Back in Buenos Aires, Home

when Elizabeth and I returned to retiro station in buenos aries, we made our way to our new place to meet the sister of our renter who had our keys.

getting the keys and moving in felt incredible. unpacking clothes into a drawer, leaving shower stuff on the side of the tub, putting books on a bookcase: each felt sweet and comforting. we took stock of our location and found a great, inexpensive pizza place around the corner (ugi's, home of the 8 peso large pizza), a chinese market across the street, a dvd rental place about 5 blocks away, and a full sized grocery 3 blocks past the dvd rental (and the same place where we used to shop at when we lived in san telmo).

the first sunday at san juan bautista catedral was a homecoming too, greeted warmly from Kevin, Steve, Irena, and others at our church home in town.

i recall experiencing a sense of pleasure, different than any other for me on the trip at that point, in feeling at home in a place that was once foreign. i was back in my buenos aires, amongst familiar streets, friends, sights, and activities.

Puerto Iguaza y Las Cataratas

once Elizabeth perked up, we made our way for the falls the next day. although it looked a little overcast and rainy, we planned to get wet as it was. i think we spent close to five hours wandering around the various trails, marveling at all the natural beauty. here are some pictures:

neat animals were also seen while here. the first was my favorite. i think we had figured out what kind of bird it was, but i christened it "the bird who looks constantly surprised."

supposedly there are toucans and monkeys, but we didn't see any of those. here are the rest:

so what did Elizabeth and i look like after a month of backpacking? like this:

we returned that night, still drying off, and called it an early night. we waited out the time until our last bus the next day, a 12 hour all nighter, and finally made our way back home. having already spent four months in buenos aires and then going away, it really felt like we were returning to home. friends, our church, a place to unpack. we had a lot to look forward to.

Bad U.S. Movies on South American Buses #6

if someone told me that i was going to watch a movie that starred denzel washington, val kilmer, jim caviezel, and bruce greenwood, i would be intrigued. while not a huge denzel fan (we are on a first name basis), he has been in some good movies. same goes for jim caviezel and bruce greenwood. i would even venture to say that i'm a val kilmer fan after his turn in the surprisingly sharp kiss kiss, bang bang. i definitely wouldn't be opposed to seeing this film. its name is deja vu.




however, if you then told me the director was tony scott, the younger, less talented brother of noted director ridley, i would likely change my tune. while ridley has made legitimate film classics like alien and blade runner, tony has made action dreck like top gun, enemy of the state, and the fan. i know Andrew will take umbrage with me for calling out top gun since it is just about his favorite movie ever (he compares everything to top gun), but i have never been a supporter of the film, its director, or the way he employs a constantly shaking camera, cuts between shots more frequently than a music video, and washes out his palette to make it seem like there is more action than is actually present. if you want a capsule of what a full length tony scott film is like, watch this short he made for the otherwise excellent bmw films series. i know there are those who like this type of direction. i, for one, do not.


and yet, supplied with a decent script, tony scott has succeeded once in making a movie i don't openly hate. that movie is man on fire, which also starred denzel in the leading role. perhaps lightning would strike twice? in a word, no. so allow me to take a closer look at what went wrong.

for starters, the plotting and characterization. man on fire casts denzel as an ex-agent, an alcoholic trying to get his life back in order by taking jobs as personal security for the wealthy. he is a fractured man, putting together the pieces by starting small and protecting an affluent white girl in dangerous mexico city. it is easy to root for this sympathetic character.

in deja vu, denzel portrays an ATF agent who is too late to prevent a ferry from a domestic terrorist attack. which also takes place as members of the navy are being honored on it, to really offend the sensibilities of the viewing public and demonize the bad guy. working to piece together what happened, he gets hooked up through the FBI to some crazy machine that can look into the past. a "scientific" explanation explains how it works, so it's totally cool. i wish there was a clip on youtube; it was the funniest part of the movie. and so his character begins stalking an attractive young twenty-something in the past with his omnipresent backward looking camera. let's all support the creepy voyeur!


the second place this film fumbles, as touched on a little bit in the above paragraph, is in the believability department. to its credit, the film goes all out on its ridiculous premise. instead of asking viewers to just believe in the all-seeing past camera, the makers take the concept to the nth degree and make the camera into a time machine as well. but they have no desire to grapple with any of the questions of what changing actions in the past means to the future. or what could potentially happen when two of the same person are in the same place at the same time. this is no movie for metaphysics or ruminations on time.


