Film Review - Catfish

Catfish (2010, dir. Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman)

Its strangely appropriate that at the same The Social Network is playing in theaters, this documentary about what Facebook hath wrought is making the rounds as well. It can be looked at a sequel in some ways: The Social Network are the origins and this is the results of its existence. Since the film premiered at Sundance earlier this year it has garnered mixed reviews. Some critics have seen it as a perfect slice of life in a society where identity has become malleable, while others question the very reality of the documentary, charging it as a meta piece that forces the audience to question if they are being fooled. Catfish was preceded by a mountain of hype and I approached the film with a tempered mind, thinking I would encounter something not quite as good as the trailer claimed.

DocuMondays - This Filthy World

This Filthy World (2008, dir.Jeff Garlin)

Unlike the other documentaries I have looked at, where you have multiple interviewees and tightly edited footage to form a narrative, this is simply one man on stage in front of a crowd, talking to them. It's basically a concert film, but while most of those feature either a music performer or comedian this is a film director. I guess the closest equivalent  of this would be the Evening With Kevin Smith DVDs. Both are the result of directors whose personalities are as large as the reputation of their films. John Waters is definitely not a filmmaker who appeals to everyone, something he readily admits, but even if you don't enjoy his films I think it would be hard not to enjoy this one-man show about his love of all things strange.

Waters was raised in and around Baltimore, Maryland, which is to him like New York is to Woody Allen. Baltimore, named the Ugliest City in America at the time which Waters proudly cites, provided him with a front row seat to the grotesque. Rather than being repulsed, Waters was drawn to the misshapen and demented natives and made them movie stars. His love of film also began in Baltimore when, as a child, he became enamored with the gimmickry of William Castle (House on Haunted Hill, House of Wax) and Kroger Babb. Babb was a filmmaker who had little skill with filmmaking, and more with being a salesman. He produced films like Mom and Dad, which the Catholic Church gave a Condemned rating, and features actual birth footage, one of the few ways of showing female nudity in those days. Babb would have an obvious influence in Waters later work, and Castle got a very gimmicky homage with the Odorama cards handed out at showings of Polyester.

My favorite piece of the performance was the second half, where Water discusses how he even he has lines he doesn't think people should cross. This allows him to go into very poetic descriptions of teabagging, helicoptering, and other outer edges sexual practices that he gets pleasure from horrifying the audience with, but also seems to honestly think are too far. He addresses his child molestery appearance, which draws looks when he goes to see animated films at the theater. He talks about his love of attending trials and the little club of friends who try to one up each other about which they have attended (Waters got into one of 10 public seats at Watergate for a day, an elderly woman beat him, she was Nuremburg, the Super Bowl of courtroom trials). There's a wonderful sequence where he talks about the influence The Bad Seed has on him, creating a desire to be a secretly evil child. Even now, he says he loves to encourage children to get into trouble, mentioning when he was attending a parade recently and tried to convince a little girl to help him go knock people's bicycles over.

Like I said, Waters isn't everyone's cup of tea, nor should he be. If he was, then the entire agenda of his work would be subverted. He talks about how his career is now lauded in elite high society circles in New York and that he thinks its wrong. Even if you don't care for his films, I don't think you could watch this and not find some anecdote or piece of wry wisdom memorable. If you haven't seen his work some segments might be confusing, but nevertheless this is an excellent piece of insight into one of the ground breaking directors in America.

DocuMondays - Prodigal Sons

Prodigal Sons (2008, dir. Kimberly Reed)

It is impossible to watch this film and not be affected in someway. It is one of the most inside looks at a family and their struggles, particularly with mental illness. I can't say I have ever seen a documentary that captured such intensely intimate and violent moments on film. While the details of this particular family may seem drastically different from your own, when looking at the core nature of the relationships it is like any other: there is a lot of emotional pain and little done to resolve it for years. It's one of those documentaries that is bound to ignite arguments about what is incited by the director and what is the natural progression of these people in this situation.

Kimberly used to be Paul, the high school quarterback and basketball center. After leaving Helena, Montana as a teen, she moved to San Francisco and embraced her life as a woman. Meanwhile, older adopted brother Marc was in a car accident that left him permanently brain damaged. Marc has trouble building new memories and for him Kim is Paul. In addition, youngest brother Todd he came out of the closet and moved away to California. The center of the film is the three brothers issues of identity as it relates to their relationships with each other. Marc is having trouble with medication that is used to balance him and lashes out repeatedly in violent ways that chill you to the bone. This is told through the filter of Kim, who is angry that Marc still thinks of her as Paul, and its unsure if this is a choice Paul is making or if he is physically incapable of permanently processing this.

The documentary is sold in its trailer as being about the discovery of Marc's biological family. It turns out he was the son of Rebecca Welles, daughter of director Orson. Kim follows with her camera as Marc travels to Croatia and meets Welles' lover Oda Kodar. Kim and Marc seem to bond over this trip and it appears that he has control over his temper. The next time they meet up though, Marc flips out about a broken gas gauge on a truck and physically assaults Kim, all of it recorded on camera. Things continue downhill at the family Christmas when Marc brutally tackles Todd from behind, police are called, and Marc grabs a knife. He ends up in a mental institution. Tragically, Marc died as the result of a seizure in May of 2010.

The film has to re-find its footing a few times as it starts out as being about Kim returning to Helena for the first time as a woman. It quickly becomes about she and Marc's relationship, in particular his jealousy at never being the "good one". Kim was the straight A student and star athlete. Marc was held back in preschool and drank and partied to excess. Now that Marc has suffered this injury he has faded from being able to impress, now he appears to use his disability to make every family get together about himself. But how much does Kim incite and how much is Marc manipulating? The film never completely answers this, but it will stay in your mind for a long time.

Criterion Fridays - Close-Up

Close-Up (1990, dir. Abbas Kiraostami)

In America, its not uncommon to see a film "based on a true story". The audience has come to expect that while names and events are real, screenwriters have "punched up" the script with dramatic tropes and formulas designed to add drama to what they see as dull, uninteresting reality. On the opposite end of things, you have documentaries like Capturing the Friedmans where the reality of the situation is so horrific and dramatic we have to wonder how much is exaggerated and manipulated by the director. In Abbas Kiraostami's film Close-Up he takes an approach to the "based on a real story" movie that is some sort of amalgamation of narrative film and documentary. This is one of few times I have watched a film unable to figure out what was reality and was staged.

