I showed this to a class last week. While it is not in the class of Toy Story or Finding Nemo, I found myself enjoying this prehistoric Three Men and a Baby. My personal favorite character was Diego the Sabretooth Tiger, though I was dissappointed that he came back at the end. What a cop out! I was confused by the Sloth’s prowess at winter sports and would have liked to see more lazy Sloth jokes. I enjoyed the evolution jokes even though some of them didn’t quite make sense.
There is also an interplay between predator and prey throughout the film that I find interesting. They talk about some of these contradictions a little bit and I think the message is of acceptance of place in the food chain. Social ties to friends and cute babies seem to trump natural emnities. I am not quite sure what this means, but it got me thinking a little bit.
This is another film we watched during our film festival. The documentary does a lot of interviews with people about old protest music that is interesting but may drag on a bit. However some of the footage is fantastic. There is an amazing funeral song and some really fun stuff from after Mandela gets out of prison and the first election. However, the most impressive part was the footage of the Toy Toy - a kind of Zulu war/protest dance. It was basically designed to scare the crap out of the soldiers watching the marches. It hints at some of the violence involved in the anti-apartheid struggle.
I remember two things about my Current World Affairs class in high school. The first was doing a project on the Bosnia conflict, the second was watching this film. Cinematically, it is good. Denzel and Kevin Kline both do a good job and the story does a nice job of depicting the general impression of Steve Biko, though it doesn’t get into real depth of understanding of Black Consciousness. But mostly the professinals just stay out of the way of what is an awesome story. This gem came out during the anti-apartheid heyday, but it has not remained well-known for some reason.
Most movies about S.A. mostly focus on Mandela. One of the reasons I like this is that it shows a different era and also the diverse aspects of the resistance to apartheid. In my mind, Mandela gets the saintly MLK treatment in South Africa, while Biko gets less affectionate Malcom X treatment because he also wanted Blacks to improve themselves on their own. This comparison is flawed, but if you want to know more, I recommend watching Cry Freedom or reading Biko. The book is a little self-congratulatory, but good reading.
During my student teaching last year we put together an African Film Festival and I showed Cry Freedom to my seventh graders, completing the circle of life. SABC’s Great South Africans placed Steve Biko 13th, one ahead of Shaka, founder of the Zulu Nation and one behind Charliz Theron
I only saw part of this thing in a class a couple weeks ago. I am not sure how long it has been since I saw this or if I have ever seen it. As I watched the opening scenes, I was struck by how absurd this film is. Maybe this says something about who we were as a country at the beginning of the Cold War Era. The country was going through its own rags to riches story as it came fully out of the Depression into one of America’s great economic booms. Blond-haired Cinderella triumphs over her dark haired step sisters.
What I don’t have an analogy for is Cinderella making clothes for the little birds and mice. These creatures in turn become her slaves, dressing her and running errands. Perhaps this is conistent with our view of military aid to Third World Countries. The countries love our cultural and economic exports so are happy to aid us in our quest against the evil empire. I was just floored by the premise of this woman making clothes for mice and birds. Snow White makes friends with forest creatures, but are there any other cinematic instances of human-animal interaction like this? For some reason, I find this part more bothersome than the pumpkin turned into a carriage.
You may notice that I gave this movie 50 out of 100. I am not sure weather 100 is good or bad, but I do know that I have know idea if I liked this movie.
What I did like was Viggo, some of the cute horse interactions, and the general pro native american ideology. Someone told me that this guy was a real dude who quasi bred these horses, but his real thing was being nice to his horse rather than killing a series of horses by riding them to death. That aspect of the story was not included. I also liked how Viggo didn’t end up going for either the nice, off limits girl or the evil seducing girl. That avoided a lot of possible romance pitfalls. There are also lots of nice sunsets.
On the downside, I just didn’t find the story to be all that compelling. For whatever reason, I was not extremely worried about what was going to happen. And I didn’t find the action to be especially good either. So there you have it.
This is a film about a supposed day in the life of the Beattles. They put together a plot where they spend a day trying ot get to a TV taping, do the rehearsal and in the finale sing the final number. Austin Powers took a page from thier book in the intro where he gets chased around the streets of London. There are a few chase scenes in this film. Also thrown in is Paul’s very clean grandfather. His grandfather drives a lot of the plot as he is a first class mixer and is always up to no good. Who knows whether these are their real personalities, but they seem to be in line with our conceptions of the fab four. Lennon was the rebelious leader, Paul was Mr. Nice guy, Ringo was also nice, but also kind of lame and George was just kind of there. You get to see them sing a bunch of songs and see them on screen. I found it interesting, but mostly for historical value. It also seemed like the Monkees were based on this movie.
I can’t believe this thing came out in 1950. It is old! And after watching yet another Billy Wilder movie I have concluded that this guy had some wacky stuff kicking around under his lid. I am not sure exactly what film noir is, but i think this is it. It has a narrator, shady people and some huge lines. Even the really long memorable lines page on imdb misses some of them. I like when he talkes about rain and his shoe shine man. “He never asked about your finances, he just looked at your heels and knew the score.”
This film does a nice job of keeping you guessing what is going to happen next even though they tell you the ending to start off with. I thought it also did a good job of making me feel uncomfortable when it wanted. I even felt pretty convinced about the characters even though a couple of them were ridiculous.
