Sunday, March 31, 2013
"The Host": Meyer explores "multiple identities" or soul changes
Does it make sense for one body to inhabit two more
souls? I’m not talking about
schizophrenia or split personalities or “voices” that are explainable
medically.
Stephenie Meyer’s “new” novel and Andrew Niccol’s 2-hour
slow-paced sci-fi film, “The Host”, pose that question. Aliens have conquered
Earth, and displaced most earthling’s souls with their own. (This may evoke "Invasion of the Body Snatchers IV", but the mood and storytelling concept are totally different.) They say they can
build a perfect world of cooperation and sustainability. Actually, their ideology sounds like
Communism, of the Maoist or maybe even North Korean kind. (Yes, this movie is a kind of “Red Dawn IV”.)
The problem with extreme socialism is
that, when you try to enforce the rules (“everyone pays his dues”) and create a
classless, moneyless society (stores in the new world order don’t have brands
or even credit cards or cash registers), you break the rules yourself. Only criminals can eliminate other criminals
without adding to sin. Meyer seems in
touch with that.
There are a few refusniks, of rebels holed up – this time in
New Mexico caves apparently left by the Chaco Culture (which slowly dismantled
its own civilization over a few hundred years). They live underground, and have
developed a technology to grow food out of sight. (Hint: the same concept
occurs in the 1969 western “MacKenna’s Gold”.
Here, there’s no “old turkey buzzard”.)
One of the young women, Melanie (like in “Gone with the
Wind”, played by Saorsie Ronan) didn’t make the complete transition from
Wanda. Her old self talks to her (like a
schizophrenic’s voices). Much of the
plot concerns her “escape” back to the rebels, and how “love” (for a
smooth-skinned Jared, played by Max Irons) might make the switch complete.
In my own novel “Angel’s Brother”), the “victims” (so to
speal) of a bizarre neurological retroviral infection sometimes find their
souls living inside an angel – as they “tune on”, like for a dream, every so
often, and learn the angel’s background, while the angel learns those. If the “victim” doesn’t die, he might “convert”
partially (that sounds like the concept Meyer has, so I guess I gave away too
much in previous blogs). Such a “special” (or exceptional) patient might
experience having two bodies, switching back and forth through time-warps
within his body (there’s a hint of that concept in this movie in the way the
aliens can heal, and also in the way the eyes look). Just don’t give away too much in blogs. Oh, no matter. Ideas can’t be copyrighted
anyway.
There’s also an interesting visual concept of what a soul
looks like when it leaves – an idea we saw in the 1984 film “Dune”. It also reminds me of an image in the book
“Proof of Heaven” (books blog, March 30).
The movie gets its astronomy right – it really can take years for souls
to reach other planets, even at the speed of light. (But maybe consciousness can move faster than
light, inside a mini black hole, transmitted inside a bizarre retrovirus ---
sorry, that’s my idea).
There's also another idea, not explored here: what would it have been like for the World going through the invasion? How quickly would it take people to understand what was happening? That is a problem with some of these "After Earth" (or "Resident Evil") scenarios -- the cataclysm that set up the story seems artificial unless really explained (the same problem plagues NBC's series "Revolution"). My own novel takes place "while it happens".
The official site from Open Road is here.
Not many people attended this movie at Regal Easter Sunday
afternoon. The scenery – whether around Shiprock
in New Mexico or in Louisiana (the nations’ new film center) is breathtaking. (Remember Devil's Tower, from CE III?)
Wikipedia attribution link for Shiprock picture. I visited the area in May 1984 (after going
to Lama near Taos).
Because of some themes in my own writing, this film made
more sense to me than it did many reviewers.
But the story still seemed to have some loose ends or holes. In this sort of writing, they are hard to
plug.
The end credits had some interesting art work of possible extrasolar planets. Many would be tidally locked.
Labels:
indie sci-fi,
my scripts,
Open Road,
Tree of Life issues,
Twilight
Saturday, March 30, 2013
"Admission" is a somewhat contrived comedy about Ivy League admissions, with a likable kid "hero"
The best experience in the romantic comedy “Admission” comes
from the brilliant but eclectic high school student Jeremiah (Nat Wolff, who
resembles Max Manghella), at an alternative school on a New Hampshire. He talks logically and gives a great
ventriloquist puppet show, backing up his application to Princeton.
The rest of the plot seems, while touching, a bit
contrived. Tina Fey (SNL) plays Portia,
a university admissions placement officer, working for the Dean played by
Wallace Shawn (“My Dinner with Andre”).
When she makes a recruiting trip to the new age farm run by John
Pressman (Paul Rudd), she meets the mysterious but likeable and articulate
farmboy, but is confronted by the possibility that he is the kid she gave up
for adoption after “mistake” early in her life.
John is a single father figure, having adopted a smart boy
from Uganda (no mention of Uganda’s anti-gay problem). He’s also planning to
work on a water project in Ecuador (a distant relative in my own family, a
recent engineering graduate, did the same in Guatemala, and Matt Damon has been
active in supporting these efforts).
So there are a lot of feel-good plot elements, not
necessarily connected logically enough to be compelling – yet the writing
follows the formulaic techniques for creating rooting interest and urgency.
Will the boy get in to Princeton? Will Portia
and John keep their integrity in the process?
Will the University?
The movie was actually filmed in New York State, rather than
around Princeton. I like to see films
made where they are supposed to happen.
I’ve known only one Princeton student, back in the 60s; he was in
architecture. However, I lived near
Princeton when I worked for RCA in 1970-1071 and visited the campus
frequently. Remember Nassau Street and
Buxton’s?
I saw this film before a fair crowd on Saturday afternoon at
a Regal in Arlington Va.
The official Facebook is here. McAfee Advisor gave me red warnings
consistently for the Focus Features site for the film; don’t know why, maybe a
false alarm. However, Firefox search
shows green ratings from all rating companies including McAfee for the entire
Focus site.
Pictures are mine, from spring of 2010. Quiz: which picture is not from Princeton? Where is it?
Update: Check review of Arvin Vohra's book "Lies, Damned Lies and College Admissions", Book Review blog, April 19, 2013.
Update: Check review of Arvin Vohra's book "Lies, Damned Lies and College Admissions", Book Review blog, April 19, 2013.
Friday, March 29, 2013
"The Beautiful Truth": A teenager and his father document the anti-cancer diet of Max Gerson
“The Beautiful Truth” (2008, Cinema Libre) is quite a touching documentary about the
relationship between nutrition and cancer, made by a father (Steve Kroschel)
and 15 year old son Garrett Kroschel. The family lives in Alaska on an animal
reserve. When Garrett’s mother dies, he
withdraws, and his father decides to home school him, at least partially. A major assignment is a “book report” on a
work by Max Gerson, claiming that diet can cure cancer.
Garrett travels to many locations in the US and Mexico,
interviewing people in various movements that oppose silver in dental fillings,
vaccines, and processed foods. Garrett
even has his own silver filling removed.
He travels to a cancer clinic in Mexico and meets patients who are
recovering despite stopping chemotherapy.
The film presents an odd theory that the use of fluoride in dental
treatment was related to the military complex producing nuclear weapons, and I’m
not sure I got the connection.
