MEN WANTED: FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOUR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS. SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON

-Advertisement

In 1914 on the eve of World War I, a British explorer named Ernest Shackleton embarked on an expedition to cross Antarctica on foot.  He believed Antarctica the last frontier for exploration, and gathered 28 crewmembers to accompany him on his ship the Endurance.  “I think he considered it the last great Antarctic adventure,” noted his granddaughter, Alexandra Shackleton, “to cross the Antarctica from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea, a distance of about 1800 miles.”  Everyone knew the expedition would be dangerous, perhaps deadly, but no one expected the horrendous journey that followed. Shackleton’s Voyage of Endurance recounts the nearly two years of perils experienced by the captain and crew that became heroic, despite that fact that they never came close to reaching their original goal.

Click here for the full review by Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

Because of the United States’ longstanding embargo against Cuba, Americans often fail to recognize its vast influence upon their culture. Before 1960, Americans frequently traveled 90 miles south of Florida for vacations, just as they visit Jamaica today, where they openly enjoyed Cuban music, cuisine, and its legal gambling. By the turn of the 20th century, Cuban music had also arrived stateside on phonograph records; later, Cuban musicians themselves, like Desi Arnaz, arrived. Latin music would add new textures and rhythms to jazz and introduce a plethora of new dance steps like the tango and the rumba. Roots of Rhythm, narrated by Harry Belafonte, explores the origins of Latin music, its growth within Cuba, and finally, its influence on jazz and popular music in the United States.

Click here to read the full review by Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

…Even love of country is not deeper than the love we have together…

The first words from Barbara Sonneborn’s Regret to Inform, sung by a Vietnamese war widow, perfectly characterize this 1998 Oscar nominee for Best Documentary. Centered around the filmmaker’s journey to Vietnam twenty years after an enemy mortar killed her husband, Regret to Inform shares the stories of American and Vietnamese women who lost loved ones to the war.

Click here for the full review by Mark A. Nichols.

Chris Maker has been directing documentaries for over 50 years now, and One Day In The Life Of Andrei Arsenevich is his latest masterwork. The film offers a poetic eulogy to his friend, Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky is internationally known for films such as The Mirror, Solaris, and Stalker, and the viewer meets him in the mid ‘80s as he shoots and edits his last film, The Sacrifice.

As the film begins the viewer meets a dying Tarkovsky, reunited with his family after five years in exile. It appears, at first, that this will be a film about their reunion, but it slowly settles into a mediation on the themes and images of Tarkovsky films. The interlocking of his ideas and obsessions, set beside the stark imagery of his films, slowly reveal the inner core of the artist.
–Read the rest of this entry »

“The era was summed up in the comforting slogan so soothingly repeated by the solid majority of Americans, but-and this significant fact is forgotten-heard with teeth-grinding frustration by the rest: ‘I like IKE.'”

- Dan Wakefield

America has always seemed to provide an outlet for the weird, the different, and the malcontented. In a general way, that meant that a dissatisfied city dweller in the 19th century could pack his family up in a wagon and head out West. But it also meant that anyone dissatisfied with the status quo had an outlet to do his or her own thing. When Roger Williams fell out with the Puritans of Massachusetts, Rhode Island was born; when John Humphrey Noyes envisioned every man being married to every woman, the Oneida community was founded; and when Eugene V. Debs viewed the mainstream political parties as unrepresentative, the Socialist Democratic party was formed.

Of course mainstream America didn’t like these non-conformists, and never missed an opportunity to repress, jail, or snuff them out. Nonetheless, the ideas of these small bands of renegades slowly seeped into the culture, leaving their influence on the next decade or generation.

Betsy Blankenbaker’s New York in the Fifties drops in on one feisty group of dissidents who traded the suburbs, big cars, and fast food of middle America for be-bop jazz, free love, and an allegiance to the written word. Based on Dan Wakefield’s book of the same name, the film focuses on the life and times of a number of poets, artists, and musicians caught in a whirlwind of drunkenness, discovery, and radical politics. New York in the Fifties not only captures a unique place and time, but also offers the missing link between the “silent generation” and the counter culture of the sixties.

