Riding Whales

Te tai/Still the tide's tenacious turmoil (from a poem by Megan Simmonds on Maori Heritage).

Hey if any of you ever get the chance, you should see this movie called "Whale Rider". Wonderful! It's about a 12 year old Maori* girl who wants to be the leader of her people. This is from Roger Ebert, who reviewed it and gave it 4 stars (out of 4): "Sounds too ethnic, uplifting and feminist, right? The genius of the movie is the way is sidesteps all of the obvious cliches of the underlying story and makes itself fresh, observant, tough and genuinely moving. There is a vast difference between movies for 12-year-old girls, and movies about 12-year-old girls, and "Whale Rider" proves it." Oh I cried through some parts, and sitting there, in the quiet parts all you could hear was sniffling. Rich liked it too. You would think it was all serious but it's actually interspersed with funny scenes and funny lines. I had trouble with their accent at first, for example the word "defend" would come out "de-feend"...Rich didn't seem to have any problems...he grew up with the Boston accent in his ear so I see how it was easy to understand. haha I think the word "hard" would be "hahd". Okay gotta run, just see the movie! Oh if you guys don't know about this site you should refer to it if you were thinking of seeing a certain movie or not. Click Here. Or you could just look up Roger Ebert's site on suntimes.com/ebert. You can also look through the archives by clicking "search" under the Ebert tab. Okay have a good day all! Gotta run.

*Maori means:
1 : a member of a Polynesian people native to New Zealand
2 : the Austronesian language of the Maori

Me.