Documentary

Lake of Fire

BigSugar — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:48:38 -0700

And you thought a movie couldn't piss you off.

Here's the deal: director Tony Kaye, of American History X
infamy, spent fifteen years putting together a documentary about the
most hot-button issue of modern times. Abortion.
Controversy ensues, natch.

Before I get into this, it
should be noted that apparently, Tony Kaye is a large type fucking
asshole. He's pissed off just about every studio and, quite
possiby, everyone with a pulse in Hollywood. This film won't do
much to change that. He shot in black and white as a knod to the
perception both sides have on the subject of abortion, but the film is
entirely grey, or shades thereof. Get the point?

Niether
side is handed a pass here. The fundamentalist fuck-wads come off as
the hateful, racist idiots they are and the intellectual liberals come
off as cold-hearted pricks. Both sides get equal airtime and both
sides are depicted as scum sucking assholes who, quite franky, are
running the political system of this nation into the ground. Not
that it needs a whole lot of fucking help on that score. Be that
as it may, there is something for everyone here. A preist who
swears that one clinic performed an abortion, then threw the fetus on
to a grill for some afternoon barbecue, and Noam Chomsky verbally deconstructing an argument about
how shit sometimes has to die. There's some pretty sick
post-proceedure shit as well as the aftermath of one of the murders of
a clinic doctor. Yeah, you watch this one, you ain't gettin' out
clean.

Now this flick clocks in at over two-and-a-half hours and
you may be asking yourself why in the name of Loki's fucking ballsack
you'd want to sit through this fucking shit. The answer is this;
the last half hour. I'm not going to give it away to you, but I
can promise you, you will not go untouched by it. For all of the
vitriol from both sides of this thing, what it really boils down to is
simple; you make a choice, you live with consequences. In spite of the
assertions that the intellegencia of this film propose, there is indeed
a
simple answer. But you won't find it in the Bible or a biology
book. The answer, in no small portion, is in the last
thirty minutes of this movie. It is in my opinion anyway.

I
don't know if you'll be swayed by this film, and frankly, I don't give
a shit. If your beliefs can be altered by a movie, then you
didn't really have beliefs in the first place. That said, I don't
give a rat's fucking ass how jaded and cynical you are, the last images
of this flick will get into your head and stay there. How you
interpret them is up to you.

Save Yourselves,

'Nuff Sugar

Darius Goes West

BigSugar — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:17:38 -0700

Alright, I'm gonna have to break serious here for second. Stick with me, it won't last long. I promise.

Here's
the deal; Darius Weems, a fifteen-year-old victim of Duchenne Muscular
Dystrophy and eleven compadres trek off from Athens, Georgia (GO DAWGS!) to L.A. in an attempt to get Pimp My Ride to customize the titular hero's dillapidated wheelchair. A hilllarious gut punch ensues.

Life
sucks, right? What do you got, you got a boss who's always on
your ass, a broad that wants all your cash or no broad at all, gas is
going through the roof while the commute gets longer, and blah, blah,
blah.

Darius Weems has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. That's
the bad kind. The kind you'd wish on Hitler. His brother
had it and died at twenty. If Darius is very, very lucky, he'll
get to see his thirtieth birthday. As of this day, DMD is a death
sentence. No exceptions. How bad does it suck to have this
disease? There are moments in this film where Darius is unable to
bring a cup to his mouth to drink or a cell to his ear to talk.
For people with this disease, a wheelchair is an improvement, that's
how bad.

But here's the point; Darius doesn't care.
All that hardship with things we take for granted, and he doesn't care
in the least. He doesn't care so much that not only did he and
eleven friends cross the contiguous forty-eight (back and forth), he
also laughs his ass off and has a grin that would make the
Cheshire Cat envious. This guy is centered to a point that most
of us will never get to. And best of all, he's funny as hell.

Two
scenes in this flick burned themselves into my brain. The first
is when Darius discovers "Glosabi." The second is a very short
conversation with his mother near then end of the trip that has to be
seen to be believed. Those two scenes alone are worth whatever you
have to go through to get this flick. As an added bonus, Smalley
and no less than three editors tightened this thing down to clockwork
and made a flick that, while standing on a soapbox for sure, manages to
both entertain and educate without ever once talking
down. Among the docs I've seen, this is absolutely the
finest. And if that isn't enough to tempt you, Darius raps
throughout the film, and while he'll never be mistaken for Dr. Dre, he
manages to rhyme the word "dystrophy." Not even Snoop can make
that work, I promise.

