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Archive for January, 2009

Life torn Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is a Korean War veteran who lives in an urban Detroit neighborhood among Hmong immigrants. Kowalski’s once peaceful neighborhood is now a victim of gang violence. Upon his wife’s death, Kowalski slowly and reluctantly comes to know his neighbors as more than racial stereotypes. Eventually he comes to realize that he has more in common with them than his own spoiled family, who see him as an old racist useful only in what he can do for them. As the gang violence escalates and threatens to consume the lives of his newfound friends and neighbors, Kowalski decides he must take matters into his own hands in order to protect them.

A wonderful movie of embracing cultural diversity by both Kowalski and his Vietnamese neighbors. Eastwood brings a bit of geriatric Dirty Harry to the screen. Seems the older he gets the better actor and director he becomes. This movie is not for the cultural hypersensitive as our characters evolve, but in the end it  makes a strong social statement. Great movie.

Rating:  4.5 our ot 5

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is a 1921 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, first published in Colliers Magazine, and subsequently anthologized in his book Tales of the Jazz Age (occasionally published as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories).^[1]. Developed for years by the late Hollywood mogul Ray Stark, the rights and story development were purchased from the Ray Stark Estate and adapted for a 2008 film of the same name directed by David Fincher.

In the book, the story begins with the birth of the protagonist, Benjamin in 1860. Benjamin is born with the physical appearance of a seventy-year-old man, and when his father first visits him mere hours after his birth he is already able to speak. To avoid embarrassment, Benjamin’s father forces him to shave his beard and dye his hair in order to look younger. He also forces Benjamin to play with the other neighborhood boys, and buys him toys and orders him throughout the day to play with them. Benjamin obediently plays with them, but only to please his father as Benjamin has more joy in smoking his father’s cigars, reading encyclopedias, and talking to his grandfather. He is even sent to kindergarten at the age of five, but is quickly withdrawn from the class after repeated instances of falling asleep during kid-oriented activities.

As the story progresses it soon becomes apparent to the Button family that Benjamin is aging backwards which astounds them beyond belief. At the age of eighteen he enrolls in Yale University. However, having run out of hair-dye on the day that he is supposed to register for classes, the officials at Yale send him away believing that he is a fifty-year-old lunatic.

Several years later, while attending a party with his father (who now looks to be the same age as Benjamin), Benjamin meets the young Hildegarde Moncrief, the daughter of a respected Civil War general. Hildegarde tells Benjamin that she would rather be with an older man because they treat women better. He dances with her, and they quickly fall in love and marry. Benjamin soon takes over his father’s hardware business, and he proves to be highly adept at the job, while growing fabulously rich.

As Benjamin “grows younger,” he begins to feel healthier and happier, as Fitzgerald says, “the blood flowed with new vigour through his veins.” However, his wife ceases to attract him as she ages, and he soon decides to fight in the Spanish-American War. He serves with great distinction and receives a medal for a wound he received at the Battle of San Juan Hill. When he returns home his relationship with his wife deteriorates further, and he becomes more detached from her. He often leaves the house and goes to lavish parties and dances, while his wife is more settled in her ways.

In 1910 Benjamin turns over control of his company to his son, Roscoe, and enrolls at Harvard, with the appearance of a 20-year-old. His first year at Harvard is a great success, and he dominates on the football field. However, by the time Benjamin reaches his senior year he is a frail sixteen-year-old too weak to play football and barely able to cope with the academic load.

Benjamin returns home, and as the years progress he goes from being a moody teenager to being a young boy and is reluctantly cared for by his son. Eventually, he looks to be the same age as his own grandson, and even attends kindergarten with him. As his body grows younger, Button slowly begins to lose his memory of his earlier life. The toys and games that he spurned as a newborn begin to interest him. As he reaches the end of his life he becomes a baby, and his nurse Nana takes him for walks and teaches him to say words. His memory deteriorates to the point where he can’t remember anything except the immediate present, and eventually, all goes dark.

In the movie, which opens on the day that Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, elderly Daisy Williams nee Fuller is on her deathbed in a New Orleans hospital. At her side is her adult daughter, Caroline. Daisy asks Caroline to read to her aloud the diary of Daisy’s lifelong friend, Benjamin Button. Benjamin’s diary recounts his entire extraordinary life, the primary unusual aspect of which was his aging backwards, being born an old man who was diagnosed with several aged diseases at birth and thus given little chance of survival, but who does survive and gets younger with time. Abandoned by his biological father, Thomas Button, after Benjamin’s biological mother died in childbirth, Benjamin was raised by Queenie, a black woman and caregiver at a seniors’ home. Daisy’s grandmother was a resident at that home, which is where she first met Benjamin. Although separated through the years, Daisy and Benjamin remain in contact throughout their lives, reconnecting in their forties when in age they finally match up. Some of the revelations in Benjamin’s diary are difficult for Caroline to read, especially as it relates to the time past this reconnection between Benjamin and Daisy, when Daisy gets older and Benjamin grows younger into his childhood years.

