By Jason Apuzzo. With the protests currently taking place in Iran, we wanted to alert Libertas readers to a short film called Interrupted Lives: Portraits of Student Repression in Iran (see the trailer above). Interrupted Lives is a 20 minute documentary that deals with the repression of free-thinking students by the Iranian government, and specifically examines documented human rights cases of student imprisonment, torture or execution since the 1979 revolution.
The film is available to be seen in full here. Interrupted Lives will be traveling to major university campuses this Spring – including Harvard, Berkeley, and Oxford. We wish the filmmakers the very best in this important effort.
By Joe Bendel. It is quite the literate field for this year’s Oscar nominated short films. Two are based on acclaimed children’s books and one was inspired by the creator’s travel journal. All three are accomplished films, worthy of the ultimate prize. All five 2011 nominees along with two other shortlisted films screen as part of the program of Academy Award nominated shorts, which opened this past Friday in New York at the IFC Center.
If King’s Speech sweeps this year’s Oscars, perhaps it will pull along Jakob Schuh and Max Lang’s The Gruffalo along with it. After all, it features the voice talents of Helena Bonham Carter as a mother squirrel, who tells her children the tale of a rather resourceful mouse. The rodent-protagonist scares off various forest predators with tales of his supposed friend, the dread Gruffalo. Much to the mouse’s surprise, the Gruffalo really exists, looking pretty much as he described, but with the voice of Robbie Coltrane. While older viewers will probably have a good idea where Gruffalo is heading right from the start, it is a charming film with some rather clever bits of business, wholly appropriate for all ages.
While Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann’s The Lost Thing is also based on a children’s book (written and illustrated by Tan), it is told from the reflective perspective of a man of somewhat mature age wistfully looking back at a mysterious event from his childhood. Discovering some sort of alien or fantastical creature at the beach (apparently a mollusk in an armored tea kettle), the narrator tries to figure out what to do with this new friend the adult world tries its best to ignore. A strange but gentle fable, Thing is visually arresting and surprisingly meditative. It is easily the most substantive of the animated nominees.
Stylistically, Bastien Dubois’s Madagascar, carnet de voyage is by far the animated line-up’s most distinctive work. Employing watercolor and sketches of varying degrees of sketchiness, Dubois vividly brings his travel journal-scrap-book to life, animating episodes from his year-long sojourn through Madagascar. In terms of story, it is a wee bit thin. Indeed, it could easily serve as a promotional film for Madagascar’s tourism bureau, but its graceful élan and spirited vibe distinguishes Carnet apart from the competition.
The only real clunker amongst the nominated field is probably the leading contender, Geefwee Boedoe’s one-note didactic anti-capitalist polemic Let’s Pollute. This year’s Pixar slot was filled by Teddy Newton’s Day & Night, which is as safe and pleasant as one might expect. Rounding out the animation program are two shortlisted titles that did not make the final cut. Bill Plympton’s The Cow Who Wanted to be a Hamburger was probably selected simply on the basis of the filmmaker’s reputation. By contrast, Moritz Mayerhofer’s archetypal Urs is a striking work that might have benefited from a bit more narrative muscle.
This is a stronger year than usual for Oscar nominated short form animation, with at least three very strong films still in contention. Indeed, the combination of Gruffalo, Thing, and Carnet (and to a lesser extent Urs) makes the animated program well worth seeing in New York currently at the IFC Center.
By Jason Apuzzo. • Photos leaked this week of Leonardo DiCaprio playing Hoover (see here and here). In all the chatter I’m seeing about this film, I still haven’t heard a peep about how this film intends to depict Hoover’s confrontation with actual – i.e., non-imaginary – Soviet infiltration of the American government from the 1930s-1950s. This is an enormous issue that has rarely been covered adequately in film, beyond the usual treatment as being a phenomenon of ‘paranoia.’ I’m hoping that Clint breaks from that clichéd and misleading template – although, for a multitude of reasons, I’m doubting he will.
You know who would’ve made a great film out of this subject matter? Kazan. (I’m actually reading his autobiography right now.) There are no Kazans today, however, because they’ve been weeded out of the system by the same people so enamored with Eastwood right now.
• Die Hard 5 suddenly has a director, and the latest rumors on that film involve Bruce Willis/John McClane fighting a relative of his old nemesis, German ‘Red Army Faction’-style terrorist Hans Gruber, wonderfully played by Alan Rickman in the original film. (Jeremy Irons played a relative of Rickman’s in Die Hard 3; I actually thought Irons was even better than Rickman.) What do people still think of this franchise? Personally, I’m long past caring about Willis or what he does; I didn’t even bother to watch Die Hard 4 – a film which, I might add, dropped its American title of Live Free or Die Hard in certain foreign territories in order not to ‘offend’ certain sensibilities. Opinions on the film and on Willis are welcome.
• Sony will apparently be releasing James Bond 23. Also: no word yet on whether or how this may also affect MGM’s Red Dawn.
