September 14, 2009

EVENING

...... EVENING

The film alternates between two time periods, the 1950s and the present, in which a dying Ann Grant Lord reflects on her past. Her confusing comments about people she never mentioned before leave her daughters, reserved Constance and restless Nina, wondering if their mother is delusional.

As a young woman in her early twenties,
cabaret singer Ann arrives at the spacious Newport, Rhode Island home of her best friend Lila Wittenborn, who is on the verge of getting married. Lila's brother (and Ann's college friend) Buddy introduces her to Harris Arden, the son of a former family servant. Buddy tells Ann his sister always has adored Harris, and expresses his concern that she's marrying another man out of a sense of duty rather than love. Inebriated, Buddy passes out, and as Ann and Harris chat they find themselves bonding.

On Lila's wedding day, she confesses to Ann she confronted Harris with her feelings for him and he rebuffed her, so she goes along with the ceremony as planned. At the reception, at Lila's request, Ann sings a song and is joined on stage by Harris. Afterwards Buddy, drunk again, confronts the two about their growing closeness and kisses Harris. As Lila prepares to depart with her new husband, Ann offers to take the bride away with her, but Lila refuses and leaves for her honeymoon.

Buddy admits to Ann he's had a crush on Harris since his childhood, though he also claims not to be "that way" -- he denies that this would be okay as Ann assures him. He then changes the subject, confessing he has loved Ann ever since their college days, offering as proof a note she once sent him he has kept in his pocket ever since. Ann later expresses her anger at him for repressing his sexual orientation by building her up as his true love. She and Harris slip off to his secret hideaway, where the two make love.

Buddy, in search of the couple, stumbles into the road and is hit by a car. His friends find him, but too late to save his life. The following morning, Ann and Harris, oblivious to what transpired the night before, jokingly consider sailing away, but at the Wittenborn house they hear the tragic news.

In the present day, Lila arrives at Ann's bedside to comfort her and reminisce. Ann recalls a day when she ran into Harris in the street in
New York City. By then, she was a wedding singer, unhappily married with two young daughters, on the verge of moving to Los Angeles, and he was married with a son. He intimated he still loved her before the two exchanged cordial goodbyes.

As Lila leaves, she tells Nina about Harris and reassures her that her mother did not make any mistakes in her life. Nina sits with Ann, who encourages her daughter to have a happy life. Nina finally musters up the courage to tell her boyfriend Luc she is pregnant with their child. An ecstatic Luc proudly announces the news to Constance and promises he always will be there for Nina. Their joy is interrupted by Ann's nurse, who urges the women to rush to their mother's bedside to bid her farewell.

CROSSING OVER

Lagi lagi nonton ... yah hampir setiap week-end aku pasti ada jadwal nonton ... Kali ini aku nonton film CROSSING OVER dan ....

After immigrant Mireya Sanchez is deported, officer Max Brogan takes care of her little son, and brings him to the boy's grandparents in Mexico. Later the woman is found dead near the border. Brogan returns to the grandparents to tell the bad news.

Cole Frankel, a corrupt immigration officer, makes a deal with Australian immigrant Claire Shepard: he can have unlimited sex with her for two months, then she gets a
green card. In the course of the two months he separates from his wife and wants to make the relationship with Shepard one of love, but she declines. He exempts her from completing the two months and arranges the green card. However, authorities find out and arrest him and Shepard is deported. His wife Denise Frankel adopts a little girl from Nigeria, who has already been in the detention center several years.

Brogan has an Iranian colleague, Hamid Baraheri. Hamid's family disapproves of his sister having sex with a married man. Encouraged by his father his brother plans to beat them up, but he ends up killing them, and is arrested.

Asian teenager Yong Kim, who is about to be naturalized, reluctantly participates in a robbery with four others. Hamid kills the four but lets him go. He lies to the authorities that there were only four robbers.

Gavin Kossef, a young British immigrant, pretends to be Jewish, to get a job at a Jewish school, which allows him to stay in the U.S. In a test where he has to demonstrate his familiarity with the Jewish religion he does not perform properly, but a rabbi asked to assess it approves it, so that the immigrant passes the test. After the test, in private, the rabbi requires from the immigrant to take lessons from him to eliminate the deficiencies in his knowledge.

Taslima Jahangir, a 15-year-old girl from Bangladesh, presents a paper at school promoting that people should try to understand the 9/11 hijackers. The school principal reports this to authorities. She is not charged for this, but it turns out that her parents and she are illegally in the U.S. One parent of choice can stay with the girl's two younger siblings, who are U.S. citizens because they were born in the U.S., the girl has to leave with the other parent to Bangladesh, even though she has lived there only until she was three. She leaves with her mother, and cannot even say goodbye to her father.





September 07, 2009

THE HANGOVER

Kalo minggu lalu, aku lewati tanpa nonton ... tapi tidak dengan minggu ini ... Yah aku dan temenku sempet nonton THE HANGOVER ... sekalian bukan puasa ...
Awalnya dia gak suka aku ajak nonton film ini ... dia tanya "ceritanya tentang apa sih?" ... huhhhh kalo dia tanya begitu, itu tanda dia gak suka ... tapi gak tau gimana, akhirnya dia mau juga tuh ... dan aku perhatiin dia cukup menikmati filmnya kok ... walaupun agak2 ngantuk nontonnya ... he he he ...

