We’ve been having such a wonderful time with Pat in town.  It is always so nice to have friends and family around.

On Friday Pat and I drove up to Ayutthaya, the capital of the Kingdom of Siam from 1350 to 1767 until it moved down river to Khrungthep.  Actually it was temporarily located in Thonburi, across the river from Khrungthep, so Khrungthep is the fourth capital. 

We had lunch with our friends Ron and Kari, who after serving as Missionaries here in Thailand for a year are just a few months away from moving to Kenya of all places.  Kari has previously served in Africa and really loves the country.  The restaurant we ate at was beside the Chao Phraya River and we actually ate on a boat moored to the restaurant.  Flooding in Thailand has been bad this year, one of the worst on record, and there are a lot of signs of that flooding still present in Ayutthaya.

One example is the boat we were dining on, below.  In this picture you can see a railing, which was the edge of the riverside dining terrace.  That point was originally about 3 meters – 10 feet – above the normal water line.

We also visited Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon, a temple on the southwest side of town that contains the largest chedi or pagoda in Ayutthaya.  It is one of the more beautiful ruins because the temple is very well maintained and has beautiful gardens. 

It is Tawn’s favourite and more historically significant because this is where Tawn took me on my visit to Khrungthep when we met.  Somewhere – I’ll have to look – there is a picture of a boyish-looking Tawn standing on the chedi at this wat.

Right: Pat atop the chedi at Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon.

Our visit included a ride on the elephants, a hopelessly touristy but fun thing to do.  Our 24-year old elephant seemed pretty tired – halfway through the 20-minute ride we stopped so she could flap her ears and cool down a bit.

When we arrived back at the loading/unloading platform there was a group of four young Japanese women waiting to board and I think a few of them didn’t realize what they were getting themselves into.  So there was a minute or two of shuffling and talking amongst themselves as they figured out who would ride with whom.  One of the Thai ladies working on the platform kept repeating “dozo, dozo” in Japanese – “please, please.”  The other lady on the platform was losing her patience.  So much so that when Pat and I de-boarded and I headed the wrong way, she shouted (literally – you never hear Thais do this) “exit the other way!”  I turned around, smiled and said in very polite Thai, khaw thood khrap – “I’m so sorry.”  Caught by surprise, she responded with mai pen rai, “no problem.”  And then I added, mai suphaap leuy – “not polite at all.”

Below Left: Pat learns how to make merit at the temple by applying gold leaf to statues.   Below Right: The risks of too much application of gold leaf at the temples!

Back in Khrungthep in the evening, we joined Tawn for a light dinner and bottle of sparkling wine a The Deck, one of our favourite restaurants as it sits right on the rive and offers this spectacular view of Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn.

Right: We do a seance-like pose with an artificial-looking but very real Temple of Dawn glowing behind us.

This afternoon, Pat and I will head to the west to Kanchanaburi and explore some of the more mountainous provinces.  This is the same area where I went with my cousins Brad and Silvia in July, so don’t expect a lot of new trails to be blazed.  It will be nice and relaxing and maybe a whole five degrees cooler.

Tawn and I are really quite lucky this year: even though we will not be heading back to the US for the holidays, we’ll have the opportunity to see a dozen friends and family members over the next six weeks as we enjoy an almost unending stream of visitors.

Our first arrival, late late late Tuesday night, was Patricia from KC.  Pat was introduced to me through Albert in San Jose – they knew each other professionally.  So when Albert joined me for my sister’s wedding in 1999 (this was before I had met Tawn) in Kansas City, we stayed with Pat since my family’s houses were all full with guests.  Pat is just such a wonderful, considerate person that we quickly became friends.

After having visited with her many times when in Kansas City and spending time with her while living there, she decided that to come visit us in Thailand.

Pat’s flight arrived 90 minutes late Tuesday evening, so nearly 1:00 Wednesday morning, which was not a problem at all.  She was able to sleep in on Wednesday and did a largely self-directed day.  Then Thursday we were able to spend some time together.  We did a short walking tour from the MBK Centre to Chidlom BTS Station, passing the Siam Paragon, Wat Phathum Wanaram (which sits in the shadow of Siam Paragon and Central World Plaza, and the Erawan Shrine. 

Afterwards we picked up Tawn’s mother and went to a women’s dressmaker’s shop to have some outfits custom-tailored for Pat, with Tawn’s mother as 3/4’s translator (I was the other quarter) and bargainer.  Finally, we got Pat checked into her second hotel, had dinner at a casual corner place, and then introduced Pat to the world of foot massages.

