Curious Case of Benjamin Button - % % %

Meh. Better than Forrest Gump, but still didn't quite have the emotional or philosophical impact I feel the filmmakers (dir. David Fincher) intended.

Like Forrest Gump, we have a special southern protagonist, and the same screenwriter, Eric Roth. Strike number one. He wanders through the decades of the 20th century, and his special nature tells the audience about themes of life and how to live a happy life. Unlike Gump, the soundtrack doesn't feel hokey, the historical moments aren't forced down our throats, and the main characters aren't shallow moralistic templates.

So yes, it's pretty good. But no, it's not great. Cate Blanchett, the love interest and bookending dead character, uses her breathy voice to approximate a Louisiana accent, but comes off in the end as a bit too vacant. She is wonderful at portraying the naive, confidence of youth. Her character's life as a dancer is a good parallel in a story about aging. Only certain athletes like gymnasts and ice skaters can share such a tragic life pursuit.

But Brad Pitt, who is well cast as an image, who wouldn't want to grow hotter as time goes by, walks through the movie with little affect. He is too vacant in his performance. His physical condition, as a person aging backwards, constitutes the entirety of his character. Otherwise, Benjamin wanders around, captivated by powerful personalities and bemusedly smiling along with their lives.

Then there is the tragically overplayed metaphorical object. Will someone contact Scorcese? because most of this is his fault. there is a hummingbird that magically appears when a character dies at sea. It's preposterous that a hummingbird would be seen deep at sea, let alone that it would appear after a man with such a bird tattooed on his chest dies. It's cheesy. And I call out Scorcese because he similarly keeps using animals and objects in cutaways to slap the audience in the face with a metaphor. The rat in the end of the Departed? The Bible tossed into a river in Gangs of New York. It's hokey and it needs to stop. I got the hummingbird metaphor when the character explained his tattoo, but seeing one at his death and at the death of Daisy, Cate Blanchett, is just banging the audience in the head with a foam cheese hat from a Packers game.

I'm also not sure why Tilda Swinton's character of a British emissary/Russian spy's wife was even included except to kill time while Benjamin was away with his heart growing fonder and to show Benjamin that after he has a daughter that life is to be lived and it's best to be independent and fulfill your own personal goals. It didn't work and, while making me appreciate the odd morality of the film, made me sad that pursuing one's own life must come at the sacrifice of supporting and intensely loving one's family according to the film. What a man's perspective on fulfillment. I kept thinking that even though it was going to be hard for everyone that he was growing younger, that Benjamin was cruel and foolish to abandon his family that he clearly loved so deeply. Just because something is extremely hard, doesn't me that it's not worth doing.

The Gump analogies continue with his youth spent in a boarding house - this time a senior home, a quirky parallel black friend - this time a pygmy from Africa whose stature makes him a carnival attraction, a gospel loving mama who teaches him some choice phrases, a lost father, and a childhood love who can't see what she's got until it's almost too late.

I do like some aspects of the book ending of the story, although since Saving Private Ryan I generally loathe book ending. Telling the story on Daisy's deathbed creates a palpable contrast with Benjamin's death and life. Yet, the reveal of Daisy's daughter's true father is tossed aside as Hurricane Katrina comes crashing in. I also like the use of Katrina as a manifestation of the unpredictability of life and of time's painful erasure of all of our lives.

the themes of the film are good to emphasize, that the future is unknown, yet it often feels like things and people come together at just the right moment from time to time. Yet there was an emotional crevasse, probably stemming from Pitt's vacant performance.

My final gripe is that I pity the cinematographer who works with Fincher. Someone needed to tell him to cut it out with the After Effects. There is a sequence set in the past that appears as if it was filmed in the 1910s, but colorized, and it's too much. There's no subtlety in the technique of aging the film. It's annoying.

While the makeup was good, it wasn't great. The youthification was impressive, but as usual, much of the aging felt plastic and the CGI is trusted too heavily to achieve many of the effects.

The ending possesses a certain magnificence, watching a man turn into a child and go senile. But all in all, it's too long and not potent enough for me to have felt struck by a masterwork. Good, but not great.

PS I love Tilda Swinton and found it very sad that she was described as plain looking in the film because she's stunning looking. She's got those incredible eyes like pools of ink like Mathieu Almaric. But this dress makes her look like she has five boobs, right?

