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February 28, 2005

War and the Everyday

Just got the good news that a paper I'd proposed for this year's Visible Evidence conference has been accepted (the paper's title: "War and the Everyday: Documentary and Representations of the Iraq War"). It looks like a really cool conference, with its "single-stream program," in which all panels are followed by all of the conference's participants. The conference has close ties to a series of books by University of Minnesota Press and usually seems to feature lots of good speakers on documentary, so I'm really looking forward to it.

The other good news? The conference is in Montreal. I've never been there before, so that should be lots of fun, too.

Posted by chuck at 10:10 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

February 27, 2005

Oscars 2005 Open Thread

Will Scorsese finally win an Academy Award? How many times will the show's producers have to press the mute button? Who'll make the most overtly political Oscar speech? Who's wearing the worst tuxedo? Discuss all the important questions of the night right here.

Update: I guess the answer to that first question is "no." In other news, I recieved a very gracious "thank you" during one of tonight's acceptance speeches.

Posted by chuck at 7:22 PM | Comments (78) | TrackBack

Oscar Goes to Babylon

It's Oscar night in Bush's America, one of the most public and most lavish displays of self-congratulation that you'll ever see. With an auditorium full of people professionally trained in the art of creating eye-pleasing spectacles, you can count on carefully choreographed dances, witty musical numbers, and dazzling costumes. And Dargis is right that the Oscars make public the Hollywood industry's non-stop conversation about itslef, making the event a translucent window into the belly of the culture industry, or at least one branch of it. But, apparently nobody in Bush's America is watching (or at least not watching the whole shebang), and Hollywood is worried, because if nobody watches, it's almost like the whole thing didn't happen. So, how to recapture audience interest when there are so many distractions in the media landscape?

As Frank Rich notes, this year's nominees for best picture, as measured by box office numbers, seem to have little cultural relevance. Oscar faves Million Dollar Baby and The Aviator have both made less than $100 million, making the Oscars a less anticipated event than usual. Even I'd forgotten that the Oscars were on Sunday (until Chris Rock reminded me), and I'm a film junkie whose cinema fix can never be truly satiated. But, as Rich notes, those Hollywood types know what sells. There's a reason why Hollywood seeks out the assiatnace of an accounting firm to ensure the fairness of the Oscar races. And Hollywood knows that indecency (or the possibility of indecency) is hot right now.

Quick aside: is it an accident that these indecency debates often hover around "unscripted" or live events? Is there something about the continegcy of live TV (in which anything could potentially happen) that provokes the cultural police? Even with the countless cameras and quick-fingered producers ready to press the mute button, there seems to be a tremendous fear of the event itself, that it could cycle into something beyond control of the cultural scriptwriters.

Rich notes that the big "live" spectacles--the Super Bowl, the Grammys, the Golden Globes--have all seen their ratings decline in this post-TiVo, post-wardrobe malfunction society where the unscripted is dangerous, a potential threat to innocent eyes and ears. Rich then reasons that Hollywood's response to this ratings decline is not to promise a cleaned-up Oscars, safe for the children of Bush's America, but quite the opposite. By tabbing Chris Rock to host, the marketers of the show are selling the idea that they'll be pushing boundaries. Rock has been happily playing along, stirring up controversy in interviews all week long (the Oscars have a "gay following?" the technical awards are "boring?"), until someone, Matt Drudge, finally took the bait and complained about the potential for offense on Oscar night. Even discussions of Oscar's self-censorship, in this case Robin Williams' political hot potato musical number, feed the anticipation of potential controversy. Just what will that Patch Doubtfire guy do next?

Of course, as Rich points out, it's no secret that many of the same right-wing organizations that rail against indecency are also part of the same media conglomerates, such as Comcast and, until recently, Adelphia, that sell "indecent" materials. Fox is the classic example here, with Rupert Murdoch's FOX News openly supporting family values canddiates while the FOX network traffics in some of the sleazier network TV shows currently being broadcast. This game is beatifully supported by organizations such as the Parents Television Council, which features a concept known as the "Worst TV Clip of the Week," allowing "concerned parents" to view the worst that TV has to offer. Such an approach only feeds the shows' notoreity, and I'd be willing to bet that being featured on the "Wosrt Clip of the Week" only increases one's audience as a show, which is why Desperate Housewives, love or hate it, has become such a ratings machine. In my own experience, those Sunday School classes during my teenage years that warned against the seductions of rock-and/or-roll only fueled my desire to go out and listen to Led Zeppelin and the Eagles (and, yes, those classes were about ten to fifteen years behind the rest of the music world).

So what we have, yet again, is another giant distraction. Media watchdog organizations will continue to decry the state of entertainment, while the market for controversial material will prevail. As Rich notes, "it is still the American way to lament indecency even while gobbling it up." So, yes, the name of the game is profit, and since controversy sells, that's what we'll see on Oscar night, even if there really isn't any controversy. The illusion of potential controversy is enough to keep us tuned in (except druing the technical awards montage). Meanwhile, this family values rhetoric does have real consequences in silencing certain PBS shows, making the network far more timid than it used to be, as the documentary about soldiers ilustrates. The blackmail of PBS also prevents potentially productive conversations about sexuality, especially if Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has her way. Of course, I'll probably be right in front of my TV, waiting for any potential controversy, any disruption in Oscar's seamless spectacle. And like last year, I may live blog the whole thing if I'm in the mood.

Posted by chuck at 9:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 26, 2005

"The Stuff that they had Discarded"

The third installment of the Film Love series, "NOW! Short Films on African American Experience in the 1960s," gave a fantastic overview of documentary and experimental film being done in that era. Andy Ditzler, of Frequent Small Meals, presented a great selection of rarely seen footage in a variety of formats (DVD, VHS, and even 16mm).

