Careful What You Win For: Lucky

Now what?

I've often thought that if I won the lottery (if I ever played it), I'd give away all of the winnings - every dime. A righteously charitable fantasy to be sure, but my thinking has been that despite my debts and bills, I'm generally not struggling to get by from paycheck to paycheck. There are many, many more people who "need" extra money due to various circumstances and long-term financial hardships. People like multimillionaire lottery winners, as it turns out.

Jeffrey Blitz's compelling new documentary, Lucky (out today on DVD), explores the lives of a half dozen or so individuals and families who have been awarded those giant cardboard checks. Winning millions of dollars not surprisingly had a huge effect on their lives, but not quite in the way I would have expected, and definitely not in the way many of them hoped.

On the Horizon: Movies in 2011

Foreboding weather again for movie fans?

Although I've yet to finalize my best films of 2010, mostly because I'm still slowly catching up to all that I've missed, it's already well into 2011 and thus time to take a look at what's ahead.

People have defended 2010 as a solid year in film, but I'm afraid I just haven't seen (at least not yet) much to write home about, or write here about, as it were. Compared to the upcoming year, however, 2010 may end up being considered a golden year to be remember. I'm not going to break down specific titles by month as I have in past years; rather, I'm going to lift from Mark Harris' instantly classic article in the February issue of GQ (which I now realize has been lauded all over the place for weeks, but which I only discovered in the hard copy of the magazine that I stole borrowed from the YMCA).

I think this is all that needs to be said, and I think that aside from MSPIFF 2011 this spring, I probably shouldn't worry about the many new movies that I'm likely to miss this year as well:

"...let's look ahead to what's on the menu for this year: four adaptations of comic books. One prequel to an adaptation of a comic book. One sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a toy. One sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on an amusement-park ride. One prequel to a remake. Two sequels to cartoons. One sequel to a comedy. An adaptation of a children's book. An adaptation of a Saturday-morning cartoon. One sequel with a 4 in the title. Two sequels with a 5 in the title. One sequel that, if it were inclined to use numbers, would have to have a 7 1/2 in the title.

...Right now, we can argue that any system that allows David Fincher to plumb the invention of Facebook and the Coen brothers to visit the old West, that lets us spend the holidays gorging on new work by Darren Aronofsky and David O. Russell, has got to mean that American filmmaking is in reasonably good health. But the truth is that we'll be back to summer—which seems to come sooner every year—in a heartbeat. And it's hard to hold out much hope when you hear the words that one studio executive, who could have been speaking for all her kin, is ready to chisel onto Hollywood's tombstone: "We don't tell stories anymore."

Un-fracking-believable: Gasland

Just think, you can cook without a stove!

If you became angry or frustrated while watching Inside Job, wait until you get a load of Gasland, the award-winning documentary exposing even more egregious shenanigans committed by Corporate America. All things considered (including his personal relationship to the story), filmmaker Josh Fox lays out an honest, objective examination of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", the controversial new trend in domestic natural gas production. Gasland is this decade's Erin Brockovich or A Civil Action, the significant difference being that in this documentary, and thus in real life, companies aren't committing crimes by breaking or going around government regulations meant to protect citizens. That's because relatively speaking, there are no such regulations in place.

Much as you might expect this be a right vs. left political issue, what with Halliburton behind both the fracking technology and the Dick Cheney-initiated "Halliburton Loophole" (which exempts oil and gas companies - all of them - from our country's long-standing clean air and water regulations), the uncomfortable truth is that this is bipartisan bad behavior. While conservative interests may comprise corporate boards and shareholder majorities, President Obama and environmentalists are championing domestic natural gas production as an alternative to our addiction to foreign oil.

Problem is, nobody has developed a safe way to retrieve shale gas from the earth's crust, so for the time being more natural gas production means more fracking (by all accounts an extremely messy process). And more fracking - well as you can imagine that means more really nasty pollution, and more people being able to light their methane-infused tap water on fire.

Gasland won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance 2010, and was recently short-listed for this year's Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. I can't say it's a polished film (it's occasionally tangential and burdened with mumbling narration by Fox), but, alongside Inside Job and Restrepo, it's among the most important American documentaries of the year.

