Will Ferrell Tackles Spanish for Casa de Mi Padre

I was never a fan of Will Ferrell. I'm one of those people who believes Saturday Night Live went downhill after the days of Chevy Chase, Dan Akroyd, John Belushi, and Gilda Radner, with a brief resurrection during the days of Dana Carvey and Mike Myers. One Christmas, when I was home in Los Angeles for the holidays with nothing to do, my family roped me into watching Elf starring Will Ferrell.

Against my will (no pun intended), I sat down in the living room, prepared to walk out of the room if the movie got to the point of being unbearably stupid. I never left the room. It wasn't as stupid as I'd thought. Barring the eye-roll inducing goopy romantic moments, I actually thought the movie was funny, and I've even watched it again a couple of times since that first time. But I've never seen another Will Ferrell movie since then -- I've never been tempted to, and no one's suckered me into doing so. Until I heard about Casa de Mi Padre.

For one, I am in love with Gael García Bernal, and I want to marry him. If that ever came true, I would promise to speak Spanish every day and go back to church every Sunday.  (Isn't that what a good Mexican does?) I first discovered Gael in The Science of Sleep, although most people know him for his role in Y Tu Mamá También.

Second, I am intrigued by the concept of creating a "deliberately awkward and oddly paced skit," as described by the Casa de Mi Padre's director and screenwriter in coming up with inspiration for the film. Much like watching Will Ferrell take himself so seriously as an elf, it will be interesting to see him take himself seriously as the son of a Mexican rancher. Not that elves and Mexicans have much to do with each other, except in the case of the Gnombre, the "loveable Hispanic garden gnome."

And Gael approves of the use of comedy in this movie, so it must be good. Let me know if you see Casa de Mi Padre and tell me what you think of it!



Excerpts from the original NY Times article, "The Universal Language of Will Ferrell" published by Dave Itzkoff on March 2, 2012:

Shot in 24 days on a budget of about $6 million, “Casa de Mi Padre” tells the story of Armando Alvarez (played by Mr. Ferrell), the ne’er-do-well son of a Mexican rancher whose manhood is tested when he falls in love with the fiancée (Genesis Rodriguez) of his flashier brother, Raul (Diego Luna), and is drawn into a violent conflict with a drug baron (Gael García Bernal).

If that sounds like the plot of a garden-variety telenovela you might see playing on a cheap TV in a corner of your Laundromat, that is exactly the point.

“For some reason,” Mr. Ferrell said, “it just hit me that it’d be really funny not to have the joke be that I speak bad Spanish, but that I actually speak as proficient Spanish as I can muster, and everything is played really straight.”

Mr. Ferrell could not pinpoint more precisely where the idea for the movie came from, except to say it had been bouncing around his head for several years.

[...]

Darlene Caamaño Loquet, president and chief operating officer of Nala Films, said that while she and the company’s chief executive, Emilio Diez Barroso, with whom she founded the company, have Hispanic backgrounds, they do not specifically look for films aimed at Spanish-speaking audiences.

“To us,” Ms. Caamaño Loquet said, “the definition of Hispanic or Latino themes is not the same as the general entertainment mind-set.” She added: “Our goal is to make mainstream movies that have people that sound and look like us. Because we are the mainstream.”

[...]

Mr. García Bernal, who is Mexican, gave Mr. Ferrell high marks for his Spanish pronunciation, comprehension and vocabulary of swear words. Though the film deals in stock subjects like Mexican drug dealers and corrupt American border police, Mr. García Bernal said he was never concerned that it was mocking his native country or culture.

“There is no such thing as respectful or disrespectful,” he said. “There is good humor or bad humor. And there’s people that make stupid, not funny, racist jokes, and there’s people that play with the race issue in a very joyful and jovial way.”

Mr. García Bernal added: “If we stop and judge every single film the same way, then there’s no film that is safe from the highest morals. It’s a comedy, and in a comedy you can treat touchy subjects as well.”

Click here to read the entire article.

The Social Revolucion at SXSW Interactive 2012

The Social Revolución is an interactive movement of Latinos using social media as their platform to create and inspire change. These ambitious individuals are using hashtags, pixels, and live updates to spread ideas, foster communities, and inspire their worldwide audience into action.

Premiering as the official Latino event at SXSW Interactive 2012, The Social Revolución will recognize and celebrate these online cries in three categories:

• The New Americano: These individuals and/or organizations are trendsetters impacting the Hispanic market online.
• The Mobilizer: These are Latinos with international and local causes using social media as a strategy to mobilize their audience.
• The Innovator: Whether it’s a new app or website, this movement is redefining how we reach Latinos now and in the future.

All of these monumental visions from the Latino community have inspired the gente at Cultural Strategies, headquartered in Austin, Texas, to make this an official movement that is rarely recognized in social media.

So let it be heard, let it be no longer ignored.

¡Oye el canto of The Social Revolución!

