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Memories of Another day

Memories of Another day
While my Parents Pulin babu and Basanti devi were living

Sunday, April 26, 2009

The READER in the Shadow of HOLOCAUST, Kate Winslet and Bengal Intelligentsia`s APPEAL for CHANGE


The READER in the Shadow of HOLOCAUST, Kate Winslet  and Bengal Intelligentsia`s APPEAL for CHANGE
 
Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams: Chapter 214
 
Palash Biswas
 
 

Like the cahracters of the Hollywood Film The READER, we the people of South Asia, irrespective of Race, Caste, Religion, Clan and Nationality, have not come over the HOLOCAUST of Partition till  this date. Generation after generation, we are PREDESTINED to live and die in the SHADOW of the HOLOCAUST never passing away, completely DEGENERATED! Completely SEGREGATED. We are predestined to live in Infinite Concentration Camps, Gas chambers and Death chambers while the WAR Criminals rule us with the INFAMOUS GESTAPO!

My friends often complain that I tend to be NON Academic and like the Ambedkarites and Maoists, I sound so LOUD, so EXTREMIST. Even the little mags as well as literary field and Journalistic ARENA DESPISE most!

But I may not help it.

This morning, my son steve was browsing TV Channels and discussing the SRILANKAN Crisis  with an outlook comon in the Generation Next. They believe in the Official Information flow most ans immerse themselve into Virtual Reality.

I just could not help  myself to say, `Look on the Tamil refugees, you may get your Grand father somewhere. Our people have been stranded in the GEOPOLITICS wide WAR ZONE suffered as the Tamils suffer in Srilanka. Our Women were Unsafe, Captured, converted and raped in lacs, Children STARVED in lacs and the People Died in lacs'!

Even this day, we are the Most DESETTLED people as a Nationwide Deportation Drive is launched by the ADWANI PRANAB BUDDHA AXIS! We have been DEPRIVED of CITIZENSHIP and we may IDENTIFY with the PALESTINE PEOPLE living in the CONTINUITY of HOLOCAUST!

Snadip Panday,the famous social activist, has written a STUNNING report in his news letter SACHHI MUCHHI that TWO HUNDRED and THIRTY EIGHT Families belonging to Eleven Districts around lucknow, living in a SLUM, near the river GOMATI, had been ousted as they are BRANDED as BANGLADESHI although non of them happens to be Bengali speaking! amongst these POOR People eighty Five families came from the adjoining district HARDOI where SANDIP and ARUNDHUTI are based! The DUO could not help them!

The URBAN SLUM DWELLERS, the SLUM DOGS are now being treated as SLUM DOGS!

I have been insisting in Interactions with FRIENDS all over the COUNTRY that this BLOODY CITIZENSHIP AMENDMENT ACT and the TWIN TERROR Acts as well as AFPSA would soon break the limits of regions and Communities as these are going to be the BEST TOOOLS for EVICTION, DISPLACEMENT, DEPORTATION, PROMOTER BUILDER MNC RAJ and MANUSMRITI APARTHEID Rule. I had been correct, I always knew. But our friends, specially Social Activists, Intellectuals and Journalists had always been DETACHED as the VICTIMS were only the MUSLIMS, BENGALI DALIT Refugees and the ALIENATEd North East and kashmir People for whom the HOLOCAUST continues and the War Criminals are never tried!
The Crimininal executing all MASSACRES in West Bengal, GUJARAT, MUMBAI or elesewhere have never been TRIED as the NAZIES and FASCISTS had been. if tried, they got CLEAN CHIT!

No body even demanded JUSTICE for MARICHJHANPI Genocide!

The so called Mainstream, the CIVIL Society, the Intellegentsia or the Media have no SYMPATHY whatsoever for us the SLUM DOGS and the partition Victims still suffereing from the Partition holocaust!

Recent reports show that the the RESETTLED BENGALI Refugges in Dandakaranya are being BRANDED as MAOIST. Hitherto they were BRANDED as ILLEGAL BANGLADESHI INFILTERATORS! Where this DUAL IDENTITY would leave our people too, unfortunately this depends on the TRIIBLIS SATANIC Axis irrespective of ELECTORAL GOVERNMENT.

No POLITICAL Change may help us to RECOVER from the LONGEST POSSIBLE shadow of the  HOLOCAUST!

The BENGALI INTELLIGENTSIA has signed a JOINT Statement APPEALING CHANGE in Bengal! the SIGNATORIES are:

Mahashweta Debi, TARUN SANYAL, Jaya Mitra, Sabyasachi Deb, Suchitra Bhattacharya, Amelendu Chakrabarti, Chaitali Chattopadhyaya, Partha PRATIM Kanzilal, Prasun Bhowmik,SOMON Mukhopaddhaya, Shyamal Bhattacharya, Aneek RUDRA, Sanjukta Bandopaddhyay, Anuradha Mahapatra, Abhijit Sengupta, Shambhu Rakshit, Jashodhara Roychowdhari, Abheek Majumdar, Shibasheesh Mukhopaddhyaya, Shubhro Chattopaddhyaya, Swati Chakrabarti, Shantanu Bandopaddhyaya, Sujoy SOME, Atanu Bannerjee, Subir Sarkar, Debashish Kundu, JOY GOSWAMI, Amal Dutt, Debbrato Bandopaddhyaya, SUNANDA SANYAL, Bolan Gangopaddhyaya, Rushit Sen, Kalyan Rudra, NABO DUTT, Mainak Biswas, Dr. Debpriya Mallik, Amiyo Chowdhari, Amiyo Dhar, Dilip Chakrabarti,Amitabh Chowdhari (Shri NIRAPEKSHA), APARNA SEN, Alokananda ROY, Manasi Sanyal, Bidipta Chakrabarti,BIRSA Dasgupta, SUMAN bandopaddhyaya, INDRANEEL Roychowdhari, RAJA MITRA, Raja Dasgupta, BIBHAS CHAKRABARTI, Kaushik Sen, Shayamal Chakrabarti, Manish Mitra, SUMON MUKHOPADDHYAYA, Gautam Mukhopaddhyaya, SOHINI Sengupta, Debashish Sengupta, Kakoli majumdar, Arpita Ghosh, BRATYA BASU, SHAONLI MITRA, SHUBHOPRASANNA, Shipra Bhattacharya, Samir AICH, Hiran Mitra, Sanatan Dinda, Chanchal Mukherjee, Arup Das, Amit Chakrabarti, SHAIBAL Mitra, Samiran  Majumdar, Apu dasgupta, Dipankar Dutt, Asit Poddar, pradosh Pal, Shyamal Gaain, Aleek Das, Sujit Das, Abhijit Mitra, Dilip Samanta, Shantanu Dutt, Chayan Roy, Nikhil Bhowmik, Atish Pal, Rajshekhar Aich, Vijoy Chowdhari, GANESH HALUI,JOGEN CHOWDHAURI, MAMATA SHANKAR, Chandrodaya Ghosh, Sunetra Ghatak, SUPRIYO SEN, Vidyarthi Chatterjee, chtralekha Ghosh, Someshwar Bhowmik, Sumita samanta, Nilanjan Bhattacharya, Ranoo Ghosh, Pramod Gupta, Anamika Bandopaddhaya,Chiranjib Pal,Indrajeet das, Rajshree Mukhopaddhyaya, Gautam Chakrabarti, Barun Moitra, Ashim Chowdhari,, Partha burman, Nilotpal majumdar, DEVLEENA, Shaibal Bandopaddhyaya, Joy Basu, naveenand Sen,Ladlee Mukhopaddhaya, ANANYA CHATTOPADDHYAYA, Pratul Mukhopaddhaya, Anindo Chattopaddhyaya,  Tapan Sinha, Asim GIRI, Amit Roy, Keya Chattopaddhyaya, sanhita Bandopaddhayaya, PALLAB KIRTONIA and NACHIKETA!

Well, we suppot this CALL just to have at least a DEMOCRAT FREE Environment in West Bengal to mobilise any SOCIAL Mobilisation for the LIBERATION of ABORIGINAL INDIGENOUS Minority Communities!
But the fact remain that none of these CELEBRATES would support our demands for EQUALITY, Liberty, OPPORTUNITY, EMPOWERMENT, JOB, Livelihood, Citizenship, Human and civil Rights and JUSTICE, an RESERVATION! They would never help us to recover from the Geopolitics WIDE Continuity of HOLOCAUST SHADOW!

They would not stand with us while we are DEPORTED! Massacred! DISCRIMINATED!

None of them have demanded JUSTICE for MARICHJHANPI Ethnic Cleansing for long Thirty years! They have not arranged any MASS CONVENTION on MARICHJHANPI!

They have never DEMANDED to stop the DEPORTATION, PERSECUTION and KILLING of DALIT REFUGEES all over INDIA!

What so?

We stand united with them as we want the ECZEMA must go!

We want to get RID of the HOLOCAUST SHADOW for GENERATION Next!

"The Reader" is a scrupulously tasteful — more on that word tasteful later — film about an erotic affair that turns to love. It is also, more obliquely, about the Holocaust and the generation of Germans who came of age after that catastrophe.

Directed by Stephen Daldry; written by David Hare, based on the book by Bernhard Schlink, translated by Carol Brown Janeway; directors of photography, Chris Menges and Roger Deakins; edited by Claire Simpson; music by Nico Muhly; production designer, Brigitte Broch; produced by Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack, Donna Gigliotti and Redmond Morris; released by the Weinstein Company. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes.


WITH: Kate Winslet (Hanna Schmitz), Ralph Fiennes (Michael Berg), David Kross (Young Michael Berg), Lena Olin (Rose Mather/Ilana Mather) and Bruno Ganz (Professor Rohl).

The Guardian writes:

Much praise has been given to this adaptation by screenwriter David Hare and director Stephen Daldry of Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel Der Vorleser, or The Reader - the German title has the sense of "reader-aloud". Everyone involved in this film is of the highest possible calibre, but their combined and formidable talents could not annul my queasiness that the question of Nazi war guilt and the death camps had been reimagined in terms of a middlebrow sentimental-erotic fantasy. This was, I admit, a problem I had with the original novel, and the movie treatment has not alleviated it. Its full, questionable nature emerges as the narrative unfolds; those fearful of spoilerism had better look away now.

The Reader Release: 2008 Countries: Rest of the world, USA Cert (UK): 15 Runtime: 123 mins Directors: Stephen Daldry Cast: David Kross, Jeanette Hain, Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Susanne Lothar More on this film Kate Winslet gives a typically intelligent performance as Hanna, a sturdy, unprepossessing woman in a provincial town in 1950s West Germany; she is employed as a tram conductor. One rainy day, she chances upon Michael (David Kross), a teenage boy shivering, throwing up and almost delirious with undiagnosed fever in the courtyard of her apartment building. With brisk and motherly can-do, she mops his brow, sloshes away the sick with a bucket of water and makes sure he gets home all right. Some months later, after a lonely recuperation, he comes back to her flat with a bunch of flowers to say thank you. They end up having a glorious affair, and their passionate lovemaking is accompanied with a ritual hardly less erotic - she loves him to read aloud to her from the classics: Chekhov, Homer, Rilke.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jan/02/the-reader-kate-winslet-film

 

Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels announced a unilateral cease-fire Sunday, saying they will halt fighting to allow humanitarian workers into the war zone to help civilians.  

The Sri Lankan government immediately rejected the offer. Sri Lanka is expressing appreciation for the offer of a humanitarian mission from the United Nations. But the government denies the international aid community's assertion there is a humanitarian crisis. No one, however, disputes that many civilians remain trapped on the small piece of land in the northeast where the rebel Tamil Tigers are putting up a desperate last stand.Sri Lanka's government and military say they are doing their utmost to minimize civilian casualties after cornering the remnants of the rebel force that once controlled a large swath of the north. The rebels appear on the verge of total defeat after a quarter-century violent quest to create an independent ethnic Tamil homeland.
 

Rebels in Sri Lanka claim some 150,000 people are on the brink of starvation in the territory held by the Tamil Tigers in the northeast.  The Sri Lankan government says the rebels are to blame for the plight of the civilians in the remaining area controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The accusations come amid rising international concern over mass civilian suffering in the dwindling war zone.

On the other hand, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made an unannounced trip to Lebanon ahead of critical legislative elections there that could result in hard-line militants taking power.Clinton was scheduled to meet Sunday with Lebanese President Michel Sleiman during her brief stay in the capital, Beirut.In a written statement distributed to reporters, Clinton said the people of Lebanon must be able to choose their own representatives in open and fair elections, without the threat of intimidation or violence, and free of outside influence.