Although there is some deviation from the story, I personally like the way it is told in the movie because it is based in New Orleans and having lived there for so long before the storm, it was quite nostalgic to see some familiar sights. Recognizing buildings, areas of town and even some of the houses was a delight. The movie was almost 3 hrs long but not boring. Well put together. It was a good medium for Brad Pitt and showed some real versatility in his acting ability. The movie gives the view the whole gamut of the range of emotions. A must see.

Rating: 4.8 our of 5

Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 drama film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Simon Beaufoy. It is based on the book Q and A written by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup.

Jamal Malik, a former street child from Mumbai, is being interrogated by the police. He is a contestant on Kaun Banega Crorepati, the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and has made it to the final question but has been accused of cheating.

The explanation of how he knew the answers leads us through the history of his short but full life, including scenes of obtaining the autograph of a famous Bollywood star (Amitabh Bachchan); the death of his mother during an anti-Muslim riot in the slums; and how he and his brother Salim befriended an orphaned girl, Latika. Jamal refers to Salim and himself as Athos and Porthos, and Latika as the third Musketeer, whose name they do not know, not having read far enough in the book.

Living on the trash heaps, they are discovered by Maman, a gangster who runs an orphanage and then uses the children to beg and bring in money. Salim is groomed to become a part of Maman’s operation, and is tasked to bring Jamal so he can be blinded to improve his income potential as a blind singer. Salim rebels against Maman to protect his brother, and the three children try to escape, but only Salim and Jamal are successful. Latika is re-captured by Maman’s organization and raised as a culturally talented prostitute whose virginity will fetch a high price.

The brothers eke out a living, traveling on top of trains, selling goods, pretending to be tour guides at the Taj Mahal, and pickpocketing. Jamal eventually insists that they return to Mumbai since he wishes to locate Latika. When he finds her working as a dancer in a brothel, the brothers attempt to rescue her, but Maman intrudes, and in the resulting conflict Salim draws a gun and kills Maman. Salim then uses the fact that he killed Maman to obtain a job with Javed, a rival crime lord. Salim claims Latika as his own, and when Jamal protests, Salim threatens to kill him and Latika intervenes, accepting her fate with Salim.

Years later, Jamal is working as an assistant in a call center, serving tea to the employees. When he is asked to cover for a co-worker for a couple of minutes, he searches the database for Salim and Latika. He gets in touch with Salim, who has become a high-ranking lieutenant in Javed’s organization. Salim invites Jamal to live with him and, after following Salim to Javed’s house, he sees Latika living there. He talks his way in as the new dishwasher and tries to convince Latika to leave. She rebukes his advances, but he promises to be at the train station every day at 5 p.m. One day Latika attempts to rendezvous with him, but is recaptured by Javed’s men and Salim. One slashes her cheek with a knife, scarring her.

Jamal again loses contact with Latika when Javed moves to another home. In another attempt to find Latika, Jamal tries out for the game show because he knows that she will be watching. He makes it to the final question, despite the hostile attitude of the host who feeds Jamal an incorrect answer during a break. At the end of the episode’s taping, Jamal has one question left to win 20 million rupees and is taken into police custody, where he is tortured as the police attempt to learn how Jamal, a simple slumdog, could know the answers to so many questions. After Jamal tells his whole story, explaining how his life experiences coincidentally enabled him to know the answer to each question, the police inspector calls his explanation “bizarrely plausible” and allows Jamal to return to the show for the final question. At Javed’s safehouse, Latika watches the news coverage of Jamal’s miraculous run on the show. Salim gives Latika the keys to his car and his phone and urges her to run away. When Jamal uses his Phone-A-Friend lifeline to call Salim, Latika answers his phone and they reconnect. She does not know the answer to the final question either, but believing that “it is written”, Jamal guesses the correct answer (Aramis) to the question of the one Musketeer whose name they never learned, and wins the grand prize. Simultaneously, Salim is discovered to have helped Latika escape and allows himself to be killed in a bathtub full of money after shooting and killing Javed. Later that night, Jamal and Latika meet at the train station, and finally share a kiss.

B grade cinematography to an interesting plot and editing.

Rating:  4 our of 5