Grandparents Day Movie Reviews

"Anastacia: The Video Collection" has a running time of 90 minutes. It is a must have!

This dvd "Single" gets 2 out of 5 stars for doing part of the job the other disc does.

"The Day I Became a Woman" consists of three short stories that cover three generations of women. Each part is, as always with Iranian films, based on allegorical meanings, so if you're used to the idea of traditional storytelling, you must stop using that concept for a while. But don't worry, because her method here is more accesible to aundience outside Iran than other works made there. Just try to find what the film really wants to say.

The first story follows a girl who meets her 9 year-old birthday. That means, in the traditional view, that she becomes a grown-up woman, and henceforth she belongs to domestic sphere her mother and grandmother are in. No longer she is allowed to play with boys, but the girl contends that as she was born at noon she still has time, and she is finally given short time to meet her best friend (a boy), who is ironically grounded in his room to do his homework. The way she spends the last moment of her childhood is depicted with slow but poetic images.

The second follows a married woman who takes part in a bicycle race. But her husband threatens her to stop, then her family, the village's chief, and so on. But in spite of these interruption, she keeps on going, never thinking of stopping for them, even facing her divorce. From what she rides, or runs? To where she runs? These questions are never directly replied, but instead, with a dynanic images of rushing bicycles (all driven women) the film keeps on running breathless, leading us to its shattering ending.

The third one, most humorous and poignant, portrays an old lady, who comes to a shopping center to buy things for her house. As she has inherited money, she can buy anything she wants -- a fridge, clearner, television, tea-pot, you name it. One irony is that she cannot remember one thing that she really wanted, and that is the crucial point of the film. Spreading all she bought on the beach, she tried to remember in vain while the children play with them. The answer is again indirectly shown, implied by the past her story suggests, but I should not reveal that part. Find it for yourself.

Shot with lyricism, and infused with urgent messages about today's women's status in Iran (and probably anywhere else), "The Day I Became a Woman," short as it is, offers more chance than any other film these days, to think about those issues we all should be conscious of. But before that, let me say the film is a great success with its poetic visuals with simple fable-like quality. Shot in Kish Island on the Pertian Gulf, this film is a must for any film buff with a discerning eye. And it shows a glimpse of life on this beautiful island, a famous resort place, where, perhaps to your surprise, you will encounter unexpectedly a huge shopping center that looks like those you see in LA, Tokyo and London.

The film opens with a bright blue sea, partly blocked by a black scarf being used as a sail on a makeshift boat. This image crystallises the film's theme - the wide horizons offered by the world limited by the socially-controlled fact of being a woman. Clothes are crucial - this scarf, an emblem of oppression for women, becomes a practical item that confirms freedom for the boys. The heroine of the first story wears her hair free and a loose summery dress; she is used to playing the beach with boys. Today is her ninth birthday, the day she becomes a woman - this means donning the heavy black chador like her mother and grandmother, effacing herself and staying at home, whose doors, walls and windows are a heavy presence. Arguing that she's still a child because she was born at noon, she manages to wangle one last free hour, to be marked by the stick she carries, whose shadow will indicate the time. Hence a social injustice is justified by reference to nature and the land. Our knowledge of her life closing up gives this final hour a desperate urgency, but the director imposes no heavy portentousness, revealing instead the youth, spontaneity, openness, wit and charm to be soon lost. The most painful (to us), charged and delightful sequence sees her sharing candy through a barred window with her best friend, an impish youth in American gear who has been grounded to do his homework. The fact that this scenario will soon be irreversibly reversed makes the charm almost obscene.

The second story seems to continue the surreal strain of the director's daughter, Samira Makhmalbaf's 'Blackboards', as a man galloping urgently on a strong horse shouting 'Aloo', is shot in speedy tracks. He comes across an endless line of scarved female cyclists, whose presence is only explained in the third part, and so whose inexplicability increses the tension. He picks out one woman, Aloo, and demands she returns home. Despite the snickers of her compadres, she refuses. Her husband returns with a Mullah and threatens divorce - she retorts, go ahead. Her father and tribal elders, then her thuggish brothers, all emanate from nowhere and inexorably demand she return to being a submissive woman. The psychological agony that sears the protagonist is only fitfully shown in her face, but is revealed in a series of dislocated, hallucinatory landscapes, in which the soundtrack moans. The clash between modernity and tradition suggested in the bicycles and horses paralells the strong visual presence of the environment, the aridity of the desert plains, and the potential refreshment and rebirth of the clear, beating sea.

