Month: November 2013

A Homecoming for Russians Artists: LFM Reviews Enter Here

By Joe Bendel. Ilya Kabakov does not really care how many millions of people Stalin murdered—more relevant to him is the way the Soviet state treated his mother like dirt. His intensely personal experiences under Communism profoundly shaped his conceptual work, created in collaboration with his wife, Emilia. After twenty years in the West, Kabakov finally returns to Moscow for an ambitious series of installations. Amei Wallach documents their mostly triumphant homecoming in Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here, which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

Kabakov’s contemporaries all acknowledge the Moscow Conceptualists started with him. Like most of his colleagues, Kabakov paid the bills illustrating children’s books. It allowed him plenty of free time to pursue to pursue his own work – in secret, of course. Arguably, the young Kabakov was rather fortunate when the Leningrad Art School accepted him, at a time when both pupil and institution had been evacuated to Samarkand. However, his formative art school years remain a source of pain and anger for Kabakov.

Years later, Kabakov’s mother agreed to his request for a written account of her difficult life. The narration of her words form the film’s strongest sequences, chronicling her hand-to-mouth years, working as the night watchman at his art school, living illegally in a converted water-closet, because she lacked the proper residency papers. Constantly evicted by bureaucrats and snitches, Kabakov’s mother was essentially homeless and shunned in the workers’ paradise. Her missive-memoir became the framework for Labyrinth, My Mother’s Album and its influence on other pieces is unmistakable.

While Ilya Kabakov clearly emerges as the senior partner, Emilia Kabakov seems perfectly content to serve as the more practical liaison with the business side of the art world. Twelve years his senior, Emilia Kabakov carries far less personal baggage from the Soviet years. However, it is rather eye-opening for her coming across an old informer’s journal with her family somewhat ominously identified as “the Jews.”

The Kabakovs’ brand of conceptual art is far more accessible than what might come to mind after watching the Herb & Dorothy documentaries. Unlike some of their colleagues, the Kabakovs’ work is clearly both intellectually and emotionally engaging, with their ironic use of Soviet symbols and the trappings of crummy everyday Russian life speaking volumes. Kabakov frequently incorporates his paintings into their so-called “total installations,” which further heightens their visual impact.

With an eye for telling details, Wallach and her crew nicely capture a sense of the viewing experience of the Kabakovs’ installations. Likewise, she also catches the artists, particularly Ilya, in reflective moods. Executed with sensitivity, insight, and a dash of style, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here is recommended for those who appreciate fine art and Russian history when it opens this Wednesday (11/13) at Film Forum.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on November 11th, 2013 at 2:45pm.

The Iranian New Wave: LFM Reviews Tall Shadows of the Wind

From "Tall Shadows of the Wind."

By Joe Bendel. It could be world cinema’s most iconic scarecrow after The Wizard of Oz, but this severe figure definitely lacks a heart. Conceived as a protest against the Shah’s rule, it eerily foreshadowed the tragic disappointments of the Islamic Revolution, thereby earning it the distinction of being banned by both regimes. Fittingly, Bahman Farmanara’s Tall Shadows of the Wind screens next week during the Asia Society’s Iranian New Wave 1960’s-1970’s film retrospective.

Produced in 1979, the timing for Wind was profoundly unlucky. Right from the opening sequence, one can see how the new authorities would take issue with Farmanara’s heavily symbolic adaptation of Houshang Golshiri’s short story. A hardscrabble village has assembled in the fields to chant their prayers to their long awaited deliverer. It is a primal scene with a vaguely pagan character, feeling rather out of place in the Abrahamic tradition.

Clearly, life is desperately hard for the village, due to reasons only vaguely alluded to. A scarecrow has been erected in the fields, which should be a positive development. However, when Abdullah the bus driver draws the rough approximation of his own features on the straw man, it starts to exert a malevolent influence on the local populace. Anxiety and general feelings of dread run rampant through the hamlet, leading to some very real physical repercussions. As the indirect cause of it all, the somewhat eccentric Abdullah is further marginalized within the community. Yet, he remains the one member of the tight-knit group inclined to take action.

From "Tall Shadows of the Wind."

