Movie-The Ultimate Lesbian Short Film Festival

Many reviewers have written about this collection of short films , complaining about the production quality or the acting. And yes, while The Ultimate Lesbian Short Film Festival (2005) does not rank with the Hollywood blockbusters on production values, or even acting (though it is better than most Keanu Reeves fare for sure) the films in this collection have something many larger budget films lack.

Every film here has a message and loads of heart. And that goes a long way to forgiving the production faults...these are not people who have huge budgets to do their work...so they do the best they can in filming and sets. But they do excel in making short films that make you pause, think and examine the point of view presented. And that is something many Hollywood films lack.

Movie- Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds had multiple nominations in this year's Oscars--- Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor. Christoph Waltz won for Best Supporting Actor.

Let me just say...I did not expect to like Inglourious Basterds. I am not one of those Quentin Tarantino lovers, who think anything he does is gold...in fact, there are many of his films that I am not really that fond of. Also, I could take or leave Brad Pitt. So this movie did not have a ton of appeal for me.

Ooooops. I was wrong! OK, I admitted it.

Inglorious Basterds (2009) was an excellent film. Yes, it had the trademark Tarantino gore...but it is set in the time of war, and the gore that it fictionalizes is nothing compared to the gore that really happened, especially that set in motion by the Nazis and Hitler.

Basterds is set in a fictional world, where a group of American soldiers went into Germany spreading terror among the Nazis by their cruelty and disregard for any conventions. They ravaged Nazis, because to them, as Jews, all Nazis deserved it. Now you have to remember, this is a Tarantino reflected world. It is not true life, and does not pretend to be. It is more if a comic book version of The Dirty Dozen. Good guys and bad are CLEARLY delineated, and there is no question about who is the hero and who is evil.

And the amazing thing is that this works...a world where Hitler is killed by a team of bloodthirsty, but ultimately heroic Americans? Who isn't into that? The movie is really beyond description, but involves a movie theater, Hitler dying at the hands of the team, underground fighters, scalps, a bat (baseball) and the amazing, menacing Christoph Waltz, who brings the term "urbane terror" to life as the Nazi officer who hunts Jews.

Waltz brings a jittery-ness to every scene he is in. He is menace personified, but surrounded by a charm of a man of the world. He really, more than Pitt, brings this movie to another level.

Pitt is fine in his lead role, but nothing to write home about, and the other actors in the team are mostly interchangeable. But the cast is only a sidebar for Tarantino...it is about this story that keeps lunging forward, a story that is so not real, and yet somehow makes us want it to be real. It is a movie that really does defy most real description, but engages at basic, visceral level. I don't think it is one of those movies that makes you ponder overmuch, but it gives one hell of a ride while watching.

2 Magazines

OK...I will admit to one of my MANY addictions---I LOVE the year end issues of People and Entertainment Weekly. Probably because they have lists---Best Books, Best Movies, Best TV Shows...etc. But I have these issues every year. The In Memoriam section is always interesting, and this year, wow, we lost a lot and biggies too.

Both magazines can be read in a flash, and they are fun respite from my usual reading...and they give me ideas for movies and shows I may not always have heard of. So, of all the OCDs I have, this one I will keep. Glad it only once a year though!

Book- A Single Pebble

The last couple of books I have read by John Hersey were both disappointments, really not his best stuff. But with A Single Pebble he again is lyrical and clear, subtle and bold in his writing. It was a really good book, and I would really recommend it.

A Single Pebble tells the story of an American engineer who goes to China in the 1920s to figure out how to dam up the Yangtze River. He is the narrator of his own story, told from a large span of years, he is old now. And the sense of his nostalgia is palpable, as is also his sense of disdain for the young arrogant man he once was.

To survey the river he has to travel upriver by Chinese junk, hauled by ropes on the shore by a crew 40. It is a perilous journey for these men, called trackers. Led by the fearless and wild head tracker, who keeps the march going by his songs, the young engineer is first impatient with the slowness of the journey, and then gets lost in the timelessness of it. His first thoughts are of making the journey easier through locks and canals, but his ideas are morphed through events of the long journey upriver...the dangers and skills of the trackers, the acceptance of the crew to their fate.

