The Great Debaters (2007)

Denzel in an excellent performance as the coach of a debateteam from Wiley College, a small East Texas school. The team slays the dragons of competition and racism.

Based on a true story, the plot revolves around the efforts of debate coach Melvin B. Tolson (Denzel Washington) at historically black Wiley College to place his team on equal footing with whites in the American South during the 1930s, when Jim Crow laws were common and lynch mobs were a pervasive fear for blacks. In the movie, the Wiley team eventually succeeds to the point where they are able to debate Harvard University. This was their 47th annual debate team.
The movie also explores the social constructs in Texas during the Great Depression including not only the day-to-day insults and slights African Americans endured, but also a lynching. Also depicted is James L. Farmer, Jr. (Denzel Whitaker), who, at 14 years old, was on Wiley's debate team after completing high school (and who later went on to co-found C.O.R.E., the Congress of Racial Equality). According to the Houston Chronicle, another character depicted on the team, Samantha Booke, is based on the real individual Henrietta Bell Wells, the only female member of the 1930 debate team from Wiley College who participated in the first collegiate interracial debate in the United States. Wells also happened to be a minor African American poet whose papers are housed at the Library of Congress.
The key line of dialogue, used several times, is a famous paraphrase of Augustine of Hippo: "An unjust law is no law at all."
Another major line, repeated in slightly different versions according to context, concerns doing what you "have to do" in order that we "can do" what we "want to do." In all instances, these vital lines are spoken by the James L. Farmer Sr. and James L. Farmer, Jr. characters.

The major characters are very well acted. Denzel delivers a soliloquy about Negroes and racism that is a perfect example of the excellence of his acting. Wonderful film.

Compañero

After Alberto Granado died on 5 March, I watched the film Motorcycle Diaries. Granado and Guevara had taken the journey, and I remembered having watched the DVD some time back. That led me to watching Benicio del Toro in Che. Part one, the Argentine Partie un, l'Argentin  and Che. Part two, guerrilla Partie deux, guérilla.

That led me to wanting to read Che's biography. Two were available: John Lee Anderson's Che Guevara : a revolutionary life,which I needed to interloan, and this one, which was on the shelf. I took the latter one from the shelf, and interloaned the former.

I was flummoxed in reading Castañeda's work. He used the phrase fifteen minutes of fame referring to Guevara (whose fame has lasted far longer than 15 minutes, and to whom the phrase does not begin to fit), and referred to him as our man. I could not believe he would use such language, and was put off. Anderson's book arrived a few days later, I switched to it, and dropped Castañeda's work.

Che: Part two

A straightforward telling of Ernesto Guevara's last year, from the last few days in Cuba, already in disguise as an OEA (OAS) bureaucrat, to his assassination in Bolivia. Nowhere as dramatic as Part one, almost a documentary, it lacks impact. Benicio del Toro does a masterful job of portraying el Che, but ... for the loyal base, this is a great film. Yet, even so, I thought it lesser than Part One. There was no mention of Congo, for instance.

Che: Part One (The Argentine)

(2008). Nicely done. Familiar story, yet riveting.

Catch a fire

Excellent film. Derek Luke is magnificent as Patrick Chamusso, Bonnie Henna does a very good job as Precious, and the film evokes the South Africa of 1980 quite well. A grand film.

The true story of a South African hero's journey to freedom. In the country's turbulent and divided times in the 1980s, Patrick Chamusso is an oil refinery foreman and soccer coach who is apolitical. That is, until he and his wife Precious are jailed. Patrick is stunned into action against the country's oppressive reigning system, even as police Colonel Nic Vos further insinuates himself into the Chamussos' lives.

Tim Robbins is very good as Vos, and deserves credit for playing such a vicious, despicable character.

Arranged

Really just a wonderful film. A review on IMDb.com puts it this way: centers on the friendship between an Orthodox Jewish woman and a Muslim woman who meet as first-year teachers at a public school in Brooklyn. Over the course of the year they learn they share much in common - not least of which is that they are both going through the process of arranged marriages.

The acting is really good, feeling genuine. The film is less than perfectly polished, as, indeed, is everything about the film, which makes for a grand film. It has something of real-life feel to it, not so much a polished look and feel as a feel of realism. A powerful message of tolerance, of doubt, of independence, of prejudice, of enlightenment, of tolerance. Magnificent.

Zoe Lister Jones

...

Rochel Meshenberg

Francis Benhamou

...

Nasira Khaldi

The violin

The violin

Film Movement, and Cámara Carnal Films, written, produced and directed by Francisco Vargas Quevedo.

Interesting, gritty, shot in black and white. Ultimately satisfying.

Corral Falso, Guerrero, Mexico