Word: directors
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...April, a Rand Corp. study concluded that 1 out of almost every 5 military service members on combat tours - about 300,000 so far - returns home with symptoms of PTSD or major depression. "Anyone who goes through multiple deployments is going to be affected," says Dr. Matthew Friedman, director of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' National Center for PTSD. But nearly half of these cases, according to the Rand study, go untreated because of the stigma that the military and civil society attach to mental disorders. The suspect in the Fort Hood shootings, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, counseled returning...
Often, before a movie scene is filmed, the director and cinematographer will bring in the leading actors' stand-ins to light and frame the shot. The opening image of Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Embraces shows this process with a stand-in for Penélope Cruz. Then the star actress enters the frame. She looks so somber, as if she's about to read a death sentence...
Almodóvar is cherished worldwide for his movies' brio and wisdom, but the Spanish writer-director, who turned 60 in September, has been preoccupied with death and mourning in many of his prime films. He killed off important characters in the first reels of All About My Mother and Volver, then examined how the survivors coped with their loss or the urge for revenge. An underlying love for the dead or near dead stokes the main figures in Talk to Her and Volver. In each case the grieving is natural, respectful, votive. Also volcanic...
...first minutes of Broken Embraces announce the death of its star attraction, the actress Lena, played by Cruz. In the 14 years since her death, Lena has been deeply mourned by her lover Mateo (Lluís Homar), a movie director who was blinded in the same car crash that killed her. He now works under the playfully turbulent pseudonym Harry Caine, as in hurricane. He needed a new name, he says, because the real Mateo died with Lena. But now he learns of the death of Ernesto (José Luis Gómez), a wealthy businessman who financed Lena...
...grand tradition of Hollywood multigenerational weepies, the sins of the fathers reverberate in their offspring. In 1994, on the set of the film Mateo was shooting with Lena, Ernesto's son was compiling a making-of featurette that was really a documentation of the director-actress tryst. In 2008, Ernesto Jr. is still skulking around, hoping - or threatening - to unearth bitter old truths. Also, Mateo's housekeeper and longtime friend has a son, sweet and smart, who assists Mateo. We'll learn that every supporting character is there for a reason...