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“An eloquent documentary relating
an inmate’s point of view of being incarcerated in what very well might
be the most dangerous and bloody prison in America.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Liz Garbus (daughter of lawyer Martin Garbus) and Jonathan Stack
create an eloquent documentary relating an inmate’s point of view of being
incarcerated in what very well might be the most dangerous and bloody prison
in America. The prison is a former slave plantation named Angola because
the slaves came from there; it was turned into a prison at the end of the
Civil War, which makes it one of the oldest prisons in America. It is in
rural Louisiana and is situated on 18,000 farm acres that are divided up
into a number of camps that house about 5000 men looked after by a staff
of 1800 in this maximum-security state penitentiary. Most inmates are in
for long sentences with little prospects of parole, and since a great many
of the inmates are lifers it is estimated that about  85% will die
in the prison. Afro-Americans make up about 77% of the prison population.
The inmates not on Death Row must work either in the field, where they
are paid 4 ¢ an hour, or for higher status jobs inside the prison
that pay as high as 20 ¢ an hour.

The filmmakers stayed away from filming the prisoners causing disturbances
and instead concentrated on a number of lifers who knew that they may never
get released. The aim was to see how the prisoners coped and stay motivated
to keep going on with such dim prospects. Shot during the course of one
year, with seemingly free access to the prison grounds. Acting as tour
guide is the white Christian warden, Burl Cain, who believes in forgiveness.
Sympathy is doled out for those in prison, the victims and the workers.
The conclusion this Academy Award-nominated documentary comes up with,
is that everyone must do what they think is right. The prisoners who can’t
afford to pay for a proper lawyer and claim innocence, must follow up on
their own to get appeals. While the prison staff must do their job with
efficiency and fairness, as we watch a drill to get the execution done
just right. The victims are also not forgotten, as their families have
a right to address the Pardon Board to state their opinion on whether or
not the committed felon deserves to be released. 

The film follows six inmates of various stripes and races who are
in different stages of their long sentences: George Crawford is a 22-year-old
newcomer with a life sentence, who is frightened about the prospects of
spending the rest of his life in prison. He doesn’t think he got a fair
trial, as his mom is trying to raise $3,000 to get him a new lawyer; Ashanti
Witherspoon who was 22 when after a robbery he got into a shootout and
wounded two policemen and is now 47 and is serving a 75 year sentence,
but who has changed in prison through self-education and has become committed
to helping others. He has become a prison trustee allowed to leave the
prison grounds unsupervised; Eugene “Bishop” Tannehill received a stiff
sentence for his violent crime and has grown to be an old man in prison,
incarcerated since 1959, but who has a positive attitude believing it’s
all in the hands of God. In prison he found religion and has become an
ordained prison preacher, and whose release depends on the governor signing
a pardon; John Brown is a thirtysomething hardened white man on Death Row
for the last 12 years who faces execution for viciously stabbing to death
a robbery victim in front of his wife. The inmate is pictured as someone
trying to now live the life of Jesus after a childhood of crime — since
he was 14 he has only spent two years of his life not in prison; The black
man Vincent Simmons was convicted of raping a 14-year-old white girl and
has served 20 years of a 100 year sentence and has his first chance to
go before the parole board with new evidence not presented at the trial
that the victim was a virgin after the alleged attack. But his parole is
still denied; and, finally, there’s an elderly white man, Logan “Bones”
Theriot, in the prison hospital dying of lung cancer, who is serving a
life sentence for killing his wife because she neglected her pregnant child
from another man. “Bones” has found peace with himself and with his maker
and is ready to die and be buried on the prison grounds amongst his only
friends.

This is the real deal, even if it fails to explore the truth of Angola’s
bloody side and what gave the prison its awful reputation. It makes for
powerful viewing, even though it leaves more unanswered questions that
need some answers–from parole board procedures to the wisdom of such long
sentences to something other than evoking banal  bleeding heart responses
for those who do the crimes.

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It was the co-winner (with Frat House) of the Documentary Grand Jury
award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival.