Prime Suspect: Final Act - % % % % %

Wow. Now this is drama. Helen Mirren is outstanding at conveying the multitude of emotions coursing through her character. "Final Act" is an extraordinary depiction of the horrible climaxes of life when everything is coming down on you and you can't quit, you can't break down. You must hold it together as well as you can, admit that you must change yourself and persevere through the guilt and shame and fear and trauma, hoping that you will come out the other end eventually without screwing anything else up. Wow. I'm stunned by the complexity of the story, characters and direction.

At the end of the episode I just watched, a climactic scene takes place in a parking lot and instead of opting for the close-up to involve the audience, the director shows the CC TV of the action, putting the audience in a hopeless, out-of-control vantage point, illustrating the lack of control that any of the characters have at this point. Events happen, cutting back and forth between the painfully distant observation of the action and the involved, director's camera. The emotions and consequential action are shown and then we are tossed away and shown the futility of our presence in the action. We, as is Mirren, are helpless to stop the violence. Wow.

I must now watch earlier episodes and catch up, as should we all. This, not Deadwood or Weeds, is evidence of the golden age of television. wow.

Numb3rs Season 3 - % % %

It's nothing special, that's for sure. But the ten minutes of dorkiness per episode and plots that semi-revolve around wacky academics, who likely have Asburgers syndrome, make the crime procedural portion of it bearable.

I, along with most of the US apparently, need some kind of crime show to watch in the background while I fold laundry or vacuum. And rather than watch CSI which is totally stupid, especially the Miami one (that David Caruso is awful and who cast that walking bag of skin cancer in a show set in Florida?!!! He's a pale red head. It's suicide.) or the endless reruns of Law & Order (which is perfectly fine as a repetitive tv show - they've got a good pattern), I pick Numb3rs. I loathe the actual number in its title, but it's got five actors I really like and demonstrations of wacky physics phenomena.

Diane Farr (check her out on Rescue Me), Peter MacNicol (Fame), Judd Hirsch (Taxi was my favorite show when I was 4), David Krumholtz (slums of beverly hills), and Rob Morrow (hottie Jewish guy extraordinaire).

Greatest American Hero - % % %

I have been watching this on Me TV and I have to say, it's as good as I remember. It's cute and fun and I really still like Robert Culp. Is this where I know Connie Sellecca? Or is it just Lifetime movies? But I digress.

The best thing is getting to hear and sing along with the theme song. I could sing it all day, and I ordinarily loathe light 70s/80s music. Oh, except for the Family Ties theme song. That's great, too.

Believe it or not, I'm walking on air. I never thought I could feel so free ee ee!
Flying away on a wing and a prayer. Who could it be?

Believe it or not, it's just me!

John Adams - % % % % %

I wish it were possible to see history in this fashion through other eyes. I'd love to see Thomas Jefferson or John Jay similar biography-series like this.

It's wonderful to see such an intimate portrait of historical figures who appeared to me, thus far, as figures in paintings, like greek statues or paintings of aristocrats. I love hearing the theoretical accents of people of Revolutionary America and their changing fashions and cadences. I trust that the series has been thoroughly researched and I can thus draw conclusions about the lives of early Americans. Like that they didn't have much stuff at all. What cluttered lives we live. Even the rich people in Europe had vacant homes, in order to impress one with the enormity of their spaces, I assume.


Laura Linney is great. But I must say that Abigail Adams appears to be the most perfect, wise, and sensitive person ever created. Aside from feeling unstable due to the prolonged absence of her husband, she never seems to falter from being an intellectual and poetic ideal. It's a bit much. Paul Giamatti somehow erases his Italian ancestry and appears an uptight, New England stoic. I really enjoy the increasing cantankerous crankiness present in the character.

Thus far, the supporting characters have been fascinating, especially Thomas Jefferson (Stephen Dillane), Sam Adams (Danny Huston), King George (Tom Hollander) and Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin. I like the inclusion of Adams' children's lives, although they seem to be narrow depictions of dutiful, eldest son, rebellious middle child and attentive mother-modeled daughter. But they complement the depiction of the founding father's character and life-narrative.

There are way too many canted angles and the regular, highly-mixed sound of insects buzzing becomes repetitive. It's useful to illustrate the different standards of cleanliness and the rugged nature of lives of the time, as well as to illustrate the increasing madness of Adams' fevered state while in the Netherlands, but it is too loud. It gets repetitive and annoyingly noticeable as the series progresses.

I've only seen the first five episodes, so there will surely be more to follow on this series.

