A viewing tip for those of you with cable... As reported by Flickhead a couple of days ago, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting 5 (count them 5!) Luis Buñuel films: Los Olvidados, Nazarín, Viridiana , El Angel Exterminador and Simón del Desierto. Fantastic films all, and none available on DVD in the US.
And it's not just Buñuel -- TCM is also planning a month long tribute to the best of the Mexican cinema. Certainly, the Cinco de Mayo holiday provides a convenient placemat for this embarrassment of riches, but who cares? It's high time that Mexican films are receiving some mainstream recognition in the US, along with such great actors and personalities such as Cantinflas, Maria Felix, Pedro Armendáriz, Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante, Silvia Pinal (who appears in several of the Buñuel films already mentioned) and Tin Tan, directors like Fernando de Fuentes, Emilio "El Indio" Fernandez and Roberto Gavaldon, and the ridiculously great cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. I grew up on the border and saw many of these movies on Mexican TV, and for a lot of people of my parents' generation and older, these figures were stars that rivaled the brilliance of those coming from Hollywood. If your knowledge of Mexican films is limited to recent arthouse hits and horror and wrestler movies (great and fun as they may be), treat yourself to some of the best pictures of the Golden Age of Mexican Film, la Epoca de Oro. And for those of you without cable TV (like me), ¡la vida no vale nada!
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