The night opened with a 1966 CBS-TV interview between Mike Wallace (weird to see him so young) and the rising star of the Black Power movement, Stokeley Carmichael, who was portrayed in this broadcast as a potential threat to Martin Luther King's leadership in the Civil Rights movement. This interview was interesting to me on several levels. First the sequence opened with the presentation of Carmichael speaking at a rally using low-angle shots to portray him as looming over camera. But, more than anything, as Ditzler noted, it's interesting to watch how the major networks "presented" these conflicts within the Civil Rights movement.

The CBS broadcast was followed by a screening, in 16mm, of experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs' Perfect Film. Jacobs, who frequently made use of found footage, reports that in the case of Perfect Film, he essentially left this footage alone because it was already "perfect." The footage, discarded outtakes from a TV studio, primarily consists of an interview with a black radio reporter giving his eyewitness account of Malcolm X's assassination. Mixed with the interview footage, we see other interviewees on the street, and a detective giving his account, but what makes this film more intriguing are the gaps of black leader and the "silent" exterior shots of Harlem buildings, to which the director would have presumably added voice-over or music later. The effect of the footage as it stands is to produce contemplation about Malcolm's life and that era of American life.

There were two major highlights for me. First, Santiago Alvarez's energetic agit-prop film, NOW!, powerfully uses Lena Horne's civil rights anthem over still photographs of lynchings and police brutality mixed with shots of protest and revolt. Despite the heavy use of stills, Alvarez's restless camera pans and zooms, giving the film a very energetic feel. Worth noting: Extreme Low Frequency Films has re-relased some of Alvarez's work, including NOW!, on a 2-DVD compilation, He Who Hits First Hits Twice: The Films of Santiago Alvarez (here's an Austin Chronicle review).

The other major highlight was a 1964 cinema verite-syle documentary by Eugene Marner and Carole Satrina, Phyllis and Terry, which focuses on two black teenage girls. The two girls have an incredible sense of comic chemistry, playing off each other, finishing the other's stories, with an ease in front of the camera that is utterly compelling.

Another item on the program was "Malcolm X: Nationalist or Humanist," an episode of the NET public TV series, Black Journal, a newsmagazine-style show about black culture, politics, and arts. The episode was made several months after Malcolm's death and emphasizes his attempts to internationalize the Civil Rights movement. Some great footage of Malcolm giving a speech in Mississippi. This Malcolm X material fit nicely with Third World Newsreel's presentation of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. In both cases, the emphasis seems to be on the role of alternative media in addressing African-American experience in the 1960s.

In that sense, the program fit very neatly together in providing an overview, or introduction, to this material. I would have loved to have seen more of the innovative film work by Jacobs and Alvarez, but this particular Film Love screening has certainly provided me with many other avenues for exploration. In fact, if I can get my hands on the DVD at some point, some of Alvarez's work might fit neatly into future Introduction to Film or Experimental Film classes. I'd certainly encourage others to attend future Film Love screenings. Ditzler put together a great program of rarely seen films, and this material certainly deserves a wider audience. My only gripe: I would have enjoyed a brief moderated group discussion after the screenings to hear reactions from other members of the audience.

Posted by chuck at 11:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 25, 2005

Friday Movie Links

Just a couple of quick, unrelated film links to brighten everyone's Friday afternoon. First, I came across this Reuters article on Fespaco (English version), the biennial pan-African film festival, which starts this weekend. Of interest to me: the festival's top award, the Etalon d'Or de Yennenga, or Gold Stallion of Yennenga, is awarded to the film that best depicts African relaities, a crtiterion that some filmmakers have begun to question (I originally found this story via Cinema Minima, but before I had enough coffee to blog it).

Second, the very cool news that the cinetrix is blogging the run-up to the Independent Spirit awards and teh Oscars for Bravo. If you have any suggestions for Independent Spirit Awards drinking games (take a sip every time a winner thanks the other nominees?), send them her way.

Also via the cinetrix, the MPAA has reversed its initial decision to give Gunner Palace an R-rating, making it the "most profane PG-13 picture ever," according to Palm Pictures. Here's the scoop from the World Peace Herald. Turns out that the MPAA is hip after all.

Depending on my ability to get work done (I have some serious dealines for a couple of applications), I'll be attending at least one of the screenings I mentioned last night. If you're in the Atlanta area, you should, too.

Posted by chuck at 2:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 24, 2005

Weekend Movie Happenings

Three (really) independent film events this weekend here in Hotlanta. Friday night at the Eyedrum, Film Love 3 will be playing at the Eyedrum. Film Love 3 presents short films made and released in the 1960s that depict African-American experiences during that decade.

Next, Franklin Lopez's independent media group, subMedia, will be clebrating their 10th anniversary with a a party at Eyedrum, this Saturday, starting at 8 PM. The party will feature a punk band from El Salvador, fire juggling, and indie films by Eyekiss and POPfilms.

Or you might also check out the latest installment of the Dailies Project, Losing Control, playing at Decatur's Push Push Theater, a series of short film collaborations between local filmmakers and theater artists.

Posted by chuck at 9:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Real AARP Agenda

I've been thinking about Jimbo's recent discussion (also here) of "cynical reason" quite a bit over the last few days. Jimbo's comments arose out of a discussion of David Horowitz's assertion that university professors work an average of six to nine hours a week while collecting annual salaries of over $150,000. Now, if I lived in such a reality, the last few months of my life would have been far less stressful. Of course, Jimbo's point was that Horowitz knows very well that professors don't collect such salaries or work so little. Instead, he's engaging in cynical reason, saying what he knows to be false in order to further some other goal, whatever that may be.

Today's New York Times offers yet another example of this kind of cynicism, with Maureen Dowd's column on the USA Next group, a group which wants to criticize the AARP's opposition to Bushian Social Security "reform." In order to criticize the AARP, USA Next recently posted a "comically hyperbolic" advertisement on the American Spectator website alleging that the AARP not only supports gay marriage but also hates the troops, both horrible sins under the Bush regime. The ad suggests that because the AARP opposed the Ohio "gay marriage" amendment, on the grounds that the amendment's vague wording might afect legal recognition of any union, including older heterosexuals living together, they must by default condone gay marriage. The AARP ostensibly does not "support the troops" because they do not specifically endorse the USA Next position on combat veterans' health benefits, which is, of course, a non-issue when it comes to the AARP position on Social Security.