After the unnerving shock of the central story, the finale seems to offer comic relief, and almost threatens to sink into cutesy magic realism. For the first time we seem modern, cosmopolitan Iran, as a group of young boys with trolleys wait at the airport for incoming passengers. One carries an old lady of just-inherited wealth, who begins shopping in the spanking malls, because she has never had anything in her life. With her retinue strung behind her, huge cardboard boxes on trolleys, this old woman on wheels is like a reverse, comic image of the fugitive in the second story. Waiting for the ship to carry her cargo, she lays out her purchases on a gleaming beach, in effect constructing a house without walls, like some kind of Surrealist travel brochure. When she returns into town to replace a teapot she dislikes, her servants take over, boys indulging the freedom to play and experiment with identity denied the film's women, all of whom return in this closing story, either by presence or allusion.

A defiant, provocative political plea, 'The Day I Became A Woman' is more accessible than the films of Kiarostami or Samira Makhmalbaf, as it leavens the formal and ideological rigour with the pleasures of colour, action and humour.

Nothing against the American industry, but if you are looking for a Hollywood movie try something else. Yes, there is plenty of beauty and fantasy, but not in the American fashion. Here the stories and people and places are very simple (and very deep). Yet, the fantasy is so real that you can very easily transpose it to your own life, regardless if you came from Middle East, Japan or Americas. Well, as long as you have some brains and some subtlety.

Well, I saw this movie four weeks ago, and I could not stop thing about it since. The more I think, the more I learn. Every single detail of the story, camera work and sound has a meaning.

I read a magazine review critic complaining the movie was boring, specially the first story, in which the girl was a very bad actress, concerned about not playing that day, but not showing emotions for what her life was going to be. Does a nine year old girl understand what is "becoming a woman"? Of course not, her understanding was limited to that moment when she was being forbidden to play with her best friend. This is exactly what made the story so universal, I could remember myself (raised on an environment with freedom for women) waiting for the permissions of my mother, desperately waiting for the time of the adults. And inside the critical context of the movie, her lack of understanding of what her life was going to become was also very important.

Oh, and so many other meanings and symbols just in this first story. The wind and water (also present in the other two stories), the plastic fish by which she exchanges her chaddor, her little time passing away and she unable to use it and still waiting, her availability, the lollipop teasing across the bar separating her from her boy friend (the *given* pleasure the only control left to her), her mother coming to pick her up, etc.

The other two stories are as good and universal. Even if you live inside a women's lib society, even if you are a man. This movie is a work of art. So, it demands sensibility for understanding it. If you are looking for fast food entertainment, forget about it.

I've always love Yuu Watasu's Anime and Manga, like Fushigi Yugi..but Ceres, I thought i was good at first, coz the art looked really pretty and the story line seemed good. But then when I rent it, and really started watching it..it was not as nearly touching and what's the word.."stiring" as Watasu's other animes. It's like suddenly Tooya and Aya became lovers? It's all too quick. and if you're buying it, DO NOT BUY THE VHS DUBBED, no offense, the english voice acters are terrible, especially Aya's, she sounds like some 7 year old kid. It's worth rent and everything, but definitely not worth buying...

As the story begins, "The Yard" has been called in by the Yorkshire police on a particularly nasty case - a farmer has been found brutally murdered in his barn along with his sheep dog; his traumatized sixteen-year old daughter is found mute, unable to tell investigators what has occurred. To make matters worse, allegations of local police corruption have just surfaced.

This is not going to be an easy case, especially as Lynley and Havers arrive on the scene in Yorkshire each encumbered with a steamer trunk full of emotional baggage.

