By Jason Apuzzo. Filmmaker, best-selling author and former rock drummer Larry Schweikart recently sent me the trailer (see above) for his forthcoming documentary, Rockin’ The Wall. Rockin’ The Wall is about the liberating force of rock music for young people living behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. The film is based in part on a segment of Larry’s book, Seven Events That Made America America. Many of you also may remember Larry as the co-author of the #1 New York Times best seller A Patriot’s History of the United States. [Both of these books are available in the LFM Store below.]
Rockin’ The Wall deals with how rock music served as a source of hope for young kids growing up in the communist world, and how the music subverted the grip that totalitarian regimes held over societies within the Eastern Bloc. Larry and his team interview rockers from the Cold War era, including the band Mother’s Finest – a black funk-rock band out of Atlanta who played East Berlin two weeks before the Wall came crashing down. Also interviewed are young eastern Europeans from that era whose lives were changed irrevocably by rock music and the cracks that music opened up – literally and figuratively – in their otherwise repressive world.
One of the great details that Rockin’ The Wall apparently goes into is how the communist regimes – seeing what a powerful force rock music was among the youth – tried to co-opt the music for their own purposes. In the Soviet Union this lead to the Russians actually creating a ‘Ministry of Rock'(!). I’m hoping Larry has some samples from that Ministry’s music – it must be hilarious.
Rockin’ The Wall reminds me of a marvelous film from the Los Angeles Film Festival that we recently reviewed here at LFM, called Disco & Atomic War. Disco & Atomic War is an extraordinary new Estonian documentary about the so-called ’soft power’ influence of American and Western culture on the minds of Soviet citizens living in Estonia during the Cold War, who were able through clever means to watch Finnish television broadcasts emanating from just over the border. As Disco informs us (in amusing detail), American popular culture – especially in the form of glamorous TV shows like “Dallas,” or movies like Star Wars and even Emmanuelle – was deeply feared by Soviet authorities due to the ideas and expectations such programming planted in the minds of Soviet citizens. This led to amusing co-optings, such as the Soviets creating their own officially sanctioned disco instruction course for TV (shades of the ‘Ministry of Rock’?).
By David Ross. The word “neo-conservatism” suffered a wild and unfortunate distortion during the last nine years, coming to mean something like “the neo-fascist philosophy of George W. Bush and his Satanic cohort,” or even more simply, “the wicked tendency to invade other countries.”
Given this slippage of meaning, I cannot recommend highly enough Joseph Dorman’s documentary Arguing the World (1998), which provides a thoughtful and accurate account of neo-conservatism as it traces the careers of literary critic Irving Howe, political thinker Irving Kristol (father of Bill), Columbia/Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell, and Harvard sociologist Nathan Glazer. The story will be familiar to conservatives who know their own lineage: bookish, Jewish New Yorkers arrive at City College; fall under the spell of Trotsky; revolt against the murderous tyranny of Stalin; begin to qualify their leftism; cast their lot with the high modernism of Partisan Review; found Commentary; begin to take seriously the Soviet threat; increasingly recognize the perverse incentives and disincentives created by LBJ’s Great Society; recoil from the brainless nonsense of the counter-culture; begin creating the intellectual foundations of modern conservatism in a series of groundbreaking books and articles; preside over conservatism’s return to power on the back of their own ideas.
While remaining strictly neutral and objective, Arguing the World explains these weighty developments in American political and intellectual history and rescues an important tradition from cartoonish caricature.
By Jennifer Baldwin. The Boomers love making TV shows and movies about the 1960s; it fulfills their narcissistic desire to relive their own adolescence and young adulthood – and it makes their generation seem “important,” the most important generation of all. Naturally, most of these shows and movies about the turbulent 60s approach the era from the point of view of young people: teenagers, college students, the youth movement and the hippie scene.
