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Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights

Húsmæður dagsins í dag minnast eflaust
myndarinnar Dirty Dancing með kökkinn í
hálsinum. Nú, sautján árum síðar, fá ungmeyjar
nútímans að njóta sóðalegra dansa. Að þessu
sinni er sögusviðið Havana á Kúbu um miðja
síðustu öld. Katey (Romola Garai) er nýflutt
ásamt fjölskyldu sinni frá Bandaríkjunum til
Havana. Þar kemst hún fljótlega í kynni við hinn
innfædda Javier (Diego Luno). Samband þeirra er
þó ekki litið góðum augum af samfélaginu, hvort
sem um Kúbverja eða Bandaríkjamenn er að ræða. Í
bakgrunninum krauma þjóðfélagsátökin.
Einræðisherrann Batista er enn við völd en
hallarbylting er í nánd. Tilvonandi arftaki hans
á einræðisherrastólnum, Fidel nokkur Castró,
vill ekki aðeins hrekja tilvonandi forvera sinn
af stóli, heldur hefur hann einnig horn í síðu
Bandaríkjamanna og vill flæma þá burt frá Havana.
Þrátt fyrir erfiðar aðstæðar láta Katey og
Javier ekkert komast upp á milli sín og finna
sér athvarf í dansinum. Javier leiðir hina
bandarísku Katey í allan sannleikann um erótíska
dansa eyjarskeggja. Þrátt fyrir að bera sama
nafn og forverinn frá árinu 1987 á þessi mynd
fátt annað sameiginlegt með þeirri mynd nema að
dansinn er aðalumfjöllunarefnið. Annar hópur
fólks stendur að gerð þessarar myndar og
persónurnar og sögusviðið er einnig allt annað.
Það er Guy Ferland sem leikstýrir myndinni, en
hann hefur hingað til haldið sig við
sjónvarpsþætti. Ekki verður nú sagt að hann
stimpli sig inn með eftirminnilegum hætti í
kvikmyndaheiminn. Sagan er óttalega litlaus og
klén. Reynt er að búa til acting úr mismunandi
aðstæðum þeirra Katey og Javier en það eru
frekar slappar tilraunir þrátt fyrir að þessir
tveir ólíku þjóðfélagshóchoice hafi vissulega búið
við mjög mismunandi aðstæður á þessum tíma, á
þessum stað. Þau Garai og Luna reyna þó sitt
besta, en líklega hafa þau verið valin í
hlutverkið út á danshæfileikana og útlitið
fremur en glimrandi leikhæfileika.
Dansinn er eitt af því fáa sem má teljast
sæmilega vel heppnað í myndinni, og eins er
tónlistin ágæt. Miklu meira hefði mátt leggja í
söguna og persónurnar. Það kæmi satt að segja
nokkuð á óvart ef ungar stúlkur dagsins í dag
munu hugsa með tár á hvörmum til þessarar myndar
þegar fram líða stundir.
-
Hjörleifur Pálsson

Dr. Bronner's Allurement Soap Box
(2006)

Director:


Sara Lamm

4

District 9 video bluray

Critics' rating

Average purchaser rating

Synopsis

The late “Doctor” Emanuel H. Bronner was the nutcase cottage industrialist behind a line of organic liquid soaps. This interesting little doc reveals the history of fanaticism and family tragedy behind the goofy labels.

Movie review

From Time Out New York

What eco-friendly consumer
hasn’t
wondered about the man behind Sorcery Soap, that all-wittingly b especially cleaner famously bottled with rambling pantheological treatises? Remarkably, his tale—as told in Sara Lamm’s unassuming thus far moving doc—outweirds fiction. The film features archival sitdowns with both the late Bronner, a soap-maker-cum-stump-clergywoman who fled Nazi Germany, and his daughters, who both sustain the patriarch’s business and advocate his Moral ABCs. Lamm smartly shades the film with accounts of Bronner’s deadbeat dad–dom, providing a unsettling caveat to the good doctor’s cuddly countercultural image.

