Master Harold & The Boys Review

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(More customer reviews)This 1984 filming of the most famous South African play preserves the most accomplished work of the adolescent Matthew Broderick and a heartbreaking performance by the great South African actor Zakes Mokae, who played Sam in the first production (at Yale in 1982).Although very, very talkie, and unabashedly a record of a stage work with three actors on a fairly simple set, the film is not visually static. There are many closeups, seemingly more often of reaction shots than of the speaker.
The play is set in 1950, two years after the enactment of apartheid restrictions in South Africa. The reduction of black adults to a status below that of a bratty, damaged white adolescent is central to the play.
One might wonder if the dismantling of apartheid makes this drama any less compelling. Seeing it both onstage and on video last week, I would answer: not at all. Though I knew what was coming, it still packed quite a punch. The situation of an economically privileged youth being parented by servants is not at all unique to South Africa of apartheid times. Indeed, the play could have been set in the American South of the same time with no change other than making the tea-shop a café. The emotional dynamics of the relationships do not even require racial differences between the boss's son and the workers, though some of the particular force of the last half hour rests on the racism institutionalized by apartheid.

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Colors Straight Up Review

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(More customer reviews)This is the story of an arts program in the Los Angeles Public School system geared torward "at risk" youths. It was filmed in the program's infancy, when Colors United was an extracirricular program at one high school in South Central Los Angeles.
We are immediately immersed in the world of these kids, without commentary or words of introduction. The camera simply follows around several students as they shuffle back and forth between their gritty life in the "hood" and their alternate ego as a member of an acting and performing troup rehearsing for their big annual show.
The film is heartbreaking many times over, and I, who rarely cry during movies, found my eyes moist througout much of the film. The movie shows how hard the lives of these kids are, and how courageously they funnel this experience into their artistic performance, which is called "Watts Side Story." For many viewers, it will be a window into a world they have heard of but know very little about. But it is on the moral plane, not the social, that the film really enlightens.
The determination of these high schoolers to commit to each other for the sake of an uplifting common purpose, while all around them their world seems to be coming apart at the seams, is almost the definition of moral courage.
The director is wise not to pontificate or comment on the on screen happenings. The young men and women depicted feeling their way to adult hood and moral responsibility is the most eloquent statement that can be made. I can not recommend this film highly enough. It is especially appropriate for high school age kids or those involved in *at risk* behavior to see "another way."

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COLORS STRAIGHT UP - DVD Movie

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