Rush to see AUGUST RUSH :)

Watched a beautiful movie, simple and profound at the same time. August Rush. It really tested the windsails of one's faith. Plus, Freddie Highmore is a great actor!

I love movies that make you feel emotions and compells you to cry. They make me feel alive, that I have compassion. Some movies just numb you, which can be good to an extent but emotionally powerfully movies stay with you, can even change and inspire you. Make you hope for something that you must just wait for.

This movie is really about a lot of everything: loss, hope, redemption, discovery. I like how the movie begins. Evan is conducting the field of grass like an orchestra. Then in narration as he gets beaten by some older boys at the home he's placed, he says that world sometimes knocks it out of you "It" can be anything, but in this movie it can be music. For me that had been the case. When I got depressed, suddenly I stopped playing music...When life changed drastically, I stopped feeling the passion-the world knocked it out of me....

Years time, with the faith of a little child Evan still believes he hears his parents and that learning music and letting them hear it somehow will bring them to him.

More beautiful than any movie celebrating music (refer to Mr. Holland's Opus). The character of Evan believes in music like others believe in fairy tales. It is this strong belief that we all must have in anything, whether it be finding a family, a purpose in life, or hope and happiness. You just got to keep having the faith.

Even more touching is when you see Evan discover the guitar for the first time. The joy and glee on his face is like watching a baby discover with joy his or her own ability to make noise for the first time :) I teared at this and many other parts of this movie.

I wish I were more articulate in describing the experience I felt watching this. This is definitely not an unabiased critique. On a whole, the movie works, although there are some quirks that I can overlook (like Robing Williams character in a setting that rivals Oliver Twist). I would definitely add this to my DVD collection as soon as available. My only wish was that there was a commercial hit song so that more people would be attuned to this wonderful movie (no lie: my family and one other couple were the only people in the theater; I bet the others were milking their money's worth watching Beowulf, or god forbid, Dusting Hoffman in the Mr. Maggorium's Emporium).

Two thumbs up!!! 88 keys well-tuned!!!

Across the Movie Aisles

It has been a while since a movie actually MOVED me. It would have been easy to cry at this one. Music is my kryptonite and no matter how much I try to think music isn't in my veins, the Beatles try to pull me back in! And so witht his film! Julie Taymor, you are a film genius. I am proud to say that Hollywood, even in the midst of the writers' strike, has a future-and its in its female directors!

I loved the opening to this movie. "Girl" is so minimalistic in its setting - a man and his life set against the backdrop of a lonely beach shore, the place where I myself find solace. Here, the character Jude unfolds his love story with Lucy and his meeting with Maxwell, Sadie, JoJo, and Prudence-among other interesting characters along the way. The turmoil of the '60's is eeringly similar to the anti-Iraqi war sentiment of today. Unfortunately, we have no music to really shuttle us forth to move us to demonstrate for peace as is shown in the film. Perhaps from learning from our history, we the new generation felt that war will happen and there's nothing we can do about it. But as John Lennon said: "War is Over. If you want it."

Simple yet profound in the sense that Jude's initial pacifist views gets his relationship with Lucy into a sketchy (pun intended-he is an artist) turn and soon their lives are twisted during a protest and their lives are suddenly torn across waters. In different parts of the world we are unknown to each other unless we make that connection. Jude and Lucy are lucky to have made that connection, overcoming obstacles of distance and politics. In the end, we realize truly that all of really need is
LOVE!

Poignant observations: T.V. Carpio is fetching in her debut as she opens her first scene as a heartbroken closeted teenager who decides to hitchike and explore the world, in and of itself her own exploration of her own sexuality which reaches its pinnacle when Jude, Lucy, Sadie, and Max try to sing to her while she hides-how appropriately-in a closet. Their song is enough for her to come out and not be afraid any longer....For the rest of the film we must make the assumption that she's made a choice, particularly when they all meet up later after some time where she's joined Dr. Leary's compound/circus. She finally reunites with Sadie's band where she plays the toy piano with JoJo on the rooftop of an apartment building a la Beatles.

