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Il Postino – Movie
Greetings to all of you!
A couple of days ago I finally had the opportunity to watch Il Postino, it had been on my Netflix queue for a while and 
I came to appreciate the movie even more as I got to watch the movie again while lisening to the audio commentary with Director Michael Radford, and found out that Massimo Troisi who played Mario Ruoppolo died sometime after the shooting of the movie ended.
What an amazing story, not just the movie itself but the journey that Massimo Troisi choose to have this picture made. Massimo Troisi came across the Italian version of this story and identified with the postman (Mario Ruoppolo), purchased the rights from writer Antonio Skarmeta, and kept calling Director Michael Radford every couple of months to direct this movie, eventually Director Michael Radford agreed.
During the shooting of the movie, Massimo was notified he needed a heart operation and he postponed it so they could continue to work on the film, unfortunately he died right after the movie was completed. What a brave individual, to accomplish his dream until the very last minute.
There are many sites that go in detail about describing the movie, I suggest that if you are curious you just rent it or purchase it and enjoy it without a preconceived idea.
Here is what in my humble opinion would be the equivalent of trying to explain the movie to you, in the movie the character Mario asks Pablo Neruda if he can explain why “the smell of barber shops makes me sob?” The character Pablo Neruda responds (This is mainly the English subtitle translation and a few words of mine – I am able to understand some Italian words as they are similar sounding to Spanish words).
“You see Mario i cannot tell you in words different from those that I have used, when you explain poetry it becomes banal… better than any explanation is the direct experience of emotions that poetry can reveal to a mind predisposed to understand it.”
Il Postino was loosely based on a book called “Ardiente Paciencia” written by Chilean Antonio Skarmeta.
And it was at that age … Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
-Pablo Neruda
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Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
On my wall i have a note that reads “I lived as I dreamed.”
That little saying/message originated from the movie Neverwas, and every time I look at that note, It reminds me that some things we worry about are just not that important (some certainly are but not all), it also reminds me to keep my childhood dreams alive.
Related to the above I recently came across a talk from Carnegie Mellon professor and alumnus Randy Pausch (RIP), which once again puts things into perspective. I hope you enjoy his talk.
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Inspiration
Sometimes all we need is for us to see someone else demonstrate passion, in order to get us on track with our own discoveries.
I hope you enjoy these as much as I did.
The first audition I got to see of Britain’s Got Talent 2008 was that of Faryl Smith, a 12 year old girl who sang Ave Maria. I must confess that when I heard how she sang the song I got a little teary eye.
The following link contains information about her, you can also look for her and the other two individuals mentioned in youtube.com
http://talent.itv.com/finalists/thursdayFinalist1.asp
The second audition was that of Madonna Decena, a singer from the Philippines. I thought she did an excellent audition as well, like Faryl I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. This song didn’t have the same impact as the first. Faryl’s presentation was amazing.
The last audition that I saw was that of Dean Wilson. I know some people love to hate Simon Cowell, but he seems to brings perspective to the situation. In this particular audition I think that the reason why he said he didn’t like the song was because it didn’t appear that Dean was performing with the passion that was needed. I have watched the audition various times and you can definitely tell the second time around there was a lot more passion and conviction.
Read MoreSketchcrawl #18
On March 29th, 2008 people in more than 50 locations participated in this World Wide Event Sketchcrawl.
It was raining on Friday, and like many I said to myself rain or shine I am participating. The meeting place was Ghirardelli Plaza in San Francisco, California. What a great location, great views, nearby beach, dock and antique ships and also great place for a chocoholic like me.
Below are the sketches of the day, along with a couple of watercolors. It was a challenge to get the colors I wanted, nonetheless It was a great experience – even if it was a little cold and windy at times.
Restaurant sketch and Flute player
Balclutha (1886)
The challenge for me was the mixing of the colors and the water not looking like I wanted it to look, I also realized the first cables I painted were too thick, so I switched to a micron pen to do the rest. Overall it is an improvement over my previous watercolors and I am happy with the result.
Hercules Tugboat (1907)
The challenge for this one was the angle. the dock (should I include it or not) and the reflection on the water.
I was afraid at first to attempt the sketch because of the angle, so what I did was to create a thumb-sketch to get an idea of how to handle the issue, after that I first sketched the larger tugboat on pencil and then used a micron pen 02 (waterproof) to go over the pencil lines, lastly to colorize the boat.
I had fun doing this watercolor, It was such a pleasant portion of the day (not windy and sort of warm) it seemed that all the views were so refreshing upon finishing this, It felt like I had reached some stage of stillness or something similar, the colors seemed so vivid, and I felt so good. In all a very rewarding day.
This time I got the chance to stay until the end of the day and participate in the exchange of the sketchbooks. Ronnie del Carmen got it right when he mentioned on Sketchcrawl’s forum that the sharing of work can be a little intimidating, it was but eventually it wasn’t so bad. The funny thing is that I heard people express the same fears I had, and heard many explain why X looked this way or why Y looked that way (as I also heard myself saying). A couple of times I encounter a situation where it appeared the person liked mine better than theirs (or maybe i just thought that lol) and I felt that their approach was better than mine.
I also heard people say that they were afraid of sharing at the end of the day and that may have been a reason why they left early. I overheard someone else mention that their friends were afraid of participating at all (because they felt their work may not be good enough).
The lessons as I see them for me and I presume are for others too, are to let go of the fear of not getting it right, because the more you do the task the better you will get at it.
I think the reason why it may take some of us longer to improve faster is simply because we are afraid of ‘playing’ with the medium and see what accidents might occur, and the fear of sharing both at the end of the day (in Sketchcrawl context) as well as when we are in the process of creating something and someone steals a peek.
I actually used to try to turn my sketchbook away when I thought someone was looking and when I was working on the tugboat a person stopped to look and much to my surprise I stopped and actually showed it to the person, who responded “muy bueno” – yeah, it felt good!
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“After Life” Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda
A couple of days I came across this movie and I have just started to watch it. I wanted to share it here since it seems to be related to the first post entered in this blog.
While the movie is not about art per se, I feel it may place some perspective in your life, and the actions that are taken from day to day.
The name of the movie is After Life
After death, you get to choose one memory, and only one memory of everything you experienced in life, all the other memories will be forgotten. You are given three days to decide what to select, then a movie gets created out of that memory before you get to move on.
While I have not finished the movie as of this writing, I must say that the first 20 minutes that I have watched are already quite interesting and thought provoking… thought provoking because I too started to think what would be the best memory I could possibly keep if I was in that situation, and again what other opportunities lie ahead of us that could potentially replace whatever memory we choose to select in this instant.
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Self Talk
Just had to share this with you. I’m sure some of you may have already realized this, and/or maybe read the same book (don’t remember the name at the moment – still at the store).
It made a mention of the self talk that we put ourselves through when we sketch. We think (using some of my own here 
), “there is no way that the arm can be that long” or “the head is too large” etc, etc. If I recall correctly the book suggested that instead of having that type of conversation with one self, we should be thinking something like “this angle should be like this” or “the distance between this eye and the other eye is this much” etc. I mentioned that to my wife and I heard laughter of agreement.