A sci-fi B-Film that punches above its weight. So argued Anthony Quinn of The Independent (Sep 4, 2009) on the South African spectacular District 9, directed by Neill Blomkamp. Certainly, it is a refreshing change from such overly done efforts as the Transformers series and Terminator with their tedious super effect twaddle that does little to inspire. Nor will viewers be left wondering about the special effects in this production – Peter Jackson made sure he peppered this work with a fair assortment of them. Continue
Arthur Conan Doyle found the English countryside seething with potential criminality. His sleuth creation of Sherlock Holmes was never deceived by the tranquil image of the country retreat and escape from the industrialized centre. London, with its bustle, filth and squalor, was a far more decent option. One finds the same theme repeated in such writers as John Mortimer, who only ever lets his famed advocate Rumpole venture out into the country occasionally for a brief. All tend to end badly. Cynicism towards country life, dominated by casual cruelties and sudden death, is ever present.
This case is brilliantly depicted in Michael Haneke’s black and white The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band), a portrait of a north German village in 1913. The narrator (Ernst Jacobi), who is also a teacher (Christian Friedel) resident in that village during the crucial years, speaks of various mysteries that affected its inhabitants. An attempt is seemingly made on the village doctor’s (Rainer Bock) life through tripping his horse by a wire that is mysteriously removed. The wife of the farmer is killed in an accident. Two children, including one with Down syndrome (Eddy Grahl), are found abused in the woods. The estate barn is burned down; and the cabbage crop destroyed. The police are eventually called in, but they are incapable of making sense of it. Continue
“…a bit of the old ultra-violence.”
-A Clockwork Orange
Watchmen is a universe unto itself, an alternative history of the 20th century, and an exploration of “human nature” that slices to the bone.
This is not your typical superhero film, and it seeks to be a radical departure from standard comic book fare. Based on the comic books and best-selling graphic novel of the same name, the story of the Watchmen is significant and worth commenting on.
The Watchmen are highly developed characters who fit into the story like precise parts of a well-designed machine. They also explore some very creative territory, with Dr. Manhattan being the most striking, most powerful and most visually stunning member of the team.
In under a month, Avatar has racked up nearly a billion dollars from outside the USA, bringing its total box office to $1.3 Bn+ at the time of writing. It will be the biggest box office earner of all time. Money talks, especially in Hollywood.
So what is being said, exactly?
One can look at Avatar and see all manner of things: 3-D, computer / human hybrid characters, elaborate worlds, floating rocks, flying lizards, guns and explosions, but that’s not what drives the film. What story is resonating around the world this month?
SPOILERS –
Please don’t read until you’ve actually seen Avatar for yourself. Continue
Pedro Almodóvar is a treasure of the screen, supremely sensitive to surfaces, characters, and the workings of the cinema itself. His devotion to the craft is unmistakable, demonstrated by constant hints, persistent allusions to past greats, and the mechanics of filmmaking. Continue
This week, as James Cameron’s 3D cinematic science fiction saga dominates the American box office, and tie-in products permeate fast food franchises and toy stores, it is worth noting an interesting bit of cultural leakage tying our own real militarized state to Cameron’s virtual world of Avatar.
Avatar is set in a world where the needs of corporate military units align against the interests of indigenous blue humanoids long inhabiting a planet with mineral resources desired by the high tech militarized invaders. The exploitation of native peoples to capture valuable resources is a story obviously older than Hollywood, and much older than the discipline of anthropology itself; though the last century and a half has found anthropologists’ field research used in recurrent instances to make indigenous populations vulnerable to exploitation in ways reminiscent of Avatar. Continue
I finally caught John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. This is a movie that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. McCarthy and Hillcoat seem to be the perfect marriage with their mutually bleak and apocalyptic vision of the West. Hillcoat’s The Propositionis by far one of my favorite Westerns of all time, and I read McCarthy’s book The Road twice. I was stunned by the barren, desperate, hardcore, ruthlessly survivalist tone of both these narratives. It seemed to me that Hillcoat was the perfect choice to adapt McCarthy’s poetic and savage view of survival in a post-apocalyptic landscape. Continue
Invictus: Dreams and Realities
Column: Binoy Kampmark
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul
William Ernest Henley, ‘Invictus’ (1875)
When the Springboks, South Africa’s famed rugby team, returned to the international fold after decades of isolation, suggestions were made to change the name. Drop the label and jersey, went the cry, those hated symbols and reminders of apartheid. Embrace, instead, the emblem of the floral protea. But the Boks were spared by the sagacious and calculating President Nelson Mandela. A traumatized nation had to be healed, and rugby might well assist in that enterprise. Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, based on John Carlin’s account in Playing the Enemy, is a narration on the subject. Continue
Two London activists go up against the global McMafia in what became the longest trial in British history.
