Month: November 2010

On-Tour in Iraq: Striking a Chord

By Joe Bendel. With the success of The Surge, the nature of military service in the Iraqi theater is much safer and more predictable. Of course, that is a blessing – but it also means American military personnel have more time to get bored and dwell on their separation from loved ones. However, nothing works like music to console the weary soul. Even though they might not be household names, the military brings in a number of entertainers to play for the troops like singer-songwriter Nell Bryden, whose second tour military tour of Iraq and Kuwait provides the structure of Susan Cohn Rockefeller’s Striking a Chord, a documentary short (see the trailer above) now playing the festival circuit.

The USO books the big name stars. The Multinational Corps handles the professional gigging artists without the fame or the egos. One such musician is Brooklyn-born Nell Bryden, the first entertainer recruited by Lt. Col. Scott Rainey, the chief of programming for the Corps. A blues-and-roots influenced pop vocalist, Bryden is a charismatic performer and a good sport. She does not simply chopper in and out for her gigs. Rockefeller shows her visiting hospitals and touring bases, talking to anyone looking for a sympathetic ear. Indeed, the rapport she quickly establishes with soldiers appears deep and genuine.

It helps when you check your politics at the airport. Several of her band members agree, noting the deep personal connections they have been able to make once they jettisoned their own political baggage. Likewise, Rockefeller tries to play it straight and avoid partisanship, largely succeeding. While bookending the film with grim expert commentary on post-traumatic stress syndrome arguably has certain implications, she also gives voice to soldiers’ frustrations that none of the good news they see unfolding in Iraq is ever reported in the western media. Continue reading On-Tour in Iraq: Striking a Chord

LFM Review: Megamind

By Patricia Ducey. It’s lonely at the top.

That’s the premise of Dreamworks’ latest 3-D animated toon, Megamind. In a story that mines this rich thematic vein, we watch as two protagonists – the balding blue-headed ‘Megamind’ and his nemesis, the superhero ‘Metro Man’ – come to this sad realization. Metro Man finds his superhero status a burden, whereas the bumbling Megamind is revealed to be no brilliant, lonely anti-hero like Charles Foster Kane, nor an ambitious Huey Long figure – nor a god-man brought low by flying too close to the sun. Instead, he is the pitiable product of a lousy childhood – and this ‘he’s depraved on account of he’s deprived‘ trope proves the less successful aspect of the story.

I’m reminded of those great lyrics from West Side Story:

Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It’s just our bringin’ up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, naturally we’re punks!

Megamind borrows liberally from other cartoon narratives, especially Superman’s. A planet in a far-off galaxy is about to self-destruct, so two sets of parents rocket their babies off into the ether – hoping they find safety on firmer ground. In a pure accident of fate, one baby lands under the Christmas tree in the home of a loving, intact family – while the other alights in a prison yard. Predictably, the loved child grows up to be a superhero, albeit a bit of a conceited prig, and the prison baby grows up to be Megamind. But Megamind chooses the dark side, in true psycho-babble fashion, only after Metro Man and the other kids at school bully and tease him. If they think I’m bad, I might as well be bad, he figures. Thus their lifelong rivalry begins, and Megamind is satisfied with conjuring up devilish plans and having the occasional plot hit its mark. He can’t even imagine that one day he might actually defeat Metro Man – yet it happens, much to his surprise.

Megamind revels in his triumph for a time – The king is dead, long live the king! He raids the Federal Reserve, steals the Mona Lisa, and runs Metro City into the ground. Something is missing, though – so in disguise, he woos newswoman Roxanne Ritchi (like Cyrano wooing Roxanne). Will Megamind discover his inner good guy? Will Roxanne learn that a man’s heart is more important that his looks?

I think you know the answer.

All well and good. The weak link in the story, though, turns on the fate of Metro Man. Megamind thoroughly defeats him. Yet in Act 3 our supposedly dead hero reappears; apparently he faked his own death so he could drop out, grow a beard, and read self-help books. He abandons Metro City – just when the people need him – to search for self-fulfillment. And at last he finds his true calling: he’ll become a rock star! But his singing and guitar plucking are rather wanting. Who cares? He feels fulfilled! This is where the story (and his character arc) clunk to a stop, at least for an adult. He never wises up and returns to his responsibilities, even as Roxanne urges him to – forgetting the one true superhero credo: “With great power there must come great responsibility.”

