Kramer vs. Kramer was an incredible movie. Based on an adaptation of a novel by Avery Corman, the movie was directed by Robert Benton and released in 1979. The movie became a major landmark in the depiction of the trauma of the divorce of a couple, and the effect that it has on everybody involved, most notably on the young children who are torn apart by the divorce. The depiction of the tensions in a marriage related to ambition, feelings of neglect, and the shift in the earlier traditional roles of a marriage made this movie one that seems relevant even today. The movie came at a time when there was a shift in the traditional dynamics of a marriage, with a greater number of women seeking to find themselves by building a career for themselves. Combine this with a great script, some careful (and non-biased handling), and excellent performances, and you get to see why Kramer vs. Kramer became successful then, and remains a wonderful movie.

The movie starts Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep as Ted and Joanna Kramer. Ted is a rising advertising executive, and needs to put in a large amount of time in his job. Something has got to give when such large amounts of time are spent on the job, and ted is unable to spend much time with his wife and child, eight-year old Billy (Justin Henry). He hardly knows what is going on at home, and greatly neglects his wife Joanna. And then it happens; Joanna feels a total sense of despair, of not doing anything, and informs Ted that she needs to leave in order to try and find herself.
This shocks Ted to an incredible degree. He struggles to understand as to why Joanna left him and also has to adjust to running the house, with a young son, and also keep to his demanding job. He slowly starts to adjust to the reason as to why Joanna left him, and starts to form a bond with his son. His job starts suffering, but he is more interested in being a good parent, and eventually he loses his job. And then, after an year and a half, Joanna comes back to claim Billy. Ted is not willing, and a custody battle happens which Ted loses and custody is granted to Joanna. However, in the end, Joanna tells Ted that she understands that Billy has a great relationship with Ted, and that Billy can continue to stay with Ted.

Oscar Wins

* Best Picture
* Best Director
* Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium
* Best Actor in a Leading Role - Dustin Hoffman
* Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Meryl Streep

Nominations

* Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Jane Alexander
* Best Cinematography
* Best Film Editing
* Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Justin Henry. Henry was and is to date the youngest acting Academy Award nominee.

Amadeus is the middle name of one of the greatest composer of all time, the Austrian composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who lived in Vienna during the 18th century. And thus it is pretty natural that a movie on the life of this great composer (and another composer of the same age, Antonio Salieri) should have the name Amadeus in it. The movie, released in 1984 was a drama film about these 2 men, and caught the attention of critics to such a great extent that it cleaned up on the awards, winning 8 Oscars, and a clutch of BAFTA and Golden Globe awards. The movie was also a commercial hit (although on a smaller scale) since it made around $51 million on a budget of $18 million. Inspite of some creative licenses with the truth (the movie assumes that the murder of Mozart is due to a devious plan by Salieri, when this was not a proven fact).

The movie also served to make a lot more people aware of the life history of Mozart, and his amazing musical skills. The depiction of his talent was pretty good, wrapped in a story that touches all the human emotions of skill, envy, jealousy and anger, distress, depression, hatred and downfall. All of these were exhibited in the inter-twined life history of Salieri and Mozart, down to the downfall of both of them.
The story is all set in flashback, when a priest visiting Salieri in a mental health institution visits him, trying to get a confession from Salieri about having committed the murder of Mozart. Salieri is initially uninterested, but then opens up and discloses the full story, including his role in the downfall of Mozart. Salieri had a troubled start to his musical career, since his father was not interested in letting his son study music, but then his death opened the door to a musical career. Salieri was not an exceptional musician, and was happy being the court composer to the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, believing his talent to be God’s gift. And then Mozart burst onto the screen.
Mozart was funny, he was brash, he was lewd, and he was a genius. He started out with taking a work that Salieri had spent time making, and modified that into a new musical work (conversion of “March of Welcome” to “Non più andrai” march from Mozart’s opera ‘The Marriage of Figaro’). Salieri is sinking into depression, believing that actually god is laughing at him for his mediocre music. In the meantime, Mozart goes through a whole gamut of emotions; feeling happy at his success and with his wife Constanze and his son Wolfgang, and then getting shaken by court rivalry, depression over his father Leopold’s death. He starts to fall down as his family expenses increase and the income starts to fall.
And then the ultimate plan. Salieri decides to deceive Mozart, so he disguises himself to be like Leopold (Mozart’s dead father), and gives Mozart a down payment to write a requiem mass (also known as a funeral mass). Mozart starts down to write his best piece of work, not aware that the plan was for Mozart to be killed in the end, and Salieri would then appropriate the Mass and deliver it (in a delicious irony), at Mozart’s funeral. Mozart drives himself to madness while writing this work, and his wife leaves him along with their son. His condition continues to decline, and he collapses during a performance. Salieri takes him home, and continues to make Mozart work during his illness.
Mozart’s fie returns the next morning, and is shocked to see his condition. Salieri has by now abandoned his plan, and he credits Mozart with work on the composition, and Constanze locks the manuscript away. However, all this is in vain, since Mozart dies, and the composition is left incomplete. Mozart is taken away and buried in a pauper’s grave (although his body is recovered later and buried more appropriately). The work remains incomplete, and Salieri is driven to the mental asylum with the thought that God would kill Mozart rather than let Salieri share the glory of the beautiful composition.