Former U.S. Iraq commander General David Petraeus said the latest bombings in Iraq underscore the need for vigilance to prevent the situation from deteriorating.Attacks by suicide bombers that have killed at least 140 people in the last two days, 185 so far in April, have caused renewed concern in the U.S. Congress, where General Petraeus testified to a House committee.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called on Pakistani leaders to do more to fight the Taliban, which he called a threat to the existence of democracy in the country.  Speaking at a Marine Corps base in North Carolina Thursday, Gates also discussed the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.Secretary Gates was asked about the impact on the U.S. effort in Afghanistan of the Pakistani government's agreement with militants in the Swat Valley and the Taliban move into the Buner district near the nation's capital, Islamabad, this week.

"My hope is that there will be an increasing recognition on the part of the Pakistani government that the Taliban in Pakistan are in fact an existential threat to the democratic government of that country," said Robert Gates.  "I think that some of the leaders certainly understand that, but it is important that they not only recognize it but take the appropriate actions to deal with it."

Gates' comments came the day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused the Pakistani government of abdicating its authority to the Taliban by agreeing to impose Islamic law in Swat.  Gates indicated that future U.S. relations with Pakistan depend, at least in part, on the government's ability to take on the Taliban threat.

The Reader(Cert 15)
 
Philip French The Observer, Sunday 4 January 2009 Article historyThe Reader is an exemplary piece of filmmaking, superbly acted by Kate Winslet, David Kross and Ralph Fiennes, beautifully lit by two of Britain's finest cinematographers (Roger Deakins and Chris Menges) and sensitively directed by Stephen Daldry from a screenplay by David Hare. In certain ways they sharpen Bernard Schlink's bestselling German novel of 1995 which deals with a subject - Nazi concentration camps and the Holocaust - that has hung over my generation since the outbreak of war in 1939, days after my sixth birthday.

The Reader Release: 2008 Countries: Rest of the world, USA Cert (UK): 15 Runtime: 123 mins Directors: Stephen Daldry Cast: David Kross, Jeanette Hain, Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, Susanne Lothar More on this film In 1940, we were made aware of the camps satirically by Chaplin's The Great Dictator, and sombrely by the Boulting brothers' film about the incarceration of the anti-Nazi cleric Martin Niemöller, Pastor Hall. Five years later newsreel from Belsen and Buchenwald showed us what went on inside those camps.

Since then, there has been an unending stream of Holocaust movies (nearly 300 are dealt with in the third edition of Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust, Annette Insdorf's standard work on the subject), ranging in character and quality from scrupulous documentaries like Claude Lanzmann's Shoah and Alain Resnais's Night and Fog to, for me personally, the two most offensive, Liliana Cavani's near-pornographic The Night Porter and Roberto Benigni's sickly Oscar-winning Life is Beautiful.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jan/04/the-reader-review

Review: The Reader
by Jette Kernion Dec 12th 2008 // 3:02PM

Filed under: Drama, Independent, Theatrical Reviews, The Weinstein Co.

Opening in limited release this week with a wider release planned for January, The Reader has "prestigious arthouse drama" written all over it. It's an adaptation of a critically acclaimed German novel by Bernhard Schlink, but translated into English for wider appeal, and features a big dramatic performance from Kate Winslet in which we see her character over the span of decades. It's directed by Stephen Daldry and adapted by David Hare, who collaborated on another prestigious adaptation together, The Hours in 2002. This time, their movie explores German relationships that are affected, even decades later, by the Holocaust.

The movie is told as a flashback from the point of view of a middle-aged lawyer in Berlin, Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes). Back in the late 1950s, 15-year-old Michael (David Kross) falls ill on the way home from school one day, and is comforted and helped by a strange woman (Winslet). When he recuperates and returns to her home to thank her, a sexual spark flares up between them into an inappropriate but sympathetic relationship. They meet every afternoon, not just for sex but for reading -- he starts by reading her the books assigned to him for school, but ends up finding all manner of literature for them to share. However, Hanna is full of secrets -- she is even reluctant to tell Michael her name -- and the effects of her past and her secret-keeping are long-reaching and dramatic.

The structure of The Reader is rambling and hard to follow -- you think the movie is drawing to a close, and then you get 15 minutes more, making me feel impatient near the end of the two-hour film, as though there were too many endings. (I had the same problem with Changeling.) The frequent shifts in time -- Michael in the present time of the film (1995), an extended chunk of the film during his teen years, another long flashback as a young man, and then shorter sequences that skip three years here and five there. The narrative arc isn't quite clear enough for the movie to shift in this way without a slight sense of disorientation. It may be that the decision to keep the novel's narrative structure impacted the film -- I haven't read it, but descriptions seem to indicate that the movie is fairly faithful to the events in the book.
http://www.cinematical.com/2008/12/12/review-the-reader/

The Reader (Der Vorleser) is a novel by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink. It was published in Germany in 1995 and in the United States (translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway) in 1997. It deals with the difficulties which subsequent generations have in comprehending the Holocaust; specifically, whether a sense of its origins and magnitude can be adequately conveyed solely through written and oral media. This question is increasingly at the center of Holocaust literature in the late 20th and early 21st century, as the victims and witnesses of the Holocaust die and its living memory begins to fade.

Schlink's book was well received in his native country, and also in the United States, winning several awards. The novel was a departure from Schlink's usual detective novels. It became the first German novel to top the New York Times bestseller list, and US television mogul Oprah Winfrey made it a selection of her book club in 1999. It has been translated into 37 languages and been included in the curricula of college-level courses in Holocaust literature and German language and German literature. A 2008 film adaptation directed by Stephen Daldry was well received.

The Reader is a 2008 drama film based on the 1995 German novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink. The film adaptation was written by David Hare and directed by Stephen Daldry. Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet star along with the young actor David Kross. It was the last film for producers Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack, both of whom died before it was released. Production began in Germany in September 2007, and the film opened in limited release on 10 December 2008.

 

Meanwhile,Sri Lanka's Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa dismissed the rebel group's announcement, saying the rebels are "running from" government forces and in a position where they are cornered and "must surrender."

U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss told VOA the situation in Sri Lanka is the "toughest humanitarian crisis in the world at the moment."

The U.N.'s top humanitarian official, John Holmes, is in Sri Lanka meeting with officials in Colombo.  He is urging leaders to let aid workers take badly needed supplies to the tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the small strip of land still under rebel control in the northeast of the island.

The Tamil Tigers accuse the government of blocking food deliveries to the area under rebel control, and they say the civilians there are facing starvation.

 
Lakashman Hulugalle, director general, Media Center for National Security, points to location on map of remaining LTTE rebel-held territory
A Sri Lankan Defense Ministry spokesman Lakshman Hullugalle says the rebels are to blame, saying they have been stealing any aid the government has sent for civilians.

The spokesman estimated that between 200 to 300 rebel combatants remain in the war zone, and he said they could be vanquished instantly if not for the precautions government forces are taking to minimize civilian casualties.

The U.S. State Department has renewed its call for a cease-fire in the war zone, saying the safety of civilians and respecting international humanitarian law must be the foremost priority of both sides in the conflict.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's ruling party won an overwhelming majority in a local election.  The win announced Sunday is seen as an endorsement of military victories against the separatist Tamil Tigers.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's Freedom Alliance won 68 seats in the council of Western Province, which includes the capital, leaving 36 seats in the hands of opposition parties.


 posting on a pro-rebel Web site, attributed to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, claims 150,000 civilians are on the brink of starvation.

Sri Lanka's government says the civilians - it puts the number at no more than 10,000 - are hostages of the rebels, who claim the military is blocking desperately needed food.

The head of the Defense Ministry's media center, Lakshman Hulugalle, tells VOA News it is the Tigers who are to blame for anyone starving on the northeastern coast.

 
Lakashman Hulugalle, director general, Media Center for National Security, points to location on map of remaining LTTE rebel-held territory
"What we have sent to those areas is not being distributed to the innocent people. It's been robbed by LTTE. This is the only government in the world feeding terrorists and fighting against terrorists," he said.

A United Nations spokesman tells VOA the world body has "no information about government food going in" recently to the affected area. It says at least 50,000 people are trapped by the fighting.

The Tamil Tigers have seen their territory shaved down to less than eight square kilometers amid a final offensive by the military.

Defense spokesman Hulugalle says the rebel remnants - he estimates at 200 to 300 combatants - could be instantly vanquished if not for the precautions government forces are taking to minimize civilian casualties.

"For the Sri Lanka government and for the forces it's a matter of a few hours. If not for these innocent Tamils we should have crushed LTTE within hours," he said.

The United Nations' humanitarian chief, John Holmes, is to meet Sunday here with government officials. The United Nations says he will push for enhanced humanitarian missions in and around the conflict zone where access to the tens of thousands of displaced people is very limited.

The White House, in a statement, is calling on both sides to immediately cease fighting and allow civilians to exit the conflict area. It says aid organizations and journalists should have access to those refugees who have already escaped.


Film Reviews
Film Review: The Reader
By Kirk Honeycutt, November 30, 2008 11:00 ET
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Cast and CrewOpens: December 10, 2008
Executive Producer: Bob Weinstein
Executive Producer: Harvey Weinstein
Co-Executive Prod.: Jason Blum
Producer: Sydney Pollack
Producer: Scott Rudin
Producer: Redmond Morris
Producer: Anthony Minghella
Co-producer: Henning Molfenter
Co-producer: Charlie Woebcken
Associate producer: Michael Simon de Normier
Director: Stephen Daldry
Screen Writer: David Hare
Director of Photography: Roger Deakins
Director of Photography: Chris Menges
Editor: Claire Simpson
Line Producer: Arno Neubauer
Prod. Designer: Brigitte Broch
Art Director: Christian M. Goldbeck
Art Director: Erwin Prib
Set Decorator: Eva Stiebler
Costume Designer: Donna Maloney
Music: Nico Muhly
Casting director: Simone Bar
Casting director: Jina Jay
Cast: Ralph Fiennes (Michael Berg), Kate Winslet (Hanna Schmitz), Karoline Herfurth (Marthe), Bruno Ganz (Professor Rohl), Hannah Herzsprung (Julia), Jeanette Hain (Brigitte), Susanne Lothar (Carla Berg), Alissa Wilms (Emily Berg), Florian Bartholomai (Thomas Berg), Friederike Becht (Angela Berg), Matthias Habich (Peter Berg)
See Full Chart
Box Office:
Week of 04/19/2009
Pos.: 38 Gross: $55,229 Bottom Line: A love affair between a younger man and an older woman sharply reflects the conflicts between Germany's war and postwar generations
During the making of "The Reader," producers Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella passed away. This last film is a testament to the kind of productions each was associated with in his career -- films of entertainment, often with stars, that also reach out in terms of situations, themes and settings to embrace larger issues that confront society.

"The Reader" is a well-told coming-of-age yarn about a young boy growing up in postwar West Germany and experiencing his first love affair. But the outreach is to an issue crucial in that country but also genuinely disturbing to any viewer. This is the troubling dilemma of Germany's so-called "second generation," which had to come to terms with the Nazi era and a Holocaust perpetuated by parents, teachers and even lovers.

Certainly "The Reader," for all its erotic scenes involving Kate Winslet, presents a difficult marketing challenge. The lively, nonlinear structure imposed by screenwriter David Hare and tight, focused direction from Stephen Daldry make this an engaging period drama. But German postwar guilt is not the most winning subject matter for the holiday season. The film opens Dec. 10, expands Christmas Day and goes national Jan. 9.

"The Reader," based on Bernhard Schlink's controversial German novel, deliberately places a Holocaust perpetrator at the story's focal point. But since we first meet her in an entirely different light, as a kind, loving and passionate woman, it explores the challenges of this second generation in navigating a welter of deeply psychological and morally complex issues.

The film opens in 1995 Berlin, where Ralph Fiennes plays aloof, emotionally numb attorney Michael Berg. We're swiftly conveyed back to 1958, when his younger self (very well played by David Kross) has a chance encounter that will forever affect him. Coming down with what he later learns is scarlet fever, he is helped home by a stranger, Hanna (Winslet). Upon recovering, he looks her up to thank her and is startled to find himself losing his virginity to her. They embark on an affair with its own kind of feverish urgency.

As part of their bedroom rituals, he starts to read to her from books by Mark Twain, Homer and Anton Chekhov. She calls him "Kid" and clearly an "oldness" afflicts her beyond her years. Yet there is a kind of role reversal in his reading to her that allows him to expose her to worlds she never knew.