Wakefield and company were ready to trade in the American Dream for something richer and wilder than business degrees, corporate jobs, and families, and New York promised a taste of the forbidden. Hailing from middle class backgrounds in middle America, Columbia, the beatniks, and the club scene must have seemed like a lethal dose of salvation. Here, one met at the White Horse Tavern, drank too much, and argued about characters in Hemingway and Faulkner books. Here, one could watch Kerouac read at the Vanguard, catch Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot, or sit in on lectures by C. Wright Mills or Mark Van Doren.

One of the fascinating aspects of New York in the Fifties is that Wakefield and his friends formed a clique that existed separately from the beatniks. Indeed, the Columbia crowd didn’t even like the beats. One group valued educational institutions; the other got kicked out of them. One labored over the written word; the other believed the first draft was the best. One found New York a great adventure; the other searched America’s highways for new experiences. “… I resented being labeled because of my age first as ‘silent’ and suddenly as ‘beat,'” wrote Wakeman, “when my own life and work … had little in common with the life or literary style exemplified by what Seymour Krim called Kerouac’s ‘non-stop gush.'”

New York in the Fifties paints a black and white portrait of a rich historical moment that leaves the viewer wistfully thinking, “Wouldn’t it be fun to travel back to a time that worshipped the written word and cherished be-bop jazz?” But nostalgia is a dangerous drug. It tempts one to juxtapose one’s own era against a golden, and untouchable, era of the past. The 1950s only come out better if one leaves out McCarthy, the birth of the modern conservative movement, the H-bomb, and Pat Boone. Still, it’s fun to take a short respite by watching New York in the Fifties .

Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.
doanechristine@msn.com

Over a 14 year period, workers removed a half million tons of stone, digging as deep as a 120 feet, to carve the four presidents on Mount Rushmore.  The scale was, and is, unprecedented.  Washington’s face spans 60 feet, his nose 20 feet, and each eye, 11 feet; Roosevelt’s mustache spreads another 20 feet, while Lincoln’s mole requires a mere 16 inches.  The total cost, most of it footed by the federal government, was only $989,992.32, more than repaid by the 50 million visitors since 1930.

Mount Rushmore tells the story of the project and the man who made it possible.  Ego, drive, and vision marked Gutzon Borglum.  The intemperate artist turned sculptor made his reputation in the early 1900s fashioning pieces like the bust of Abraham Lincoln that Teddy Roosevelt displayed in the White House.  A commission to carve a Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain in Georgia, however, ended in disaster.  Progress on the 1500-foot memorial proved sluggish and money was always in short supply.  When the backers accused Borglum of mismanaging funds, he destroyed the models for the memorial and walked away from the project.  His reputation reached an all-time low.

Click here for the full review by Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

College sophomores, fundamentalists, and zoologists still enjoy arguing over whether or not humans descended from apes.  Indeed, the teaching of evolution has led millions of god-fearing parents to home-school their children and avoid vacationing in the Galapagos Islands.  To good Baptists, Methodists, and Pentecostals, the question that loomed large during the Scopes’ trial in 1925 hasn’t changed much.

In July of that year Clarence Darrow, famous defense attorney and avowed agnostic, lined up against William Jennings Bryan, three time presidential candidate and three-time loser.   Newspapermen overran the local hotels while hucksters and ministers sold their wares on the street.   WGN radio broadcast the event live and nationwide, and even the cynic and satirist H.L. Mencken showed up for the greatest show in Dayton, Tennessee.