This weekend we’ll take a trip up to Kanchanaburi, where I brought Brad and Silvia during their July visit.  Should be a lot of fun.

Here are some pictures from yesterday:

Left: The path we followed, going from left to right along Rama I road.  Notice how many shrines are indicated on this Bangkok Metropolitan Authority map, all highlighted in yellow.  Right: Wat Phathum Wanaram literally sits in the shadows of the year-old Siam Paragon mall, with the Central World Plaza office complex and shopping center right on the other side.

Above: Pat visits the Erawan Shrine (often mistakenly called the “Four-Faced Buddha” as it is a Hindu, not Buddhist, image) in front of the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel.  This is a very popular place for people to come and pray for good fortune and it is customary to offer incense, candles, and garlands.

Left: Sketches pulled together by the shop’s designer based on samples and ideas – two jackets, a skirt, two shells and a black silk shift – all interchangeable and all custom-made.  Total price – a steal!  Right: Tawn’s mother watches as the designer takes measurements of a coat whose length Pat likes.

In Memory of Ed Bradley

Longtime 60 Minutes journalist Ed Bradley died on Thursday of leukemia.  His reporting and interviewing style was one I always admired and when I had the opportunity to see him in person – on a US Airways shuttle flight from New York to Washington one Friday afternoon – I was so impressed with the way he carried himself and acted with kindness and sincerity to all who stopped him to say hello or offer a comment.  As his former boss, producer Don Hewitt said, “a great gentleman and a great reporter.”

Warning: political-leaning entry below.

Author Ann Lamott writes a column for salon.com.  Of particular interest to me was a column from April 2005 in which she responds to the question she frequently is asked, “how do you reconcile your Christian faith with that of the radical right?”  She responds, “I don’t even try.”

One paragraph that caught my attention was her analysis of the fundamentalist “appropriation” of God:

“What the right has “appropriated” has nothing to do with God as most of us believers experience God. Their pronouncements about God are based on the great palace lie that this is a Christian country, that they were chosen by God to be his ethical consultants, and that therefore they alone know God’s will for us. The opposite of faith is not doubt: It is certainty. It is madness. You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do.”

What a true statement.

It is about 7:00 am Tuesday morning, local time, and our friend Patricia is about 10 hours into her journey from Kansas City to Khrungthep.  She’ll arrive this evening just before midnight, probably completely exhausted.  Sadly, I received an email from her sister this morning that Pat’s son’s car was stolen and when it was recovered by the police they stored it in impound.  Since the car is in her name, they need a copy of her identification so that it can be released.  So as soon as Pat arrives, I’ll have to break that news to her.  Fun start to a vacation.  Well, she’ll get ten days after that to relax.

Pat is the first of about a dozen friends and family members who will be making their way to Khrungthep between now and the middle of December.  Should be an exciting five weeks.

A Third Chain

Sometimes it almost seems like my life occurs as a string of blog-worthy events.  Saturday morning Markus came over at 8:00 so we could go on a bike ride, which we had not done for two or three weeks.  Strapping the bicycle rack to the back of the Nissan, we drove down to the visitor parking area to the bicycle parking.

As I undid my two cable locks, Markus said, “Oh, I didn’t realize you were using a third lock now.”  Which was when I discovered that someone had added a third cable lock, connecting the frames of our bikes.  Not sure who the (un)helpful person was – this type of prank-playing isn’t very typically Thai, but who knows?  I asked the security guards if they had a bolt cutter.  Unfortunately, the building engineer was not yet in, so they didn’t have access to the room where such a tool would be stored. 

Markus and I were able to load the bikes onto the rack and decided to head out and look for a bolt cutter.  The guard kindly wrote the name of the tool on a notepad for me and I drew a picture, and then we were off.  Thankfully we found a small hardware shop on Sukhumvit near soi 37.  I parked around the corner and went to the shop to see if they had a bolt cutter.  There were two choices: a smaller bolt cutter that might be insufficient for cutting the cable, or a larger one that was obviously well-used.  The owner wanted 650 baht (about US $18) for the used cutter.  Using my Thai, I asked if I could just rent it for ten minutes.  So we settled on a price – 300 baht – and I walked back to the car and cut the cable.

