- The Cannes Film Festival starts next week (May 13-24). They have a smart (in English) website, so bookmark this page: http://www.festival-cannes.com/en.html. Movies we know nothing about today, we'll be screening in the next year.
- Book Review - The Soloist - Finding fascinating the various iterations of the same story (movie, newspaper columns, TV documentaries), yesterday I bought, and consumed at one sitting the Steve Lopez book, The Soloist, the underpinning of the movie and a reworking in narrative form of his LA Times columns. It's a quick easy read, and while argumentative, very persuasive.
I'm ashamed that in a region of unprecedented wealth, the destitute and the sick have been shoved into this human corral. I'm frustrated by my inability to do more for Nathaniel. If I can't help him, how can I help the others. ...and .....He lives in two distant constellations, this man who fends off rats on skid row and holds forth at Disney Hall, mingling easily with members of the orchestra...From paranoia to poetry, sirens to violins, madness to genius, Nathaniel's life is opera.
($13.86 @ Chapters; $3.96 @ Amazon).
- Cinephiles should visit our website (http://www.my-pov.ca/), screen the newly posted The Soloist trailer Scott has posted, and then screen, on YouTube(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7ovt3vSFi8), a 4:00 memorable documentary clip of a birthday party journalist Steve Lopez organized for Nathaniel Anthony Ayers in the basement of his newspaper.
- Farla, having seen The Soloist, reminds me of the healing-force-of-music parallels between this week's film and Shine, the elegant 1996 Australian movie about pianist, David Helfgott. Both deal with the conundrum posed by creativity: gifted, scarred musicians, whose lives can go so awry. Steve Lopez makes the same point in his book:
Nathaniel's sound is the baring of his soul, and when he closes his eyes, it's as if he's come to a clearing in a forest and found relief under an open sky.
In Shine, Rachmaninoff costars with Geoffrey Rush. In The Soloist, it's Beethoven.
- Nicole went to see Ghost of Girlfriends Past (100 min) for us. Here's what she found:
Connor Mead, (Mathew McConaughey) ,more philandering bachelor than glamour photographer, heads from New York City to his childhood home in Newport, Rhode Island to serve as best man at his younger brother’s wedding.“Not the best man to pick for your best man” The publicity reads: And they were right! Uncle Wayne, (Michael Douglas) the Hugh Heffner ghost, with matching depth, is out to show his shallow nephew that he has lost his way “…like the Tin Man, born without a heart.” What wisdom!Uncle Wayne calls upon the ghost of many past girlfriends to lend a hand in teaching his shallow nephew a lesson about life and love.
Beautiful childhood friend Jenny Perotti (Jennifer Garner), still vulnerable to Connor’s charm, is on a mission. She has the incredible task of making the weekend long festivities work smoothly.. Well educated, self confident, friend of the bride and groom. Of course, what wedding would be complete without a wicked tongued divorced mother-of-the bride, a drill sergeant Marine Corps father of the bride? Throw in a wedding rehearsal dinner party that goes awry, some predictable slapstick, bridesmaids disillusioned by socially inept ushers and eager to be out there on the make and you have the general ingredients of: Ghost of Girlfriends Past. This film is for young romantic comedy lovers. I am not one of them!
- Our thanks to J. Paul Higgins, who provided notes on Tyson, after attending the press screening on our behalf:
Strangely compelling movie, “strangely” because I’m not a boxing fan and for the most part the movie consists of close cut scenes of Mike Tyson speaking interspersed with archival fight footage. There is no narration. And yet the time passed quickly and I was fully engaged.This is not a technical boxing film; focuses more on the mental framework of a fighter than the physical training or techniques. The boxing footage is taken from broadcasts of his fights but in generally seems dispassionate and not excessively brutal given the subject matter. Mike Tyson is not a very sympathetic character; he started life as a pre-teen mugger, became famous as an alleged wife abuser, was convicted and imprisoned for rape, was famous as a brutal and aggressive boxer and most famous for biting an opponent on the ear twice during a fight. Tyson does not shrink from any of the controversy, addressing all the low points. Some mistakes he admits to, others he denies, others are blamed on his young age or drug taking. The film effectively cuts between archival interviews of a young, brash Tyson and film of today’s battered and brutal looking man with a facial tattoo. He is an uneducated but an intelligent and thoughtful speaker and the director catches him in a range of emotions, from tears to angry defiance. Overall the film presents a middle aged man trying to come to terms with his past and self-consciously working to become his version of a better man.
- I'm proposing some major improvements to the future operations of my-pov.ca, finishing off a document I'll circulate next week
The Soloist - Monday, May 4th - 5:15 p.m.
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