By Bryan Newbury
January 9, 2007

“(E)ach candidate behaved well in the hope of being judged worthy of election. However, this system was disastrous when the city had become corrupt. For then it was not the most virtuous but the most powerful who stood for election, and the weak, even if virtuous, were too frightened to run for office.”

–Niccolo Machiavelli.
Attention filmmakers: if you desire a hit, or at least critical accolades, you could do worse than throwing a dart at a map of New Jersey and filming local elections. After seeing both Anytown, U.S.A. and Street Fight, it is hard to imagine many documentary buffs who aren’t itching for another volume to comprise a New Jersey electoral trilogy. Street Fight isn’t quite as compelling as Anytown, yet its excellence is tough to dispute.

Actually, much of Marshall Curry’s film Street Fight borders on what could best be termed “accidental excellence.” Not that Curry isn’t a gifted filmmaker with an eye for gripping political drama. Not that this feeling permeates viewing the film. It is only upon reflection that one thinks to himself, “He seems to have stumbled into it.”

In a way he has, which is not to be judgmental, because there are scores of solid documentaries whose creation and execution seem to be guided by stars. Curry came to Newark originally to set up a literacy program. Like much of Newark, Curry was once a fan of the eccentric and gifted mayor Sharpe James. As the film unfolds, the dark side of Mr. James becomes increasingly disturbing.

Street Fight is more a profile of attractive upstart Cory Booker, a 32-year-old one-term city councilman. The battle between Booker and James is unlike most in American politics. Both are African-American (unless you take the view of Mr. James, who states or implies at various times that Booker is a white Jew on the Klan payroll) and both are Democrats… unless, well, you know. In spite of those on-paper similarities, the two could scarcely be more different. Booker was raised in a suburb, went to Stanford and then to Yale Law, has a casual charm and a genuine altruism. There are a number of parallels one could draw between Booker and Barack Obama. As Curry describes on the film’s website, Booker was getting the “first black President” talk even while his political career was nascent.
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By Bryan Newbury
January 1, 2007

Disarm gives the viewer some indicators that it is what we might refer to as an “activist” film. The primary image associated with it are Afghan children standing in front of a wall… one of what used to be four… with the title stenciled in black spray paint. The score is provided by Brendan Canty of Fugazi. That spray paint stencil is used as the title image in the opening credits, with participants from the affected nations painting it on walls, tanks and other iconic images of war and waste. This presentation gives the title itself a character more of demand than display.

This judgment is soon rebuffed by the work presented. Disarm takes us to the hot spots of antipersonnel mining, and subsequent de-mining, and does so with impressively athletic pace. We begin at the Myanmar-Thai border. As an official explains, the use of cameras in the area is illegal. Given the reputation of the government in Myanmar, one senses that the footage we see was gained at some peril.

From there, they set off to Sarajevo. The scenes from Bosnia and Herzegovina do best to illustrate a key point Wareham and Liu are driving at. Namely, that the horrific irony of the practice of mining is that though it serves a limited military purpose, which few fighters would choose to do without, the people who fall prey to the devices are overwhelmingly civilian and usually come across the mines in peace time. In Bosnia and Afghanistan alike, the de-mining is done best by men who laid the things in the first place. One Bosnian soldier reflects upon the inevitability of digging up some he has set.

The second key point, which Disarm succeeds in making, is that the subject of land mines seems to deter from the principle point of the argument: the victims. As scenes from Kabul and Colombia show, even if the nations of the world had the will to eradicate the munitions from the face of the earth, there would still be an overwhelming need to assist those already afflicted by them.
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By Roger A. Davis
December 30, 2006

Do you do crossword puzzles every day?
If the answer is yes, you must see the documentary,
WORDPLAY

Will Shortz, crossword editor of the New York Times
Would know the dictionary meaning of “rimes”
Also, 21 across; Nuremberg concern:  w a r c r i m e s

His daily puzzle is the cream of the crop
Bill Clinton, Indigo Girls and Ken Burns share this passion
To fill in the squares, 4 down; current clothes:  f a s h i o n

Shortz founded the American Crossword Tournament
It is WORDPLAY’s central theme
Stamford, Conn., who will fulfill their being “The Champ” dream?

There is an underlying story of puzzle construction
That is very interesting, kind of like basic instruction
13 across; first stage of kidnapping:  a b d u c t i o n

I recommend this movie to my readership
Comedian Jon Stewart is in it, he didn’t even need one blip
Did you know, Jon proposed to Tracey with Will’s NYT puzzle tip?

As a fan of crosswords, word scrambles and cryptoquips
WORDPLAY rekindled my interest to do puzzles
Here is one for you, 10 down, Toto restraint for lip(s)

—–

Visit Eden Prairie Prose for more poems by Roger A. Davis.

Review Wordplay for yourself.

Purchase Wordplay.

By Bryan Newbury
December 19, 2006

“April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.”

T.S. Eliot
That The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is the most essential viewing for one who endeavors to understand international politics could scarcely be disputed. Whether it is more valuable as a portrait of emerging democracy in Latin America or an account of media manipulation by private industry is up for debate.

