Yamustafa!

Shades of Philosophy in 'The Last Airbender' Original Article by Muhsin Khalid*  Part One Muhsin Khalid "The Last Airbender" stands out among recent American movies as a distinct work of art that is loaded with aesthetic and philosophical revelations.  Upon reflecting, I see its importance as arising mainly from the complex intellectual grounds that lay the foundations for various shades of meaning in the course of events of the movie. These foundations are only visible through very delicate encodings concealed in the techniques employed in the making of the film. Such techniques that are unique par excellence allow us to glimpse through the film components into the visual and the audible and to grasp the idea that stitches these components neatly together in a grand intellectual design and aesthetic cinematography that is stunningly well-conceived and beautiful. The hero of the movie, a twelve year old child portrayed by Noah Ringer , is the last a...

Roger Waters, iconic lead singer/guitarist and master lyricist of "Pink Floyd" brought to BC Place Stadium, Vancouver Sat. May 26 the group's well-liked concert: The Wall - a show billed as the largest rock concert in B.C. history.  –  Ramon Klose/CTV In my previous post Truly A Dystopian Movie I have examined another form of existence for this colossal work of art. The third one, the original, was a music CD. View more photo galleries CTV British Columbia - Roger Waters’ The Wall concert dazzles Vancouver - News Photo Gallery

Faisal Goes West "Identity is only what we make of it." Bentley Brown. Bentley Brown This movie is not yet out! Still in the rough cut and awaiting a soundtrack! According to its maker, Bentley Brown, a Texan who lived in Africa for many years,  "Faisal Goes West" highlights a more global story of human (in)equality, the dignity and indignity of the migrant experience, as you know — especially in the US and parts of Europe, people coming from Africa are often profiled in a negative light, never given the benefit of the doubt that they are intellectual human beings. This is something our film feel seeks to question. Specifically, in ‘this movie' we are focusing on a reality in America, on the absolute over qualification of immigrants. "The film speaks to two kinds of audience in the USA. Firstly, to a generation of migrants, for whom there are direct parallels with the story told in the film. The second audience are the Americans who don’t re...

“We all owe God a death,” says Ryder. "We each owe God a life,” responds Garber. From the movie Original Article by: Mohsen Khalid The philosophical perspective of this movie arises from the events of a terrorist plot aimed at extorting a large sum of money. One of the two main characters in the movie ceases subway train Pelham 123 in New York and holds the passengers as hostages. It is one of the  most important films for both  Denzel Washington and John Travolta  as it grants them, more than ever before, the opportunity to exhibit their ultimate skills as actors. The film is based, in essence, on the exchange between these two men while the drama in the content only serves to support the philosophical themes conveyed in their dialogue. A dialogue that is really geat,simple and has a sweeping effect that could inevitably lead the unwary of its sedition into the same destructive and declining fate which befell Andrey Yef...

Initially, I was craving to listen to the music score for the movie Rocky. The very first one (1976) which I had loved way before I saw the movie itself. It was composed by Bill Conti*. Very enthusiastic. Even victorious. An achiever's tune. Conti had the guts to put in some bars for the electric guitar in the midst of an instrumental ensemble. Just like Ennio Morriconi years before in Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western movies (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly etc.) As is usually the case on Youtube, my attention was highjacked by one Spielberg fan. A laurawhitehead is offering a clip of the John William's score for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom! Great music. But because I was kind of greedy trying to find a better sound quality...for nothing, I got completely diverted by one hell of  a revelation on 'how they dunnit' or what happened behind the scene in the aforementioned Spielberg movie on a different page on Youtube with a different guy (a guy ...

"It’s not just a book—it’s a weapon aimed at the hearts and minds of the weak and the desperate, and it will give us control of them." Carnegie, the villain in the movie. Reflections On "The Book of Eli" Original article by: Muhsin Khalid* A friend posted a comment on my thread in one of the internet forums on cinematic issues to the effect that he did not like the movie "The Book of Eli". I advised him to give it another thought as I believed the movie's subject-matter is not as superficial and aimless as it might appear at first sight. As a synopsis to the movie, a man by the name Eli (portrayed by Denzel Washington) drifts non-stop across the United States from east to west in the aftermath of an apocalyptic destruction of the human civilization.While  Eli is walking through total destruction, sweeping famine and enormous degradation of human beings, another man, a villain by the name Carnegie (Jerry Oldman) is searching all along fo...

In this video clip from the very beginning of the movie Midnight Cowboy,  the combined visual and auditory effects deliver the viewer right into the specific reality. In the first shot there is a brief surge of the typical war cries, horse gallops and gunshot noise of the Western genre on a blank screen. The camera zooms out on the huge screen of a drive-thru theater in broad daylight! Then a nostalgic squeak is gradually overridden by a singing voice which takes us into the beautiful banjo arpeggios of the song "Everybody Is Talkin".  In the closing shot for the credits we see the profile of a woman drinking from  a Coke bottle. Enough signifiers. We are in the land of the American dream!  Most people who read the novel, which was in itself a success, believe the movie is a 95% honest novel-to-movie translation. It tells the story of a naive young man (a cowboy from Texas) who moves ea...