I. Love. The. Hunger. Games. I’m reading them again for the second time. Today I was on the train reading Mockingjay and the girl next to me was reading it too and I was thinking about how excited I am for her that she’s reading it. So many people I know have read them and today I realized why.

I’m not even going to pretend that I’m saying something awesome and profound here, but I did figure it out. Katniss is a girl. The fantasy stories that are the hollywood favorites all have male heroes. Specifically, I’m going Star Wars & Lord of the Rings. The dudes I know LOVE these stories. They aren’t the stories of men who were born to be heroes. They are stories of nerdy young men who probably would have stayed inside playing video games forever if their aunt and uncle hadn’t been barbecued at the front door. They are stories of guys with height limitations that just held on tight enough and saved the world.

They are heroes. Reluctant heroes. That’s what makes these heroes so appealing, something could happen at any moment and turn a regular person into a hero. One day you’re eating your second breakfast and the next thing you know there are dwarves in your living room singing 85 stanzas of the most mundane song ever.

So just like you, guy who identifies with Legolas Greenleaf or Luke Skywalker or Elijah Wood, I identify with Katniss Everdeen.

Do I know how to shoot arrows? No. I did it once in junior high and had huge bruises on my forearms and complained that the target was too far away. Do I really in my heart of hearts think that I would be the one who could fight to the death to save humanity? No. If the world ‘ends’ tomorrow and someone writes a book about it in the very far future that follows the hero arch, I’m not in it. I’m not the hero. I might be mentioned once in passing in something like ‘and then there was Hawkes Klein in the kitchen canning beets’ which is much more my style.

I am just a girl who is damn proud of the hero.

Katniss never 100% embraces her fate. She doesn’t become any more excited about her new role as the books go on, she wouldn’t allow herself a ‘happily ever after’ she’s seen too much. Would she give it all up to be able to go back to her old life? I don’t think so. I think the entire time she understands that there is no going back and that even though it’s going to be difficult for her and for well, everyone, that she has to press on.

The thing is I needed a girl hero. I needed a big sister (do I think I would volunteer were my siblings taken away to be killed, yes) to look up to and be excited for and proud of. She’s pretty but only by accident and she doesn’t ever want to be thought of as anything but someone who would do anything for her family. She knows she’s not the smartest person in the arena, she’s not the best trained and she’s not the strongest. Her circumstances made her extraordinary.

The last woman I can think of in Young Adult lit that could be considered hero-ish is Hermione, because she reads and is awesome. Is Bella Swan a hero? Oh. Hell. No. Fairy tale princesses? No. Whoever Liv Tyler was in LOTR? No. Is Lisbeth Salander a hero? Not really.

I hope I’m just missing some. The women that I know and respect love The Hunger Games, I think it’s because there’s a love for the type of hero Katniss represents in all of us.

Who are your female literary heroes?

Bunraku is a difficult movie to categorize, but if I had to, I’d call it a Western/Martial Arts film. I don’t know if I would call it an “all-star cast,” but it definitely is star-studded. The film stars Josh Hartnett, Demi Moore, Sugata Shun, Woody Harrelson, Ron Perlman, Kevin McKidd, and GACKT.

In a future where firearms are banned, a mysterious drifter (Hartnett) arrives in a strange town ruled by the ruthless Nicola (Perlman) and his army of thugs, headed by nine deadly assassins, which is topped by the vicious Killer #2 (McKidd). The drifter is soon forced to trust a young samurai (GACKT) looking to restore his family’s honor, and the local bartender (Harrelson) who has been secretly awaiting a dream team to help overthrow Nicola’s regime.

The title of the movie comes from a 400-year-old form of Japanese puppet theater. This actually plays a huge part in how the movie is presented. A prime example of this is the sets – They’re mostly computer-generated, and look over-the-top, giving them the illusion of being set-pieces that you’d find in a stage play. This helps to recreate the feeling that you’re watching a play, rather than a movie. This also limits what can happen in one particular scene, giving the movie a faster sense of timing.

The first scene is an absolutely amazingly choreographed fight sequence that plays more like a dance than anything else. What’s really interesting is that no fight is quite the same. In some, it’s nitty gritty, and in others it’s just fun to watch.

One thing I really enjoyed was how they handled subtitles. Although the movie is mostly in English, there are still a couple scenes with Japanese dialogue. With that said, instead of doing subtitles the traditional way — In the middle of the screen at the bottom — Bunraku does them in comic book text boxes. This helps to immerse the audience in the film’s unique world and atmosphere.

The most interesting aspect of the film though is its cinematography. From turning the normal way phone conversations are shown to scene transitions that make your head spin. This film’s director chooses to explore a completely over stylized approach, and somehow makes it work.

The music in the film was done by Terrance Blanchard. It’s dramatic when it needs to be, and at times, big-band-esque, but during fight sequences, it reminds me of the 1960s Batman series, where (almost) every impact makes a musical note. In my opinion, it helps to accentuate the picture’s theatrical sensibility.

While predictable at times the movie’s incredible sense of style carries it through. I recommend this movie if you’re looking for something with unique visuals, and can stand an almost-cliche plot. The DVD also contains a commentary audio track featuring Guy Moshe and Kevin McKidd.

4 out of 5 stars.

Bunraku was written and directed by Guy Moshe, based on a story by Boaz Davidson, and is rated R. The film stars Josh Hartnett, Woody Harrelson, GACKT, Sugata Shun, Kevin McKidd, Ron Perlman, and Demi Moore. It was produced by Snoot Entertainment, Bergman Productions, and Picturesque Films. It was distributed in theaters by ARC Entertainment and XLrator Media.

I was given a DVD copy for review by ARC Entertainment, and I would like to sincerely thank them for doing so.

There are no women in it.

I googled “Moneyball women” and what I get is even more disturbing. The movie producer and the studio head are both women. It’s not a secret that there are more men in Hollywood. We all remember that it took until 2008 for a woman to win “Best Director” at the Oscars. It’s frustrating enough that women have such a hard time breaking the movie-making glass ceiling. Then I hear statements like this regarding the challenges of getting the movie made, I can’t help but feel like we’re always one step forward and two steps back.

Doubling-down, another female specialty, Horovitz would argue. “It’s a fact of our species that women have to turn a no into a yes more often than men do,” she says. “Do you think my husband wanted to get married or have children?

uh what? You married someone who didn’t want to get married and had kids with someone who didn’t want to have kids? I can’t. That’s such a frustrating stereotype of a married couple.  It’s such a frustrating stereotype of a woman. I absolutely refuse to accept that women should accept that we get told ‘no’ more often. Like it’s something we should just laugh off? Oh dear me, silly world, always putting women last.

Others, like Laura Baudo Sillerman at Women’s Voices for Change hit the nail on the head:

Admittedly, it’s a true story that doesn’t lend itself to a big part for a woman, but it takes place in 2002. Is it really possible that the scene of the high-heeled, mature secretary arriving with two trays of coffee — one for Billy Beane, the modern general manager, and the other for John Henry, a supposedly progressive team owner — actually happened? And was this scene necessary? Was Beane’s relationship with his own secretary (again a mature woman) truly limited to barking the names of people to whom he wanted calls placed (and, oh yes, asking if the coffee was made)? Couldn’t the beautiful and gifted Robin Wright have been given more than just one scene during which she was restricted to indicating her loyalty to her supercilious second husband?

When this very pleasant very enjoyable film was finished (seriously, I liked it a lot) I wasn’t fixating on the number of women. I don’t love doing that, but when it’s this unequal and this over the top I feel like it creeps up on me and I cannot remain passive about it. Everything was amplified when this flashed across the screen:

Written by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin

JCPE and I both yelled “Ahhhhh THAT’s WHY it was so good! Goddamit Aaron Sorkin another great movie! Best screenwriter of all time!”

Then I started thinking almost exactly what Laura Baudo Sillerman said above… why can’t I remember more than three women characters? Why don’t I know their names?

See? Similarly why can’t I remember any women who weren’t crazy girlfriends or sluts from Social Network while I’m at it? You can argue that there weren’t that many women who were involved in the making of Facebook, but there have to be stories out there where genders are at the very least equally represented. I started thinking when will we start telling those stories?

Now I’ve let it sit for 24 hours and I’ve gone from sort of ok with it to actually angry about it. I believe that Aaron Sorkin is the best screenwriter of all time. I believe that whatever the future holds for the planet earth that it 100% will include people performing Aaron Sorkin scenes for hundreds of years. The West Wing is our Hamlet, The Social Network is our Macbeth. I’m not mad at Aaron Sorkin for being a man, I’m grateful that he’s a writer, it’s no exaggeration when I say that his work has changed my life. I am mad at Aaron Sorkin for not putting his money where his mouth is.

What makes me upset is this:

This made me cry when I saw it. He makes a point to say to his daughter that “smart girls have more fun, and you’re one of them!” That’s awesome, great dad stuff Aaron!