One of the memorable insights Fox shares at the end of film is that as he drove thousands of miles across the country to study the impact of fracking on local communities, every place started to look the same. Of course this is a common observation East Coasters make once they get west of Pennsylvania, but the stereotypical reasons (e.g., boring landscapes) were not cited here. Rather, the states blended together for Fox because fracking is happening everywhere: refineries and wells littered the country in places he never expected, and the stories and horrific symptoms from people he met were similar across thousands of miles. In other words, the problem isn't spreading - it's already spread, everywhere.

And, despite the fact that nobody yet knows the true effect fracking has on our air and water supply (only recently did the EPA initiate an official study on it), the practice continues unabated in one of the least regulated industries in the country. Completely helpless citizens are being poisoned and communities ruined, and not only is there no law against it, but the current laws were made to enable it. Worse, state agencies and departments that would normally be charged with looking into citizen's complaints are among the first to be cut as government budgets bleed out during the recession.

It's ironic then, or maybe it's not, that corporate interests helped lead to the recession, which has led to government budget deficits, which have led to agency and department personnel cuts, which has led to decreased regulation of corporate practices like fracking, which has led to greater corporate profits.

God Bless America.

Gasland comes out today on DVD (New Media/Docurama Films)
Add to your Netflix queue

Further reading:

"A Colossal Fracking Mess", Vanity Fair, June 2010

"Fracking yields fuel, fear in Northeast", CNN.com, September 2010

Further viewing:

"Shaleionaires" - 60 Minutes, November 14, 2010

Taking It Home: Inside Job

Finally, it all makes sense. Mostly.

Listening to the media echo chamber discuss President Obama's tax deal this week, I realized that it's been more than two months since I saw Charles Ferguson's illuminating Inside Job, and, shockingly, I think I still understand his deft explanation of the reasons behind the financial meltdown and, consequently, our current panic about tax rates and unemployment benefits. After numerous films - including but not limited to Capitalism: A Love Story (0/2 for Michael Moore after he dropped the health care ball with the forgettable Sicko), American Casino, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and even The Other Guys - tried and failed to explain what led to The Great Recession, Ferguson's film was like a breath of fresh air, illustrating the financial foolishness in terms that anyone can understand. Good thing, too, because as I said in my pan of the meaningless Wall Street, this was probably the last chance The Recession Movie had to establish itself as a viable genre.

Why was it so hard to present this financial information in a clear way prior to this film? To be fair it does require a lot of detailed explanation, and when filmmakers have other things on their minds (melodrama and an Oscar in the case of Stone's Wall Street; comedy and I-don't-know-what in the case of Moore's Capitalism), the meat of the subject at hand is guaranteed to be lost. Inside Job, in contrast, has little else on it's mind other than telling us what happened and, not accidentally, making us feel really angry about it. This isn't necessarily a fair and balanced documentary (and maybe not a documentary at all?), but it nonetheless presents the facts and allows educated people to talk about them, even though in this case the facts really speak for themselves.

127 Hours in 94 Riveting Minutes

The other night I had a dream, or rather a nightmare, that our cat was trapped in an unplugged microwave for three days until I was able to break the door open and rescue her. Her eyes were bloodshot and her tired, sweaty body was bruised and bloodied in a few spots; her right hind leg was stripped of flesh and fur almost to the bone. As I woke up in a hazy state, it didn't take long for me to peg 127 Hours as the inspiration for my subconscious. Thankfully I don't have dreams like this often, and our cat is just fine, but this movie has haunted my mind for a week not only because of the nightmarish, climactic battle between mind and body, but also because of the questions this incredibly simple story raised about relationships, independence, family, regret, determination, and even technology.

Much more than the nerve-wracking "thriller" I expected, 127 Hours is a tender, even beautiful tribute to the resiliency of the human spirit. It's a film that jars you awake from the tedious monotony of the cinematic landscape, engaging instead of entertaining and not compromising for the sake of your viewing comfort. So does the Saw franchise, one could argue, but while I've never seen any of those movies, I've also never been under the impression that they have the artistic, acting, or even comic merit exhibited in 127 Hours.

Independent Lens presents: Lost Sparrow

Lost Sparrow is the type of documentary that should come with a warning label: "May cause severe emotional distress". It does not contain much disturbing or graphic content, but the tragedy of the Billing family history is so nakedly laid bare that you can't help but be affected. I was mentally worn and emotionally vulnerable on the night that I watched it, and I'll fully admit the film's denouement had me sobbing. While I was reminded of Capturing the Friedmans, Surfwise, and Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father, I was keenly aware while watching Lost Sparrow that there were many more social layers under the surface of this particular story.