As the Irish film crew, led by Kim Bartley and Donnacha O Briain, captures tense moments inside the presidential palace, the role of media (and subsequently, historians) is illustrated perfectly. While Hugo Chavez’ ministers are languishing in the palace, which is under threat of cannon fire should Chavez not surrender himself to the coup d’etat, one is filmed exclaiming that “[T]hey can’t destroy history.” Can’t they, now?

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised illustrates a number of issues with Latin America in general and Venezuela in particular, but the idea of destroying history is at the forefront. As one watches the film, it is alluring to contemplate just how much of history is reliable. And just how much could well be laughable. Were it not for the filmmakers arriving in Caracas in September of 2001 to shoot a documentary about the populist President of Venezuela, the official story would appear as some bastard doppelganger inverse to actual fact. That ironies seem to compound in relation to the film is symptomatic of the state of North and Latin American media it seems to decry.
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By Umut Newbury
December 13, 2006

For several years now, the Organic Consumers Association in the United States has been referring to genetically engineered foods with the affectionate phrase: “Frankenfoods.”

Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s latest documentary, Our Daily Bread, illustrates grimly in about an hour and a half how all food, crops and animals, raised in the industrial agricultural system qualify as Frankenfoods.

Our Daily Bread shows us the nightmare that is producing food for 6 billion of us on this planet in the 21st century. We all partake in it everyday of our lives, yet so few of us really think of where our food comes from. Geyrhalter has tracked down for us exactly where filet mignon and eggs and bacon, even tomatoes, peppers and apples come from, and it is not pretty. The 21st century human being is so cut off from the reality of foodstuffs that it seems the more we don’t look, the worse it gets.

Geyrhalter spent two years across Europe on factory farms, shooting images of pigs, cows and chickens being slaughtered by the thousands. Think of the scene in Baraka where the accidentally hatched baby chicks were being gassed in an egg factory, then multiply it by as dozen or so times. Unlike Baraka, there is not a score substituting for narrative in Our Daily Bread. Geyrhalter’s piece is virtually quiet, except for the sound of machines, muffled human voices and lots and lots of water hoses. There are so many shots of cleaning and watering in the film, it is difficult not to remember Lady Macbeth. Human beings industrialized food production and brought it indoors to confined crowded environments and the result is lots of blood and chemicals that need to be washed from the bunny suits of workers, the floors and the equipment again and again. But water will not wash our sins away and the workers in Geyrhalter’s film seem to be aware of this. The only thing more disturbing in the film than the cruel and unusual treatment and killing of the animals is the situation of the people who work at these factories. Though we have managed to invent lots of machines to help with the dirty work, it seems the most gruesome duties are still reserved for the human workers. There has to be a person to give a cow a C-section, a person euthanize pigs and a person to cut off the heads of chickens. None of the factory farm workers in Our Daily Bread look happy or pleased with their jobs.

The situation in the fields does not look any brighter. In one scene, a field of beautiful flowers is suddenly overshadowed by a crop duster spraying pesticides; in many others Geyrhalter shows us acres and acres of land devoted to the cultivation of one single plant. Workers in these fields and greenhouses seem like robots picking produce, watering or applying a concoction of chemicals. We even get a glimpse of a field supervisor with his binoculars watching the workers on the field, reminding us of the ironic similarity to days of plantations and slavery. Even salt miners look dehumanized as they travel hundreds of feet below the European continent and find themselves in a massive maze of gigantic tunnels for the simplest of dinner table items.

We have put an end to the reign of the family farm, the natural biodiversity and ecological balance. We have consolidated food production, putting it under roofs that house hundreds of thousands of chickens and pigs, we have invented machines and conveyor belts to make the production faster, and the people who now work for feeding the world look like zombies. All this, for what? Cheap food and lots of it, for sure. There are so many mouths to be fed in this world that naturally food production needed to increase and live up to the demand. But a first year economics student could easily tell that this has to do not just with supply meeting demand but with profit-making as well. There is nothing inherently wrong with desiring a profitable industry and feeding the world at the same time, but the those of us who consume the products of this morally disturbing system meal after meal must start asking the question, “At what cost?”

Geyrhalter said this in a recent interview:

“… it becomes the scandal of how we live, because this economic, “soulless” efficiency is a reciprocal relationship with our society’s lifestyle. There is nothing wrong with saying, “Buy organic products! Eat less meat!” But at the same time it’s kind of excuse, because we all enjoy the fruits of automation and industrialization and globalization every day, which affect much more than just food.”

It’s true and Geyrhalter’s chosen technique in Our Daily Bread, sans narration or score, helps the viewer contemplate upon this.

This film should be required viewing for anyone who eats. These images should be replaying in every consumer’s head while buying groceries or ordering lunch at a restaurant. It is time we stop corn-syrup coating the hellish nightmare we call food in the 21st century.