Now please, please write another strong woman. There isn’t a women I know who wouldn’t say she looks up to CJ Cregg.You have the talent and the power to create something truly remarkable for the next generation of women.

Seriously:

I’m upset with you, Aaron Sorkin. I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to ask the person who is the best at their craft to please take a moment to write us a strong female-lead movie. True stories of strong women DO exist, you have the talent to bring these stories to life in a way that no one else has.  Do it for me, do it for the women who became interested in politics because of CJ. Do it for the women who became television producers because of Dana Whitaker. Do it for your daughter.

I LOVE Christmas music! I spend the week before Thanksgiving getting my holiday playlist all set up and this year was no exception. I’m pretty easy to figure out musically… I like the hits. I like to have fun listening to music, I like to sing along. I like to cry sometimes to “Jolene” or “I’ll never get over you getting over me” but for the most part I like FUN.

So I knew I’d want to get the Justin Bieber album. Oh. The. Biebs. I’m old-er than a teenager but not old-old so I think I’m in a good position to appreciate The Biebs for being fun. I have neither a teenage or a ‘I wasted my life’ crush on him. I just really like the part where Ludacris says ‘But I really wanna see her on the weekend’ in ‘Baby!’

What I’m saying is. I’m easy to please.

[Just.... one teeny tiny rant-like thing before I start. I typed in 'J...u...s...t' into Itunes and it auto brought up Justin Bieber, as the #1 Justin. Justin Timberlake was #2!!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD TIMBERLAKE! I GET IT I know you want to act blah blah blah just ugh come on and make some music!]

For the most part Under the Mistletoe is awesome. It takes a little to get used to the fact that there are some new Christmas songs. I always think that’s a little strange, there are so many standards I’m totally ok with you just covering all of them and not creating anything new. But, if I was in charge of music we wouldn’t have All I want for Christmas is you. Which, Bieber covers… it’s…. ok. Not great, I don’t 100% believe Mariah Carey did anything besides mail in a cd of her original and maybe some glitter, but it’s fine.

Hits:

Like I said, I like the hits. The first single off the album is Mistletoe and every time it comes on I gravitate to the middle of the room and start singing. I can’t even help it. I already know the words. ie: in the time it took me to find this video and get the code I was rocking back and forth singing ‘Shorty with you! oooooh shorty with you!!’ what?! I know, it’s awesome.

There are also some pretty amazing collaborations. For ‘Traditional’ songs Bieber and Usher sing a beautiful rendition of The Christmas Song. Busta Rhymes and Beiber’s impression of a British rapper do Drummer Boy. Yeah, Busta! Where has he been and is that place jail? Didn’t everyone making a video of his get arrested once? Is that where he was? I’m cool with it, I’m glad he’s back.

Beiber teams up with Boyz II Men for Fa La La and his Santa Coming to Town is amazing. Your holiday dance party is all set!

Misses:

I’m an old fashioned girl. As in, I lived with my husband for three years before we got married but I would NEVER have brought him home for Christmas until we lived together! Is not being with your boyfriend and girlfriend a big deal in High School? What kind of kids are worried about the person they love not showing up for the holidays? Am I missing some sort of custody nuance because my parents got divorced when I was 20? I always thought that songs about missing Christmas were to make salesman dads feel better about their lives.

There’s A LOT of ‘oh my girlfriend isn’t here I wish I could cuddle all night long’ in this album. To that I say WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS!!! If my teenager thinks that he can have his girlfriend sleep over on Christmas Eve he has another thing coming (unless she’s an orphan, I’m not a monster). Christmas Eve is the worst of these offenders. He says “It feels like Valentines Day!” No.

Most Jackson 5-y:

I know the kid is young (although not young enough not to take paternity tests for quickies backstage with strangers…) but Someday at Christmas is so Jackson 5 that I had to double take.

Most Religious:

This year is the year of Religious Tolerance! For me. I know the world is a mess, but I’ve become so chill with the world’s religions I want to sing them a song of peace and love in a very secular way. It’s new for me, and honestly it feels awesome. Pray is the most religious of all the songs on the album, but it’s nice. If you want to pray for people to have a better life, I think that’s really nice and good for you! There’s also a beautiful Silent Night.

Conclusion:

You should get this. Grab your nearest crush and dance near the tree! You only get a month of this cheer don’t let the fact that it’s The Biebs stop you from enjoying it. It’s Christmas everything is fine!

Happy Holidays Poptenners!!

Love,

HK

I bought it on Itunes but you can get it on Amazon HERE.

*sorry, I couldn’t embed videos for all…

10. Dunya & Desie (ThreeDoubleYou)

This film is based on a Dutch television series about two best friends from different cultures.  Its wonderfully quirky prop-based title sequence is the work of Balder Westein of ThreeDoubleYou, based in Amsterdam.  Westein’s use of objects brings the audience into the film in a way that is immediately personal and helps establish the story with intimate details, even before we’ve seen a single frame of the film.  I already want to know if they’re still friends!

9. BreadCrumbs (Satan’s Pearl Horses)

This is such a beautiful use of illustration and imagery.  The film follows a group of filmmakers through the woods who come across two mysterious Hansel-and-Gretel-type kids.  Creeeepy.

*Upon seeing the trailer, this might be one of the aforementioned overshadowing title sequences

8. Playgrounds (Oncesize)

This piece opened Holland’s Playgrounds Festival.  It’s an amazing use of photography to create really subtle and sophisticated 3D imaging.  No movie, but it makes me totally want to hang with the Dutch.

7. Ex Drummer (Koen Mortier)

Amazing mix of reverse photography and use of props.  The action in this opening sequence Belgian film gives us great insight into these characters, three friends searching for a new drummer for their local band, and portends something violent and dark in their future.  Am I right???  I must find out.

6. Earthwork (Stan Herd)

Crop-titles for a documentary about the inventor of crop art!  FTW.  Kudos for visual cohesion, and for making me want to know all about this crazy-specific vocation.  LOVE.

5. Saippuaprines (Fake Graphics)

A comedy from Finland about a soap opera writer who falls in love with the star.  The title sequence is a 3D rendering a script, with fun and vibrant effects that make the whole thing come to life.

4. 7 Miljonärer (Fake Graphics)

It’s not just cause this is a Swedish film (Go Sweden!).  This sequence is the opening for a comedy about people fighting over a huge inheritance and the use of monopoly paraphernalia is especially inspired.  Little details sprinkled throughout are made clear only after you watch the film.  So… yeah, now I want to see it.

3. Splice (Kook Ewo)

I’m including this opening sequence, even though it makes my skin itchy, because it’s super disturbing.  I actually meant to see this movie way back when it first came out because the trailer rocked my face off and Sarah Polley is fantastic.  But the title designers knocked me over again… by grossing me out.

2. Ça Se Soigne? (Deubal)

Oh, the French!  How they make such wonderful whimsical things that sing with romance and delight.  This animated title sequence is truly captivating and full of imagination.  The build-up is so organic and fluid, it just takes you for a ride… a ride filled with joy and whimsy.

1. Pocko/Magma (Captive)

This is freaking adorable.  This was created for an exhibition of customized Russian Matryoshka dolls.  “An uncompromised homage to the title sequence of Dr. No,” it’s also so cute I can’t stand it.

10. Max

Have you ever wondered what America would look like if the South won the Civil War? Or if Al Gore had become U.S. President in 2000, rather than George W. Bush? That very sort of “what if” question hovers over the plot of  Max starring John Cusack as a Munich art dealer and Noah Taylor as Adolf Hitler. Hitler was actually a painter, and this movie highlights a fictional relationship between him and the art dealer played by Cusack.

9. Modigliani

Most people know that Andy Garcia played an Italian mafiaso in Godfather Three, but his talents for playing an Italian in a film did not end there. He does an admirable job playing the painter Amadeo Modigliani in this movie. I think the best parts are the ones that focus attention on Modigliani’s rivalry/friendship with Picasso.

8. Lust for Life

You can bet that when Van Gogh died, he had no idea he’d be as revered as he is today. Nor could he have guessed that the man who would play in a movie  about his life would be nominated for one of film’s highest honors. Kirk Douglas plays Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life. He certainly looked the part and he played the artist so well that his performance garnered him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in 1956. The above scene takes place when Paul Gauguin (played by Anthony Quinn) comes to live with Van Gogh in the South of France. The volatility of Van Gogh and the eventual demise of Gauguin’s stay in the South of France with Van Gogh is summed up well in this scene. I love the moment when Gauguin smells the pot in which Van Gogh has been cooking their meal.

7. Downtown 81

Downtown 81 is an urban fairytale starring Jean-Michel Basquiat playing a character much like himself. It’s a really interesting period piece about downtown NY in the 80s and well worth watching. But one note: if the sound seems off, it’s for good reason: the audio was damaged and the film had to be re-dubbed. Because Basquiat died, the filmmakers asked poet Saul Williams to do a voice over of the lead character’s lines.

