Cinema

Just finished watching the C4 faux documentary about the assassination of GWB. Very watchable, I thought. The technique mainly consisted on interspersing genuine newsreel footage with deadpan interviews with participants, including various law-enforcement people and protestors. Politically it wasn’t too heavy handed, though there was a clear attempt to situate Cheney as an opportunist who would use anything, even the killing of Bush, to advance his pet view of the world. Ditto the Syrian oppositionist who postulates official Syrian invasion on the basis of claimed insider knowledge in a manner that reminded me very much of the neocon’s pet Iranian exile. The twist was good, but I won’t spoil things for others by posting it here. I just hope that US cinemas and networks get over their reluctance to show an interesting piece of film.

I’m slightly reluctant to post this recommendation, for the simple reason that most of our readers are in the US, and this is old news (really old news) to them. But I’ll post anyway, for the benefit of those who are not, and, especially, for my fellow Brits. I was watching some show the other night in which Charlie Brooker (yes, that Charlie Brooker) was talking about American TV, and he recommended The Wire . The fact that David Simon was behind it was enough for me, because HLOTS was my favourite cop-show ever, so I started renting the DVDs. The Wire has never been shown in the UK (except on some nearly impossible to get satellite channel) and I guess I can see why: plot and dialogue hard for non-Americans to follow, no concessions to the viewer. But it is absolutely compulsive. Basically, it is a tale of two competing bureaucracies: the Baltimore PD and the Barksdale drug gang. On the whole, you’d say that the drug dealers have the more functional of the two organizations but the focus on the internal politics of each and on their political pathologies will elicit instant recognition from anyone who works in, say, a university. And there are great iconic characters too, such as Omar, the gay stick-up man, who only robs from the dealers and leaves civilians alone. I’ll leave it at that (since I won’t post plot spoilers). If The Wire has never been shown in your country, beg, borrow or steal the discs.

I just watched the trailer for 300, a film version of a Frank Miller graphic novel (which I haven’t read) about the battle of Thermopylae. Looks like the core of it is a good old relentless battle in the spirit of Zulu. There’s also some stuff on Sparta and its amazing toughness, Persia and its big golden thrones, and ambassadors to Sparta standing unwisely close to large open pits. The Spartan tradition of compulsory homosexuality was less in evidence in the trailer. My feeling is that the likes of Melanie Phillips, Christopher Hitchens and Victor Davis Hanson are already drafting the flinty Op-Ed pieces they’ll publish the week the film comes out. They can add themselves to the wide variety of people who have been inspired by the story of Thermopylae. It’s all about juggling the analogy to make sure that you get to be one of the lonely 300, and not the vast invading foreign army.

I finally got around to watching V for Vendetta [imdb]. Being a comics nerd, I am mildly bothered by the departures from the original (wikipedia will tell you all about it) – and more so by the fact that the author, Alan Moore, didn’t want this. So he got his name struck from the project. (Then they went and packaged a whole teaser section from his graphic novel with the DVD. Chance of Moore disassociating himself from the Wachowski bros.? Not so much.)

I found it a pretty good film. Entertaining. Nicely slick. Thought-provoking? In some ways I think the less ambiguous treatment of the material suits the material, although in other ways it dumbs it down. But here’s my simple thought: the film pretty clearly intends to be anti-Bush allegory or what have you. (You can cut it finer, but it comes to that.) Yet you could turn around and say: but the whole Iraq mess depends precisely on people finding this sort of political romanticism far too realistic for their own good. The dream of an Event – an explosion – after which, miraculously, everyone comes out into the public square and spontaneously dons the mask of their destructive liberator. Freedom forever! Unity through demolition. And there will be flowers. Why would you think postwar planning wasn’t necessary? [click to continue…]

I went to see The Wind that Shakes the Barley last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it. There are at least three Timberites better qualified than I to judge of the historical accuracy of the film, so I won’t comment on that. There did seem to be points of universal interest though. A group of farm-boys with a semi-theocratic ideology successfully holding off the high-tech army of a modern industrialized power next door seems to be a theme that gets repeated in other times and places. And the way in which a revolutionary nationalist movement divides into warring factions in when faced with a pragmatic compromise of its maximal goals has some parallels with the Palestinian story. An unexpected pleasure was the close physical resemblance between pompous landowner Sir John Hamilton (played by Roger Allam) and Christopher Hitchens. Recommended.

