Just before I start, I wanted to exclaim that I'm officially going to the Corcoran! Hopefully I go to their commencement ceremony so as to see where I'll be in a couple years. Also Tim Gunn will be there soooo...
who doesn't like tim Gunn
anyway here are the links to the few movies I'm dying to see!
Where the Wild Things Are.
A Spike Jonze Film
Release date: October '09
I love the book. Maurice Sendak is seriously one of my favorite authors.
He is uniquely original and classically whimsical. When I read his words I'm transported back to my Montessori class. So 90's
So I know I haven't been writing here for a while or at least not consistently but there's no demands for reviews in today's current economy so, what's a movie buff to do? I'm just kidding, I've just been really busy but I'll be back in action; Sooner than later. So to start I give you this.
WTF America. I know Oscar season had came and left but really? We choose to watch a Beyonce movie over at least a film about fighting or the dying earth.
I have to agree that this film is an important one. It's a small indie movie that does well in becoming a powerful film through all its uncharacteristic elements. Like the low budget or the 4 main actors or the scattered and scarce dialogue. It really has all the essentials of becoming a boring movie. Although I must say. I have a sort of bias , in that themes about immigration or displacement are one's very close to me, because both my parents were immigrants and I come from a people who struggle everyday to prove they just want to belong and not be considered criminals for taking shits on american toilets.
The film's protagonist is, for lack of a better term, a bored character. His name is Walter Vale and is played by Richard Jenkins, who received a 2009 academy award nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of the character Walter. Walter is a very specifically written character who at the point of the film's commencement is rather apathetic as a result of not experiencing anything rewarding in his life. He is a recent widower who attempts to preserve his wife's past existence by learning how to classically play the piano, as she did professionally. Turns out, he can't and his cycle through new piano instructors has become jaded to him, among other things. He is a professor who has been teaching the same subject for 2 decades and has already written three books and in the process of writing a third. But when directed to go to New York for a conference, professor Walter Vale's life would no longer be the same as before.
As he enters his New York apartment after months of neglect, he discovers an African woman,Zainab played by a relatively new actress Danai Jekesai Gurira,in his bath tub. Startled by his discovery, he is confused but before processing the situation and making sense of the confusion he is aggressively confronted by a Middle Eastern man, Tarik Kahlil played by Haaz Sleiman, who was nominated for an ' 09 Indie Sprit Award for best supporting actor for his role as Tarik. Both strangers are young and are a couple. After hastily discussing the situation at hand while packing and preparing to the leave the couple reveal that they have been renting the place from a man named Ivan. Vale, having no knowledge of an Ivan or that his place was being lived in, made no attempt to chastise the strangers and respectfully let them depart from his home. After seeing them alone outside and no where to stay he tells them to return and spend the night. The relationship between the three quickly spirals into something positive. They all live together during Walter's time in NY for the conference. They are all seemingly amicable and almost friends.
The relationship between Tarik and Walter has its turning point when Tarik discovers Walter playing his drum. Walter is slightly embarrassed to have noticed Tarik noticing him. Tarik instead attempts to teach Walter to play. They begin playing non-stop. Walter, because he has finally learned to execute musical talent and Tarik, because it is his job to play. One day the new friends decide to play at a park with other drummers. It is then, when Walter feels that break in his internal monotony. He is happy. And so is Tarik. The drums are an important motif because the two learned from each other through the exotic instrument and it is the drum that catapults this stunning relationship between all characters.
On their way back home they go to the subway but Tarik gets stuck while trying to get through so he slightly hops the passageway. The police stop him and he is detained at jail. Walter confused yet again by what has happened doesn't stop to take into account if what indeed is serious. After telling Zainab she tell him historically that they are illegal and that Tarik's detention could also mean his deportation. This experience leads to Zainab leaving Walters home and Tariks mother going to NY from michigan as a result of Tariks lack of calls.
After his arrest we see a deep enthrallment between these different polarities of people that are Tariks loved ones.
It may not be a satisfying ending by conventional expectation (cough cough Americans). Lets just say this ain't no Slumdog and you won't leave with a smile on your face and an Oscar in your hand. It is powerful, realistic and beautifully ironic. It is a story about music and the threading veins that connect us all through the unexpected.
