Nacho Libre (Jared Hess, 2006)

[Lino]

All I know is this: I want THAT poster in my living room and I NEED to see this movie NOW!

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Yeah, I'm psyched to see this one as well. Plus, Peter Stormare's gonna be in it. The mind boggles at what kind of character he's going to play.

Jack Black interview/set visit articles

[Lino]

I have to say that the posters are just brilliant:

[rs98762001]

I like the posters, but that trailer is hell to sit through. Nothing worse than a movie already convinced of its own side-splitting hilarity.

[Barmy]

Is there a more annoying person on this planet than Jack Black?

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Is there a more annoying person on this planet than Jack Black?

Chris Tucker.

[Lino]

I agree. I can't stand no more that squeaky voice of his. At least Jack nailed that mexican accent right on the money.

I guess this one will be for those who enjoyed Napoleon Dynamite's quirky humour and want more, this time with a mexican flavour!

[dx23]

Is there a more annoying person on this planet than Jack Black?

Chris Tucker
Oprah Winfrey
Penelope Cruz
Tom Cruise
Paris Hilton
Donald Trump
Omarrosa
Terrell Owens
Michael Jackson
R Kelly
Bill O'Rilley
Joel Schumacker

I could go on, but its going to kill the thread. I didn't like Napoleon Dynamite, but I like wrestling, and like the 40 Year-Old Virgin, the poster is driving me to see the film.

[flyonthewall2983]

I must admit a curiosity to it too. There have not been many good films about wrestling, unfortunately.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

I must admit a curiosity to it too. There have not been many good films about wrestling, unfortunately.

There was an excellent of episode of Angel entitled "The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco" that paid homage to the Mexican wrestler genre. But yeah, other that you'd be hard pressed to find anything decent.

[flyonthewall2983]

There's also the episode of Quantum Leap where he leaps into a wrestler with a Russian gimmick. The thing I remember most is where he goes into the locker room and tries to speak in what little Russian he knows, to find out that they are actually Texans lol. But what I'd like to see eventually is one of these autobiographies the WWE has produced turned into a screenplay, hopefully Mick Foley's book which was the NYT best-seller from what I remember. And have it done with respect to the business yet to be as truthful as one can.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Sombra Dolorosa is a fun little film. Maddin is apparently a big fan of the old Santo movies, so maybe he'll revisit the theme someday. Takashi Miike made a couple of wrestling films, but one of them (Silver) is terrible and I haven't seen the other (A Human Murder Weapon, reviewed here).

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Yeah, I'm psyched to see this one as well. Plus, Peter Stormare's gonna be in it. The mind boggles at what kind of character he's going to play.

Jack Black interview/set visit articles: http://www.latinoreview.com/filmpreview.php?id=157

Latino Review as more pics at the above URL.

[Lino]

Wow, this one came right out of the blue: it seems that Beck is scoring this film! Read more here and while you're at it, say hello to our Martha!

[Oedipax]

As a fan of his music for many years, reading Beck's comments on Hess being right up there with Fellini kind of made me want to die. Artistically he's been declining in recent years (for me it started to go wrong with Sea Change and only improved a little with Guero) but this practically puts the final nail in the coffin. Then again, maybe the film will surprise me and turn out to be great. Here's hoping, I guess.

Edit: Also, I guess this is nitpicking, but is this really the very first film Beck has scored? I was under the impression he'd done things for Steve Hanft at least, for his short films and features, one of which is seeing a DVD release soon.

[ben d banana]

Mormon + Scientologist = Naptime

[Lino]

Second trailer is up

[Dylan]

Danny Elfman is now scoring this.

There is no article online yet, but Dan Goldwasser of soundtrack.net knows Elfman (and his agents) and has confirmed the rumor.

It's recording in LA in a week. Wonder what happened to Beck?

I have no comment on the film, but the score could be fun.

[Oedipax]

Maybe Beck's just going to contribute a song to the soundtrack, not unlike what he's done for lots of other movies. No big deal.

