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March 22, 2006
Revisiting Crisis
David at GreenCine pointed me to Sudhir Muralidhar's review of Our Brand is Crisis in The American Prospect. Like Muralidhar, I found that Boynton's documentary "riveting" in part because of the unusual access to Goni's campaign and to the American political insiders, such as James Carville and Jeremy Rosner, who orchestrated it. As I discussed in my review, Goni "wins" the 2002 election, but he is unprepared to handle the widespread opposition to his presidency and the onging economic uncertainty that haunts Bolivia, which the film illustrates through the stark contrast between the "focus groups" orchestrated by US political consultants and the protests taking place outside of Goni's campaign headquarters. Muralidhar similarly notes that "What is particularly troubling about this story is the degree to which the political process, and all the character attacks and propaganda that process now entails, is so detached from the social and economic reality."
In other doc news, David mentions Eugene Hernandez's report that Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantanamo will be released this summer by Roadside Pictures, and Doug Cummings reviews The Future of Food.
I'll be attending tonight's screening of The End of Suburbia at the DC Environmental Film Festival and will hopefully have a review up later tonight or tomorrow.
Posted by chuck at March 22, 2006 10:48 AM
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Comments
Sounds like a fascinating film. I also look forward to your "End of Suburbia" review. I'm particularly interested in that since I've found myself living in the suburbs the last few years after several years in Chicago.
Posted by: Josh Boelter at March 22, 2006 12:23 PM
Letdown of the week: The Road To Guantanamo is available for download - I had already set aside the evening to watch it until I realized it's only for UK customers. Guess I'll be waiting until a.) summer or b.) the local import DVD store gets a copy.
Posted by: dvd at March 22, 2006 10:17 PM
dvd, that's too bad. Hoping that "Guantanamo" makes it to Silverdocs here in DC (I imagine it will).
Josh, review is on the way. Short version: it makes me want to never own a car again.
Posted by: Chuck at March 23, 2006 9:57 AM