This film should be taught in every grammar school — or at least junior high.
I was ecstatic when I first learned about this film, and I put it at the top of my queue. England has draconian libel laws and the balance is clearly skewed to the one with the bigger pocketbook. In this case the mismatch was so gratuitous and ridiculous, that even if you were a McDonald’s shareholder you’d have to be rooting for Dave and Helen by the end.
The hidden microphone conversations with the capos is hilarious. Some McHonchos flew over to try and force a settlement, while not actually agreeing to anything in exchange. The conversations are revealing of a corporate criminal mindset and disdain for the concept of free speech.
I’m not sure how anyone can eat at the open grease pit, which is the subject of the film, but people do. Perhaps if they saw this film, they wouldn’t.
McLibel’s got a third act, and a twist ending … and that’s all I’ll say.
Hollywood’s Enduring Myth of the Black Male Sexual Predator
The Selling of “Precious”
By ISHMAEL REED
“A niche market could be defined as a component that gives your business power. A niche market allows you to define whom you are marketing to. When you know who are you are marketing to it’s easy to determine where your marketing energy and dollars should be spent.”
-Defining Your Nice Market, A Critical Step in Small Business Marketing by Laura Lake
One can view Sarah Siegel on “YouTube” discussing her approach to marketing. During her dispassionate recital she says that she sees a “niche dilemma,” and finds a way to solve that dilemma. Seeing that no one had supplied women with panties that were meant to be visible while wearing low cut jeans, she captured the niche and made a fortune. With five million dollars, she invested in the film Precious, which was adapted from the book Push, written by Ramona Lofton, who goes by the pen name of Sapphire, after the emasculating shrew in “Amos and Andy,” a show created by white vaudevillians Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll.
(Ms. Lofton also knows a thing or two about marketing. Noticing the need for white New York feminists to use black men as the fall guys for world misogyny, while keeping silent about the misogyny of those who share their ethnic back-ground, she joined in on the lynching of five black and Hispanic boys, “who grew up in jail.” She made money, and became famous. They were innocent!)
When Lionsgate Studio and Harvey Weinstein were quarrelling over the rights to Push, which has been marketed under the title of Precious, about a pregnant 350 pound illiterate black teenager, who has borne her father’s child and is assaulted sexually by her mother, Sarah Greenberg, speaking for Lionsgate, said that the movie would provide the studio with “a gold mine of opportunity,” which is probably true, since the image of the black male as sexual predator has created a profit center for over one hundred years and even won elections for politicians like Bush, The First. Continue
From:
John Scagliotti, member of the National Gay and Lesbian Journalist Association’s documentary caucus and programmer of Kopkind’s CineSlam, Vermont’s LGBT Fest of Shorts.
AP headline: “Economy grows in 3Q, signals end of recession”
We are helping do our part by announcing a $250 reduction for Pride of the Ocean’s first historic LGBT Film Cruise (benefit for Kopkind’s CineSlam, VT’s LGBT shorts festival) for registering before Dec 20th for the May 30th 2010 embarkation from New York City (where we will be commemorating the first pride event 40 years ago: The Christopher Street Liberation March (June 1970) . Don’t forget to invite some NY State Senators to join you .) www.prideoftheocean.com Continue
More interesting sci-fi, and this time it’s kid friendly. With District 9 and Sleep Dealer, we’ve had some pretty decent sci-fi lately.
This animated film takes place on a completely different planet, a place of peace and harmony. The indigenous life forms live together with respect for all life. That is a conscious choice the society has made, and it is accepted by all.
Enter the earthlings, having destroyed not one but three planets (venus, earth and mars), and brought themselves to the brink of extinction. The earthlings are militarists for the most part, and the military faction is about to assert itself here. Continue
Your wives are back at home having sex with Bart Simpson and Burt Reynolds.”
-Iraqi Propaganda leaflet, to American soldiers in the 1991 Gulf War.
There is a line at the start of Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats: ‘More of this is true than you would believe.’ The line is off putting – what is, or isn’t true? The audience is none the wiser, and the traces to the original book from 2004 by Jon Ronson by that name are left vague.
Military men are as superstitious as any other, hiding behind the veneer of scientific dogma and vast, mechanized schedules for killing and maiming. But when it comes down to it, do these lethal practitioners know any better than the sagacious shaman? Continue
“In this first of its kind dramatic-documentary-musical,” essayist Lewis Lapham and an all-star cast (including Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Altman, James Baker and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.) take two young Ivy-League graduates on a tour of the corridors of power. This “astonishing”, “coruscating” satire poses the question: Is it better to rule the world, or to save it?”