Every once in a while, a movie cames
along that slaps you around and reminds you to keep moving, keep
fighting. This is one of those movies. Darius got the fuzzy
end of the lollipop, no doubt, but it didn't slow him down one
bit. Every now and then, we all need to be reminded that as hard
as life can get, some people have it a lot harder, and yet they still
fight on. And they do it with smile and a laugh. We should
all be so lucky.

www.dariusgoeswest.com

Get it and love it.

Save Yourselves,

'Nuff Sugar

Sharkwater

Turzman — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:13:06 -0700

The barbaric practices of the shark-finning industry are criticised in this award-winning film that combines hidden-camera footage of the atrocious treatment of sharks with glorious underwater footage of the predators from first time documentarian Rob Stewart.

Biologically speaking, there's nothing new here. The intro offers a rudimentary desciption of sharks not uncommon with your basic Discovery channel doc, but the focus is on the degredation of shark populations and its effect on aquatic eco-systems. Specifically, shark fishing is targeted here, and Stewart teams up with a Greenpeace-like organization that motors around the world's oceans, making life difficult for fishermen with lees than moral scruples.

The term, "in-depth" isn't quite correct here, because only the surface of the fin industry is scratched. Strewart was able to sneak a camera into a Costa Rican shark fin "holding area," and there is ample footage of the act itself out on the water. But how, exactly the fins get from waterfront warehouses to restaurants around the world is still unknown, despite being illegal in 16 countries.

But there is brutality aplenty, as we see the bodies of finless, tail-less sharks being dumped back into the ocean, still alive, to die probably of suffocation before they are picked apart by every little nibbler in the sea. Stuff like this, simply put, defines "cruelty."

But this yin certainly has a yang, for Sharkwater isn't just a bloody orgy of shark-fucking. No, there is some majestic underwater footage of sharks doing what they do best, showing that Stewart has a very keen eye when looking through a viewfinder. Coupled with the fact that it is underwater, free swimming with sharks, even the most established of DP's must appreciate the fruits of this labor.

This is a film that can be appreciated even if you're not a shark freak like me. Anyone who can appreciate a good doc will love this film. ANd it wouldn't hurt a non-shark freak to get a little education about the ocean's top predator. When seals hunt for fish, they are just as predatory and implement similar tactics as sharks, yet they are protected. Herman Mellville depicted the sperm whale as a monster, but with a little observation and understanding, it became clear that whales are hardly dangerous (to humans) so they are protected. What Sharkwater suggests is the same thing for sharks. A little bit of observation, education and undestanding may lead humans to believe that "just because they're scary" is not reason enough to slaughter sharks to the brink of extinction.

Diary of the Dead

FableForge — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:36:25 -0700

Preachy. Its funny how for what seems like several decades now, veritable hordes of amateur filmmakers have been trying to emulate Romero, and now Romero makes a film where he emulates amateurs. Is it a compliment to say he nailed it dead on? Or is that just a bad pun? :)

DIARY OF THE DEAD, like CLOVERFIELD, is a movie that pretends to be another movie. CLOVERFIELD pretended to be found footage, DIARY OF THE DEAD pretends to be a student film, called "THE DEATH OF DEATH". The premise is that a young karmacritter-like guy and his karmacritter friends are out in the woods shooting some silly mummy movie (their film professor is there with them too) when the proverbial undead shit hits the fan. The director, a guy named Jason, suddenly feels a call, like most indies do, to transcend the media with his message, and start documenting the End of the World. For a while, his pretense is that it saves people. During one of the more sad-chuckle-type moments of the movie, he seems really proud that clips of his work have gotten 70 thousand views in myspace in 5 minutes. The world is going to hell in a gory handbasket, but youtube fame is youtube fame, eh?

Romero, like most directors, has his own message to say through this movie, a message about how the traditional media is not truth because they lie, and the crowd-sourced media of youtube is also not truth, cuz there's so much of it that it becomes just noise. Like I said, Romero, like his own protagonist, and like all directors, has a message. Is just that unlike most directors, he hits you over the head with it over and over and over.

