The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is set to hit theaters on Dec. 21st and if you haven’t read the book, you are really missing out. Steig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy is one of the best international mystery/thriller series ever published. The first novel is an epic that can stand alone, and it’s not necessary that you read the whole series. Also, it makes use of some really cool computer gear. Today, I am going to take the high-road, however, and try to not be a book snob. It is my expectation that you will be able to enjoy this movie without regret of having missed out on the novel.
Cast Daniel Craig
Yes, I know that all the books are supposed to be about Lisbeth Salander and the miserable existence that she has been forced to lead at the hands of a secret organization, but it’s really about Mikael Blomkvist. His altruistic personally and his complete intolerance for injustice is central to the story. Daniel Craig fits the bill for me as a believable Blomkvist, right down to his natural demeanor, not to mention his parallel looks to Sweden’s Michael Nyquist.
How many ways are there to abuse a person? How many ways can someone be made to feel inferior? Apparently, in the 1950s and 1960s, Mississippi Junior League types were expert at oppressing not only their fellow citizens who happened to be Black, but also anyone else who didn’t meet their silver spoon standards.
Sadly, in the Deep South, there is still this us-them attitude among many Whites and African-Americans. There are pockets of racial hatred and oppression everywhere, but in places like Louisiana and Mississippi—and all those other places that don’t accept that the Civil War is over or that the South lost—social segregation flourishes.
Beautifully, sensitively acted, The Help recreates Jackson, Mississippi, circa 1963-4, where two worlds co-existed, the elite, rich, young, white families and their Black domestics—the maids who cleaned homes, raised other people’s children, and were insulted, bullied, and treated like property. The maids weren’t second-class citizens; their employers barely considered them people, treating them with an embarrassing degree of insensitivity.
In the early days of the civil rights movement, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Emma Stone) returns home to Jackson after graduating from college, intent on becoming a serious writer. She returns to the privileged life in which she was raised, and to all her equally privileged friends, most of whom are married and have children. They gossip, play bridge, go to parties, and engage in similarly amusing activities. They all have “help.” As Skeeter begins to appreciate how superficial their lives are and observes how they treat the women who serve them, she decides to write a book entitled The Help, about the relationship of her friends to their maids, told from the maids’ point of view.
She secretly embarks on her project with the help of Aibilene one of her friends’ maids (Viola Davis), although no others are willing to collaborate for fear of losing their jobs. Influenced by civil rights activists and the assassination of Medgar Evers, both Skeeter and the maids are ready to shake up the status quo. When one of the maids is brutalized by the police, all of them decide to cooperate with Skeeter.
Strong performances distinguish The Help, particularly Stone, Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard as the insufferably smug, bigoted Hilly Holbrook who gets her come-uppance at the hands of a maid she fired, Octavia Spencer as maid Minny Jackson (who gets her revenge), Allison Janney as Skeeter’s mother, and (especially) Jessica Chastain as the white, but socially unacceptable, Celia Foote.
There are many unlikely humorous moments in The Help, making it a glossy revision of what life was like in that time and place. However, they give the audience a sense of what “should have been,” a semblance of fairness in an unfair world.
Is The Help an accurate depiction of a certain segment of 1960s Jackson? Knowing that there are still areas in America where “White folks” and “Black folks” are socially segregated despite legislated integration, one suspects that it is rather close. The Help will be available on DVD and Blu-ray December 6, 2011. It is an intelligent, thoughtful, and thought-provoking look at a chapter in our social history.
One of the many things audiences might expect from the December 13, 2011 (“Panda 2sday”), DVD/Blu-ray release of Kung Fu Panda 2 probably isn’t a visit to scripture, yet its story echoes elements of the story of Moses, whom you may remember from another film, The Prince of Egypt (1998), also from Dreamworks. However, Kung Fu Panda 2 is in no way a religious film. It does not feature bible stories, commandments, or miracles.
Director Steven Spielberg's epic adventure, “War Horse” is a tale of hope and perseverance set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during the First World War. The film follows the extraordinary journey of a horse named Joey as he moves through the war, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets, before ending up in No Man's Land. Based upon a successful book, and turned into a successful international theatrical hit that is currently on Broadway, “War Horse” comes to the screen in an epic adaptation by one of the great directors in film history, Steven Spielberg.
Le 31 juillet, tout le web était effervescence avec l'annonce de la nouvelle encre arborait par Miley Cyrus.
Le tatouage s'inscrit sur le côté de son doigt ring. Une histoire étonnamment grande pour un tatouage ridiculement petit.
Pourquoi était l'histoire si gros ? Il fallait faire avec le mariage homosexuel. Comme toute personne qui s'ensuit Miley sait, son soutien pour le mariage homosexuel n'est pas quelque chose qu'elle a honte de parler.
Miley envoyé un tweet d'une image du tattoo avec la déclaration, « All LOVE est égal ».
Comme les ventilateurs et les personnes qui sont non-donc-bien-fans en désaccord avec elle et ont fait via twitter qu'elle aurait éventuellement répondre à un avec, "où est elle dit dans la bible pour juger d'autres ? OH droite. Ce n'est pas. Dieu est le miel de juge unique. « Dieu est amour. » »
Quand j'ai vu tout d'abord le tatouage il m'est apparu à être simplement deux lignes en parallèle. Étant quelque peu la boucle je ne pouvais pas vraiment découvrir pourquoi deux lignes parallèles était symbolique du mariage gay ou les droits des homosexuels.Qu'à faire une recherche a fait je découvre que les lignes étaient en fait un signe égal. Soudain, il a commencé à donner du sens.Je pourrais trouver au moins deux organisations qui utilise le symbole.
Le premier est le Gay and Lesbian droits Lobby de Nouvelle Galles du Sud. Ils ont adopté le symbole ne plus tard 2007 et utilisés dans leur amour tous est campagne égaux. Il m'est difficile de croire que Mme Cyrus est activement impliqué dans ce groupe de Nouvelle Galles du Sud, mais il semble y avoir un lien direct entre le symbole et le nom de la campagne.
C'est aussi le symbole utilisé par la campagne de droits de l'homme. C'est le groupe de défense des intérêts des États-Unis plus important LGBT avec plus d'un million de membres.
A comme Matt Damon qui récemment fait l'actualité avec son soutien aux enseignants, Miley Cyrus dit quelque chose de gens écoutent. Je pense que nous devrions attendre beaucoup plus à l'avenir de Miley Cyrus, tant que le message qu'elle souhaite envoyer trouveront un auditoire qui est disposé à écouter.
