Word: rocke
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...parable for immigrant visions crushed by reality. It is a caustic metaphor for Hispanic-American filmmakers lusting to conquer Hollywood. Years of slammed doors have tempered hope with skepticism, even when one smash movie has opened doors a crack. La Bamba, a low-budget bio-pic of Chicano Rock 'n' Roller Ritchie Valens, was last summer's surprise hit, earning $55 million at the North American box office. Maybe Hispanic film artists would prefer to believe in La Bamba's rags-to-riches story. But they know how even that film ends: with a fatal plane crash...
...eleven songs that range wide and pierce deep, all sharing a similar theme. "Violence is love gone crazy" is the way he puts it, with the same snazzy elan and offhand humor that make him such an affable and adept screen actor. He seems easy with it all: sweeping rock, laid-back jazz, Latin-inflected pop. Recently he reflected on the album on a film set in Hamilton, Mont., where he is starring in a caper comedy called Waiting for Salazar. (Acting, Blades insists, is merely a way of subsidizing his musical career.) "There are eleven different styles of songs...
Visual signals are everything: hard-pounding loudspeakers woof and tweet to the strains of Tito Puente, Hansel y Raul and Willie Colon. The songs are mostly rhythmically irresistible salsa songs that combine the heady call-and- response of African music with the electronic surge of rock 'n' roll and the glitzy brass of a Big Band. The dancers move to the beat like a snake to the charmer's call: the hotter the tune, the cooler the step as the men expertly guide the women through the twists and curves of the mambo, the cha- cha-cha, the merengue...
...Cuba que lindos son tus paisajes" (Cuba, what beautiful vistas you have) -- the bilingual crowd goes wild, even though most of those present have never seen Cuba and have little prospect of ever doing so. "We've never had to attract these kids. They come by themselves," says Cruz. "Rock is a strong influence on them, but they still want to know about their roots. The Cuban rhythms are so contagious that they end up making room for both kinds of music in their lives...
Curfew's action also revolves around the character of Manungo Vera, an ex-patriate hippi rock star who has returned from France in time for the widow's funeral. Once a member of that Leftist clique that so desperately wants to stage the funeral as if it were a communist demonstration, Vera has spent time in France enjoying fame, fortune, and a respite from the horrors of current Chilean life. Accompanied by his thoroughly French son, Jean-Paul, Manungo revives his ambiguities concerning Chilean politics and the Left, becoming ensnared in the political longings that, according to Donoso, inevitably catch...