by Sandy | Aug 13, 2011 | Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, dvd, Film
French film, A Prophet (Un Prophète, 2009) directed by Jacques Audiard struck me as a cautionary tale for wayward youth. It details the experiences of 19 year old Malik (Tahar Rahim) as he serves his 8 year prison sentence for refusing to cooperate with police.
A product of juvenile detention facilities, incarceration in an adult prison matures him, not in the way usually meant. Instead of rehabilitation, “learning his lesson” while repaying his debt to society, etc., prison teaches him questionable survival skills and he toughens. What he learns in prison far surpasses what he could have learned on the streets.
Surviving alone may work on the outside, but in captivity, being part of a group is vital, and being the top dog in that group is prime, doing whatever it takes to get there. Malik adapts to the inhumanity that surrounds him and prospers.
You get drawn into the story and after awhile, you start to root for this young man and want him to rise above somehow. Which perhaps is a testament to both the acting and writing because Malik does some evil stuff, but you still want him alive and freed after his 8 years. (It’s not so much that you want him to “win”- but you want him to survive, to live long enough to discover another way of being in the world.)
But, what lingering effects do violent actions and experiences have on a kid? Are they difficult to erase like tattoos? Is he branded forever? I don’t know.
Fascinating movie.
BTW: Un Prophète (2009) won the Grand Prize at Cannes Festival, 2009
by Bob Martin | Aug 5, 2011 | Art, Culture, Directors, Movies
Awkward love stories are not unusual, however they are seldom about African Americans or as elegantly told as this film. The normalcy of the main characters existence, in one of the world’s most beautiful cities, sets the stage for the complexity of racial transformation. The juxtaposition, that some of us want to keep what we’ve got and others want to move on to something new and that reconciliation is both difficult and necessary.
Medicine for Melancholy is a small film which tries to tell a lot and succeeds for the most part. It goes to show that you don’t need a huge budget to make a movie that tells a good story and enlightens its audience.
I am hopeful that the Director, Barry Jenkins, is still working his craft and will get the opportunity to continue to do insightful movie making.
Wyatt Cenac, Tracy Heggins and Barry Jenkins
by Sandy | Jul 31, 2011 | Art, Blogroll, Exhibits, Movies, Museums, Reposted
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents a program celebrating the gifted, often bizarre, and controversial director of such movies as “Sweeney Todd”, “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, “Ed Wood” and “The Corpse Bride”. 
The exhibit is “Tim Burton, a major retrospective exploring the full range of Tim Burton’s creative work, both as a director of live-action and animated films, and as an artist, illustrator, photographer, and writer… the exhibition brings together over 700 drawings, paintings, photographs, moving-image works, storyboards, puppets, concept artworks, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera, including art from a number of unrealized and little-known personal projects.”
Tim Burton * Until October 31, 2011
LACMA/ Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles
by Sandy | Jul 15, 2011 | Blogroll, Culture, Education, Exhibits, Film, Museums
The weekend long festivities for the grand opening of The New African-American Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington, DC begins on Saturday July 16, 2011. 
“Using photographs, documents and state of the art audio visual equipment, the museum helps visitors understand the African American’s heroic and largely unknown struggle for freedom. The museum is located two blocks west of the Memorial in the historic U street corridor. To assist visitors, researchers, and descendants of USCT, the Museum also offers important educational and research tools.”
Joining in the celebration will be local dignitaries, with speeches of course, panel discussions and an all day film festival on Sunday July 17. A few of the films showing are listed below:
The Freedom Riders
Glory
Eyes on the Prize
For Love of Liberty
The New African-American Civil War Memorial and Museum
1925 Vermont Avenue. NW Washington, DC
by Bob Martin | Jul 1, 2011 | Art, Directors, Movies, Writers
Carina Nebula
It is the first words spoken that makes this movie understandable and perfect for me. Malick treats the rest of the dialog like the utterance of the universe, important but not understandable. The idea that nature and grace exist for us to choose from is not a religious idea and that following one over another is neither right nor wrong, that in the larger scheme of things it may not matter. There are no understandable answers.
I kept thinking of the first verse of Joni Mitchell’s “The Sire of Sorrow”, and that we seek pain, not satisfaction. Life’s awareness will bring to your knees in pure awe, but that would be too easy.
“Let me speak, let me spit out my bitterness–
Born of grief and nights without sleep and festering flesh
Do you have eyes?
Can you see like mankind sees?
Why have you soured and curdled me?
Oh you tireless watcher! What have I done to you?
That you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true?...joni mitchell
I didn’t find this movie religious or trying to clarify the origins of stuff and can understand why some people would. For me the compelling message is that there is wonder all around us and we spend most of our time focused on ourselves and that what we pay attention is what we get.
If you decide to see this movie go with a group committed to viewing the full movie. Later have a conversation about what you saw or felt about the movie, it all in the experience of seeing “Tree of Life” vs. trying to understand it. All interpretations have value.
Also it will help to see it in a theater that has both exceptional visual and sound equipment. I’ve got to see it again at a different theater. Sorry Hawkins Scottsdale.
by Bob Martin | Jun 21, 2011 | Art, Film, Movies
Woody Allen is one of my film heroes. I’ve enjoyed just about every stage of his career including now. I believe that the talent of an artist is his/her ability to communicate their message as simply and truthfully as possible. I’ve always found Allen’s films truthful and I can always here what I believe to be his voice in the script. Not the way he sounds or way lead actors seem compelled to mimic his cadence, rather how his message and humor are consistent. Allen is a writer, so things to don’t get blown up or shot at, things get spoken.
Midnight in Paris is a funny movie that should not be compared to anything else Allen has done, except, I kept seeing little pieces and stories from some his earlier films.(Hannah and Her Sisters, Everyone Says I love You, Crimes and Misdemeanors,Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and Sweet and Lowdown)
The charm of this film is our mistaken belief that we were born to late , at the wrong time or era. The truth of the films is that we are always where were supposed to be.
French film, A Prophet (Un Prophète, 2009) directed by Jacques Audiard struck me as a cautionary tale for wayward youth. It details the experiences of 19 year old Malik (Tahar Rahim) as he serves his 8 year prison sentence for refusing to cooperate with police.
