#”THE AMERICAN CYNIC LONGING FOR THE DREAM”

      Seabiscuit

      Director: Gary Ross

      Writer: Gary Ross

      Studio: Universal Pictures

      Starring: Tobey Maguire, Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges), Tom Smith (Chris Cooper), Elizabeth Banks, Gary Stevens, William H. Macy, Kingston DuCoeur, Eddie Jones, Ed Lauter

      Spellbound

      Director: Jeffrey Blitz

Review by Jade Sharma 

My boss says to me today, “You know what the only free thing in this country is? I say, “What’s that?” He says, “The only goddamn free thing in this country is to pay your rent. It’s free to pay your rent, that’s all these bastards let you get way with anymore.”

Although my boss, a middle aged artist from a working class background in Detroit, who makes art out of garbage is not a fair representation of the general public. He does convey a popular sentiment, that to put it bluntly, that America well, kind of, sucks. There’s a lot to gripe about, you can choose among the following: economic hardship, vast unemployment, blackouts, ban on smoking, Iraq, George W. Bush, on which ever scale, local or international, problems are plentiful. If you are complaining today in America, odds are the person listening to you is nodding in agreement and chiming in with their own grievances.

It is true that America is in need of a collective self-esteem boast, where can they look? The movies, in particular two films have come out, to help America feel a little bit better about herself. Seabiscuit, is a tale of horse, a jockey, and the owner of a horse, defying all odds and ending up on top. It is set in the depression, another time when Americans had a lot to gripe about. It opens with the hard luck story of the jockey, Red Pollard (Tobey Maquire)whose parents were forced to give him up, because they didn’t have any money. Then through twists and turns, on thing leading to another, his life is intertwined with Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges) who is going through his own hard times. He has just lost a child, and his marriage has ended. We meet him as he is finds his new wife, and decides he wants to buy a horse to race. As he wanders prospective trainers, he stumbles upon the eccentric recluse trainer Tom Smith (Chris Cooper). Cooper spots Seabiscuit, and is convinced the horse will be winner, despite its lazy nature and small body. So finally the team is formed, each of which their own problems to overcome: the horse (1.too small, 2.tempermental), the jockey (1.too big, 2.bitter, 3.attitude problem), the owner (1.death of child), and the washed up trainer. If it sounds a bit over the top and formulaic, well, that’s because it is.

It is “one of those” movies. It even sounds like “one of those movies.” It has one of those generic intrusive scores, if you close your eyes, you will know what to feel because it uses that same score that has been in Hollywood movies for the past decade. It’s the most awful, annoying attribute of the film, it feels as though someone is poking telling you, “feel this way”, “now feel this way.” This film is one of those big guy v.little guy. A team with everything against them overcomes (I.E. The Mighty Ducks). What makes it a little more interesting is the character of William H.Macy who plays a radio journalist covering the horse racing, his fresh snippy banter throughout this movie, add a much needed touch of wit and cleverness. Also there are passages in the film, small little history lessons in black and white interwoven depicting the changing time of America in it’s journey toward modernity. Despite that, it is your basic hard luck boys overcoming the obstacles. So why is it so popular?

I saw it in a theatre in upstate New York; the audience’s median age was about 60, and white. There was applause all through it. Afterwards I was standing in the lobby waiting for my friend, when a 70 year old white woman, with an almost teary eyed smile on her face, turned to me, and said, “Wasn’t that just wonderful?” I nodded in agreement. And she began telling me about how her husband had read the book. She said, it was the best movie she had seen in a long time. That Hollywood had finally made a movie that she liked.

It was then I realized this movie was more like a photo album to her, it wasn’t just the actual time period, that she was nostalgic for, the depression is a time I don’t think most people want to re-live, but of the feeling that America offered. A time when things were changing, printing presses, the assembly line, and the feelings of opportunity these changes evoked in the American spirit. The feeling that if you worked hard and you had experienced your due of hard times, you would eventually be successful. The American Dream. But for people in my generation, there is no nostalgia for that time. The whole time I was watching it from a multi-cultural, historical perspective. I kept thinking where are the black people? Are they being lynched? I think that’s why young people, are more apt to be cynical about this film. The American Dream may have always been a myth, for the every one of the immigrants who came here with a quarter in there pocket who became wealthy, there were thousands that didn’t. But it was the possibility of the dream.

For all of you cynical Americans who feel that that dream has died, check out Jeffrey Blitz’s documentary, “Spellbound”, which chronicles eight kids hoping to win the National Spelling bee. Blitz’s subjects are as diverse as they get: suburban kids, city kids, rich kids, poor kids, and kids of different races. What all these kids have in common, is there desire to be the National Bee Champion, though at least in one case it seemed the parents wanted it more so.

The first part of the film is portraits of each of the kids. First there was Angela, from Texas, who’s parents immigrated her ill legally. Neither her mother or father speak English, though when she wins the regional spelling bee, her father is so proud he cries. Her brother articulates that this is the reason his father came to America, to provide better education for his kids.

There is also Neil, a second generation America, who’s parents are from India. It seems his father is the driving force of Neil’s participation in the Spelling Bee. Neil’s father has hired tutors to teach him French and Spanish, so he knows how to break down words from these languages. He goes over 7,000 words with him a day. Neil’s father, says in the film, that if you work hard in America you are guaranteed to succeed, this he says is not true of other countries.

There is also Ashley who is from the ghetto in D.C, who memorizes words out of the dictionary, and Nupar who’s a upper middle class Indian American.

The second half of this film is the actual spelling bee, where you see the kids compete, which makes you feel as nervous as the parents are when you watch it. Blitz shows each kid spelling each word, each participant hesitantly utters each letter, taking deep breaths, nervously looking around. This is what makes it so suspenseful. One by one you see each kid fall round by round, till one is declared the winner.

The National Spelling Bee, epitomizes the American Dream. Any of these kids can win, they all have an equal chance, no matter where they’re from or what they look like. Although luck does come into play, if you work hard, you will win.

Jeffrey Blitz got this movie made by acquiring twelve credit cards, and charged the entire production. This is part of the sentiment of the American Dream: risk. He risked his financial safety on his product. The whole movie was shot on DV, which only adds to its authentic feel.

Seabiscuit is a formulaic predictable Hollywood “feel good” piece of propaganda to make you feel better about America. While Spellbound is a quirky honest look of the wrestling human heart of the American dream in all its beautiful hopeful glory.

      “Monster”

      Director/Screenwriter: Patty Jenkins

      Starring: Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, and Bruce Dern

      review by Jade Sharma

Life can be easy. You can be born in a safe warm place, grow up sheltered by picket fences, act out your teenage rebellion by dying your hair, fall back in place just as you graduate college, and then find yourself a productive member of society on your way to buying a a nice job buy a house and having a family of your own. But for some like, Aileen Wuornos there is a different kind of faith awaiting you. One thing is clear after watching Monster, even if Aileen Wuornos hadn’t become one of the only female serial killers in U.S. history, from the moment she was born: she would have a hard life. After watching Monster, I wanted to know more about Aileen’s past so I did some research on the internet, the following is what I found out. Aileen Wuornos’s father was a child molester and a sociopath who killed himself in prison. Her mother abandoned her, and her and her two siblings were raised by there maternal grandparents. Her brother died of throat cancer at 21, her sister committed suicide. Aileen started selling her body at age thirteen, got pregnant at fourteen, and was forced to give the baby up for adoption. She moved to Florida, and continuing being a hooker as an adult.

The movie begins on a rainy night, suicidal, determined not to let her last John have a freebie, Aileen decides to spend the money she made on her last trick and then kill herself. As she’s drinking up her earnings she meets 24 year old Tyria Moore. After a belligerent initial exchange, the two spend the night getting plastered and getting to know one another. At the end of the night Ty invites her to spend the night with her, and so begins there romance.

The story unfolds in the whittrash landscapes of central Florida: seedy bars, lawn furniture and interstate highways. The only time we see places like this in the media, is when Hollywood is mocking it like Harmony Karine’s Gummo, or on re-run of cops. To us city dwellers, this is the America we wish we could forget of bush supporters, racists, N.R.A members, and Christian fundamentalists. Aileen and Ty’s relationship from the beginning is portrayed in the film as intimate, and tender, even sweet. They go roller skating together, they laugh, and cuddle. It is clear that Aileen is starved for intimacy, finally, the promise of happiness is possible and she will do anything to hang on to it.