The music from the movie:

(all composed by Mozart except as noted)

* Disc One

1. Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K 183, 1st movement
2. Stabat Mater: Quando Corpus Morietur and Amen (Pergolesi - performed by the Choristers of Westminster Abbey, directed by Simon Preston)
3. Early 18th Century Gypsy Music: Bubak and Hungaricus
4. Serenade for Winds, K. 361, 3rd movement
5. The Abduction from the Seraglio, Turkish Finale
6. Symphony No. 29 in A, K 201, 1st movement
7. Concerto for Two Pianos, K. 365, 3rd movement
8. Mass in C minor, K. 427, Kyrie (Mozart)
9. Symphonie Concertante, K. 364, 1st movement

* Disc Two

1. Piano Concerto in E flat, K. 482, 3rd movement
2. The Marriage of Figaro, Act III, Ecco la Marcia
3. The Marriage of Figaro, Act IV, Ah Tutti Contenti
4. Don Giovanni, Act II, Commendatore scene
5. Zaide aria, Ruhe Sanft
6. Requiem, K. 626, Introitus (orchestra introduction)
7. Requiem: Dies Irae
8. Requiem: Rex Tremendae Majestatis
9. Requiem:Confutatis
10. Requiem: Lacrimosa
11. Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466, 2nd movement

Movie awards at the Oscars: Best Picture, Best Actor (F. Murray Abraham as Antonio Salieri), Best Director (Forman), Costume Design (Theodor Pistek), Adapted Screenplay (Shaffer), Art Direction, Best Makeup, and Best Sound

This is an incredibly interesting novel. The common motif running through Sydney Sheldon’s novels is that of a strong woman character who faces challenges, and eventually triumphes.
If tomorrow comes is about a woman called Tracy Whitney, who is seemingly well set. She is in love with a rich handsome guy, and he, over parental disapproval is all set to marry her. In a tragedy, she finds that her mother has committed suicide after being cheated by a local hood. She attacks him, and he uses that incident to get her jailed, as well as convicted of a painting theft (so that he can benefit). She gets betrayed by her lawyer and the judge.
She is now in jail, subject to the pressures over there, and having been dumped by her fiancee who can’t have relations with anybody who has been convicted for theft and is an attempted murderer. In jail, she comes across inmates who are used to dominating others, and is setup as a target by one of these. Another one such defends her, but she really needs to escape from jail. She gets a plot, but as she is moving away, she makes the choice of saving the jailor’s son who is drowning.
She is now a heroine, and eventual public pressure gets her a pardon. So she is now out, but without a job. After not luck regarding a career (due to being an ex-felon), she joins a cheating crowd, and starts becoming an expert at cheating people. First she takes revenge on the people who betrayed her (and this is interesting reading, especially the part about the judge getting convicted of spying in Russia). The rest of the book is all about her various adventures in cheating people, as well as the attemtps of an investigator who is always on her trail.
This is a pretty gripping novel, and not something that you can easily put down. Fun to read, and the incidents don’t seem very unrealistic. You can actually emphatize with the heroine, who is actually cheating people.