The film presents some biographical material on both Max
Gerson (who died in 1959, possibly of arsenic poisoning, after his first book
manuscript had been stolen and he had to rewrite his book), and daughter
Charlotte.
The film criticizes the mainstream cancer establishment,
including the American Cancer Society (one of the charities benefitting from
donations from my mother’s trust), as a front for the “radiation and
chemotherapy” industry.
In places, the full-screen film offers stunning scenery, as
the boy flies over Alaskan glaciers in a private plane At the end, he returns
home to his rural environment, and meets a neighbor who had lost both legs to
diabetes.
The film also describes some odd treatments, such as coffee
enema therapy.
The film has a poetic epilogue, where aphorisms of Gerson
are quoted. When one dies, it doesn’t
matter what one has or learned; it matters what one taught. It doesn’t matter who many people he knew, it
matters how many people will miss him.
It is not fame or accomplishment that matters, but “significance”.
The official site
(from Gerson Media) is here.
I watched it on Netflix instant play, but it is available
now free on YouTube.
Wikipedia attribution link for Denali National Park (I made
a visit by private plane in 1980), here.
Labels:
biography,
food,
indie documentary,
medical ethics
Thursday, March 28, 2013
"Bob's New Suit": a "narrative" family comedy seen from the viewpoint of a wardrobe item, set in the Valley, of course
“Bob’s New Suit”, a new comedy by Alan Howard, tells the
story of a working-class “Vallye” family through the eyes of a suit that its
nicest character acquires for a wedding.
Yup. Ever wondered what your
clothes would say if they could talk?
Actually, the comedy “What Happens Next?” (Dec. 31, 2012)
also started out in a walk-in closet.
And I sense that this new film is familiar, like I might have heard of
the script somewhere, from a screenwriting group when I lived in Minneapolis or
from a class here in Arlington.
This is also a film where “the kids are all right” but the
grown-ups aren’t.
Bob (Hunter Bodine), the suit-wearer, a gardener and
handyman, is a strong enough young man to hold the rest of his family together.
He’ll have to be a super person to get
through all this. He’s straight, and he
needs Jenny (Hayley DuMond and maybe named after a corresponding character in “Swiss
Family Robinson”) to see him through the changes that happen to his family when
his mysterious dad Buster (John Bennett Perry_, a laid-off aerospace engineer,
loses it. His tomboyish sister (Shay
Astar) announces that she is trangender and will become a man. Mom (Suzi Bodine) can’t tale what Stephanie
is doing to the family (starting with his ailing dad, an idea that I faced mysef decades ago), until she has to face that it all came down from Mom
and Dad, as deeper family secrets unravel.
Only the suit knows all. Is this
what English author Thomas Carlyle wanted with “Sartor Resartus”? Check the plot of Carlyle’s novel and “new
kind of book” on Wikipedia (remember
your English lit?): it seems to inspire this film. Stephanie does gradually become Steve and dates Marlena (no connection to the character in "Days"), Jenny Shimizu. Another family member, and scammer, is played clearly by Charlie Babcock.
The film looks like it was shot largely shot “in the Valley”;
it looks like the area not too far from the (“traffic jam”) 405 and 101; I was
there last May. Watching the film, I
felt like I could just drive back to the Angelino Hotel and enjoy the view from
the roof.
The Facebook site is here. The DVD (from Breaking Glass Pictures, and Rowan) will be
available on April 2, 2013.
This film also struck me as a take-off on Robert Altman’s
style of filmmaking (“Short Cuts”), or even a miniature “Magnolia” (Paul Thomas
Anderson).
The DVD contains three interviews. I received a screener from the distributor. Michal Silverblatt ("The Reader", or The Suit talking) interviews the director Howard, who compares his work to that of Alfred Hitchcock ("Marnie" and even the switched identities of "Vertigo"), a mood analogy that I don't see, He compares himself to George Cukor, John Ford (continuity), and Jacques Demy. Then Howard interviews Ashtar (a very feminine actress in real life) for 20 minutes, and then Suzi Bodine, about acting with her son.
The DVD contains three interviews. I received a screener from the distributor. Michal Silverblatt ("The Reader", or The Suit talking) interviews the director Howard, who compares his work to that of Alfred Hitchcock ("Marnie" and even the switched identities of "Vertigo"), a mood analogy that I don't see, He compares himself to George Cukor, John Ford (continuity), and Jacques Demy. Then Howard interviews Ashtar (a very feminine actress in real life) for 20 minutes, and then Suzi Bodine, about acting with her son.
Picture: Mine, from the Angelino on the 405, roof bar-restaurant, at breakfast; below, another view. Makes you want to be their right now.
.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
"Once Upon a Mattress": the little musical (good to watch on the day that SCOTUS debates "marriage")
In a year that gives so much attention to the big musicals (“Book
of Mormon” is due for the screen in 2015 or so), it’s good to look at a few of
the smaller ones.
“Once Upon a Mattress” last entered film as a made-for-TV film for Disney
in 2005, directed by Kathleen Marshall. (There are 1964 and 1972 versions.) It is based upon the off-Broadway 1959
musical by that name (it later went to Broadway) with music by Mary Rodgers and
lyrics by Marshall Baher, based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson, “The
Princess and the Pea” (and maybe that can be a chickpea, as in “Cold Souls”).
The musical is very popular in high school productions.
The plot seems ironic when viewed on a day when the Supreme
Court heard oral arguments about gay marriage, because this is a musical comedy
about the “meaning” of marriage.
The story takes place in a medieval or fantasy kingdom,
which on the film seems to be rendered in GCI, to look like a set of a castle
with a little outdoor space for gallantry.
The colors in the film are quite garish, using the same film hue
technique as “Oz” (March 16).
In the story, a bossy Queen Aggravain (Carol Burnett)
insists on finding only the most perfect bridge for her homely son princePrince
Dauntless (Dennis O’Hare). Probably most
school and community productions choose a relatively good looking person for
the role, but the musical is much funnier if the leading man is quite homely
and ordinary. Also, no other marriages
in the kingdom can occur until a perfect bridge is found for this almost-gay
prince. That could definitely cause a “demographic
winter in the kingdom (to the delight of the
religious right).
But a particular young knight Sir Harry (Matthew Morrison,
who is and should be handsome) finds his girlfriend Larken (Zooey Deschanel) is pregnant. He can only get married if he can find a
bride for Dauntless. That will be a
rather mannish girl Winnifred the Woebegone (Tracey Uhlmann) .
The Queen sets up tests for the princess, including an
exhausting ball, and a particular enactment of the wedding chamber where the
bed is covered with twenty mattresses,
which a chickpea at the bottom, to see if the princess is “senstivie”
(feminine) enough to carry out her duties. Just as in "Twin Peaks", there is some "warm milk" (but not "skim milk").
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
"The Holy Quaternity" or "4Some": two couples squatting on a resort after a hurricance; they mix, and the kids aren't OK
“4Some” (or “The Holy Quaternity”, or, in Czech, “Svata
Ctverice”), a little 80 minute comedy by Hrejebk, may be a modern Slovak answer to “The Ice Storm” or even “Bob, Carol.
Ted and Alice”.