Returning to the shop with the now-cut cable, I tried the smaller bolt cutter and discovered that it was sufficient for the task.  Its price was only 250 baht, so I bought that one instead and the owner, happy to sell something so early in the morning, didn’t charge me for my rental.  So if anyone in Khrungthep has a bolt or cable that needs cutting, let me know as I have a bolt cutter I can loan you!

Delayed by about forty-five minutes, Markus and I headed out to Min Buri, a community east of the city and north of the new airport.  It is a largely Muslim community and one of its features is a very large 1.5-km stretch of road that was part of a larger project that has yet to be built.  So there is little traffic on this wide, 3-lane road as the only thing it connects to the desolate frontage road along the Rama IX expressway.  The only traffic we encountered on our 22-km ride was about three dozen other cyclists – all the serious road cyclists glad in spandex and aerodynamic helmets. 

The challenge was in figuring out how to get to this stretch of road as it is closed to regular traffic.  Using my map, there appeared to be a construction road but the large earth-movers on that stretch were imposing, as was the construction person waving a red “don’t go down this path” flag at us.  So we did find a nice stretch of concrete footpath running alongside a khlong, which is always a little iffy as sections are sometimes missing, branches hang low, and dogs at some of the houses along the way don’t care for strangers.  But the people were nice, saying hello to us – mothers lifting their children up so they could see the farang passing by.

Almost Loi Khrathong

Looking back to last November 18 and 16 (use the posting calendar in the lower left-hand corner of my Xanga webpage), there are two entries on Loi Khrathong, the annual festival expressing thanks to the water spirits and cleansing away wrongdoing and ill-fortune from the past year.  It is a beautiful event, thanks to the brightly coloured and candle lit floats, of khrathong, that are launched by the thousands into khlongs, rivers, and lakes across the Kingdom.

The festival coincides with the full moon of the eleventh lunar month and that falls on today.  So tonight after having dinner with a fellow Santa Clara University alumnae who has moved here recently, Tawn and I will go down to Chulalongkorn University to participate in the Loi Khrathong celebrations.

But the festival really gets an early start with a weekend full of events.  Friday afternoon on the concourse outside the National Stadium Skytrain station there was a pageant and competition with a display of beautiful, environmentally friendly khrathong.  Here are some photos.  Notice, especially, the ones made from carved wood.  They’re beautiful!

Extra mileage?

I received an email from US Airways Dividend Miles – their frequent flier program – informing me that I was at risk of losing my miles as there had been no activity on the account for such-and-such a period of time.  This is because once US Airways joined the Star Alliance, I simply used my United Airlines Mileage Plus account number instead.

Anyhow, I had just over 10,000 miles in my account.  Not enough for a free ticket but I didn’t want them to go to waste.  It turns out that US Airways as well as most other carriers, offers a free service whereby you can donate miles (in 1,000-mile increments in US Airways’ case) to various charities.  In this case, I selected Angel Flight, a non-profit whose volunteers arrange free air travel for needy patients and health care organizations.

This was good news because I, like lots of people, have several frequent flier accounts that I do not use very often so the likelihood of accumulating enough miles for a free trip is low.  These miles can be good for something, though.  Time to start investigating what other airline frequent flier accounts I can Robin Hood.

Those of you in the Northern Hemisphere will kindly overlook the relativism I’m employing when I say that winter (ruduu now – “cold season” in Thai) has arrived in the Kingdom.  Our generally southerly winds have shifted and cooler winds from the north are blowing in. 

While the daytime high hit 31 C / 89 F and last night’s low was 24 C / 76 F – “summery” by many people’s standards – the breezes help keep the heat index more bearable, especially if you can stay out of the direct sunlight.

Interestingly for those of you planning on visiting over the next month (that would be about a dozen people that I know of so far) today’s high and low temperatures are a mirror of the historical averages for November.

The arrival of winter coincides with the end of the mid-term school holiday, so after a month of no teaching I drove down to Bang khon thii nai Wednesday morning to resume my English teaching.  Tod was unable to join me, but it looks like Ken – a new arrival from Chicago – is interested in coming along next week so maybe I can get a whole carload of teachers soon. 

