Be Kind Rewind = Movie for people who love movies

Be Kind Rewind is a little sappy in some parts, to be sure, but its a movie for people who love the creative process of the cinema. It's directed by Michel Gondry, of whose work I am a fan, and stars Jack Black and Mos Def as the lovable losers with a mission to fix everything that they have screwed up. (You know the pattern.)

Plot summary is easy: Black accidentally erases all of the VHS tapes in Danny Glover's video store while Glover is out of town, and the guys decide to recreate those movies that people want to rent themselves, which leads to JB and MD playing all the parts in Ghostbusters and filming at their local library, etc. They call this "Sweding" -- More on this pracitce here.

I love their sheer exuberance. Way back in one of my very first blogposts, I talked about Raiders: The Adaptation, which I still hope to see someday. This exuberance is reflected in some other films I like, including Ed Wood, Boogie Nights, American Movie, and Day for Night -- all of which are about people who just plain love to make movies.

Here's Jack B. and Michel G. explaining the concept of Sweding:


This is the trailer of BKR itself, but Sweded:


Ghostbusters, as mentioned above:


Fan contributions -- Star Wars Ep. 4:



The Shining:


The Matrix:


And just for the heck of it, here's Fats Waller:

Catching up on a few things

Snowed in!

Practically the whole freaking country north and east of Hawaii has been experiencing major winter weather for the past few days, and we are no exception. So, time to clean out a few links that have been sitting around for a while.

• Here's where you can download the Gr*y *lb*m. Here's where you can get the holiday-inspired Santastic Four.
• An essay from the Boston Globe from a while ago discussing the connections between Iron Man the song and Iron Man the superhero.
• Bands I Useta Like
• Here are a TON of documentaries to watch.
• T-shirt: Veni Vidi Wiki
• The Rudiments of Wisdom: Thousands of cartoons covering almost everything there is to know! (This one should go on the sidebar.) Same with The Secret Life of Machines. (Videos here.)
  
• Evolution of movie credits. (Prob. has to do with union demands...)
  

What I've Been Reading Lately and Will Be Reading Shortly

One of my resolutions this year (actually, my only resolution this year, and one that may stretch to two or three years) is to read the three volumes of Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogy cover to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover. We are 5/12th of the way though the year, and I am about 5/16th of the way through the first 1/3. That's OK; lots of time to read and smoke cigars on our new deck. Here are some comments I made on the occasion of Mr. Foote's death.

I got some books out of the library the other day, too.

• Glut, by Alex Wright, which I am about 1/2 way through right now. This is about the way that information has been organized and disseminated from prehistoric times through the present. So far so good! I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff. It sort of reminds me of a book I read years ago, A History of Knowledge by Charles Van Doren. (Proofing note: First full paragraph of page 11, you have "scrict" instead of "strict.")
  
• The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I like the quote on his site: "My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves & the quality of their knowledge too seriously & those who don’t have the courage to sometimes say: I don’t know...." Here's a separate Wikipedia page on the Black Swan theory.
• Gilligan's Wake, by Tom Carson. Here's it is on Google Book. About dot com review here.
  
• Two of the "Southland Tales" graphic novels. Saw the movie a few weeks ago, watched it twice in a row. It's one of those movies (like Videodrome, which I just watched last night for the first time in years) that I know I will be coming back to over the course of coming decades and finding new ideas and content. Side note -- Interesting category on the Videodrome page -- Motif of harmful sensation.
  

Wikipatterns; Falco; Movie Posters; Books That Make You Dumb

Been a while since I got some blogging in; No time like the present.

Items:

• I just finished reading Wikipatterns, Stuart Mader's book based on this website (or maybe the site is based on the book, or both go hand in hand, or whatever). Blog here. Excellent summaries of wiki philosophy and practice, but obviously in my case it was preaching to the choir. Two things the book did introduce me to: Geek and Poke -- Very funny! It's kind of like Dilbert, but geekier. And, the screencast of Heavy Metal Umlaut: The Movie. Also, the author has a blog hosted by Amazon -- interesting.
  