In the article, the President of USA Next, Charlie Jarvis readily admits that he doesn't believe that the AARP is a front for a pro-gay, anti-troops agenda, but knew that he could count on liberal bloggers to express outrage and moral indignation at his absurd allegations, as I am now. But then Jarvis gleefully admits that that's exactly what he wants (and that's why I've refrained from linking to--or even trying to find--the USA Next website) because this "viral" quality of blogging spreads the USA Next message for free around the entire blogosphere. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I've engaged in my share of liberal outrage blogging, but Jarvis's stragtegy here calls for a different kind of response, one that brings the cynicism of people like Jarvis into much clearer relief. I've been thinking a lot about the economy of linking and how it might be used to promote these conservative ideas, and I'm still caught in this impasse between criticizing groups like USA Next and being complicit with their goals of spreading their anti-Social Security, I mean, "pro-privatization," message.

Posted by chuck at 11:45 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

February 22, 2005

A Company of Soldiers

Frontline's "A Company of Soldiers" follows Dog Company, a group of soldiers from the 1-8 Cavalry, during November 2004. The PBS team worked as embedded reporters, free to film almost anything during their month in Iraq (the Pentagon screening focused on "secuirty clearance" issues only). The filmmakers chose to concentrate primaily on "the Misfits," a nine-member combat group thrown together from many different parts of Dog Company. This documentary focus on the experiences of a small group of soldiers inevitably led to comparisons with Michael Tucker's Gunner Palace, with both films raising, both consciously and unconsciously, questions about the representations of war.

Having watched Tucker's film just over a week ago, I was struck by the differences between the two films. Gunner Palace offered a far more personalized account of the war, particularly through the heavier use of subjective camera and first-person voice-over narration. Throughout the film, I was consistently aware of Tucker's presence as a filmmaker. By contrast, the Frontline voice-over approach tended towards sober objectivity, with the result that Company seemed to view the soldiers at a safe distance. While we do witness an extended segment where the soldiers mourn the death of one of their comrades, I never got the sense that the documentary was aware of its role in shaping what we were watching. Instead, we get highly aestheticized back-lit images of soldiers conducting combat operations, with an undistinguished soundtrack that conveyed little more than the sobriety of the subject matter.

I also found the interviews in Soldiers far more frustrating than those in Gunner Palace. Most of the interviewees were career military men (I didn't see a single woman in the entire broadcast), trained in the PR speak designed to present the war, and the men and women who serve, in the best possible light. Unlike the more critical soldiers in Gunner Palace, the Misfits never speak negatively about U.S. action in Iraq; in fact they are shown at one point complaining about protestors (one oddly suggests that if the protestors don't like the war, they ought to enlist in the military).

My other major complaint about the film is the almost complete failure to convey anything resembling the perspective of the Iraqi people whose lives have been completely disrupted (and often destroyed) by the war. Company comes close in a few places. One Iraqi hesitates to help out Dog Company because he fears being labelled a spy. A market built by Dog Company in November doesn't open because a sheik demands an excessive fee to rent the booths that are supposed to be free. But for the most part, the Iraqi people are either left invisible or remain almost entirely unknowable. The film conslcudes with a very brief critique of the decision to go to war in Iraq, noting that while the soldiers are all competent and careful, the effects of the war on Iraq have been devastating. However, because of processes of cinematic identification (camera placement, central characters, etc), this critique, in my reading of the film was utterly lost. This critique comeas across more clearly in film director Tom Roberts' New Statesman editorial, in which he writes of "the tyranny of unintended consequences," the violence that often greets even the best U.S. intentions. Roberts himself is skeptical that democracy is currently "untenable" in Iraq, and adds that the situation there is even worse than its representation in teh UK media.

There has been some discussion of the fact that many PBS stations, fearing fines from the FCC, would air a slightly altered version of A Company of Soldiers. The Georgia Public Television station where I watched the show chose to air the edited version, and while I'd certainly have preferred the "raw" version, I'd imagine that the difference between the two was negligible. I'll also add that the current inability to show the "raw" version illustrates the need for some serious dialogue about restrictions on free speech, but more importantly, PBS's caution demonstrates the very vital need for a more vibrant role for public television in general.

Posted by chuck at 11:32 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 21, 2005

Movies Under the Stars

Also via Green Cine, this fascinating collection of newspapers advertisements for Wisconsin drive-in movie theaters, many of which date back to the 1940s. It's a great collection, not just for the films that are being advertised, but also (and possibly more importantly) for the "lost" culture of drive-in movie theaters found in these ads (originally via Rashomon).

Posted by chuck at 6:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Fighting Words

Via Green Cine: a link to Monica Davey's New York Times article on the role of Gunner Palace in sparking the popularity of rap written and performed by US soldiers in Iraq. Davey writes:

If rock 'n' roll, the sounds of Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane and Creedence Clearwater Revival, was the music of American service members in Vietnam, rap may become the defining pulse for the war in Iraq. It has emerged as a rare realm where soldiers and marines, hardly known for talking about their feelings, are voicing the full range of their emotions and reactions to war. They rap about their resentment of the military hierarchy. But they also rap about their pride, their invincibility, their fallen brothers, their disdain for the enemy and their determination to succeed.
The article seems to emphasize the play of language, the "ambivalence" of the lyrics of much rap music, allowing the rappers to criticize the military hierarchy while at the same time conveying solidarity with their fellow soldiers. Gunner Palace director, Michael Tucker adds that rap is very much a part of the barracks culture in Iraq.

