list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Wondrous Oblivion on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Wondrous_Oblivion/232585/default.aspx Title: Wondrous Oblivion
Year: 2004
Director: Paul Morrison
Plot: Writer/director Paul Morrison, who directed the cross-cultural period drama Solomon and Gaenor, returns to similar ground, though in a lighter vein, with Wondrous Oblivion. Sam Smith stars as David Wiseman, a Jewish boy living in London in 1960 who dreams of being a world-class athlete. David is totally obsessed with cricket, and loves playing, even though he is one of the worst players at his school. His parents, Ruth (Emily Woof of The Full Monty) and Victor (Stanley Townsend), are struggling with the bigoted residents of their working-class neighborhood, but the neighbors get a bit more friendly to the Wisemans when Dennis (Delroy Lindo), a Jamaican laborer, and his family move in next door. David is shocked and delighted when he realizes that Dennis and his daughter, Judy (Leonie Elliott), are installing a cricket pitch in their backyard. Before long, and against the wishes of his worried parents, David is spending a lot of time next door, becoming very friendly with Judy, and becoming a much better cricket player. Ruth gradually warms to Dennis, but the rest of the neighborhood grows increasingly hostile. Wondrous Oblivion was presented by the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of the 2005 New York Jewish Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 4
Number of Lists: 5
Number of blog posts: 17
Number of discussion threads: 4
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Mon, 11 May 2009 01:31:46 GMTWondrous Oblivion2004Paul MorrisonWriter/director Paul Morrison, who directed the cross-cultural period drama <a href=/films/132147/default.aspx style='text-decoration:underline'>Solomon and Gaenor</a>, returns to similar ground, though in a lighter vein, with Wondrous Oblivion. Sam Smith stars as David Wiseman, a Jewish boy living in London in 1960 who dreams of being a world-class athlete. David is totally obsessed with cricket, and loves playing, even though he is one of the worst players at his school. His parents, Ruth (Emily Woof of <a href=/films/114440/default.aspx style='text-decoration:underline'>The Full Monty</a>) and Victor (Stanley Townsend), are struggling with the bigoted residents of their working-class neighborhood, but the neighbors get a bit more friendly to the Wisemans when Dennis (<a href="/players/P____42509/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Delroy Lindo</a>), a Jamaican laborer, and his family move in next door. David is shocked and delighted when he realizes that Dennis and his daughter, Judy (Leonie Elliott), are installing a cricket pitch in their backyard. Before long, and against the wishes of his worried parents, David is spending a lot of time next door, becoming very friendly with Judy, and becoming a much better cricket player. Ruth gradually warms to Dennis, but the rest of the neighborhood grows increasingly hostile. Wondrous Oblivion was presented by the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of the 2005 New York Jewish Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide4Slightly Tagged (1-5)51743http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/u12561fpjlj.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Wondrous_Oblivion/232585/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/groups/Filmgaming/Re_Best_Movie_Lists_DVD_giveaway/563/39354/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: Dr_Gor
Post To: Filmgaming
Post Date: 1/10/2009 11:26:46 PM
Body: [quote user="spout"] Win five DVDs from indie studio Palm Pictures.It's easy: Reply to this thread with one of your Spout lists. Choose a list you like. "Want to see it" lists serve a purpose, but let's face it -- nobody reads them for fun. Some good list examples are Man-made Disasters, Top 5 Movies about Friendship, or Post-Collegiate Existential Dilemmas. Never made a list before? Click the "Add to lists" link at the top of this page. There you can title a list, then add movies to it by clicking the "Add to lists" link on the movie pages. Send any questions about building lists to all@spout.com. Check back here on 1/16 to see if you've won! The DVDs 1. 13 Tzameti - Watch the trailer. A young man is caught in a perverse gambling match, and he'll need more than luck to survive. It's on Leeroy's list The Secret Society. 2. Clean - Watch the trailer. When a TV host's husband OD's, she attempts to escape her own addiction. It's on puhnner's list See this one. 3. Wondrous Oblivion - Watch the trailer. A coming-of-age story set in 1960s London. A boy has to choose between loyalty to his friends and the acceptance of his prejudiced neighbors. 4. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things - Watch the trailer. A young boy bounces among foster homes and into the care of his drug-addict/prostitute mother. Included on Queer Cinema's list Transvestism in film. 5. Africa Unite or You're Gonna Miss Me - Winners get to choose the film that looks more interesting. Africa Unite: A Celebration of Bob Marley's Vision is a concert film and humanitarian documentary. Watch the trailer. You're Gonna Miss Me: A film about Roky Erickson looks at Roky's far-reaching influence on rock music and his struggle with schizophrenia. On FilmCouch's list The Tortured Artist. Watch the trailer. [/quote] Here is a list of mine that is short and sweet... List of Extreme Films by Extreme Cinema - Movie & Film Lists - Spout
]]>Sun, 11 Jan 2009 04:26:46 GMTDr_GorFilmgaming1/10/2009 11:26:46 PM[quote user="spout"] Win five DVDs from indie studio Palm Pictures.It's easy: Reply to this thread with one of your Spout lists. Choose a list you like. "Want to see it" lists serve a purpose, but let's face it -- nobody reads them for fun. Some good list examples are Man-made Disasters, Top 5 Movies about Friendship, or Post-Collegiate Existential Dilemmas. Never made a list before? Click the "Add to lists" link at the top of this page. There you can title a list, then add movies to it by clicking the "Add to lists" link on the movie pages. Send any questions about building lists to all@spout.com. Check back here on 1/16 to see if you've won! The DVDs 1. 13 Tzameti - Watch the trailer. A young man is caught in a perverse gambling match, and he'll need more than luck to survive. It's on Leeroy's list The Secret Society. 2. Clean - Watch the trailer. When a TV host's husband OD's, she attempts to escape her own addiction. It's on puhnner's list See this one. 3. Wondrous Oblivion - Watch the trailer. A coming-of-age story set in 1960s London. A boy has to choose between loyalty to his friends and the acceptance of his prejudiced neighbors. 4. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things - Watch the trailer. A young boy bounces among foster homes and into the care of his drug-addict/prostitute mother. Included on Queer Cinema's list Transvestism in film. 5. Africa Unite or You're Gonna Miss Me - Winners get to choose the film that looks more interesting. Africa Unite: A Celebration of Bob Marley's Vision is a concert film and humanitarian documentary. Watch the trailer. You're Gonna Miss Me: A film about Roky Erickson looks at Roky's far-reaching influence on rock music and his struggle with schizophrenia. On FilmCouch's list The Tortured Artist. Watch the trailer. [/quote] Here is a list of mine that is short and sweet... List of Extreme Films by Extreme Cinema - Movie &amp; Film Lists - Spout http://www.spout.com/groups/Filmgaming/Re_Best_Movie_Lists_DVD_giveaway/563/39217/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: laurakewl
Post To: Filmgaming
Post Date: 1/7/2009 4:45:15 PM
Body: [quote user="spout"] Win five DVDs from indie studio Palm Pictures.It's easy: Reply to this thread with one of your Spout lists. Choose a list you like. "Want to see it" lists serve a purpose, but let's face it -- nobody reads them for fun. Some good list examples are Man-made Disasters, Top 5 Movies about Friendship, or Post-Collegiate Existential Dilemmas. Never made a list before? Click the "Add to lists" link at the top of this page. There you can title a list, then add movies to it by clicking the "Add to lists" link on the movie pages. Send any questions about building lists to all@spout.com. Check back here on 1/16 to see if you've won! The DVDs 1. 13 Tzameti - Watch the trailer. A young man is caught in a perverse gambling match, and he'll need more than luck to survive. It's on Leeroy's list The Secret Society. 2. Clean - Watch the trailer. When a TV host's husband OD's, she attempts to escape her own addiction. It's on puhnner's list See this one. 3. Wondrous Oblivion - Watch the trailer. A coming-of-age story set in 1960s London. A boy has to choose between loyalty to his friends and the acceptance of his prejudiced neighbors. 4. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things - Watch the trailer. A young boy bounces among foster homes and into the care of his drug-addict/prostitute mother. Included on Queer Cinema's list Transvestism in film. 5. Africa Unite or You're Gonna Miss Me - Winners get to choose the film that looks more interesting. Africa Unite: A Celebration of Bob Marley's Vision is a concert film and humanitarian documentary. Watch the trailer. You're Gonna Miss Me: A film about Roky Erickson looks at Roky's far-reaching influence on rock music and his struggle with schizophrenia. On FilmCouch's list The Tortured Artist. Watch the trailer. [/quote]
]]>Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:45:15 GMTlaurakewlFilmgaming1/7/2009 4:45:15 PM[quote user="spout"] Win five DVDs from indie studio Palm Pictures.It's easy: Reply to this thread with one of your Spout lists. Choose a list you like. "Want to see it" lists serve a purpose, but let's face it -- nobody reads them for fun. Some good list examples are Man-made Disasters, Top 5 Movies about Friendship, or Post-Collegiate Existential Dilemmas. Never made a list before? Click the "Add to lists" link at the top of this page. There you can title a list, then add movies to it by clicking the "Add to lists" link on the movie pages. Send any questions about building lists to all@spout.com. Check back here on 1/16 to see if you've won! The DVDs 1. 13 Tzameti - Watch the trailer. A young man is caught in a perverse gambling match, and he'll need more than luck to survive. It's on Leeroy's list The Secret Society. 2. Clean - Watch the trailer. When a TV host's husband OD's, she attempts to escape her own addiction. It's on puhnner's list See this one. 3. Wondrous Oblivion - Watch the trailer. A coming-of-age story set in 1960s London. A boy has to choose between loyalty to his friends and the acceptance of his prejudiced neighbors. 4. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things - Watch the trailer. A young boy bounces among foster homes and into the care of his drug-addict/prostitute mother. Included on Queer Cinema's list Transvestism in film. 5. Africa Unite or You're Gonna Miss Me - Winners get to choose the film that looks more interesting. Africa Unite: A Celebration of Bob Marley's Vision is a concert film and humanitarian documentary. Watch the trailer. You're Gonna Miss Me: A film about Roky Erickson looks at Roky's far-reaching influence on rock music and his struggle with schizophrenia. On FilmCouch's list The Tortured Artist. Watch the trailer. [/quote] http://www.spout.com/groups/Filmgaming/Best_Movie_Lists_DVD_giveaway/563/39094/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: spout
Post To: Filmgaming
Post Date: 1/5/2009 12:23:44 PM
Body: Want to win five DVD's? It's easy: Reply to this thread with one of your Spout lists. Choose a list you like. "Want to see it" lists serve a purpose, but let's face it -- nobody reads them for fun. Some good list examples are Man-made Disasters, Top 5 Movies about Friendship, or Post-Collegiate Existential Dilemmas. Never made a list before? Click the "Add to lists" link at the top of this page. There you can title a list, then add movies to it by clicking the "Add to lists" link on the movie pages. Send any questions about building lists to all@spout.com. Check back here on 1/16 to see if you've won! The DVDs 1. 13 Tzameti - Watch the trailer. A young man is caught in a perverse gambling match, and he'll need more than luck to survive. It's on Leeroy's list The Secret Society. 2. Clean - Watch the trailer. When a TV host's husband OD's, she attempts to escape her own addiction. It's on puhnner's list See this one. 3. Wondrous Oblivion - Watch the trailer. A coming-of-age story set in 1960s London. A boy has to choose between loyalty to his friends and the acceptance of his prejudiced neighbors. 4. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things - Watch the trailer. A young boy bounces among foster homes and into the care of his drug-addict/prostitute mother. Included on Queer Cinema's list Transvestism in film. 5. Africa Unite or You're Gonna Miss Me - Winners get to choose the film that looks more interesting. Africa Unite: A Celebration of Bob Marley's Vision is a concert film and humanitarian documentary. Watch the trailer. You're Gonna Miss Me: A film about Roky Erickson looks at Roky's far-reaching influence on rock music and his struggle with schizophrenia. On FilmCouch's list The Tortured Artist. Watch the trailer.
]]>Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:23:44 GMTspoutFilmgaming1/5/2009 12:23:44 PMWant to win five DVD's? It's easy: Reply to this thread with one of your Spout lists. Choose a list you like. "Want to see it" lists serve a purpose, but let's face it -- nobody reads them for fun. Some good list examples are Man-made Disasters, Top 5 Movies about Friendship, or Post-Collegiate Existential Dilemmas. Never made a list before? Click the "Add to lists" link at the top of this page. There you can title a list, then add movies to it by clicking the "Add to lists" link on the movie pages. Send any questions about building lists to all@spout.com. Check back here on 1/16 to see if you've won! The DVDs 1. 13 Tzameti - Watch the trailer. A young man is caught in a perverse gambling match, and he'll need more than luck to survive. It's on Leeroy's list The Secret Society. 2. Clean - Watch the trailer. When a TV host's husband OD's, she attempts to escape her own addiction. It's on puhnner's list See this one. 3. Wondrous Oblivion - Watch the trailer. A coming-of-age story set in 1960s London. A boy has to choose between loyalty to his friends and the acceptance of his prejudiced neighbors. 4. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things - Watch the trailer. A young boy bounces among foster homes and into the care of his drug-addict/prostitute mother. Included on Queer Cinema's list Transvestism in film. 5. Africa Unite or You're Gonna Miss Me - Winners get to choose the film that looks more interesting. Africa Unite: A Celebration of Bob Marley's Vision is a concert film and humanitarian documentary. Watch the trailer. You're Gonna Miss Me: A film about Roky Erickson looks at Roky's far-reaching influence on rock music and his struggle with schizophrenia. On FilmCouch's list The Tortured Artist. Watch the trailer. http://www.spout.com/blogs/joem18b/archive/2008/9/25/35552.aspx Post By: joem18b
Post To: joem18b Blog
Post Date: 9/25/2008 7:04:22 PM