The animation and 3-D effects in Megamind, though, are stunning, with incredible range and variety. On the micro side, a baby chewing on his finger is irresistibly sweet, while the billowing satin of Megamind’s cape adds to his creepy allure. On the macro level, director Tim McGrath’s depth of field recalls the artistry of a Greg Tolland or William Wyler, with action bursting out of the screen on all three axes. The evil Titan lashes the damsel Roxanne to the highest skyscraper in Metro City, and Metro Man careens down the concrete canyons of Wall Street; the film is truly a 90-minute roller coaster ride. In addition, McGrath inserts jokes for the grownups: a Marlon Brando/Jor-El parody as Megamind’s father, a political poster a la the famous Obama ‘Hope’ poster, etc. Continue reading LFM Review: Megamind

In the White Room

Designs by Karim Rashid.

By David Ross. Gary Hustwit’s Objectified (2009) is a cerebral documentary about industrial design. It considers everyday products we don’t usually think about as solved physical puzzles – peelers, garden sheers, computers, cars – and presents the thought processes of those who do the solving. The documentary is articulate, but also tendentious and leading. It purports to explain and defend ‘good design,’ but what it actually defends is a stringent minimalism and futurism. Its approved objects are clean lined, smooth surfaced, mono-tonal, ergonomic, and – in its dreams – ‘sustainable.’ This is the design philosophy of Apple, IKEA, and OXO – the spirit of molded plastic chairs and cell phones everywhere – in direct descent from the manifestoes of the Bauhaus. Continue reading In the White Room

REMINDER: The Complete Metropolis Screens Tonight on TCM, Nov. 7th + Set Your Clocks Back!

By Jason Apuzzo. A special reminder to our readers: Turner Classic Movies will be showing the newly restored, ‘complete’ version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis tonight, Sunday, November 7th at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific – along with a documentary associated with the restoration process. Make sure to catch this important piece of cinematic history – I assure you, you won’t regret it. To read more about this special screening, visit the TCM website.

Incidentally, you can read LFM Contributor Jennifer Baldwin’s review of the newly restored, ‘complete’ Metropolis here, and you can also read my long-ago review of the ‘original’ cut of Metropolis here.

SPECIAL NOTE: DON’T FORGET TO SET YOUR CLOCKS BACK AN HOUR TODAY.

Posted on November 7th, 2010 at 7:14am.

LFM Review: Four Lions as Cinematic Tea Party

[Editor’s Note: the review below is a revised and updated version of my Four Lions review from this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival.]

By Jason Apuzzo. Chris Morris’ scintillating new film Four Lions is so wickedly funny, shatters so many taboos, and is so brazen in its satire of Islamic terrorism – and the vacuous, Western political correctness that supports it – that it’s a wonder Morris isn’t in a witness protection program right now. Not that he would need to be protected from jihadis, whom I imagine spend little time watching indie cinema – but from the Western cultural establishment, whose protective covering over the lunacy of Islamic radicalism Morris rips away with comic gusto and flair in this marvelous new film that opens in select theaters nationwide today.

Four Lions was a big hit at last year’s Sundance and this summer’s L.A. Film Festival, and has already done killer business at the indie box office in the UK (it opened the same weekend as Iron Man 2, yet had a better per-screen average), yet after a long and successful tour of the festival circuit the film only recently secured distribution here in the U.S. from first-time distributor Drafthouse films. Having seen Four Lions during its much-discussed festival run, it’s not hard to understand why. This uproariously funny and sophisticated film, that had the audience at the L.A. Film Festival in hysterics from the opening scene on (Four Lions was eventually voted Best Narrative Feature by audiences at the LAFF), is nonetheless so subversive in its vision of Islamic terrorism – so thoroughly and mercilessly dismissive of any justification for terrorism – that by the end of the film any lingering shred of sympathy that might exist toward the terrorists’ point of view has simply been pulverized. Imagine starting up a heavy-metal band fresh off watching Spinal Tap, or becoming a French police officer after watching Peter Sellars play Inspector Clouseau, and you can imagine the kind of effect Four Lions must have on young Brits thinking of starting up a terror cell.