—–

Directed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter

92 minutes/ Color

2005

Purchase at First Run/Icarus Films

By Bryan Newbury
December 11, 2006

In literary circles, there are two schools of thought regarding Henry Charles Bukowski. The first reveres, going so far as to stand him next to Whitman and Villon in the poetic pantheon. The second finds him craftless, boorish and generally not their kind of people. “How many ways can you look at rough sex or horse races,” this second group, usually consisting of equal parts obsequious academic intellectuals and overly sensitized hausfraus, will go on. The first group answers, “Quite a lot,” and braces for fisticuffs while group two laments the state of contemporary verse.

This sketch could be a bit of a simplification, but finding a gray area when it comes to Buk is like seeking common ground between English and Argentine football fans. A fitting tribute to the man. Bukowski wasn’t one for nuance.

Whatever camp one falls into, there is no disputing his selling power. In the twelve years following his death, Charles Bukowski is more than a cottage industry. From 1994 to the present, he’s had more books of poetry released than many do in a lifetime. He’s sold more than most. Matt Dillon stars in a recent adaptation of his second novel, Factotum, and the chances of seeing Buk’s pockmarked mug on a tee shirt at a rock show are exponentially greater than when he was alive.

This presented a daunting task to director John Dullaghan. When a cult figure reaches this kind of popular apogee, the longtime fans tend to get a bit restless. For the many who have shared a kinship with this drinking class hero, this level of attention is a bit unwelcome. At the very least, the 2003 release of Born Into This must have appeared opportunistic to die-hard Bukowskians. This is a group of men and women who have been known to steal titles, drink heavily and heckle Phillip Roth. Dangerous characters.

On the other hand, Bukowski fans are thrilled with even a passing glance. There is no limit to books, recordings, broadsides or… tee shirts… that a devotee might collect. Though the exposure may strike the hard core as unseemly, it must be taken into consideration that Buk was not in the company of Auden or Bunting, eschewing biography for the work itself. To the contrary, few have cultivated such a cult of personality. The more Bukowski content there is, the fans say, the better.

Dullaghan had a tightrope to walk. Yes, there is an audience for this film. A rabid one at that. That audience, however, tends to define cynical. Sure, that certain number will own a copy; but the chances of them widely deriding it as bullshit are very high.

It is with pleasure that the reviewer can report Dullaghan has the balance of a cat. Born Into This is beyond a triumph. For fans of Bukowski, and even of contemporary literature, it is an essential addition.
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By Bryan Newbury
November 30, 2006

It was 73 degrees Fahrenheit in Lawrence, Kansas on Tuesday, 28 November 2006. Within a day, that turned to 37 and reduced to low 30’s, then 20’s and eventually into the teens. Rain was followed by freezing rain, then drizzle, then sleet. In spite of the deteriorating weather situation, hundreds packed into the University of Kansas’ Woodruff Auditorium for the maiden screening of Fall from Grace. Mr. Jones quipped to a capacity hall that he was pleased with the attendance. “I spent a year with the Phelps family…with the weather I was beginning to fear that God does hate me.”

Yes, the audience, along with Mr. Jones, pressed on. Good for the filmmaker’s soul, no doubt. Murder on a reviewer’s complexion.

Fall from Grace is the fruit of a long year spent with the Phelps family, the primary members of the Westboro Baptist Church’s congregation. As the film illustrates, Phelps & Co. are known throughout the world for their pickets, protests, and general hatred of Broadway musicals. What would make a young man devote such time to the subject of Phelps and his ever-visible “God Hates Fags” and subsequently, “God Hates Troops” signs? One suspects it is the same reason Westboro changed its focus from homosexuals to the Iraq War: publicity.

Surely he can’t be blamed for it. Indeed, this is a timely subject. Though we might like to look beyond these evangelical instigators and picture them as quaint anachronisms inhabiting a time prior to the War on Terror, it is instructive to get a view from the crow’s nest into their political, theological and philosophical world. Considering that common ground has been reached between Palestinian Imams and Israeli Orthodox Rabbis on the assertion that a gay pride march is the ultimate anathema in al Quds, we may see Phelps through the lens of history as ahead of the curve. When a bulk of America’s states, including Kansas, decided to validate a portion of Westboro’s teachings through the constitutional prohibition of same-sex unions, Phelps might have demurred. Rather than circling the victory lap, Pastor Fred saw an opening for a new whipping boy. How, exactly, Mr. Phelps came to the conclusion that the American military is aligned with the sleeper cells of the homosexual agenda is up for debate. Changing the object of his ire from fags to flags could be a tremendous miscalculation. Then again, when one ponders James Guckert, he might not be that far off.

The aspect of a convoluted philosophy manifested through a charismatic personality is tackled well in Fall from Grace. The aim of the picture seems to be an in-depth portrait of the personality of Phelps and by extension his family and congregation. (As Jones pointed out in the question-and-answer period, there are only two other families in the congregation. One is married in, the other apparently another filmmaker who migrated back to Kansas from Florida to do a documentary on Phelps and ended up a member of the parish. Tread lightly, Mr. Jones. There but for the grace.) As a profile, Fall from Grace works rather well. We learn much about Fred Phelps’ development both spiritually and professionally.
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By Bryan Newbury
November 10, 2006

Detractors of Michael Moore usually share something in common besides politics. More often than not, they haven’t seen the films of which they’re speaking.