Then she disappears. Eight years later, as Michael attends a war crimes trial as a law student in Heidelberg, she makes a startling reappearance as a defendant. Michael is shaken to his core by growing evidence that his first love is, by any standard, a monster. But how does one deal with a monster who is a lover? One can only condemn her; but in that condemnation, where lies the process of understanding?

The film makes no attempt to answer this question if indeed there is an answer. There is an explanation, not immediately apparent, for why Hanna found herself in a position to dictate life or death. But there is neither an excuse nor an offer of atonement ready for her.

Neither Hare nor Daldry shows us any easy way to look at this character. They muddy the waters and complicate the emotions, but the facts of her actions smother any possible empathy.

What remains unclear, in the film at least, is why Michael has seemingly never thought about any of this before 1966. Did he never question his father -- depicted here as a stern, unsympathetic man -- about what he did during the war?

To Winslet and Kross belong the gutsy, intense performances of the film. Lena Olin as a unyielding camp survivor and Bruno Ganz as a sagacious law professor put in memorable appearances. Fiennes is solid as the elder Berg, but by this stage of life the "oldness" Hanna once exhibited has caught up with him too, making his a somewhat listless role.

Superior production work in Germany by top professionals led by two of the world's finest cinematographers in Chris Menges and Roger Deakins gives what is a very tough story a fine professional polish.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film-reviews/film-review-the-reader-1003917714.story


 

 
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    nandigramunited: CHANGE WANTED! PARIBARTON CHAAI!Face of the ...

    The SLOGAN is PARIBARTAN CHAAI! Change wanted in Bengal! The Cream of West Bengal Intelligentsia, the CULTURAL ICONS, which turned away from CPM, ...
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      Maoist gunned down village head in Malkangiri

      odishatoday.com - ‎Apr 24, 2009‎
      By our Correspondent Kalimela (Orissa): The suspected Maoists have gunned down a village head of Palkhonda village of Skikhpali Panchayat under Malkangiri ...
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      EVMs snatched in Malkangiri

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      Re-polling in 17 booths after April 28 in Malkangiri

      odishatoday.com - ‎Apr 22, 2009‎
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      Maoists kill candidate in Malkangiri

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      Naxals bare their fangs in Malkangiri and Kandhamal

      Hindu - ‎Apr 4, 2009‎
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      Cops, Maoists battle it out in Malkangiri

      Times of India - ‎Apr 6, 2009‎
      KORAPUT: Police said around 200 rounds of gun-fire were exchanged between security personnel and Maoists in a forest in Malkangiri district on Monday. ...

      Orissa on boil at over 40 C; toll climbs to 40

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      Orissa CEO recommends repoll in nine polling stations

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      Orissa in grip of searing heat, toll mounts to 39

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      At least 16 poll officials abducted by Naxalites in Malkangiri

      Orissadiary.com - ‎Apr 17, 2009‎
      Report by Siba Prasad Das, Malkangiri : At least 16 poll officials abducted by the Naxalites on Thursday evening and taken away the EVM from tham , released ...
       
      Sri Lankan ethnic Tamil civilians who crossed into government controlled areas rest near war zone in Puthukudiyiruppu, 24 Apr 2009
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      Rebels in Sri Lanka claim some 150,000 people are on the brink of starvation in the territory held by the Tamil Tigers in the northeast.  The Sri Lankan government says the rebels are to blame for the plight of the civilians in the remaining area controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The accusations come amid rising international concern over mass civilian suffering in the dwindling war zone.

      A posting on a pro-rebel Web site, attributed to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, claims 150,000 civilians are on the brink of starvation.

       
       
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      Military officials report intense fighting in Lower Dir district, and say scores of militants, including a militant commander, have been killed in the ongoing clashes
       

      At a protest in New Delhi on Saturday, held to commemerate the 20th birth anniversary of The Panchen Lama. The Tibetan government-in-exile based at Dharamshala has sought the intervention of the UN Human Rights Council and asked the Chinese government to withdraw the case against the Tibetan monk Phurbu Tsering Rinpoche, on trial in a Chinese court for allegedly possessing illegal arms. AFP

       
       
       
       
      1. The Partition of India

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        The Reader (2008 film)

        From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

          (Redirected from The Reader (film))
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        The Reader

        Promotional film poster
        Directed by Stephen Daldry
        Produced by Anthony Minghella
        Sydney Pollack
        Scott Rudin (uncredited)
        Written by David Hare
        Starring Kate Winslet
        Ralph Fiennes
        David Kross
        Alexandra Maria Lara
        Lena Olin
        Bruno Ganz
        Music by Nico Muhly
        Cinematography Chris Menges
        Roger Deakins
        Editing by Claire Simpson
        Distributed by The Weinstein Company
        Release date(s) December 10, 2008
        Running time 124 min.
        Country USA , Germany , United Kingdom
        Language English
        Budget $32 million

        The Reader is a 2008 drama film based on the 1995 German novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink. The film adaptation was written by David Hare and directed by Stephen Daldry. Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet star along with the young actor David Kross. It was the last film for producers Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack, both of whom died before it was released. Production began in Germany in September 2007, and the film opened in limited release on 10 December 2008.

        It tells the story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who as a teenager in the late 1950s had an affair with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. Michael realizes that Hanna is keeping a personal secret she believes is worse than her Nazi past, a secret that — paradoxically enough — could help her at the trial.

        Winslet and David Kross, who plays the young Michael, have received much praise for their performances. Winslet received praise and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, BAFTA Award for Best Actress, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress and the Academy Award for Best Actress at the 81st Academy Awards for her role in the film. The film has also been nominated for several other major awards.

         

        Kate Winslet

        From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

        Jump to: navigation, search
        Kate Winslet

        Palm Springs Film Festival, 2007
        Born Kate Elizabeth Winslet
        5 October 1975 (1975-10-05) (age 33)
        Reading, Berkshire, England
        Occupation Actress/Singer
        Years active 1991–present
        Spouse(s) Jim Threapleton (1998–2001)
        Sam Mendes (2003–present)

        Kate Elizabeth Winslet (born 5 October 1975) is an English actress and occasional singer. She is noted for having played diverse characters over her career, but probably best-known for her critically acclaimed performances as Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, Rose DeWitt Bukater in Titanic, Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sarah Pierce in Little Children, April Wheeler in Revolutionary Road, and Hanna Schmitz in The Reader.

        Winslet has been nominated for six Academy Awards and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in The Reader. She has won awards from the Screen Actors Guild, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, as well as being nominated for an Emmy. At the age of 22, she became the youngest actress to receive two Oscar nominations;[1] at age 33, she is now the youngest actor of either sex to receive six nominations. David Edelstein of New York Magazine hails her as "the best English-speaking film actress of her generation."[2]

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Winslet

         

        Writing in blood: The Indo-Pak partition- Part III

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        Violence between India and Pakistan, did not end with the partition. Hindus and Bengali Muslims alike were massacred in the 1971 Bangladesh atrocities. ...

        All the Fuss about the "Settlers" of the Hilly Districts: Whose ...

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        The territory became impassable and unlivable for most Bengali speaking people. They would be kidnapped, and often times killed, even when ransom money had ...

        New Delhi's endgame?

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        My dilemma with Shashi Tharoor

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        Most gentlefolks in India (the equivalent of the Bengali bhadralok, or in the inimitable and entertaining vocabulary of the Communists, ...

        Asean has failed to save Rohingyas

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        Foreign hand in Balochistan chaos?

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        THE situation slightly eased when the 49-year-old head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Balochistan province, John Solecki, ...

        Asia's New Boat People

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        The Rohingyas themselves say they are Muslim descendants of Persian, Turkish, Bengali, and Pathan traders, who migrated to Burma as early as the 7th century ...

        New Year celebrations make a splash

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        'If Lanka doesn't implement truce, snap diplomatic ties'

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        Tehran launches its custard pie strike

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        I write in the shadow of Holocaust Remembrance Day. I write in the shadow of operation Cast Lead. I write to remind us that as I once heard Shaul Mishal say ...

        MONTGOMERY: Holocaust remembrance: 'In the Shadow of Shoah'

        Packet Online - ‎Apr 20, 2009‎
        Ms. Wertheimer-Stanton will be signing her latest book, "Still Alive in the Shadow of Shoah," a memoir based on her life which includes her time spent in ...

        Tragic history

        Daily Gleaner - ‎Apr 22, 2009‎
        ... million Jews who perished in the Nazi holocaust. israeli leaders vowed that there wouldn't be a second holocaust, their pledges ringing in the shadow of ...

        Interrogation controversy casts long shadow on agenda

        Washington Examiner - ‎Apr 23, 2009‎
        Then he abruptly pivoted to other issues — Earth Day, Holocaust remembrance, credit card abuse and more. But others are not moving on, and the torture issue ...

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        His shadow hovers over this narrative with the possibilities of what might have been. Valuable supplements to the story are a map of the journey created by ...

        Durban II, another opportunity missed

        guardian.co.uk - ‎Apr 24, 2009‎
        The dark shadow of Durban 2001 hung heavily: no one wanted a repeat of that awful event. It was clear that no governments wanted to stir up trouble. ...

        The Holocaust in a different way

        Indiana Statesman - ‎Apr 21, 2009‎
        Both parts of this novel are available at Cunningham Memorial Library, as well as another of Spiegelman's graphic novels, "In the Shadow of No Towers."
         
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          Mainstream, Vol XLVII No 19, April 25, 2009

          Letter from Kolkata: Decadence of Bengali Intelligentsia

          by Amitava Mukherjee, 26 April 2009

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          As the general election campaign is coming to a close, there are increasing signs that the Bengali intellectual life is at a crossroad, often exhibiting signs of terrible decay and partisanship, a direct result of penetration of Left ideas in the Bengali social life after independence.

          Every election since 1967 has brought to fore the bankruptcy of the Bengali middle class. Remember the 1967 general elections when the two Communist Parties, dominated by middle class intellectuals, started slander campaigns against the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, Prafulla Chandra Sen, an honest Gandhian, as he had advised the people of the State to use green plantains as an item of food because there was a crisis of rice in the market. Prafulla Chandra Sen might have been undiplomatic but he was an honest man. The Communists deliberately chose not to see the better side of the man and instead started a low-grade slander campaign against him. More reprehensible was the allegation from a certain middle class quarter that Sen had purchased the Stephen House, a palatial building in the heart of Calcutta. But when he died Prafulla Chandra Sen left nothing behind and had in fact spent his last days on whatever his friends and associates, notably Ashok Krishna Dutta, a veteran Congressman, gave him voluntarily. The Communists gave a pathetic exhibition of their poor taste as they marched on the streets of Calcutta after Prafulla Chandra Sen's defeat in the election with green plantains. The Bengali middle class also rejoiced at this cheap show. That was really the beginning of the destruction of the intellectual life of Bengal.

          Servility and mediocrity are tantamount to infectious diseases and the first seeds of these, planted in 1967, saw the flowering of the poisonous tree after the Indira Congress captured power in West Bengal in 1972. The corrupt and mediocre Bengali intelligentsia remained quiet, with a handful of exceptions, as hoodlums donning jerseys of political parties let loose an atmosphere of terror on the streets of West Bengal. The Bengali bhadralok again chose to turn a blind eye and instead decided to pay obeisance to Sanjay Gandhi when her mother clamped Emergency on the country. Who can forget the pathetic scene in Calcutta when a renowned historian from the Calcutta University was seen jostling with others to occupy a front-row seat at a meeting which was addressed by Sanjay Gandhi at the height of the Emergency? Or try to recollect the uncouth attempts of violent Youth Congress workers led by a present Union Minister to prevent Jaya Prakash Narayan from entering the University Institute in Calcutta where JP was scheduled to address a meeting. At that time also the Bengali intellectuals had not raised their voice.

          ¨

          However, after the Left Front's coming to power things have definitely taken a qualitative turn. Under Congress rule there was no attempt to create any segment among the middle class which would always look towards the ruling party for approval before airing any view. The society was free and unshackled. Syncophancy was there but it remained largely at the individual level and there was really not much attempt to create any section which would play the role of his master's voice.

          Developments over Singur and Nandigram have exposed this trend in the most unabashed manner, no doubt. But the process had started much earlier immediately after 1977 when the Left Front Government started doling out favours to sections of the middle class, mostly journalists, writers, singers and other cultural personalities. Many of them were favoured with lands and flats on out- of-turn basis. Side by side regimentation of the society was carried out with professional perfection through appointments of hangers-on in various government and academic jobs.