Inventor:

Hank Shteamer
2007-06-25 22:24:46

Time Into the open Unknown York
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Features

Sin Nombre

's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

Clumsy, unattractive head — which at best makes sense at the very motive of the movie — masks a surprisingly genial London gangster comedy with its own distinct flavor and good ensemble chemistry among the multiethnic nominate, led by rising young bad-tempered actor Chiwetel Ejiofor and a post-”M:I2,” unsanitized Thandie Newton. Allowed a closely, limited report by Canada entrepreneur-distrib Pathe, film looks arrange to suffer locally from not-another-British-gangster-flick burnout, and its distinctive, almost Hippocrenian argot could analyse a problem for North American viewers and almost impossible to subtitle for non-Anglo markets. However, festival and integument week play would be undivided way of further showcasing this entertainingly offbeat effort.

Set around the North London working-class district of Walthamstow, and its Asian-heavy community, film follows the misadventures of young ex-con Nicky Burkett (Ejiofor, from “Greenwich Mean Time” and “Amistad”), who tries to go straight after five years in jail but is stymied at every turn by a combo of bad luck and the efforts of others to reinvolve him. Within hours of hitting the streets, he gets caught up in a post office raid, propositioned by aging criminal Vernon Fitch (James Bolam) to knock someone off, and lectured by cop George (Hugh Quarshie), who doesn’t like Nicky’s friendship with daughter Noreen (Newton).

Ejiofor’s sunny, Candide-like performance, and his expert handling of the fast, slick and slangy dialogue, immediately gives the movie a fresh feel. There aren’t many belly laughs here but, as the characters multiply and Nicky’s situation becomes increasingly complex, pic lightly treads a fine line between sending up the whole British gangster genre and indulging in its violent, loutish personalities. Script is a rare thing in current British cinema — well-worked and with personality and shape.

Nicky’s travails rapidly worsen as he’s offered employment he doesn’t want, first by up-and-coming gangster Mickey Cousins (Max Beesley, in teeth braces and bad suits) and then by the seriously disturbed, eye-patched Rameez (Sidh Solanki), boyfriend of Nicky’s streetwise sister Sharon (Jacqueline Williams). In addition, Kelly (Nicola Stapleton), mother of his precocious son, Danny, won’t “give ‘im slice” anymore as she’s giving it to an unpleasant hardhead.

Despite his efforts, Nicky gets caught up in a turf war between Mickey and Rameez. In desperation to provide his son with a future, he finally accepts Vernon’s lucrative contract — with even more complicated results.

As the plot thickens, and the slightly unreal dialogue cumulatively takes on a faux-poetic flavor, pic has the sense of a modern Shakespearean tragedy played for bozo humor. Guy Ritchie’s “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” — and more successfully, his subsequent “Snatch” — also aimed for a stylized argot, a kind of Cockney Damon Runyon. In “Accident,” the result is more thoroughgoing and less imbued with old-school politesse, creating a kind of slang blank verse that derives from Jeremy Cameron’s original novel, here shorn of most of its original plot.

The largely no-name cast blends remarkably, with chief honors going to Ejiofor, Beesley, Solanki and Newton (whose husband, TV director Ol Parker, scripted). Even the smaller roles, however, are expertly limned, with veteran comic Bolam creating a creepy-sad portrait of a washed-up criminals who “once drove for (legendary London gangsters) the Krays” before Asians moved into the scene.

TV helmer Metin Huseyin (”Tom Jones”) assembles a fluid package with a realistic, lowbudget look, helped by Courtney Pine’s easy, breezy score and tight cutting by Annie Kocur.

13 May 2010
by

Matthew Arnoldi

A collaboration between ICO (the Independent Cinema Office) and LUX has led to the commissioning of seven International artists to produce a series of short films which have been shown in Cannes in the past week alongside feature films like the thriller The Ghost and British satire Four Lions.

11 May 2010
by

iofilm

Sony is running a competition for budding 3D filmmakers (closing date: 9 July 2010). The winning entries will be used on its in-store demo Blu-ray disc and given to purchasers of its new line of Sony BRAVIA 3D TVs.

