J and I have not been fans of Leonardo DiCaprio, but we warmed to him in The Departed.We're now totally hot on his acting prowess after seeing Blood Diamond tonight.
T.I.A.
Playing diamond smuggler Danny Archer, DiCaprio is transformed into a white man who was born in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Apparently, drinking sessions with South African soldiers helped to knock the Australian twang out of his Saffie accent!Set during civil war in Sierra Leone in the early 90s, Archer finds himself in debt to his bosses because of a failed diamond smuggling attempt on the Sierra Leone/Liberian border.Imprisoned, he hears a leader of the RUF (Revolutionary United Front), accuse a fellow prisoner (Solomon Vandy played by excellent Djimon Hounsou) of having found a huge pink diamond which he hid, before being captured.
Once out of prison, Archer also frees Vandy and circumstances lead them to team together to return to the mine to recover the diamond.
Along the way, Archer meets Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), a hardened American war journalist, to whom he tells his story of his involvement in the blood diamond trade.
There's a whole lot of substories going on in this movie which blend together in a powerful assault on the viewer's senses and emotions. African politics, child soldiers, refugees, the indifference of the rest of the world to Africa's plight (with a focus on America because of Bowen's viewpoint), intertwine with the relationships between the 3 main actors and their stories of how they came to be where they are.
Horror, humour, shock, disgust, sadness, hopelessness, respect, love, honour, acceptance, loss, vindication.
You have to see Blood Diamond.
DiCaprio deserves the Oscar for this role, but he's up against some stiff competition from Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.
(Images from the IMDB website)
Recently there’s been a lot of negative talk around our beloved Summer Surprises mascot, Modhesh.
Dubai Sunshine wishes him dead, Grapeshisha is scared silly of him, and even I have been tempted into evil by writing a haiku about the springy yellow thing.
I think that we’re just jealous of him, because he gets to have a fun city named after him, and we don’t.
Now, it appears that Modhesh is about to become bigger than Mickey Mouse! Emirates Today reports that Modhesh’s agents are being hounded by (unnamed) Hollywood animation studios waving cheque books – all clamouring to be the first to get Modhesh to sign his name to a contract which will allow the studio to begin filming his exploits.
I have a word of advice for you, Modhesh. Forget about the animation films until you've established yourself as a box office star, and first make some real movies to get your name up in lights. Going straight to animation will only see you doing roles like Shrek and Buzz Lightyear, and you don't want that, do you?
No, my friend - you have to THINK BIG! Go for the top - think Eddie Murphy, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise.....think about changing your name to Tom Modhesh!
In order to help Modhesh, I’ve perused some movies that he might like to look at re-making.
Aided by Secret Dubai’s post on movie titles with a UAE flavour, I’ve redesigned some movie posters so that Modhesh can see what he can aspire to, as he hurtles into the heady heights of hedonistic Hollywood.
Click on the images for a closer look.
Go for it Modhesh - we're behind you all the way!
We’ve been in New York since Tuesday afternoon, and in between working hard with partner and press meetings as well as handling the normal pressures of emails and routine tasks, we’ve also taken time out to do some personal things.
We’ve already managed to see 2 movies.
MI3 was predictably forgettable. How many times must we endure Tom staring cross-eyed and unfocussed into the camera, thinking that all he has to do to act is smile. That worked in Cocktail buddy, but no more! Of his more recent movies, the only one that I liked was The Last Samurai in which he couldn’t smile – but then maybe I like it because it was filmed in NZ!
We haven’t yet managed to see Da Vinci Code. Friday was opening night and every screening was sold out. We’ll wait until we get to San Francisco to try again.
The other movie we saw was hilarious. Called Over the Hedge, it’s a cartoon movie for kids, but with some seriously funny adult storylines which are always built into cartoon movies.
We’ve also managed to do a fair amount of walking which NYC is all about.
The following posts are what we call our New York Minutes from this week! You can click on the images to enlarge them in your browser.
Our trip down SZR to the Ibn Battuta Mall this evening was the usual dance with the crazies – avoiding buses, trucks and especially the 4WDs who really should not be allowed to leave the Emirate of origin that is displayed on their registration plates.
Our reason for risking our lives was to go to the movies to see The Constant Gardener.
