Steady Diet of Film

Review: Kobe Doin' Work

Produced for ESPN and now available on dvd, Kobe Doin' Work trained 30 cameras on NBA superstar Kobe Bryant for the course of a full game, with commentary provided on the final cut by Bryant. The game, pitting the Lakers against their longtime rivals the San Antonio Spurs, would eventually lead to Bryant's first Most Valuable Player award. After a screening of soccer documentary Zidane at the Cannes film festival, legendary film-maker (and Knicks fan) Spike Lee decided a basketball version was immediately necessitated. Since Lee's dabblings in documentary film (When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, Four Little Girls) has produced even more incendiary work than the provocative narrative films (Do the Right Thing, 25th Hour, Bamboozled) that cemented his reputation as a film raconteur, news of his involvement in the non-fiction form is always cause for excitement for those of us who like to see the pot stirred. While it's not an entirely fair comparison to draw, Bryant's checkered past, my complete lack of interest in professional sports and the long shadow cast by Tyson (James Toback's brilliant documentary on boxer Mike Tyson), one can't help but feel a little short-changed by such a straightforward sports procedural.

The enthusiasm and nearly scientific analysis in Bryant's commentary does convey a few interesting nuggets to even the most hardened professional sports hater. Despite these players and teams bringing in millions of dollars, their locker room looks like one in which high school players would congregate in. Many Lakers players have learned conversational Italian and Serbian to accommodate team members who struggle with English. Bryant's incredible graciousness towards the abilities of his competitors is downright gentlemanly. Otherwise, even Lee's interjections on the commentary track only serve to add more details about the actual process of the actual game.

On a recent panel at the Starz Denver Film Festival about believability in documentary film, film-maker AJ Schnack (in a discussion about Michael Moore) brought up the strange stratosphere that celebrity film-makers inhabit. In addition to garnering their projects an exponentially higher amount of publicity, they also regularly gain access to people and stories who might otherwise be considered too private to divulge. Chris Rock's participation in Good Hair is an excellent recent example of how this influence can lead to light being shed on difficult, personal subject matter and Bill Maher's Religulous being an equally strong example of how not to spend one's fame capital.

It's unlikely that a person who's recently been through a very public sexual assault trial would partipcate in any kind of documentary film project, even one with the modest aspirations of Kobe Doin' Work, if not for the credibility brought to the project by Lee. While viewers will walk away certainly knowing a bit more about shooting from the triangle, one might also wonder whatever happened to that raconteur of yore.

DVD extras include: an introduction by Spike Lee, deleted scenes, photo montage, music video for "Levitate" by Bruce Hornsby, a behind the scenes featurette and several audio options to watch the full game. 

See also: September Issue, Murderball, Hoop Dreams, Bigger Stronger Faster, The Heart of the Game, Gunnin for That #1 Spot.

Review: Crude

Joe Berlinger's (Paradise Lost, Some Kind of Monster, Brother's Keeper) seventh film Crude follows the class-action lawsuit filed by a small group of Ecuadorians residing in the Amazon rainforest, they go after Chevron for massive industrial pollution that has driven entire tribes of native people out of their homeland. The litigation is spearheaded by Pablo Fajardo, a young man who grew up in one of the affected villages. Just three years out of law school, he's been put in charge of the fate of his people's customs, land and safety. Assisting him is brash US attorney Steven Donziger and advocacy group Amazon Watch. Filling out the story is a merry-go-round of oil corporation attorneys and scientists. As is the case in so much of Latin America's biography, rampant government corruption is a recurring character. 

A more literal version of modern David and Goliath couldn't be imagined. Understandably, oil giant Chevron (who merged with Texaco in 2001, halfway through the film's story) is not terribly threatened by a little bad publicity because really, what are a few dead Amazonian babies when the United States' entire economy rests on your product? Yet Chevron-Texaco deploys an army of attorneys who spend years tying the case up in different jurisdictions, muddying the waters of scientific research and burying judges under reams of briefs (and bribes). 

Essentially, this battle comes down to a constant and often irrational public relations campaign. Chevron-Texaco attorneys accuse Fajardo of getting wealthy off of the cause, although we later see he lives in windowless shack with his mother. Donziger becomes frighteningly intense when coaching non-English speakers on how to maximize heartstring-pulling pronouncements at a shareholders meeting. Somehow, Texaco-funded scientists manage to keep  straight faces when they declare the Amazonian people's insidious cancer clusters are caused by lack of hygiene. 

But the nuclear option is triggered when Vanity Fair features a spread on the photogenic Fajardo and his equally photogenic cause. This coverage garners the attention of newly elected president Rafael Correa (a young, smart candidate recently swept into office by a massive wave of popularity) and Trudie Styler (aka Mrs. Sting). Fajardo's world quickly changes when he is invited to attend Sting's Earth concert, bringing him international attention. We eventually see Jimmy Smits bestowing CNN's Hero Award on him.