Body: O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias (2006)***** SPOILERS *****The Year My Parents Went On Vaction tells the story of a pre-teen boy in São Paulo, Brazil, separated from his parents during a military coup in 1970. As the army takes over, the country is distracted in part by Brazil's successes in the World Cup of that year (sort of like following the pennant race or NFL football in the U.S. as the country's financial system implodes). The movie is pleasant, never dull, well shot, with a delicate score that adds to the feelings of sadness and loss inherent in the plot (the director threw out the first score written for the movie; Beto Villares then did it over and got it right).TYMPWOV begins with a mother and father taking their son to grandfather's house in São Paulo. The three are riding in a VW bug, '65 or earlier. A Brazilian friend suggests that for verisimilitude, they should have been in a Renault or Citroen, because the bug was the inexpensive car of youth and the lower middle-class; her family always drove French cars. Be that as it may, the movie's streets are rife with vintage bugs and VW buses, though I did spot a Renault or two. I mention this because the first car that I bought and paid for with my own money was a new '67 bug from Belmont Motors in Massachusetts, powder blue. It has been sitting since 1981 or so in a succession of company parking lots, progressively degenerating until, paint gone, wheels seized, flowering weeds growing from dirt caught in the chassis crevicles, it looks so bad that I was ordered to have it towed off the property because it had become an eyesore, at least to one sorehead in the company who remained anonymous - the bug's engine refusing to start, a hole in the floor threatening to release the battery under the back seat like a bomb dropped from its bay at the first speed bump, the windows opaque as my glasses in the Turkish bath down the street. Fortunately, my son stepped up and volunteered to restore the car as a hobby. He abstracted it on a flatbed towtruck via Raul's Towing Service to his driveway, where it sat, partially disassembled, for a week or two before the city, at the behest of neighbors or a cruising patrol car, ordered him to remove it. He rolled the poor thing into his garage, wheels now at least freed, out of sight behind closed doors, and since then he has ordered replacement parts from an unending list. He tells me that there are two sources from which to obtain these parts: (a) a quality manufacturer somewhere or other, or (b)Brazil. You want quality, you go to the quality manufacturer; you want cheap, you go to Brazil. I don't know if that's true or not but when I replaced a bumper a long time ago, it had a "Made in Brazil" sticker on the inside surface. One tap by another vehicle and the bumper folded up like an origami noodle. Also, curiously, '67 door handles are unavailable. But the point is, if you're a bug lover you might want to give TYMPWOV a little love for that reason if for no other.Director/writer Cao Hamburger and his co-writer, Claudio Galperin, were both born in São Paulo in 1962 and were eight years old when General Emilio Medici engineered his coup. Hamburger's parents "went on vacation" at that time, but only for a few weeks. In this movie, Hamburger and Galperin share some of their childhood experiences growing up in the cultural melting-pot of São Paulo. Hamburger's father came from a German/Jewish family that emigrated to Brazil before World War II. His mother was of Italian/Catholic stock, though both parents were non-religious scientists as he grew up. He says that he began thinking about São Paulo's mix of cultures and his roots while living and feeling like an outsider in London, another city where races and nationalities mingle. According to Hamburger (and my Brazilian friends), Brazil is deeply divided over socio-economic class issues (the rich, a small middle-class, and the poor) but is accepting of emigrants; he refers to Brazilian culture as Samba culture - "Samba" here meaning, roughly, "let's all dance together." In fact, Hamburger started out with all sorts of ideas for the movie, but while making it settled on the idea of enjoying the brief periods of sunshine in life on a cloudy day. The movie was made on a medium budget by Brazilian standards. Since the success of films like Central Station and City of God, Hamburger says, funding opportunities for cinema have gotten a lot better. He used professionals as well as non-actors from the community, which in the film is a conservative Jewish neighborhood. Today, Hamburger says, this neighborhood is Korean, but since he is exploring his own roots, for the purposes of the film it remains Jewish. Hamburger spent four months finding an empty apartment building to use for the shoot; the movie was filmed completely on location.So often in making a movie, the director starts out with an idea and massages it until a theme for the film is produced. This process can extend over years with input from editors, writers, friends, family, and assorted other sources while the director chases funding, as I describe in my review of Manda Bala. Hamburger's initial inspiration was to examine the mixture of cultures in Brazil, and from that grew the idea of examining a year in the life of a boy growing up in the same time and place that Hamburger and Galperin did. During the making of the movie, the military coup and contemperaneous world-cup excitement in the film emerged, according to the director, as metaphors for life. It seems to me that some of these metaphors crop up post-production but perhaps I'm just metaphor-blind or metaphor-averse. Does a movie metaphor count if it's discovered after the movie is finished? Does it count if a reviewer invokes it, rather than the director? I do like the way that Claudia Llosa, for example, disavows metaphors in her Maven-reviewed Madeinusa, a movie which could easily be weighed down with them. I'm guessing that Hamburger's military coup and World Cup would remain in the movie whether Hamburger deemed them metaphors or not. As it is, he has one more thing to talk about during interviews. Anyway, the coup represents a dark day and the World-Cup victory represents a shaft of sunlight breaking through the gloom of that day. The dark day is life under the military regime and the sunlight represents those moments in life that you must embrace in order to get through the bad patches - did I just nest a metaphor within a metaphor there? The life of goalies in general is also a metaphor in the movie, but if the victory is a bright shaft of sunlight, what is the goalie? A meteorite the size of Oshgosh? Who knows? The gray day/sunlight metaphor, applied to my own personal life, would be like at my work, where my boss would be dictator General Emilio Medici, and out of the grinding gray of morning I would emerge at lunchtime to sit down across from Izzy Vulvano and beat his pants off playing Magic and using my special red and black deck. Also the movie is about dealing with our loneliness and our connections to others, how we make them and break them and move on. Is the movie itself a metaphor for that, or just a movie about that? Also, the director does not agree that soccer is the opiate of the masses, exploited by the junta in this case to maintain calm. Hamburger is going for gray day/sunshine here, not gray day/opium. And having mentioned Manda Bala above, note that this whole movie unfurled without a kidnapping or fried frog in sight, but only because the whole country is under siege from an autocratic military dictatorship rather than a scourge of corrupt politicians and kidnapping-for-profit criminal thugs.Strangely, Hamburger's soccer metaphor gets turned on its head at the end of the movie. Irony? Another layer? Or just part of the movie that doesn't conform to a simple, stumbled-upon talking point? I thought about calling Hamburger and asking him, but nobody likes a wiseass.When the metaphorical army arrives in Michel's neighborhood and starts dragging young men out of their union offices in São Paulo, clubbing them and hurling them into vans while the boy's parents are in hiding, it occurred to me to wonder whether such scenes are automatically more powerful when filmed in the country where they are supposed to have happened, in the language in which they happened, by victims or the relatives of victims of the evils portrayed. Or, for a subtitle-hating country like America, could such a scene be made more visceral and moving if shot in Hollywood for U.S. consumption? For example, would Der Untergang or The Lives of Others have retained their energy or even gained some, if they had been made, shot for shot, in the U.S. with U.S. actors instead of Germans? Ennio De Concini tried it with xxAlec Guiness playing Hitler but I think we can agree that that didn't work as well as Bruno Ganz doing it. Being a cinema snob, I would say without cavil that it is intuitively obvious that the Brazilian version of the coup or the German version of Hitler's last days cannot fail to have an innate power, if well enough done, that a U.S. version could never match. But hold on. Summer Palace provides a dramatic take on Tiananmen Square and the events there in 1989, yet I've heard plenty of squawking (from round eyes) about its failure to do justice to that historic conflict. Would a movie about Tiananmen, made along the lines of The Last Emperor, fare better in the U.S? Could Gettysburg withstand a transfer to Japan; if Kurosawa made it, might it even improve in the eyes of the Japanese? Or in the eyes of American viewers as well? How to assign metrics to questions like these? It's easy to just say that the better the filmmaker, the better the film, for all informed viewers of taste. Do the French still love Jerry Lewis? Are Hollywood blockbusters still the biggest grossers all around the world? And children in movies - does the fact that the child is native to a country foreign to the viewer and speaks a foreign language have any effect one way or the other on that viewer? Rather than approaching these questions from first principles, maybe the thing to do is to evaluate a hundred movies or so, make a call on each, and examine the results for trends.And speaking of children, how do they learn to act so well? Or isn't learning involved? Teens act in high-school drama classes and plays - they're learning something there, I guess. They act in community theater, especially in locations where drama in the schools is being cut. Adults go to drama school, but often act badly in films anyway. And yet I see movie after movie in which children act just fine (Mother of Mine, Wondrous Oblivion, Birth, Kabluey (where the kids are caricatures, but good caricatures.) On the other hand, that kid in The Dick Van Dyke Show... ouch.). Is aging an antidote to natural inborn talent? As we grow up, do we lose our ability to act? Or are these children, who seem to be acting so well, actually not doing much at all? In TYMPWOV, is the boy mostly just running around, looking upset, and playing with his tabletop soccer set, or is he interacting with others and... well, acting. I called the Stella Adler School in Manhattan to ask these questions, but the woman I spoke to told me that the youngest students they enroll are 14-year-olds (eight Saturday classes from 10 to 6, $800. No waiting list.) I asked the woman if the under-14s I see in the movies have been trained, or if whatever they show is just natural ability. She could only surmise. I asked if the Stella Adler Saturday classes have produced some success stories; she said yes, but didn't name anybody I've heard of. She didn't have much else to say about younger children and their appearances in movies, so I called a school out in the Valley (Sherman Oaks) which takes kids as young as 8. Sherman Oaks is up the 405 from Santa Monica, just over the hills from Hollywood. The fellow I spoke to told me flatly that every young person onscreen today has taken classes. He listed graduates from his school now appearing in Desperate Housewives, Everyone Hates Chris, etc., etc. (Classes from 10 to noon on Saturdays.) Agents and casting directors visit frequently, nominally as "class assistants," but actually trolling for talent; or maybe just trying to make a living. For example:****For Young actors:Howard MeltzerHannah Montana Casting DirectorTV Intensive - Saturday, October 4thIn each class session, the children work on a scene. In addition, there is instruction in preparation, auditioning, so forth. Camps and career-placement services are available. I asked the fellow whether children start out with talent and then lose it, or whether talent is distributed among children in the same proportion as among adults, and if so, what the classes might add to that. According to him, we're all natural-born actors. As children, we play-act all the time, but as we age, we forget how much fun that acting can be. Acting classes, like organized sports, are just a modern way of letting children continue to have fun. And just as you won't be playing in the NFL or NBA unless you associate yourself with an organized program, just so you won't break into Hollywood without connections. Plus, I'm now getting casting calls for some reason.Hamburger claims to have auditioned more than a thousand children looking for his stars in TYMPWOV. When he found the boy and girl that he wanted for the leads, Michel Joelsas and Daniela Piepszyk, he changed the script to fit them. Joelsas had never acted in a movie before (like Magaly Solier in Madeinusa, who had never even been in a movie theater when Claudia Llosa made her the lead in her movie). Hamburger says that Joelsas had talent and other characteristics of his personality that helped him to compose the character, such as "his shyness, his introspection, his curiosity about life, and his strength." And his "intelligence and a sense of observation. And he had strong charisma. He's also got a certain shyness and an inner strength." Hamburger introduced all the children in his movie slowly to the characters that they were to play, perhaps Mike Leigh-like. There was improvisation. None of the kids saw a script during the shooting of the movie. So no acting class there, unless you count Hamburger's direction; TYMPWOV argues for inborn talent, but only in one in a thousand or so. “The way I work with them is the most important element. I treat them as intelligent people. They are not children. They are spiritual, intelligent human beings. What I look for in casting children is charisma and talent, but, more than that, I want smart people. There is a very natural sense - especially the kids with their reactions...We worked a lot to have this very natural feel, but there is a lot of work behind it.” So roll the film of Michel's audition. What the heck did this kid have to do when he came through the door, number 1013, with Hamburger languishing there in his director's chair, in order to get picked boss boy? Bark like a dog? I coulda been a contender? Put on blackface, fall to his knees, and sing Mammy? We'll never know. Now my niece - those auditions are brutal. She crawls on her belly like a reptile. They badger her about her tattoos. Surely there were tattoos in Shakespeare's time, weren't there, even if they weren't coupling ferrets over You Suck! in red and green on her shoulder blades?When I say that the kids were fine in the movie, I just mean that I watched the movie and never found myself thinking, "This kid is acting." What they were actually doing onscreen, I wasn't exactly paying attention to. Sometimes in a movie I do think about what the child is up to: when Cameron Bright gets into the bath with a naked Nicole Kidman in Birth, I found myself speculating about how that was accomplished without breaking any laws. When Dylan Baker has a talk with his son in Happiness, about Baker's pedophilia and his abuse of the boy's sleepover friend the night before, I knew in advance that Baker was actually talking to the air and his son's reaction shots were filmed later. But in general, I don't sit watching for signs that actors are acting, child or otherwise. Mary Badham and Phillip Alford in To Kill a Mockingbird? How much were they given to do? Can't remember. Scout narrates the movie, but as an adult. Are kids mostly asked to just look worried, or angry, or confused? How often does a kid have to laugh in a movie? What's the story on kid monologs? 726,000 Google hits for "kid monologs," including the following from Henry V:BOY: As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to all three; but all three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man. For Bardolph, he is white-livered and red-faced; by the means whereof 'a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the means whereof 'a breaks word and keeps whole weapons. For Nym, he hath heard that men of few words are the best men, and therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest 'a should be thought a coward; but his few bad words are matched with as few good deeds, for 'a never broke any man's head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk. They will steal anything, and call it purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-case, bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three halfpence. Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais they stole a fire-shovel. I knew by that piece of service the men would carry coals. They would have me as familiar with men's pockets as their gloves or handkerchers; which makes much against my manhood, if I should take from another's pocket to put into mine; for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. I must leave them and seek some better service. Their villainy goes against my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up.Wow. Maybe Michel laid that one on Hamburger.When I think of "bad acting," am I just reacting to bad line readings? In Son of Rambow, the boys have a lot to say and every once in a while I'd raise an eyebrow. In TYMPWOV, Joelsas and Peipszyk and the other kids are required to show their chops as follows:First twenty-five minutes: Michel (Joelsas) is the only child in the first quarter of the movie, except for a brief interaction with Hanna (Piepszyk). He plays by himself, asks his parents questions, looks out the car window at the big city and, by the way, narrates the film creditably. Sustains hugs from his parents. (As a child, I was hugged by a woman in a play once and I had to stand there and take it with a smile.) This is a good-looking young man. The camera loves him. So he walks, runs, waits, frowns at strange food, pisses in a flowerpot. It all looks real to me. I guess that's acting.Second twenty-five minutes: Michel gets slapped, runs away, cooks in the kitchen, kills time around the house. Now some face time with Hanna - mild dialog - but since I don't speak Portuguese, how can I evaluate their line readings? Rats. (And by the way, watching the movie, I mostly couldn't distinguish Portuguese from Yiddish; be nice if the subtitles would indicate which was being spoken - and ditto for Swedish and Finnish in Mother of Mine). At 39 minutes (out of 100), Michel meets Hanna's friends, three boys. They refer to Michel as the goy. Ten minutes of ensemble child acting; all five seem a little stiff, but they're just meeting each other for the first time, so maybe in real life they would be stiff. Will the stiffness persist? Now Michel settles in with his neighbor, the elderly Shlomo next door, and makes friends throughout the neighborhood. He's not asked to say much by Hamburger, but he does a lot of worrying about his parents, running around the neighborhood, so on. At the halfway point in the film, the World Cup begins. Third twenty-five minutes: First World-Cup match with everyone watching; Michel spending time alone again in the apartment; then with a whole crowd of kids - minimal dialog; back home at the one-hour mark. Second match. Polish Jew, Italian Jew, Greek, African, German Jew, Hamburger really pushing the melting-pot theme. Local soccer game. Narration by boy. He wants to be a goalie. Another World-Cup match (sees first with Shlomo, second at the union, third with the old women. Local kids game with Michel as goalie. Piepszyk gives him a gift in a one-on-one scene with dialog. Michel goes to synagogue.Final twenty-five minutes: The kids do an excellent acting job at a bar mitzvah celebration. And then some acting by Joelsas, as he helps a young union member hide from the army and secret police. Emoting, face to face with an adult! Some intense moments. Then more alone time for the boy, now coping with his worries in a more mature way than at the beginning. And the final soccer match, and more perfect-pitch behavior from Joelsas. And drama to wrap up. The boy has charisma, for sure. I believed him, from start to finish, and the other kids too.And lest I forget, every time a goal was scored, everybody whooped and waved their arms in the air and I wondered if all the women in Brazil were shaving under their arms in 1970. According to a Brazilian I asked, the answer is yes. Looks come first in Brazil, she told me, and that includes proper underarm maintenance.