Marie and Vitek, and Dita and Ondra, share a house near Prague
and the men work together (always around big electric power stations). When one has some lottery winnings, they go
an island in the Caribbean for a “vacation”. There is some discussion of the idea that
much of the previous undesirable content of the island had been wiped out in a
hurricane. The two couples don’t have any moral scruples about sharing their
love for each other in all directions – they don’t believe in the marital norm
of exclusivity (so much a topic of today’s social debate). But this time, when they get back home (to a central
European winter), the kids may not be all right after all.
There’s a nice sound track, that uses the Mozart Gloria near
the end.
The setup reminds me of my own family beach vacations when I
was a child. We always shared the same
row house in Ocean City for a week in June, many years in a row. No, none of the antics of the film happened
with us. One year (1950) I got the
measles and we had to come home early.
The official site is here. Strand Releasing has announced a DVD
release date of April 16. The review was done from a screener private Vimeo link.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Noam Chomsky: a good subject for an "interview film"
In downtown Minneapolis in 2002 and 2003, when on the way to
“The Saloon” on Saturday nights, I sometimes stopped at a newsstand store on
Hennepin called “Shinders”. My last
visit (in 2011) seemed to indicate that it had closed, but I recall it because
there were beaucoup books and rags there by Noam Chomsky and his theories about
9/11.
At the West End Cinema in Washington recently, in a casual
conversation about another film, a patron called Chomsky a “liberal gatekeeper”.
The film “Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in our Times”
(2002), by John Junkerman, presents Chomsky in some interviews and speeches in
front of college audiences. (I dreamed
last night that I was giving a speech, like my 1998 Hamline University
speech). Chomsky was 73 when these
interviews were filmed, ten years ago.
Can “interviews alone” make for interesting documentary
film? Sometimes, if the subject is
compelling enough. (Consider Sony’s “Blind
Spot: Hitler’s Secretary”, also in 2002).
Chomsky says some startling things. He sees street crime as a metaphor for war,
and says that at some level there is probably always some legitimacy to it in
terms of unresolved social inequality.
(That reminds me of the People’s Party of New Jersey back in the early
1970s, that saw violence as legitimate and saw middle class professionals like
me as part of the enemy.) This is
obviously a dangerous and frightening notion, but some people see it as a
predecessor to revolution.
But the main thrust of his remarks is to see the United
States as the world’s main terror state, so George W. Bush’s “War on terror”
had to be meaningless.
He also claims that Palestinian suicide bombing in Israel
did not start until 2001, despite Israel’s occupation and expropriation of
lands in the West Bank ever since 1967.
The film originated from Japan and has this site. But it was filmed
in the Bronx (at
Fordham) and apparently distributed by First Run Features.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
"Abel's Field": A teenage boy, saddled with raising two little sisters, finds personal salvation from an ex-con
Some “Christian” films are actually good. “Abel’s Field”, by Gordie
Kaakstad, follows the conventions of screenwriting (Aron Flasher) by piling on
the crises for its likable teenage boy hero Seth (Samuel Davis), and makes you
wonder how he can possibly solve all the problems thrown on his shoulders.
Seth, 17, is supposed to be a high school senior in a Texas
town, and was kicked off the football team after he was overburdened with
taking care of two seven year-old twin sisters after his deadbeat dad
left. A distant brother and oil worker
Keith (Joe Ward) renounces any responsibility and says that therid dad created
families and left them. Also Seth’s mother died tragically at 35, apparently
from cancer.
Right off the bat, we have a common theme that doesn’t get
discussed openly by policymakers. People
often have to raise children that they didn’t “choose” to have by performing
heterosexual intercourse. Older kids sometimes have to raise siblings, and sometimes (as in “Raising Helen”) people raise
siblings’ kids after family tragedies. Why don't we point out this explicit problem more often? This ought to play much more explicitly into the “family values” debate
than it usually does. In fact, a few
states have filial responsibility laws drawn up to require adults to support
impoverished siblings as well as parents.
The story is set in motion by two other major
characters. Richard Dillard plays the
authoritarian football coach Chalmers (“I am the football coach, so I am God”),
and he still has the authority to get Seth expelled when he fights back after a
football player bullies him in the hallways.
The film could go into why the bullying occurs but doesn’t.
Seth makes do by working as an auto mechanic (he’s very good
at it) and in fast food. To punish Seth,
the coach makes him work in detention for an itinerant contractor Abel (Kevin Sorbo), rebuilding the watering and
drainage system for the football field before the fall homecoming game.
Abel gradually becomes Seth’s spiritual mentor, but then we
learn that Abel has a very troubled past himself, possibly criminal.
Seth has almost “perfect 10” looks (although we never see
him without full shirt and trousers), and he seems too clean cut for the
situation.
Seth would be able to inherit his parents’ house, but is
unable to pay the enormous past due liens on it, that his irresponsible dad
ratcheted up, so he faces inevitable foreclosure (very easy under Texas law) and eviction (with his dependent little sisters). There is a sequence where
he is “tempted” into theft to get out of the problem, and that becomes a test
for the screenwriter.
Abel also has a book of drawings. It’s rather curious that, at the end of the
him, he doesn’t need his own artwork any more.
It’s about people? That part I
had trouble believing.
The official site is here. Notice Seth’s “looks”.
The 2012 film is available on a rather inexpensive DVD, or
can be rented on YouTube for $3.99. The
distributor is Sony Affirm and Sony TriStar.
The film was shot in Thall, Texas, a small town east of
Austin. I may have driven through it in
November 2011, when I went to Bastrop to look at the wildfire damage. Even thought the film is new to distribution, the technology shown looks 80s-like; I don't recall seeing PC's or smart phones.
Compare this film particularly to "The Conrad Boys: (Dec. 12, 2008).
Compare this film particularly to "The Conrad Boys: (Dec. 12, 2008).
The DVD has a 23-minute short “Behind the Scenes” by Hussain
Parina. There is a sequence where the
method of painting the multiple tattoos onto the bod of Kein Sorbo is
demonstrated. Kevin complains about the
partial upper chest shaving.
The director considers the film homage to the values of his
own father.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
"War Witch": a teenage girl tells her harrowing story of life among brutal Congo rebels
“War Witch” (“Rebelle”), a French-Canadian film directed by
Kim Nguyen, and nominated for best foreign-language film (French and native
African) is tough to watch.
Komona (Rachel Mwanza) is talking to her unborn baby
somewhere in the Congo as the film starts, warning him that when he comes out
of her belly, she may not be able to love him the way a mother should. We’ll find out at the end if she does.
We then watch her story, of her being kidnapped at the age
of 12, and forced to become a rebel fighter in the Congo. She is elevated to a “witch”
because of her intuition about the enemy. The film shows this which ghostly
characters made to look albino and static. She meets an albino native who wants to marry
her. She makes him prove his manhood by
finding a white rooster in the village.
The marriage results in the baby, but is short lived as she is taken
back.
The brutality of the film is horrific – she is made to do
unthinkable things, even as a child. So she gets some
revenge with, shall we say, an “implant” – something American soldiers found
Vietnamese women did during the Vietnam war.
The film also shows living conditions in sub-Saharan Africa as absolutely gruesome. I could not have survived this.
