venezuelan television

being marooned on a gorgeous caribbean island (isla margarita), my viewing options have been slim. thanks to the programmers of venezuelan television, however, I have seen two movies I most likely would not otherwise have come across: Speak and Life/Drawing or Apartment 12. Speak features one of my personal favourites, Steve Zahn, playing a wild art teacher that mentors a teenage girl (a very haunted Kristin Stewart) who went through a traumatic experience at a party that caused her to lose her friends and her place in the world. the movie's very simple and sad and pretty well done. I love Steve because I worked on a movie with him in Auburn, NY called Blowin' Smoke (which we shot as Freak Talks About Sex). it's probably not that good, but my name is in the credits, along with Steve's. Apartment 12 stars Mark Ruffalo as an artist whose girlfriend breaks up with him, causing him to wallow in self-pity until he meets a girl from Colorado who entered the Air Force afterhigh school and is far too much of a hick for the painter's pretentious sensibilities. the movie has a lot of apartment antics - wacky neighbors abound.