It’s a wrap. I successfully completed the movie project. To finish up assignment, I saw 5 films over the last 3 days. It was a bit crazy to spend so much time indoors considering all the good weather we had, but I really wanted to finish up before the week started and other commitments got in the way.
Friday night I saw Catch Me If You Can which I already talked about. Saturday night I saw Frida which can best be described as an erotic piobic about the life of painter Frida Kahlo and her communist painter husband, Diego Rivera. Then today, I saw 3 films. I started with The Quiet American which is both anti-war and anti-American. “Based on Graham Greene’s novel, the story, set in the 1950s, revolves around a cynical British journalist and opium addict (Michael Caine) who has spent 20 years in French Indochina (later Vietnam) and has an increasing resentment of American colonialism in the nation. ”
After watching The Quiet American, then saw The Hours based on Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The movie which was depressing as hell, “draws on the life and work of Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) to tell the story of three women: Woolf, who is portrayed in the throes of writing Mrs. Dalloway and contemplating suicide; Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), a young pregnant wife and mother in the suffocating confines of her tidy little life in Los Angeles in 1949; and Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep), who is giving a party in the present in New York for her closest friend, Richard (Ed Harris), an award-winning writer dying of AIDS.”
And finally, I saw Gangs of New York, Martin Scorsese’s overly ambitious epic about the immigrant wars in New York between 1840 and time of Civil War. The movie is good, but a little too violent and barbaric for my taste. Having said that, Daniel Day-Lewis should win the Oscar for Best Actor. He was superb in the role of Billy the Butcher who Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio) comes back to kill after 16 years — just so he can avenge the death of his father Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson).
Having now seen all 20something movies nominated in the 6 major OSCAR categories, trying to think of who I would vote for, if I were actually a member of the Academy. For some categories, it’s an easy choice. For others, it’s a bit more difficult. Thinking I’ll reflect and give my picks before the Oscar broadcast next Sunday.