Davey addresses the relationship of hip-hop to the first Gulf War, noting that several prominent hip-hop artists, including Mystikal, served in that war, while Ice Cube played a significant role in David O. Russell's Gulf War film, Three Kings. I'm about to set up my students' film screening, so I don't have time for a full analysis, but the article includes the text of several raps, all of which work through the ambiguities of the current war in Iraq (one soldier even jokes that they could rap to the rhythm of gunfire during some of the attacks). The article is also accompanied by some audio samples.

Posted by chuck at 6:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 20, 2005

Mbye Cham on African Cinema

Via Cinema Minima, Martin Jumbam's interview with Howard University film professor, Mbye Cham. The interview is from 1997, but still very much worth reading, as I'd imagine that African filmmakers still face many of the same obstacles. Cham, in particular, notes the difficulties that African filmmakers face in comepting against the US and Bollywood film industries in getting their films distributed:

I think that African film-makers and those working in the film industry in Africa have a difficult task ahead of them. The Indian romance spectacles, the "Kung Fu" movies and all other imported, cheap Hollywood films have an extremely powerful grip on the popular imagination of the ordinary film-goer in Africa as they are usually the only films regularly screened in African theatres. But the key issue here, I believe, is the lack of viable distribution networks for African films. It’s even a miracle, given the limited means at their disposal, that African film-makers are able to make films at all, and once such films are made, the other major hurdle is getting them out to the spectator. People have to see a film before it can make a career, both artistically and commercially.

Posted by chuck at 9:22 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Citizen Trump

The Documentary Film Weblog points to an intriguing "aborted" documentary project, The Movie Movie, by director Errol Morris:

The Movie Movie, an aborted project, is based on the idea of taking Donald Trump, Mikhail Gorbachev and others and putting them in the movies they most admire. Isn’t it possible that in an alternative universe Donald Trump actually starred in Citizen Kane?
Morris' website includes footage of an interview with Donald Trump, in which the The Donald discusses what Citizen Kane means to him. I think the project could have been a fascinating one, and future installments promise Gorbachev talking about his love for Tarkovsky's The Mirror and Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, but also love the idea of Morris devoting a section of his website to "aborted projects," documentaries that, for whatever reason, never reached completion. I'm tempted to think, in fact, that these aborted projects might say as much about teh filmmaker as the documentary films he actually finishes. And, of course, documentaries themselves often change directions in the course of filming, as is the case with Morris' wonderfully good film, The Thin Blue Line.

Digging around on Morris' website, I see that he also has an essay/rant on William Faulkner's rather celebrated Nobel Prize Address. I've always been partial to Faulkner; his Nobel Address never ceases to provoke my thinking, and Morris' comments illustrate the ways in which Faulkner's comments remain timely nearly fifty years after they were first spoken (or whispered as the story goes--MP3 of address available here).

Posted by chuck at 7:20 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

February 19, 2005

War Documentaries and the FCC

Just read on Yahoo about an upcoming Frontline feature, A Company of Soldiers. The documentary focuses on the U.S. Army's 8th Cavalry Regiment stationed in Baghdad, following their day-to-day activities in the weeks following the U.S. presidential election in November. This approach sounds similar to the approach taken in Michael Tucker's Gunner Palace, so I'll be interested to see how Frontline shapes this material. Tucker, as I argue, offers what might best be described as a "politically ambivalent" approach, using teh discourses of "reality" to simultaneously support both pro- and anti-war readings. This isn't political neutrality or documentary objectivity, but something else entirely. The subjective identification with the soldiers works against critical distance, and instead we find ourselves immersed in the images of war, but that identification is far from simple politically, as my original review suggests.

The Yahoo article focuses primarily on PBS's decision to present a mildly sanitized version of the Frontline episode, editing out 13 expletives that might have exposed PBS to fines by the FCC (Tucker's film has faced a similar problem, with the film's use of profanity earning it an R rating that may limit the audience). In both cases, the discussion of ratings seems to shift the discourse in some problematic ways. By focusing on the soldiers' use of profanity in the films, these artciles ignore any discussion of the violence (or lack of violence) portrayed in the films. At any rate, I'll be interested to see how the PBS doc portrays the everyday life of the soldier.

By the way, while digging around the Gunner Palace website, I came across Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker's Baghdad Diary. It's clear from the earliest days of the diary that Tucker is thinking about his project in terms of how the war becomes mediated by previous war films, TV shows, and novels. In one early entry, "Jackass Goes to War," he compares SPC Wilf to Youssarian of Catch-22. In another entry the war is described as the ultimate (pop) "culture clash," in which we learn about the soldier's Internet surfing habits.

Posted by chuck at 4:20 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Movie Title Screen Captures

I've been engaging in some procrastnation blog surfing and came across Steven Hill's Movie Title Screen Page which has over 3,100 screen captures of movie title screens (via Bitter Cinema). Looks like a useful resource, or at the very least, a fun browse.

And now back to my regularly shceduled grading marathon.

Posted by chuck at 3:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Debating Horowitz

I haven't been talking about politics here lately. That's due to any number of factors, including the desire to appear "politically neutral" during my election-themed class last fall. I've also found myself wondering for a long time about the effects of blogging on political discourse. Are these blogs merely adding to the cacophany of Crossfires and partisan talk shows? Or can they add something new? My answers here are much more tentative than they used to be, a whiseperd "maybe" rather than the resounding "yes!" of months past.

This ambivalence comes to mind because of the recent discussions of David Horowitz's comments about university professors. I usually have mixed feelings about tangling with someone like David Horowitz, whose recent project, "Discover the Network," reads like a demented version of the Kevin Bacon game. Debating Horowitz seems to grant him a legitimacy that seems unwarranted on most topics. But his recent comments in Boulder, Colorado (registration required, bugmenot recommended), deserve special attention because they so utterly misrepresent professor labor. In the article Vanessa Miller reports that,

University professors are a privileged elite that work between six to nine hours a week, eight months a year for an annual salary of about $150,000, according to David Horowitz.
Of course, Horowitz, who spends a lot of time playing gadfly on various college campuses, knows better. So why make such baldly false statements about how hard professor work or how much we get paid? The obvious answer is explicit in his comments: to discredit professors as wealthy elites, out of touch with the common people. Such claims are nothing new, of course, and charges of elitism have been used to discredit academics for some time. And I'd iamgine that most people don't really believe these numbers, but I could be wrong about that. Such a claim is more strategic than anything else.