Never manipulative and consistently engrossing, Lost Sparrow is a downward spiraling journey into the marginalization and mistreatment of the Native American community, the strength of the family bond, and the challenge of forgiving an unforgivable sin. If making a film about the skeletons in your family's closet is considered a sign of bravery (and I think it is), director Chris Billing deserves a medal of valor.

In the early 1970's, Billing's family adopted four Crow Indian siblings (two boys, two girls) who were removed from their home on an impoverished Montana reservation after numerous allegations of domestic abuse. The Billing family, already with six children, quickly became a family of 10 kids and two parents, seemingly as happy as they are in the family photo above. 

In 1978, however, the two Crow Indian brothers were mysteriously killed by a freight train near the family's home in upstate New York (no one knows why they were lying on the tracks). The accident devastated the family and the community, the children were buried nearby (against Crow tradition) and the wounds slowly began to heal - or so it appeared. Chris Billing went on to become a highly-respected journalist and the Beijing Bureau Chief for NBC, but he was always uncomfortable with the uncertainty around his brothers' death. Lost Sparrow is his effort to find out what happened, and in doing so he discovers much more than he bargained for, and much more than anyone should ever hope to discover and publicly share about their family.

What impressed me so much about Lost Sparrow was the impossibly objective light Chris Billing shone on the tragic history of this family, no doubt due to years of journalistic practice. He somehow does not condemn and he does not apologize, and tells an incredibly personal story without making an overtly personal film. No family is perfect, and the themes in Lost Sparrow - love, forgiveness, fear, and pain - resonate on a universally human level. While Lost Sparrow could be seen as a traditional documentary about family history that you'd expect to find on PBS, I saw it as much more: an unforgettable portrait about adoption, redemption, and owning up to a past that has haunted your family for 30 years.

Lost Sparrow premieres on PBS on Tuesday, November 16 (check local listings)

Wall Street: People Never Change

Hair color may change, but an obsession with a certain shade of green never does...

If Oliver Stone is disappointed that his inconsequential Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps isn't nudging its way into the Best Picture race, he might consider sneaking it into the Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Fact is, for American viewers the characters may as well be speaking a rural Turkish dialect as they argue and fret about the recent financial crisis. It's yet another aimless Recession Movie that ultimately serves no purpose other than to remind us that we still have no idea what a credit default swap is. We don't understand Wall Street, and thus we can't understand Wall Street.

But then, that's assuming Stone set out to explain this disaster in the first place, which we can rule out based simply on the fact that he doesn't actually portray even one financial shenanigan (leaving Charles Ferguson's upcoming Inside Job as the all-important final chance to explain the recession in Main Street terms). Instead, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a timeless examination of greed, similar to its prequel in an attempt to personify evil as a white guy in a dark suit.

To the extent that Stone successfully portrays bankers and brokers as scheming swindlers, we should be thankful. It puts us at much greater ease when we can pin the blame on them, the lenders, and not us, the borrowers, and Stone's stylish flair throughout the film, as unnecessary as it is to the story, still achieves an essential purpose in distracting us from the film's bleak central theme: people never change.

Although advertising firms and media headlines and magazine columnists naïvely and hopelessly attempt to convince us that we've entered a "new normal" in which people will spend sparingly and save wisely, the inconvenient truth is that 90% of Americans are earning and spending as much as they ever have (and in the case of the top earners, earning more than they ever have). Interest rates remain at historic lows and credit is still freely available to nearly anyone who desires it. As the recession begins to fade on a wider scale and the opportunities for easy money begin to emerge, we will be resurrected like millions of Gordon Gekkos, anxious to reclaim our financial kingdoms, no matter the literal or figurative cost. Isn't that human nature, or, at the very least, the American way?

300 Words About: I'm Still Here

Last week, before Casey Affleck inexplicably broke his silence about I'm Still Here being a mostly scripted hoax, I told a friend of mine how great it would be if Joaquin Phoenix walked out onto the stage of "The Late Show with David Letterman" tonight with a clean-shaven face and a normal personality. What a perfect "Gotcha!" opportunity it would have been.