]]>Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:04:22 GMTjoem18bjoem18b Blog9/25/2008 7:04:22 PMO Ano em Que Meus Pais Sa&iacute;ram de F&eacute;rias (2006)***** SPOILERS *****The Year My Parents Went On Vaction tells the story of a pre-teen boy in S&atilde;o Paulo, Brazil, separated from his parents during a military coup in 1970. As the army takes over, the country is distracted in part by Brazil's successes in the World Cup of that year (sort of like following the pennant race or NFL football in the U.S. as the country's financial system implodes). The movie is pleasant, never dull, well shot, with a delicate score that adds to the feelings of sadness and loss inherent in the plot (the director threw out the first score written for the movie; Beto Villares then did it over and got it right).TYMPWOV begins with a mother and father taking their son to grandfather's house in S&atilde;o Paulo. The three are riding in a VW bug, '65 or earlier. A Brazilian friend suggests that for verisimilitude, they should have been in a Renault or Citroen, because the bug was the inexpensive car of youth and the lower middle-class; her family always drove French cars. Be that as it may, the movie's streets are rife with vintage bugs and VW buses, though I did spot a Renault or two. I mention this because the first car that I bought and paid for with my own money was a new '67 bug from Belmont Motors in Massachusetts, powder blue. It has been sitting since 1981 or so in a succession of company parking lots, progressively degenerating until, paint gone, wheels seized, flowering weeds growing from dirt caught in the chassis crevicles, it looks so bad that I was ordered to have it towed off the property because it had become an eyesore, at least to one sorehead in the company who remained anonymous - the bug's engine refusing to start, a hole in the floor threatening to release the battery under the back seat like a bomb dropped from its bay at the first speed bump, the windows opaque as my glasses in the Turkish bath down the street. Fortunately, my son stepped up and volunteered to restore the car as a hobby. He abstracted it on a flatbed towtruck via Raul's Towing Service to his driveway, where it sat, partially disassembled, for a week or two before the city, at the behest of neighbors or a cruising patrol car, ordered him to remove it. He rolled the poor thing into his garage, wheels now at least freed, out of sight behind closed doors, and since then he has ordered replacement parts from an unending list. He tells me that there are two sources from which to obtain these parts: (a) a quality manufacturer somewhere or other, or (b)Brazil. You want quality, you go to the quality manufacturer; you want cheap, you go to Brazil. I don't know if that's true or not but when I replaced a bumper a long time ago, it had a "Made in Brazil" sticker on the inside surface. One tap by another vehicle and the bumper folded up like an origami noodle. Also, curiously, '67 door handles are unavailable. But the point is, if you're a bug lover you might want to give TYMPWOV a little love for that reason if for no other.Director/writer Cao Hamburger and his co-writer, Claudio Galperin, were both born in S&atilde;o Paulo in 1962 and were eight years old when General Emilio Medici engineered his coup. Hamburger's parents "went on vacation" at that time, but only for a few weeks. In this movie, Hamburger and Galperin share some of their childhood experiences growing up in the cultural melting-pot of S&atilde;o Paulo. Hamburger's father came from a German/Jewish family that emigrated to Brazil before World War II. His mother was of Italian/Catholic stock, though both parents were non-religious scientists as he grew up. He says that he began thinking about S&atilde;o Paulo's mix of cultures and his roots while living and feeling like an outsider in London, another city where races and nationalities mingle. According to Hamburger (and my Brazilian friends), Brazil is deeply divided over socio-economic class issues (the rich, a small middle-class, and the poor) but is accepting of emigrants; he refers to Brazilian culture as Samba culture - "Samba" here meaning, roughly, "let's all dance together." In fact, Hamburger started out with all sorts of ideas for the movie, but while making it settled on the idea of enjoying the brief periods of sunshine in life on a cloudy day. The movie was made on a medium budget by Brazilian standards. Since the success of films like Central Station and City of God, Hamburger says, funding opportunities for cinema have gotten a lot better. He used professionals as well as non-actors from the community, which in the film is a conservative Jewish neighborhood. Today, Hamburger says, this neighborhood is Korean, but since he is exploring his own roots, for the purposes of the film it remains Jewish. Hamburger spent four months finding an empty apartment building to use for the shoot; the movie was filmed completely on location.So often in making a movie, the director starts out with an idea and massages it until a theme for the film is produced. This process can extend over years with input from editors, writers, friends, family, and assorted other sources while the director chases funding, as I describe in my review of Manda Bala. Hamburger's initial inspiration was to examine the mixture of cultures in Brazil, and from that grew the idea of examining a year in the life of a boy growing up in the same time and place that Hamburger and Galperin did. During the making of the movie, the military coup and contemperaneous world-cup excitement in the film emerged, according to the director, as metaphors for life. It seems to me that some of these metaphors crop up post-production but perhaps I'm just metaphor-blind or metaphor-averse. Does a movie metaphor count if it's discovered after the movie is finished? Does it count if a reviewer invokes it, rather than the director? I do like the way that Claudia Llosa, for example, disavows metaphors in her Maven-reviewed Madeinusa, a movie which could easily be weighed down with them. I'm guessing that Hamburger's military coup and World Cup would remain in the movie whether Hamburger deemed them metaphors or not. As it is, he has one more thing to talk about during interviews. Anyway, the coup represents a dark day and the World-Cup victory represents a shaft of sunlight breaking through the gloom of that day. The dark day is life under the military regime and the sunlight represents those moments in life that you must embrace in order to get through the bad patches - did I just nest a metaphor within a metaphor there? The life of goalies in general is also a metaphor in the movie, but if the victory is a bright shaft of sunlight, what is the goalie? A meteorite the size of Oshgosh? Who knows? The gray day/sunlight metaphor, applied to my own personal life, would be like at my work, where my boss would be dictator General Emilio Medici, and out of the grinding gray of morning I would emerge at lunchtime to sit down across from Izzy Vulvano and beat his pants off playing Magic and using my special red and black deck. Also the movie is about dealing with our loneliness and our connections to others, how we make them and break them and move on. Is the movie itself a metaphor for that, or just a movie about that? Also, the director does not agree that soccer is the opiate of the masses, exploited by the junta in this case to maintain calm. Hamburger is going for gray day/sunshine here, not gray day/opium. And having mentioned Manda Bala above, note that this whole movie unfurled without a kidnapping or fried frog in sight, but only because the whole country is under siege from an autocratic military dictatorship rather than a scourge of corrupt politicians and kidnapping-for-profit criminal thugs.Strangely, Hamburger's soccer metaphor gets turned on its head at the end of the movie. Irony? Another layer? Or just part of the movie that doesn't conform to a simple, stumbled-upon talking point? I thought about calling Hamburger and asking him, but nobody likes a wiseass.When the metaphorical army arrives in Michel's neighborhood and starts dragging young men out of their union offices in S&atilde;o Paulo, clubbing them and hurling them into vans while the boy's parents are in hiding, it occurred to me to wonder whether such scenes are automatically more powerful when filmed in the country where they are supposed to have happened, in the language in which they happened, by victims or the relatives of victims of the evils portrayed. Or, for a subtitle-hating country like America, could such a scene be made more visceral and moving if shot in Hollywood for U.S. consumption? For example, would Der Untergang or The Lives of Others have retained their energy or even gained some, if they had been made, shot for shot, in the U.S. with U.S. actors instead of Germans? Ennio De Concini tried it with xxAlec Guiness playing Hitler but I think we can agree that that didn't work as well as Bruno Ganz doing it. Being a cinema snob, I would say without cavil that it is intuitively obvious that the Brazilian version of the coup or the German version of Hitler's last days cannot fail to have an innate power, if well enough done, that a U.S. version could never match. But hold on. Summer Palace provides a dramatic take on Tiananmen Square and the events there in 1989, yet I've heard plenty of squawking (from round eyes) about its failure to do justice to that historic conflict. Would a movie about Tiananmen, made along the lines of The Last Emperor, fare better in the U.S? Could Gettysburg withstand a transfer to Japan; if Kurosawa made it, might it even improve in the eyes of the Japanese? Or in the eyes of American viewers as well? How to assign metrics to questions like these? It's easy to just say that the better the filmmaker, the better the film, for all informed viewers of taste. Do the French still love Jerry Lewis? Are Hollywood blockbusters still the biggest grossers all around the world? And children in movies - does the fact that the child is native to a country foreign to the viewer and speaks a foreign language have any effect one way or the other on that viewer? Rather than approaching these questions from first principles, maybe the thing to do is to evaluate a hundred movies or so, make a call on each, and examine the results for trends.And speaking of children, how do they learn to act so well? Or isn't learning involved? Teens act in high-school drama classes and plays - they're learning something there, I guess. They act in community theater, especially in locations where drama in the schools is being cut. Adults go to drama school, but often act badly in films anyway. And yet I see movie after movie in which children act just fine (Mother of Mine, Wondrous Oblivion, Birth, Kabluey (where the kids are caricatures, but good caricatures.) On the other hand, that kid in The Dick Van Dyke Show... ouch.). Is aging an antidote to natural inborn talent? As we grow up, do we lose our ability to act? Or are these children, who seem to be acting so well, actually not doing much at all? In TYMPWOV, is the boy mostly just running around, looking upset, and playing with his tabletop soccer set, or is he interacting with others and... well, acting. I called the Stella Adler School in Manhattan to ask these questions, but the woman I spoke to told me that the youngest students they enroll are 14-year-olds (eight Saturday classes from 10 to 6, $800. No waiting list.) I asked the woman if the under-14s I see in the movies have been trained, or if whatever they show is just natural ability. She could only surmise. I asked if the Stella Adler Saturday classes have produced some success stories; she said yes, but didn't name anybody I've heard of. She didn't have much else to say about younger children and their appearances in movies, so I called a school out in the Valley (Sherman Oaks) which takes kids as young as 8. Sherman Oaks is up the 405 from Santa Monica, just over the hills from Hollywood. The fellow I spoke to told me flatly that every young person onscreen today has taken classes. He listed graduates from his school now appearing in Desperate Housewives, Everyone Hates Chris, etc., etc. (Classes from 10 to noon on Saturdays.) Agents and casting directors visit frequently, nominally as "class assistants," but actually trolling for talent; or maybe just trying to make a living. For example:****For Young actors:Howard MeltzerHannah Montana Casting DirectorTV Intensive - Saturday, October 4thIn each class session, the children work on a scene. In addition, there is instruction in preparation, auditioning, so forth. Camps and career-placement services are available. I asked the fellow whether children start out with talent and then lose it, or whether talent is distributed among children in the same proportion as among adults, and if so, what the classes might add to that. According to him, we're all natural-born actors. As children, we play-act all the time, but as we age, we forget how much fun that acting can be. Acting classes, like organized sports, are just a modern way of letting children continue to have fun. And just as you won't be playing in the NFL or NBA unless you associate yourself with an organized program, just so you won't break into Hollywood without connections. Plus, I'm now getting casting calls for some reason.Hamburger claims to have auditioned more than a thousand children looking for his stars in TYMPWOV. When he found the boy and girl that he wanted for the leads, Michel Joelsas and Daniela Piepszyk, he changed the script to fit them. Joelsas had never acted in a movie before (like Magaly Solier in Madeinusa, who had never even been in a movie theater when Claudia Llosa made her the lead in her movie). Hamburger says that Joelsas had talent and other characteristics of his personality that helped him to compose the character, such as "his shyness, his introspection, his curiosity about life, and his strength." And his "intelligence and a sense of observation. And he had strong charisma. He's also got a certain shyness and an inner strength." Hamburger introduced all the children in his movie slowly to the characters that they were to play, perhaps Mike Leigh-like. There was improvisation. None of the kids saw a script during the shooting of the movie. So no acting class there, unless you count Hamburger's direction; TYMPWOV argues for inborn talent, but only in one in a thousand or so. &ldquo;The way I work with them is the most important element. I treat them as intelligent people. They are not children. They are spiritual, intelligent human beings. What I look for in casting children is charisma and talent, but, more than that, I want smart people. There is a very natural sense - especially the kids with their reactions...We worked a lot to have this very natural feel, but there is a lot of work behind it.&rdquo; So roll the film of Michel's audition. What the heck did this kid have to do when he came through the door, number 1013, with Hamburger languishing there in his director's chair, in order to get picked boss boy? Bark like a dog? I coulda been a contender? Put on blackface, fall to his knees, and sing Mammy? We'll never know. Now my niece - those auditions are brutal. She crawls on her belly like a reptile. They badger her about her tattoos. Surely there were tattoos in Shakespeare's time, weren't there, even if they weren't coupling ferrets over You Suck! in red and green on her shoulder blades?When I say that the kids were fine in the movie, I just mean that I watched the movie and never found myself thinking, "This kid is acting." What they were actually doing onscreen, I wasn't exactly paying attention to. Sometimes in a movie I do think about what the child is up to: when Cameron Bright gets into the bath with a naked Nicole Kidman in Birth, I found myself speculating about how that was accomplished without breaking any laws. When Dylan Baker has a talk with his son in Happiness, about Baker's pedophilia and his abuse of the boy's sleepover friend the night before, I knew in advance that Baker was actually talking to the air and his son's reaction shots were filmed later. But in general, I don't sit watching for signs that actors are acting, child or otherwise. Mary Badham and Phillip Alford in To Kill a Mockingbird? How much were they given to do? Can't remember. Scout narrates the movie, but as an adult. Are kids mostly asked to just look worried, or angry, or confused? How often does a kid have to laugh in a movie? What's the story on kid monologs? 