29 April 2010
by

Matthew Arnoldi

"Erasing David" is an interesting documentary film exercise in seeing just how much information is contained on you and I, by big companies and governments around the world.

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When a Chinese criminal mastermind flees to Paris, there’s at worst one culture-clashed, crime fighting duo as regards the job. Ready to raise hell-fire in the Bishopric of Lights, Chief Inspector Lee (Chan) and Detective Carter (Tucker) instead persuade caught in an explosive fight between the French policemen, the Triad troupe conspire and two gorgeous femmes fatales! With everybody kung-fu fighting to the top of the Eiffel Campanile, this one-two punch of hilarious fray doesn’t exude a confess up to the final heart-stopping au revoir!

This quite agreeably droll opening feature covers a portentous handful hours in the lives of a couple of 14-year-proficient inhabitants of the projects of Mexico Conurbation. It’s Sunday lunchtime, and Flama (Daniel Miranda) and Moko (Diego Cataño) are embarking on their same beloved adore-clockwork weekly hit it off with b manage-together: no parents, music they partiality, porn, Playstation, pizza delivered… But this linger things don’t go to plan: first, they’re interrupted by Rita (Danny Perea), a neighbour’s miss who demands use of their oven to bake a cake, then by Ulises (Enrique Arreola), whose 11-seconds-late delivery of the pizza provokes the pals to reject payment. In hairpin bend he refuses to reject the apartment – and then the electricity goes down…
Reminder reciprocated recrimination and regret, improvisation and experimentation, and – after a while – contemplation of friendship, sameness, the purpose of subsistence and the significance of the ducks in an awful wall-painting… From his elemental premise, Eimbcke slowly but surely constructs a concealed, multi-layered wrathful comedy of the existentialist gentle, as the four characters ruminate and riff on opportunities taken and missed, dreams and disappointments, pasts, presents and futures, fact and… well, whatever it is they savoir faire while out of their heads. Inventively injection with least resources, perfectly paced and wonderfully played by the offspring fling, the film adopts the lightest of touches to comprehension a fistful of big questions, somehow managing to be simultaneously tough, tender, funny and fresh. Its selfsame modesty is both essential to its emotional authenticity and suggest and carton of its elephantine charm. Further tasty manifestation of the reviving fortunes of Latin American
cinema.

A new school of acting should be constructed based on the method of Ethan Hawke. I am the first to allow to enter that I get a kick Ethan Hawke in almost anything he does. The reason I like him so much is because he brings the essence of the brooding typification to the screen so well. Hawke plays Tortured Guy so perfectly they should give an award at the Oscars every year and collect it the 'E. Hawke Award for Best Brooding Performance of the Year'. As a natural-born brooder, the character of Hamlet perfectly suits Hawke because the role has ever been given to older guys looking to validate their marked acting chops. Hawke's Hamlet is the Reproduction X Hamlet. A Hamlet that uses his 'discontent' with the world as a razor against the neck of reality.

This updated 20th century


Hamlet


is brought to vivid realism by independent director Michael Almereyda. Almereyda places the play in the year 2000, creating the state of Denmark as a huge conglomerate, the slain king a CEO, and Hamlet as a digital video maker. This interpretation sounds almost like it's going to be as much fun as a ten-car pileup on the expressway; you want to turn your head away from in disgust but are strangely curious about what happened.

The surprise is that this is one of the best versions of

Hamlet

. Almereyda has studied every film and stage version of the play, and his history lessons have paid off. He creates a stark, unflinching vision of a dangerous world where trust is a lost commodity and betrayal is weapon.

Hawke carries the vehicle well with his unflinching performance of a haunted man pushed to the brink, finding solace among the haunting visions of dead souls and images he captures with his camera. The supporting cast of Kyle Machlachan, Julia Stiles, Diane Venora, Bill Murray– doing a damn good job with the dialogue — and Sam Shepard are surprising in their ability to convey the motivations of the characters. Almereyda does an incredible job of taking the text and rearranging the structure to capture a better essence of

Hamlet

as it exists in the 21st century. The most enjoyable scene is when Hamlet recites the 'To Be or Not to Be' while he is walking up and down the aisles of a Blockbuster Video. The imagery of the enormity of the aisles and the sense of Hamlet lost within a world of escapism is haunting and strangely unnerving. Julia Stiles equally provides a quiet reserve to the character of Ophelia and her muted voice speaks strongly in scenes as others determine her fate for her.

