Review of movie 'Amour'

       'Amour'. Starring Jean Louis Trintignant, Emanuelle Roy and  Isabelle Huppert. Directed by Michael Hanneke.


    There's definitely two distinct ways of looking at old age. One is Jane Fonda's way or the North American way. "Old age is wonderful," goes this message. "It's just another stage of growth. Sure, it ends in death but don't think about that part." Then there's the European take on ageing which says it can be hell on wheels.
    The French film 'Amour' hews to the second view. Georges and Anne Laurent are an upscale French couple who've made it into their eighties. They're living in a big apartment somewhere above the ground floor in a building that maybe in Paris.
    Anne, played by Emanuelle Riva is a former classical music pianist who gets hit by a stroke. Then a second stroke hits her. Georges, played by another veteran actor, Jean-Louis Trintingnant has to take care of his now invalid wife. Director Michael Hanneke spares us nothing. We see how hard it is for Georges to lift his wife from the wheelchair she's in,  to the bed and back from the bed to the wheelchair. In long stable camera shots, Hanneke gives us closeups of the couple's struggles just to do what used to be normal everyday tasks.
     And sometimes Georges has to change the bedsheets,  as Anne now urinates in bed. I've never seen that in a film before.
     Isabelle Huppert plays a small role as the daughter Eva. Like many middle-aged children she has trouble facing her parents' physical decay and their oncoming death. Near the film's end, Georges has to feed  his near paralyzed wife. "Come on sweet," he says. "You only ate three mouthfuls."
    The ending hurts. But you can't condemn anybody. Ageing , disability and death stalk us all. 'Amour' means love of course. In the end Georges shows his love for Anne. 'Amour' is one tough film, worlds away from the upbeat mood of most North Americans. For that alone it's well worth watching.

Review of 'Against Our Will'

     Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, a book written by Susan Brownmiller. Published in October 1975. 541pp.


      In 1975 my life was a mess. Rage, sadness and paranoia  buffeted my mind.  Patella femoral syndrome, a degenerative disease ate away at my knees making me unable to walk more than six or seven blocks a day. And some young feminists I met abused me whenever I saw them. In fact, as I now realize, they were just giving me back what I'd dealt out to other people.
     So when some young woman told  me about 'Against Our Will'  a book by Susan Brownmiller, I said something like, "I won't read that. I'm tired of feminism and feminists."
       But a week or so ago, I came across 'Against Our Will' in a tiny thrift store in Vancouver's West End. I bought it and read it. And to-day, I think it's one great book.For Brownmiller, rape of women by men, is the very essence of men-women relations. Rape, she says, "is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation, by which all men keep all women in a state of fear."
      To prove this controversial point, Brownmiller ranges across history, religion, culture, psychology and above all criminal law. Along the way she denounces so-called famous rapists and killers  like the 19th century murderer 'Jack the Ripper'. She also disputes the teachings of famous religious figures like the theologian St. Thomas Aquinas.
     There are long chapters in the book in which she shows how wars give men the chance to rape and kill. There's a small section on child molestation that's become a huge issue in recent years. She also examines the delicate area of white-black relations in the United States and concludes that black men as well as white ones have raped many women. Liberals and some progressives may have not liked this part of the book, since white racists in the  U.S. and elsewhere have always denounced black men for raping and hungering after white women.And Brownmiller concludes that black men have raped white women many times.
   Then in one of the most moving parts of 'Against Our Will', she quotes long testimonies of rape victims and the terrible impact that rape had on their lives. Here, Brownmiller hammers criminologists and others who blame women for being raped.
     "Because men control the definition of sex," writes Brownmiller, "women are allotted a poor assortment of options." This is true and no one can read 'Against Our Will' and call rape as one person I knew did, "No big deal."
       Since this book came out, much has changed for the better. Many police are now women and will listen to and act on the complaints of rape victims as many male police never did. Women have led marches across Canada and the U.S , demanding that laws against rape be enacted. Due to their efforts and books like 'Against Our Will', rape is now seen as a serious crime.
      Still, much remains to be done. In India, for example, a recent news story revealed many rapes of Indian women by men. And the case of serial killer Robert Pickton shows that many policemen still will not act to protect women from rape and murder by men.
,   Now that my mental state has improved as has my opinion of feminism, I can only agree with the words of Carol Rinzer, a journalist at the  New York City-based 'Village Voice' newspaper.'Against Our Will' she wrote way back in 1975, "is a major work of history. It's a classic." 38 years later it still is.        

A review of 'This is 40'.

                                  This is 40. A movie starring Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann. Directed  and scripted by Judd Apatow.