I’m looking forward to the release of Lady in the Water. Like everyone else, I appreciate that The Village was ridiculous, but I loved Unbreakable. I even enjoyed Signs. This thing I’m about to link to is a little old. But, well – last call to lay your bets. I’m torn between:

“It turns out Paul Giamatti is trapped on a planet of sea nymphs, who’ve actually “discovered” him – who’s the sea nymph now?”

And:

“The sea nymph’s mother was dead all along – just a wig and a rocking chair.”

Consider this your M. Night Shyamalan weekend open thread.

Following up last night’s post, I’ve constructed two more little Tom and Jerry appreciation sites – for “Pencil Mania”; for “Piano Tooners” [fixed!] You can also download the cartoons themselves here and here. I’ve incorporated my expert commentary into the sites themselves. Are you like me? Do you find these things just weirdly beguiling?

That reminds me. One of the finest graphic novels you’ve (maybe) never heard of is Kim Deitch, The Boulevard of Broken Dreams – and it’s for sale cheap, in hardback [amazon]. Now that Green Day went and sang that song, the poor book will never show up in google searches anymore, I guess. Pantheon doesn’t even have all that much about it on their site. But I’ll tell you a secret. I linked to this page of stills – and this charming little animation – long ago, and the links are still good! (Probably there’s some way to get there the normal way, but I’m not seeing it.)

Here’s a short bio piece on Deitch, who really deserves to be as well known as Spiegelman and Crumb.

A week or so ago I noted the availability of absurdly cheap 50-movie DVD packs – SF, mystery, so forth. And this 100 Cartoon Classics [Amazon]. I now report that they work great for snarking out! (If you don’t know what that means, read more Daniel Pinkwater.) Just pick a cartoon – any cartoon – then a film, or two for a double-feature. Fan out all the discs and pick strictly at random. Now you must watch. The results will probably be bad. But that’s part of the snarking-out experience.

This afternoon Belle and I ran a double-feature matinee. First, a Tom and Jerry cartoon, "A Spanish Twist". No, not the stupid cat and mouse. The originals. Read about them here. Now visit the wonderful little site I have built just for you. Wonder of wonders! It turns out you can download the whole cartoon here.

Seeing as Pirates of the Caribbean II is coming out soon, I wonder whether it’s too late to get Johnny Depp back into the studio for a gratuitous falling-out-of-a-palm-tree scene, as a hat-tip to his character’s inspiration. Seems like an obvious option (I mean, I thought of it). Though seeing as Richards had post-accident brain surgery recently, maybe the studio doesn’t want to risk it.

An interesting short film on Barbie, Jews, identity and about a million other topics. It is so packed with material – some of which seems extremely random – that it is hard to know where to even start with any commentary. See what you think.

A few weeks ago I saw the documentary The Beauty Academy of Kabul and wanted to recommend it as I thought it was a very interesting film. It’s playing now in a few U.S. cities and will continue to show up in a few others over the summer. (Just click on “Where to see it” on the flash page.)

A small group of American women (a couple of them immigrants from Afghanistan) decided to open up a beauty school in Kabul to train local women about their craft. (It turns out that most of these Afghani women had already been pursuing this line of work previously, but they had not received any training in a while.)

The film does a nice job of giving some historical context starting with footage from the 70s about life in Kabul and the introduction winding up with images of all the destruction on Kabul’s streets today. It is really fascinating to see the transformation. The focus is mainly on day-to-day life, a perspective we don’t usually get to see much.

The movie seems to be very honest about portraying various sides of the parties involved. Although the American women go into all this with a reasonably open mind, not surprisingly they remain naive about the local women’s lives. This comes through clearly in the footage, there does not seem to be any attempt at making them seem more sophisticated or in-touch than they are. The toughest parts, for me, were the heart-wrenching realizations about the situation of women in Afghanistan today, regardless of certain changes.

It’s a bummer that films like this don’t get wider distribution. If you happen to be in one of the few towns where it’s playing, I recommend checking it out.