The Kite Runner soars

” target=”_blank”>Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling novel, ” target=”_blank”>Reel Talk With Stephen Farber. “I think it will be a serious awards contender.”

Hundreds of guests crowded the Wadsworth Theatre in Westwood on Monday, October 22 to see the first major L.A. screening of the highly anticipated and slightly controversial film. Buzz about the pivotal rape scene and the potential danger it poses to the three young Afghani stars of the film has only increased the hype surrounding the release, which has been pushed back from Nov. 2 to Dec. 14. The delay gives Paramount Vantage time to relocate the boys and their families to Dubai, which is supposedly safer.

First-time actors, the boys who play Amir and Hassan are phenomenal. So are the rest of the actors in “The Kite Runner,” who are all relatively obscure. Four of the main adult actors participated in the post-screening Q&A with Farber, including 26-year-old Khalid Abdalla (Amir), who stunned the audience by revealing that he learned to speak Dari, an Afghan dialect, in less than a month in order to play the lead role.