Word: kites
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Kite Runner begins and ends in contemporary America, and the story it tells is firmly set against the history of modern Afghanistan, from a point just before the Soviet invasion of that unhappy land to the moment after the Taliban imposed its hateful fundamentalism on the country. Yet the movie version of Khaled Hosseini's best selling novel doesn't feel like it has been, as people used to say, "ripped from headlines." It instead has about it something of the air of a big, rich, very old-fashioned novel, telling the far-ranging story of two boys...
Forster is fortunate that Hosseinni has provided him with a lovely, appropriately cinematic novel and controlling metaphor, the kite flying that precedes his title's kite running. It seems that in the peaceable Kabul of yore, kids once flew kites competitively, hoping to cut their opponents' strings by deftly maneuvering their own kites as they swooped through the air. It is a pretty game, but one that also hints at the ferocities that will follow in this film. Once it is over, the kids ran madly through the streets to retrieve the beautiful object they had downed. The servant...
...Iranian-French cartoon bio-pic Persepolis was nominated for Foreign Film but not Animated Feature. And of the five finalists in the foreign-language category, three have already been ruled ineligible for the Motion Picture Academy?s foreign film Oscar: The Diving Bell (because its director is American), The Kite Runner (Swiss-American director) and Ang Lee's sexy Lust, Caution (not made in Taiwan...
...Kite Runner...
...transposed to war-torn Afghanistan: Dickens spoken in Dari. Every atrocity endured in childhood will face an equal and opposing vengeance at the end; virtually every major character will reappear later; family relationships are not what they seem. Readers (and viewers) don't love books (and movies) like The Kite Runner in spite of these clichés but because of them. The fierce tidying up of ancient grievances allows us to believe that there may be justice in the world--at least in fiction...