It is surprising, then, that The Big One hasn’t shared the enmity that greeted his other feature documentaries. After all, if there is one film of Moore’s that hasn’t been seen, by and large it is this one.

The film takes place on Moore’s book tour promoting his 1996 work “Downsize This!: Random Threats from an Unarmed American.” It is little wonder that Moore has been widely castigated by not only the right, but also mainstream media in general. Here is a man making millions from films and publishing books… and he doesn’t even have a college degree! What right does such a slovenly lout have telling us on which side the bread is buttered?
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By Umut Newbury
November 26, 2006

Since their victory on Nov. 7, the Democratic leaders have pledged to make raising the minimum wage among their top priorities. If they want to accomplish that goal they should make sure to have all of their Republican colleagues view Roger Weisberg’s Waging a Living before the debates begin.

The federal minimum wage has remained at $5.15 per hour since 1997. According to The New York Times, when adjusted for inflation, the buying power of the wage has dropped to its lowest level since 1955. By December, The Times reported recently, the minimum wage will have remained unchanged for the longest period since it was established in 1938.

Weisberg follows four Americans over a period of three years in Waging a Living, three women and one man. Jean Reynolds, a rest home nurse in New Jersey, is recently divorced and is taking care of her children, one of whom is a 29-year-old cancer patient, and her children as well. Jerry Langoria, a security guard in San Francisco earns $12 per hour, but can only afford a small room in a hotel for $530 per month.

Weisberg points out several facts throughout the documentary such as, after 10 years, of those who start in poverty 50 percent stay there. After a divorce, in the year following a man’s standard of living increases by 10 percent while a woman’s decreases by 27 percent. An estimated 18,000 Americans die every year for lack of health insurance.
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By Bryan Newbury
November 20, 2006

There was a time, not too distant in this nation’s history, that to be accused of profiteering was tantamount to a treason charge. In fact, Harry Truman said as much. One gets the feeling that if he could resurrect Truman and F.D.R. for a screening of Robert Greenwald’s Iraq for Sale the reaction would be something just short of seeing Rosemary Clooney on stage in hiphuggers and a bustier.

War profiteering is as time-honored as the act of killing itself; however, just like appearing in public in a Vicodin haze and a state of undress, there used to be something clandestine and scandalous about the enterprise. As this film illustrates, the act of profiteering has become essentially official state policy.

Greenwald takes on the usual suspects. We begin with Blackwater’s private security team. Everyone remembers seeing the grisly scene of 13 April 2004 in Fallujah where four American citizens were burned, mutilated and strung up. The most jarring realization at the time seemed to be that these weren’t American military, but civilians. Actually, these men occupied the gray area of the mercenary. Not a state charge, exactly, but certainly not a water treatment worker or an architect. As it happens, Blackwater funds a sort of private army in Iraq. The four who lost their lives that day were doing security detail for Mr. Bremer.

A reoccurring theme is set with the story of two of these men, told by grieving families. The money paid to private contractors to outsource military duties at an egregious premium is the primary motivation for said companies’ employees to be in Iraq in the first place. While we feel sympathy for the losses of the families seen throughout the film, it is hard to ignore the fact that the employees of KBR, CACI and Blackwater are there for a huge payday as well. Irrespective of this, there is a case to be made that with such hefty resources it is the duty of these companies to use some reason in deployment of hired guns and truck drivers. The beef of the families is by and large that the private contractors in Iraq cut corners to increase profits. Couldn’t call it unexpected that when an entity whose primary goal is increased profit is charged with the business of state, the invisible hand of the market chops off the occasional head.

The numbers and actions of the companies profiled in Iraq for Sale make quite a case for the bereaved. Crisis communications expert Chris Lehane describes in detail what public relations moves Blackwater made after the Fallujah incident. No matter what a person thinks about the men and women seeking a small part of the fortune and the risks they take, it is difficult not to look for new and better curse words for these folks. Combine that with the 600% growth the company has enjoyed and the fact that the U.S. government awarded them with a $73 million contract from FEMA for Katrina “relief” and the question of just who is running the government becomes increasingly salient.
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By Bryan Newbury
November 14, 2006

Do not be alarmed. That sound you heard at the coffee shop this morning was United States documentary buffs praising the celluloid gods in for the manna they’d received from their rental clerk.

Michael Apted’s latest installment of the Up series has hit the street after an excruciating wait. For the film fan, it is something akin to having a class reunion, Thanksgiving Dinner and a letter from a distant relative all at the same time. The opening sequence from 1964’s World in Action feature takes us back to the point we became aware of this groundbreaking work. Since Seven & Fourteen, Apted’s septennial look into the lives of English men and women from across the class and geographical spectrum has surpassed simply groundbreaking and been catapulted into the legendary realm. An argument could be made that it stands alone atop Olympus in the world of documentary filmmaking.

