Word: bernal
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...night that would make David Bernal famous, although he didn't know it at the time. He was 21 and a senior at California State University at Long Beach, majoring in art and illustration and doing a little break dancing on the side. On the night in question he had been hired to perform at a Korean-American talent show in Los Angeles. There's a grainy amateur video of the event in which you can see him mumble his name into the microphone and then do his thing for about...
...audience goes insane. Those watching can't believe what's happening. Bernal, who performs under the name David Elsewhere, describes his dance style as a mixture of "popping, waving, liquiding, breaking, roboting." What this means in practice is that, first, his body physically melts into a little puddle and then rebuilds itself bone by bone; then he becomes a giant robot; then weird energies go surging through his arms and legs; then he makes it look as though something is crawling around under his shirt; then he becomes a springy hopping creature. And then, just like that, it's over...
...among the most powerful and supple works of their esteemed directors. Yet the Jury gave only a thanks-for-coming Best Director prize to Haneke, and snubbed Cronenberg completely. The King isn't in their class, but it gets star heft from Mexican hottie Gael García Bernal. He plays a quietly intense young man named Elvis who insinuates himself into his long-absent father's devoutly Christian family: righteous wife (Laura Harring), rebellious son (Paul Dano) and a daughter (Pell James) searching for love, divine or carnal. The movie's fuse is far too long, but there...
...King takes the Jarmusch film's premise and sees it from the point of view of the abandoned son. Elvis (Garcia Bernal), just out of the Navy, tracks down his father (Hurt), now a Texas preacher with a wife and two kids, like Tom in A History of Violence. The father tells Elvis to stay away from his deeply religious family, but the lad begins furtively wooing the daughter (Pell James) -presumably, his half-sister! And that is just the beginning of his machinations. By the end of the film, when Elvis comes to his father and, like a well...
...Cannes were outraged by the tests of faith it presented: of Christian faith for the characters, of plausibility for the audience. What's undeniable is the showcase it provides the young Mexican actor primed for U.S. stardom. Lending an impeccable American accent to his brooding good looks, Garcia Bernal expertly embodies a young man who can be gentle and cruel, a courtly lover and a ruthless killer...