          It was not, therefore, surprising that the Bengali society on the whole remained quiet even after gruesome killings of refugees from Eastern Bengal on the Marichjhanpi island or the Anand Margis on the streets of Calcutta. To a great extent Bengalis remained quiet when the palms of several persons were chopped off in the Howrah district for their sin of being Congress workers. Numerous persons have lost their lives in police custody. But the Bengali society, except some civil rights organisations, have remained quiet. The Left Front parties have dishonoured their promise of bringing to book these police officers who were guilty of excesses during Congress rule, and instead gave them promotions. Even that was not enough to stir up the society.

          Happenings in Singur and Nandigram form a very painful chapter of not only West Bengal's history of 'development' but its intellectual life as well. People of the State saw a veteran filmmaker like Mrinal Sen joining the unprecedented precession of common men protesting against State terrorism in Nandigram on one day and participating in the State Government sponsored procession in support of the State action on another day. What does Sen's action signify? Why have Sunil Gangopadhyay, the litterateur, and Saumitra Chattopadhyay, the film personality, become controversial by their reticence to speak out against the powers that be over the events in Singur and Nandigram?

          Highly controversial too is the case of another person, named Amartya Sen; he has, over long years of painstaking work, acquired considerable international reputation. He at first supported the West Bengal Government's decision to invite the Tatas for their motor car factory in Singur and even spoke in favour of the land acquisition measures, and then made a volte face and conceded that loss of profession of the displaced farmers is too serious an issue to gloss over after volleys of protests had come from different quarters over his earlier remark; but thereafter, in a quite amusing manner, he tried to justify himself by saying that he too was a supporter of Left ideas from his student days.

          It is now time for the Bengali society, mostly its middle class, to introspect about its values, about is contributions during the freedom struggle and also about the abysmal depth to which it has sunk during the last thirty years. Bengalis must stop deceiving themselves if they really want to play a laudable role in future.

           

          Leftist intellectuals root for Third Front

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          During a recent meeting with the intelligentsia, Mr. Bhattacharjee admitted that many familiar faces were missing. "I would have been happy to see some ...

          Lalgarh tribal leader softens stance

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          ... intelligentsia and the civil society. Mr. Sen said the EC wanted peaceful polling in Lalgarh and it was his duty to hold elections all over West Bengal. ...

          CPM willing to join a Third Front govt: Buddha

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          He was replying to a question at an interactive session with members of Kolkata's Left-leaning intelligentsia, organised by the cultural wing of the CPI(M). ...

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            The Reader

            From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

            Jump to: navigation, search
            The Reader  
            Author Bernhard Schlink
            Translator Carol Brown Janeway
            Cover artist Kathleen DiGrado (design), Sean Kernan (photo)
            Country Germany
            Language German
            Genre(s) Novel
            Publisher Vintage International
            Publication date 1995
            Media type print (paperback)
            Pages 218 pp
            ISBN 0-375-70797-2

            The Reader (Der Vorleser) is a novel by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink. It was published in Germany in 1995 and in the United States (translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway) in 1997. It deals with the difficulties which subsequent generations have in comprehending the Holocaust; specifically, whether a sense of its origins and magnitude can be adequately conveyed solely through written and oral media. This question is increasingly at the center of Holocaust literature in the late 20th and early 21st century, as the victims and witnesses of the Holocaust die and its living memory begins to fade.

            Schlink's book was well received in his native country, and also in the United States, winning several awards. The novel was a departure from Schlink's usual detective novels. It became the first German novel to top the New York Times bestseller list, and US television mogul Oprah Winfrey made it a selection of her book club in 1999. It has been translated into 37 languages and been included in the curricula of college-level courses in Holocaust literature and German language and German literature. A 2008 film adaptation directed by Stephen Daldry was well received.

            Contents

            [hide]

            [edit] Synopsis

            The story is told in three parts by the main character, Michael Berg. Each part takes place in a different time period in the past.

            Part I begins in the city of Heidelberg, West Germany in 1958. After 15-year-old Michael becomes ill on his way home, 36-year-old tram conductress Hanna Schmitz notices him, cleans him up, and sees him safely on his way home. He spends the next several months absent from school battling hepatitis.

            He visits her to thank Hanna for her help and realizes he is attracted to her. Embarrassed after she catches him watching her getting dressed, he runs away, but he returns days later. After she directs him to retrieve coal from the cellar, he is covered with coal dust. She watches him bathe and seduces him. He returns eagerly to her apartment on a regular basis, and begins a heated affair. They develop a ritual of bathing and having sex, before which she frequently has him read aloud to her, especially classical literature, such as The Odyssey and Chekhov's The Lady with the Dog. Both remain somewhat distant from each other emotionally despite their physical closeness. Hanna, wrestling with her own guilt, is at times physically and verbally abusive to Michael.

            Months later, Hanna suddenly leaves without a trace. The distance between them had been growing as Michael had been spending more time with his school friends. He feels guilty and believes it was something he did that caused her departure. The memory of Hanna taints all his other relationships with women.

            In Part II, eight years later, while attending law school, he is part of a group of students observing a war crimes trial. A group of middle-aged women who had served as SS guards at a satellite of Auschwitz in occupied Poland are being tried for allowing 300 Jewish women under their ostensible "protection" to die in a fire locked in a church that had been bombed during the evacuation of the camp. The incident was chronicled in a book written by one of the few survivors, who emigrated to America after the war; she is the star witness at the trial.

            To Michael's stunned surprise, Hanna is one of the defendants, sending him on a roller coaster of complex emotions. He feels guilty for having loved a remorseless criminal and at the same time is mystified at Hanna's willingness to accept full responsibility for supervising the other guards despite evidence proving otherwise. She is accused of writing the account of the fire. At first she denies this but then in panic admits it in order to not have to give a sample of her handwriting. Michael, horrified, realizes that Hanna has a secret she considers worse than her Nazi past — she is illiterate.

            This realization explains many of Hanna's actions: her refusal of the promotion that would have put her in the position to kill these people directly and also her panic the rest of her life over being discovered. During the trial, it comes out that she took in the weak, sickly women and had them read to her before they were sent to the gas chambers. Michael decides she wanted to make their last days bearable; or did she send them to their death so they would not reveal her secret? She is convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He could have revealed her secret and so spared her that, but cannot master his emotions.

            Part III: Michael, trying to come to terms with his feelings for Hanna, begins taping readings of books and sending them to her without any correspondence while she is in prison. Years have passed, Michael is divorced and has a daughter from his brief marriage. Hanna begins to teach herself to read, and then write in a childlike way, by borrowing the books from the prison library and following the tapes along in the text. She writes to Michael, but he cannot bring himself to reply. After 20 years, Hanna is about to be released, he agrees (after hesitation) to find her a place to stay and employment, visiting her in prison. On the day of her release in 1984, though, she commits suicide and Michael is heartbroken. Michael learns from the warden that she had been reading books by many prominent Holocaust survivors, such as Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Tadeusz Borowski, and histories of the camps. The warden is angry with him for not communicating with Hanna in any way other than the audio tapes. Hanna left him an assignment: give all her money to the survivor of the church fire.

            In a dénouement, Michael visits the Jewish woman now living in New York who wrote the book about the winter death march from Auschwitz. She can see his terrible conflict of emotions and he finally tells of his youthful relationship with Hanna. The unspoken damage she left to the people around her hangs in the air. He reveals his short, unloving marriage, and the distant daughter. The woman, comprehending but unable to resolve her own loss of family, refuses to take the savings Hanna had asked Michael to convey to her, saying, "That would mean giving absolution, which I cannot do". She asks that he donate it as he sees fit; he chooses a Jewish charity for combatting illiteracy, in Hanna's name. The woman does, however, take the old tin tea box in which Hanna had kept her money and mementos, "to replace the similar tea box which was stolen from me as a child in the camp"—a small gesture towards her former guard, and healing her own memories. Returning to Germany, Michael visits Hanna's grave for the first and only time.

            [edit] Characters

            Beyond Michael and Hanna, none of the significant characters who actually appear in the mimetic sense have names.

            • Michael Berg, a German who is first portrayed as a 15-year-old boy and is revisited at later parts of his life, when he is a researcher in legal history, divorced with one daughter, Julia. Like many of his generation, he struggles to come to terms with his country's recent history.
            • Hanna Schmitz, illiterate and former SS guard at Auschwitz. She is 36 and working as a tram conductor in Heidelberg when she first meets 15-year-old Michael. She takes a dominant position in their relationship.
            • Michael's father, a philosophy professor who specializes in Kant and Hegel. During the Nazi era he lost his job for giving a lecture on Spinoza and had to support himself and his family by writing hiking guidebooks. He is very formal and requires his children to make appointments to see him. He is emotionally stiff and does not easily express his emotions to Michael or his three siblings, which exacerbates the difficulties Hanna creates for Michael. By the time Michael is narrating the story, his father is dead.
            • Michael's mother, seen briefly. Michael has fond memories of her pampering him as a child, which his relationship with Hanna reawakens. A psychoanalyst he sees tells him he should consider his mother's effect on him more, since she barely figures in his retelling of his life.
            • Ilana Mather (The Jewish woman who wrote the book about the death march from Auschwitz). She lives in New York City when Michael visits her near the end of the story, still suffering from the loss of her own family.

            [edit] Literary elements

            [edit] Style

            Schlink uses both the hardboiled tone of the detective novels he had previously written and a more reflective, sometimes poetic, approach more consistent with the weighty material. The former is exemplified by the bluntness of chapter openings at key turns in the plot, like "Next morning, she was dead." The latter comes into play in passages like "It was one of the pictures of Hanna that has stayed with me. I have them stored away, I can project them on a mental screen and watch them, unchanged, unconsumed."

            He also deftly uses chiasmus ("I didn't reveal anything I should have kept to myself. I kept to myself something I should have revealed") at times to accentuate Michael's confusion.

            [edit] Guilt and the German generation gap

            The novel's take on the Holocaust is doubly unusual among Holocaust fiction in that not only does it put historical distance between its narrative and the wartime period, it has as its main contact with those events a perpetrator instead of a victim.[citation needed]

            Schlink's main theme is how his generation, and indeed all generations after the Third Reich, have struggled to come to terms with the crimes of the Nazis ("the past which brands us and with which we must live"). For his cohorts, there was the unique position of being blameless and the sense of duty to call to account their parents' generation,

            ... (which) had been served by the guards and enforcers, or had done nothing to stop them, or had not banished them from their midst as it could have done after 1945, was in the dock, and we explored it, subjected it to trial by daylight, and condemned it to shame ... We all condemned our parents to shame, even if the only charge we could bring was that after 1945 they had tolerated the perpetrators in their midst ... The more horrible the events about which we read and heard, the more certain we became of our responsibility to enlighten and accuse ... The Nazi past was an issue even for children who couldn't accuse their parents of anything, or didn't want to..[1]

            But while he would like it to be as simple as that, his experience with Hanna complicates matters:

            I wanted simultaneously to understand Hanna's crime and to condemn it. But it was too terrible for that. When I tried to understand it, I had the feeling I was failing to condemn it as it must be condemned. When I condemned it as it must be condemned, there was no room for understanding ... I wanted to pose myself both tasks — understanding and condemnation. But it was impossible to do both.[1]

            Hanna and Michael's asymmetrical (and illegal, then and now) relationship enacts, in microcosm, the pas de deux of older and younger Germans in the postwar years. "... the pain I went through because of my love for Hanna was, in a way, the fate of my generation, a German fate," Michael concludes.

            A strong version of this plays out in the scene where the student Michael hitchhikes to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp site during the trial, to get what he hopes will be some first-hand knowledge he has not gotten during the trial. The driver who picks him up is an older man who questions him closely about what he believes motivated those who carried out the killings, then offers an answer of his own:

            An executioner is not under orders. He's doing his work, he doesn't hate the people he executes, he's not taking revenge on them, he's not killing them because they're in his way or threatening or attacking them. They're a matter of such indifference to him that he can kill them as easily as not.[1]

            After the man tells an anecdote about a picture of mass executions he supposedly saw that shows an unusual level of insight into what a Nazi officer shown might have been thinking, Michael suspects him of being that officer and confronts him. The man stops the car and asks him to leave.