The reason AMC’s original series Mad Men was such a sensation when it debuted four seasons ago, and what continues to make it one of the best shows on TV, is that it approaches the 1960s from a somewhat different angle. It’s the angle of men in suits, women in tasteful and elegant clothing, cocktails and business meetings – in other words, the world of grown ups. This is the 1960s from the point of view of the adults. What makes the show so brilliant is that by focusing on the adults of the era it shows where the real breakdown of society occurred in the 60s: not with the kids, but with their parents.
Kids will always rebel, in any era, in any time period. It’s part of our adolescent development to test boundaries and question our world. But it’s up to the adults in a society to maintain civilization in the face of this adolescent upheaval. Where the 60s went wrong – where the rot set in – wasn’t that the youth started tuning out and turning on, it’s that the adults did as well.
At the end of the third season, there was quite a lot of upheaval in the adult world of Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and his cohorts: JFK was assassinated; Betty (January Jones) went to Reno to divorce Don and remarry Rockefeller Republican Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley); British firm Putnam Powell and Lowe were preparing to sell Sterling Cooper; and in perhaps the most exhilarating finale of the show’s entire run, Don, Roger (John Slattery), Bert Cooper (Robert Morse), and English newcomer Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) all joined forces and left Sterling Cooper to form their own advertising agency (Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce) – taking Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), Pete (Vincent Kartheiser), Joan (Christina Hendricks), and Harry (Rich Sommer) along with them.
Season three ended with the show going through such a radical change that fans have been anxiously waiting to see just where things would pick up in season four. Would Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce still be in existence and would they be successful? Would Betty finalize her divorce and marry Henry? Would Don be happy in his new role as bachelor and big shot creative director and face of the company at his new “scrappy underdog” agency?
In the season four premiere, “Public Relations,” Matt Weiner has jumped ahead one year in the story – to Thanksgiving, 1964 – and the changes we witnessed in the last episode of season three are now in full bloom. Weiner doesn’t reset anything. Don is living the bachelor life; Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is now an established agency (though not without the headaches and anxieties of being a small upstart); Betty is remarried to Henry Francis; and Don Draper is faced with a new professional challenge: promoting himself.
In the past, Draper has always emphasized that the goal of advertising is, first and foremost, to sell the product. An ad may be cute or clever, but if it doesn’t sell the product, it’s worthless.
Now in season four, Don is confronted with a new paradigm. He’s not just selling other people’s products; he must sell himself. It’s an uncomfortable role for a man who has stolen another man’s name, a man who has spent most of his adult life constructing a new identity for himself. As we open the episode, a reporter for Advertising Age is interviewing Don, asking him, “Who is Don Draper?” Don can’t/won’t answer that question. He says he’s from the Midwest where he was taught that it wasn’t polite to talk about oneself. Don’s trying to be modest, to remain the man behind the scenes who is just doing his job.
But when the article comes out mid-way through the episode, the reporter has mistaken Don’s modesty for aloofness, his humility and professionalism for coldness and mystery – and mystery is a killer for someone who is trying to be a salesman. It’s a huge misstep for Don, because as Roger and others point out, Don is the agency’s biggest asset – he needs to sell himself to the world in order for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce to get more business.
The thematic counterpoint to this storyline is the plot with the Jentzen bathing suit executives, who make two-piece bathing suits (not “bikinis,” as the prudish executives are always pointing out) and who want to sell their suits without resorting to salacious sexiness the way their bikini-making competitors do. Again, the theme here is modesty. Whether it’s modesty in dress or modesty in terms of humility, this first episode is drawing a contrast between the traditional way of thinking and the new, more “authentic” way of thinking. The world is becoming more sensationalized, more in your face. It’s about not holding back anymore when it comes to your wants and desires. It’s about, as Don puts it to the Jentzen men, “would you rather be comfortable and dead, or risky and possibly rich?” In other words, standards, decorum, modesty – these are the things which must be sacrificed in order to stand out in the world, and standing out in the world is what will get people’s attention, and getting people’s attention is the key to success. Continue reading Mad Men Season Four Premiere: “Public Relations”
This is why LFM readers need to go see this film, and continue to spread the word about it – because if we get a franchise out if this, what we’re going to get is … SPOILER ALERT … Angelina Jolie stalking the land, eradicating communists from our midst. And we want that, right? … END OF SPOILERS.