6. Waking Life

I suppose this film could be classified in a lot of ways. Experimental, philsophical narrative. Spaced out, stream-of-consciousness film essay.  Mindscape movie making… Whatever you call Waking Life, I think it was pretty breakthrough when it came out in 2001. Even if you were to watch only one scene, you can gain something from it. I’ve embedded A.O. Scott’s astute analysis of the film for the NY Times.

5. American Splendor

I LOVE this movie. And though I’m not sure the late, great Harvey Pekar would call himself an artist, I’m going to anyway. Plus, Robert Crumb is an important character in the film, so there. When I watched it, I thought immediately of Henry Miller, given how much the American author may have liked Pekar’s stance that ordinary life is pretty complex stuff. Paul Giamatti does a terrific job playing the curmudgeonly Pekar and the interaction of animated illustrations and regular film making in the movie is great.

4. My Left Foot

In this movie, Daniel Day-Lewis plays Christy Brown, an Irish painter, poet and author who had cerebral palsy. I’m always impressed by Day-Lewis and the roles he takes on for his films. For me, he’s one of those actors that engages a character, learns the script and comes out on the other side of the camera as another person. This film is a prime example of that.

3. Girl with a Pearl Earring

Before he played a king with a speech impediment, Colin Firth was Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer in Girl with a Pearl Earring. There are only 34 known paintings by Vermeer in the world and one quite accurate part of this film is that Vermeer was a famously slow painter. He took a painstaking amount of time on each of his compositions, which is partially the reason why so few of his works exist. In real life, the man who was Vermeer’s patron was a pious man and not the vulgar womanizer depicted in the movie. And it’s likely that the model the title painting is based on was one of Vermeer’s daughters, rather than a maid who worked in his house. The actual painting called Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer is at the Mauritshuis Gallery in the Hague. But in case you can’t make it to the Netherlands and happen to live in NY, a similar Vermeer is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

2. Pollock

Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings are famously symbolic of American Modern Art in the mid-20th Century. This film chronicles the prodigious drinking, the haphazard dripping, the notorious womanizing and the incredible work that made Pollock one of the titans of Abstract Expressionism. Ed Harris does an exceptional job playing Pollock (and man does he ever look like the painter) and Marcia Gay Harden, who plays Pollock’s wife, the painter Lee Krasner, won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the film.

1. Basquiat

Soho was a very different place in the mid-80s than it is today. I happen to like Basquiat’s work a ton, which is part of the reason I’ve seen this movie about 25 times. But I’m a big fan of Jeffrey Wright too. Wright plays Basquiat, the graffiti writer turned art world darling. The star-studded cast includes Gary Oldman, Bencio Del Toro, Dennis Hopper, Parker Posey and David Bowie as Andy Warhol. The film was directed by the painter Julien Schnabel, who knew Basquiat when they were both NYC based painters in the 80s. Funny enough, the character that is meant to be Schnabel appears to be the most level headed character in the film…

Ballet is a monster.  Or so suggests Darren Aronofsy by way of his latest film.

Two years after resurrecting the career of Mickey Rourke and moving audiences (meaning me) to tears with The Wrestler (2008), the director has put his stamp on the year 2010 with Black Swan, a nightmarish exploration that reunites the filmmaker with the surrealism so distinctive in his previous works.  This go around, he trades wrestling for ballet, and in place of Mickey’s weary gaze and weathered face is the graceful, fluttering visage of Natalie Portman.

Portman plays Nina, a dancer at a New York City ballet company, striving to be noticed by her domineering and egomaniacal director, Thomas… or rather, toh-MA (Vincent Cassel).  Soon, through a somewhat creepy set of circumstances, Nina is cast as the lead in the company’s revival of Swan Lake, just as a new dancer, Lily (Mila Kunis), arrives at the company to shake things up.

The role of the Swan Queen is actually two different characters in one: the enchanting white swan who wins the love of a young prince, and the alluring black swan who eventually, through a case of mistaken identity, seduces the prince away, leading to the white swan’s demise.  The latter is a role less dependent on precision, relying more heavily on physical sensuality and a sexual freedom that Nina, a meticulous technician with a manically pathological work ethic, has great difficulty accessing.  She is reminded of this constantly by Thomas, who harshly points out her inadequacies during rehearsals and earns major creep-meister points by morphing into a kind of sexual puppet master.  Nina is momentarily comforted by a burgeoning friendship with Lily, a weaker but strikingly more charismatic dancer, who tries to shake Nina loose of her own self-control.

But Nina isn’t chasing freedom.  Her true pursuit… is perfection.

Swan is largely a story of the artist’s toxic obsession with this impossible goal, and the destruction it causes when expectations and dreams blur into madness.  The more she pushes herself, the more she starts to flail… and starts careening toward Crazytown.  What unfolds is a Kafkaesque tale of creative delusion, complete with wild paranoia, self-mutilation and one drug-fueled lesbian encounter (I spoiled nothing.  Watch the trailer).

It is an impressive visual accomplishment; both awesome and gruesome.  Aronofsky is a master of creating beauty out of ugliness, a perfect fit for his chosen subject, which comes wrapped in its own mystique.  Ballet is a form that demands supreme physical control with the look of floating on air.  Dancers appear to soar on stage because in the time between performances, they are running their bodies into the ground.  Those lovely pointe shoes wrapped around their feet that give length to the body lines also conceal a mess of blisters and bloodied sores.  Every lift is another bruise, every twist is another morning of back pain.  And off-stage is no different.  What appears so pristine and elegant on the service is actually a labyrinth of politicking and fierce competition… and at times, sabotage.  But ballet’s appeal has always been in its refinement  -its poise- which seems to draw in its more blue-blooded audience, who likely gives little thought to the drama that plays out long after the curtain goes down.

Aronofsky constructs this world with great care, and his work in Swan is unquestionably gorgeous.  But the film is wrapped in a fog of coldness that, intentional or not, keeps his audience at a distance.  I have noticed the word “visceral” getting thrown around quite a bit in other reviews.  But that’s pretty much the only time I’ll use it.  There is certainly intrigue and tension; a mental unrest that develops from watching Nina come unhinged.  But the experience isn’t so much “visceral” (I lied) as it is a psychosomatic reflex; the arthouse equivalent of covering your eyes during the scary parts.  While we are engaged and interested in Nina’s torment, we never give much thought to her humanity, partly because we never really see it.  The ballet, as it turns out, isn’t merely a backdrop or an expression of the human story underneath — it is the entire story; a parable of what can result when our artistic pursuits turn cold and maniacal, when the psyche gets swallowed up… and the artist prevails over the self.

Though Swan may suffer from the weight of its own psychosis, it does contain some stellar acting.  Portman delivers one of her most adult performances to date.  She infuses Nina with an almost inconsolable fearfulness that only heightens her mental instability.  Mila, as Lily, is appropriately saucy, and her spunk provides a distinctive, but in-no-way-cartoonish contrast to Portman’s mental frailty (Mila, you’re adorbs and you give wonderfully sassy interviews).  Vincent has made a career of playing arrogant, somewhat smarmy men, which would be a problem if he were bad at it, which… not at all.  And Barbara Hershey is a glorious ball of nervous obsession as Nina’s controlling stage mother.

Black Swan is certainly a worthy accomplishment, inarguably one of the most original visual works I have seen in some years and engrossing from start to finish.  But its aura is one of detachment… distance.  As someone who holds every viewing experience as an opportunity for empathy, I left this one feeling patently unsatisfied.

Lesley Chilcott, Producer of Waiting for Superman
Asi Burak, Co-President Games for Change
Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, Executive Director of Witness.org
Chris Kazi Rolle, The Hip Hop Project

The format was ten minutes of presentation, a few questions from the moderator, and Q&A from the audience. For the purposes of making this a more cohesive piece I’ve condensed concepts and questions under each speaker.

Lesley Chilcott: Producer of Waiting for Superman

Originally I produced An Inconvenient Truth and that had a big campaign online. “Pledge to see the film” opening weekend was a brand new concept. When 221,000 people pledged to see the movie I knew we had caught onto something big. We were early to the “social media as a powerful tool for activism” game. We were the first film to put a URL at the end of the movie, and to give tips on how to take action now. We sold out most our shows, and had 70,000 people per screen. It was an amazing average. Having a small opening and a pledge campaign allowed others to feel like they were part of a movement, and allowed us to reach a wider audience.

The first step to getting involved seems a little empty since all you have to do is watch my movie. So we wanted to take it to another level. With Waiting for Superman we wanted to set a new bar so we partnered with a group called Donors Choose. If we got enough pledges for people to watch the movie then non-profits would give a major gift. We set a few bars so that people would feel like they weren’t just coming to a movie and giving us money.

Pledge Campaign

For Donors Choose you could say, “My hometown is here I want to help this project”. It’s not just a movie. It’s a movement. It gave people a point to start at. When we had a movie that’s about global warming with Al Gore and a slideshow.