Click here for the full review by Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

It’s an American tradition that compels millions of families to gather ‘round the tube and root for their favorite contestant each year.  Families watch as 51 women, one from each state (and Washington D.C.), parade in evening gowns, bathing suits, and participate in a “talent” contest.  Indeed, as some children aspire to be sports and movie stars, this annual event inspires 10,000 young women to enter 1200 state and local beauty pageants each year in the hopes of becoming Miss America.  Like the Super Bowl and the Emmys, the contest has become part of America’s mythological consciousness, a point of pride and societal longing.   

Click here for the full review by Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

20,300 years old. Frozen solid in the permafrost of Upper Siberia. Protected by reindeer-herding nomads. The Discovery Channel’s Raising the Mammoth (2000) and Land of the Mammoth (2000) trace the excavation and investigation of the Jarkov Mammoth from its discovery in 1997 to its study through present day.

Click here for the full review by Mark Nichols.

“I kind of died somewhere along the way,” says the dignified gentleman in a beret, a sort of Jewish-Beatnik Alistair Cooke. He had gone in search of something that had been missing all his life, and in gaining it, lost a part of himself too.

In 1955, a 34-year-old gay Jewish painter who had grown up in Brooklyn, the son of Polish immigrants, landed a Fulbright scholarship and trekked into the Peruvian Amazon with his sketch pad and camera. Though he would later visit other jungles and tribal peoples in Borneo, Bali, and the Congo, and all but settle with the natives of Asmat, West Papua (the Indonesian part of New Guinea), it was this early trip that most changed his life and inspired a pair of documentary filmmakers to shoot him.

Click here for the full review by David Loftus.

Jazz, a new documentary by Ken Burns, is a celebration of a unique American art form and of the people that made it. Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie—these are the illustrious names that fill the history of jazz. Burns begins at the beginning—in New Orleans—then traces jazz’ history from Dixieland to Avant-Garde, from the East Coast to the West Coast, from predictable ensembles to totally free improvising. Jazz wants to re-introduce the viewer to this grand, uniquely American art form; it wants to remind the viewer just how special a Charles Mingus is; and it wants to remind the viewer of the contributions and sacrifices that African Americans have made to bring this music to the culture.

Click here for the full review by Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

Episode Guide

Made in 1993 with the help of grants from the Austrian Department of Education and Art, and the County of Upper Austria, this film received limited theatrical release in the U.S. five years later and subsequent video sales due to the popularity of the 1997 Hollywood release of “L.A. Confidential”—which not only made up-and-comers of stars Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, but brought the man whose books inspired it to a deservedly larger circle of readers.

Click here for full review by David Loftus

Hoop Dreams wades deep into the murky waters that surround basketball recruiting from high school to college.  As Spike Lee informs a group of players at a basketball camp, they are a commodity to the recruiters and will only be valued as long as they are useful.  To make it, in fact, a player has to be more than good or even great.  They need to be aggressive, subservient to overbearing coaches, exceed academically, and be oblivious to life outside of basketball.  It also helps to have a supportive family that is willing to sacrifice money, time, and personal needs to make sure you make it.  That such devotion is a perversion of human nature, or that it coldly leaves the less than perfect behind, is beside the point.  That’s the way it is.

One of the fascinating aspects of Hoop Dreams is the way it spontaneously unfolds, the viewer never quite sure what will happen next.  The film follows two young basketball players, Arthur and William, at home, at school, and on the basketball court.  The filmmakers have chosen two players who may go far, but no one can be sure.  Director Steve James expresses a certain faith, nonetheless, that an interesting and meaningful story will develop.  This approach gives the film an open structure: although the film stops when Arthur and William finish high school, it could have easily followed them through college and beyond. 

The casual unfolding of the film also helps James achieve a great deal of depth, building layer after layer of meaning.  Arthur attends St. Joseph’s High School on a partial scholarship, a school that offers him a better opportunity to develop as a ball player.  Soon, however, his family can no longer afford even partial payments and Arthur is sent back to his neighborhood school.  The viewer, at this point, probably makes a moral judgment about schools that toy with the lives of athletes when it is in their interest, only to drop them when it isn’t.  This state of affairs, however, becomes cloudier due to the complications within Arthur’s family.  His father leaves, and only later do we find out that he has developed a drug habit, explaining the lack of funds for St. Joseph’s.  This comes as a surprise because the father is well-spoken, and seems to accurately understand the difficulty of his son’s potential success.  This layering of meanings shatters stereotypes and assumptions.