Even with Wind’s otherworldly vibe, the significance of a new progressive guardian bringing even greater misery is impossible to miss. Likewise, its pointed depiction of the nonconformist’s troubled place within society did not exactly fit the new government’s playbook, either. Causal relationships can get a little sketchy, but the mysterious uncertainty is part of what makes it so unsettling. Farmanara creates an impossibly hard to describe vibe, combining gritty naturalism and a feverish sense of supernatural oppression. Although Wind is a decidedly cerebral allegory, it could have easily been converted into a horror film with a handful of re-shoots and a different score.

Evidently finding a clean print of Wind is a bit of a challenge, but even in imperfect formats, Farmanara’s visuals are unusually powerful and loaded with meaning. A compelling fusion of the unreal and the too real, Tall Shadows of the Wind defies comparison to other films. Since it will be projected from a DVD, the Asia Society will not charge admission to Wind this coming Tuesday (11/12). Highly recommended regardless, Farmanara’s film has never been as widely screened as it deserves to be (especially in Iran), so any showing is an event to take advantage of.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on November 11th, 2013 at 2:38pm.

Getting Macro on the Micro Level: LFM Reviews Economic Freedom in Action

By Joe Bendel. Thanks to economic freedom, you can buy Paul Frank merchandise in Slovakia. The availability of monkey-face t-shirts might not sound like an epochal triumph, but it has made a world of difference for the Rybárikovás and their standard of living. Even more dramatic are the case studies of the North Korean defector providing start-up capital to his fellow refugees in the ROK and the Chilean beekeeper exporting queens to struggling European bee farms. Drawing upon these highly personal case-studies and the Fraser Institute’s annual report on world economic freedom, host-economist Johan Norberg argues that policies of economic liberty make the world a better place whenever they are adopted in Economic Freedom in Action: Changing Lives, which airs on Chicago’s WTTW this Thursday.

Written and directed by James & Maureen Castle Tusty, the filmmakers responsible for inspiring Singing Revolution, and produced in conjunction with the Free to Choose Network, Action follows the template established by Milton & Rose Friedman’s groundbreaking series, sprinkling manageable nuggets of analysis amid plentiful real world examples. Spanning the globe, Action starts in Africa, examining the country’s extraordinary turn-around from the perspective of Sylvia Banda.

Under Socialist president-for-life Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia was an economic basket case – but following his ouster, it has become one of the continent’s fastest growing economies, thanks to an ambitious privatization program. Banda was able to ride that wave. Starting with an unfurnished one-room restaurant, she now operates one of the nation’s largest food supply companies. Through capitalism, she has enacted a series of agricultural and hygiene reforms that the government and NGOs struggled to implement.

The contrast between economic liberty and authoritarianism is starkly demarcated on the Korean peninsula. While famine is an everyday fact of life in the tightly regimented DPRK, the ROK is a land of plenty, often leading to culture shock for defectors like Daesung Kim. To help his fellow refugees adapt, Kim started a venture capital firm that invests in their small enterprises. Once struggling to survive, those he works with now have a stake in South Korea’s economy and can provide entrepreneurial expertise if and when the North finally liberalizes its markets and political system.

Arguably, Kim is the bravest capitalist featured in Action. In contrast, the stakes were never so high for Katerina Rybáriková, but her story nicely illustrates the necessity of economic liberty in addition to political liberty. After the fall of communism, Slovakia still lagged behind most of Eastern Europe and ranked relatively low on the Fraser Institute’s index. However, a concerted program of privatization and property rights guarantees created the climate that allowed Rybáriková to successful pitch a Slovakian franchise to the Paul Frank corporate office.

One might expect Action to steer clear of Chile, yet it completely proves the thesis of Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, with political liberty duly following the establishment of economic liberty. While acknowledging the abuses of the Pinochet regime, Action charts the explosive growth following his economic reforms that remain largely unadulterated to this day. Thanks to the market-based economy, brothers John and Miguel Hernandez have been able to build their bee farm into a going pollination service and bee queen exporting concern, a business with particularly positive global ramifications, given environmental concerns regarding dwindling bee populations.

Chile and South Korean have consistently ranked high on the Fraser report, while Zambia and Slovakia have been recent up-and-comers. That begs the obvious question: how does America rank? For years, we usually held the second or third spot, but we have fallen in recent years, to number nineteen. Norberg and the Tustys do not engage in a lot of finger-wagging, but the significance of this tumble is hard to miss.