The look of the film (and the culture) reminds one of “Beasts
of the Southern Wild” (July 9. 2012 here).
The official site is here. The theatrical distribution in the US is
being handled by Tribeca film (from the 2012 festival, which I attended but I did not see this film there).
I saw the film Saturday afternoon before a sold-out crowd in
a small auditorium at the West End Cinema in Washington DC.
Friday, March 22, 2013
"Olympus Has Fallen" is essentially "Red Dawn III"
The big “B movie” opening this weekend, “Olympus Has Fallen”,
starts with a conventional but detailed prologue at Camp David in the Maryland
Catoctin Mountains, right before Christmas.
At about 1200 feet elevation , they have a real snowstorm just before
Christmas. The Secret Service, led in
part by Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) leads the entourage which has a horrible
accident on icy roads. Banning gets
blamed with the first lady dies in the accident.
The “plot” of the movie, then, has a lot to do with the “opportunity
Banning has to save the president (Aaron Eckhart) and indeed the whole country
right after July 4, eighteen months later, after a North Korean mercenary
terrorist attack on the White House.
You read right. This
movie is “Red Dawn III” (see my “cf disaster movies” blog Nov. 22, 2012 for
this franchise) in practice. It starts
with a C130 that invades DC air space with unbelievable defense against
missiles, shooting up the White House and surrounding area with a gattling gun.
Then there is a ground attack, which captures the House and holds the president
and all his staff hostages. You know
what the title of the movie means. North
Korean terrorist Tao-Woo (Keong Sim) is as mean as they come, and is on the
verge of getting the US to blow up all of its own nuclear weapons on its own
soil to destroy the county , through compromise of various security codes by
this “home invasion” – preposterous to be sure, but maybe a telling lesson for
ordinary home security. There is some
Marxist ideological talk about the evils of Wall Street and the need to bring
everyone in the world equally low.
This movie doesn’t provide much or a “warning” because the
plot really couldn’t happen. What could
be more likely would be local EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attacks with
microwaves, or “radiation dispersion devices” or possibly bioterror. One can imagine a scenario where any
ideologically extreme group could try this to bring the country down, and that
thought is scary. Yes, Communism could
still “try-catch” it, and it’s
conceivable that North Korea or Iran (maybe not so much the old Al Qaeda any
more) could pull something. In one of my
novel manuscripts from the 1980s. “Red” infiltrators contaminate New York City,
causing a mass evacuation when one of the main protagonists is in a bathhouse
(this dates back to 1982, before AIDS was fully understood). Early in my coming of age (in the early
1970s), I was exposed to some on the radical Left who wanted to plot such awful
things out of their own indignation that some people could be richer than
others (maybe at the expense to others).
This grim scenario has been possible for decades.
Morgan Freeman seems a bit kind as the Speaker of the House,
officially in charge of the nation from the Pentagon bunker at 3 AM. Breaking news points out that this is the
first time the White House has fallen since the War of 1812.
Of course, the release of the movie this weekend is coincidentally timely, given North Korea's recent bellicose threats to annihilate Washington, and its cancellation of the armistice with the South. A war with the South sounds like a real possibility. Maybe there is something to the Domino Theory (that justified drafting me in 1968) after all.
Of course, the release of the movie this weekend is coincidentally timely, given North Korea's recent bellicose threats to annihilate Washington, and its cancellation of the armistice with the South. A war with the South sounds like a real possibility. Maybe there is something to the Domino Theory (that justified drafting me in 1968) after all.
The official site (Filmdistrict and Millennium) is here.
I saw this film in a large auditorium at Regal Cinemas in
Arlington VA, before a moderate crowd at the early evening show.
The film is frantic in pacing, and sometimes seems almost silly.
Compare it to “Zero Dark Thirty” which seems measured and real by comparison.
One other point. On 9/11, there were brief incorrect reports
very early in the event that the Washington Monument had been struck, which
happens in this film. It is possible
that, had Flight 93 not been downed by the passengers, that it could have hit
the White House or Capitol, but both would have been evacuated. The attackers might have done more harm
toward decapitating the government (as Dick Cheney calls it) had they chosen
these targets before they hit the
Pentagon, which was completely repaired physically within one year. I’ve covered the “conspiracy theories” in
other movie reviews.
I never heard the White House called Olympus before. As if it deserved to be named after a volcano on Mars.
I never heard the White House called Olympus before. As if it deserved to be named after a volcano on Mars.
Labels:
cautionary,
Communism,
military,
pre 9/11 drama
Thursday, March 21, 2013
"Upside Down": Intriguing look at an unusual "dominion"; Sturgess looks like a hero
The indie sci-fi film “Upside Down” (I can’t spell the
second word that way) by Juan Solanas is based on a premise that creates
possibilities for storytelling but that doesn’t make much sense in physics.
Two earth sized planets are almost touching at one
point. The planets’ matter is “inverse”
of one another, but that doesn’t mean it behaves like matter and anti-matter
(or anti-particles). The only
consequence is that an inhabitant of one world “overheats” (like a car engine)
if too long on the other world. It’s
possible to fly like superman between the two worlds, that are maybe about two
miles apart at the closest point.
The setup causes political problems. The “upper” world is rich, and because of the
overheating danger, can maintain an absolute ban on travel among the two
worlds, and keep the lower world impoverished.
Adam (Jim Sturgess plays the 30 year old adult) and Eden
(Kirsten Dunst) have dared the ban, crossing an “in ovo” boundary (to borrow
from Clive Barker’s “Imajica”) as kids, leading to punishment for both. Years later, Adam has developed his invention
based on pink bee pollen, which can make people young and has anti-gravity
properties. He gets a “job” in the
headquarters Trans World company, and the scenes of an immense office space
with workers upside down (and even job interviews) is indeed engaging.
Suffice it to say, innovation turns out to be a panacea for
the political problems, and Adam (with the help of a laid-off employee) deploys
his invention. One can say that the
movie has a libertarian, Cato-like message .
Sturgess turns out to be an Ayn Rand-like hero, with a touch of Clark
Kent. Remember, he was good at math in
“21”.
The official site (Millennium Films) is here. The film was shot in Quebec and France, with a lot of help from Warner Brothers.
The concept of the “youth potion” was interesting to
me. In my own novel (“Angel’s Brother”),
I have a hierarchy of beings, and explain how angels come to be. If a young man is infected with a certain
virus that encapsulates a microscopic black hole, he can get infused with
energy that overcomes entropy and allows him immortality without necessarily
needing to reproduce. (This can sound
like a world that doesn’t need women!)
But when older people are infected, they often develop bizarre
(cutaneous) malignancies and die. But
some have their memories transferred to an angel, and can remain alive
intemittenly forever in the consciousness of the angel (rather like
experiencing a sequence of dreams). The
angel also learns everything that was in their “heart and soul” when they
lived. Some adults have an intermediate
result and can share telepathic interchanges with the angels.
In this movie, the look (especially the Dubai-like
skyscrapers) reminds one sometimes of similar effects in the dream sequences of
Christopher Nolan’s “Inception”.
