Philly Cop Is Monster. News 'n Notes.

Review: Sabrina Vourvoulias, "Skin In The Game," Tor.com

Michael Sedano

The first video of a black devil fish showed the creature flexing its huge jaws, the mouth gaping with needle-like teeth that cage-in a creature attracted by the phosphorescent lure dangling in the deep sea darkness from the black devil fish’s head.

In an idle flash, I thought the fish could be the model for some outer space monster only a science fiction writer could think up. Sure enough, someone has.

I don’t know if Sabrina Vourvoulias saw that marine footage, but the critter she has roaming the zombie ghetto of Philadelphia could be the devil fish’s terrestrial prima:

The taste of her fear-driven flop sweat, her death, washes over my tongue, takes the edge off the hunger that’s always nested inside me. Taste prompts image. I see the girl, face upturned as she waits for her fix, then something striking fast at her chest. Not a knife, but a mouth with scimitar teeth that pop out like double switchblades.

Monsters like that go around emptying out innards and leaving human carcasses in their wake. Blanca is a cop and her job is to identify and cleanse. Of course, things grow complicated and dangerous.

Vourvoulias’ story, “Skin In The Game” will hit the streets in the December 2 issue of Tor.com. It’s not to be missed. “Skin In the Game” holds the reader’s interest with a fast-moving first-person story and a collective of interesting personages. The author’s use of short thematic paragraphs sets the pace. Cultural materials inform the story's logic with linguistic, orthographic, nicknaming, and food datos that add richness but without complexity that could confuse exogenous readers.

The story’s notable for its raza characters and setting. Boricuas, Dominicans for instance. The central character is a Mexicana cop-of-sorts from South Philly. The City of Brotherly Love suffers a terminal case of advanced irony. Social services have all gone to hell. Cop uniforms include heavy-soled boots to guard against discarded hypodermic needles that pave the sidewalks of this barrio.

Vourvoulias writes an arresting story with an eye-opening surprise that adds dimensions to the character’s personality while confirming suspicions the author cleverly plants like a sneeze in a greek tragedy. The author passes along matter-of-fact information about cultura. Tamaleras use platano and maíz hojas. Mejor, the Tamágicos have herbal concoctions that help people make good decisions and love one another. That's soul food of the first order.

Without making a big deal of her characters' latinidad, Sabrina Vourvoulias shows how diversity in SpecFic should work. “Skin In the Game” is one of those subversive stories science-fiction is noted for, helping people see with new eyes, to notice diversity but not make a big deal of the natural order of things, even if things are all dystopic.


Mark Vallen Eulogy for Richard Duardo

QEPD Richard Duardo. Artist and serigraphy master, Duardo played a key role in the technology of art.

Mark Vallen's recent eulogy for his contemporary offers a critical appreciation for Duardo and his influence in United States arte. Click here for Vallen's essay.  Don't miss Vallen's essay on the 43 missing from Ayotzinapa.

Mail Bag
Before it Goes to Video
No one who's seen Water & Power has walked away from the motion picture disappointed. Disappointment comes from the paucity of gente who bought tickets during its premiere theatrical run.

In the best of all possible cinema worlds, word of mouth would have ignited a frenzy of ticket-buying that snowballed enthusiasm to a point a major exhibition chain would pick up the title and just like that, chicano film would earn a place as a filmic investment vehicle.

Instead, like the Cesar Chávez biopic earlier in the year, the film faded after a short burst of enthusiasm.

The producers are showcasing the film at select theaters, using an internet-based ticketing service, tugg. It's a method of assuring a seat for the audience while reassuring theater owners of a likelihood of selling tickets, popcorn, and candy. But there's much more.

Producer Richard Montoya reminds, via email that this Los Angeles-area showing "will be one of the final opportunities to see W&P the way it was meant to be seen and heard - big screen and projected from the DCP drives - not high-def or blue ray but deeply saturated picture ingested into the projection system - the purest form and great sound."

Montoya invites you to share news of this special program. Find the details and link to the tugg event in Monterey Park at this link.


Gifting Season: Books Always Reliably Welcome

Arte Publico Press makes buying holiday presents thirty-five percent easier with an offer every book-lover may want to consider, especially with Christmas a month away. Visit Arte Publico's website for their catalog. The offer via telephone ordering expires on the 19th.