The film revolves around the case of Ali Sabzian, a man posing as Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and receiving the good will and shelter of the a family in Tehran as a result. The films opens with an obviously staged scene, the reporter, who first published the story that brought it Kiraostami's attention, is traveling with police via taxi to the family's home to witness the arrest of Sabzian. From there the film becomes a patchwork of the actual video footage of Sabzian's trial and re-enactments of the events. The re-enactments actually feature the real people involved, including Sabzian. The reason this could happen is, that Sabzian never stole from the family he stayed with and the crime was non-violent. By the end of the film, we learn what Sabzian's motivation was and see the family show great sympathy for him in court.

While most films about real crimes attempt to illuminate and make the mystery something that can be understood, Close-Up works to confuse things and make Sabzian a harder and harder character to pin down. What it becomes is a meditation on why someone not involved in the Arts would feel such a strong connection to someone who made their living off of cinema. Sabzian lives with his mother in the wake of divorce. His wife took one child, his mother raises the other. He works in a dead end job as a printer, and Sabzian claims that in director Makhmalbaf's work he finds his own suffering put into words he cannot explain. Sabzian is an incredibly sympathetic figure, but even he confuses us because he talks about how he feels drawn to be an actor, that the idea of losing himself in a character is appealing. So, is the Sabzian speaking court truly his honest self, or another persona he has taken on?

This was not going to be the film Kiraostami was supposed to make at the time. However, after reading about the story in the paper he became obsessed with it and couldn't sleep. So he contacted the parties involved and began making the film. As much as he wants to capture reality on film, he unabashedly manipulates certain scenes. When Sabzian is released from jail at the end of the film, he meets the real Makhmalbaf there are "audio difficulties" with the microphone equipment. Kiraostami has admitted freely after the fact that the audio problems was a manufacturing of him out of respect for the conversation between the two men, but instead of simply saying he was doing this, he made it another layer in the reality and fiction of the film. This is definitely a film that challenges the perceptions of the audience and will make them constantly question the reality or artifice of each and every scene.

DocuMondays - Art and Copy

Art and Copy (2009, dir. Doug Pray)

It's everywhere. You experience it almost every hour of the day, and it is usually while you are in a passive state. It persists and nags at your brain without you ever realizing it, but when you see it done exceptionally well you sit up and make note. Advertising is a modern psychological virus. The majority of it is terrible, which makes sense when you think about how much of it there is. As the film states, we experience 5,000 advertisements a day in multiple mediums. When it is done well, we slip out of passivity, sit up, and make note. What's interesting is the best advertising either sets an atmosphere without every directly referencing the product, or is completely direct about the product and the emotion that goes along with it. This documentary interviews the pioneers of modern advertising from the mid-1960s to the 1980s.

The documentary is structured in a very clean way. Each section of the film is divided with a scene without dialogue and statistics on advertising placed over scenes of urban meditation. The first section of the film talks about the environment the featured advertisers came into. We've all seen ads from the 1950s which have an air of a false stereotypical salesman's pitch. With the young turks that took over in the 1960s, they began to create provocative ads that didn't necessarily give the viewer information on the product, but evoked curiosity and emotion in them. The Volkswagen Beetle ads of the late 60s were a major breakthrough in American advertising, where the quirkiness of the product was acknowledged. Very straightforward taglines were used instead of just making the logo swallow up the space.

It was the firm Doyle Dane Bernach that brought us the Beetle ads, and the shockingly harsh (for its time) American Tourister luggage ad, as well as the hyper arty Braniff airline campaign and finally the I (Heart) NY image. Mary Wells, the Peggy of her time, was an incredibly inventive and creative copy editor who took her background in theatrics and applied it to advertising. The sense of drama in commercials is something that sticks with us today (think Budweiser frogs, Taster's Choice soap opera). At the time these ideas were presented, the good old boy network in charge were confounded and even the clients were often times frightened at the possibility of risking their brand on such ideas.

The documentary focuses a lot on the divide between the business side and the creative side, particularly how in the old paradigm, the accounts people were over creative. In the 1960s, this was subverted with the creative types either becoming more aggressive or striking out on their own. The East Coast was also the mecca of advertising so no one was noticing when the West Coast firms began rolling out revolutionary campaigns. It was one of these firms that got the Apple Computers contract and brought up the "1984" Superbowl ad, introducing the Mac to us through a Ridley Scott directed ad. You never see the Mac once. This firm still holds the Apple account and came up with "Think Different" in the 1990s and the current silhouette iPod campaign.

The final segment of the film deals with the ethical responsibilities of the advertiser, in specifics how it ties to politics. They feature the Morning in America Regan ads from 1984 that are unlike anything out today, and epitomize the way an incumbent can run and win again. Some of the interviewees agree that the ads works, but from an ethical perspective they find it misleading because of the facts it ignored. Hal Riney, the man behind the Morning in America ad confesses that his habit of going purely emotional in his ads goes back to a childhood where affection was held back from him. In the majority of his work images of the Rockwell America is evoked in a cleverly deceptive way. If you are at all interested in media and the way humanity's decisions can be shifted by the creative this would be a very insightful film to digest.

DocuMondays - Dogtown & The Z-Boys

Dogtown & The Z-Boys (2001, dir. Stacy Peralta)
Narrated by Sean Penn

As anyone who knows me well can tell you, I am by no means a sports enthusiast. However, even I know the names Stacy Peralta, Tony Alva, and Jay Adams. I can't say I knew a lot about them before I watched this documentary, but I did know they were big names in the world of skateboarding. In the early 1990s, skate culture was a big deal. I was about 9 or 10 years old and in all of child-focused media you had skateboard bound characters; from Nintendo's Skate or Die to the skateboard bound Michelangelo in TMNT. There was an entire aesthetic movement backing it as well: Chicano graffiti inspired neon clothing is what I remember most vividly. All of that started back in 1971 in South Venice Beach, California.