I saw this at the first show on a Thursday night at Landmark
E Street, before a small crowd.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
"Let My People Go!": French and Finnish gay men play Moses
“Let Me People Go!”, by Mikael Buch, mixes a lot of cultures
in a situation comedy. It starts in a
pastel gingerbread house in a Finnish forest where Ruben (Nicholas Maury) lives
with Teemu (Jarko Niemi).
Ruben is
French and Jewish and looks it, and Teemu is “Nordic”. Ruben works as a mail letter carrier. One day he delivers a package with a huge
amount of cash. After signing for it,
the elderly recipient tries to get him to take it back. He does, after a scuffl,e. Teemu, a schoolteacher who seems pretty
responsible (except in a scene in a forest dunbuggy) kicks him out of the house, properly fearful
of his lover’s foolishness. But Ruben travels
to France for Passover, and his luggage gets lost.
What follows is a series of family escapades, some gay, some
straight, and some having to do with Jewish identity. In one scene, Ruben asks if he can give up
being Jewish. No, you can’t. There is some mention of the idea that the
Jews have wronged Palestinians in order to re-establish their identity.
In a comic finale, Ruben does get in trouble with the law,
before Teemu (who speaks English and Finnish) comes to France to reunite with
Ruben. It sounds like comic opera.
The title of the film refers to embedded scenes from the
Paramount film “The Ten Commandments”.
There is a flashback of a little Jewish history where the
screen compresses (from “Scope”) to standard aspect ratio, which does not work
too well in a theater that already crops to shot 2.35:1.
The site from Zeitgeist films is here.
I saw this film at the West End Cinema Wednesday night
before a fair crowd, early show.
My favorite Finnish film is “Joki” (“The River”, 2001),
several interlocking stories that circle around in time (the way “Pulp Fiction”
does).
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
"7 Below": One haunted house, more than one time zone
The film title “7 Below” (or “Seven Below”) suggests an
outdoor vista of ice and snow, maybe a blizzard. You hear that it’s about a group of strangers
or acquaintances who get holed up in a haunted house in northern Minnesota
during a a storm.
But actually the film (by Kevin Carraway) is shot in Goshen,
Ohio (near Cincinnati) in summer, and the storm is a powerful front with power
outages (candle light) and tornado watches.
You don’t get to see the twister.
Instead, the group is caught in a time warp, where the relive the scene
of horrible murders committed there a century earlier by a disturbed boy (a
timely theme, it seems, although this film seems to have been completed early
in 2012). Some of the characters learn
they could be reincarnations, of course.
Actually, the idea of characters from different “time zones” interacting
in the same space is potentially interesting.
The steadiest fellow is a medical student Adam (Mike Barr),
who looks a little silly when he can’t identify a corpse early in the movie, but then he carries the film, his own
vulnerability the last to be exposed.
Luke Goss is the avenging angel Isaac, and Val Kilmer looks
very over the hill as Bill McCormick.
The film is distributed by Arc Entertainment (Alliance Atlantis) and the production company
list includes Vtiamin A Films. I guess
nobody wants night blindness in a haunted house.
The official site is here.
Monday, March 18, 2013
"White Elephant": a "poor" Catholic church in Argentina, in practice
The Argentinian film “White Elephant” (“Elefante Blanco”),
by Pablo Treparo, in its look, calls to mind an 80s film, “The Mission”, that I
saw at school a number of years ago when I was substitute teaching.
The title refers to the ruins of a tuberculosis sanatorium
built near Buenos Aries in the 1930s, abandoned and now the heart (and symbol)
of a shantytown (“Villa Virgin”) in the
suburbs of what (in the 50s) encyclopedias had called “the most beautiful city
in the world”. We usually “get to see”
the slums around Rio or Sao Paulo in the movies; Argentina has tended to keep its poverty out
of sight until now. Movies, as they say, take you to another world, and this
one certainly does (and it is no “Emerald City”).
In this movie, the Marxists are rather the good buys, and
the capitalist guerillas represent right-wing totalitarianism. I don’t know where this fits into Argentinian
history – which is a problem with getting an audience for a film like this in
the U.S.
The intermediate backdrop of the film is the death of Father
Joseph Mujica in 1974, from a right-wing gunman. In modern times, a hippy-like Father Julian (Ricardo
Darin) wants to use the stories of miracles performed by the deceased legendary
Mujica to get political support for a new hospital. But entering the picture is
his friend, a volatile French priest Nicolas (Jeremie Renier), who has left a
difficult situation where an earlier village “mission” was destroyed by rogue
outlaws. He wants to engage the drug
kingpins and convert them, whereas Julian fears that will make priests
combatants. Nicolas befriends an atheist
young woman and social worker Luciana (Martina Gusman).
Nicolas and Luciana actually rescue a kid who throws up in
their car, but then they begin to fall in love.
Nicolas will not keep his vows of abstinence. He is capable of temptation in more than one
direction.
Julian (the “slum priest”) and Nicolas will be tested when
the ghetto explodes near the end. The
scene reminded me of the conclusion of a 1966 film, “The Chase”.
The film is interesting and timely now because an
Argentinian has been crowned as Pope Francis, and we know that he is deeply
committed to poverty, and to conservative social mores which of course
challenge the celibate priesthood.
The solemn music score by Michael Nyman is brooding and
quite effective. The film is shot in
full 2.35:1 and the realism of the poverty in the outdoor scenes is
overwhelming.
A site from the Tiff Festival is here
I received a private online link for a review
screening.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
"Oz: The Great and Powerful": is wizardry a prerequisite for greatness? Stay in the Emerald Hilton
From a filmmaking perspective, the most interesting part of the
new remake fantasy “Oz: The Great and Powerful”, by Sam Raimi, in 3-D, from
Disney, is the 40s-style opening in black and white, with a 4:3 old aspect
ratio screen. Carnival musician Oz
(James Franco), with sidekick Finley (Zach Braff, who can do everything)
entertains the masses on the Kansas plains.
He echoes “The Prestige” and “The Illusionist”. He stirs controversy when he declines to cure
a crippled girl with his magic sleight. In the scramble that follows, he gets
picked up by a tornado (well done and transported to another planet, Oz.
The screen shifts to color, and widens gradually to full
Cinemascope, and it’s important to see this film in a theater that uses the
entire screen surface for wide screen (otherwise the opening has to be cropped
even more). I saw it at the AMC
Courthouse, remodeled with the reclining seats.
Oz has a geography, starting with the Emerald City, which
looks like a green Dubai (or maybe a Hong Kong or even KCMO). I wondered what a hotel room in one of the
towers would be like? Would there be
Internet and Facebook?
Oz goes adventuring, and engages his characters: a monkey
who looks like a small human with hairy arms and legs; a doll with amputated lets who talks and
moves around when Oz kindly glues her back together. The ride inside soap bubbles, and eventually
enlist an Army of farmers to fight the wicked witch. (It’s amazing what the
farmers think their own skills contribute, toward solidarity.) Michelle Williams is reasonably compelling as
a girl friend in Oz.
The color (Deluxe) shows about the best use of hue that I
have ever seen in film.
The official site is here.
“I don’t want to be a good man. I want to be a great man.” To me, Braff would have filled that bill
better than Franco. Do you need to
become a wizard to be a great man? A boyfriend asked that back in the 1970s.