      A fifty something woman outside the Cineplex Tinseltown Theatre in downtown Vancouver didn't like 'This Is 40'. "Too much swearing," she said. "And the story didn't turn me on." But fortunately her opinion didn't sway this viewer so I paid my $9 and seventy five cents and hobbled into the theatre. And I'm glad I did.
       Director Judd Apatow seems to stuff his films full of four letter words, crazy plot lines and his family. So 'This Is 40' doesn't differ from his past films in these ways. A sequel to 'Knocked Up' of 2007, 'This Is 40' features Paul Rudd playing Pete the hunkish husband of Debbie played by Leslie Mann.
      How can such a lovely looking Californian couple living in such a beautiful home in Los Angeles, have so many problems as they both turn forty?Well they just do. Debbie's father only shows up every seven years. Pete's dad, on the other hand, sees him too often. This sixty something father played by Albert Brooks keeps hitting up Pete for money, to support his young triplets.
    Then there's Pete and Debbie's children, ably played by Maud Apatow as Sadie and Iris Apatow who's Charlotte. Judd Apatow, as you may have guessed keeps all things in the family. Maud and Iris are his daughters, while Lesley Mann is his wife.
    "I am happy," a tearful Debbie tells her doctor when she finds out she's pregnant again. But her two daughters seem far from happy. They scrap and fight over everything just like their parents. Meanwhile Pete's music business may be going bust, while Debbie's dress store is being robbed by an employee. Pete and Debbie scream at each other nearly every day, while both of them carry bad habits . Debbie sneaks away sometimes to puff a cigarette, and Pete scarfs down cream puffs while no one's looking. And as that woman said to me before I went into the theatre, Debbie and Pete do swear.
     "People are strange," the late Jim Morrison, himself a Californian and sometime resident of Los Angeles once sang.. All the people in 'This Is 40' act strange. But then who knows? Maybe acting strange is the new normal. Still, 'This Is 40' is a great and funny film.  Judd Apatow, who directed the film and scripted it, is one very talented man and it helps that he had a talented cast to act out his script too. 
     .

movie review of 'Zero Dark Thirty'

          'Zero Dark Thirty'. Starring Jessca Chastain and Jason Clarks. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Length of 157 minutes.



     When Osama bin Laden planned the bombings and airplane hujackings of 9/11, had he ever heard of Maya, the driven, totally-focused CIA female agent? Probably not, because if he'd have known of Maya, he might have scrapped all his develish plans right then and there.
     'Zero Dark Thirty' is a basically one plot film, in which Maya, played by Jessica Chastain, hunts down the man behind 9/11. When we first see Maya, she's shedding a face mask outside of a torture chamber. At movie's end, she sits in the hangar of a giant aircraft, and a tear finally runs down one of her cheeks. {I think it runs down her left cheek}.
     In between those times, that's to say for more than two hours-and-a-half, the movie ably directed by Kathryn Bigelow, whips us  through the U.S., Afghanistan, Pakistan and various other places. Suicide bombings, torture, by Americans no less, snipings, and just plain violence, litter the screen with bodies.
    Maya is tough. "Help me," a tortured prisoner near the movie's start pleads to her. "You can help yourself by being truthful," Maya shoots back.
     The head of the CIA played by James Gandolfini {based on the veteran Congressman Leon Panetta, I think} asks a room of mostly men who found Bin Laden's probable hideout. "I'm the motherf...er who found this place...sir," Maya says bluntly.
    Zero Dark Thirty is the military name for the darkest time of the night. And that's when the U.S. Navy Seal raid on Bin Laden's refuge in Pakistan takes place. This part of the film streches out for about an hour and ends with the rough and tough Seal crew finding and killing their prey. Kathryn Bigelow's direction and her and Mark Boal's script gives us a film that's part documentary, part drama.Maya stands out as a woman who can escape potential assassins as well as tussle with inflexible bureaucrats.
   It's based on a true story. So if you like war, violence, justice meted out to deserving victims, and total effort finally rewarded, then don't miss 'Zero Dark Thirty'.As for me, I enjoyed the film, but I'm going to see a violence-free comedy the next time I go to a theatre. I need a break right now from dying and death.'Zero Dark Thirty' had just a little too much death in it for me.