Raza Hollywood's Best-Kept Secret. Sci-fi. Cleaning Nopales.

Review: Water & Power. Written and Directed by Richard Montoya. Opened May 2 in limited release.

Michael Sedano

Spider Man outdraws the Water & Power twins ten-to-one. In 16 theaters over opening weekend, the Richard Montoya written and directed independent film pulls in 2350 ticket buyers per house, weekend gross $40,000. The big-budget arachnid plays 4300 screens filling 21,000 seats over Cinco de Mayo weekend, pulling in millions. The numbers are mediocre. I’m sure Spider Man’s marketers would prefer to have sold more tickets. They should have made a better movie and people wouldn't be bad-mouthing it. 

Richard Montoya has made a superior film, and it’s time more people bought tickets to see Water & Power and get their friends into seats. Audiences will see every dime of the producer’s minuscule budget on screen. Dine on a visual feast of Los Angeles imagery, get pulled along by a compelling script. All in all, Water and Power is the best film gente aren’t seeing.

Should Chicanas Chicanos go see Water & Power because it's a Chicano film, or because of Richard Montoya? No, but there's that. Mejor, go see Water & Power because it's genuinely worthwhile, thoughtful entertainment. Lots of raza in-jokes but an informed audience will find Water & Power completely accessible, funny, and respectful of the audience's intelligence.

 I saw Water & Power on a Monday morning in Arcadia, with maybe six movie-goers. That’s a tough thing, to be in an empty auditorium with a good flick. Water & Power comes at the viewer in fast, rough-and-tumble bits that overflow with wit and intensity. Explosive laughs and surreal surprises are so much better when a full house lets loose a Montoya-inspired belly laugh.

The story of two brothers nicknamed Power and Water, comes together in fragments, with childhood flashbacks adding depth to the tragedy unfolding in the lives of a pair of high-achievers. Both have contracts on their lives. The cop brother for assassinating a criminal shot-caller. The politician brother for insisting on planting a million trees along the LA River without cutting in condo developers.

With cinematographer Claudio Chea, Montoya creates visual poetry with Los Angeles its persona. The filmmakers enchant with lush night scenes, aerial shots looking down, traveling shots crossing the river channel. Chea and Montoya define “noir” by the look and feel they achieve in the play of light against blackness. Le noir, darkness, permeates places the brothers take refuge, and the choices the carnales face. Then Chea and Montoya create wonderful contrast in the bright overexposure of scenes with the ice cream-suited downtown fixer embodied by Clancy Brown. The Devil.

The fixer scenes become visual metaphors for invincible power and evil. "Come into the light," the scenes scream, echoing a biblical line “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” In the hard glare, Water learns his eastside connectas produce nothing but an opportunity to kneel at the devil’s feet. It's a savage moment leaving a viewer shifting uncomfortably in the seat.

Emilio Rivera as Norte/Sur carries the film, not solely owing  to his pivotal role between the two brothers but because the script gives him all the best lines. The audience watches mystified as Water acts like a vencido, treating a respectful Norte/Sur like shit. We’re on Norte/Sur’s side now, ambivalent about the good guy. Surprise and hilarity grow from a dance scene where Norte/Sur echoes Mae West, climaxing an arrestingly surreal scene that, more than any in the film, illustrates Montoya’s diabolical wit and his careful structuring of the film to arrive at this insightful moment completely disarmed.

Norte/Sur gets the best lines in the script, and the biggest laughs. For instance, climactic desperation builds life or death tension. Various barrios up in arms are out to revenge or protect, depends on whose side they’re with. Water, Power, and Norte/Sur sort out the alliances, strategizing whom to call upon from a roll call dozens of barrios and their muscle: San Pedro muscle, and Dog Town muscle, but not Frog Town muscle because of they're hooked up with Cypress Park muscle. Then how about Los Feliz muscle? A “who’s on first-“style double take, “Los Feliz has muscle?” Los Feliz is a mostly tony neighborhood bordering on Elysian Valley, the official name of Frog Town.