Max is another complicated character is as much as we desire to see how much he will change. He is a happy go lucky guy. He doesn't take school seriously with the privileged life he has having an ivy leage education. His father speaks over Thanksgiving dinner in which Jude is invited as points out that it is what you do that makes you who you are, insinuating that Max's lack of doing anything makes him nothing...Max's father asks Jude's opinion, to which he offers that it's that whatever you do you do it well. That could mean making choices and hoping they're the right choices. Once a choice is made, one must learn to live with it. In the case of Max, he tries initially to avoid the draft but is made to fight nevertheless. He serves his country well-enough until he's injured and sent back home. It has matured him but has it changed him?...Using his own experiences of what he's seen, the music changes into a scene of Max and Jude much older in two different bars in different countries as Max sings "Hey Jude"....And in the end we must all "take a sad song and make it better."

Lucy I will have to say reflects my desire to fall in love and the fear that is involved. All my life to think that my love would be where I live only to be snatched away, as in Lucy's case where her fiance is killed in battle. Then here comes Jude. Does she dare fall in love again? "If I Fell" is such a telling song as she sings like she's reciting a monologue and watching Jude cast debris into the sea. How often do we just take a look back at a situation and analyze it constantly before acting...I am not impulsive, but I am not Lucy...for she follows her heart and I do not :(

Sadie is a doppleganger for Janis Joplin. In fact, she is played by an actress who has toured off-broadway portraying Janis as well! The only tie i find between her and I is the search for creative success and need for expression. As for JoJO, the telling moment for me was when he performed "As My Guitar Gently Weeps." In a sense, I find my heart gently weeps each time I find I lose that sense of creativity dying and I need to resurrect it from the dead.

As for Jude, I find I am him in so many ways. I cannot really describe all the reasons here. I'm not good in expressing myself and when it comes to feeling left out or jealous I don't speak things through. Instead I go in an incomprehensible rage similar to when he bursts through Lucy's headquarters that she works for a peace organization as he loudly sings "Revolution."

YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION WELL YOU KNOW WE ALL WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD.
...BUT WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT DESTRUCTION. DON'T YOU KNOW YOU CAN JUST COUNT ME OUT.
DON'T YOU KNOW IT'S GONNA BE....ALRIGHT.

In these words I try to convince myself that yes, things are gonna be alright...but is that for certain?...
Will my male Lucy and my female Jude "Come Together" in the end of my version of my life?....

Overall, sentimentality aside, this movie is powerful, emotional, visually stimulating, and a feast for the musical ear :)

Into the Wild by director Sean Penn

Another great film by director Sean Penn. The realism brought to Into the Wild, in the emotions and the people, accentuated the humanity that was initially shunned by Emile's portrayal of real life Christopher McCandless, who died after being on his own in the Alaskan wild.

In the film (based on John Krakauer's book of the same title), Christopher McCandless has become bitter about his relationship with his parents. He had nurture a grudge secondary to their abusive relationship with each other. Unable to trust relationships thereafter with others, he seeks nature for solace. Thus he embarks on the Great Alaskan Adventure. He bumps into different people, all sharing their joys and uniqueness along the way. However, Christopher (now taking the alias of Alexander Supertramp) has become blinded with his Alaskan quest, he doesn't realize where true happiness lies...until too late.

It is an unfortunate loss of humanity to realize that humanity, if we are gentle with each other and loving of one another, can actually help save and redeem itself! It is also a testament to how parents in their behaviors toward one another and how they express love can affect their children. Their own blindness to how their actions affected their children in this case drove Christopher away...How often is this with adolescents who grow up to become jaded adults about love. How often does dysfunction in humanity and love drive adolescents to doubt their security in life.

Christopher is an exception. He embraced life outside of the usual norms, one may even question his sanity, but in his search for truth in books, he writes the following (or so it is assumed after watching this film):


HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.

Don't isolate yourself! Only when you forgive will God shine His love! (a quote from the film)

See this film to be inspired and learn of the human condition! It will change you forever.

I Couldn't Wait for Evan!!!