I think I get Romero. He's basically a hippie still, counterculture, down with the man and so on. Nothing wrong with that. I agree with 90% of those views myself. He's just not -subtle- about them. He has the girlfriend of his protagonist actually provide a voice over in this "THE DEATH OF DEATH" student film that the entire "DIARY OF THE DEAD" is. Read that again: she provides a voice over, a narration, to every single lesson Romero wants us to learn. He doesnt trust us to "get it" by just watching the images on the screen, he has this girl actually spell it out, over and over.

I think that's my only gripe. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was a lot more subtle than this, but in the end all four of Romero's zombie movies (notice I don't count "LAND OF THE DEAD" here, that's not a Romero film in my opinion (and his)) are about social commentary. But the first few movies, he was just teasing, he was just snickering from the back of the room, the wise guy who knows how the system really works and if you pay attention, you just might learn something. Now Romero's older, he's turned into the crank on the street with "THE END IS NEAR" cardboard, shouting to everyone cuz man, like... no one listens man.... no one listens.

I can't blame him for it. I think if you took this film, and killed the voiceover narration, it would be more powerful, not less, because the message would be less overt, more subversive, and we know powerful messages -need- to be subversive.

As for the fans of the genre, he delivers a couple good gore moments, and I particularly love the feeling of... the smell of napalm in the morning, to borrow from another apocalyptic film, the general sense of malaise, that things are slipping into hell out of control, that life will never be the same, that everything and nearly everyone you ever loved is gone forever and whatever comes next will likely be worse. He transmits that well, he really depicts what it would be like if society collapsed due to a zombie epidemic. But then, like a great reviewer in this site likes to say, the little things give you away. Like, did the black guy who's leading a militia operation to resist the zombies, really had to say the line "we had never been in control before"? Did the Amish man really had to kill himself that way? Etc etc. Little things.

Its a great movie. I recommend everyone, especially everyone in this site, to go see it. But I just wish Romero had made it easier for us to focus on the actual story, and less on his meta-story message.

Still, B plus.

Into Great Silence

Espektro — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 09:14:50 -0700

Hello critters!. Documentaries offers most of the time the POV of the author instead the reality they pretend to show us. Editing is wizardry, it can rise or crack impressions in the audience by using music, dialogues and video in the right order to bang your mind. But for the new Philip Gröning's film, this is not the case.

INTO THE GREAT SILENCE is a documentary about the life inside a charthusian monastery in the french alps. The project started 20 years ago and now is rolling on film fests arround the world, coming soon to your nearest theater I asume (see the youtube US trailer at the bottom of this post). Most of the critics qualify this as an enchanting, hypnotic, introspective movie, a travel trough time and nature using the silence as your vehicle. Only a few gregorian chants and short dialogues inserted into a 3 hour film (yup, 3 hours of silence... incredible isn't? but not boring at all) full of close ups to the life style of this millenary monastery. The most radicals qualify it as a catholic movie, but it goes beyond the labels and has nothing to do with dogmas. Maybe works as a counterpoint for JESUS CAMP (posted by Fableforge) showing a different perception about religion and the human relations with the existence sourrounding us. Not fanatism, but a personal compromise with God. Not about heaven or hell, but life on earth.

Gröning walked the path of the true documentarist by inserting himself into the reality he wanted to portrait on the film instead of just watching from the above, living as a chartusian himself and acomplishing with all the routines and rules inside the monastery. He concludes there's a huge space for individuality inside the monastery, despiting the first impression you could have about a medieval order with medieval rules surviving in the XXI century.

If you have the chance, rent it, download it (paying for it of course) or go to your theater. Watching a film turns into a personal experiencie, and this is a very deep one.

http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/

Cloverfield

OuchMouth — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 12:20:45 -0700

Cloverfield seems kinda like a no brainer. Take the Blair Witch Style and attach it to a Summer Blockbuster type of film. Well,l I suppose it is a compositer's nightmare, what with so much CG carnage while the camera is bobbing and shaking all over the place. However, all that hard work paid off....Cloverfield is likely the best January movie you'll ever see! (and before you start offering exceptions, make sure you're not thinking of a movie that was technically released in Dec. and only widely released in Jan.)