• According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Russians are building a huge new studio complex, ‘Lenfilm XXI,’ which apparently could become Europe’s largest film studio. Question: isn’t it ironic that the Russians are actually building studios, while we’re shipping our film production overseas?
• The big news this week was the release of the new X-Men: First Class trailer, in which the young X-Men and X-Babes appear to play a role in … resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis. Not exactly what I was expecting, but I’m rolling with it. Check out the trailer above, and see how the Cold War continues to be fought and re-fought on our screens these days. (Also: Bryan Singer talks about the new film here.) By the way, where are all the juicy production stills we’re expecting of January Jones and Jennifer Lawrence? (January Jones talks more about her sexed-up costumes here.) The latest production photo they released was of the back of Magneto’s head. Weird marketing, guys.
• Speaking of publicity stills, the first such still of Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher has just been released. I’m not sure what the point of that was – to prove that Streep can transform herself? I think we all know that by now. The photo doesn’t make me feel any better about the ugly rumors over this film being a hit job – or about the Thatcher family’s ardent opposition to the film. Here’s what Streep herself is saying about playing the role:
“The prospect of exploring the swathe cut through history by this remarkable woman is a daunting and exciting challenge. I am trying to approach the role with as much zeal, fervour and attention to detail as the real Lady Thatcher possesses—I can only hope my stamina will begin to approach her own!”
Sounds wonderful. Why am I not believing a word of it?
• The Atlas Shrugged trailer arrived this week, and to some extent it raised more questions than it answered. Certainly the main question it raised was: who is John Galt? OK, bad joke, I haven’t my coffee yet. But seriously, reader Vince noticed that Dagny Taggart is driving a Toyota in the trailer – quite the irony given Toyota’s recent acquittal in court over their supposedly bad brakes. My question is: wouldn’t Dagny be driving something like a Jaguar? Or a Mercedes? She strikes me as being an expensive kind of gal.
• A word of note: Mao’s Last Dancer will be arriving on DVD/Blu-ray on March 29th (we loved the film, see our review here), and Farewell – a great Cold War thriller, featuring Fred Ward as Ronald Reagan (see our review here) – will be arriving on DVD/Blu-ray April 12th.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT COLD WAR NEWS … Russian former Bond babe Olga Kurylenko’s The Assassin Next Door hits DVD this week, and her new film There Will Dragons just got picked up for distribution for Samuel Goldwyn Films. Olga’s proving that old homespun adage about what Russian immigrants should do to make it in America: play Bond girls and assassins.
And that’s what’s happening today in The Cold War!
By Jason Apuzzo. Here it is above, folks, so take a look. The film hits theaters on April 15th. Atlas Shrugged Part I covers the first third of the novel (Part I: “Non-Contradiction”) up through the “Wyatt’s Torch” chapter.
As regular Libertas readers know, LFM was invited on-set and did the very first interview with director Paul Johansson about the film (see here and here). Audiences will now soon get to render their own verdict.
By Joe Bendel. Between war, terrorism, and environmental degradation, this year’s Oscar nominated short documentaries have a nightmare scenario for just about everyone. However, the better nominees also find hope where they can. For the first year ever, the Academy Award nominated short film road show will also include documentaries, split into two program blocks, both of which open today in New York and Los Angeles.
Jed Rothstein’s Killing in the Name was born in tragedy. Co-produced by Carie Lemack, whose mother was murdered at the World Trade Center, Name profiles Ashraf Al-Khaled, her fellow terrorism survivor and co-founder of Global Survivors Network. Al-Khaled will tell you that Islam is the religion of peace, and he has earned the right to say it. On his wedding day, a suicide bomber targeted the Jordanian hotel hosting his reception, killing his father and in-laws. Since then, Al-Khaled has become an outspoken critic of Islamist terrorism, challenging other Muslims to speak out more forcefully. As he reminds them, it is their co-religionists who are most likely to be the victims of their attacks.
While outwardly unassuming, Al-Khaled will boldly confront anyone in his quest to de-radicalize Islam, even “Zaid,” an Al Qaeda recruiter. Not surprisingly, Zaid proves to be a craven coward, refusing to meet Al-Khaled, instead consenting only to answer his questions through Rothstein. Yet, it is not just Al-Qaeda that glorifies wanton killing. The attitudes of children at an Indonesian madrassa are downright chilling. Frankly, Al-Khaled sounds like he is kidding himself when he speaks of planting seeds of doubt in them, but again, he has earned the right to a little self-deception at that point. Though only thirty-nine minutes, Name is easily one of the most illuminating documentary examinations of terrorism to play the festival circuit.
Like Al-Khaled, Zhang Gongli also fights to make the world a safer place. A farmer in Central China, Zhang became a self-taught legal activist, who challenged the chemical plant poisoning his region as well as the local Communist Party authorities which protected it. Aided by an Chinese environmental NGO, Zhang’s struggles are documented in Ruby Yang’s The Warriors of Qiugang. Eventually privatized, the serial polluting began while the plant was a state enterprise. Indeed, it was the local Party that first turned a gang of thugs loose on the village in an attempt to intimidate the activists. It would be a strategy the plant would repeat, with the local authorities’ acquiescence.