“Superb ensemble
cast.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A misery loves company drama, where bad things happen to good people
who are with bad people. Alejandro González Iñárritu
(”Amores Perros”) is the spectacularly talented Mexican director and co-writer
along with  Guillermo Arriago of this absorbing soap opera puzzler,
which is accomplished in English and set in an unnamed American city. It’s
a melodrama about desperate souls who are strangers and become unknowingly
linked together by their existential experiences fighting for survival
and another chance in life after facing catastrophes. The story is threadbare
but nevertheless absorbing, which is due to the superb ensemble cast and
its innovative filming style. Shot with clipped editing, grainy and washed-out
coloring, in a twisty non-linear manner, and with an explosion of images,
the film has an unusual resonance that evokes anything from religious metaphors
to warm and fuzzy calls for humanism. Style over substance might be the
case, though there’s a driving force behind the circles it leads the viewer
around that make this film seem like it’s biting you in the rear when you
least expect it.

In the opening shot we view a haggard looking Paul Rivers (Sean Penn)
standing by the bed of a sleeping Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts). This shot
indicates the film’s end, as everything that will take place has already
occurred. By not shooting in chronological order, the film moves either
forward or back. It is difficult to put the pieces together in the first
part as to what’s going on, that is until the story starts to kick in toward
the middle part and we have seen all the main characters in various stages
of their recent past and begin to see their dilemmas. It becomes the filmmaker’s
unique way of introducing the central characters. 

We meet a man named Michael Peck taking care of his two cute daughters
and his wife Cristina (Naomi Watts) attending a drug group therapy meeting,
who thanks her loving hubby for his strength and support in helping her
kick the drug habit. Jack (Benicio Del Toro) is a heavily tattooed man,
with a large tattoo of a cross on one of his arms, who is heatedly counseling
a punky youngster named Nick in a religious center who is resisting his
arguments to turn his life over to Jesus. We soon learn that Jack is married
to a supportive wife Marianne (Melissa Leo) and has a young boy and girl,
and is a troubled ex-con with a long record for petty crimes who found
salvation through the efforts of the prison preacher Reverend John (Marsan)
and has since getting out of jail two years ago dedicated his whole life
to God. The scene switches to a doctor’s office in a fertility clinic,
where the anxious Mary Rivers (Gainsbourg) is told that her fallopian tubes
are infected and because she had an abortion only an operation would give
her some chance of becoming pregnant. She’s in a strained marriage and
has just returned to her dying math professor husband Paul, who is awaiting
for a heart transplant and is not expected to live for too long even if
the transplant is a success.

The main characters spend the next two hours agonizing over the meaning
of life, as some are fond of saying during trying times the mantra “life
must go on”– half to convince themselves and the other half to convince
the other person. The reborn Jack has talked himself into believing there’s
a “divine plan”, that nothing happens by accident, as his wife comments
she doesn’t know who he is anymore but fell in love with him as a sinner
and can’t stop loving him. But though living a clean life now Jack gets
fired from his caddie gig at a swank country club because the patrons object
to his neck tattoo and when he causes a fatal accident wrecking the lives
of another family, it makes him face his new belief with a more questioning
attitude and more uncertainty and more guilt. Paul is also looking for
an order in life, and understanding the principles of math is his ticket
to that mystery. He further muses about why his unsettling wife wants to
get pregnant through him passing sperm through artificial insemination,
as he’s confused but feels he’s evolving and becoming a better person through
trying to deal with his misfortunes. In the end, Paul feels guilty about
his transplant and looks to repay his anonymous heart donor. Cristina is
the winsome housewife who now has a handle on her life, but her only salvation
is in a loving family and if that should crack there’s the possibility
of her returning to her former bad habits. 