The story of the Zephyr Skate Team is the story of the class divide in America. The young men and women who skated on Zephyr were children of broken homes who lived in the "wrong side of the tracks" part of Venice Beach. The shoreline there was not one tourists ever visited and its most prominent landmark was the decrepit hulking skeleton of an abandoned theme park. The figures in the film began by surfing amongst the treacherous collapsing roller coasters and pier, and were forced to seek recreation elsewhere as the waves only came in at a very specific time of the day. As a lark they took up skateboarding, which had faded away as a fad in the mid-60s. The invention of polyurethane wheels, replacing the easily chipped and locking up clay ones, allowed the boards to grip the pavement and provide a smoother ride. Thus, many surfing techniques were brought in by the skaters. Basically, the modern skateboarding aesthetic is a direct result of the play these young people engaged in day after day.

The economic conditions of the key figures seemed to be one the largest driving forces. Many of the young men who skated on Zephyr came from homes where the fathers had left or, poor economic conditions resulted in, aggressive and abusive fathers. They found the Jeff Ho Surfboard Shop as a second home, where proprietors Jeff Ho, Skip Engblom, and Craig Stecyk encouraged the skaters to develop their own individual styles of the riding the boards. South Venice was a community envious of the North Venice mansions, and as fate would have it, a heavy drought struck California during the early 1970s. This left a lot of dried out pools and some of the more inventive skaters began to see the similarities between the flourishes and curves of the cement pools and the waves they were used to riding. And so, vertical skateboarding was born, skaters attempting to leave but one wheel touching the very rim of the bowl they rode in.

Much like a VH1 Behind the Music episode, we're given a traditional Rise and Fall story, but what makes it so remarkable is that the key players were all teenagers for both the Rise and Fall portions. Stacy Peralta came out as the most successful, going on to champion and mentor skaters like Tony Hawk. Tony Alva struck out as a very successful entrepreneur, becoming the first skater to break away from the companies and start his own. The saddest of the lot was Jay Adams, whom all the interviewees agree could have been the best in history, but he got caught up in a drug lifestyle that included crystal meth that sent him to some rather difficult places. The film does an excellent job of structuring its narrative, and does everything I want from a good documentary: It causes me to have interest in a subject I have thought little about, tells me an interesting story about very human people, and leaves me wanting to know more.

DocuMondays - Objectified

Objectified (2009, dir. Gary Hustwitt)

Take the toothpick. There is a particular design, Japanese in origin, where the toothpick had a designed head, almost like ridges. This head can be broken off as a signal that the toothpick is in use, always a good thing. It can also be used as a rest for the toothpick so that the point doesn't touch any surfaces, like so. I doubt many of us view toothpicks with much contemplation on a daily basis, yet we use them fairly frequently. Objectified is a documentary looking at all those aspects of an object we spend zero time thinking about, but the interviewees has devoted their lives to examining.

Director Hustwitt, responsible for the similar and interesting documentary Helvetica, explores a very modernist approach to design. Apple is mentioned many times as a company on the cutting edge of premier, sleek design. One on the interviewees is Jonathan Ive, the man behind the iMac in all its iterations and talks about the focus on monitor tube of the first iMac to the now self-contained flat screen monitor of the current. We see the raw aluminum slate that is processed to create the frame of the MacBook laptop and Ive emphasizes all the thought that went into these particular materials in this particular shape, and how the average user will never think or realize this.

While there is much focus on industrial design, many of the commentators talk about the need to create new sustainable objects while simultaneously learning to find appreciation in the objects we already have. One of the interesting ideas in relation to sustainability is presented by Karim Rashid, a rather flamboyment and dynamic designer. Rashid posits that to solve the problem of landfills brimming over with garbage we design objects that are disposable from the start, and he includes high end electronics like cell phones and laptops. I have to say its intriguing to think of a cell phone with a high quality cardboard shell that could easily be tossed out and its sim chip placed in a new shell for cheap. Or even a laptop where you boot from a thumb drive and the computer itself is merely a way to interact with the data on that drive and access the internet.

Critic Rob Walker was the most enjoyable to listen to, as he presented the side of realizing that the objects one has already accrued contain more emotional value to the user than the Now object which is new and we are told we must have. He presents the scenario where your house is on fire and the things you grab as you run out are not those things that scored particularly well in a review you read somewhere, rather they are things that inform you about yourself in someway. Walker also discusses the corporate marketing around objects that he believes causes the quality of materials to be downgraded. He refers to this idea of desiring new as the New Now, which is designed to make the previous New Now become Then. All in all, a lot of interesting ideas presented by people who are experts in every sense of the word about design.

DocuMondays - loudQUIETloud

loudQUIETloud (2006, dir. Steven Cantor, Matthew Galkin)
Featuring The Pixies (Charles Thompson, Kim Deal, David Lovering, Joey Santiago)

Kelly Deal, sister of Pixies' bassist Kim Deal, sums up the nature of the band in very simple terms. She tells her sister, "You are four of the worst communicators I have ever seen!" And she is most definitely correct in this summation of the group. Throughout their 2004 Pixies Sell Out tour, the bandmates communicate with each other the barest minimum, retreating into their individual solo projects when not on stage in front of fans. What the documentary confirms is that there is no new Pixies material coming any time soon, and that the band simply got back together because, like most of us, they have bills to pay.

The Pixies were formed in the late 80s and fell apart in the early 90s, particularly from in-fighting between Charles Thompson and Kim Deal. As the film opens, Deal has recently come off a rehab stint for alcoholism and is accompanied by Kelly on the tour. They travel in a separate buses from the guys in the band because Kim must stay away from alcohol. Drummer David Lovering is also dealing with issues of substance abuse, though he hasn't come to that realization. The rest of the band is visibly uncomfortable in his presence and eventually confront him about his constant cocktail of booze and Valium. The film is a meditation on what happens when a group of people who produce great art end up absolutely hating each other.

