists the uniform opinion that the site is problematic, and there should have been a competition at the beginning of reconstruction, when changes to the site itself could have been done. It’s of course too late for that now, and though the jury may also complain that many of the finalists ignore Libeskind’s vision, they are going to pick a winner by the end of the year.

You Are Here

Getting ready to paint. I'm working on more paintings for my architecture portfolio. I need to get a away from InDesign as I've been spending too much time on it. Then again, I've been watching too many movies too, more about it later.

The photo is of my setup; paints, brushes, etcetera are on my architectural desk, and the painting was done about a year ago, when I was a bit miffed because a close friend called me “unfocused.” "Who? Me?!? Argh." I had been talking about painting and wasn't getting anywhere, so that day I focused and painted. Take a closer look.

Oh yes, the headline is the title of the painting I'm about to make.

Neat-o*

Aaah, the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre screened "Kill Bill: Vol.1," which I saw right when it came out, however the fun part of getting tickets was the Q&A with the dazzling-energy-radiating-sexier-than-a-mac-pop-culture-lover director/writer afterward. Indeed, it was incredible. He radiates so much energy, and it didn’t help to calm him down that all 650 seats of the theatre were filled with cinephiles and B-movie fans.

The bombardment of questions begun, ranging from violence, to how come the flick was split in two, to the experience of filming in China, to his kung-fu movie influences, to fighting sequences without digital effects, to music, because he believes music and movies go hand in hand, to the obligatory budget, schedule, etcetera foo, and of course to Vol.2, is it done? Yes! Blah blah blah. He wasn’t disclosing too much information, other than to say that there will be more focus on character development, and oh yes, a killer and brutal trailer fighting scene between the gals, which will be so beautiful it will hurt to watch.

One thing about Tarantino that quickly revealed itself is that he is very entertaining; he takes a question, rants away, and in the process tells a lot of anecdotes. I would have liked to have had my Canon Optura 200MC because it was so cool, but instead I had my Nikon Coolpix, which is slowly dying on me, this reminds me that I shouldn’t get started on camera talk––I’m dreaming about the Nikon D2H, keyword “dreaming.”

*Macs are sexy; Tarantino is sexier.