During the break, which was a working holiday for the teachers, the ajarn yai (principal) had done some sprucing up of the classroom in which I teach, trying to make it a more dedicated “foreign language learning space.”  Included in this were several new graphics and signs touting familiar English expressions:

Upper left: “In Rome, do as Romans do” (Thai version: “When you enter a city where the people have one eye half-closed, you must half-close one eye, too.”  The word, “leuw” doesn’t necessarily mean to wink, it can also mean an eye being half-closed because of a physical reason.) 

Upper right: “Cloudy mornings tern [sic] to clear evenings.”  (Thai version: “Mornings with clouds and fog always turn to be afternoons that are bright and shining.”)

 Left: “Love at first sight.” (Thai version: “Love (when) first meeting.”)

The drive down was a nice one.  As I was driving along Thanon Rama IV toward the sunrise, I caught a great view of the sun, big and orange against the horizon, silhouetting a building.  It was a fantastic visual and I was going to go back this morning and shoot it with my camera but discovered at 5:30 this morning that the piece of my tripod that attached my camera to the tripod is still attached to my 35mm camera – which is back in Kansas City! 

However, as I was crossing the Chao Phraya River on Rama IV bridge, I did get a nice picture of the sun filtered through the ever-present, partially-polution, partially-humidity haze.  Unfortunately, you’re not allowed to stop on this bridge for taking pictures or anything else.

At the school in Bang khon thii nai, the students were busily helping out with chores.  As I’ve mentioned before, an important part of what the school teaches is the sense of community and the students all contribute to the upkeep of the school.

The grass had grown long during the holiday and had been cut just a day before school resumed, so the boys were collecting the cut grasses along with fallen palm fronds and were burning them in a very wet and smokey bonfire. 

The girls were decidedly disinterested and instead tended to the flowers and other chores.

The boys thought that the fire was great fun, standing in the midst of lung-darkening plumes of smoke, being covered in ash.  Ajarn Yai was not overly impressed and finally told them to stop adding to the burning pile.

As I watched and took photos of the boys gathering around the fire, eagerly feeding it and watching it grow, their excitement growing in direct proportion to the smoke, the thought occurred to me that this was on the verge of becoming a Thai primary school version of Lord of the Flies.

After the chores, the students played the National Anthem (not done correctly so Ajarn Yai scolded them and had them do it a second time) and then we began our day.  As I feared, there was insignificant retention of English vocabulary.  Actually, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be.  But we spent the day reviewing vocabulary and practicing basic sentences.  One nice thing is that the confidence level is much higher when the students speak.  They now go around the room and can introduce themselves and share their favourite things (no, we don’t sing “Raindrops on Roses”) with only a little bit of hesitation.

One year.  That’s how long I’ve lived in Krung Thep Maha Nakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udom Ratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanu Kamprasit (กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทราอยุธยามหาดิลก ภพนพรัตน์ ราชธานีบุรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์ มหาสถาน อมรพิมาน อวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยะ วิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์).  This roughly translates as “The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukam,” according to Wikipedia.

So where do I find myself after a year?  It seems like it should be a momentous accomplishment.

The condominia being built in my neighborhood – five of which I can see from my balcony – are all much further along in construction.  That’s one sure sign of progress.  The new airport opening is another, although there are a lot of reports that it still has a lot of details to be worked out: Airports of Thailand, the operator, has announced they will install 200 more toilets, increasing the number to 300.  That’s right, only 100 toilets originally.

How do I feel about a year?  Very good.  I can say that I have been free of any regrets about my move, at any point in the past year.  Truly, there has been no point at which I’ve questioned the decision.  While I’m not sure that I will want to live in this city for the rest of my life, I’m certain that I want to be here, now.  Maybe somewhere quieter like Chiang Mai or Mae Hong Son in the future.

Taay phom phuut aan gap kien pasathai dai ru plow?  (But am I able to speak, read, and write Thai or not?)  I’m still two weeks away from my one-year anniversary or studying, and I took one or two breaks along the way for holidays and visitors.  Still, I have made some really good progress: I can read and write at or around a first-grade level (but much more neatly as my motor skills surpass most six-year olds’!)  I can speak at about the same level, too, although most Thai six-year olds have me beat when it comes to that.  This is especially true since they’ve been exposed to slang and idiomatic expressions since birth.

How are things with Tawn?  In our nearly seven years together, we’ve had two periods (11 and 14 months, respectively) when our relationship has been long-distance.  After that second period there was a lot of re-learning how to live together.  He became used to living at home with his parents and I acclimated to living on my own and being around my family.  It took several months to re-synchronise our living habits.

