Hugo Chavez: The Man of the Hour

I was trying to find out the time in Caracas when I realized that Caracas has half-an-hour difference from the U.S. Central Time, which geographically also applies to Lima or Santiago and, supposedly, Caracas. Confused, I found out that, in 2007, Mr. Hugo Chavez had decided to make Venezuela stand out from the rest of nations by setting the standard time in Caracas about 30 minutes earlier. Actually, the same thing happens in almost ten other nations (Iran, India and Afghanistan among them). I wondered why this happens and, of course, at the end of my little research I got the answer that I should have supposed from the beginning: Politics.

Because of the size of the country, in the continental U.S. we have Pacific, Mountain, Central and Eastern times. But did you know that China, which is even larger and it contains at least five time zones, has only one standard time (Beijing time) for the whole country? That means that, especially during the summer, quite a few millions of Chinese people must leave their beds, start working and saying good morning when they still have three or more dark hours to go. And they should be going to bed when it is still a bright day outside if they want to get up on time to work the next day. Of course, none of this everyday annoyance is worthy of consideration by the Chinese government. The important thing for them is that millions of Chinese obey its central, autocratic rule.

Just the same, it seems to be that Mr. Chavez is determined to set his own time for his own country. Thirty minutes difference with the rest of the world might not sound like a big deal but why to bother with it if not to create international flights and telecommunications confusion, delays and misunderstandings galore. Just a perfect "innocent" tool to advance the growing sense of isolation that engulfs Venezuelans in every possible way.

Apparently, many people are right when the say that Hugo Chavez is the Man of the Hour in Latin America. He sets the clocks, he sets the hour. He is the Man.

Check this article. I am sure that you will find very interesting how hard it is to know, at any given time, what time is it.

Anne Hathaway's Party

Some movies are not easy to watch. You get so involved by them that sometimes you feel sorry, guilty or embarrassed by the characters. You actually experience the movie more than simply watch it.

Something like that happened to me with Rachel Getting Married, a movie that did not stay long in the theaters but that I am sure it is certain to be huge in the DVD market. Rachel is one of the daughters of an upper class family and her sister Kym —the main character played by Anne Hathaway— is a repentant junkie who just came out of rehab on the eve of her wedding.

In Rachel... the hand-held camera used throughout the movie provides a documentary feeling that is, at times, painful to watch, as if you were watching an accident about to happen. I have no words to describe Hathaway’s performance. She is astounding. What a difference with the naïve girl from The Devil Wears Prada. In fact, in that movie I was more impressed by her looks than by her acting. What a moron.

In Rachel Getting Married, her tortured, disturbed character looks so real that you wonder how easy or how hard it must have been to perform it. No doubt she is a wonderful actress and, to pull a task of this magnitude, a human being with great depth and understanding. Is the rest of the movie at the same level? Yes… mostly.

The wedding is almost a living postcard of multiracial, post-modern perfection with world music instead of Vienna waltzes. Everyone here is an interesting, wholesome and sensitive human being, which is nice but not very realistic (unless that you live in Utah --as the character of Nicholas Cage says in the final scene of Raising Arizona).

But maybe the only thing that might be a bit uncomfortable is the length of the celebration and the insistence of Jonathan Demme in showing so many details of the spirited party that don’t help the story at all.

At the end, though, who cares about the hangover if you have spent the night with Anne Hathaway?

Star Trek: A Cool Disappointment

Star Trek, the newly released movie directed by J.J. Abrams, provides an excellent two-hour show and a nice twist of the decades-old series. And it is actually very promising if you think of it as the seed for upcoming new episodes of the franchise. But it is far from being a masterpiece or of creating a superior precedent. Star Trek looks cool because of the cast and the characters, faithful to the original ones and, at the same time, fresh in its recreation without seeming fake or contrived. But to be honest, abuses a little in terms of its action sequences and of a plot that does not make a lot of sense. The failure, though, is in the conception, not in the realization.

Let me explain.

Maybe the coolest thing of the original Star Trek saga (with the remarkable William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy) was that the show was a lot about ideas. The idea of a universal Federation that has achieved peace and mutual respect among planets, races and species. The idea of a justice system valid among all of them. The idea of — and this is the coolest idea of them all — that a fabulous starship has been built with the most advanced technology, even for its hyper technological times, with the declared mission to step into the unknown sections of space in search of, precisely, the unknown.

With all its action and cool effects, in the new Star Trek film the U.S.S. Enterprise is just another battleship, not THE extraordinary spaceship made to explore the unexplored. And even if it is brand new and just came out of the factory—not of a General Motors plant, I am sure— it does not have the cool appealing of the original mission: "These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before."

I think that Gene Roddenberry and the creators of the old series are still unsurpassed. They had the power of a boldest imagination which is even more powerful than all the especial effects that Hollywood can buy. But that does not mean that I am not planning to see the next movies. I am excited… Who knows if J.J. Abrams is reading this and is planning to do the right adjustments to the cause of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Hope is the last frontier.

The Lady and the Trump

It's funny the way that Mr. Donald Trump insists in assuming the role of moral guide for the nation. Coming to the rescue of Miss California, the lady in distress because of some semi-nude pictures (and her own involvement in the nonsensical debate about gay marriage), The Donald showed an unexpected "21st century" free spirit...

"We reviewed the pictures very carefully," he said in a press conference today. "We are in the 21st century. ... Carrie's a model, she's very successful. ... Some were beautiful, some were risqué. ... We've determined the pictures taken were acceptable, fine, and in many cases they were very lovely pictures."

I feel relieved that Mr. Trump has dignified Miss Prejean's predicament imposing his FDA seal of approval on her "material." Well, if he says so that's good enough for me. Thank you Donald, I feel clean again.