Movies Directed By Ron Howard

A, dare we say, entertaining look at 1960s racial divide

"The Help," the movie version of the phenomenally successful novel about Southern women in 1962, is surprisingly compassionate and entertaining.

Why surprising?

Because if you had not read the book nor yet seen the movie, you would most likely expect any treatment of black maids and white matrons in the Jackson, Miss., of 1962 to emerge as a diatribe of racial prejudice, guilt and anger.

The American South, even in a time in which television screens and shopping malls make everyone look and sound alike, remains the most changing and adaptable region - surely in America and perhaps in the world. It falls. It rises. It perseveres.

Call it prideful guilt - an attempt to maintain heritage while, at the same time, denouncing it.

There is some prideful guilt in "The Help." The Hollywood odyssey that began with the anti-black prejudice of "Birth of a Nation" gave way to Margaret Mitchell's fantasy of faded glory and to Tennessee Williams' laughable, but poetic, decadence. Currently, it has evolved into a Hollywood that plays it safe commercially by staying in an angry mood. The slave ship horrors of an "Amistad" are safer than the humanity of a "To Kill a Mockingbird."

It is safe, then, to reason that the movie version of "The Help," in its first weekend at theaters everywhere, is a surprise in that it is more compassionate than it is angry. This is both its plus and its minus. While it is likely to become "beloved" with some viewers, it is just as likely to be quickly forgotten by others. For both, it is an entertainment worth seeing.

The movie, as with the book, has faced derision because of what some claim as its "exaggerated" speech patterns for the black characters and for the fact that it attempts to speak for black women of the period through a white, modern woman. Like "Mississippi Burning" (FBI agents as heroes of the civil rights movement) it is initiated by a white character.

Skeeter Phelan (played by new star Emma Stone, who gets better each time out) returns from Ole' Miss with a degree in English rather than the "Mrs." degree her mother would have preferred. She is more of a free thinker and an individual than the other members of the Junior League - all of whom are safely married to "community types."

She wearies of her job as an advice columnist at the local paper and seeks out local maids to share stories of their lives - stories that include humiliation and servitude. The ensuing book, we are told, is shocking, yet we see and hear little other than the obvious. It seems that its telling is more "shocking" than anything it actually tells.

Travel By Film: A List of Top five Travel Films as Picked By Me

A movie can take a person on an adventure to anywhere in the world. At the present time, travel is not on everyone’s agenda, considering the economic recession that has left people unemployed and unable to finance a trip. With the recession it is affordable to take a trip to the local movie theater or the video store, with endless possibilities of where one can travel through watching a movie. I am featuring five movies that inspire me to travel the world.

Number five is Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0403508/). This movie is about a group of good friends that are parting ways. They have a pair of jeans that they send to each other as a way of staying connected. This movie stars Amber Tamblyn(as Tibby), Alexis Bledel (as Lena), America Ferrarra (as Carmen), Blake Lively ( as Bridget), and Jenny Boyd (as Bailey), as the group of good friends. It inspires me to travel because the character Lena (Alexis Bledel) is visiting Greece and her family. The movie portrays the beauty of Greece by showing a picturesque Oceanside villa and parts of the countryside, as well.

Number four is Angels and Demons (www.imdb.com/title/tt0808151/), a movie about a professor at Harvard, Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), who is flown to the Vatican in order to decipher symbols and solve the crimes that have been committed. This movie feature Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor (as the Carmenlango), and Ayelet Zurer (Tom Hanks’s partner in solving the crimes). Angels and Demons was directed by Ron Howard. This movie makes me want to travel because it shows the area around the Vatican including many famous historical monuments and buildings. For example, it shows Saint Peter’s Square, Saint Peter’s Basilica, and many of the more famous churches and cathedrals. The movie illustrates some of the beautiful paintings of the Vatican as well as giving a more private tour of the Vatican, including the Vatican Secret Archives, and some of the secret passageways throughout the city.

The next movie on my list is The Proposal (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1041829/). This movie is a comedy starring Ryan Reynolds (Andrew Paxton), a professional assistant and a potential husband, and Sandra Bullock (Margaret Tate), as a Canadian seeking citizenship in the United States. Sandra Bullock is to be deported to Canada within a short period of time. The only way she can see receiving citizenship is by marrying her assistant. The Proposal features a trip to Alaska. It inspires me to travel as it showcases the waterways, a quaint village, and some of the beautiful wilderness that Alaska has to offer.

Films Directed by Ron Howard, Apollo 13, Willow, the Da Vinci Code, a Beautiful Mind, Angels

Ron Howard, from Mayberry to the moon-- and beyond

Advances in database technology, EDBT 2006 : 10th International Conference on Extending Database Technology, Munich, Germany, March 26-31, 2006 : proceedings

Information modeling and relational databases

The New York times guide to the best 1,000 movies ever made