We didn’t know how to market it yet. First we got people in environmental groups to get on board. The biggest challenge to overcome was putting a personal face on it, and making sure people knew we were talking about many millions more. We are not experts nor do we pretend to be. Our goal was not to provide specific answers. We made a promise to ourselves that we should “call out” the obstacles, and the first thing was to “call out” with ourselves. Guggenheim, the director, says in the beginning that he’s a part of the problem because he puts his kids in private school. We wanted to boil down all the major issues to a level of how it affects a six year old. Our thought was that if we kept things simple enough then these problems are obvious. People will be able to relate to the people and understand the larger issues. Our role is to be a national convener of all thoughts. Randi Weingarten, who was portrayed quite negatively in the film, also wrote a chapter in the book we released concurrently with the film. As filmmakers you have to be aware of what you are saying and the implications of what you are saying. Documentaries are opinion pieces, and while we’re not experts, we do have thoughts on the matter.

(Editorial Note: If you go to the “take action” portion of their website it is very directed, and has a lot of specific solutions to the questions posed in the documentary.)

We launched our website 3 months before the movie came out and were looking for partners. We became involved with Donors Choose right around the time of Sundance. They raised millions of dollars to meet their pledge effort, and we’ve been overwhelmed by their dedication to fulfill their commitment to us.

Just before Sundance we were doing everything we could to reach the deadline, and in our push we had constructed two entirely separate films. One was a two hour movie of just graphics, charts, and concepts, and the other was a 2 hour story about these kids. 3 weeks before Sundance we combined the graphics and concepts part of the movie into one.

When you’re working on a very divided issue like education. You cannot accept funding from sources that will push a specific mission because the movie would have absolutely no legitimacy. A lot of the major reformers portrayed in Waiting for Superman did not have any creative input on the film. There were collaborative meetings, but to let them in the room would have negatively impacted the film. Funding has to be separate from non-profits so there is no conflict. After the film is made though is a good time to seek out opportunities like that. Each non-profit has their own agenda, and are working toward specific goals. For a cause oriented film you need to get non-profits to talk with one another to promote one specifc goal.

(Editorial Note: I remember doing this exact thing with Second Skin in preparation for SXSW film festival in 2008)

Asi Burak: Co-President of Games for Change

I am also a game developer, and made the popular and transformational game PeaceMaker. The game challenges you to succeed as a leader where others have failed. Experience the joy of bringing peace to the Middle East or the agony of plunging the region into disaster. PeaceMaker tests your skills, assumptions and prior knowledge.

The game immediately got an incredible amount of press, and was widely discussed as a ground breaking work that fused activism and gameplay into one. We commercialized it and sold it to many countries including 100,000 copies to Israel. Even though PeaceMaker is 3 years old it’s still used as the primary tool in schools to trigger discussion on how to solve the conflict.

Games for Change began as an intrepid group of 20 activists who believe games are the media of the future. There is a double challenge when you try to make “games for change” because people don’t believe games should be both fun and transform people’s perceptions. Video games suffer from a perception that they are violent, shallow, or fun. They have to be engaging in a way that films do not. PeaceMaker made people cry, and that’s a tough sell.

Filmmakers have an easier path because the documentary genre was forged decades ago for this exact purpose. The market allows for these type of movies to be seen by a specific sub section of the populace. The challenge of distribution in video games is much harder. There is a place to watch a movie like Waiting for Superman. However an educational game doesn’t have a “place” per se. NGO’s in many cases are the way to finding the audiences for Games 4 Change.

People are starting to understand that games are incredibly powerful tools. The notion that gamers exist as an audience was irrelevant for activists until recently. Now with Facebook games many people play socially, and there is an opportunity to catalyze on that interest. It is something that has bridged many ages and groups. If its become such a powerful media why not use the amazing capabilities we have to explore them? It’s still new to many people that video games can be used for causes.

The opportunity is that until now the media we consume is passive and linear. We are sitting in a dark room and told a story. It could be compelling but it’s not necessarily our story. New media and the internet are about choices and making changes to our world. We’re the heroes of those stories rather than seeing others. How do you make a game that break boundaries of taking action? We want our kids to be part of othe story, work at their own pace, not just being told passively. We just have to learn to use gaming as a tool better. The one advantage film has to gaming is there you are telling stories versus focusing on action. It’s hard to push content and messages.

However, people are now playing the same game for weeks, months, and sometimes years. The holy grail is long form play, and getting gamers to engage. The mechanism that gets people to take care of  virtual chieckens and purchase goods through micro-transactions. Can you transfer that psychology for social good? Can you spend 4 minutes on the bus to donate to a nonprift? We don’t want people to take action at the end of an experience, but rather as part of the journey through the game.

Yvette Alberdingk Thijm: Executive Director of Witness.org

Witness.org is putting cameras in others hands, and using it to change the conversation on human rights. The foundation was created decades ago by Peter Gabriel. He would hear so many heartbreaking stories and yet afterward they would get lost. However, if you tape the story it can be used to keep those stories. So we get them to tell their own story, and use them as a catalyzing force for change. Who is the audience that needs to see it? We target small groups who want to empower one another to evoke change. Get the story told, get the right people to see it, and have them take an appropriate action.

We’re specifically working for women rights and activism. We want to speak to horrors in people’s own countries. We’re getting filmmakers to create these very personal clips and they are also incredible marketing tools. With a video that is explicitly used to fundraise you have to be very wary about what you are portraying. It’s disrespectful and unethical to exploit someone to get money for your cause. One woman from Zimbabwe with a particularly difficult story had someone create a Facebook page that was very popular and raised over $50,000 alone. We had to navigate her world with caution when telling that story.

When you fight causes in countries where they censor things what do you do? In Yemen the government bans our videos. Sometimes you have to get videos out of the country and make international communities aware.

The Iranian demonstrations during their elections are an example of that. The problem is oppressive governments are using social media well too. The Iranian government has a most wanted website, and they take the videos that are posted on YouTube, take stills out, put them on this site, and crowd source identification.

Chris Kazi Rolle, The Hip Hop Project

The Hip Hop Project is a cause film about Chris Kazi Rolle. The film is about a program I started in 1999 that brought kids into a place where they could produce their own Hip Hop albums. The Hip Hop Project is really about family relationships. The emotional fortitude to deal with my family situation was the biggest hurdle I had to overcome. I wanted to empower kids to do the same. If I can get in front of people with passion they become advocates for me and my project.

When the movie was completed it had a ton of swear words in it because the kids were rapping about their lives. The MPAA rated it “R” and I had to appeal them to get it down to a “PG-13” so that the people it was intended for could go watch it in theaters.

(Editorial Note: While the entire piece is written in their own words I connected the dots where appropriate)

Two things happened yesterday.

1. My dad called to tell me that my uncle is stuffing his turkey this year with White Castle burgers. I actually think I might throw up right now from typing that. You know that go-to gross out place you go in your head when you need to throw up? This is my new one.

2. Gawker asked What Movie Scenes Are Too Gross for You to Watch? in response to a viewing of 127 Hours.

So I know nothing about this movie except what I’ve gleaned from the internet telling me that it’s way too gross for me to see. The gist I guess is: he cuts his arm off to free himself.

Remember the guy who did this in real life? (Google hint: ct man basement arm)

His arm could not be saved.

Oddly, although I know I’m not going to see this movie, because I no longer need a mental ipecac (see above) I’m less inclined to be offended by this than I am by say, Saw 3d, or Burlesque.

If Rotten Tomatoes holds even a bit of truth I’d say my instincts are spot on. Grossness for the sake of being gross? What are you trying to prove? A well-acted, well-directed film is so rare these days that when we get one, gross or not, it’s totally worth it. This movie looks awesome.

One of the year’s best films: Anchored by James Franco’s astounding performance, 127 Hours is a more sharply focused, more emotionally touching, and more technically impressive work than Danny Boyle’s 2008 Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire. – Emanuel Levy

Boyle and his co-screenwriter Simon Beaufoy have taken what could have been the man vs. nature equivalent of torture porn and transformed it into a visceral, exhilarating drama about hope, life and the need to belong to something greater than one’s self. – Jim Vejvoda

For background:

We at Popten dig fan documentaries. This 30 minute Adult Fans of Lego documentary is a great glimpse into the lives of those who dedicate themselves to brick culture. Jess Gibson did a fantastic job shooting and cutting this geeky labor of love. I only wish I was given a deeper look into this subculture, and a better sense of the truly incredible Lego creations out there. Still, definitely worth your thirty minutes. Especially to get a look at a real life Charlie Brown.

Do I even need to intro this film?  Johnny Knoxville et. al unleash their antics again — this time, with a new fancy super camera that puts you right in the middle of all the grossness.  And I believe the image below says it all:

Kwon: I have to say… Everything about these guys tells me I should HATE them.  But I don’t.  They make me laugh… HARD.  Why is that?

Juan: I mean – Holy Jesus maybe it’s because these guys are geniuses. They are essentially Picasso except instead of paint their tools are vomiting, shitting, stunts, and random pranks.