Doug (Justin Bartha) is about to be married to Tracy (Sasha Barrese), and his friends — Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), and soon-to-be brother-in-law Alan (Zach Galifianakis) — take him to Las Vegas for a bachelor party. Tracy's father lends them his car, a vintage Mercedes convertible for the trip. The four get a suite at Caesar's Palace hotel and casino, then sneak onto the roof and toast to the night ahead. The next morning, the three groomsmen wake up in the suite with no memory of the previous night, and realize that Doug is missing. Clues abound: the suite is in severe disorder, a tiger is in the bathroom, a baby is in the closet, Stu is missing a tooth, one of the suite's mattresses is impaled on a statue outside, Phil is wearing a hospital bracelet, Stu has an $800 ATM receipt, and a valet brings them a stolen police cruiser they dropped off the night before.

While retracing their steps, a doctor at the hospital informs them that they had traces of
roofies in their blood, explaining their memory loss, and that they came from a wedding. They find the chapel, and learn that Stu, despite planning to propose to his controlling girlfriend Melissa, married a stripper named Jade (Heather Graham), the mother of the baby in the closet. The men visit her apartment and return the baby, but are taken by surprise and arrested for stealing the police cruiser. Phil negotiates their release in exchange for the three groomsmen "volunteering" as targets for a taser demonstration. They then retrieve the Mercedes from an impound lot and discover a naked Asian man in the trunk. The man attacks them and runs away, and Alan admits to spiking their drinks the night before with what he thought was ecstasy, but realizes the drug dealer must have sold him roofies instead. They return to the hotel and find former boxing champion Mike Tyson in their room, who was looking for his stolen tiger. Tyson knocks out Alan and orders them to return the pet to his mansion. They drug the tiger with roofies and transport it in the Mercedes, but before they reach Tyson's mansion, it wakes up and destroys the car's interior. Tyson plays security footage of the groomsmen's activities from the night before in an effort to help them locate Doug.

Resuming their search, the three are confronted by the thugs, who, as it turns out, are led by the naked man they found in the trunk of their car, Leslie Chow. According to Chow, the groomsmen have $80,000 of his money, which they accidentally took the night before. Chow demands it back in exchange for Doug, whom he has kidnapped. Unable to find the money, Alan uses his knowledge of
card counting to win it playing blackjack. The money is repaid, but Chow had kidnapped a different Doug, who turns out to be the drug dealer who sold Alan the roofies. After a conversation with the Doug the drug dealer, Stu remembers that hotel windows do not open in Las Vegas, and deduces that the mattress on the statue must have been thrown from the roof, and therefore they must have locked a sleeping Doug on the roof as a prank. Rushing back to the hotel, they find him with less than four hours before the wedding. Stu and Jade agree that they cannot remain married, but promise to meet the following weekend to see what develops between them. Jade also reveals that Stu had pulled out his own tooth on a dare from Alan. As they rush home and make it to the wedding, Doug discovers he has Chow's $80,000 worth of casino chips in his pockets. Doug marries Tracy, and Stu breaks up with Melissa. As the reception ends, Alan reveals a digital camera he discovered in the back seat of the Mercedes chronicling the events they were unable to remember, and the four agree to look at the pictures only one time before destroying the evidence.


September 02, 2009

KISAH KD DAN AKU

Beberapa hari belakangan ini ... gak di tivi, gak di koran, gak di tabloid, gak di majalah, gak di internet ... semua rame membahas masalah perceraian KD & Anang ... Buat sebagian orang, berita perceraian ini, mungkin mengejutkan ... tapi sebagain lagi, mungkin tidak ...

Walopun kehidupan KD tidak mempengaruhi kehidupanku tapi ada satu moment dalam hidupku yang bersinggungan dengan KD .... yaitu aku pernah mengawali suatu hubungan dengan seseorang dengan menonton konser KD ber-sama2 ...

Aku inget banget, waktu itu konsernya diadakan di salah satu kafe di Jalan Gatot Subroto ... konser itu ramenya luar biasa ... maklumlah KD di masa itu sedang berada di puncak kariernya ... dan kebetulan badanku mungil alias gak tinggi ... di belakang pula dapetnya ... komplet kan? ... Rupanya temenku sangat ngeh dengan kondisi ini ... dia tanya "kelihatan gak?" ... aku jawab "gak" ... lalu diangkatlah aku sama temenku itu .. dan di-dudukkanlah aku di meja bar ... jadi aku bisa liat KD yang lagi tampil ...

Tapi sayang hubunganku dengan dia hanya berjalan ± 3 tahun ... sedangan KD & Anang kalo gak salah ± 13 tahun ...

Kenapa aku bilang bersinggungan dengan KD? ... Karena pada saat itu, aku dan KD sedang ada ikatan dengan seorang lelaki yang sekarang sudah tidak ada hubungan lagi, tentunya dengan status yang berbeda, KD & Anang suami istri, sedangkan aku & dia pacaran ...