MILK

In 1977 an unlikely leader was elected as a city supervisor in San Francisco. His name was Harvey Milk, and he was the first openly gay politician in the country's history. Not a year after taking office, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated inside of City Hall. During his brief time in office, Milk helped pass a number of gay rights initiatives and defeat the exceedingly discriminatory Proposition 6. Fast forward 20 years and we have the passage of Proposition 8 in California and an intense sense of deja vu.

In part, current events are what makes Gus Van Sant's Milk such a chilling and timely tale, that while at once beautiful and tragic, leaves one with a half-empty perspective on how short society has really come. But from the inspiring man that was Harvey Milk to the incredible performance by Sean Penn to the shocking murder of a rising community leader to Van Sant's intimate framing and treatment, Milk is a gallon's worth of rightfully deserved superlatives that make it one of the best movies of 2008.

As has been printed and described to me, Harvey Milk was an ordinary man by most accounts, but one with an impressive degree of empathy, optimism and passion. Sean Penn as Milk embodies these characteristics so deftly that's hard to imagine him ever having played a hardened character before (e.g. the detective in The Interpreter). As Penn recites Milk's move to California and his political pursuits, his impassioned expressions and bouncy intonation has a dedication and complexity that borders on career-worthy. You get a sense that Milk really was as charismatic and everyday as Penn describes, and that it's no wonder he was able to galvanize a community out of a plain sense for what was right. Might Penn secure another Academy Award for his performance? I certainly hope so.

Cleve Jones and Harvey Milk attend a rally in a scene from Milk.

In the film, Milk (in his early 40s) moves from New York City to The Castro area of San Fransisco with his boyfriend Scott (James Franco). The two open up a small business, Castro Camera, which quickly gives way to Milk becoming involved in the neighborhood merchant association and by extension the fight for equal treatment. Milk's fight for his and the community's equality continues to grow, eventually leading to him running for political office and securing the city supervisor seat. Along the way, Milk amasses a rag-tag group of activists and campaigners, most notably Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch). Both Franco and Hirsch hold their own alongside Penn, delivering affectionate, genuine performances to be proud of.

Franco pulls off the intimacy in his relationship with Penn, while Hirsch nails the bubbly impatient activist. Probably the only brand-name in Milk that didn't deliver was Josh Brolin, quite sadly, as the murderer Dan White. Despite the guy's recently rise to stardom, he sits firmly as the odd man out among the other three leads. I know Brolin plays the troubled fellow city supervisor who does the unthinkable, but his performance comes off as incomplete rather than complex. Van Sant and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black share some of the blame here as you never get the sense that Brolin's character really develops.

An obvious aspect that may make Milk a hard sell is it's squarely gay perspective. And while there isn't a Brokeback Mountain terrain of intimacy, there certainly is a lot of affection between Franco and Penn - very well-placed and executed, I might add. And sure, you can abstract the fight for equality as a civil rights issue that touches everyone, but as you'll see in the movie, Milk's fight never hid the gay angle behind more general, albeit safer messages. Appreciating Milk and the life of Harvey Milk is to truly understand what he and his supporters fought for. Some may not understand it completely or can't relate to it personally, but they can certainly appreciate the man's accomplishments. Generalizing Milk's message and legacy wouldn't be a just treatment of the man.

Gay himself, director Gus Van Sant recognizes this very importance and tells Milk's story in a surprisingly authentic manner. You don't get the sense that the film has been white-washed or "blockbustered" in any way at all, and that Focus Features is putting themselves out there again as honestly as they did with Brokeback. At a reported budget of around $20 million, Van Sant was able to transform The Castro back to its '70s look, but he let his talent shape the movie. Milk will go down not only as a hallmark film for the gay community, but also a piece of cinema that everyone should remember for its timeliness, its hero, its cast, and its emotional intricacy that simultaneously inspires feelings of joy, sadness and anger.MILK, Nominated for 8 Oscars. Another 16 wins & 38 nominations

Starring: Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Emile Hirsch, James Franco

Director: Gus Van Sant

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

At once epic in scope and intimate in detail, David Fincher's THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON is certainly the director's most emotional film to date (though FIGHT CLUB and SEVEN don't offer much in the way of competition). Loosely based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, this romantic drama tells the tale of Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), born in 1918 in New Orleans as a baby with wrinkles, cataracts, and arthritis. Benjamin will age backwards, getting younger as he watches those around him growing older. Included in that group are his adoptive mother, Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), and Daisy (Cate Blanchett), the love of his life whom he meets when she is just a little girl and he is an old man. They age in reverse, but despite Benjamin's globe-trotting adventures, their lives repeatedly intersect. The script from Oscar winner Eric Roth bears more than a few hallmarks in common with his earlier work on FORREST GUMP: both adaptations cross decades and continents. But BENJAMIN's script or even the fine acting aren't its most impressive accomplishment; the technology--both CGI and makeup--used to make Benjamin and Daisy age are remarkable, and makes the film entirely believable, but they're certainly aided by fine performances from both Pitt and Blanchett. The triumph of technology only serves to underscore the beauty of this film and of the love story at its heart.