“Ch-ch-ch-ch-chaaanges,” as David Bowie sang, “just gonna have to be a different man.”  Living here, living within the Thai culture, has had an effect on me.  I can sense it and am sometimes acutely aware of it, although I think the effect is measured glacially.  Very broadly, Thai culture’s critique of Western culture (they would never say it to your face, though) is one of, “you think too much.”  That would be a very appropriate diagnosis of what ails me, no doubt.  And I think that, one year on, I’ve learned a bit and reflected a bit and – at least in some small way – have started to think a little less.

Not “think less” in an intellectual sense, since these blog entries are a reflection that I consider and think about my surrounding world regularly.  Instead, “think less” in the sense of being less concerned about details that are ultimately not very relevant.  Much like that pop-psychology self-help question, “will I remember this a year from now?”  If the answer is “no,” then it probably isn’t worrying about.

Tawn may entirely disagree as there still seem to be plenty of occassions where I’m the one worrying about details, details, details.  Must plan.  Must-have-a-plan.

Still, I think, some progress there.

I believe that Great Opportunities abound; you simply have to open yourself to experiencing them.  This year has brought a plentitude of opportunities to me.  I have met many, many interesting people and have developed a few good friendships.  I have encountered the school at Bang khon thii nai (which re-opens today after a month holiday) and the teachers and students there, seeing a side of Thai life I would otherwise never see.  I have been able to share my experiences of this place with others, visitors both physical and virtual.

Most of all, though, I’ve been able to be together with the man I love and keep building a life together.  Not just to “be together,” but also to “be,” together.  And that’s been a great experience.

The week came to a hectic conclusion – multiple revisions of one key 90-minute self-paced training presentation kept me up until almost midnight Friday night.  But it is finished and done and I can move on to other projects, hopefully a little less workload-intensive.

Friday evening I did duck out for a bit and Tawn and I went to the corner Thai restaurant Krua Bai Thong and then for a foot massage next door at 5-Star Massage.   

These are two businesses we’ve patronised regularly in the past year although for the past month we’ve been quite busy and haven’t been.  I was very happy to see that when I walked in, Achi, the pet dog of the massage parlour (who has grown a lot in a month!) recognized me and came running over to jump up and sit on my lap. 

Right: Here’s a picture from back in July with the massage parlour’s owner’s boyfriend letting Achi sleep on his lap.

The past few days I had noticed that the air conditioner in the bedroom had not been cooling as effectively as it had in the past.  Set it at 23 C when you went to bed, it would still be at about 25 C even after running all night long.

For several months I had been planning on calling a company come out and clean and service our two air con units, so this was the motivation I needed to actually give them a call. 

So Saturday morning at 9:00 a team of five arrived and in the course of 90 minutes did a thorough job cleaning out the interior air con units as well as the external machines, refilling the near-empty freon.  They use high-pressure water on the interior units and manage to not spray too much extraneous water on surrounding walls, although I did have to do a little bit of clean up afterwards.

Saturday evening we had guests over, Ken and Suchai.  Ken is a former 19-year United Airlines employee who contacted me via airliners.net many months ago with questions about moving to Thailand.  In the past month he has made the move and just took possession of a rental condo yesterday. 

It was nice to have them over for drinks, snacks, and then a trip across the street to Big Mama’s Italian Restaurant.  Didn’t take any pictures of them – sorry, I’ll get to that next time – but we had a good time.  I think I need to buy one of those small measuring cups used by bartenders; my Cosmopolitans were way too heavy on the vodka. 

Our appetisers were as follows: Blanched asparagus spears wrapped in prosciutto, pork laab salad served in cucumber cups, and pan friend mushroom bites with Haloumai cheese and fresh sage.

Side note: My trip report for my August trip from Bangkok to Penang, Malaysia has been posted HERE on airliners.net.

Above: Rainy Sunday night in the Pratuwan (watergate) area.  Central World Plaza is on the left, Gaysorn on the right.  Looking north toward Khlong San Saeb and Thanon Phetchaburi.

Sunday evening instead of joining me for the screening of the Battleship Potemkin, Tawn met up with his friends for what might be described as an engagement party.  Sa, one of his friends, is getting married to her long-time boyfriend this December and she needed to distribute the official invitations.  This was reason enough for a dinner.

