And my Number 1 Movie Ever is…

Working for the movie industry, many times I’ve been asked this question by different people. It usually gets me to re-think which one to choose above all others. And every time I come back to one conclusion, which for no specific reason feels embarrassingly clichéd (especially when talking to more serious movie connoisseurs like my professional film critic friends).

But here it is. My most favorite, number one movie ever is:

The Empire Strikes Back.

Yes, Chapter V in the Star Wars saga.

There, I’ve said it.

And the more I think about it, the more I realize there are plenty of reasons for that particular movie to have a special place in my heart.

It is not only because it came out in 1980, when I was at the impressionable age of 10, and not just because it was the follow-up to the original, commercially successful Star Wars phenomenon.

No, it actually has A LOT to offer as a movie, thinking about movies as the sheer escapist entertainment they should be.

And here are just seven of the many reasons that make this my favorite movie ever:

1.       It was exceptionally well crafted by its time. Visuals, special effects, sound effects… they were all so well done and presented, that you felt you were actually there. I loved the atmospheric feel ranging from the violent snowstorm from the opening scenes, the trip aboard the Millennium Falcon, the swamps of Dagobah, the furnace in Cloud City… the sounds, the images; they truly transported you to a galaxy far, far away. One simple scene that stands out for me is when the Falcon lands in Cloud City’s outdoors’ docking bay. The sunset, the breeze, the ship’s steam outlets… you actually feel like you’ve just landed from a long trip on a pleasant, otherworldly destination.

2.       Visuals you actually had never seen before. The battle on Hoth was amazing; the Snow Walkers’ design alone was astonishing; the weird snow steeds called Tauntauns; the asteroid field chase that by far technically surpassed the Death Star battle from the first one (and the surprise payoff when you realize the Falcon has hidden inside a giant space slug); discovering a powerful Jedi master in the form of a tiny, very old muppet (and having them pulling this off in such a way you actually thought it was believable); the climatic lightsaber duel…  This film offers one visual wonder after another, and they all feel organically part of a whole, which is not easy considering how different every scene is.

3.       The philosophical background is amazing and easy to grasp. The religious theology hinted at in Episode IV gets fully developed here, including a very good explanation about what “The Force” is, as well as some wonderful pearls of wisdom, like Yoda’s famous “Do or do not. There is no try”. It all made you actually wish you could become a real life Jedi.

4.       The drama. What is a good movie if it doesn’t have great drama? And in that sense, this movie is PACKED from start to finish: Luke Skywalker lost in a snowstorm while there’s an impending imperial attack and Han Solo risking his own life to save him; the exploding chemistry of the love-hate (but mostly love) relationship between Han and Leia (and you thinking “wait, wasn’t this Luke’s girl in the first movie?” -because you still didn’t know they were twins); Lando Calrissian’s betrayal (the scene where they find Darth Vader at the dining room was a real shocker, and you just loved Han’s no-nonsense attitude: hey, there’s the villain, just shoot him! It didn’t work, but he did the smart thing you actually wanted him to do); C-3PO gets blown to pieces; Han Solo gets frozen in carbonite; our hero gets his hand cut off and actually loses the final battle; and of course, the shocker of all shockers: Darth’s revelation to Luke: “I am your Father”. How cooler could this get?

5.       The dialogue. This film has a particularly great script with many wonderful, memorable lines. Just check out the quotes' page in IMDB and you’ll see what I mean.

6.       The great ending. Such a convoluted plot could not be easily resolved. And we would probably have hated and felt cheated if they had tried to do so.  There are a lot of loose ends in the end (one of the main characters is frozen in carbonite, for chrissakes!) but they manage to leave you with a sense of resolution AND still obviously wanting MORE!!

7.       The wonderful music. To me, this is John Williams’ finest overall score ever. This has some great memorable themes (including the Imperial March) and you don’t feel there are any fillers just to get some background music in there; every piece seems thought through and carefully composed for each scene. This is probably the soundtrack I’ve heard most times in my life and I still love putting it on the iPod once in a while.

I could go on and on, but I think this rests my case. Aside from being part of a very popular, commercial franchise, The Empire Strikes Back stands out as a GREAT, overall movie experience and for that it deserves its rightful place atop my favorite movies’ list;  the one movie with which I measure all other movies.

You probably have your favorite movie ever for completely different reasons.

But this is mine. So there!

Here be Dragons...

I thought this was an appropriate subject to kick off 2012.