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, Tilda Swinton, Jason Flemyng, Elle Fanning

Director: David Fincher

Director: David Fincher
Screenwriter: Eric Roth
Producer: Kathleen Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall, Cean Chaffin
Composer: Alexandre Desplat

Slumdog Millionaire

Directors:Danny Boyle, Loveleen Tandan (co-director: India)

Writers:Simon Beaufoy (screenplay) andVikas Swarup (novel)

http://www.foxsearchlight.com/slumdogmillionaire/

Danny Boyle couldn’t have timed his resurrection as a populist director much better than this. Half the planet is desperate to enjoy a feel-good hit that doesn’t involve Abba songs.

The other half will be astonished by his chutzpah. Slumdog Millionaire is exactly the kind of exotic, edgy thriller that the new generation of Academy voters on both sides of the Pond absolutely adores. The rags-to-riches story is set in the grubby backstreets of Mumbai. Half the script is delivered in Hindi. And the plot is impossibly shallow.

The film starts at the end. Dev Patel’s 18-year-old Jamal is just one correct answer away from winning — or blowing — a 20 million rupee (£280,000) fortune on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

The handsome and terrified youth is an orphan from the gutters of Mumbai. Jamal’s unexpected success on the show over two intense days turns the stuttering youth into a national sensation.

When the programme breaks for the night before the all-important final question, Jamal is bundled through the back door of the television studio, whisked to the nearest police station, and beaten to a pulp by corrupt and jealous cops who want to know how he cheated. This is where the film actually begins.

“What the hell can a slum boy possibly know?” barks the irritated police chief (Irrfan Khan) as a plump minion clips a pair of electric cables to Jamal’s big toes. “The answers,” spits out Patel’s bruised hero. The plucky martyr reveals how each loaded question asked by the slimy host of Millionaire unlocks a seminal childhood injury.

This being a Danny Boyle movie the precious answers are nailed to brutal scenes. They involve frantic sprints through Mumbai’s crowded markets and grisly flashbacks to medieval slums where the nine-year-old Jamal, and his slightly older psychotic brother, Salim (Madhur Mittal), spend most of their childhood fleeing the clutches of sinister pimps and hungry gangs. It’s terribly Dickensian.

The fairytale power of the film is the way Boyle manages to capture the evolution of the city through the eyes of a child. It’s visually astonishing. The film gets under the skin of the city on every imaginable level. The cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle is an insouciant genius with a camera. You could hang his lush stills of garbage heaps, frowning waifs and skeletal tower blocks in any respectable art gallery. By the same token the film must have been murder to edit.

Jamal’s shocks of growing up alone unfold like dreams: the death of his mother, murdered during a riot; a comic shaking of hands with a Bollywood legend, and then a long litany of ghastly wounds inflicted on fellow urchins by smiling pimps and lethal Fagins.

The rift between the sensitive Jamal and his increasingly domineering brother is the rip that hurts the most. The adolescent orphans barely understand the pain that they inflict on each other. Boyle uses this simmering tension to turn up the temperature at critical moments.

The director has never been shy of manipulating emotions and characters to crank out the maximum screen emotion. The scented backdrops and flavours of Mumbai dilute the crude liberties that Boyle occasionally inflicts on the melodrama.

The fact that these memories stack up into neat answers is spookily inconvenient if you’re a poisonous bastard such as Anil Kapoor’s deliciously smug television host. Or an emotionally detached viewer. Indeed Slumdog Millionaire is guilty of all sorts of implausible twists, not least a thundery long-distance romance between Jamal and a sultry captive beauty (Freida Pinto) forced into prostitution. It keeps pulling at your sleeve like a needy child.

Despite the wobbly structure, Slumdog is a far more sophisticated film than the plot suggests. There isn’t an inch of Merchant Ivory on view. And, like the best parables, Slumdog doesn’t simply plunder India’s troubled past and a boy’s bitter-sweet memories in order to look forward.

What’s great about the film is that it looks sideways as the past and future grind past each other like tectonic plates. It’s the kind of dynamic that Robert Lepage explores so brilliantly on stage. Here, Boyle takes on a bewildering mess of contradictions to make a surprisingly pure point.