I’ve seen most of the 1939 “The Wizard of Oz” with Judy
Garland, by Victor Flemming and Noel Langley, on reruns. The film is notable for its early
Technicolor, with its sepia black and white in the opening and close (the new
film omits BW at the end. The films are
based on the 1901 children’s novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank
Baum.
Remember Oprah's Dr. Mehmet Oz, who talks about the importance of social connectivity for his heart patients. You need to love somebody who loves you back.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
"Emperor" plots a bit with Post WWII history in Japan (and it does "plod")
“Emperor” is the
second major “foreign” film this week (actually, from New Zealand) about life
in an “occupied” country after surrender at the end of World War II.
In fact, the film begins with the shorts of Hiroshima’s atomic
bombs, but it won’t go the course ‘Hiroshima, Mon Amour” (which came to William
and Mary in the fall of 1961 my one semester there).
General Douglas MacArthur (Tommy Lee Jones) has the job of
stabilizing Japan and wants to run for president. He “hires” JAG General Bonner
Fellers (Matthew Fox) to investigate the role of Emperor Hirohito in any war
crimes.
The film shows some of the post war destruction to Tokyo,
and offers some flashback where has a romance with a Japanese woman (Eriko
Hatsune) about the time that Pearl Harbor was approaching.
The dramatic content of this historical film doesn’t seem
particularly compelling. Fellers gradually develops evidence that Hirohito really
did play a role in Japan’s willingness to surrender. Despite two nuclear
detonations, Japan’s militarists still wanted to fight on.
Fellers looks at the emperor’s “library”, and notes that
Japanese soldiers worshipped the emperor as a “god”. That made them dedicated and loyal fighters,
compared to Americans, so the script says.
Hirohito hardly looks like a “god” in the final “confrontation” however.
The official site is here. The film, directed by Peter Webber, is
distributed by Roadside Attractions, often associated with Lionsgate.
I saw the late show Friday night in the large auditorium at
the AMC Shirlington in Arlington, but the turnout was quite small.
Labels:
indie drama,
military,
war crimes,
WWII aftermath
Friday, March 15, 2013
"We're Not Broke": big business lobbies away taxes
Remember how John Boehner, early in the debt ceiling debate
in 2011, hinted that better-off social security recipients should accept means
testing and turn it back, because “we’re broke. We don’t have the money”.
Well, a 2012 documentary by Victoria Bruce and Karen Hayes
shows that we do have the money; “We’re Not Broke”, the film title says. Is this about shared sacrifice? Or is it about a world that sees evading taxes as a way for richer people to "support families"?
The biggest part of the problem is that mainstream
corporations can shelter than income from reasonable taxation. The film maintains that offshore tax havens
aren’t just the province of Internet hackers and counterfeiters. Mainline US corporations do this all the
time. The film gets into an obscure
discussion of “territorial taxation”, practice by many other countries.
The film also presents the “Occupy” movement, including “Occupy
Wall Street” and “Occupy DC”. There is a
scene of the Freedom Plaza demonstration in Washington DC in 2011.
It also presents attractive upper middle class young men
helping organize and join in the demonstrations.
The film skims across the waves of the question whether our
society is “everyone for himself” – the Michael Moore retort about “What’s in
it for me”? It doesn’t go down too far
into the spiritual area (like Rick Warren’s “Purpose”).
There is an interesting history of how Athens (the Greek City-State) justified taxation of its people. With no Athens, there could be no personal wealth.
The film also shows the collusion between corporate lobbyists and IRS tax executives, who often play miscal chairs in their own job market (sounds like "conflict of interest"). People "support families" by manipulating the tax system to exclude their own shareholders from taxation. Small businesses, with moderate income consumers (and sometimes even without separate corporate structures) have no chance to protect themselves from higher taxes (despite GOP claims to the contrary). What does the GOP really mean when it is so intransigent on any new revenue at all as part of political compromise?
The film can be rented on YouTube for $2.99. It is also available on Hulu and Netflix
Instant Play.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
"Emmanuel's Gift": a boy fights for the disabled in Ghana; Oprah narrates
Oprah Winfrey narrates most of the 2005 documentary “Emmanuel’s
Gift”, directed by Lisa Lax and Nancy Stern. This film tells the story of a boy
born in Ghana with a vestigial, deformed right leg and who went on to raise
money for disabled people in the country with bicycle tours. ‘
In Ghana, 10% of the people are disabled, and the culture
stigmatizes them, meaning that many wind up in the streets begging. As a boy, Emmanuel Yedoah left home to go to Accra to work
shining shoes to raise money for his mother – filial responsibility or piety is
very strong in these cultures – and became interested in cycling. I was amazed that this is possible with only
one leg. Emmanuel took inspiration from
an American athlete Jim MacLaran, who would be gravely injured in two separate
cycling accidents. Emmanuel would eventually have surgery in the United States
to remove the leg and be fitted with an effective prosthesis.
The last part of the film discusses the social and political
climate in Ghana, remarkable in that it is considered one of the most
democratic in Africa. Emmanuel is able
to raise funds and awareness to provide facilities and social respect for the
disabled in some communities.
Emmauel married in California and has one child, according
to the end credits.
The official site is here. The film is distributed by First Look and
produced by “Lookalike”.
The film makes me consider how I can “hide” behind moral
stigma in order not to feel more for people in his situation than I do. It can get personal.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
"Obselidia": A road trip into a simpler world of forgotten things, and a warning
Here is a little film where you need to introduce the
tagline first. “If the world is going to
end tomorrow how will you live today?”
The film is “Obselidia”, by Diane Bell, and apparently a hit at Sundance
in 2011.
George (Australian Michael Piccirilli), works in a public library and, typing by hand,
working on an “encyclopedia of obsolete things”, which will force him to learn
to become a huckster. He works on a
typewriter by hand (in a manner like Barton Fink), and sympathizes with people
who can’t afford or don’t know how to use computers. I actually remember the visit of an
encyclopedia salesman to our home around 1951 when my parents bought me a World
Book!
George has discovered the writings of Lewis (Frank Taylor
Hoyt), who predicts that global warming will make most of the world a desert
even by 2020. He meets an equally lonely
movie projectionist Sophie (Gaynor Howe), and goes on a comic road trip to meet
the guy in Death Valley.
George grows a bit.
He learns to drive. He learns
what it might be like to look after someone in an emergency. The couple wanders a bit, going to an old
opera performance, and then camps on the scientist’s “ranch”, which is filled
with more knickknacks and “obselidia”. They
sleep together in a tent, platonically.
The couple has a conversation about having children. George says he could have kids only if men
could bear babies (“Children of Men” perhaps), but that means he is alone, not
that he is gay.
I recently visited a museum in Frostburg, MD with a lot of “obsolete
things”. I recall what my own life was
like, growing up in the 50s, in a suburban world controlled by my parents – yet
it was a rich world, even without freedom as I know it today or even my own
money. I placed a lot of value on my
classical record collection – with now obsolete technology (although many
people stand by vinyl today), some composing by hand, and performing piano
locally, sometimes my own music. I had a
taste of a little bit of celebrity but was competitive enough, given the times,
to sustain it.
The DVD comes from Humble Films, and starts playing immediately,
with no menu or individual scene access.