726,000 Google hits for "kid monologs," including the following from Henry V:BOY: As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to all three; but all three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man. For Bardolph, he is white-livered and red-faced; by the means whereof 'a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the means whereof 'a breaks word and keeps whole weapons. For Nym, he hath heard that men of few words are the best men, and therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest 'a should be thought a coward; but his few bad words are matched with as few good deeds, for 'a never broke any man's head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk. They will steal anything, and call it purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-case, bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three halfpence. Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais they stole a fire-shovel. I knew by that piece of service the men would carry coals. They would have me as familiar with men's pockets as their gloves or handkerchers; which makes much against my manhood, if I should take from another's pocket to put into mine; for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. I must leave them and seek some better service. Their villainy goes against my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up.Wow. Maybe Michel laid that one on Hamburger.When I think of "bad acting," am I just reacting to bad line readings? In Son of Rambow, the boys have a lot to say and every once in a while I'd raise an eyebrow. In TYMPWOV, Joelsas and Peipszyk and the other kids are required to show their chops as follows:First twenty-five minutes: Michel (Joelsas) is the only child in the first quarter of the movie, except for a brief interaction with Hanna (Piepszyk). He plays by himself, asks his parents questions, looks out the car window at the big city and, by the way, narrates the film creditably. Sustains hugs from his parents. (As a child, I was hugged by a woman in a play once and I had to stand there and take it with a smile.) This is a good-looking young man. The camera loves him. So he walks, runs, waits, frowns at strange food, pisses in a flowerpot. It all looks real to me. I guess that's acting.Second twenty-five minutes: Michel gets slapped, runs away, cooks in the kitchen, kills time around the house. Now some face time with Hanna - mild dialog - but since I don't speak Portuguese, how can I evaluate their line readings? Rats. (And by the way, watching the movie, I mostly couldn't distinguish Portuguese from Yiddish; be nice if the subtitles would indicate which was being spoken - and ditto for Swedish and Finnish in Mother of Mine). At 39 minutes (out of 100), Michel meets Hanna's friends, three boys. They refer to Michel as the goy. Ten minutes of ensemble child acting; all five seem a little stiff, but they're just meeting each other for the first time, so maybe in real life they would be stiff. Will the stiffness persist? Now Michel settles in with his neighbor, the elderly Shlomo next door, and makes friends throughout the neighborhood. He's not asked to say much by Hamburger, but he does a lot of worrying about his parents, running around the neighborhood, so on. At the halfway point in the film, the World Cup begins. Third twenty-five minutes: First World-Cup match with everyone watching; Michel spending time alone again in the apartment; then with a whole crowd of kids - minimal dialog; back home at the one-hour mark. Second match. Polish Jew, Italian Jew, Greek, African, German Jew, Hamburger really pushing the melting-pot theme. Local soccer game. Narration by boy. He wants to be a goalie. Another World-Cup match (sees first with Shlomo, second at the union, third with the old women. Local kids game with Michel as goalie. Piepszyk gives him a gift in a one-on-one scene with dialog. Michel goes to synagogue.Final twenty-five minutes: The kids do an excellent acting job at a bar mitzvah celebration. And then some acting by Joelsas, as he helps a young union member hide from the army and secret police. Emoting, face to face with an adult! Some intense moments. Then more alone time for the boy, now coping with his worries in a more mature way than at the beginning. And the final soccer match, and more perfect-pitch behavior from Joelsas. And drama to wrap up. The boy has charisma, for sure. I believed him, from start to finish, and the other kids too.And lest I forget, every time a goal was scored, everybody whooped and waved their arms in the air and I wondered if all the women in Brazil were shaving under their arms in 1970. According to a Brazilian I asked, the answer is yes. Looks come first in Brazil, she told me, and that includes proper underarm maintenance. http://www.spout.com/blogs/rik_tod/archive/2008/8/14/34001.aspx Post By: rik_tod
Post To: The Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost
Post Date: 8/14/2008 10:00:55 AM
Body: Director: Paul MorrisonPathé/Momentum, 1:46, colorCinema 4 Rating: 5Last week, I wrote a piece about a film involving a young Brazilian lad with whom I was able to identify due to a shared love we both had for sport. In each case, it was a different, particular sport: mine, baseball; his, soccer. The connecting factor between us was that we both created worlds in which the trivia and paraphernalia surrounding each sport, rather than the sport itself, were the primary basis and focus of our individual obsessions. And each obsession was a way in which we could protect ourselves, sometimes to our detriment, from the familial strife surrounding us, though the boy from Brazil's problems perhaps a bit more political heft to them.In Wondrous Oblivion, we meet another such lad, perhaps the third member of our party, though I am fairly certain that our true number, this group of game-obsessed, youthful dreamers, is in the tens of millions. Given the proliferation of fantasy sports leagues nowadays, perhaps this group has largely either moved fully beyond childhood for such matters, or childhood has now been stretched to Winsor McCay proportions. Regardless, David is a child of those displaced by the war, his parents being Jewish European immigrants. He and his family live in a home in a somewhat shabby area of London, though his father's successful grocery keeps the family getting on pretty well -- well enough to look for a bigger home in a better area -- and David in a boy's school, though he is generally not well accepted by the rest of his class.Mostly, this is due to David being rather quiet and shy, and if they gave awards for portraying wide-eyed innocents for much of a film's running length as something near to a git, then the filmmakers would be rolling in the post-show bling. More than anybody else on earth possibly could, David loves cricket. The problem is that David sucks at it. Really, really sucks at it. Can't field, can't hit... the kid can barely throw the ball five feet, and never in a straight line. The one thing that kid has going for him is earnestness, though through my eyes, this just makes him seem a tad simple, and it seems to be that way for his schoolmates as well.Enter the Samuels, the new next door neighbors from Jamaica. Mr. Dennis Samuels immediately erects an elaborate cricket net in their backyard, so they can practice bowling (what we would call pitching in baseball) and then hit the ball safely without smashing out every window in the neighborhood. Dennis has an adorable daughter named Judy with whom David will become enamored, mostly because she, too, is obsessed by cricket. Except her obsession stems from the fact that she is actually good at playing it, not just at mooning over the sport all misty-eyed.This seems like the perfect scenario in which a withdrawn, cricket-mad lad can finally find the guidance he needs in the sport which he loves so much, sometimes to his detriment. Only, most of the neighborhood is unhappy with a black family moving in, and David's family is already under pressure due to their own racial background. When David becomes too close to the Samuels' family, David's parents will bear the brunt of the pressure from local racists and tsk-tsking neighbors, while David remains mostly encased in the comfort of his world where everything is cricket. Or what one of his teachers will describe as David's "wondrous oblivion."This film, like the Samuels family for David, seemed like the perfect opportunity for myself as well. Unlike much of speed and power-obsessed America, where even baseball has become a "boring" sport, I actually enjoy a pastime even slower and more pastoral in nature. Even more so, I like being given chances to see the British love of cricket through more than just a random scene here or there. My pal Eggy leaped upon this knowledge and sent me a copy of the Bollywood film Lagaan a couple of years ago, and she was so right and wonderful to do such a thing. Right in my wheelhouse. I even watch the half-hour Cricket World wrap-up on one of the Asian cable networks every Sunday or so, and check the listings for that once-in-a-while test match that pops up on Fox Soccer Channel without any regularity whatsoever. So, to be handed a film that obsesses as much as its young protagonist over the sport seems too good to be true. Add to this the early '60s London atmosphere, the slow build of an integrated society, and a soundtrack filled with songs from the first wave of ska (a personal favorite genre of music), and it would seem that Wondrous Oblivion couldn't miss with me.And yet, after 105 minutes of merely average drama, I was left wanting so much more. Not that I wanted anything terrible to happen to any of the main characters (except maybe David, who I wanted to punch in the temples every once in a while), but the mounting threat of the violence comes off almost cartoonish, like it wandered in from Absolute Beginners (where at least it seemed far more dangerous, even while being enveloped by lip-synced musical numbers). Everything in this film is all threat -- the possible romance between David's cute, marriage-stunned mother and Mr. Samuels (played by Delroy Lindo, an actor I have never really enjoyed much, in what may be his most perfect role) is all bluff, and ultimately plays false -- and even the cricket scenes are this way. Where I am pleased with the detail to the minutiae of the game, once David learns to play and even become one of the best in his school at the game, the film tails off and doesn't allow us to truly revel in his success. They try to compensate at the end with a scene involving some top-flight stars of the game, but there aren't any fireworks to it. It becomes as workaday as the rest of the film.Even this "wondrous oblivion" David lives in really doesn't come off. The fantasy elements are too underplayed -- almost thankfully, since they are dreadfully done as it is -- for them too work in the piece at large. David's player cards, which he collects throughout the film, come to life in his eyes as he plays his tabletop games, and the effect strikes a note of discord with the rest of the film. It just doesn't match. And so, too, goes the phrase "wondrous oblivion." At the beginning of the film, his teacher says the phrase in reference to David, and somehow the kid picks it up as a personal catchphrase. He uses it whenever something strikes his fancy, but honestly, even though we are told he is a good student, David seems just a tad too daft to pick up on anything, especially a softly whispered minor insult. As a screenwriting device, and as a title, "wondrous oblivion" comes off as too forced.As a film, though, it is anything but forced. It's a walk in the park where you meet a couple of scary muggers, but they are on their day off. It's wistful nostalgia without any sort of grounding on which one can plant their feet for a rest. I don't want to actually dissuade people from seeing it, as it is, on first glance, a well-made film. Their are decent performances from Emily Woof as the mother, and the aforementioned excellent Lindo. The ska music is fine, the party scene is teasing, and the cricket is grand. But don't read "well-made" as "well-crafted," though.Wondrous Oblivion is too caught up in its own fantasy that it is already doing everything right to really care to do it right. And that, on any field, is an "all out."
]]>Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:00:55 GMTrik_todThe Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost8/14/2008 10:00:55 AMDirector: Paul MorrisonPath&eacute;/Momentum, 1:46, colorCinema 4 Rating: 5Last week, I wrote a piece about a film involving a young Brazilian lad with whom I was able to identify due to a shared love we both had for sport. In each case, it was a different, particular sport: mine, baseball; his, soccer. The connecting factor between us was that we both created worlds in which the trivia and paraphernalia surrounding each sport, rather than the sport itself, were the primary basis and focus of our individual obsessions. And each obsession was a way in which we could protect ourselves, sometimes to our detriment, from the familial strife surrounding us, though the boy from Brazil's problems perhaps a bit more political heft to them.In Wondrous Oblivion, we meet another such lad, perhaps the third member of our party, though I am fairly certain that our true number, this group of game-obsessed, youthful dreamers, is in the tens of millions. Given the proliferation of fantasy sports leagues nowadays, perhaps this group has largely either moved fully beyond childhood for such matters, or childhood has now been stretched to Winsor McCay proportions. Regardless, David is a child of those displaced by the war, his parents being Jewish European immigrants. He and his family live in a home in a somewhat shabby area of London, though his father's successful grocery keeps the family getting on pretty well -- well enough to look for a bigger home in a better area -- and David in a boy's school, though he is generally not well accepted by the rest of his class.Mostly, this is due to David being rather quiet and shy, and if they gave awards for portraying wide-eyed innocents for much of a film's running length as something near to a git, then the filmmakers would be rolling in the post-show bling. More than anybody else on earth possibly could, David loves cricket. The problem is that David sucks at it. Really, really sucks at it. Can't field, can't hit... the kid can barely throw the ball five feet, and never in a straight line. The one thing that kid has going for him is earnestness, though through my eyes, this just makes him seem a tad simple, and it seems to be that way for his schoolmates as well.Enter the Samuels, the new next door neighbors from Jamaica. Mr. Dennis Samuels immediately erects an elaborate cricket net in their backyard, so they can practice bowling (what we would call pitching in baseball) and then hit the ball safely without smashing out every window in the neighborhood. Dennis has an adorable daughter named Judy with whom David will become enamored, mostly because she, too, is obsessed by cricket. Except her obsession stems from the fact that she is actually good at playing it, not just at mooning over the sport all misty-eyed.This seems like the perfect scenario in which a withdrawn, cricket-mad lad can finally find the guidance he needs in the sport which he loves so much, sometimes to his detriment. Only, most of the neighborhood is unhappy with a black family moving in, and David's family is already under pressure due to their own racial background. When David becomes too close to the Samuels' family, David's parents will bear the brunt of the pressure from local racists and tsk-tsking neighbors, while David remains mostly encased in the comfort of his world where everything is cricket. Or what one of his teachers will describe as David's "wondrous oblivion."This film, like the Samuels family for David, seemed like the perfect opportunity for myself as well. Unlike much of speed and power-obsessed America, where even baseball has become a "boring" sport, I actually enjoy a pastime even slower and more pastoral in nature. Even more so, I like being given chances to see the British love of cricket through more than just a random scene here or there. My pal Eggy leaped upon this knowledge and sent me a copy of the Bollywood film Lagaan a couple of years ago, and she was so right and wonderful to do such a thing. Right in my wheelhouse. I even watch the half-hour Cricket World wrap-up on one of the Asian cable networks every Sunday or so, and check the listings for that once-in-a-while test match that pops up on Fox Soccer Channel without any regularity whatsoever. So, to be handed a film that obsesses as much as its young protagonist over the sport seems too good to be true. Add to this the early '60s London atmosphere, the slow build of an integrated society, and a soundtrack filled with songs from the first wave of ska (a personal favorite genre of music), and it would seem that Wondrous Oblivion couldn't miss with me.And yet, after 105 minutes of merely average drama, I was left wanting so much more. Not that I wanted anything terrible to happen to any of