YESTERDAY, EASTER SUNDAY, MARIA AND I went to the movies again (we had only gone the day before, remember?); today she invited yesternight and bought the ticket. That's how she gets me to go to the movies two days in a row. Says she'll pay. Lucky dog Danny. Seeing a good movie in a large-screen theater with super-quality stereo sound is better than most big TVs at home. Not just the size, but the quality of the image. There REALLY Is a Difference between "film" and "video" oh yes yes yes there is. Fortunately for this poor little bohemian poet retired early to Mexico, the movies in Tijuana only cost from three to six dollars, depending on hour and theater.

Anyway, we went down in her little clunky growling car, down through the valley of Alamar that carries a branch of the Tijuana river on the south side of Otay Mesa, the branch of the river that comes out of the canyon where the superhighway goes toll road toward and from Tecate, while the river twists down from Tecate Peak the sacred mountain of Kuchama, surrounded by truly splendid Mediterranean climate and vegetarian health spas and migrants struggling to slip through the night over the wild mountains where cougars and eagles only dare and further up there are Barret Reservoir and the abuséd wilderness of Pine Creek and then Morena Lake all dammed up practically no flowing water but in olden times it was a hell-of-gully-washer flash-flooder whenever it rained, yes, a real killer destroyed the first great race track in 1916 et cet. But now it is barely a dip in the road all the water trapped and sucked up into reservoirs yes.

Anyway we went down into the valley south of Otay, rattling down along the Cucupa cut-off boulevard with its truly horrific potholes (especially returning) and twisted through the section of buildings down there where sewage smells rather bad, across the dry river dip piled up with dirt just waiting to be washed away some day unknown time future when the dams burst WHAM crumble flussssssshhhhh no not yet no. Then up the other side into a side-valley feeding up up up toward the foothills of Cerro Colorado around the Plaza Monarca (monarch butterfly) shopping mall over there in back of El Lago on the borders of Guaycura where we parked behind the theater mall anchor and went in. Neighborhoods, shopping malls, here you give directions by things you see and very rarely by exact street name and number no no no yes.

We saw ALATRISTE a Spanish movie all spoken in pure castillan orale it was veryyyyyyy hard for this little gringo but I understood most of it and thoroughly enjoyed the costume opera and swordplay yes it has Vigo Mortensen (however you spell his name) playing a crusty old Spanish captain of soldiers he does a good job I was convinced.

Convinced in its historical accuracy, convinced in its characters as people, convinced in its truth as truth. I should have written "the film was convincing" but wanted to say me, person, my point of view. But, in the end, it – the film – was "convincing" even though, as "they" say, it is only a movie.

I kept thinking about two young filmmakers I have recently come to know, one in person Jesus came down to film the poetry week before last and the other karismo @ youtube over the internet. One I know from conversation believes in the pure, chemical loveliness, the visual, pure beauty of film, focussed on the molecular level of chemicals exposed on the film itself, as compared and contrasted to harsher, crisper, video with its packets of digital red/gree/blue color packet values. Sigh. This is the meaning of "technical esthetics" which are so much more important than dollar value at the box office or money in the bank. UNLESS YOU ARE HUNGRYYYYYYyyyyyyyyy or addicted to Las Vegas.

Only a movie. Never mind that nothing is real in our world until we see it happen in the movies. Still. It is it was: only a story. Only a make-believe acted out in front of cameras, bit by bit, piece by piece, actors dressed up and set in front of cameras and excellent lights, set into outdoor scenery and indoor rooms, created and recreated reality and reality LIGHTS CAMERA ACTION and then CUT and all the little bits and pieces of film edited together into one elegant tapestry this is a castle of course there be tapestries here, please! One elegant tapestry of narration. And, it seemed to me, with my bits and pieces of historical knowledge of the period (1600s, Europe), more or less historically accurate. Rather a refreshing change compared to such "artistic license" pictures of exagerration and DAMNED LIES like Apocalypto or 300. There, I said it. Boo hoo whine whine whine.

Yes, yes, there were some very old plot elements in Alatriste, old literary tricks from books used ever and again in movies, too. In the end of the first scene – a stunning watery river/canal fort fight in Holland – a dying soldier tells the hero to take care of his son. He does. We see the boy grow up into a young man who falls in love with a fancy girl who ends up betraying him by marrying a rich count or somebody excellencia or another. The movie thus becomes a "coming of age" movie. The old soldier also has a love and loses her, too. He "becomes of age" spiritually in his middle age. They both love, and lose. And then, in the end, they die in a hopeless, lost battle against the French.

So. No happy ending. Sigh. But this is all to the good as it makes the film NOT a typical Hollywood happy ending movie. Like 300. Sure the three hundred Spartans died but the whole work-of-art was, from the beginning, "told" by a narrator who survived the battle (sent away to deliver a message) and later he leads the bigger army that strikes back in the end to destroy the evil Persians. Instead of the truth twisting and turning in the wind at the end of a rope we get a deus-ex-machina style happy ending. POOF wham ZHAzapppppp.

AND Hell you remember Pearl Harbour? Another movie supposedly about defeat? How did that movie end? Not with the destruction of Pearl Harbour, no, it ended with the counter-attack by Doolittle's squadron against Tokyo. And that whole heart-twisting metaphor of one hero dying in the Doolittle raid so that his best friend (IN THE MOVIE remember it ain't real it's a movie) just so he could raise his son? Why this turnabout and twist? To GIVE THE GODAMN MOVIE A PHUKING FREAKING HAPPY ENDING is why oh yes yes Yes YES DON't deny it you poor little lost zillionaires in hollywood you ARE Addicted you know to money and the happy ending whine whine whine but the public demands a happy ending whine whine whine whine all the way to the bank yes.

Oh Damit Danial just shut up you are just a jealous little poet yes.