On her way to meet Tyria for their second date Aileen is propositioned by a John. She decides she has enough time for a last trick. The John takes her into the woods, where he hits in the face. She awakes to find her hands tied, he begins kicking the shit out of her. She struggles so hard she frees herself, reaches in her bag, and shoots him multiple times as she screams in curses. This is the dramatic turning point in the film. While she is shooting this torturing rapist, she is a hero, but this well is the last time in the film, that you root for her to kill. Although she has killed him she can’t go to authorities she’ll get no sympathy there. She’s a”cheap whore” and she knows it will do no good to go to the”good old boys” for help. So she covers her tracks.

She returns to Ty’s house, and the two run away together. First in a cheap motel, and then moving into a real house. After the first murder, she makes a last ditch attempt to turn her life around which from the start seems doom to fail. Her clumsy attempts to join the straight world are met with rejection. At one law office, the lawyer berates her,”you think you can just wake up one day after the party, and decide you deserve to have what people work there whole lifes for?” Her life has hardly been,”a party” and she reacts to his smugness by cursing him and storming out. At the employment office she makes a pathetic plea to the clerk that she’s a hooker and needs a chance to turn her life around. She is met by a stone wall and the woman’s back. Again she erupts in rage.

With no other prospects, she returns to being a hooker, largely due to her desire to support her young girlfriend. Tyria implicitly encourages that decision. And appeared to be disappointed with Aileen’s decision to change her life around. But since the murder, she has transformed. She sets off on a path of madness and delusion killing johns, partly in fear of being raped again, partly as retribution for her past victimizations by men, and partly, as she explains to Tyria, because “that’s the way life is, its the way people are.” The film shows several of these episodes. She spares a couple johns, one of which is a retarded virgin, whom she intends to kill, but after hearing him speak, she decides instead to jerk off.

Although the film depicts a likeable Aileen Wuornos and gives you enough hints of her tragic upbringing, there is not much to sympathize with as she brutally shoots these men. And I think that is what is at the core of this film. It shows you the monster, the killer, the ugliest predator of them all, the one you felt was a victim in the beginning, turns out of the monster in the end. The men she begins killer, turn your sympathies around, one of the johns turns out to be married to a woman in a wheelchair, making you conclude that it is only out of neccessity that he seeks the company of prostitutes. Also it becomes clear, that Aileen isn’t so delusional to think every man is responsible for her pain. Her only friend in the film, Bruce Dern, tells her he understands her circumstances and sympathizes with her. The last man it shows her kill doesn’t pick her up to have sex with her. Instead he consoles, even offers to let her stay at his house. And as she’s about to shout him, he begs and pleads for his life. This is the complete transformation from the first murder scene. In the first scene where she murders the rapist, she is the victim, and he is the monster. In the last killing scene, she is the monster, and the man is the victim.

This film, maybe due to its”True Crime” genre feels like a T.V movie. It feels low budget, and is juicy with murder, insanity, and twisted love with a cheesy 80’s soundtrack. But the acting sets it apart from similar movies of this genera. Charize thereon is such a powerhouse of energy and emotion, that at times, it makes her on-screen girl friend Chrina Riccie look deadpan and flat in comparison. There seems to be a lack of chemistry, though I’m not sure how much chemistry there’s suppose to be, as the film portrays there relationship more of a fucked up dependency and longing then a soul mate love affair.

In the end, Ty is the one to throw her to the wolves. She is arrested, at a bar and taken to jail. It is there that Ty caller her, and attempts to extract a confession from her, over the phone which is being tapped. Aileen is hip to the wire tap, and at first uses code words and is vague. But Ty convinces her that if she doesn’t confess that she will be locked up too. So she says that it was all her, and that Ty had nothing to do with it.

The film shows, the judge giving her death penalty, and which Aileen responds to by cursing out the judge for sending a rape victim to death. The film fades to white as she walks down the prisoner hallway.

In the first voice over of this film, she talks about how she always believed there was something special about her, that she was beautiful. She says, that she read that Marilyn Monroe had been discovered in a drugstore. And she spends her childhood and adolescence waiting in drugs stores, on highways, in bars, to see that kind of beauty in her. This is a common enough fantasy, what makes it so poignant in this film, is Aileen’s life turns out to be in such stark contrast to this starlit life and the grim reality that she would live.

The scene when the undercover cops finally bust her struck me. The way it happened was, two undercover cops persuade her to come to there car where they will give her some change to call her girlfriend. At this point Aileen is wasted, and these two burly men are convincing her to go to with them. As your watching, you began to fear they will rape her. But as she follows them the cops surround her, and she goes to jail. And you can’t help thinking, well, either a man was going to fuck her in the ass, or the law will. It isn’t that she doesn’t deserve to be prison, but it seems like everyone who ever entered Aileen’s life fucked her in one way or another.

What it doesn’t tell you in the movie, which I read in an article on the Crime TV website, is that Aileen Wuornos, signed her own death certificate. Instead of appealing the case, as most people do when sentenced to death row, she refused to follow the case with other appeals. It was then that Jeb Bush stepped in, and ordered a stay of execution, and had her undergo three psychiatric tests, to determine if she understood that she would go to death if she didn’t appeal the decision. It was found, she understood. And Bush conceded her decision. She then spent twelve years on death row, she became a media figure, granting interviews, and describing her tragic past. Feminists rallied for her as a victim, and a born again Christian woman ended up adopting her while she was on death row as a show of support. She died of lethal injection in 2002.

In the end it was Aileen that really made the decision to die, not the courts. She said, “Let God be my judge.” She didn’t fear death. Aileen Wuornos lend a lonely life, clinging to the only intimacy she ever saw, and when that was taken from her too, she took her sentence, and cursed out the judge that gave it to her.

“Lost in Translation”

Director: Sofia Coppola

Producer: Sofia Coppola, Ross Katz

Screenwriter: Sofia Coppola

Stars: Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi, Anna Faris

MPAA Rating: R

Review by Jade Sharma

The cinematic seventh seal has been broken with Bill Murray’s deconstructionist Karaoke version of Roxy Music’s “More Than This” in Sophia Coppola’s second movie, Lost in Translation.  Murray plays the role of Bob Harris, a fictitious character mimicking his own real-life stardom, struggling with the both success and ultimate meaninglessness of his grandiose life. While filming a multi-million dollar whiskey commercial in Japan, Bob meets a young American woman named Charlotte also staying in his same swanky Tokyo Hotel. Charlotte, a young twenties-something Yale graduate is struggling to find her identity within in her new marriage to a glitzy photographer (Giovanni Ribisi) who remains out of focus when it comes to their seeming incompatibility. Bob, a married man of 25 years, is always trying to come to grips with his struggling relationship coupled with a career crisis.

When the two jet-lagged Americans finally do connect with each other in the cocktail bar after hours, it seems they find an easy and fun oasis with each other amidst the desert of isolation. Bob has a week alone to himself in the city, while Charlotte is mostly waiting for her husband to return from a photography shoot in some other city in Japan. And so the two begin to enjoy each other’s company, experiencing the strange outings in the highly gadget-oriented city, rife with confusion and urban stimulus.

Yet it is within this chaotic urban cityscape that director Sophia Coppola has introduced the third, and perhaps most important character, the city of Tokyo itself.  Filled with quiet sequences unveiling the visual panorama of various buildings, people, and buzzing streets, the personification of Tokyo envelops both Bob and Charlotte as their fast-forming companionship seems to render a stronger connection than originally anticipated. Though it is relieving when the movie neglects to focus on the gratuitous angle of yet another much older man and fresh flowering woman finding love with each other, it certainly does provide an interesting delineation of companionship somewhat difficult to categorize. Both characters have come to independent realizations that they’re lost in the translation of their own lives as well as in the foreign city hosting them ­ upon meeting each other an indelible connection is made.