Kwon: It’s pretty remarkable.  Also remarkable… the opening sequence is one of the most brilliant uses of 3D EVER.  Had me on the floor.

Juan: Yeah, you and I were jumping out of our seats

Kwon: Through the WHOLE MOVIE.

Juan: Unbelievably it took Jackass 3D to make me a believer in 3D (fuck you Avatar).

Kwon: A. men.  They’re the only ones allowed to use 3D now.  I’ve decided.

Juan: Done – I’m calling the MPAA tomorrow… is that who decides?

Kwon: I think they just rate the movies…

Juan: Anyways.

I honestly think these guys are really talented, and if there were an award for their brand of filmmaking I think they should win it. It comes down to keeping randomness interesting for a couple of hours. The narrative really is about a bunch of friends who are scared to death of making yet another movie, and yet still really want to make another hit movie… because who doesn’t?

Kwon: Yes!  Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, there is something noble about putting your body through so much abuse for the sake of capturing a moment.  And they get many more than one out of this movie.  It’s almost sublime.  They’re sort of like action stars a la Jackie Chan… only they’re not avoiding injury… they seek it out.

Juan: Somehow they’re really good stuntmen too though because while they get hurt they don’t die or even break a bone. Which is really something because there is some really dumb shit in this volume, and a lot of nut busting. I mean if a kid at Blizzcon can break their leg from jumping up and down it’s a downright miracle these guys got off with bruises.

Kwon: Truth, JC.  Truth.  I think Johnny must share some DNA with Wolverine.  I mean at one point he frickin’ LANDS ON HIS NECK.  No injuries.  Though he does get bitten on the ass by a dog.. one of the few moments that involves blood.

I think my favorite moments are the few times we get to see that the guys are actually really scared to do these stunts.

Steve-O: [about to get hit between the legs] I’m Steve-O, and… oh god, why do I have to be Steve-O?

They’re such endearingly honest, humorous moments of anxiety.  I’m crying out my eye, laughing, even as I squirm.

Juan: Like when Chris Pontius puts a viking helmet on his chin, draws on eyes and a nose, and goes head to head with a scorpion. We all know his chin doesn’t stand a chance, and just after he gets stung for the fifth time he jumps up angrily.

“Okay! That’s it! I want this to stop”

“Dude, it was your idea – you were totally into it”

“Yeah, well now I’m done”

“Dude are you mad?”  *

*[that's not verbatim from the film just what I remember]

Kwon: HAHA.  I think they do ask him if he’s mad…and he kinda IS.  But he’s also momentarily embarrassed that he’s mad.  It’s such a charged/hilarious moment.  Or when Steve-o is getting strapped in to do the final (indescribably disgusting) stunt:

Johnny: “You ready, Steve-o?”

Steve-O: [silence… then]  “No.”

I DIE.

Part of me thinks, “these guys REALLY love their fans.”

Juan: Yes. They love their fans, and they want them to be entertained, and they want to achieve more themselves. Living products of the American Dream(tm).

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

Clockwise from top left: Bam Margera, Preston Lacy, Chris Pontius, Ehrren McGhehey, Weeman, Dave England, Steve-O, Ryan Dunn; Center: Johnny Knoxville

Juan: I think Johnny Knoxville is an incredibly charismatic insane person, and one who is almost venerated in that group of friends. At the beginning or end of a scene I feel they will look to him to make sure everything got to the appropriate level of insanity.  He’s not that into gross humor as much as he enjoys doing really stupid daredevil sort of stuff.  It’s almost like Evil Kinevil style with Johnny except with a sort of hilarious twist, and some great art direction.

Kwon: Totally.  Johnny’s got a little bit of that old vaudevillian showman in him.  He could have his own talk show, if he wasn’t such an insurance liability.

Juan: Steve-O: Knox’s #2.  This guy loves gross. He seems to be obsessed with it. He loves puking, shitting, drinking weird things, and doing things that go above and beyond the call of duty.  For example he drinks a cup of Preston (Fat man) sweat.

Kwon: Dude, that was gross.

Juan: Just remembering it makes me queezy.  And what is that camera operators name?  Because he was totally a character in this film, and he looked sooo good.

Kwon: I don’t know, but he throws up a lot.

Juan: Some weird visor over his face and long curly hair – i couldn’t place where he could have come from. Maybe a dead head?

Weeman and Preston always end up doing a fat man and small man thing. Although one of the best moments was the dwarf scene where two dwarf guys lay into each other over a girl. Then some dwarf cops come in to break up the fight, and finally some dwarf paramedics come in to take away the people who are hurt.  Genius scene.

Kwon: It was like being in a Fellini movie.

Juan: YES.  Jackass = Fellini absurdism

Kwon: OMG.  We SOLVED the puzzle.

Juan: All of their favorite movie of all time is Satyricon

Kwon: Of course it is.

I love how emotional Bam gets.  He’s the big ball of feelings.  Usually rage, but still.  The guys play a major prank, preying on one of his intense phobias, and he goes absolutely berSERK.  It’s sad and riotous at the same time.

Juan: Seriously, this guy is that person who gets shit on by everyone in the group, and everyone loves him for being sort of who he is.  I feel like, and have no real reason for this, that he tells tall tales about his life and times.

Kwon: haha.  He weaves deceit!  Also, it’s hilariously appropriate that the premiere of this film was at the MOMA.

Juan: Haha, really? AMAZING. These guys.

The others sort of get jumbled up in my mind in terms of their prank/daredevil style.  Except for Ryan Dunn who I think is the stand out in this installment.  He really gets in on a lot of the pranks. It’s pretty impressive.  Dave England does something crazy with bees this time around.

Kwon: Ugh.  Bees are totally awful.  I learned that from watching Candyman.

Juan: Finally, let’s just relive the introduction again. Each of them comes out wearing something in the color of the part of a large rainbow they are inhabiting. Then each one gets something amazing done to them in super slow motion, and eye-popping 3D enhances it completely.

Kwon: These guys are fantastic.  The slow motion is perfection.  I think we immediately looked at each other with the same wide-eyed expression.. like, “YES.”  Movie win, Johnny.   Movie.  Win.

Juan: What would you say was the ultimate 3D moment?  There was something that you and I both went “wow” too. It was like we could reach out and touch it.  Was it the dildo?  No, it was something else.

Kwon: I think it was a chicken… though there ARE many dildos.

VERDICT:

Kwon: Verdict:  If you’re a fan, there’s no way you won’t enjoy it.  These guys are out-of-their-minds hilarious, committing to wild acts of stupidity that are, among other things, incredibly brave.  Go.  Holler.  Squirm.  Laugh.

Juan: Yup. Absolute Scale: 10  You get exactly what you came for and it makes 3D filmmaking more than just a passing fad.

Team K&J, being entirely impressive and possessing mind-boggling endurance (or just being big time movie geeks), went for a two-fer this past weekend, taking in the Davis Guggenheim-helmed Waiting For Superman, a documentary that tackles our broken education system… and the Johnny Knoxville-led injury-filled romp, Jackass: 3D.  Enjoy our chat-like reviews in two parts!

Kwon: So we double-featured our faces off this week.

Juan: We did and it was good.  I found out you hate popcorn eaters and I am a popcorn eater. Thank goodness I ate before hand.

Kwon: I DID, however, consume the most unnecessarily large container of french fries out of desperate hunger, so I would have made an exception for you.

Let’s begin with…

PLOT:

Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim reminds us that education “statistics” have names: Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily, whose stories make up the engrossing foundation of WAITING FOR SUPERMAN. As he follows a handful of promising kids through a system that inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth, Guggenheim undertakes an exhaustive review of public education, surveying “drop-out factories” and “academic sinkholes,” methodically dissecting the system and its seemingly intractable problems.  [Sundance Film Festival]

Juan: The story is a character driven tale of a few students moving through our education system with running commentary from some of the great educators and entrepreneurs working today.

Kwon: Wow, this film ripped my heart out.  There are so many revelatory aspects to this issue and there’s SO MUCH people don’t know about the process.  Public education is legitimately terrifying.  What did you think?

Juan: I completely agree. I was totally engrossed in the lives of these kids who are living our broken education system. It was at once hopeful, terrifying, and incredibly endearing. While the film had some story problems, glossed over a few major issues, and used the old 1960′s movie clip to tie everything together crutch; it was also completely relevant, a true indictment of education, and has brought a great amount of awareness to the major issue.

Kwon: Yes.  Essay-based documentaries have become the standard in the age of Michael Moore.  But I really appreciate that this film was much more focused on the people and less on ‘creating’ the narrative.  Their stories really speak for themselves.

Juan: Actually that’s a great note I’ve been hearing a lot from documentary film lovers. We’re forcing stories into documentaries to make them more entertaining, and we’re losing focus on the reason we’re making them. Case in point: the amazing Oscar winner last year “the Cove” that resembles a heist movie to perfection. Which is not to say the right movie doesn’t deserve both, but you’re totally right. We’re not force feeding anyone here, and to that end it serves the the film’s motive. Hats off, Jiun, hats off.

