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On Alejandro González Iñárritu: A review of 21 Grams in Five Branch Tree and a review of Babel by Aditya.
A Daniel Alarcón read at City Lights bookstore by Favianna.
orshouldi on José Saramago's Blindness.
Daniel Stephens reviews Fernando Meirelles' City of God.

Babel directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

As an Academy Award nominee for best picture, “Babel” was a startling choice. The movie, which was written by Guillermo Arriaga and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, is composed of three stories held together by a slender thread, and the mood is darkly calamitous; even the few joyous moments are suffused with dread. In the Arriaga-Iñárritu world, if something bad can happen it happens—hardly a typical American movie’s view of life. Earlier, the two men made, in Mexico, the bloody, turbulent “Amores Perros” (2000) and, in the United States, the dolorous “21 Grams” (2003), which starred Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro. Now, however, the collaborators have had a falling out (each claiming the greater credit for what appears in the movies). As they seem to be heading in separate directions, these fate-driven films can be seen as a kind of trilogy. All three send characters from separate stories smacking into one another in tragic accidents; all three jump backward and forward in a scrambling of time frames that can leave the viewer experiencing reactions before actions, dénouements before climaxes, disillusion before ecstasy, and many other upsetting reversals and discombobulations.

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Latin American Cinema

Interview with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Winner of the Golden Globe for best dramatic picture, "Babel" is nominated for seven Academy Awards including best picture, screenplay and director for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.

Gonzalez Inarritu, 43, is the first Mexican-born filmmaker to be nominated for a best director Oscar. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe and Directors Guild of America Award.

Shot in Africa, America and Japan in five different languages, the gritty drama revolves around the repercussions from the shooting of an American woman (Cate Blanchett) while vacationing with her husband (Brad Pitt) in Morocco.

The film marks the third collaboration between director and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga -- the two have since had a falling out -- which began seven years ago with the Oscar-nominated Mexican drama "Amores Perros."

They followed that up three years later with their first English-language production, "21 Grams," for which Naomi Watts and Benicio Del Toro received Oscar nominations

Gonzalez Inarritu began his professional career as a disc jockey at the top-rated Mexican station in 1984. By the end of the decade, he was composing music for features and short films.

In the 1990s, he was put in charge of production of a TV company and by 27 was one of its youngest directors. He segued into forming his company for producing advertising, short films and TV. Gonzales Inarritu made his first short feature, "Detras del Dinero" in 1995.

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Mexican Cinema

Interview with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's film "Babel" took home best director and jury prizes at Cannes and is up for a slew of Golden Globe awards, including best picture and best director. Alfonso Cuaron's "Children of Men" is at 91 percent on the critical opinion meter RottenTomatoes.com, making it one of the best-reviewed films of the year.
But during their separate visits to the District this season, both directors took time out from promoting their own films to ask if I'd seen the work of someone else.
Mr. Inarritu assured me I'd be blown away by "Pan." Mr. Cuaron marveled, "Isn't it amazing? That ending is so fantastic. ... Very powerful."
These are some strangely uncompetitive filmmakers -- and very good friends.
Mr. Inarritu, Mr. Cuaron and "Pan" director Guillermo del Toro all hail from Mexico and all are in their early- to mid-40s. While they've left their native land, they remain friends who have established Mexico as a hotbed of film talent.
"It must be the water," laughs Mr. del Toro.
"There is a fierceness in how we express ourselves that comes from need and hunger," he says more seriously. "When Alfonso and I started doing films 25 years ago, it was almost impossible to make a Mexican film. It was almost unheard of for a Mexican film to open in America. So we came out of adversity. And I think that makes your voice stronger."

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Interview with Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu

Alejandro González Iñárritu is not just a director; he’s a filmmaker, an auteur in the traditional sense of the word. His three films to date, all collaborations with screenwriter and novelist Guillermo Arriaga, have been conceived and developed by the duo, sidestepping the lure of big studio productions, as a director-for-hire, that most successful directors in Hollywood follow.
Not that he is opposed to it. “Well, there is always an idea, a subject, that I want to tackle,” he says about his choice of films, adding, “fortunately, or unfortunately, I just haven’t had the time, or perhaps the luck, to find something that interests me more than what I am working on. If it does, of course, I’d be open to it.”
His latest endeavor, Babel, distributed by Paramount Vantage, the specialty distribution arm of Paramount Pictures, is indeed a studio film. But just like 21 Grams, its predecessor, it was developed by Iñárritu and Arriaga, based on their own ideas.
Babel, the third in a trilogy that began over six years ago with Amores Perros, followed by the 2003 sensation 21 Grams, borrows the fractured narrative style of its predecessors. And like them, it is an exploration of human relations, of cause and effect, and of the way in which our destiny is the random end result of circumstances beyond our control. “Life is a sum of accidents,” says González Iñárritu, sitting in a plush sofa, legs propped on a chair, at the offices of Paramount Vantage in New York­­ where we met to discuss his film. “It’s a series of extraordinary events that we’ve lost the ability to question,” he asserts, adding: “A Cuban friend of mine says: ‘If a second is enough to end our lives, then it is certainly enough to change it.’ I think there are events and actions that determine our lives, and that of others, even across the world.”

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Latin American Cinema

Interview with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

An interview with Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu about his last film "Babel", which is tipped for an Oscar.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has become one of the most acclaimed directors in Hollywood with just three films - Amores Perros, 21 Grams and, now, Babel, perhaps the film he's received the most press for and one that will likely lead him to an Oscar nomination for best director. Part of the recent wave of Mexican directors, including Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron, Inarritu is a part of a new era of filmmakers who are willing to challenge viewers to see something new in the medium. As great as Perros and Grams were, Babel is Inarritu's first masterpiece, a fascinating dissection of culture, communication, and crisis in the new millennium.

What attracted studios to Babel

I don't know. I think maybe the [studio] people are tired to be making the same kinds of films. They feel that there's something, that maybe they can bet on some elements. Maybe they feel like the package makes sense and they trust in the elements, like the story, the director, the actors, and the way I pitched them. And, I presented them in a way that they trust. I think all of these people, maybe as you are, are bored, of doing and seeing the same thing. So, I gather that's what drives them, kind of the curiosity about this film.

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Latin American Film

Amores Perros directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

When a director shifts gears as often as does Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the man behind the emotionally rich debut film "Amores Perros," you may wonder if he knows what he wants. He does, and this film is satisfying in many ways.
He is unashamed to immerse this tough-minded, episodic film noir in freshets of melodrama. Significantly, he knows the minute difference between being unashamed and being shameless, and because he knows how to keep things hopping -- working from an intricate script by Guillermo Arrianga that has a novelistic texture -- we watch a man with immaculate control of the medium.(...)
It's rare that a director can enter films with this much verve and emotional understanding. Mr. Gonzalez Inarritu loves actors, and his cast brings so many different levels of feeling to the picture that the epic length goes by quickly. "Amores Perros" vaults onto the screen, intoxicated by the power of filmmaking -- speeded-up movement and tricked-up cuts that convey a shallow mastery of craft -- but evolving into a grown-up love of narrative. In his very first film Mr. Gonzalez Inarritu makes the kind of journey some directors don't, or can't, travel in an entire career.

You can find the review here