Movie : Milk

Movie Info :

Title : Milk
Genres: Drama, Biopic and Politics/Religion
Running Time: 2 hrs. 7 min.
Release Date: November 26th, 2008 (limited), December 5th (expands)
MPAA Rating: R for language, some sexual content and brief violence.
Distributors: Focus Features
Production Co.: Groundswell Productions, Jinks/Cohen Company
Studios: Focus Features
Financiers: Co-Financier: Groundswell Productions, Focus Features, Axon Films
Filming Locations: San Francisco, California USA
Produced in: United States
Starring: Sean Penn, Allison Pill, Josh Brolin, Emile Hirsch, James Franco, Diego Luna, Victor Garber, Denis O'Hare, Stephen Spinella, Eric Stoltz
Directed by: Gus Van Sant
Produced by: Michael London, Bruna Papandrea, William Horberg
Official Site: Milk (2008)

Synopsis:

After moving to San Francisco, the middle-aged New Yorker, Harvey Milk, became a Gay Rights activist and city politician. On his third attempt, he was elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in 1977, making him the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the USA. The following year, both he and the city's mayor, George Moscone, were shot to death by former city supervisor, Dan White, who blamed his former colleagues for denying White's attempt to rescind his resignation from the board.

Mr. Milk had been the subject of several books and the Academy Award-winning documentary feature, The Times of Harvey Milk (1984); but Milk (2008) is the first fictional feature to explore private aspects of the man's personal life and career.

Milk was filmed on location in San Francisco. Many of Mr Milk's real-life surviving friends and former associates participated in the making of this film, several appearing on camera.



Movie Preview :

His life changed history. His courage changed lives.

In 1977, Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, becoming the first openly gay man to be voted into public office in America. His victory was not just a victory for gay rights; he forged coalitions across the political spectrum. From senior citizens to union workers, Harvey Milk changed the very nature of what it means to be a fighter for human rights and became, before his untimely death in 1978, a hero for all Americans. Sean Penn stars as Harvey Milk under the direction of Gus Van Sant in "Milk," filmed on location in San Francisco from an original screenplay by Dustin Lance Black, and produced by Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen.

"Milk" charts the last eight years of Harvey Milk's life. While living in New York City, he turns 40. Looking for more purpose, Milk and his lover Scott Smith (James Franco) relocate to San Francisco, where they found a small business, Castro Camera, in the heart of a working-class neighborhood. With his beloved Castro neighborhood and beautiful city empowering him, Milk surprises Scott and himself by becoming an outspoken agent for change.

With vitalizing support from Scott and from new friends like young activist Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch), Milk plunges headfirst into the choppy waters of politics. Bolstering his public profile with humor, Milk's actions speak even louder than his gift-of-gab words.

When Milk is elected supervisor for the newly zoned District 5, he tries to coordinate his efforts with those of another newly elected supervisor, Dan White (Josh Brolin). But as White and Milk's political agendas increasingly diverge, their personal destinies tragically converge.

Milk's platform was and is one of hope – a hero's legacy that resonates in the here and now.

Taken From : http://movies.yahoo.com



Movie Review :

by James Rocchi

Milk is a well-intentioned film, but it's also well-made, and it never confuses nobility of purpose with narrative direction. It's full of inspiration and aspiration, but at the same time, it never kids itself -- or us -- about the tricky, twisty ways of modern American urban politics. It's a sincere plea for equality that doesn't ignore the challenges of prejudice and fear. It celebrates past victories and speaks to current struggles; it mourns devastating losses and is still a hymn to hope. It commemorates a man and spotlights a movement; it avoids cliché feel-good moments but still wrings richness out of moments that feel good. It has a heart, and a brain; it's tender and loving while also being sexy and hot; it features a brilliant performance from Sean Penn but surrounds him with other talented actors doing superb work. Milk is adult and intelligent in ways many films are not, and it's rousing and enthralling in a way few films are. It's a minor miracle of sheer film making joy and determination, and one of the best American films of 2008.

