July 2007

Worth a Listen

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Talk to Me
  • IMDb: link

Talk to Me

Petey Greene (Don Cheadle) is a con artist and a convict.  Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor) works for the local Washington D.C. radio station WOL.  Through a chance meeting as Dewey visits his brother (Mike Epps) in jail a long, and often tumultous, friendship develops between the pair which lands Petey an opportunity as a disk jockey.

Martin Sheen provides a nice supporting performance as the radio station’s manager who is less than thrilled with putting a malcontent ex-con who speaks his mind on the air.  Dewey’s gamble pays off however and Petey provides the voice the station and its listeners have been waiting for.

The film is bursting with great performances.  Aside from the two leads, who will knock your socks off, and the nice turn by Sheen, the film also features Taraji P. Henson as Petey’s girlfriend and Cedric the Entertainer in a humorous and subdued performance as the Nighthawk.  All are terrific.

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Lights Out

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Sunshine
  • IMDb: link

“Our sun is dying.  Mankind faces extinction.  Seven years ago the Icarus project sent a mission to restart the sun but that mission was lost before it reached the star.  Sixteen months ago, I, Robert Capa, and a crew of seven left Earth frozen in a solar winter.  Our payload, a stellar bomb with a mass equalivant to Manhattan Island; our purpose, to create a star within a star.”

sunshine-poster

50 years into the future our sun is dying.  One mission to restart the star has already failed; now the fate of the world and the entire human race rests in the hands of the crew of the Icarus II who will attempt a desperate mission to try and re-ignite the sun using all of the world’s remaining nuclear weapons. It’s an interesting set-up as we begin with the crew already 50,000,000 miles away from Earth when the discovery of the first Icarus spacecraft and a small miscalculation put the lives of the crew, and the entire population of Earth, in jeopardy.

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Rescue Dawn

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Rescue Dawn
  • IMDb: link

Rescue Dawn

The first thing you notice about Rescue Dawn is how low-tech an enterprise director Werner Herzog has undertaken.  No big special effects, no prolonged large action sequences.  This is a character study, and a darn good one.  Here is a director with a camera in a jungle letting the actors tell the tale.  It’s a great substitute for the big popcorn flicks of the summer for those of you who could give two shits about robots transforming into cars or what kind of wacky weddings Hollywood stars get themselves into on film.

Rescue Dawn isn’t a fun movie, but it is a well made film with a collection of strong performances that provide stark drama in the jungles of southeast Asia.  Based of the true story of the only American POW to ever make it out of the Laotian jungle, it’s an experience to remember.  In 1997 director Werner Herzog captured Dieter Dengler’s life in his documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly; now ten years later Herzog returns to give us a film based on his remarkable tale.

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Death Done Right

/ / Books & Magazines
  • Title: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  • Wikipedia: link

I’ve been reading the Harry Potter series for just over nine years now.  I’ve spent countless hours reading and rereading the books, discussing them with my friends, and even protesting a radio station for ruining the last book’s ending on-air before I finished it.  With all of my history with the books, is it even close to possible for series author J.K. Rowling to end this story that I’ve grown up with to my satisfaction?

The book starts out in line with the other six entries into the series.  Harry gets picked up from Number Four, Privet Drive and is escorted to the Burrow for another half-summer spent with the Weasleys.  The only difference is that on the way there, Harry is nearly murdered and one of his friends actually is.  Rowling makes it fairly clear from the beginning: this is war.  People are going to die and they won’t stop dying unless the enemy bites the dust himself.

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Behind the Scenes

/ / Film News & Trailers

Today we look behind the scenes of the new documentary The Devil Came on Horseback which examines the genocide happening in Darfur.  To begin with here are the co-directors Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern sitting down to discuss the film.  Larger version available in the Full Diagnosis along with Q&A from Sundberg and Brian Steilde, and Steidle presenting his photographs during an interview.  You can also watch the film’s trailer.

The Devil Came on Horseback
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Directors Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern discuss the film.

 

Brian Steidle discusses his time in Darfur and shares the stories he has seen and the photographs he has taken.

 

Annie Sundberg and Brian Stidle from South by Southwest (SXSW) earlier this year.  The quality is not the best.

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