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Classmates's Works on Film Reviews
Like Water For Chocolate, Selena |
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Shari chose these two movies for Project 6. I had also watched, "Like Water For Chocolate," so it was interesting to see what someone else wrote about it. Like myself, she gave the movie 5 stars. "Like Water For Chocolate" really was a great movie, and Shari does an excellent job providing information about how magical Tita's food is. She provides a great list of characters. Most interesting was her quote, "Uprooting comes many times throughout the movie..." Uprooting, does indeed, come many times throughtout the film- when Pedro and Rosaura leave for San Antonio, when Tita herself goes to live with the doctor, when Gertrudis leaves with the revolutionary- I hadn't thought of that aspect of the film before, so I enjoyed thinking about that.
The next film she reviewed was "Selena." She also included several links to other Selena sights. The one with the statue on it, however, only took me to the Corpus Christi paper and not to the statue. Selena's family had a lot of influence on the events in her life and helped her with her career- the strength of family in the Latino community seems to be a central theme throughout this semester.
The aha component of this work ties this together- love and family. I agree with her thought that , " the stereotyping and ethnocentricity flows into our movies as well as our everyday lives."
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Jose Guzman: The Mission and Camilia
The next student website I looked at was Jose Guzman's. He watched two films, The Mission and Camilia. His site has some great pictures on it. I also liked his link from the Gurani indians to the Catholic Encyclopedia for even more information. Connecting the movie to this semester's teachings by relating it to community was a real aha for me.
Learning about how Mendoza released himself from his guilt by turning to religion was also interesting. I think I will watch this movie.
His second movie was Camilia, another story about a love ending tragically. So far, The Mission, Camilia and Like Water for Chocolate have this very similar theme. Again, Jose uses some great links so you can learn even more about the characters in the movie. This movie is based on facts and ends up with the main characters getting executed- the first woman to be executed and she was pregnant. I wonder if that part if fact?
The best part of this webpage was Jose's connections. Here, he writes a powerful essay on how he feels that the "church cannot live up to what it preaches." He goes on to say how the church is just an institution serving institutions instead of people. I thought this was a unique way to connect the movies together.
The last site I picked was Aase Sommer's. Aase watched the movie Tango and read Heart of Atzlan. The key fact I learned reading about Tango was that I didn't know Tango dancers were killed by the Argentian military. The Heart of Aztlan part of this website tells the story of Clemente and his family. There seems to be supernatural magic in the book that bothers Aase a bit- I liked how he says that love can't conquer all.
Connections
Of the book reviews and movies I've seen/read/read about, I can see one main theme- in the Latin American community, it seems that family has a certain hierarchy and this hierarchy is respected. The family influences many of life's decisions. They are all connected and bound together by family ties until the day they die.
It is also interesting to me, being a catholic, to see how much mystical magical supernatural beliefs manage to find their way in and out of both books and movies. I wonder if this is the Aztec influence never actually leaving totally?
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