More importantly Horowitz's comments have now compelled several professors, including myself, to respond. And that's where I have a question. By taking Horowtitz's bait and resonding to these absurd assertions, aren't we playing into his hands, giving his arguments the legitimacy they don't really deserve? I tried to address this point in my comments to Scrivener's post on Horowitz several days ago, but I'm not sure I quite got it right, although Bérubé's satirical response makes sense to me as a useful alternative, as I'll try to explain below.

So what is the answer here? To continue fact-checking Horowitz or others like him? Such an approach re-creates the Crossfire approach, which doesn't really take us anywhere new. Our facts compete with his facts and the audience scarfs down a microwave pizza as the spectacle unfolds. I'm not sure it applies precisely here because Horowitz is quite a bit different than Bushworld, but Jimbo's recent comments about exposing the internal contradictions of Bushworld make more sense to me than a straight rebuttal. I'm not sure what that would look like, but I do want to try to start asking these questions again.

Posted by chuck at 11:21 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

February 18, 2005

The Harder They Come Review

Quick note to self: when I teach Perry Henzell's The Harder They Come next time, it might make sense to teach it after teaching Bonnie and Clyde, especially when talking about the editing in the final showdown scenes of each film.

Update: A Salon review of the Critereon DVD from November 2000.

Posted by chuck at 10:35 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Book Meme: 123.5

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

Like Scrivener (who got the meme from Dr. Crazy), I have a shelf full of books nearby, but based on a completely unscientific estimate, William Faulkner's Pylon, which I never reshelved after watching the Douglas Sirk film adaptation, The Tarnished Angels) happened to be closest by an inch to spare over Bill Nichols' Representing Reality. The Faulkner sentence was also too good to pass up: "'I will eat and sleep on Roger and I will eat and sleep on you.'"

Posted by chuck at 12:41 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

February 17, 2005

Blog Block

I'm suddenly finding it incredibly difficult to compose blog entries, and the longer I wait to blog something, the less likely I am to blog it. I've had this kind of blog block before, also during a pretty stressful time (I'd rather not talk here about the things that are stressing me out), so I know that I'll get back into the groove soon. In a way, I think this post is simply intended to get me back into the habit of blogging and to remind me that I've had similar periods of uncertainty in the past.

Posted by chuck at 9:59 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

February 13, 2005

Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst

I caught Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (IMDB, the title must have been changed in order to avoid confusion with a recent Oscar contender) on Friday night, but haven't really had the opportunity to write a review until now (and even now I should be working). Guerilla tells the story of the brief history of the Symbionese Liberation Army, focusing to some degree on the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and Stone's film effectively captures the media frenzy inspired by the "Bonnie and Clyde" antics of the SLA, a fantasy he gently (though somewhat obviously) mocks with his inserts of clips from various Robin Hood films, including an animated Disney version from 1973.

In telling this story, Robert Stone chose not to interview with Patty Hearst, focusing instead on other members of the SLA and San Francisco journalists who covered them. The result is fairly haphazard, with Stone ultimately portraying Hearst as a shallow Stepford wife-meets-spoiled heiress, which seems more than a little unfair (the film's final shot, presenting footage of her on a morning talk show, portrays her as completely shallow). But what struck me as interesting about Stone's film is its connection to the recent doc, The Weather Underground, which focused on another late-60s/early 70s terrorist group. It seems significant that documentary filmmakers are revisiting these topics at this point in American history and that both documentaries seem to treat their subjects as charismatic media figures rather than as political figures. Guerilla is also far less nostalgic and less ambiguous in its portrayal of these radical political groups. Whether that's due to the specific actions of the SLA or some other factor is a little unclear.

Steven Holden's New York Times review is a little more generous than mine, with Holden noting that the film does trace the source of the SLA's political commitments via footage of Kent State and Vietnam. And it may also be that the group's political commitments were shallow. As one of the interviewees notes, not in apology as much as explanation, the members of the SLA were all very young, mostly in their early- or mid-20s when they kidnapped Hearst, who was herself only 19.

Posted by chuck at 10:38 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Million Dollar Baby

Quick reviews tonight as I'm still in the midst of my first grading marathon of the new year. Like Chris, I was mildly underwhelmed by Million Dollar Baby (IMDB). I certainly understand the film's appeal to the critics, many of whom have compared Eastwood's recent work to either the auteurist films of the 1970s or classical Hollywood. The film's cinematography (by Tom Stern) is impressive, his use of shadows adding to the grittiness of the story, and Dunn's gym effectively conveys his own sense of resignation as he reaches the end of his career. And the final shot (which I won't reveal) almost rescued the film for me.

Like Chris, I also found myself annoyed by the film's "dodgy class-regional politics," especially when it came to the portrayal of Danger, the mentally challenged Texan who hangs out at Frankie Dunn's (Clint Eastwood) gym. I tend to have problems with using mentally challenged characters for comic relief and/or easy emotional payoffs, and although his character is relatively minor (the film could have done just fine without him), I think Danger serves precisely that function. Hillary Swank's Maggie, the female boxer Frankie trains after losing his best male fighter, also seemed rooted in class stereotytpes (scrappy hillbilly with a heart of gold). The film also left the issue of race somewhat unexplored, other than a brief anecdote Eddie (Morgan Freeman) relates about his first meeting with Frankie in Mississippi. Perhaps Million Dollar Baby just wasn't going to live up to the Oscar-fueled hype that I've been hearing for the last few weeks, but I simply found Maggie too undeveloped and many of the film's explorations of class, gender, and race (and how these categories relate) to be insufficiently explored (Cynthia offers an insightful reading of Eastwood's exploration of gender). Million Dollar Baby is still a solid film, well worth seeing in the theaters, but not quite as good as the hype. I'd like to write a longer, more reflective review later, but things are kind of crazy right now.