Equally important in this film is the soundtrack. Light scoring by Kevin Shields throughout the movie helps along the swells of silence accompanying Coppola’s cinematography serving as the keyhole into this Asian capitol.  Along with a few older songs by My Bloody Valentine, Jesus and Mary Chain and the aforementioned  “More Than This” by Roxy Music, the sweetness of the movie’s music is tinged by the light sadness of the story.

Lost in Translation gives the audience an open-ended sense of possibility in the small ways connections can have an enormous effect on people. Bob and Charlotte couldn’t find themselves, but they found each other, and because of that, their worlds opened up with new breath of life.

“Kinsey”

Directed by Bill Condon

Distributor: Fox Searchlight

Release Date: November 12, 2004

Can masturbation cause blindness? Does being a homosexual mean you are insane? Is it normal for your boyfriend to touch your anus? Does cunnilingus cause birth defects? These are the questions the students struggle with as they line up at the door of Professor Alfred Kinsey’s office. What is perhaps most shocking about the film, Kinsey is not the discoveries he makes (most woman orgasm by stimulating the clitoris not the vagina) but the level of ignorance about sex in the 50s. Viewing the 50s from the present, it never occurs to us that the Cleavers might have assumed, as did the recently married woman interviewed in Kinsey, that babies come from a woman’s navel, as newly weds.

The film Kinsey attempts to mirror in structure and theme what the man Kinsey sought to do in his life and work. Kinsey opens with Kinsey getting what he is known for giving: an interview for “a sexual history”. His own interview is training for the interviewers that would carry this frank exploration throughout the country. “Look at the person in the eyes and smile, no matter what is said.” Kinsey grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey. His father was a puritanical tyrant whose strict religious values were downright absurd. Father Kinsey delivers a sermon when his son is about ten on the evils of the just-invented novelty, the zipper. The zipper “gives men easy passageway to moral oblivion.” Kinsey, raised in this oppressive environment, struggles as a teen with what we may now consider ”normal” hormones and his budding sexuality. We see him crying after he masturbates. As a young man, Kinsey finds solace in nature, and becomes entranced with the wonderment of the gall wasp, which he would study for twenty years, collecting over a million. What he found so striking about the gall wasp was how vastly different one is from another. The new gall wasp often looks completely different from the parents.  In a lecture he states to his class, “There is only variation.” He would later use the same scientific approach to the study of human sexuality. As he says to his wife, “Human beings are nothing but slightly more complicated gall wasps.” He thus turns his magnifying glass from the lifeless wings of the gall wasp to the controversial subject of sex while he is at Indiana University.

The subject of sex is on his mind as he and his wife, both virgins, went through a traumatic sexual dysfunction in the first days of their marriage.  This, luckily, was quickly remedied by a doctor. His students, who affectionately called him Brok, often come to him soliciting sex advice, which he gives in a frank way leaving them both shocked and intrigued. He decides to take over the outdated “Hygiene course” that is offereda course, which apart from showing films depicting victims of syphilis, and preaching abstinence does little to shed light on the subject.  Kinsey offers a more direct and blunt approach in his “marriage course,” offered only to married senior students. He shows slides of penises and vaginas, which even today sitting a theatre make you feel a bit embarrassed. During the course, he sees a gap of scientific knowledge in the field of human sexuality which propels the most extensive study of the subject to date.

The humor in this film comes from the juxtaposition of the obscene blatant language Kinsey and his wife use with their 1950s gosh-darn attitude. Kinsey, played by Liam Nelson, is seldom seen without a friendly wide grin on his face as he says words like: vagina, penis, and orgasm. His wife, Mack (Laura Linney), offers a slice of rhubarb pie to Kinsey’s assistant and smiles when he propositions her. She looks at Kinsey and smiles with a matter-fact-ness that seems more like the answer to “would you like another slice of pie” then the offering of sleeping with another man. The aging of the actors was crudely accomplished, the changing of Laura Linney’s hair from black to grey was about as sophisticated as it got. But despite this minor flaw, there is little to be criticized in this film that covers the substantial work of a complex man.

The film is part eighth grade sex lesson and part love song to science. At first Kinsey’s work evoked immense interest and popularity that eluded him during his first twenty years of a scientist analyzing the wasp. But as he began work on his volume on female sexuality, the climate had changed. Bullied by harsh critics in the McCarthy Era, the Rockefeller foundation retracts its grant, leaving Kinsey adrift. Watching this film in today’s climate of conservatism, you are struck with how little things have changed despite how much more we know. The time portrayed in “Kinsey” was one of sexual unawareness. Today, after the sexual revolution and Kinsey, we stand better educated yet still chained by the same social conventions. In the film, Kinsey comforts a homosexual. “Homosexuality is out of fashion these days but that doesn’t mean it always will be.” He could have said those very words today.

At the end of this film we find Kinsey and his wife in the woods peering up at the trees in childish wonderment. To the Left, Kinsey is a hero, a warrior of truth who fought to understand basic human sexual behavior. To the Right, he is a promoter of abortion, pornography, and sexual permissiveness. To Kinsey, during the film, he is a mere scientist. Having seen the impact of his work on society, it is unquestionable that Kinsey was more, much more, than a mere scientist documenting the facets of human sexuality. Kinsey evokes the conundrum that was and is sex in those days of HUAC as well as now. It’s a movie that is important, sexy and fun. Kinsey is a rare film in every sense of the word.

“Kill Bill Volume II”

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Starring Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Gordon Liu, Michael Parks, Bo Svenson, Jeannie Epper, Perla Honey-Jardine

Screenplay by Quentin Tarantino

Based on the character of “The Bride” by: Q&U

Martial arts adviser: Yuen Wo-ping

Produced by Lawrence Bender

Miramax Films/Band Apart

If Quentin loved himself a little less he could have made a masterpiece. What I mean by that is, if he had some sharper scissors he could have cut together Kill Bill Vol.1 and Kill Bill Vol.2 and made a true cinematic achievement. Instead he opted to release Vol.1, which to many, including myself, was a huge disappointment. The entire Kill Bill summery can be said in three lines. The Bride (Uma Thurman) drops out off an assassin squad, headed by x-lover Bill. The assassination squad gets pissed off and kills her husband and deadly wound her which makes her fall into a coma. The bride wakes up and kills every member of the assassination squad. Volume 1 was boring; the story too simplistic and gone was the famous Tarentino snippy dialog that made his name. It also for the first time made me question Tarentino’s use of violence, I mean, how many time can you watch blood squirting out of someone’s torso after having their head chopped off thinking is this really how I want to spend my time? And then the final disappointment was the ending. Volume 1 ends, cliffhanger style, making you stare at the credits thinking, “This is Quentin, your going to leave me hanging?”

So I’m sitting in the theatre, already content on giving a couple more bucks, and wasting a couple more hours, out of pure loyalty to the guy, just because of record. I figured, why not, he might have something up his sleeve. I didn’t expect that much from him, but Kill Bill Volume 2, I gotta say is fucking awesome. There are some drawn out monologues like the one Bill (David Carradine) goes on and on about some comic book for two minutes that made me bored to tears. Monologues about comic books, are no longer clever subjects about a subculture, but sound more like generic banter from Clerks. Then there’s the part where Uma is getting trained by her Kung Fu expert, that though are entertaining often drag and should have been shortened. But even with all this, the movie was great. Not because there were some good parts to outweigh the bad. It’s just that the good parts weren’t just good, they were fucking amazing. I mean, amazing like they should be shown in every film school to every film student to say, hey, this is fucking cinema.

So what are the amazing parts? Well, there’s a part where Michael Madsen catches Uma hiding outside his trailer, he shoots her with a salt gun that puts her out. He calls Bill, to see what kind of deal he can make. Bill tells him to find the most brutal way to kill her. So he tries to bury her alive. The way Quentin did this was leaving us with Uma in the coffin. We hear the nail being driven into the coffin, as the light turns to darkness. And then its pitch black, and Uma is whimpering. She has a small handheld flashlight that she turns on, to check out the coffin. And then you hear the sound of the dirt crashing, being piled on top. The twinge of claustrophobia I felt during this scene was like no horror movie I’ve ever seen. I’m not going to say how she gets out, though it is unbelievable, you can’t help but rejoice, to leave the coffin with Uma. There are many surprises that make you scream and jump, and cringe. It doesn’t bog you down with character development, but it doesn’t bore you with senseless dialog. The only well-written words come out of the mouth of an eight-year old.

