Word: mccourt
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Williams' speech was part of the Askwith Education Forum, an occasional series that most recently hosted Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Frank McCourt...
...need bother mocking or pitying the Irish; they do such a good job of it themselves. Frank McCourt beautifully juggled contempt and sympathy in his memoir of growing up poor and wet in Limerick in the '30s and '40s, before squandering the goodwill he had accrued with the taint of 'Tis (it'll be a while before that sour screed is filmed). Parker, who did right by the Irish in The Commitments, has a go at the impossible task of adapting Angela's Ashes and trying to satisfy all those who loved the book so much that McCourt's painful...
...with Laura Jones to write the screenplay, and the film is very faithful to the book--too faithful, perhaps. Like a complex organ hymn being plinked out on an electric keyboard, the film plays the same basic melody as the memoir but fails to bring out the nuances of McCourt's writing, while these nuances are precisely what made Angela's Ashes a great work rather than a mere string of anecdotes...
...Frankie McCourt himself is portrayed by three actors: 8-year-old Joe Breen, 13-year-old Ciaran Owens and 19-year-old Michael Legge. Sadly, only Breen manages to capture the essence of Frankie and the "odd look" he gets from his good-for-nothing, "North of Ireland, Presbyterian" father. Breen, slack-jawed and observant, effectively captures McCourt's portrayal of himself as a slightly vapid child...
...closing scene is so treacly and trite that it verges on being offensive. The young Frank McCourt, a fresh-faced Irishman with high hopes for the future, is looking out from a boat onto the Statue of Liberty--his first look at the beloved United States for which he's yearned for so long. As the score swells and Frank beams with delight, there's a moment of suspense before you realize that a chorus of ragged Irish immigrants isn't actually going to line up behind him and start singing "America, the Beautiful." This scene...