
Namibian Drama from Phillippe Talavera

Namibian Drama from Phillippe Talavera
2009-06-01
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6.3The Mambo Kings tells the story of César and Nestor Castillo, brothers and aspiring musicians who flee from Cuba to America in search of the American Dream.
6.1The plot centers on students involved in the Soweto Riots, in opposition to the implementation of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools. The stage version presents a school uprising similar to the Soweto uprising on June 16, 1976. A narrator introduces several characters among them the school girl activist Sarafina. Things get out of control when a policeman shoots several pupils in a classroom. Nevertheless, the musical ends with a cheerful farewell show of pupils leaving school, which takes most of act two. In the movie version Sarafina feels shame at her mother's (played by Miriam Makeba in the film) acceptance of her role as domestic servant in a white household in apartheid South Africa, and inspires her peers to rise up in protest, especially after her inspirational teacher, Mary Masombuka (played by Whoopi Goldberg in the film version) is imprisoned.
6.3A dark personal secret drives a young woman to use every man she encounters.
7.4An adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Long Island-set novel, where Midwesterner Nick Carraway is lured into the lavish world of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Soon enough, however, Carraway will see through the cracks of Gatsby's nouveau riche existence, where obsession, madness, and tragedy await.
6.4In the 1930s, British officer John Truscott journeys to a remote village in colonial Malaysia to educate and Westernize the local Iban population. There, he's introduced to the lovely Selima. In keeping with tradition, Selima is assigned to sleep with Truscott and teach him the native language and customs. But when they fall in love, both colonists and natives object to their plans to marry.
6.1An aging King invites disaster, when he abdicates to his corrupt, toadying daughters, and rejects his loving and honest one.
6.2Georgie is slowly suffocating in a loveless marriage to fishing tycoon Jim Buckridge. Handsome poacher Lu is an irresistible symbol of the excitement she craves. A passionate affair follows that reveals the dark secrets in Lu’s past and forces him to take flight into the blistering heat of the outback. Georgie follows, determined to find him and bring him back.
7.0The film tells the story of two boys who become friends at the start of the Troubles in 1970. The boys share an obsession with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with the consequence that they run away to Australia.
7.1After an affair with a queen leads to his demise, an eager traveler encounters a mystical bird with the power to give him another life.
6.2George Sanders stars in this engrossing melodrama about a very domineering sister who holds a tight grip on her brother -- especially when he shows signs of falling in love.
5.9A version of Shakespeare's play, set in the world of warring indoor and outdoor gnomes. Garden gnomes Gnomeo and Juliet have as many obstacles to overcome as their quasi namesakes when they are caught up in a feud between neighbors. But with plastic pink flamingos and lawnmower races in the mix, can this young couple find lasting happiness?
6.9Dennis, owner of a rubber plantation in Cochinchina, is involved with Vantine, who left Saigon to evade the police. When his new surveyor arrives along with his refined wife Dennis is quickly infatuated by her.
7.4Young Cedric Errol and his widowed mother live in genteel poverty in 1880s Brooklyn after the death of his father. Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has long ago disowned his son for marrying an American. But after the death of the Earl's remaining son, he decides to accept Cedric as his heir.
6.5An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.
6.1Rory is an ambitious entrepreneur who brings his American wife and kids to his native country, England, to explore new business opportunities. After abandoning the sanctuary of their safe American suburban surroundings, the family is plunged into the despair of an archaic '80s Britain and their unaffordable new life in an English manor house threatens to destroy the family.
6.5On trial for murdering his girlfriend, philandering stockbroker Larry Ballentine takes the stand to claim his innocence and describe the actual, but improbable sounding, sequence of events that led to her death.
7.0Nola grew up living in a van with her father, Clint—two nomads against the world. When tragedy strikes, Nola must confront the reality of life on the road alone, learning to own her grief, her past, and her new destination.
6.2Stigmatized from infancy by the fate of his criminal father, a man is bruised and bullied until one night, in a fit of rage, he kills his most persistent tormentor. As the police close in around him, he makes a desperate bid for the love of the dead man’s fiancée, a schoolteacher who sees the wounded soul behind his aggression.
6.3Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.
6.2In London, barrister Anthony Keane takes the case of Maddalena Paradine, a beautiful woman accused of poisoning her blind husband. Though happily married, Keane becomes infatuated with his enigmatic client and convinced of her innocence. His obsession clouds his judgment as he builds a defense implicating her servant, André Latour—an act that leads to devastating consequences both in court and at home.