• Remember Falco? (The "Rock Me Amadeus" guy?) Check out Falco Reloaded. Very entertaining!
• Check out the 100 greatest movie posters of all time. Lists like this are made to be argued about, and this list doesn't disappoint in that regard. (For instance, if person "A" doesn't think movie posters should feature attractive women in various states of undress, and person "B" does...)
• Virgil Griffith is the guy who developed the revolutionary Wikiscanner. Now, he has put together a visual study of Books That Make You Dumb. I'm glad to see that my favorite American novel of the 20th Century, Catch-22, was one of the closest to the not-dumb side. And, we were just talking the other day at work about 100 Years of Solitude, which I have never read but would like to. I thought it was interesting that people who listed The Bible as their favorite book scored 150 points higher than those who listed The Holy Bible.
  

Mid-October Already...

OK, only five blogposts in the last month and a half. I know, pathetic. Meh. Things are still mega-busy, so I'll be back among the bloggeratti one of these weeks, just not right now.

Items:

• Japanese legislator busted for too much Wikipedia editing: A Japanese bureaucrat has been reprimanded for shirking his duties to make hundreds of Wikipedia contributions about toy robots, officials said Friday. The agriculture ministry said the bureaucrat, whose name was not released, contributed 260 times to the Japanese-language Wikipedia entry on Gundam, a popular, long-running animated series about giant robots that has spun off intricate toys popular among children and adults who belong to the so-called "otaku culture" of fascination with comic books, animation and robots. "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam," ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura said.
• Via 43 Folders, 41 Reasons Why Your Blog Probably Sucks. Number 13 (I know, I know): Not posting regularly. There are two primary reasons that not posting regularly is "bad". One is that readers lose patience when they don't your schedule. (Not everyone uses an RSS reader.) The other reason is that search engine spiders often index your pages on a frequency proportional to your posting. The more you post, the more frequently you might get indexed, thus increasing the chances of search engine traffic. (Note that in some niches such as politics, you need to post 10-20 times per day to get noticed.) At the least, if you can't post regularly, have a consistent schedule that's obvious to your most loyal readers.
• I've watched several films over the past few weeks. Two great thrillers from the 1970s: The Day of the Jackal and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three; A couple of Robert Altman's lesser known films, O.C. & Stiggs and Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or, Sitting Bull's History Lesson; and two very "different" films (I like 'em when they're different) -- Shortbus and Cube. More on these later
• I also read a book by a guy named Ian Ayres that I have to recommend for all you numbery people -- Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart. Lots of good stuff in here on statistics, data gathering, and practical applications of the analyses presented so as to be understood by the interested amateur.

Weekend Items

Several things:

• I had never come across this transcipt/article before about DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid even though it's over seven years old. Excerpt: When we look at art we see how cultures become cross-fertilized. In the US there are many cultures, North/South American, African, Asian...The US has the widest variety of cultures in the smallest geographic region in the history of human civilization. So when you have access to the recordings of all these diverse cultures, continuous access to them, that's when things get really interesting. With collage, anything goes, anything can be mixed and transformed. Art is a reflection of culture, and to me music is our social reflection.
• Cool blog to add to the sidebar, via Bella Rossa -- The Groovy Age of Horror.
• Another blog to check out -- that of graphic novelist Warren Ellis.
• Via Techyum, here's the NYT on the U.S. Court of Appeals telling the FCC to go fuck themselves. Excerpt: Mr. Martin, the chairman of the [Federal Communications C]ommission, attacked the panel’s reasoning. “I completely disagree with the court’s ruling and am disappointed for American families,” he said. “The court says the commission is ‘divorced from reality.’ It is the New York court, not the commission, that is divorced from reality.” He said that if the agency was unable to prohibit some vulgarities during prime time, “Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want.” Anything they want? Oh my God, not that!
• Here's a guy who always likes to identify exactly which books are sitting on the shelves when he sees pictures with bookshelves in the background. Excerpt: I wish someone could put a stop to this epidemic. Whenever I see such pictures I have an uncontrollable urge to seize the nearest magnifying glass and try to decipher the titles. What is it that drives some people (I know others who confess to this failing) to devote their time to such snooping when we could be walking the downs, or exploring the music of Medtner, or deconstructing the latest piece about Paris Hilton? (No need to explain -- I do the same thing.)
• I like the philosophy of this Rebecca Blood post (and the post of the librarian from whom she got the article) recreated here in its entirety: How to be a more effective researcher -- Q: Question: How do I start researching? Answer: Treat research as a lifestyle not an assignment. A great approach from what appears to be an academic librarian, including a new (to me) term: The Invisible College. [Wikipedia article] Bloggers will immediately see themselves in this role, so it's worth pointing out that anyone who limits themselves to blogs will miss many other communities of interest, online and off. Here's the main page of the blog referenced by a librarian named Linda Jones. That kind has to do with how I approach my Wikipedia edits... I get a topic I am interested in, and review the material that other "amateurs" have prepared, and then just kind of see how I can improve the organization, presentation, and indexing of the material, and see what blanks I can fill in to lend towards greater completion.

