MACHETE, reviewed, in eJUMPCUT Magazine: Marina Wood on Robert Rodriguez's Labor/Immigrant Rights, Gorefest Classic

Up and coming cultural studies-maven, Marina Wood, has a great piece on MACHETE I just ran across in the online incarnation of Jump Cut magazine. Wood's reading is rich--informed as much by her graduate training in cultural studies as by her down and brown day jobs working as a domestic rights violence prevention coordinator and an undocumented labor educator in California's Inland Empire. She also has a gift for next-generation Christmas ornaments.

¿Sí, se puede...o no? I CAN'T believe I forgot about this wacky little linguistic sequence á la Robert Rodriguez

Las Teclas de Negro

Akron blues-rock duo, The Black Keys, or Las Teclas de Negro as they are billed in this fake trailer, tip their sombreros to Robert Rodriguez in their latest music video.

Machete! Danny Trejo Interview in Time Magazine

Chicanos With Moolah Doing Everything They Can With Their SuperPowers to Ingrain Specific "Mexican" Stereotypes

I am a huge fan of Tarantino and Rodriguez--but you've got to admit that the subversive agit prop semiotics of the original Spy Kids is not fueling his cinematic furnace these days! I know, color me pedantic Mother Superior, but you KNOW I have a point! At some point, faced with the pleasure of making cinema and the responsibility that comes with having been tapped as an outpost of Chicano-ness in Lala-land, you've got to find a way to make it work--elsewise, Robert Rodriguez becomes like Richard Rodriguez in Hunger of Memory, the scene where he, in a scene of academic/existential malpractice, counsels Chicano undergraduates AWAY from academe. Ok, it's not really the same thing, but close. That piece is archived here. Meanwhile, Robert's got lots of other things on his mind as he conjures the bloody contours of Machete.