So HBO executives and Tom Hanks, super producer, make more of these. Thank you Tom Hanks for providing better entertainment as a producer than as an actor. It's true... Band of Brothers, John Adams, From the Earth to the Moon etc... I therefore forgive him for Polar Express, a beloved childrens book ruined by creepy CGI and a mediocre, boring plot.

Back when people took their nation's politics seriously.

stuff I've dug up while being bed ridden due to repeated bad news this past week

Animal Camouflage: bugs that look like leaves; then vertebrates that look like leaves, like frogs, fish, gecko, ... cool

Cassette Coin Purse

Booklet on the history of numbers

Quantum of Solace - % % % - And why I hate movie theaters

I could barely comprehend what was going on in the opening chase scene from the new James Bond film. I was in the fourth row from the back and I still could not see the whole screen. It was so loud I couldn't distinguish sounds within the onslaught.

If I had watched this in my home, the volume would have been more moderate. I would have watched it on a large screen tv or projected on a 15 foot screen and sat at such a distance that the screen would only have taken up two thirds of my vision rather than 150% of it. I also would have been able to eat and drink and whatever in comfortable folding chairs or lounging on a couch.

Instead I lost two years of my hearing and feel traumatized.

I do feel a great loss at the closure of so many theaters and the hard times the industry is experiencing. But bringing in "live recordings" of operas and self-help symposiums is not the way to revitalize the theater industry. But what do I know. I thought those Japanese game shows were the lowest echelon of programming possible, but then I watched a trailer for "Mama's Boys". Clearly reality competition dating shows are lower. And those game shows are joyous and a great use of the temporary nature of tv.

As for the film, it was ok. While it attempted a meditation on revenge which felt weak and a second thought, the action scenes that make up the core of the film were exciting once the initial chase scene ended. The next chase was on foot and I could catch snipits of the architecture and space they were rushing through. But man, it was hard work. How can I be frightened that James Bond is going to crash into the bad guy if I can't comprehend that the rope he's hanging from is attached to a seesawing beam that rotates around the room? With no establishing shot, nor one that lasts more than two seconds, I imagined the plausible hypothesis for what I was seeing and conjecture for what the director might want me to think. Garrgh! Frustrating.

I haven't seen Casino Royale, so maybe the revenge plot might have been more compelling to others.

I did like the main plot about an evil multinational organization buying up all the water in the planet and blackmailing developing countries into paying their extreme prices, all under the cover of an environmental organization preserving untouched lands. And Mathieu Almalric is a wonderful bad guy. Why are his eyes so black? They are pools of ink and when he scrunches his face, he transforms into the countenance of demonic possession.

I liked the characterization of the female foil, Camille (Olga Kurylenko). She was tough but with a real justified fear of fire. And another woman gets crude oiled in parallel to the golding in Goldfinger. Really great visual.

I also liked that there were less fashionable but still beautiful locations like Bolivia, Port au Prince etc... and not just Europe and Japan. Or is it that those locations in the global south are now fashionable?

But the fight sequences involved lots of jumping, which reminded even my 69 year old father of the Bourne films. And this from the man who thought, after overhearing a gossipy conversation between my mother and I, that Julia Roberts was a friend of hers from college.

Although I respect the darker, less self-referential direction that the franchise is pursuing, I have never gotten the charm of Daniel Craig. When I first saw him in Tomb Raider, I was confused as to why anyone would cast such a gnarled face opposite Angelina Jolie. Yes, he has clear blue eyes and a certain British charm, and no, one needn't be pristine in order to be attractive, least of all men. But, I don't quite get his "magnetism".

And directed by Marc Forster of Finding Neverland fame? I'm surprised.

Paul Haggis? ack. The screenwriting kiss of weak emotional assumptions of underlying shmaltzy goo. crap.

Why do all the Bond villians have sidekicks with hideous haircuts?

Judi Densch gives my favorite performance of her time in the series, in a role actually written to take advantage of her skill. And I love that the relationship between Bond and M is more closely detailed.

Wiat I just realized that I did see Casino Royale. Ouch. That's a bad sign for the plots of the current phase of the series. Sorry to the writers, but it's true. I had no recollection of the previous film.

There are loads of ridiculous assertions in the film, particularly the action sequences. Bond jumps on a Haitian fishman's shack/boat and can out run inflatable, modern, boats with top of the line engines? Security in these inflatables are using guns and never shoot and deflate their crafts? Bond is so tired by the end of the film that a businessman (Almalric) can almost kick his ass into a firey pit through hand to hand and then axe to hand combat?