however, it does allow for all sorts of totes kewl moments, like how denzel in the past can encourage and give hints to denzel in the future in shallow, obvious ways that don't generate any suspense. u can sav her......i wonder what that could mean?


i won't give anymore of the plot away because i do realize that this movie could appeal to some of my friends (Andrew, you top gun lover you), but i will say this: if you want to see a thought provoking movie about what it would actually be like to travel through time, watch primer instead. and then watch it closely about 4 more times because that is one confounding, subtle film.


high point: while nothing to do with the actual movie itself, the producers returned to new orleans to film this after katrina hit, hiring locally for just about everything they could. i do think that is pretty commendable.


low point: ***SPOILER*** when denzel dies to protect the girl this time around, the other denzel of the future is unharmed and comes to comfort her later as if he has known her this whole time and has the memory of past denzel. wtf, mate? ***SPOILER ENDS***


"yeah, right" moment: i don't think i can top the utter implausibility of the all-seeing backwards camera/time-traveling device, so i'll just leave it at that

Iguazu....Almost

after the relaxation experienced in salta, we had one major leg of the trip left. the waterfalls at iguazu, nestled away in the northwestern corner of the country bordering on paraguay and brazil, beckoned us.

however, first was the 24 hour bus ride to get there. while we took the bus many times, there was nothing to match what was happening on this. our first mistake came in thinking it would be a great idea to sit at the very font on the second level of the bus. we expected the scenery to be beautiful and wanted a great look through the massive windows at the front of the bus. however, this prevented us from having a decent look at the television monitors for movies, although given the slate of movies it ended up not being such a poor choice.

that day we were treated to such films as night at the museum, deja vu, antwone fisher, and next. while antwone fisher had a couple redeeming moments, the rest had little to offer. i've already written up next, and deja vu shouldn't be too far out itself.

so if we assume these movies averaged about two hours in length each, that still left over sixteen hours to be passed on this interminable bus trip. what did they do to fill the time? just leave some quiet time for people to be left to their thoughts? nope! instead, they forced us to play bingo. seriously. the attendant guy went up and down the aisles and forced a game card on every seat. since they didn't have the normal equipment to draw the letter and number combination at random, the leader of the game was just calling out combinations he made up. when he grew tired of that, he started soliciting people on the bus to call out numbers they wanted to be called. while i'm not one hundred percent sure about the rules of bingo, i'm fairly certain that allowing people to call out the combos they need is severely antithetical to a game predicated on chance.

in spite of these attacks on my patience, the bus continued on its way, stopping at several smaller towns in the northern provinces of argentina, each time dropping off more passengers than picking up. Elizabeth and i found ourselves some of the last few people on the bus for the final overnight leg into iguazu and as the night drew further, the overcast weather turned to rain storms. normally, i have a pretty high tolerance for feeling comfortable in moving vehicles, but several factors coincided to make me feel unsafe and struggle through sleep that night. such factors included:

• driving rain which made it difficult for us, let alone the driver, to tell what was in front of us
• no seatbelt that was on my original seat
• a red light accompanied by piercing buzzer when the bus exceeded its speed limit (this was going off consistently all night meaning that our driver was speeding through windy roads in storms)
• no leg room

i spent a fair amount of overnights on buses in my south american stay. this one was by far the worst. when we arrived in iguazu the next morning, Elizabeth felt miserable enough to spend our first day out of commission. i started exploring the seriously tiny town and then amused myself with internet for a while before picking up my book. an interesting prelude to the ultimate stop on our trip.

Thoughts on Cinema and Traveling

since about the time i was in junior high, i started taking more of an interest in films. on lazy sundays after church, i would scour the section that listed all the films in theaters, giving a snapshot review and pertinent casting information. it was during this time that i began to increase my awareness and gain interest in films that weren't blockbuster types, even though i never was near enough the art house theater to see them.

my interest continued through high school and took another leap in college after my introduction to film studies class and being closer to theaters that offered a greater variety in film.

leaving for argentina in september of 2007, i vacated the US a couple months before films that would be released for the awards season. everything i read seemed to be lauding the films coming out like no country for old men, there will be blood, sweeny todd, the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford, etc. and so i would sit week after week, reading the newly released reviews and sigh, knowing that i had months before these films would be released in argentina. some critics even began to speak about 2007 as the best film year since 1994 and here i was in a place that may as well have been a galaxy far, far away.

