Iweala and Nguyen Approach Child Soldiers in Book and Film

Sergio Corbucci's The Great Silence is a Spaghetti Western that Slaps Hollywood in the Face !

Jean-Louis Trintignant

Klaus Kinski

 

Let's be clear here, nobody made Spaghetti Westerns like Sergio Leone.  He is the A-list.  Sergio Corbucci probably heads the B-list.  The Great Silence (1968) is a great Western built on an Ennio Morricone soundtrack.  It stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Klaus Kinski and takes place in the 1899 blizzard in Utah.  Spoiler alert !  All the good guys die.  Nuff said.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolio Faces Off with Sergio Leone's Epic

 

Renown Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan paid homage to the master of Spaghetti westerns, Sergio Leone, when he named his 2011 film after Once Upon a Time in the West (1969).  Both films are short on dialogue and long on facial expressions, the directors believing that sculptured facial close ups tell a rich story.  Ceylan was also influenced by Russian director Tarkovsky, known for expansive time sequences in his films.

Landfill Harmonic, Cateura, Paraguay

 

Cateura, Paraguay is a town essentially built on top of a landfill.  When orchestra director Szaran and music teacher Favio set up a music program for the kids of Cateura, they soon had more students than they had instruments. That changed when Szaran and Favio were brought something they had never seen before: a violin made out of garbage. Today, there's an entire orchestra of assembled instruments, now called The Recycled Orchestra.  The film Landfill Harmonic is directed by Juliana Penaranda-Loftus and Alejandra Nash.

Memory Serves Nostalgia for the Light

High atop the Atacama desert plateau, astronomers peer into the heavens observing phenomena that took place millions of years ago from distant stars while elderly women search the desert for the remains of their kin, "disappeared" under Pinochet's ruthless dictatorship.  Both the astronomers and the body searchers deal in a world of memory.  Director Patricio Guzmán explores modern Chile's collective memory loss against these intermingled stories, in this beautifully executed documentary.  The only place on earth with zero humidity, ancient mummies and dissidents alike are preserved for eternity.  At one point, the camera pans an abandoned shack for miners, spooons rattling in the wind, recalling scenes from Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West.

Miral: Julian Schnabel Sees How the Other Shoe Fits

 

 

In this fascinating film, Julian Schnabel (his mother was President of Hadassah in Brooklyn where he grew up) summons the courage to make a film (2010, Venice Film Festival) about the Arab-Israeli conflict from the standpoint of a Palestinian schoolgirl wirh Israeli citizenship.  Based on the autobiographical novel by the stunningly beautiful Rula Jabreal (international journalist, author), this film was the focus of much criticism upon release.  Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) plays Miral in an uncanny resemblance to Rula Jabreal.  The film also features Willem Dafoe, a U.S. soldier stationed in Israel.  More than anything, it is the story of Miral's relationship with her school teacher Hind Hussein (Hiam Abbass), who taught her how intelligent understanding of the world fosters tolerance.  Schnabel's daughter Stella, plays Lisa, a jewish love interest of one of the Palestinians. 

 

In a wonderful case of life imitating art, Rula Jebreal fell in love with Schnabel while filming, they were in a relationship 2007-2011.  Schanbel is also an artist and is well known for his lavish 11th St apartment Palazzo Chupi in New York.  Obscure Pete Townshend song "So Sad About Us" (Scoop album) appears in scene between Miral and Lisa.

 

The Misfortunates: Franzen's The Corrections on Steroids

 

This 2009 Belgian comedy directed by Felix Van Groeningen has some interesting parallels with Jonanthan Franzen's superb novel The Corrections.  Both stories revolve around an aspiring author struggling to get published.  Both works ask the question - do familial love and pride sustain a proper upbringing ?  The Misfortunates takes this notion to the extreme.  I've got to believe that Van Groeningen was paying homage to Franzen in his choice of title.