PROPOSAL

Watched the engaging and funny Sandra Bullock vehicle, The Proposal, and found it surprisingly enjoyable. Yes, it is unbelievable, and the ending contrived, but I really enjoyed the chemistry between Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. Most of the cast is very good. The latin stripper/shopowner/minister has some excellent parts. This is not heavy fare, but a enjoyable romp.

ANGEL'S GAME

Carlos Ruiz Zafon has delivered another interesting tale of 1920s Barcelona in The Angel's Game. Not quite as engaging or crisp a page-turner as his previous Shadow of the Wind, he returns to familiar haunts to unfold the story of a young writer who advances from assistant at a local newspaper to become author (writing under a pseudonym) of a series of popular penny thrillers, with the help of a wealthy and guilt-ridden patron, when he is approached by a mysterious Parisian published to write a fable (that will promote a new religion). Although it is unspoken, and I initially thought I might be reading a vampire story, the villian appears to by a fallen angel or even Lucifer himself. What is clear is that the protagonist is beset with misgivings and then fear, and then becomes something of a Typhoid Mary, whose activities and investigations inevitably lead to unfortunate events befalling those around him. His heart belongs to a young woman whose marriage (I will not reveal to whom) teras him apart. I think the strongest part of the story is his relationship with a young aspiring writer who insinuates herself into his life; his manueverings to introduce her to a potential husband are precious. Overall, though, Zafron sems to lose control of this novel. It does not hang together well. Perhaps his editor should have been tougher. Still, it is better than most of the fiction I have read recently.

FOREIGN FILMS

Took another trip into foreign films last night. Obvioulsy, much is lost on the American viewer in most cases, but I think I was able to figure things out fairly well. I think.

Dubia: Kiss Me Not on My Eyes is an Egyptian movie about a young woman seeking out the meaning of love in literature, dance, and the real life, within the constraints of Muslim society. The main character, played by the very lovely Hanan Turk, is an intelligent and educated woman, who wants to learn the skill of traditional dance (her mother was a well-known belly dancer) and is selected to learn from a local master. Turk can really dance and has gorgeous dark eyes and beautiful full hair. The dancing is often quite enticing, but the underlying storylines are more important about the constraints put on women through religion and culture (including the terrible practice of female circumcision). She also continues her studies into classical love poetry as a disciple of a controversial professor amongst the more conservative scholars, who seeks to protect the publication of Thousand and One Nights. I thought that it was pretty good, and opens some windows into Egyptian culture.

I also caught Them (I do not know if it was Romanian or French, though the action occurs in Romania), in which a Freench teacher and her writer boyfriend fend off an attack by a gang of hooded youngsters. At times chilling and scary, it is not the greatest horror film, but it is still interesting. Olivia Bonamy is good in the role of Clem.

AVATAR

Took the boys to see Avatar yesterday. It was a visually impressive movie, though the story is a bit heavy handed (and will surely provoke criticism after the initial awe wears off). Yes, we know the terrible whites destroyed Native American culture, and that we are rapidly destroying our environment, but I found it a bit hard to believe that humans haven't learned anything by the time we get to that level of advanced space travel. Kind of like Dances With Wolves meets Starshop Troopers. There is no reason the story couldn't have included these messages, but the writing could have been much more stellar: I guess they sacrificed that for technical advnaces. Both boys really enjoyed it, though, and I did too for the most part. I am a bit tired of having to pay extra money to see movies (nearly $30 for the three of us, and we went to the matinee). In fact, I am not all that enamored with 3-D. I think I will enjoy it just as much when it is in HD on dvd.

EXOTICA & Disney

Watched an interesting, though somewhat unsatisfying, movie (Exotica) about a upscale strip club and its employees, and one special customer maintaining a fictional life that soothes a terrible loss and disrupted life. Two of the employees of the club are intertwined in his tragic history, hinted throughout, and a newcomer is recruited by the protagonist to discover why he was thrown out of the club. Some of the scenes are erotic, but several subplots are left hanging and do not seem to fit well with the main story (which is somewhat compelling, and one has to wait until the last scenes to discover just how several of the characters' stories mesh). The storylines of the rare bird egg smuggler/unsure homosexual and the baby by contract do not fit well with the primary story and are basically left hanging.

