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Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-11-27 (Wednesday)
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2024 05:33:02 -0000 (UTC)
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Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:

>El Mariachi (blu-ray) 1992 low budget movie produced, written, and 
>directed by Robert Rodriguez.  The plot follows "El Mariachi" (Carlos 
>Gallardo) who is mistaken for a hitman while trying to bum a job at a 
>local bar for tips.  I watched with a really good commentary track from 
>Rodriguez.  This was his first movie, and extremely low budget 
>(according to Wikipedia $7,225).  On the commentary he talks at length 
>about all the corners he had to cut to get the movie made with lots of 
>very interesting stories.  One thing I was surprised by was that he 
>constantly referred to the lead actor as his character name, "El 
>Mariachi."  But he also talked about how involved he was in day-to-day 
>decision making and production. Then I quickly realized it's because he 
>was also a co-producer.  Much of the movie was made up on the spot based 
>on whatever random person they could get to agree to be in the movie, 
>and if they could bring their own props and costumes that was a definite 
>plus!  For example the guy they hired to play a musician got the part 
>because he was the only guy in town with a portable keyboard.  This is a 
>Spanish language movie, but the lead bad guy doesn't speak Spanish, 
>which is why he wears sunglasses to hide the fact he's phonetically 
>reading a script.  The movie was designed to be a direct to video for 
>the Spanish language market and they were all shocked when it suddenly 
>became a huge hit.  He points out tons of errors and mistake in the 
>movie that they realized existed at the time of making, but didn't care 
>because they didn't think anyone would actually see the movie outside of 
>a tiny Spanish language direct to video market.  Rodriguez said when the 
>studio wanted to dub the movie into English, it cost more to dub the 
>film than the entire cost to make it.

Great stories on the commentary track!

This was a great movie. I liked it better than Desperado, which was
essentially a remake.

>Desperado (4K disc) 1995 Sequel written and directed by Robert 
>Rodriguez.  Antonio Banderas takes over the role of El Mariachi who this 
>time around is out for revenge against a Mexican drug dealer.  Salma 
>Hayek turns up as the love interest.  And Danny Trejo shows up as a 
>killer who uses blades.  Is the movie good?  Any movie that has a guy 
>carrying a rocket launcher hidden in a guitar case is by definition a 
>good movie.
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVjfmgr2cf0

Salma Hayek was sexy as hell, although I never saw the telenovellas she
was in at the start of her career on Mexican television.