Want to be part of it? Here's how:

1. Nominate a Revolucionario
2. Help us spread the word
3. Tweet about The Social Revolucion using the hashtag #revolucionSXSWi
4. Become a sponsor or ally
5. Attend the Latino Lounge at SXSW Interactive 2012

Dogs Against Romney - Lola Rides Inside

If you want to be part of the movement, check out:
https://www.facebook.com/DogsAgainstRomney

Or go on Twitter and follow @Grrr_Romney -- use the hashtags #irideinside and #dogsagainstromney

Currency Wars - Before I Begin Reading

In addition to training Lola to sit, stay, and fetch, we are also teaching her about the economy. Shand reads her a chapter from James Rickards' Currency Wars. In the past we've feared nuclear war and biological warfare. Now we must fear currency war.


Excerpt from the book summary on the Penguin website:

"In 1971, President Nixon imposed national price controls and took the United States off the gold standard, an extreme measure intended to end an ongoing currency war that had destroyed faith in the U.S. dollar. Today we are engaged in a new currency war, and this time the consequences will be far worse than those that confronted Nixon.

[...]

As James Rickards argues in Currency Wars, this is more than just a concern for economists and investors. The United States is facing serious threats to its national security, from clandestine gold purchases by China to the hidden agendas of sovereign wealth funds. Greater than any single threat is the very real danger of the collapse of the dollar itself."

I've yet to read the book, and I will do so as soon as Shand is done reading it. (We are borrowing it from the library - because of the currency war, we can no longer afford to buy books.) I think this book will help me better wrap my mind around what's going on with the economy. But I have noticed this - within the last few weeks, the cost of food and fuel have both been rising dramatically.

It's getting to the point that for the first time in my life, I am seriously doubting being able to cover my costs of living, unless I start going into credit card debt (which I have avoided all my life, except for a stupid 1-year period). To cut back on our expenses, we are also keeping our heater running at 65 degrees (instead of the usual 68), not going out to eat or drink except on very limited occasions, and generally reusing as much as we can. What are you doing to be financially sustainable?

Why I Never Dated a Latino

I never purposely chose not to date a Latino. My first major crush happened when I was 10 years old, and it was on a boy from Mexico City just a couple of years older than me – I suffered a horrible case of unrequited love (although he never knew about it) until I was 16 years old. As a teenager, of course, I thought he was “cute”, but I was also drawn to the fact that he read a lot of books and played classical violin. Most of all, I thought the way he spoke perfect Spanish was absolutely dreamy. Eventually, I got over him, especially when I figured out that Latina girls weren’t part of his dating repertoire.

I went to a mostly Mexican-American high school bordering East Los Angeles, and even though I liked some of the boys, they just never seemed to pay attention to me in any romantic way. They always regarded me as a pal or buddy, an honorary sister, or the girl they’d come to for academic advice. I guess it didn’t help that I was at the top of my class, somewhat eccentric, and extremely shy. To be fair, I did attract the attention of a few boys, but they were the creepy, weird ones that were even too odd for me. The girls in my school who got asked to the dances or had the boyfriends were socially outgoing, athletic and confident, and way more fashionable.

It wasn’t until the summer after the 11th grade, when I traveled all the way across the country to Pittsburgh for a pre-college summer camp, that I liked a boy – and he liked me back. He was Jewish (culturally, but not religiously, whatever that means), and he played the violin. It might have turned out happily ever after, but I returned to California and he to Vermont. We intended to maintain a long-distance relationship until we were old enough to get married, and we wrote piles of love letters to each other for nearly seven months. It didn’t work out. In fact, I think the only reason I fell for him was because he played the violin, and I was still heartbroken over the violinist boy from Mexico City.

I met another non-Latino boy of Irish ancestry in Southern California when I was in the 12th grade. All my Mexicans friends teased me for it because he was “white,” as if I was some sort of traitor to the cause. This definitely didn’t help my status as the girl who acted so “white.” There were a few boys in college of course. None of them were Latino, either, I guess because I didn’t know any at all. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is not necessarily the hotbed of Latino culture.

To make the long story short, I moved to Austin in 1998, but it wasn’t until ten years later that I came across Latinos who were potential matches for me – college-educated, interested in music and the arts, and slightly unconventional. (Austin, compared to Los Angeles, seems ethnically segregated to me.) But by then, it was too late. I’d already fallen in love with a handsome and talented musician of Scottish and Prussian heritage, who – as it turns out – has schooled me on Mexican history, border politics, and traditional music.

Our first trip together was hopping on a bus in East Austin down to Monterrey, from where we journeyed to Saltillo and then to Parras, home of the oldest winery of the Americas. We’ve learned mariachi songs and cooked traditional Mexican cuisine together. His favorite gift I’ve given to him is a vintage serape. And one day, we plan to build a little adobe house in the Chihuahuan desert of Terlingua and have pet donkeys. So his last name isn’t Martinez, and he is fair-skinned and reddish-haired, but he is definitely a Latino at heart.

Undercover Mexican Girl's Senior Prom