Buon giorno, ragazzi!
Check out my latest article on Shoutmouth: http://www.shoutmouth.com/index.php/news/25707
- TangoDiva
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
A-Ha Article
Bonjour, mes amis --
I have yet another article on Shoutmouth: http://www.shoutmouth.com/index.php/news/25175.
- TangoDiva
I have yet another article on Shoutmouth: http://www.shoutmouth.com/index.php/news/25175.
- TangoDiva
Sunday, August 19, 2007
The Little Bosta That Could
Hello, all --
I wrote this review a while ago regarding DC's annual Arabian Sights Film Festival for a magazine, but the editor kept putting off publication until -- after a display of much patience -- I pulled the article and am now self-publishing it, so to speak, in this blog.
"A Lebanese musical – this should be interesting," smirks the young American woman in the row behind me. A diverse audience, including African-Americans, Anglo-Saxons, Asians, and, naturally enough, Arabs, has packed into the modest, somewhat Art Deco-inspired AMC Loews Theater to watch Bosta (2005), one of several films in the lineup of DC’s 11th annual Arabian Sights Film Festival (Oct. 27-Nov. 5). As quoted on the organization’s official website, festival director Shirin Ghareeb explains that the event was arranged in order to "heighten added interest and awareness of Arab film," and to "emphasize the diversity, creativity and artistic expression which is evident in all these exceptional films." Some of the films included are Beur, Blanc, Rouge (France/Algeria); The Night Baghdad Fell (Egypt); Ahlaam (Iraq/UK/Netherlands); and Waiting (Palestine/France).
Bosta traces the trials and triumphs of "DIGI Dabké," a Lebanese troupe, as they wend their way to Baalbeck in the hope of performing their modern version of the traditional stomping dance, the dabké, at the region’s famous international arts festival. The film forces the Lebanese to take a look at what they were, what they have become, and asks them what they choose to be.
The opening scene introduces us to the bosta, or autobus, whose stalled engine creates a traffic jam. The scene features – among others -- a mustachioed, olive-skinned driver, who, like any self-respecting Lebanese road-rager, yells, "Arrib, ya hhmar" (move up, you ass), a line which prompts laughter from the audience. In fact, writer-director Philippe Aractingi’s typically Lebanese one-liners and dry cynicism tickle these multicultural movie-goers throughout the duration of the film.
Laughter, for the Lebanese, is a part of life, and a necessary one, at that. Humor and a sort of relentless, willful joie de vivre is what helped the Lebanese face the emotional and physical ruin brought on by the civil war. This wreckage is simply, yet effectively encapsulated in one of the film’s early scenes, in which Kamal Maffousse (Rodney Al Haddad) revisits his father’s Utopia College of Aley and soberly drinks in its pitiful remains.
There, he discovers Naim (Mahmoud Mabsout), along with the 1943 bosta, which has been left completely intact, untouched by the war, much like the Lebanese spirit and willpower which keeps them laughing, singing, and, quite literally, dancing through life.
Traveling by bosta, the actors and audience are treated to some rare scenes of Lebanon’s natural beauty which stand in stark contrast to the hole-ridden buildings constituting M. Maffousse’s decimated Utopia. Indeed, the cinematography is one of Bosta’s stronger points. The vibrant greenery, graceful hillsides, majestic cedars, and seemingly architected bodies of water are captured with a limpid simplicity and reverence by Director of Photography Garry Turnbull.
Turnbull makes use of many different types of imagery, and while this leads to some overkill, it is nonetheless effective. A blend of realism, surrealism, linear action, and flashbacks, the film illustrates that past, present, and future are inevitably enmeshed ("Our future is who we are/our past remains part of us," goes the concluding song).
The use of exaggerated make-up, caricature, and archetype is all too strongly reminiscent of Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom, in which rigid fogyish older men butt heads with free-thinking ambitious young bloods. While the parallel is too blatant and clumsy to be classified as a clever homage to Luhrmann’s film, the dialogue sets it apart from its predecessor, making it distinctly Lebanese, both culturally, and in terms of its own particular, idiomatic significance. "No Lebanese speaks Arabic anymore. All our girls are blonde," complains the aptly named president of the Concours National de Dabké, M. Mahfouz (preserved) Barakat. The audience laughs, and so do I.
The work of composer Vangelis would seem to be another influence on Bosta, this time in relation to the film score (Ali El Khatib, Simon Emmerson, Martin Russell). Certain moments in the score create an atmosphere of dismal disembodiment, hearkening back to the synthesized soundtrack Vangelis wrote for Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner.
