Towelhead (2007)

DVD: Towelhead

Normal is hard to watch in “Towelhead”
Review by Jasmin Ramsey, P U L S E

“Towelhead” is based on a novel by Alicia Erian and directed by “American Beauty” writer Alan Ball

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.

A ride through America’s Dark Side

Get the DVD: Taxi To the Dark Side

See also:
Taxi To the Dark Side (2007)

Taxi to the Dark Side
by Jasmin Ramsey, P U L S E

(This review first appeared on Rabble.ca)

“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.

The Hurt Locker (2009)

See also:
The Hurt Locker (2009), Cultural Politics and Uncritical Critics

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.