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LATEST
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The audience
comes to life with the first beats of the unexpected.
Young at Heart
An Illusion Review by Joan
Ellis
“Young at
Heart” is a mirthful answer to a big question: what do I do when I’m old?
We aren’t talking advanced middle age in this documentary; we’re talking
old. And we aren’t talking about a hobby; it’s all about passion and work
and structure, and there aren’t too many activities that offer that
combination to old people.
Young at
Heart is the name of a chorus of 24 people from 75 – 94 who live in
Northampton, MA and tour the U.S. and Europe singing under the direction
of an extraordinary younger man named Bob Cilman. With an inexplicable mix
of energy and compassion, Cilman has created a focus for these people that
gives them a chance to be excited about living. He makes big demands on
their time and talent because he understands their commitment to the
chorus is their lifeline. He asks them to work hard, and there is no hint
of condescension in his efforts.
With a
concert date six weeks off, they are learning “Schizophrenia,” a song from
the punk band “Sonic Youth;” try Coldplay and Talking Heads and a
potential spirit buster where, at a fast clip, the word “can” is repeated
71 times. The goal of the group is not fine choral singing, but the
fellowship of friends dedicated to learning new musical rhythms rarely
associated with their age group. Their audiences come to life with the
first beats of the unexpected.
Genuine
laughter is a primary ingredient in the chemistry of the group. The movie
audience is won by the remarkable wit of the singers as they navigate the
rapid fire lyrics of jazz and rock. They obviously love rehearsals for
which they are on time in all kinds of weather. When sadness hits, and it
does in the natural course of things, the loss is on some level an
expected loss. But it is still the loss of a friend and colleague they
have come to know very well through rehearsal, performance, and travel.
British
documentary filmmaker Stephen Walker explores the chemistry in
non-intrusive interviews with the singers. Neither chemotherapy, nor chest
pain, nor an oxygen canister keeps them from rehearsals. “Why do you keep
coming?” Answer: “I love what I’m doing. That’s what my life is now –
singing.” They sing in cars, in busses, in concert halls, and, in an
especially moving scene, in a prison.
If one answer
to old age is discovering what you love to do, another is the beauty of
acceptance. These people are beyond annoyance or judgment. Frailty
surrounds them, but so does good will. There is little pettiness among
them and no complaint at all. When we watch Eileen Hall, at 94, studying
her music in large print with a magnifying glass at home and finally
belting out “Yes, I can, can , can” 71 times on stage we realize that the
hardest to find and most valuable enhancement of old age is work.
December 10th, 2007
The perspective
now developing on the last eight years has created a fury in parts of the
electorate that surpasses even the anger generated by Richard Nixon and
his multiple felonies or Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War.
We are trapped in the fifth year of a war started by a president and
vice-president who lied to the American people about why it was necessary
while linking it in an unconscionable way to 9/11 – an extension and
justification of sorts of their newly minted War on Terror. George Bush
and Dick Cheney wanted to invade Iraq. Now, five years later we are still
blowing up bridges and buildings in that country and then rebuilding them
with American companies hired at taxpayers’ expense. Why are we still in
Iraq? Because civil war will break out if we leave? This war will end in a
bloodbath of our creation whenever we leave. To bring democracy to Iraq?
It is a concept so alien to the Middle East that is an embarrassment every
time George Bush even mentions it.
Our country, untouched by the hideous cost of this war in lives and
resources, goes merrily on living in a toxic culture that has spawned a
profusion of luxury goods – houses at $15,000,000, handbags at $29,000 – a
market catering to obscenely paid corporate executives, entertainers,
hedge fund managers, and international visitors. Don’t dare answer that
those salaries are simply what the market will bear and that whatever the
market will bear is fair. Eighteen year old kids are...
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Tarek disappears
behind the steel doors and security cameras of our new national fear.