As Apted has admitted on many occasions, the Up series started off with some preconceptions of the class system in Britain that turn out to be far more nuanced than anyone had thought. Rather than serving as a document for the rigid class system, over the years the Ups have displayed striking exceptions to it. Beyond that, it has chronicled the new face of London to some degree, as well as the ever unchanging Dales and Scottish countryside.
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By Bryan Newbury
November 7, 2006

In this midterm election season it is heartening to consider what country, and world, we might be looking at were it not for the 2000 Presidential Election. Watching The Party’s Over sustains those “what-ifs” while displaying just how we got to 2004. It is difficult to gauge just how apropos the filmmakers thought this title would be in 2004 and beyond, but judging from this fact-heavy documentary one is led to suspect that there is a bit of a wink behind it.

Philip Seymour Hoffman narrates the film and acts as tour guide to American politics circa 2000. It would be hard to imagine a better person for the role, as Hoffman admits he isn’t, or at least wasn’t, very politically engaged. This is a great benefit to the film. In today’s market there seems to be an echo of what the news media refers to as “balance.” For example, when someone does a film critical of Wal-Mart, the retort comes in the form of another film which is sympathetic to it. Leaving aside the facts, the reaction seems to be that one is equal to the other. Both sides are told, one from each slant.

Of the many documentaries of a political nature this reviewer has watched in the course of the last six years, none have exhibited less bias or more balance than The Party’s Over. It could serve as a companion volume to a number of films made in the aughts. It pairs well with the Moore Canon. Hoffman examines the issue of fear as control, much like Moore in Bowling for Columbine. Only Hoffman gets the quotes at a gun show from N.R.A. meetings. It would appear that the far right and far left in America understand precisely what kind of game is being played. The disconnect lies in the perceived culprits and solutions.
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By Bryan Newbury
November 5, 2006
“All politics is local.”

Should you wish to disprove Tip O’Neill’s famous advice, which actually dates back to Finley Dunne, you needn’t look further than Anytown, USA.

Ostensibly it captures the most local of political races: that of the mayoral in Bogota, New Jersey. Bogota is typical of small town America demographically, culturally and politically. The main concerns of the citizens, depending upon whom you ask, are either taxes or services. One maverick answered this type of question by stating he’d like lower taxes and better schools and roads. We wonder why the best and brightest stay out of politics.

That truism still has legs. At the outset, citizens of Bogota are seen up in arms about budget cuts which threaten the school. Schools are always high on the list for potential voters, but the problem goes even deeper in Bogota: it could kill the football team!
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By Bryan Newbury
November 4, 2006

At least there’s Keith Olbermann.

Though certain reviewers have called comparisons to the antiwar movement during the Nixon administration to that of today’s tumult, one would need blinders fitted for a thoroughbred to avoid obvious parallels. The U.S. vs. John Lennon begins with an archetypal image of the scene in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. A concert is being held for jailed MC5 manager and marijuana legalization activist John Sinclair. Sinclair’s offense? Offering two joints to an undercover agent. His sentence? Ten years maximum security.

Enter a cast of fellow musicians and activists. At center stage is John Lennon, armed with National Resophonic guitar and his wife Yoko. We are to find out that the simple act of singing on Sinclair’s behalf coincided with the Michigan Supreme Court summarily overturning the conviction they’d recently upheld. Maybe there’s something to this whole rock ‘n roll thing.

The U.S. vs. John Lennon follows this scene with a bit of exposition. Much of it isn’t altogether necessary to fans of Lennon. For that matter, fans of popular culture in the second half of the twentieth century. It does, however, serve to build the foundation for a narrative pacing that is commendable in documentary filmmaking.
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Happy film productions are all alike; every unhappy film production is unhappy… well, it is unhappy in almost always the same way.

In Hearts of Darkness the angst, agony and ecstasy of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now receives a masterful dissection. That it doesn’t descend into parody for one minute is an accomplishment of Herculean proportions.

Coppola had originally intended upon shooting Apocalypse with George Lucas during the Vietnam Conflict. Screen writer John Milius wanted to stage the thing in Vietnam. Studios wouldn’t go near it for obvious reasons, and Coppola had to settle for making The Godfather I and II.

By 1976 he had parlayed that success into American Zoetrope and developed enough clout to make the epic.

Hearts is full of ghosts. The first is that of Joseph Conrad.

Conrad can have a funny influence on people. His books caused this reviewer (an ardent pacifist) to join The United States Navy. He inspired both Orson Welles and Francis Ford Coppola to tackle “Heart of Darkness.” Challenged would be closer. Should the Necronomiconesque qualities of the dour Pole be doubted, consider the Unabomber.

