Screenplays and Stories

Friday was Opening Night of the San Diego Latino Film Festival and we started the festival off right, by seeing a fabulous film--"Don't Let Me Drown." Here's a link to an interview with the Director Cruz Angeles on indie wire. The film was a modern-day "Romeo and Juliet" story of sorts, with a backdrop of NYC right after 9/11. Heavy hitting, but light and hopeful, the screenplay was a fine example of a social drama that let the characters and the story win you over, rather than getting up on a soapbox to pound home its agenda.
Last night was "Io, Don Giovanni" a period piece about a writer and lyricist who worked with Salieri and Mozart on some of their operas, and was friends with Casanova. The film was ambitious and quite theatrical, but it just didn't move me--though it was visually stunning, with a few amazing performances. Maybe it's just that I'm not an opera buff, but I thought that the extended opera segments went on way too long.
Tonight's film will be "Chamaco," set in Mexico City, with Martin Sheen...Maybe he'll even show up for the screening, as Benjamin Bratt is supposed to do later in the week. Bratt would be the perfect person to start in our screenplay, "Pan American" so we hope to meet him, and his brother, who directed one of the films screening this week.
So this week is all about screenwriting--seeing so many films, short and long, fiction and documentary, is such an education...And it's pretty exciting to see such an impressive cinema line up from all around the world, too!
Here "On The Waterfront" Captain Russel has been working on the installation of our fine Spectra Watermaker and constructing an arch for our Kyocera Solar panels and they are up finally! No power yet, as the wiring is still being installed, and the Watermaker isn't yet operational but we're not far from being self-sustaining...
Hasta pronto!