Captain Abu Raed

Yesterday I went to see Jordan's entry for the 2009 Oscar race "Captain Abu Raed." The movie tells the story an an aging airport janitor, Abu Raed, who is mistaken as an airline pilot by children in his local neighbourhood after finding a discarded pilot's hat.

Raed starts telling fantastical stories of his journeys to far away places to offer a ray of hope to the poor children of his neighbourhood. The movie is extremely touching and beautifully filmed introducing the viewer to the beauty of historical Amman. All the actors were outstanding! I highly recommend this movie!

Excerpts from the movie along with music from the film composed and conducted by Austin Wintory; performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony and Lisbeth Scott:

Che Part I by Steven Soderbergh

I recently went to see the first installment (2h 13 mins) of "Che." Che is a two part biopic by Steven Soderbergh about the life of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

The first installment of the movie (The Argentine) focuses on the Cuban revolution. The movie begins with Castro, Guevara and the other revolutionaries landing on the Caribbean Island and ends in the successful overthrowing of the dictatorship of Military Leader/President Fulgencio Batista. The movie follows the revolutionaries as they advance towards Havana and in between we get to follow Che in his role as the head of the Cuban delegation at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Puerto Rican actor, Benicio del Toro won the Best Actor Award at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival for his portyal of Che in the movie.

I think the movie should of concentrated more on Che, the person. No reasons were given as to why he decided to leave to Cuba and leave his family behind or why he decided to leave Cuba after the revolution. Overall it was a good movie especially when taking into account that Che Guevara is probably not the most easiest topic to tackle for a movie. The directing by Soderbergh was, at times, visually stunning but the movie gives more of an image of another war movie than an actual biopic of Che.