Over dinner, Tawn mentioned to his friends – he told me later that this was probably way premature – that he and I had been discussing the idea of raising children.  Now, point of clarification for my readers: Tawn and I have just been discussing the idea and the point of making any decisions would still be a few years away, but as we’ve been discussing buying a house and other longer-term arrangements, the discussion of a family came as part of the package.

The reaction of Tawn’s friends was uniformly negative and non-supportive: gay, straight, married and unmarried, each of his friends dismissed the idea out of hand.  Most of them raised the concern that children raised by gay people would face unnecessary teasing and discrimination and wondered why we would want to “subject” a child to that.

Tawn’s gay friends responded more along the lines of their continued disbelief that a gay man would actually want to settle down into a monogamous relationship.  But they’re shallow, so that response didn’t surprise me.

The most measured response, ironically, came from the husband of Tawn’s only friend in the group who is married.  He said that he could see us adopting because, given a choice between an orphanage and having gay parents, a child would ultimately rationalize that they were better off with gay parents than no parents at all.  This coming from a man who left his wife and two young children to marry his mistress.  I get his rationale, but am not sure he would serve as evidence that straight parents provide any better stability or environment for their children.

Anyhow, Tawn came home pretty disappointed, having expected more from his friends. 

Initially, I shared his disappointment.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it is hard to expect people to be any more enlightened than the society in which they are raised and live – at least initially.  If we do eventually decide to raise children, through natural means (birth mother, artificial insemination, etc.) and/or adoption, there will be a long path of educating our friends, family, and others about the issues at hand.

I’ve always taken it on faith that my friends and family would be supportive of us starting our own family, but given the reaction of Tawn’s friends, maybe that faith is unfounded. 

Of course, the whole question of us raising children is a big “if”… there’s a few dozen high hurdles to overcome from adoption laws to different citizenship and immigration rights for the parents.  Just purchasing a home will be a necessary first step.  We can see where it goes from there.

Side note – when I run my spell check on Xanga, “gay” keeps coming up as misspelled.  What, are they nuts?

Below left: Morning sun streams into the living room on one of only about three days when the light hits a narrow corner of a nearby office building and is reflected in.  This will repeat again in about six months.  Below right: Erawan Shrine, often mistakenly called the “Four-Faced Buddha” in front of the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel. 

Sugarless

Thai director Patana Jirawong produces an interesting feature film about two very different people who are both looking for love in the big city.  The first is a taxi driver from upcountry who came to the city to look for his girlfriend, who moved there years before.  The second is an illiterate preoperative transsexual who works as a prostitute.  They meet through a newspaper advice column and carry on a correspondence (the transsexual having johns read the letters and transcribe responses in lieu of payment) before deciding to meet on New Year’s Eve.  Despite high personal standards, they end up meeting unknowingly when the taxi driver picks up the prostitute.

The Proposition

Australian director John Hillcoat helms this late 1800s-set picture starring Guy Pearce, written by indie rocker Nick Cave.  Capt. Stanley (Ray Winstone) and his men capture two of the four Burns brothers, Charlie (Pearce) and Mike. Their gang is held responsible for attacking the Hopkins farm, raping the pregnant Mrs. Hopkins and murdering the whole family. Arthur Burns, the eldest brother and the gang’s mastermind, remains at large has and has retreated to a mountain hideout. Capt. Stanley’s proposition to Charlie is to gain pardon and – more importantly – save his beloved younger brother Mike from the gallows by finding and killing Arthur within nine days.

This film is starkly shot and very interesting.  Reminded a great deal of 2003’s Ned Kelly with Heath Ledger. 

The Battleship Potemkin

Sergei Eisenstein’s classic 1925 silent black-and-white revolutionary film about a 1905 mutiny that occurred on the eponymous naval vessel that brought on a massive street protest an subsequent police massacre in the coastal city of Odessa.  Ostensibly, this presentation was going to include an updated score by the Pet Shop Boys, but what I heard sounded to me to be the original score.  The film is considered a classic of the era and the famous Odessa Steps sequence was paid homage to in the climax of Brian De Palma’s 1987 film, The Untouchables. 

Eisenstein’s use of montage technique (putting together separate, individually neutral shots to form an effect greater than the sum of its parts) was grounbreaking.  One can argue that modern music videos with their hyperkinetic frenzy of cuts, owes a debt to Eisenstein.  Very good analysis of the film here.