Four Lions is about a bumbling UK terror cell living in Sheffield. The two key leaders of the cell are Omar (Riz Ahmed) – the only reasonably sane or professional one in the group, around whom most of the film revolves – and Azzam al-Britanni (or ‘Barry’ to his friends, played with Falstaffian flair by Nigel Lindsay), who’s actually just an abrasive, working class white-guy convert to Islam. Nigel Lindsay’s portrayal of Azzam al-Britanni almost steals the whole show; the combination of belligerence and stupidity he brings to the character is pitch-perfect. Other guys in the terror cell include the sweet but utterly moronic Waj (Kayvan Novak), and Faisal (Adeel Akhtar) – a mumbling doofus who for some reason is convinced he can train crows to be suicide bombers. A fifth member of the group, Hassan (Arsher Ali), is a pretentious wanna-be rapper (his music conducts a ‘jihad of the mind’) who is recruited while Omar and Waj are in Pakistan botching their terrorist training.

Terrorists as total morons: Faisal in Chris Morris' "Four Lions."

The film follows the different members of the group as they struggle to conceal their activities, aided only by blind luck – and a kind of inane cunning – with the film climaxing in the terror cell’s effort to bomb the London Marathon. That last sequence in particular is a tour-de-force of action, comic-timing, suspense … and ultimately, great emotional power. Without giving away the film’s ending, let’s say simply that Four Lions does not pull punches about the full tragedy and inhumanity of terrorism. Indeed, much to the contrary, by the end of Four Lions one has the sense that the film’s manic humor has only been a ruse – a clever set-up – for what is actually a devastating and deeply moral payoff at the end.

What struck me the most about Four Lions was the intelligence and sophistication Chris Morris and his actors brought to this material. The trailer for the film (see above) captures the opera buffa aspects of Four Lions – but not necessarily the anarchic, Paddy Chayefskyian verve, insight and verbal wit of the film’s satire. Having made a film on this subject matter myself, I can tell you that Morris has accomplished no small feat in bringing out the sheer lunacy of the terrorist worldview – while keeping the tone light, and respecting the earthy humanity of the characters.

Check this clip out below for an example – it comes from one of my favorite scenes in the film, as rapper Hassan gets recruited by the completely insane Azzam al-Britanni while attending a ridiculous academic conference on jihad:

The inevitable question that films like Four Lions or The Infidel or Living with the Infidels or Kalifornistan always inspire is: is the film ‘humanizing’ terrorists? And the answer is, of course, yes … which is exactly what real-world terrorists, intoxicated with their self-image as divinely inspired warriors, never want.  As we know only too well at this point, real-world terrorists do not consider themselves mere human beings … but jihadis, divinely inspired by Allah. This is the pompous bubble that Four Lions exists to pop. And pop it the film does, with the force of an atomic blast. Continue reading LFM Review: Four Lions as Cinematic Tea Party

REMINDER: Kalifornistan Opens Free Thinking Film Festival on November 12th

By Jason Apuzzo. I wanted to remind our Libertas readers in the Northeast today that Kalifornistan, a film starring LFM Co-Editor Govindini Murty, and which I wrote and directed, will be opening the Free Thinking Film Festival in Ottawa, Canada this coming Friday, November 12th. We’re very excited about this, among other reasons because the Free Thinking Film Festival is the only festival taking place anywhere this year that will be devoted to promoting principles of freedom as expressed through the cinema.

The Free Thinking Film Festival is designed by its founder Fred Litwin to celebrate “limited government, free market economics, and the dignity of the individual.” We’re very honored that Kalifornistan was chosen to open the festival for its Opening Night Gala, an event which will also serve as a fundraiser for the Military Family Resource Centre – which helps military families in Canada. Tickets for this event are available here.

Other films in the festival lineup include: Cyrus Nowrasteh’s The Stoning of Soraya M (Closing Night Gala, with Cyrus attending), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn, HBO’s documentary For Neda (which we showed in its entirety here at Libertas) and a multitude of interesting documentaries including: Crossing the Line, Outside the Great Wall, Decryptage, The Cartel, Generation Zero, Do As I Say, Mine Your Own Business and others. The full festival line-up is available here.

We want to thank Fred Litwin and his team for choosing Kalifornistan to open the festival. We’re very honored to have Kalifornistan in the company of the many exceptional films and filmmakers being gathered together for this exciting event. I’ve put the trailer for Kalifornistan above, and you can visit Kalifornistan’s website here.

Again, our thanks to the Free Thinking Film Festival, and we encourage everyone to get their tickets for this great event today. The Free Thinking Film Festival will be taking place at the National Archives – adjacent to Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Canada. Incidentally, Govindini is a proud Ottawa native, and is delighted that free thinking films are coming to the fine citizens of Canada’s capitol.

Posted on November 5th, 2010 at 9:19am.