Local color is a constant feature of Montoya/Culture Clash scripts. Water & Power continues the technique, spreading the joy to the greater Los Angeles region. Out-of-towners will get most of the jokes. For sure, everyone’s going to enjoy the backhand Edward James Olmos takes when the characters are listing big Chicano stars. “Not Olmos” they declare unanimously, and Olmos—who produced the film—is crossed off the list, “no Eddie.”

Some of the juiciest, and inadvertently sentimental, local color occurs during a police line-up. Lupe Ontiveros, after a lifetime of playing house maids, steals her scenes as a brassy foul-mouthed cop. Ontiveros sounds completely convincing as an angry, empty-headed yes-woman cop acting tougher than any of the men around her. QEPD, Lupe Ontiveros.

While writer Richard Montoya is generous with the big laughs, he’s also incisive with a spectrum of lessons. Brotherhood and carnalismo come as a pair. Water and Power are little brother and big brother, but Norte/Sur is Power’s carnal. He gradually earns Water’s respect. Power and Norte/Sur’s intimacy comes with several surprises. Norte/Sur is paraplegic because Power shot him years ago. Norte/Sur is Power’s long-time snitch whose encyclopedic barrio knowledge makes Norte/Sur a kind of Greek chorus impelling the story along. I sense a sly homage to the shoeshine tipster in Baretta and Police Story.

No one will come to Water & Power seeking stereotypes or archetypes, and those who enter the auditorium with preconceived notions about gangs, cholos, cops, and chicanos will exit shaken. Maybe not about cops. The film opens with a speeding black and white, a uniformed officer enthusiastically hitting a bong.

The film doesn’t glorify gangsters nor offer an iconic nobility. For the most part, gang bangers exist as punchlines or puppets. Cholos, on the other hand, come with a look and a sense of humor. As personified in Norte/Sur, the cholo repels the straight Water vato but adds a different dimension to the hard ass cop persona of Power.

Water & Power, for all its chicana chicano characters is not about chicanismo. The film is about power, corruption, and moral expediency. The best lack all conviction, corruption infects all over, the cops, the fixers, the gangsters, the politicians, raza, Asian, anglo alike. They all come to a line, many cross it.

It’s not a chicano question it’s multi-ethnic: When opportunity conflicts with expediency, does a moral person do the right thing, even if life depends on it? Water & Power is puro noir. The characters do the right thing and get the bloody end of the stick anyhow. Evil walks away with clean feet, the audience walks away stunned, entertained, moved, informed. And eager to tell their friends, go see Water & Power.

How you got there, to be the one holding the stick, there’s a story in that. Told in Richard Montoya’s unique voice, it’s a story worth taking friends to see, Water & Power.


UCR Latinos in Sci-Fi Conference On-line at Latinopia

Interest among sci-fi writers and readers continues to grow around the idea to hold a science-fiction writers conference modeled on the National Latino Writers Conference once held on the National Hispanic Cultural Center's state-of-the-art campus in old Alburquerque.

Blogueros Ernest Hogan and Rudy Ch. García sat on the author panel at the recently concluded first-ever Latinos in Sci-Fi Conference hosted by the University of California, Riverside.

Jésus Treviño, a spec lit writer himself, filmed the panel and features it this week at Latinopia.

http://latinopia.com/latino-literature/latinopia-word-latino-science-fiction-1/

The Gluten-free Chicano
Peeling Nopales the No-Espina Way

Sadly, the title misleads a bit. Any time a cook prepares fresh nopalito pencas, an espina or two is sure to find a finger or palm. Así es, the romance of el nopal.

A sharp paring knife and careful finger placement between the espina carbuncles are two secrets to preparing nopales. 

Use a washable cutting board or work on newspaper. Draw the knife around the spiny perimeter of the cactus paddle, cutting away the outer ¼ inch of spininess.

Hold the penca flat and draw the knife across the face of the penca nearly horizonally. Most espina nubs cut right off. Dip the blade in a glass of water to wash away espinitas.

Steel the blade frequently to keep the edge slicing effortlessly.

Wash the pencas. There's a white espina in the top middle of the foto below.



Slice the pencas into ¼" strips. Draw the blade at a diagonal through the strips.

The nopalitos are ready to use in a salad, a stew, with scrambled eggs. Below, nopales simmer with carne de puerco. Later, the cook will add una torta de camarón.

Here's a The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks recipe for nopales con tortas de camarón.