Technically the film looks good (some of the photography reminds me of “Zabriskie
Point” [Nov. 19, 2011]) , but I wish more care were given to the DVD
usability.
The official site is here.
The film can be rented on YouTube for $2.99. I believe that it was available for Instant
play for a while on Netflix but now the only other way to see it is to buy the
DVD: it is not available for rent.
For humor, check my main blog Feb. 23, 2013 for a posting about free content and the "library".
For humor, check my main blog Feb. 23, 2013 for a posting about free content and the "library".
Monday, March 11, 2013
"Time of my Life" ("To Always"); film from Belgium looks at voluntary euthanasia
“Time of My Life” (in Dutch, “Tot Altijd”, which translates
as “To Always” or “Until Forever”), is a new film by Nic Bakthazar, available
from Strand Releasing in DVD on March 19.
The film tells the true story of Mario Verstraete (Koon de Graeve), a young politician in
Belgium who developed a particularly aggressive form of multiple sclerosis, and
fought to have euthanasia legalized in Belgium.
He would be the first to pass away (at age 40) under the new law in
2002. The film is narrated from the
omniscient viewpoint of friend Thomas (Geert Van Rampleberg).
He seems like a young man when he has his first symptoms,
spotty vision loss. He becomes
physically dependent fairly quickly, being struck by a car in one scene. He visits a physical therapist who recommends
SM sessions in the gay male community.
It’s clear that the idea of a law like this is disturbing to
many people, who see it as a slippery slope leading to a society that does not
place value on the lives of the disabled.
One couple compare this story with that of Terri Schiavo in Florida in
the United States. Of course, it also reminds one of the activism of Jack Kevorkian in the 1990s, which resulted in a prison sentence.
The US National Library of Medicine at NIH has a story on
the passing of Mario and the publicity it attracted here.
In my own life, I’ve seen MS develop in women much more
often than men. I remember a tearful
moment in a church service in Dallas in the early 1980s when a lay minister
announced she had it.
The official site is here.
I watch the film as a private video on Vimeo available to
screeners. The film is shot in full wide
screen 2.35:1. The film is quite long for “docudramas” of this type, running
slightly over two hours.
There is some nice classical music in the background,
including Ponchielli, one of the Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss, and the
Schubert Unfinished. The close of the
film uses the quiet conclusion to the German Requiem by Johannes Brahms. The very last memorial scene, outdoors in the
Flemish countryside, is quite moving.
The film could be compared to “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”,
reviewed Jan. 11, 2008, a French film about a man with locked-in syndrome.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
"Koch": documentary biogrpahy of New York City's feisty mayor
The Avalon Theater in Washington DC (a non-profit,
continuing operations for a facility dating bac to 1923) is showing the chatty
biographical documentary “Koch” (by Niels Barsky) in its big auditorium, with fair attendance
today (Sunday afternoon). This has
nothing to do with the controversial oil company (Friday’s pot), but, rather,
New York City’s feisty mayor Ed Koch, who held office from 1978-1989 and
recently passed away at 88.
I lived in New York City in the 1970s, and remember his New
Year’s Day inauguration to start 1978, when he said ‘Come East”. The City had fallen into despair with the
financial crisis of 1957m and the famous New York Daily News headline “Ford to
City: Drop Dead” (link) .
)
New York did get better quickly in the 1980s. A friend, on my visit back from Texas in
1982, said, “actually New York is booming.”
Koch kept himself personally
above the corruption of others, or he at least tried to.
He calls himself a "fiscal conservative" and a "social liberal". The film says little about his terms in Congress from 1969-1977. Koch actually wrote one time that he supported the idea of filial responsibility, that adult children should be held responsible for their parents. (New York State, however, does not have a filial support law.)
He calls himself a "fiscal conservative" and a "social liberal". The film says little about his terms in Congress from 1969-1977. Koch actually wrote one time that he supported the idea of filial responsibility, that adult children should be held responsible for their parents. (New York State, however, does not have a filial support law.)
Koch was a bachelor all his life, and actually teamed up
with Bess Meyerson in the 1977 campaign to deflect “homo” character
assassination from political opponents.
He refused to answer questions about sexual orientation, and said that
politicians shouldn’t have to. On the
other hand, many feel that a politician’s “coming out” would help less fortunate
LGBT people. Some felt that his response
to AIDS in New York City was underwhelming.
Late in the film, there is some graphic footage of PWA’s and ACT-UP
demonstrations. (See review of “How to
Survie a Plague, June 24, 2012).
Koch was felt to have an uneven record with African-Americans. He first supported and then tried to close a hospital in Harlem as part of New York's financial restructuring. He does refer to himself as "white" and his Jewish background, while shown (in extended family events) doesn't seem to put him in a a "minority".
I believe Koch was still in office when the police scandal associated with the Central Park Five occurred in 1989 (see Dec. 15, 2012 posting).
Koch was felt to have an uneven record with African-Americans. He first supported and then tried to close a hospital in Harlem as part of New York's financial restructuring. He does refer to himself as "white" and his Jewish background, while shown (in extended family events) doesn't seem to put him in a a "minority".
I believe Koch was still in office when the police scandal associated with the Central Park Five occurred in 1989 (see Dec. 15, 2012 posting).
The official site for the film (Zeitgeist) is here.
It is said that Ed Koch leaves behind the entire City of New
York as his lineage. Whenever he was in
a plane landing back home, he felt like he owned the City as if it were “the Ring” (that is, Frodo's).
By the way, I do remember those old subway tokens of the 1970s. I was living in Dallas for most of the time if Koch's mayoralty; I left NYC in early 1979, when things were still not good.
By the way, I do remember those old subway tokens of the 1970s. I was living in Dallas for most of the time if Koch's mayoralty; I left NYC in early 1979, when things were still not good.
"Lore": a gentile girl and her siblings explore a wasteland: Germany under occupation after WWII
I don’t recall seeing a collaboration between Australian and
German filmmakers before. “Lore” is such an effort, but it comes across as
almost following the prototype of a situational horror movie, where survivors
have to deal with moral paradoxes in a wasteland created by others.
It’s 1945, at the Allies have partitioned Germany. Lore (Saskia Rodensahl) is expected to
protect and lead her younger siblings through homelessness, barter, and
scavenging as her Nazi parents take leave, expecting to be brought down by the
new authorities.
The journey is grimy and grungy. Northern European spring has never looked so
ugly in the forest. Death and maiming
are everywhere. You see a baby with
bedbugs, and a young woman with mangled legs. You think of del Tor’s “Pan’s Labyrinth”. Lore meets a young concentration camp
survivor, apparently a Jewish man (Kai Malina) who seems likeable enough (and
less scathed than he would have been). While she feels drawn to him, she has
difficulty overcoming the bigotry that her parents had installed in her.
What would have been more interesting would have been a view
of life “before” the fall to the Americans or Russians (they’re moving between
zones). What was life like for gentiles
who believed in Nazi ideology and saw an economy booming, until the Allies
brought destruction to their own homes?
There is also opportunity (barely hinted at in the script) to point at
the divisions that Germany will take as it is split between western values and
Communism.
