Welcome to Amreeka

 

Awhile back, I happened to be watching IFC and caught the tail end of the  Spirit Awards for independent films.  As winners were announced, I wrote down numerous titles that looked of interest. When it got to the best actress category, I was intrigued by a scene from a movie I had never heard of, Amreeka. I also, from that small clip, could see why the lead actress, Nisreen Faour, was nominated. She didn’t win, but I came away with a movie I was dying to see.

Amreeka tells the story of a Palestinian woman, Muna and her teenage son Fadi, who win a green card lottery and are able to immigrate to America (Amreeka) and live with her sister, doctor brother-in-law and 3 daughters, in a suburb of Chicago. Leaving behind the violence of their homeland, Muna hopes to create a better life for her son and herself. unfortunately,  unbeknownst to her, Muna has a box of cookies confiscated from her at customs. Fadi notices but doesn’t realize their life savings is in that box for safe keeping. Once here in the States, Muna, a qualified banker in her homeland, finds no one will hire her and ends up taking a job at White Castle, letting her family believe she works at an adjacent bank.

What follows is a touching, sad, sometimes frustrating and eye-opening movie experience, which left me saying “I just saw my favorite movie of the year” .  The acting was wonderful, perhaps aided by the fact that stars are fairly unknown, giving it a realistic non-hollywood feel. In addition to nominations for several Spirit Awards, it was nominated for other awards such as Cannes and Sundance, for film, acting, screenplay and directing.

If you would like to see this hidden gem of a film, it is available to be sent to Fountaindale from one of the owning  libraries our PrairieCat catalog consortium. Just follow this link to place a hold. There is also a book titled “A Country Called Amreeka” by Alia Malek, if you would like to know more about the Arab experience in the US.

-Christine J.

Lights! Cameras! Its Oscar Time!

It’s that time of year again, “Oscar” time!  The Oscars, real name Academy Awards, has been around almost as long as motion pictures have. The Academy Awards are presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to award excellence in the motion picture arts.  The first Academy Awards were held in Hollywood on May 16th 1929.  The winners were Janet Gaynor and Emil Jannings winning for multiple roles instead of the now traditional one. The first movie to win was Wings, with it also being the only fully silent picture to win an award.  Winners did know before hand of their award.

The story of the award got the nickname “Oscar” varies. Some say it was actress  Bette Davis who said it looked like her first husband others that it was the Academy’s Executive Secretary who coined the phrase. No matter who did, the name stuck and we call it that today.  In addition to the traditional awards, there have been “special” small size awards given to stars such as Shirley Temple, lifetime achievement awards and the Irving Thalberg memorial award given to producers for creative excellence. Irving Thalberg was an Academy Award winning producer who died at the young age of 37 in the 1930s. There is a great web site  that the Academy has which lists past winners, history, quotes etc…. on the Awards.

  Throughout the years ,there have been many memorable moments during the ceremonies. Hattie McDaniel being the first African-American to win an award for Gone With the Wind, Louise Fletcher signing to her deaf parents when she won her oscar for best actress in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Marlon Brando refusing his award for The Godfather, sending out Sacheen Littlefeather, otherwise known as Marie Cruz, in protest of the U.S. treatment of Native Americans. And most memorable, in 1974, David Niven was presenting an award when a streaker ran behind him. David quipped “The only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping … and showing his shortcomings.”. There were also some really awful moments. Many of us remember 1989  watching aghast as Rob Lowe and Snow White sang and danced to Proud Mary, ending up in a Disney Lawsuit for unauthorized use of a Disney character! And then of course, there are the LONG acceptance speeches, the awards for short documentaries that no one ever heard of, and the length of the ceremony itself! The 1998 ceremony ran 4 hours and 2 minutes! There have been some great hosts Billy Crystal (those opening song and dance numbers!), Bob Hope and some not so good, David Letterman (the Uma… Oprah joke, not great to begin with, got worse real fast).

The Fountaindale Library has some great materials on the Academy Awards. There is The Academy Awards: The Complete Unofficial History, DVD collections of the short films nominated in 2003 , 2007 (a chance to see them!!), as well as Academy Award Winning Music From MGM Classics . We also carry many of the award-winning and nominated films. In addition to those mentioned above, we have newer titles like  Slumdog Millionaire , and The Departed, to the classics like The Sound of Music, and All About Eve.

The 82nd Academy Awards will be held on March 7th and will be hosted by Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.

-Christine J.

Brick

It’s film noir set in a public high school.  Brick tells the tail of Brendan Frye (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) a loner and ex-small time pusher who gets pulled back into the fray after receiving a mysterious phone call from his ex-girlfriend asking for help.  As he dives into the high school underworld populated by kids with names like Dode, Tug, Brain, and The Pin, he slowly but surely begins to put all the pieces together even while getting the living daylights beat out of him (which happens at least three times – at one point he passes out because of blood loss).

Made for less than a half-million dollars, the film still manages to find some stunning images set among the dry and desolate California desert region.  It received several award nominations and won a few independent film awards, including a Sundance award. 

The dialogue is crisp and fast, the plot is intricate, and the acting is sublime, all helping to make you forget that these are high-school kids and not characters from a hardboiled detective novel. 

So if you like intelligent, skillfully made movies on a shoestring budget, check out Brick.

- Christopher H.

Joyeux Noel

Please join us Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 6:30 pm in the Meeting Room for our monthly Art House and Foreign Langue Film presentation.  This month we will be showing the movie “Joyeux Noel”, which translates into “Merry Christmas”.  With World War I as a backdrop, it tells the true-life story of the spontaneous Christmas Eve truce between the Scottish, French, and German troops.  For one night they cast aside their differences in war to come together and celebrate brotherhood.    With a phenomenal international cast, this Academy Award, Golden Globe, and BAFTA nominee for Best Foreign Language Film is a wonderful choice for celebrating this holiday season.
- Brian S.