Berlinger stands back and lets us be swept up in (and eventually become mildly terrified by) the garish thrall of the celebrity stampede. But he does not allow the Police's "SOS" (introduced by Cameron Diaz and dedicated by Sting from the stage, natch) to let us us off so easily. While the media coverage undoubtedly influenced Chevron-Texaco being (spoiler alert) found in violation of all charges by inspectors, we are made painfully aware that these companies will never pay a dime to the people who watched their children vomit blood and die excruciating deaths. And they only moved out of the area once the wells ran dry, utterly indifferent to how many customs, languages and people are squelched in the process. 

Crude plays like the documentary companion piece to Henri-Georges Clouzot's film 1953 Wages of Fear (though probably shares more in common with William Friedkin's 1977 re-make Sorcerer). The contrast of industrial greed clashing against the unceasing beauty of the natural world had me waiting in odd earnestness to see a washed out bridge or quicksand wipe out the interlopers. We want to cheer for nature to defend itself. Berlinger shows us the sad and gruesome reality is far more determined by wealth and power. 

RIYL: Carmen Meets Borat, Oblivion, Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi, Our Brand is Crisis, End of Suburbia, Terror's Advocate.

Crude is playing in select cities. In Portland at Hollywood Theater and Cinema 21. Available on dvd February 23, 2010.

 

See also: 

• "60 Minutes" segment on the Ecuadorian class action lawsuit.
• Joe Berlinger interviewed on KUCI's FilmSchool. [mp3 direct link]

CORRECTION: Sorry all, I didn't realize by linking to KUCI's podcast it would show up in our iTunes feed. We're not affiliated with the FilmSchool podcast, though we find it very fun and informative.

#023 Fantastic Mr. Fox w/ Phoebe Owens

This week I'm joined by Phoebe Owens (puppet fabricator for Coraline, producer) to take a closer look at Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox. First we discuss the delicate balance between being an audacious auteur and just being overly-indulgent. We then talk about how the film fits into A.O. Scott's recent piece about the recent uptick in movies where adults delight in infantilizing themselves, the Promethean studio effort to spin the "Anderson directed this film via e-mail" scandal, why Anderson needs to leave France for the good of cinema (which includes several inappropriate Roman Polanski jokes, you've been warned) and how William Dafoe can get along with anyone. Enjoy!

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See also:

• Phoebe writes more about the film at her site SuperPhoebe.

Review: End of the Line

Produced by ecological advocacy group Ocean Now, End of the Line examines the environmental and economic crises created by the industrialization of fishing. Specifically, how international regulations have been corrupted, skirted and flat out ignored. The near extinction of bluefin tuna has only made it chicer among the London sushi set. The financial impact on communities that thrived on small, locally-controlled fishing is severe, as technological developments now require fewer workers to capture a higher quantity of sealife. Ultimately, the environmental impact of disrupting underwater ecosystems is high and dire.  

Having made the benignly non-credible Unknown White Male in 2005, Rupert Murray is a good choice for a work-for-hire film. Based on Charles Clover's book by the same title, the film moves briskly and blessedly relies very little on graphic images of animals being gutted to make its points. 

Since the film begins with a stated objective, one can't help but receive the statistics and panicked tone with some suspicion. But the flip side to documentaries financed through advocacy groups is that in 9 out of 10 cases they have much better funding than investigative pieces would. And because every famous person needs a cause, these films easily attract celebrity involvement in voice-overs and promotion, often making them more appealing to a broader audience. Let's all note the critical, commercial and awards circuit success of this year's dolphin-killer expose The Cove. In End of the Line, Ted Danson takes up the cause.

Those fundraising dollars show up beautifully on screen here. The film boasts some of the most breathtaking underwater cinematography since the BBC series "Blue Planet". Murray also effectively uses animated sequences to convey the enormous scale of fishing vessels raking the ocean floor. 

End of the Line gracefully sidesteps one of the most common pratfalls ecology- and animal rights-focused documentaries fall into by aligning itself early on with the people working on the lowest rungs of the fishing industry. It opens by showing the devastating effect industrialization had on the cod fishing industry in Newfoundland in the mid-1980s.

Matthew Galkin's I Am An Animal: the Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA, being a recent study in what not to do in these circumstances. It never ceases to baffle how organizations with a clear, well-defined social agenda cannot be bothered to build affinity groups with that little known conglomerate known as humanity. It not only undercuts their recruiting efforts, it calls into question the film-maker's and organization's most basic intellectual function to try to cast workers earning minimum wage in horrifically dangerous work as bloodthirsty butchers getting wealthy from animal abuse.