‘CHARACTERS’ OF NOTE:

Geoffrey Canada (born January 13, 1952) is a American social activist and educator. Since 1990, Canada has been president and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone in Harlem, New York, an organization whose goal is to increase high school and college graduation rates among students in Harlem.

Michelle A. Rhee (born December 25, 1969) is the chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools system of Washington, D.C. in the United States.

Randi Weingarten (born December 18, 1957)[1] is an American labor leader, attorney, and educator, is the current president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), a member of the AFL-CIO, and former president the United Federation of Teachers. New York magazine called her one of the most influential people in education in New York state.

William Henry “Bill” Gates III  is an American business magnate, philanthropist, author and chairman[3] of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen.

Kwon: So Randi does not come off well, and by extension, neither does the teachers’ union, which is shown to provide endless and excessive cover for inadequate, uninspiring teachers who have exactly zero interest in shaping minds or even earning their money.  That section in the film is accompanied by some horrifying hidden camera footage of teachers kicking back at their desks while students PLAY CRAPS IN CLASS.  It’s pretty unconscionable.   We can’t really speak to intentions, but if the film is any indication, the function of the union has little to do with serving the greater good… or any kind of good at all.

Geoffrey is presented as a teacher for the new age, a progressive educator with energy and gusto.  The kind of teacher you normally only see in movies.  The one thing that struck me was his admission that it takes every teacher a few years just to be decent.  It took him 5 years to become good.  Lesson:  Teaching is an actual job.

Juan: Michelle Rhee in my eyes is a real show stealer because she is such a controversial figure in the world of education. She made a decision to go against teacher’s unions, and is pitted against Randi in many respects in an attempt to break some of the oldest tenets held by teachers. More specifically, tenure.

Kwon: I agree.  That’s a terrifying job, that I would never want.  And I really get the sense that she’s trying to do the right thing, which in this case, is most definitely not the popular thing.

Juan: Finally, Bill Gates is essentially in the picture to give a broad view of what happens to students in the job market when the system has failed them. He does a great job of discussing the largest issue facing America today, and that is loss of jobs to better educated work forces overseas.

Kwon: Yeah, Bill’s the man.

Juan: The movie was directed by a pretty great director, who made watching a slideshow into a feature film (An Inconvenient Truth), which was pretty impressive and incredibly entertaining.

Kwon: Fact.  Yes.

Juan: The introduction to the film is absolutely gorgeous.  Well shot and thorough.  It’s strange because while it has more of a narrative I didn’t feel like I really got to know any of the children that well. They were archetypal in man respects, and I think I liked it that way.  It made more of an overarching statement about all kids.

Kwon: I agree.  They are merely a handful of examples, representing a much bigger collective in America.  And one of the things I found myself doing is figuring out which situation best represented my high school.  I think my school was most like Emily, the girl in the suburbs whose public high school gets wonderful marks… but really only if you’re tracked at a certain level.  I was fortunate enough to benefit from this tracking system… but I would imagine my life would be notably different, had I been placed in a lower tier.

Juan: I had a public school upbringing too.  I hit up the magnet school in poorer locations though.  I lived in Washington DC which was in one of the better areas for education.

I am a little torn because I think this film sort of tows the party line. As in Obama’s party line about charter schools being the miracle solver. That’s not to say they aren’t great. It just seems like as a populace we tend to embrace one solution, and then run after it haphazardly. It’s part of what I feel makes it so hard to evoke real change in our country because we’re always after these ‘cure-alls.’  While I understand that the concept is teachers are the problem. I was really affected by the examples that were being touted.

Kwon: Yeah.  One thing I foresee is people walking away with that misguided blanket assumption.  The real issue is that we need better teachers, qualified teachers, and we need to PAY them.

Juan: I think the idea of awarding good teachers more money is a good idea.  Making sure that a good teacher continues to be good is also something important to keep in mind.  Tenure is a scary crutch that I didn’t realize was controlled by a teacher’s association.

Kwon: What really blows my mind about the curse of tenure is the way the school systems are forced to deal with “underperforming” teachers.. namely, the lemon dance.

Juan: Yes! please explain.

Kwon: Every year, schools trade off their bad teachers to each other, in the hopes that somehow those teachers will be less awful in a new environment.  Teachers that ‘dance’ out of this ridiculous process end up in some sort of holding pen, where they are PAID to sit in a room and do crossword puzzles while the system tries to figure out what to do with them.  They are paid to be shitty employees.  It’s the definition of lunacy.  In what other profession would this be okay?

Juan: I just can’t believe that every county has this same policy.  And wasn’t it sort of insane that the head of the teacher’s association (Randi) resembled the devil?

Kwon: Seriously, she makes them all look insane.

Juan: I mean what age are we living in that the person at the head of a teacher’s association takes the pulpit like she’s a reverend bestowing the holy eucharist.  Do you have any idea what the education world thinks of this movie?  Have they taken this lady out of power yet?  Is she in the middle of a lemon dance to middle management or the clergy?

Kwon: OMG, she’s totally lemon-dancing!

Juan: Note, a comment from Rick Ayers at University of San Francisco:

“The film dismisses with a side comment the inconvenient truth that our schools are criminally underfunded. Money’s not the answer, it glibly declares. Nor does it suggest that students would have better outcomes if their communities had jobs, health care, decent housing, and a living wage. Particularly dishonest is the fact that Guggenheim never mentions the tens of millions of dollars of private money that has poured into the Harlem Children’s Zone, the model and superman we are relentlessly instructed to aspire to.”

In Ayers’ view, the “corporate powerhouses and the ideological opponents of all things public” have employed the film to “break the teacher’s unions and to privatize education”, while driving teachers wages even lower and running “schools like little corporations.”[22] Ayers also critiqued the film’s promotion of a greater focus on “top-down instruction driven by test scores”, positing that extensive research has demonstrated that standardized testing “dumbs down the curriculum” and “reproduces inequities”, while marginalizing “English language learners and those who do not grow up speaking a middle class vernacular.

Kwon: I get that schools are underfunded, but it is also true that there are bad teachers who refuse to teach and they are still employed.  And the film doesn’t delve as deeply into certain specifics, but what I take away from it is that it’s clearly not working the way it is now.

Juan: Sure – I mean in a feature there really isn’t too much time to do much on giant subjects other than gloss over the major speed bumps and impediments that are making it harder to get to what we want.

Kwon: I was speaking to a friend of mine who has actually just opened a charter school in the city and we were discussing statistics.  The achievement gap between a child from a low income neighborhood and a child from an affluent community is so wide, it’s unbelievable.  And apparently, by the age of 3, a child from a family of means knows 30 MILLION more words than a child from a low-income household.

Juan: 30 Million?

Kwon: Isn’t that insane?

Juan: It’s sad and scary to think that we create these structured environments where it’s nearly inevitable for people to be stuck in the place they are in.  Worse still is that we don’t live in a time where we can deal with it.  The stats about job placement going overseas and most countries being much smarter than ours was unbelievable.  We literally aren’t creating a work force for our industries, and so they have to recruit overseas.

Kwon: But we still rank #1 in confidence…

Juan: Yes – we’re #1 – an amazing short lived segment. I’m waiting for the 3 1/2 hour version of this film.  Seriously there better be some massive scene extensions.

Kwon: There HAS to be.  I can’t imagine Guggenheim hearing that and NOT responding with a forceful “WTF?”

Juan: I think what the film did an insanely good job of was showing how aware the children were of the stakes.  They saw their parents afraid for their lives, and knew that something horrible would happen to them if they didn’t magically get picked.  For everything that this film didn’t do I have to give it major high fives for their depiction of the silly system in place for choosing kids to get into “good” schools.  Random selection is such an arbitrary mechanism to decide on the fate of children.  And the most important lesson is that if everyone is terrified of their public school that must really say something about what we’re doing to the kids there

Kwon: Yes.  You celebrate for the kids that get into these alternative schools.  But the ones that don’t… ugh, hello waterfall tears.  It’s just so incredibly wrong.  It’s tragic that a little boy at 10 can have the existential awareness of his circumstance and know that he wants something “better for his kids”, but is left to rely on the luck of a lottery draw.  Like… he’s TEN.

Juan: It’s almost like you could cut directly to a slaughterhouse because of the way the parents and children seem to view it.  And who is to tell them they are wrong. If they live in a district where the feeder school is bad then generally speaking you’re probably not going to get the best education in the world.  And quite possibly not really have a chance at life.  That’s something that’s even scarier. That we force children who are being underserved through the system because we cannot accept their failure. Then on the other side of a bad high school they have a degree, and aren’t even eligible for a 4 year college.

Kwon: Yes, they get pushed through (or age out) without actually learning anything.

VERDICT:

Kwon: Personally, I think this is a film everyone should see; for all the usual reasons you recommend a film (superbly made), but also because it’s just that important.