[cdnchris]

I broke down and finally watched the trailers. I think I laughed more during the one trailer than the two times I watched Napoleon Dynamite, so I might give this one a go after initially dismissing it. Could be fun.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

article in The New York Times:

May 28, 2006
Who's That Masked Man and Where Did He Learn to Wrestle Like That?
By LEWIS BEALE

WHEN Jared Hess, best known as the director of "Napoleon Dynamite," was in Mexico City casting "Nacho Libre," a new comedy in which Jack Black plays a priest in training turned wrestler, he auditioned a number of real-life wrestlers, who showed up wearing colorful masks.

Naturally, Mr. Hess asked them to remove their disguises. But they all refused.

And he thus learned the first rule of Mexican wrestling, known as lucha libre (literally "free fight"): Iconography is everything.

"We learned very quickly that asking them to remove their masks was too much," said Mr. Hess, whose film opens on June 16. "There's a lot of integrity in that."

Integrity is only part of it. Considered kitsch by some, a unique cultural phenomenon by others, masked wrestlers have been popular in Mexico since the 1930's, when an American promoter introduced the concept south of the border. Because masks played a ceremonial role in pre-Columbian Indian cultures, the disguises went over especially well. Today their wearers embody a combination of average Joe and working-class avenger.

"The lucha mask is a symbol of strength and empowerment in the Mexican and Chicano culture," said Michelle Martinez of the Department of Chicano Studies at Arizona State University. "The mask goes back to Aztec and Mayan times, and also brought the luchador to the superhero level. It gave them this larger than human appeal."

The lucha culture spoofed in "Nacho Libre" approached its peak in the 1950's with the ascendancy of El Santo, el Enmascarado de Plata (Santo, the Silver Masked Man), the greatest star of the Mexican ring. Santo, whose real name was Adolfo Guzman Huerta, became a sort of Everyman hero who stood up for the rights of the oppressed. He starred in comic books and more than 50 movies, and because he never removed his mask — either in his films or in public — he remained a mysterious figure even in death. (Guzman Huerta, who died in 1984, was buried in his headgear.)

Other luchadores, with names like Blue Demon and Mil Mascaras (Thousand Masks), followed Santo to the silver screen, and from the 50's through the 80's they appeared in numerous films, battling everyone from Dracula and the Daughter of Frankenstein to the Mummies of Guanajuato. With their cheap production values, cliché-ridden dialogue and barely competent performances, these films make it look as if Ed Wood had a secret career in Spanish-language pulp. But they were enormous successes at the time and gave Hispanic children their own cinematic role models.

"They can be dismissed as sort of low-end rip-offs of other genre films made in America," said the Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro, whose latest work, "Pan's Labyrinth," opens this year. The movies have a "surreal logic to them," he said, "and sometimes they achieve almost a dreamlike quality. There is a zany, non-Anglo sensibility that is less sophisticated, but far more charming in many ways."

Lucha bears only a passing resemblance to the arena rock stylings of American pro wrestling. Although they both have heroes and villains, and many of the rules are the same, the audiences and symbolism are entirely different. In lucha, occasional matches involve masked wrestlers who bet their disguises. If one can unmask the other, the loser must reveal his true identity. And the longer a luchador defends his mask, the higher his status in the ring. There are also matches in which the loser is forced to shave his head, a symbolic moment in the land of machismo.

Lucha libre is "a family event," said Mike White, one of the screenwriters of "Nacho Libre." "When you go to these matches, you see little kids to old ladies. It's a community event, not just for teenage boys."

In recent years lucha has also become an example of rasquachismo, an essentially indefinable term that describes underdog art containing elements borrowed from other cultures. As an illustration, Professor Martinez mentioned a luchador whose headgear features Aztec and Louis Vuitton designs. There are also luchadores who perform under names like Destructor Nazi (complete with swastika armband), Robot R2 and Ultraman. "Lucha," Professor Martinez said, "is really an assemblage of a lot of international influences, but the ritual that goes along with it is very Mexican."

That essential Mexican identity has not stopped American hipsters from latching onto lucha style and adding their own little touches. There are fanboy-oriented lucha Web sites like frompartsunknown.net; several rock bands perform wearing lucha masks; stitching patterns for lucha head gear can be ordered over the Internet. There's even a lucha noir novel called "Hoodtown," and at least two children's cartoon shows, "Mucha Lucha!" and "Ultimate Muscle," have featured lucha performers. Then there's Lucha Va Voom, a touring show of wrestlers, comedians and burlesque that seems to be a convergence of rasquachismo and camp.

