Film & BooksIssue: Pisces 08
Persepolis
Based on Marjane Satrapi's books, the film “Persepolis” tells the poignant story of young Marjane coming of age in Iran in the midst of the Islamic Revolution and the Iran/Iraq war. Like the books, her story of female strength comes to life in simple black and white drawings, artistically choreographed into motion on the screen.
It is clear from the beginning that little Marjane is strong-willed, confident, and independent. Her well-educated, left-leaning parents encourage her to be herself and her feminist Grandmother provides no-nonsense guidance throughout the film. Needless to say, the whole family suffers immensely under the new Islamic regime. Forced to wear a head scarf and endure the torture and deaths of family members and friends, Marjane cannot help but speak out to her teachers about the injustice.
Fearing for her safety, her parents send her to Vienna at the age of 13. There she experiences the exhilaration of freedom mixed with the loneliness of alienation in European society. After a sudden break-up with her first love, Marjane sinks quickly into despair and total isolation and reluctantly returns home to Tehran and her family.
“Persepolis” succeeds not only in warmly recounting Marjane’s dilemma between personal freedom and the comfort of home and family but also in bringing to life for westerners the political history of Iran through her personal stories. Conveyed simply through an immensely enjoyable and innovative form of animation, “Persepolis” is a charming story of strength and resilience in the black-and-white world of religious intolerance.
Now the French selection for Best Foreign Language Film at the upcoming Academy Awards, I highly suggest seeing “Persepolis” on the big screen. (Written and directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, in French, with English subtitles.) 
Film & Books Archives (total entries: 28)
Sagittarius 08 & Honest Self Expression
Scorpio 08 - The Money Issue
Honestly, I have never been one for self-help books, but what I liked most about "How We Choose to Be Happy" is that it celebrates the wisdom of a variety of literary greats balanced by the stories of ordinary people.
This book won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction for good reason. I started the “The Great Man” on Saturday morning and had to finish it by lunch the next day. When it started to rain I traded my lawn chair for the couch and kept on reading. This novel is fabulously funny, mischievous, and easy to read.
A quirky look at boyhood and film-making in the 1980s, “Son of Rambow” is a welcome diversion from the current deluge of blockbuster remakes and super hero epics in theaters this summer. Written and directed by Garth Jennings and produced by Nick Goldsmith, I like the way this film spins a standard, winning movie formula at a slightly awkward angle.
Although “The Maytrees” by Annie Dillard is marketed as a novel, it reads from beginning to end as a poem. Like body surfing, the poetry will move emotions in directions that the mind may not understand. When this wave brought me to shore, I needed air and I wasn’t quite certain where I had been or where I had landed, but I was, in the truest sense of the word, in awe of the experience I just had.
April and May are notoriously bad months to go to the movies. The Academy Award hopefuls of 2008 won't be released until the fall, and the summer blockbusters won't be out for a few months. So what is a film reviewer to do when all the movies in the theaters are lame? This reviewer is going to suggest that you catch up on the best movies of 2007!
After an unsuccessful attempt to climb K2, Greg Mortenson stumbled into the village of Korphe in Pakistan’s Karakoram Himalaya region. The generosity and hospitality of the Korphe villagers inspired Mortenson to establish the Central Asia Institute (CAI). Since the establishment of CAI ten years ago, the organization has built 55 schools serving Pakistan and Afghanistan’s poorest children, especially girls.
This book grabs the reality of life with two hands and shakes it upside down. Those who appear to be physically beautiful and those whose eloquence is often over-beautified, are the most repulsive characters. “On Beauty” is about being real, about dealing with life, and about the need to reexamine what “living” really means.
