A Paparazzi's Masterpiece: 2009

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Australia Character Review

Baz Luhrmann’s latest film, Australia, is the kind of film that draws a metaphorical line in the sand. Those who prefer movies that hit the screen with a stylistic flourish, and that unapologetically wear their hearts on their sleeve, then I would say that Australia which stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman will be their kind of film.

I would like to elaborate on the lead female character of this movie, Lady Sarah Ashley, starred by Nicole Kidman. She is an arrogant English aristocrat among the riches. She leaves England to confront her errant husband in Australia just before World War Two, where he intends to sell off his enormous, sprawling cattle station. Lady Ashley, however, ends up inheriting the cattle station, and in order to save it, she must undertake an epic cattle drive to Darwin. To my utter surprise, I found myself getting caught up in Lady Ashley’s horror at the discovery of her husband’s murder, her growing affection for Nullah and the other hands on Faraway Downs, her new cattle station and her growing attraction toward the Drover. As a woman and she has to overcome her husband’s death and handle her husband’s cattle whereby she has no knowledge on handling cattle, she is tough and brave enough to face all those hurdles.

Assisting her is a drover, starred by Hugh Jackman, a tough, no-nonsense man, whose terse, aggressive world is the exact opposite to Lady Ashley's rarefied existence. In the course of their journey, the unlikely couple fall in love, and Lady Ashley is made to re-evaluate her increasingly complex life. This shows that Lady Ashley is a optimistic person as she moves on in her life without looking back on the tragedies that happened.

Coupled with the presence of a young Aboriginal boy, Nullah, starred by Brandon Walters, Lady Ashley's feelings for The Drover bring her even closer to her inherited home. This portrays her caring side. She takes care of Nullah and is willing to adopt him as her own child after the death of Nullah’s mother. She even risks her life just to see Nullah in the Mission Island during the bombing of the Japanese.

In a nutshell, Lady Ashley is a tough, brave, optimistic and caring woman. Her great personalities show that she is capable to be a successful woman and a good mother.

Coach Carter Movie Review

Despite its fouls, and the whistle blows more than once or twice, Coach Carter takes a direct, man-to-man offense that works over the toughest resistance to sappy sports dramas. The true-life story of a coach who tries to teach his players that there's more to life than basketball is brought to the screen in this sports drama, directed by Thomas Carter. Ken Carter (Samuel L. Jackson) was once a star player on the Richmond High School basketball team in Richmond, CA, and years later, after establishing himself in publishing and marketing, he returns to the school and to the team as the new basketball coach. As a basketball coach, he has a mission to remake high school athletes. For this reviewer, a simple tale of a goal-driven man of principle beats a million-dollar downfall any day.

Carter quickly sees that his work is cut out for him. The team is having an awful season, and their fights off the court are more decisive than their play on the court. While Carter wants to make the Richmond basketeers into a winning team, he also wants a lot more by teaching the boys to respect themselves and one another, and that they must excel in the classroom as well as in the gymnasium. We can see that Carter lives by moral absolutes. He doesn’t want his boys to get caught into the “streets scene” by disciplining them. He wants them to balance their time in academic and co-curricular activities so that they won’t totally concentrate in playing basketball only. Carter aims to rack up a victory on and off the scoreboard, and academic performance comes first.

Early on, when Coach's attire nets a derogatory reference to the N word (Nigga), he snaps back with a few lines that lets the brutes know this is one member of the faculty who doesn't substitute familiarity with gangsta rap culture for doing his job. In this movie, we can see that the boys always talk to each other and even to their coach with foul language. They used a lot of N word in their daily speech which is very rude. Carter warned them that N word was used by the whites to disgrace their ancestors during long time ago and they should stopped saying it as to respect their own ancestors. Call him Sir Coach-a-Lot.

Under Carter's guidance, the team turns their losing season around, with the state title a genuine possibility. However, when Carter learns that a number of his players have let their grade point averages slip below cgpa 2.3, as mandated in a contract signed among the boys and their parents. He decides to lock the team out of the gym and send them into study hall until their marks improve. Carter's plan quickly becomes a subject of controversy among parents and team boosters, and their objections are soon picked up by the local news media, many of whom are not sympathetic to Carter's belief that his players must have goals beyond college ball or the NBA.

When some of the teammates violate the contract, Carter takes on the whole blasted town, a mob of parents and public school bureaucrats that treat playing ball as a kid's destiny, a view which Coach regards as contemptible determinism. Confrontations come in waves, with a tournament, a romance, a showdown and the big game, of course, and it's not as easy to call as one might suspect. A gymnasium scene highlights the movie's theme that good choices, not environment, make a man's character.

Plenty of game ought to satisfy the sports fan, but this is not a sports movie and player individuality develops off, not on, the court. Editing is director Carter's weak spot, with noisy soundtrack songs as it's an MTV co-production, droning over unnecessary shots of cheerleaders and fans, though instrumental music is actually good when it's allowed to play. A pool party drags the progression and talented Miss Morgan (Eve's Bayou) as Coach's squeeze is reduced to cheering in the stands.

Singer Ashanti, in her movie debut, is not ready for the screen, though she gets better when her character makes one of the boldest choices in a movie about the role of making choices. She doesn't match Rob Brown (Finding Forrester) whose role as her bright basketball player boyfriend is one of the best. In the movie, there’s a teenage pregnancy issue where Ashanti is pregnant. However, she aborted her child due to feeling of unready in taking care of a child as they are still schooling teenagers. Channing Tatum as the token white boy also stands out. In a season of drunks and doomed athletes, Coach Carteris an entertaining picture that provokes thought, laughter and empathy while shooting its hoops—and that's worth a million.

In the end, most of the boys got scholarship to continue their studies at college level.This is a good movie as it has a mix of good and bad sides of life in various perspectives. This movie focuses more on the lifestyle of new edge teenagers, issues and problems faced by them in daily life. It shows the process of how to shape a teenage to grow up into a mature and disciplined grown up.