The film has a wrap to it that puts the pieces of the puzzle in place,
as it flirts with violence and mankind’s darker side. Though it hardly
put back all the pain it let out of the bottle, it still feels like a redemptive
experience. In Penn’s voice-over towards the conclusion, he explains the
meaning of the odd title as “We all lose 21 grams at the exact moment of
our death. The weight of five nickels, of a hummingbird, of a chocolate
bar–and perhaps also of a human

soul.” The 21 grams refers to the body weight loss at death. I doubt
if that cleared things up, just like the film put things in place by the
end but still could not clear up the mysteries. Supposedly, life also continues
without necessarily clearing things up. It goes on as one characters says,
“with or without God.” If that is indeed what all the philosophical yelping
was about, the filmmaker was crafty in going after the entertaining disjointed
look he achieved rather than telling a straight linear story. The messages
would have been the same, but seeing it so clearly would have deadened
any mystery and kept it more like a soap opera than real life. 

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Penn and Del Toro give riveting understated performances while Watts
steals the film with her charged agonizing one, as their tantalizingly
real life characterizations supercede the distressing story in importance.
All three were honored when 21 Grams was shown in competition at the Venice
Film Festival. I expect the same will happen at the Oscars.

Fred and Ginger teamed for the opening time as featured artists in the big fabrication reckon, ‘The Carioca’: ‘I’d like to appraise this detail just once’ says Fred, launching the movies’ greatest partnership. Otherwise notable mainly concerning the non-stop opticals which courtesy the pellicle into a series of excited postcards. The propositional star, the ligneous Raymond, is swept off his feet by the exotic Del Rio (one of those actresses who grow older but ten years in forty-odd), of whom a Yankee frail cries, ‘What have these South Americans got below the equator that we haven’t?’. The Berkeleyesque aerial ballet is a gas.

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Loaded with a wealth of songs, it’s meaty, not too kaleidoscopic and yet closely knit for a compact 100 minutes of tiptop filmusical entertainment. The tenet is a natural, and Irving Berlin has fashioned some peach songs to fit the highlight holidays.

Plot is a new slant on a backstage story. Bing Crosby is the crooner, Fred Astaire the hoofer, partnered with brunet and fickle Virginia Dale. Latter jilts Crosby for Astaire (who subsequently becomes No. 2 to a Texan millionaire) which thus leaves the frankly lazy Crosby to carry out his Holiday Inn idea on his own. The crooner has figured out there are some 15 holidays in the year and by operating a Connecticut roadhouse on those festive occasions only he can loaf the rest of the 340 days.

Thus are strung together these songs and ideas: ‘White Christmas’; ‘Let’s Start the New Year Right’; ‘Abraham’, a modern spiritual for Lincoln’s Birthday holiday; ‘Be Careful, It’s My Heart’ (St Valentine’s Day); ‘I Gotta Say I Love You, ‘Cause I Can’t Tell a Lie’ (Washington’s birthday); ‘Easter Parade’, of course; ‘I’m Singing a Song of Freedom’, wherein Crosby, attired as the Freedom Man (with a snatch of ‘Any Bonds Today?’) introduces himself as an American Troubadour.

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Mark Sandrich’s production and direction are more than half the success of the picture.

1942: Best Song (’White Christmas’).

Nominations: Best Original Story, Scoring of a Musical Picture

Introduction

The Chronicles of Narnia is a collection of well-known fantasy novels written by C. S. Lewis in the middle of the twentieth century. The series was about a group of children who found a portal into the world of Narnia and how they became engulfed in a massive battle between good and evil. The stories from Lewis’ novels have been adapted into television (both animated and live action), film, radio, and theater.

The most recent adaptation was the 2005 movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, which was based upon the book in Lewis’ series of the same name. In April 2006, the movie was released on DVD in single- and two-disc versions. Both versions included the theatrical cut, while the two-disc collection’s edition included a second DVD of extras.

This review covers the extended edition of the movie, which also includes all of the extras found in the single- and two-disc versions, as well as two additional discs of exclusive content. It is also important to note that the extended edition will only be available in stores from its debut of December 12, 2006 to January 31, 2007. It’s a time limited release.