While William’s family situation seems more stable, it is far from uncomplicated.  His father, a car dealer who has left his family, attempts to renew his relationship with William in the wake of his success.  His older brother, once a basketball player with potential, has taken the role of father and advice giver upon himself.  His endless admonishments and recriminations toward William become overbearing, but he remains sympathetic because of his own dire plight.  Basketball, his one hope to reach beyond his immediate environment, has left him psychologically scarred, and he now seems destined to live out a life filled with dead-end jobs.  William, perhaps because of the pressures from those around him, seems to continually underachieve, perhaps afraid of risking too much, failing, and becoming a carbon copy of his brother.

Hoop Dreams lasts for three hours but it is doubtful that the viewer will notice the length.  Instead, having developed strong ties to Arthur and William, viewers will probably find themselves wishing they could follow both young men into adulthood.  This doesn’t mean that the viewer enjoys everything that happens in the film. The viewer would like both men to succeed, but their social handicaps and the cutthroat tactics of recruiting tinge the dream with dark shadows.   Hoop Dreams is a complex film that deeply explores the hopes and pitfalls of inner-city life, leaving the viewer with a number of troubling questions about the future of thousands of young men like Arthur and William. 

Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.
doanechristine@msn.com

Credits

Steve James—Director/Producer/Editor
Frederick Marx—Producer/Editor
Peter Gilbert—Producer/ Cinematography
Gordon Quinn—Executive Producer
Catherine Allan—Executive Producer
Bill Haugse—Editor
Ben Sidran—Music Composer

It takes little imagination to understand why Roko and Adrian Belic had problems financing their film. It would focus on a type of music—throat-singing—that few had ever heard of, and be filmed in Tuva, an isolated region near Mongolia that wasn’t even on the map. Worse still, the camera would follow one Paul Pena—a relatively unknown blind blues singer who had taught himself throat-singing—as he interacted with Tuvan culture. The brothers weren’t particularly surprised that no one was interested, but neither were they dissuaded. So with little money and a rag-tag crew who wanted to work on the film for nothing, they booked a flight to Tuva.

Click here for the full review by Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

Nearly everyone has heard of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and probably knows a child who has it. This isn’t surprising since approximately six million children, or two per every classroom, are currently taking stimulants to modify behavior. It is also likely that many have been in heated debates about ADHD and medication. Are doctors too quick to prescribe medication? Are we replacing discipline with medication? Will medication change a child’s personality? Are the pharmaceutical companies unfairly promoting the use of Ritalin and Adderall?

Click here for the full review by Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

Frontline received unlimited access to the Santa Clara, California juvenile court system to study four cases over the course of a year. The cases of Shawn, Jose, Marquese, and Manny are presented against the backdrop of changing attitudes about how to prosecute juvenile offenders. California, for instance, was in the process of considering Proposition 21, a law that would insure that many juvenile offenders would be tried as adults.

Shawn is from a middle class neighborhood in Los Altos. His crime: attempting to kill his father one Christmas night. Jose, often homeless, has been arrested for a gang related beating death. Manny, previously convicted of rape, attempted—with fellow gang members—to murder four people. Marquese is the only non-violent offender of the four. He is being charged with theft and already has seven other felonies on his record. Two possibilities exist for each case: being tried as an adult, or remaining in the juvenile system.

Defenders fight to keep their clients in the juvenile system. The juvenile system seems less harsh, with more possibilities for rehabilitation. Prosecutors fight to have them tried as adults by asking the hard questions: is it really possible that Shawn was sleepwalking when he attempted to kill his father? Doesn’t Jose’s involvement in a brutal beating death cross a certain line? Don’t Manny and Marquese’s repeated infractions show that rehabilitation has failed in the past?

