About The Movie

I'm a little more focussed in how to use this blog now.  I've decided to review and discuss movies and invite my friends to join me.  I'm going to paste a review I wrote in a class below.  Please feel free to make comments and post your own reviews or views on a movie.  My review is kind of formal (and long) but feel free to be as formal or informal as you like.
THE GIRL IN THE CAFÉ HBO (2005)

Starring: Bill Nighy, Kelly MacDonald Director: David Yates Writer: Richard Curtis Emmys: Two wins and seven nominations Golden Globes: Two nominations

What happens when you combine filmmaker Richard Curtis’ talent for making romantic comedies with his zeal for charity fundraising? The result is The Girl in the Cafe, an award winning film released by HBO and BBC in 2005. Watching this film is like taking your medicine with strawberry ice cream. This movie deals with a serious topic, extreme poverty, but also tells a tender, funny love story that makes it more than palatable.

The issue of extreme poverty is an important one, but sometimes I just don’t want to hear about it. Do you get that way too and change the channel when stories about starving children in Africa come on TV? “What can I do about it anyway?” I wonder. I feel like I should lend a hand but just feel hopeless or confused about what to do.

Richard Curtis, who created such mega-hits as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones’ Diary and Love, Actually said, “The movie's about the two things I'm most passionate about, which is love - otherwise, I wouldn't have written all these romantic movies, and poverty because I've run a charity for twenty years.” His charity is Comic Relief, which has raised the equivalent of nearly $100 million toward ending severe poverty, since its inception in 1985.

Early in the movie, the first of Curtis’ passions - love - begins to take shape with the introduction of gangly Lawrence who has thinning hair and is top aide to Britain’s finance minister. We see Lawrence living a kind of half-life, going through the motions of crawling out of bed, cleaning his teeth, cooking and chewing food and then shuffling off to work. In the evenings, he comes home to do those same things in reverse order only with a different menu and the addition of a TV. One cannot help but feel sorry for him.

So weighed down with preparations for the approaching G-8 Summit, Lawrence seldom leaves the office, but one day he slips into a café for a few minutes. Holding a cup brimming with hot tea, and no empty table in sight, he asks a young woman if he can sit with her. Lawrence, played by Bill Nighy, and Gina, played by Kelly Macdonald, are shy at first but as they talk, they discover a mutual appreciation for dry, subtle humor.

Their growing attachment is made convincing by Gina and Lawrence’s on-screen chemistry. It is especially evident on their second date when Lawrence relates a recurring dream. Different members of the Rolling Stones, it seems, pester him to play “hot licks” with their band and he refuses, saying he is late for a departmental meeting. It was especially difficult, he tells Gina, to turn down Keith Richards who pleaded with him for an entire elevator ride.

When Gina asks the meaning of his dream, he admits “I am not the man I dreamt I might be when I was young.” He says he got into civil service to make a difference in the world but has ended up ‘pushing paper’ most of the time. Until now, Lawrence has been somewhat aloof but in this scene the walls come down. The viewers, seeing the expression on Gina’s face as she realizes he is opening up to her, are entranced with the love forming between these two characters.

Curtis’s knack for writing romantic humor and Nighy’s impeccable comedic timing are showcased in the scene after this second date. Lawrence is seen pacing the floor in his apartment, using hand gestures and forming words with his mouth. As he is carrying on an internal debate, one side of him wins and advances toward the phone only to declare defeat as another part of him retreats. Eventually though, he picks up the phone and dials Gina’s number. He tells her that he is flying to Reykjavik Iceland in a week for the G-8 Summit, where he will be among the representatives from the UK.

Although Gina knows nothing about this conference with top world leaders and he knows almost nothing about her, he heedlessly invites her along. Once she arrives, she creates quite a stir. Lawrence is shaken to his very underpinnings as their new relationship and his job are threatened, pushing him to risk all to become the man he once dreamed of being.

Gorgeously filmed, especially the pastel hued scenes in stark, frigid Iceland, The Girl in the Cafe is a politically-electrified romantic comedy with solid performances from Kelly MacDonald who has starred in Gosford Park, Elizabeth, and Trainspotting and Bill Nighy who gave an unforgettable performance as an aging rocker in Curtis' Love, Actually. Emmy Award winner David Yates skillfully directed and producer Richard Curtis wrote the compelling screenplay.

Although the summit in the movie is fictional, many of the issues on the table are the same as the G-20 Summit to be held this year in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In a few weeks, as in the movie, world leaders will decide if they want to make good on the promise that was made at a previous Summit, to make serious inroads toward wiping out suffering due to extreme poverty.

According to Richard Curtis, there are three reasons we need to rid the world of poverty, “The main reason for doing so is basic simple humanity. You cannot have fifty thousand people dying a day from avoidable poverty.” Another reason is that without poverty the world will be more secure, “Africa will be an increasingly unsafe continent if it stays this poor. It will be prey to all sorts of extremism.” Curtis’s last reason is that Africa has the potential to be an enormous market. It is an untapped resource and instead of being a drain on the rest of the world it can actually make huge contributions.

After seeing the film, my confusion about helping the poor resurfaced. What can be done? Does anything really help? I started looking for answers to these questions and found a quote from former South African President, Nelson Mandela that shed some light. “Poverty is not natural. It is man made and can be overcome by the actions of human beings.” This made sense to me.

Richard Curtis has been taking action for over twenty years now with good result. He also encourages others to join in, "I would love people to think, I'm just an ordinary person like the girl in the film.” I began to think solving the problem of extreme poverty was like building a wall. Every brick counts. After seeing The Girl in the Café, I feel for the first time that there are solutions and that I can place a few bricks myself.

what to write?

I have been writing letters this morning.  I am also writing a paper for my senior capstone Learning Gardening class.  I have been writing and responding to e-mails.  During my walk this morning I wrote some text messages and sent some pictures via picture mail. 

Blogs , Wikis and Web Class

I am sitting in a class I'm taking at PSU about Blogs , Wikis and the Web.  One of the assignments is to create a blog.  I've read a couple of blogs and was curious about them but now all of a sudden without giving it any thought I have a blog!  Since I already had a Gmail account it was easy to do.  After I post this message I am going to customize and design the blog.  I like to write but will have to decide what I am going to write about in the future.