During one end-of-year gathering with friends, somebody mentioned Saint George had been removed from the Catholic Sanctoral, and that started out a heated debate. I’ve been checking references on the issue, but there doesn’t seem to be anything online, so I guess it was a false alarm (if someone has additional information about this, please let me know).

Anyway, as most people who know me are aware of, I don’t consider myself Catholic (I embraced agnosticism years ago), however I still believe symbols carry the power we confer unto them and one of my Catholic upbringing favorite vestiges is Saint George (along with Saint Judas, for completely different reasons).

I love the imagery of the saint valiantly slaying the dragon, because I believe it’s a great allegory of how we should overtake the challenges in our lives.

We constantly face tasks, problems, sorrows, fears and whatnot that sometimes seem too big, and we somehow manage to pull through. But I believe the most valuable learning doesn’t come from challenges thrown at us, but from the ones we actually choose to face.

Sometimes we arrive at crossroads in our path when we can decide to follow the easy way out, maintain the status-quo, remain in our comfort zone, and maybe miss some opportunities; or we can face the “dragons” blocking the way to new experiences.

I often find myself choosing the later without thinking every detail through. I’m a fool lured by the treasures beyond, and that makes me charge in without fully sizing up the difficulties first. Fortunately I usually prepare myself for possible eventualities beforehand, and have good improvisational skills. I’ve also always believed that trying to bite off more than you can chew is a great learning experience.

My older son has just decided he won’t participate in a poem declamation contest at school. It proved to be too stressful and did not really appeal to him. On the other hand, two weeks ago he was genuinely afraid he couldn’t ski, and an hour later he was zipping down the hill past me (I was the one rolling down… first time at the slopes for all of us, you see). He’s learning to choose which dragons to face and actually goes through with it, which makes me really proud of him. It seems we are doing something right with the kids, after all.

That’s why I believe this was a great subject to begin the year. I’ve decided the best way to face this 2012 is with a calculated gung-ho attitude. Always take the path you think is best for you, put aside your concerns and fears, and don’t worry too much about the dragons. You’ll probably find out you can defeat most of them.

Happy New Year!

Oops! Did I offend you with my Halloween?

In this age of political correctness, it’s hard not to offend someone. Almost every day you read about some actor, public figure or politician who said or did something that “offended” some group (some of these are more radical and aggressive in their response than others).

A few years ago a friend of mine sent me an e-mail, copying our circle of common acquaintances, about the Christian vision of Halloween as a Satanic celebration, and why, according to them, decorating your house for the holiday is a way of inviting evil into your home.

Whoo, boy, do we decorate our house.

Halloween has always been a big deal for me, and that message I received was questioning that (in a friendly way, I have to admit). I did not feel offended or attacked in the least (frankly, I couldn’t care less). I’m always open to all points of view… however it did make me curious.

Years ago I did my research about the origins of Halloween and discovered it’s a mish-mash of various beliefs and customs (you can read the book or see the made-for-TV-cartoon movie “The Halloween Tree” by Ray Bradbury to get a simplified version of this). In the end I concluded that it began as a celebration of the change of Seasons, and this has also been linked to the ways we face death, the unknown, the afterlife, the supernatural and all things that scare us throughout different cultures (yes, there are some ghastly acts in its history too, but isn’t that true about most aspects of culture, especially when there’s religion involved? The Inquisition, the Salem witch trials and public stonings, anyone?).

It’s also a great pretext to have fun with the kids, friends and enjoy all sorts of goodies and social gatherings. To dress up in disguises and pretend we are someone or something else, to have fun getting spooked. I think it’s a way of helping people cope with some of the things they don’t understand or fear. And I can see how that can be troubling for those who feel their particular religion is the right and only vessel to deal with these issues. Some of us don’t.

We also need to understand symbols have the meaning people and different cultures have bestowed upon them. Someone who dresses up like a red, horned devil might be seen as something completely different in another culture, where evil is portrayed in a different way.

Summing up, I think it’s all about respect. I respect your beliefs, you respect mine. If you feel uncomfortable with my celebration of Halloween and find it unbearable, just block me throughout October. There are a lot of political and religious points of view out there, but I’m not offended by people expressing these, I just choose when and when not to pay attention (I am offended, however, by people insisting on making you listen when you have already chosen not to).

I think it’s demanding too much of the rest of the world to be careful about what they say not to offend you.

What IS your responsibility is to prepare yourself and your children about how to filter and deal with these messages in a tolerant way.

Anyway, for everyone out there who does want to join in on the fun, it’s only 12 days to Halloween! 