By the way, did anyone else out there find Morgan Freeman's voice-over to be unnecessary and overdone? I know there's a clear motivation for it at the end of the film, but in a few places, the voice-over seemed to be trying too hard or to be explaining too much.

Posted by chuck at 10:00 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

February 10, 2005

Gunner Palace

During a brief statement before tonight's screening of Gunner Palace (IMDB), filmmaker Michael Tucker claimed that one of his goals in making the film was to avoid being overtly political, to "leave politics out of the film." While I am inevitably suspicious of such claims of political neutrality, I found watching Gunner Palace to be an incredibly valuable experience, but watching it with an audience that included the filmmaker was utterly compelling and sometimes quite troubling (I'll try to explain why in a few minutes). Tucker has also been promoting the film by conducting screenings near military bases in such cities as Columbus, Georgia, indirectly communicating that he believes soldiers and veterans to be one of his most important audiences, and that audience captured for me in vivid detail some major questions about the politics of representation.

The film itself is an incredible achievement, immersing the spectator in the everyday life of a group of soldiers stationed in one of Uday Hussein's palaces. Tucker vividly portrays the absurdity of the soldiers living in the palace as soldiers relax by the palace swimming pool, oblivious to the sounds of war in the distance. The artificial grandeur, augmented by Uday's garish tatses, also provides some bitter humor. Other moments in the film do convey that Tucker is far from politically neutral. During one scene a soldier sarcastically displays the Humvee armor his unit bought off an Iraqi junk dealer, his comrades actually rolling on the ground laughing at the dark humor. A follow-up voice-over of Donald Rumsfeld pledging to increase the military budget doesn't hide Tucker's disdain for people who support the military in their words but not necessarily in their actions.

But Gunner Palace is at its best during two distinct, but recrrent, elements. First, Tucker carries his handheld camera during several of the soldiers' missions into Baghdad. The jostling camera, the sudden movements in the streets, and the long takes without a cut suggest that anything could happen. Bags of garbage in the street suddenly appear threateneing because they might hide an improvised explosive device (or IED). Men and women who seemed helpful yesterday are now conspiring against the soldiers. The film's lack of a clear narrative--the plot is chronological, but presents no specific mission or goal--only adds to the sense that it's not entirely clear why the soldiers are there or what they can do to make things better.

Second, Tucker allows the soldiers to speak for themselves, and for the most part we hear from low-level soldiers, not the officers who have been trained in military PR-speak to provide the answers we want to hear. These are regular folks who just want to go home and want to try to portray something about their everyday lives, as impossible as that goal might be. The soldiers who speak are poets, free-style rappers, and class clowns. Although they constantly try to describe their experiences, they are all acutely aware of the fact that we're not getting their stories on the six-o'clock news. While I can talk about the politics of representation, the difficulty of conveying one's experience, these soldiers are living it. As one soldier notes, "After the movie's over, you'll get your popcorn out of the microwave, and you'll forget about me." And, of course, to some extent he's right. Another adds, "For y’all this is just a show, but we live in this movie."

As Tucker himself notes, the film inevitably focused on these issues of representation and mediation. He notes

The longer I stayed, the more it became their movie—one laced with cinematic déjà vu. At times, it didn’t feel like I was shooting a documentary, rather a war movie that we have all seen a dozen times. For the older officers and NCOs it was M*A*S*H. They brought aloha shirts for poolside BBQs. For others it was Platoon and Full Metal Jacket—you could see it in the way they rode in their HUMVEES. One foot hanging out the door—helicopters with wheels. For the teenagers, it was Jackass Goes to War.
Of course the clearest referent was Apocalypse, Now, especially during one scene in which the soldiers play "Flight of the Valkyres" while on a mission. This comparison is also echoed through the director's voice-over, which I found unnecessarily dramatic.

And this comparison to Apocalypse Now is where I struggled most with my reaction to the film. I couldn't quite shake the idea that Tucker's film--far from being politically neutral--was actually politically ambivalent in Frank Tomasulo's useful phrase. I don't have Tomasulo's essay handy, but in my vague recollection, I'm taking Tomasulo's description of Apocalypse to mean that the film yields a multitude of political readings, both pro and anti-war, a description that might apply to Gunner Palace as well. One audience member commented that he couldn't imagine the Pentagon being offended by anything in the film, perhaps wilfully ignoring the critique of Rumsfeld, but noticing the film's sympathy with the grunt soldiers. An Iraq War veteran in the audience read the film as anti-war because it failed to show the "positive effects" of the war, a position challenged by an officer who had been stationed in Gunner Palace and joined Tucker at tonight's screening. Another audience member had the rather troubling response that the number of dead and wounded in Iraq didn't compare to the numbers in previous wars, prompting an immediate emotional response from several veterans in the audience. Such reactions, in my reading, suggest that the film is far from neutral in its content. It's difficult not to identify with the soldiers, especially given the use of continuity and POV editing that aligns our gaze with that of the soldier. And while Tucker is careful to present the confusion and disorientation any war will create, we don't ever see things from the perspective of Iraqi citizens even though many of the soldiers clearly sympathize with them. After writing this review, I'm more convinced than before that I've just seen an incredibly complex, nuanced, challenging film. I'm not entirely sure I've come to any conclusion about it, but I also can't recommend this film enough. It may be the most thoughtful and thought-provoking film I've seen to come out of the Iraq War so far.

Update: Blackfive's review seems to support my claim that Gunner Palace is "politically ambivalent." It's also worth noting that the MPAA has seen fit to give Gunner Palace an R rating, a ruling which Palm Pictures is currently appealing. I'd imgine this appeal will likely fail, in part because of the film's complicated politics, which is a shame because GP should be required viewing for teenage boys and girls who may soon face a decision about whether or not to serve in the military.