The film's populist sensibilities ultimately make it quite pleasing. Instead of focusing on what everyone is doing incorrectly, it (politely) skewers hyper-consuming yuppies by showing the devastating effects of an endless quest for eccentricity and Omega-3 fats. As a result, those of us who are ordinary (meaning, we don't dine at Nobu on a regular occasion) feel quite superior. How about them apples?

RIYL: Collapse, FLOW: For Love of Water, Sharkwater, An Inconvenient Truth.

End of the Line is playing in select cities around the US. In Portland at the Living Room Theaters.

Review: The Road

It seems a bit precious to talk about how studio politics can muck up a well-intentioned film but there is really no other framework to discuss John Hillcoat's The Road. After testing horribly with key demographics, Dimension Films shelved the film for over a year. After much public acrimony, recriminations, forced re-shoots and re-edits, the film emerges with a slightly cheerier ending than originally intended and an Oscar-baiting release strategy of doling out the film at prestigious film festivals (Venice, Telluride, Toronto) with a late November theatrical release date.

The Road, based on Cormac McCathy's novel, centers on a father and son (Viggo Mortenson and Kodi Smit-McPhee, billed only as "The Man" and "The Boy") after an unexplained catastrophe has left the world a bleak, lawless place. The few remaining survivors constantly struggle for food while remaining in hiding from roving gangs of cannibal rapists. As the film starts, the Pair Without a Name (or much in the way of camping skills) are slowly making their way by foot to the coast to head South for warmer climates.

The film is clearly made with tremendous talent and skill (there may not be a better looking film this year) but passions that have been watered down by too many special interest groups. The first half feels stretched to the point of nonsense by too many opposing elements: a director clearly fond of the source material (and his previous film The Proposition proved he's well-suited to the themes of doomed familial responsibility), a terrible actor trying to win an Oscar (please do not reward yet another bout of blacked out teeth and life-endangering weight loss in the name of awards, Academy) and a studio trying to make a feel-good movie about the end of the world.

But the lack of a strong hand to guide this relentlessly bleak subject matter ultimately condemns The Road's fate. Without any meaningful subtext or a compelling backstory, the novel's vignette-style plays like an endless loop of innocent curiosity. Which leads to heinous child endangerment, then to a narrow escape and a pat morality lesson delivered by The Man and The Boy, who offer teary-eyed pledges to "always be the good guys". For a film about the animalistic nature of man, where the threat of child rape lingers constantly, the lack of male frontal nudity feels like a real copout.

And speaking of uneven, the film is filled to the brim with shameless product placement. It goes to show that in our celebrity-obsessed culture, a famous person holding a can of soda as a lifeline to man's diminished promises will sell, regardless of the backdrop. Equally problematic is the reliance on flashbacks to The Man's period of normalcy. The constant reminder of amber-tinted days when he and his wife (played by Charlize Theron) were courting, home childbirthing and eventually making a suicide pacts makes The Road feel like the most tedious break up movie ever made. 

All of which brings us to the abysmal, cinematic void that is Viggo Mortenson. Right now, Mortenson is best known in the public realim for (a.) being taken to court for unpaid child support soon after the Lord of the Rings franchise left him a millionaire several times over and (b.) self-publishing his poetry. For my money, these are equally repulsive character traits and do not lend themselves well to open-ended stories where so little content is being provided that the viewer is forced to project their own understanding of his internal struggle for goodness.

Essentially, we're left with a film that has gummed the source material with too much hokum to appeal to the literary set, too much moral rhapsodizing to keep horror fans from getting bored and too much cannibalism and child rape for Academy Award believers. While watching the film I was reminded several times of Lynne Littman's Testament, a masterpiece of the Family Apocalypse canon. Littman showed the drudgery of daily existence when life is expunged of modern appliances and hope -- replete with horrible things happening to children. However, with that film the horror and dread is experienced by the viewer. The Road makes us feel like helpless passengers on a journey of soul-sucking despair with no larger purpose other than too many people sat in too many meetings.

#022 The Twilight Saga: New Moon w/ Nancy Dickison

This week I am joined by pal and Twilight superfan Nancy Dickison to discuss Chris Weitz's The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which we perhaps all too appropriately discuss while baking cookies. We get into why changes made to the Twilight story are not as offensive to fans as other franchises, Team Hardwicke vs. Team Weitz, and how the intensity of the Edward/Bella makeout scenes are essential to one's enjoyment.

Enjoy!

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See also:

• I participated in a roundtable discussion at Women in Hollywood on the Twilight phenomenon.

Review: 2012

The attachment we forge to tokens of pop culture are often more about snapshots of where we're at that time in our lives than a reflection of our real pleasures or preferences. I realize this the most when I look at the career of director Roland Emmerich. In the summer of 1996 I was a preternaturally sulky teenager living in a town I truly loathed. There was a lot of to-do about that year's Fourth of July blockbuster -- Independence Day. It was the first big-budget action film with a black actor (Will Smith, then considered a television and pop star with very little movie success) in the lead role. The "Entertainment Tonight"-type shows had pieces on every night fretting about whether moviegoers would accept that the fate of the free world could be held in the hands of a black man.

