Oddcoupling pt1

As I write this, Angela is commenting about all of the little
similarities that she found in the movie... six degree esque things...
nothing that could add up to a cohesive whole, yet it's my job to find
some common theme between two movies that let's admit, have absolutely
nothing in common.

Hoffa and Pumpkin... movies that have both been named with names. But
I think that these two flicks have common threads; class and
leadership.

In Hoffa, we have Jack Nicholson portraying a man who wants to turn
the Teamsters into the nations most powerful union. For better or
worse, he's organizing the truck drivers against their 'evil
opressors' the owners. In Pumpkin, we have a sorority that wants to
claim the sorority of the year award from the sorority that's won it
the previous 20 years.

Hoffa, decides that he's going to work with the Mafia in order to
attain his goals of winning over the company owners. Jeanine
Kryszinsky (Dominique Swain) decides that she (and her sorority
sisters) are going to work with special ed students in order to win
P.C. points with the Greek Council and boost their chances of winning.
Both, through their choices instigate their eventual doom.

The mafia, once Hoffa gets out of jail and realizes that he's not
going to be able to regain the Teamster presidency, takes Hoffa out
because he won't quiet down. Christina Ricci's character's
relationship with Pumpkin, ruins any chances of the sorority winning
the yearly award.

I know that these seem like tenuous connections at best, but no one
said that finding connections was going to be easy. Angela drew the
next number tonight, but since I have a really early meeting, we
watched a movie that accidentally didn't make it into our pool,
_Miracle_. I grew up hearing the story of the 80 olympic hockey team
pretty often because a lot of the guys were Minnesotan and Herb Brooks
was a Minnesotan... even if you don't play hockey in Minnesota (I
didn't) there's still an appreciation of it amongst a large percentage
of the population. Plus, there's always a bit of a "train wreck"
phenomena with movies that are shot in your own hometown. Even if
you're not that interested in the movie (read: Joe Somebody, Drop Dead
Fred) you watch because you want to see the scenery. I'm glad that
Miracle was better than that.


Tomorrow's movies... when we have more time. 21 Grams and Pieces of April



21 Grams
Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
Written By Guillermo Arriaga
Starring
Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Benicio Del Toro (I dig him)

This is the story of three gentle persons: Paul Rivers (Penn) an
ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English emigré
(Gainsbourg), Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban
housewife, happily married and mother of two little girls, and Jack
Jordan (Del Toro), an ex-convict who has found in his Christian faith
the strength to raise a family. They will be brought together by a
terrible accident that will change their lives. By the final frame,
none of them will be the same as they will learn harsh truths about
love, faith, courage, desire and guilt, and how chance can change our
worlds irretrievably, forever.


and

Pieces of April
Written and Directed by Peter Hedges

starring
Katie Holmes, Patricia Clarkson, Derek Luke and Oliver Platt

April Burns (Holmes) invites her family to Thanksgiving dinner at her
teeny apartment on New York's Lower East Side. As they make their way
to the city from suburban Pennsylvania, April must endure a comedy of
errors - like finding out her oven doesn't work - in order to pull off
the big event.


So anyway, that's the current scoop. Don't forget the Colorado Springs
Film Society meets this Monday evening with a showing of the
Manchurian Candidate. There's a new print that just came out on DVD
this week and it will be interesting to see it in light of the new
version that comes out next Friday (surprisingly, I hear the new
version is actually quite good in it's own way)


More later,
Brian