the main characters (except maybe David, who I wanted to punch in the temples every once in a while), but the mounting threat of the violence comes off almost cartoonish, like it wandered in from Absolute Beginners (where at least it seemed far more dangerous, even while being enveloped by lip-synced musical numbers). Everything in this film is all threat -- the possible romance between David's cute, marriage-stunned mother and Mr. Samuels (played by Delroy Lindo, an actor I have never really enjoyed much, in what may be his most perfect role) is all bluff, and ultimately plays false -- and even the cricket scenes are this way. Where I am pleased with the detail to the minutiae of the game, once David learns to play and even become one of the best in his school at the game, the film tails off and doesn't allow us to truly revel in his success. They try to compensate at the end with a scene involving some top-flight stars of the game, but there aren't any fireworks to it. It becomes as workaday as the rest of the film.Even this "wondrous oblivion" David lives in really doesn't come off. The fantasy elements are too underplayed -- almost thankfully, since they are dreadfully done as it is -- for them too work in the piece at large. David's player cards, which he collects throughout the film, come to life in his eyes as he plays his tabletop games, and the effect strikes a note of discord with the rest of the film. It just doesn't match. And so, too, goes the phrase "wondrous oblivion." At the beginning of the film, his teacher says the phrase in reference to David, and somehow the kid picks it up as a personal catchphrase. He uses it whenever something strikes his fancy, but honestly, even though we are told he is a good student, David seems just a tad too daft to pick up on anything, especially a softly whispered minor insult. As a screenwriting device, and as a title, "wondrous oblivion" comes off as too forced.As a film, though, it is anything but forced. It's a walk in the park where you meet a couple of scary muggers, but they are on their day off. It's wistful nostalgia without any sort of grounding on which one can plant their feet for a rest. I don't want to actually dissuade people from seeing it, as it is, on first glance, a well-made film. Their are decent performances from Emily Woof as the mother, and the aforementioned excellent Lindo. The ska music is fine, the party scene is teasing, and the cricket is grand. But don't read "well-made" as "well-crafted," though.Wondrous Oblivion is too caught up in its own fantasy that it is already doing everything right to really care to do it right. And that, on any field, is an "all out." http://www.spout.com/blogs/belladonna2054/archive/2008/6/14/31238.aspx Post By: belladonna2054
Post To: belladonna2054 Blog
Post Date: 6/14/2008 8:22:51 PM
Body: Wondrous Oblivion is about a young boy named David Weisman (played by Sam Smith), in 1960 London, who dreams of one day of being a cricket star, however there is one problem: he has no talent. This does not stop David’s passion for the sport, much to the chagrin of his classmates and family. One day new neighbors, the Samuels, move onto David’s block which causes a stir within the community. The new neighbors are from Jamaica. This causes racial tensions to rise further for David’s family, who are already subtly persecuted by their neighbors because they are Jewish. It is further raised as David sees Dennis Samuel (played by Delroy Lindo) build a cricket fence in his backyard. Seeing this as his opportunity to build his cricket skills, he breaks his mother’s (played by Emily Woof), rules by going over and being coached by Dennis. The other neighbors quickly take notice to David’s time spent with the Samuels and trouble begins for Mrs. Weisman in the form of two busybodies, Mrs. Dudley (Mary Cunningham) and Mrs. Wilson (Carol MacReady). At first to try to coax her into talking to their landlord into getting rid of the Samuels, when Mrs. Weisman does not go through with it, she continuously receives taunts and harassment from the neighborhood. But this does not stop her from allowing David to spend time with the Samuels. As time passes, Mrs. Weisman’s own relationship with Dennis begins to grow. Meanwhile David’s cricket skills improve and his dreams of being a part of his school’s cricket team come to pass. Delroy Lindo does a great job as Dennis Samuel, the big hearted patriarch of the Samuel family. Sam Smith also does well as the young David Weisman, the innocent young boy who faced a lot of challenges because of his inability to play cricket and because of his religion. Emily Woof was impressive in role as Anna Weisman, a woman who married young who is struggling in her role as a mother and handling the neighborhood busybodies. Director Paul Morrison did a good job on this film for the small special effects on the trading card scenarios and for the story over all, which he wrote. He chose well in having Delroy Lindo and Emily Woof, they are both great actors who played their parts very well. This was a great film to watch. It’s great for family and adolescents who are learning history of the 1960s. But for the average viewer, the story is the average boy coming-of-age set in the 1960s. I personally enjoyed it because it is relatively cute. However there are scenes in the film that are never really explained why they are there. One is where David collects and plays with cricket player cards which come to life for him. It would have been interesting to find out what type of role those scenes played in the film, but you never know. You are left to the assumption that it is all in David’s imagination. There are also scenes in which go on for more time than what they should. An example is when David obtains his dream of getting on the cricket team at school. There are scenes in which he continuously excels at games, but how long do they have to go on until you have to say enough? I recommend this film for families who want to see a good coming-of-age story. Kids would like it for the ‘hero’. Parents would like it because it doesn’t have much violence or have any foul language. This story is good because it is not taking place in the United States (which are the typical settings) and different time, 1960. I wouldn’t recommend it for the typical movie viewer because it is a repetitive story. But overall it is a great story.
]]>Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:22:51 GMTbelladonna2054belladonna2054 Blog6/14/2008 8:22:51 PMWondrous Oblivion is about a young boy named David Weisman (played by Sam Smith), in 1960 London, who dreams of one day of being a cricket star, however there is one problem: he has no talent. This does not stop David&rsquo;s passion for the sport, much to the chagrin of his classmates and family. One day new neighbors, the Samuels, move onto David&rsquo;s block which causes a stir within the community. The new neighbors are from Jamaica. This causes racial tensions to rise further for David&rsquo;s family, who are already subtly persecuted by their neighbors because they are Jewish. It is further raised as David sees Dennis Samuel (played by Delroy Lindo) build a cricket fence in his backyard. Seeing this as his opportunity to build his cricket skills, he breaks his mother&rsquo;s (played by Emily Woof), rules by going over and being coached by Dennis. The other neighbors quickly take notice to David&rsquo;s time spent with the Samuels and trouble begins for Mrs. Weisman in the form of two busybodies, Mrs. Dudley (Mary Cunningham) and Mrs. Wilson (Carol MacReady). At first to try to coax her into talking to their landlord into getting rid of the Samuels, when Mrs. Weisman does not go through with it, she continuously receives taunts and harassment from the neighborhood. But this does not stop her from allowing David to spend time with the Samuels. As time passes, Mrs. Weisman&rsquo;s own relationship with Dennis begins to grow. Meanwhile David&rsquo;s cricket skills improve and his dreams of being a part of his school&rsquo;s cricket team come to pass. Delroy Lindo does a great job as Dennis Samuel, the big hearted patriarch of the Samuel family. Sam Smith also does well as the young David Weisman, the innocent young boy who faced a lot of challenges because of his inability to play cricket and because of his religion. Emily Woof was impressive in role as Anna Weisman, a woman who married young who is struggling in her role as a mother and handling the neighborhood busybodies. Director Paul Morrison did a good job on this film for the small special effects on the trading card scenarios and for the story over all, which he wrote. He chose well in having Delroy Lindo and Emily Woof, they are both great actors who played their parts very well. This was a great film to watch. It&rsquo;s great for family and adolescents who are learning history of the 1960s. But for the average viewer, the story is the average boy coming-of-age set in the 1960s. I personally enjoyed it because it is relatively cute. However there are scenes in the film that are never really explained why they are there. One is where David collects and plays with cricket player cards which come to life for him. It would have been interesting to find out what type of role those scenes played in the film, but you never know. You are left to the assumption that it is all in David&rsquo;s imagination. There are also scenes in which go on for more time than what they should. An example is when David obtains his dream of getting on the cricket team at school. There are scenes in which he continuously excels at games, but how long do they have to go on until you have to say enough? I recommend this film for families who want to see a good coming-of-age story. Kids would like it for the &lsquo;hero&rsquo;. Parents would like it because it doesn&rsquo;t have much violence or have any foul language. This story is good because it is not taking place in the United States (which are the typical settings) and different time, 1960. I wouldn&rsquo;t recommend it for the typical movie viewer because it is a repetitive story. But overall it is a great story. http://www.spout.com/blogs/solafekxela/archive/2008/4/12/27244.aspx Post By: solafekxela
Post To: solafekxela Blog
Post Date: 4/12/2008 12:38:50 PM
Body: British filmmaker Paul Morrison hasn’t been working in the industry for long, but his first feature film, Solomon and Gaenor, was well received and earned an Oscar nomination for best foreign film in 2000. Both this and his latest effort, Wondrous Oblivion, deal with the culture clashes faced by Jewish people in post-World War II society. Whereas his debut was a tragic and heartfelt love story, Wondrous Oblivion is a more lighthearted portrayal of a young child desperately seeking his place in the world.Eleven-year-old David Wiseman wants nothing more than to be the next great cricket player. His passion, displayed relatively quickly in the film through his adoration for the figures pictured on his many trading cards, is undeniable. However, like many ambitious young athletes, he’s, well, not very good. This, a problem faced by many prepubescent boys, is probably the most relatable aspect of an otherwise distant film.1960s London provides the backdrop for the tale of this young lad seeking the approval of his friends and parents. The neighborhood the Wiseman family inhabits is filled with hateful, prejudiced people who condemn any sort of interracial interaction. When an exuberant Jamaican family moves in next door, David is delighted to find them to be helpful cricket experts. His parents (particularly his father), however, are quite hesitant to allow their son to grow too close to these foreign people.Clearly, there are two central dilemmas at the heart of the film. The first is David’s struggle to channel his natural talent and become a respectable cricket player. The second, far less nuanced and interesting, is whether or not the family should break the racial barriers of the neighborhood and try to welcome the Samuels family. When, early on, the captain for David’s cricket team is announced, the boy is saddened by the selection of one of his classmates. His father’s reaction, in particular, is notable, asking “why aren’t you the captain?”. David knows the answer is quite simple - he’s not good enough. This moment feels so truthful to the sort of pressure parents ignorantly force upon their young athletes that I really wanted to appreciate what the entire film had to say. However, it isn’t long before it becomes a predictable, overly polished retelling of clichéd stories that have overstayed their due in the film industry.The excitement of David’s growing success at cricket is overshadowed by the racial stereotypes that plague the interactions between the two families. It’s obvious that Morrison is trying to break down these societal, cultural barriers, but he paints both families with such broad strokes that it’s hard to find anything new to learn about these important issues.The visual style is another matter that really drags down any potential for nuance. He keeps almost everything in the frame in focus, uses vibrant colors to accentuate the cultural celebration he aims for, and fills many shots with obvious metaphors of the racial clashes he depicts. Every frame is so polished, so on-the-nose that it is hard to believe there is any subtlety lurking beneath the surface.While actors like Delroy Lindo as Dennis Samuels and Emily Woof as Ruth are solid in their roles, they aren’t given much to do by the derivative script. I do admire the way Morrison seems to be quite passionate about the particular issues he explores in his films, but I was disappointed to discover that Wondrous Oblivion had nothing new to offer me about the plight of Jewish people in modern society and the way they clash with other cultures.
]]>Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:38:50 GMTsolafekxelasolafekxela Blog4/12/2008 12:38:50 PMBritish filmmaker Paul Morrison hasn&rsquo;t been working in the industry for long, but his first feature film, Solomon and Gaenor, was well received and earned an Oscar nomination for best foreign film in 2000. Both this and his latest effort, Wondrous Oblivion, deal with the culture clashes faced by Jewish people in post-World War II society. Whereas his debut was a tragic and heartfelt love story, Wondrous Oblivion is a more lighthearted portrayal of a young child desperately seeking his place in the world.Eleven-year-old David Wiseman wants nothing more than to be the next great cricket player. His passion, displayed relatively quickly in the film through his adoration for the figures pictured on his many trading cards, is undeniable. However, like many ambitious young athletes, he&rsquo;s, well, not very good. This, a problem faced by many prepubescent boys, is probably the most relatable aspect of an otherwise distant film.1960s London provides the backdrop for the tale of this young lad seeking the approval of his friends and parents. The neighborhood the Wiseman family inhabits is filled with hateful, prejudiced people who condemn any sort of interracial interaction. When an exuberant Jamaican family moves in next door, David is delighted to find them to be helpful cricket experts. His parents (particularly his father), however, are quite hesitant to allow their son to grow too close to these foreign people.Clearly, there are two central dilemmas at the heart of the film. The first is David&rsquo;s struggle to channel his natural talent and become a respectable cricket player. The second, far less nuanced and interesting, is whether or not the family should break the racial barriers of the neighborhood and try to welcome the Samuels family. When, early on, the captain for David&rsquo;s cricket team is announced, the boy is saddened by the selection of one of his classmates. His father&rsquo;s reaction, in particular, is notable, asking &ldquo;why aren&rsquo;t you the captain?&rdquo;. David knows the answer is quite simple - he&rsquo;s not good enough. This moment feels so truthful to the sort of pressure parents ignorantly force upon their young athletes that I really wanted to appreciate what the entire film had to say. However, it isn&rsquo;t long before it becomes a predictable, overly polished retelling of clich&eacute;d stories that have overstayed their due in the film industry.The excitement of David&rsquo;s growing success at cricket is overshadowed by the racial stereotypes that plague the interactions between the two families. It&rsquo;s obvious that Morrison is trying to break down these societal, cultural barriers, but he paints both families with such broad strokes that it&rsquo;s hard to find anything new to learn about these important issues.The visual style is another matter that really drags down any potential for nuance. He keeps almost everything in the frame in focus, uses vibrant colors to accentuate the cultural celebration he aims for, and fills many shots with obvious metaphors of the racial clashes he depicts. Every frame is so polished, so on-the-nose that it is hard to believe there is any subtlety lurking beneath the surface.While actors like Delroy Lindo as Dennis Samuels and Emily Woof as Ruth are solid in their roles, they aren&rsquo;t given much to do by the derivative script. I do admire the way Morrison seems to be quite passionate about the particular issues he explores in his films, but I was disappointed to discover that Wondrous Oblivion had nothing new to offer me about the plight of Jewish people in modern society and the way they clash with other cultures. http://www.spout.com/blogs/vhsparrow/archive/2008/4/1/26846.aspx Post By: vhsparrow