So first of all, the effects are spot on. It totally feels like you're just watching footage from this camcorder...I'm super critical of CGI, but everything looked real in this movie.

Secondly, it's scary as all hell! You know disaster is looming around every corner, and you care just enough for these characters to hope that somehow they'll be able to avoid it. Sometimes they do...sometimes they don't. And then there's a scene a subway tunnel....that's all I'm saying. But let me just say it was the best use of scaring the audience through a camcorder's use of nightvision I've ever seen...and that trick has been used quite a bit lately. I screamed like a wee girl at one point there.

The movie is a giant monster movie, like we're all familiar with, but from such a vastly different perspective. To steal a bit from another review I read, you know that somewhere there's a general with a cigar in his mouth, yelling at his troops to find a way to kill this thing. You know there's an ace fighter pilot who just proposed to his girlfriend. You know there's a president, wondering whether to nuke or not. You know there's a journalist, trying to get close enough to get the story, and that there's a scientist on the brink of finding the creature weakness. But the camera never ventures anywhere near these characters. We're traveling along with the extras you see running beneath the monster's feet yelling "Godzilla!" (no, it's not Godzilla...it's...something else. Something scary and awesome looking. That's the best I can do).

And then there's the cunning use of flashbacks in the movie...sort of. I wasn't expecting this bit, but it was very effective...that's all I'll say about that.

The best way to describe this movie is a "monster simulator" You know those big boxes you can get into at malls that move around on hydrolics and you fly a space ship, or ride a roller coaster, or travel through a volcano....well it's like that for a monster attack. And that is awesome!!

Sure you have to apply a little suspension of disbelief...there's a number of points throughout the movie (that subway scene especially) when Gus (our faithful cameraman) would have left the camera behind. And sure, maybe he wants to get all the money monster shots, but would he really be filming just enough intimate scenes with his friends to create an effective story arc for each? But, if he didn't, we wouldn't have a movie, so that's all it takes for me. Plus the character is just quirky enough, I can believe...sort of.

And I'll just finish up by if you did enjoy the movie and wanted more (like I did...look, there's no scientist or general, so you're not going to get a whole lot of exposition)...look up some of the viral marketing for this movie. You can learn alot more about the characters and the mysterious soft drink known as "slusho".

Jesus Camp

FableForge — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:26:58 -0700

This is some amazing little thing I discovered today.

I cant
put the direct embed code here, because it would be a copyright issue,
but I encourage to search around in google for "Jesus Camp" and see
what you can of this documentary.

It really had a huge effect on me.

What
I find the most amazing of all, is how vastly different can be the
reactions of people in favor or against, based on the exact same
footage.

The filmmakers wisely didn't include any voiceover whatsoever (although I suspect they used the radio host to make their own points) and what you get for 90 minutes is just footage of little kids being indoctrinated as ultra-right christians.

You will see little kids.... crying... "speaking in tongues"... breaking tea cups with hammers (the cups represent bad secular governments) ... man, it grabbed me by the gut and squeezed, and I felt like shouting at the screen that this is Child Abuse!

Children are supposed to believe whatever their parents say, evolution made sure of that (can you imagine if kids had to "see for themselves" whether they should or shouldn't run into the streets without looking, or plug forks into power outlets?) and thus, when their parents tell them that the earth is 6 thousand years old, that men coexisted with dinosaurs, that God is watching them 24/7 and judging on every little thing they say, every thing they do, every thing they THINK in the privacy of their own minds... judging it... deciding heaven or an ETERNAL LAKE OF FIRE for it.. the kids believe it. Why would parents DO that to their own children?! How can that not be child abuse?!

Anyway.... heh. Whee, I'm getting carried away here. Ehem. My point was, and is: the same footage that feels completely revolting for me to see.... makes the adults in the film actually proud. Thats right, check out the wikipedia link for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becky_F... the woman who complains americans are too fat to stand up for Jesus, as she waddles through the stage rallying the little christian soldiers to lay their lives for the lord. Check the website of the parents of this kid Levi, who goes into .. preaching paroxysms: http://www.jesuscampers.com/

Its the same freaking footage! The version I'm watching, is the version they're watching, the little girl crying and obviously having all sorts of mental ... intensity.. is the same girl they're watching. Same images, go comfreakingpleatly into different sides of our brains. "Jesus Camp" is the same documentary: what makes me squirm makes them proud, what makes me ashamed makes them honored, its almost mind-blowing to appreciate the huge gaping chasm of perception. I gotta blame this on the concept of faith, too.