This is a journey of self discovery for the young engineer, but the discoveries are meted out over his lifetime. His understanding of the journey gets stronger as he gets older. And Hersey writes well that melancholy, that sense of wonders past. He is lyrical and poetic, and never rushed, but never slow. He creates tension as the flow of the river becomes greater, and his words and cadence feel much like the river.

This is a very good little book, one of my favorite of Hersey's...it has moments that I will not forget and it is a book that is not easily shoved to the back of your mind.

2 Magazines

The January issue of National Geographic had an astonishing article in it about bionics...Wow! What seemed like science fiction only a decade ago now is at our doorstep as fact. The linking of man and machine is used right now to help people who have lost sight and limbs, but the implications of other uses are also a bit terrifying. The science has come so far making arms that link directly into the nerves and the brain, with more and more sophisticated movement and dynamics. Incredible! And what they are doing for sight! Holy crap! As usual, the rest of the articles were entertaining and educational...The expose of wildlife trafficking was a great piece of investigative journalism and worth the Geographic's resources. And the images were heart-rending.

The January-February issue of Playboy is my last for a bit. I let my subscription lag for various reasons. But it was an excellent issue! the interview with Sean Combs was so-so, but the article about "The Singularity" actually meshed well with the Nat Geo article about bionics. There is much that is imagined about how far humans can adapt science to create better humans, but there is much that is real too. Tara Reid's pictorial was good, but highly airbrushed...still, she looked pretty good. The fiction by Dennis Lehane was fantastic. "Animal Rescue," was just outright a great short story. The expose about the man who conned the Pentagon was enlightening and frightening at how easily our government can be totally conned when manned by paranoids.There was other excellent fiction and articles. I am glad I am going out on a high note with this magazine.

The Andrew Awards- Best Foreign Film, 2008

With Revanche I have finally seen all the nominees for best foreign film in 2008, as chosen by Oscar voters. They had their best, and so do I---the Andrew Awards have returned!!! (I know, you are ALL so excited!)

The nominees are: The Baader-Meinhof Complex from Germany, The Class from France, Departures from Japan, Revanche from Austria and Waltz with Bashir from Israel. The Oscars chose Departures. We will talk about my choice---

First, let's get rid of a couple off the bat. Hated The Class...pretentious, over-acted and self important, it was not the least inspiring. The Baader-Meinhof Complex was interesting, but ultimately could not get over the fact that its protagonists are terrorists with little to no good qualities, and the film-makers seemed not to realize that.

This leaves three very good movies. I just posted the review of Revanche, and while it was really good, it did not come up as high as Bashir and Departures. So it is between those two.

Waltz With Bashir was really the front runner for best foreign film according to most reports before the Oscars. that was because many non-Oscar voters had seen it, and few of those people had seen Departures. But the Oscar voters got it right, and the Andrew Award for best foreign film in 2008 is: Departures!

I can't say anything bad at all about Waltzing With Bashir...it was an amazing film. But Departures was beautiful...haunting and lyrical, funny and sad, it talks about death, and the death rites that our modern world seems to be abandoning, as we are abandoning our elderly. It talks about the respect the dead in our families deserve, and the after effects of death...a subject that touches everyone of us at some point.

The 2008 Andre Awards are done-- Here is the synopsis:
Best Picture: Milk
Best Actor: Sean Penn, Milk
Best Actress: Kate Winslet, The Reader
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Best Supporting Actress: Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler
Best Director: Steven Daldry, The Reader
Best Foreign Film: Departures, Japan
Best Animated Film: Wall-E
Best Documentary: Man on Wire

The 2009 awards will be starting to post soon, as soon as I finish one category it will go up!

Movie- Gomorrah

Taking place in the slums of Naples, Gomorrah (2008) is a really gritty look at how the Camorra crime syndicate, the Mafia, effects people in many walks of life. While the mob has been glamorized in many ways, rich, tough men who hang out in strip clubs and big houses, this shows probably a truer picture of what the life is like. Yes they are tough brutal men...but they are ugly, not really so rich, and make life terrible for many.

Gomorrah follows several stories: two young men think they can make a name for themselves and take out the local mob, a tailor who creates designer knock-offs for the mob and decides he can get away with helping the new Chinese gang, a delivery man for the mob...all these tales intertwine to create a picture of thugs, of heartless thugs who have no loyalty and enforce a code that benefits only them. It is a grim picture of no future, and life that is cheap and disposable.

