pathways, November 2009
music
- Alma Mater - Music from the Vatican
films
- AMELIA
- THE BOYS ARE BACK
- 2012
- THIS IS IT
music
Alma Mater - Music from the Vatican
Special notice from
CathNews has advised that
Alma Mater - Music from the Vatican, the first CD, DVD, and book from Pope Benedict XVI, will be launched worldwide on November 27. The album features the Pope, who is well-known for his love of music, reciting and singing passages and prayers, accompanied by the Choir of the Philharmonic Academy of Rome, recorded in St Peter's Basilica by Vatican Radio. This is the first time that the voice of Pope Benedict XVI has been heard on an album.
The album will be made available in three formats: CD, CD/DVD + CD/DVD and book:
- CD - 8 tracks audio, single disc which includes a 4-colour 16 page booklet;
- CD + DVD (DVD includes a 22-minute documentary on the making of the album);
- deluxe edition (CD + DVD plus hardback 'coffee table' book).
Proceeds from the album sales will go to provide music education for underprivileged children around the world.
films
Each of the following film reviews was written by Fr Peter Malone MSC who directs the film desk of SIGNIS: the World Association of Catholic Communicators and is an associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting.
AMELIA
starring Hilary Swank, Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor
directed by Mira Nair
111mins. rated PG (mild coarse language)
20th Century Fox: OUT NOW
You would have to be a bit of a grouch (or a cinema buff who liked only more avant garde or experimental film-making) not to enjoy this old-fashioned lavishly produced portrait of aviator, Amelia Earheart, during her 10 years of limelight and flying feats. Especially if you know how it ends, you can sit back and be absorbed by this visit to the US of the 1920s and 1930s. Certainly the production values, sets, costumes, songs help us to immerse ourselves in this era.
While the framework of the narrative is Earheart's last flight around the world, the film is principally flashbacks to Amelia's emerging as a successful pilot, her being in command although a passenger in the cross Atlantic flight of 1928, her further flights, her being promoted by publisher (and one of the inventors of celebrity, PR and advertising sponsorships), George Putnam, her marriage, her support for women pilots and organisations, her involvement in commercial aviation and her being one of the most popular Americans during the Depression and the 1930s.
The director is Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay, Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair, The Namesake) who brings a deep female sensibility to the storytelling and atmosphere and a sensitive attention to detail as well as to the emotion of the story. And the strength of the film is Hilary Swank, looking remarkably like the actual Amelia Earheart who is glimpsed in final photos and newsreel clips.
Beautifully photographed with a lushly emotional score, this is the kind of film that Hollywood does so well, light but substantial, emotional but inspiring, a picture of a free spirit who encouraged risk and commitment to her passion.
THE BOYS ARE BACK
starring Clive Owen, Laura Fraser, Julia Blake, Chris Haywood, Emma Booth
directed by Scott Hicks
104 mins. rated M (mature themes, sexual references and coarse language)
Hopscotch: OUT NOW
I am very glad I saw The Boys are Back.
If you were to ask me to say what the film is about, I would answer, 'parenting'. That may not be the greatest enticement to see the film, but it is important to say it.
The film, based on a memoir by Simon Carr, is about a widowed father having to parent his six-year-old son, without any preparation or any innate ability to do this, and then cope with the arrival his 14-year-old son from a previous marriage. Now, that may not seem the greatest enticement either - but there have not been so many films dealing with a father trying to cope with caring for his children. This is an important theme and, with a thoughtful screenplay by Alan Cubitt and with the sure hand of the director, Scott Hicks, it communicates, and entertains, very well. It also avoids falling into sentimentality and contrived romances.
Clive Owen gives a wonderfully sympathetic and nuanced performance as Joe Warr, a British sports journalist who re-located to South Australia with his equestrian champion wife, Katy (Laura Fraser). He left behind his son, Harry, with his mother in England but he and Katy have their son, Artie.