The Visitor
An Illusion Review by Joan
Ellis
At last, in this dismal spring, a good movie. Leading a small and gifted
cast, actor Richard Jenkins infuses “The Visitor” with extraordinary
subtlety and he does it in a role that most actors would have handled with
exaggeration. There is no overkill here. Under the direction of Tom
McCarthy who also wrote the script, Jenkins has created a character we
believe.
So
conditioned are we to Hollywood theatrics that we wait for the drama of
full blown redemption or transcendence. Don’t wait; just settle in with
Professor Walter Vail (Richard Jenkins) and watch a real life unfold. Vail
teaches one course in economics at a Connecticut college while writing his
fourth book. In every respect he is uninspired, often gruff in his private
solitude. He walks the campus alone and is equally alone in a group of
colleagues at a meeting or in the dining hall. When he lost the wife he
loved, a classical pianist, he also lost his energy and his spirit.
When Walter
goes to New York to deliver a colleague’s paper, he heads for the
apartment he seldom uses and is surprised to find a couple who rented his
place from a con man. Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) is a musician from Syria,
Zainab (Sanai Gurira), a jewelry maker from Senegal. Because we know
Walter Vail well from the first third of the movie, we are ready to watch
him warm slowly to the young couple he invites to stay on in his
apartment. As he takes African drum lessons from Tarek and drums with him
on the streets of New York, he comes slowly, ever so slowly, alive. Walter
at last expresses himself in a place a world apart from his classroom in
the college where he taught for twenty years.
In a grim but
credible example of what has happened since 9/11, Tarek becomes an
innocent victim of the new immigration policy of “take your prisoner, no
explanation necessary.” Tarek disappears behind the sliding steel doors
and security cameras of our new national fear. Turned away repeatedly at
the detention center when he asks questions, Walter, the quiet academic,
hits a personal turning point, wheels around and, in the absence of a
channel upward, unleashes his anger at the receptionist.
The final
third of the movie revolves around Tarek’s mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass) who
arrives from Michigan in search of her son. The relationship that develops
between Mouna and Walter Vail is a beautiful story of love and compassion.
Not one of the actors in this lovely movie breaks the consistent tone of
private silence that Richard Jenkins and director Tom McCarthy set at the
outset. In quiet resignation, Jenkins says and does everything with
understatement. It took me by surprise, but if you can leave your
conditioned expectations of emotional fireworks at home, you too will be
rewarded with the essence of first rate acting.
HUNTING
VIDEOS
When
you stand clueless in the video store, try these.
They won’t insult your intelligence.
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To
Feed a Kooky Sense of Humor
Off
the Map
Black
Cat, White Cat
Big
Fish
The
Dish
Light
and Good
About
a Boy
Along
Came Polly
As
Good As it Gets
Being
Julia
Calendar
Girls
Enchanted
April
In
Good Company
Miss
Congeniality
My
Wife is an Actress
Real
Events
13
Days
Shattered
Glass
The
Whole Family
Billy
Elliot
De-Lovely
Gosford
Park
Hidalgo
Holes
Pirates
of the Carribbean
Rookie
Seabiscuit
Sweet
Home Alabama
The
Emperor’s Club
Tuck
Everlasting
Adventure
Master
and Commander
The
Bourne Conspiracy
The
Edge
The
Italian Job
Touching
the Void
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Action
Collateral
Day
After Tomorrow
Drama
About
Schmidt
Afterglow
Closer
Croupier
Don
Juan in Hell
Field
of Dreams
Frida
Garden
of the Finzi-Continis
Gloomy
Sunday
House
of Sand and Fog
Last
Orders
Legend
of Bagger Vance
Map
of the World
Million
Dollar Baby
Nowhere
in Africa
Possession
Rabbit
Proof Fence
Songcatcher
Storytelling
Swimming
pool
The
Deep End
The
Natural
The
Quiet American
The
Talented Mr. Ripley
Unfaithful
When
Brendan Met Trudy
Widow
of St. Pierre
Invasion
of the Barbarians
Documentary
Bowling
for Columbine
Fog
of War
My
Architect
Supersize
Me
The
Control Room
For
History Nuts
Blind
Spot
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