Post To: vhsparrow Blog
Post Date: 4/1/2008 10:39:04 PM
Body: So, Delroy Lindo. 13 years ago he was the one shining moment — an uncredited cameo in the otherwise execrable adaptation of Michael Crichton’s ‘Congo‘ — forget that Crichton has become a flack for the anti-Global Warming lobby. Hats off to Laura Linney and Dylan Walsh there and all, but Delroy stole your movie, even though his participation there was limited to all of 5 minutes of screen-time. 16 years ago, he was West Indian Archie in Spike Lee’s award-winning ‘Malcolm X’ (1992) adaptation, but what has he done between then and now? ‘Clockers’ in 1995, ‘The Devil’s Advocate’ in 1997, ‘Gone in Sixty Seconds’ in 2000, ‘The Core’ in 2003 and ‘Domino’ in 2005 — sure he’s been working, but in each one of those roles, he’s been relegated to supporting roles rather than the front-and-center position that one would think that he’d have earned by now. And 3 weeks ago, you can imagine my chagrin in seeing him on the cover of ‘Wondrous Oblivion’ (2003), appearing in what appears to be a family picture, supporting some white kid. From badass to lovable Cricket instructor, Lindo’s career reads like Michael Chiklis‘ in reverse, so you can imagine my reluctance to uncan and spool this film. Fact of the matter, Wondrous Oblivion isn’t that bad of a film. What the film concerns is an awkward moment in British history — the early ’60’s — when South London became integrated — when Jewish immigrants (refugees, really) became the neighbors of West Indian immigrants in one of the Thames’ poorer quarters. When one group of ethnics takes up residence in anothers’ traditional neighborhood, there are always tensions, and so it goes with Oblivion. Here, Sam Smith plays young, Jewish David Wiseman, whose grandparents escaped the Holocaust to relocate in England. David’s mother, Lillian, is married to Victor, 20-30 years her senior as a matter, one assumes, of economic security. David is a cricket fan who obsessively collects cricket paraphernalia, though he has no skill at the game and is relegated as the scorekeeper at his grammar school. Enter into this picture Dennis Samuels (Delroy Lindo) and his family, not to mention his two young daughters (Leonie Elliot as Judy and Naomi Simpson as Dorothy) . It also turns out that Dennis also a cricket fanatic and no sooner than moving in next door to the Wisemans, he constructs a netted practice-area in his backyard. Of course, David’s father and the xenophobic, working-class people of David’s Brixton neighborhood take umbrage, such that hate-mail is followed by other threats while Dennis teaches David to play a proper game of cricket. This is all fairly by-the-numbers stuff that we’ve seen in movies as formulaic as ‘The Karate Kid’ (1984) and ‘The Bad News Bears’ (1976) and ‘My Bodyguard’ (1980). The thing that makes this film a bit more palatable is the examination of racial tension and the picture we get of South London during that period.I sort of appreciate the effort to create some sort of cultural outreach here, but ultimately, the effort stretches credulity somewhat, here. In the real world, Dennis Samuels would be making an effort to keep David away from his daughters, for fear of some sort of collateral damage by association, since local racists would be as likely to assault his girls as well as young David, especially if they were seen together. This Mister Miyagi nonsnse is better suited to greeting cards than movies that might be seen by impressionable children. There's also a suggestion of romance here, between Dennis and David's mother that's best left unspoken.Making a notable contribution to this film is the music — authentic ska, courtesy of Judy and Naomi, without which, this would simply be another by-the-numbers, coming-of-age and learned racial tolerance film. This one gets an extra star just becasue Lindo is in it and young Leonie Elliot turns in a memorable performance. Rating:
]]>Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:39:04 GMTvhsparrowvhsparrow Blog4/1/2008 10:39:04 PMSo, Delroy Lindo. 13 years ago he was the one shining moment &mdash; an uncredited cameo in the otherwise execrable adaptation of Michael Crichton&rsquo;s &lsquo;Congo&lsquo; &mdash; forget that Crichton has become a flack for the anti-Global Warming lobby. Hats off to Laura Linney and Dylan Walsh there and all, but Delroy stole your movie, even though his participation there was limited to all of 5 minutes of screen-time. 16 years ago, he was West Indian Archie in Spike Lee&rsquo;s award-winning &lsquo;Malcolm X&rsquo; (1992) adaptation, but what has he done between then and now? &lsquo;Clockers&rsquo; in 1995, &lsquo;The Devil&rsquo;s Advocate&rsquo; in 1997, &lsquo;Gone in Sixty Seconds&rsquo; in 2000, &lsquo;The Core&rsquo; in 2003 and &lsquo;Domino&rsquo; in 2005 &mdash; sure he&rsquo;s been working, but in each one of those roles, he&rsquo;s been relegated to supporting roles rather than the front-and-center position that one would think that he&rsquo;d have earned by now. And 3 weeks ago, you can imagine my chagrin in seeing him on the cover of &lsquo;Wondrous Oblivion&rsquo; (2003), appearing in what appears to be a family picture, supporting some white kid. From badass to lovable Cricket instructor, Lindo&rsquo;s career reads like Michael Chiklis&lsquo; in reverse, so you can imagine my reluctance to uncan and spool this film. Fact of the matter, Wondrous Oblivion isn&rsquo;t that bad of a film. What the film concerns is an awkward moment in British history &mdash; the early &rsquo;60&rsquo;s &mdash; when South London became integrated &mdash; when Jewish immigrants (refugees, really) became the neighbors of West Indian immigrants in one of the Thames&rsquo; poorer quarters. When one group of ethnics takes up residence in anothers&rsquo; traditional neighborhood, there are always tensions, and so it goes with Oblivion. Here, Sam Smith plays young, Jewish David Wiseman, whose grandparents escaped the Holocaust to relocate in England. David&rsquo;s mother, Lillian, is married to Victor, 20-30 years her senior as a matter, one assumes, of economic security. David is a cricket fan who obsessively collects cricket paraphernalia, though he has no skill at the game and is relegated as the scorekeeper at his grammar school. Enter into this picture Dennis Samuels (Delroy Lindo) and his family, not to mention his two young daughters (Leonie Elliot as Judy and Naomi Simpson as Dorothy) . It also turns out that Dennis also a cricket fanatic and no sooner than moving in next door to the Wisemans, he constructs a netted practice-area in his backyard. Of course, David&rsquo;s father and the xenophobic, working-class people of David&rsquo;s Brixton neighborhood take umbrage, such that hate-mail is followed by other threats while Dennis teaches David to play a proper game of cricket. This is all fairly by-the-numbers stuff that we&rsquo;ve seen in movies as formulaic as &lsquo;The Karate Kid&rsquo; (1984) and &lsquo;The Bad News Bears&rsquo; (1976) and &lsquo;My Bodyguard&rsquo; (1980). The thing that makes this film a bit more palatable is the examination of racial tension and the picture we get of South London during that period.I sort of appreciate the effort to create some sort of cultural outreach here, but ultimately, the effort stretches credulity somewhat, here. In the real world, Dennis Samuels would be making an effort to keep David away from his daughters, for fear of some sort of collateral damage by association, since local racists would be as likely to assault his girls as well as young David, especially if they were seen together. This Mister Miyagi nonsnse is better suited to greeting cards than movies that might be seen by impressionable children. There&#39;s also a suggestion of romance here, between Dennis and David&#39;s mother that&#39;s best left unspoken.Making a notable contribution to this film is the music &mdash; authentic ska, courtesy of Judy and Naomi, without which, this would simply be another by-the-numbers, coming-of-age and learned racial tolerance film. This one gets an extra star just becasue Lindo is in it and young Leonie Elliot turns in a memorable performance. Rating: http://www.spout.com/blogs/joem18b/archive/2008/1/8/23634.aspx Post By: joem18b
Post To: joem18b Blog
Post Date: 1/8/2008 5:13:30 PM
Body: Wondrous Oblivion This is a feel-good family movie containing a w.i.i.i.i.d.e variety of social and personal issues. If you’re in the mood for something light, but with a heart, watching Wonderous Oblivion might be a pleasant way to spend 106 minutes. It was for me. South London in the early 60s never looked so Harry Potter. Edit: Wait a minute. Everybody says that this is a feel-good family movie, but what about those multiple lingering tracking shots down Emily Woof’s spine and over her buttocks, just to make sure that we understand where Delroy is headed? And what about those Lindo/Woof lip-locks in the kitchen? Maybe the first one gets a family pass because it snuck up on the two of them, but the movie goes a little Mandingo with the second one, Delroy sweating in his wife-beater and Emily panting with passion, fade to black. Full disclosure: I haven’t caught Paul Morrison’s commentary track and I can’t write a proper review without it. I don’t know if it’s even available in the U.S. If so, I haven’t been able to find it. Which means that I can only guess at his intentions in making this movie. I mean, his filmography is sparse and he’s no spring chicken, being born in ’44, so this isn’t just one of a dozen flicks he churned out over a period of time to put his kids through college. This one movie is a significant percentage of the man’s ouvre. Did he set out to go feather-light on purpose with this thing? It’s his script; he wrote it. No way this was just a payday for him. But without a phone number or email address for the guy, or that missing commentary track, I’ll never know. I did spot Delroy Lindo in the Marina Safeway in San Francisco. (He lives in S.F.) My golden opportunity to ask him about working with Morrison!. But damn! I can never remember Lindo’s name. First or last. Delroy. Delroy. Delroy Lindo. Got to find a good mneumonic for Delroy Lindo. Can’t let this happen again. And after I memorize his name, I can take on the names of his wife and son, Neshormeh and Damiri in case I spot one of them in RiteAid instead. Delroy was over there handling the fruit but no way I could approach him without remembering his name. For one thing, he had that series of movies back in the 90s wherein he plays various bad mf’s. Scary. Maybe he was all lovey dovey in MO, but when he does that crazy-eye thing that he does, kind of like Calvin in the comic strip when Calvin is going gack!!, I don’t want to be standing in front of the dude. He keeps it under control in MO - it just slips out once or twice, sort of sideways – but still. And speaking of MO, Delroy’s parents are Jamaican and he was born and raised in London, so he’s an excellent fit for his role in the movie. Even though he lives in San Francisco now, he still considers himself British.. I’m perfectly ok with engaging him right there in the produce department because he graduated from ACT in S.F and I consider him part of the community. But not without remembering his name. No way. Anyway, I understand that Morrison’s commentary focuses on characterization and plot, rather than on making-of anecdotes, so he had his thinking cap on when he made the film, but this is a moviemaker who had to know that he was using a shovel and knee boots to load up his script with motifs that he could never do more than kiss in passing, to mix the metaphor. Was his editor out of town? Was his muse bipolar and running hyper that year? Was he trying to make up for lost time – making two or three movies at once? Or is autobiographical material running roughshod over him? It’s a bad sign, the reviewer wondering about the director’s life goals while watching his movie. A guy I know gave me an email address that would supposedly get me to Stanley Townsend, who played the Jewish dad in the movie. My friend told me that the address was part of a press packet pimping The Nativity, in which Townsend plays Zechariah. So I wrote a 2000-word exegesis on the role of Jewish father in cuckold movies and got an intemperate two-word response from some sorehead named Townsend who sells Geico insurance in Pores, Nebraska. Morrison’s previous film “Solomon and Gaenor” (1999) was a romantic tragedy about a Jewish man (Ioan Gruffudd in an early role) and a Welsh woman. Morrison wrote and directed, and filmed the movie in English, Welsh, and Yiddish. It won prizes and respect. Currently, now in his 60s, he’s making Little Ashes, with a script by Philippa Goslett. Set in Madrid in 1922, the movie deals with Salvador Dali at 18 and his friendship with Federico Garcia Lorca and Luis Bunel. Javier Beltran, Robert Pattinson, and Matthew McNulty star. Morrison also did an early movie about Degas and Pissarro. So the man makes movies that are about something. But in between these efforts we have Wonderous Oblivion. The script runs smooth, fitting into the Billy Elliot, Bend It Like Beckham, predictable coming-of-age genre, but Morrison can’t help letting all of his dogs out of the kennel at once. No ending in scale could possibly put this thing to bed properly. Instead, for example, the movie depicts a black family being harassed, threatened, and partially burnt out of their home and this element/motif is addressed and resolved by restricting the anti-black feeling in the neighborhood to mild glowering and muttering amongst the denizens, but with every actual hostile act assigned to a single vacant-eyed teenage bad boy who can be easily neutralized when/if necessary to the plot. Likewise, when Judy shows up at David’s birthday party and he turns her away, boy loses girl, but since they’re only 11, an apology clears that up. Let me recommend the first episode of the classic documentary series Seven Up! (1964) as a corrective to this Disneyland version of lower-middle-class England in the early 60s. Or The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) for boy sport in that era. I asked an agent I know if he could get me a five-minute interview with the Jewish mom in the movie, Emily Woof.. They say that when the time came for her to choose her screen surname, she looked over at her pet pit bull, who travels with her everywhere in spite of the lawsuits, raised her eyebrows, and when the dog barked, she picked Woof. Strange but true. “You have a dog?” she asked me on the phone and I told her that I didn’t like dogs, but that I had 11 cats. Why? Why did I have to tell her that? Stupid. I will say that like the young protagonist in the movie, I spent a lot of time laying out bubblegum cards and having tussles between two sides – mostly Wings airplane cards, with the airplanes flying to the right fighting against those flying to the left, my favorites on both sides surviving the longest. The oldest cards were the most magical. But with my baseball cards no; they got laid out, team vs team, when Game of the Week came on the radio. One thing that did bother me in the movie as I was watching was that to my eye the backyard wasn’t really deep enough to allow the bowling that, with some camera trickery, we are asked to accept. A cricket pitch is about 72 feet long, .plus the extra space needed to run up to the line… but wait. I get it. They’ve laid out a junior pitch . Don’t know how long a junior pitch is, but it could fit into a backyard, so never mind. If you’ve ever seen top-level cricket, or even if you haven’t, it’s just as fast and violent as major league baseball is. Both sports lull with a pace that features lengthy gaps in the action, but then feature frantic, fast-moving moments. At Fenway Park one day, a British friend and I had a long conversation about pitching vs bowling. His contention was that since the bowler was allowed to run up toward the batsman and then optionally bounce the ball on its way toward the wicket, the ball would be harder to hit than a baseball pitched from a standing start and required to come in between neck and knees. Especially since the bowler can load up the ball and the pitcher isn’t supposed to. This seems to make sense, even though the bowler is required to come in overhand with a straight elbow and the striking surface of the cricket bat is much larger than that of a round baseball bat. The question is settled, however, for me at least, by the fact that a good batsman can remain up for many overs (an over is 6 consecutive bowled balls) – which is to say, can prevent the ball from hitting the wicket – as David did, to the annoyance of his teammates who wanted to be done for the day - whereas the best hitter in baseball will almost surely whiff at at least one good strike within, say, ten pitches. To gather data on this question, I’ve arranged for a visit from pitcher Earl Scrotile of the AAA Sacramento River Cats and Mani Singh of the Northern California Cricket League to a meetup at the San Francisco Community Playing Fields, Gardens, and Homeless Shelter on Battery Street this Sunday, all welcome, where we will each stand in against Earl and Mani and see who is harder to hit. The event will be filmed as part of a new mumblecore movie called “Ouch! That’s My Elbow!”