Salt finished second at the box office this past weekend to Inception, as Christopher Nolan’s fanboy-zombie army continues to show up in droves to that film, eager to have their brains scrambled. It’s worth mentioning, however, that Salt is on fewer screens, and – depending on whom you believe – its budget may only have been half of Inception‘s. And, of course, we know how the critics have been (for the most part) carrying Nolan’s water for him.
Clad in a floor-length Versace gown she described as “Russian Red”, Jolie blew kisses to thousands of fans who came to watch her play a suspected Russian double agent in the blockbuster, which opened at No. 2 in the U.S. at $36.5 million. “I think this film is positive for modern Russia,” a broadly smiling Jolie told Reuters television at her first ever premiere in Moscow. Earlier, she took four of her six children to see the gold onion domes and iconic red walls of the Kremlin.
“As much as there are bad guys that are Russian, there are also heroes that are Russian in this film,” she said as her diamond stud earrings sparkled in the sunshine of Moscow’s record-setting heatwave … “It really makes me happy that we have returned to the theme of Russian spies in Hollywood films,” 23-year-old architect Alexander said after watching the film.
Good stuff. “It really makes me happy that we have returned to the theme of Russian spies in Hollywood films.” Don’t you love how eager these guys are to re-start the Cold War? To all my Russian friends (and I do have them, including someone who worked in The Kremlin): we miss you guys too! The Cold War was such fun, especially compared to today. Hugs and kisses.
Watch Jolie work the crowd below at the Moscow premiere. They obviously ate it up.
If you haven’t seen the film, it should be pointed out that Salt makes a strong and obvious differentiation between the retro-communist bad guys who are the villains of the film, and those forces within modern Russia who are trying to achieve a reconciliation with the West. That’s why the Russians are undoubtedly so eager to embrace this film – because it sort of allows everyone to have their cake and eat it, too. The Russians get to look cool and villainous and relevant again, while at the same time the genuine changes in Russian society that have taken place since the communist collapse are fully acknowledged.
“Angelina, Angelina” chants and clapping filled the air as Jolie, who plays a CIA officer accused of being a Russian sleeper-spook, signed autographs, posed for the cameras and kissed one little girl on the cheek at the Oktyabrskiy theater … Jolie had the Russians cheering at “Spasibo,” charming the audience with her Russian during the film’s introduction. Her “Dobriy Vecher!” – Russian for Good Evening – greeting was met with screams and whistles.
“This is my first premier in Moscow and I’m so excited to be here,” she said switching into English. “I hope you enjoy the film. I tried to speak a bit of Russian. I hope I did okay.” Once the projectors started rolling, the audience cheered and clapped for any references to Russia and with particular zest for a scene where a fur hat clad Jolie rides the Staten Island Ferry.
Yes, Jolie wearing the fur hat was a great scene in the film, as I mentioned in my review. And actually, I would’ve like a lot more of that sort of thing from the film. One of the few problems I had with the film is that you never see her in a great outfit like the one below. Why couldn’t they put her in a red dress? The film cries out for it.
Jolie’s considerable publicity efforts for Salt, by the way – which have already included trips to Comic-Con and Moscow (within a few days of each other) – are leading industry wags to say that she’s definitely earning her $20 million paycheck for this film. Is this good for women – as we’ve been asking a lot here at LFM? Yes, I tend to think it is. Jolie is launching a major international film in multiple markets, and proving that women can do that if given half the chance. And she’s probably creating more good will for us in Russia right now than Obama is, although that probably isn’t hard.
Word also comes in The New York Times today that a new, unauthorized biography of Jolie by Andrew Morton will be out soon, featuring details of her complex, strained relationship with her father Jon Voight – a relationship which Morton considers to be the source of her curious, ambivalent behavior toward men.