Update II (2/24): David Ansen offers a similar reading of Gunner Palace, arguing that the film presents material that "will confirm and confound both right and left" (thanks to GreenCine for the link).

Update III (3/5): Also check out Cynthia Fuchs' review of Gunner Palace, which makes the connection to Michael Herr's Dispatches, which seems crucial to my reading of the film via the mediated lens of Apocalypse Now.

Posted by chuck at 11:27 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Experimental Films

Several days ago, Matt pointed to this interesting experimental multimedia project.

Meanwhile, Wiley Wiggins links to four ealy medical films. No conclusions here. I just found both links sort of interesting.

By the way, I'll be seeing Gunner Palace tonight in a last gasp of freedom before my first grading marathon of the semester.

Posted by chuck at 1:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Miracle Workers and Million Dollar Babies

Over the last several months, I've been quietly admiring Frank Rich's New York Times columns. His columns alalyze the intersections between political and popular culture in refreshing and insightful ways. Today's column, in which Rich addresses the surprising controversy over Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby is no excpetion. According to the critics, Eastwood's film, which I haven't seen, endorses euthanasia, and conservative critics and pundits have been pounding this point home on talk radio. Like Rich (and Clint Eastwood himself), I find it odd that the man who played Dirty Harry and held elective office as a Republican has become a target of these conservative critics. I also find it strangely inconsistent that these critics are railing against the cinematic representation of one death on-screen when the number of dead people in Iraq doesn't seem. But that's another story.

But what I also found surprising, and somewhat disturbing, from Rich's column is the brief mention of a planned new show called Miracle Workers to be aired on ABC. According to another New York Times article, Miracle Workers focuses on a team of medical professionals who scour the country looking for people who need urgent medical care but cannot afford to pay for it. The show was produced by the same people who brought us Blind Date, but the creators promise that the show will feature no competition or contests. After all, people's lives are at stake here, ladies and gentlemen. We wouldn't want to do anything crass or exploitative. This show is just about taking care of people. Then again, a subtext of such a TV show might read: Why don't these people have health care in the first place? Where is the outrage that said sick people must rely on "miracle workers" in order to get the mediacl treatment they deserve? Of course, they get to be on a reality TV show. That makes them pretty lucky, I guess.

Posted by chuck at 11:36 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 6, 2005

Moolaadé

I caught Moolaadé (IMDB), the most recent film by Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene, Friday night and found it to be a very impressive film. Moolaadé focuses on the practice of female circumcision in a remote village in Burkina Faso. The film opens with four girls who flee the purification ritual, turning to Collé, a woman in their village known to oppose the practice. Collé offres the girls "moolaadé," a kind of sanctuary that will ensure their protection. Like Roger Ebert, I fear that a rough sketch of the film's plot might discourage viewers from actually seeing Moolaadé, but the film is well worth watching if it happens to make it to your community.

In many ways, Moolaadé is about issues of modernization, with battery-powered radios intersecting with the ancient rituals of the village. The women clearly treasure the radios, seeing it as a lifeline to the world outside their village, but when Collé and several of the other women begin to resist the traditional practices, the men in the community collect the radios, piling them in front of the village's mosque and setting fire to them in a beautifully composed juxtaposition. Collé, one of the more compelling characters I've seen in some time, brings a great deal of pleasure to her resistance (see the Bright Lights Film Jornal review), dancing and singing with the girls she is protecting, though later in the film she is forced to pay dearly for her actions, taking a beating from her husband, who has been coerced by elders in the viallage into enforcing his power over her. Her ability to endure this punishment prevents the film from falling into the trap of pitying the characters.

I think that part of what made the film work for me was Sembene's ability to generate genuine suspense, and until the end of the film, I was uncertain how things would play out (a quality also noted by James Berardinelli). Few of the characters were purely villainous. Even the most traditional characters act primarily out of a fear of change.

I've been having a difficult time reviewing this film, in part, I think, because of my own awareness of my status as a viewer consuming these images of another culture. I'm not sure how to respond to the film's presentation of the crisis between modernization and globalism against the village's traditions, many of which are quite clearly harmful, especially to young girls and women. These contradictions are played out in the character of Mercenaire, a traveling merchant who provides the women with their precious radio batteries, but who also quietly sells condoms and displays posters promoting AIDS awareness. But at the same time, I'm not sure the film delves deeply enough into the harmful consequences of globalization and modernization on these villages.

If any of my other readers have seen the film, I'd love to hear your take. While I really liked the film, I haven't entirely resolved my interpretation of it.

Posted by chuck at 12:46 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 5, 2005

Special Screening of Gunner Palace

Atlanta readers may be interested to learn that there will be a FREE screening of Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker's Gunner Palace (IMDB) on Thursday, February 10, at 7 PM at the Midtown Art Theater on Monore Drive. The documentary focuses on a military unit, nicknamed "the Gunners," stationed in one of Uday Hussein's old palaces, and the film shows how the soldiers find ways to deal with their sometimes overwhelming everyday experiences. Director Michael Tucker and Iraq war veteran, Capt. John Powers, will be present at the screening.

I picked up a few extra passes (although I assume that obtaining passes won't be that difficult), so if you're interested in attending, email me at chutry[at]msn[dot]com or leave a comment.

Posted by chuck at 11:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 4, 2005

Benjamin Smoke

Intrigued by a discussion of Lost Book Found (still haven't been able to track down the film here in Atlanta), I rented Jem Cohen's documentary, Benjamin Smoke. The documentary focuses on Benjamin, an openly gay, HIV-positive, speed freak rock performer from Atlanta who died in his 30s. Benjamin's music channels the gravelly vocals of Tom Waits but mixes in the influences of punk (Patti Smith is a major influence), jazz, and even country. Given Benjamin's rock-and-roll lifestyle, it would have been easy to turn his story into a VH1-style Behind the Music morality play (as this unsigned review points out), but Cohen handles this story much more effectively, allowing Benjamin to speak for himself, and Benjamin is a natural in front of the camera, a great storyteller, speaking to us as if he is conversing over coffee with an old friend. Cohen provides little narration, and doesn't pretend to offer a total picture of Benjamin. While the film is certainly biographical, it resists offering anything that would resemble the final word on this fascinating performer.