The synopsis provided by IMDB summarizes the film Gardens of the Night as, "An 8-year-old girl [who] is taken from her home and convinced that her family does not want her anymore. After enduring 9 years of horror, she and her fellow victim are dumped by their captures. Now, 17 years old and no one to turn to, except each other they do their best to survive life on the streets, until one day she finally accepts the help of a shelter counselor to find her way home. However, what she truly finds is the love of her life and that you can never go back."
Gardens of the Night is a film that captures the world of child abduction in an unsettlingly gritty and raw light. Tom Arnold, who plays the abductor, performs one of his most compelling acting jobs in his comedy-fluttered career. I must say his spot-on performance is commendable for all its cringe-worthiness. In the end Arnold became what the popular majority would assume a child abductor looked like but despite his conventionality he never became an imitator instead he created is own persona. 15 minutes into the film I had to stop watching. Its subject matter was that intense for me. And the director, Damian Harris, does an excellent job of capturing the subtleties and making them obvious in a subtle way. You become an investigator for the victim hoping to find the next trap before she does in the hopes of preventing her from being harmed. Your become completely submersed in this up-side down world.
It's always hard to tell who the breakthrough actor is, in intense characterizations like these. Arnold's perfectly formulated and yet effortlessly delivered performance, he manages not to out shine the child victim, Leslie who is played by Ryan Simpkins. Ryan's compelling eyes make the character's emotions intense and deep yet ambiguous in the end because unless she's outwardly crying her glossy eye's just manage to observe and nothing more. It becomes the job of the viewer to attribute an emotion to the intensity of her ambiguity. Her overall acting isn't always ambiguous though. She conveys the necessary emotion when it is completely appropriate and necessary. Her eyes also provide a much-needed innocence to the character. Her eyes have the ability to connote submission and fear at the same time and it becomes ever so appropriate for the situations in which the character finds her self. After watching her performance I feel that Simpkins has a great future ahead of her. If she was only 11 at the time of the film's release, I can only imagine how much more refined her acting chops will be as an adult.
Harris's directorial style is very supportive to the film in its entirety. He, as I said before, makes the subtle obvious in a subtle way. Meaning he might shoot "Leslie's" shoes in a scene where it is not relevant yet is used to remind the viewer of her innocence as a child. He includes very ironic elements in his writing, most notably in the “caterpillar to butterfly” analogy. He uses the score appropriately, although I can’t say I’m a fan of the actual musical quality of the score. Its conventional at times. The high pitched piano tones do help remind the viewer of the dichotomy between innocence and total perversion. A specific scene I can remember that was especially perturbing was a scene when the cops are after Arnold’s character and his accomplice and him begin to sing a cheerful song to the kids while fleeing the sight. In the scene the imagery is intense in that the children have bandanas strapped around their mouths and despite their efforts the children manage to only make muffled yells in all their horror. This frantically sung song accompanies this haunting imagery and the opposition between sight imagery and sound imagery is completely disturbing. It is a style use that can be compared to the rape scene in A Clockwork Orange, when they sang “Singing in the Rain.”
Lets not forget this film may have been great on an artistic and technical level. But the subject matter was unbearable at times. In what can really only be considered the rape/sex scene that we never see, the aftermath is disgustingly gripping. Arnold's character tries to convince Simpkins's character that she is a new person after enduring what she did and it is fucked up. There's no way around that. This girl is sold to multiple men who all manipulate her differently and I can almost consider their manipulation worse than their physical harm but that's just a personal conviction. That's not even the half of it. The head petting was probably the worst for me to see. I had to watch the film in MULTIPLE increments because it was too hard to see in one shot. You might think it won't go there but just like degrassi; it goes there.
In the end, yes the film is a performance driven film, but the subject matter never became something we've seen before. And that's another thing that’s important thing to recognize; the film deals with subject matter we may believe to have seen before in "the movies," but the truth is we haven't. There has never been quite a stirring rendition of child abduction like this one. This is not a heist movie, this is not slasher film and we're not seeing it through the eyes of the parents.. Ultimately it becomes a documentary of sorts. This assertion is supported by how well researched the film is. Writer/director, Damian Harris based his story on the kids, counselors, cops and pimps he met during two years of research, and it definitely shows. We are introduced into a world that's kept behind closed doors and in police files.
h e l l o
well... about me huh
i'm an awesome salvadorian that happened
to have been born in Fairfax, va.
im a former alter boy
me=nerd
wait
nerd=smart
so am i a dork?
im the kid that gets bullied!
I paint
and fucking hate hate high school
but i'm grateful for it
in other words i am the most original person you'll ever meet