Bosta also borrows from the traditions of the Bollywood musical in which the actors launch into song and dance numbers for apparently very little or no reason. Bosta’s routines, while motivated, are only tenuously so, and while this may prove irritating only to fans of Western musicals, our Indian brethren would undoubtedly blink in confusion at these musical moments’ lack of splash and intricacy. Furthermore, the sound editing has been poorly realized, the numbers’ in-studio acoustical quality failing to correspond with the actors’ outdoor environments.
Partial blame for this disconnect must be assigned to some of the actors themselves, who often only take into account the lip-synching aspect of the dubbing process without paying much attention to the fact that singing also involves the use of the throat and breathing mechanism. In fact, the performances in this film are largely amateurish and often self-conscious. That being said, all of the actors essentially possess their own charisma, in addition to a natural Mediterranean passion and emotiveness that renders them interesting and magnetic.
The most talented actress of the bunch is the beautiful Nadine Labaki, who plays Kamal’s love interest, Alia. Understated, yet emotional, tender, honest, strong, and thoroughly likable, Labaki has us in her corner throughout the piece as we witness her struggling with her feelings for the fickle, but ultimately noble, Kamal. Liliane Nemri’s loyal and decidedly uninhibited Arzé carries much of the movie and often, the dance troupe, with her good-natured brand of sarcasm, positive thinking, and lovable goofiness. This point is not surprising when one considers that her name means "cedar," the evergreen symbol of Lebanon. While Nada Abou Farhat (Vola), Rodney Al Haddad (Kamal), and Rana Alamudin Karam (Isabelle) are capable and show much promise, their raw talents have yet to be refined and channeled with more precision.
Despite many weak performances and the film’s overly ambitious tendency to do too much and be too much, with its awkward genre-blending and film-school technicality, Bosta does have its triumphs in cinematography and performance.
The movie is filled with moments that are sublime, tender, genuinely funny, and its theme is noble and sincere; its heart is in the right place. Through its concluding joyous, freestyle dabké, Philippe Aractingi offers the hope that Lebanon can change for the better -- one step at a time. Bosta’s own determination and pluck is apparent in its having vied for a place amongst the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film, though ultimately, the movie failed to win a spot amongst the five contenders for this year’s Oscars.
As the final scene fades, the audience, a cross-section of all ages and cultures, responds to the movie with applause, solid, though brief. Perhaps after glimpsing the rich tragicomedy that is Lebanese life, some perceptions have changed. Perhaps Bosta, as art, is a vehicle through which perceptions may continue to change – one audience at a time. Perhaps, in time, Bosta will prove to be the "little engine that could."
I wrote this review a while ago regarding DC's annual Arabian Sights Film Festival for a magazine, but the editor kept putting off publication until -- after a display of much patience -- I pulled the article and am now self-publishing it, so to speak, in this blog.
"A Lebanese musical – this should be interesting," smirks the young American woman in the row behind me. A diverse audience, including African-Americans, Anglo-Saxons, Asians, and, naturally enough, Arabs, has packed into the modest, somewhat Art Deco-inspired AMC Loews Theater to watch Bosta (2005), one of several films in the lineup of DC’s 11th annual Arabian Sights Film Festival (Oct. 27-Nov. 5). As quoted on the organization’s official website, festival director Shirin Ghareeb explains that the event was arranged in order to "heighten added interest and awareness of Arab film," and to "emphasize the diversity, creativity and artistic expression which is evident in all these exceptional films." Some of the films included are Beur, Blanc, Rouge (France/Algeria); The Night Baghdad Fell (Egypt); Ahlaam (Iraq/UK/Netherlands); and Waiting (Palestine/France).
Bosta traces the trials and triumphs of "DIGI Dabké," a Lebanese troupe, as they wend their way to Baalbeck in the hope of performing their modern version of the traditional stomping dance, the dabké, at the region’s famous international arts festival. The film forces the Lebanese to take a look at what they were, what they have become, and asks them what they choose to be.
The opening scene introduces us to the bosta, or autobus, whose stalled engine creates a traffic jam. The scene features – among others -- a mustachioed, olive-skinned driver, who, like any self-respecting Lebanese road-rager, yells, "Arrib, ya hhmar" (move up, you ass), a line which prompts laughter from the audience. In fact, writer-director Philippe Aractingi’s typically Lebanese one-liners and dry cynicism tickle these multicultural movie-goers throughout the duration of the film.