Welles must have felt the chill in the room. Before rolling a frame, Welles was looking at twice his allotted budget, butting heads with the studio and lost his screenwriting partner. No mention is made as to whether Coppola sought out Welles when beginning an adaptation of the same novel in a different war, but his shadow looms in any event. It is a substantial coincidence that after Welles’s aborted Heart of Darkness he went on to make Citizen Kane. Considering that Welles and Coppola respectively released what many consider to be the Number 1 and 2 films in the history of cinema, the idea of an odd type of curse is pervasive. “You may try,” we find Conrad taunting, “and for your efforts you will be rewarded. But I will be damned if you make the thing.”

Coppola is obviously cognizant of the connection. While we watch the priceless footage shot by his wife Eleanor, the feeling that he is willing the thing to be a fiasco is omnipresent. It is hard not to speculate as to whether Coppola wanted a failed production. He certainly played his hand into it. Negotiating a deal with Ferdinand Marcos whereby Philippine helicopters were leased with the caveat that they could be taken back at a moment’s notice should they need to be used for counterinsurgency. Giving his lead actor the sack and hiring on Martin Sheen, at the time something of a loose cannon. Casting the temperamental Brando as Kurtz and advancing him $1 million. (Why not just shoot the moon and have Orson play him?) It doesn’t require an undue amount of cynicism to postulate that the fruition of the film was the real failure in Coppola’s mind. As tapes of his conversations indicate, Coppola was motivated by something much larger than just a movie. With each outburst it seems that he’s aiming not so much for “Heart of Darkness” as “Dead Souls,” “The Anathemata” or Orson Welles’s Don Quixote. Though completed works make legends, those testaments to a creative genius delving so deeply into a work that he loses himself entirely make myths. 
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It’s tough not to like record collector Joe Bussard, subject of the film Desperate Man Blues. Tough, provided you’re not a devotee of rock n’ roll music. Tough, unless you happen to be one of those people laboring under the misapprehension that jazz music has been made post-1933. Tough if you’re not one of the deluded fools whom thinks he has some classic sides available on 78 rpm. Even if you fall under one of these three categories, which comprises about 78% of the population of the United States circa 2006, not liking Bussard seems a difficult proposition.

Minutes into Desperate Man Blues we’re treated to the bubbly and idiosyncratic personality of Joe Bussard. On the opening cut he’s found smoking what is to be an omnipresent cigar and grooving to a prewar vinyl. Aficionados of air guitar will be as entranced with Joe as record collectors and old time music enthusiasts. Within minutes, the audience is treated not only to air guitar, but air clarinet, air fiddle, air trombone and even (this may be the only recorded case, which would suit Bussard fine to be sure) air Weissenborn. All this while dancing contagiously.
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Old timers tell of a mystical place not far from here. Health care is provided for all citizens. People take in idyllic winter scenes whilst enjoying jelly doughnuts and long johns with maple icing. It has a large frontier and a few major cities. Even in these cities people are polite, stand five feet behind you in the ATM line and leave their doors unlocked day and night. There are seven million guns for ten million families, yet homicides from firearms are an eighth that of the United States. There is magical wildlife, though no one has gone so far as to suggest pixies and unicorns.

Those of us who had heard tales of this frozen utopia were reasonable to be skeptical. If such a place indeed existed, why were we not emigrating in droves?

Then came Michael Moore’s third feature film, Bowling for Columbine.
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Who would frame somebody with a Gardenburger?

In the real world, probably, no one. At the Renfrew Center in Florida, where the documentary THIN takes place, one anorexic named Shelly believes the staff of the rehabilitation center does.

Lauren Greenfield’s debut as a documentary filmmaker is not for the faint of heart. In the United States, we have come to believe that the food we are eating is making us fat, which it is. The majority of American adults are clinically overweight or obese (more than 63 percent according to 2005 studies).  However, there are also five million people who suffer from eating disorders that keep them too thin. Greenfield opens the film with a little known and shocking truth: one in seven anorexic women will die from complications caused by their disease.

She takes us on a dark journey inside the Renfrew Center, one of a handful of treatment centers in the nation for women who suffer from anorexia or bulimia, most often both. We first meet Shelly, a psychiatric nurse who enters the clinic at a whopping 84.3 pounds. Polly comes to the center after attempting suicide over two “pieces” of pizza. She does admit on camera that the cheesy-doughy goodness wasn’t the only thing that led her to slice her wrists, but she adds, “that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Brittany is 15 and she’s had eating disorders since she was eight. She went from 185 pounds to 95 in one year and it becomes clear to the viewer that perhaps she didn’t have the best role model around her when she starts talking about the “chew and spit” candy parties that her mother initiated. When her mother comes to visit Brittany at the center, she picks through her plate right in front of her child. Another woman, Alisa, says she developed her eating disorder after hearing the pediatrician deem her fat when she was 7 years old. She recounts graphically a typical day in her life: She would drive to Dunkin’ Donuts and buy a dozen doughnuts then to Burger King and McDonald’s to buy large orders of breakfast items, all to bring them home, eat them in their entirety and vomit profusely afterwards.
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I am jaded.  I live in a culture where something is always being sold to me.  I believe the worst until I know better.  Irony is presumed long before sincerity.  I get magazines which are nothing more than elaborate advertisements for one product or a group of products.  I get instant messages that aren’t even from a real person, only a program pretending to be one.