Alas, his appearance will now be an anticlimactic reunion in which he will no doubt apologize to Letterman and probably fail to explain exactly what I'm Still Here is "about". From where I sit, having seen it a couple of weeks ago and immediately recognizing a number of things that just could not be real, I don't think there is anything to explain. Either you consider I'm Still Here a brilliant skewering of Hollywood celebrity culture (featuring a Best Actor-nominee worthy performance; the best of Phoenix's career), or you consider I'm Still Here just plain offensive, a joke on the movie industry and a waste of everyone's time. Much of your reaction may depend on whether you saw it before or after the cat was officially out of the bag - but if you have seen it, wasn't it pretty obvious while watching that Casey Affleck was documenting a manufactured reality?

The Guy With the Butterfly Tattoo

"See that butterfly? You think it's Danaus plexippus, but it's not - it's Pieris rapae!" 

"A butterfly?," my wife wondered aloud as we watched George Clooney's character, Jack, perform his daily calisthenics routine in his cozy flat tucked away in a small Italian village. She was referring to the tattoo on his upper back (although it would have made just as much sense on the small of his back, and been funnier), and while I also noticed the unexplained marking, I was busy trying to determine whether Jack traveled with a pull-up bar or if they are actually standard in century-old Italian dwellings.

Whatever we were focused on while watching Anton Corbijn's The American, it wasn't the plot - such as there is one. The potential for a simmering thriller exists (the film is based on Martin Booth's well-received 1990 novel, "A Very Private Gentleman"), but the on-screen translation is a cliché-ridden and ultimately inconsequential film. Much as it tries to transcend the genre, it still ends up a vanilla "One Last Job" movie where the bank robber/assassin/detective/soldier/criminal plods along as a tortured soul, haunted by a lost love, chased by inept enemies, unable to trust anyone and forced to accept his likely fate - to die either as a martyr or as a ghost. Generally these characters do a good deal of brooding and philosophizing to supporting characters about their life's path.

Problem is, Rowan Joffe's screenplay for The American calls for very little in the way of characters talking and very much in the way of George Clooney just looking depressed. He is the picture of melancholy, sipping espresso alone in cafes, nervously walking and driving with an eye over his shoulder and a hand on his gun, tossing and turning in bed, making safe, emotionless conversation with locals, rubbing his eyes in anguish, and so on. At some point I just had to wonder, "Was this the right guy for the job?".

Two or Three Things I Know About Blogging

As I tread onward into my fourth year of maintaining this blog, it's an appropriate time for reflection. To say that I've learned some things about film and particularly about blogging over the last three years would be an understatement so great as to make it a meaningless statement. I've absorbed so much I feel like I can't even remember what I knew or thought I knew about film three years ago.

And I haven't just learned about movies, and how they are made and why they are made and how people talk about them and why they are important, but also about the nature (and sometimes disturbing power) of blogging, about how to efficiently use the internet to find trustworthy information, about how to write HTML code, about the future of online media, about professionalism and respect, and about social networking (in the truest sense: developing real friendships with people thousands of miles away). But what overwhelms me more than what I've learned so far is just how much I still have yet to learn.

Taking It Home: Restrepo

(Images courtesy Outpost Films)

"Our idea was...let's make the most visceral war film you've ever seen." 

So said photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who partnered with author/journalist Sebastian Junger to create the Sundance-award winning documentary Restrepo, which delivers what's sure to be the most nerve-racking viewing experience of the year so far. Inception plays like a Saturday morning cartoon in comparison. If Restrepo isn't the most visceral war film we've ever seen, it's at least the most visceral movie about the war in Afghanistan that we've yet seen, and the most insightful documentary on the 21st-century soldier's experience since The War Tapes (which, along with the disappointing Gunnar Palace, comprise the few films that actually feature soldiers and not actors). 

Pro-war, anti-war, McChrystal, Wikileaks, whatever. The talking heads and the rest of the U.S. should stop shouting and hand-wringing for a moment to witness what's actually happening on the ground, or at least was in 2007-08. Restrepo follows the deployment of a dozen or so brave American infantrymen from Second Platoon, Battle Company, of the 173rd Airborne, who spent more than a year in Afghanistan's deadly Korengal Valley. The reasons to see this documentary are as numerous as the opinions about what the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan (i.e., the "graveyard of empires"); suffice to say you don't have much business in a conversation about the latter until you've seen the former.