The most telling aspect of the picture is Kim Deal and her sister in this separate bus, following the guys. Even on the guys' bus, Charles is caught up in negotiation a switch to a new recording label, Joey is working on the soundtrack for his documentary film, and David is unnatural chipper from the drugs in his system. These were the twentysomethings of the 1990s, now in their late thirties and completely self absorbed. Kim plucks away on demos for the new Breeders album, writing songs for it, never once thinking about new songs for the Pixies. At one point a reporter from Rolling Stone interviews Charles and asks about new material. Charles says he's been keeping his solo demos around and letting the band hear them to hint about getting some new stuff together, but from seeing the rest of the film he seems disinterested, and often times annoyed to work with these people.

It's interesting to see the enthusiasm of the high school and college aged fans who became aware of the Pixies years after the band fell apart. In their eyes the Pixies are a single unit and unreal. One girl brings a sign reading "Kim Deal is God". She manages to slip Kim a copy of Brave New Girl, a novel whose protagonist is an obsessive fan of the Pixies. The camera is on Kim later in her bus as she thumbs through the book. Her reaction is one of distress, she quickly puts the book down and lights a cigarette. These people are simply that, people. Nothing more. They are in the middle of divorces, struggling with addictions, and trying to get by.

DocuMondays - Koko: A Talking Gorilla

Koko: A Talking Gorilla (1978, dir. Barbet Schroeder)

I have faint memories of being a little kid and seeing video of Koko the gorilla and her cat/adopted child All Ball. I also remember seeing Dr. Penny Patterson with Koko and years later came across an article that reminded me I was familiar with this story already. Now, as an adult, I go back to where the story began, the days before Koko was an internationally known figure and simply part of study at Stanford to teach a gorilla sign language. What she became is a mirror to put our own ideas of personhood and intelligence up against.

Koko was born in captivity in the San Francisco Zoo. She was lent to Stanford, but as the movie explains, she was kept past the agreed upon stay and things between the zoo and the college got very tense. Dr. Patterson, 28 at the time of the documentary, bonded with Koko deeply, and shows an obvious maternal instinct with the ape. Director Schroeder explains in the film that the entire documentary had to be kept quiet, lest the zoo contact authorities to have Koko removed.

Koko is shown going about her daily routine with Patterson, who we are told has to be there when Koko wakes up and when she falls asleep to keep their bond airtight. Patterson has in effect devoted her entire life to the care and development of Koko, same as a devoted parent to a child. Patterson even disciplines Koko with a fearlessness that shows an absence of distinction between man and ape. For us laymen, should a gorilla misbehave we would try to back out of the room slowly. For Patterson, she actually strikes Koko to reprimand her for tearing up her room.

The evidence in support of Koko being considered a "person" with the rights that come inherent to that is her ability to apparently synthesize language. She knows 1,000 American Sign Language signs and 2,000 words of spoken English. For objects she has no words for, Koko has shown the ability to merge two signs to describe the object. She had no word for "ring" so she called it "finger-bracelet". She had no word for "duck" so it became "water-bird". Fairly impressive. While there can be valid arguments back and forth about Koko being a person or not,  I found Patterson's wish that Koko not be seen as something that could be owned a statement I would be in support of. The zoo sees Koko as their property, Patterson sees Koko has her child. Both may be a little presumptuous in their ideas of Koko. Once an animal gains the ability to use a human developed language to communicate it should cause us to step back and question many things. If Koko expressed a desire to leave both Stanford and the zoo, would she be granted this request?

A very thought-provoking documentary from one of the premiere documentary makers. Barbet Schroeder, much like the Maysles or Barbara Kopple, is not a character in his own film, but an observer. We hear the occasional question, but the subjects are truly the focus of his work.

DocuMondays - Tales From the Script

Tales From the Script (2009, dir. Peter Hanson)
Featuring Allison Anders, John August, Shane Black, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, Frank Darabont, Antwone Fisher, Mick Garris, William Goldman, David Hayter, Zak Penn, Adam Rifkin, Jose Rivera, Paul Schrader, Guinevere Turner

The documentary opens with Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost, Deep Impact) talking about leaving the studio commissary with a group of executives and one of them telling him his script was the best thing he ever read. Months later, Rubin was in the same commissary, leaving behind the same executives with  new writer and heard them say his script was the best they ever read. This anecdote sets the tone of the rest of the documentary which isn't so much about screen writing as it is about the relationship between writers and the studios. This relationship is one in which the writer wants to accepted and the studio wants to get that script out of his grubby little hands and make it the movie they want to see.

The film is made up of interviews with a wide swathe of writers from mid-century pictures up to those of the last decade. To frame the segments of the documentary, scenes from popular films that revolve around screenwriters are used (Barton Fink, The Muse). The result is a very inside baseball type film that is definitely never going to appeal to a large audience. To people working in the film industry and movie nerds like myself, the picture is fascinating glimpse into the trials and travails of the Hollywood screenwriter. We get to hear from veterans such as William Goldman (Butch Cassidy, The Princess Bride) and Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Affliction) as well as young, but equally prolific writers like David Hayter (X-Men, Watchmen) and John August (Big Fish, The Corpse Bride).

I found it very interesting to hear the voices and see the faces of screenwriters of films I was familiar with. I have to say, most of the films represented here were ones I don't care for, particularly Bruce Almighty and Click, but the writers definitely fit your expectations of them. One of the most fascinating interviewees was Guinevere Turner. She started out scripting the indie lesbian romantic comedy Go Fish and went on to pen a draft of American Psycho. Turner tells the story of working with Uwe Boll on Bloodrayne and learning that he was letting the actors make edits to her script. While this would drive most writers insane, Turner says she told herself to take deep breaths and that she hated the movie anyway.

The film fails to be a helpful guide to novice writers which is a shame. Goldman has become a sort of god of screenwriting and has numerous books on the topic. There's some interesting comments on the "postcontent" era of films which might be useful, but overall its just an interesting curio that shows us where films are born.

DocuMondays - Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth

Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth (2008, dir. Erik Nelson)
Featuring Harlan Ellison, Robin Williams, Neil Gaiman, Peter David, Ronald D. Moore

One of the first things you learn about Ellison in this documentary is that once he was so pissed with a television executive that he boxed up a dead groundhog and mailed it to the man. Ellison made sure that he paid the cheapest postage possibly so that it would take upwards of a week to reach the man and be sufficiently bloated and rotting. This is tempered with his friend Neil Gaiman saying that Ellison's entire life's work is one large piece of performance art. That it is not about his 1000+ short stories or numerous award-winning teleplays, but its about the cultivation of this quick-witted curmudgeonly persona.