Indeed, Action is a remarkably sure-footed exploration of the real world impact of economic policies. By focusing on human stories it never comes across like an econ lecture or a ration of polemics. It is thoroughly convincing, but it is also really good television, taking viewers to places they rarely see in the mainstream media. Highly recommended, Economic Freedom in Action: Changing Lives airs this Thursday (11/14) on Chicago’s WTTW and can be seen in syndication on PBS stations throughout the month. It will also be available for online viewing courtesy of the Free to Choose Network.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on November 11th, 2013 at 2:20pm.

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post: Putting Computers in Their Place: Computer Chess & The Nerd Origins of Today’s Technopoly


[Editor’s Note: the post below appears today at The Huffington Post.]

By Jason Apuzzo. Computers need to be put in their place. They really do.

That’s why I’ve been looking forward to the DVD release this week of Andrew Bujalski’s cult Sundance hit Computer Chess. Computer Chess finally spills the beans about where these little monsters came from in the first place.

Every time I pick up a newspaper these days – I’m one of the twelve people left who still read physical newspapers – I read about how computers are spying on us, destroying jobs, or infuriating health insurance customers. Like a hungry Rottweiler off its leash, computers are getting out of control and tearing up the neighborhood.

If you believe what you read, computers are also in the process of wrecking the book publishing and music industries, eliminating celluloid photography – and just this week computers claimed their latest victim, one near and dear to my heart: the local video store, as Blockbuster finally succumbed to laptops, smartphones and tablets as the preferred ways of renting all those movies you couldn’t afford to see (or were too embarrassed to see) when they were in theaters.

2013-11-08-VideoStoreaisle.jpg
The demise of the American video store.

No more video stores – who would’ve believed it, even just ten years ago? That means no more pimply teenagers to recommend midnight horror movies to me (“Sir, I definitely recommend C.H.U.D. over TerrorVision“), no more aimless browsing or listening to neighbors argue over which Steven Seagal movie to rent, no more cheap licorice sticks at the checkout counter.

I never thought I’d miss those things so much – but suddenly I do. And it’s all because of our ‘friend’ the computer. Computers are becoming like the Yankees during the ’90s: gobbling up everybody else’s talent, then telling us how good it is for baseball.

The propaganda over the wonders that computers supposedly bring to our lives is getting out of hand. In the very least, it’s out of proportion to the destruction computers are simultaneously causing – that ‘disruptive’ effect Silicon Valley gurus salivate over, like vampires at a blood drive.

So as Twitter – the company currently reducing our public discourse to snarky, 140-character outbursts – celebrates its gaudy IPO right now, I’d like to recommend a new movie out on DVD this week that casts digital technology in a very different light: Computer Chess. Continue reading LFM’s Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post: Putting Computers in Their Place: Computer Chess & The Nerd Origins of Today’s Technopoly

Have a Drink, Cousin: LFM Reviews Sake-Bomb

By Joe Bendel. As a sake-brewing apprentice about to succeed his master, Naoto relates to the potent potable on a deep level. It is almost sacrilegious to ask him to drink a sake-bomb (the old sake shot submerged in a beer). Nonetheless, he acquits himself fairly well when he hits the California party scene with his snarky cousin (better than the churlish vlogger, in fact). Eventually, everyone will learn a thing or two in Junya Sakino’s extended family road comedy, Sake-Bomb, which opens today in Los Angeles.

Naoto could not possibly be more earnest. When he agrees to take over his master’s brewery, he also follows the old man’s advice, taking a week’s vacation to finish working through any lingering regrets he might have in his personal life. His pursuit of Olivia, his long lost summer lover, brings him to the Moritas’ apartment in Los Angeles.

Sebastian is crashing there with his father, because he is unemployed and has just been dumped by his girlfriend. He is not exactly keen to shuttle Naoto up to Petaluma in hopes of finding the elusive Olivia, but his father insists. Naturally, they first take a detour to a party in Irvine, so Sebastian can make a complete clown of himself in front of his ex. At least they meet a few interesting types there, including Joslyn, the naughty graphic novelist who catches Sebastian’s eye.