Earlier in the day I watched Disney's Igor with the boys. Surprisingly, it was pretty good, with plenty of trademark puns to keep me chuckling. Not the greatest Disney film, though the animation was very good, and I would recommend it.

BROUGHT LOW BY THE MOVIES

I got my fill of depressing movies today. Well done movies, with strong acting and compelling stories, but downers nonetheless. Sometimes you can tell right off the bat that there isn't going to be much of a happy ending. In the case of one movie, The Road, I knew that if they stayed true to the book by Cormac Mccarthy, that it wasn't going to be a fun ride; in the case of Crossing Over, starring Harrison Ford, several story lines are clearly going to end badly, though not quite as badly as the earlier movie. Still, both are definitely worth watching.



Even as disturbing and well written as McCarthy's book was, and I really enjoyed it, I was apprehensive about how the movie would come out; however, I was not disappointed, as I feel the makers stayed fairly true to the original. They cut out a few scenes, but overall it was well done. Vigo Mortinson was excellent in the role of the father, and the rest of the cast was great too. Where they found all the locations to shoot this thing is beyond me. The film version is not as hard edged as the written one, but I suspect McCarthy was probably satisfied with the treatment. In combination with his No Country For No Men, I am anxious to see what he comes up with next.

Crossing Over touches on many themes relating to illegal immigration and the desperate attempts some make to earn their green cards. As they say on television, the story was "ripped from the headlines." Ford plays a large-hearted immigration cop, who tries to remain humane while doing his job. His partner, an Iranian American, looks the other way when his over zealous father pushes one son to the edge, resulting in the murder of their too-Americanized sister and her lover (this storyline bothered me a bit, because if I rememebr correctly, in the real case it was not one son losing his temper at teh alst moment, but an orchestrated hit by the family). A Mexican mother pays a heavy price tryig to regain entry after she has been deported because she was forced to leave her young son behind; an Asian boy, on the cusp of naturalization, is coerced into joining a robbery attempt; a little Nigerian girl, soon to be orphaned, is the object of concern by a immigration lawyer, whose bureaucratic husband uses his position in INS to bed an Australian starlet trying to stay in the country; a Jewish immigrant gets a lot of help (and there is a message there about the power of some groups to more readily be able to by pass the system) in earning his status; and a young, devout Muslim girl, who espouses an unpopular theme in class soon finds her family ripped apart by also-zealous Homeland Security types. The movie is clearly sympathetic to the immigrants and also shows well the meaning naturalization holds for many new citizens. There is a lot of emotion here: guilt, compassion, humaneness, paranoia, racism, intolerance, forgiveness. It is definitely worth watching.

DISCO

I here admit that I loved disco, and still do. In fact, I actively warp my children's minds by subjecting them to a healthy dose of disco; they both know all the words to Fire and several other popular songs from that era (and they know the difference between disoc and funk). Hey, I'm Dad, and I can do that! :) Yes, I liked the clubs and dancing and the music, for the most part, though unlike so many of that time I managed to avoid the drugs, diseases, and other forms of disaster. I liked the clothes and the atmosphere. It was a carefree time. So there, I admit it. In honor of this admission, I watched The Last Days of Disco tonight. Put out in 1998, it chronicles the interrelationships of a group of young New Yorkers who enjoy going to a popular disco (loosely based upon Studio 54, I think). The movie brought back some memories, though for the most part I don't remember the conversations going quite along the lines this group did (then again, I didn't attend Harvard or any similar school). I was overly thrilled with the acting, but it was a decent film. The most recognizable actor is Kate Beckinsale, way before her current buffness in the Underworld series. Her character is not appealing though. in fact, all of them seem a bit shallow. I think the dancing was a bit weak too; we had a lot more fun on the dance floor.