I'm just going to steal this next point from Pajiba.com - Ted Boynton: "The Daniel Craig iteration of Bond may not realistically portray espionage, but this depiction has the stones to grapple with the philosophical dilemma of using ultra-competent covert operatives to accomplish what legitimate diplomacy and lawful police work cannot." And this film makes the point, repeatedly, that there are not good and bad guys in international relations, but rather governmental/military entities who serve the economic interests of their tax paying corporations (the corporatocracy).

Dark Knight - % % % %

I wasn't sure how they were going to pull off changing the actress playing the love interest (a big improvement), and plotting two super villains, but Christopher Nolan achieved it admirably. Not perfectly, but admirably.

To the film's advantage, it was shot in Chicago and utilized some of the best downtown locations since the Untouchables. Chicago actor, Ron Dean, plays a corrupt cop, and I'm always happy to see him outside of my regular viewings of the Fugitive. Although I found the integration of Chicago and "Gotham" (aka NYC) a bit odd at times, like the intersection of 25th and Cicero? Wha? But the use of the odd half streets/alleys off of Jackson, the gorgeous LaSalle, footed by the stock exchange, El covered Lake Street, Lower Wacker Drive and a host of other fab locations made me exclaim numerous times that "every movie should use x location!" or "Why aren't more movies shot in Chicago?", and my personal favorite, "New York is so ugly in comparison."
This includes the scariest parking garage ramp I've ever had the horror of driving down. (Rush Hospital off of Ashland)

I previously used "admirably" instead of "perfectly" because, while the parallels between the two villains' agendas work on paper, in the film, they felt glossed over and forced. I had little emotional investment in Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal) - his fiance & Batman's love interest, or even the moral highground of Lucien Fox, played by Morgan Freeman. And when an audience isn't engaged by Morgan Freeman's moral highground, you've just got too much going on, damn it!

But, wow! Heath Ledger is unrecognizable. With his hunched back, sunken eyes, early 20th century accent, and grimacing laughter, he creates the only truly terrifying Joker. This Joker could kill Robin with a lead pipe. This is the Joker of the Dark Knight. Wonderful. His performance declares the great tragedy of his loss to the art of film. He clearly had an extraordinary range and talent. And he's totally gonna get an Oscar.

His performance reminds me why the Tim Burton Batman franchise just didn't hold up. I usually blame Michael Keaton and the penguins with striped rockets on their backs. But really, with the exception of Danny Devito's astounding Penguin, the earlier Batman franchise was too goofy and cartoony. The Batman comics of the last 25 years have been so terrifying and gruesome, so bleak and corrupted, that the Burton Batman feels absurdly operatic in comparison. Operas have their own wonderful quality, but one would be hard pressed to claim that they are emblematic of a contemporary reality.

The use of the Jackson and LaSalle St. Chicago locations, which hearken back to the Untouchables and obviously much earlier films of the depression, link our currently bleak and destitute times with that era. Serendipitously, the Dark Knight coincides with the worst economic situation since the depression and I think we are all looking to that time to brace ourselves and prepare our minds for what is to come.

The special effects were all great and the Bat-Mobile has never been badder. But for the characters, the film depends upon the audience having seen the earlier Batman Begins in order to feel or understand anything about Rachel or Lucien, or even Bruce Wayne for that matter. The corruption of two cops holds little punch other than an intellectual scorn for failed officers. The death of Rachel involves a twist that distracts from any emotion the audience might feel at her loss. Although I do love the characterization and performance of Harvey Dent's descent into madness and villainy and the progress of Commissioner Gordon into a commissioner.

So it could have been better. But it could have been soooooo much worse. And I did really enjoy it, was shouting at the screen and loved the adventure.

There Goes My Baby (1994) - % %

Anticipating, and dreading being right, are some of the most mediocre emotions elicited while watching movies. Boredom and nausea are obviously far worse. Aside from some "sweet" performances from Rick Schroeder, Dermott Mulroney and Kelli Williams, and the one compelling performance of Noah Wiley, I experienced boredom and disappointing expectations throughout the film. And then there were the false notes. Like a 1950s burger joint being torn down and turned into a strip mall. It's just too convenient for a "1960s nostalgia" movie.

For example, each character represents an archetype. The smart black kid from Watts with a scholarship to Princeton who grows up to be a US Senator; the hippie chick who gets knocked up and valiantly hides the pregnancy from the free-wheeling drifter father, only to move to San Francisco; the noble civil rights enthusiast quoting Bob Dylan who becomes a protester and then a University professor; the shy girl who narrates it all because she grew up to be a writer. And of course someone dies in Vietnam. Vomit. the school teachers are all a-mur-ican patriot fascists. Most of the parents too.

