<목욜정모> April 23rd, 2009. Thursday meeting's topic

[뺑끼(운영자)]

Slumdog Millionaire makers donate £500,000

to Mumbai charity

By, Xan Brooks

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 16 April 2009 17.03 BST

제가 좋아하는 영국의 유명한 가디언지에서 발췌한 글 입니다.

The money will fund a five-year project to improve living standards for slum children living in the Indian metropolis where the Oscar-winning film was shot

The rags-to-riches tale of Slumdog Millionaire took a fresh twist today as the film's makers announced plans to funnel a portion of the film's profits to a charity working with slum children in the city of Mumbai. A donation totalling £500,000 will be overseen by the charitable organisation Plan.

1. Slumdog Millionaire

2. Release: 2008

3. Country: UK

4. Cert (UK): 15

5. Runtime: 120 mins

6. Directors: Danny Boyle, Loveleen Tandan

7. Cast: Amil Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Azharudin Mohammed Ismail, Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Irrfan Khan, Madhur Mittal, Rubina Ali

Slumdog Millionaire was filmed in the Indian metropolis on an estimated $15m (£10m) budget. It went on to win eight Oscars at February's Academy Awards and has so far earned more than $300m at the global box office.

"Having benefited so much from the hospitality of the people of Mumbai it is only right that some of the success of the movie be ploughed back into the city in areas where it is needed most and where it can make a real difference to some lives," director Danny Boyle said in a statemet. "Despite intimidating odds, extraordinary work is going on to help people break the cycle of poverty through education. We're delighted that this initiative will add to that ongoing work."

Following Slumdog's success, the film's creators faced criticism for their handling of the Mumbai-based actors. In February it was revealed that child stars Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail were still living in makeshift shacks on the city's outskirts. Both were later rehoused by the Indian authorities.

The £500,000 donation will fund a five-year project to improve living standards for the city's children. "Around one billion of the world's population live in slums and there are 100,000 new slum dwellers every day," said Plan spokesperson Marie Staunton. "Slumdog Millionaire has shown audiences around the world a snapshot of what life is like for one in six people on the planet." 

Questions

1) Do you watch movie often?

Where do you usually see a movie? And with whom?

2) What did you see recently?

3) What is your priority when you choose movies?

4) What's the best in your life time?

5) Anything's possible. Anything you want to talk about.

---

* Books of The Times

Che’s Afterlife - The Legacy of an Image

By Michael Casey

Illustrated. 388 pages. Vintage Books. $15.95.

모두들 한번쯤은 들어서 알고 계시는 체게바라에 관한 책입니다.

이번 글은 정말 좋은 글들이 풍성한, 저의 one of most favorites 뉴욕 타임즈에서 발췌하였습니다.

뉴욕타임즈에서 이번 강추도서로 선정되었습니다.

Not just in the hearts of revolutionaries, Marxist insurgents and rebellious teenagers, but on T-shirts, watches, sneakers, key chains, cigarette lighters, coffee mugs, wallets, backpacks, mouse pads, beach towels and condoms. He’s not only been used by politicians like the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, to promote their own agendas, but he’s also been employed by merchants to sell air fresheners in Peru, snowboards in Switzerland and wine in Italy.

The supermodel Gisele Bündchen pranced down a runway in a Che bikini. A men’s wear company brought out a Che action figure, complete with fatigues, a beret, a gun and a cigar. And an Australian company produced a “cherry Guevara” ice cream line, describing the eating experience like this: “The revolutionary struggle of the cherries was squashed as they were trapped between two layers of chocolate. May their memory live on in your mouth!”

As Michael Casey, the Buenos Aires bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires, observes in his fascinating new book, “Che’s Afterlife,” the image of Ernesto Guevara most frequently used by politicians, demonstrators and merchants alike is based on the famous 1960 picture of the guerrilla leader taken by the Cuban photographer Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, known as Korda. It’s the familiar, ubiquitous close-up, often rendered in high-contrast blacks and whites, which features the handsome 31-year-old Argentine-born revolutionary looking off into the distance as if he had his eyes on the future, his gaze — described, variously, as pensive, determined, defiant, meditative or implacable — as difficult, in Mr. Casey’s words, “to put a finger on” as the Mona Lisa’s smile.

In this bracing and keenly observed book, Mr. Casey traces how Korda’s photograph became one of the most widely disseminated images in the world, how Che went from being a symbol of resistance to the capitalist system to one of the most marketable and marketed brands around the globe, how the guerrilla fighter became a logo as recognizable as the Nike swoosh or McDonald’s golden arches.

Although newspaper and magazine articles have traversed this ground before, none have done so with the thoroughness and globe-trotting ardor of “Che’s Afterlife.” Mr. Casey has written a book that is not only a cultural history of an image, but also a sociopolitical study of the mechanisms of fame. It is a book about how ideas travel and mutate in this age of globalization, how concepts of political ideology have increasingly come to be trumped by notions of commerce and cool and chic, and how the historical Che Guevara gave way, post-mortem, to a host of other Ches: St. Che, said to possess the ability to perform miracles; Chesucristo, a Christ-like figure revered for his ideals, not his advocacy of violence; an entrepreneurial Che, promoting the lesson “that individuals should honestly strive to produce their utmost for the good of all”; and the Rock ’n’ Roll Che, more representative of youthful anti-authoritarianism than of any political dogma.