This morning was like any ordinary day. Woke up. Ate. Changed. Beautified my eyebrows with a wax and then prayed at a weekly novena... On the way home, a lady bug landed on my window, as if gravitated to my presence by some inner kinship unspoken by a much higher force between us. My family decided we were to see EVAN ALMIGHTy but debated whether we'd miss the 5:45 show. Knowing past encounters from being a movie fiend with a few minutes to spare before the movie starts, I realized that even though we were just pulling out of the drive way by 5:30 knowing a 20 minute ride was ahead, I had to have faith that as soon as I sat down in my cushioned theater chair that the last credits would roll with the words DIRECTED BY Steve Odekirk, popcorn in hand and just in time for the movie! As always, it never failed.... And then it hit me as I watched this film, God does work in subtle ways, watching our every move and preparing our next steps, communicating in small ways. Though what I'll explain in the following will be lost to those who are not me and unable to associate little things that connect with the film with my personal experience, I hope that those who do read this and see the film will appreciate the film's themes:

1) Family
2) Conservationism/Environmentalism
3) Faith in the heat of criticism, ridicule, and risk of losing everything
4) Corruption and materialism
5) Individual responsibility/Random acts of Kindness (e.g., in changing the world)

Before putting my personal spin to this film, I have to laud Steve Carrell for another performance. He has chosen a career path unlike any other. His comedy is unique, though all successes of great comics lie in their ability to maintain their individuality among a slew of others doing the same thing. Steve Carrell also portrays Evan in ways that present hints of a budding dramatic actor that has the potential to make an audience weep with a range to dance into our hearts with bizarre waves of humor and obscure pop culture references (Gomer Pyle's "Golllllllleeee"). His character in the film is different and yet in some ways similar to his character Michael from The Office. The two collide in their desperation to be understood, though they diverge in their ways of gaining sympathy from others. Evan's persistence to be understood by others has him ridiculed by others and accussed of being mentally unstable, he continues with everyone in the end seeing it his way with redemption in the way his life is changed thereafter. On the other hand, Michael's desperation for love and attention and understanding leads him to nearly just as bizarre behavior, but constant practice of such behavior only isolates him from his employees who will always continue to think he is insane. I look forward to Carrell portraying more serios and darker roles in the future which could not hurt his career but escalate him even further even beyond Robin William's caliber I dare say!

(SIDE BAR: To THE OFFICE fans, you'll be able to see some cameos of Dundees such as Andy who in the film has some airtime as anchorman, whereas a cameo of Martin can be seen if you watch the ark scene as they near the capital building!)

As for the themes mentioned above, I nearly cried much to the credit again to the acting of Steve Carell but let's not forget Morgan Freeman. In discussing the film afterwards, my mother made an astute comparison how the ALMIGHTY series is our generation's Oh God! films that featured George Burns as God. With the move in special effects, the ALMIGHTY films outdo Burns 100 fold but perhaps the proselytyzing is preserved in both generations. Evan's wife, Joan, who separted briefly with the kids in the midst of things getting out of control, is told by God : When you ask for patience, are you immediately patient at that time or are you given the opportunity to be patient? When you ask for courage, are you given courage or the opportunity to be courageous? And when you ask for family to be closer, do you get a quick warm, fuzzy feeling or given the opportunity to be closer?...Then he takes his opportunity to leave and in his absence, Joan is blessed with a return of food in a once empty plate....Indeed, ask and you shall receive! I wish God appears to me one day in a Starbucks :)

Side by side, in speaking about the ark as a love story, God emphasizes the need to have two people stick together whatever comes their way! And in truth, this is a message that should be shared more often than not. This is a time with families more divided emotionally distant through technology and materialism (note the gorgeous house and Hummer that Evan lives and drives, only to be driven into an oblivion making a huge statement that we certainly cannot take what we reap on earth with us where it matters! ) Corruption also rears its face and brings a throwback to the tragedy of the New Orleans plight caused by Katrina and the flood victims that followed in the aftermath. Though there was no Evan to save our real world, how beautiful to have film as a medium to get the message across that "cutting corners" will lead to consequences. Other sources of corruption is filtering money from cutting corners in efforts to create dams of low quality and then later using that money and clout to create a bill that will only destroy the earth of its beautiful land resources...Here is where the land and animals converge together to make their mark within a veiled attempt to respond in AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH fashion.

