Inside out: Portraits of children

This a complementary (rather short) documentary included in the ”Little Fugitive”-DVD I got, made by the same director, Joanna Lipper. The film presents the portraits of some children, boys and girls, roughly about 10-13 years old. They present themselves, and then talks about their lives, their dreams and goals in life and other things. It´s decently done, but was a bit slow and very conventional and a bit boring to watch. It caught my interest a few times though. If you compare to other documentaries, I would rather recommend for example ”Boy of Baghdad” or ”Chippendiddys”. Here are a few screenshots.

    

Ikarusvpn’s Disco – Dancing Time… Official Promo Video

The latest selfmade promo video for Ikarus´s blog – go here!

Stats Time!

 Thanks to my blog colegas, Skykid and Ikarus, I decided to try a whole new thing and let you know the secrets of the heart of my blog statistics. As you can see, you are not alone watching this blog, and it´s not bAd figures I think. This special friendship is purely based on our mutual interest in coming of age films, an interest that now is out of hand and has almost become an addiction or like a big bang love of my life. And some days with unusually good statistics I feel like the king of the hill, and this is all thanks to you, my readers, and you I love! To hope for much more comments is unfortunately like looking for miracles as it seems. But the most important thing is of course the genuine interest in the coming of age films, and I know that you stand by me in sharing this interest. But when I started this blog it was at first like an innocent experiment, and I had about 10 visitors a day, and now you don´t know how far it can go. Nobody knows. And I would like to thank everyone who leaves me comments, you´re my hero! In your absence blogging would be a bit boring. And I must also thank all the talented kids, both local boys from Europe like Danish Anton, French Jacquot, English Oliver Twist, Dutch de Witte van Sichem, Italian Acla, the German brothers Max and Moritz, and the boy who is living on the island of Bird street, as well as all the boys from other parts of the world, like the boy of Baghdad, the boy from Lebanon, the gypsy boy Mondo, Australian Fatty Finn, Maroccian boy Ali Zaoua, Joe the King, Robby, Philippinian Maximo Oliveros and the Brazilian street kid Pixote, for your excellent performances in all the good and sometimes crazy films. Many of you almost look as you would like to say : put the camera on me! You are natural talents, that make the audience glued to the screens. If I have forgotten to mention someone you may punish me. The themes in the films are of course coming of age, but there are very varied stories, some are about innocent voices that are abandoned by there parents, friends or society in general. Some are about adventures in the Amazon, on Grasshopper island, in the Russian Koktebel, or in American Rock Haven. Some are about street kids in Bombay or in Italy like Vito and the others, some even living in a greenhouse. These films are often about boys without destiny that are actually fateless. Some films are focusing more on the father and son relationship or other family problems you can encounter when you´re 15 or 12 and holding and when the heart is deceitful above all things. Ivan´s childhood is a story about children during wartime. He is the child I never was. Some films are blue, some are for a lost soldier coming with a flavor of corn. So which of all these films are the best? Even if I used the Swedish expression ole dole doff, I couldn´t say. And there are so many, and new ones are coming up all the time, so follow you follow me and you will be updated with new film reviews in this blog!

So here are the statistics!

Little Fugitive (2006)

Director: Joanna Lipper

Release year: 2006

Genre: Drama

Country: US

Awards: Certificate of excellence (Brooklyn International Film Festival)

Plot Summary: This is a remake of the film ”Little Fugitive” from 1953, directed by Joanna Lipper, who also directed the documentary ”Inside out: Portraits of children” (1997). Joanna Lipper, who is also the writer of this remake, has managed to catch a glimpse of the sometimes harsh environment in which children are growing up in present day US. The story is about the two brothers, Lenny and Joey, who are living with their single and underpaid, hard working mother. With their father spending time in prison, the brothers have to depend on each other. The older brother, Lenny, played excellently by Nicolas Martí Salgado, is not always willing to take care of his younger brother Joey, played by David Castro (born 7 Feb 1996). One day Lenny decides to get rid of Joey for a while, with unexpected consequences.