Then and there I (sulkily!) forged a logically tenuous but utterly convinced metaphysical connection to his situation. If Will Smith could save the planet from an alien invasion (and make a lot of money doing it) then I could get out of this crappy town. You know some of the rest of this story -- Independence Day grossed $817M worldwide and launched Smith into a stratosphere of fame and fortune that few ever reach. And while my trajectory for success wouldn't qualify as a blip on his radar screen, I have managed to avoid methamphetamines, the LDS church or being impregnated by a member of the Aryan Nations. Which might seem like a low bar to clear, but judging by the attendees of my last high school reunion, puts me in at least the 95th percentile of the place I once called home.

I share this little yarn to provide a bit of context for the leeway I've been giving Emmerich for the last decade. Even though Godzilla had abysmal CGI and was predicated on the idea that Matthew Broderick was a scientist.. it also had a dinosaur, and you can't hate a dinosaur movie. That's just un-American! The Day After Tomorrow had endless Dick Cheney sight gags and the New York Public Library was a key location -- nothing not to love about that. 10,000 BC featured Camilla Belle, who is darling. And perhaps the less said about Mel Gibson-starrer The Patriot the better.

But Emmerich's latest, 2012, has finally breached the limits of my spiritual generosity. This 2.5 hour slog employs the Emmerich go-to themes of ancient = authentic, mystical and all-knowing; while modern = soft-minded, lazy and effeminate to bring the Mayan prediction of the world ending in the titular year to life. The earth's core has heated up so rapidly that the crust is shifting, causing massive worldwide tsunamis and earthquakes. Everyone will be killed who is not invited to participate in the multilateral, top secret survival program that is first explained as being a series of spacecrafts but later we learn consist of three super-duper cruise ships. The film spends an arduous 45 minutes setting up the science of what's happening and the elaborate governmental conspiracies that are hatched to save works of art, zoo animals and millionaires at the expense of doing anything to prevent mass human casualties or political scandal. The implicit message being, "let me show you what will happen next since when this happens for real no one will be coming to save you." That's fine, I long ago accepted that the necessity caffeine and naps hold to my day to day happiness means I would be better off dying in the first wave of human annihilation.

Emmerich has always skated by with broad racial and cultural stereotypes, plot holes so gaping that two pieces of information provided in the same scene will contradict each other and our lust for images of chaos and destruction. But there was always an essential goodness to his lead characters that we could project ourselves onto. It's how hero mythology in the American action-adventure genre works. We tell ourselves, "If this nightmare were really happening, I would rise to the challenge to be a hero. I'd save myself, I'd save my family, I would save MANKIND." Yet 2012 is essentially just a hokey family melodrama, with millions of people dying in the backdrop, that has such a fundamental loathing for all of its characters and viewers that it is a thoroughly painful and joyless exercise in cinema-endurance.

And while massive human collateral damage could be understood to be happening in his previous Earth-enders, we never saw so much of it take place on-screen as in 2012. Maybe I'm just being a bit humorless about the crass commercial use of 9/11 imagery, but we never used to see people running for their lives from burning buildings wiped out with the sick glee Emmerich has here. Their deaths were often opined in somewhat exasperating monologues, but there was at least an implied humanity. In 2012 we see main characters killed in exceptionally brutal fashion, their deaths completely unremarked upon by surviving family members.

I bring this up not because I mourn the loss of a great thinker or film-maker -- my past affinity notwithstanding -- it's not as though cinema would lose a pillar if Emmerich was physically consumed by a giant, soulless machine (like one of 2012's more courageous characters who commits the ultimate misdeed of not being a part of a nuclear family at the time of the apocalypse) the same way his soul was mulched a long time ago. But the fact is, corporate movie studios spend a lot of time and resources studying us. And they don't outlay hundreds of millions of dollars manufacturing and marketing movies that they don't have some assurance are going to connect with a broad audience. Even if 2012 doesn't repeat the massive financial and star-making success of Independence Day, something has clearly shifted in our culture in the last five years to convince a few dozen executives and rows of bean counters that intimate, graphic images of massive human destruction can now be expected to make us laugh and cheer even in the family-friendly PG-13 holiday fare.

Oh, and the CGI sucks.

Short Films: Peque Varela's "1977"

A clip from Peque Varela's film 1977 about a girl who daydreams of a different identity.

Short Films: Theodore Ushev's "Drux Flux"

Inspired by "One-Dimensional Man" by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, Drux Flux is an intoxicating, disorienting examination of how industrial progress can crush the soul.