Something that really disappointment was the music. Normally Tarentino’s soundtracks are an essential part of cinema. To me, that’s one of the things that I thought Tarentino introduced, all his films have unique sounds. Most mainstream films you watch sound alike and you wonder why they all have the same score. But I can’t even remember any of the music in this one.

When I tell people to see this movie, they ask, “Well, do you have to see the first one first, in order to understand it?” I say, “Well, you could, but it would be better if you didn’t.” The entire first film is pretty much covered in the first five minutes of the second film, which tells you how futile it was. I heard a rumor that Tarentino offered to combine the films, but Harvey Weinstein decided he could make more money with two movies. If that’s the case, it probably worked, but it’s a shame because if Tarentino had combined them, he could have had an Oscar contender in his hands. Instead of a movie that will disappear from consciousness save for Tarentino fanatics and stoned teenagers.

“Better Luck Tomorrow”

Directed by: Justin Lin

Cast: John Cho, Roger Fan, Jason Tobin, Sung Kang, Parry Shen

Running Time: 1:41

Rated R

“Raising Victor Vargas”

Directed and Written by: Peter Solett

Cast: Victor Rasuk, Judy Marte, Melonie Diaz, Altagracia Guzman

Running Time: 87 min.

Rated R

comparative review by Jade Sharma

One of the biggest problems in American Cinema is the lack of minority representation, especially of Asians and Latinos. These groups have been systematically shunted to the sidelines of contemporary American cinema. The African American community has enjoyed more exposure than other minority groups. Black males on television are represented three times more than they are in the general population. Of course, the roles they are given can be — and often are — criticized as stereotypical. Asians are hardly seen in movies at all, not even in stereotypical roles. And, for the most part, when you see a Latino in a film, you only need to wait a couple of seconds before a crime goes down.

This is a problem in film that I think we all know about. It is fairly obvious, and talked about a lot, but little has been done to fix it. As an Indian Asian and aspiring filmmaker, it’s a subject I’ve thought about a lot. When I started writing screenplays, all of my characters were either black or white. I couldn’t figure out why I was doing this. I’m not white, I’m not black. Why do I feel more comfortable writing characters of a different race then my own? Of course, as a writer, I believe that one of the things we strive to accomplish is to transcend one’s own identity in order to create real characters in a world made for them. But the larger question remains: Why aren’t more roles written for Asians and other minorities in films? The few Asians who are in film tend to be stereotyped. By introducing an Asian character who doesn’t fit the mold, one runs the risk of having one’s film labeled “Asian” or, more generically, “Ethnic”. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if you attempt to market your product as mainstream, it may be a fairly difficult obstacle to overcome. This absence of Asians seen in films may lead you to feel that your Asian character bears a disproportionate burden, in the sense that he or she represents a whole race; it might be perceived that you’re saying something good (or bad) about Asians in general. It’s tough for your character to exist as an individual. This is a quandary of sorts, a Catch-22; by breaking one stereotype, you run the risk of creating another. Non-Asians may feel like they don’t have a right to — or cannot accurately — portray Asians.

I found that one of the reasons I was writing white characters is that having a white character is like having a blank page. Whatever characteristics, whatever traits, whatever eccentricities you give to the character, belong to the character. To be white in American film is to be Everyman; you can be a poor white man, a rich white man, a robber, a killer, a dad, a businessman, a doctor, and a homeless person. Putting a white person in any role gives you freedom. Your audience will judge the character only by what they say, what they’re wearing, how they act. If the character is black, or Asian, or Puerto Rican, you must deal with the preconceptions and attitudes that your audience brings to the theater. Non-white characters are judged before being introduced. Based solely on skin color, people will view your character with a different and limited set of perceptions than they would a white person. The subject of race isn’t an issue unless white characters play opposite an Asian or black. If it’s just a film with all white characters, audiences just see the characters; they don’t consider it a commentary on white America, just America. There is no “white” section in video stores but there is a section labeled “black.”

Having said that, I recently saw two films, both dealing with minorities. One was about Asian Americans and the other one was about Puerto Rican Americans. Better Luck Tomorrow and Raising Victor Vargas. In my opinion, one of these films was successful, one was not.

Better Luck Tomorrow could have been a good film. It has an interesting premise: a group of upstanding high school kids live secret lives of crime. The main character is Ben (Parry Shen), an average American teenager striving to get into a good college. He gets good grades and is involved in a number of after school activitiessuch as the food drive, academic decathlon, and the basketball team. Ben falls into a crowd similar to himself, all ambitious Asian students who go to great lengths to overachieve. To reduce the boredom of suburbia, the group begins to get involved with little scams. First they rip off electronics stores, then get involved with cheat sheets, then — without any development in the plot — they suddenly become coke dealers. Rather abruptly thereafter, the group ends up with a murder on their hands. None of the characters undergoes any apparent transformation. The filmmakers resort to the standard matinee ending: boy drives off into sunset with girl he wanted all along.

There are obvious holes in the story, such as how they get from selling cheat sheets to dealing coke. Since they all seem to come from affluent backgrounds, there’s the lingering question of “why are they doing this?” One conspicuous choice made by the filmmakers was to avoid depictions of any parents or other adults in the film. I think this proved a big mistake, as the contrast may have given more motivation to the characters’ actions. Without parents, there is no commentary on the vastly different world in which their parents were raised versus the one into which these kids are born. This might have helped to explain the characters’ overzealous desire to achieve. There were other problems with character development: the main character, Ben, struck me as phony and bland; he’s like a collage of every lead male character in film for the past twenty years — including everyone from Tom Cruise in Risky Business to Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. The love interest, a cheerleader with the standard jerk asshole boyfriend, doesn’t have any depth at all. In the beginning of the film, she looks like a regular Miss Goody Twoshoes. When it later turns out she may have played in some porn of some kind, there is nothing about her character that believably explains either her past or her switch. Either way, these two central characters are uninteresting, and the dialog between them is barely a step up from any teen television drama.

To attain a perfect score on his S.A.T., Ben learns the word “inextricable” — an adjective meaning, among other things, “hopelessly intricate”. This perfectly critiques Better Luck Tomorrow. The makers apparently want to cover every subject: from white parents adopting Asians, to neglected kids, to drugs, to affirmative action, to teen suicide, to… well, just about every ABC After School Special ever made. Better Luck Tomorrow should have focused on one storyline and a natural pace, instead of slowing the story down with the love interest for a half hour, then fast forwarding through all of their criminal activity, before coming to a screeching halt with a torturous murder and a last-ditch suicide to top it off. Maybe because the film had three different writers who tried to take it to three different places, and ended up taking it half way to nowhere with nothing to learn, it failed as a cohesive, tight film.

There are a few successful things about Better Luck Tomorrow. First of all, it’s a low budget film that looks and feels like a big budget film, which means the cinematographer and the director knew what they were doing technically, at least.

What impressed me as I watched was that the film sometimes managed to deny the characters’ Asian backgrounds. Ben could have been, well, white. Beyond the superficial, there is no evidence in his character at all that he’s not. I don’t think this would necessarily be a fault, but it didn’t work for me. Watching Better Luck Tomorrow, I couldn’t help imagining a group of writers sitting around a table saying, “Hey, let’s make an Asian Pulp Fiction,” “or an Asian Go,” or “let’s make an Asian this or that…” That said, it’s as if race in Lin’s film only matters to the group, not to its individuals. When the group goes to a party and a bunch of jocks make some racial remark, it incites one of the characters to pull out a gun and start a fight. But race is never treated as an integral part of who they are. This led to feel that the character development was superficial and ultimately, unbelievable.

Raising Victor Vargas, on the other hand, is a tight, cohesive film with memorable characters, and one of the most authentic movies I’ve ever seen, all centered around Victor Vargas (Victor Rasuk), a fifteen year-old wannabe player. The film starts out with him losing his virginity to a fat girl. He is caught in the act, and soon the whole neighborhood is making fun of him. This is all treated in a lighthearted manner, and Victor takes it in stride. Later, at the Pitt Street pool with his friend, Victor meets the challenge to make their moves on two pretty girls. Victor falls for Judy (Judy Marte) the first time he sees her sitting beside the pool. She first gives him the cold shoulder and then agrees to let him be her boyfriend, but only because she doesn’t want to be bothered by other guys.

