08.Mar.2009 Sunday Salon: Foreign Movies

This week I gave in and joined the Orbis Terrarum Challenge. One of the mini challenge is Orbis Terrarum Film Mini Challenge, which challenges you to watch 10 films, 10 directors, from 10 different countries. Now I haven’t started watching any since the start of the challenge, but I remembered a couple of foreign movies that I liked that I watched this year.

Not One Less is a movie by the known director Zhang Yimou, the man behind House of Flying Daggers, Hero, and Curse of Golden Flowers. It tells a story about a 13 year-old substitute teacher in rural China. The real teacher warned her not to lose any of the student while he’s gone. So when one of the student disappeared, she goes through extraordinary measure to find the kid. Apparently almost all the casts were locals, including Wei Minzhi, the main character, who after this movie got a full scholarship to University in Hawaii. You can read the article here.

Run Lola Run is directed by Tom Tykwer (Germany), also the director of Perfume the movie. This movie largely shows a woman with the weird red hairdo running. That’s Lola. She runs and runs and runs. Nah, but it’s obviously more interesting that it sounds. It shows how little tiny things in life and a split of a second could change everything. One of my mom’s favorite movie. She kept telling me about it for a few years until I finally watched it a month ago.

While we talk about movie, I just watched the Freedom Writers movie, which was taken from the Freedom Writers Diary book. It’s a true story about a young teacher who teaches this class full of “challenging” students with painful background and from dangerous environment. A lot of race and culture issues, gangs and teenage problems. The movie is really good, so I’m not sure if I’d read the book. First I was worried that it was just gonna be another Dangerous Minds movie, but it’s not. It felt far more real and definitely less Hollywood-y. Also it’s played by the awesome Hillary Swank, can’t complain :). It’s a touching movie that’s worth watching.

The Freedom Writers Diary : How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them is one the books that has been banned in US. On the book cover is Erin Gruwell herself, the idealistic teacher that has brought everyone together. In the extras of the DVD, there’s the making of the movie with Erin and it also shows the real Freedom Writers, the original class where everything began. Cool stuff. Has anybody read the book? What do you think? If you’ve watched the movie, how do you compare it with the movie?

Reading wise, I just started the Complete Maus yesterday night. Some of the translations do annoy me a bit. There are some plain grammar and spelling mistakes. Seeing how I’m into graphic novels these days (just finished The Sandman vol 1 too!), I might as well join the graphic novel challenge. Yes I will. Official post soon will be posted.