]]>Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:13:30 GMTjoem18bjoem18b Blog1/8/2008 5:13:30 PMWondrous Oblivion This is a feel-good family movie containing a w.i.i.i.i.d.e variety of social and personal issues. If you&rsquo;re in the mood for something light, but with a heart, watching Wonderous Oblivion might be a pleasant way to spend 106 minutes. It was for me. South London in the early 60s never looked so Harry Potter. Edit: Wait a minute. Everybody says that this is a feel-good family movie, but what about those multiple lingering tracking shots down Emily Woof&rsquo;s spine and over her buttocks, just to make sure that we understand where Delroy is headed? And what about those Lindo/Woof lip-locks in the kitchen? Maybe the first one gets a family pass because it snuck up on the two of them, but the movie goes a little Mandingo with the second one, Delroy sweating in his wife-beater and Emily panting with passion, fade to black. Full disclosure: I haven&rsquo;t caught Paul Morrison&rsquo;s commentary track and I can&rsquo;t write a proper review without it. I don&rsquo;t know if it&rsquo;s even available in the U.S. If so, I haven&rsquo;t been able to find it. Which means that I can only guess at his intentions in making this movie. I mean, his filmography is sparse and he&rsquo;s no spring chicken, being born in &rsquo;44, so this isn&rsquo;t just one of a dozen flicks he churned out over a period of time to put his kids through college. This one movie is a significant percentage of the man&rsquo;s ouvre. Did he set out to go feather-light on purpose with this thing? It&rsquo;s his script; he wrote it. No way this was just a payday for him. But without a phone number or email address for the guy, or that missing commentary track, I&rsquo;ll never know. I did spot Delroy Lindo in the Marina Safeway in San Francisco. (He lives in S.F.) My golden opportunity to ask him about working with Morrison!. But damn! I can never remember Lindo&rsquo;s name. First or last. Delroy. Delroy. Delroy Lindo. Got to find a good mneumonic for Delroy Lindo. Can&rsquo;t let this happen again. And after I memorize his name, I can take on the names of his wife and son, Neshormeh and Damiri in case I spot one of them in RiteAid instead. Delroy was over there handling the fruit but no way I could approach him without remembering his name. For one thing, he had that series of movies back in the 90s wherein he plays various bad mf&rsquo;s. Scary. Maybe he was all lovey dovey in MO, but when he does that crazy-eye thing that he does, kind of like Calvin in the comic strip when Calvin is going gack!!, I don&rsquo;t want to be standing in front of the dude. He keeps it under control in MO - it just slips out once or twice, sort of sideways &ndash; but still. And speaking of MO, Delroy&rsquo;s parents are Jamaican and he was born and raised in London, so he&rsquo;s an excellent fit for his role in the movie. Even though he lives in San Francisco now, he still considers himself British.. I&rsquo;m perfectly ok with engaging him right there in the produce department because he graduated from ACT in S.F and I consider him part of the community. But not without remembering his name. No way. Anyway, I understand that Morrison&rsquo;s commentary focuses on characterization and plot, rather than on making-of anecdotes, so he had his thinking cap on when he made the film, but this is a moviemaker who had to know that he was using a shovel and knee boots to load up his script with motifs that he could never do more than kiss in passing, to mix the metaphor. Was his editor out of town? Was his muse bipolar and running hyper that year? Was he trying to make up for lost time &ndash; making two or three movies at once? Or is autobiographical material running roughshod over him? It&rsquo;s a bad sign, the reviewer wondering about the director&rsquo;s life goals while watching his movie. A guy I know gave me an email address that would supposedly get me to Stanley Townsend, who played the Jewish dad in the movie. My friend told me that the address was part of a press packet pimping The Nativity, in which Townsend plays Zechariah. So I wrote a 2000-word exegesis on the role of Jewish father in cuckold movies and got an intemperate two-word response from some sorehead named Townsend who sells Geico insurance in Pores, Nebraska. Morrison&rsquo;s previous film &ldquo;Solomon and Gaenor&rdquo; (1999) was a romantic tragedy about a Jewish man (Ioan Gruffudd in an early role) and a Welsh woman. Morrison wrote and directed, and filmed the movie in English, Welsh, and Yiddish. It won prizes and respect. Currently, now in his 60s, he&rsquo;s making Little Ashes, with a script by Philippa Goslett. Set in Madrid in 1922, the movie deals with Salvador Dali at 18 and his friendship with Federico Garcia Lorca and Luis Bunel. Javier Beltran, Robert Pattinson, and Matthew McNulty star. Morrison also did an early movie about Degas and Pissarro. So the man makes movies that are about something. But in between these efforts we have Wonderous Oblivion. The script runs smooth, fitting into the Billy Elliot, Bend It Like Beckham, predictable coming-of-age genre, but Morrison can&rsquo;t help letting all of his dogs out of the kennel at once. No ending in scale could possibly put this thing to bed properly. Instead, for example, the movie depicts a black family being harassed, threatened, and partially burnt out of their home and this element/motif is addressed and resolved by restricting the anti-black feeling in the neighborhood to mild glowering and muttering amongst the denizens, but with every actual hostile act assigned to a single vacant-eyed teenage bad boy who can be easily neutralized when/if necessary to the plot. Likewise, when Judy shows up at David&rsquo;s birthday party and he turns her away, boy loses girl, but since they&rsquo;re only 11, an apology clears that up. Let me recommend the first episode of the classic documentary series Seven Up! (1964) as a corrective to this Disneyland version of lower-middle-class England in the early 60s. Or The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) for boy sport in that era. I asked an agent I know if he could get me a five-minute interview with the Jewish mom in the movie, Emily Woof.. They say that when the time came for her to choose her screen surname, she looked over at her pet pit bull, who travels with her everywhere in spite of the lawsuits, raised her eyebrows, and when the dog barked, she picked Woof. Strange but true. &ldquo;You have a dog?&rdquo; she asked me on the phone and I told her that I didn&rsquo;t like dogs, but that I had 11 cats. Why? Why did I have to tell her that? Stupid. I will say that like the young protagonist in the movie, I spent a lot of time laying out bubblegum cards and having tussles between two sides &ndash; mostly Wings airplane cards, with the airplanes flying to the right fighting against those flying to the left, my favorites on both sides surviving the longest. The oldest cards were the most magical. But with my baseball cards no; they got laid out, team vs team, when Game of the Week came on the radio. One thing that did bother me in the movie as I was watching was that to my eye the backyard wasn&rsquo;t really deep enough to allow the bowling that, with some camera trickery, we are asked to accept. A cricket pitch is about 72 feet long, .plus the extra space needed to run up to the line&hellip; but wait. I get it. They&rsquo;ve laid out a junior pitch . Don&rsquo;t know how long a junior pitch is, but it could fit into a backyard, so never mind. If you&rsquo;ve ever seen top-level cricket, or even if you haven&rsquo;t, it&rsquo;s just as fast and violent as major league baseball is. Both sports lull with a pace that features lengthy gaps in the action, but then feature frantic, fast-moving moments. At Fenway Park one day, a British friend and I had a long conversation about pitching vs bowling. His contention was that since the bowler was allowed to run up toward the batsman and then optionally bounce the ball on its way toward the wicket, the ball would be harder to hit than a baseball pitched from a standing start and required to come in between neck and knees. Especially since the bowler can load up the ball and the pitcher isn&rsquo;t supposed to. This seems to make sense, even though the bowler is required to come in overhand with a straight elbow and the striking surface of the cricket bat is much larger than that of a round baseball bat. The question is settled, however, for me at least, by the fact that a good batsman can remain up for many overs (an over is 6 consecutive bowled balls) &ndash; which is to say, can prevent the ball from hitting the wicket &ndash; as David did, to the annoyance of his teammates who wanted to be done for the day - whereas the best hitter in baseball will almost surely whiff at at least one good strike within, say, ten pitches. To gather data on this question, I&rsquo;ve arranged for a visit from pitcher Earl Scrotile of the AAA Sacramento River Cats and Mani Singh of the Northern California Cricket League to a meetup at the San Francisco Community Playing Fields, Gardens, and Homeless Shelter on Battery Street this Sunday, all welcome, where we will each stand in against Earl and Mani and see who is harder to hit. The event will be filmed as part of a new mumblecore movie called &ldquo;Ouch! That&rsquo;s My Elbow!&rdquo; http://www.spout.com/blogs/qflw/archive/2007/8/28/19058.aspx Post By: QFLW
Post To: QFLW Blog
Post Date: 8/28/2007 11:14:00 PM
Body: Written and directed by Paul Morrison. A story about 11-year-old David Wiseman (Sam Smith), a Jewish boy in South London in 1960 who is mad for cricket but a hopeless player. He avidly collects cricket player trading cards, has a bat signed by the entire Surrey team and a full set of whites for playing in. His parents, Ruth and Victor Wiseman (played by Emily Woof and Stanley Townsend) are immigrants from Poland. At least that’s my guess; I’d originally thought them German, till Ruth teasingly refers to Victor as “you Polack.” Lilian (Yasmin Paige) is David’s younger sister, a smart-mouthed cello player whom we don’t see or get to know much of.The Wisemans, being Jewish, are the target of their neighborhood’s bigotry until the neighbors on their left move out and a Jamaican family, the Samuels, moves in. Assuming that the Wisemans’ landlord must be Jewish, too, the ringleading bigot, a Mrs. Wilson, buttonholes Mrs. Wiseman, importuning her to complain to the landlord and try to get the Samuels evicted.On top of being “darkies,” the Samuels excite much gossip and headshaking by digging up the roses and erecting a cricket net in their back garden. David is at once entranced, ignoring his parents’ instructions to be polite but not to mix with the Samuels family. After watching Dennis Samuels (Delroy Lindo) and his daughter Judy (Leonie Elliott) bowl and bat to each other, he more or less invites himself over to join them, all the more pitifully by turning up in full kit. Dennis and Judy soon realize he’s not the player he wants to be, but Dennis kindly takes him in hand and gives him some real coaching. Over time David gains enough skill to be allowed to play for his school’s team, instead of being relegated to keeping score, and he and Judy become good friends.So caught up in his cricketing, David is rather oblivious to what else is happening around him. The rest of the neighborhood is incensed that the Wisemans allow David to be so friendly with the Samuels. Ruth Wiseman, often neglected by her good but work-distracted husband, attempts to turn to Dennis for physical and romantic attention (he wisely declines). The Wilsons and/or their grandson harass both the Wisemans and the Samuels, leaving them threatening notes, making menacing gestures. Victor Wiseman keeps the threatening notes to himself and decides to move the family out of the neighborhood. Then David himself falls prey to peer pressure and snobbery. He’s given a birthday party to which all his schoolfellows are invited, but when Judy comes to wish him happy birthday as well, he turns her away, afraid of ruining his new-found acceptance among the other boys.The tensions and ill feelings come to a head when the Wilsons’ grandson sets fire to the Samuels’ house and cricket netting. When even the police refuse to believe that the fire wasn’t just some careless accident on the Samuels’ part, Victor speaks up. It’s a short speech (“You should be ashamed. We all should be ashamed. Ask those two about their grandson.”) but it seems to shame the neighbors into being more accepting.There are many films about having to grow up and face tough issues like prejudice; this one feels as though it’s merely skimming the surface of things that could be said. Technically speaking, the sound is uneven—the dialog is so low it’s hard to follow much of the time, while the film’s music blares too loudly. Sam Smith is wonderfully oblivious but not a lot else. Leonie Elliott and Yasmin Paige are more natural. Stanley Townsend is likeable as the well-intentioned breadwinner and Emily Woof as a wife and mother torn by wanting to protect her family yet be accepting of fellow immigrants and seek greater fulfillment for herself. Delroy Lindo always has an arresting presence. Over all, I enjoyed this movie and its cast well enough, but it seemed clumsy and ineffectual a lot of the time, just touching on the points it intended to make. I could see it trying to manipulate how I ought to be reacting.
]]>Wed, 29 Aug 2007 03:14:00 GMTQFLWQFLW Blog8/28/2007 11:14:00 PMWritten and directed by Paul Morrison. A story about 11-year-old David Wiseman (Sam Smith), a Jewish boy in South London in 1960 who is mad for cricket but a hopeless player. He avidly collects cricket player trading cards, has a bat signed by the entire Surrey team and a full set of whites for playing in. His parents, Ruth and Victor Wiseman (played by Emily Woof and Stanley Townsend) are immigrants from Poland. At least that&rsquo;s my guess; I&rsquo;d originally thought them German, till Ruth teasingly refers to Victor as &ldquo;you Polack.&rdquo; Lilian (Yasmin Paige) is David&rsquo;s younger sister, a smart-mouthed cello player whom we don&rsquo;t see or get to know much of.The Wisemans, being Jewish, are the target of their neighborhood&rsquo;s bigotry until the neighbors on their left move out and a Jamaican family, the Samuels, moves in. Assuming that the Wisemans&rsquo; landlord must be Jewish, too, the ringleading bigot, a Mrs. Wilson, buttonholes Mrs. Wiseman, importuning her to complain to the landlord and try to get the Samuels evicted.On top of being &ldquo;darkies,&rdquo; the Samuels excite much gossip and headshaking by digging up the roses and erecting a cricket net in their back garden. David is at once entranced, ignoring his parents&rsquo; instructions to be polite but not to mix with the Samuels family. After watching Dennis Samuels (Delroy Lindo) and his daughter Judy (Leonie Elliott) bowl and bat to each other, he more or less invites himself over to join them, all the more pitifully by turning up in full kit. Dennis and Judy soon realize he&rsquo;s not the player he wants to be, but Dennis kindly takes him in hand and gives him some real coaching. Over time David gains enough skill to be allowed to play for his school&rsquo;s team, instead of being relegated to keeping score, and he and Judy become good friends.So caught up in his cricketing, David is rather oblivious to what else is happening around him. The rest of the neighborhood is incensed that the Wisemans allow David to be so friendly with the Samuels. Ruth Wiseman, often neglected by her good but work-distracted husband, attempts to turn to Dennis for physical and romantic attention (he wisely declines). The Wilsons and/or their grandson harass both the Wisemans and the Samuels, leaving them threatening notes, making menacing gestures. Victor Wiseman keeps the threatening notes to himself and decides to move the family out of the neighborhood. Then David himself falls prey to peer pressure and snobbery. He&rsquo;s given a birthday party to which all his schoolfellows are invited, but when Judy comes to wish him happy birthday as well, he turns her away, afraid of ruining his new-found acceptance among the other boys.The tensions and ill feelings come to a head when the Wilsons&rsquo; grandson sets fire to the Samuels&rsquo; house and cricket netting. When even the police refuse to believe that the fire wasn&rsquo;t just some careless accident on the Samuels&rsquo; part, Victor speaks up. It&rsquo;s a short speech (&ldquo;You should be ashamed. We all should be ashamed. Ask those two about their grandson.&rdquo;) but it seems to shame the neighbors into being more accepting.There are many films about having to grow up and face tough issues like prejudice; this one feels as though it&rsquo;s merely skimming the surface of things that could be said. Technically speaking, the sound is uneven&mdash;the dialog is so low it&rsquo;s hard to follow much of the time, while the film&rsquo;s music blares too loudly. Sam Smith is wonderfully oblivious but not a lot else. Leonie Elliott and Yasmin Paige are more natural. Stanley Townsend is likeable as the well-intentioned breadwinner and Emily Woof as a wife and mother torn by wanting to protect her family yet be accepting of fellow immigrants and seek greater fulfillment for herself. Delroy Lindo always has an arresting presence. Over all, I enjoyed this movie and its cast well enough, but it seemed clumsy and ineffectual a lot of the time, just touching on the points it intended to make. I could see it trying to manipulate how I ought to be reacting. http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/jewish/MemberTagFilms.aspxjewish
Number of films tagged: 452