Lynley has just been the Best Man at the wedding of the love of his life, Deborah, to his best friend Simon St. James. Upon arriving in Yorkshire, he finds that one of the local police officers assigned to work with him is one Sergeant Nies, whom he'd previously had a run-in with and Nies is still nursing a grudge against him. As if these problems weren't daunting enough, Lynley has to deal with Havers.

Havers, who has a well deserved reputation at the Yard of being difficult to work with, resents Lynley for being rich, well-educated, well-connected, handsome and charming - in short, everything she isn't. Her obvious resentment of Lynley becomes so tiresome, that at one point, he stops the car in the middle of the road one evening and says, "You are exhausting, you are permanently on the defensive." Later, he exclaims, "take away your prejudices and who's Barbara Havers?" Havers, however, does have some very real problems to deal with; while Lynley is trying to cope with his loss of Deborah, Havers is spending every spare moment on the phone trying to get help from Social Services for her parents - a father in the last stages of emphysema and a mother suffering from what appears to Alzheimer's.

Yet in spite of their personal problems, Lynley and Havers quickly get down to the business of investigating the murder. That they do so - in the face of local police hostility and foot-dragging, witnesses who tell them only half-truths, plus a few red herrings thrown in along the way - is a testament to their skill and professionalism.

This BBC production of "A Great Deliverance", based on the book by Elizabeth George, is well adapted and perfectly cast. Some Elizabeth George fans may object to casting a dark haired actor in the role of Lynley, whom George conceived of as a blonde, but that's a trivial issue. First, actors frequently bare little physical resemblance to the authors' original descriptions of the characters they play - case in point, P.D. James' Adam Dalgleish. James always described Dalgleish as "dark", something Roy Marsden isn't. Second, if you're casting about today for a tall, good looking, "upper class" British actor for a role - Nathaniel Parker is the natural choice. Parker casually combines class with masculinity. He also possesses one of the best speaking voices of any English-speaking actor today. His lines are always delivered clearly, but effortlessly, in that rich, mellow baritone of his. In a television career of more than a dozen years - "Piece of Cake", "Never Come Back", "Vanity Fair" and "Far From the Madding Crowd" - Parker has displayed great versatility. Having appeared in episodes of "Inspector Morse" and "Poirot" he's also no stranger to "Mystery" audiences. As Lynley, he projects authority, integrity, vulnerability; plus genuine warmth and tenderness when visiting the victim's youngest daughter - Roberta Tey - at a psychiatric hospital.

Like Parker's Lynley, Sharon Small's Barbara Havers differs in appearance from the character created by George. George's creation was short, dumpy and dressed in Oxfam rejects - one doubts if too many actresses would have been beating down the doors to play the character as originally envisioned. Small retains Havers' abrasiveness, but through her attempts at dealing with the problems in her private life, she succeeds in making Barbara a more sympathetic character.

One of the traditional strengths of British TV imports is the careful attention the British pay to the casting of each role. "A Great Deliverance" is no exception. In addition to the two strong leads, "A Great Deliverance" is graced with a great supporting cast. Anthony Calf and Amanda Ryan play newly weds Simon and Deborah St. James brilliantly - capturing the romance of a newly wed couple and the awkwardness created by their relationship with Lynley and the anguish they know he is going through. Emma Fielding is perfect as Helen Clyde - so perfect - that one wonders why the producers subsequently replaced her in later episodes. Brendan Coyle (Richard Tey) - with his dark good looks and earthy masculinity - is a perfect counterweight to Parker's Lynley. But the real acting honors go to Rebecca Gallacher as Roberta Tey - so eloquent in her silence.

To sum up, while this BBC-WGBH production of Elizabeth George's "A Great Deliverance" does not follow the book to the letter, it does capture the essence of this excellent mystery. I highly recommend "A Great Deliverance" to lovers of good, old-fashioned British mysteries.

Volume 3: (Disc 1)

The Professionals (3): An agent in Prague has suddenly vanished. John Drake arrives in Prague, posing as a member of the embassy staff, his mission is to locate the missing man. Very quickly he is taken in, and compromised by a crafty operative, and his lovely accomplice. Drawn into their trap, Drake learns the fate of the missing man, and then takes steps to save him before it is too late.