Documentaries offer no relief from suspicion.  Granted they are presumed to be reality or at least one perspective on it.  And so when I begin to watch a documentary that is a personal story I often give it the benefit of the doubt.  But not this time.

A friend told me this film wasn’t really a documentary when I mention my intention to view it; how is that to start the seed of doubt?  Whether intentionally or not this film initially feeds that doubt.  I am questioning whether this is yet another attempt to shoot fiction in a documentary style.  Even the subtitle of the film A True Story, has my cultural radar going off.  Who needs to call their documentary true unless it is fake?  Who believes this Unknown White Male really has amnesia, that he really exists?
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Minutes into Michael Moore’s first feature length film the viewer is introduced to the two themes which will reoccur for more than a decade. The first is the plight of the American working class and the maniacal nature of predatory capitalism. The second, as Moore’s first employer outside his hometown of Flint, Michigan tells him, is that Michael Moore and California are a “mismatch.”

After a Bay Area magazine gave Moore the sack and sent him home in a complimentary U-Haul, which we will soon learn is something of a state mascot in Reagan-Bush era Michigan, he becomes witness to the rapid decay of a city which once boasted the most manufacturing jobs in the world.

Roger & Me also acquaints us with Moore’s soon-to-be notorious filmmaking style. A disheveled fat man in a ball cap tilting at corporate windmills, playing out an amusing picaresque equal parts Quixote and Columbo. Moore is determined to interview General Motors chairman Roger Smith and somehow convince him to visit Flint so he can look into the eyes of the 30,000 people whose livelihood he shipped to Mexico.

The subject comes naturally to the filmmaker. His father, along with Dinah Shore and Pat Boone, worked for GM. His uncle was involved in the 1936 Flint Sit Down which resulted in the birth of the United Auto Workers Union in February 1937. Throughout the course of the story he comes across friends and classmates who have been adversely affected by the plant shutdowns.
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Paper Clips captures how the students of Whitwell Middle School responded to lessons about the Holocaust; they committed to honor every lost soul by collecting one paper clip for each individual exterminated by the Nazis. Despite the fact that they had previously been unaware of and unfamiliar with the Holocaust, their dedication was absolute. Their plan was simple but profound. The amazing result, a memorial railcar filled with 11 million paper clips (representing 6 million Jews and 5 million gypsies, homosexuals and other victims of the Holocaust) which stands permanently in their schoolyard, is an unforgettable lesson of how a committed group of children and educators can change the world one classroom at a time. Here is a poem inspired by the film.
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Despite pronouncements of an end to The Age of Irony by a number of public intellectuals, essayists and even Time Magazine columnists, it seems that irony will be around long enough to enjoy the last days of the Mayan calendar with the cockroaches and Collected Longer Poems of W.H. Auden.

We’re reminded of this while pondering American cultural patterns in the Ipod Age. The culture, for lack of a better term, is at a state of hyperatomization. There’s an old anecdote about a certain way to offend a Spaniard: tell him Spain has 600 political parties. The inevitable rejoinder being, “You fool, Spain has 6 million parties and I am one of them!” Finally America can identify, replete with scores of youtube posters who are indeed their own biggest fans. In a vacuum, this isn’t ironic, even for the millions misusing the word on a daily basis. 

What has happened in popular music seems to be steering towards irony.     

Let’s say you consider yourself the uber-music fan. You go into your local record shop to pick up a few choice vinyls from the Riverside catalogue and… “What’s this?”

“Why,” the clerk tells you in-between sharp breaths to properly polish his new belt buckle, “it’s ‘Good For What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows 1926-1937.’  It happens to be Jack White’s favorite album this week.”

There are two options for the music consumer. Either you politely nod and sit the disc back down and look around for a Gid Tanner album or you buy it and put out of your mind that some hipster somewhere has beaten you to everything.

The further one wades into the waters of rare and obscure musical forms, though, the more he is made aware that with each passing year backwards he is witnessing via his headphones a music based communally, one without international or even national stars. At the end of his quest for American music’s holy grail he is humbled by the realization that everyone in Buncombe County, North Carolina beat him to it. What’s more, it was at the same time and there were no locked doors to be found, metaphorical or otherwise.

Perhaps our postmodern personality crises aren’t so far removed from the days of the medicine show. As Free Show Tonite points out in the beginning, the entertainment at these extravaganzas was a ruse to coax the more slow witted of rural Americans to buy snake oil. (Think Cialis. Or, for the forty-plus million uninsured Americans out there, think Snake Oil.) Continuing the crawl, the viewer enjoys her first caveat. Some of the scenes illustrate “…folk culture of the period (that) played upon deep-seated racial fears and stereotypes.” We’ve come so far.

