"Che' Film Premieres at Cannes Tomorrow -- Four and a half hours long

[magbana]

Che' film set for Cannes premiere

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/cuban_colada/2008/05/che-film-set-fo.html

The Cannes Film Festival will open Wednesday and "Che" will be among its
offerings. The film, which features Puerto Rican actor Benicio del Toro as
Ernesto Che Guevara and Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro as Raúl Castro
(below), was not fully edited last month and there were questions about its
inclusion in the festival. But director Steven Soderbergh rushed through the
editing and the 4-hour-28-minute film will be shown May 21 in two
installments, "The Argentine" and "The guerrilla." The script is based on
Guevara's diaries, written in Cuba in the 1950s. According to the Reuters
news agency, Santoro Santorox spent two months in Cuba last year, staying in
the Sierra Maestra and visiting the house where the Castro brothers were
born. "I loved Cuba, had wonderful days there," Santoro told Reuters. "I
feel a bit Cuban too. It was a very strong experience." Asked about Raúl
today, Santoro was diplomatic: "I cannot do a political analysis about him."
---Renato Pérez Pizarro

[Texano78704]

1. Welll...

That should have all the gusanos in quite a twitter.

[roody]

2. 4 and 1/2 hours,

in the spirit of a speech from Fidel.

[Mika]

3. Brazil heartthrob plays Raul Castro in 'Che' film

Brazil heartthrob plays Raul Castro in 'Che' film
http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/news-7838--24-24--.html

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters): In his latest film, Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro portrays a man who is very much in the news himself these days -- Cuban President Raul Castro.

And though the similarities between the heartthrob and the normally dour Castro may not be immediately evident, Santoro says their eyes are similar.

The 32-year-old actor will be promoting "Che," directed by Steven Soderbergh, as well as the Argentine film "Leonera," directed by Pablo Trapero, at the Cannes Film Festival.

"Che" is based on the diaries of the Argentine guerrilla Ernesto "Che" Guevara on his revolutionary struggles in Latin America, starting in Cuba alongside Raul and his brother, Fidel, in the 1950s. Benicio Del Toro stars in the title role.

Although the Raul Castro part is small, it is topical. Raul Castro took over from his brother as leader of the communist-ruled island in February, 50 years after the events depicted in the film, and has embarked on a series of reforms.


Rodrigo Santoro
AFP PHOTO

"I knew it would be a delicate and very polemic role," Santoro said in an interview.

"As an actor, I have to try to incorporate the human being. I cannot do a political analysis about him."

A photo he saw of Raul Castro from 1953 helped him.

"He has slanted eyes. I think the producers saw that and thought, "Look here -- there's a great physical resemblance."

Santoro made a two-month trip to Cuba last year, staying in the Sierra Maestra mountain range from where Fidel Castro led the revolution and visiting the house where the brothers were born.

"I loved Cuba, had wonderful days there, people are amazing," he said. "I feel a bit Cuban too. It was a very strong experience."

Santoro's other movie, "Leonera," is about the life of a mother who raises her son in prison. Some of scenes were shot in Argentina's largest maximum security prison in Olmos.

Santoro, who has starred in international hits such as "Love, Actually" as well as acclaimed Brazilian movies like "Carandiru," is now filming "I Love you Phillip Morris" in New Orleans along with Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor.

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[robcon]

4. NYT review nails it.

"...In between the two periods covered in “Che,” Guevara was an important player in the Castro government, but his brutal role in turning a revolutionary movement into a dictatorship goes virtually unmentioned. This, along with Benicio Del Toro’s soulful and charismatic performance, allows Mr. Soderbergh to preserve the romantic notion of Guevara as a martyr and an iconic figure, an idealistic champion of the poor and oppressed. By now, though, this image seems at best naïve and incomplete, at worst sentimental and dishonest. More to the point, perhaps, it is not very interesting."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/movies/23cann.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Guevera's part in the murderous and brutal campaign to wipe out any dissent in Cuba is often overlooked in his image as a revolutionary. He stamped out any hope for democracy in Cuba with his Stalinist enthusiasm for murdering his supposed enemies.

[Judi Lynn]

5. The N.Y. Times also nailed it on Iraq, with their scum star, Judith Miller.

No one capable of moderate brain function takes the NY Times seriously.

[Bacchus39]

6. and no-one with a brain takes Che Guevara seriously either

except T-shirt salesmen. what a boon for capitalism Che has become.

[robcon]

7. So your only answer is guilt-by-association, Judi Lynn?

No response concerning Che's murderous reign in Cuba? Only about the NYT.

Why am I not surprised?

[Mika]

8. Another of Robcon's and B39's expert resources. Who knows more about Cuba than a movie critic?

The sentence sounds like the author has been reading and is regurgitating B39s and your fantastical assumptions about Cuba, of which you both know near nothing except the US gov & Richard Mellon Scaife funded anti Cuba propaganda that you mime.

To be fair, the critic does mention that the movie was about Che's early revolutionary life, and then his ending - with the focus on the tactical detail to the Cuban insurgency. It is not a retrospective on Cuba.

It would be accurate to point out that the US rebuked any overtures by the new Cuban revolutionary government that sought political dialog and normalization, and trade negotiations with the USA. Things might have turned out much differently had the US government not pushed the agenda that forced Cuba to establish primary trade & political relations with other governments (the Soviets), that Mr Guevara wanted Cuba to distance itself from in 1964-65.


The Cuban revolutionary gov started in 1959. Guevara was Cuba's UN ambassador from 1961-65 and was traveling most of the time. In 65 he was in Africa. Guevara gone from Cuba in 1966. In 1967 he was dead.

It is now 2008.

Cuba has made monumental changes since the few short years that Che was present in Cuba.

This movie critic might be a decent source for movie theater and DVD entertainment, but certainly isn't an oracle on Cuba. Its laughable that anyone would claim that this movie critic "nails it" in his review of a movie that doesn't even cover the time period the critic ignorantly refers to.


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[magbana]

9. I'm with you Mika and so is Miss Machetera

HERE COMES TROUBLE

Today's New York Times has a sneak preview of the new Steven Soderbergh Che film, from Cannes, where its reporter, A.O. Scott got a peek. The film is presently 4-1/2 hours long, and split into two parts; the first, dealing with Che's role in the Cuban Revolution and the second, the insurgency in Bolivia. A.O. Scott, evidently trained in the U.S. method of "objective" reporting, where you give mathematically equal space to both sides, even when one of the sides is an obvious lie buttressed by an eternity of disinformation, complains that Che's "brutal role in turning a revolutionary movement into a dictatorship goes virtually unmentioned."

Okay, well, that would be called fiction.

Soderbergh's film is not a documentary, obviously, but must it include every anti-Cuban fantasy in order to get a decent review and a distribution deal? Probably. Ask Oliver Stone what happened to Comandante, which HBO canceled under pressure from Miami and Washington, and even now you can't buy it except in a version that won't play on an American or Canadian DVD player, without hacking it first.

So U.S. citizens, no worries. There's no danger that you'll see Che in the near or distant future, any more than you'll ever see Dick!, the movie about Dick Cheney's brutal role in turning the United States into a dictatorship.

http://machetera.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/here-comes-trouble/