I’ll leave that subject to the psychoanalysts and/or the female readers of our site; all I’ll say is that Salt‘s a colorful, refreshing (for being so politically incorrect) film – powered by an engaging star performance – and we’ll be keeping an eye on it here at LFM. Make sure you see it so we can ensure that more films like it are made in the future.
By Patricia Ducey. Kisses, a 2008 Irish film and favorite at many important festivals, is now in wider release throughout the US this summer. [See the trailer below.] Writer/director Lance Daly spins a tale of two abused Irish kids from the unfashionable outskirts of Dublin who run away from home to find freedom from family strife. No leprechauns or legends in this Ireland – the film takes place in a modern, industrialized Ireland, chockablock with rusting warehouses, traffic jams, and pop culture references. Daly, after a few preview screenings in the US, has wisely provided subtitles to aid the American ear in decoding the Irish patois. [I implore other filmmakers whose films are not in spoken American English to do the same. I’m talking to you, Sarah Gavron.]
The Irish Film Board, Bord Scannán na hÉireann, which has been financing and promoting the national cinema of Ireland since the 1990s, helped finance Kisses. What is the “national” cinema of Ireland, though, in actuality? Films written or produced by Irish persons, or films about Ireland? Or some permutation of both? Irish filmmakers have borrowed from early American films, like the docudrama Man of Aran or the romanticized The Quiet Man, and vice versa. I spent some time in Ireland in the ’90s, when the Board first starting supporting these films – I was researching my thesis on this subject – and came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a purely national cinema. But times were good in Ireland then, and the Board plowed ahead. Irish moviegoers, though, voted with their feet and many of these board-supported films ended up, oddly, being shown in art houses in Ireland – while the likes of Mrs. Doubtfire drew the crowds near Grafton Street. Whether it is smart for any government to support the arts is debatable – just look at the bidding war over tax incentives for movie production here in the US – but such a debate has begun in Ireland due to the now faltering Irish economy.
Young Shane Curry in "Kisses."
The truth is that film and narrative have always been ‘globalized’ and Kisses is no exception. The two runaways, Kylie and Dylan, live in a neighborhood Antoine Doinel would feel at home in. The runaways cadge a ride down the canal ala Huck Finn, courtesy of a Russian émigré boatman who introduces the kids to Dylan’s namesake – Jewish/Christian American folk rocker Bob Dylan – with his impromptu rendition of “Shelter From the Storm.” And later Dylan learns a lesson about the give and take of love from a Jamaican prostitute eking out a living in Dublin.
Dylan and Kylie’s world, though, is a drab working class Ireland. The two families live in comfortable enough homes, but Dylan’s father, a handsome guy, drinks and bullies, while Kylie’s uncle fools everyone in the family except her – she knows from bitter experience what he really is. Both Dylan and Kylie reach the end of their respective ropes on Christmas Day; one battle royale, one unwanted advance too many, and they are off, with Kylie egging Dylan on to make a run for it. They hop a river barge to the city, and the adventure begins – for good and ill.
The cinematography is lovely. Daly shoots the opening scenes of the housing development in bleak black and white, and lets the color slowly seep into the frame as the kids and the boatman get farther and farther away from home (a nod to The Wizard of Oz? Again, the cross-pollination of film). The two child stars, real Dublin kids Kelly O’Neill as Kylie (a Drew Barrymore look-alike) and Shane Curry as Dylan, shine as newcomers. Daly draws joyous and heartbreaking performances from both of them, without the wise-assery or precociousness we see in so many preteen stories. I wished that perhaps Kylie was a little less heroic a heroine, but that’s a minor quibble.
If you liked a recent Irish film Once, you will like Kisses. Kisses is the anti-Inception. It is small and slight but you won’t forget it – just like your first kiss.
