Tuesday, February 12, 2008

A Coming-Of-Age With Death


I've become a real movie buff over the last couple of years what with the fact that I got myself a laptop with a DVD player and mainly because the public library here in Portland where I live has one of the greatest selections of DVDs around. I try to watch a movie every evening after a day of either writing poetry or tutoring or both. I've not owned a TV in 14 years so movies and novels are the way I escape.

About a year ago, I found "The Barbarian Invasion" at the library and was spellbound by the plot even if I did have to spend part of the time reading the subtitles (the movie is in French and was shot in and around Montreal.

For today's posting I thought I'd do two reviews of the Academy Award Winning movie (the best foreign film for 2003). Here we go:

Amazon.com
The intriguing Denys Arcand (director of Jesus of Montreal and Stardom) returns to the lusty, cantankerous intellectuals of his first film, The Decline of the American Empire. Remy (Remy Girard), a history professor, is dying of cancer, and his estranged and financially successful son Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau) returns to care for the old man. With the power of money, Sebastien cuts through bureaucracy and the law to give his father some comfort--comfort that Remy accepts with reluctance, because in his eyes the unintellectual Sebastian has betrayed all of Remy's principles. Old friends arrive and soon the conversation turns to sex, religion, history, sex, academia, sex--The Barbarian Invasions isn't very focused, but the very breadth of its ideas makes it worth seeing; few movies even try to grapple with morality or the state of our culture, let alone with this kind of intelligence and grace. --Bret Fetzer


Product Description
Academy Award(R) winner for Best Foreign Language Film in 2003, THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS is a provocative look at the many ties that bind a group of friends and lovers. It's not easy for a narrow-minded professor (Rémy Girard) to reconcile with his equally stubborn son. But soon, father and son find themselves gathering with their wide and colorful circle of family and friends to confront their differences, confess their secrets, and celebrate life! Winner of the Best Actress (Marie-Josée Croze) and Best Screenplay awards at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival -- critics everywhere hailed this outstanding motion picture as one of the year's best!

Find out more about the film and its actors at: http://www.imdb.com/

Redearch info gathered at: www.amazon.com

Now, here's one of my poems willing to confess a secret:


Then She Describes What Would happen If Aliens Took Over

—They would lift every pant leg and shake out rats.

—Use the world as if it were a hammock full of mushroom bones.

—Demand that all laundry lists to kneel at their feet.

—Tattoo a barcode for the price of heaven onto selected wrists.

—Cut-off echoes at the halfway point.

—Move the stage props of skid row to Beverly Hills.

—Insist on reforms that would cause the penal code to self-destruct.

—Invent a revolutionary red to lipstick sunsets.

—Relocate poetry to some undisclosed remote lake.

—Teach mattresses how to wake-up without hangovers.

—Make sure there's a slur in the evening news report.

—Propose that each shirt be based on a previous tale.

—Condemn hospital gurneys to a squeaky-wheeled fate.


Poem first published at: http://www.cadenza-magazine.co.uk/
Visit my ezine: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and music blog: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/

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