I like this film for its boldness, tackling one of the most ignored open secrets in America. There are numerous cameos from people across the spectrum: Howard Zinn, Kurt Vonnegut and Pete Seeger to some of the darker Lords of the Sith. Each thinker is given screen time to get in his/her own take on America’s ruling class, what it means to them, and to weigh in on the moral implications. Continue
While taboo topics like underage female sexuality and racism in America will inspire controversy on their own, combining them as the main focus of a feature film guarantees discomfort from all fronts. In fact, the unease viewers experience while watching Alan Ball’s “Towelhead” is constant throughout, beginning with the opening scene which narrows in on an older stay-at-home boyfriend shaving the bikini line of his girlfriend’s 13 year old daughter Jasira, played by 18 year old Summer Bishil. Continue
“We’ll have to work … the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows … A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion … it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal basically, to achieve our objectives.”
These were the words of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, during a Meet the Press interview with Tim Russert five days after the September 11 attacks of 2001.
Acknowledging Cheney’s words as a telling precursor to America’s self-serving and calamitous ‘War on Terror,’ Alex Gibney’s 2007 documentary Taxi to the Dark Side provides viewers with a glimpse of what the ‘dark side’ of the Bush administration’s tactics and policies entailed for detainees who had been apprehended by U.S. military forces. Continue
Watching “The Hurt Locker” Hurts
by Jasmin Ramsey, P U L S E
“The Hurt Locker” was a Box Office favorite and may become an Academy Award contender.
…That a film that does not include a single Iraqi perspective is being hailed as an accurate portrayal of the situation in Iraq is either indicative of the blatant bias and possibly hidden intentions of the film’s creators and reviewers, or representative of the flawed view that continues to resonate within people’s minds about the war in Iraq.
As the year winds down and Hollywood gets busy creating Oscar buzz, one unlikely contender is “The Hurt Locker,” the widely praised Iraq movie that premiered at the Venice Film Festival last year and was released in the U.S. in June 2009.
Just when I thought I’d seen enough of Iraq war movies, along comes (Hurt Locker),” an Access Hollywood film critic told USA Today in September. “If any movie about Iraq is going to break through to the academy, this is it. Continue
Are “CyberBraceros” the future? Or are they another really good metaphor for globalization?
Sleep Dealer came into existence as a result of a huge effort by its writer/director Alex Rivera, who also workshopped it at the Sundance Institute.
Sleep Dealer attacks current issues with future scenarios. Privatized water supplies, forced migration to the cities, working in dangerous conditions and at pittance wages, all the themes are current and relevant to the lives of billions.
Shown from the perspective of the global south, the drone warfare, corporatized control of natural resources and dehumanizing sweatshops resonate loud and clear. Definitely check out Sleep Dealer.
Over the past ten years, the Yes Men have emerged as an infamously daring and creative duo of anti-corporate pranksters. In their new movie, The Yes Men Fix the World, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno (known in their non-activist lives as Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos) explain their methodology: “What we do is pass ourselves off as representatives of big corporations we don’t like,” they say. “We make fake websites, then wait for people to accidentally invite us to conferences.” Continue
Apparently, the Obama administration has made a deal with all the major TV networks to push “service” conceptually onto Americans.
“Campaign Elements
- Unprecedented week long of television programming on all four leading broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, and all affiliated broadcast and cable properties as well – and other networks, beginning October 19,
- To “organically” create and produce as many stories as possible about service and volunteerism and connect them in the plots of network dramas, comedies and reality shows”
Let’s be clear, there is an agenda at work here. Obama has come out in favor of what he calls “service” in the form of military service and other non-military federal programs (AmeriCorp) as a mandatory requirement for American children to graduate from high school.
Such “service,” the military variety in particular is very much on the minds of Washington war planners as they struggle to find more available troops for their never ending quagmire in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
Obama prefers the soft-sell. That is to use lofty, roundabout rhetoric and innocuous seeming propaganda (like sitcoms) to get ideas out there that the US government wants you to go to Asia and kill.
Obama’s strategy has always included increasing the bloated military, and his latest military budget is the largest in history, outspending the rest of the entire world combined on miltiary (which they call “defense,” but that is quite false when the funds go to “offense.”)
Let’s return to this “volunteerism” agenda in the midst of an economic meltdown, the likes we haven’t seen since the 1930s.
While the government and its fatcat base of donor/bribers continues to plunder the treasury to the tune of $13 Trillion plus, and yes, as Obama himself continues to cash his paycheck for his own personal government “service,” our nation is collapsing.
I suppose it takes a special kind of sucker to be distracted by the president’s call to go volunteer when you can’t find a paying job to feed your kids, keep your house, or afford medical treatment.
A lot of the motivation behind propaganda is distraction. They get you talking about the wrong issues, the wrong problems, the wrong solutions. The right issues, the right problems, and the right solutions are squeezed out of the discussion. That is the nature of the modern propaganda state. Remember eternal vigilance. Don’t be punked.