Free Show Tonite documents the last old time medicine show. Surviving performers from the medicine and minstrelsy heyday were reunited for a two day event in North Carolina, circa 1982. Many devotees of old time music will notice some things they’ve only read about. For example, there’s a great scene featuring the lost art of “beating straws” on a fiddle. They’ll also be treated to OTM luminaries. There’s
Hammie Nixon, whose jug mastery extends even to what appears to be a Sundrop soda can. Guitar Slim and Walking Mary McClain offer some rousing numbers which belie their advanced years at the time of filming. And there’s that Roy Acuff fellow, who also narrates the film.

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I am obsessed with Flogging Molly.  I was not yesterday.  I had heard of the traditionally Irish-influenced punk rockers prior to watching the film, Whiskey on a Sunday, this morning but had never heard their music.  Now I type as fast as I can, eager to run out to the record store and grab all their records.  Ordering online won’t be fast enough.  After that I need to check local concert listings and camp out wherever they’re coming next.

Whiskey on a Sunday, directed, shot and edited by Jim Dziura, who, as far as I can tell, has only done supporting camera work of a handful of documentaries, flows extremely well, picking up at an undefined date in the midst of the band’s tour, and deftly weaves in and out of tour, studio and interview footage with all band members and effectively (and free of narration) tells the band’s story, both as group and as individual members. 
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Few creatures receive the perennial good press enjoyed by penguins. In popularity as stuffed toys they’re probably right behind teddy bears, dogs, cats, and horses; and cartoonists from Oliphant to Berke Breathed have found them ideal as commentators.

So perhaps it should not have been any great surprise that the documentary crowd pleaser of 2005 turned out to be a nature film, distributed by Warner Independent Pictures and funded by National Geographic, “as told by Morgan Freeman” and “based upon the story by Luc Jacquet”—whatever that means—that stars emperor penguins. What is surprising is how little we really knew about them, as well as how gorgeous the severely limited palette of Antarctica proved to be for the cameras.
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Sam Jones’ I am Trying to Break Your Heart is, simply put, a masterpiece. Unashamedly simple, its fly-on-the-wall approach recalls that of Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back and captures, as it unfolds, the most public of battles between artist and executive, chronicling the recording, rejection, resale and release of Wilco’s fourth album, 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

I am Trying to Break Your Heart begins during the recording sessions for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and succeeds in breaking the viewer’s heart as one watches an optimistic band record while pausing to sing the praises of their record label, Reprise, for giving them a free hand in the execution of their album. “They’ve given us $85,000 to record it,” laughs bandmember Jay Bennett, “and they haven’t heard a word of it.” Moments like this are the heart of the success of this film as the viewer knows already where the story’s going, but the band and filmmaker had no idea. We know it’s all going to fall apart – it’s just a matter of time. That said, I am Trying to Break Your Heart taken as a whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. There are no exquisite epiphanies, no shocking revelations, no high drama (even the discreetly acrimonious departure of Jay Bennett is downright tame and civil by rock and roll standards) – and there is no new documentary innovation present – simply a moment captured and a story told, albeit one fans already know – but director Jones, and especially editor Erin Nordstrom, creating more “moving pictures” than motion picture. Every frame, a warmly grainy, comfortable black and white, evokes a gray Chicago morning, the weary optimism of frontman Jeff Tweedy, and the unassuming, austere, yet inconspicuous intricacy of Wilco’s music.

I am Trying to Break Your Heart will almost certainly appeal to Wilco fans as band personalities are exposed, the recording process is revealed, and those perfectly imperfect Wilco performances are interspersed throughout it all. This reviewer’s only wish was that some Reprise Records points of view were shared (one would guess they probably declined comment). Bennett’s departure is only briefly discussed after the fact, though the informed viewer knew to expect it and could therefore pay special attention to strained studio interactions between Bennett, Tweedy, and other bandmembers. Non-fans may also find the film of interest, especially if they come to the film unaware of the story behind it. I am Trying to Break Your Heart certainly has the potential to draw new fans as it features some absolutely wonderful performances from the band and touches on the humanness of this down-to-earth band. Never posing as rock stars nor fleeing in the opposite direction as unapproachable, enigmatic, hipper-than-thou slackers, Wilco, and especially Tweedy, come across as the musicians down the street; writing, playing and recording simply for the sake of the song.

Certainly the crown jewel in the Plexifilm catalog, I am Trying to Break Your Heart is given lovely treatment on DVD. A two-disc set, the first disc features the film with commentary from the director and band as well as the original theatrical trailer. The second disc is a treasure trove for fans, with over an hour of extra footage and 17 additional Wilco songs as well as alternate Yankee Hotel Foxtrot tracks, live performances, and entirely new, unreleased material. A making-of featurette is also included. Finally, the handsomely packaged product is complete with a 40-page filmmaker’s diary with plenty of photos and notes by Rolling Stone senior editor, David Fricke. I am Trying to Break Your Heart is not only a satisfying release for the Wilco fan, it’s one of the few great rock and roll movies ever made, certainly ranking with Don’t Look Back, Sympathy for the Devil, and Let it Be.

Mark A. Nichols
williejoeshaver@yahoo.com

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