Word: carmene
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Volver begins with a tracking shot through the cemetery in a Spanish village, as dozens of widows polish the tombstones of their late husbands. Among the mourners is Raimunda (Penélope Cruz, in a performance of great strength and ferocity), scrubbing down the grave of her mother Irene (Carmen Maura). With his usual taste for bizarre but plausible narrative twists, Almodóvar manages, in the first 40 minutes, to get a corpse in the freezer and a ghost under the bed. And he's just getting started, since nearly everyone in Volver has a dreadful family secret...
...Last Stand. But its usual fare is provocative or perplexing films from top directors. Three of the attention-grabbing entries: Volver Pedro Almodóvar blends ghost story, revenge drama and all-girl comedy in a tale of courageous, if loco, sisterhood. Lovely Penélope Cruz and spectral Carmen Maura merit laurels, maybe Oscars...
...late husbands. It is a collective act of devotion, of civic pride and maybe (from what we learn later in the film) of atonement. Among the mourner-scrubwomen are two sisters, Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) and Soledad (Lola Dueñas), tending the grave of their mother Irene (Carmen Maura), dead these four years. Visiting Irene's older, failing sister Aunt Paula (Chus Lampreave), they hear the daft woman's claim that she has been cared for by Irene's ghost. This is dismissed as sweet dementia, until Sole, returning to Madrid, opens the trunk...
...Mark Danford-May, writer and director of U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, based on a South African opera, which premiered at last year's Cannes Film Festival but has yet to find an American distributor, said he believes the film's inclusion at Ebert's festival will be a big help. "His support really can help open doors," Danford-May said. "We're hoping to find an American distributor, and after being picked to come here, we know that his opinion matters...
...considerably less angry and less political than, say, Rock's or South Park's. Instead, student stand-ups prefer to riff on more personal themes like their obsession with pop culture (from Brown's Dustin Foley: "You know who I think is having an affair? Waldo and Carmen San Diego. Has anyone seen either of them lately?") or their dating habits (from Kenyon College's Rubin Miller: "Girls always say they want a man who speaks his mind. But I have a friend back home who has Tourette's, and he hasn't been laid in years...