Launching Abbas Kiarostami’s great trilogy in rural, rocky northern Iran (Life and Nothing More and Through the Olive Trees follow), Khane-ye doust kodjast? follows eight-year-old Ahmed as he sneaks away from home after school to pursue a moral cause: the return of a classmate’s notebook he accidentally took. This other boy, Mohammad Reza Nematzedah, lives […]
Daily Archives: November 18, 2008
It is outrageous that some would think that Anthony Asquith’s charming, delightful, occasionally hilarious The Importance of Being Earnest, from Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play, is anything less than cinematic. I say this because the front-end and back-end set-up, based on the rising and closing curtain of a stage performance of the play, is deliberately stagy […]
“Killing has no rank.” Rafael: “Only my father may judge what’s right for me.” Masagual, showing contempt for a Jesuit: “You sold out. I know. I’m the buyer.” Masagual, to Rafael: “We worship war! We play at it like sport!” Masagual, to orderly: “This war, which we’re going to win, will lead to a sordid […]
Dennis Grunes 