The one interesting item, that it all occurs on the opening night of the Watts riots, gets lost after the first half of the film. What could have been an interesting story about a wealthy white kid and his family's black servant's son, who grew up like brothers, and ventured into Watts during the riots to retrieve and protect the latter's grandmother, just goes back to the basics in the middle and focuses on the fears of an enlistee and the pregnant hippie. There's an anti-war protester who gets killed while in custody. It devolves into a riot on the front lawn of the high-school. Noah Wiley pours gasoline onto the school's statue, turning the civil war era soldier into a flaming totem, while Dermot Mulroney fist fights the principal. Not as funny as you might expect. And not as compelling as the filmmaker hoped. Blah.

I only finished it to hear the obligatory voice-over epilogue of where each character ended up. Total cliches. Bleck. Except that the hippie named her baby Pirate. Ha!

Of course they have to sell the movie with shirtless teen boys.

I think that the new "This" channel 26.4 is going to lead to similar reviews in the future. There's something pleasant and indulgent about trash on a Saturday afternoon.

30 Rock - % % % % % - rox

Few series hold up to successive viewing - cough - 24 - cough cough. But 30 Rock amazed me. I never stopped laughing out loud or being charmed by the characters' foibles. I did realize that Josh has disappeared and Pete is totally underutilized (props to my Second City alumna!)



Man, I love Tina Fey! I love her self-deprecating humor. I buy her compulsive consumption of crap much more than itty bitty bony arms Deborah Messing. Yeah right she eats a whole box of Crispy Cremes. My ass. Only if she barfs them all up immediately afterward. But Tina Fey, maybe. And drinking wine while walking on her treadmill and drunk dialing her hopeful condo-board, priceless. I would totally do that. Oh, drunken yoga is a much worse idea than you'd imagine. Glurb.

Alec Baldwin becomes a little one note, but it's such a great note that I want to hear it all night long.

The show is rando, but in a charming way - thanks in large part to Tracey Jordan. His interpretation of fame and pop culture madness is brilliant. A few parts mocking racism, a few parts mocking insanity/sanity, and a whole lot of cutey baby eyes for forgiveness.

Kenneth has changed over the years and I like the chances they're taking on mocking his hillbilly Christian background. "Hillbilly milk"! marvelous.

Even Jena is a great send-up of actors, and musical theater actors at that. As a reformed thespian, I did sing the songs of Grease, Fiddler on the Roof, and many more painful musicals in the halls of my high school. Sorry everyone. I also apologize to the citizens of Paris for the Little Mermaid medley. It wasn't my idea! I didn't even know the words for most of those songs!

I'm stunned by how many times an episode I explode with a vociferous "HA! ha!" Or flop on my side laughing.

thank you Netflix. You can't know how you've changed my otherwise crappy week. Instead of feeling like you can't really trust people, I'm titillated by our foibles and forgiving for our sweet flaws.

Crumb - % % % % %

OK, maybe I'm exaggerating these films' quality, but this was honestly a well made biographical documentary of a very interesting person. Honestly.


A comic book artist is certainly a great subject matter for a film. Composed primarily of Robert Crumb's drawings and interviews of him and those in his life, "Crumb" depicts the sad life of the Crumb family and Robert's attempts to live beyond the mediocrity of his childhood by processing his own psycho-social issues through his drawings. He is paralleled with his older and younger brothers: one who lives at home with their mother and is continually on tranquilizers to moderate his violent tendencies; another who lives alone, meditating on a bed of nails for several hours a day to quell his impulses to pull women's shorts down.

His former girlfriends and old haunts are interviewed as well. We follow Crumb around, watching him draw people, seeing the world through his eyes. Yet Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World, Bad Santa) refrains from mocking the people on the street directly. Indirectly, there are definite allusions between characters Crumb sees and his seemingly subsequent drawings. Yuppies in a yogurt shop are followed by caricatures of muscle-bound, meat heads. Zwigoff's presence isn't denied, nor is it obtrusive. He occasionally prompts those on screen with questions, but relies on the camera and editing to point out the connections intended for the audience.