That’s only one side of Raising Victor Vargas. The other side is Victor’s family life. He lives with his saintly younger brother, his couch potato sister, and his traditionally moralistic grandmother (Altagracia Guzman). The interactions between this family are the most natural I have ever seen. The grandmother sees Victor as a hoodlum trying to destroy the family. Victor is only behaving like a normal teenager, getting a girlfriend, trying to be cool. But the grandmother perceives him as a sex maniac encouraging his younger siblings to become interested in sex too early. When she finds Victor’s younger brother, Neno, jerking off in the bathroom, she flies through the roof and drags Victor to the police station to tell the officers that she no longer wants him in her house. At film’s end, after Victor storms off and stays out all night, we find the family in the dining room. The grandmother is silently sitting at the window, and Nino and his younger sister are on the couch. Victor walks in and sits between his siblings. The phone rings. Victor walks up to his grandmother and requests the key to the phone. She has had a lock put on the phone after — early in the film — Victor threw it out the window. The grandmother grudgingly retrieves the key and hands it to him. This resonated for me as a completely believable and poignant rendering of the grandmother’s transformation. There is no blatant apology, or big speech, like most important breakthroughs in movie families; it revolves around a simple action that is heavier then any word. And that is what works about Raising Victor Vargas. It isn’t in your face; it’s like a series of candid moments. All the characters are likeable and it’s easy to relate to them. There is no big issue of race here. Although the story takes place in New York’s readily identified Lower East Side, there are no guns or violence. As director Paul Sollett says, “if Victor was asked what kind of life he wanted, he would say, ‘I want to meet a nice girl, and get a good job, like any other kid.” Sollett doesn’t mistreat his characters’ racial identities; he accurately depicts them without focusing everything on what is really just a simple, ordinary part of everyone’s everyday life.

An interesting side-note to these films is the fact that Better Luck Tomorrow was written and directed by Asians, while Raising Victor Vargas was written and directed by Peter Sollet, who is white. Thus, it looks to me like the lesson to be learned is that you can transcend your own cultural identity to portray another culture and place, but you must remain true to your characters.

In conclusion, I feel Better Luck Tomorrow doesn’t accurately portray the Asian experience. Instead, it tries to push Asia outside, only using it to incite senseless violence. In Raising Victor Vargas, although there is no discussion of race, and no depiction of racial conflicts, we know where they are located in the racial identity pool. Because of the role of the grandmother, you get where they’re from and what they have been brought up with; at stark variance with the lack of adults in Better Luck Tomorrow.

To simply replace white characters with Asians or Latinos in mainstream American cinema isn’t the answer. More voices must be heard, and they must tell stories reflecting the lives of those on different paths, the lives of characters whose most important job is to remain believable. I don’t know why Ben didn’t seem believable to me. If he was white, he would have been more credible. Maybe that’s my problem. It may also indicate something about racial attitudes in America today. But right now, there aren’t enough Asian and Latino faces in the movies to change such attitudes. Hopefully we’ll have better luck tomorrow!

Jade Sherma, May 2003

“Young people today get most of their news from Comedy shows. Comedy shows are moving closer to what serious news programming used to be and news is moving into the realm of entertainment.” NPR – Nov 13th 2006

Let me take this moment to invoke the early nineties and say, ‘No shit Sherlock.’ As a ‘young person’ I am thoroughly annoyed, as every young person must be, with this statement. Not because the statement is incorrect, or because this man pushes the envelope for the term fuddy duddy, seeing as our country has been so conservatized since the early nineties, the radical creed could be more realistically appropriated into “Don’t trust anyone under thirty …. except Buckminster Fuller” (some things never change), but at the tone of shock in this man’s voice, and also the fact that a so called ’serious news show’ is just barely skimming the surface with commentary regarding a subject that that has been common knowledge to the general public for at least ten years, and presenting it as new and incisive which is exactly why “young people” are moving away from so called ’serious newscasts.’

That’s right. When we want to know what’s really up, which lobbyist groups are getting down with whom, and why, we don’t go to CNN, or Fox, or A.B.C. We turn on Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert at communications … sorry I mean Comedy Central.

I’ve heard too many rambling, lame attempts by the not so laymen, to deconstruct this social phenomenon. But the reasoning behind it is actually pretty simple. It has something to do with what makes funny, funny.

The first element added when stirring the comedy pot is the same element the Pink Panther spun into hilarious, mysterious gold; the element of surprise. When the members of Monty Python stood in line at the infamous cheese shop, we laughed initially because we were surprised. It’s a cheese shop. We expected at least a little cheese. What we got was a lot of camp.

The second element is, of course, that ever elusive, honesty. Bill hicks stood on stage and, as he lit a cigarette with a cocky smile, informed his audience that non-smokers die every day. Funny, because it was true, and yet it was the opposite of what the audience was used to hearing; “smokers die every day.”

One of the most recent and in my opinion funniest pop culture examples both of these elements, surprise and honesty, being put into good use simultaneously is reflected in a joke that’s been circulating the bar scene for about two years now. Have you heard it? It goes; “What the difference between Neal Armstrong and Michael Jackson?” Give up? The answer is; “Neil Armstrong walked on the moon …. and Michael Jackson… (long pause)… likes to fuck little boys.”

Surprising, because you expected a play on the moon walk, and yes, I think, unfortunately, probably, honest.

The ‘news casts’ on comedy central hold to the comedian’s creed of brutal honesty, perhaps with a slant, but the slant is one of personal esthetics, not one of political or corporate ties … and surprise! Why are programs like the Daily Show surprising? Well, their style of news is surprising to Americans because we haven’t been privy to even an accidental collision of news and honesty in decades. Unless you count the press release issued in 2003 where, in a suit filed against Fox by their reporters, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Fox News on the grounds that ‘it is not illegal to falsify news. I don’t (count it).

Incidentally when Fox reported that story they slanted it this way. “The suit against Fox News for falsifying information has been dismissed.” Short and bittersweet. Not surprising. Not honest. Not funny.

Since I am at a loss for a segway, let me just say I would like to radically shift gears here and turn my Freudian headlights upon that most elusive and debilitating of comedy forms, satire, and upon that most tiresome New Yorker columnist, George Saunders. George Saunders recently published an article entitled, ‘”Borat”: The Memo’ in the Shouts and Murmurs section of the New Yorker. This article caused me to shout initially and murmur under my breath all the way home. The article is written in the form of a tongue in cheek memo to what appears to be a member of the Borat staff putting together the new Borat DVD.

It begins; ” … have taken the liberty of suggesting some re-shoots: OPENING VILLAGE SECTION: How about a high-speed montage of the actual difficult, brutal lives of the villagers in Romania- the hours of debilitating toil, their oppression at the hands of their corporate government, premature loss of teeth, death of infants etc. ect.-”

How bout it? Mmm … how bout, not. Why not? Simple. It wouldn’t be funny. This sort of criticism is as ridiculous to me as posing the question, ‘why didn’t Dizzy Gillespie ever compose a classical Italian Aria?’ Because, that’s not where his talent lies. It would be totally inappropriate for the medium, and lastly sir, it’s not what he was getting at, and as usual, you rich white liberals just didn’t get what he did. That’s right. I said it. It’s a funny thing. Rich liberals won’t get it.

I do not want this to be a totally manic enraged tirade against rich, white so-called liberals, so I’m going to go at it more slowly from this point on. Let’s take a breath and look at what we have here, shall we? To begin, Borat is a piece of satire. To attack a work of satire for not being realistic is, in my opinion is, as Harlan Ellison spoke of attacking a work of fiction on the same pretext, ‘as ridiculous as going fully armed with sword and shield into battle with a hot fudge Sunday.’

But we can try to see what it is made of and where some of those delicious to some, inedible to others, ingredients came from.