So here I was browsing through a bookstore when I saw that they had a section for books on discount. Now I am always a sucker for good books at reduced prices, so off I went. There was this book lying there with a black cover that seemed to be about the US Supreme Court. Now I have always been interested in legal histories and constitutional law, and so I picked the book up. I have never regretted the move.
The book is called “Of Power and Right: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and America’s Constitutional Revolution“ by Howard Ball and Philip J Cooper (1992).
I am not a citizen of the US, nor am I affected by the laws governing the US, so why am I writing a review of the book?
The book presents an epic view of the US legal and social society through the goings-on in the US Supreme Court from the time of the New Deal to the removal of the race-segregation laws, and to the emergence of cases dealing with the rights of the state (government) vs. the rights of the individual. There are essentially 2 streams of thoughts about the power of the judicial system: Judges need to respect that the legislature is the expression of the will of the people and not try their own interpretation, vs. the interpretation that the role of a judge is to hold the constitution supreme and effectively use this as the benchmark for determining the validity of a law.
Justice Hugo Black was a believer in the first thesis (power), while justice William Douglas believed in the second one (right). The book details their initial career before their movement into the Supreme Court, and then really comes into its own. The interactions between the Justices, between the executive and the Justices, and the process (including persuasion and disagreements) used by the Supreme Court to come out with a judgement is all brought out in great detail, and helps to provide a high level of understanding. The cases dealing with the internment of the American citizens of Japanese descent during the second world war, the military tribunals dealing with German spies caught on American land, and specifically the most famous case of the racial segregation era (Brown vs. Board of Education) are all brought out in great detail in this book.
For a layman, the legal and judicial system is wrapped up in mystery when it comes to its intricacies. This book will go a long way in helping people understand how the judicial system works, and how the opinions of Justices drive the US Supreme Court.

What a delightful movie. Could there be a person who has seen it and forgotten about it ? I just could not believe it the first time I saw it; how can you have the imagination to take a movie about 2 young guys caught up in small-town America for a crime they did not commit, get in a cousin who is a lawyer without experience along with his girlfriend, and an old grouchy judge, and come up with a movie that has you laughing away at many points. By the end of the movie, in the discussion about the right car, you are positively at the edge of the seat as the tension shoots up, and you know that something big is going to happen that will turn the case, and it does so happen. More about that later.
The movie was directed by Jonathan Lynn, and did not have a big cast at all, with the 3 most prominent people being Joe Pesci in the role of a struggling lawyer, Vincent LaGuardia Gambini; the late Fred Gwynne playing the hard and grouchy judge Chamberlain Haller, and Marisa Tomei in the award winning role of Mona Lisa Vito (she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role). So you start off with these 2 young men from yankee land who while traveling through an Alabama town indulge in some petty shop-lifting.

In a twist of how guilty conscience can get you into deep trouble, they land into massive trouble. Picked up by the police after the clerk of the shop is shot and killed, they assume that they have been picked up for shop-lifting (they are a bit surprised that shop-lifting is a major crime, but this is Alabama, so ..). In this surprise, when told / asked that they shot the clerk, they are astonished and only managed to ask the same thing. However, the person recording their statement does not read the question and astonishment in the reply and soon they are now being booked for murder. Hardly a good feeling to be booked for murder in a far-off city, and to be told that they have actually confessed.
And this brings their cousin Vinny into the picture. Billy’s mom gets their cousin Vinny to take the case (a bit surprising that, after all, if your son was arrested for murder, you would want a first rate defense lawyer, not a person who has spent 6 years getting into the bar and has no trail experience). And this brings Joe Pesci along with his fiancee Marisa Tomei.
Joe Pesci has very little experience as a trail lawyer, and manages to rub the judge the wrong way right in the beginning (and the judge is even more conscious, after all, a lawyer from Yankee land must be made to appreciate the way justice happens in Alabama). Fighting with the judge over his appearance, over the way to speak in court, and over his experience (he has to show the judge that he has trial experience while he does not, and he eventually manages to fool the judge on this point); the scenes with the judge and Joe Pesci are first-rate.
Some of his other cultural experiences are also great, you get to see the distaste when he had to eat grits every day because the motel serves only that for breakfast, about not getting enough sleep because of the thunderous noise made by trains in the night near the motel (affecting his sleep and his preparedness to the extent that he finally welcomes the contempt notice issued to him since that allows him to get a good nights sleep in the jail).
He gets better and better in the courtroom, being able to challenge witnesses, and slowly move towards proving his story that it was a different car, and not his cousins car. This leads up to the great finale where he gets his angry fiancee (angry at him for ignoring her and refusing to take help from her) through her incredible knowledge of cars in order to try and discredit the testimony of the FBI Agent. You have to watch this scene to believe it. Overall, a must-watch movie.