Faith in the heat of being told you are crazy is true belief in God. To lose your life is to gain your life, as the Bible is oft quoted. How appropirate in the end for Evan's case. As his days prior to building the ark seemed like a breakdown, he resisted human influence and trusted the unknown. In a world where we trust humans and the sometimes devastating consequences that can occur when that trust is left in inappropriate hands, we may need to build an ark in our own hearts to survive the flood of the culture that barrages us now with innappropirate lifestyles and selfish acquisitions we so much desire but are not so much in dire need of. How can we change the world? With an act of random kindness (A.R.K.)!





---------------- My Personal Connection -----------------------Evan Almighty-----------------
Because we arrived about 6:00 at the theater, I'm guessing I did arrive at my seat about 6:14? Coincidentally, everyday Evan wakes up, it is at this time which matches the Genesis verse where Noah is called upon God to build an ark made of gopher wood. Parts that made me cry, was already mentioned, that between Evan's wife and God, because I have often asked for courage, patience, and family to be closer-now I know I must pay attention to God's signs of those opportunities He must be sending but I've been ignoring.

Music and LYrics

Charming and witty are adjectives least expected from this movie that many reviewers have panned as being, how shall we say, unworthy of being on Englands Top of the Pops! But if you're like me, which fortunately some of you are not, I would say swallow your pride and intelligence and simply go to a movie for a good smile and you might be rewarded with a good feeling similar to when you first heard the Beatles "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" or the first time you realized you wanted to pick up a tennis raquet and imagine you could play guitar.

This is that kind of movie. And because I too am a songwriter/singer and writer in the literary sense, I can appreciate both characters' struggles delivered comically as well with moments of depth and seriousness. Hugh Grant plays himself, offering us a Cary Grant for our time. And though the woman in me has fallen for him many times over in films like About A Boy (a film I'll review on a special Hugh Grant day yet to be determined), Two Weeks Notice, and Notting Hill, he has won me over 100 x more after seeing him behind a piano as he sings a song to Drew's character, Sophie. Did I mention he looks hot in tight pants? He has aged well!!!! And as the movie opener song suggests, when I saw him again (yes I saw it 2x) popped went my heart :)

True, there are moments when the movie leaves the audience a little skeptical about the potential for laughs, but Hugh Grant saves the day if not by Drew's sad puppy dog pouting eyes.

Generally, if you don't want a too deep movie but want a general good time, this is it. A good "chick flick" , date flick, or family movie. Whoever you see it with, if you love music you'll leave with a tune you can't get out of your head.

***Side note: Looks like there's a trend of singing celebrities...It won't be long before musicals make a comeback!!!!!!...Oh, I hope Hugh Grant doesn't leave romantic comedies and acting too soon for his career in writing. Many hearts will also pop in great deflation :(

Dreamgirls

This is a long overdue review I've been meaning to write in a long time. Being that it has been maybe a week since I last saw it, my perspective may be affected slightly on the fact that I've listened to Jennifer Hudson's version of "I Am Changing" for the last 2 hours (with breaks of course). Let me tell you, that song in itself speaks volumes about what this film is about and the well-deserving Oscar nominated supporting actress.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Jennifer's performance but the first scene in which she enters I was impressed. And to think, this is her acting debut, aside from community theater but what community theater actor goes into the Oscars within just a few years? And to think she lost American Idol? No offense to America, but I do believe the public doesn't know talent very well. Jennifer Hudson's performance gave me chills, particular with the song mentioned above. She made me feel like I was watching and listening to a black Barbara Streisand!!! In that scene I knew she had a great future ahead. I pray that such early success won't get to her head or be her downfall as it has been with so many other celebrities.

Of course there are other actors!!! Eddie Murphy was great too. He's gone beyond Party All the Time from the '80's to Oscar nomination!!! A great evolution from a former Saturday Night Live alum! Jamie Foxx, though not much musical screen time, he had a subdued yet powerful presence as well. Beyonce has done well, but I can't help but think that Jennifer overshadowed her a bit ;) And Anansi did just as well, a Tony winner!!! More exciting, I hope to see Jennifer reprise her role in a live reproduction of the musical!

I can't really say anything critical in film analysis since this was based on an award winning musical. Bill Condon, director of the film version of Chicago does his magic once again. And I felt my feet tapping away in the theater once again :) I feel music should make a revival in the movies. Less violence and more love and harmony :)