Interviews with cultural critics, from art critic, Robert Hughes (who calls Crumb the Breugel of the second half of the 20th century) to former Mother Jones Magazine editor, Deirdre English, including a very young Peggy Orenstein, cut back and forth showing the many interpretations of the work. When Orenstein tells Crumb that as a young girl she saw her brother's collection of Zap Comics, including many of his cartoons, and that she was extremely confused about adulthood and sexuality, Crumb at first tosses his hands in the air. He says that he can't defend himself, but follows with a story of his daughter's fear and confusion watching Goodfellas. So some art is only for some people, even then only those who choose it, and his is therefore not for children.

It is a sensitive telling of a small man's life which connected with other men's lives. His work is controversial because it exposes many of our species' and society's ugly impulses. The film does not interrogate whether his sexual fixations and fantasies are biological or psychological, which would be an interesting, although expansive, discussion. While it touches on the racist imagery depicted in some of his work, especially from the 60s, the film neglects to include any African-American voices, nor those well versed with African American History. I suppose that the previous editor of Ms. is familiar with the kinds of bigotry and oppression involved in any discussion of racism, but no other experts or authorities are called upon to respond.

The film is also shot on the eve of his departure from the America he so successfully satirizes. At the end, Crumb, his wife and daughter, move to the south of France. The US was not a fantasy-fulfillment land for him, and so he takes his fantasies and exits. He seems to be someone who narrowly escaped mental illness, unlike his two brothers, through expressing and experimenting with his demons. These expressions found camaraderie with others' demons and gave him friends, love and support. It seems that without these friends and support, that he might be living in a one room apartment in squalor and greasy hair. Instead he lives in France. Ah! The transformative power of art!

Finally! It has happened to me, right in front of my face, and I just cannot hide it!

Ah ha! Netflix has accomplished the seemingly impossible. They have opened the ability to watch online to Mac users! Yay! If it's Netflix' or Apple's fault, I blame them both.

And now I will likely never leave the house. I've been fortunate to have had a wicked cold for this week and have thus been able to watch a bajillion different tv shows and films. I don't need people anymore, I have got a history of cinema to catch up on.

Peace out.

link to another review of Born in Flames

deeper into movies: Screening: "Born in Flames" - March 13th, 7:30 pm

Born in Flames - % % % % %

I don't intend on giving 5%s to every movie, nor writing only on the films I give 5%s.

But this film is awesome. It's nutso. I love it. It's super low-fi, using varied formats and awkward camera placement reminiscent of home photography and security cameras. It cuts unexpectedly into the next scene, leaving the audience with the sense that we're just flipping through conversations between these women.

It's a marxist-feminist-1968 revolutionary fantasy. 10 years following the Liberation Revolution, women are still frustrated by the rhetoric of equality and the lack of follow through by the new government. Thus the Women's Army is formed, initially chasing rapists on bicycles, but eventually moving to armed resistance following the prison murder of their leader, and uniting women in the struggle for equal work and the end of masculine-focused society.

In an interview included on the DVD, filmmaker Lizzie Borden claims that she intended the audience to disagree with the violence in the film. I find this hard to believe. The militancy is so admired by the attention given to certain characters and the non-violent, bourgeois, cultural, educated elite are dismissed as out of touch and afraid of action. I think she, like many who came of age after 1968, admires the firm stance that many took during the fight against the Vietnam War and the willingness to completely sacrifice for a cause. It is romantic and foreign to bougie college kids like Borden at the time, and myself for that matter. College educated, liberals long for a passionate commitment to a movement. If our heroes are Dr. King and Gandhi, we naturally fantasize about civil disobedience. If one's heroes are Bernadine Dorn or Malcolm X, one fantasizes about militant revolution.

The romanticism of the film is further developed by the two radio djs, Honey and Adele, one a firm, forward, black, soulfully-voiced leader & one a punky, opportunistic, painfully-rapping, feisty provocateur. They are folk leaders whose messages ignite the imaginations of their audience and the audience of the film.

I, for one, enjoy the fantasy of bands of bike riders coming to save the day, blowing rape whistles to prevent sexual assaults, and groups of women coming together to provide daycare, eldercare and equal employment in male dominated occupations (i.e. nearly all). The film's movement demands respect for nurses, teachers, waitresses and secretaries.

I wish I'd seen it when I was in high-school, but I don't know if I'd have been gutsy enough to embrace it.

Shock Corridor - % % % % %

Bookended by the quote, "Whom God wishes to destroy he first turns mad. (Euripides, 425 BC)", Shock Corridor indicts 1960's society for numerous ills: racism, repressed sexuality, war crimes, nuclear war, and unbridled ambition. Each character's madness is derived from these ills. The only African-American student at an all white college goes crazy and believes that he is a KKK member, terrified that a black man will marry his daughter. One of the creators of the atom bomb regresses to childhood because his adult choices and their consequences are too painful to countenance or to responsibly own. A room of women, diagnosed as nymphos, must possess men, driven by their weakness in society when independent of men.