Ihr Macht Mich Verrückt

(l to r) Brühl, Bleibtreu, Fürmann...I think.

I revisited Tom Tykwer's The Princess and the Warrior last week and, in addition to remembering how terrific the soundtrack was, I was again confounded by the identity of German actor Benno Fürmann. Who I often confuse with the German actor Daniel Brühl. Who I often confuse with the German actor Moritz Bleibtreu. Who I often confuse with Benno Fürmann and Daniel Brühl. To make matters more confusing, all three have starred alongside the German actress Franka Potente.

It's a madly frustrating cycle, and since these three actors continue to drive me crazy (macht mich verrückt) with each movie in which they appear, I'm laying this post out primarily as a point of personal reference. Maybe it will help me finally sort out what they've each starred in. It probably won't work, but it might.

Stay Cinematically Healthy by Avoiding Salt in Your Diet

Angelina Jolie: Spreading goodwill (for UNHCR) and taking names...

Well that didn't take long, did it? Or maybe it was just a dream. Only a week after moviegoers were treated to Inception's intelligent and original story (albeit maybe it not quite as intelligent as advertised), it's time for us to bracingly wake up to reality. Or, depending on if the totem is spinning, accept that this is "limbo". Wherever we are, it's a dreadfully dull place, where movies like Salt deliver a steady stream of mind-numbing clichés and altogether stupid plots. This puffy spy thriller is a particularly brainless affair: half-Bond, half-Bourne, half-baked, and, mercifully, half an hour shorter than expected, when it doesn't end but simply stops mid-scene.

Originally produced as a star vehicle for Tom Cruise before he dropped out for what can only be assumed was the disastrous Knight and Day, Salt was rewritten for Angelina Jolie (the "best woman in the world" who, we should remember, "dies for our sins"), who predictably signed on to play yet another sexy assassin. The change in gender of our anti-hero is perfectly appropriate for the purpose of the story, but that doesn't excuse the eye-rolling flourishes of Jolie making kissy faces and tiger scowls during hand-to-hand combat, or inexplicably removing her panties and using them to shroud a security camera.

Teza and the Surreal Cinema Experience

Early last year I read a BBC News article about an Ethiopian film, Haile Gerima's Teza, that won the highest award at the Pan-African Film and Television Festival (as well as a few awards in Venice the year prior, but losing the Golden Lion to The Wrestler). Considering my father is from Ethiopia, and considering this film was about the political tumult that took place after he left the country three and a half decades ago, and considering that this story has not been shown on film before, and considering I've never been to Ethiopia (and he hasn't been back), I was, to say the least, a little obsessed with tracking this film down.

Assuming that a full U.S. theatrical release was unlikely, I immediately set a Google Alert for the film so I could find out what was happening with it and when it would be released in any format. In the meantime I also contacted the production company on numerous occasions in the hope of receiving a screener copy to review, but never received a response. It was a shot in the dark, but it was still a shot. About six months ago the alerts started picking up speed, and earlier this year the film finally landed on American shores. Fittingly, it would play in a theater in Washington, D.C., home to Gerima and the largest Ethiopian population in the country.

But would it ever come to Minnesota? Impossible, I thought. It bounced around the East Coast (picking up raves along the way), however, and all of a sudden it began moving westward, arriving in Minneapolis last week (thank you, Minnesota Film Arts!). I gathered my family, including my dad, and we set off to Ethiopia on what truly was a unique cinematic adventure.

As Teza progressed, I had the surreal sensation that I was seeing my family history on film. Not a direct representation of it, but a portrait of the place in which my parents lived at a critical juncture in their lives (and also where my brother was born). It displayed the geography and language and extremely dangerous political climate; ultimately, much of what happened in this film affected my parent's decision to leave the country, first living in Austria (my mother's home) before arriving in California, where I was born.

Putting it together, then, I was literally relating my existence to much of the history portrayed in Teza. When you're cognizant of a connection like that while watching it, cognizant of the fact that changes here or decisions there could have significantly altered your life, well it's a bizarre experience.

Teza is a ravishing epic about Ethiopia's rarely discussed modern history, and while it's not a perfect film (of all things, the acting is a bit wooden at times), I'll never forget the experience of sitting in the theater and watching this film while considering that what was on screen actually led to me sitting in the theater and watching this film.