A Date With Doris (2): Drake is in an unspecified Latin American location to extract an agent in jeopardy, and then rendezvous with the submarine "Doris". His cover is as a reporter sent to interview a prominent General. Things just do not go smoothly for Drake, and he always seems off balance. He barely concludes this messy affair, and is only successful because of luck, and some very fortuitous assistance. He is also guilty of a major error, when he foolishly allows himself to be followed to his "safe house". Count yourself lucky this time, John.

The Mirror's New (3): This one keeps you guessing. Edmund Bearce, a member of the British Embassy staff, chooses murder as a way to cancel a personal debt. Preparing to dispose of the body, he has an accident, and is knocked unconscious. Upon waking, he has a dead body on his hands, and a lost day to account for. Bearce reappears, but can't explain what happened. A suspicious Drake investigates and uncovers a secret life, and much more.

Colony Three (5): Easily the most thought provoking episode on the disc. The plot is similar to an episode of "The Prisoner" or "The Avengers", skirting the edges of credibility. Drake takes the place of a communist sympathizer, just prior to his defection to the Soviets. After arriving in Soviet territory, Drake and two other defectors take a long train ride to a secret location. They arrive at a place named "Hamden", also known as the "village" (sound familiar?). The phony English town is actually a training ground where Soviet agents learn to assimilate into British culture. Drake penetrates security, gathers as much information as he can, and then it is time to leave. This one has a bit of everything, torture, gadgets, death and a tragic end.

Volume 4: (Disc 2)

It's Up To the Lady (2): Sometimes Drake is just not on his game, and this is one of those times. A British diplomat intending to defect vanishes. A rendezvous with his wife (Sylvia Syms), will take place in Greece, near the Albanian border. Drake is on the scene, to try and get the wayward diplomat to return to Britain. Underestimating the local opposition, he is nearly drowned, loses his charges, and carelessly gets himself shot. Topping it all off, he learns once again what it is like to be a pawn in the game.

What Ever Happened to George Foster? (3): Bernard Lee ("M" from the Bond films) guest stars, as Lord Ammandford, a wealthy industrialist who seeks to destabilize the government of a fictitious South American country. In addition, the Lord is a man interested in keeping a mysterious past a secret from a probing John Drake. This is more of a straight detective story.

The Galloping Major (2): Sent to Africa, at the request of the President (Henry Marshall) of an unnamed country, Drake finds himself the pawn in a political power struggle. Makes interesting viewing in light of historical events, but not a great story.

The Colonel's Daughter (4): In India, classified information is being leaked to the enemy. Drake is looking into the activities of a butterfly collecting Colonel, and his daughter, living in a house in the country. Soon, Drake is up a tree, in the middle of the jungle, maintaining surveillance. Later, he uncharacteristically emerges victorious in a three on one brawl, on his way to uncovering those involved in the secret pipeline. Drake finds that the Colonel's daughter is definitely Daddy's girl.

Writing is critical to a good story, and some of the plots of these international exploits just do not quite pass muster. Drake is simply not at his best, making some near fatal mistakes. Perhaps being an operative largely on his own in a foreign land, puts Drake at too much of a disadvantage. He doesn't quite have the fire we have seen before. A few good episodes, but not enough for a ringing endorsement of this set. Give A&E positive marks for addressing a previous complaint, by upgrading to four episodes per disc. Fans of Danger Man, may find my other reviews of interest.

As noted above, probably of greatest interest to McGoohan fans will be the episode "The Colony", as the origins of "The Village" are plain for all to see. However, my favorite has to be "What Happened to George Foster", where McGoohan's Drake takes on a millionaire Lord (played by Bernard Lee, no less!) and risks his career, not to mention his life, in a private vendetta that foreshadows #6's battles with the assorted #2's of "The Prisoner".

This is certainly not light-hearted "Avengers"-style material. McGoohan gets roughed up in just about every episode, and there aren't any charming eccentrics or snappy gadgets. But it is nearly incredible that such high quality LeCarre-like material was shown on a weekly basis. Truely, it was a Golden Age.

