Article: Movies

It would be unfair of me to spoil the fun by revealing any further details, as it’d be best to arrive uninformed and sit with baited breath for each successive revelation. As for the technological wizardry, Lucas has outdone himself in this regard, from battle sequences to molten rivers to hyperbolic spaceships to futuristic skylines to haunting holograms and beyond, all pulled off with a seamless interface of the real with the computer-generated.

Representing a veritable rainbow of the cultures to be found around the city, these aspiring hoofers are seemingly oblivious to their ethnic, color and religious differences of their assigned partners, instead focusing intently on learning precisely what is needed to prevail in the much-anticipated annual competition.

The Tracker–though set in the Australian Outback in 1922, this multi-layered melodrama looks more like a typical cowboy adventure out of the Wild, Wild West. A woman has been brutally murdered and the killer is wanted dead or alive. The authorities deputize a posse to track him down in the desert. But what, at first, appears to be an ordinary tale of frontier justice, the one where the good guy gunslingers get their man and ride off into the sunset, turns into a much more complicated affair after it comes out that the victim is white and the prime suspect is an aborigine.

Morgan is up for a Golden Globe for his latest performance as Eddie ‘Scrap Iron’ Dupris in Million Dollar Baby, where as the film’s one-eyed narrator, he plays an ex-boxer-turned-janitor-turned-ring trainer-turned-philosopher, wise beyond his lowly station in life. Here, he talks about that role which is generating some Oscar buzz, too.

Because the film presents a fairly-faithful rendering of actual events, don’t expect a sugar-coated, "happily-ever-after" Hollywood finish and you won’t be disappointed. That being said, Coach Carter, nonetheless, is ultimately unusually satisfying, as it transcends typical sports flick fare, given its sobering suggestion that tough times might call for tough love and tough measures

Unfortunately, there were just as many bad Black outings as good ones, with the year being marked by an extraordinary number of embarrassing Stepin’ Fetchit-style showings. If the Black Hollywood renaissance ushered in by Halle and Denzel’s Oscar wins only means returning to another era of minstrel shows, I’d just as soon pass.

The picture was expertly crafted and directed by three-time Academy Award-winner James L. Brooks, a legend long appreciated for his ability to present complex characters involved in compelling predicaments. His impressive screen credits include four Best Picture Oscar nominations, for Terms of Endearment, Jerry Maguire, As Good As It Gets and Broadcast News.

This deliberately-paced, character-driven production is actually a trio of tenderhearted tales of undying love, each inspired by the classic works of Monzaemon Chikamatsu (1653-1724). Chikamatsu, the author of over 140 domestic dramas exploring themes arising out of the conflict between duty and desire, is revered in Japan as the country’s equivalent of William Shakespeare.

But when they discovered so many young street urchins residing in brothels there, they decided to focus on the awful plight of these unfortunate, underage social pariahs instead. For they found that while the hardened hooker moms might have resigned themselves to their slum squalor and second-class status, their innocent, ostracized offspring still harbored dreams of rising above their inherited, lowly station.

Sir Anthony Hopkins narrates the otherwise gay play-by-play as Ptolemy, periodically hinting at our hero’s preferences with matter-of-fact observations like, "It is said that Alexander was never conquered in his lifetime, except by Hephaistion’s thighs." The film’s man-on-man hedonism is presented subtly, more in hugs and longing looks than in steamy lip locks.