For those of you not in the know, Harlan Ellison is an acclaimed author of literature both of the science fiction genre and not. He's actually famous for calling the "sci-fi" abbreviation a "hideous neologism" that "sounds like crickets fucking". Needless to say, he is a very opinionated man and any attempt to make a documentary about him is going to be caught up in his fiery and impassioned rantful nature. Ellison was responsible for the classic "City on the Edge of Forever" episode of the original Star Trek, "Demon With a Glass Hand" episode of The Outer Limits (which he sued James Cameron for ripping off to make The Terminator), and for much script work on Babylon 5.

The film focuses on exploring the history and personal philosophy of Ellison. It is near impossible to get the experience of prose across on screen, though the film attempts it by having Ellison recite a few passages from his more famous work against the backdrop of incredibly shitty lava lamp-esque green screen backgrounds. The more interesting pieces are of Ellison expounding on his personal beliefs. He his passionate about writers not being treated like second class citizens by the studios. Ellison tells of how he received a call from woman who told him that on an upcoming Babylon 5 DVD they were wanting to make an extending interview with him a special feature and he agreed, with the stipulation that he receive a paycheck. She replied that everyone else just said yes and did it for free, resulting in a verbal lashing from Ellison about how she and the others in the business side of things wouldn't work for a second if they weren't getting paid.

The documentary suffers due to the absence of any counter to Ellison. He is infamous for public spats and lawsuits and it would have given a interesting balance to the film to have a group of people who disliked the man. Instead all we get is fawning praise and admiration from people who grew up reading his work. Ellison's writing is wonderful, and he is one of the best writers of the late 20th century. The film just hurts from not having those voices to temper Ellison's oft loud and bombastic one.

DocuMondays - Kurt and Courtney

Kurt and Courtney (1998, dir. Nick Broomfield)
Featuring Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, and a cast of thousands...of junkies

I was thirteen when Kurt Cobain killed himself, and honestly the front man for Nirvana existed on my periphery. The whole grunge scene has never been a music genre I enjoyed, I'm more of a 90s BritPop fan (Oasis, Blur, The Verve). But I can understand why the movement was so big, as it was a big deviation from the musical norms of the time. This docu, by Brit filmmaker Broomfield seeks to stir up some of the conspiracy theories surrounding Cobain's death and in the end isn't really about Kurt or Courtney, but about famewhoredom.



What stands out most about the film is the shoddiness. Made on the cheap, the documentary is narrated by Broomfield who doesn't do much to play the neutral observer, but pretty much interjects his personal opinions throughout. That doesn't make the film any less fascinating though, especially with its parade of "friends" of the Cobains. In particular, one young woman who takes Broomfield to a club where Kurt performed during his early days, and whom talks with expertise about seeing the Cobain couple shoot heroin. She promises Broomfield photographic evidence, and when he returns to her apartment later she is anxious and befuddled and has a million excuses as to why she hasn't been able to provide the photos. The woman is incredibly reminiscent of how Courtney Love is described throughout the documentary.

Broomfield pursues some wild leads, including the claim by S&M band member El Duce that Courtney offered him $50,000 to kill Kurt and "make it look like a suicide". A less reliable source you couldn't ask for. There's Courtney's former private investigator who now has "scientific" evidence that the amount of heroin in Kurt's blood made it impossible for him to handle the shotgun. However, Broomfield provides actual scientific evidence proving that it is possible, to which the investigator simply ignores. The most awful of Broomfield's interviewees is Courtney's father, a man writing and publishing books condemning his daughter for the murder of Kurt in what he explains as a way to keep in touch with his daughter.

Broomfield reasonably comes to the conclusion in the film's epilogue that Kurt most likely did commit suicide and that Courtney didn't pay anyone to kill him. What the documentary revealed to me was that at the end of the day both people came from incredibly messed up homes where a strong parental presence was absent. Kurt seems like a very personable, intelligent guy in some of the interview archival footage, and Courtney seems like a sad woman who made a habit of latching onto local musicians in the hope of grooming them into the next Sid Vicious, as a compliment to her Nancy Spungeon. The person you feel the saddest for is poor Frances, their daughter, whose childhood couldn't have been an easy one.

Kurt and Courtney is currently available to view on Hulu.com

DocuMondays - The Nomi Song

The Nomi Song (2004, dir. Andrew Horn)

In 1963, author Walter Tevis wrote the novel The Man Who Fell to Earth, and 13 years later David Bowie starred in the film adaptation. Little did anyone realize that the premise of the story: an alien being appears out of nowhere and goes on to achieve fame before dying prematurely was to be copied by a fellow Earthling who would lose his identity in the alien persona. Nomi's story was much like the operas he loved, very beautiful at its heights, but destined to end in tragedy.



Born Klaus Sperber in Bavaria in 1944, the film really only focuses on his days in New York City in the late 1970s when his career as a New Wave artist occurred and ultimately ended in death. There is wonderful archival footage provided, albeit very low quality, but have footage of performances in the East Village at its cultural height is a treat. The Nomi persona came from the mind of Klaus who combined elements of his native German cabaret, classical opera, Japanese kabuki makeup, and retro 50s futurism. This melange of concepts worked together perfectly, and his set lists would consist of 1930s pop songs, 1960s pop, and his own otherworldly inspired tunes. But what truly made him such a unique act was the mastery of his voice, singing in both a tenor and counter-tenor/falsetto.

The man behind the cleverly designed persona was a conflicting mix and seemed to become much colder and distant as he became more popular. Nomi possessed an androgyny that one interviewee describes as more than sexual, but a removal from normal human emotion. He truly behaved like the alien or robot he pretended to be. There are candid moments caught on film when that fades away. On particular scene involves his appearance in a local access music show in NYC where, instead of singing, he showed off his second talent, making cakes and pies. There are also stories from his back up band and friends of how he hungered for fame, at his heart he wanted to be an opera diva.