The Movie

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is an epic story set in a fantasy world called Narnia. The movie was directed by Andrew Adamson (Shrek). With “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe”, Adamson does C. S. Lewis’ story justice by bringing it to life and at the same time keeping true to Lewis’ original story (or at least as much as I can remember). The movie was nominated (and won) several awards.

The story is set in World War II and is about the four Pevensie children, Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skandar Keynes), and Lucy (Georgie Henly). When the war came to the children’s home town, they were sent to temporarily live with professor Kirke. In Kirke’s large manor, they found a gateway into the world of Narnia. In Narnia, the children fulfilled a prophecy that stated two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve would appear to defeat the White Witch and restore goodness, joy, and happiness to the world.

For many years, the lands of Narnia had been covered in a cold, snowy darkness. The White Witch, a self-proclaimed Queen of Narnia, through fear and brute force took control of Narnia. To any who oppose her, she takes their lives by turning them into stone statues. Narnia has been waiting for the arrival of four special children to join Aslan, the true king, and his army in a massive battle of good against evil.

The first time I saw “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe”, I was in awe. I thought the movie was fantastic. Specifically, the movie incorporates drama, action, comedy, and suspense in such a manner that can only be described as grand. The story is just fun and exciting. I loved how Adamson represent Lewis’ original story in a way that was fun on so many levels and also true to the original story.

One aspect that makes “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” such a great film is its production values. The movie was put together very well, with a superior audio track that features vibrant sound effects, a musical score that helps give the scenes character, and vivid visual and special effects that bring the world of Narnia alive.

The characters are also handled well; roles such as Lucy, who is just so adorable and cute, Mr. Beaver, a goofy character who provides humor, Aslan, the strong and magnificent leader, and the White Witch, an ice cold performance that almost perfectly embodies evil. The roles are admirably filled and portray solid characters that help bring the story alive.

Overall, I was really enjoyed seeing “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” and seeing it again only reinstated how much I enjoyed the film. I thought it was a powerful representation of the Lewis’ work and I greatly look forward to the subsequent movies in the series.

For additional information about the movie, please refer to reviews written by Aaron Beierle and
Holly E. Ordway of the two-disc collector’s edition.

The Extended Edition

All in all, the extend edition provides a longer cut of the movie (approximately seven minutes worth of additional/extended footage), but the additional/extended portions give the movie very little in terms of substance. For instance, consider an extended scene where the camera shows the scenery a few seconds longer than the original cut. Such a change is what the extended version provides. The changes are so subtle that there is little effect to the movie as a whole.

For those who are purely considering to upgrade your single- or two-disc versions solely based on the value of the extended edition and its impact on the Narnia-journey, it might be best to keep your old discs. Bottom line, the extended edition’s seven minutes have very little bearing on the story. (Admittedly, there are a couple additions/extensions in the final battle scene that were a nice touch, but clearly not enough moments like these.)

I thought extended portion’s lack of influence was a shame, because, for instance, the extended cuts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy provided new, extended, and alternative scenes that really changed the overall flow of the movie. Instead, the only changes The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe get are so minor that the only effect it has is making the overall feature run longer. Again, the problem is that the majority of the changes are extended scenes with non-consequential elements (e.g., more shots of the snowy Narnia mountain side) that have no impact to the story. If anything, I was let down by how un-extended this extended edition was.

Here is a list of the differences between the original movie (OM) and the extended edition (EE). Please note that the list may not be complete in full. I detected the differences manually, watching the videos side-by-side using changes in audio and video as clues to differences. But, I am fairly confident I did not miss anything. Please note that the list contains massive spoilers to both versions of the film.

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CLICK HERE TO SKIP THE SPOILERS SECTION

SPOILERS

• The menus are different; the OM features shots of Narnia’s snowy mountainside while the EE has shots of Aslan’s camp.
• The EE begins with a different Walt Disney sequence (it is much flashier). It runs several seconds longer than the OM.
• In the beginning of the movie when Aunt Laurie sees the children off at the train station, the scene is extended. It has more shots of the characters, crowd, and setting. The goodbye is also extended with an alternative shot. The dialogue is the exact same.
• After the opening credits, just before the train arrives at Goosey Station, Lucy gives her stuffed toy (a dog) to Edmund. He gives it to the boy sitting across from him. Note this is an additional scene not found in the OM.

