blinkit

Blando: a mini-review of Manufacturing Dissent

WMD: I have no problem with a documentary examining documentary maker Michael Moore. He's the most successful and famous doc maker in history. In Roger and Me, his second best film, he gave us the movie of record about the hollowing out of America's industrial heartland. His most recent, Sicko, which is also his best, puts to (a sick) bed the notion that the U.S. health care system is in any way a model to envy or emulate. But, as everyone knows now, he's a flawed filmmaker and personality. For a guy dealing in a supposedly non-fiction genre, he's a fudger, sometimes shockingly so, and a ham. For a self-described man of the people, he's got an ego -- and an affluent lifestyle -- that's as wide as his girth. And he's apparently not the easier boss to work for. A guy like this is crying out for examination, especially in a film that emulates his patented style of gotcha "journalism". But after seeing Manufacturing Dissent, I'm still waiting for such an examination.

I take the makers of MD at face value when they say the are fans of Moore and set out to make a doc of him behind the scenes because they are fans. But when they were repeatedly rebuffed by his coterie of PR handlers and security over a simple request for a 20-minute sitdown interview, they were surprised. And then they discovered, as has now been written about for years, that Moore makes stuff up--both in his films and in numerous public appearances--to suit his own ends. The film does a credible job of examining Moore's background, how he grew up in a wealthy burb of Flint, his early years as a journalist/publisher (in which he apparently used stories from another publication without permission or payment) running his own paper, his failure/meltdown/assassination at Mother Jones, and his rocket ride to fame after Roger and Me electrified film festival audiences. We hear from friends, past and present, business associates and a range of figures from the U.S. left from Nader to Hitchens, and we get to watch him on the road trying to whip up the youth vote during the 2004 U.S. presidential election. And what emerges is a reasonable portrait of a man with all the charms and flaws I've described above. But they're also charms and flaws that have been written about and known about for years. The makers of MD seem to be shocked that Moore is Moore, and their criticism of him is altogether too moderate. They end the film with a statement from a disenchanted colleague and friend of Moore (and he's got good reason for being disenchanted) musing about how Moore is feeding into the same old cult of American celebrity, and that while he poses as a political radical, he's feathering his own nest. But what's left unsaid is that the film, by being about Moore, continues that cult of celebrity. And the reason that the film was made in the first place was because the filmmakers, as Moore fans, were part of that cult. And we don't get the impression they've left it by doc's end.

Final note: The filmmakers are Canadian, and while there's some reference to that in MD, it doesn't go far enough. Moore frequently uses Canada as a shining example of the social welfare state in his films. And as a Canadian who's reasonably happy with our goals of social welfare (if not always our implementation), I find Moore's lavish praise embarrassing. Yes, embarrassment is a Canadian trait, but if Moore fudges his American examples in films like Bowling for Columbine, he's an outright distortionist when it comes to Canada. A classic example was his wandering through a Toronto neighbourhood and discovering all the doors unlocked. The unsubtle lesson: sweet Canadians are so unconcerned about violence, because we have none, that it's doors open policy all the time, neigbhours! Maybe in 1950 in small towns on the prairie where everyone went to church or was too drunk to care. In 2007, you can count up the alarm security signs and stickers in just about any neighbourhood in Vancouver and end up with a pretty high number. I really doubt Toronto is any different, especially now that our largest city has acquired world class youth gang gun violence.

Today's bLINKit: I'm way too old for MySpace, and never troll it, but through this show, I stumbled upon the song that plays when you open this page. Sentimental me, I like it.

More DVDs: Doing it his way

By sheer coincidence, I've been watching a lot of Sinatra movies recently. And here's my conclusion: Frank Sinatra was one of the better and underrated actors of his generation. Or at least he was prior to the heyday of the Rat Pack and all that fooling around with the Mob. But even in something later like Von Ryan's Express he's both eminently watchable and believable. He prefers stillness over histrionics, calm over shouting, and he commands attention when the camera closes in on his face: here's a torn, conflicted man of street-smart intelligence and barely constrained rawness. Not very polite, but also decent. Driven, but always followed by doubt. It's these kinds of qualities I've found in two recent viewings.

The first is The Manchurian Candidate, a prize in itself. Part satire, part political thriller, it concerns a hilariously straight up international communist attempt to brainwash American GIs captured in Korea to become zombie-like assassins in the U.S. But with sophisticated editing, deftly staged setpieces, a great sense of humour and overshadowing paranoia, it likely set the bar for future politco-conspiracy flicks like The Parallax View and JFK. Sinatra plays one of the soldiers who, on his return from the war, is plagued by strange dreams. He slowly comes to the realization his former sergeant has become an involuntary killer for evil commies. Add the talented Laurence Harvey, various character actors like James Gregory and Henry Silva, and Angela Lansbury in a role so Freudianly evil it's as far away from Murder She Wrote as Kansas is from Khandahar, and it's highly entertaining. And Sinatra sews it all up as the central character desperately trying to keep up to events and save both his friend and his country.

Saving his friend is also the struggle Sinatra faces in 1958's Kings Go Forth, about two American soldiers involved with the same woman in the south of France during the Second World War. Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood co-star. Sinatra meets the girl first and falls in love with her. He inadvertently introduces her to the charming, handsome but shallow Curtis, who steals her away. That she's also half-black, in an era of intense racism, is a real zinger, and one of the major underlying themes of the story. The writing here is crisp, an example how a relatively ordinary film can also be literate with well-rounded characters, especially the women. It's enough to make you miss old films. Once in American cinema people actually sat down and had grownup conversations about real things. And again, Sinatra, at the core of the film, holds the film together brilliantly, largely be doing more with less.

201 views/Find your ancestors

WMD: That's the latest count of people (or computers) who have watched the YouTube video I posted Sunday. It's nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands who are watching cats pee in the toilet or play the piano, but it's a larger audience than any other video creation I've produced. It's also nearly as much as the total domestic audience for the average Canadian film. I'm honoured to be in such company.

Today's bLINKit: A genealogy project online.

Recommended listen: Open Source's The New Zoology, about the latest studies into animal emotion and consciousness. To sum up: they have more of both than most of us thought.

BlinkitTV debut on YouTube: Hit Me With Your Best Chop

Today marks BlinkitTV's debut on YouTube (along with about an estimated 100,000 other people today ...) with a short parody doc. I created it out of footage I shot using the video function of a Canon point and shoot camera. It was the day before the Christmas break, our work was done, and my colleagues were engaged in a little "housecleaning." This is the story that came out of it. Other segments came out of stock non-royalty video clips. Software used for this production was Magix Movie Edit Pro 11, a great, underestimated and powerful German-made program, and ACID Music Studio 6, a robust and easy to use looper and studio. The music came from various ACID loops.

Second wave, day two: watch your garbage

WMD: Another pest control guy was here yesterday. This time, he was here longer, which I hope is a good sign. And since the new spray, there's been no sign of the little nasties since their reappearance a few days ago. I'm not holding my breath, since I've been down that road before. Oh wait: the apartment was sprayed. I am holding my breath.

One thing I've learned is to watch what you throw away. This domestic disturbance has been an opportunity for spring cleaning, as I've gotten rid of stuff that I don't need and that may be either harbouring or attractive to the bugs. Case in point was an old small bookshelf that I had recently put in my closet to hold all the Ziplocs that contain my clothes. The day before the recent spray, I took it apart out of curiosity and discovered, of course, a small colony of bedbugs (about half a dozen tiny ones) on its underside. Since I don't need it, I threw it out. But when I went to the garbage bin in the alley way less than an hour later to throw out regular garbage, the shelves were gone. I encountered similar experiences when I first tossed out stuff before the first spray: anything I put into the bin was either sorted through or taken away within 30 minutes of it being placed there. And yet I never saw a single soul in the alley. There's two lessons here: first, watch what you throw out. If you include any personal papers, even letters and old bills, shred them beforehand to avoid any possibility of identity theft (paper documents are the main source of identity theft, not online hackers). And second, there's a whole ecology to this city that the mainstream of society never sees: small armies of binners and garbage raiders who prowl the alleys, largely unseen, and live off what the rest of us cast away.

Jericho Watch: The season finale of Jericho, a drama set in the U.S. after it's been attacked by terrorist nuclear bombs, produced the best TV line of the month: "I'm about to go to war with Newburn, Kansas, home of the nearest Costco. Today's about as weird as I can handle." And then the show killed off a major character. Also its best actor. We'll see if it survives the loss, let alone gets renewed for the fall season.

Today's bLINKit: Corey at Scratch Factory takes on Hollywood for calling Canada the world's biggest haven for movie pirates. (The people who video films in theatres -- not the guys with the peg legs and parrots.) He also takes a whack at bad reporting. I'm with him.

24 Watch: Family plot

24 Watch: The lacklustre coda of a struggling season picked up a bit, as the family theme of this season returned with a vengeance. Once again, there was plenty of been there, done that, as CTU turned out to be ridiculously easy to attack. You'd think they would have learned from the gas attack a few years back. Or the bomb attack way before that. Or the 16 times throughout the past decade in which Jack has escaped from a CTU cell and knocked out all the guards. But nope: no learning from experience here. And no one seems to have realized there's a sewer underneath the building. On the positive side, a heroic death for a minor and annoying character, although on the emotional punch scale of secondary character deaths (1 being a tactical team member, 10 being poor Edgar), it was barely a 5. And Jack, knowing this is ratings month, had plenty to do again, as we knew he would. Borrowed items: one pistol, one automatic rifle. Bodycount: four. And he was just getting started ...

Movie recommendation: The Queen. As good as people said it would be. But while many people said it made the Queen (the real one) look bad, I thought she came across quite well as the only person in a screwed up family with the brains, courage and heart to break with her own upbringing, culture and temperament to adapt to changing circumstances. The film's essential lesson: It can't be easy being the sole homo sapien in a family of freaks.

Why Jericho is better than Lost

WMD: In every way, Lost should be better TV than Jericho. In almost every way, it's not. On the surface, Lost is the better show: better writing, direction, gorgeous camera work, arguably a better cast, and a beautifully minimalist orchestral score. These are all reasons why it's won good ratings, a devoted fan base and industry awards. Jericho looks amateurish by comparison: contrived character conflict; canned emotions; editing, direction and storyline going at 90 mph; and a belief on the part of its creators that every scene needs music, music, music to underscore its dramatic point. And yet, after a season of watching both, I don't look forward to the next instalment of Lost. But I can't wait for Jericho. Why? Because I care about what happens to the people on the show. Why? Because it's real.

Despite all its gorgeousness and high drama, Lost is as real as a plastic nativity scene. I don't believe any of it. It's not just that the writers are pulling each episode out of their ass, or that no one involved with the show has any idea what it's about or how it will end (shades of The X-Files or Twin Peaks). It's just not believable. A bunch of air crash survivors are supposed to be marooned on a tropical island, for months now in the show's timetable, and yet each week their lives look like an extended beach party. No one is hungry, no one gets gangrene, no one gets diarrhea, and no one is freaking out emotionally, wearing a coconut shell on their heads and dancing around the fire with a rotting pig's head as their god. Aside from the Others kidnapping the odd survivor, and the monster made of inky smoke, it's not so bad on that weird island. Indeed, as the pictures of big, blue waves rolling on to the beach each show remind us, it's really quite pretty. But the kicker came last season, when the few survivors (ie the major characters) who actually do anything interesting on the island found the hatch, the rest of the group showed not the least bit of curiosity or interest. And this is completely, totally incredible: after weeks of deprivation, the one functioning toilet on the whole island, as far as anybody knows, has been found, and there's no rush to use it. Same with the one shower. The kitchen. The working stereo and its record collection. The freaking running water. Real beds. In real life, there would have been a stampede to the hatch. People would have fought over it. Kicked the doctor and Locke in the nuts as they tried to guard the door and raided the pantry for boxes of Initiative corn flakes and cans of pea soup. Then they would have fought each other to get to the toilet for their first good potty time in two months. But did that happen? Nope. Everyone sat back at the beach roasting marshmallows. And that's when the show lost me, pun intended.

Over on Jericho, they're in real trouble. They didn't notice it at first when the bombs went off and their world changed, but that creeping realization that trouble was coming to their town, even though they were spared the direct result of a blast, became a full-on train as events developed. First their phones, TV and Internet went out. The electrical power grid shut down. Then their gas ran out. Medical supplies became scarce. And quickly, so did the food. Then refugees poured in. Mercenary marauders took a swing at them. The fields and roads outside the town limits became a dark and dangerous landscape, as big game disappeared and hundreds of thousands of desperate people from the northern states walked en masse to the warmer southern regions in hope of surviving the winter. In Jericho, people starved, froze to death, fought each other for rations. Politics became bitter. Refugees were resented, teargassed and threatened with expulsion. Families were torn apart. And it's getting worse. Characters are making unattractive decisions: my favourite is the high school kid. Six months ago, he was a loser nerd. Now he's emerging as a major landowner, and revealing a scary vein of ruthlessness.

Sure, much of Jericho is a soap opera, that week in, week out depends on standard adventure plots (find bad guys, run from bad guys, talk with bad guys, don't get eaten by bad guys) to play the story out. And it is really nothing more than a guilty pleasure. But what a pleasure, with a compelling backdrop in which Americans are struggling to survive and behaving very, very badly. Six months ago, the people of Jericho were small town folk in a boring little white bread community. Now their nearest neighbours, who at worst were their traditional football rivals, are starving to death. They've created an army, fashioned home made mortars and have declared war on Jericho to get its farms and salt mine. In last night's episode, after the town staved off the first mortar attack, the town leaders passed out rifles to their friends and neighbours in preparation for full-out war and talked about how they were facing a fight for their very existence. You can't get more fundamental, or real, than that. And that's why I'll keep watching.

Today's bLINKit: More views on 300 -- Corey Reid of Scratch Factory has a very informed take on the film, thanks to his background in the Frank Miller graphic novel. And Kung Fu Monkey explains why 300 is opposed to the American military tradition or citizen-soldiers. (It's a great argument, although I'd counter that from The Green Berets through Rambo down to The Unit, a smaller vein in American culture also worships the extreme, pure soldier, and it's that tradition that 300 seems to celebrate, if it celebrates anything at all.)

300 reasons to be baffled

WMD: OK, I can't live up to the subject headline since I don't have 300 reasons to recommend or diss this movie. But I remain ambivalent about it because I can't place it. What's 300 on about?

On the surface, it's about almost maniacally brave Greek warriors holding off a vastly numerically superior Persian force by using courage and skill in a fight which was helpful as a delaying tactic and also effectively suicidal. The Spartans talk a lot about defending justice, freedom and reason, and at home, they seem to hang out most of the day in an outdoor mall, populated by about three dozen people, that looks and feels a lot like those fake communal towns The Next Generation Enterprise crew was always beaming down to (where there are no cars or public transit or energy sources, and everyone dresses the same and seems to have enough food and something to do.) Everyone is hot, except the young boys who looked like they just arrived fresh from the island of Lord of the Flies, and there don't seem to be any slaves. Meantime the Persians, when not seen as a huge, faceless horde, seem to hold lots of bondage parties. And their leader Xerxes is eight feet tall, speaks in an artificially modulated voice and really likes his bling. 

All of this makes for a dazzling film, especially when see on the Imax screen. It's clearly not historical. The Spartans don't seem to have any slaves. (Historically, they were thick with them, depended entirely on them for their economy, and treated them like crap.) The Persians, who have the political and diplomatic sophistication of British soccer fans, use rhinos and primitive hand grenades (this in what is supposed to be the 5th century B.C.). Their elite Immortals warriors look like samurai, right down to their bushido blades. And they have the odd monster, like one giant baby with giant cleavers for hands. We're pretty far from the historical record here.

Much has been written about how Iran believes the movie is a propaganda exercise to vilify it by using the ancient Persian empire as a stand in for the current Holocaust-denying mullahs. I don't see that. This movie, and the graphic novel it's based on, were likely conceived of and executed long before Iran became part of the axis of evil, in U.S. terms, as opposed to what it has been since the 1970s, merely another annoying country, in geopolitical terms, with lots of oil. Iran should get over itself.

But what's up with the 300 and the biggest display of elite white manflesh on film (Abs R Us) since Ben Hur, especially as they battle brown, black and yellow pan-Asian/African hordes? In its theme of white defenders, it's like Birth of a Nation with hoplites. With its brilliant balletic blend of real-time and slow motion fighting scenes, it's Triumph of the Will with Greeks. And what kind of heroes are these? The Spartans, as portrayed, are just this side of combat crazy: the ideals they stand for include the systematic brutalization of their young boys. They have little time for anyone who's not a professional soldier. They love death. Are we supposed to like these guys? And what are we to make of the film's throwaway references to how the Spartans are defending the gates to protect the ideals of freedom and reason against the forces of mysticism and tyranny? Is this meant as a metaphor? If so, of what? Is it the West defending itself against the forces in the rest of the world? Is this an essentially white, Eurocentric America trying not to drown in global diversity? The Greeks here are NOT stand ins for Western Christians: they are ironclad rationalists, as evidenced by how the 300 Spartan heroes actively defy their own religious leaders to go to battle. They're secular neocons. So is this message? Would someone make a movie like that in 2007 when it's so utterly hamfisted?

It's weird, too, that the Greeks are shown as ethnically and culturally homogeneous, while the Persians are as varied as the stars. If there's supposed to be a metaphor between the West and Rest of the World, that picture is plain wrong. The West is diverse. It's the rest of the world that seems to be fencing itself off into ethnic, cultural and religious enclaves. The last Western state that tried to go the homogeneous route, Germany, was pounded into the ground (admittedly not because of its nutty and evil internal policies, but because it invaded everyone in sight). Now Germany is awash in ethnicity, while places like the aforementioned Iran ban makeup and hold conferences questioning the Holocaust as historical fact.

And there's also something weird about American popular culture and its continuing embrace of the myth of the outnumbered heroic force fighting an enemy greater in numbers but inferior in morals and morale. In American films, heroes are always getting themselves surrounded in forts against Indians (Westerns), Mexicans (the Alamo movies), Germans (Saving Private Ryan) and Vietnamese (every Vietnam movie ever made). Then they have to fight the bad guys off using wit and courage, and it's usually a photo finish. 300 continues that tradition, as if it's part of a centuries old advertising campaign for special forces recruitment. The reality is that Americans have rarely gone to war outnumbered. And when they have had fewer soldiers than their opponents, they've almost always been better supplied and/or equipped. For every spec forces operative dropped into Afghanistan, for example, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of soldiers and civilians involved in his training, equipping, supplying and support. The proof? He can call in an air strike on his radio almost at will.

And finally, why 300's disturbing association between beauty and virtue, and ugliness and moral weakness? The Spartan who betrays the 300 is a disfigured troll. The buff soldiers he betrays, all of whom suffer lovingly detailed and gory heroic deaths, are physically right out of a firefighter's charity calendar. I could be wrong, but the admittedly traditional association between virtue and physical perfection seems to be ramping up in pop culture, and it's disturbing. I fear our pop art is going fascist.

24 Watch: Jack is Rainman

24 Watch: A heartwarming episode, in which Jack enlists the aid of an autistic or savant fellow to catch a terrorist. On the surface, it looks like it's finally a chance for Jack, after ripping out people's jugulars, torturing his brother and getting repeatedly kicked in the ribs, to show his tender side by: a) realizing the suspect he was dealing with was Dustin Hoffman from Rainman; b) that Rainman was being used for his brother for his supernatural talent with computers to hack supersensitive secrets online. Indeed, Jack gets all warm and fuzzy and goes to great lengths to keep Rainman alive, which he hasn't necessarily done for untold dozens of people who's help he's enlisted/conscripted over the years. (See Jack coming, you run. Just leave the keys for your car behind, since he'll appreciate that.) So why is Jack all shook up by Rainman? Because he sees himself in Rainman. Consider: Rainman is emotionally and socially retarded, but brilliant at what he does, ie hacking databases. Jack is emotionally and socially retarded, but brilliant at what he does, ie hacking off body parts and large parts of his soul. And just as Rainman was unknowingly being exploited by his brother, Jack was also, earlier in the day, being unknowingly exploited by his brother. A moment of epiphany, made special with one more notch on the pistol in the bodycount list.

Other TV: Rome is over for good, its last episode killing off most of the surviving characters and putting pained expressions on everyone else. And in what I take to be Roman fashion, it ended sort of happily, except for all the folks with pained expressions, but not sentimentally. I'll miss it, especially since it was finally learning to use cool digitized backdrops to show some rather cool ancient vistas.

And BSG went nuts again, as key characters discovered a shocking secret about themselves, all because they kept hearing snatches of All Along the Watchtower. I'm not making that up. With the Doodle Art poster kind of imagery that closed the season finale, it's now apparent the 12 Colonies were founded in 1969.

Movie recommendation: Idiocracy, available on DVD. It's better than Borat. Borat was shockingly funny, but also offensive and not nearly as smart as everyone thinks it is. Idiocracy isn't as funnier, but is far smarter about how everyone in our culture is getting dumber by the generation.

24 Watch: Stop the insanity/The Big Lebowski in 5 Seconds

WMD: Yet another episode in which Jack Bauer is placed to the background, basically limping around in the basement of the Russian consulate while other people try to rescue him. Most of the focus of the latest episode is on the return of the wonderfully evil Charles Logan. Still, Jack returns to form and adds two more to his bodycount and borrows yet another gun and a phone. And I'm going to award him some honourary 1/4 kills, since the death of the dozen or guards--most of whom seem utterly innocent in terms of any connection to the nuclear plot--can pretty much be traced back to Jack since he precipitated the whole standoff. So: total bodycount addition: five. Not bad for perhaps six minutes of actual screen time. But c'mon folks, an assault on a consulate? C'mon!

Today's bLINKit: The difference between men and women, as illustrated by control panels. And that great movie about the Dude rendered down to just a few seconds.

Plus you have only a few hours to add to the latest Courier poll (combining the Law of Attraction with a healthy lunch) here.