We have been exposed to satire for centuries, from the Victorian Minstrels, to Saturday night live, In living color; from the Smothers Brothers to Dave Chappell; From Burlesque to The Cocketts to the Yippies and on and on and on.

When Eddie Murphy said ‘Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill all the white man!” Did we take him seriously? No. Well, most of us didn’t. But there was something serious to it. Some surprise, because a black man was sticking his neck out and saying what so many white men had been allowed to say quite freely, of blacks, for centuries. And there was honesty too. He tapped into an unspoken sentiment and rage that was and still is very real within the minority culture , stemming from generations of acquiescence to the demands, and acceptance of the small seemingly meaningless reparations and gifts of their former(?) masters.

For many, those words, exaggerated though all the whites hoped they were, came as such a relief and honest surprise there was no choice but to laugh. Much of comedy is just an acknowledgment of the invisible weights on the shoulders of society, an acting out of displacing of those weights. Sometimes the act seems exaggerated. But one must acknowledge that to lift the entirety of such a weight all at once and fling it overboard would require a much exaggerated motion in reality. Would require, perhaps, the Kill Kill Killing of all the white man. How else could you be sure?

Given ‘Krazy Kramer’s’ recent tirade and quick apology including my favorite line, “The insane thing about all this is, I’m not even a racist.” Yes, Mr. Richards! That is the insane thing, I think, but not for the reasons you do, I’m sure. I forgive your tirade, I suppose, since you did so hastily apologize. But I have not yet found it in me to forgive your naïve, mystified apology. That’s another essay though. Let’s get back to Eddie Murphy since he provides such shinning examples of satire as a mirror which is its first and foremost manifestation as a medium, and is also, I think, what Borat ultimately provided, which has everyone checking their asses and grimacing.

I think it must have been the late eighties on Saturday night live. Eddie Murphy puts on white face for a day and goes about his daily errands as a white man. In the first scene he enters a deli where a black man is making a purchase. Eddie, in white face, picks up a newspaper and waits patiently in line. The black man pays the clerk and exists. Eddie has his money ready. But when he attempts to pay the clerk, the clerk says to him, “What are you doing? He’s gone. Just take it.”

Brilliant. First of all, black man in white face turns the old prerogative of so many early comedians on its head. Surprising! At the same time it speaks directly to a socio-economic system that has politely kicked minorities in the face for years. Honest, if exaggerated. It’s a funhouse mirror allowing you to glimpse an image of yourself from an’other’ perspective.

All of these skits took place in the company of other comedians and actors, pre-scripted, on live or sound stages.

Now we have entered into the reality television phase of our existence. Reality television is the new BOOM. Thus far we have followed families and superstars alike through the annals, and I do mean annals, of their lives. But it should not surprise us that comedians are now finding a niche in that medium. We have seen Candid Camera, and Women Behaving Badly- in essence kranks and funny accidents. But, with the exception of Andy Kaufman, we are have not seen incisive, comedic satire played out in reality settings.

Surprise! Enter Borat. It’s not exactly reality television because he’s not ‘himself.’ It is not traditional sketch comedy because the reactions of the ‘real’ public cannot be scripted.

I want to go back, for a minute to Mr. Richards and Eddie Murphy. I was having a drink last year with a rather opinionated friend of mine in a bar upstate. I was quoting some racist mother fucker or other and instead of saying nigger I injected, “the N- word.’ My friends face dropped. “If I were white you’d just say nigger.” He told me. “And I wish you would. Your politeness is more offensive than that word ’cause it’s not real. Guess what? Niggers still exist and all these rich so-called liberals around here want to pretend like they don’t, like they’ve gotten rid of the problem, so they don’t use that word, but they think it. I’d rather everyone just said it, ’cause we’re still here, and we’re living among you and there’s nothing you can do about it. Might as well acknowledge it.”

Radical yes. Outrageous. No. Pretty logical actually. Honest, surprising. Somehow though, not really funny.

When I saw Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kasakhstan, my friends’ words rang through my head. Here is a character who takes on the characteristics of the impoverished, the crude, the cruel and the American unknown, foreign, thereby forcing us to acknowledge the stereotypes we keep tucked under our sophisticated hats.

The startling thing to me about Borat is not his absurd stupidity and crudeness but the fact that no one he encounters throughout his extensive travels throughout this great country of ours, questions the validity of this obvious caricature. As soon as he says, “I am from Kazakhstan,” you can see the expectation in the eyes of his unwitting victims. They, on some level, expect this behavior from a poor foreigner. If not they would surely see through the façade. Let me drive this idea home for you: My lover is Basque. We were at the flea market one day and I introduced her to an acquaintance of mine, a middle aged sophisticated New Yorker. They began talking and he asked her, in a sort of wavering suspicious tone if Basque was a very developed place. I answered with a straight face (meant as a joke), “Oh , her family still keeps a goat in the kitchen.” He tried to mask his horror and nodded politely “Oh really?” He said.

No not really. Of course not really. But he really didn’t know. So yes. Borat takes the horrible truths, and the stereotypes and exaggerates them for insulated Americans who don’t know the difference. And that is the joke. He is as horrible and cruel, and crude as their vision of the world, possibly as the world is. It’s honest and surprising and dare I say, funny.

The question, I believe, George Saunders meant to pose was, ‘what good is all this crudeness, and brutal honesty and degrading satire doing?’ Well, to find the answer to that one must look beyond the premise and into the actions of the character. “Where,” Mr. Saunders writes, “are the gays insulted?” where is the scene where Borat “says something offensive to inner city black kids?” Yes, these scenes are not there, because Borat is not out to hold a fun house mirror up to minorities whose faces are already wrecked with the torment of struggle. There is also no scene where he actually goes into Kazakhstan and attacks an impoverished family with a dildo. It wouldn’t be funny. There would be no hidden ‘good.’ It would just be absurd, senseless and cruel.

It is funny and I believe the most telling part of the film, if searching for integrity in the mania, when Borat visits the racist ‘antique store’ whose sign proclaims as he enters, “We retain the right to Secede.” He pretends to be a racist mother fucker along with the racist mother fuckers who own the store, even though Cohen, is Jewish, Borat, his character is wildly anti-Semitic. They show him various Civil War relics and duck figurines. Suddenly Borat slips falls, catches himself and falls again and again and again, in a bit of physical humor that recalls Faulty Towers. He’s not on a stage though. He really destroys nearly five hundred dollars worth of real civil war relics, costing some real racist motherfuckers a real shitload of dough. He pays them $120.00 and a ball of hair (which seems appropriate given the history of reparations) before exiting, the defeated, bumbling buffoon. That’s how they, the racist motherfuckers, see him; a fellow racist bumbling buffoon. What the audience watching the film sees is a comedian taking part in a bit of anti-racist, grassroots direct action.

And for me, that is the good Borat does. Every ‘bit’ is a piece of direct action through comedy, which is what most good comedy and good art is anyway. To quote Skunk Ananzi (Black Lesbian! Shaved Head!) Yes it’s fucking political! Everything is political! Yes it’s fucking satirical! Everything is satirical! And in Borat’s case, horribly absurd. At times, he does go a little blue for my taste. But that’s just my taste, and although I find it offensive I doe not wish to see blue comedy eradicated and wiped from the ass of the earth. Some people seem to like it. Shit is also shocking and honest. Especially at a high class southern dinner table, in the presence of the minister and his wife, (you’ll have to watch the movie).

Back to old George Saunders because he did provide me with such an excellent scene by scene blue print of the antithesis of my deconstruction in his attempt to disarm the hot fudge Sunday that is Borat. He helps for what me give you better description of why I view this Borat as radical comedic activist. He writes of the Rodeo *why not add a scene focusing on a “particular couple who have complicated feelings about the war in Iraq” … ? Perfect for comedy Mr. Saunders! And he could, I suppose conclude with a dramatic epilogue on the use of the image of the weeping willow in romantic literature. Hilarious! He continues, (after hitching a ride) *Borat ,perhaps “sits in the back seat of a car with kids, takes shit, then pretends to be humping the family dog and we see, from their reactions that they really are rednecks after all.”