            [edit] Illiteracy

            In addition to complicating Michael's (and our own) estimation of Hanna's true culpability, her illiteracy becomes a metaphor for modern understanding of the Holocaust. Even the title of the book plays on this (in German, the verb vorlesen applies only to reading aloud, as Michael does for Hanna, and as her indictment is read aloud to her in court over a day and a half).

            The Reader abounds with references to representations of the Holocaust, both external and internal to Michael's narrative, some real and some invented by Schlink. Of the latter, the most important is the book by the death-march survivor that constitutes the basis of the case against Hanna. It is summarized at some length and even briefly quoted, although its title is never given. Michael must read it in English since its German translation has not yet been published: "(It was) an unfamiliar and laborious exercise at the time. And as always, the alien language, unmastered and struggled over, created a strange concatenation of distance and immediacy." On a second reading in later life, he says, "it is the book itself that creates distance."

            This conceit applies to the Holocaust as a whole as seen through late 20th-century eyes, throughout the novel. Hanna, once she attains literacy and understands the situation more fully than we can, cannot live with herself anymore. She tells Michael:

            I always had the feeling that no one understood me anyway, that no one knew who I was and what made me do this or that. And you know, when no one understands you, no one can call you to account. Not even the court could call me to account. But the dead can. They understand. They don't even have to have been there, but if they do, they understand even better. Here in prison they were with me a lot. They came every night, whether I wanted them to or not. Before the trial I could still chase them away when they wanted to come.

            Her choices become far more problematic after we are aware of her situation. Many of Hanna's decisions, Michael realizes, are inexplicable without this understanding. When she breaks with German practice and asks the judge at her trial "What would you have done?" about whether she should have left her job at Siemens and taking the guard position, she really wanted an answer, and wasn't just exasperated or asking rhetorically. As a result of her shame at being illiterate, she has not only let the bulk of the crime be pinned on her, she has let those with a greater share of responsibility escape full accountability.

            For our part, Michael is aware that all his attempts to visualize what Hanna might have been like back then, what happened, are colored by what he has read and seen in movies. He feels a difficult identification with the victims when he learns that Hanna often picked one prisoner to read to her, as he would later on, only to send that girl on to Auschwitz and the gas chamber after several months. Did she do it to make the last months of one almost certain to die a little more bearable? Or to keep her secret safe? Michael's inability to both condemn and understand springs from this.

            He asks himself and the reader:

            What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews? We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable, we may not inquire because to make the horrors an object of inquiry is to make the horrors an object of discussion, even if the horrors themselves are not questioned, instead of accepting them as something in the face of which we can only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt. Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt? To what purpose?

            [edit] Literary significance and criticism

            Schlink's novel was a huge commercial success not only in his native country but in the English-speaking world, becoming the first German novel to top the New York Times bestseller list when it was translated two years later.

            [edit] Germany

            The Reader sold 500,000 copies in Germany. It received several literary awards and many favorable reviews. In 2004, when the television network ZDF published a list of the 100 favorite books of German readers, it was 14th, the second-highest ranking for any contemporary German novel on the list.[2]

            Critic Rainer Moritz of Die Welt wrote that it took "the artistic contrast between private and public to the absurd."[3] Werner Fuld wrote in Focus that "one must not let great themes roll away, when one can truly write about them."[4]

            [edit] English translation

            In the pages of the New York Times itself, Richard Bernstein called it "arresting, philosophically elegant, (and) morally complex."[5] While finding the ending too abrupt, in the Book Review, Suzanne Ruta said Schlink's "daring fusion of 19th-century post-romantic, post-fairy-tale models with the awful history of the 20th century makes for a moving, suggestive and ultimately hopeful work." [6]. It went on to sell 750,000 copies, many of them after Oprah featured it in her book club in 1999.

            That same year, Sir Claus Moser, chair of the Basic Skills Agency of Britain's Department for Education and Employment discussed Hanna's story in the foreword to the BSA's comprehensive report on illiteracy and innumeracy. The book sold 200,000 copies in the UK, although reviews there were slightly more mixed.

            The book won the 1999 Boeke Prize.

            [edit] Criticism

            Schlink's problematic approach toward Hanna's culpability in the Final Solution has been a frequent complaint about the book. Early on he was accused of revising or falsifying history. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Jeremy Adler accused him of "cultural pornography" and said the novel simplifies history and compels its readers to identify with the perpetrators.[citation needed]

            In the English-speaking world, Cynthia Ozick in Commentary Magazine called it a "product, conscious or not, of a desire to divert (attention) from the culpability of a normally educated population in a nation famed for Kultur."[7] Frederick Raphael was blunter, saying no one could recommend the book "without having a tin ear for fiction and a blind eye for evil.[cite this quote] Ron Rosenbaum, criticising the film adaptation of The Reader, noted that even if Germans like Hanna were metaphorically "illiterate" with regards to the Holocaust, "they could have heard it from Hitler's mouth in his infamous 1939 radio broadcast to Germany and the world, threatening extermination of the Jews if war started. You had to be deaf, dumb, and blind, not merely illiterate... You'd have to be exceedingly stupid."[8]

            As critics of "The Reader" argued increasingly on historical grounds, pointing out that everybody in Germany could and should have known about Hitler's intentions towards the Jews, they chose not to remark that Schlink had decided to have "Hanna" born outside of Germany in "Hermannstadt" (Transylvania, Romania). The first study on the reasons why Germans from Transylvania entered the SS appeared only in 2007, 12 years after the publishing of the novel; at that point however, discussions on "The Reader" had already solidly placed Hanna in the context of Germany. The study paints an equally complex historical picture as Schlink's novel.[9]

            Schlink has said, "in Israel and New York the older generation liked the book" but those of his own generation were more likely to criticize Michael (and his) inability to fully condemn Hanna. He added (also in The Guardian), "I've heard that criticism several times but never from the older generation, people who have lived through it."[10]

            [edit] Film adaptation

            The film version, directed by Stephen Daldry, was released in December 2008. Kate Winslet played Hanna,[11] with David Kross as the young Michael and Ralph Fiennes as the older man.[12] Bruno Ganz and Lena Olin played supporting roles. It was nominated for 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture. Winslet won the Oscar for leading actress.

            [edit] References

            1. ^ a b c Schlink, Bernhard (1995; English translation 1997 by Carol Brown Janeway). The Reader. Vintage International, 157. ISBN 0-679-44279-0.
            2. ^ ZDF.de - Top 50
            3. ^ Rainer Moritz. Die Welt. October 15, 1999
            4. ^ Werner Fuld, Werner. Focus. September 30, 1995.
            5. ^ Bernstein, Richard (1997-08-20). "Once Loving, Once Cruel, What's Her Secret?". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE6D71F3FF933A1575BC0A961958260. Retrieved on 2007-09-10. 
            6. ^ Secrets and Lies - New York Times
            7. ^ http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/the-rights-of-history-and-the-rights-of-imagination-8997
            8. ^ http://www.slate.com/id/2210804/pagenum/2
            9. ^ Paul Milata: Zwischen Hitler, Stalin und Antonescu: Rumäniendeutsche in der Waffen-SS. Böhlau. Cologne 2007.
            10. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/feb/09/fiction.books
            11. ^ Jeff Labrecque, "Best Actress," Entertainment Weekly 1032/1033 (Jan. 30/Feb. 6, 2009): 45.
            12. ^ Winslet Replaces Pregnant Kidman in Film IMDb

            [edit] External links


            The Reader (2008 film)

            From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

              (Redirected from The Reader (film))
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            The Reader

            Promotional film poster
            Directed by Stephen Daldry
            Produced by Anthony Minghella
            Sydney Pollack
            Scott Rudin (uncredited)
            Written by David Hare
            Starring Kate Winslet
            Ralph Fiennes
            David Kross
            Alexandra Maria Lara
            Lena Olin
            Bruno Ganz
            Music by Nico Muhly
            Cinematography Chris Menges
            Roger Deakins
            Editing by Claire Simpson
            Distributed by The Weinstein Company
            Release date(s) December 10, 2008
            Running time 124 min.
            Country USA , Germany , United Kingdom
            Language English
            Budget $32 million

            The Reader is a 2008 drama film based on the 1995 German novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink. The film adaptation was written by David Hare and directed by Stephen Daldry. Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet star along with the young actor David Kross. It was the last film for producers Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack, both of whom died before it was released. Production began in Germany in September 2007, and the film opened in limited release on 10 December 2008.

            It tells the story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who as a teenager in the late 1950s had an affair with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. Michael realizes that Hanna is keeping a personal secret she believes is worse than her Nazi past, a secret that — paradoxically enough — could help her at the trial.

            Winslet and David Kross, who plays the young Michael, have received much praise for their performances. Winslet received praise and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, BAFTA Award for Best Actress, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress and the Academy Award for Best Actress at the 81st Academy Awards for her role in the film. The film has also been nominated for several other major awards.

            Contents

            [hide]

            [edit] Plot

            The Reader begins in 1995 Berlin, where Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) is preparing breakfast for a woman who has spent the night with him. After she leaves, Michael watches a U-Bahn pass by, flashing back to a tram in 1958 Neustadt. A teenage Michael (David Kross) gets off because he is feeling sick and wanders around the streets afterwards, finally pausing in the entryway of a nearby apartment building where he vomits. Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), the tram conductor, comes in and assists him in returning home.

            Michael (Kross) reads to Hanna (Winslet).

            Michael, diagnosed with scarlet fever, must rest at home for the next three months. After he recovers he visits Hanna. The 36 year old Hanna seduces and begins an affair with the 15 year old boy. During their liaisons, at her apartment, he reads to her literary works he is studying, such as The Odyssey, The Lady with the Little Dog, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Tintin. After a bicycling trip, Hanna learns she is being promoted to a clerical job at the tram company. She abruptly moves without leaving a trace.

            After seeing the adult Michael, a lawyer, we see him (played again by David Kross) at Heidelberg University law school in 1966. As part of a special seminar taught by Professor Rohl (Bruno Ganz), a camp survivor, he observes a trial (similar to the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials) of several women who were accused of letting 300 Jewish women die in a burning church when they were SS guards on the death march following the 1944 evacuation of Auschwitz. Hanna is one of the defendants.

            Stunned, Michael visits a former camp himself. The trial divides the seminar, with one student angrily saying there is nothing to be learned from it other than that evil acts occurred and that the older generation of Germans should kill themselves for their failure to act then.

            The key evidence is the testimony of Ilana Mather (Alexandra Maria Lara), author of a memoir of how she and her mother survived. Hanna, unlike her fellow defendants, admits that Auschwitz was an extermination camp and that the ten women she chose during each month's Selektion were gassed. She denies authorship of a report on the church fire, despite pressure from the other defendants, but then admits it rather than complying with a demand to provide a handwriting sample.

            Michael then realizes Hanna's secret: she is functionally illiterate and has concealed that her whole life. The other female guards who claim that she wrote the report are lying in order to place the brunt of the responsibility on Hanna. Michael informs Rohl that he has information favorable to one of the defendants but is not sure what to do since she wants to avoid disclosing this. Rohl tells him that if he has learned nothing from the past there is no point in having the seminar.

            Hanna receives a life sentence for her admitted but untrue leadership role in the church deaths while the other defendants get shorter terms. Michael meanwhile marries, has a daughter and divorces. Rediscovering his books and notes from the time of his affair, he begins reading them into a tape recorder. He sends the cassette tapes, a tape recorder, and the books to Hanna. Eventually she learns to read and write, and she writes back to him.

            Michael does not write back or visit, but keeps sending tapes, and in 1988 a prison official (Linda Bassett) telephones him to seek his help with Hanna's transition into society upon her upcoming release. He finds a place for her to live and a job, and finally visits. The night before her release Hanna hangs herself and leaves a tea tin with cash in it and a note to Michael, asking him to give the cash from the tea tin and some money in a bank account to Ilana.

            Michael travels to New York. He meets Ilana (Lena Olin) and confesses his past relationship with Hanna. He tells her about the suicide note, and that Hanna was illiterate for most of her life. Ilana tells Michael there is nothing to be learned from the camps. Michael suggests that he donate the money to an organization that combats adult illiteracy, preferably a Jewish one, and she agrees. Ilana keeps the tea tin since it is similar to one stolen from her in Auschwitz.

            The film ends with Michael getting back together with his daughter, Julia, at Hanna's grave and beginning to tell her the story.