Mumbai’s brand new skyscrapers sprout out of patches of mud; Jamal’s old-fashioned principles will forever be out of synch with the slick, nightclub world that his older brother Salim inhabits. And so it goes. The romance? Fear not. It’s fabulous icing.

Taare Zameen Par

Aamir's Taare Zameen Par is India's official Oscars entry

Aamir Khan's tryst with the Oscars continues. Khan's directorial debut Taare Zammen Par has been selected as India's official entry for the Oscars.
Taare Zameen Par released in India on 21 December, 2007 and bagged rave reviews from audience and critics alike. The film has been produced by Khan in association with PVR Pictures.
It stars Aamir Khan, Darsheel Safary, Tisca Chopra, Vipin Sharma and Sachet Engineer. Khan is currently shooting in Ladak for Raju Hirani's 3 Idiots and is expected back in Mumbai tomorrow.
In an official statement Aamir Khan says, "Am really happy that TZP been selected to represent India at an international forum like the Oscars. It is a film that is extremely close to my heart. It's a film that first sensitized me as a parent and as person and then went on to have same effect on all the audience in India and across the globe. I hope that it has an equally strong impact on the members of the Academy as well."
The movie has won various accolades at awards functions in India this year in categories of best film, best director, best story and more.Film Federation of India (FFI) chairperson Suneel Darshan led this year's committee for the Oscars nomination. Other jury members include Bijon Das Gupta, Aruna Raje, Ravi Kotharakara, H M Ramachandran, Sudarshan Rao, Mahesh Kothare, Jagdish Sharma, B R Ishara and Manoj Chaturvedi. A total of nine Indian movies were contesting this year for the Oscar nomination, of which Bollywood had the highest share with movies like Taare Zameen Par, Ashutosh Gowarikar's Jodhaa Akbar, Neeraj Pandey's A Wednesday, Nishikant Kamat's Mumbai Meri Jaan, Abhishek Kapoor's Rock On and Subhash Ghai's Black & White. The two Marathi movies that were in the running were Tingya and Valu along with one Telegu movie Gamayam.Speaking to Businessofcinema.com, Darshan says, "It was a difficult task to choose from the nine movies.

The Pianist

Directed by Roman Polanski
Starring: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmnn, Emilia Fox, Frank Finlay
Running Tim2:28
CountrPoland/UK
Year: 2002

A talented Polish Jewish pianist escapes deportation. He is transferred o the Warsaw ghetto, from which he escapes to find refuge in the ruins of the capital. From one hideout to another, he gets help from people, and unexpectedly from a German officer who is struck by his genius.

Three years after the poor Ninth Gate, Polanski returns with very traditional direction. The Pianist is the academic and literal adaptation of musician Wladislaw Szpilman's memories. This fictional reconstitution of a tragic episode of the Shoah doesn't shine by its formal inventiveness, at least in the first part. Admittedly, Polanski thoroughly describes the inescapable process of dehumanization implemented by the Nazis. Jews are slowly relegated, deprived of the most elementary rights and humiliated before being exterminated. Divided between incomprehension, fear and absurdity, the protagonists quietly undergo the Nazi oppression, before revolting: it is the famous episode of the Warsaw ghetto's resistance.

Adrien Brody (already noticed in Bread and Roses) lends his slender silhouette and emaciated face to this pianist genius. Through the portrait of a musician caught into events, arises of course the theme of the place and usefulness of art during wartime. Deprived of his instrument, the artist is nothing. However, he owes his survival to a haunting performance in front of a German officer who's discovered his hideaway. This scene, one of strongest of the film, restores Szpilman's integrity as an artist, while bringing a dash of humanity to the German officer.

Unfortunately, you have to wait 110 minutes before getting to the most successful scenes. The film becomes truly enthralling when, isolated, the pianist must ensure his survival in the ruins of Warsaw (haunting sequences of devastation). With fear and hunger in his belly, he's anguished to be uncovered. Polanski renders this fear palpable. The lack of food also becomes a dramatic stake.

In spite of an accumulation of stereotyped scenes, the film is successful in the point of view adopted by Polanski: the war is seen only by the small end of the spyglass. Indeed, Szpilman is a character who hides and flees throughout film. He sees war only through windows, half-opened doors and holes in the walls.... Even the few days of the resistance in the ghetto are seen through a window. Some explosions and shots: this is how Polanski approaches this glorious episode: with stupefying scarcity. He could have chosen to show the desperate fighting of the Jewish resistance, but here the fiction gains in intensity.

