Cross-Cultural Trumpeting
So this Egyptian police band walks into a remote Israeli town.
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So this Egyptian police band walks into a remote Israeli town.
What audience is the Charlie Bartlett aimed at?
Imagine that you're a film editor and a German director walks into your office and pitches this idea: "We're going to go into the middle of the Amazon, find a giant mountain straddling two rivers, blow it up and move a large boat across." Seriously.
This Sunday marked the conclusion of the Sundance Film Festival, the biggest event of the year for American independent film. Long seen as a festival showcasing up-and-coming directors like Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, P.T. Anderson and many others, the festival has recently become a launching point for commercially popular films. Little Miss Sunshine and Napoleon Dynamite were both sold to distributors during the festival and were classified as successful before ever reaching the masses. Yet the festival has displayed more than quirky comedies with broad-based appeal; diversity of genre, topic and production value can be considered a major tenet of the event. Indeed, Sundance director and Penn alum Geoffrey Gilmore pointed out that last year's festival featured Zoo, a documentary about bestiality.
The best
My good friend Joseph McCarthy was the greatest American ever to live. He fought to rid America of the godless Communists committed to the destruction of our way of life. While his original list of Communists helped so many Americans, there was one man he forgot to include -- George Clooney. I know for a fact that Mr. - or should I say Comrade - Clooney is a Communist spy out to subvert Hollywood.
With I'm Not There, Todd Haynes has made a truly innovative movie. Though it tells the story of Bob Dylan's life, it is in no way a typical biopic. In fact, the movie has no plot in the traditional sense, and instead consists of a series of episodes about six fictional characters whose lives all mimic a part of Dylan's life. That said, these episodes convey a better sense of Bob Dylan the person than any typical linear narrative possibly could.
War and Peace
Fred Claus tries to tell an updated version of the Santa Claus story by bringing in Santa's relatives and adding some modern flourishes, but it ends up being a formulaic cash-in on the holidays that only those under the age of six will enjoy.
Is there a particular message people will get out of this?
This movie marks the directorial debut for Gilroy, who wrote the screenplays for the Bourne trilogy. Compared to the hyperkinetic Bourne movies, Clayton is a much more thoughtful effort. It follows - you guessed it - Michael Clayton (Clooney), a sort of crisis-management man for a large New York law firm that represents a fictitious company charged with producing a cancer-causing fertilizer. Right at the outset of the movie, Clayton's car blows up (lucky for him he's not in it). Then in a classic Tarantino-like move, Gilroy spends the next hour and a half taking the viewer through the previous four days to show how Clayton got himself into a position where someone would put a bomb in his car.
White Collar:
In this dark comedy, Finn Earl (Anton Yelchin), a teenager from New York City, is planning to have the summer of a lifetime studying the Iskanani tribe in the Amazon with his anthropologist father. However, due to an unfortunate turn of events, he ends up staying in America with his mother Liz (Diane Lane), a masseuse-for-hire. The two end up living on the estate of Liz's client Ogden C. Osborne (Donald Sutherland), the seventh-wealthiest man in America. Making the best of the situation, Earl decides to conduct an anthropological study of Osborne's family.
Director Olivier Dahan's new film La Vie en Rose had its Philadelphia premiere last Thursday night at the Philadelphia Film Festival and it received a standing ovation. After the screening, Dahan himself briefly appeared to answer audience questions, but he sat down with Street for an interview the following day.
The Italian, one of the best movies so far this year, follows Vanya (Kolya Spiridonov), a young boy in an orphanage in rural Russia. At the outset, an Italian couple decides to adopt him; the remainder of the film follows Vanya in his final days as an orphan, struggling over whether his real mother might try to find him after he goes to Italy. He eventually goes on a quest to find her.
The Italian, one of the best movies so far this year, follows Vanya (Kolya Spiridonov), a young boy in an orphanage in rural Russia. At the outset, an Italian couple decides to adopt him; the remainder of the film follows Vanya in his final days as an orphan, struggling over whether his real mother might try to find him after he goes to Italy. He eventually goes on a quest to find her.
Catch and Release is no work of art, and the filmmakers know it. In one scene, a character flat out remarks that mainstream flicks today provide more gimmicks and cheap thrills than commercials. Ironically, in a blatant display of product placement, Cuisinart and KitchenAid boxes prominently stand out in a scene - blurring the line between cinema and advertisement.
At the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, Mexican director Alejandro González I¤árritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams) won the Best Director Award for his most recent film Babel. Often going against Hollywood conventions, I¤árritu's films are always out of sequential order and nearly every shot uses a handheld camera. Recently, I¤árritu spoke to Street in a roundtable discussion to talk more about Babel and his career.
Following in the wake of Syriana and The Constant Gardener, Babel is a thought-provoking film examining a multitude of characters and locales.
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