Andrew and Leslie Cockburn have produced an investigation into the housing / financial crisis, and in particular the mortgage company “product” called “subprime mortgages.”
“We meet the players. A banker explains that the complex securities he designed were “fourth dimensional” and sold to “idiots.” A senior Wall Street ratings agency executive describes being ordered to “guess” the worth of billion dollar securities. A mortgage loan salesman explains how borrowers’ incomes were inflated to justify a loan. A billionaire describes how he made a massive bet that people would lose their homes and has won $500 million, so far.”
That seems to be the question that most of the talking heads seek to answer in this PBS Frontline film.
Several of the speakers allude to pulling out and letting the Afghans fix their own country, but that idea is not seriously considered, not without a massive NATO/American domination campaign first. Continue
The Alliance For Justice has produced this call for accountability.
Full Petition Text:
Dear Attorney General Holder:
For more than five years, we have known that senior lawyers in the Bush Administration wrote the infamous “torture memos” to provide legal cover for human rights abuses taking place. Since 2004, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) has been investigating the authors of the “torture memos”–Jay Bybee, Steven Bradbury, and John Yoo.
In a hearing before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in June, you said that this five-year investigation was close to an end and that OPR’s report would be ready in a “matter of weeks.” However, when you ordered a preliminary review into the interrogation of certain detainees in late August, you indicated that the OPR report would not be released imminently. And while you expanded Special Prosecutor John Durham?s mandate to investigate those interrogators who went outside the legal guidance provided by the Office Legal Counsel, you have failed to affirm that the investigation will follow the facts where the evidence leads, even if up the chain of command.
I urge you to authorize a full-scale investigation of those who ordered, designed, and justified torture. You can begin this public accountability process by immediately releasing the OPR report. Only by knowing all of the facts can our nation move forward and take the necessary actions to uphold the Constitution and the law.
Signed by:
[Your name]
[Your address]
RIP! is an important film. Technically, it’s an illegal film without copyright permissions for numerous song samples and video clips which would push the budget into the tens of millions of dollars if the publishing corporations had their ways (and they often do get their way). That is the point filmmaker Brett Gaylor makes with this investigation of copyright in the modern age of Interweb Tubes and sprawling corporatocracies.
Jack Herer is a driven man, driven by a vision to save the world in the following way.
Use a naturally growing substance to–
– manufacture paper from, instead of cutting down forests full of trees, and
– use the oil from the seeds for lubrication instead of petroleum with its high levels of pollution, and
– use the fibers for rope, cloth, canvas, clothing, and
– use the medicinal powers of the plant to alleviate suffering, and
– reduce the prison population and associated astronomical costs of incarceration and interdiction and
– roll back the police state measures of the “drug war” restoring civil liberties to the people of America…
WMD is a frustrating film, not a little bit because of its subject matter. This is the story of some big lies which transcend borders, the globalisation of big lying. This is about forged uranium documents, fake intelligence sources and knowing war crimes as the U.S, Britain and others sent their armies to “disarm” a country they knew wasn’t “armed” with WMDs in the first place. Continue
I stumbled on this free online film, not knowing what it was. I’m glad I did. Naomi Wolf has made a film to accompany her book of the same name, which is essentially an indictment of the Nazi-type policies inflicted on America since 9/11, primarily by the Bush regime, but also approved by many Democrats.
Comparisons to Hitler’s strategic plan to overthrow democracy in Germany are relevant and real. There is no excuse for ignorance in this information age . Wrapping one’s self in the flag and in mindless flag waving is no substitute for the “eternal vigilance” required of a free people. Continue
Move Over Congress, Here Comes Achbar, Moore and the Yes Men
The Filmmakers vs. the Capitalists
By Pam Martens
Article originally published at CounterPunch.org.
Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned and no body to be kicked?
— Edward, First Baron Thurlow
We’re about to find out if the filmmakers can succeed where Congressional hearings and mainstream media have failed. Will the film documentaries examining insatiable corporate greed and Wall Street malfeasance provide the American people with the necessary foundation of understanding and activist tools to seriously tackle the problem head on?
The embryo of a breakthrough idea is emerging amidst the smell of popcorn and Raisinets in theatres around the globe: the mega corporate structure is no longer facilitating product innovation as much as it is spawning audacious crime innovation. So big and bulky it can’t get out of its own way, let alone innovate, the bloated behemoth resorts to crime for profits. Unless we think there is a future for our nation in patenting, securitizing and exporting felonious acts, we need to change course and fast.
Three films are standouts as a combined curriculum for leading Americans out of the darkness. Together, they provide a compelling argument that the seeds of today’s financial calamity were planted in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 1886 to effectively grant corporations the same protections as humans. Continue
