A beautifully shot, but serious film set in India around the time of Gandhi about Hindu widows isolated from society by their religion. One of the Academy Award nominees for Best Foreign Language Film from Canada.
Warning: spoilers, maybe. There’s a little twist to this film which can catch you by surprise if you aren’t paying attention, as I wasn’t. Revenge plays a major part in this film, and upon reflection I felt its lack of limits was rather too immoral. There’s also gratuitous and random violence as well. Dialog makes mention of North by Northwest, but this is nothing like that classic.
Still, I couldn’t complain much about much of the beginning of the movie where
Harnett wears only a towel. In some shots you see him next to other
actors, and you realize he is way tall.
Once in awhile Charlie Rose has interesting guests. Today Henry Kissinger gave an interesting spin on the the Iraq war. I can’t repeat everything he said, but just that it was more historical and philosophical and provided some hope. One thing he mentioned was that eventually the people in Iraq will no longer want chaos and may come to a political solution themselves. He also expressed optimism about diplomacy working among Iraq and its neighbors.
Last week it seemed like they’d changed the format of this show to be more 1:1 Q&A rather than a free for all, but this week it was back to a more free form discussion. Once in awhile, they have the bespectacled, yet cute Jeff Zeleny from the New York Times.
While it stays very close to the book, the movie seems at times lifeless. I think it is partly because the movie is so close to the book, that nothing is a surprise in the film. While Hanks plays easily the everyman which is Robert Langdon and is required by the script, it seems like someone so knowledgeable about esoteric affairs of the past should be more interesting. But this is a failing perhaps of the book rather than the movie. Nevertheless, Ian McKellan who plays Leigh Teabing is wonderful in the film. I guess I kind of wish they had taken more liberties with the script to make the characters slightly different or the plot points more of a surprise.
The conspiracy theories abound in this movie about oil and the Middle East. Set in Lebanon and a fictitious Arab country. George Clooney and Matt Damon put in fair performances as respectively a CIA agent and a energy analyst turned financial advisor to a Prince/Emir. It reduces nearly all the Americans dealing in with the Arabs in the movie to money grubbing and immoral people. Perhaps it’s deserved and truthful, but seems rather too one sided.
I didn’t really like this story of an aspiring artist who attempts to win the heart of a sitter model. A good effort by the actors in the film. It somehow struck all the wrong notes for me.
Extremely candid and in many parts funny autobiography by the actor. He talks
about how he was shaped by his parents into what he was. His father who left the mother seemed to always withhold approval of John. For example, he disapproves of John’s acting career. This, he believed, fueled his drive to be successful. He mentions
the all important obsession on losing ones virginity in adolescence and how it bonded all the (presumably straight) boys from different backgrounds in the neighborhood. At various points, he clarifies that
he’s not gay, and piles the hate on River Phoenix for stealing his girl, even though he knows River is dead now. Leguizamo is not a nice guy really, but the book is at least somewhat interesting.
Not so great and expensive to visit museum in South Beach, Florida. Some good Kahlo paintings, a few large medieval tapestries, a few Japanese wood block prints, and one Rubens painting does not a museum make. And $15 admission to see some mediocre Jade carvings, what a rip.
Not spectacular, but not a bad museum on the University of Florida campus.