What I've Been Watching Lately

Several movies in the last couple weeks:

McCabe and Mrs. Miller -- I saw this first about 12-13 years ago, and I was prompted to watch it again as part of my campaign to watch or re-watch all of Robert Altman's films -- a campaign upon which I embarked after his death. It's kind of like an anti-Western -- the hero spends a bunch of time avoiding the showdown and sneaking around in the snow. I watched Altman's Popeye a little while ago, and they both had elaborate, quirky sets that almost acted as characters themselves. On McC&MM, Altman points out in the commentary that the because the story was about people building a town in the old West, that he got the carpenters who were building the actual set to dress in period clothing and do their work, and just incorporated that work into the background of the film itself.

Boxcar Bertha -- This was an early Martin Scorcese film. Now I am a huge Scorcese fan, and I certainly will not say that I am dissatisfied with having viewed this film -- It was pretty good. I just don't think it was all that great. Like McC&MM, the railroad was the bad guy.

Smokin' Aces -- Kicked fuckin' ass! Kind of Pulp-Fictionish, but not exactly, and this movie just gets started and does not stop! Here are some samples of the Smokin' Aces comic books. Here's the director's blog, and he says there might be some prequels in the works. Can't wait!

Superman Returns -- I loved the overall feel of this movie; It was very loyal to the first two films in the Superman franchise of the late 70s and early 80s. I didn't see it until just now, and I kind of wish I had caught it on the big screen. I loved the way they incorporated the original John Williams score so thoroughly, and how they did the retro-futuristic effects on the opening credits. The plot... well, you know -- the villainous Lex Luthor is out to rule the world, kill Superman, etc. But that's what the plot is supposed to be. This is definitely a situation where the form of the film is at least as important as the plot, if not more so, and I think SR realizes that.

LBNL, (I haven't watched them all yet) -- We went to Wal-Mart yesterday for kitty litter, and I saw that they were selling all four of the first Star Trek movies for $7.50 each! And I don't mean some bare bones garbage, I mean double-disc, director's version, collectors' editons of each! Boo-yah! I watched ST:TMP late last night (for the first time in many years) and I was struck by how 70s it was. I saw it in the theater when I was about 11, and I remember being like "Huh? When are they going to do something?" Much more abstract than the following installments. (Update, 11:07 PM, Monday 5/28/07 -- I have now watched them all, and over the next couple weeks will go back and catch the extras and commentaries. Keep an eye out for ex-Go-Go Jane Wiedlin in IV!)

Safeguard Liberty; Bloggy Neighborhoods; Geometry; Writing

Items:

• I've been watching V: The Original Miniseries lately, and the other night we watched Children of Men. I know that V had some sappy early-80s haircuts and the special effects are primitive by today's standards, but I just get choked up over the old guy who survived the Nazi Holocaust showing the kids with the spray paint how to deface the Visitors' propaganda posters... "If you're going to do it, do it right. I'll show you." (Spray paints a "V" over one of the posters.) "You understand? For Victory! Go tell your friends." As for CoM, I really liked the look and feel of it, but IMHO the anti-globalization philosophy elucidated upon in the extras was contradictory to the anti-anti-immigration scenes depicted in the film. Both good reminders to be vigilant in our efforts to demand our civil liberties from the state. Speaking of which, check out this Agitator post. Excerpts: The Ocala, Florida Sheriff's Department shows off its new toy. You know, in case North Korea ever decides to invade Central Florida... ...I can't really think of any reason for a paramilitary police team to wear camouflage other than to mimic the military. Which, for the umpteenth time, isn't a healthy aspiration for the domestic peace officers charged with protecting our rights to have. All goes back to that "mindset" problem.
• America's Top 10 Bloggiest Neighborhoods, via S.B. Johnson.
• Here's a fun way to learn about geometry.
• Via Bookworm, Writers and writing:

Weekend Stuff

Items:

• Magazine Art (soon to be on blogroll) Excerpt: We like art. Art wants to be seen; it does no good if it can't be seen. There's a lot of art that's been hidden away for fifty or a hundred years or more—hidden away not because it's bad art, or because someone tried to suppress it, but just because it was part of something transient. Once that transient thing had its day in our living rooms, it fell from view and the art that it held was lost to us.
• Click for a timeline of the history of the world by Milo Manara. This one has all the good stuff left in it. (NSFW.)
• We saw Hot Fuzz last night and we loved it! Make sure to see Shaun of the Dead either shortly before or shortly after so as to be able to make fresh comparisons, of which there are numerous to be made.

Enjoying Listening to Halsey's Typhoon

I'm almost done with an audiobook I started several months ago, Halsey's Typhoon by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. It's a very engaging narrative about Typhoon Cobra, which hit Admiral Halsey's fleet in December, 1944. Lots of attention is given to the three ships that sunk, and also to the Destroyer Escort U.S.S. Tabberer, and its captain, a guy named Henry Plage, who defied orders (and instincts of self-preservation) and picked up dozens and dozens of survivors floating around in the middle of nowhere, usually one at a time amidst turbulent waves that still threatened his ship, potential enemy subs, and other American ships with bigger guns than his that mistook him for a Japanese vessel.

I have a feeling that there's a movie deal floating around here somewhere (no pun intended). They've had some good movies about the Army and Marines during WWII in recent years, but nothing recently that I can think of about the surface Navy, and this story has it all -- nature's fury, ship's captain as hero, ship's captain as villain, administrative screw-ups, survival against all odds, etc. etc. I wouldn't be surprised if a) Tom Hanks has already put some money behind this, and b) he's got one of the pretty boys that can act (Damon, Wahlberg, or Di Caprio) slated to play Plage.

• Here's the (un?)official homepage of the Tabberer.
• Here's the Tabberer page from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.
• I'm starting a Wikipedia page for that ship. It'll be a stub, but it's a start.
• Speaking of "Plage," I hope there wasn't any "iarism" to go with that in picking the title -- Sounds an awful lot like Halsey's Typhoons, written in 1968 by Adamson and Kosco. (Although, even if it was a little bit borrowed, I think it would still be a plus for the authors and/or owners of the 1968 content... Their book seems to have been out of print for the better part of three decades, and if there is a resurgence of interest in this topic, it might be the chance to bring that book back into print. Thus (even if someone determines that the current title was borrowed a bit too heavily from the original) the original still stands to profit from the similarity.

Jack Valenti Dies at 85

Well, I see that Jack Valenti, of whom I have been quite critical in the past, has passed away.

I prefer not to speak ill of the recently deceased, so I have marked the passing by adding some categories to his Wikipedia page and starting one for his MPAA ratings board appointee, Joan Graves. (This was the woman shown as a cartoon in This Film Is Not Yet Rated.)

Weekend Items

Several things:

• The ♥G♥ and I also watched the film The Prestige this morning, and I was fascinated by it. (I kept pausing the DVD every few minutes to share my theories on the story with her.) Mild spoiler warning: If you've ever read Spock Must Die, there are some similar concepts. I want to see about reading the novel by Christopher Priest. They gist of the story was about magicians being psychotically obsessive about hiding their secrets. I was reminded of the contrasting approach that Penn & Teller have used to much success, in which they tell the audience they are flim-flamming them, and then explain how they did it.
• Does the Internet need an overhaul? Some people at Stanford University (and elsewhere) think so. Excerpt: We believe that the current Internet has significant deficiencies that need to be solved before it can become a unified global communication infrastructure. Further, we believe the Internet's shortcomings will not be resolved by the conventional incremental and 'backward-compatible' style of academic and industrial networking research. The proposed program will focus on unconventional, bold, and long-term research that tries to break the network's ossification. To this end, the research program can be characterized by two research questions: "With what we know today, if we were to start again with a clean slate, how would we design a global communications infrastructure?", and "How should the Internet look in 15 years?" We will measure our success in the long-term: We intend to look back in 15 years time and see significant impact from our program.
• Happy belated birthday to the institution of the blog.
• Lots of stuff on the late great Kurt Vonnegut. Where do you begin on his writings? I haven't read all of it, but I've read a lot of it. Maybe start with Slaughterhouse Five, if you have not yet initiated yourself into the Cult of Vonnegut. Or is that my bias because that was my first book of his? Maybe God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater for a more optimistic characterization?
• I came across some copies of Juxtapoz Magazine this weekend. (I swear, it was before I saw this Boing Boing link -- Some friends of ours have some copies in a basket next to the bidet in their bathroom.) Check 'em out. I like the magazine's overall vibe, and I will be looking at more of their articles in the next few weeks.

