Word: films
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...kids know what's good for them? In movies, that is? A child of the decade just ending has been exposed to some of the grandest, most imaginative entertainment in film history: the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series, to be sure, but mainly the animated features from Pixar, Dreamworks and Aardman. These films did more than teach life lessons about the value of friendship, loyalty and initiative; they gave priceless instruction in what movies can be, and how to watch them. Seeing Finding Nemo, Kung Fu Panda and Chicken Run - not to mention this year...
...Brazilian officials organizing the film premiere of Lula, Son of Brazil probably weren't thinking of the biopic's subject when they chose the music to be played before the curtain went up. But the subliminal connection with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was hard to ignore: "You're the One That I Want," "I Will Always Love You," the theme to the James Bond and Rocky flicks and then - almost inevitably - just moments before the film began, the uplifting bars of the theme to Superman...
None of this, however, is in Lula, Son of Brazil, the two-hour epic that opens across Latin America's biggest nation on Jan. 1. With a secondary billing that goes "You know the man, but you don't know his story," the film vaults through the episodes that marked Lula's early years and his remarkable rise from poor to powerful. Starting in the scrubland of the northeast, where he was born one of eight kids, it follows him to São Paulo, where he suffered at the hands of an abusive and alcoholic father. It shows...
...style that owes much to Brazil's famous soap operas, in which every movement, emotion and line drips with melodrama, the film depicts him losing a finger in a lathe accident and then his wife and son in childbirth, before he bounces back to lead the powerful metalworkers' union in historic strikes that challenged the country's military dictatorship. (Read "Can Rio's Crime Problem Be Solved Before the Olympics...
Little-known actor Rui Ricardo Dias does a fine job portraying Lula from young man to adult, but the film glosses over Lula's frailties, depicting him as a man who can do no wrong. "The director omitted episodes in Lula's life that suggest the President has weaknesses or defects," said Veja, a popular right-wing newsmagazine. "Basically, it's a terrible film," wrote critic Ricardo Calil...