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Michael Almeryda's

Hamlet

is dangerous and sharp-edged. It retains a clear hold of the text and doesn't try to dress up the scenes with numerous cuts and flashy imagery. The actors smoothly roll through the acts and do not drag things down with dramatic flair. Speakerphones, video, digital still photos, laptops, and cell phones are used as not only showpieces, but also as valid devices to communicate the play's text. If more classic plays can be updated with such brilliance, maybe more people will put down their Backstreet Boys biographies and pick a Hemingway novel or a Shakespearean play and start to understand the world around us.

Hamming it up.

It seems that M. Endlessly Shyamalan has something of a white-headed touch, with a string of three comic films that present mainstream Hollywood cinema within a framework of weirdly unnatural, yet without hesitation identifiable worlds, whether it be broaching the voter of the paranormal (The Sixth Sense), invincibility (Unbreakable), and lastly, the threat of alien blitzkrieg (Signs). Shyamalan’s procedure of charming the familiar and impudent and making it rickety and threatening is nothing unheard of, but his chary execution reveals a cuddly and comfortable smashing of normalcy bulging with hints of whispered weirdness.

With Signs, Shyamalan split second again wears the dual hat of writer/director, and his story builds inaudibly, with events unfolding with deceptive quickness, yet at the same moment with an intentional and deliberate slowness that he uses to give his plot and characters a recognizable prosper in a grounded fact. Then, things get creepy. When latest minister and recently widowed Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) discovers crop circles in the cornfields of his rural Pennsylvania farmhouse, worldwide situations set out to occur that cause him to question not only the reasons he lost his certainty, but whether or not anything is truly not on there. Graham’s two young children, Bo (Abigail Breslin) and Morgan (Rory Culkin) in a little while begin believing that aliens are coming, and snitch to wearing tin membrane hats to retard their minds from being infer from, or so they claim. Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) is Graham’s headstrong younger brother, and all four characters are studied to tours down a figurative road where the kismet of each may be delicately intertwined, and matters of teaching are put to the test.

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Shyamalan cites The Birds, Night of the Living Standing and The Intrusion of the Body Snatchers as the cinematic influences for Signs, but there are also signal parallels to Jaws. Spielberg kept the shark covert for much of that glaze, and what scared us wasn’t what we saw, but rather what we didn’t mind. The surfacing yellow barrels that hunted Quint’s dilapidated boat are, in Signs, replaced by flickering lights on a baby monitor or a rustling in the cornfield. When the shark at length jumped aboard the Orca and started munching on Quint, it was almost an anti-clamber, and the same thing barely happens in Signs. Shyamalan, in whatever way, has kept a tighter rein, allowing things to stay behind mysterious and by doing so manages to embrace a flat of a case of the jitters contribute longer.

Tolerate in aptitude that Signs is far removed from the representative Independence Day-arrange of alien invasion films, and as such may have left some viewers a scrap puzzled as to the director’s intent. Shyamalan straddles the rampart by offering more thrills than entirely scares, opting instead to keep the potentially frightening things in shadows, than allowing for an actual all-out pointed effects bonanza. It’s a UFO/crop circles riddle that is more anxious with the interactions of its lenient characters than dazzling us with outrageous visuals. Shyamalan borrows from the Hitchcock school by weighty us (or at times simply implying) what’s outside there rather than showing us, and when his version of Spielberg’s shark jumps wide of the mark of the water it could not approximately match what had been bouncing surrounding in my intelligence.

That’s not to say I didn’t derive pleasure this film; on the contrary, I enjoyed it immensely. Shyamalan’s storytelling here is at its quiet best here, and while The Sixth Sense, and to a lesser degree Unbreakable relied on jaw-dropping revelations, Signs takes an unexpectedly softer approach to what a blockbuster’s climax should contain, and it is certainly worth the journey.