Juvenile cases are complicated by the fact that half of the offenders come from dysfunctional families. Jose, Marquese, and Shawn have parents with substance abuse problems. Jose has often lived on the street and Manny found his only sense of belonging in a gang. Even when the juvenile system steps in, they may place the youth back into an unbalanced family situation. Even when the system seems to help someone, it provides only the barest of safety nets afterwards. How does the reformed youth, for instance, get a job when they have a felony record?

Frontline has offered a penetrating look at four youths, one juvenile court system, and the general problem of juvenile justice. During the filming, California passed Proposition 21, legislation that would probably have altered each of these cases. The legislation has left judges with less room to consider special circumstances for violent offenders, and assures that many youths will be tried as adults. While this change may represent current social attitudes toward juvenile crimes, it is far from clear that this legislation will better aid the rehabilitation of young offenders. Juvenile Justice offers little hope for youths like Shawn, Jose, Marquese, and Manny in the future.

Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

doanechristine@msn.com

When undercover Detective Frank Lyga saw a gun pointed toward him from another car window, he drew his weapon and shot twice, killing the driver. Soon he knew that he was in big trouble. The occupant had been Kevin Gaines, an off-duty police officer and also a member of the LAPD. To make matters more explosive, Gaines was an African American. In the wake of the Rodney King and O.J. Simpson trials, the situation was ripe for controversy.

The story of corruption within the LAPD will strike many as a contemporary version of L.A. Confidential. It is the old story of dishonest police officers on the take, abusing their power, and living beyond their means. Unlike L.A. Confidential, however, this story is real. For the past several years the LAPD has been involved in a massive intra-department scandal involving a road rage shooting death, connections to the infamous Death Row Records, and theft of confiscated narcotics. Through interviews with police officers, district attorneys, and community activists, FRONTLINE pieces together this strange and disturbing tale of present-day corruption on the LAPD.

Click here for the full review by Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

Recent blackouts in California have made national headlines. To many people, this situation is a little difficult to comprehend—California is hardly a poor state. Even more odd, the problem only promises to get worse during the upcoming summer heat. While the impact of too little electricity and rising utility bills would seem to have vast implications for the economy, the White House has shown little inclination to get involved. FRONTLINE gathers the complex strands of Blackout by talking to Governor Gray Davis of California, Vice President Dick Cheney, federal and state officials, and a number of Texas energy brokers from Enron, Duke Energy, and El Paso.

Click here for the full review by Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

From the Bronx to the Buddha is the story of Mike DeStefano or “Mikee D,” stand-up comic, former drug addict and gangster, and AIDS spokesperson, “survivor.” Mike DeStefano is a guy whose face you might see in a Spike Lee “joint,” except with depth. And it’s his sincere depth of character that carries this hour-long docu-“stand-up”-drama.

Viewers do not know many Mike DeStefano-types as the focal point of documentaries. Usually they are in works of fiction, as shallow tough-guys, Italian-stallions, and here, there is the real thing. His crass and blunt nature is sincere and does not appear overdone. Later, however, when his stand-up and what we are seeing as “real-life” and behind-the-scenes overlap, the piece becomes somewhat redundant. Much of the stand-up is race-jokes that you’ve heard already. Bronx to the Buddha, at times, seems transparent, like you know what is going to happen from the onset, but as it proceeds, it and DeStefano mature.

The most compelling part of the film is definitely the final half-hour. DeStafano, a long term non-progresser or LTNP has seemingly triumphed over the AIDS virus without medication and without treatment. He speaks of Buddhism assisting in his survival and of his rejuvenated spirit.

I wish that the lives of his wife and best friend who succumbed to the AIDS virus could have entered into the piece more, which would have made his triumph even more extraordinary. There is a too-brief mention of his wife, herself a drug addict, and it takes too long to get there.