It’s about an English diplomat and his wife who are sent to Kenya, where she works with some others to uncover a drug company’s misuse of the African people as guinea pigs for their drug testing. She’s murdered, and her husband then goes on a self-destructive mission to find out why and who is behind it.
The movie is an extremely powerful drama with top quality actors. The cinematography is styled like a documentary which lends well to the investigative nature of the plot.
Above all, there is the sense of futility at the level of corruption that comes to light. No one really knows the full story – all of them are bit players who do what they think is right, but the info they give to others results in tragedy that comes back to haunt them.
It would take a lot of momentum to stop what is happening in Africa, but who could possibly be powerful enough and stay incorruptible to change it? How many people at the top of African politics would need to be removed? And how many other people just as corrupt as those there now would be there to take their places?
My heart goes out to the aid workers, the medical teams and the relief agencies that work in these areas and try to make a difference. It takes special people to endure the politics, the constant danger and the appalling conditions – just to have someone unravel all their good work so they have to start again.
Relief work is certainly at the mercy of big business. Those relief workers on the ground are at the mercy of their bosses and organizations whose motives would have to be questioned – if anyone could stay alive long enough to blow the whistle.
On our recent trip to the US, we bought the movie DVD Hotel Rwanda, and played it the other night.
If anyone hasn’t seen it, I encourage you to do so.
It’s one of the hardest movies to sit through that we’ve ever watched.
It deals with the civil war in Rwanda. Some years before the time of the movie, the Rwandan people were divided into 2 groups by the Belgians who were in the country as “advisors”. Depending on the width of their noses, the native Rwandans were determined to be either Hutu or Tutsi people. In 1994 soon after a peace treaty was declared for the country, the aircraft carrying the Hutu Rwandan President was shot down. It was never proven which group did it - the Hutu said that it was the Tutsi, but there is wide speculation that the Hutu assassinated the President in order to start a war against the Tutsi. The Hutu then went on a genocidal rampage – to eliminate the Tutsi people. Close to a million Tutsi were slaughtered.
The movie is based on a true story of one man – Paul Rusesabagina who is a hotel manager, and is Hutu. His wife is Tutsi, and they have 3 children. Paul is friends with everyone, and you can see how he nurtures these relationships with some of the things that he does – alcohol for the Army general, special Cuban cigars for the politician – he knows that these “favours” buy him some favours in return, when he needs to use them. He's also portrayed as a loving husband and father - kind and thoughtful - and well-respected by all who know him.
When the Hutu begin their “cleansing”, Paul manages to take his family and most of his neighbours to the refuge of the hotel where he works. The rest of the movie is about his constant struggle to keep the hotel “guests” alive and out of Hutu hands.
It’s an intense film to view – it took us through a gamut of emotions. There is tension and fear whenever Paul has to confront the military or Hutu militia to save his people from being killed: the despair when a run for the airport nearly turns to disaster as the buses head for an ambush: the futility felt by Paul when he sees so many Tutsis dead on the road, and when he realizes that his attempts to win favours with the alcohol and cigars amount to nothing: the disgust when the western world turns its back on Rwanda and offers no aid. Among the despair, fear and futility, come moments of humour, such as when he discovers his wife and family hiding in the bathtub during a raid and his wife aims the shower nozzle at him like a gun: and times of happiness such as when they find their missing brother and sister-in-law’s 2 girls in a refugee camp.
The movie is laced together with sound snippets from actual radio interviews that were taped at the time of the civil war. The most pathetic and disgusting one to listen to is of a (American?) woman saying that they had heard reports of “acts of genocide”, and when questioned further by the reporters, she explains that this is some of the “terminology” that they had been coached to use to describe the Rwandan situation.
Please don’t let what I’ve written here put you off seeing the movie if you have yet to see it. It’s compelling viewing, and leaves you with the realization that no matter how bad the traffic is on Shaikh Zayed Road, or how frustrating the construction can be, there are people in the world who are using all their energy and wits to just try to stay alive.
Life is cheap and has no value – it’s how your life is lived and what you do with your time that makes the difference.
Paul Rusesabagina is a man who made a difference.
J and I have not been fans of Leonardo DiCaprio, but we warmed to him in The Departed.