the film that caused me the most duress was there will be blood. the director, paul thomas anderson, had already made one movie i adored (magnolia), one i liked a lot (hard eight), and one that had some amazing sequences but was a little uneven (boogie nights), but all reports coming from the US only had the highest plaudits for his newest opus. not only was he pairing with actor daniel day-lewis, not only did he enlist in radiohead guitarist johnny greenwood for the score, and not only had the preview i watched on youtube absolutely knock me out, but i had talked to some friends back home who had already seen it and spoke highly of it.

i felt like i was a junior higher once again, able to only read about all these great movies that were denied to me due to circumstances outside of my control.

although we had seen a couple films friends brought over in the first months of being there (rush hour 3 and blades of glory, thanks Marc!), i had yet to go to the theater or rent something i really wanted. i was so consumed with seeing there will be blood that i didn't even care. before Elizabeth and i left on our month long trip, i had checked to see when there will be blood was coming out. sure enough, it was while we were on the road at some undetermined location. but, as fortune would have it, the second day we were in salta, a place with two separate movie theater complexes, was the first day there will be blood was released there.

i was so excited and the film lived up to my wildest hopes. thankfully, Elizabeth agreed that we would take it easy and while in salta we saw three films over the course of three days. it broke the seal on my movie going and seeing in argentina. when we got back to buenos aires, our new apartment had a great video store around the corner and we realized that films in theater, if seen during the day, were dirt cheap as well.

i'll eventually get to a post talking about my favorite films of 2007, but i wanted to capture a little bit of the angst over being out of the country during such a fruitful period in film. rarely do i get to experience what are considered "great" films in theater because most of them have been made before my time and i feared i would miss it again by being out of the country. thankfully, i was able to rectify that before my return.

Two Stories from Salta

while in salta, we had a couple screwy experiences. the first happened on the first day that we were in town and decided to hike up to the top of the lookout over the town. early on we saw a stray dog (and there are always stray dogs in argentina) and she began to follow us. she was an extremely mangy looking dog and nothing we could do convinced her to leave us. in the hour and a half it took for us to make it up to the top, she would stay with us. normally having a dog companion deciding to join us would be cause for celebration but it was frustration only that accompanied. while walking up the slippery steps to the top (it had been drizzly all day), the dog would often cut in front of us almost causing us to step on her or trip. i definitely didn't want to touch her though because i was almost convinced she had fleas. when we made it to the top, at one point she brushed across my leg and about two seconds later i saw something jump off of my leg - a legit flea. it was gross. and if that wasn't enough, another male stray dog we found at the top of the lookout took an interest in the female and tried to hump her every time she stood still for longer than six seconds. when we decided to head back down the hill, we ended up having two dogs following us for this reason. we were only able to ditch them when we were back in town and went inside the bus station and out an opposite door since they seemed to know enough not to come inside.

story two: while walking around town one day it had become extremely hot after some rain and we decided to buy ice cream (which is never a poor decision in argentina). after having one lick of my cone after departing the store my ice cream slipped off and hit the ground. distraught, i did what any reasonable person who really wanted ice cream would do - i reached my hand into the mush on the street and salvaged as much ice cream as i could in which i knew it wouldn't have interacted with the street and shoved it into my mouth. i'm still convinced this was a good idea.

Salta

after a restful day spent in calama, we woke up early and made the course for our early bus trip. we knew it was going to take most of the day and would have us arrive in salta towards the end of the day. we boarded a full bus and started the long trip. it was here that i made an on-the-go mix of really relaxing music on my ipod that is still on it to match the really beautiful scenery that continued to change gradually as we moved from desert to salt flats to more hilly area.

along the way our bus stopped a few times. naturally, we had to stop at the border to have our bags inspected by drug dogs and to pass through customs but we also had the pleasure of stopping at a roadside cafe for a small lunch and coffee or tea. while there Elizabeth struck up a converastion with chilean woman and her two (or maybe three? my how the memory is hazy) kids. she was a school teacher and very conversational. or maybe she was just appreciating conversation with people over the after of 20 since her kids where elementary age. regardless, it was a nice diversion and she was one of many people on the trip whom we met that were very friendly and just interested in chatting and hearing stories.

when we arrived that night, we were both extremely hungry and couldn't think of anything apart from food. thankfully, our hostel was near the bus station, we were able to drop our things off, and receive a recommendation on where to go for some affordable, tasty food. after pasta and a bottle of coca-cola (delicious!) we retired back to the hostel to spend the first of about six nights there. even spending six consecutive nights in a singe place felt like settling in for us at this point and it was great.

what the days ended up being was lots of sleeping in, spending days walking around the town, climbing up to the lookout point over town, and seeing three movies. here are two pictures from the top of the lookout: