Word: nair
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There is something very disconcerting about the first scenes of “Amelia.” The new Amelia Earhart biopic from director Mira Nair ’79 opens with a soft, hopeful score to accompany Earhart—played with wit and charisma by Hilary Swank—on her first trip across the Atlantic Ocean; the year is 1928, and Earhart’s airplane swoops gently over the vast seascapes and mountains of clouds. In “Amelia,” flying is about freedom and joy, an attitude completely forgotten in our modern...
...flights is never excessively troubling; somehow she always escapes the danger and lands among fawning crowds or the occasional confused shepherd. She pursues her ambition to be a “vagabond of the air” without fear, barreling through the obstacles of poverty, peril, and gender bias. Nair ignores not only the connotations that air travel has acquired in recent years but also the incredulity that Earhart’s consuming ambition will inspire in viewers given last year’s financial collapse. We no longer live in Earhart’s era of optimism, passion...
Despite the degree to which Nair is able to flesh out the aviatrix’s life, Amelia’s primary trait remains her desire to be “transported to a safe, beautiful place where everything is comprehensible.” She gets there through flight, but for those of us hampered by FAA regulations, “Amelia” offers an opportunity for the same experience. It is visually sumptuous, easy to understand, and endowed with the simple romanticism of a Capra film that Earhart might have watched herself. With any other director, it might...
...narrower releases, the Coen brothers' A Serious Man earned $860,000 at 82 theaters; Black Dynamite, the blaxploitation tribute that was highly praised at Sundance, could cadge only $141,000 on 70 screens; and the omnibus entry New York, I Love You, with directorial contributions by Mira Nair, Allen Hughes, Brett Ratner and Natalie Portman, took in a small-town $372,000 in 199 venues. Hopes remain high for two British romances. Bright Star, about poet John Keats' doomed love, has received $3.5 million in contributions from moony English majors; and An Education, with star-is-born Carey Mulligan, crossed...
...program's worth and the need for future missions. But ISRO scientists say they simply underestimated the radiation levels the probe and its communication system would face, problems they will now fix. The water discovery was vindication that they had got a lot right and the hiccup, said chairman Nair last week, was all part of a normal learning curve. The ISRO, Nair told reporters, is "100% satisfied with the mission's objectives." (See the top 50 space moments since Sputnik...