THE LOBBYIST’S CRAFT IS EXPOSED IN THANK YOU FOR SMOKING Thank You for Smoking is based on the 1994 novel by Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, which argues that government has gone too far in trying to restrain the lives of private citizens, who should make their own decisions whether to smoke or […]
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MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA ORIENTALIZES ASIAN WOMEN Memoirs of a Geisha, directed by Rob Marshall, is the Cinderella story of an ordinary nine year old, Chiyo (played by Suzuka Ongo), who by chance runs into The Chairman (played by Ken Watanabe) in a marketplace and then spends the rest of her life with a longing
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FATELESS SHOWS THE POWER OF MIND OVER MATTER IN A NAZI LABOR CAMP Fateless, directed by Lajos Koltai, is based on Nobel laureate Imre Kertész’s 1975 autobiographical novel Sorstalanság (the Hungarian title of the film) about a Hungarian Jewish boy, György Köves (played by Marcell Nagy) who at the age of fourteen is sent to
FINAL BALLOTING FOR BEST POLITICAL FILMS OF 2005 Many films were pre-nominated for Political Film Society awards for 2005. Since Political Film Society rules require the number of nominated films to be reduced to no more than five in each category, members voted in January to narrow the choices. Accordingly, the final ballot appears below:
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THE FIRST COLLEGE BASKETBALL LINEUP ENTIRELY OF AFRICAN AMERICANS STARS IN GLORY ROAD Glory Road, directed by James Gartner, is well timed both for the holiday recognizing Martin Luther King, Jr., and the beginning of college basketball season. The movie is based on the 1979 book (by Robert A. Heinlein) and true story of a
Idiocracy, directed by Mike Judge, is a satirical treatment of the premise that earthlings in five hundred years will be more stupid in a self-regulating, dumbed-down society that has abandoned fundamental human rights. When the film begins, Joe Bowers (played by Luke Wilson) is recalled from his job in a military archive to participate in
Tristan & Isolde, directed by Political Film Society awardwinner Kevin Reynolds (for Rapa Nui), is not the German opera film that many filmviewers might expect but is nevertheless based on the Tristram and Isolde medieval romance written in 1185 by Thomas of Britain, which in 1210 was translated into German, the version on which Richard Wagner based his
A Year Without Love (Un año sin amor), directed by Anahí Berneri, is a based on an autobiographical novel by Argentinian Pablo Pérez (played by Juan Minujín), a thirty-year-old gay writer who has recently returned home to Buenos Aires from Paris with AIDS after his partner dies of the disease. The film begins in April 1996,
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Three Days of Rain, based on characters in six short stories by Anton Chekhov, takes place in Cleveland during a three-day rainstorm. Directed by Michael Meredith, filmviewers must keep track of several independent plots, which are separated through the method of short cuts. A common theme is how the down-and-out survive and often but not
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The Singing Revolution, directed by James and Maureen Tusty, is a documentary tracing the history of the Estonian people that culminates in the independence of Estonia during 1991. After noting the way in which a small country has been conquered by larger powers, most recently Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the focus is on
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