  

• After Peter and Susan’s first encounter with professor Kirke, an alternative scene of the children playing cricket is provided in the EE cut. The scene begins with the focus on the wardrobe and then cutting to the children playing cricket. The dialogue is also different. The changes are minor.
• After Edmund breaks a window while playing cricket with his siblings, an extended version of the children running is provided.
• When all four children find themselves in Narnia and don on their mink coats, an extended scene with the children walking the snowy mountainside of Narnia in amazement is provided. There is no additional dialogue.
• While Mr. Beaver is leading the children to safer quarters, his home, an extended scene is provided showing more of the lovely and very snowy Narnia scenery. There is no additional dialogue.
• However, the EE’s subtitles show Mr. Beaver says “Merely a trifle”, while the OM’s subtitles show It’s merely a trifle”, although Mr. Beaver says the latter.
• The scene is extended when the children and Mr. Beaver arrive at the premise of his home. It features a few additional lines of dialogue and more shots of the beaver dwelling and Lucy looking at a frozen fish in the pond.
• After Edmund enters the White Witch’s castle, there is an extended scene of Edmund looking at more of the stone statues.
• When Maugrim leads his pack of crazed wolves to find the remaining children at the Beaver’s home, there are additional scenes of the wolves and the children preparing to flee. It is literally lasts a couple seconds. The following portion, however, with the wolves searching the house is extended and several seconds longer.
• After Peter and Susan are reunited with Lucy (thinking she had drowned in the river), an additional scene with the children and beavers walking through the forest and countryside, which was formerly covered in snow. There is no dialogue.
• After all four children are reunited and decide to help out in Narnia’s battle of good against evil, Susan announces she is going to practice archery. The scene immediately following with Lucy watching Susan shoot practice targets with her bow and arrow is extended by a few seconds.

  

• In the final battle scene, after the eagles begin dropping rocks on the bad guys, there is an additional scene with the White Witch commanding her flying minions to the sky. The scene also shows a couple evil flying minions and eagles clashing in battle.
• When the two opposing forces meet for the first time on the battle field, the initial action is extended by a couple seconds (just prior to the close-up of Otmin, the minotaur general, kicking butt).
• When the archer shoots the fire arrow that turns into a phoenix, an additional scene is provided where an evil flying creature jumps in the air to stop the phoenix! Peter valiantly kills the creature with a spear.
• After the phoenix creates a massive line of fire, a couple seconds of the overall battle scene is shown (i.e., how the bad guys are cut off).
• After Peter falls off his unicorn, Oreius sacrifices his life to slow down the evil queen’s pursuit. This addition features a new segment with Oreius killing the miniature that tried to stop him from reaching the White Witch.
• When the two eagles attack the White Witch, their failure is briefly extended.
• Peter tells Edmund and Mr. Beaver to escape to safety, but Edmund decides he would rather stay and fight. An additional/extended scene is provided showing Edmund going down the mountain to help Peter, which includes Ginarrbrik falling on his butt and more detail of Edmund’s initial assault on the witch.
• The Walt Disney logo at the end of the credits is flashier in the EE than the OM.

END SPOILERS

The DVD

Shirley Yamaguchi, Japanese film star, plays the title task and fits anticipated into the release. Her restrained personality is unctuous. Don Taylor is good as the Korean Against veteran who marries her and brings her to Salinas, Cal, for a late entity in an American farming community where portion publicly thought is prejudiced.

The Catherine Turney script, based on a story by Anson Bond, brings the bride up against such pitfalls as reluctant acceptance by the groom’s family, a jealous sister-in-law, anti-Jap feeling among some of the farmers and similar standard dramatic angles that go with plot. Story comes to its head when the sister-in-law spreads rumor that the child born to the couple was actually fathered by a neighboring Japanese farmer.