Loved Grindhouse!!

We went to see Grindhouse this afternoon. I fucking loved it!

If you haven't heard, the idea is that it recreates the spirit of the old low-budget exploitation movies (the more outrageous the better) that Tarantino and Rodriguez love so much, in the form of a double feature with a bunch of (fake) trailers and stuff. The themes of homages to obscure films, strong female characters, gobs of blood, needles, Texas, Tennessee, and other stuff I haven't yet reflected upon were included, as were references to Red Apple cigarettes and Big Kahuna burgers.

I suppose it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I knew that I wanted to make sure I saw it in one piece, rather than having it broken up in to two pieces, as I have seen some theaters around here start to do.

Can't wait for the full treatment of Machete!

Denby on Non-Sequential Chronology in Movies

Here's David Denby in the New Yorker on trends in non-chronologically sequential narratives in film. Excerpts: As they seem to be heading in separate directions, these fate-driven films [Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel] can be seen as a kind of trilogy. All three send characters from separate stories smacking into one another in tragic accidents; all three jump backward and forward in a scrambling of time frames that can leave the viewer experiencing reactions before actions, dénouements before climaxes, disillusion before ecstasy, and many other upsetting reversals and discombobulations... ...In recent years, we’ve had movies, like “Adaptation” (written by the antic confabulator Charlie Kaufman), that are explicitly about the making of movies, and others, like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (also written by Kaufman), that move forward dramatically by going backward in time. Then, there is a related group of clogged-sink narratives, like “Traffic,” “Syriana,” and “Miami Vice,” which are so heavily loaded with subplots and complicated information that the story can hardly seep through the surrounding material. “Syriana” made sense in the end, but you practically needed a database to sort out the story elements; the movie became a weird formal experiment, testing the audience’s endurance and patience. Some of the directors may be just playing with us or, perhaps, acting out their boredom with that Hollywood script-conference menace the conventional “story arc.” But others may be trying to jolt us into a new understanding of art, or even a new understanding of life. In the past, mainstream audiences notoriously resisted being jolted. Are moviegoers bringing some new sensibility to these riddling movies? What are we getting out of the overloading, the dislocations and disruptions?

Real good article. He comments on Pulp Fiction as the film that set off the latest wave of non-sequentialism. Lots of other examples he could have given, but the one most notable by its omission was Stanley Kubrik's 1956 film The Killing, which was very much a forerunner to Pulp. It was a heist movie about these thugs who have a sure thing but manage to screw it up with their backstabbing. The story unfolded through the eyes of each character, so that you saw the day's events several times from different perspectives. If you like Pulp Fiction, then I can't recommend this film enough.
Also, I ought to point out that my favorite 20th-Century American novel is Catch-22, which manages to intimidate even the most anal-retentive reader away from trying to put its events into chronological sequence. Once when I was in high school, I spent a whole weekend with notecards spread out on the floor of my bedroom trying to do just that, before I just decided to enjoy the revolving door of the whole thing.

Speaking of Quentin Tarantino...

...I am totally stoked about his upcoming co-production with his pal Robert Rodriguez, Grindhouse! Here's an interview they did, along with an International Herald Tribune article on the topic. Excerpt: By the filmmakers' lights "Grindhouse" is a gift to moviegoers who miss, or missed, the experience of watching B-grade genre pictures of the sort that in the '50s, '60s and '70s sold what the big studios wouldn't: usually sex and gore. The films, often shown back to back, were plugged with garish posters that promised more than their pathetically low budgets could deliver. (In that spirit "Planet Terror" isn't about another planet at all, but our own, at a particularly bad moment.)

Here's the trailer:

And here are some trailers from some of the films that inspired this one -- These are great!

Finally Read V for Vendetta

Here's an article that Alan Moore wrote in 1983 about his groundbeaking series V for Vendetta, entitled "Behind the Painted Smile." Believe it or not, I've never read VfV until now. It's really excellent, and all the more interesting considering all the security cameras installed around London in the years subsequent to VfV's original publication (even though they don't work as well in the real world as in the V-World).

Excerpt: That said, all we really had was a lot of unusable ideas flying back and forth through the aether and nothing very tangible as a result of it, One night, in desperation, I made a long list of concepts that I wanted to reflect in V, moving from one to another with a rapid free-association that would make any good psychiatrist reach for the emergency cord. The list was something as follows; Orwell. Huxley. Thomas Disch. Judge Dredd. Harlan Ellison's "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman." "Catman" and "Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World" by the same author. Vincent Price's Dr. Phibes and Theatre Of Blood. David Bowie. The Shadow. Nightraven. Batman. Fahrenheit 451. The writings of the New Worlds school of science -fiction. Max Ernst's painting "Europe After The Rains," Thomas Pynchon, The atmosphere of British Second World War films. The Prisoner. Robin Hood. Dick Turpin... There was some element in all of these that I could use, but try as I might I couldn't come up with a coherent whole from such disjointed parts. I'm sure that it's a feeling that all artists and writers are familiar with... the sensation of there being something incredibly good just beyond your fingertips. It's frustrating and infuriating and you either fold up in despair or just carry on. Against my usual inclinations, I decided to just carry on.

Lots of analysis all over the Web, especially here. Numerous essays, etc. analyzing the themes, characters, allegory, morality, philosophy, etc. found in the story. Excerpt: How can you reconcile V's terrorism? The only possible reasoning that makes sense is that the ends justify the means. That though V's actions are extreme, they are necessary. V, Finch, and Evey all arrive at their epiphany's [sic] after psychological torture. This indicates that such enlightenment cannot come without pain. This idea is repeated with the entire society: before V's better world can come to fruition, Norsefire must be destroyed, and that can only happen after society descends into violence, loss and hardship. If change is necessary, then so is the pain that comes with it. Of course, this explanation only fits if you believe that the ends really do justify the means. Change may be painful, but V does more than let anarchy loose upon the world; he directs it, channels it, for his specific goal. Fate is literally subverted, which means the change and pain all the characters in Vendetta experience can be traced back to V and the terrorism he uses. Again, this may be justified if you believe V's goals warrant it, but the terrorism V employs is very much a part of our world. The fanaticism V displays is echoed in the fanaticism of terrorist groups around the globe. Does V's beliefs truly justify such terror, or do we believe that only because we agree his beliefs? To put it another way: would you accept V's actions if you removed his mask and found the face of Osama bin Laden underneath?

I've heard the film was not nearly as good, though I'll probably check it out anyway. However, here's an extensive analysis of the print series as compared to the film, in which it is argued that the film does not come out looking bad at all. Excerpt: As a film project, the idea of taking a textually dense graphic novel like V for Vendetta onto the big screen is an interesting idea, given the original version contained a stark but impressive visual style which reflects well the period of its creation (both “Thatcher's Britain”, that clichéd period of neo-liberal ascendency, but also the low water mark of the post-War economic “recovery” of the UK, something marked in the graphic novel through references to shortages and rationing that modern audiences, and particularly non-European viewers, are unlikely to sympathise with or understand) and some of the key literary and “low” culture references (including the use of children’s literature strongly throughout the narrative, via explicit references to the Magic Faraway Tree). Political anarchism is not a popular subject for literature (as opposed to other forms of political organisation commonly found in science fiction literature, such as Heinlein’s individualist liberalism, for example), and so the representation of this highly misunderstood political philosophy on the screen is a worthy project.

Watched Brother's Keeper This Weekend

I first watched the film Brother's Keeper about 10-12 years ago, largely at Roger Ebert's recommendation, and liked it quite a bit. This weekend I got it out of the library and watched it again (I remember enjoying it but I was hazy on the details). This is an excellent documentary and I recommend it highly.

It's about these mentally limited brothers who lived in contented squalor on a cow farm in upstate New York. All the locals know the Ward Boys, and when one of them is charged with murdering his brother, they put out the coffee cans to raise money for his defense.

A couple of observations on the film (as opposed to the incident, which may or may not have been a crime):

First, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky are the guys who went on to make the Paradise Lost documentaries on The West Memphis Three (the teenage Metallica fans from Arkansas accused and convicted of killing three young boys), which I blogged about here. So, they study two rural towns upset by local murders (and make no mistake -- the West Memphis killings were as brutal as you can imagine). The residents of the upstate New York area where the Wards lived were portrayed as very supportive of Berlinger, Sinofsky, and the Wards, and very skeptical of the police. The residents of West Memphis were portrayed as the opposite -- very hostile towards Damion Echols and the other two boys, cagy towards the filmmakers, and accepting of the assurances of the police and prosecutors. The attitudes were very mirror-universish... obviously, people are more comfortable with people who are "like" them (farmers feel good about farmers, even if they are eccentric) and less comfortable with the unknown (rural Southerners are freaked out by goth/metal/occult teenagers).

Another parallel I noticed was between BK and Grey Gardens. The conditions that the four Ward Boys lived in were not unlike those seen in the patrician estate of "Big Edie" and "Little Edie" Beale. Sinofsky got started in the film business working for Maysles Films, the organization run by documentarian brothers David and Albert Maysles. The cow-farming Wards and the blueblooded Beales kept to themselves, with strong family ties outweighing most social considerations (noone else would put up with any of them?), and yet seemed not to mind having a camera live with them capturing intimate interactions. I wonder if Little Edie would have thought the Wards were arguing over her?

All three films (or films + sequels) --BK, PL, GG -- are well-worth watching, all the more so if you are able to watch two or more close enough to each other to keep your eyes open for potential comparisons.

Just a Few Things...

Several items:

• Study links intense Catholicism with high crime rates!
• Happy 25th anniversary to indie label Epitaph Records.
• Here's the Massive Resource List for All Autodidacts.
• Here's the early gestation of a movie script.

Blogging Catch-Up

Items of interest:

• Two excellent DVDs for film buffs: Larry Cohen's God Told Me To (make sure to listen to the commentary, and look for sets and props from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and also a young Andy Kaufman as a NYPD cop who starts shooting people at the St. Patrick's Day parade) and IFC's The Spaghetti West.
• Interesting L.A. Times article on the nautically themed home of Hollywood writer Mark B. Perry.
• Here's the Bing Crosby/David Bowie Christmas classic, Little Drummer Boy (Peace on Earth), a few days late.
• Stephen Colbert vs. The Decemberists: Guitarmageddon! (Parts one, two, and three.) Tribune article here.
• Wikipedia vs. Google = Wikia. The winner? Everyone with a keyboard.
• Put your blog on paper? Why not?

What I've Been Watching Lately

Here are some things I've been watching over the past two or three weeks:

• Barberland -- A nice little doc about all things tonsorial, including a tour of the Ed Jeffers Barber Museum.
• Penn & Teller's Bullshit! Season Three -- The ♥G♥ and I love this show! Conspiracy theories, gun control, life coaching... all bullshit!
• 49 Up -- This component of an excellent lifelong experiment in reality television deserves its own post.
• Taking Sides -- Based on the play by Ronald Harwood, about Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler who may or may not have been a Nazi collaborator. Very thought-provoking!
• The Brood -- Early Cronenberg. Worth watching for Cronenbergians, but if you're not one, you might take a pass. Best. Broad-daylight kindergarten-teacher assassination by a mutant-child. Ever.
• My Best Fiend, Klaus Kinski -- This is a documentary by director Werner Herzog about his personal and working relationship with intense method-actor Klaus Kinski (father of nude-with-snake pin-up girl Nastassja Kinski), with whom he made numerous excellent films (Like Fitzcarraldo, for instance). Recommended! Interestingly enough, to the best of my recollection, Nastassja (or his other children) weren't even mentioned in the film.


Nastassja wasn't intervewed for the film, but the snake was.