What a surprising joy to have seen this heart tugging film simply because it was better than I had expected despite the controversies, cultural inaccuracies, and cuts and alterations from the book, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. The entertainment value came principally from the commendable acting and chemistry from a pair of unknowns (especially the superb Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada playing the guileless and loyal young Hassan), beautiful score, panoramic scenery and a well-told story at a measured pace that pitched the mush factor at just the right level of lachrymosity.
It still has all the concentrated contrivances, convenient coincidences and correct clean lines that plague a neatly constructed novel but what the hell…I can see the film’s positive magic touching a lot of people and winning shit-loads of awards (I might cynically add, precisely the kind of stuff the Western world laps up in ladles and loves assembled, pre-packaged and gift wrapped with a neat bow tie about a culture and world still largely unknown to outsiders...and I may add even more cynically, the political climate is ripe for this).
I am also ploughing through my Heroes episodes and enjoying every bit of it even though word has it that the second season is not as good as the first. I can only shudder knowingly when I see Isaac Mendez painting the future when he has precognitive visions beyond his control.
Apparently precognitive dreams are fairly common and I honestly don’t know what to make of them as I have them from time to time (it’s always very vivid as opposed to run-of-the-mill dreams). Most of them are random shit I have no control over. Some related to me, and some seemingly never related to me. But I still remember the morning when my Dad rushed into my bedroom and told me the space shuttle Challenger had exploded – months after I had painted a picture of a space shuttle explosion (the painting was published in my school year book). Or the time my sister phoned me to tell me the Concorde had crashed…weeks after I told her of my hyper-realistic dream of seeing a Concorde (a plane until then that had never crashed) ploughing into a field right after take off near to a motorway and a row of houses. And then I see this in the news:
Most are probably coincidences and selective bias but these two still creeps me out to this day.
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