I thought Gomorrah was a nice counterpart to the Godfather films and the Sopranos. While all those are fantastic, I think they do not show the down and dirty side of things. The slums that are increased because of the crime syndicate, the hopeless despair placed on people already living on the edge, the poverty that makes children captive to caprice and not free to grow. This is the mob in its grimmer reality.

Yes they are tough men. But they are not wearing designer suits, they do not have beautiful homes. They are smelly, obese old men, losing a war that they started. Such is the world that Gomorrah recreates.

Movie- Revanche

Revanche was nominated for best foreign film for the 2008 Oscars (held in 2009). It did not win.

Set in Vienna, Tamara works as a hooker in a brothel. Working there also is Alex, a handyman/ bouncer/ janitor. the two fall in love, though that is something they need to keep secret to not run afoul of the pimp who seems to own Tamara and run the brothel.

The two plan their escape and a new life, but run into some snags that hit on a visceral and emotional level, and Alex must now start his new life alone, while seeking some measure of revenge.

But his revenge is not against just one man, though his ire is focused on that one man, but is more against the world that caused he and Tamara to be caught in this web of vice, a world that does not offer many choices when someone tires to get away from it. It also a self-loathing that moves Alex, that stems from the bad choices he made, that stems from his inability to protect Tamara, and act a human.

Alex no longer resides in Vienna, but in a rural area, with his grandfather. The scenes do contrast the grit of the rough Vienna Alex knew and the cleanliness of the countryside. This mirrors the corruption of Alex, and his want to become better, which puts him at odds with his own vengeance. The settings mirror the battle raging in Alex.

Revanche (2008) is a movie with many layers, but it is also very human and entertaining. It is after watching it that you get a sense of the filmmakers skill, but watching it you enjoy the humanity of the characters. The acting by Johannes Krisch as Alex and Irina Potapenko as Tamara is top notch, as is the supporting cast. All in all an excellent movie, and one that I will remember.

Movie- Oliver Twist

Yet another remake of Oliver Twist, this 2005 edition by Roman Polanski gets many things right. And while that may be so, there is underlying lack of heart, like Polanski was getting so involved in creating his characters true to the original, he forgot that Oliver is the one we should really care about. Instead the title character seems to be merely a fulcrum for the other characters to balance on, and the other actors to perform their roles.

Now it is hard to get really excited about this work, because Oliver Twist has been made at least 12 times since the movie business began. It has been a silent, a couple of animated, TV mini-series and a musical. So what does this version bring?

Well, Ben Kingsley as Fagin is pretty good. And there is a richness to the settings...you can feel the griminess of London in that era...it was a dirty, stinking place, where people emptied their chamberpots onto the sidewalks from the upper windows, and woe to those who walked below. That is all wonderfully captured.

While Oliver is certainly sympathetic, somehow he comes across as merely being carried by events, not the catalyst to events. Things happen to him, he does not make the events go, and that is a problem of heart. Oliver Twist, like many Dickens characters, is good, but can be plucky and make choices that influence those around him. And you feel here he has little influence.

This is a good movie, and I enjoyed it. But it is not great, for all the care that was taken to create it.

Book- A Glance Away

A Glance Away by John Edgar Wideman was not a book I was at all engaged in, or liked very much. It was a book whose characters I cared not at all about, and actually found them pretty pathetic. It is a book that came out of the 60s and 70s, and though I like those eras, some of the literature featuring characters that cannot communicate or change and who make their own damn lives miserable just leaves me cold.

This book features two characters, Eddie, who I have a bit more sympathy for, is a young black man back to his urban home from a rehab stint in the South. And while I could be OK with Eddie being an addict, his inability to deal with an overbearing mother, or even have the slightest ability to say one word that would make the situation better, just evokes nothing but contempt and derision from me, especially as he knows how he could make this situation and his life better.

The other character is Robert, a middle-aged queen, a professor who has devolved into alcoholism and pretended literary aspirations. Really he does not write at all, is scared to go into his classroom and feels like life has taken a dump on him. Guess what Robert, THAT is life! Get over yourself and your little petty difficulties...they are not that overwhelming! They can be pretty easily solved, at least many of them. But he is just wallowing in self-pity for supposed injustices.

There is a bit of plot where these two meet, but most of the book is examining the two psyches of the men. And quite frankly, neither psyche in very interesting. I am glad it was a short book.