Have you ever had a similar "meta" experience with a film closely related to your family or your life? Are there movies that capture historical events or social changes that reach you on a deeper level because of your direct (or indirect) connection to them?

Taking It Home: 9500 Liberty

 

Has anyone in Arizona talked to these people? 

You may have heard about a controversial ordinance that was recently passed which requires police officers to question any individual they have probable cause to suspect is an undocumented immigrant. You may have heard about the ensuing protests and planned boycotts, and the election year hand-wringing by the involved politicians, and the fiery "man on the street" rhetoric about God and country. 

But this isn't Arizona's Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (SB 1070) of 2010. It's a county ordinance in Virginia from 2007. The same kind of law elicited the same kind of reactions, but without the same level of attention - until now. Indeed, there exists a unique opportunity to see a glimpse of the future by simply taking a look at the past in the fascinating new documentary 9500 Liberty, directed by Asian-Americans (and Coffee Party founders) Annabel Park and Eric Byler. The film is coincidentally rolling into theaters across the country this month, including in Arizona on July 27 - only two days before SB 1070 goes into effect.

If you've been paying attention to the Arizona dilemma (and if you're an American of any color you should be, since this will affect everyone), you owe it to yourself to watch this engrossing film and then spend some focused time deliberating and discussing it. What 9500 Liberty confirms, not surprisingly, is that there are no easy answers to the problem of illegal immigration. Moreover, it underscores how much of this debate - on both sides - is driven not by rational logic, but by emotional panic.

It becomes apparent while watching 9500 Liberty that the Arizona bill will be a trumpeted success in some aspects and a humiliating failure in others. The trick will be learning how to navigate between the rhetoric and the reality while maintaining a big picture perspective on the future of the United States. At the end of the day, and as it has for every controversial social change this country has experienced, this question remains begging: What will adapt first - laws or people? The American Constitution or the constitution of America?

Concerning the Next Decade: An Open Letter to Hollywood

May 2010

Hollywood, et.al.

N Highland Ave & Hollywood Boulevard

Hollywood, CA 90028

Dear Hollywood Producers, Writers, and Directors,

I write to you at this critical time on behalf of the worldwide movie-going public. They have not requested that I write this letter, but the situation is urgent and, selfless hero that I am, I accept that it is my duty to save the world of cinema using the judicious power of this blog. Maybe you'll make a movie out of my story one day. You have a lot of bad ideas like that, actually, which is why I'm writing this letter.

The American movie industry is, depending on who you ask, either in the midst of a record-breaking profit bonanza or an apocalyptic creative crisis. You obviously know the former to be true as you are currently being read this letter by your assistant, who works much harder than you give her credit for and who doesn't have the heart to tell you that the eco-luxe boutique lodge she just booked for you in Koh Kood lacks an on-site acupuncturist, or that the Maserati dealer just called to let you know that the platinum gear shifter you requested won't be available for two more months, or even that the organic wheatgrass smoothie you're drinking right now isn't actually organic.

Indeed, in spite of your obscene wealth you really do have a lot of the daily inconveniences and problems that wear us plebeians down on a daily basis. I'm not sure how you cope, but for relief from life's boredom and pain many of us head to the comfort of our local movie theater. There, we find ourselves presented with a variety of new releases each week provided by you and your peers. A few offerings are worthwhile but most are offensively bad - not that you would likely know, since the only thing you're watching is your bank account balloon as our hard-earned dollars pour in.

Painful Moments in Movie History #1: The Animal Cracker Scene

Armageddon, 1998

Director: 

Michael Bay

Writers: 

Jonathan Hensleigh, J.J. Abrams, Tony Gilroy, Shane Salerno

______________________________

A.J.:
You know  what I was thinking?

Grace Stamper:
What?

A.J.:
I really don't think that the animal cracker qualifies as a cracker.

Grace Stamper:
Why?

A.J.:
Well cause it's sweet, which to me suggests cookie, and, you know, I mean putting cheese on something is sort of a defining characteristic of what makes a cracker a cracker. I don't know why I thought of that, I just...

Grace Stamper:
Baby, you have such sweet pillow talk.

A.J.:
I got like a little animal cracker, Discovery Channel thing happening right here. (affects Australian accent) Watch the gazelle as he grazes through the open plains. Now, look as the cheetah approaches. Watch as he stalks his prey. Now the gazelle is a little spooked. He could head north, to the ample sustenance provided by the mountainous peaks above. Or, he could go south. The gazelle now faces mans most perilous question: north...or, south...way down under. Tune in next week.