This alone makes the film interesting, but I'm giving it 5%s because it's also interesting as a film, with oddly cute superimposed images indicating the hallucinations of the main character. While the acting of Constance Towers, as the cabaret-star girlfriend of the main character, is over the top and hysterical, the extreme emotional swings of all the characters artificially indicate the torture everyone experiences.

It's fun to watch and interesting to ponder.

Economic Hitman Speaking Freely - If you like Noam Chomsky...

While essentially an extended interview of one man in one location, “Speaking Freely: John Perkins” posits numerous paradigm shifts for the economically and politically minded. Filmicly, it is boring. As one who possesses an economics undergrad major, and a passionate advocate for social justice, I found John Perkins’ description of the world to be a good, hard push on a swing. It spun me around and gave me a new perspective on what I had thought I knew so clearly, and simultaneously connected with suspicions I’d had for some time.

In the opening minutes of the documentary, Perkins claims that poverty is not the core problem. It is extreme wealth that necessitates poverty, which is to blame. It is not possible for a small percentage of the world to be as profoundly wealthy as many are in “developed” nations, without the rest of the world being profoundly poor, without resources or opportunities for significant advancement. Thus over half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. And they are getting what they pay for.

One of the first concepts taught in economics is scarcity. There are a limited number of anything. There are only so many gold deposits on earth, so many potatoes at any given time, or so many hours in a day. We affix a price as a means of estimating the goods’ or services’ relative value. Four frappaccinos is worth as much as a sweater at H&M. So for a small percentage of the people on earth to control a vast percentage of the resources, objects, land and people, it is necessary for most people to not have any access or control over those scarce resources. Wealth is a representation of power over goods and people.

Instead, the conversation in our society is directed towards the lives of the poor, when really their circumstances and choices have little effect for change. It’s the choices of the wealthy and powerful that determine the circumstances of the lives of the poor. The poor have few choices. Should I work at this degrading job or work at that poorly paid job? Do I live in this slum or that shack? What can I afford to eat? So we should flip the conversation around and discuss how the wealthy and powerful can equalize the circumstances by equalizing access to resources. And this sounds very Robin Hood indeed.

Who is in control of this system? The corporatocracy. This marvelous word, apparently created by Perkins, draws attention to the power structure of the economy. We don’t live in a democracy. Corporations and those who run them finance our elections. They control the conversations politicians can have and what most people can learn about through the media. They are not a monolith, but rather operate within the same system, based on the assumptions of economic theory, and resultantly think alike.

And then he gets into his area of expertise. As an “economic hitman”, his self-appointed title, Perkins worked for one of the major international monetary funds, like the IMF or the World Bank, convincing the nations of the global south to accept development loans in exchange for accepting disadvantageous policies, such as dictating the subcontracting US or European companies or dictating the domestic policies of such “developing” nations.

As evidence he sites the fact that the poor are poorer and more populous. If these financial deals were indeed intended to improve the standard of living of people in the global south, they have failed. The forecasts created to justify these loans were totally off. This points to the real intentions of those who designed these loans. The loans have been clearly been designed to favor the wealthy nations, and particularly the wealthy corporatocracy, and to maintain the status quo.

While the World Bank was founded upon noble intentions to rebuild Europe after WWII, it quickly devolved into a means of securing loyalty to the west and alienating the communists, who would disturb the distribution of wealth and power. Once the CIA succeeded in inserting the Shah of Iran, as Perkins' narrative formulates, the powers that be realized that war, an ugly and embarrassing means, was not the only means of maintaining their hold. They could use economic incentives to manipulate a few powerful leaders in various nations to follow their dictates.

Once these nations are securely in debt, wealthy nations extort these weaker nations' resources by forcing them to sell off their natural resources or keep their wages and benefits low for multinational companies to take advantage of.

And we all, on some level, do know that this is how it works. We live in a society in which brazen selfishness is considered street smart or intelligent. Of course USAID doesn't pass on its finances to foreign NGOs. Why would the US government want to benefit foreign NGOs? Well, because the money is intended for the people living in poverty and it doesn't matter how it gets to them. Of course, we say, we can't just give the poor money. They'll use it for other purposes. Those governments are corrupt. That homeless guy will spend it on crack. We continually need to maintain power over other people by defining the ways in which they live their lives so that it will benefit us the most.