Anyway. I guess I've done more than 50 words now, haven't I. Right. So... google for this movie, or better yet, rent it and put some money in the pockets of the filmmakers (although I'm telling you, if you're not gonna rent it, google it and watch it for free; better something than nothing) and see what is your reaction, pride or disgust. Here's the YouTube trailer, which I guess is okay to embed:

Alright. Back to work for me.

Zeitgeist

Evildirector — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 13:17:17 -0700

EvilDirector's Cynical Review of Zeitgeist

* out of ****

"The reality is..."

I am a white, middle-aged male who wears glasses, speaks
very little in company, reads a lot, and am considered to possess above-average
intelligence. The reality is, I am a serial killer...or I would be, if we were
following the same thought process used by Zeitgeist, the recent propoganda
film that does more harm to its own cause then good. Simplistic, misleading, often wrong or off the
mark on historical data, the film does just what it accuses the Church of
doing: warping minds to fit a cause. I
was surprised by the wave of disgust I felt while watching Zeitgeist, primarily
because I am an agnostic, a person highly suspicicous of organized religion, a
person who knows his history and knows, for instance, of some of the
correlations between Jesus Christ and other pagan gods of resurrection. In fact, I might be the worst audience for
this film: what it tries to force-feed, I gag on, not because I don't like it,
but because I've tasted much better.

A small clarification: there are two basic types of
non-fictional film. The first tries to
inform the audience without bias, which we can loosely categorize as a
"documentary", while the second tries to inform the audience and swing
them to a certain point of view, which we can loosely categorize as
"propoganda". While there is
signifigant overlapping of the two in every kind of non-fictional film, you can
quickly tell what you are watching within the first few minutes. By that standard, Zeitgeist is pure
propaganda. There is nothing wrong with
either classification, nothing inherently good or bad about belonging to
either; where Zeitgeist is awful is because it is a horrible propoganda film,
actually taking a person sympathetic to the cause and driving him away.

Technically, the film is basically well-put together, though
there are a few problems that will drive a film afficiando nuts. The first is the quality of the voice-work,
which changes throughout the film, sometimes in mid-paragraph, as the
film-makers switched recording environments or situations. More distracting is the editing of certain
images to nothing but music, best seen in the opening, which starts with scenes
of war, but then drifts to planets, constellations, human cells, etc, before
ending with scenes of the World Trade
Center: What the fuck? Strong language, but it fits when all I hear
for forty-five minutes is music and I'm looking at nothing but a pulsing ray of
light. Is it to pad out the time? Is it to let us enjoy the music?

The film is divided into three parts, and it's symbolic of
how bad it is that it took me five tries just to suffer through the first one
on the origins of organized religion, specifically Christianity. The basic case the film makes is that Jesus
is symbolic of the rising and setting, the movement of, the sun in the sky,
which is not a new theory nor one which I particularly disagree with. At the
same time, though, the film-makers present absolutely no evidence or citations
for their information, and, just like the Church they clearly despise, often
begin statements with the phrases, "In fact..." or, "In
reality...." Is it indeed fact that
Jesus represents the constellation Pisces?
I thought that the film said the constellations represented the
disciples? Oh, but it must be reality because, as the film tells us, twice in
the Bible, a book spanning so many pages that the paper is often thin enough to
see through, Jesus interacts with either fish or fisherman. Hmmm.
Does the modern fish symbol represent Jesus as Pisces, as the film
presents us as fact, or does it instead represent a secret symbol used during
Roman persecution that stands for the Greek letters chi and roi, as many Roman
historians tell us? Hmmm. Are the Ten Commandments stolen from the
Egyptian book of the Dead, or are they common to most societies since, in fact,
they all appear to be simple common sense? Hmmm. The film tries to do what
Oliver Stone did in JFK so well, and fails miserably: it tries to throw every
anti-Christian myth theory out there in the hopes that something will
stick. Some does...but most, especially
for someone who has looked at this issue before, seems insultingingly
simple-minded and misleading. I almost
laughed when the film called Mithras a Persian sun god, which is true, but then
failed to mention his competition with and subsequent envelopment by the Christian
faith. A simple reason for such similiarities between religions might not have
anything to do with the sun at all...but more with the melding of one religion
with another. Oh, and Mithras was born
from a rock...definately a virgin, but a rock nonetheless.