Nomi also hungered for companionship, but even his persona was viewed as outsider one to the gay community in the late 1970s. They loved what he did but it seemed that his alien nature made it hard for any man to find him sexually attractive. Friends report in the documentary about his proclivity to go "cruising" and they warned him about the potential for disease by doing this. In the early 1980s, after beginning to compromise his work to be able to put out a marketable album, Nomi discovered strange lesions on his arm and was taking an increasing amount of antibiotics to stay healthy. He was eventually diagnosed with what was called at the time "gay cancer", more commonly known as AIDs. His final months were sad, as he had turned his back on bandmates earlier and sought out any one who would show him compassion.

While the documentary does an excellent job of telling the story of Nomi's musical career. However, I found myself wanting to know more about Klaus Sperber and how this young man from Germany developed this psychological mindset. What was the appeal of the idea of retreating into the alien persona? It seems that a lack of companionship fueled but how did it begin. This is an excellent documentary and can be viewed for free on Hulu.

The Nomi Song (Hulu)

DocuMondays - Examined Life

Examined Life (2009, dir. Astra Taylor)
Featuring Judith Butler, Cornel West, Slavoj Zizek, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Michael Hardt, Martha Nussbaum, Avitall Ronell, Peter Singer, Sunaura Taylor

Fans of Michael Bay's work will no doubt be rushing out to see this one. That was sarcasm. Canadian-American filmmaker Astra Taylor has assembled 8 philosophers and given them ten minutes a piece to muse on some aspect of existence. This could have been pretentious drivel, but Taylor is able to make herself the subject of the film early on in an effort to point out that such an endeavor is imperfect and we should simply sit back and enjoy the mistake. While walking through a park with NYU literature professor Avital Ronell, the subject becomes the interviewer, asking Taylor what the goal of all this is. Taylor responds that philosophy is such an oral exercise, yet it is communicated primarily in printed words, where there is time and space for it to be stretched out and examined. Taylor states she wanted to see if something similar might be accomplished on film, where the philosophers can speak.

The three standouts for me were Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek, and Cornel West. Cornel West has had vast experience as a media personality so he has the charisma and verbage to make what could have been a dry seminar into a witty musing on the nature of democracy and authority. Judith Butler is also very interesting, with her segment involving a discussion between Taylor sister, Sunastra, who is a painter and disability advocate. Their talk hinges on the idea of "going for a walk", and what that means for a wheelchair bound person such as Sunastra. This evolves into the nature of being disabled in a contemporary context and then to an exploration of what the manner in which people walk tells us, and how human behavior is regulated by social expectations.

The best was Slavok Zizjek, a Croatian philosopher whose A Pervert's Guide to Cinema is a great documentary introduction to film criticism. Zizek delivers his dialogue from a landfill somewhere in New York. He talks about the conflict between humanity and nature, and the trend in some groups to desire a "return to nature". His argument against this is that Nature is simply an ongoing series of violent biological interactions. He cites oil being such a large part of contemporary life, and how we never contemplate the sheer level of violence that had to occur to destroy so much living matter to produce the oil in the earth. The conclusion of this talk is that it is in humanity's best interest to create further and further artificial environments that it can control, and that this will involve a redefining of beauty from a pastoral standard to one in which hills of garbage can be found to have a pleasing aesthetic.

The documentary is obviously not for someone needing an escapist film, yet it is not a film for someone who has attained a degree in philosophy. I found it fairly apparent that Taylor is trying to reach out to the contemporary individual who has an interest in continuing their education and not moving through life drone-like. The film is full of idea candy, some interesting questions to contemplate and savor after seeing the picture.

DocuMondays - Young @ Heart

Young @ Heart (2007, dir.Stephen Walker)

The film opens with a jarring scene: a music video featuring a group of senior citizens performing The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated". The first reaction is one of amusement, it is "adorable" that these "little old people" are singing a punk rock song. However, once the lyrics sink in, the simple "aw, how cute" fades away and there is a profound expression that is created when these words come from those mouths:

"Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go....
Just put me in a wheelchair, get me on a plane
Hurry hurry hurry before I go insane
I can't control my fingers I can't control my brain"

There's something very honest and appropriate about a group of aged faces yelling out these lyrics. It seems more appropriate for them, than a group of young buck musicians. This is what the 2007 documentary Young @ Heart does so well, it balances the "cute, old people" moments with a rich and meaningful exploration of aging and confronting our mortality. 

The heart behind the Young @ Heart Chorus is Bob Cilman, a truly extraordinary person. Bob had dedicated hours of work to help organize and put on performances with the elderly, and he doesn't coddle them. When his two featured performers have trouble with James Brown's "I Feel Good", Bob doesn't speak to them in hushed tones. He shouts at them, he gets angry and frustrated, and eventually decides to just work on another song. It can appear mean, but Bob has such a high level of respect and such lofty expectations for this group he can't help but be intense about it. And those expectations pay off a hundredfold.

The performers bring a lot of love into their performances, and the film captures a very tumultuous year for them. Long-time and dedicated performer Bob Salvini takes ill and eventually dies in the middle of the group's performance season. A profound moment occurs when, during their concert, Fred Knittle performs Coldplay's "Fix You", a song he was meant to share with Salvini. The lyrics reflect the feelings of the the performers and Joe's family who watch in the audience:

"And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you"

The documentary is deeply moving. In another scene the group performers for prisoners at a correctional facility. The way the camera shoots the faces of the chorus singing "Forever Young", then cutting to the faces of criminals having to look down or cover their faces because of the tears welling in their eyes makes it impossible for the audience to not experience the same sense of compassion. Don't discount this film as made for the old, or purely an attempt to exploit the elderly. This is a film made for the young to discover the depth and wisdom of their elders. This is one to be hunted down as soon as possible.

Fred Knittle performs Coldplay's "Fix You"

The Young @ Heart Chorus performs "Forever Young"

DocuMondays - What Would Jesus Buy?