We learn at once that Katy had cancer. Joe is distraught. Artie, 6, understands that his mother has died but cannot, self-consciously, deal with it, so his responses are a mixture of the accepting, the sensible and the bewilderingly emotional. Artie is played by Nicholas McAnulty in a performance that seems completely real. He and Clive Owen play naturally and persuasively off each other. Joe copes by trying to do the normal things and there are some moving and some exhilarating scenes of the two together.
Joe, meanwhile, has to go back to work as the top sports writer for the Adelaide paper and finds some support from a fellow parent, Laura (Emma Booth), whose daughter becomes great friends with Artie.
The further complication and another step in the theme of parenting arises when Harry (George MacKay in a just right performance) comes to Australia: tentative, afraid of his father, wondering why he was abandoned, awkward with other children but bonding with Artie. A crisis, when Joe has to go to Melbourne to cover the Australian Tennis Open, leads to hard decisions, which writer, director and actors convey with the right blend of emotion and common sense.
Besides having something worthwhile to show and say about family - and emphasising how important presence, attention and, especially, play are for developing children and for parental relationships - the film is a persuasive advertisement for the beauty of South Australia (hills, coast, McLaren Vale) on the Fleury Peninsula where Scott Hicks, in fact, lives.
We will each bring our own experience to the characters of the film and their interactions. Since my mother died when I was seven and my brother five, I was empathising with Artie but, more importantly, I was finding Clive Owen's portrayal of Joe was helping me to understand and appreciate what my father must have experienced. It is a complement to The Boys are Back that it had this power.
2012
starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Tom McCarthy and Chiwitel Ejiofor
directed by Roland Emmerich
151mins. rated M (disaster scenes and infrequent coarse language)
Sony Pictures: OUT NOW
The end is near! And, according to 2012, it is much nearer than we thought: 21/12/12.
Roland Emmerich loves disaster films. He has already destroyed Washington DC (in Independence Day), New York (in Godzilla) and the whole of North America (in The Day After Tomorrow). Now it is Los Angeles, overwhelmingly spectacularly, and glimpses of the collapse of Rio de Janeiro, the Vatican and Washington again.
In fact, 2012 is a welcome throwback to those disaster movie highlights of the 1970s and has Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno, Earthquake all rolled into one plus ingredients from the 90s Deep Impact and Titanic. If it is spectacle and effects on an apocalyptic scale you want, then 2012 is your movie.
Roland Emmerich knows what he wants to do and does it with spectacular panache. To make his next movie more of a classic of special effects, it would be good if he could do some more work on making the human story more interesting and dramatically complex.
THIS IS IT
documentary with Michael Jackson
directed by Kenny Ortega
111 mins. rated G.
Sony Pictures: OUT NOW
This Is It is an event before it is a film. Michael Jackson was a world personality as well as the 'King of Pop'. His death at 50 and the puzzlement and investigations about his health condition and his medication seized the headlines.
Columbia Pictures quickly bought the footage taken during the rehearsals for the not-to-be concerts for $60,000,000. Director of the concerts, Kenny Ortega (who had directed the High School Musical movies) was commissioned to develop a movie out of the footage which would be released worldwide on October 28, just over four months after his death on June 26, 2009. They achieved it and here it is, This is It.
Here is a perspective on the film from someone who is too old to be a Jackson fan - and remembers him first as singing Ben in the horror film of that name.
The first comment about the film is about how Jackson himself comes across in it - quite impressively. The rehearsals show how demanding his singing and choreography were. The professionalism of the man is also very impressive. Jackson has learnt and perfected his craft, knows music and how it works, understands audience responses and does not tolerate in himself anything haphazard.
Jackson is also more articulate than might have been expected. He can be twee but, as he comments to his rather deferential director, Ortega, we hear a vocabulary that is extensive and expresses, sometimes imaginatively, what he wants of himself and others. The concerts would certainly have been spectacular.
We are on stage or backstage all the time. We hear the experts in lighting, staging, costume and so on commenting. We see auditions, support dancers learning their steps and, as the director says, being extensions of Michael himself: the robotic movements, the moonwalking style. We see how Jackson himself handled rehearsals, giving all his energy and wanting perfection.
This is It is far more interesting and enjoyable than anticipated and is certainly an excellent tribute to Michael Jackson's talents.
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