Evaluation: Joanna Lipper´s remake of the ”Little Fugitive” is a nice and well written story, with a soundtrack well adapted to the film, and with raher good actors in general, especially Nicolas Martí Salgado, playing Lenny. Some of the side characters are not that good and some effort could have been made in finding better actors to those parts. There are also a few stereotypes in the film that don´t have any place in such a good film. The director of the film ”Dog days of summer” ,  Mark Freiburger, have a few things to learn from this film´s cinematography, which is much better with different camera angles and is here for example actually focusing into the characters at times. In turn, Joanna Lipper has a few things to learn from the Russian filmmakers, who as usual are miles ahead of US directors in their capability to create exciting and touching coming of age films.

Where to find it: I found this film at CVMC.net, but it´s also available at for example amazon.com.

Stars: 7 stars out of 10.   

* Has anyone else seen this film and what did you think about it?
* Do you have any other favourite US coming of age films?

Let me know with a comment!

      

   

    

The Orphans (Podranki)

Being one of former Soviet cinema´s best achievement, ”The Orphans” is also one of the many films that deals with the effect of war on children. Another film is ”Ivan´s childhood”, which also is a very good one. Actually there are many good Russian coming of age films, for example ”The return”, ”The greenhouse effect”, ”Lessons at the end of spring”, ”Father and son” and ”Freedom is paradise”. They all have in common an astonishing cinematography, very fine actors, and a genuine story, and they are all more deep and touching than most films from the US (with a few exceptions of course). If this Russian film has reached the bottom of a very deep lake, for example the US film ”Dog days of summer” is still floating on the surface cloathed in a life jacket. Russian coming of age films don´t wear life jackets. Enough said of that, here is the story in brief: Alyosha is a boy of about 12 years old and, being an orphan, he and his sister must beg and steal food in order to survive. Soon he is taken into a juvenile detention center where he gets education together with other orphan boys. Everything is seen through the memories of the grown up Alyosha, like in the film ”Dog days of summer”. The film is dated back to 1977, but still is totally enjoyable. The film music is by Vivaldi, which is a good choice. The director is Nikolai Gubenko. I don´t want to spoil more of the story, but would like to recommend that you watch the film yourself. I would give it 4.5 points out of 5. I found this film at CVMC but it´s possible that the film also can be found at amazon.com and other commercial sites.

                     

Empire of the sun – on television

This marvellous film is shown on Swedish television tonight (”Solens rike” TV3 00.20). Jim Graham (Christian Bale) is a privileged and handsome boy living with his parents in Shanghai at the time of the Japanese invasion in December 8 1941. During the attack, Jim is accidentally separated from his parents and eventually ends up in a prison camp. This Stephen Spielberg film is one of the best modern coming of age films made in the US.

Life is a long quiet river

IMDb-link . The French film ”La vie est un long fleuve tranquille” is a 1988-made story about growing up in different socioeconomic conditions and how that affects you´re view of the world. This is a great coming of age movie about a 12-year-old boy who is switched with another baby at birth, thus landing in a poor but loving family, with the other child, a girl, landing in a wealthy but emotionally more strict house. 12 years later the mistake is being revelead and the boy has to move in with his new family. Being used to steal for money he´s amazed of the valuable silver in his new house, but he also has to learn some new manners, including such simple things as how to behave at the dinner table in this more conservative environment. It´s not easy to adjust and his heart seems to stay put with his original though not biological family. Now you should not expect too much drama in this film, since the genre I would say is more comedy. The cinematography or photo in this film is about average, not bad but it could have been better. But the cast is excellent, both the boy playing the main character, and all the others. The story is interesting and the director has done a great job with making a nice and genuin film of it. I think there are at least two important issues in this film, one is how much your personality and values are effected by your family and other surroundings when you are growing up. The other issue is about how much or perhaps how little it means to have biological parents. To summarize, since this is a French coming of age movie, you´ll not get disappointed of the story. It´s nicely done, and I would give it 4 stars out of 5. Other good French coming of age movies are ”My son” , ”La revolte des enfants” and ”Farewell children”.