What Would Jesus Buy? (2007, dir. Rob VanAlkemade)

Starring Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir

There's a huge problem going on in America and it is known as the Shopocalypse, can I get a Change-alujah?! This is the message being preached by faux-preacher/political theater activist Reverend Billy Talen. Now, with his Church of Stop Shopping, he is touring the country promoting the idea of thoughtful consumerism, wherein we make choices based on where products were made and their actual usefulness. During this outing, the group traveled from the East Coast to Disney Land over the Christmas Holiday spreading their message.

I loved much of the the concept of this documentary, however, it has a problem I find common in issue films of this nature. It presents the problem very well, and I am on board with that, but it never really offers a strong solution and seems to wander too much. The filmmaker seems unsatisfied with simply focusing on Reverend Billy or actually taking piece of his "sermons" and expanding on them Super Size Me Style. In that film, Morgan Spurlock would take an idea (children's nutrition, usage of sugar) have his bit relating to it in his experiment and then expand upon it with interview of experts and people suffering from the after effects of a process food product. There are moments that come close to that here, but ultimately fall flat.

The film hits the targets you would expect it to: Wal-Mart, Disney, Starbucks. And the bizarre sermons are quite humorous. What the film needed was a strong grounding in anti-consumption message with statistics. It needed to hit three areas strongly: Pollution, Conditions in Third World Countries, and Long-Term Economic effects of spending. The director grazes these ideas so briefly that he shouldn't have even bothered. It's interesting how violent authorities become when Reverend Billy and his crew start talking about people ending their unchecked spending. Before anyone is aware of their message, most people seem confused and bit amused. Once the sermons about not giving into the Want impulses drilled into your brains, the security guards and police show up and become quite rough.

Because of the title, I think the film should have centered on rabid consumption juxtaposed against the teachings of Jesus. Once, he's mentioned in a very interesting way by a question of when was the only time Jesus became violent. The answer being in the Temple when he saw the money changers and lenders. I found it interesting that I had never contemplated his one act of aggression coming towards others in relation to people seeking to profit off of others and using the religion to do so. What Would Jesus Buy? is an interesting film, but remains constantly on the surface and never tries to breakthrough.

DocuMondays - Elia Kazan: A Director's Journey

Elia Kazan: A Director's Journey (1995, dir. Richard Shickel)

Narrated by Eli Wallach

The career of Elia Kazan is one of the most impressive of any American filmmaker, but also tainted by involvement in the McCarthy hearings and much controversy caused by his work. Even Kazan's detractors find it hard to discount the amazing body of work he produced though. Kazan is a real story of an immigrant coming this country and making their way, while never compromising their personal convictions.

Kazan was born in 1909 to Greek immigrants in Turkey, who emigrated to the United States in 1913. The documentary doesn't spend much time talking about Kazan's childhood, instead jumping to his career as an actor and director of the stage in New York. Kazan was part of communal theater group who focused on work of social importance. Melodrama was discarded in favor of tackling leftist issues, particularly those related to the working class. These techniques and themes would carry over into Kazan's film work years later. Once he was picked up as a mainstream Broadway director, Kazan's star really shone, particularly when he won a Tony for the original production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

Because of Kazan's deep friendship with Tennessee Williams he was a natural to bring A Streetcar Named Desire to the screen. In the documentary, Kazan relates a tale of how Williams had a bit of a crush on Marlon Brando, causing him not to worry all that much when critics focused on Stanley Kowalski so much, and not the larger conflict between Stanley and Blanche for Stella. This film and many others had a trademark jazz score and very inventive camera work that reflected his protagonists' dementia. Kazan was also gifted at discovering great talents. Among his finds were Marlon Brando, James Dean, Karl Malden, Lee Remick, and Andy Griffith. Kazan explains his method of getting to know an actor by meeting the people important in their lives, spending time with them, going out to dinner with them, and basically figuring out who they are a person because that is what they are going to bring to their performance.

The part of Kazan's career that causes the most dissonance for people was his involvement in the HUAC proceedings. Kazan named names of fellow actor and performers who had been members of the Communist Party with him. As a result many of them were blacklisted and unable to find work for years. This stood out as strange as Kazan was never anything but up front about his own leftist beliefs. Years later he stated his reason being that he was tired of the socialist movement in America hiding, and decided it was now or never for them to come out, even if it was against their will. He didn't do this believing there would be long term harm, but that America would see that socialists weren't scary bogey men. While aiding Joseph McCarthy and his communist witch hunt may have not been the best idea, it is understandable in a way.

Kazan's film career ended officially in 1976, but in reality his light had dimmed about a decade earlier. Hollywood became focused on younger, iconoclastic directors of the late 60s, and the director is very understanding of this. He states that it is a natural cycle of the filmmaking art to look for freshness and he had made the statements he wanted to make. This is a great documentary that takes its story straight from the subject's mouth and will get you excited about seeing the masterpieces of Elia Kazan.

DocuMondays - Beautiful Losers

Beautiful Losers (2008, dir. Aaron Rose, Joshua Leonard)

Starring Shepherd Fairey, Harmony Korine, Mike Mills, Jo Jackson, Chris Johansen, Geoff McFetridge, Margaret Kilgallen, Thomas Campbell, Barry McGee, Ed Templeton

Artists have always precariously walked the line between commerce and staying true their vision, and culturally we consider those who are able to commoditize their work to have succeeded. The reverse of this is that elements of strictly commercial art have been adopted by artists who have no interest in marketing iconography. My personal understanding of art is probably summed up as "I like what I like". And the art and artists featured in this film I like.

The documentary chronicles the work of artists who came up in director Aaron Rose's Alleged Art Gallery in Manhattan during the 1990s. The vast majority of the personalities profiled here came out of the skateboard or punk scenes and ,when you look at the methodology of their art, it makes sense. Pop art has been the strongest influence in the work of these now fortysomethings, in particular retro advertisement art. Painter Jo Jackson states that she loves old advertisements for products that are now obsolete because the seductive properties of the capitalism behind it has died.

The frustration of many artists in this documentary is with how quickly their work was gobbled up by a system that looks to make everything a commodity. There were stickers and buttons being sold at Hot Topic adorned with their work and they admit it felt like having a piece of oneself taken. On the other side, graphic artist Geoff McFetridge was responsible for a Pepsi One advertising campaign and admits he was happy to do it, but also fearful of how the artistic community around him would react. Their reaction was very positive and Geoff hinges this on the fact that he never compromised what made his work his.