What makes people without financial power more dangerous than those with it? Are they really more sinister? more psychologically damaged? more reckless? more financially stupid? Our nation spends $12.4 billion a year on plastic surgery and we're all worried that the guy on the street is going to buy beer with the nickel we might give him. But I digress.

Aren't there checks and balances in these large non-governmental financial organizations to prevent this kind of corruption? Yes, says Perkins. There are some within the IMF and World Bank who's job it is to point out inconsistencies and manipulations. But inevitably, it's in the interest of these institutions to go forward with the loans. The money, after all, comes from the wealthy governments, which comes from the wealthy corporations, and the leaders of these institutions are selected by the wealthy governments, like Paul Wolfowitz, recent Bush placement as president of the World Bank.

What I find most interesting is his personal analysis of how good people can do bad things. Because their actions are not illegal, they exist within large structures, it takes so much effort to make small improvements, and they are making good money, it's easy to justify their part of the system.

I always wonder why people have different takes on the world than me. Is it lack of information or lack of education or what? Am I fortunate enough to have had the financial cushion of my education, which enabled me to move into the arts, knowing that if worst comes to worst, I'll be a secretary at a non-profit, like my last job. I won't starve. I have access to a living wage without sacrificing too much. So I can buck the system. and I've been raised knowing that the church isn't right about everything. Women are equal to men so they should be able to be priests. And the government isn't always right. Look at Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal. Our nation has done some pretty terrible things, like killing Native Americans and supporting legal slavery and discrimination. So that leaves existing within a large structure and that it's just plain hard to get anything to change. Fair enough. People discriminate when everyone around them does the same. People want to enjoy life and not struggle every day against the flow. I see that. So what do we do?

This discussion proves why privatization is a tempting evil. Governments receive large sums of money in exchange for control of their resources. Chicago is in the process of privatizing our parking meters. The city will get a large lump sum to pull us out of the red for a year or two, or to finance our preparations for the Olympic bid. But we'll spend it all now and not have that revenue stream available in the future. In fact, whomever purchases the contract for parking meters will certainly make more money over a few years than they paid the city in the first place. Why else would they do it? So five years down the line and our parking rates are extortionist and the city is broke. I guess it'll help lower traffic and air pollution. Maybe even improve CTA ridership. But who says how many meters the company is allowed to install and operate? Are there any limits on where future meters are installed? There's no government regulation once the control has been sold off and no democratic control over that city resource.

This narrative explains how US citizens can be treated well and welcomed to many nations but the US government can be so deeply hated. The US government manipulates officials, or the entire government and military like in Nicaragua, in order to benefit US corporations, who pay politicians to get elected. Foreigners know that US citizens are almost as helpless as they in this matter.

Included in the discussion of governmental manipulation, is Saddam Hussein's rise to power. I did not know this, but as a member of the Ba'ath party, Saddam was part of a 1959 US-backed attempt to overthrow the new military dictator. According to NewsMax.com, "he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim." "Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact in 1959, an act that 'freaked everybody out' according to a former senior U.S. State Department official. Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was 'the most dangerous spot in the world.'" There's more to the story, but I found this quite interesting. I had learned about the US' ties in the '80s to Saddam, and I laughed out loud at the photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam, but I didn't know how far back his ties with the CIA went. Another example of the US governments' sneaky plans backfiring in all of our faces. And an example of the actions of the US government when the economic policies and the CIA aren't successful. If we can't manipulate the government peacefully or orchestrate an assassination, we invade.

Perkins' discussion of undocumented US immigrants leads to the conclusion that the only way to stop extra-legal immigration is to alter our trade policies to end our exploitation of their economies, so that people can make a living wage in their own home nations. Using a band-aid on the wound won't stop the bleeding. Slapping a wall up on our border, won't end the need on either side of the wall.

Perkins makes another interesting analogy. He connects modern day militants and "terrorists" to his ancestors who used militancy and guerrilla warfare to toss out the British when they, farmers facing desperation, were forced to bear arms.

He ends on the "it's a small world" note. The misery of those in Afghanistan can affect us. The world is so interconnected that we can't close our eyes any longer. Unlike the citizens of the British Empire, the violence in our foreign policy is clear to us and affects us personally. We don't have continents between us and the consequences of our policies. TV, the internet and air travel bring it into our living rooms.

So yeah, it's an interview inter cut with images of the global south and common people of those areas. But it's got some important ideas that we should be discussing.