But what I found more interesting about the film is it's treatment of Benjamin's place within an Atlanta culture that itself seems to be on the verge of being lost. Benjamin lived much of his adult life in the eccentric community of Cabbagetown, where most of the town's residents worked for a cotton mill until it closed in 1970, and the Cabbagetown community became populated by local legends such as Benjamin and Kelly Hogan, lead singer of the Jody Grind. This local culture is now fading away as the neighborhood is gradually being transformed by gentrification. The film captures much of this local culture incidentally, with archival footage of local performer, Deacon Lunchbox, as well as footage taken inside Atlanta's notorious alterna-hip strip club, the Clermont Lounge. But Cohen also has a wonderful eye for everyday objects, for allowing the camera to linger a few extra seconds on some beads hanging in a window or a piece of furniture or a run-down store front or some kids playing in their homemade go-carts. Benjamin leads us through a Cabbagetown tunnel heavily decorated in graffiti (unfortunately the film can't do this particular space justice). These images all present a weird Atlanta that I found absolutely fascinating and suggest that the familiar images of the city--the Peachtree Plaza, the Bell South building--are part of another city altogether, with the Atlanta skyline appears as a mere distant backdrop.

The film itself is visually rich, as A.O. Scott points out, combining photographs, archival footage, and black and white and color film. The DVD includes several nice extras, including more footage of Benjamin's band, Smoke, performing in the Clermont Lounge and other local venues, and Jem Cohen and co-director Peter Sillen use these images to preserve a weird Atlanta that could have easily been lost.

By the way, G Zombie also mentioned the film a few weeks ago when he was recommending music by two of Benjamin's bands, Smoke and the Opal Foxx Quartet (and if you haven't heard their music, you absolutely should).

Posted by chuck at 3:58 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 3, 2005

General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait

I finally took the sage advice of Jonathan (scroll down to the comments) and the cinetrix and rented General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait last night, and as they both note, Idi Amin is a fascinating subject. General, directed by Barbet Schroeder, portrays Idi Amin as utterly sociopathic but also as oddly innocent and charming (see David Ehrenstein's Critereon essay). Schroeder made the film with General Idi Amin's complete co-operation, and although Amin clearly seems to think that the documentary will be sympathetic, Schroeder's camera constantly reminds us that the audiences that seem to adore him are clearly fabricated.

There is a frighteningly humorous scene in which Amin sends a telegram to the leader of Tanzania, telling him, "I want to assure you that I love you very much and if you had been a woman I would have considered marrying you although your head is full of gray hairs. But as you are a man that possibility does not arise." According to the cinetrix, Amin demanded that the scene be cut from the film, and Schroeder complied at the time, restoring the footage after he was deposed. There are scenes showing Idi Amin gleefully playing the accordion (Schroeder even gives Amin a credit for composing the film's music). There are scenes showing General Amin dissing other world leaders, including Henry Kissinger. And yet the film constantly reminds us that Amin was one of the most brutal dictators in recent history. Fascinating, disturbing stuff. A really amazing documentary.

Posted by chuck at 9:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 2, 2005

Blog Talk

I'm giving a brief talk this afternoon on blogging at an electronic pedagogy seminar for first year Brittain Fellows here at Georgia Tech. One of the major points I'm planning to adress will be how blogs function differently in more topical courses, such as my Rhetoric and Democracy class, and my literature- and film-based courses. I've noticed, in particular, that I tend to post more frequently in these topical courses, while in "Spectacle, Surveillance, Control," the blog has done little other than serve as a slightly more public course management tool.

I'll also spend some time talking about the advantages and disadvantages of having students keep individual blogs versus having small group blogs and some of the course manaagment issues that arise from using blogs rather than other course management tools. At any rate, here are some links to previous courses where I've used blogs:

If you, my readers, see anything I should add or emphasize, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments.

Last minute update: Here's a graduate student seminar paper that discusses a variety of ways in which English instructors have used blogs in their classes.

Posted by chuck at 2:11 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 1, 2005

Documentary Dilemmas

Several months ago, Brian Flemming mentioned a rather frustrating dilemma for documentary filmmakers, noting that "a corporation can (and often will) sue simply because you caught a trademark or copyrighted media product in the background of a shot." Flemming notes that the ubiquity of corporate logs can make filming certain kinds of documentaries difficult at best.

Now the cinetrix reports another documentary dilemma. The civil rights doc Eyes on the Prize is unavailable on video and TV "because of expired copyright licenses." These expired licenses include footage of a group of people singing "Happy Birthday" to Martin Luther King, Jr. The producers of the film cannot afford to renew these licenses, so the film may not be re-released for some time. The good news: A group called Downhill Battle has called for public screenings of the documentary on February 8 at 8 p.m. I'll be attending the Atlanta screening, and hope that other bloggers can attend screenings in their communities.

The cinetrix also makes some important points about the fragility of video and the potential for films such as Eyes to disappear from public consciousness, so be sure to take a look at her entry on the screenings.

Posted by chuck at 11:48 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Post-Iraq Invasion Films

Too tired to write a longer post, but this Yahoo article about a showcase of post-Iraq invasion films at the Rotterdam Film Festival is pretty cool. Among the highlights: Salam Pax got some tutoring from the folks at The Guardian and made the movie Baghdad Blogger. Also worth noting is Underexposure, the first feature film made after the invasion using 1980s-era Kodak film cobbled together from the former Ministry of Culture building.

Posted by chuck at 11:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack