the chutry experiment

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February 28, 2006

Washington DC Independent Film Festival

I'm not sure how I missed the fact that the Washington DC Independent Film Festival begins this week and runs through March 12. Too bad I'll be out of town all weekend, but if you're in DC, be sure to check out a few of these films.

Posted by chuck at 11:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

After Innocence

"Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die. What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having?

Because of all these reasons, today I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates."--Former Illinois Governor George Ryan

When I was living in Illinois a few years ago, the state's death penalty came under intense scrutiny. It turned out that several death row inmates had been wrongully convicted, many of them spending decades on death row for crimes they did not commit. As he was leaving office, Governor George Ryan commuted all Illinois death row sentences to life in prison until the state's legal system could resolve the problems that were producing false convictions. As a strong opponent of the death penalty and an observer of the legal system's inequities, I couldn't help but appreciate Ryan's gesture. But legal exoneration is often only the beginning of the story, and Jessica Sanders' compelling documentary, After Innocence (IMDB) asks an easily forgotten question: what happens after these innocent people are released from prison? How do they renew lives that were disrupted by the false conviction?

Innocence features seven cases of men who were wrongfully convicted of crimes, and in all cases the men discuss the powerful whirl of emotions and the overwhelming sensory overload that greets them when they emerge from prison. In almost every case, the men find themselves stepping back into the world at a tremendous financial disadvantage because they spent the years they would have been attending college, learning a trade, or serving in the armed forces trapped in prison. Many of them spent every dime of savings and their parents' savings paying legal bills to fight their conviction. As Vincent Moto notes at one point, his parents should be retired and living in the Poconos. Instead, they're forced to work far past the age of retirement. Others describe the difficulty of finding work when the conviction hasn't been fully erased from their record, while Dennis Maher discusses the difficulties of explaining his situation to women he'd like to date.

One subtext of the documentary is the promotion of the Innocence Project, a campaign started by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld in 1992 to support te use of DNA evidence to oveturn false convictions. Of course this is only the beginning of securing justice, and more recently there has been an effort to seek financial restitution for those who are wrongfully convicted. In fact, in some cases, when these men were released, they were given little more than a bus ticket home, with many of them moving back into their parents' homes years after adulthood.

In all cases, their stories are devastating, but Sanders' subjects show surprisingly little anger about what happened to them. In fact, Maher somehow manages to forgive the original prosecutor of his case immediately after he walks out of prison a free man. Perhaps this is a conscious strategy on Sanders' part to underplay their anger, which sometimes bubbles just beneath the surface, but I'll admit that I couldn't have shrugged off losing years of my life so easily.

At the same time, several reactions seemed fairly consistent. In many cases, the men would describe what might be described as feelings of emasculation. Soto, in particular, explains that he feels like he hasn't lived up to his obligations as a father, who should provide for his children. Others describe the uncanny experience of returning to the community they called home and feeling like an outsider. Scott Hornoff, while driving through the town he had called home, reflects that "I feel like a foreigner." Others describe the sensory overload that they confront when leaving prison, with Nick Yarris, who was prohibited from speaking during his first two years on death row, commenting that he "couldn't believe how loud the world was."

I do think that the film could have benefitted from more legal argument or explanation of how the justice system often fails. Instead of getting a clear understanding of these problems, the seven stories are somewhat isoalted from each other, and some tighter connections might have resolved this concern. But when one of the featured exonerees, Wilton Dedge, is finally released from prison several years after his innocence has become indisputable, it's not hard to recognize some of the reasons for corruption. After all, if Dedge is released, it sets a precedent for other criminal convictions in Florida where DNA evidence was not used. Drawing these connections more explicitly, where possible, could have made the film an even stronger argument.

I caught After Innocence at DC's Provisions Library, where Taryn Simon's amazing photography series, The Innocents, is currently featured. If you can't make it for the film screening, I'd certainly recommend spending a few minutes viewing Simon's work.

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"No Crap. Okay Maybe a Little...But It's Your Crap."

Quick link to the upcoming documentary, 24 Hours on Craigslist, which is starting to get some buzz. For my talk at SCMS, I've been thinking about online social networks (Facebook, Craigslist, MySpace, Live Journal, and others) and how they intersect with or upset questions pertinent to film studies.

I won't have time to see the documentary before giving the paper, but it looks really interesting. Here's an ABC article on Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. Links via Lost Remote.

Update: Lost Remote also points to the news that CBS has asked YouTube to pull down a video clip of the CBS news report on Jason McElwain, the autistic high school basketball player who had one of the most incredible hot streaks imaginable, sinking six three-pointers in less than three minutes. The clip, which is utterly irresistible, received at least 1.2 million views on YouTube before it was pulled.

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After Innocence Screening

I managed to score admission to a press screening of After Innocence (IMDB) tonight. Innocence tells the story of people who were wrongfully imprisoned, often for years, only to be exonerated years later through DNA evidence.

I think the film has already screened here in DC (maybe while I was out of town for a conference?), but it will be shown to the public twice this week at the Provisions Library (located near the Dupont Circle Metro stop), a resource here in DC focusing on the arts and social change. Screenings are scheduled for March 1 and March 3 at 7 PM.

Posted by chuck at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 27, 2006

"Buy Us Back Chirac"

Photos of some politically interesting Mardi Gras floats, courtesy of RebeccaB. Not sure I have anything to add, but the floats are a pretty humorous, if occasionally morbid, critique of the incompetent handling of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

Posted by chuck at 2:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Spring Break Monday Linkfest

It's spring break here at CUA, which means it's really time to catch up on all of that work I should have been doing several weeks ago. I'm still wrapping up my talking points for my workshop panel at SCMS, but GreenCine Daily (as usual) provided a few links I wanted to mention or to stoer for future reference.

First, a link to an entry on the WFMU blog, "Videomania," which points to quite a few online video resources I hadn't encountered. Lukas also offers a handy guide to the strengths and weaknesses of many of the popular video hosting websites, including iFilm and Veoh, among others (worth noting in this context: the IP issues that came up recently when NBC forced YouTube to pull down a popular Saturday Night Live skit that had been stored there. But the coolest aspect of Lukas' entry: he has links to dozens of online videos to support your procrastination habit.

I've been hammering the point that there were no women among the best director nominees and the fact that there have been only three women nominees for best director in Oscar's 78-year history. The Guerilla Girls and MoviesByWomen.com have erected a billboard in Hollywood to remind us of these depressing facts. Sharon Krum covers this story in more detail in The Guardian.

Update: One more link, via Wiley Wiggins: Democracy Player, which allows viewers to "download and watch all the best internet TV shows and videos in one powerful application."

Update 2: Here are some basics on Machinima, as well as a link to the politically interesting French Democracy film that was making the rounds for a while back in November. And, while I'm thinking about it, here's a Boing Boing pointer to an upcoming DIY film festival.

Update 3: Okay, technically it's Wednesday but Mark Caro's discussion of the IFC-Comcast deal to release several IFC films simultaneously on pay-per-view and in theaters is worth noting (thanks to the Risky Biz blog).

Update 4: Even later on Wednesday, but this Washington Post article on the role of iTunes in creating online communities is worth noting, as is their discussion of Derek Slater and Mike McGuire's "Consumer Taste Sharing Is Driving the Online Music Business and Democratizing Culture," although I'm generally skeptical about claims regarding the democratization of media.

Posted by chuck at 12:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Digital Product Placement on TV

Just a quick link to this Yahoo article on the use of "digital product placement" on the show Yes, Dear. In a recent episode of the show watched by millions of people (I'll get to that in a minute), a box of Kelloggs crackers was digitally painted onto a coffee table.

This practice is a relatively obvious response to the emergence of TiVo and other devices that allow viewers to skip commercials as advertisers continue to seek visibility for their brand images. And I'd like to note that I'm not really that interested in whether such practices are as "effective" as commercials themselves, although I think it does contribute to the commodification and branding of all (virtual) space in ways that I don't entirely welcome, naturalizing the presence of these brands and logos in our daily lives.

Perhaps what is most disturbing about this new practice is that it allows greater flexibility in terms of allowing brand images to be "altered or replaced when the show goes into reruns and off-network syndication." Thus, just as Spielberg was able to digitally edit out the threatening guns in ET, TV producers could re-sell that spot on Yes, Dear's coffee table when the push to sell Kelloggs crackers has passed. In that sense, there is the potential for a weird de-historicizing of the TV image so that the stars of that show might handle products that didn't exist when the show originally aired.

At the same time, I have to admit that I'm a little less alarmed by this news than I ought to be. After all, product placement is not an uncommon practice already, and sitcoms or TV shows such as Yes, Dear, are already so unreal that using digital technologies to insert a product into the sitcom world doesn't seem that shocking. I think I'm more alarmed by the fact that "millions" of people watch Yes, Dear.

Update: Lost Remote has more information, including a photograph of the digitally-included product.

Posted by chuck at 12:12 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 26, 2006

Silence is Golden

I've been fascinated by the reaction to the recent article by marketing professors Wagner Kamakura (Duke University), Suman Basuroy (Florida Atlantic University), and Peter Boatwright (Carnegie Mellon University), which argues that film reviewers' silence on certain films can tell us something about their opinions of those films. According to a Duke University press release, the study

finds that many film critics, faced with far too many movies to write about, tend to avoid writing reviews of bad films that they’ve seen. At the same time, a few critics, faced with the same overwhelming choice, tend to avoid reviewing good movies that they’ve watched.

The study has been widely criticzed, with Kamakura seeking to clarify their research on Poynter Online in response to these scathing comments by MCN's David Poland. It's a little difficult to develop a full reaction to the study without reading the whole thing, but several things seem problematic, at least when looking at the press release. First, they seem to describe the decision to review films as a free choice ("faced with far too many movies to write about, tend to avoid writing reviews;" "a few critics, faced with the same overwhelming choice"), which seems like an imprecise understanding of the requirements of professional reviewers. As Mark Caro points out, when a newspaper only has two or three reviewers, critics don't always get their choice about what to review, especially if they are the paper's junior critics (Ebert is suspicious of the study for similar reasons).

I'm also wondering how they handled other institutional issues, especially the complicated relationship between studios and distributors and the newspapers and magazines where these reviews are published (how, for example, might a magazine like Entertainment Weekly, owned by Time Warner, which also has a major film studio, shape who reviews what film or, more importantly, what films get reviewed?).

I'm going to refrain from criticizing their study further until I get a chance to read it. I know that university press releases can often miss the mark terribly when it comes to describing the significance of a given study. But the research does raise some interesting questions about the motivations for writing reviews or what function reviews might function in the consumption of films. In my own experience, I generally seek out independent and documentary films (you may have noticed this by now), in part because that's what I like and in part because no one is paying me to watch Date Movie.

Their follow-up study seems similarly strange. According to the press release, the researchers are "now exploring the relationship between a movie’s critical acclaim and its box office sales," with an eye towards determining which critics most affect box office. If they're planning to judge consensus grades on films against box office, such a study would seem flawed from the beginning, especially when studis will spend as much as $40 million to buy an audience for their film. Again, I want to wait until I see the study, but I'm guessing that critics likely have their greatest effect when they campaign for or promote films that might not otherwise receive a wider audience. Still, I'd be curious to hear from both film reviewers and people who read film reviews (including mine). Does the quality of a film affect whether you write about it? Or better, what motivates you to write reviews, usually for no money, on your blogs? And for those of you who read reviews, does a critic's silence on a certain film affect your perception of it? In general, how do film reviews shape your experience of or desire to see a given film?

Note: The Cinemarati discussion of this study is also worth checking out (and my questions are similar to theirs).

Posted by chuck at 6:59 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Digital and DIY

I'm working on my contribution to my workshop panel at SCMS and have found myself thinking quite a bit about the relationship between digital video (DV) and the recent DIY culture that has grown up around it, which we've certainly seen among some of my favorite film bloggers. Because this is a workshop panel, I have a little more room to speculate and point towards interesting possibilities rather than reaching conclusions (which is kind of nice). These thoughts are all over the place right now, and I'd love to hear from indie filmmakers (and other interested folks) on some of these issues.

With that in mind, I'll be tracking a few links to blog entries, websites, articles, and other materials that have been informing my thinking on these issues. I've already mentioned my interest in the buzz around My Space: The Movie and my curiosity about Dylan Avery's Loose Change, which calls into question many of the claims about the September 11 attacks (I'll try to write a short review later, but the doc does raise some interesting questions).

But as I've mentioned, I'm also very interested in the DIY community that seems to be forming in (or near) my corner of the film blogosphere. In particular, Sujewa has been incredibly active, not only in promoting his Date Number One, which I can't wait to see, but also a punk rock DIY ethos. He's also asking some important questions about whether DIY filmmaking can be a "day job," which I think is an important question when it comes to the autonomy of the filmmaker and his or her work. I'm inclined to disagree with Sujewa to some extent and suggest that it's relatively rare that a DIY movie maker can earn enough to make it a full-time gig, even if the quality of work is quite good, but I'm certainly open to hearing from others who might be more optomistic than I am.

David Lowery also discusses some of the issues at stake with regards to DIY, namely the distribution question. Of course digital distribution has been celebrated as an alternative to theatrical release, but like David (and Sujewa), I'm still pretty attached to the big screen (and here, I find David's comparison with the music industry quite helpful). David also discusses the role of a filmmaker's signature in using DIY priciples, specifically when he discusses the marketing/promotion of Mark Cuban-Steven Soderbergh experiments with "day-and-date" release for Bubble, which relied heavily on Soderbergh's reuptation as a pop experimentalist.

There's also a nice collection of links at Self-Reliant Filmmaking, where Paul Harrill has been asking some interesting questions over last few weeks. He also mentions the International Documentary Challenge, which sounds really interesting (and I think this short form can be an effective way of putting together an interesting doc).

I do have another question that may be difficult to answer: I've noticed that my digital DIY culture, is well, pretty much a boy's club. I'm certainly aware that women are doing interesting work in independent film and video, but I can't help but think that the construction of this version of DIY filmmaking has somehow been coded as male, and I'm wondering what might be producing that perception.

Finally, just a couple of additional pointers to atuthor Rick Schmidt's website, where he is proting his filmmaking manual, Extreme DV at Used Car Prices, and to the Lost Film Festival, which looks like an interesting venue.

Update: Here's some more information about Four Eyed Monsters, one of the more interesting self-distributed film projects I've encountered. Their video podcasts are highly entertaining and do a fantastic job of creating demand for the film (one of the film's directors, Susan Buice, notes that each episode of their video podcast series has been downloaded 50,000 times, which would not be an insignificant audience for a low-budget indie).

Posted by chuck at 1:32 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

February 25, 2006

Plan Nine from MySpace

Susan Carpenter has an interesting article in the LA Times on David Lehre's My Space: The Movie, a new short video satirizing the popular social networking website. Lehre's film is rapidly gaining a wide audience on the internet. In fact, in less than a month, the video, which is available for download at YouTube.com (just search for "My Space"), has already been viewed an estimated 3.3 million times.

My Space: The Movie gently parodies many of the familiar features of the website, including the narcissistic photographs and the "angles," the practice of taking self-pictures from flattering angles in order to appear more sexually attractive. I've had some problems viewing the entire film (due to downloading problems), but it looks like a fun little video and, more significantly, fits the online video medium quite well.

Lehre, who is a 21-year old self-taught filmmaker, has been able to translate his success into a development deal with MTVU, has already managed perhaps one of the biggest compliment a filmmaker can receieve: My Space: The Movie has already spawned several parodies and imitations.

Posted by chuck at 10:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 24, 2006

TV Reads

Two interesting, but unrelated articles on television that I wanted to mention: first an LA Times article on the new HBO show, Big Love (IMDB), which focuses on a polygamous Mormon family, with one husband (Bill Paxton) married to three wives (Chloe Sevigny, Jeanne Tripplehorn, and Ginnifer Goodwin). As Susie of Suburban Guerilla points out, leaders of the Mormon church are upset about the show, arguing that they banned the practice some time ago. But the Times article points out that Utah officials have confirmed that "thousands" of polygamists are "trying to fit into mainstream society." The series has the potential to introduce some interesting questions about definitions of family, but there's a degree to which it sounds like it will be replicating the male fantasy of having several young, female partners (all three wives are 10-20 years younger than Paxton).

Also wanted to throw in a quick link to this discussion of "unbundled" cable television, which would allow consumers to choose which cable stations they want to watch and to avoid paying for those they don't. If unbundled cable TV becomes a reality (and it seems likely), then I might actually become motivated enough to start getting cable again, if only to make snarky comments about series such as Big Love. The deabte is an interesting one, in part because one the FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, has sought to curb the sexual and violent programming available on cable even though it might conflict with industrial concerns (Rupert Murdoch has actively opposed the a la carte option).

One of the objections to a la carte programming has been that "niche channels" such as Black Entertainment Television and the History Channel could be hurt if they don't draw enough subscribers. While it's certainly a possibility, I'd imagine that niche channels even find a wider audience if viewers didn't have to pay for a "bundled" cable package (one of the reasons I don't have cable is that I don't wnat to pay for ESPN 2 through 7, for example). It'll be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few months.

Posted by chuck at 5:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Early Visual Media Links

I'm putting together some ideas for my SCMS workshop and came across this really useful web resource, Early Visual Media, which would have saved me a lot of time the last two weeks when I was talking with my Media and Hitsory students about daguerreotypes and other early forms of photography, as well as prot-cinematic devices such as the phenakistoscope, the magic lantern, and other optical toys (such as the thaumatrope).

I did get a chnace to show my students some of the cool materials archived on the Library of Congress website, including the amazing Farm Security Administration photos, which I could easily browse for hours, and this quick overview on the 19th century practice of taking daguerreotypes of dead family members (now that I've taught sections of Jeffery Sconce's Haunted Media and this discussion of daguerreotypes, my students think I'm way too preoccupied with death).

At some point, I do want to think about what it means that we encounter these old media outside their original context (that is, the physical/material qualities of these older media), but for now, I just want to point towards some of these valuable resources.

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Movie Mapping

Via GreenCine WFMU's Mark Allen uses Googe Earth to capture current satellite images of the locations of eleven of his favorite films. Among the films and locations: the bank from Dog Day Afternoon, the spot where Lou's Tavern from Fight Club once stood, and the high school stairs from Heathers.

David's pointer to the WFMU blog also introduced me to their very cool radio station.

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Lavishly Wettest

Via Boing Boing, A map of DC's Metro system (PDF) with all of the station names re-arranged into creative anagrams. Thus, my West Hyattsville station becomes "lavishly wettest," and I work near the "Buckaroo Land" station. My favorite anagram: Pentagon City, which became "Giant Potency."

For my Atlanta friends, There's another anagram map for Atlanta's Marta system.

Both of these anagram maps (along with several others) appeared soon after the London Underground demanded that one remixed map be pulled down (also via Boing Boing).

Posted by chuck at 11:57 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Documenting Conspiracy

I've been swamped with grading this afternoon, but just noticed David Lowery's link to the documentary Loose Change, directed by Dylan Avery. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but plan to ASAP. The film is streaming for free at Google. Looks interesting, and I'll be interested to know what others think about the film.

Posted by chuck at 12:38 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 23, 2006

A Question of Representation

William "The Gambler" Bennett and Alan Dershowitz have joined forces in The Washington Post to Attack the Press for choosing not to publish the offensive anti-Muslim cartoons that appeared in a Danish newspaper a few months ago. Ester at babblebook summarizes the basic argument far better than I could. Essentially they're arguing that "the terrorists have won because the American press refused to publish the Danish caricatures." While I've generally avoided the discussion of these caricatures in a free speech context, I think the logic of their editorial should not go unchallenged, especially when it comes to their characterization of "freedom of expression" and of what ought to be represented in the public sphere.

First, I think it's worth challenging their characterization of the media as a monolithic entity. In his foreword to The Future of Media (a great collection of essays by the way), Bill Moyers expresses his discomfort with the term, "the media," as a catch-all phrase. While Moyers is primarily addressing the distinctions between individual journalists, as a media studies scholar, i find that the phrase obscures more than it reveals, especially when it comes to distinctions between newspapers, magazines, television, radio, and other media.

In fact, their attack on the press relies upon the assumption that people who follow the news get their information only from the mass media, from the newspapers who have, correctly in my opinion, chosen not to publish the Danish cartoons. While most newspapers have made this choice, the cartoons are widely available in multiple outlets on the internet. To be sure, not everyone has access to the internet, but the cartoons would not have been disseminated so rapidly without it once they became useful as a tool for stirring up outrage.

Dershowitz and Bennett's other arguments, however, are far more insidious. While they imply on the one hand that The Media has capitulated to the terrorists, they also fault the same Media for printing stories that inconveniently call attention to the illegal and unethical actions committed by memebrs of the Bush administration in the name of a war on terror, namely the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and their practice of wiretapping without obtaining a warrant, suggesting with just a small degree of caution that such stories "could harm our allies."

Of course, they are assuming that we will forget that several major newspapers, including The Washington Post and The New York Times felt compelled to apologize for their reporting before the war because their reports accepted at face value Bush administration claims about WMD and links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden (among other issues). To suggest that mjor news outlets have effectively challenged Bush administration claims about the war, much less actively undermined that effort, seems utterly unsupportable.

They also make a false comparison between the role of watchdog journalism and the "need" to disseminate the Danish caricatures. One of the main reasons free expression is guarded so religiously is that it is an important tool in protecting against public officials who might abuse the trust voters have placed in them. While the First Amendment protects the right to publish the cartoons (I'll never argue otherwise), there's a larger issue at stake in terms of responsibility. Again, the Danish images are already widely available. Smart reporters can describe them quite effectively in their articles, so I think tolerance should win out here.

Finally, they make massive generalizations about the "Islamist street" (is that anywhere near Evangelical Avenue?), throwing around phrases such as "cartoon intifada" that reduce and trivialize the real differences among the responses to the cartoons (Ramzy Baroud's response is just one example of this). In fact, this notion of the "Islamist street" is used to portray all of the protests and protestors as violent, citing the obviously troubling signs that read, "Behead those who insult Islam." While I condemn the violent protestors, I think it's somewhat unreasonable to characterize any outraged response to these cartoons in this manner (did they have similar objections when Ann Coulter demanded after 9/11 that the US "kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity").

In short, Bennett and Dershowitz are essentially complicit with the talking points that have been repeated ad nauseum for the last four or five years, as their conclusion implies in which they imply that "they [whoever they are] hate our freedoms" when it's really our policies they hate.

Update: Just noticed that Glenn Greenwald has made a similar argument about Bennett and Dershowitz's masqerading as free press advocates when in fact they are actually attacking teh foundations of journalists' attempts to investigate and challenge the Bush administration. I still disagree with Greenwald's claim that newspapers ought to publish the offensive cartoons, but he offers an important defsense of the rights of journalists to investigate the Bush White House.

Posted by chuck at 12:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 22, 2006

SCMS Bloggers

I've already mentioned that I'll be participating in a workshop panel at this year's SCMS. The topic of the panel, "Complicating the "M" in SCMS: Internet and Contemporary Digital Studies," should open up some interesting questions, and I feel lucky to be on a panel with such cool people.

But right now, I'm just checking to see if any of my regular readers are planning to attend SCMS. And if any of those readers would enjoy meeting up for drinks at the conference. I know very little about Vancouver (it's my first time visiting what I've heard is a very cool city), so I don't have anything specific in mind. But if you're interested, leave a comment or email me. And if you have any restaurant recommendations for Vancouver, I'd love to hear those as well.

Posted by chuck at 5:13 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

DC Sounds and Images

Just a quick pointer to a couple of upcoming film and art events here in DC. First, the National Archives will be screening many of the films nominated for Oscars for best documentary, best short documentary, live action short film, and best animated short. I'll be attending the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Vancouver, but if I weren't, you can bet I'd be seeing many of these films (I've seen most of the documentary nominees and certainly recommend Murderball and the Enron documentary.

Second, it looks like the Wordherders and friends will be hitting the Ballet mécanique and Dada exhibit on Saturday, March 18. If any friends of the 'Herd wish to join us, you're more than welcome to do so.

Posted by chuck at 12:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 21, 2006

Documentary Note

Before I forget, I just wanted to mention a documentary someone recommended at last Wednesday's DC Drinking Liberally, A Blinding Flash of the Obvious, made by People for the American Way. The documentary focuses on "the successful 2004 campaign to encourage Cincinnati voters to overturn an anti-gay city charter provision approved a decade earlier" and includes a panel discussion featuring Wisconsin Congressperson Tammy Baldwin, among several others.

Posted by chuck at 5:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Talking 'Bout My Generation (of Filmmakers)

I have several stacks of grading to do over the next few days, which means I'm in full procrastination mode this afternoon. For now, I'll just quickly mention that I'm curious to read Joshua Horowitz's new book, Mind of the Modern Moviemaker: Twenty Conversations with the New Generation of Filmmakers, which compiles Horowitz's interviews with filmmakers ranging from DIY hero Kevin Smith to postmodern auteur Michel Gondry and studio faves Brett (Rush Hour) Ratner and Todd (Old School) Phillips.

As far as I can tell, it's a fairly eclectic collection of filmmakers, but the collection also begs a few questions. As far as I can tell, the collection only includes two filmmakers who are women (Karyn Kusama, who directed Aeon Flux and Patty Jenkins, who directed Monster). Because this kind of book functions as a kind of "snapshot" of the film industry, I'd be curious to know what Horowitz's selection process entailed. Karina identifies several implicit arguments in the book, specifically that the filmmakers are a "stamping a generation-specific brand of irony and self-referentiality and digital savvy." Like her, I'm a little skeptical.

Meanwhile, The Reeler offers his take on Horowitz's book and links to his blog, Better Than Fudge, and there's an interview with Horowitz at the Gothamist, where Horowitz describes his book as "something of a time capsule -- a snapshot of contemporary moviemaking today."

Posted by chuck at 3:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Reading "Sunday Morning"

I have been intrigued by the discussion of the Media Matters (MM) paper, "If It's Sunday, It's Conservative," which detects a consistent conservative slant in the Sunday morning gabfests, and while I don't have time to write about it in detail (still hoping to do that), there are one or two points I'd like to address. To a great extent, MM's research and the responses to it depend on definitional claims regarding the distinctions between "conservative" and "liberal" guests.

One example: Eric Alterman points to Vaughn Ververs' critique of Media Matters' methodology for tracking "conservative" and "liberal" guests. MM explains that they "classified each guest based on her/his general partisan or ideological orientation." Although such classifications are not always clear, this method seems relatively reasonable, and given that conservatives appear on these shows with far greater frequency than liberals, it's not unreasonable to argue that political discourse, as much as these shows contribute to it, has been shifted to the right.

Ververs seeks to complicate MM's definition by arguing that their approach fails to acknowledge one important definitional factor, what he calls "the intra-party dynamic." He notes that MM classifies Zell Miller as "conservative" for his loudly and frequently professed support of George W. Bush but then compares Miller to Sens John "Maverick" McCain and Chuck Hagel, who have been outspoken critics of the President. Several things get lost in this comparison: first, McCain has never actively campaigned against a Bush presidency to the degree that Miller campaigned against a Kerry presidency. In fact, it might be argued that both McCain and Hagel are criticizing the Bush administration from what they regard as a more principled conservative position. So even if McCain criticizes Bush, he's not doing so from a liberal or progressive position.

The "pundit" argument is a little more complicated, and I think Ververs may be right to demand some clarification of the terms used to classify one pundit as "conservative" and another as "moderate." While I'd agree with the MM classifications of David Brooks as conservative (yes, I know he supports gay marriage, but he's reliably conservative on most other issues) and Broder as moderate (see Alterman's What Liberal Media? on Broder), those definitions should be as clear as possible.

Note: Media Matters' Paul Waldman has a response to Ververs that pretty much reinforces my point, and they make a strong case for explaining the pundit gap.

Posted by chuck at 1:12 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Narrating the War on Terror

In the comments to my entry on Frank Miller's planned Batman-Al Qaeda narrative, G. Zombie mentioned a New York Times article on other graphic novels and comics series that plan to feature war on terror plots. The Marvel "Civil War" series seems particularly compelling:

Along the way, Marvel will unveil its version of Guantánamo Bay, enemy combatants, embedded reporters and more. The question at the heart of the series is a fundamental one: "Would you give up your civil liberties to feel safer in the world?"

Of course comics have a long history of dealing with real-world issues, as the many World War II comics that demonized Nazis illustrate, so I'll be interested to see how this series plays out.

I've also found myself intrigued by the recent discussion of Robert Ferrigno's Prayers for the Assassin, an alternate-reality thriller set in the year 2040 that has been promoted or reviewed relatively widely on some prominent political blogs. The basic premise:

THE YEAR IS 2040. New York and Washington are nuclear wastelands. The nation is divided between an Islamic Republic across the north and the Christian Bible Belt in the old South. The shift was precipitated by simultaneous, suitcase-nuke detonations in New York City, Washington, and Mecca, a sneak attack blamed on Israel, and known as the Zionist Betrayal. Now alcohol is outlawed, replaced by Jihad Cola, and mosques dot the skyline. Veiled women hurry through the streets. Freedom is controlled by the state, paranoia rules, and rebels plot to regain free will…

In this tense society beautiful young historian Sarah Dougan uncovers shocking evidence that the Zionist Betrayal was actually a plot carried out by a radical Muslim now poised to overtake the entire nation. Sarah’s research threatens to expose him, and soon she and her lover, Rakkin Epps, an elite Muslim warrior, find themselves hunted by Darwin, a brilliant psychopathic killer. Rakkin must become Darwin’s assassin—a most forbidding challenge. The bloody chase takes them from the outlaw territories of the Pacific Northwest to the anything-goes glitter of Las Vegas—and culminates dramatically as Rakkim and Sarah battle to reveal the truth to the entire world.

While Tom Tomorrow compares Prayers to Robert Harris' Fatherland, the first association I have is Philip K. Dick, especially his underrated Man in the High Castle. I'm very curious to read Prayers, though it will probably have to wait for several weeks (I do have a long flight to and from Seattle for SCMS in a few days, so maybe then), but both Tbogg and Tomorrow's comments about the novel's politics are intriguing. While the book has sometimes been presented as "anti-Muslim warblogger porn," in part because of Ferrigno's blog, both Tbogg and Tomorrow see something more complicated going on politically.

I have to run to campus and meet with some students, but I've noticed that I'm writing about/thinking about this topic a lot lately. Maybe there's a conference paper or article in this issue?

Update: Here's a CNN article about Prayers. Interesting to note that Ferrigno came from a fundamentalist Christian background that he left as a teenager. The CNN article also points to this mock news website set in a world not unlike that described in Ferrigno's novel.

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February 19, 2006

Legoland Security Administration

Via Mark Crispin Miller, a new Lego toy, a "surveillance truck," which allows police to use satellite dishes to intercept signals "from all over the world." At the risk of driving traffic that way, here's one website that is selling the truck.

I'll admit that I'm fascinated and troubled by these children's toys that condition them to police state tactics, or in the case of this George Bush action figure, promote Bush's triumphalist militarism.

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Manderlay

I went to see Lars von Trier's provoactive new film, Manderlay (IMDB), last night because of this negative review in the Washington Post (found via Risky Business). You see, the Post's reviewer, Philip Kennicott, implies that because von Trier has never stepped foot in the United States, he is not in a position to diagnose its social problems, specifically the history of slavery and racism in the United States. James Berardinelli is more explicit on this topic (although I didn't read his review until after seeing the film), arguing that "in order to be able to criticize something, you have to have first-hand familiarity with it. Von Trier has never lived in the United States.... But that doesn't stop him from attacking the fabric of the United States' society." Such ad hominem attacks say little about the content of the film and miss a larger point about the hegemonic power of the United States and its popular culture worldwide. Von Trier, as most reviewers will observe, seems to relish the role of provocateur, as his Dogme 95 Manifesto

While I'd agree that Manderlay stumbles in places, both of these reviews miss the degree to which von Trier is trading in representations in this film, intentionally pushing the limits of cultural caricatures through exaggeration and embellishment. My best approximation for describing this method would be to suggest that the film works as if German playwright Bertholt Brecht remade D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation. If Griffith was "writing history with lightning" to use President Woodrow Wilson's notorious phrase, von Trier is unwriting it, or rewriting it perhaps, with artificial lighting.

The first point to make about the film is its deliberate staginess (one reviewer compares it to a Thornton Wilder play, which isn't unfair, but Brecht is clearly an influence). The film opens in 1933, as we see Grace Mulligan (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her gangster father (Willem Dafoe), trekking across the country in a convoy of cars. That the cars move across a map of the sketched on a barren stage, with a giant Statue of Liberty drawn onto New York City, sets us up for the film's allegorical commentary.

Grace and her father arrive in Manderlay, a plantation in Alabama that continues to practice slavery seventy years after it was ostensibly abolished by the Civil War. When Grace witnesses a black man, Timothy (Isaach De Bankolé of Ghost Dog fame), her charitable instincts are tapped, and she insists on staying at Manderlay until she can ensure that the "slaves" have achieved liberation. While such a premise allows von Trier to attack southern institutionalized racism, Grace is not portrayed as entirely innocent either. When she tells the slaves that they should have been freed 70 years ago, Flora retorts, "Only seventy years ago?"

The plantation itself retains the staginess of the opening sequence, with its deliberately bare stage set including walls and spaces that are drawn on the stage floor, suggesting actor's marks. At the same time, the film is narrated in voice-over by John Hurt in a cheerful tone that stands in counterpoint to the sometimes brutal events that take place over the course of the film. This staginess is reflected in the acting, which follows Brecht's dictum that actors should not impersonate, but narrate (acting "in quotation marks"), with von Trier using such a method to call attention to representations as they pertain to race relations in the United States (and to a lesser extent as they comment on US forign policy in Iraq).

One of the major motifs of the film is a book, Mam's Rules that are used to govern the plantation and meant never to be sen by the slaves who work there. When the plantation's matriarch (Lauren Bacall) exhorts Grace to burn the book, she refuses, thereby unintentionally extending their influence over Manderlay. Among these rules we see a classification of all the slaves into seven categories, which would allow the plantation overseer to control his charges more effectively, and by calling attention to these representations, von Trier works to challenge them. Most notably, he works to deconstruct the sexual fantasies about white women and black men that animate a project like Griffith's Birth of a Nation (in this sense, von Trier has a strange affinity with DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation).

I won't explain the plot in further detail other than to say that von Trier's film offers a complicated commentary on the history of race in the United States. The film famously closes with a montage of photographs documenting the legacy of slavery and the history of poverty and Civil Rights in the United States. The images, shown while David Bowie's "Young Americans" plays, are designed to provoke, bringing a more explicit sense of history on the narrative we have just witnessed. While I do think von Trier's film polemic is flawed (I'll grant the point that it's condescending in places and I don't think he makes his commentary on the present explicit enough), I was quite compelled by the questions Manderlay seemed to be asking.

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February 18, 2006

Saturday Afternoon Film Links

I should really be working on something else but have a few film articles and blogs that just came across my path. First, Chris Hansen, writer and director of The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Messiah, a film I reviewed a few months ago, now has a blog. Chris also teaches filmmaking at Baylor University.

Chris is also participating in the Indie Features 06 blog, another product of Sujewa's prolific blog line-up.

Also G. Zombie was kind enough to pass along this New York Times article discussing two new documentary TV series, The Sierra Club Chronicles and The ACLU Freedom Files. I don't have much to add to the article right now, but I do thnk it bodes well that these critical documentaries are getting a wider audience (the ACLU show, for example, airs on both Link TV and Court TV).

Update: And now a Saturday evening read before I dash off to see Manderlay (yeah, I know it has been getting bad reviews, but I'm a von Trier fan): I just learned about Washington City Paper writer Tricia Olszewski's Movie Babe blog.

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Cartoon Violence

Originally I had intended this post merely as a pointer to the Nation interview with Joe Sacco (linked below), but as I began to write I wanted to connect a few more dots on this issue, in part because it is so deeply linked to the issues of representation that concern me as a scholar of media studies.

Like many people, I've been thinking about the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad over the last several days (I'm not going to link to the images--you can find them easily enough). Like Manorama, I'm less interested in debates about free speech when it comes to these images, which were clearly intended as a provocation, and more interested in the degree to which these images participate in what she aptly calls "an entire visual economy which dehumanizes Muslims, and specifically, Muslim bodies, as a means of expressing and visually reinforcing western dominance."

In the interview with Joe Sacco and Art Speigelman (Maus) in The Nation, Sacco echoes this point:

To me the bigger context is that there are segments of the Muslim population around the world that have been pummeled with other images, like Abu Ghraib, that are also offensive. And you also have to see this in the context of how some Muslims around the world are viewing the actions of the US or allies of the US, for example Israel. You add all these things into the mix, and it's just another thing, another part of this ridiculous war that is being forced on people, that is supposed to be about a "clash of civilizations."

These cartoon depictions of Muhammad, who is not supposed to be depicted visually in the first place, merely extends this network of visual images that dehumanize Muslim people, most vividly represented by the Abu Ghraib photographs, which continue to leak to the public. Thus, what appears to be an overreaction is in fact part of a larger context, and while it seems plausible that the violence is far from spontaneous (Amardeep makes the point in Manorama's that the governments of several countries have encouraged this response), I think there are some reasonable questions about how visual images can be used to dehumanize other people (and I'll add here that I also find the call for anti-Semitic images deplorable). I don't condone the violence by any means, but I think it is worth expressing my objection to the process of dehumanization in which these cartoons and the Abu Ghraib photographs participate.

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Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (IMDB) is one of the best literary adaptations I've seen in some time [Edited to add: It's also one of the funniest]. But before I review Winterbottom's film adaptation of Laurence Sterne's wildly inventive metafictional novel, I should probably explain that because I majored in literature in college and have an MA in English, I'm usually ambivalent about literary adaptations. Then again, I should probably mention that before I was born, both of my parents were strongly discouraged if not explicitly prohibited from watching movies, which may explain my own enthusiasm for film. I could perhaps go back further in time or obsessively return to the moment of my birth, but then this review would never get written, and I would be unable to explain that, like Dana Stevens, I regard Winterbottom's Shandy as one of the most "faithful" adaptations I've seen in some time, to the spirit if not the letter of its literary source, especially when the film, like Sterne's novel, pursues its uneccesary digressions and its own narration.

In general expectations for literary adaptations set viewers up for disappointment, especially if you're a fan of the novel. Key scenes are deleted. Characters disappear completely. And costumes or settings are inauthentic. Winterbottom's Shandy nicely satirizes this culture of adaptation, in part by turning Steve Coogan, the lead actor in a film adaptation of Shandy, into the main character of the film. Coogan, the character, is narcissistic and competes with fellow actor Rob Brydon, who plays Tristram's Unce Toby. Coogan obsesses over his costumes, specifically worrying about how his fake nose will alter his appearance, and more importantly, that his heels don't provide him with an appropriate height advantage over his co-star, Rob, while Coogan's character also worries about who will receive top billing for the film (of course, this is familiar territory for Coogan who also plays himself in a sketch in Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes).

Winterbottom weaves between these "backstage scenes" and the attempts to make a film version of Shandy quite nicely, and what Winterbottom achieves with his film is nothing less than a meditation not simply on the possibilities of adapting the impossible but on the filmmaking process itself. Unlike Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation, which never really goes beyond the production of the screenplay itself, Shandy traces the entire moviemaking process, perhaps making it more comparable to French Lieutenant's Woman, Truffaut's Day for Night, or maybe The Player. We see the enthusiastic assistant, Jennie (Naomie Harris), gushing about Fassbinder and other German directors the "talent" pretend to know (of course,as Klawans implies, the Fassbinder allusions might run a little deeper). Later the director learns that he can film a key battle scene when Gillian Anderson agrees to appear in the film, therefore assuring more financing for the film, setting up a subtle economic commentary on how films get made (these scenes reminded me of Fellini's comment, "And the film will be finished when there is no more money left").

While I'm thinking about it, I should probably go back and mention Uncle Toby's mysterious battle injury and young Tristram's unintentional circumcision. But that might interrupt my review, so I should return to that topic later. Of course Winterbottom milks the "cock and bull" jokes as much as possible and to nice effect. Although James Berardinelli worries that Winterbottom seems "obsessed with cock," the film's obsessive returns to Uncle Toby's unspeakable war injury work quite well.

Some of the film's best scenes trade on Coogan's willingness to parody his image as a narcisstic actor, with Coogan constantly getting into petty squabbles with his co-stars and dealing with members of the tabloid press that want to report an unsavory story about this one night with a stripper. Coogan's character also bickers with his agent, dismissing a preposterous script that might tarnish his image. It's a nice commentary on the ways in which celebrity is constructed (J. Hoberman has a similar read, as does the Washington Post's Desson Thomas).

Of course, unlike Fellini's film, the movie isn't finished when the director runs out of money. Instead, like Altman's The Player, the movie is done when the cast and crew watch their first test screening. And even after the credits roll, Coogan has to demonstrate that he can do a better Pacino than his co-star, Brydon.

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February 17, 2006

Express Yourself

Commuters in Metro trains all over Washington, DC, are reading a snippet of chutry experiment wisdom today. The Washington Post Express blog log quoted (huge PDF, I'm on page 37) my entry on Frank Miller's planned Batman graphic novel. In a weird sort of way, this news totally made my day.

Update 2/18, 12:22 AM: Now those same issues of the Express are stuffed into garbage cans (and hopefully recycling bins) all over Washington, DC.

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February 16, 2006

Broadcast Noise

I'm doing the final touches on my article on war documentaries this weekend and wanted to gesure towards another project I'd like to tackle. A few months ago, I mentioned interest in David Mindich's Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News, even while expressing some suspicion towards one of Mindich's argument. Mindich was kind enough to arrange for the publisher to send me a copy, and I've been thinking about his arguments about American news-watching practices ever since (my suspicions that Mindich imagined a "golden age" of informed citizens, it turns out, weren't warranted).

I'm not yet sure what this new project will look like. I'll certainly continue thinking about these documentaries about the Iraq War by both embedded reporters and Iraqi artists and filmmakers, but more recntly, debates about the network and cable news coverage of the war and American politics in general have been attracting my attention. Eric Alterman points to an October 2003 study by the Program on International Policy Issues (PIPA), "Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War" (PDF) that raised some important questions about how the American public saw the war in Iraq much differently than the rest of the world (and as Alterman illustrates, the problems identified in that report persist to this day).

I'm also intrigued by the Media Matters report, "If It's Sunday, It's Coservative" (PDF) that offers some fairly compelling data to illustrate a conservative bias on the Sunday morning talk shows (and the reasons that such a bias is important). But I think that all of these texts, from different angles, help illuminate some of my own frustrations about politics and the news media (yes, I know that term is way too broad). I'm still sorting through these ideas. Hopefully I'll have time to write a longer post on this topic over the weekend, but if anyone has read either report (or Mindich's book), feel free to comment.

Update: Eric Alterman's Nation column offers an insightful analysis of the Media Matters report and raises one of the key points I wanted address: even without analyzing Fox's Sunday morning shows, the Media Matters folks were able to detect a strong conservative bias in Sunday morning guests.

Update 2: This WSJ.com article by Farnaz Fassihi about her experiences as a reporter covering the war in Iraq is fascinating and chilling.

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Journalism and Graphic Novels

Speaking of graphic novels, while I was at the DC Drinking Liberally event last night (featuring Washington Note blogger, Steve Clemons), someone mentioned the work of Joe Sacco, whose graphic novels look quite comeplling, in part due to their mixture of art and journalism. I'm especially curious to check out Palestine, which features an introduction by Edward Said.

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Batman to Pursue Al Qaeda

Via Risky Business, the news that Frank Miller, who also wrote the Sin City series, is revisiting the Dark Knight universe he created in the 1980s to pen a graphic novel in which Batman joins the fight against the terorists. The novel will be titled, Holy Terror, Batman! and will feature a terror attack on Gotham. What seems unusal about the planned novel, especially given Miller's far more critical work in the original Dark Knight universe, is that Miller claims that the novel will serve as "pure propaganda," in which Batman "kicks al Qaeda's ass."

Brainster's Blog has a rundown on Miller's comics and their overt political imagery, and like him, I think it's a bit too easy to ascribe a consistent political vision to Miller's artistic output. I'm curious to see Holy Terror, even if it is overt "propaganda," but I'd love to see something a bit more nuanced.

Update: Just noticed that Scott Eric Kaufman has a thoughtful post on Holy Terror.

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Documentary Links

I'm feeling a bit lazy this morning (Wednesday is typically a very long day for me), but wanted to point out a few links on documentary that are worth checking out.

First, some good news about a documentary I've been anticipating for some time. Tara Wray's Manhattan, Kansas, will have its world premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival. If any of my readers make it to SXSW, I'd love to hear your thoughts about the screening.

Second, Cynthia Fuchs' Alternet review of Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst. In my initial review of the film, I expressed some disappointment in Robert Stone's treatment of the SLA's evolution, but Fuchs makes a compelling case for arguing that Guerilla unpacks the degree to which the SLA represents one of the first moments when terrorism and television became entertwined. As Fuchs points out, in his director's commentary, Stone notes that "This really was America's first encounter with modern, media-driven terrorism." Fuchs also notes that the DVD is loaded with some intriguing extras, including 53 minutes of Patty Hearst's tapes to her parents, as well as other contemporary documentary footage (security tapes duing the Hibernia Bank robbery, etc).

Finally, I missed Darwin's Nightmare when it played in DC a few months ago, and now after reading these comments from mind the__GAP*?, I wish I had taken the time to see it.

Update: Not sure how much others make use of my categories in the sidebar, but I've finally begun to realize that "documentary" probably deserves its own category here. One of the unfortunate effects of making up categories as you go along is that some of the distinctions that seem significant initially ultimeately become somewhat unhelpful as descriptive terms (such as my cultural studies and film theory categories).

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February 15, 2006

Weird Science

Michelle Malkin and Jason Apuzzo are dismayed about the news that Paramount has decided to distrubute Al Gore's documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth (IMDB).

Apuzzo sees this as further evidence of Hollywood liberalism gone wild rather than Paramount seeking to pick up a potentially profitable film. I've addressed that issue relatively recently here, so I won't repeat my arguments on that topic.

Malkin, on the other hand, takes pains to find a couple of scientists who seem to have issues with Gore's conclusions about global warming. While two scientists hardly consititutes a consensus against a larger majority, I'm willing to entertain their arguments. But, as Sir Oolius notes, they don't really objection to Gore's basic thesis about global warming but merely want to call attention to their own research that points to additional (and important) causes for the flooding in Manila:

"While it is true that global warming could contribute to the rise, this is only in the millimeters, but the centimeters' rise could be attributed more to heavy groundwater extraction which results in subsidence, which makes it appear that the sea is invading land," he explained.

"I am not saying that we should stop helping control greenhouse gas emissions, but very, very few really know the real story about flooding in Metro Manila," he said.

"We could cry all day about greenhouse gases but if we don't regulate carefully our use of groundwater, we could be flooding faster than whatever could come from global warming."

Note tht the scientists never dispute the existence of global warming and even emphasize that we need to continue to work to reduce greenhouse gasses. Sir Oolius is also careful to note that Gore was careful to emphasize the role of local efforts and expressed his wish not to meddle in the affairs of other countries. In fact, by conducting such a media event, Gore has called attention to a rather serious problem in Manila, opening up a dialogue that should continue long after he leaves.

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February 14, 2006

Ballet mécanique in DC

Jason and Dennis have already mentioned this news, but it's worth repeating:

The infamous Ballet mécanique is coming to Washington, DC, but not in any way it's been heard before. And it's not going to be for just one performance...it's going to be played over 30 times.

George Antheil's 1925 masterwork, which was never heard in its original version (for 10 percussionists, two pianists, three airplane propellers, electric bells, siren, and 16 player pianos) until 75 years after its composition, will be presented on the mezzanine of the National Gallery of Art's East Wing every day for over two weeks, starting on March 12. Performing it will be 16 computer-controlled player grand pianos and an orchestra played entirely by robots. This means it will be the fastest, most maniacal, and--thanks to the cavernous acoustics of the giant building--the loudest Ballet mécanique ever performed.

In conjunction with a huge exhibit on Dadaist art, which runs from now through May, the Music department of the National Gallery has commissioned a Ballet mécanique installation, which will be on display and performing from March 12 through March 29. The all-mechanical orchestra will be located on the mezzanine, next to the entrance to the Dada exhibit hall. At 1:00 pm (every day) and 4:00 pm (weekdays only), the orchestra will roar into action and play a 10-minute version of the piece.

When I taught film at the University of Illinois, I used to teach French Dadaist painter Fernand Léger and cinematographer Dudley Murphy's film, Ballet mécanique, which was originally made in conjunction with Antheil's music (the collaboration was scrapped when it was realized that the music and film didn't fit), so I'm very interested in checking this out. The National Gallery of Art has some information on the Dada exhibit, which also sounds very cool.

Technorati tags: dada | antheil | washington

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February 13, 2006

Why We Fight

In Why We Fight (IMDB), director Eugene Jarecki offers a compelling and provocative analysis of why the United States is fighting a war in Iraq. In fact, Jarecki's documentary illustrates that the war in Iraq is nothing more than the extension of a logic that has been developing over the last half-century, ever since departing President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the "military-industrial complex" that was quickly forming in the aftermath of World War II and in the rise of the Cold War. While the Iraq War, backed by neo-conservatives represented in the film by Richard Perle and William Kristol, is perhaps the best illustration of the expansion of this logic, Jarecki's film is careful to demonstrate that the expansion of the military-industrial complex cannot be blamed on a single political party or group. In this sense, Jarecki's film displays an intellectual honesty that I found quite impressive even if I struggled to put all of the disparate pieces together by the end of the film.

As many critics have noted (including Stuart Klawans, in his insightful review in The Nation), Why We Fight opens with a segment from Eisenhower's famous 1961 farewell speech, in which the outgoing President warned of the dangers of the massive military build-up. In a GreenCine interview, Jarecki commented that he came across this speech while doing research for his previous documentary, The Trials of Henry Kissinger and finding himself impressed by Eisenhower's candor, " knew that it would be the stuff of the next film I would make, the starting point." In fact, Eisenhower's speech becomes something of a motif, commenting on and reinterpreting the alliances between the military, industry, and more recently, Congress and neoconservative think tanks, with the film patiently building its case that when wars are profitable, we will continue to see wars, to paraphrase Chalmers Johnson.

This kind of critique might easily lend itself to glib partisan potshots at the Cheney-Bush-Halliburton alliance, and while those potshots might be fun (and deserved), I think Jarecki has created something far more intellectually honest and far more difficult to dismiss (a point that Salon reviewer Andrew O'Hehir also raises). Why We Fight offers conservative critics of US foreign policy, such as John McCain, who generally comes across as a serious proponent of reform (although McCain's office has been highly critical of the film). Jarecki is also careful to note that members of both parties in Congress and in the Oval Office have interests in sustaining the "collusion" between the military and industry. More significantly, Why We Fight is careful to avoid reducing this historical narrative to the work of a few single indiviuals, avoiding the conspiracy stories that weaken many documentaries (including, I would argue, Jarecki's previous film).

Instead, we see that the motivations for "why we fight" cannot be reduced to a single explanation or source, and this is where Jarecki's film manages to grasp the full weight of the complex emotional and psychological reasons that might motivate people to go to war. I have noted that the military-industrial complex is almost certainly motivated by greed, but Jarecki also introduces us to Wilton Sekzer, a Vietnam veteran and retired New York police officer whose son was killed on September 11. Sekzer's grief is incredibly profound, and beliving that Saddam Hussein is partially responsible for his son's untimely death, he contacts someone within the military and asks them to write his son's name on one of the bombs to be dropped on Iraq. When Sekzer later learns that the Bush administration has misled the public, admitting that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, his disbelief and disillusionment is quite powerful (although, like Manohla Dargis, I was disappointed that Jarecki never sought to explain why so many people like Sekzer bought these lies). Jarecki also introduces us to William Solomon, a young man who seeing no other options in life after his mother passes away, joins the military. When I first saw the film, I found it difficult to connect these stories to Jarecki's lrger thesis, but I think Klawans is right to emphasize the ways in which Sekzer, Solomon, and, in a different way, retired Lieut. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, all offer three very powerful, very different explanations for why we go to war. Of course, explaining why we fight and explaining how to stop it from happening are two very different questions.

One note on the title: Many people have commented on Jarecki's borrowing (or stealing, as he freely admits) Frank Capra's title for a series of documentaries he made to rally support for American involvement in World War II, but I found Jarecki's explanation for his use of the title somewhat surprising: rather than seeing Capra's films as mere propaganda, which again is too easy, Jarecki instead aligns himself with Capra's support of the "little guy" (Mr. Smith, George Bailey) against a corporate power that threatens true democracy. It's an interesting argument, and given the film's sympathy with its "little guys," especially Sekzer, Solomon, and Kwiatkowski, his explanation makes a great deal of sense.

Update: This is about a month old, but here's a blog entry from the Huffington Post by director Eugene Jarecki.

Update: I finally found Darren's comments about Why We Fight in an old entry of mine.

Technorati tags: jarecki|documentary|whywefight|halliburton

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February 10, 2006

Untold Stories From Iraq

Earlier today, I mentioned Eric Alterman's Think Again essay on coverage of the war, but I missed his link to Paul McLeary's CJR Daily series, Dispatches from Iraq. McLeary, who spent several months as an embedded reporter, describes the ways in which many everyday stories about teh war are going unreported, in part because of the risks and expense of maintaining a staff of reporters over the course of several years.

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Friday Film and Media Reads

I'm working on some other writing projects this afternoon but wanted to make sure I don't lose these links. First, Eric Alterman's Think Again column this week, "The War Goes On, Unreported," discusses the dangers that reporters in Iraq face in bringing us news about the war, an issue that's highly pertinent to the article I'm writing on Iraq War documentaries. The kidnapping of Jill Caroll and the injuries to ABC reporter Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt have provided this story with slightly greater visiblity, but as Alterman notes, 61 journalists--42 of them Iraqis--have been killed since the start of the war. In addition, many western news organizations have been gradually reducing their staff in Iraq, making it even more difficult to get the important "everyday stories" about the war from the perspectives of those people--soldiers and civilians alike--who are living it on a daily basis.

On a related note, David at GreenCine points to the Turkish movie, Valley of the Wolves – Iraq, which is poised to break Turkish box-office records. According to a Time magazine review, the film depicts "U.S. soldiers in Iraq as they raid a wedding, machine-gun the guests, and take survivors to a prison where a Jewish doctor removes their organs for rich people in the West." The film opens with a scene based on a real-life incident in which "11 Turkish commandos were detained by U.S. troops in the Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah." The incident provoked anti-American sentiment in Turkey, apparently reflected in the film (which, oddly enough, includes actors Billy Zane and Gary Busey). I haven't seen this film, but descriptions have certainly made me curious, even if it appears to be incredibly problematic politically.

Also from GreenCine, acquarello's review of Chris Marker's fascinating 1962 film, Le joli mai, made in the spring of 1962, soon after the beginning of the end of the French war with Algeria. I haven't watched Le joli maiin about six or seven years, but now certainly want to revisit it as soon as possible.

And since I'll be watching Why We Fight later tonight, I'll go ahead and link to Susan Gerhard's review of Eugene Jarecki's doc.

Finally, a movie preview for the suspense thriller, Sleepless in Seattle.

Update: Don't know how I missed this before, but this Hannah Eaves interview with Eugene Jarecki is also well worth checking out.

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February 9, 2006

September 12th

With Hollywood studios preparing to release films depicting the September 11 tragedy, I've been thinking for some time about the ethics involved in revisiting these traumatic events, and there are legitimate concerns that some filmmakers may exploit the attacks, as this recent comment on my blog illustrates. But several films, including Spike Lee's 25th Hour (my review), have addressed the powerful grief and psychic disorientation that resulted from 9/11. Another film that belongs alonsgide Lee's film is the new independent film, September 12th (IMDB), directed by John Touhey from a screenplay he co-wrote with Mark Lickona. September 12th offers a quiet and subtle reflection on the ongoing process of mourning after 9/11.

The film opens with the Riga family in a cemetary where they are conducting a memorial service for Lori, who died in the World Trade Center, on the third anniversary of her death. Tuohy wisely chooses not to reveal much of what is being said about Lori, allowing her character to develop gradually in the reflections and conversations that take place after the service. This memorial service establishes the two primary characters, Rick (James Garrett), Lori's finace, and her brother, Frank (Joe Iacovino, in the film's strongest and most difficult performance), and the emotional complexity of memorialization. In a personal interview, Touhey, who was working in New York on 9/11, mentions that September 12th was shaped by the little memorials that appeared immediately after the tragedy, "The one thing that impressed me most in the days that followed were all the little memorials and shrines that sprang up all over the city." These questions about memorialization give September 12th are a dominant--and important--part of Touhey's film.

The film depicts this grief in other ways, as well. Immediately after the service, Eddie (Ernest Mingione) walks up and introduces himself to the family, offering his business card and asking the family to contact him. Because Eddie is a lawyer, Rick and Frank immediately assumes that Eddie wishes to represent the family in an effort to profit off of their loss. While audience members will likely guess that Eddie's motivations are somewhat more honorable, Rick and Frank's responses are perfectly natural.

Rick remains deeply devoted to Lori, seeing her in the most positive light possible and attending to the needs of Lori's mother. Frank, by contrast, appears belligerent, playing an unnecessarily rough game of basketball with his nephews. His memories of Lori are far less generous a he recalls a childhood primarily characterized by competition with his older sibling. In both cases, the central characters are still in the process of mourning, a process that is clearly informed by their relationship to Lori, as this Film Threat review points out. As the film evolves, this comparison becomes more central to the film, with Rick and Frank forced to confront their conflicting memories of Lori when Rick invites Frank, who has been evicted temporarily, to crash at his apartment.

I won't talk in much detail about the substance of their conversation, but I felt the film captured the substance of these conversations rather effectively, although in places, the screenplay felt a little too unpolished, as if the actors were quoting the lines rather than immersing themselves in a character. Unlike the Film Threat reviewer who faults the acting, I'm less inclined to attribute my reaction to performance than I am to the difficulty of finding language that will communicate this type of post-9/11 mourning. But even with that minor reservation (and perhaps even because of that difficulty), I think that September 12th deserves a much wider audience and represents an important attempt to remember 9/11 in an honest and fully human fashion.

Cross-posted at Agoravox.

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Politics of Oscar Redux

Couldn't resist linking to what might be the best blog smackdown I've read in a long time. Kung Fu Monkey takes on Jason Apuzzo's rather silly denunciation of Hollywood, the Oscars, and all the rest of it as one big lefty conspiracy. Many thanks to Self-Styled Siren for the link. Like her, I'll be laughing about this post for some time.

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Sundance Swag

I've been intrigued by Eric Alterman's description of his experiences at the Sundance Film Festival. I do think Sundance can have a positive effect on filmmaking and on the promotion of independent cinema, even in the midst of the "corporate hype and celebrity hoopla," as Alterman describes it. The festival does provide a site for promoting progressive filmmaking, such as the Queer Lounge at this year's Sundance (they generously invited me to drop by, but unfortunately I wasn't at the festival), and one of the big award winners, the documentary Iraq in Fragments looks very promising. Sundance's "Where is the Media?" panel, on which Alterman participated, is also a good example.

At the same time, as Alterman's comments illustrate, the festival is loaded with contradictions, especially when it comes to the role that corporate swag plays at the festival. Alterman is worth quoting in full on this topic:

I’m not a prig, but one of the more morally objectionable things I’ve ever seen in my life were the “gifting booths” set up at Sundance exclusively for the purposes of giving celebrities expensive things they could easily afford and then leaking the news to star-struck journalists so that they could write about how wonderful both the celebrities and the products were as if that’s what was really important at a festival designed to nurture and encourage new artistic voices. Clearly it’s a screwy society that gives rich people free stuff and brags about it.

If you've read my blog for very long, I probably don't have to tell you that I share Alterman's sentiments on this topic. But I think Alterman's also right to argue that it's worthwhile to think about how celebrity worship can be used in productive ways (Angelina Jolie's ongoing charity efforts and George Clooney's filmmaking ventures are but two good examples).

This post is a long way around asking what might be a fairly simple question, especially for my readers who do research in film and media studies. I'd be curious to know what, if anything, has been written on the effect of these film festivals (Sundance especially) on film production, distribution, and consumption. If I recall correctly, I know that Chris Holmlund and Justin Wyatt's edited collection, Contemporary American Independent Film; From the Margins to the Mainstream addresses this topic to some extent, but any other suggestions would be much appreciated.

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In Other News...

I've been invited to write some columns for Flow, a critical forum on television and media culture, published by the Radio-Television-Film Department at the University of Texas at Austin. My columns won't appear until late March or early April, but I'm looking forward to writing for them.

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Why We Fight Controversy

I've already bought my ticket for a Friday night screening of Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight and am very much looking forward to seeing it. I'd heard from a number of reviewers that one of the documentary's "stars" is Arizona Senator John McCain. As Nora Ephron points out, McCain often seems to inspire unabashed hero-worship in many TV pundits (she specifically mentions Chris Matthews), and now even Jarecki seems to be viewing McCain as a heroic member of Congress for his role in combatting some of the improprieties in the war in Iraq. I'll admit that this enthusiasm for McCain is a bit frustrating because the Arizona Senator is hardly progressive on a number of issues that I find important, so Jarecki's positive portrayal of him had made me somewhat cautious about the film.

But apparently, despite his "star" status, McCain's office is less than pleased with Jarecki's film, in part because the documentary makes it appear as if McCain is questioning Cheney's involvement in awarding contracts to Halliburton, the company he used to run back in the day.

Steve Clemons' review of the film and his response to the McCain controvery is well worth reading in full, and I won't attempt to summarize it without having seen the film. I will, however, be watching it with this debate in mind on Friday. Now, if only I'd been paying attention to The Washington Note a few days ago, I could have seen Why We Fight a week earlier.

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February 8, 2006

Death of the Blockbuster

Chris of Infobong.com passed along Chris Anderson's recent Long Tail blog entry on the death of the blockbuster (see also Boing Boing). Anderson's argument is not unfamilar, as he emphasizes the continuing decrease in domestic box office revenue for Hollywood's big-budget spectacles:

[T]he fraction of total box office that comes from the blockbusters (top 25 films) has been steadily falling, even as the cost of making those films (expressed here as a percentage of total box office revenue) has been rising.

Bottom line: even in Hollywood, the home of the blockbuster, hits are losing their power. It's not nearly as dire as in music, but it's trending in the same direction. Does this mean the end of movies? Not at all--there have never been more films made, just as there has never been more music available than today, despite the fact that the bestsellers sell less.

Anderson's argument is compelling, but like many of the poeple who have commented on his entry, I'm not quite sure his conclusions are supported by the evidence he offers (and this is where some of my conclusions are likely influenced by Epstein and others who have written on this topic).

First, Anderson's reading of box office numbers ignores the role of blockbuster films in marketing other products (product placement in the film, corporate tie-ins, etc). The theatrical box office for a film is just a small percentage of the film's total revenue, and domestic revenue is now dwarfed by international box office. In addition, several commenters have noted that Anderson's analysis of economic changes don't completely measure up (I'll suggest that you look at their explanations rather than attempting to summarize them myself). It's also worth noting that Hollywood's accounting practices would probably make an Enron executive blush. Finally, while it may be the case that more films are being made, it's still incredible difficult to find a studio (indie or major) to distribute your film.

Anderson's defense of his conclusions isn't terribly convincing either. Without further evidence, it's not fair to assert that domestic box office will necessarily predict international box office or DVD sales. In addition, because "home theater" systems are so widely available, many people are choosing to wait for films (including blockbusters) to show up on DVD.

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February 7, 2006

Early Photography Links

I'll be talking about photography in my Media and History course starting tomorrow and found some links that might be useful for my class (and maybe others as well). First, a link to the George Eastman collection of Lewis Hine's photography. The Eastman House online archive looks pretty useful, with a nice collection of early photographers including Eugene Atget, Matthew Brady, and a small number of daguerreotypes.

But one other topic I hope to revisit will be the Cottingley Fairy Photographs, which were taken by Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright in 1916-17 and showed fairies and gnoes leaping and playing next to the teenage girls. Their pictures led to a widespread effort to detemine the authenticity of the photographs, and even Sherlock Holmes writer Arthur Conan Doyle, who was an ardent spiritualist and believer in fairies, endorsed the images as genuine. Only in 1983 did Griffiths and Wright acknowldege that the photographs were a hoax.

I wasn't specifically planning to discuss this story, but given that various permutations of spiritualism have been an ongoing theme in the course, I'm hoping that my students will find it interesting.

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Frontline on the Insurgency

I was reviewing the PBS Frontline episode, A Company of Soldiers this afternoon when I came across a mention of an upcoming episode simply entitled, "The Insurgency," which will air on February 21 at 9 PM (though local broadcasts may be different). I'll try to post more information when it becomes available on the PBS website.

Another related episode of Frontline from last year that I missed: The Soldier's Heart, which focuses on the experiences of US Marine Rob Sarra and several other soldiers who discuss being haunted by their memories of the battlefield.

Update: Another promising Frotline episode I missed earlier: Reporting the War, which focuses on the experiences of journalists attempting to cover the war.

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Brokeback to the Future

Speaking of time travel, here's that "Brokeback to the Future" preview clip that has been making the blog rounds for the last few days.

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The Infinite Corridors of Time

Via GreenCine, the news that quirky, short-lived 1960s TV series, The Time Tunnel, is now available on DVD. Time Travelers Robert Colbrt and Lee Meriwether visit the Titanic, the War of 1812, and Pearl Harbor, and that's just in the span of four episodes. My Netflix queue just got a little bit longer.

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February 6, 2006

The Last Telegram

Odd timing: I happened to be teaching the history of the telegraph in my Media and History course this week when Western Union announced that it has sent its last telegram.

Like my students, I was a little disappointed that Western Union declined to report the recipient of the telegram or its content, especially given Samuel Morse's famous first telegraphed message, "What hath God wrought?" But the Tribune article does provide a nice historical overview of the telegraph, including its role in the news gathering process and the cultivation of "telegraphese," which bears more than a passing resemblance to today's text messaging.

Also in extremely old media news: cavers have identified cave drawings in a grotto in western France that may be over 25,000 years old, which would make them significantly older than those located in the caves of Lascaux.

Update: One of my media students passed along this MSNBC story on the end of the telegram, in which we learn a little about the content of the last ten telegrams, many of which consisted of birthday wishes, condolences, and several people trying to send the last telegram.

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February 4, 2006

Bubble

Steven Soderbergh's Bubble (IMDB) has received more attention because of its experimental distribution schedule than because of the film itself, but the film itself is deceptively experimental focusing intimately on the lives of three workers in a small doll factory in a small industrial town on the border of West Virginia and Ohio.

Bubble first introduces us to Martha and Kyle who work together in the doll factory and have cultivated a quiet but grounded friendship, based in part on the daily rituals of driving to work together and sharing a fast food lunch in the factory's breakroom. Both Martha and Kyle work outside the factory in second jobs to make ends meet, and they sometimes discuss what they would do if they managed to save just a little money. Their routine is subtly but inevitably interrupted when the factory hires a new employee, Rose, a single mother in her early twenties. When Rose is introduced to the small group of workers (maybe 5 ot 6 people) in the doll factory, her brief smile at Kyle indicates her attraction to him. As Ebert points out, it's unclear whether Kyle returns Rose's acknowledgement, but Martha sees the smile and begins to see her relationship to Kyle change. Martha's "loss" of Kyle (they remain friends but their friendship, and Kyle's reliance on Martha, is what changes) is also measured by the lunch breaks in which Rose and Kyle share a cigarette at the end of the meal in a spearate section of the breakroom. Soderbergh's camera emphasizes how this subtle act not only changes Martha and Kyle's daily routine but also how it begins to create some distance between them, physiaclly and emotionally.

Rose also becomes representative of an independence unavailable to Martha and Kyle. Her second job entails cleaning wealthy people's houses, where she takes bubble baths in their tubs, reasoning that she doesn't have that luxury in her apartment, with Rose's free-spiritedness prompting Martha to comment, "I don't know about her." Eventually Kyle asks Rose on a date, with Rose, in turn, asking Martha to babysit her daughter, setting up a scene of profound awkwardness when the three of them are forced to interact in Rose's apartment, building towards an act of violence that is somewhat shocking although it is certainly consistent with the emotions of the film's central characters.

Soderbergh, along with screenwriter Coleman Hough (who also worked with Soderbergh on Full Frontal), sets the tone for this kind of story very effectively. The doll factory itself allows for some slightly uncanny imagery, with Kyle pouring pastic into the leg and head molds, while Rose and Martha airbrush identical faces on rows of these cheap plastic dolls (Filmbrain describes the creepiness of the doll factory rather well). The featureless breakroom, which looks like it could have been decorated anytime in the last thirty years, the fast food restaurants that provide daily nourishment, and the mobile homes and apartments all suggest a sense of routine or monotony.

Using these characters, Soderbergh has created a quiet, intimate portrait of small-town, southern life, a world that Soderbergh knows well, as Michael Atkinson points out. Because the film is simultaneously available on DVD and in theaters, it will be interesting to see what kind of reception it receives (and whether the site of reception matters in terms of audience response), but the film does offer one of the more interesting character studies I've seen in some time.

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February 3, 2006

The Politics of Oscar

I've been intrigued by the recent discussion of what might be called the "Politics of Oscar," the ongoing discussion of the films that have been nominated for Academy Awards and how they might serve as a barometer for whether Hollywood is liberal or conservative or whether the nominated films reflect the values of this mysterious heartland that I keep hearing about.

The Oscar argument has taken on two distinct flavors. On the one hand, several observers have speculated that the Bush propaganda machine may have had a hand in preventing some of this year's more explicitly political documentaries, such as Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight, from receiving a documentary nomination, as reported in this New York Times article. Politex at Bushwatch speculates that Michael Moore's speech at the March 2003 Oscar ceremony after he won the Best Documentary Oscar for Bowling for Columbine (not Fahrenheit 9/11) may have been seen as too threatening: "what we're seeing now are attempts to prevent such an event from happening again. Given what we have learned over the years about Bush news management and propaganda, a White House hand in Hollywood is hardly out of the question."

In this context, I agree with Alternet's Laura Barcella that such influence is unlikely, and this lack of influence is not something I would ascribe to Hollywood liberalism real or imagined. In the first place, attributing a discrete set of politics to an entire industry is reductive at best. There are obviously indivduals and production companies that are making films with politically progressive aims in mind, such as Jeffrey Skoll's Participant Productions, profiled in this Washington Post article (more on Skoll, who professes to be politically "centrist," and Participant Productions later).

And dsepite these claims, several of the nominated documentaries can be read as strongly critical of Bush administration policies, particularly Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, in which Bush contributor Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay is one of the film's chief villains. More crucially, an Oscar nomination (or the Oscar itself) is no guarantee that the winning documentary's "message" will reach a wider audience in the way that the filmmaker intends or that the documentary will provoke political change. In fact, if anything Moore's visibility as a documentary filmmaker after Bowling and Fahrenheit has been quite useful to the conservative noise machine.

But others, such as Jason Apuzzo, have argued that this year's Oscar nominees represent a "trend" towards honoring "message" [read liberal] films, a trend Apuzzo describes as The New Triviality. In my opinion, this is a more sinister claim because it redefines triviality so that it becomes its opposite. Films that attempt to have an effect socially or politically are "trivial" by his definition when it is clear that they are clearly far from trivial, esecially given that they are shaping political dialogue in a way that Apuzzo doesn't like. In fact, Apuzzo offers no clear definition of what a non-trivial film might be. He complains that the most recent Star Wars was snubbed at the Oscars, but Lucas himself has acknowledged some relationship between his film's political intrigue and the Bush administration's behavior, and given his maverick status, his film's lack of nominations may have nothing to do with either the content of the film or its quality.

Apuzzo further posits that these films are alienating heatland audiences. Apuzzo glosses the fact that Brokeback Mountain appears to have turned a tidy little profit ($52 million so far on a $14 million budget, with enthusiastic audiences across the country). He also ignores the fact that the "message" film has been a staple of Hollywood since D. W. Griffith picked up a camera in the 1910s, if not earlier (Griffith's message wasn't a good one, of course, but it was a message). Ceratinly many critically acclaimed films, such as 1940's The Grapes of Wrath, and even many of Frank Capra's films show that this trend is not a recent one. In short, many of this year's nominees feature "social issue" topics, but that is nothing new by any stretch of the imagination (thanks to tbogg, whose critique of The New Triviality is far more effective than mine, for the link).

Note: I've also submitted this story to Agoravox, where I'll be publishing articles and reviews from time to time.

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February 2, 2006

Documenting Iraq

I've been finishing up an article on first-person documentaries about the war in Iraq (my deadline is about two weeks away), and the essay is beginning to feel like the beginning of something much larger. With that in mind, I want to mention a new documentary that has received tremendous acclaim at Sundance, James Longley's Iraq in Fragments, which seeks to explore some of the ongoing conflicts in post-war Iraq.

Also check out Hannah Eaves' excellent interview with Longley, available from GreenCine, which provides a nice overview of the conditions in which he found himself filming and emphasizes the lack of historical scope in many of our discussions of Iraq.

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February 1, 2006

Cache

Michael Haneke's Cache (US website/IMDB) opens with a static image of suburban house, with a steady, unblinking gaze not unlike that of a surveillance camera. The camera doesn't move as scenes of daily life are displayed leaving the viewer to contemplate why this house is the object of such intense scrutiny. Suddenly our gaze is disrupted when the image begins to fast-forward and we realize that we are watching a videotape along with the owners of the house, Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche). Throughout the film, Georges and Anne continue to receive videotapes from the unidentified source, though as the film's tension escalates, the images become increasingly personal, with one videotape depicting Georges childhood home.

In many ways, the opening scene recalls a similar moment in Haneke's earlier, underrated film, Funny Games, which I won't spoil for people who haven't seen the film, but in both films, video seems to disrupt the temporal "present" of the films in complicated ways. In both films, the status of the viewer is implicated as we become conscious of the camera's gaze. In both films, the camera--or videotape--also serves to intensify tension within an upper-middle class family.

In the case of Cache, this tension maps allegorically onto both the US war on terrorism and, more explicitly, onto the French treatment of Algerians during the 1960s, but given the recent riots, these scnes have a very contemporary feel. It has been a few days since I've seen the film (I've had no time and little energy to write for the blog recently), so my memory on details about the film is a bit thin, but I found it to be a successful, chilling psychological thriller, one that used the genre conventions in order to comment on contemporary issues in a thoughtful way.

But if others have seen Cache, I'd enjoy knowing what you thought of it.

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