When I was a kid, I watched David Copperfield make the
Statue of Liberty disappear. I saw the
statue disappear, and yet, we all know that it was an illusion: the second act
of Zeitgeist misuses that phenomena, that confusion of human senses and memory,
to push a certain angle. With cleverly
cut news footage, we learn of planned demolitions, of secondary explosions,
etc. This act works better because it
does stick to sources more than an omnipotent voice's narration, but it still
reeks of manipulation, as any film editor can tell right off the bat. Selling the idea that the government was
somehow involved in a coverup followed by a Reichstag Fire-like campaign of
misusing tragedy to fit agenda is not a hard sell to most Americans, including
myself, so I found myself more willing to watch and listen, though the film
prevents me from evaluating by refusing to play straight with footage, by
editing to gain a desired effect. Even when the film points out valid questions
regarding the Pentagon strike, and the confiscation of security logs and the
lack of solid evidence for a plane crash, it never attempts to answer the
harder question: if Flight 77 did NOT hit the Pentagon, where the hell is
it? And it's attempt to
"refute" the evidence of Flight 93 consists of less then a minute of
anonymous voice-over, a few quotes on screen, and a question mark. The most effective bit of this act comes when
we actually get an expert, quoted directly and identified completely, talking
about the possible use of Thermite explosives to bring down the towers. Because I knew who was speaking, I knew where
he was getting his information, and I knew his credentials, I felt free to
succumb to the film's desired effect: the idea that the towers did not fall due
to the plane strikes alone. I will also note, however, that the Zeitgeist
website contains some information that refutes itself...basically expert
testimony about how the tower's did not, exactly, fit the profile of a
controlled demoltion. It is no mistake
that this segment closes with a quote from President John F. Kennedy...as if to
link that conspiracy to this, at least in the viewer's mind.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out where the last act of
this film is going, since the first two acts are seemingly unconnected...or
maybe it does, since there is, in fact, no link between the first two acts and
the third act. Round about this time, a
viewer realizes that he's seen three different films, only one of which was in
any way effective. The final act blames
almost everything from the Great Depression to the Second World War on an
international cabal of bankers who, gasp, want more money. No shit, Sherlock. Economic interests are always at the heart of
events, always, and only simpletons don't acknowledge it; at the same time,
economic interests don't completely rule, as the film would like you to think, and, once again, we get very, very
oversimplified and misleading information on the cause of everything from war
to depression. One example the film tries to use is the Lusitania
incident that triggered America's
entry into the First World War...or so the film would like you to think. Although widely used in textbooks as America's
reason for war, the Lusitania was
sank in 1915...and America
entered the war in late 1917. Hmmm. Not
quite the "...short time after..." the film suggests. A history
teacher will literally throw up at the over-simplified portrayals in this act.
So should anyone with half a brain and any knowledge of human interests or
actions. The tie-in to 9/11, when it comes, even mistakenly furthers the myth
that Hitler set the Reichstag Fire...which, according to most historians, is
almost certainly false, and can almost certainly be blamed on the folks Hitler
did blame it on: renegade communist forces in Nazi Germany.

In the end, Zeitgeist raises some valid points that are
unfortunately lost amongst inept, force-fed oversimplification and editing.
My own, very generalized opinion on conspiracies? If anything, history has
taught us that men are warlike and argumentative, and that no union can last
without dissension and chaos. Any long-term illumanti or banker conspiracy
would have been torn apart by it's own forces, which is not to say that bankers
or religion can not influence...just that it does not do so by virtue of a
guided, secret plan. And short-term conspiracies, even though they might
accomplish short term goals, are almost ALWAYS revealed by multiple sources on
the inside due to internal dissension.
Was 9/11 an inside job? I'm not convinced; I think the government has
used it for it's own ends, I think a lot of asses were covered, and not covered
well and subsequently uncovered in later years, but I don't think a group of
bankers sat down and drew out the attacks. Why not? George W. Bush. Worldwide,
he is hated, and he is hated in America
almost as much. The American people are so tired of his blundering that they
want nothing but the END of the war, and the new president will probably give
that to the American people. If a secret
cartel wanted nothing but war, Bush was the worst spokesperson. An FDR could have convinced us to fight a
century-long crusade; Bush convinced us that the war on terror was a very, very
bad idea.