You never know... memories of Ice.

This will be a quickie, but I really wanted to write about this.

A few years ago, between 1997 and 2001, I worked for a small advertising agency called González de la Vega & Associates. It was so small, my work was not limited by my title of Associate Creative Director (i.e. they had me multi-tasking without paying me more, but I didn’t really mind). One of my roles was drawing cartoon characters for different brands and miscellaneous advertising materials.

Back then we had the Fiesta Ice account (the kind you buy in bags at convenience stores and gas stations). I drew a very sketchy ice cube character which fortunately was immediately approved.

From that, as part of the campaign, I drew various different poses and situations which, to my surprise, are still present on their packaging, POS and distribution refrigerated trucks.

I visited their website a couple of weeks ago and found some familiar faces there… the characters have lost their outline quality when they animated them, but are still the same old crazy cubes I drew over 10 years ago!

And what’s more, our Home Entertainment division did a promotion with them for the release of Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, bringing for me the brand into a full circle! (you can see one of my cubes in place of the "o" of the slogan "Pureza al Cubo" below).

My kids are growing up looking at these characters in grocery stores, supermarkets and gas stations, knowing that their dad created them. That’s pretty awesome! I suddenly realized this became part of the cultural landscape, and all from a sketchy drawing I did so many years ago.

I never imagined that doodle would ever be so long lasting. Goes to show you, you never know in the long run what will happen with something you are doing today.

This is the one thing that stands out and I’m really proud of from the 7 years I spent working in advertising agencies before I joined the movie industry, and I'm really happy to share it with all of you here.

A Career is a Terrible Thing to Waste...

Here’s my 5 cents of cheap career advice.

The other day some friends and I were discussing professional opportunities, choices, plans, decisions...

Some people think it’s better to focus on the here and now, after all, no one knows if and what opportunities may arise in the future. They believe they have to do their best at what they currently do and then things will eventually sort themselves out for them. I believe that’s leaving too much to chance.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are the Luke Skywalkers- “All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was…” as Yoda so succinctly put it. These are the ones who start a new job thinking about what other position they covet and what other companies may be interested in them, without truly devoting themselves to their current chores.

 I’m more of a Qui-Gon-Jin person:

Obi-Wan: …Master Yoda says I should be mindful of the future.
Qui-Gon Jinn: But not at the expense of the moment. 

Quick parenthesis: Why all the Star Wars’ references? Because we are re-releasing Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace in 3-D on February 10^th, 2012 and I need to shamelessly plug it! And now back to our regular programming.

I always try to focus on my current responsibilities, without losing sight of possible future paths. I see my career like a boat on a very choppy sea. You’ve got a general idea of where you want to go, but the currents keep dragging you somewhere else. You’ve got to play those currents so as not to stray too far away from your visualized destination, which must also be somewhat flexible, otherwise you might lose opportunities by stubbornly following a fixed goal, or be disappointed if things don’t turn out exactly as you want… and chances are they won’t.

By having more or less a defined general goal, you can then constantly prepare yourself for possible opportunities that will keep you on track of reaching it (as Seneca has endlessly been quoted as saying, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”).

Then comes the tricky part: you have to know when to take chances, jump the big waves, brave the currents, jump into the water with the sharks or paddle like crazy (enough cheap nautical references for you? I know I’ve had my full, so let’s continue without them).

I guess what I’m trying to say is that you need to strive to do whatever you are currently doing as best as you can, have an overview of what you want to accomplish in the mid-to-long run, and always keep preparing for it. You have to actively seek opportunities and keep your eyes open for signs (sometimes you’ll know when to aggressively pursue an objective and when it would be better to let it pass you by).

And there are always pesky politics to consider. Who are your true allies? Who’s holding you back? Who couldn’t care less? By knowing this, it becomes easier to play the pieces, even the ones working against you, in your favor. Try to keep most people on your side. Pissing people off almost always turns out to be counter productive, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. These are the risks you sometimes have to take.

After all of the above, you might think I devote way too much time on career planning.

I don’t.

I'm more of a dreamer. I try to visualize myself and my family in an ideal future, get a good feel of what that future might look like, and then keep that vision in my heart while pulling up my sleeves to do the current job at hand. That's what inspires me to keep doing my best.

Frak, Starbuck’s dead!

And I’m not talking about the coffee chain.

It’s taken me years, literally, to catch up with one of the best, critically acclaimed sci-fi dramas of the last few years: the Battlestar Galactica (BSG) TV series that ran from 2004 to 2009. Great stuff. But watching it this way got me into thinking about the way we enjoy our personal entertainment and how its social impact has changed over the years.

A long time ago, say, from the ‘50’s through the ‘70’s, there was a limited number of TV channels. So-called movie “events” were scarce (three or four really big ones a year, at the most). Your individuality was defined by the kind of books and magazines you read, and probably the theater plays you saw and night clubs you attended. But mass media was a social thing. Almost EVERYONE knew what had happened on the highest rated drama the night before, had heard the same local news, or had seen the same sporting event. A really big theatrical release guaranteed almost everyone had seen it and discussed it. You could tell what the cool property was by looking at the cover of Mad Magazine.

Nowadays, there’s an endless variety of open TV, cable and digital channels for every taste. And you can rent or buy whatever series you want to watch when you feel like it.

Case in point: I bought the BSG series but, as a person with limited free time to watch TV, I end up catching up on series long after they’ve broadcasted. So I’ve been trying to get up to speed on Entourage, Smallville, 24, Mad Men, Breaking Bad… even the The Batman animated series. But by the time I get to some of these, nobody cares about them anymore. BSG got very limited exposure in Mexico, only the first season was available to buy or rent, and scifi in general is not popular down here. So I’m one of the few within my circle of acquaintances that is excited about it. A couple of nights ago I was watching in bed and got to the show almost at the end of the third season where Lt Kara “Starbuck” Thrace apparently kills herself, disintegrating her viper against an energy cloud. Powerful stuff. I’m sure she will somehow pop back from the dead for the last season, but in the meantime the shock was huge. So much so, that my gasp woke my wife up.”What happened?” she asked. “Starbuck’s dead!! I cannot frakking believe it!” (“frak”, by the way, is BSG’s euphemism for… ok, I guess it’s obvious, nerd parenthesis off). “What?” “Yeah, she killed herself in her Viper.” “What the hell is a “viper”?” “Oh, nevermind, go back to sleep”. And so, I was left with no one to share the shock and excitement, because the next morning no one knew or cared about BSG at the office, and if anyone somewhere else might have, they probably saw it when it first aired.

So, sometimes watching a TV series can become a lonely enterprise. Even so, it’s exciting that now we can catch up whenever we want to whatever everyone’s talking about. And we can choose what really excites us, and we can link with people who share similar interests based on a wider range of entertainment options. There’s something for everyone’s taste and the really great stuff still manages to stand out from the clutter. 

Exciting times we are living in.

I Confess!

Now that Rise of the Planet of the Apes (#Apeswillrise / #elplanetasimios) released over the weekend in the US and will be opening on September 2^nd in Mexico, I’ve had the chance to discuss it with people in general with very positive results (everyone who’s seen it agrees it’s a great surprise and that it surpassed or at least reached their expectations… which is amazing considering how high these were). But I also realized that it is most un-cool to say you remotely liked Tim Burton’s 2001 re-imagining.

Well, I confess I liked it. So sue me. But I’m a huge fan of the franchise, I grew up with it, I’m also a big Tim Burton fan, and I thought he did a very interesting take on the ape mythology. Rick Baker’s makeup was great (yeah, NOW we can do believable CGI apes, but that was still not the case back in ’01) and the ending was a brave attempt to update the original’s. I appreciated all of that. There, I said it.

And now, to top that one off, here I will proceed to declare my liking of other three such films (the ones that earn an exasperated eye-roll from movie “experts”):

The A-Team: Everyone ended up hating it. But I thought it was a very good updating of the original series, which I kinda liked because of their 80’s goofiness. Liam Neeson did a good job on George Peppard’s role and the other guys were fun to watch (I also got to work with most of them during their visit to Mexico!) I loved it when a plan came together. So there.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Granted, not one of Mr. Connery’s finest, but there have been much worse (Highlander II, anyone?) I also got to work on the marketing campaign for the movie in Mexico (which was very exciting, considering he's my all-time favorite actor!), and up until now, it’s Sean’s last movie before retiring. You gotta love that!

Mars Attacks: Yep, last but not least, another rare Burton-dud. But I loved it when the Martians blew up congress!! And watching such great actors having fun (even when it didn’t always feel you were attending the same party) made for a good, if not great, time (oh, and the Martians’ design, CGI animation and attitude were priceless!) Ack Ack!

This is why I always say there are no bad movies, only wrong audiences.

Is there a movie you've liked and everyone else hated? Now's the time to confess.

Have a great week, everyone!