The idea of a film about navigating a wasteland is certainly
not new. In my own 1969 novel manuscript “The Proles” I have my self-generated
characters exploring a world after all-out nuclear war set in the 1980s. In Stephen King’s mammoth novel (and TV miniseries in the 1990s) “The Stand”,
the heroes explore an America destroyed by a plague. You want to know how it all came about.
The official site is here, from Transmission Films in Australia.
The US distributor is Music Box Films, and the director is Cate
Shortland. The film is based on a novel ("the Dark Room") by Rachel Seiffert.
I saw this late Saturday night at the AMC Shirlington in
Arlington in a large auditorium in front of a small audience.
Labels:
foreign language,
indie drama,
war crimes,
WWII aftermath
Friday, March 08, 2013
"Greedy Lying" oil companies and lobbyists, and the denial of climate change and any inconvenient truths
Craig Scott Rosebraugh could lose his upper arm tattoos, but
he’s produced a compelling, if heavy-handed attack on the one-sided nature of
the energy lobby in denying climate change, for short term profits for a few
more years. That’s the gist of “Greedy
Lying Bastards” (remember another film
whose title started with “Inglorius”?)
Is this real documentary, or propaganda?
The film particularly indicts Koch Industries and
ExxonMobil as the guilty companies, and
Citizens United as the conservative lobby that even bullied the Supreme Court
into overturning limits on corporate campaign contributions. (Remember the film, “Hillary, the Movie”?) He also blasts some respectable
libertarian-oriented think tanks like the Cato Institute, which I have often
supported.
The film also explains the psychology of arguing denial, by making overcoming doubt take energy (just as it takes with religious faith). It also shows how the energy industry built up "argo-fake" lobbying organizations with other interests (like tobacco) to leverage the psychology of "doubt" with the public.
Imagine your life if your career is to lobby for these
companies or PAC’s. You wouldn’t dare
have blogs, Facebook profiles, twitter postings like mine, and you wouldn’t
dare author books like mine, or make movies like this one. You have to be one-sided to make enough money
to provide for your family, to spread your genes. I can’t bring myself to compete that way.
The other aspect of the film is very graphic footage of the
effects of climate change (apparently) on families now. Much of the film concerns the wildfires near
Colorado Springs in the summer of 2012, and traces the losses of several
families, and their odyssey through evacuation.
There is some footage near the end of “Hurricane” Sandy. There are plenty of close-up shots of
terrifying tornadoes, and a haboob in Phoenix. (He left out the 2012 derecho.) And there is coverage of the failure of
international negotiations (as in Copenhagen), and of the fate of island
countries like Tuvalu.
The official site is here.
I do think there is something lacking in just blaming
corporate greed for climate change denial and the increasingly violent storms
that seem to be happening. There is also
individual lifestyles, that seem not to need others as much as they used
to. Is that an argument for Amish
values? You wonder if everyone should be
expected to be prepared to shelter others, because it could happen to
anyone. Will this become a new social
requirement?
There’s great quote from Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, where
he talks about helping families rather than saving an abstract planet. The film moves right back to the Colorado
Springs fires.
A good question is how the insurance industry is responding
to all these problems.
I saw this film at the Angelika Mosaic in Merrifield VA at 8
PM, and there were only three people in the audience. I thought it would do well. I guess I should feel guilty because I own some ExxonMobil. In fact, natural gas holdings paid for all of my aunt's eldercare until she passed away.
See related film about Koch energy reviewed here Sept. 20, 2012.
See related film about Koch energy reviewed here Sept. 20, 2012.
Labels:
Citizens United,
climate change,
indie documentary,
Koch oil
Thursday, March 07, 2013
"Cyrus": tell a terrifying crime story through "reality journalism"
Mark Vadik’s film “Cyrus: The Mind of a Serial Killer” (2010) could be viewed as a curious exercise
in layered storytelling through journalism.
A young woman Maria (Danielle Sabchez) and her young camera
man interview an old codger Emmet (Lance Henriksen) in an old Midwestern house,
about a serial killer Cyrus (Brian Kraus) who has disappeared after a spree in
rural Michigan (near Niles).
Emmet tells a terrifying story, of a young man who brought
his bride to a mystery farm, and went crazy when she wasn’t satisfied with her
new lifestyle. Pretty soon, Cyrus was
into all kinds of unspeakable activities, the results of which he sold to
diners in a nearby restaurant.
As the film
progresses, it seems like a combination of “Motel Hell” and “Silence of
the Lambs”. The former of these two
horror films was actually funny. Not this one. Actually, it takes on elements of “Saw” and “Hostel”. But in time, Maria has reason to wonder if
there were not just one monster but two.
How could this old guy no so much and collect so many mementos? In the end, the storytelling device seems a
little artificial.
There is some interesting commentary, however, on what makes
these criminals tick, and there is a little speech about some of them
(including Dahmer, Gacy, Bundy and Manson) at the end. I think what is really needed is a documentary about rampages (Holmes, Lanza, etc).
The film could pose questions about journalists shield laws and privileges, and when journalists have a legal and moral obligation to contact law enforcement. For example, NBC News and Dateline have often worked with law enforcement to set up stings.
It's also possible to get into the area of the risks journalists must take. But that sort of seriousness about policy discussion is not the point of the film.
The official site is here (for Anchor
Bay).
Things roll in this movie.
It’s rather 80s-like.
Pictures: south central Michigan (mine, from Aug. 2012).
Labels:
horror,
indie drama,
journalists in peril,
rampage
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
"Killer Joe": Matthew proves machismo by playing a rogue cop aka hitman
William Friedkin’s “Killer Joe” attracted controversy in
2012 in the arthouse circuit because of one particularly graphic scene near the
end, where Matthew McConaughey’s character Joe (police officer and moonlighting
hitman) demonstrates his machismo (which is necessary, given his smoothness) with a female character Sharla (Gina
Gershon)w with the help of a particular prop, a fried chicken leg. (In the trade world, this seven-minute
sequence is called “The Chicken Scene”, although that’s not quite accurate; it
will probably become a trivia question for Millionaire.)
Perhaps the film could have been used to promote
Chick-fil-A, Oh, I’m being sarcastic, of
course.
All the characters in this black comedy are either dimwitted
(Chris, the indebted drug dealer, played by a usually innocent Emile Hirsch) or
despicable. So when Chris hires Joe as a
hit man to knock off his mom Adele (Julia Adams), for life insurance money,
there are all kinds of complications and “terms of service”, of course.
Actually, the final scene, where sister Dottie (Juno Temple)
exacts justice, is even more graphic than the scene that earned the NC-17 (the
DVD is officially unrated). Although an
R version existed, Friedkin resisted showing it.
It’s pretty obvious to compare this film with Quentin Tarantino’s
“Djano”, the latter of which makes this little Texas film (actually shot in New
Orleans) seem worth overlooking. The film does have the style of a "modern" spaghetti western. Modern Dallas isn't like this now. (I've lived there.)
The official site from Lionsgate is here.
The title of the film (“Joe”)< brings to mind the 1977
film by Jud Taylor, “Tail Gunner Joe”, about Senator Joseph McCarthy. That was far more interesting to me (and
seems ironic to mention here.)
.
Labels:
Friedkin,
indie drama,
Lionsgate,
SXSW,
Tarantinio
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