I, Too, Sing America

In the tapestry that was the throng blanketing the public concourse stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to the portico where President Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office, I was struck by a strange and incongruous sight: a sea of black people waving tiny American flags. What bizarro world was this? Black people waving American flags? Get the flux out of here! And yet, there they were, waving their red, white and blue flags proudly, enthusiastically and full in the vigor of having obtained their full statehood rights. First Lady Michelle Obama was vilified for voicing an opinion similar to what these people were so obviously demonstrating: for the first time in their adult lives, they were proud to be Americans.

I suffered a terrible lost

I suffered a terrible lost today. When I picked up my morning paper I discovered that, overnight, I had lost an old and dear friend. The headline was like a punch in the stomach: Weak sales spell end for 82-year old chain. I bought my first book at the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop. In my sane and sober youth I spent hours meandering through their original downtown location, a two story emporium that smelled of books, dust and mold. I saw Ernest Gaines read there. I saw Gloria Naylor read there. I saw Edward P. Jones read there. I didn’t meet my first wife there but I did gain an introduction to my first book club. As I sit here, in my basement office, surrounded by hundreds of the thousands of books I own, I realize the Schwarz Bookshops were the epicenter of my lifelong love with books. Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops to close. Wow.

Slumdog Millionaire Soars

Slumdog Millionaire is an artful mash up of Oliver Twist, East of Eden, It's a Wonderful Life, The Shop Around the Corner, The Mahabharata and It Could Happen to You. A big, ebullient movie, Slumdog bubbles up out of the brutal slums of Mumbai where orphaned brothers Jamal (Ayush Mahesh Khedekar) and Salim (Azharuddin Mohammed

Ismail) forge a lifelong bond as "the Two Musketeers" and soars to the national stage of the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

Motherless street urchin Latika (Rubiana Ali) becomes the third Musketeer when big-hearted Jamal, who always gives his best, offers her shelter from the rain, against the stern rebuke of Salim, who always keeps the best for himself. Literally scooped out a trash heap by the Fagin-like Maman (Ankur Vikal), the trio at first think they have found sanctuary with a kind-hearted benefactor but it quickly becomes apparent that their savior is a brutal exploiter of children. Salim helps Jamal and Latika escape but once again he saves the best for himself and Latika is recaptured. Jamal pines for Latika for the rest of the movie even as he and the ever resourceful Salim ride the
rails and engage in all manner of petty larceny to survive. Jamal's life lessons, a marvelous tapestry shown in flashbacks, contribute to his unlikely run on Millionaire.

Director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) does several remarkable things in Slumdog. He manages to convey the depth and breadth of India both socially and geographically, from crushing poverty to lavish wealth and from the trash heaps of Mumbai to the reflecting pools of the Taj Mahal. He artfully juxtaposes the ugliness of exploitation and corruption against the unrivaled beauty of love, faith and perseverance. He shows us an ancient India co-existing simultaneously with an Indian economy built on outsourced services such as those provided by the telephone call center where the adult Jamal (Dev Patel) toils as a chai-wallah, literally a boy who serves spiced tea.

In short, Slumdog Millionaire is

an energetic homage to classic

Twentieth Century filmmaking and a shining beacon pointing the way to how great movies can be in the new millennium.

Brad Pitt is cute as "Button"

I went to see "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and, on the whole, I enjoyed it. It is a much more melancholy movie than "Forrest Gump," a movie that it is often compared to and, at nearly three hours, it is long - but not overly so. It is as long as it needs to be. And "Button" is often like that - all it needs to be - but seldomly more. It doesn't soar as "Gump" did and it feels derivative: Gump's braces are Button's old man wheelchair and double canes; "Lieutenant Dan" meet "Cap'n Mike"; Cate Blanchett's Daisy is Button's Jenny. That said, "Button" is an oddly affecting movie that stays with you long after the theater lights have come back on. (By the by, I would like to give a special shout out to Taraji P. Henson's performance as Button's "mother." This is a small jewel of a performance by an actress who is proving herself to be an artist with many colors on her palette. From "Baby Boy" to "Button" is quite a journey).