And so the World Film Festival comes to an end…

On to other news, my Seagate 120gb external hard drive stopped working – it gets power but the disk isn’t running – after just shy of a year.  Very disappointed in a hard drive that craps out after such a short period of time. I returned it to the store and it is still under warranty.  They will send it in to the workshop and are confident they will be able to extract the data (which includes over a year’s worth of pictures!) and will send provide a replacement for me.  I think I’ll have to purchase a second external drive however, to ensure I have a backup of the backup.

Saturday was sort of a movie marathon day with tickets to a trio of screenings.  Fortunately, they were all quite good, the result being that at the end of the day I couldn’t think clearly about any of them.

12:08 East of Bucharest

Set in a small village in Romania, sixteen years after the revolution that saw dictator Ceausescu flee the country at 12:08 pm, the owner of a local television station invites two guests on the air to discuss the question of whether a revolution occurred in their own village or not.  In other words, were people protesting in the town square demanding Ceausescu’s ouster before 12:08 pm, or did they fill the streets after the dictator’s live televised escape by helicopter?

His original guests cancelling out on him, the television personality calls upon two acquaintences, on old retiree and sometimes Santa Claus, and a history teacher who has just devoted his entire salary to paying off his drinking debts.  On screen, they discuss their role in the historic revolution.  But phone-in viewers dispute the claims of these erstwhile heroes: were they really there at all or were they drinking in the corner bar?

The film, the winner of the 2006 Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, is tightly-made, clocking in at just 89 minutes.  Director Corneliu Porumboiu captures the absurdity and humor of the situation while also mining it for poetic beauty, asking whether we all don’t reinvent our pasts to some extent.

My Brother Nikhil

The debut feature of writer/director/editer Onir, this Hindi-language docu-fiction is based on the true story set in Goa of the late 1980s and early 1990s.  The story concerns Nikhil (Sanjay Suri), a swimming champion and the pride and joy of his father, and his close relationship with his sister Anamika (Juhi Chawla). 

One day the team doctor calls him in to discuss the results of a recent blood test and Nihil learns that he is HIV positive.  The doctor’s claims of confidentiality are meaningless and the word spreads quickly through the town.

Shortly thereafter, he is arrested and isolated in a run-down sanitorium, the result of the Goa Public Health Act.  His friends abandon him and his parents move away.  The only people who stand by him are his boyfriend Nigel, his sister Anamika, and her fiancee, Sam.  They fight very hard to educate the public and after several months, earn his freedom.

But freedom from a sanitorium is not the same as true freedom.  He still faces tremendous discrimination and difficulty through a combination of laws (still on the books today) that make homosexuality a criminal offense, and the ignorance and fear of the population.

In the end the movie plays a bit like an Indian version of “Philadelphia” which is to say that it has an A-list cast, lots of stirring songs (actually, that’s more of a nod to Indian audiences than a comparison to the Tom Hanks movie), skillfully crafted tugs on your heartstrings, and no displays of affection by Nikhil and his partner.

That said, given the state of public awareness of the issues surrounding homosexuality and HIV/AIDS on the subcontinent, this movie serves a very good purpose and is quite notable, enjoying a modest commercial and critical domestic success.  Organizations including the United Nations are using it as an educational tool and it is being dubbed in other Indian languages for showing throughout the country in schools and elsewhere.

The director was present for Q&A afterwards and provided some intersting insight into how he got this film made, a five-year process that overcame a lot of obstacles.

The Feast of the Goat

In this UK-Spain co-production, based on the novel by Mario Vargas Llosa, Isabella Rosselini plays Urania Cabral, who returns to her homestown in the Dominican Republic in 1992 after having been away three decades.  Her invalid father is Agustin (Paul Freeman), the President of the Senate and right-hand man of the dictator Trujillo – until he fell into disgrace a long time ago.  Over dinner with her aunts, who chide her for having been away from her father for so long, she discloses the experiences that haunt her as her father gave away his most cherished possession in order to try to regain Trujillo’s trust.

The film also tracks the story of the men who sacraficed their lives to end one of the bloodiest tyrannies of recent Latin American history.  Their story and that of Arania are intertwined in an intense kaleidoscope of love and hate, violence and death.

Under the direction of Luis Llosa, the actors achieve very strong and believable performances, while lensman Javier Salmones captures the bright airiness of the tropical setting and contrasts it with a darkness that echoes the developing story.

Two days, three films left.