Korda’s famous photograph of Che was taken in 1960, at a state funeral for victims killed by an explosion aboard a freighter docked in Havana’s harbor. By radically cropping the shot, snipping out a palm tree and the profile of another man, Korda gave the portrait an ageless quality, divorced from the specifics of time and place.

This abstract element would be emphasized further in paintings and silk-screen variations on the picture (like those done in the style of Andy Warhol’s Marilyn and Mao), which, Mr. Casey notes, stripped the image of its historical and political roots and created a more mainstream, accessible Che.

Korda, who died in 2001, Mr. Casey writes, would not be able to collect royalties on his wildly ubiquitous image until 1997, when the Castro government signed the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, an international copyright treaty.

Although Korda’s original photograph was not widely distributed for years, Mr. Casey says, Fidel Castro began using the image as a branding symbol for Cuba in 1967, months before Che’s death. It was a clever marketing plan on Mr. Castro’s part: Che’s denunciations of the Soviet Union made him popular among “thinkers and artists of the Western European left, many of whom had lost faith in the Soviet Union,” while his condemnation of imperialism “sat well with young radical students in the United States and Europe, who were impatient for societal change and for whom the very word revolution was inspiring.”

After Che was killed in Bolivia in October 1967 at 39, at the end of a disastrous guerrilla campaign, his fame and popularity — as a martyr now — spread even more rapidly around the world: red and black posters based on Korda’s photograph became symbols of the resistance movement during the 1968 student protests in Paris, and they surfaced, too, in America, where the revolutionary was embraced by both the Black Power movement and by hippies and antiwar activists.

In its May 17, 1968, issue, Time magazine observed that the Che legend had given “rise to a cult of almost religious hero worship among radical intellectuals, workers and students”: there were “Guevara-style beards” and berets in Italy, the magazine reported, and “handkerchiefs, sweatshirts and blouses decorated with his shaggy countenance” in “half a dozen countries” — all making for “a new source of profits for composers, poster makers and book publishers.” It was an article that could have easily run some four decades later, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Che’s death.

Clearly, it’s not what Che Guevara had in mind when he declared that “the revolutionary idea should be diffused by means of appropriate media to the greatest depth possible,” but in becoming one of the world’s most iconic brand names, Che has achieved an immortality that even exceeds the predictions of the stranger he meets at the end of his “Motorcycle Diaries,” who tells him “the spirit of the beehive speaks through your mouth and motivates your actions.”

Though anti-Castro Cubans continue to denounce him as a murderer with a cold capacity for violence, Che is embraced in Latin America and the Middle East and by antiglobalization protestors as “a die-hard foe of yanqui imperialism”; in Hong Kong as a symbol of rebellion against the authoritarianism of the Beijing government; and in the United States by immigrant activists, demanding “the right to inclusion, to be considered part of the American Dream.”

For many, Che has become a generic symbol of the underdog, the idealist, the iconoclast, the man willing to die for a cause. He has become, as Mr. Casey writes, “the quintessential postmodern icon” signifying “anything to anyone and everything to everyone.”

Questions

1. Do you often read a book? or not, why?

What's your favorite genre of book?

2. What did you read recently? Tell us what you read.

3. Do you have your favorite writer? Who do you like? Why?

4. what's your best book in life? Why do you choose it's the best?

5. Anything's possible. Anything you want to talk about.

[뺑끼]

목요일 시험이 끝납니다.. 지긋지긋한 시험.. 얼릉 열람실로 달려가야겠어요^^ 좋은 하루 보내시고.. 목요일 날 보아요!

[SUNNY]

열공하삼.ㅎㅎ

[Jina]

난 목요일날 시작이예요~ㅜㅜㅋㅋ 시험기간인데 올리느라 고생했어요 오빠~ㅋㅋ

[뺑끼]

말만 학생이지.. 학생이란 거 버린지 오래..^^ 목욜날 봥^^

[Agnes]

헉! 내가 좋아하는 체게바라....... 질문이 넘 좋당....... 뺑끼님 수고했으^^

[뺑끼]

Thanks~ At a first glance, just basic but it's got sth more deeper :) see you tomorrow

[Tinkerbell]

시험기간 중에도 토픽올리느라 수고하셨어요. 멋진 회장님~*^^*

[뺑끼]

고맙습니다 :) 이쁜 지영~

[바닐라]

음.. 처음 정모에 참여하려고 합니다. 충대 정문에서 크레타를 찾아서 8시에 맞춰가면 되나요?

[뺑끼]

충대 정문 앞에 7층 크레타가 있습니다. 8시까지 오시면 되요^^

[rosa_kismet]

오.....나 오늘 아침에 조조로 슬럼독밀리어네어 보고 와서 톼픽 읽으러 왔는데 ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ 신기하다 ㅎㅎ 뺑끼씨 수고했어요!!

[뺑끼]

We are connected kk see ya~^^