This scenario would be a little off for the comic stylings of Mr. Cohen but yes, George, he did show those dumb rednecks for what they are. He got an old cowboy on camera saying we should hang all the homosexuals and he got a crowded gymnasium to cheer at the image of George bush drinking the blood of the Muslim terrorists. He also disrupted the sanctity of southern etiquette and bombarded a corporate dinner with a gay sex/ wrestling rampage.

Not everything he did in the movie could be so easily viewed through the lens of political action as the incident in the civil war shop but, in my opinion and in the opinion of youth whop are flocking to watch this movie, Cohen has taken on the role of a social commentator by transforming himself into an outrageous jester, holding court in the real lives of Americans. Americans who live unconscientious lives. Yes, why not take a shit in the back of the Nuclear families S.UV.? Why not uproot the monotony of the unconscientious, never objectors on their way to the mall to shop for sweetshop clothing and drive their gas guzzling S.U.V.’s paid for by their harmless day jobs at Bowing, or Monsanto or WallMart.

Why not right a point by point memo to them sir? Not someone who makes his living dismantling the social mores of a society whose members have had no problem outsourcing their non-culture of superficiality, racism, anti-global globalization, hypocrisy, insulation, and proud to be an American the whole time, while shucking the world at large which they know nothing about. Not even enough to see this buffoon for what he really is; a caricature hiding behind a mirror, reflecting the perpetually perplexed and offended. Begging the question, what did we do to deserve this image?

Vanity Fair: Better than CliffsNotes, but where is that bad girl Becky?
(A review of Mira Nair’s film)
By Poonam Srivastava
“Vanity Fair”

Director: Mira Nair

A Tempesta Films/Granada Film production

Screenwriters: Matthew Faulk, Mark Skeet, Julian Fellowes

Based on the novel by: William Makepeace Thackeray

Cast: Reese Witherspoon (Becky Sharp), Eileen Atkins (Matilda Crawley), Jim Broadbent (Mr. Osborne), Gabriel Byrne (Marquess), Romola Garai (Amelia Sedley), Bob Hoskins (Sir Pitt Crawley), Rhys Ifans (William Dobbin), Geraldine McEwan (Lady Southdown), James Purefoy (Rawdon Crawley)

Running time: 140 minutes

Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray’s nineteenth-century English novel, was a favorite novel of mine as a teenager. I loved the scathing satire on society and the fierce vixen protagonist who made her own rules as she played that game, society. Vanity Fair, Mira Nair’s film, recreates the characters and the scenes and holds closely to the story line. Then, the ending is a spinning Bollywood tribute that is entertaining, clever, daring but definitely out of order with the film. Mira Nair succeeds in all the parts — the characters, the costumes, the story line — but somehow the putting together of these parts undoes the film. As a cinematic event, Vanity Fair’s organic whole is lesser than the sum of its parts.

I was especially disappointed that one of the strongest, most nuanced women of literature, Rebecca Sharp, played by Reese Witherspoon, is so blandly likeable. Becky Sharp certainly always had my sympathy and support not because she was good and deserving, but because she was able and fierce. It was her layers of sharpness, her playing with the fires of British upper society — the envy,¬†the selfishness, the lust and the greed — and entering that upper society, it was her scheming, and her callousness as well as her true generous, intelligent spirit that textured my appreciation of this woman. Witherspoon, as Becky, goes from her lowly birth, to an artist and a French chorus singer, through the machinations of becoming a governess and marrying her way up the ladder — much as any likable young woman goes at it. This could be Legally Blond for g-sakes. Gone are the disturbing elements of abandoning mate and child. Gone is the sharp-toothed, sexy and smart woman that betrays friends, lovers and nobility — and who has haunted libraries and book shelves everywhere for the over one and a half centuries. In Napoleonic England, Thackeray’s Becky got as dirty as the best of them. Although Witherspoon certainly has what it takes to bring out the vice in a nice girl, as seen in Election, it fails to come out in this film.

She does hold a perfect English accent and dances beautifully in the surprising Bollywood ending. I enjoyed that dance immensely. Still it felt all wrong. The dance took the place of the naughty charades game in the book. It certainly was naughty, but it was also such an artifice. One can surely see that Becky has what it takes to recreate her life … but as a dancer?

The other actors shine but fail to reflect each other’s lights. They are beautiful and promising and then fizzle away. There are, however, some remarkable moments. Eileen Atkins (Gosford Park) is superb as Miss Matilda Crawley. Miss Crawley is a spinster whose wit finds a match in Becky. Becky comes into contact with the aging, loaded lady when she is a governess interested in her best friend Amelia Sedley’s brother, Joseph. When Becky turns her charms and snares on the old woman’s nephew Rawdon Crawley (James Purefoy) instead, well … betrayal is hardly purer. As the lovers learn to live on credit, as the handsome Rawdon gambles it all away, Becky becomes the mistress of the Marquis of Steyne (Gabriel Bryne) who hobnobs with no lesser royalty than the King.

The film is long and frustrating. It is also gorgeous and a good refresher for one of the all-time great stories that inspired the likes of Gone With The Wind and Bonfire of the Vanities. So, yeah, go and see it. Just pick a day when you are not too demanding. Or better yet, why don’t you just wait and rent the DVD on some snowy or rainy night.

“Monsoon Wedding”
An Issues Film Untainted by Art

Review by Poonam Srivastava

I saw Monsoon Wedding, due to all the excited chatter surrounding this “hit”. Who needs two hours of Thanksgiving holiday-type-family ennui at plot speed minus two? For those that do, I highly recommend Mira Nair’s latest box office “success”: Monsoon Wedding.

Catchy title, catchy cast, and hot issues meet no plot, no dialogue, and absolutely no character development. Set in Delhi, in an upper middle class home, a cast of established actors portray post -Y2k Diaspora Indians; NRIs, ABCDs, Delhi-ites, etc., gathered for a wedding. The bride is a Delhi hotty who is having an affair with a married broadcaster. The groom is an H1-B Visa- guy from “Amrika”, working in computers — ofcourse. During the course of the film, class issues become apparent, an incestuous uncle is brought out, and a grieving daughter, whose father died, gets funded to go school abroad for writing. The film sets up its tone early one with a cheesy segment of Mr. Broadcaster presenting a fatter, less than fashionable middle aged woman doing sexy sound effects. After a quick kiss and grab in the dressing room the scene shifts to Bride’s home and irate Dad cursing the crew that is to set up the tent. This, the setting up of the tent will take up much of the viewers pleasure.

I had the feeling through this film of being a fly on the wall at a family gathering. No, if I had been that fly I would have flown away. There simply was no one that I felt excited enough about in the goings on to watch. It is definitely a voyeuristic perspective that the audience is presented with. I was, as it were, merely a hapless film go-er trying to get my money’s worth. So I stayed a bit longer than I should have. As an ABCD, american born culturally conscious desi, I was outraged. After scores of conquests around the planet in literature, science and the arts — what was the need for a “look how the others live” film to be made about “my people”? True to Mira Nair’s established style, every single cliched, caricatural, image of “those Indian people” I knew was dragged before my eyes. The humor was slap- stick and cheap laughs were had for those that could grab them. The characters were oh so boring, one sided, flat … what is left to say?

Why this film is a “success” totally flabbergasts that person inside me that insists on linking success to taste, art, and culture. Why this film is not a success totally flabbergasts that person within me that believes in formulas: hot issues, incest (for god’s sake!), an impure bride, adultery (and all still not sexy!); hot sub-culture; and a great location. If only there was an artist here that would weave a tale and breath life into the ingredients above, we could have a hell of a movie. Maybe we need a filmmaker, like G. Chadha, who directed Bhaji on the Beach?

“Me and You and Everyone We Know”
Written and Directed by Miranda July
Wih Miranda July, John Hawkes

“Me and You and Everyone We Know,” is a quietly brilliant film that sidesteps cinematic convention to evoke a genuine emotional response.

Writer, director, and actress Miranda July plays Christine, an undiscovered Los Angeles artist nursing a bevy of idiosyncrasies. While moonlighting as a driver for the elderly she meets Richard, played by John Hawkes, an odd yet likeable shoe salesman dealing with the breakup of his marriage. His awkward charm takes Christine by surprise and they begin a touch-and-go game of attraction.