Juan: Agreed. You will be tempted by popcorn flicks of all kinds Friday through Sunday, and maybe you don’t want to eat a real juicy steak in the middle of a movie, but remember that it’s better for you and is more filling.

Kwon: Nice analogy.  You CAN finish with dessert though… which we did.  By watching Jackass 3D… [stay tuned]

It is widely being referred to as “The Facebook Movie”.  But The Social Network, a vibrant film that tracks the website’s rise to ubiquity, and brought to us via the serendipitous pairing of Fincher and writer/demi-god* Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The West Wing), is about so much more.  It’s about the link between ambition and desperation.. for wealth, power, fame, adoration, status, independence and acceptance; things that are entirely too easy to want while impossibly hard to define.

*[I was lucky enough (thanks again, Kenda!) to catch a screening of the film at The New Yorker Festival on Friday, where Sorkin was in attendance, along with Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake.  I believe it is the only festival in the world where Sorkin has groupies, and Timberlake does not.]

The success of Facebook, and the fact that its creator (and the subject of the film), Mark Zuckerberg, is at present the youngest billionaire in history, is both a timely and fascinating lens through which to tell this story.  The networking website is the most trafficked digital paradox on the internet, bringing millions –500 million, according to the film’s tagline– together into one virtual space, and as a result, drawing each of them further and further away from one another within the actual space they share.

Zuckerberg’s entrepreneurial rise, as (brilliantly) written by Sorkin, embodies this paradox completely, beginning with the film’s opening scene, a curious back and forth between Zuckerberg (a wonderfully layered and minimalist Eisenberg) and his then girlfriend, Erica (Rooney Mara) that soon implodes into a painfully neurotic self-desctruction, leaving the future billionaire heartbroken and rife with youthful vengeance.  He does what most rejected young men do.  He gets drunk and calls her a bitch… only he does it online.  And then he expands his vitriol by objectifying nearly every woman in his proximity, creating a Harvard-style ‘hot or not’ platform, which he dubs Facemash.  The site is forwarded to the whole school and promptly crashes the university’s server.

Zuckerberg is reprimanded, but is far less concerned with his punishment as he is piqued that the disciplinary board fails to acknowledge his coding prowess.  I mean, he just hacked into Harvard, for crying out loud!

But the stunt makes it to the pages of The Crimson and catches the attention of three fellow students who approach Zuckerberg and ask for his help programming a social networking website for the students of Harvard, which they call HarvardConnection.

Zuckerberg, as we now know, has other plans.

And we quickly learn, it doesn’t end well.  The film flashes back from two separate deposition meetings that take place long after the initial launch of the website, with Zuckerberg being sued both by his former business parter, Eduardo Saverin (a wonderful Andrew Garfield) and the three Harvard students, Divya Narendra (Max Minghella), and the Winklevoss twins (Armie Hammer: awesome!) who are now claiming intellectual property theft.  Though sparse on movement, it is within these scenes, which are stylishly and elegantly intercut between the chronological action, where we glimpse a small amount of the tragedy –The demise of his friendship with Eduardo is actually the real heartbreak in the film– that stands ready to engulf Mark and his blind ambition, which interestingly enough, has little to do with the one thing everyone wants from him: money.

Mark isn’t necessarily a bad guy.  He simply wants to matter.  He’s an emotionally wounded computer nerd, who just happens to be the smartest kid in the room.  His brilliance is the only thing hinging him to the possibility of being exceptional, and by extension, his invention gives him the power to subvert the fate foretold on the night his girlfriend stomped all over his heart: that people won’t judge him for being a nerd, but they’ll hate him for being an asshole.  Mark seems driven by the notion that if his creation is ‘cool’ enough, no one will care if he’s an asshole.  No one will care that he’s just a college kid, no one will care that he lacks the ability to dress weather-appropriately and no one will care that it may not have been his idea in the first place.

Eisenberg portrays Zuckerberg with a perfect mix of arrogance and disarming urgency, allowing the audience plenty moments of empathy to balance with their disgust.  His face collapses at times and his eyes grow distant, melting any signs of emotion.  But not because Mark is some kind of sociopath.  He doesn’t want to hurt anyone, but he also doesn’t want to care if he does.  Eisenberg’s youthful face and determined eyes seem to be a perfect fit for this kind of subdued misanthropy.  When challenged by what Mark views as lies and slander, his brows narrow and his voice grows sharp with indignation, a notable contrast to the boyish wonder that glows from within when receiving sage advice from the more seasoned business cowboy, Sean Parker (a very impressive Timberlake), who eventually takes the young Mark under his wing.

Parker is, in many ways, the rogue genius Mark wants to embody.  He’s glib, creative and most importantly, has managed to forget about the girl who stomped all over his heart.

“This is our time,” he tells Mark.  Fuck, ya.

He’s not just talking about them.  He’s speaking for a new generation of people who have grown weary of the path towards employability; a generation of tech-savvy minds, for whom ‘cool’ is currency, who will not apologize for thinking bigger and being brighter than the men and women peddling jobs they don’t want in the first place — a generation suffering from a new strain of entitlement.  As Mark explains to the opposing counsel during one deposition:

“You have part of my attention – you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing.”

Make no mistake.  The star of this film is the writing.  Mr. Sorkin has delivered one of the sharpest, funniest, most poignant and authentic works, not just of his career, but anyone’s career.  The film was heavily researched, right down to the brand of beer that was consumed by Zuckerberg in the drunken blogging that opens the film.  But a surplus of facts does not guarantee a story, let alone a great story.  Sorkin marries the two beautifully.  His dialogue shines, without blinding.  Every scene is rich with subtext and teeming with conflict.  Even Fincher, no stranger to quality storytelling, though known more for his visual wizardry, yields to the strength of the words on the page, providing space for the performances (all of them solid) and allowing them to take center stage.  The result is the kind of film that everyone yearns to experience at least once in their lifetime, and makes one hope Fincher and Sorkin don’t wait too long before working together again.

At the end of the screening, a young man from Mr. Sorkin’s alma mater stood up to tell him that after seeing the film, he believed Mr. Sorkin would be the first alumnus to win an Academy Award.

I’m very inclined to agree.

He continues that tradition with The Town, albeit with much less insistence and perhaps, by extension, less vigor, as the local charm, one of the most engaging elements of Gone, is noticeably muted.  Town is much more intent on fulfilling the demands of its genre.

Affleck plays Doug MacRay, a reluctant career criminal who makes his living robbing banks.  While carrying out a job (the film’s opener), his cohort and childhood friend, James Coughlin (the always engaging Jeremy Renner) complicates matters by taking the bank manager, Claire (Rebecca Hall) as a temporary hostage.  Doug, now tasked with keeping tabs on the potential witness, finds himself torn between his life of crime and his growing feelings for Claire.  Oh, and there’s also an FBI agent (Jon Hamm) hot on their trail.

The film, either by design or coincidence, will inevitably draw comparisons to Michael Mann’s Heat, and while Town remains loyal to the traditions of the heist film, it tends to stall when handling the peripheral character elements of the story, which is where Heat soars high above others in its class.  MacRay, unlike Heat‘s Neil McCauley, is inexplicably good, tragically well-meaning and exhibits a much softer, less complex (read: interesting) version of the hardened isolation that hovers around McCauley.  As a result, Doug’s budding romance with Claire lacks the poetic desperation that might compel the audience to root for his redemption.  We feel for him, but without any real urgency.

This may be due to the fact MacRay’s foil comes in the form of a scruffy, profanity-spitting Jon Hamm, who, while perfectly decent, also seems really excited to be cursing for a role.  Outside of lending some visual gravitas to an otherwise generic role, Hamm is given little else to do except glare and sound angry — via yelling… and cursing.

The relationship between MacRay and James also feels a touch anemic; perhaps due to the fact that Renner and Affleck really do sell the troubled, but brotherly connection that binds these two together, and you sort of wish there was more substance for them to interpret.

*Reviewer’s aside: If Jeremy Renner doesn’t win an Oscar in the next five years, I will be personally offended for him and begin plotting the demise of all appropriate conspirators  And yes, it will hurt.

Rebecca Hall, who is always lovely IMHO, also yields to convention, quietly slipping into her role as the ‘girl’ with appropriate humility.  There are no small parts, after all, and Becca’s a pro.  Claire’s fragility is at the center of her role both in the film and in Doug’s life, but Miss Hall keeps her from being reduced to a wet mop.

Blake Lively’s mumbling performance as Coughlin’s younger sister and Doug’s sometime-booty-call is the only real eye-sore of the film.  Lively remains far too aware of her appearance, holding steadfast to the belief that smearing her mascara will suddenly turn her into an actress with range.  Note to Blake:  No.

Overall, however, The Town does succeed.  Affleck may not be asked to helm the next big summer action flick, but he delivers an adequate amount of thrills within the few action sequences that are sprinkled throughout the film, including its final showdown which was filmed at Boston’s famed Fenway Stadium.  It’s an achievement in respectability and if anything, Affleck manages to remind us he can act, which, hey… that’s not nothing.