Day of the Dove-This action-packed and creepily atmospheric episode concerns a fight to the death (and beyond?) aboard the Enterprise against the Klingons. We are dropped right into the episode, with immediate violence, which pulls us into the episode's urgency and ominousness. The parties really appear quite powerless to stop their decent into total warfare. We are given our richest depiction of Klingons here, most notably in the thoughtful Kang (played by Michael Ansara). The lighting and nervous score contributes to the sense of doom and insanity aboard the ship.

This episode also has a stronger moral foundation than many 3rd season shows. We see people forced to set aside their differences and mutual suspicion in order to break the cycle of violence. Also present are the ideas that some entities thrive on hate, hate corrupts absolutely, and that laughter is sometimes the best medicine. One of the few negatives to be said about this episode is that the conclusion is ho-hum, convenient, and rushed. Better handled, it could have been one of the few 3rd season episodes to end on an uplifting note. By this point in the show, however, momentum was starting to build, as opportunities were allowed to slip away. more on this in reviews of later episodes.

Tidbits: A fraction of the scene in the corridor between Chekov and Kang's daughter shows up in the movie Koyaniskatsi. (4 stars)

FOR THE WORLD IS HOLLOW AND I HAVE TOUCHED THE SKY finds Kirk, Spock and McCoy venturing to the Yonada planet (which is really a space ship on a collision course with an asteroid). The oracle which is a relentless computer controls the ship and it must be stopped to save the good people of Yonada. Meanwhile McCoy discovers he's suffering from a disease and only has a year to live. Upon arrival on Yonada, McCoy meets up with Natira (Kate Woodville) and falls in love. This episode marks the first time McCoy ever brushed with romance really. You would think it would be more of a landmark episode but it isn't really. Mainly cause this plot was done before and way better on THE PARADISE SYNDROME. A nice enjoyable episode but nothing to special here. Average at best.

DAY OF THE DOVE probably should have been a terrible episode of Star Trek because of it was one of the cheapest Star Trek episodes ever produced. However strangely it ended up being one of the third season's most popular episodes. Probably cause of the presence of Klingons and the fact that most of the episode is packed with action and fighting scenes. The appearance of Mike Ansaras as Kang the Klingon Commander also boosts this episode's status. However DAY OF THE DOVE suffers from a weak plot line. The idea of a bizarre entity feeding off the hatred of Humans and Klingons is kinda far fetched and the ending of this episode is utterly weak. Although it is a classic and a enjoyable show with Klingons and action and all, but when you get down to the nitty gritty this is an average episode of Star Trek at best.

Overall a nice collection but not really classic. Both episodes are totally watchable though and DAY OF THE DOVE is actually a favourite of many. The appearance of Klingons almost always set the stage for a good Star Trek episode. Highly recommended!

"Day of the Dove" is great fun, more for its cast and the gusto with which they perform their roles than for the story itself. Kirk and Co. find themselves lured by a fake distress signal to a planet where only a half dozen Klingons survive. The Klingons blame the Federation for having lured them to the same planet with a fake distress signal, and killing most of his crew. After Kirk gets them safely rounded-up and under guard aboard the Enterprise, all hell breaks loose: an unseen power hijacks the ship outside the solar system at Warp 9, in circles, and releases and arms the Klingons and the Enterprise crew with swords; the two rival races fight to the death, over and over again, since the same unseen third party seems also somehow to keep repairing their injured bodies. Kirk, one way or another, has to gain the trust of the Klingon leader to identify and eliminate the alien invader responsible for the carnage, before they are trapped in eternal warfare with each other.

"Dove" is a real scenery-chewer, and one of the [least expensive]-ever episodes of the series. Only the Enterprise core cast and a handful of Klingons are ever seen - everyone else, we are informed, has been sealed off (conveniently and cheaply) below decks - leaving them to roll their eyes and gnash their teeth in artificially induced fury for most of the hour. Michael Ansara, who never disappoints, is ideal as the Klingon captain, Kang, and Susan Howard - in one of her final performances before permanently retiring from acting - is appealing and interesting as his emotionally torn wife, Mara.