All Night ♪

I love it like crazy !! Check it!

14 Kilometers

Only 14 kilometers between African continent and European continent. (Tangier in Morocco and Algeciras in Spain).
But it's technically farther than literally it is for African people trying to move to Europe, sometimes illegally.
This is a story telling that reality.

A teenage girl in Mari, who is being faced with an arranged marriage with an old man.
She decides to run off to a faraway place.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Niger, a skilled soccer player tries his future as a football player in Europe.

They come together on their way, but seperate during the way of transafrica to North.
Fnally they reunite and reach Europe.

But you have to know the truth that they're only two luckiest persons among who have the same goal as them.


The final scene is, police passes by without noticing them when they're hiding in the bush.

Although they could get over this time around, you could easily imagine they're gonna confront another tense moment or harsh reality anytime soon...

There's one quote from the movie to describe how difficult for them to immigrate illegally to Europe.

"If you could move to Europe by illegitimate way, you could definitely change your own country you're living in."

I think I'm on it.

No matter how much other countries offer help financially , physically or whatever, ultimately it's only people living there that can change the country.

A book above takes Japan and Korea as examples.

Japan is the only country to be attacked by atomic bombs.

But look at its high-speed growth era in 60's.

Korea, they were once converted to Japanese. Now they have Samsung and LG rule the world.

Therefore, according to the book, colonial history can't be the reason for struggling to grow.

We might be able to "help" them to grow, but we can't make them grow...

One Love Festival

It was miserable rainy the day before the event.
But it totally cleared up on "the" day. Maybe JAH did for us...
Under the beautiful sun, almost no clouds in the sky as far as I remembered, I was headed to One Love Festival.

After a hanging around the venue a little, we settled down in front of the stage in the shade of some trees.
The Sun started scorching here Yoyogi park, which was partly not good for your skin, but partly good. You can fantasize yourself just as being in Jamaica.
Actually, the sun in Jamaica was so strong. I almost heard my arms being blazed just like grilled chicken or something, even though I put lots of protection on them.

Listening to off-beat reggae sounds by indies or unsigned bands with Red Stripe and Jamaican soul food, jerk chicken, I noticed my eye were watering, missing Jamaica so much.

I didn't know how much I miss that island. Or Was I just being too emotional?? My little sis says it's definetely the latter. As you might know, I've been to many countries, relatively "many" , but no country never made me so sentimental. You'll see how it goes from now on...

Not that big, but there was a sound system there. It seemed people were coming together in the front of this, like being lured by the sound. They desperately needed nice riddim and nice vibes.

Having say that, they were clearly the most popular. No doubt about it. Gals and rudy raggamuffins came to shake hands with them or take some pics with them...

This elderly couple made all of surroudings happy. Just watching them dance without any camera-shiness was so peaceful. Respect !!

I'm not sure about what it was like on the second day. At least on the first day, Bob's songs were not played so often. I wanted to listen to his songs by a gigantic sound system. This is the only thing I was disappointed with.

Overall, I was soooo irie.

Sunshine Cleaning

I've wanted to watch this and it's like "finally".
As some of producers involved in "Little Miss Sunshine" as well, these two are quite similar.
Nope, more similar than I thought when I saw the trailer.

In both films, they live in Albuquerque.
And it's self-explanatory that "sunshine" is included in each title.
But it's OK. It was enjoyable enough...

Rose is a thirty-something single mother who works as a house cleaning lady.
She is having a dead-end affair with a married cop, who is her high school sweetheart.

One day, her son is kicked out of the school just for weird behavior, so Rose has to earn more money to send him to private school.
Then she decides to take a suggestion from her married lover, which he'd like to call lucrative.
It's cleanup company focuses on crime scene, such as suicide or death that go undiscovered for a while and so on.

Rose has a little sister, Norah who can't hold down a job. Mayne she's simply said to be a NEET at this day and age.

She convinces her to join the business. They prepare hardware they'll need and things are getting better when Norah carelessly triggers a fire at a house she's asked to do the job by herself. Rose has something else that she desperately has to take care of for herself.

The house is burned down and they lose everything they have established. But sisters can resume the business thanks to who... You'll see when you watch it.

One-armed hardware store owner. I kinda like his role. He's not a talkative person at all, but he's genuinely warmhearted.

Needless to say, I love Aran Arkin. He's one of my favorite actors !!

Caramel Ribbon

This is my mom's horse, Caramel Ribbon ♪

She can respond when called, like "buhihi".

She's still a young gal. She's been schooled.

Volver

Since awarded not only as a film per se, but also Penelope Cruz as a best actress, I've seen quite a publicity here and there before actually watching.

It made me feel it was just about an intimate relationship between a mother and a daughter.

I almost thought it would bring you a brand-new Almodovar's world.

Actually, at the very beginning, one of main characters claims that she saw a woman that is techinically impossible. Because she's been dead for a long time.

I've never hunched that things would revolve around a issue of being visible or invisible, just like SF or ghost thing or something, but at least, it's truth that I simply sensed something different from his other movies.

But I figured out soon that the story was not going on as I first guessed when I watched one second scene of a father taking a glance of her daughter sitting down on the sofa rudely with her legs widely spread... Here you go...

Almodovar is Aldmodovar, you know what I mean.

Then his world starts.

At the end, the mother and the daughter, who had been mentally and physically estranged, reunits.

In this way, the publicity tells the truth.

But my focus was a diversity of vigorous women in the film and their bond.

Raimunda (Penelope Cruz) handles a restaurant without a decent permission of a property owner, at where she put her husband's corpse behind in the fridge.

When she dumps the huge professional-use refrigerator with the remains inside, it's all women living neighborhood helps her this heavy-lifting.

When she has to prepare loads of meals for a big party at the restaurant with a short notice, she gets ingredient from neighboring women.

It seems the smartest and fastest way in the land and they all agree to barter with her.

Meanwhile, men are portrayed as quite opposite creature.

They're all bustards, like trying to do incest or having an affair with someone very close...

There are some I don't quite understand what Almodovar's trying to express, but this "Volver" was not one of them, luckily:-)

Putting the plotline side, the screen was always vivid and full of bright colors.

Women never wear dark-colored cloth and I love that !!

Towards Zero

If there was only specific reason that I turned to this film, it's definitely Melvil Poupaud.
He's one of my favorites after " Time to Leave".

I've been aware of that, but I hadn't given any attention to the fact this was originally from Agatha Christie's novel.
But the truth is, after watching this, I made a mad dash to the library to look for the book.
It was gripping and a pagetuner.

Unintentionally, this movie, precisely to say, it's Melvil, brought me the first experience of Agatha, which might be a bit late ;-)
Anyway, I like the way of expanding my intellectual world like this.