Yamustafa!

(Makers of men, Creators of leaders.  Be careful what kind of leaders you're  producing here)  Colonel Slade addressing the school meeting After years of proving his worth, the “Academy” decided to acknowledge the glorious and steadfast performance of actor and great impersonator Al Pacino. He finally, in 1992, got the Oscar. Hoo Wah! But Al Pacino has been, at any given time in his acting career, deserving of the highest regard. His cinematic presence has been God-fathered by the likes of Marlon Brando and he "Shylocked" his way in the “Heat” of the race to the top with hardly any "Scarface"! In this flick Pacino is the blind retired officer Frank Slade receiving help from a young student who needed to earn some money. As if not quite inundated by his experience with suicidal Slade who was struggling with his personal calamity and his excesses, the student Charlie (Chris O'Donnell) gets involved as a witness in a prank that ai...

Film Noir: European waves on American shores In 2001 Joel Coen released "The Man Who Wasn't There", his well-received movie which was actually shot in color and then purposely transformed into black and white. Coen was obviously inspired by what was known as the Film Noir, a style (or genre, may be?) that prevailed in the American cinema industry in the forties and was packed with gloomy, mysterious atmospheres and populated by vile, ruthless and/or corrupt characters or otherwise good people crushed by currents of the underworld. Classicly, Film Noir refers to most of the movies produced in the period 1941-1958 and included such memorable movies as 'The Maltese Falcon', 'Citizen kane', 'The lady from Shanghai', 'The Big Heat', 'The Set-up', 'Cape Fear' and 'Scarface'. Among the stars that shone in that period was Orson Welles, Humphrey Bogard, Robert Mitchum, Marlene Deitrich, and Rita Hayworth. But what mea...

'Rump took hundreds of milligrams of oxy every day up his nostrils, and sat on the couch for a year and watched movies'.(1) Here is a movie about the effects of another ….pill! There is a trend nowadays in which a movie opens with an episode brought from somewhere down the road in the the narrative storyline, and then proceeds toward that same episode as events unfold. You will see this trend in "Battle: LosAngeles", "Skyline" 2010 and a few other movies. One would think that this trend or technique was more original and relevant to cinematic expression when it was employed in such movies as “American Beauty” for Sam Mendes (1999) or “Farewell, My Lovely" for Dick Richards (1975). This trend here appears more like a struggling gesture from the filmmaker to raise an issue and then attempt to resolve it as the movie goes on. Less original, in other words, and reminiscent of TV series of the sixties.In the opening scenes of “Limitless” we see Eddie ...

May the eleventh "In THIS great future, you can't forget your past"                          Bob Marley in "No Woman, No Cry ". OK, what is this THIS? By all means (but one!) it should be the present. But Marley (being very kind) annexed it to the future (and not the past) thereby giving us the sense of only two times:future and past! I once wrote on Facebook that there is nothing "present"! The moment you become aware of "the present", it's gone! A few weeks ago I cited a scientific research finding that was reached by neuro-scientists. When you say "Now" you are actually referring to something that has passed. This 'present' thing is actually one of the many illusions in life! Attaching (the so called) present events to the future is not just "futuristic" what ever that may mean, it is a huge act of showing optimism and hope, of passing on to the next mom...