Not bad, Ben.  Really.

Three weeks late.  I’m embarrassed, I am.  Shame on me.  But DUDE, this movie’s still #1 at the Box Office!!!  Chris Nolan, how do you DO that?  Are you a bajazillionaire now?  You’re unstoppable!

Inception has turned into one of those films that inspires adamant and sharp division (but no Fountain-fueled fist fights… yet), among critics, cinéastes and the regular movie-going public.  There are those who view the film as an expensive exercise in confusion, while others (namely, ME) were psychically blown the f**k away.  Granted, some of my excitement may be due to the fact that this has been one of the least exciting summers in the history of movies, and after being so completely underwhelmed by the roster of films hitting the screen, I decided not to indulge the Beast of Mediocrity by going to see things that looked like utter bullsh** (You can’t bore me into submission, Hollywood.  I’m onto you).  But mostly, this movie is just super good.

The film’s dialogue is almost entirely expository, which is traditionally the hallmark of bad writing.  But Nolan, being a director of the non-hack variety, successfully diffuses all the explaining by grounding the film as a modified heist flick, complete with car chases, nifty equipment, sleep-inducing drug cocktails and job-specific players: The Subject, The Tourist, The Architect, The Extractor (sounds menacing, doesn’t it?).  And like any great heist movie, the mission is the thing, you see.  What are we doing?  Where are we going?  How do we get there?

We’re going into your MIND.  To plant an IDEA… by way of GROUP SLEEP.  Whaaa???

Fear not.  It’s awesome.  Turns out dreams are like video games.  LEVELS!  But more usefully, dreams are malleable and without limits, which is both frightening and freeing.  The state of wake and sleep is a matter of perception.  When we are bound by physical limitations, we search for spiritual reassurance, intangible connections to feed the soul.  But in dreams, we grasp for certainties, concrete truisms to anchor the mind.  Inception takes place somewhere in the in-between, and it’s a perfect context for that timeless and unanswerable question:  What is reality?

The look of Inception is nothing short of visually stunning, which only furthers my belief that it can totally be done (James, Michael… Yeah, I’m talking to you).  Modern geometric lines mix with period details that give texture to a world that could really only exist in the mind, but still feels familiar.  And I personally love the aesthetic connection to the overarching plot, which is essentially a narrative Rubik’s cube that begs to be solved.  Incidentally, that thread is consistent through every layer of the film, including the music, artfully composed by Hans Zimmer.  He talks about that here.  Seriously, how cool is he???

Inception is a bit more Puzzle than Mystery, a little more Heat than Mullholland Drive. The philosophizing never gets so lofty that it hinders the adventure.  And the size and scope (not unlike The Dark Knight) are treated with authenticity so as not to elicit involuntary laughter.  There are a few points that might raise your eyebrow, but I’m inclined to be forgiving about that, given the setting.  What, do all your dreams make perfect sense?  I didn’t think so.

And at $200M + in box-office gross (and counting)… it puts Chris Nolan leaps and bounds ahead of the pack– at least until Fincher ties up the game with The Social Network.

Jellystone Park has been losing business, so greedy Mayor Brown decides to shut it down and sell the land. That means families will no longer be able to experience the natural beauty of the outdoors — and, even worse, Yogi and Boo Boo will be tossed out of the only home they’ve ever known. Faced with his biggest challenge ever, Yogi must prove that he really is “smarter than the average bear” as he and Boo Boo join forces with their old nemesis Ranger Smith to find a way to save Jellystone Park from closing forever.

Awesome.

The central umbrella of discipline in the world of TLA is called Bending, the ability to manipulate an element. There are 4 main types of bending: Airbending, Earthbending, Waterbending and Firebending, each based on a specific real-world martial art. Much like anything else, bending can be used for good or evil — Firebenders can warm cold tea, or they can burn down a village, Earthbenders can dig ditches, or they can create small earthquakes, etc.

The film’s story itself felt very rushed, to the point where it felt like I was just learning the story and then the climax occurred. This is because they tried to cram 500 minutes of story into 103 minutes. By doing so, Shyamalan effectively lost the spirit of the series. Quite a few key points from Book One were also absent from the movie. For instance, the Kyoshi Warriors that play a major role later on in the animated series were left almost completely out. Some people feel that the adaptation should have been in the form of a television series portrayed by real live people.

Myself and many other “fans” of the animated series do not agree with the changes that were made. One of the changes that’s really grated on everyone’s nerves is the pronunciation of a lot of the characters names. It’s so far off. For example, the main character’s name should be pronounced “Ang”, not “Ahng” like it is in the movie.

The other change that really bothered me is that the Firebenders needed pre-existing fire to bend it. This change makes sense as water, air and earth are everywhere, but fire is not. You cannot control something that isn’t there, so in order to control fire, you need to already have it. However, this isn’t true to the source material. In the animated series, Firebenders can create fire from their movements, without needing a pre-existing fire.

The bending motions in the film were every bit as intense as martial arts should be, although they did tend to take too long, specifically Earth. There were a few times where I saw prolonged motions without any Bending. I was like “Uh, guys, what are you doing?”

Casting was pretty good, as was the dialogue, aside from pronunciation. Mind you, this was the first time that I had seen any of the castmembers’ work. Noah Ringer (Aang), Dev Patel (Zuko), and Jackson Rathbone (Sokka) all portrayed their characters well. Rathbone in particular played Sokka well: funny, sarcastic, and a bit of a goof. But in my opinion, the best performance would have to be that of Shaun Toub. He really nailed the role of Uncle Iroh, very knowledgeable but extremely easy-going and friendly. The worst is Nicola Peltz, who played Katara, she wasn’t anything like her animated counterpart! She completely butchered the outgoing, cautious, and stubborn character from the animated series.

Locations and costumes were very true to the series. From the Air Temples to the Northern Water Tribe. The only thing I would change is that Zuko’s burn needed to be more defined, although I’m not sure if that’s even possible, given Patel’s complexion in the movie.

As a fan of the series, I wasn’t all that impressed with The Last Airbender. It missed some major points in the story that needed to be delved into, rather than just mentioned in passing. About the only thing the film is good for is a children’s action movie. You do not want to see this film if you have any shred of respect for the animated series. Several people that I know have gone on and on about how the movie could’ve been done so much better. Let’s hope that if and when they do another movie, that they kick M. Night Shyamalan in the balls with a nice fat paycheck and tell him to leave “his life’s work” alone.

The Last Airbender was produced, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It is based on Avatar: The Last Airbender, created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. The film stars Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone and Dev Patel, and was distributed by Paramount Pictures. Released on 2010.07.01 in North America. The film was watched to completion.

Oh dear Lord what is wrong with me? Seriously, there are the things going through my clearly deranged and misguided head like “oh my my isn’t Tom Cruise charming?” WTF? I keep seeing him in that denim shirt with that hair shaking in front of his eyes and I am MAGICALLY transported to my mom’s game room, I’m 15. I’m sewing extremely 90′s purses made of red velvet for my friends. I’m watching Top Gun on TV and I’m thinking to myself… I can’t wait to grow up and go to bars and meet handsome men!! (yay for me, that happened, who said I didn’t have ambition to see my goals through?) Handsome men with microphones and complicated childhoods and… OH MY GOD I JUST SWOONED ON THE INSIDE THINKING OF TOM CRUISE IN “THE FIRM.” I might need to be institutionalized. I wonder if my health insurance covers that…

I went to Rotten Tomatoes to try to get this feeling to go away (to lose this loving feeling if you will), it’s at 53%. That’s not too bad, and even the bad reviews are like “oh it’s silly and they have no chemistry.” Well duh they have no chemistry, but I’m totally willing to believe that they hung out every night talking about magic and rainbows and giggling a lot. Take this green splat review from Dana Stevens at Slate:

Cruise, for his part, can still dependably produce unlimited quantities of Tom Cruise-ness, a natural resource undiminished and virtually unchanged since its discovery in 1983.

See? That’s not that bad!

Right now I’m totally ignoring so many factors:
- He’s crazy
- His marriage if not fake, is at the least creepy
- He lets his daughter wear high heels
- The Les Grossman thing
- The Oprah thing
- The crazy thing

I CAN’T EVEN REMEMBER THE CLEARLY EXTENSIVE LIST OF REASONS NOT TO LIKE TOM CRUISE.

I’m back in! I’m back on the band wagon, I’m back in the saddle!

Also I’m terrified of flying IRL, and it’s not even bothering me that there’s a plane crash in this trailer! My instincts are saying, oh Tom’s there, everything is FINE.

(Also I should mention that I’m having an emotional crisis because I’m the same age as Diaz when she was in the Sweetest Thing. She was a successful advertising agent, she had a really nice couch and she was totally ready to get married! Opposite of my life! Even now though, I can’t remember not liking her… Tom Cruise is MAKING me like Cameron Diaz with his bangs! HOW!?!)

Mother of crap I’m going to love this.