Laughter, for the Lebanese, is a part of life, and a necessary one, at that. Humor and a sort of relentless, willful joie de vivre is what helped the Lebanese face the emotional and physical ruin brought on by the civil war. This wreckage is simply, yet effectively encapsulated in one of the film’s early scenes, in which Kamal Maffousse (Rodney Al Haddad) revisits his father’s Utopia College of Aley and soberly drinks in its pitiful remains.
There, he discovers Naim (Mahmoud Mabsout), along with the 1943 bosta, which has been left completely intact, untouched by the war, much like the Lebanese spirit and willpower which keeps them laughing, singing, and, quite literally, dancing through life.
Traveling by bosta, the actors and audience are treated to some rare scenes of Lebanon’s natural beauty which stand in stark contrast to the hole-ridden buildings constituting M. Maffousse’s decimated Utopia. Indeed, the cinematography is one of Bosta’s stronger points. The vibrant greenery, graceful hillsides, majestic cedars, and seemingly architected bodies of water are captured with a limpid simplicity and reverence by Director of Photography Garry Turnbull.
Turnbull makes use of many different types of imagery, and while this leads to some overkill, it is nonetheless effective. A blend of realism, surrealism, linear action, and flashbacks, the film illustrates that past, present, and future are inevitably enmeshed ("Our future is who we are/our past remains part of us," goes the concluding song).
The use of exaggerated make-up, caricature, and archetype is all too strongly reminiscent of Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom, in which rigid fogyish older men butt heads with free-thinking ambitious young bloods. While the parallel is too blatant and clumsy to be classified as a clever homage to Luhrmann’s film, the dialogue sets it apart from its predecessor, making it distinctly Lebanese, both culturally, and in terms of its own particular, idiomatic significance. "No Lebanese speaks Arabic anymore. All our girls are blonde," complains the aptly named president of the Concours National de Dabké, M. Mahfouz (preserved) Barakat. The audience laughs, and so do I.
The work of composer Vangelis would seem to be another influence on Bosta, this time in relation to the film score (Ali El Khatib, Simon Emmerson, Martin Russell). Certain moments in the score create an atmosphere of dismal disembodiment, hearkening back to the synthesized soundtrack Vangelis wrote for Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner.
Bosta also borrows from the traditions of the Bollywood musical in which the actors launch into song and dance numbers for apparently very little or no reason. Bosta’s routines, while motivated, are only tenuously so, and while this may prove irritating only to fans of Western musicals, our Indian brethren would undoubtedly blink in confusion at these musical moments’ lack of splash and intricacy. Furthermore, the sound editing has been poorly realized, the numbers’ in-studio acoustical quality failing to correspond with the actors’ outdoor environments.
Partial blame for this disconnect must be assigned to some of the actors themselves, who often only take into account the lip-synching aspect of the dubbing process without paying much attention to the fact that singing also involves the use of the throat and breathing mechanism. In fact, the performances in this film are largely amateurish and often self-conscious. That being said, all of the actors essentially possess their own charisma, in addition to a natural Mediterranean passion and emotiveness that renders them interesting and magnetic.
The most talented actress of the bunch is the beautiful Nadine Labaki, who plays Kamal’s love interest, Alia. Understated, yet emotional, tender, honest, strong, and thoroughly likable, Labaki has us in her corner throughout the piece as we witness her struggling with her feelings for the fickle, but ultimately noble, Kamal. Liliane Nemri’s loyal and decidedly uninhibited Arzé carries much of the movie and often, the dance troupe, with her good-natured brand of sarcasm, positive thinking, and lovable goofiness. This point is not surprising when one considers that her name means "cedar," the evergreen symbol of Lebanon. While Nada Abou Farhat (Vola), Rodney Al Haddad (Kamal), and Rana Alamudin Karam (Isabelle) are capable and show much promise, their raw talents have yet to be refined and channeled with more precision.
Despite many weak performances and the film’s overly ambitious tendency to do too much and be too much, with its awkward genre-blending and film-school technicality, Bosta does have its triumphs in cinematography and performance.
The movie is filled with moments that are sublime, tender, genuinely funny, and its theme is noble and sincere; its heart is in the right place. Through its concluding joyous, freestyle dabké, Philippe Aractingi offers the hope that Lebanon can change for the better -- one step at a time. Bosta’s own determination and pluck is apparent in its having vied for a place amongst the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film, though ultimately, the movie failed to win a spot amongst the five contenders for this year’s Oscars.