****- Perfect in Execution, Riveting, and Bound to Be A
Classic

*** 1/2- Nearly Perfect, Riveting

***- Flawed in Some
Manner, But Overall well Made, Entertaining

** 1/2- Flawed, Entertaining on a Guilty-Pleasure Level

**- More Flawed
Then Not, Only Occasionally Entertaining

* - Completely
Flawed, Never Entertaining

Columbus in Focus

DeepBlueEdit — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:23:57 -0700

I recently saw the doc piece "Columbus in Focus" which played at the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio on the Ohio State University campus. The piece admittedly warped itself from it's initial purpose of documenting a short film in progress by a group of Ohio State students into a look at the overall state of filmmaking in Ohio and the apalling lack of any institutions that teach film as art, and even as entertainment in Ohio.

As a Broadcast Engineer of nearly 30 years, I became bored with television broadcasting when the Judge Judy's of the world started taking over and contributing to the "dumbing of America" and helping to fulfil the idea of television as a vast wasteland. I wanted something more. A real story, told well with good visuals and real emotion and yes, a sense of style and art. You don't get that from Dr. Phil.

I decided I would buy my own gear and start shooting my own short film pieces and playing with the concepts of film as art and looking at the structure of film as a valid art form and medium. I read books by the basketfull, subscribed to everything from Script magazine to millimeter magazine. I saw films and began buying DVDs of classic art films and self-studied, a lot. Then I grabbed my camera and shot some things. Not stellar pieces but they are mine and I am still learning how to make better films and videos.

This is how nearly everyone in Ohio has learned to make film and video in the past 15-20 years. Naturally, this is a terrible way to learn. You need the support of people who have been there and created pieces you admire, you need financial backing, you need the support of local institutions and the public. We don't have that here in Ohio. I have no idea why but the support for filmmaking in Ohio is terrible. This is what the documentary tried to point out.

There were plenty of technical flaws in the piece, far to numerous to mention actually. Actually, the flaws are really relevent. If there had been some sort of formal film education available to the two creators of the piece, sure, it would have been better. The flaws in the film actuly heighten the awarness of the problem in this state. We make less than perfect films because we have nobody to teach us how to be better.

The heart of the piece and the interviews shows me that this area is geared up for a boom in film production. Being a broadcaster I need to say that the majority of the pieces produced locally are not up to a level where NBC would seriously buy anything that has been done here, Greg Sabo / Mark Bursons piece titled "The Courier" being the latest possible exception to that. That doesn't mean people aren't trying. They're trying like hell to be better and make good entertaining pieces. Again, with the lack of a place that teaches valid filmmaking methods, we are mostly doomed to be second rate hacks if we don't have an inate ability to see the story in cinematic terms. There are great actors, cinematographers, photographers, crew and support people in Ohio and especially Columbus. We are all waiting for a place to turn to for the support, financial and otherwise to assist in our betterment.

Apparently this isn't going to happen at CCAD who has seemingly given up on film as a medium completly. How terribly sad that the greatest art institution in central Ohio has given up on one of the most powerful mediums the world has ever known. Why not give up acrylics in favor of a Wacom tablet why they're at it? Surely the same logic applies. 4x5 and larger still cameras cost money. We can create art on an old iMac, right? The problem is, should we so quickly abandon our past as the new group of "digital artists" seem to want us to do? Why not just forget all old technology used in art while we're at it, like silk screening? An old technology, right. Who needs that? We have these shiny new metalic tools and can create valid work with. No. You must learn the techniques of the past and along with them, the respect for the style that comes along with it. How can you effectivly teach a brush stroke using a pen/tablet? You can't. You can teach a simulation but is it the same? No. How can you teach filmmaking without the respect for the look, feel and cost of film. Teaching on video initially simply devalues the process and the end result. Cheap tools mean cheep end results. Hence, Hollywood - cheap (as in low on style, form and artistic purpose).

My 2 cents,
from another old school film snob hack.

Sean McHenry

http://www.DeepBlueEdit.com