Though largely compatible with the no-frills observational approach of the so-called Digital Generation of independent Chinese filmmakers, Warriors also features occasional grimly stylized animated sequences. It is a searing indictment of the Chinese government’s hypocrisy, not simply in terms of environmental protection, but even more fundamental human rights. While hardly concluding with everything happily resolved, it is definitely an encouraging David-and-Goliath story.
For inspiration, none of the nominees can compete with Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon’s Strangers No More. There is a country where immigrants fleeing war and civil strife finally feel safe enough to allow their children to enroll in school (in many cases for the first time ever): that country is Israel. Yes, the irony is not lost on the teachers of Tel Aviv’s Bialik-Rogozin school, where students from forty-eight countries find a safe harbor every day. Focusing on students from Ethiopia and Sudan, we see Bialik-Rogozin’s Hebrew immersion strategy pay dramatic dividends. Clearly, what they do at that school works. Though Goodman and Simon avoid making the obvious point, it is worth noting you will not find a comparable institution anywhere else in the region.
Inspiring and disturbing in equal measure, Name and Warriors are excellent films, highly recommended in any context. They play together as part of Program A, along with Jennifer Redfearn’s Sun Come Up. Following a group of South Pacific Islanders who must relocate due to rising sea levels, reportedly the result of global warming, Redfearn wisely does not overplay the environmental card. While it raises a few interesting anthropological-sociological issues, ultimately Sun’s POV figures simply are not as compelling as those of the other nominees.
Strangers is a totally grounded, legitimately feel-good movie, also enthusiastically recommended. Unfortunately, it plays with Sara Nesson’s Poster Girl, a film top-heavy with the director’s agenda. It profiles Sergeant Robynn Murray, who was once on the cover of ARMY magazine, thus making her the “poster girl” for the war, at least if you were a serviceman or retiree who saw the magazine and somehow still remembers it. While Nesson’s approach borders on the exploitative, it is certainly heartrending to watch as Murray learns first-hand how problematic government-run healthcare truly is. (In contrast, the Renaud Brothers’ Warrior Champions stands as example of how to sensitively address PTSD, without turning it into a political football.)
Three out of five is pretty good by Oscar standards. Indeed, Name, Warriors, and Strangers each provide real insight into the state of the world and a small measure of hope that average people can have a constructive impact on big macro-level problems. Both Oscar nominated documentary short programs open today (2/11) in New York and Los Angeles.
By Joe Bendel. It seems like every hipster filmmaker wants to make a retro-grindhouse movie these days, but the results are usually pretty lame. The truth is, real-deal grindhouse auteurs did not have time for posing. They had to get their shots before the cops shut them down. The subversive attitude of their oeuvre flowed organically from their dodgy working environment, thoroughly infusing the zero-budget cult films Elijah Drenner lovingly surveys in American Grindhouse, which opened last Friday in New York.
“Exploitation” films were independently produced movies with some grabby element to “exploit” which audiences could not otherwise find from mainstream studio fare. Though not necessarily limited to sex and violence, those were certainly the biggies. Drugs and circus freaks were also reliable hooks. Such films were typically booked into seedy, pre-Giuliani-era Times Square-style theaters, often playing continuously without formal start times (hence the grind in grindhouse).
Drenner and his battery of film scholars start with the silent era, when Universal hit pay dirt with Traffic in Souls, a rather sensationalistic story of white slavery – carrying the fig leaf of a progressive reform message. It established the template many exploitation filmmakers would profitably follow for decades, including the so-called “Forty Thieves” emerging in 1930’s.
Grindhouse surveys a number of rather self-explanatory sub-genres, like “birth of a baby” movies, beach party movies, faux nudist documentaries, “nudie cuties,” “roughies,” women-in-prison films, Nazi-exploitation (exemplified with class and distinction by Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS), and the ageless blaxploitation picture. Amongst his many talking heads, Drenner notably scored sit-down interview time with Fred Williamson, of Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem fame, who looks and sounds as cool as ever.
While Grindhouse focuses squarely on the filmmakers, it is not a cheap tease. Indeed, many of the voluminous clips from the seminal classics under discussion are real eye-poppers. Still, Drenner maintains the right balance of (half-) serious cultural history and crowd pleasing naughty bits.
Well-stocked with wild stories and vintage scenes of pure lunacy, Grindhouse is a whole lot of fun, sort of like an old-school Hollywood Boulevard version of That’s Entertainment. Like the “birth of a baby” films it documents, Grindhouse is in fact educational, but its subject matter is definitely mature. Ultimately, it is a winning tribute to genuinely independent filmmakers, marginalized and even demonized though they might have been. Heartily recommended to those who already have a good idea what they will be getting into, Grindhouse opened this past Friday in New York at the Cinema Village.