Number of people who tagged: 28

Number of times used: 60

]]>Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:51:45 GMT4522860Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/cricket/MemberTagFilms.aspxcricket
Number of films tagged: 4

Number of people who tagged: 4

Number of times used: 4

]]>Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:32:24 GMT444Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/VeryGood/MemberTagFilms.aspxVeryGood
Number of films tagged: 3

Number of people who tagged: 3

Number of times used: 3

]]>Wed, 22 Aug 2007 03:12:42 GMT333Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/workingclass/MemberTagFilms.aspxworkingclass
Number of films tagged: 250

Number of people who tagged: 3

Number of times used: 3

]]>Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:05:17 GMT25033Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/differences/MemberTagFilms.aspxdifferences
Number of films tagged: 2

Number of people who tagged: 2

Number of times used: 2

]]>Sun, 15 Jul 2007 04:59:04 GMT222Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/jamaican-nationality/MemberTagFilms.aspxjamaican-nationality
Number of films tagged: 62

Number of people who tagged: 1

Number of times used: 1

]]>Mon, 04 May 2009 13:03:58 GMT6211Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/talking-cricket-cards/MemberTagFilms.aspxtalking-cricket-cards
Number of films tagged: 1

Number of people who tagged: 1

Number of times used: 1

]]>Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:59:23 GMT111Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/cricket-game/MemberTagFilms.aspxcricket-game
Number of films tagged: 72

Number of people who tagged: 0

Number of times used: 0

]]>Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:13:22 GMT7200Tag