Before I tell you how deliciously pleasurable and cathartic Salt is, before I begin to gush in embarrassing ways over Angelina Jolie’s pouty lips and high cheekbones – and how sexy she looks decked out in a Russian fur hat (I’m buying one for Govindini immediately; every beautiful woman should have one) – I need to let you in on a few things that may shock you. So here we go:
The premise of the new Angelina Jolie/Phillip Noyce action-thriller Salt is that the United States has been massively penetrated by Cold War-era Soviet communist sleeper agents, who even in exile from contemporary Russia are dead set on America’s destruction. These agents are nasty, dangerous, and out to get every one of us. They hide out in the open, but also in upper echelons of power – where they wait patiently to strike. And there are a helluva lot of them, far too many for our otherwise overloaded intelligence bureaucracies to handle.
A dangerous woman on the run.
How dangerous are these sleeper agents? For starters, their first successful operation – as we are informed by way of flashback – was nothing less than the killing of President Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, who (and here Salt’s fictional story dovetails nicely with actual history) spent several years living in the Soviet Union before returning to his life as an underworld drifter in New Orleans. And now our nation is flooded with such men – cold, calculating, highly effective killers trained to strike on command and plunge America into its final, richly-deserved (from the communist perspective) apocalypse.
Oh, and by the way – one of them might be Angelina Jolie. [I knew those lips were too good to be true!]
Does this premise surprise you? It certainly surprised me, because Hollywood hasn’t been telling stories like this since the 1980’s. But in point of fact, I don’t even recall films with this sort of premise appearing in the 80’s! And it’s for this reason that Jolie, Noyce and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura deserve a lot of credit for bringing this taut, intelligent and politically incorrect thriller to the screen right now, when – ironically – we would seem to need it the most.
I’d like to tell you more about the plot of this film, actually, and take you through every suspenseful twist and turn, but that would spoil the fun when you see it – and really you should see Salt. Because months before Red Dawn is released, months before Mao’s Last Dancer hits theaters – and even, frankly, with an otherwise commendable film like the French Cold War thriller Farewell in theaters right now – Salt is the dealbreaker for me that suggests that Hollywood is not as irretrievably left-liberal-progressive as we’ve been led to believe. It can’t be, at least not any longer; there is simply no way this film could’ve been made, were it so. The sense I have is that a fight is underway in the industry right now, that our national narrative is up for grabs. Maybe it’s backlash against Obama causing this. Maybe it’s too many years of bad movies belittling the war on terror. Who knows? [Plus, there’s also the issue of Jolie’s father, noted Tea Partier Jon Voight. Is some of the old man’s craggy wisdom finally rubbing off on his formerly estranged daughter?]
Good girls wear black.
In any case, Salt really helps matters right now, provided that you’re oriented toward liberty. Salt won’t take back Avatar or a lot of other nonsense that the industry has been dishing out, but it definitely is a shot in the arm. All you really need to know about Salt‘s storyline is this: the film has two major cathartic moments in it, both of which revolve around Angelina Jolie terminating communist agents. And if that doesn’t get your freedom-loving blood flowing, you’re insensate [Or, alternately, you’re one of those well-tailored, narcotized characters in a Christopher Nolan film.]
Salt sets up a situation in which C.I.A. agent Angelina Jolie may be a Soviet sleeper agent. For quite a while we don’t know – indeed, we’re not even sure she knows, a la Bourne. Outwardly, she appears to be a highly effective C.I.A. field operative. We first get to see her in the midst of a harrowing, torture-filled captivity by the North Koreans (the North Koreans wisely keep her in lingerie, however), before she’s released by way of a spy transfer; listen in this sequence, by the way, for the film’s nice potshot at Kim Jong Il. Once back in the States, Jolie just wants to settle down with her nerdy, German entomologist husband and retire upward to a desk job.
Jolie married to a nerdy German entomologist. Holding down a desk job. I know – I laughed, too.
But events won’t let her settle down, of course, because in through the C.I.A.’s door (literally) walks a Soviet agent with a story to tell – a story about a secret communist operation, dating back decades, to train a generation of super-spies to infiltrate the West. These agents are trained to remain undercover, to adopt Western ways (in Jolie’s case, this obviously includes looking fabulous in a pant suit), and to then strike at the opportune moment. Continue reading Jolie vs. The Communists; LFM Reviews Salt