Grace Stamper:
Baby? Do you think it's possible that anyone else in the world is doing this very same thing at this very same moment?

A.J.:
I hope so. Otherwise what the hell are we trying to save?

Underrated MOTM: Blue Chips (1994)

"Is there a national championship collegiate athletic program anywhere in the country that can truthfully say all of its recruiting was done entirely within the official guidelines? Just asking."

That's Roger Ebert asking, in his review of Blue Chips, a rhetorical question that most fans of college athletics would rather not consider. Seems like a month doesn't go by without ESPN reporting on alleged recruiting violations at a given school, but it's never front page news and it's always gone after a day. Rules are broken, wrists are slapped, and everyone - fans, coaches, athletes, administrators - moves on to the next season.

This doesn't explain how a movie like Blue Chips was ever made, but it does explain why a movie like Blue Chips (or its cousin, The Program, or its successor, He Got Game) is never discussed, especially around this time of year, when universities spend (and earn) millions of dollars on advertising during March Madness coverage. Commentators talk about "how much these kids love basketball" and "what it means to Coach so-and-so to get to this point in his career", but never could a word be uttered about the money spent and favors called in to create all of those One Shining Moments.

Getafilm Gallimaufry: A Prophet, Fish Tank, Robin Hood and More

[Note: This series includes scattered thoughts on various movie-related topics. I was looking for a word that started with the letter "g" that means collection or assortment, but lest you think I'm some elitist wordsmith, know that I'd never heard of "gallimaufry" and I don't even know how to say it, but it was the only other option the thesaurus provided aside from "goulash" (too foody) and "garbage" (no).]

_______________________________________________________________

A Prophet (A) 

A Prophet is the first must-see film of 2010. Maybe that's not saying much considering the caliber of movies that have been released in this first quarter. How about this instead: A Prophet is one of the best crime sagas in recent memory, and, along with last year's Lion's Den and Hunger, it has helped usher in a new era of harrowing prison dramas (the last truly memorable one being what, The Shawshank Redemption?).

Written and directed by Jacques Audiard, whose last film (The Beat My Heart Skipped) was highly acclaimed but unseen by me, A Prophet boasts impressive verisimilitude for a completely fictional story. Maybe it's not surprising considering former convicts were hired as extras and advisers, but Audiard himself has admitted that prison life is rarely depicted in French film and television. French citizens are apparently clueless about what goes on behind prison walls in their country, so it doesn't take much convincing to accept this story as reality.

Indeed, life on the inside is reflective of life on the outside: the old French/European power structure is fading as new immigrant groups - particularly Arab Muslims (that term should not sound nearly as redundant as it does) - are arriving and establishing their identities as the "new French". Symbolically speaking, this film is urgently relevant (it won nine of the record 13 César Awards for which it was nominated); cinematically speaking it is a masterful showcase of acting, cinematography, pacing (even at 150 minutes), suspense, music, action and, most importantly, global insight.

_______________________________________________________________

300 Words About: Green Zone

"Look, man, we had to know this would flop after DiCaprio couldn't even carry Body of Lies. At least we got paid up front, right?"

Green Zone is like Glenn Beck, or Keith Olbermann, or even Jon Stewart. It's incredibly loud, incredibly loose-tongued, and incredibly lacking in moderation or nuance of any kind. Incredibly, Universal Pictures wagered $100+ million that cash-strapped audiences would want to see cable news-styled hysterics within the context of one of the most unpopular film genres of our time: the Iraq War movie (remember that The Hurt Locker is the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner in history).

Granted, Universal did have the "Bourne in Baghdad" angle to lure audiences (how has no one made a mash-up trailer yet?), and Paul Greengrass previously directed United 93, one of the best films of the last decade. But as much as Green Zone had on its side in terms of star power, nothing can make up for an extremely dated and painfully retread screenplay by Brian Helgeland - one that overflows with Big Grand Statements, both said and unsaid by its caricatures.

I figured something was wrong when Universal kept pushing the release date for Green Zone later and later (eventually past the 12/31/09 Oscar eligibility deadline), but wow, I haven't been this disappointed since about 10 minutes ago, when I saw that Brian Helgeland also wrote the upcoming Robin Hood reboot starring Russell Crowe.