            [edit] Cast

            Ralph Fiennes as the older Michael
            • Kate Winslet as Hanna Schmitz.[1] Winslet was originally the first choice for the role, though she was initially not able to take on the role due to a scheduling conflict with Revolutionary Road, and actress Nicole Kidman replaced her. A month after filming began, however, Kidman left the role due to her pregnancy, enabling Winslet to rejoin the film.[2] Entertainment Weekly reports that to "age Hanna from cool seductress to imprisoned war criminal, Winslet endured seven and a half hours of makeup and prosthetic prep each day."[3]
            • David Kross as Michael Berg when he is 15 and falls in love with Hanna in post-World War II Germany, and turns 16, and when he is a 23-year-old student.[1]
            • Ralph Fiennes as Michael Berg as an adult.[4] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly writes that "Ralph Fiennes has perhaps the toughest job, playing the morose adult Michael — a version, we can assume, of the author. Fiennes masters the default demeanor of someone perpetually pained."[5]
            • Alexandra Maria Lara as young Ilana Mather, a former victim of the concentration camp where Hanna Schmitz worked as a guard[6]
            • Bruno Ganz as Professor Rohl, a Holocaust survivor and one of Michael's teachers at Heidelberg University.
            • Lena Olin as Rose Mather (Ilana's mother) who testifies alongside her daughter at Hanna Schmitz's trial. She also plays the older Ilana Mather, who Michael visits at the end of the film.
            • Hannah Herzsprung as Julia, Michael Berg's daughter
            • Karoline Herfurth as Martha, Michael's love interest at university
            • Burghard Klaußner as the judge

            [edit] Production

            In April 1998, Miramax Films acquired the rights to the 1995 German novel The Reader by Bernhard Schlink,[7] and principal photography began in September 2007 immediately after Stephen Daldry was signed to direct the film adaptation and actor Ralph Fiennes was cast into a lead role.[8][9] Kate Winslet was originally cast as Hanna, but scheduling difficulties led her to leave the film and Nicole Kidman was cast as her replacement.[10] In January 2008, Nicole Kidman left the project, citing her recent pregnancy as the primary reason. She had not filmed any scenes yet, so the studio was able to re-cast Winslet into the lead role without affecting the production schedule.[2]

            Kate Winslet in age makeup as the 66-year-old Hanna in the later half of the film

            Filming took place in the cities of Berlin and Goerlitz and was finished in Cologne on July 14.[11] Filmmakers received US$718,752


            Kate Winslet

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            Kate Winslet

            Palm Springs Film Festival, 2007
            Born Kate Elizabeth Winslet
            5 October 1975 (1975-10-05) (age 33)
            Reading, Berkshire, England
            Occupation Actress/Singer
            Years active 1991–present
            Spouse(s) Jim Threapleton (1998–2001)
            Sam Mendes (2003–present)

            Kate Elizabeth Winslet (born 5 October 1975) is an English actress and occasional singer. She is noted for having played diverse characters over her career, but probably best-known for her critically acclaimed performances as Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, Rose DeWitt Bukater in Titanic, Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sarah Pierce in Little Children, April Wheeler in Revolutionary Road, and Hanna Schmitz in The Reader.

            Winslet has been nominated for six Academy Awards and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in The Reader. She has won awards from the Screen Actors Guild, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, as well as being nominated for an Emmy. At the age of 22, she became the youngest actress to receive two Oscar nominations;[1] at age 33, she is now the youngest actor of either sex to receive six nominations. David Edelstein of New York Magazine hails her as "the best English-speaking film actress of her generation."[2]

            Contents

            [hide]

            [edit] Early life

            Winslet was born in Reading, Berkshire, England, United Kingdom, the daughter of Sally Anne (née Bridges), a barmaid, and Roger John Winslet, a swimming-pool contractor.[3] Her parents were "jobbing actors", with Winslet commenting that she "didn't have a privileged upbringing" and that their daily life was "very hand to mouth".[4] Her maternal grandparents, Linda (née Plumb) and Archibald Oliver Bridges, founded and operated the Reading Repertory Theatre,[4] and her uncle, Robert Bridges, appeared in the original West End production of Oliver!. Her sisters, Beth Winslet and Anna Winslet, are also actresses.[4]

            Winslet, raised as an Anglican, began studying drama at the age of eleven at the Redroofs Theatre School,[5] a co-educational independent school in Maidenhead, Berkshire, where she was head girl and appeared in a television commercial for Sugar Puffs cereal, directed by Tim Pope.

            [edit] Career

            [edit] Early work

            Winslet's career began on television, with a co-starring role in the BBC children's science fiction serial Dark Season in 1991. This was followed by appearances in the made-for-TV movie Anglo-Saxon Attitudes in 1992 and an episode of medical drama Casualty in 1993, also for the BBC.

            [edit] 1992–1997

            In 1992, Winslet attended a casting call for Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures in London. Auditioning for the part of Juliet Hulme, a vivacious and imaginative teen who assists in the murder of the mother of her best friend, Pauline Parker, played by Melanie Lynskey, she won the role over 175 other girls.[6] The film was released to favourable reviews in 1994 and won Jackson and partner Fran Walsh a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.[7] Winslet was awarded an Empire Award and a London Critics' Circle Film Award for her performance;[8] The Washington Post writer Desson Thomson commented: "As Juliet, Winslet is a bright-eyed ball of fire, lighting up every scene she's in."[9] Speaking about her experience on a film set as an absolute beginner, Winslet noted: "With Heavenly Creatures, all I knew I had to do was completely become that person. In a way it was quite nice doing [the film] and not knowing a bloody thing."[10][11]

            The following year, Winslet auditioned for the adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, featuring Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, and Alan Rickman, intending to get the small but pivotal role of Lucy Steele.[12] She was instead cast in the second leading role of Marianne Dashwood.[12] Director Ang Lee admitted he was initially worried about the way Winslet had attacked her role in Heavenly Creatures and thus required her to exercise tai chi, read Austen-era Gothic novels and poetry, and work with a piano teacher to fit the grace of the role.[12] Budgeted at $16,500,000, the film became a financial and critical success, resulting in a worldwide box office total of $135 million and various awards for Winslet, winning her both a BAFTA and a Screen Actors Guild Award, and nominations for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.[8][13]

            In 1996, Winslet starred in Jude and Hamlet. In Michael Winterbottom's Jude, based on the Victorian novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, she played Sue Bridehead, a young woman with suffragette leanings who falls in love with her cousin, played by Christopher Eccleston. Acclaimed among critics, it was not a success at the box office, barely grossing $2 million worldwide.[14][15] Richard Corliss of Time magazine said "Winslet is worthy of [...] the camera's scrupulous adoration. She's perfect, a modernist ahead of her time [...] and Jude is a handsome showcase for her gifts."[16] Winslet depicted Ophelia, Hamlet's drowned lover, in Kenneth Branagh's all star-casted film version of William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The film garnered largely positive reviews and earned Winslet her second Empire Award.[17][8]

            In mid-1996, Winslet began filming James Cameron's Titanic (1997), alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. Cast as the sensitive seventeen-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater, a fictional first-class socialite who survives the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, Winslet experienced physical and emotional exhaustion on set: "Titanic was totally different and nothing could have prepared me for it. We were really scared about the whole adventure. Jim [Cameron] is a perfectionist, a real genius at making movies. But there was all this bad press before it came out, and that was really upsetting."[18] Against expectations, the film went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time, grossing more than $1.8 billion in box-office receipts worldwide,[19] and transformed Winslet into a commercial movie star.[20] Subsequently, she was nominated for most of all high-profile awards, winning a European Film Award.[1][8]

            [edit] 1998–2003

            Hideous Kinky, a low-budget hippie romance based on a novel and shot prior to the release of Titanic, was her first and only film of 1998.[21] Winslet rejected offers to play the leading roles in Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Anna and the King (1999) in favor of the role of a young English mother named Julia who moves with her daughters from London to Morocco hoping to start a new life.[22][21] The film garnered generally mixed reviews and received limited release only,[23] resulting in a worldwide gross of $5 million.[24] Despite the success of Titanic, the next film Winslet opted to star in was Holy Smoke! (1999) featuring Harvey Keitel, another low-budget project — much to the misery of her agents, who felt "miserable" about her preference of arthouse movies.[18][25] Feeling pressured, Winslet has said she "never saw Titanic as a springboard for bigger films or bigger pay cheques," knowing that "it could have been that, but would have destroyed [her]."[26] The same year, she voiced Brigid in the computer animated film Faeries.[27]

            Winslet's first effort of the 2000s was the period piece Quills with Geoffrey Rush and Joaquin Phoenix. Inspired by the life and work of the Marquis de Sade, the actress served as somewhat of a "patron saint" of the movie for being the first big name to back it, accepting the role of a chamber maid in the asylum and the carrier of the The Marquis' manuscripts to the underground publishers.[28] Well-received by critics, the film garnered numerous accolades for Winslet, including nominations for SAG and Satellite Awards.[8] The film was a modest art house success, averaging $27,709 per screen its debut weekend, and eventually grossing $18 million internationally.[29]

            In 2001's Enigma, she played a young woman who finds herself falling for a brilliant young World War II code breaker, played by Dougray Scott.[30] Her first war film, Winslet regarded "making Enigma a brilliant experience" as she was five months pregnant at the time of the shoot, forcing some tricky camera work from the director Michael Apted.[30] Generally well-received,[31] Winslet was awarded a British Independent Film Award for her performance.[8] A. O. Scott of The New York Times described Winslet as "more crush-worthy than ever."[32] In the same year she appeared in Richard Eyre's critically acclaimed film Iris, portraying Irish novelist Iris Murdoch. Winslet shared her role with Dame Judi Dench, with both actresses portraying Murdoch at different phases of her life.[33] Subsequently, each of them was nominated for an Academy Award the following year, scoring Winslet her third nomination.[8] Also in 2001, she voiced the character Belle in the animated motion picture Christmas Carol: The Movie, based on the Charles Dickens classic novel. For the film, Winslet recorded the song "What If," which was released in November 2001 as a single and whose proceeds went to children's cancer charities.[34] A Europe-wide top ten hit, it reached number-one in Austria, Belgium, and Ireland.[35]

            Her next film role was in the 2003 drama The Life of David Gale, in which she played an ambitious journalist who interviews a death-sentenced professor (Kevin Spacey) in his final weeks before execution. The film underperformed at international box offices, garnering the half of its $50,000,000 budget only,[36] and generated mostly critical reviews,[37] with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times calling it a "silly movie."[38]

            [edit] 2004–2006

            Following David Gale, Winslet appeared alongside Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), a neosurrealistic indie-drama by French director Michel Gondry. In the film, she played the role of Clementine Kruczynski, a chatty, spontaneous and somewhat neurotic woman, who decides to have all memories of her ex-boyfriend erased from her mind.[39] A departure from her previous roles, Winslet revealed in an interview with Variety that she was initially upended about her casting in the film: "This was not the type of thing I was being offered [...] I was just thrilled that there was something he had seen in me, in spite of the corsets, that he thought was going to work for Clementine."[40] A critical and financial success,[41] Winslet received rave reviews for her Oscar-nominated performance, which Peter Travers of Rolling Stone described as "electrifying and bruisingly vulnerable."[42]

            Another film of 2004 was Finding Neverland. The story of the production focused on Scottish writer J. M. Barrie (Johnny Depp) and his platonic relationship with Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Winslet), whose sons inspired him to pen the classic play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. During promotion of the film, Winslet noted of her portrayal: "It was very important for me in playing Sylvia that I was already a mother myself, because I don't think I could have played that part if I didn't know what it felt like to be a parent and have those responsibilities and that amount of love that you give to a child [...] and I've always got a baby somewhere, or both of them, all over my face."[43] The film received favorable reviews and proved to be an international success, becoming Winslet's highest-grossing film since Titanic with a total of $118 million worldwide.[44][45]

            In 2005, Winslet appeared in an episode of BBC's comedy series Extras, as a satirical version of herself. While dressed as a nun, she was portrayed giving phone sex tips to the romantically challenged character of Maggie.[46] Her performance in the episode led to her first nomination for an Emmy Award.[8] In Romance & Cigarettes (2005), a musical romantic comedy written and directed by John Turturro, she played the character Tula, who Winslet described as "a slut, someone who's essentially foulmouthed and has bad manners and really doesn't know how to dress."[47] Hand-picked by Turturro, who was impressed with her dancing abilities in Holy Smoke!, Winslet was praised for her performance.[47] Derek Elley of Variety wrote: "Onscreen less, but blessed with the showiest role, filthiest one-liners, [and] a perfect Lancashire accent that's comical enough in the Gotham setting Winslet throws herself into the role with an infectious gusto."[48]