New Jack Obama Bashers

I often wonder what world new jack Obama bashers live in. They wanna hate the playa when they should hate the game. I give President-Elect Obama credit for not only recognizing the game but becoming Master of the game. Now that he is President-Elect the game has changed but the game remains the same. Further, let us not forget the most successful Democratic administration in fifty years was the Clinton Administration - which I contend was also the only moderate Republican administration of the last half century. By that I mean the Clinton administration actually delivered what Republicans always promise (to win elections) but never deliver.

Now there is a hue and cry about a dearth of Hispanic cabinet nominees. For the record, I am not in favor of the kind of black token picks that embarrassingly littered recent Republican administrations (paradoxically, the appointments of the eminently qualified Colin Powell and Condelezza Rice are exceptions that prove the rule - I direct you back to the Reagan and first Bush administrations). While I am confident there are Hispanics with credentials and necessary portfolios, I am heartened and gratified that Obama has appointed individuals as gifted and qualified as Attorney-General nominee Eric Holder and Ambassor to the UN nominee Susan Rice. And I am positively giddy that there will be no one anywhere in Obama's administration who graduated from that community college known as Liberty University..

Ian Fleming's Monster Ball

If the first Mission Impossible was Brian De Palma’s Mission Impossible and MI-2 was John Woo’s Mission Impossible, Quantum of Solace is unquestionably Marc Forster’s James Bond movie. In fact, with its international cast of corporate, military and intelligence operatives, ogres, trolls and troglodytes, Quantum could be easily subtitled Ian Fleming’s Monster's Ball. Mathieu Amalric, award winning French actor and film director - perhaps best known in America for his lead role in the 2007 film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - plays the chief monster, gimlet-eyed Dominic Greene, an effete megalomaniac masquerading as a deep pocketed green warrior while Joaquin Cosio and Fernando Guillen Cuervo play cruel and sadistic as would-be tin-pot dictators and Jesper Christensen reprises his role as a chief cog in the sub secret evil cabal which shall not be named (Quantum).

Filmed in Panama, Chile, Italy and Austria, the movie begins where Casino Royale left off with Bond hurtling toward Sienna, Italy, the captured Mr. White (Christensen) in the boot of his car, and gun wielding henchmen in hot pursuit. Weaving in and out of heavy traffic on tight thoroughfares while his sleek Astin Martin is perforated with machine gun fire, Bond dispenses his pursuers in typical Bondian fashion and delivers Mr. White to his boss “M” (Judi Dench) and her interlocutors. The wily and unrepentant Mr. White escapes and this sends Bond careening around the world in hot pursuit.

Quantum of Solace is also co-screenwriter Paul Haggis’ James Bond movie. Quantum explores a Crash of competing world interests intersecting where Daniel Craig’s emotionally wounded
government agent seeks mortal revenge for the death of his lost love. It is not coincidence that linchpins of the story take place in such hot spots as Haiti and Bolivia, poor bereft countries with little to recommend them besides their utter defenselessness in the face of further exploitation.

While Casino Royale was full of surprises, ripe with rebirth and reinvention Quantum, for all its gorgeous vistas, dazzling car chases, roof top gamboling, explosive denouements and Bourne-like close quarter hand-to-hand combat, feels derivative – as if cobbled together from twenty other action-adventure movies. The movie is blunt and ruthless and there is much precision and artistry in its execution. Yet, you don’t feel exhilarated by Craig’s remorseless reckoning as much as you
feel pummeled by it.

Blood and Chocolate

One of the joys of having all the movie channels is the oppor-
tunity to not only see movies you have never seen but to see
movies you have never heard of.

I was not familiar with the film BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE which took

in a whopping six million dollars at the box office. Apparently it is
based on the eponymous young-adult novel of the same name by

Annette Curtis Klause.

As I understand it, Vivian is a member of a supernatural race called
loup-garoux, werewolves, who hide their identity in the general

human populace. After her family is killed by hunters in America,

she moves back to Bucharest, where she meets a man named Aiden

who makes her question the traditions of her heritage and the value

of blood ties.

Because I was simultaneously engaged in several telephone
conversations, I watched the movie with the sound off. Wow. It was
like watching one of those V-inspired dream tableaus essayed on

HBO's True Blood.  Lots of young, lithe, pretty white people

floating through the air before morphing into vicious wolves before

waking up later, bloody and naked. Sort of like a lycanthropic wet

dream or a really special episode of Gossip Girl.