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Final Three Upcoming Films
THE OWL AND THE SPARROW
APRIL 30 7:00 AND 9:00 PM
IN VIETNAMESE WITH ENGLISH SUB-TITLES
The Owl and The Sparrow is a charming
film about a little orphan who plays matchmaker in Saigon.
The centre of the story is Han Thi Pham is
Thuy, a 10-year-old child who works in her
uncle's factory in the country.
The film opens on a day when Thuy has cut
and measured all her work incorrectly, and
her uncle gives her hell. "I'm all you have,"
he sternly reminds her, and the child's
response is to run away to the city.
In Saigon, Thuy's story becomes connected
to two others: That of a broken-hearted
zookeeper (The Lu Le) who has just broken
up with his fiancee, and that of a stewardess
who is likewise challenged in the romance
department. The stewardess (Cat Ly), Lan,
has a relationship is with a married man, and
it's going nowhere.
Thuy gets help from other street urchins in
Saigon, and first tries her hand at selling
postcards. Another child suggests she sell
flowers instead, and Thuy soon becomes
WALTZ WITH BASHIR
APRIL 16 7:00 AND 9:00 PM
IN HEBREW, GERMAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
part of a group of little girls who sell roses.
The woman who runs this Dickensian group
of street children dresses them in sailor suits
and school uniforms, the better to win the
hearts of potential flower buyers.
On her first day, Thuy has sold nothing
until she meets Lan, who buys two flowers.
On another selling day, Thuy wanders into
the zoo and meets the gentle zookeeper, who
happily shows her around and lets her help
buy food for the animals.
It's inevitable that the two adults, through
their connection to Thuy, will meet and
develop a relationship. Too bad Thuy's uncle
has also come to Saigon to find the child.
The Owl and The Sparrow manages to be a
true crowd-pleaser that never gets maudlin - quite a feat when one considers the waterworks potential of any movie about children
in peril. Prepare to have your heart-strings
tugged.
C U M B E R L A N D
Nominated for the Golden Palm Award at
the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and an official selection of the 2008 Toronto
International Film Festival, Ari Folman’s
exquisite animated documentary Waltz with
Bashir is a decisive entry into the canon of
war films. Told from the point of view of
Folman himself, it is a brutally honest exploration of the reliability of memory and the
long-term impact of violence on young soldiers.
The film’s opening sequence follows twenty-six wild and angry dogs as they run
through a town, stopping to bay with rage
under a man’s window. This scene is the
recurring nightmare of one of Folman’s
army comrades, and it is his dream that
inspires Folman to search into his own past.
While he knows that he participated in the
1982 war with Lebanon, Folman has virtually no memory of the events. He goes in
search of his fellow soldiers, hoping that by
collecting their memories he will be able to
recreate his own.
Twenty-five years after the conflict,
Folman’s new recollections elicit unsettling
residual feelings and perspectives, including
C I N E M A
an uncomfortable parallel between the horrible massacres at the Sabra and Shatila
refugee camps and the Holocaust. The massacres in question were conducted by
Christian militia who murdered thousands of
Palestinian civilians to revenge the death of
their assassinated leader, Bashir Gemavel.
While not directly responsible for these
heinous acts, the Israelis tacitly assisted by
sending up flares to illuminate the night sky
and, many feel, by standing by and allowing
the crimes to occur.
Folman has elevated the film’s impact by
securing the extraordinary involvement of
Yoni Goodman, who created astonishing
animations of images originally shot on
film. This visual approach takes Waltz with
Bashir beyond ever-present news footage
and into the surreal terrain of image and
memory. Folman does not delve into the politics of the conflict, choosing instead to
explore a dark chapter in his (and Israel’s)
life. His conclusion, made in the last few
shocking moments of the film, is a tribute to
the filmmaker’s own moral honesty and to
generations of young people scarred by
ungodly acts of war.
C E N T R E
Final Three Upcoming Films
SEASON
CLOSER!
LAST CHANCE HARVEY
MAY 14
7:00 AND 9:00 PM
"Last Chance Harvey" is a beautiful little film that manages to truly capture the aching lonliness of two people
handcuffed by circumstance into lives of quiet desperation.
Take L.A. jingle writer Harvey Shine. His rumpled soul
stuffed into his rumpled linen suit, hair askew like a
drunken hedgehog and a nervous smile straining to cover
up his woes, he's faced with the prospect that this is his
last chance to keep his job, connect with his grown
daughter as her wedding day looms and find some companionship in his world.
Kate Walker is a single 40-something clipboard-toting
survey-taker at Heathrow Airport, who spends most of
her off-work time dealing with her sweet-but-maddening, aged mother (British theatre vet Eileen Atkins). But
lonely Kate can spare the occasional evening to be thoroughly humiliated on a blind date. Last chances seem to
surround them. But they're not buying it.
That Harvey and Kate meet is fated from the opening
of the often-predictable Last Chance Harvey. That they
are played with such depth and warmth by Dustin
Hoffman and Emma Thompson (both of whom landed
Golden Globe nods) means we are willing to give Last
Chance Harvey a series of chances to charm despite the
thin story.
As Harvey, Hoffman embodies discomfort. Nothing he
wears looks right, nothing he says makes him fit in. A
pained outsider in the life of his daughter Susan (ably
played by New Waterford Girl's Liane Balaban), he
watches her prepare for her lavish London wedding bolstered by the love and support of his ex-wife Jean (Kathy
Baker) and her tall, handsome and much-richer-thanHarvey husband Brian (James Brolin).
Thompson's Kate is outwardly practical and occasionally prickly, yet inwardly romantic, and she struggles
unhappily with all of it.
All that loneliness has primed Kate and Harvey to connect when they find themselves in the same airport bar,
although few women would be charmed by a fellow
mumbling to himself as he hurls back shots of scotch,
spilling half of it down his shirt.
Kudo's to Emma Thompson, who subtly yet brilliantly
captures the melancholy of yet another blind date that
goes wrong... and the disbelief of actually finding another chance at happiness.
HAVE A GREAT
SUMMER!
C U M B E R L A N D
C I N E M A
C E N T R E