Review of the book 'Voices of the Street'

            Special Literary Issue of Megaphone Magazine called 'Voices of the Street'

                                     Voices  of the Street ; Special literary issue 2012
    Megaphone magazine started as away of keeping poor people employed by selling the magazine in Vancouver city streets. Like most papers sold by poor people it's full of the triumphs and tragedies of the poor. 'Voices of the Street' which came out last year, grew out of the Megaphone writing workshops that started a few years ago.
   In this book of 64 pages, 21 poetry pieces, nine prose works and 20 photos once again give us a sometimes rough and ready accounts of being addicted to an illegal drug, living on the Downtown Eastside in a single room occupancy hotel and queing up for HST refunds.
      "Why did I survive?" Brian C. asks "Why when in the hospital because of that thing? Why did I survive?"Although Brian never seems to get the whole answer, his poem is a cry for help.
     Joseph D. tells us, "I am from the land of fish, water and sky {and} the land is green and abundant with trees, though they're/ only a few metres high." Here Joseph celebrates his homeland that's worlds away from the  crowded city streets. Misty-Lee Davis checks in with one poem which talks about living with depression. Then in another poem called 'Why Am I an Addict?' she tells us that 'Trying to stay clean is an incredible feat" .
    In his prose piece 'A Brush With Death' Bob Dennis, whom I know and sometimes buy Megaphone magazine from, tells about the perils of living with schizophrenia. In a longer piece Brian Peters looks back on his life in prison and out of it. 
    There are also some very fine photographs ."Morning View' by Nick Olson is a very fine and graphic look at the roofs of the Downtown Eastside. Kevin Siluch gives us a view of rigs from the ground level view.
     These photos, poems and prose pieces are just a few of the many parts of 'Voices of the Street'. Author Gillian Jerome, Megaphone's Executive Director Sean Condon and Kevin Hollett, Megaphone's editor also contribute a page apiece on the history of  Megaphone Magazine and the writing in 'Voices in the Street'. "These pages of writings," says  Hollett, "are filled with powerful work of literary merit and revelatory pieces containing unvarnished truths."
             I agree and hope that Megaphone magazine will continue to give us the truth on the lives of some poor people as well as revealing their literary skills and other talents.

Review of movie 'A Late Quartet'

                 'A Late Quartet' starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener. Directed by Yaron Zilberman. 106 minutes long.


       The Fuge String Quartet that plays classical music is based in New York City. It travels around the world performing, but now life and love pains nearly tear it apart at home.
     "I think you're an amazing violinist," Juliette played by Catherine Keener, who plays the viola in the quartet tells her husband Robert played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. But Robert who plays the second violin in the quartet, wants to sometimes be the quartet's first violinist. But this job is taken up by Daniel, who Robert resents. Robert has a brief fling with a flamenco dancer. When Juliette finds out about this romance she throws Robert out of their house.
     Then Daniel falls in love with Robert and Juliette's daughter Alexandra. Meanwhile, Peter the aging cellist in the quartet played by Christopher Walken, now has Parkinson's disease. And you can't play the big heavy cello when Parkinson's makes your hands and body shake.
      This film doesn't just zero in on the problems of love and ageing. It's also full of beautiful classical music and lovely camera shots of a snowbound New York City.
     "If music be the food of life/play on," Shakespeare wrote in the opening of 'Twelth Night". Peter, the aging cellist seems to prefer T.S. Eliot, whose poetry about Beethoven's late great quartets, he quotes to his class of young students.
     But whatever music or poetry you like or don't like, 'A Late Quartet' Fills more than an hour-and-a-half with fine acting and great but seldom heard music. Yaron Zilberman has directed a pretty good flick that in sensitiveness and intelligence stands light years away from the mostly juvenile fare that's served up these days on many movie screens.
     

Book review of book by Leila Nadir

     The Orange Trees of Baghdad; In Search of My Lost Family: A Memoir by Leila Nadir


       Leila Nadir is one of hundreds of thousands of people from other countries who've ended up in Metro Vancouver. In her fine memoir The Orange Tree of Baghdad she tells the story of modern day Iraq through the words of her extended family. For Nadir has never been to Iraq though her father Ibrahim was born there.
     "I feel Iraq in my bones though I have never been there," she writes. "I haven't smelled jasmine or orange blossoms scenting a Baghdad night."
    But her relations have lived in Iraq and they tell the country's story through their lives. In parts of the book they speak of the horrific violence unleashed by revolutionaries, Saddam Hussein's brutal police and army, ferocious American invaders and Sunni and Shiite militants. It seems clear from their lives that the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq has destroyed large parts of the country, though the Kurdish northern region  may have been spared most of the destruction.
    Nadir also also writes about her many relations and above all her father. He left Iraq at the age of 16 in 1960 and never returned . "We've always had war and invasion in Iraq," he tells his daughter near the book's end. One man who went back to Iraq told Leila's father, "Never go back. Just forget Iraq. Forget it."
    So Leila Nadir may never see the orange trees that perhaps grew in the backyard of her father's house. But she recalls them here to tell us a frightening story about her family and the fate of Iraq.