Film & BooksIssue: Aquarius 07
The Pursuit of Happyness
What happens when the struggle to make ends meet requires more resources than you had planned for? “The Pursuit of Happyness” is the true story of Chris Gardner, a husband and a father who finds himself reaching for his dreams while his home and his family crumbles beneath him. Played by Will Smith and Will’s real-life son, Jaden Smith, this film is not only about family and difficult financial situations, it is also about the incredible stretch between the rich and the poor in large American cities.
Written by Steven Conrad and directed by Gabriele Muccino, “The Pursuit of Happyness” is set in San Francisco in the early 1980s. This was the era of Reaganomics and the Rubik’s Cube. Chris Gardner is a charismatic yet unsuccessful salesman without a college degree who has spent the entire family savings on bone scanners that doctors don’t really want. His wife, who has had enough of working double shifts and living paycheck to paycheck has lost her patience with Chris and his new dream to become a stock broker. When his wife finally leaves, Chris begs her not to take his son because he swore he would never be an absent father like his own. As Chris continues to pursue his dream by taking an unpaid internship at a brokerage firm, the scanners run out and so does the money. He suddenly finds himself homeless with a small child at the same time that he is courting some of the richest investors in San Francisco.
Will Smith is so convincing and likable (as usual) in this role, that it is easy to forgive some of Chris Gardner’s crummy behavior. And, Jaden Smith is equally convincing as a bewildered yet sweet little boy who tries to maintain a stiff upper lip. I highly recommend this film for the performances as well as for the reality check it offers about home and family and how things can fall apart. 
Film & Books Archives (total entries: 29)
Capricorn 08 - The Career Issue
Sagittarius 08 & Honest Self Expression
Like real life-families who have a member struggling with drug or alcohol addiction, the focus of “Rachel Getting Married” isn’t on Rachel, even though it should be. It is on her narcissistic sister, Kym, who is out of rehab for the weekend to attend Rachel’s wedding.
Scorpio 08 - The Money Issue
At a time when our nation’s security is in question and our economy is in shambles “The Good Society: The Humane Agenda” by John Kenneth Galbraith has much to teach the abiding liberal as well as the dutiful conservative.
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.
Based on Marjane Satrapi's books, the film “Persepolis” tells the poignant story of a young girl coming of age in Iran in the midst of revolution and war.