Directed by Gus Van Sant (Elephant, My Own Private Idaho), Milk is radically conventional; it's also subtly, gracefully, innovative and sharp. Bet of all, Milk shows us a man who may have been a martyr, but who was most assuredly not a saint -- and makes us respect his accomplishments all the more by showing us the public work and private deals it took to make them happen. Sean Penn stars as Harvey Milk, a New York white collar worker who, at 40, came out of the closet, moved to San Francisco in 1972 with his lover Scott Smith (James Franco) and opened a business and got active -- first as a community organizer, then as a political candidate and ultimately a San Francisco City Supervisor in 1977, the first openly gay elected official in California. Milk was killed in 1978, when his fellow Supervisor, Dan White (Josh Brolin) shot and killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Milk in the wake of White's resignation. It's hard to imagine an audience member not knowing this going into Milk, and yet Van Sant wisely puts it up front, to contextualize Milk's work and to let the film -- and the audience -- commemorate a life instead of merely chronicling a death.

Dustin Lance Black's script is a model of efficiency and good judgment; the film picks up Milk's life on his 40th birthday and never looks back; there are no explanatory flashbacks, no childhood moments, just the decisions that led him to San Francisco and the things he did when he got there. And, like Soderberg's Che from earlier this year, the deliberate decision to edit a life for the significant events instead of trying to fit everything onto the screen makes for a far better film that avoids the rush and crush of lesser biographical films. (" ... Dewey Cox has to think about his whole life before he goes onstage. ...") Van Sant's direction is also excellent -- bustling and busy when it needs to be, quiet and still when it should be. Cinematographer Harris Savides recreates '70s San Francisco with economy in both senses of the word; the low-budget is stretched but never fragile when it creates the film's time period, and his shooting style only calls attention to itself at a few, carefully chosen, very specific moments.

Penn will earn an Oscar nomination for his work, and may very well deserve the win; his performance has both a bright, brilliant surface and unexpected depths. When Milk leans in to kiss a man he's just met on a subway station's stairs and then peers over the man's shoulder and his own, it's a perfectly realized moment of passion and paranoia in conflict. Watching Penn play Milk, you get the sense that while Milk was carefully, deliberately provoking his audience, he was also provoking himself, daring his political career into being. But the supporting cast around Penn is excellent -- Franco's lover who becomes a friend, Hirsch's party boy who becomes an activist. Brolin's turn as White is crafted with care and still immediately satisfying, and makes White more than just the man who pulled the trigger.

Milk includes the fight against the Briggs Initiative, a 1978 California ballot initiative that would have stripped gay and lesbian teachers of their jobs, and even taken away the jobs of those teachers who supported them. Black, Van Sant and Penn show us how Milk worked to stop the initiative with persistence, perspective and humor; refuting the idea that gay teachers 'recruit' kids, Milk notes that "If it were true that children mimicked their teachers, you'd sure have a hell of a lot more nuns running around," making a joke and the point. (Van Sant also uses only news footage to show us Anita Bryant, the gospel singer and anti-gay activist who supported Prop. 6 and other nationwide anti-gay initiatives; it's a sharp choice that not only shows us the battle unfolding as most people saw it happen then, in news coverage and soundbites, but it also works as an insightful directorial casting choice; what performer could compete with the performance Bryant was giving in the public arena?) There's been some question if releasing Milk before the November 4th elections might have 'moved the needle' against the vote for the recent passage of Proposition 8 in California; it's hard to say, but what Milk makes clear for any follower of modern activist politics was that Harvey Milk succeeded because he failed, because he knew how to turn every loss into a chance to take what he'd learned and apply it to the next race.

Milk shows us the joy of victory, and the pain of what victory can cost; it shows us the agony of loss, and the opportunities to re-think, re-organize and retrench that loss can give us. Milk repeats one of Harvey Milk's best-known lines: 'You gotta give 'em hope." Milk understands not just what hope can do but also the hate, fear and ignorance that make hope required. It shows the struggle for gay rights in the '70s, but it also makes it clear that there are too many groups -- and too many people -- who are still treated as if there are asterisks and escape clauses hidden in the Bill of Rights denying them the chance to try and attain life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Milk isn't a hollow Hollywood exercise in hero-making, and that makes it all the better: Van Sant's film succeeds so well because of its complexity, its ambiguity, its devastating combination of sorrow and joy; walking out of Milk, you'll be energized and excited, moved to feel and moved to act, amazed at one man doing so much and painfully aware of how much there is left to do.

Taken From : http://www.cinematical.com



Milk Movie Trailer 2008 HD - Official Trailer HQ