The audience is put in the same position as the hero, sharing the same vision of the event. It is regrettable that the accuracy of the direction does not carry the whole film from beginning to end.

While Polanski manages to evacuate a certain number of stereotypes from his story, the film is nevertheless consensual. A passionless Palme d'Or was awarded to The Pianist.

Malena

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Italy/United States, 2000
U.S. Release Date: 12/25/00 (Limited)
Running Length: 1:32
MPAA Classification: R (Nudity, sexual situations, violence)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1

Cast: Monica Bellucci, Giuseppe Sulfaro, Luciano Federico, Matilde Piana, Pietro Notarianni, Gaetano Aronica, Gilberto Idonea
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Producers: Carlo Bernasconi, Harvey Weinstein
Screenplay: Giuseppe Tornatore, based on a story by Luciano Vincenzoni
Cinematography: Lajos Koltai
Music: Ennio Morricone
U.S. Distributor: Miramax Films
In Italian with subtitles

Malena, the latest film from Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore, is a curious mix of whimsy and tragedy. Tornatore's blending of the divergent tones is not entirely successful - there are several jarring moments - but, on the whole, Malena works as an affecting coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of Fascist Italy and filtered through the memories of the narrator. Along the way, Tornatore sticks to the same basic style that served him well in his 1989 international hit, Cinema Paradiso, by employing equal parts nostalgia, comedy, and drama.

The year is 1940 and the place is the picturesque (and fictional) town of Castelcuta, Sicily. 13-year old Renato Amoroso (Giuseppe Sulfaro) is about to experience his first major adolescent crush when he catches a glimpse of Melena Scordia (Monica Bellucci). Melena, the daughter of Latin teacher Professor Bonsignore (Pietro Notarianni), has come to Castelcuta to care for her father while her husband is away at war. As Malena walks by, every man's head turns and women's tongues wag with scathing gossip. Then Melena's husband is killed in the war and she becomes free to pursue and be pursued by Castelcuta's male population. Meanwhile, Renato, whose infatuation develops into an obsession, begins spying on Malena and, in the process, learns that the "real" Malena is much different than his idealized portrait of her.

Ultimately, this is really Renato's story. He is the narrator (gazing back through the mists of decades at his childhood) and the emotional focus of the story is on how his perception of Melena helps him to develop into a man. When the film begins, he is in short pants (a sign of childhood), but, before it ends four years later, he has made the symbolic transition to long pants and burgeoning adulthood. Through it all, his obsessive interest in Melena is a constant companion, even though he never speaks to her. For Renato, she represents the unattainable, and his affections are clearly unrequited. Nevertheless, as her reputation in Castelcuta deteriorates and she is branded a prostitute, he feels betrayed by her because she is unable to live up to the mental image he has constructed of her.

Malena begins as a lighthearted drama that recalls one of Federico Fellini's best-known works, Amarcord. Tornatore does not have Fellini's deft hand, however, and the story eventually takes a dark turn, with some of its themes and ideas recalling the late Krzysztof Kieslowski's A Short Film About Love, in which a young voyeur comes has his fantasy picture of a woman brutally shattered by an encounter with her. The shifts in tone may make some viewers uncomfortable (especially one scene of graphic brutality that depicts what happens to Malena when she is subjected to the justice of the women of Castelcuta), but they work if we consider that the story is being presented as a series of conflicted and at times incomplete memories of someone who saw Malena as everything from a Madonna to a whore.

Malena isn't really a character; she's a vision to enflame Renato's imagination (not to mention other parts of him). As such, the key achievement for model-turned-actress Monica Bellucci is to look stunning - something she has no difficulty with, whether clothed or unclothed. Bellucci does a good job of making Melena seem aloof and stand-offish (which is how she appears to Renato), except during one or two scenes when her dire circumstances show her vulnerability. For his part, newcomer Giuseppe Sulfaro, who was discovered after an extensive casting search, does solid work portraying a boy whose guide through puberty is an untouchable woman. (When his father brings him to the local brothel to be initiated into the world of sexual maturity, Renato chooses a prostitute who strongly resembles Malena.)

One of the most powerful elements of Malena is the music, by frequent Tornatore collaborator and legendary composer, Ennio Morricone. Combined with cinematographer Lajos Koltai's sweeping camera work and beautifully photographed vistas, the music gives Malena a glorious backdrop against which the story can unfold. This is not the writer/director's most accomplished feature (Cinema Paradiso is a more complete and emotionally satisfying experience), but it offers a strong central character, an interesting historical subtext, and a coming-of-age narrative that most people will be able to relate to on one level or another.

© 2000 James Berardinelli