The male artists featured, particularly those from the skateboarding community, are constantly wavering the line between their adolescence and adulthood. A major turning point for a lot of them came during an extended stay and series of shows in Tokyo that ended when Margaret Kilgallen, painter and wife of Barry McGee, learned she was pregnant and almost simultaneously that she had cancer. Kilgallen gave birth to her daughter and about two weeks later succumbed to the cancer. The film focuses on this as the moment where a lot of the artists' personal visions became clear and the air of "punk" lessened a bit. This became a Do It Yourself mentality that is a hallmark of contemporary youth culture today.

Film 2010 #12 - My Winnipeg

My Winnipeg (2007, dir. Guy Maddin)

If you aren't familiar with Guy Maddin's style of film making, then viewing one of his pictures can be a very jolting experience. Narrative is secondary to a more stream of consciousness style of storytelling. I've been very familiar with Maddin's work, starting with Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, and this oddity of cinema lead me to watch Tales of the Gimli Hospital, Careful, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, and The Saddest Music in the World.

Maddin has an affinity for German expressionist and Soviet propaganda films from the early days of cinema. As a result, he typically makes black and white pictures that utilize the actual technology of the time period he attempts to recreate. In My Winnipeg, Maddin uses rear-projection and obvious sound stages to create a film that will be unlike anything you see in the theaters. The premise is that Maddin is attempting to psychologically break free from his frigid hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba. The best way he decides upon doing this is to recreate moments from his childhood, focused around his cold and controlling mother.

Interwoven with these recreations are bizarre, Winnipeg legends. Maddin tells us about the First Nation (would be Native Americans for us) belief that beneath the forks of the rivers that converge in Winnipeg, are a second "forks beneath the forks" that are mystical in nature. This image of a parallel existing underneath what can be seen is crucial to understand what Maddin is doing in this film. All of his anecdotes about Winnipeg involve the idea of a darker side of things, and the world of myth and fable.

Many of Maddin's claims about Winnipeg are suspect (10 times the number of sleepwalkers than any other city, a city hall built as part of an occult Mason rite) but they act as conduits into the subconscious and representations of the unseen nature of things. The fact that this entire film is a one long poem taking place in the mind of Maddin plays into the examination of a seedy underbelly to things. The film is also able to evoke strong emotion, particularly when Maddin laments the destruction of the city's professional hockey stadium, a temple to him as he grew up.

What started as a commission by the city of Winnipeg to make a documentary of their city, evolved into an amazing exploration into one man's psyche. Maddin is a director more interested in making what he likes to see and, if an audience happens to enjoy it, that is simply an added bonus. What Maddin creates as an end result is very similar to the film art created by David Lynch. This is not cohesive story with beginning/middle/end, but is an expression of the artist's mood.

Film 2009 #20 - Waltz With Bashir

Waltz With Bashir (2008)
Directed by Ari Folman

In 1982 Israel invaded Southern Lebanon, citing an assassination attempt on their U.K. ambassador as the impetus. The conflict brought them up against the PLO, Muslim Lebanese forces, and Syrians. Working with the Israelis were the Lebanese Phalangists. The Phalangists claimed secularism but are mainly supported by Maronite Christians, a sect of the Catholic Church founded in Syria in the 7th century. This mad cluster of forces came together for a bloody war that increased in intensity with the assassination of Lebanese president Bashir Gemayel. The Phalangists, incredibly loyal to Bashir, culminated the war with the Sabra and Shatila massacres, where Palestinians families were bombed and those that survived the bombing where then lined up against walls and executed by firing squad.

This is the waking nightmare Ari Folman finds himself sinking into. The film begins with a meeting in 2006 between Ari and a friend. The friend has begun having horrific dreams about his participation in the 1982 First Lebanon War. This pushes repressed memories of Ari’s participation into the fore of his consciousness and the movie unfolds from there. Ari learns through interviews with friends he served with about what happened during their tour and how they were complicit in the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Ari has a recurring vision of three naked young men emerging from the water at night and walking towards the shore where an urban landscape is lit by flares, falling like stars from the sky. Once in the city they find themselves overcome by screaming grieving Palestinian women. In the climax of the film Ari has finally sorted these memories out and we see what really happened and why he is haunted by these images.

What sets Waltz With Bashir apart from a standard documentary or war film is that it is made from a combination of standard cel animation, 3D computer animation, flash animation, and rotoscoping (animating over live action film). This allows director Folman a freedom that his small budget would not have allowed for a live action film. Complex battle scenes are recreated with ease but also without losing their weight and depth. The animation also aids in creating the nightmarish tone Folman wants to wash over us. If the roots of this war don’t come across in the film, that is intentional. We’re seeing the events from the eyes of a 19 year old boy who doesn’t understand what is happening other than it is his legal duty as a citizen of Israel to serve in the military. The film is a definite descendant of Apocalypse Now, even paying homage to that masterwork with a scene of lounging soldiers on the beach including one surfing as bombs fall.

There are so many scenes that create a sense of the bizarre and senseless. One soldier recounts becoming sick to his stomach over the side of a boat the night before the invasion. After the young man blacks out, he dreams of a giant naked woman swimming to the boat, cradling him in her arms and swimming away with him as his unit is bombed. In another scene, a soldier recounts the slaughter house the Phalangists created from the Palestinians they slew. The camera is low to the ground as we float across dead earth littered with rotting gnarled trees, corpses, and eyes and ears floating in formaldehyde jars.

Waltz With Bashir is a very timely film during this current incarnation of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It reminds us that it’s not the men on the ground on either side for us to blame, but the men at the top who give the orders and expect mindless allegiance whose hands are drenched in blood. It was reported that this film received a 20 minute standing ovation at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Ari Folman won a 2008 Golden Globe for this film and in his acceptance speech mentioned that over the course of making it eight babies were born. He said he had a particular hope for those eight children: “I hope that one day when they grow up that they watch this film together and they see the war that takes place in the film like an ancient video game that has nothing to do with their lives whatsoever.”