Release Year: 2005 Rating: R Duration: 108 minutes Other Title: Horem padem, Loop the Loop Director: Jan Hrebejk Producer: Ondrej Trojan Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
synopsis
In a small Prague apartment, Franta (Jiri Machacek) and Mila (Natasa Burger) dream of having a child, but Franta - on probation because of his soccer hooliganism past - is not allowed to adopt, and Mila is unable to conceive. After cashing in on her savings, Mila decides to buy a baby from a pawnshop that fronts a den of thieves and pickpockets. Meanwhile, an unusual family reunion is taking place: Academy professor Otto (Jan Triska) collapses while teaching, prompting his estranged son Martin (Petr Forman, son of director Milos) to return to Prague from Australia to see his father and his mother, Vera (Emilia Vasaryova), long separated from Otto whom she still pines for. Otto is now living with the beautiful and much younger Hana (Ingrid Timkova), who works in a refugee aid center helping immigrants to adjust to their new lives.
Eeyores float up and down as pink and blue hearts bounce around on a transparent background to The Winnie The Pooh MiDi.Matching wallpaper by the same name. Source: Ezthemes Size: (315 Kb)
Slide into winter and the holiday season with this beautiful wallpaper of a city street covered with snow as horse drawn sleigh fill with people makes its way up and down the avenue. Music by Lorrie Morgan, Sleigh Ride. Have a wonderful Holiday season, Wally. Source: Ezthemes Size: (885 Kb)
Though this is not a movie about elevator operators (nor is it porn), the title "Up and Down" conceivably has two meanings. One is geographical: Martin (Petr Forman) who, for what it's worth is the son of the great Czech film-maker Milos Forman, is a Czech citizen about forty years of age who has been living and working in Brisbane, Australia for the past twenty years. When he revisits the home from which he left in a huff because of his father's affair with the younger man's girlfriend, Hana (Ingrid Timkova), he has gone from down-under to up, and then back again. The second meaning, less literal, deals with two distinct social classes in the Czech capital of Prague, where Jan Malir filmed most of the story: one is the reasonably well-to-do family represented by a college professor and a social worker; the other is a down-and-out group of recent immigrants (largely from India), gypsies, and others, many of whom live in refugee camps in Prague. Director Jan Hrebejk ("Divided We Fall," "Pupendo") deals with disparate stories, linking them toward the conclusion as Robert Altman might do, though the persons in each story do not necessarily meet the others. Stilll, as the cliche goes and this story attempts to prove, we're all connected.