            After declining an invitation to appear in Woody Allen's film Match Point (2005), stating she wanted to be able to spend more time with her children,[49] she starred in the 2006 films All the King's Men, Little Children, and The Holiday. In All the King's Men, featuring Sean Penn and Jude Law, Winslet played the small role of Anne Stanton, the childhood sweetheart of Jack Burden (Law). The film was critically and financially unsuccessful.[50][51] Todd McCarthy of Variety summed it up as "overstuffed and fatally miscast [...] Absent any point of engagement to become involved in the characters, the film feels stillborn and is unlikely to stir public excitement, even in an election year."[52]

            Winslet's next appearance in a film fared far better when she joined the cast of Todd Field's Little Children, playing Sarah Pierce, a bored homemaker who has a torrid affair with a married neighbour, played by Patrick Wilson. Both her performance and the film received rave reviews; A.O. Scott of the New York Times wrote: "In too many recent movies intelligence is woefully undervalued, and it is this quality — even more than its considerable beauty — that distinguishes Little Children from its peers. The result is a movie that is challenging, accessible and hard to stop thinking about. Ms. Winslet, as fine an actress as any working in movies today, registers every flicker of Sarah's pride, self-doubt and desire, inspiring a mixture of recognition, pity and concern that amounts, by the end of the movie, to something like love. That Ms. Winslet is so lovable makes the deficit of love in Sarah's life all the more painful."[53] For her work in the film, she was honored with a BAFTA Britannia Award[54] and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and at 31, became the youngest actress to ever garner five Oscar nominations.[55]

            She followed this with a role in Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy The Holiday, also starring Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, and Jack Black. In it she played Iris, a Britishwoman who temporarily exchanges homes with an American woman (Diaz). Released to a mixed reception by critics,[56] the film became Winslet's biggest commercial success in nine years, grossing more than $205 million worldwide.[57] Also in 2006, Winslet provided her voice for several smaller projects. In the CG-animated Flushed Away she voiced Rita, a scavenging sewer rat who helps Roddy (Hugh Jackman) escaping from the city of Ratropolis and return to his luxurious Kensington origins. A critical and commercial success, the film collected $177,665,672 at international box offices.[58]

            [edit] 2007–present

            Winslet at the 81st Academy Awards in February 2009

            In 2007, Winslet reunited with Leonardo DiCaprio to film Revolutionary Road (2008). Directed by husband Sam Mendes, it was Winslet who suggested both to work with her on a film adaptation of the 1961 novel of the same name by Richard Yates after reading the script by Justin Haythe,[59] resulting in both "a blessing and an added pressure" on-set as it was her first opportunity to work with Mendes.[60] Portraying a couple in a failing marriage in the 1950s, DiCaprio and Winslet watched period videos promoting life in the suburbs to prepare themselves for the film,[60] which earned them favorable reviews.[61] Her seventh nomination, Winslet was finally awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance.[8]

            Also released in fall 2008, the film competed much against Winslet's other project, a film adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel The Reader, directed by Stephen Daldry and featuring Ralph Fiennes and David Kross in supporting roles. Originally the first choice for her role, she was initially not able to take on the role due to a scheduling conflict with Revolutionary Road, and actress Nicole Kidman replaced her. A month after filming began, however, Kidman left the role due to her pregnancy, enabling Winslet to rejoin the film.[62] Playing with a faked German accent, the actress portrayed a former Nazi concentration camp guard who has an affair with a young man (Kross) who later witnesses her war-crimes trial,[63] a role she noted hard to act as she was naturally unable "to sympathise with a SS guard."[64] While the film garnered mixed critics in general,[65] Winslet received rave reviews for her performance.[65] The following year, she earned her sixth Academy Award nomination and went on to win the Best Actress award, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress, a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress, and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.[8]

            [edit] Music

            Winslet has enjoyed a brief taste of success as a singer, with her single What If from the soundtrack of Christmas Carol: The Movie, which reached #1 in Ireland and #6 in the UK (she also filmed a music video for the song). She participated in a duet with "Weird Al" Yankovic on the Sandra Boynton CD Dog Train, and sang in the 2006 film Romance & Cigarettes. She also sang an aria from La bohème, called "Sono andati", in her film Heavenly Creatures, which is featured on the film's soundtrack. She was considered for the lead in Moulin Rouge! (which eventually went to Nicole Kidman); had she taken the part, she would have sung the full soundtrack.

            [edit] Personal life

            While on the set of Dark Season, Winslet met actor-writer Stephen Tredre, with whom she had a five-year relationship. He died of bone cancer soon after Winslet completed filming Titanic, so she missed the premiere because she was attending his funeral in London. She and Titanic co-star Leonardo DiCaprio have remained good friends since the filming.[66]

            Winslet was later in a relationship with Rufus Sewell, [67] but on 22 November 1998 she married director Jim Threapleton. They have a daughter, Mia Honey, who was born on 12 October 2000 in London. After a divorce in 2001, Winslet began a relationship with Sam Mendes, whom she married on 24 May 2003 on the island of Anguilla in the Caribbean. Their son, Joe Alfie Winslet Mendes, was born on 22 December 2003 in New York City.

            Mendes and his production company, Neal Street Productions, purchased the film rights to the long-delayed biography of circus tiger tamer Mabel Stark.[68] The couple's spokesperson said, "It's a great story, they have had their eyes on it for a while. If they can get the script right, it would make a great film."[68]

            The media have documented her weight fluctuations over the years. Winslet has been outspoken about her refusal to allow Hollywood to dictate her weight. In February 2003, the British edition of Gentlemen's Quarterly magazine published photographs of Winslet which had been digitally enhanced to make her look dramatically thinner than she really was; Winslet issued a statement saying that the alterations were made without her consent. GQ issued an apology in the subsequent issue.

            Winslet and Mendes currently reside in Greenwich Village in New York City. They also own a manor house in the tiny village of Church Westcote in Gloucestershire, England. They spent £3 million on the secluded Westcote Manor, a rambling Grade II-listed house with eight bedrooms, set in 22 acres. They have reportedly spent more than £1 million on interior renovations, as well as restoring the original water garden, mulberry garden, and orchard, all of which fell into disrepair when the former owner, equestrian artist Raoul Millais, died in 1999.

            As a result of both being involved in aircraft incidents, and fearing leaving their children parentless, Winslet and Mendes never fly on the same aircraft.[69] He was scheduled to fly on American Airlines Flight 77, which was hijacked on 11 September 2001 and subsequently crashed into the Pentagon.[69] In October 2001, Winslet was seven hours into a London-Dallas flight with daughter Mia when a passenger who claimed to be an Islamic terrorist, later charged with creating mischief, stood up and shouted "We are all going to die."[69]

            [edit] Filmography

            Year Film Role Notes and Awards
            1991 Dark Season (TV series) Reet
            1994 Heavenly Creatures Juliet Hulme Empire Award for Best British Actress
            London Film Critics' Circle Awards — Best British Actress of the Year
            New Zealand Film and TV Awards — Best Foreign Performer
            1995 A Kid in King Arthur's Court Princess Sarah
            Sense and Sensibility Marianne Dashwood BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
            Evening Standard British Film Awards (also for Jude)
            Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
            Nominated — Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
            Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
            Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
            1996 Jude Sue Bridehead Evening Standard British Film Awards (also for Sense and Sensibility)
            Hamlet Ophelia Empire Award for Best British Actress
            Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
            1997 Titanic Rose DeWitt Bukater Blockbuster Entertainment Awards — Favorite Actress — Drama
            Empire Award for Best British Actress
            European Film Awards — Jameson Audience/People's Choice Award for Best British Actress
            Golden Camera — Germany — Film — International (Exceptional work in a non-German production)
            Nominated — Academy Award for Best Actress
            Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama
            Nominated — London Film Critics' Circle Awards — British Actress of the Year
            Nominated — MTV Movie Awards — Best Female Performance
            Nominated — MTV Movie Awards — Best Kiss (shared with Leonardo DiCaprio)
            Nominated — MTV Movie Awards — Best On-Screen Duo (shared with Leonardo DiCaprio)
            Nominated — Online Film Critics Society Awards — Best Actress
            Nominated — European Film Awards — Outstanding Achievement in World Cinema
            Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
            Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
            Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
            1998 Hideous Kinky Julia
            1999 Faeries Brigid (voice)
            Holy Smoke! Ruth Barron
            2000 Quills Madeleine 'Maddy' LeClerc Evening Standard British Film Awards — Best Actress (also for Enigma and Iris)
            Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress
            Nominated — Blockbuster Entertainment Awards — Favorite Actress — Drama
            Nominated — London Film Critics Circle Awards — British Actress of the Year
            Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture Drama
            Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
            2001 Enigma Hester Wallace British Independent Film Award for Best Actress
            Evening Standard British Film Awards — Best Actress (also for Iris and Quills)
            Christmas Carol: The Movie Belle (voice)
            Iris Young Iris Murdoch Empire Award for Best British Actress
            Evening Standard British Film Awards — Best Actress (also for Enigma and Quills)
            European Film Awards — Jameson Audience/People's Choice Award for Best British Actress
            Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress
            Nominated — Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
            Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
            Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture
            Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
            2003 The Life of David Gale Bitsey Bloom
            2004 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Clementine Kruczynski Empire Award for Best British Actress
            Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress (also for Finding Neverland)
            London Film Critics Circle Awards — British Actress of the Year (tied with Eva Birthistle for Ae Fond Kiss...)
            Online Film Critics Society Awards — Best Actress
            Santa Barbara International Film Festival — Outstanding Performance of the Year Award (also for Finding Neverland)
            Nominated — Academy Award for Best Actress
            Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
            Nominated — Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress
            Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
            Nominated — People's Choice Awards — Favorite Leading Lady
            Nominated — People's Choice Awards — Favorite On-Screen Chemistry (shared with Jim Carrey)
            Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
            Nominated — Saturn Award for Best Actress (film)
            Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
            Finding Neverland Sylvia Llewelyn Davies Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress (also for Eternal Sunshine)
            Santa Barbara International Film Festival — Outstanding Performance of the Year Award (also for Eternal Sunshine)
            Nominated — Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress
            Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
            Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
            Nominated — Teen Choice Awards — Choice Movie Actress — Motion Picture Drama
            2005 Romance & Cigarettes Tula
            2006 All the King's Men Anne Stanton
            Little Children Sarah Pierce BAFTA Awards — The Britannia Award for British Artist of the Year
            Gotham Awards — Tribute Award
            Palm Springs International Film Festival — Desert Palm Achievement Award
            Nominated — Academy Award for Best Actress
            Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
            Nominated — Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress
            Nominated — Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress
            Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
            Nominated — London Film Critics Circle Award for British Actress of the Year
            Nominated — Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress
            Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
            Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
            Flushed Away Rita (voice)
            The Holiday Iris Simpkins
            Deep Sea 3D Narrator (voice)
            2008 The Fox and the Child Narrator (voice)
            The Reader Hanna Schmitz Academy Award for Best Actress
            BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
            Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress
            Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress
            Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
            Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
            Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress also for Revolutionary Road
            London Film Critics Circle — Actress of the Year also for Revolutionary Road
            RopeofSilicon Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress
            San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress
            Nominated — London Film Critics Circle Awards — British Actress of the Year
            Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
            Nominated — Southeastern Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress
            Revolutionary Road April Wheeler Alliance of Women Film Journalists — Best Actress
            Detroit Film Critics Society Awards — Best Actress
            Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
            Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress also for The Reader
            London Film Critics Circle also for The Reader
            Palm Springs International Film Festival — Best Cast Performance
            St. Louis Film Critics Association Awards — Best Actress
            Santa Barbara International Film Festival — Montevito Award
            Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
            Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role

            [edit] Awards and nominations

            Winslet won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Reader, as well as two Golden Globe Awards, one in the category of Best Actress (Drama) for her performance in Revolutionary Road, the other in the Best Supporting Actress category for The Reader. She has won two BAFTA Awards: Best Actress for The Reader, and Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Sense and Sensibility (1995). She earned a total of six Academy Award nominations, seven Golden Globe nominations, and seven BAFTA nominations.[70][71]

            She has received numerous awards from other organizations, including the Los Angeles Film Critics' Association (LAFCA) award for Best Supporting Actress for Iris (2001) and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for Sense and Sensibility (1995) and The Reader (2008). For Holy Smoke! (1999), she was declared Best Actress runner-up by both the New York Film Critics' Circle (NYFCC) and the National Society of Film Critics (NSFC). Winslet was also NYFCC's Best Actress runner-up for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). Premiere magazine named her performance as Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind the 81st greatest film performance of all time.[72]

            [edit] Academy Award nomination milestones

            With her Best Actress nomination for The Reader, Winslet became the youngest actor to receive six Oscar nominations. At age 33, she passed the mark formerly held by Bette Davis, who was 34 when she received her sixth nomination for her performance in Now, Voyager (1942).[73] Winslet previously set the marks as the youngest actress to receive two nominations for her performance in Titanic (1997), and the youngest actor of either gender to receive four and five nominations, for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Little Children (2006), respectively. Winslet was 26 when she received her third nomination, for Iris, missing the mark of Natalie Wood, who received her third nomination at age 25.[citation needed]

            She has received two nominations for playing younger versions of another nominee in the same film—the only two instances of different actors playing the same character in the same film both being nominated.[74] She played the younger versions of the characters played by nominees Gloria Stuart in Titanic[74] and Judi Dench in Iris.[75]

            When she was not nominated for her work in Revolutionary Road, she became only the second actress to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress (Drama) without getting an Oscar nomination for the same performance (Shirley MacLaine was the first for Madame Sousatzka [1988], and she won the Golden Globe in a three-way tie with Jodie Foster and Sigourney Weaver). Academy rules allow an actor to receive no more than one nomination in a given category; as the Academy nominating process determined that Winslet's work in The Reader would be considered a lead performance—unlike the Golden Globes, which considered it a supporting performance—she could not be nominated for Best Actress for both films.[76]

            [edit] Awards for noncinematic work

            In 2000, Winslet won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for Listen To the Storyteller.[77] Winslet was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for playing herself in a 2005 episode of Extras.

