Sunday, December 28, 2003

Yea, the comments box is back! I saw House of Sand and Fog last night. It was a nice movie, very tragic and emotional. Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly were superb. If they don't at least get Oscar nominations, they were robbed. Kingsley's accent was right on and he spoke Farsi pretty well. Connelly was so beautiful and could say so much with her eyes. You genuinely felt sorry for her. While I loved Shohreh Aghdashloo in Maryam, I did not like her so much in this movie. Her grammar was so bad, it made me wonder if that was because of the script or her. It seemed when she spoke Farsi in the film, she was a better actress. Of course, she just won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress for this role, so an Oscar nomination may not be that far behind. She is getting a lot of good buzz. I think she deserves it more because I've seen her grow as an actress from pre-Revolution Iranian cinema to Iranian-American satirical plays she's written w/ her very funny husband to variety show hostess and finally, starring in American films like Maryam and House of Sand and Fog. A pleasant surprise in the film was when Andy sings at the wedding in the beginning. He's a great Persian singer that everyone loves. There were some set directing issues, like women wearing saris at the wedding and some Pakistani decorations in a Persian home, which were a little distracting, but they weren't a big deal. All in all a great film, I give it 3 stars.

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