As the final scene fades, the audience, a cross-section of all ages and cultures, responds to the movie with applause, solid, though brief. Perhaps after glimpsing the rich tragicomedy that is Lebanese life, some perceptions have changed. Perhaps Bosta, as art, is a vehicle through which perceptions may continue to change – one audience at a time. Perhaps, in time, Bosta will prove to be the "little engine that could."
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Two More Articles on Shoutmouth
Hello, everyone --
I've got two more articles on Shoutmouth. You can find them by clicking on the following links:
Dean Martin: http://www.shoutmouth.com/index.php/24694
John Legend: http://www.shoutmouth.com/index/php/news/24943
- Lisette, a.k.a. TangoDiva
I've got two more articles on Shoutmouth. You can find them by clicking on the following links:
Dean Martin: http://www.shoutmouth.com/index.php/24694
John Legend: http://www.shoutmouth.com/index/php/news/24943
- Lisette, a.k.a. TangoDiva
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Music News on Shoutmouth.com
Hello, all!
If you enjoyed my Pink Martini review, there's more where that came from! I somewhat recently wrote an article on Michael Buble's stint in NYC. If you'd like to read it, pls. go to http://www.shoutmouth.com/index.php/news/22927. The name I'm writing under is TangoDiva.
For all of your other music news needs, check out http://www.shoutmouth.com/. You can also get there by clicking on any of the sublinks in the Shoutmouth widget located on the lower left side of this blog.
- Lisette, a.k.a TangoDiva
If you enjoyed my Pink Martini review, there's more where that came from! I somewhat recently wrote an article on Michael Buble's stint in NYC. If you'd like to read it, pls. go to http://www.shoutmouth.com/index.php/news/22927. The name I'm writing under is TangoDiva.
For all of your other music news needs, check out http://www.shoutmouth.com/. You can also get there by clicking on any of the sublinks in the Shoutmouth widget located on the lower left side of this blog.
- Lisette, a.k.a TangoDiva
Friday, August 3, 2007
Pink Martini's HEY EUGENE!
Pink Martini's latest release, Hey Eugene!, is truly an international musical cocktail. A celebration of differing musical cultures, Eugene features songs in such disparate languages as Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Arabic.
"Tempo Perdido" is a hip-swaying, shoulder-shimmying song -- à la Rio de Janeiro -- with an unexpectedly tragic story. The track is a good example of the group's ability to juxtapose disparate elements with a result that is both mildly (and appropriately) jarring and finessed.
"Mar Desconocido," a melancholy but sparkling waltz, pays homage to both Latin and Classical genres with its Spanish lyrics and quotation of Chopin's "Waltz in C# Minor."
Breezy Latin rhythms meet dreamy French poetry in "Ojala." The group's penchant for layering is evident once again in this number. It is light and easygoing musically, but upon inspecting the lyrics, one discovers its underlying wistful sadness.
Lead vocalist China Forbes displays her innate comprehension of culture and musical styling in the Arabic-language "Bukra Wba'do." While her accent is a cross between Egyptian and American, it is charming, and she does hit some of the more difficult Arabic vowels and consonants with great accuracy. Further, her vocals indicate an understanding of Middle Eastern vocal production, ornamentation, and attitude.
One of Pink Martini's most sophisticated and all-embracing CDs, Hey Eugene! is as urbane as a Cosmopolitan and as warm as a bear-hug.
"Tempo Perdido" is a hip-swaying, shoulder-shimmying song -- à la Rio de Janeiro -- with an unexpectedly tragic story. The track is a good example of the group's ability to juxtapose disparate elements with a result that is both mildly (and appropriately) jarring and finessed.
"Mar Desconocido," a melancholy but sparkling waltz, pays homage to both Latin and Classical genres with its Spanish lyrics and quotation of Chopin's "Waltz in C# Minor."
Breezy Latin rhythms meet dreamy French poetry in "Ojala." The group's penchant for layering is evident once again in this number. It is light and easygoing musically, but upon inspecting the lyrics, one discovers its underlying wistful sadness.
Lead vocalist China Forbes displays her innate comprehension of culture and musical styling in the Arabic-language "Bukra Wba'do." While her accent is a cross between Egyptian and American, it is charming, and she does hit some of the more difficult Arabic vowels and consonants with great accuracy. Further, her vocals indicate an understanding of Middle Eastern vocal production, ornamentation, and attitude.
One of Pink Martini's most sophisticated and all-embracing CDs, Hey Eugene! is as urbane as a Cosmopolitan and as warm as a bear-hug.
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