            [edit] References

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            33. ^ Howe, Desson (2002-02-15). "Iris: Heroic on a Human Scale". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=style/movies/reviews&contentId=A9577-2002Feb14. Retrieved on 2008-02-05. 
            34. ^ "Race on for Christmas number one". BBC. 2001-12-18. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/1716199.stm. Retrieved on 2008-02-07. 
            35. ^ "Kate Winslet - 'What If' (SONG)". Swisscharts. http://swisscharts.com/showitem.asp?interpret=Kate+Winslet&titel=What+If&cat=s. Retrieved on 2008-02-07. 
            36. ^ "The Life of David Gale". The Numbers. http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2003/LIFDG.php. Retrieved on 2009-02-06. 
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            38. ^ Ebert, Roger (2003-02-21). "The Life Of David Gale ". Chicago Sun-Times. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030221/REVIEWS/302210304/1023. Retrieved on 2009-02-06. 
            39. ^ Hobson, Louis. "Kate Winslet refutes Internet rumours". CANOE -- JAM!. http://jam.canoe.ca/Movies/Artists/W/Winslet_Kate/2004/03/15/762717.html. Retrieved on 2009-02-06. 
            40. ^ Oei, Lily (2005-01-03). "Kate Winslet: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". Variety (Highbeam). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-127975140.html. Retrieved on 2009-02-06. 
            41. ^ "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)". Metacritic. metacritic.com. http://www.metacritic.com/video/titles/eternalsunshineofthespotlessmind?q=Kate%20Winslet. Retrieved on 2009-02-07. 
            42. ^ Travers, Peter (2004-03-10). "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind review". Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/5948633/review/5948634/eternal_sunshine_of_the_spotless_mind. Retrieved on 2009-02-06. 
            43. ^ "Mother Superior". The Age. 2005-01-02. http://www.theage.com.au/news/Film/Mother-superior/2005/01/01/1104345034348.html. Retrieved on 2009-02-07. 
            44. ^ "Finding Neverland (2004)". The Numbers. http://www.the-numbers.com/people/KWINS.php. Retrieved on 2009-02-07. 
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            46. ^ Brand, Madeleine (2005-09-22). "'The Office' Star Ricky Gervais Back with 'Extras'". National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4859247. 
            47. ^ a b Schaefer, Stephen (2007-11-27). "[www.bostonherald.com Romance'' role calls for bawdy, cussing character]". Boston Herald. www.bostonherald.com. Retrieved on 2009-02-07. 
            48. ^ Elley, Derek (2007-09-05). "Romance & Cigarettes review". Variety. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117928084.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&p=0. Retrieved on 2009-02-07. 
            49. ^ Horowitz, Josh (2008-01-17). "Woody Allen Explains His Love For Scarlett Johansson, Why He Doesn't Do Broadway". MTV. http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1579782/story.jhtml. 
            50. ^ "All the King's Men (2005)". Metacritic. metacritic.com. http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/allthekingsmen?q=All%20the%20king's%20Men. Retrieved on 2009-02-07. 
            51. ^ "All the King's Men". The Numbers. http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2006/AKNGM.php. Retrieved on 2009-02-07. 
            52. ^ McCarthy, Todd (2006-09-10). "All the King's Men review". Variety. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117931520.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&s=h&p=0. Retrieved on 2009-02-07. 
            53. ^ Scott, A.O. (2006-09-29). New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/movies/29chil.htmlPlayground Rules: No Hitting, No Sex.. Retrieved on 2006-09-29. 
            54. ^ "The BAFTA/LA Britannia Awards Presented By Bombardier Business Aircraft". BAFTALA.org. http://www.baftala.org/britannia.php?. Retrieved on 2009-02-20. 
            55. ^ Gallo, Phil (2007-08-23). "This year's Oscar fun facts". Variety. http://www.variety.com/awardcentral_article/VR1117957938.html. 
            56. ^ "The Holiday (2006)". Metacritic. metacritic.com. http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/holiday?q=Kate%20Winslet. Retrieved on 2009-02-07. 
            57. ^ "The Holiday". The Numbers. http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2006/HOLID.php. Retrieved on 2009-02-07. 
            58. ^ "Flused Away". http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2006/FLUSH.php. Retrieved on 2009-02-07. 
            59. ^ Wong, Grace (January 23, 2009). "DiCaprio reveals joys of fighting with Winslet". CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/23/kate.leo/index.html?section=cnn_latest. Retrieved on January 23-2009. 
            60. ^ a b "Interview: Kate Winslet on Revolutionary Road". News Shopper. 2008-01-28. http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/leisure/4083115.Interview__Kate_Winslet_on_Revolutionary_Road/. Retrieved on 2008-02-20. 
            61. ^ "Revolutionary Road (2008)". Rotten Tomatoes. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/revolutionary_road/. Retrieved on 2008-02-20. 
            62. ^ Meza, Ed; Fleming, Michael (2008-01-08). "Winslet replaces Kidman in 'Reader'". Variety. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117978660.html?categoryid=13&cs=1. Retrieved on 2008-01-10. 
            63. ^ Kaminer, Ariel (2008-01-28). "Translating Love and the Unspeakable". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/movies/07kami.html/. Retrieved on 2008-02-20. 
            64. ^ Carnevale, Rob. "Revolutionary Road - Kate Winslet interview". http://www.indielondon.co.uk/Film-Review/revolutionary-road-kate-winslet-interview. Retrieved on 2008-02-20. 
            65. ^ a b "The Reader (2008)". Metacritic. metacritic.com. http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/reader?q=The%20Reader. Retrieved on 2009-02-20. 
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            73. ^ Goodridge, Mike (2009-01-22). "Benjamin Button Tops Oscar Nominations". Screen Daily. http://www.screendaily.com/ScreenDailyArticle.aspx?intStoryID=42788. Retrieved on 2009-01-30. 
            74. ^ a b Barber, Joe (1998-03-22). "Test Your Knowledge of Academy Award History". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/movies/oscars/oscartriviaquiz98.htm. 
            75. ^ Vallely, Paul (2009-01-17). "Kate Winslet: The gold girl". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/kate-winslet-the-golden-girl-1418269.html. 
            76. ^ Graham, Mark (2009-01-23). "Getting to the Bottom of Kate Winslet's Unprecedented Oscar Snubs". New York. http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/01/kate_winslets_unprecedented_os.html. Retrieved on 2009-01-30.  Brevet, Brad (2009-01-23). "Winslet Oscar Query Solved and 'The Dark Knight' Probably Wasn't Snubbed". RopeOfSilicon.com. http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/winslet-oscar-query-solved-and-the-dark-knight-probably-wasnt-snubbedl. Retrieved on 2009-01-30. 
            77. ^ "Grammy Award Winners". Grammy Awards. http://grammy.org/GRAMMY_Awards/Winners/Results.aspx?title=&winner=kate%20winslet&year=0&genreID=0&hp=1. Retrieved on 2009-01-12. 

            [edit] External links

            General

            Interviews

            Awards and achievements
            Academy Awards
            Preceded by
            Marion Cotillard
            for La Vie en Rose
            Best Actress
            2008
            for The Reader
            Succeeded by
            TBD
            BAFTA Awards
            Preceded by
            Kristin Scott Thomas
            for Four Weddings and a Funeral
            Best Supporting Actress
            1995
            for Sense and Sensibility
            Succeeded by
            Juliette Binoche
            for The English Patient
            Preceded by
            Marion Cotillard
            for La Vie en Rose
            Best Actress
            2008
            for The Reader
            Succeeded by
            TBD
            Golden Globe Awards
            Preceded by
            Cate Blanchett
            for I'm Not There
            Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
            2008
            for The Reader
            Succeeded by
            TBD
            Preceded by
            Julie Christie
            for Away from Her
            Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
            2008
            for Revolutionary Road
            Succeeded by
            TBD
            Screen Actors Guild Awards
            Preceded by
            Dianne Wiest
            for Bullets Over Broadway
            Outstanding Supporting Actress
            1995
            for Sense and Sensibility
            Succeeded by
            Lauren Bacall
            for The Mirror Has Two Faces
            Preceded by
            Ruby Dee
            for American Gangster
            Outstanding Supporting Actress
            2008
            for The Reader
            Succeeded by
            TBD


            Persondata
            NAME Winslet, Kate Elizabeth
            ALTERNATIVE NAMES
            SHORT DESCRIPTION English actress
            DATE OF BIRTH 5 October 1975
            PLACE OF BIRTH Reading, Berkshire, England
            DATE OF DEATH
            PLACE OF DEATH

            Yeh dil maange more

            Times of India - ‎13 hours ago‎
            ... pumps worn by Freida Pinto on the Vogue cover or a private tete-a-tete with Kate Winslet on your honeymoon — it's all about accessing the inaccessible! ...

            Kate Winslet named 'Ultimate Natural Beauty'

            Indian Express - ‎Apr 20, 2009‎
            Oscar winning actress Kate Winslet has been named the 'Ultimate Natural Beauty' in a new poll. The 'Titanic' star was given the title for having 'a classic ...

            Kate Winslet handed top beauty honour

            3 News NZ - ‎Apr 23, 2009‎
            Kate Winslet's classic English rose looks have been honoured - she's been named the ultimate natural beauty in a new poll. The Titanic star topped a survey ...

            Amazing performance by Kate Winslet

            Canada.com - ‎Apr 17, 2009‎
            In the case of Kate Winslet's turn in Stephen Daldry's The Reader, the novel emotional destination is just part of the triumph as Winslet yanks us into the ...
            Schlink on the Screen The Vienna Review

            dvds Released This Week, April 26 edition

            Reading Eagle - ‎10 hours ago‎
            (PG-13: P, V) ``REVOLUTIONARY ROAD'' (June 2): ``Titanic'' stars Leonardo dicaprio and Kate Winslet reunite as a 1950s couple whose seemingly idyllic life ...

            Fearless acting by Winslet propels Reader into top 10

            Calgary Herald - ‎Apr 14, 2009‎
            In the case of Kate Winslet's turn in Stephen Daldry's The Reader, the novel emotional destination is just part of the triumph as Winslet yanks us into the ...

            Kate Winslet with daughter Mia in New York City

            South Asian Women's Forum - ‎Apr 17, 2009‎
            Oscar winner Kate Winslet was on a girls' day out with 8-year-old daughter Mia Honey on Friday, April 17. Photo Credit: Splash News April 17, 2009, ...

            Blu-Ray Review: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes Shine in 'The Reader'

            HollywoodChicago.com - ‎Apr 21, 2009‎
            One, Kate Winslet should have always been in lead. She's the heart of the film and in over an hour of its total running time. How could you possibly compare ...

            Media Diary

            guardian.co.uk - ‎15 hours ago‎
            Kate Winslet has issued a libel writ in the High Court against the Daily Mail, which ran an unflattering article about the Oscar-winning actress suggesting, ...
             
             


             
            Palash Biswas


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