The story unfolds in a series of vignettes that expands to include Richard’s precocious sons, Peter and Robby, and a branching network of friends and neighbors, each equally quirky in their fashion. The clipped narratives and carefully crafted visual poetry of these scenes are an extension of the sensibility July developed as a video performance artist and, as a result, could stand on their own. They are, however, pieces in a skillfully constructed mosaic; the overarching theme of which is the persistence of love and friendship in the digital age.

Perhaps because of Christine’s quirkiness and the film’s obvious artistic underpinnings, “Me and You and Everyone We Know” exudes a sort of awestruck geek sensitivity that I found to be slightly annoying at first. Giving the film a few minutes, I realized that this naiveté is merely a camouflage for the clever clockworks beneath. As the whimsical slices-of-life tighten into a story, July introduces elements deftly designed to challenge the audience. In a scene where 8 year old Robby chats online with an anonymous pervert, his typed responses completely derail the viewer’s expectations; not quite defusing the unease that the situation raises but somehow managing to highlight its absurdity while offering a sly commentary on the isolation of cyber-sex. An equally delicate balance is struck when Peter, the older son, is sexually initiated by two teenage girls. The scene is at once uncomfortable, humorous, and oddly touching. That Miranda July shows us these moments and treats them with warmth and understanding is a testament to her relevancy and her bravery.

By the time the film ends, it will have touched on human attraction from its young beginnings to its waning twilight. Summing this up thematically is a simple conversation between Christine and Richard as they walk a block’s length contemplating the timeline of relationships. The scene probably took less than ten minutes to shoot and cost as much as the film it was shot on, but it’s one of the loveliest moments you’ll ever encounter on the big or small screen.

Even with July’s impressive vision guiding its course, “Me and You and Everyone We Know” wouldn’t be the gem it is without its highly talented cast. John Hawkes’ depiction of Richard’s emotional drifting is achingly accurate and Miles Thompson and Brandon Ratcliff, playing Peter and Robby, come very close to stealing the show. Even the bit players that fill out the smaller roles are likeable and utterly convincing. Finally, Ms. July proves herself worthy of the title auteur by acting as well as she writes and directs. In a scene when Richard tells her to get out of his car, the disappointment in her eyes creates an emotional gravity that the dialogue only hints at.

While July finds many ways to illustrate the struggle of love in the age of aids and cyber-sex, she steers clear of a strident tone. In place of a proclamation she offers an entertaining and believable story of people fitting their lives around modernity. Ultimately, the film’s message is one of hope, with the basic human need to seek comfort in others bypassing the newly created obstacles in its path.

“No Man’s Land” a film by Danis Tanovic

Review by Rosanna S. Lee

In this black comedy, filmmaker Danis Tanovic, depicts not only the insanity of war but also the absurdity of humanity as a whole.

“Who started the war?!” The two soldiers, Ciki, a Bosnian and Nino, a Serb were trapped in a trench between the enemy lines during the Bosnian war. Ciki has Nino at gun point. At first they started a conversation about the war. Both blaming the other side, finally at Ciki’s gun point, Nino succumbed in admitting that the Serbs started the war. At this point, they both stuck in this no man’s land, frightened and no one to trust. They can’t escape the trenches without getting shot by both side. On top of that, a fellow soldier of Ciki is lying on top of a spring-load mine that will explode if he moves. No one can help them except a mediating team. This is when the UN comes in. Always with good intentions, the UN plays the good guy in a conflict without getting involved in the fighting.

This film clearly mocks how the rest of the world, represented by the UN, views a conflict without actually stopping it. The film also remarks on the human minds and their believes. It is not good and evil anymore but more of the justification of one’s belief. Nino, a newbie to the war, probably a white collar who is naïve enough to introduce himself to his enemy, Ciki. We can see how Nino’s character evolves as the film progresses within the time span of one day. Nino transformed from an innocent soul into a vindictive monster. Ciki, who is not an evil person but due to survival and vengeance, he has to hurt Nino. The real evil here is perhaps the rest of the world who just stand by and allow this ridiculous war to continue. Ciki and Nino could become friends, they even know someone in Nino’s town. As the film continues, it actually sparkes a glimpse of hope in which the audience thinks that the two may become friends, just like Bosnia and Serbia. Wishful thinking, this film is not a fantasy. It portrays the reality. It also reveals the sad irony of war. None of the Serbs nor the Bosnians know what was going on until an absurd situation such as this occurred. It’s no longer a game when it’s beyond, in this case, between enemy lines, they have to call the referee. The UN’s involvement in this war is to close one eye and open the other, avoiding to take sides unless necessary.

Tanovic wrote a very witty script where he intelligently places the character and location in a catch 22 situation. He captured a typical war scenario. Journalists seeking for the news of the day, racing to the hottest events. At least in this situation, the media helped a good-willed UN sergeant in proceeding the rescue mission in which his superior had demanded to retreat. The journalists and reporters were there to bring the spectacle to the rest of the world. Until a real tragic event happened, they realized the severity of the situation. The spectacle is gone and what is there for the UN to solve not only resolve itself but also never solve. Nino, Ciki and Ciki’s comrade were never rescued. The last haunting shot of the film is an enlightenment to the meaning of war; a sad, lonely and hopeless place.

R.S. Lee January 2002

In the past few decades, films from China has advanced drastically as the country immerges herself into the 21st century. The films present a portrait of the Chinese culture, either in man versus idea, man versus nature or man versus society.

During the Communist occupation, films became a medium of propaganda. The styles were theatrical as in the 1959 film, Song of Youth by Cui Wei, with a storyline that is about the rising of Communism and the suppression from the Nationalist Chinese government. The film appears to be influenced by the Russian director, Sergi Eisenstein’s Battleship Potempkin with a patriotic and dramatic acting style.

Throughout the years, the films have evolved from political to historical as the so called Fifth generation directors such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige were among the most famous. Their storylines are more earthy and nostalgic of the ancient China. Zhang Yimou introduced us the karma wheel in The 1990’s film, Ju dou where he took the opportunity to express his personal style and combined it into an entangle tale of vengeance and reward. His 1991 Raise the red lantern was a realistic and stylish portrait of the concubines in the feudal Chinese cast system. Chen Kaige revealed the span of Chinese 19th Century history through the eyes of a Chinese opera troop and uninhibitedly showed us the era of the Communist China during the Chinese revolution in Farewell my concubine, 1993.

After the Fifth Generation directors had brought Chinese films to the attention of the western world, (their films are usually banned by the Chinese government) the younger generation filmmakers are bolder and more experimental in personal expression. Explorations into the taboo topics such as homosexuality in the film East Palace, West Palace, 1996 by Zhang Yuan, where he verily revealed the gay life in China today. The Sixth generation filmmakers departed from the nostalgic and earthy topics where the previous generation liked so much and started to focus toward individualism of modern day China. Many were influenced by the western film masters. The film Platform, 2000 by Jia Zhangke is an epic film with a ten year span into the lives of a group of teenagers to their adulthood. The idea of growing up in a Chinese cultural revolution society to the invasion of Rock n’Roll and bell bottom pants allows us to take a peek into the post-cultural revolution life where western influence still invades China no matter how Mao tries to prevent it. It’s a slow 3 hour long film that fulfills one’s cinematic appetite.

While the few indie films are struggling to get attention domestically but successful internationally, there are the more commercial ones such as Roaring across the Horizon, 1999 by Chen Guoxing, which is about China’s first nuclear bomb. “My 1919″, 1999 by Huang Jianzhong is about the Peace Conference at Versailles after WW1 where the entire world wants to split up China and yet she resisted. Both films are patriotic and proud of the Chinese 20th Century history and of course were very well received by the government and the people of China.

In the more recent ones such as “A Sigh”, 2000 by Feng Xiaogang and “Beijing Bicycle”, 2002 by Wang Xiaoshuao. Both films portrayed the lives in modern China and the big city. “A Sigh” is a story of an affair and how the modern Chinese society judges it. “Beijing Bicycle” is a story of a stolen bicycle and the determination of an individual’s survival in the city. Both films reveal the city life and the struggle which the hero have to go through to obtain their own sense of value and existence.