Past Tense


A brand new (yet short) entry! This outing we travel to a nostalgic land before it was overtaken in "The Lost City"...



The motion picture opened on April 28th, 2006. It was made with a budget of $9,600,000 (estimated); counting foreign receipts it made $5,256,839. The film opened number twenty-three at the box office, the following week it dropped to number twenty five.

The feature opened against "Stick It", "Ice Age: The Meltdown", "United 93" and "Silent Hill".

There was no slipcover, nor insert.

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The initial home video release on August 8th, 2006 was DVD only. There was only one exclusive from Target which sold the movie with a bonus disc for $15.99. The extra DVD came inside - in a two disc case.



Sorry, I do not have the weekly store ad.

Didn't get this title at the time. It became part of my collection from one of Dollar Tree's annual DVD sales (three times a year). This didn't happen until 2016. It was a blind buy and I hadn't known - thinking this was the regular edition was in fact the Target exclusive set... bought for a dollar.

Bonus has a run time of 2:00:05 minutes; presented in letterbox and full screen.

What is the difference between "The Making Of Lost City" documentaries? The original (on disc I) is 37:54 minutes long. The extended cut is 1:23:02, practically feature length (45:08 longer). The bonus deleted scenes have optional commentary by the director, Andy Garcia.

On May 1st, 2007 the Blu-Ray streeted for $29.98, this pretty much included all the extras from the Target disc.

Man, this feels like "Elizabethtown" (a previous Past Tense); a movie that bombs - yet gets a store exclusive.

By the way, the soundtrack sample "Guajira Clåsica" just plays from the menu screen, no way to flash forward or rewind. Say thank you - played with my Casio watch's stop watch function; 17:46 minutes. This extra didn't carry over to the BD release.

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Rant.

I should since this isn't well know.



"The Lost City" is a period drama set in late 1950s before the landscape changed. We follow Fico Fellove (Garcia) who is the owner of "El Tropico" night club in Cuba - a popular entertainment lounge. The rise of Fulgencio Batista among other things.

The film is about his family and how they reacted to the change; losing their freedoms, lives and culture vanishing. Thinking it would never be accepted/tolerated, a passing thing. Things which then brought about Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

Fico tries to keep his family together and fails... hard.

It's a somber tale with Fellove losing it all and making his way to New York trying to make enough money to bring his loved ones to America.



The thing is... some can't be saved, love is not enough. And would crush him if he even tried. There is no happy ending here. Depressing at times.

As I wrote, I didn't see this movie until '16. Glad I bought it, it's a solid flick.

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This was a long term pet project of actor/producer Andy Garcia. Which began in the late 1980s. A friend of his suggested he should read Guillermo Cabrerra Infante - who was an exiled Cuban. Life at the time when the nation was taken away.

Should be noted, the Garcia family were from Cuba and had fled.

The Cuban story would make a good movie. Garcia was working for Paramount and was trying to get them to green light the project. It never happened. So much time happened that at that point, Andy wanted to play the youngest Fellove sibling, Ricardo (now played by Enrique Murciano). When it finally happened - he played the eldest son.

During the press junkets, Garcia talks about memories of life in Havana. Not too many of them, he was very young; remembers his parents house and the beach which was nearby where he played.



Garcia was so passionate about the project - he took lessons to be proficient at piano so he could composed parts of the soundtrack. That's drive. This was his obsession which included gathering a library of island's music recordings. This was years in the making as was the feature.

I know that some didn't care for the film saying the editing was poor. I didn't have a problem with it. The other problem some had was - nobody was clean. Nobody is a saint, folks - we all have skeletons. And another is that the movie is too slow. Didn't feel like that for me. Lets say, this isn't a feature for everybody.

Can't fully recommend - you got to be in the mood to watch. But it's a worthwhile watch. This was Andy Garcia's directorial debut.

Doing research, discovered; Garcia did a concert in 1995 in Cuba for 16,000 refugees who were staying at the U.S. naval base on the island.

Okay. Lets make this lighter...

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Void.



Back in September of last year - was doing my usual internet thing; had an unexpected epiphany - in the early 1990s one of the IT girls was model turned actress - April Storms.

She pretty much came to fame due to a syndicated swimsuit TV special (Channel 9 here in SoCal), "U.S. Bikini Open". April really stood out from the other models, hot.

A Southern gal who only did swimwear shoots, no nudity. She was a semi-regular in "American Swimsuit" magazine. A Venus swimsuit model.

Then it hits me...



Storms was the pro-version of Playboy's model (never a centerfold) - Sara Jean Underwood. She appear in several episodes of the E! cable series, "The Girls Next Door".

April turned her minor fame into guest spots on TV shows and even had her own calendar. Why yes, I do own it. *wink* Never used, no marks on it, collector's item of sort. Indeed. April just like Sara was bubbly, a playful personality. A fun gal.

But unlike April, Sara is still working, an Instagram model today. Traveling the world under fan dollars - donations and doing various photos shoots. She does do nudity, mostly outdoor images. Sway.

Anyhow, April could've been as huge as Underwood, but she faded away. She could act well enough. And I don't think the non-nudity was a deal breaker. I'm under the thought she probably got married and started her own family, stopped modeling.

Man, for a few years she a was a bright star and even Hollywood took interest. Oh well. Wherever she is, I wish her well. There you go. Come back here on January 23rd for another bite into exclusive cake, it's got strawberry fosting. Honest, it's not blood. *cough cough*