Pound for pound, there might be more identity jokes in S-B than any other film this year, largely taking the form of Sebastian’s video posts. He is angry with Asian women who date white guys. He is angry with white women who do not date Asian men. He is angry with white people who cannot distinguish between Asian nationalities. He is not too thrilled with the Chinese either, so buckle up. On one hand, some of this material pushes the envelope of politeness. On the other hand, it is pretty funny sometimes.

From "Sake-Bomb."

As Sebastian, Eugene Kim never holds back on the attitude. He is almost too abrasive, considering the audience obviously is supposed to embrace him during the third act. However, likability is not a problem for Gaku Hamada, the popular Japanese star of Potechi (Chips), who subtly but surely conveys the strength of character beneath Naoto’s naivety. Together, their over-the-top and understated personas play off each other quite nicely. Future star-in-the-making Jessika Van also scores in her scene as a friend of Sebastian’s girlfriend, giving him what-for. Yet, for a certain demographic, former porn star and California gubernatorial candidate Mary Carey upstages everyone as, you know, a porn star.

Sake-Bomb never reinvents the buddy movie-wheel, but it has an edge and a good deal of heart. Better than the typical Phillips and Apatow grind ‘em outs, Sake-Bomb is recommended for fans of slightly raucous but well-intentioned rom-coms when it opens today (11/8) in Los Angeles at the Downtown Independent.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on November 8th, 2013 at 3:09pm.

The Story of a Publisher (Ahem): LFM Reviews Filthy Gorgeous; Premieres Tonight (11/8) on EPIX

Bob Guccione back in the day.

By Joe Bendel. Bob Guccione hired a lot of science and science fiction writers for Omni Magazine. He published other stuff, too. Of course, that is what built his publishing empire and it is why he is now getting the documentary profile treatment in Barry Avrich’s Filthy Gorgeous: the Bob Guccione Story (trailer here), a selection of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which premieres tonight on EPIX.

Originally, painting was Guccione’s calling. He was more or less content to live the hand-to-mouth life of a struggling artist in Europe, but his first wife—not so much. Moving to fill a void, Guccione originally conceived Penthouse as the domestic British answer to Playboy, but he quickly recognized that the American circulation titan was vulnerable to upstart competition and moved in on its turf. Guccione initially served as the staff photographer, because he could not afford anyone else, but obviously those duties agreed with him. Readers (or whatever the correct term might be) seemed to agree, until things started to turn in the 1990s.

Frankly, Filthy is much more interesting when analyzing the collapse of the Guccione empire than celebrating its rise. An entire film could probably be made on the tempestuous production of Caligula and it would be far more watchable than the train wreck resulting from Guccione’s battles with Tinto Brass. There were also cash-draining misadventures with a cold fusion reactor scam and an aborted Atlantic City casino. More costly in the long term, Guccione fundamentally lacked a vision for the whole internet thing, just like his archrival, Hugh Hefner.

There is some fascinating, honest to goodness publishing history in Filthy. There are also plenty of reminisces about what a progressive gentleman Guccione was in his business dealings and how shy he was in private. That is all very nice, but it gets repetitive quickly. Likewise, attempts to position Guccione as yet another First Amendment crusader fall flat, notwithstanding the efforts of Alan Dershowitz. In fact, the lack of critical voices in Filthy is a serious flaw. There really should be someone somehow associated with Vanessa Williams tearing into him for the nude photo scandal.

A man at work.

Naturally, Avrich periodically gives viewers peaks behind the magazine covers, because duh. Yet, the sequence that resonates the strongest describes attempts by Guccione, Jr. (a rather candid interview subject) and several of his father’s loyalists to take the magazine in a more demur Men’s Health or Maxim direction. There is something to their arguments that might have been explored in greater length. Needless to say, Guccione, Sr. went in the opposite direction, with dire financial consequences.

The magnitude of Guccione’s downfall is almost worthy of classical tragedy. As a posthumous profile, there is no escaping the inevitable, but the closing fifteen minutes or so are surprisingly sad. Still, there are some worthy object lessons for budding media moguls in Filthy regarding the importance of seizing opportunities and acknowledging seismic shifts in the marketplace. There are also pictures of naked women, scrupulously selected for their comparative tastefulness. Conspicuously one-sided but still consistently interesting, Filthy Gorgeous is recommended to mature viewers for the documentary equivalent of its articles when it airs on EPIX tonight (11/8).

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on November 8th, 2013 at 3:06pm.