Non Oaxaca Post

Have you been reading Inside Land Park (or East Sac) lately? They are doing some serious muckraking, especially in regards to Steve Hansen and the bike trail. Graswich and Steve Hansen seem to be openly feuding. I'm definitely concerned about the fencing off the bike trail issue, but more than that, I'm concerned about what I'm reading about Steve Hansen's attempt to keep the press out of a recent public meeting and bar a photographer from taking pictures. I hope someone at the Bee or CPR picks up this story and runs with it.

As a BIG fan of the movie Silent Light, I decided to watch director Carlos Reygadas' newest, a 3 hour movie called Our Time from 2018. I believe it never played Sac, or I blinked and missed it.

He starts really, really strong, with gorgeous ranch footage filmed in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala. He's got Malickian ways with filming nature, clouds, light, flora, fauna, the whole deal. I feel it was a mistake to cast himself in the lead. He said it was for financial reasons. He also cast his real wife and kids. His wife is good in it - he lacks onscreen charisma.

The movie is a bit of a slog. It's about a longtime couple's open marriage, and how a crush starts to upend it. It got mixed-to-bad reviews and a lot of criticism about the cringe-y power dynamics. He seemed pretty pissed off in interviews that people took it to be a male vs. female struggle. He saw the couple as equals, and that it was just a power struggle, but that gender roles were irrelevant. Yet the movie literally ends (this is not a spoiler) with two bulls fighting. How is it not about machismo and you end it like that???

I think he's a genius based on Silent Light so I'm still following his career. I think this movie would have been stronger as a two-hour movie with a different male lead. But I'm glad he's making movies and I hope he's at work on another one.