"Nacho Libre" borrows its inspiration as well, some of it from historical sources. A 1963 Mexican lucha movie called "El Señor Tormenta" told the story of a priest who becomes a luchador in order to save his orphanage. The film encouraged a real priest, the Rev. Sergio Gutierrez Benítez, to take up wrestling in order to save a shelter for homeless children in the port city of Veracruz. Fighting under the name Fray Tormenta (Brother Storm), he appeared in more than 1,000 matches and raised enough money to shelter more than 3,000 street kids. (A similar story was told in "The Man in the Golden Mask," a 1990 French film starring Jean Reno and Marlee Matlin.)

Mr. Hess, who said he had seen several Santo movies in college and was "blown away by the aura and mystique surrounding luchadores," heard about Fray Tormenta several years ago. When the opportunity arose to make a film about lucha libre, he said, "I jumped at it."

Mr. White added: "Those movies brought Jared to the edge of giddy rapture. It seemed like this was an untapped place to draw comedy from."

Whether "Nacho Libre" will plug into negative Mexican stereotypes is another matter. Lucha may appear to be pop culture kitsch, but its adherents take it seriously. Lourdes Grobet, whose decades-long love affair with the sport culminated in "Lucha Libre: Masked Superstars of Mexican Wrestling," a book of her photographs, said that anyone who thinks lucha and the lucha films are camp is indulging in "a social class prejudice."

Richard Montoya, an actor who appears in the film and is also a member of the Chicano performance-art group Culture Clash, said he believes Mr. Hess "applied his smarts to this" and "found an uncanny way of staying clear" of stereotypes.

"I think a lot of Mexicans will find the real Mexico in this film," Mr. Montoya said. "Besides, it seems every time a Mexican puts on a mask, it changes the world. Zorro wore a mask. Subcomandante Marcos wears a mask. There seems to be something Mexican about the individual who dons the mask but represents the masses."

[Antoine Doinel]

Y'know I didn't really get the fuss over Napolean Dynamite and the early press on Nacho Libre wasn't doing much for me either. Until I saw the trailer before X-Men: The Last Stand - it finally sold me on the fact that this wasn't just Jack Black acting "mexican" for ninety minutes. Funny, funny stuff. I will definitely be checking this out.

[Antoine Doinel]

I saw this last week, but it's actually taken me a bit of time to get my head around it. For those who haven't seen it:

SpoilerShow

As I mentioned previously in the thread, I was not a fan of Napolean Dynamite, but there is something endearingly innocent about Hess' work that really shines through in Nacho Libre. For many viewers, the religious overtones will fly right over their head - some will resent it - but the overriding theme of Nacho Libre is of finding one's path/method to serve God. I don't think it's a coincidence that (a) Nacho never wins a fight (b) the theme song of the movie has the chorus "I am a real religious man". Nacho's acceptance of his faith and serving the orphan children are the film's arc NOT his (in)ability to fight. This is definitely one of the most subtly religious mainstream Hollywood films I have probably ever seen. All that said, if you like Jack Black, there is much to enjoy here.

Oh yes, it almost must be said that I haven't seen a director since Fellini (yes, that Fellini) which such a gift for capturing unique faces. Hess a potentially great, masterful work within him once he decides to take on some more serious scripts.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

That's interesting. I finally saw this one and quite enjoyed it. At first, I thought that this was going to be another physical role for Black to indulge in his usual John Belushi-esque theatrics and he has certainly been overexposed as of late but this film reminded me of his initial appeal and how good he can be with the right material.

It was nice to see Nacho Libre continuing Jared Hess' fascination with outsiders. Black's character seemed is a lot like Napoleon Dynamite in that both are individualists who go against the grain of mainstream society and are shunned as a result. However, they also don't seem all that interested in being a part of that world.

I was also getting kind of a Wes Anderson vibe with this film... it had the same kind of warm, whimsical approach.