January 27, 2005

Los Olvidados - The Young and the Damned?

Los Olvidados

J Ho calls it a personal favorite and so does Cinecultist, it's Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados. Playing for two weeks at Film Forum with a new 35mm print starting tomorrow, CC's so psyched for some brutual Mexican surrealism. A story of street children trying to eek out a life in Mexico City's slums, Los Olvidados kicks you in the teeth and you beg for more. There's a reason that Buñuel's in the pantheon and watching this "masterpiece" will further cement why.

Like Dalì's lobster telephone, which alters the way you think about shellfish and telecommunication devices forever once you've stared at it long enough, Los Olvidados does funny things to your brain in relationship to roosters. You never knew they were the birds of the subconscious, but once Buñuel plants that idea in your mind, it's tough to shake it.

PS. For a little more winterish New York-based surrealism, check out this weekend's Idiotarod. "The Iditarod is the famous long-distance race in which yelping dogs tow a sled across Alaska. Our Idiotarod is pretty much the same thing, except that instead of dogs, it's people, instead of sleds, it's shopping carts, and instead of Alaska it's New York City." The thing starts in Brooklyn and ends at Tompkin Square park in the Eee Vee, so between that on Saturday and the Hot Chocolate Festival in front of City Bakery on Sunday, CC thinks we have our weekend plans pretty mapped out.

Posted by karen at January 27, 2005 11:49 PM