Movie- District 9

District 9 was up for an Oscar as best picture. It did not win.

The premise of District 9 (2009) seems like your basic sci-fi feature film. Aliens are marooned on earth, with their large craft permanently parked over Johannesburg, South Africa. The bug like aliens are stranded, and at first earth welcomes them, but then humanity, being fickle as we are, starts to turn against them. And this is where the concept of District 9 gets interesting.

The aliens, though obviously sentient beings, with great technology, are rounded up and made to live in a shanty town. They for years have established their own culture here, when the government decides to round them up again, and give them even more inhospitable land to live on, all perfectly legal of course, done with laws and regulations and all that. In charge of this move is bureaucrat Wikus, and man so consumed by dotting the i and crossing the t that he loses sight of what is happening.

Now the social content of this movie is pretty plain to see. And the setting is not a coincidence, because it reminds us of apartheid, and Native Americans, and gays and dozens of other ethnic or racial groups done in by the laws of the majority. And while I applaud this social relevance in a sci-fi movie, I also felt like they hit us over the head with it too often and too hard. A couple of times I even said, "OK OK, I get it!" as I was watching it.

It gets even more interesting as Wikus, the persecutor of the prawns (as the aliens are nicknamed) starts turning into one in a real sci-fi twist. He becomes one of the persecuted.

District 9 was a good movie, and that is was really an unknown, and did so well, still makes us feel we are not the captives of the studio marketing machines. But really, if the Oscars had not expanded the best picture category to 10 nominees, would this film even be considered on any one's short list? It seemed like the Academy was screaming, "We are so cool, look at what kind of film we now have nominated."

I can say the creators of the film were able to fuse the sci-fi with social relevance pretty well, and it was fun watching it. And it was a great step out of the dark that scvi-fi sometimes dwells in. But I would never seriously think it a contender for best picture.

Movie- Dim Sum

Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart is an indie movie from 1985, set in San Francisco's Chinatown. It tells the story of an elder daughter who gives up her own life to take care of her widowed mother, as the culture of that era/locale dictated good daughters do.

The thing about Dim Sum is that it shows the daughter, Geraldine, not as a prisoner of a system, but as someone who genuinely loves her mother and does not know any other way to express it other than being in this co-dependent relationship. And the mother wants Geraldine to settle down and get married, but makes her guilty with the thought of leaving her alone.

It is a quiet and reflective film about the mix of human emotions, and the ties that bind us together, but can break us as individuals.

Movie- Up

Up is nominated for two major Oscars---as a Best Picture nominee and as Best Animated Feature.

This animated Pixar film shows why the studio is still the leading light in animation. Up (2009) is not just an amazing animated film, (though the animation is truly great) Up (2009) is a movie written with pathos, sincerity, humor and an understanding of human regrets and love. And that is why it is nominated for Best Picture along with Best Animated Feature.

Telling the story of an old man, Carl, who just wants to live out his the rest of his life in peace, secluded in the home where he and his late wife had lived their lives in happiness. Around him are going up high rises, and the developer wants his property too, but Carl refuses to sell...there are to many memories in the house for him to let it go.

The beginning of this movie is so understanding of what a person clings to, what a person needs after a lifetime with someone, and then being left alone. Carl and his wife had known each other since childhood, and a sequence showing their life together was beautifully created. Maybe more touching to me, since Sharlynn and I have known each other all our lives, and some of the scenes reminded us of our life.

But Carl knows the time is coming where he will be forced to leave, so he takes matters into his own hands, ties thousands of balloons to his house, fills them with helium and sets off for and adventure he and his wife always wanted to take. Carl has a guest though, in Russell, a Scout who is on the front porch when the house ascends.

The story of their adventure is fun, with allies and villains. The dogs are especially funny, with the word "squirrel" distracting even the most viscous of them.

But the underlying message of them film is that life is an adventure. Even if we live it without travelling all over the world, without climbing the Alps or risking life and limb to explore the Arctic or dive from the world's highest peak. Everyday life is a sort of heroism...plodding to work to care for your family, having kids, making your moments of remembrance true and sweet, caring for each other...all this is adventure and living, and brave.

Up is a movie the works on many levels---it is funny, with great animation, an adventure and good for adults and kids. But the story, the script is what makes this movie. The human emotions are very real, very empathetic and and very true. Up is a very good movie.