Stylistically, there are a few scenes with a psychologist that are, at best, campy. The roaming “man-on-the-street” camera in which DeStefano himself stars, engaging himself with passerbys in comedic skits are interesting. It is a unique experience to have the subject of a biographical documentary take on a role that is clearly more than just talking head and biographical footnotes; he exists as a character and as a faux-producer.

Overall, DeStefano is a fascinating, dominant character. His experiences have warranted his crassness and searing personality. And his triumphant nature brings the audience along nicely. He will remind you of so many of your favorite Italian-American characters- a la Tony Soprano and the list goes on and on. “Mikee D”, as he is called throughout the piece, is tough and endearing.

Sushama Austin
Sushamaaustin@hotmail.com

Friends Forever, the feature-length debut of Ben Wolfinsohn, follows bandmates and professed “Friends Forever”, Josh and Nate, as they travel across America, spreading the news that rock-and-roll is not dead. Or maybe it is. Or maybe it’s just dying. To be honest, after three viewings, I’m not sure if Friends Forever is trying to save rock-and-roll or kill it altogether. What is clear is that, no matter what, it’s going to go out kicking and screaming.

Click here to read the full review by Mark Nichols.

A nyone who has done competitive distance running finds it a challenge to be objective about Steve Prefontaine. He was the Muhammad Ali of the sport: a popularizer, a matinee idol, a big mouth who made promises and usually delivered on them.

He had an aggressive style both on and off the track, running with fierce intensity in the middle of the race to try to break faster runners because he didn’t have that great a final “kick.” When he took the national two-mile record in high school, he shaved seven seconds off the previous mark, and eventually captured seven American records between 2,000 and 10,000 meters. No US runner before or since has had the best times at so many different distances.

Click here for the full review by David Loftus.

After 45 years, cinema verité continues to inspire awe and heated debate. The movement began simultaneously in a number of countries—France, England, Canada, and the United States—and has been called a number of things—free cinema, direct cinema, and observational documentary. A number of important filmmakers came out of the movement—D.A. Pennebaker, Albert Maysles, and Jean Rouch—and a number of memorable films—Don’t Look Back, Salesman, and Chronicle of a Summer—stand as the movement’s achievements. Cinema Verité surveys the movement by talking to a number of its practitioners.

The greatest strength of Cinema Verité is that it has gained access to the founders who remain more than willing to talk about the movement. Robert Drew discusses handheld cameras and mobile equipment—tools filmmakers take for granted today—that allowed the filmmaker to follow the story as it developed, shoot without a script, and to gain closer access to the subject(s). Films like Primary (1960) provided unheard of intimacy with candidates John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, while Crisis (1963) put the viewer in the midst of a tense showdown between the Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Governor George Wallace over segregation. The looser structure of these films also struck many people as more “real.”

Unfortunately, Cinema Verité only allows a short amount of time for each interview, making it is difficult to gain a sense of the differences within the movement and how the movement developed. The fairly sharp difference between filmmakers like Pennebaker, who remained a passive observer behind the camera, and Rouch, who directly questioned his subjects, is never really explored. The makers of this film seem surprised when Fred Wiseman bluntly states that being objective—a stated goal for many verité practitioners—is impossible. Instead of pursuing this, they let it pass. There is also a strange sequence that connects cinema verité to contemporary fiction films like The Blair Witch Project. While the connection is easy to identify, an interview with the makers of this movie adds little to a discussion about a documentary film style.

Peter Wintonick’s film will serve as a good introduction for those unfamiliar with the movement and offer a chance to see clips from classic cinema verité documentaries. It does a good job explaining the technical innovations that allowed for new methods of filming and provides a good survey of the important players within the movement. The coverage is balanced in that it reviews filmmakers from a number of countries and includes women and at least one African-American filmmaker. It fails, however, to offer an in-depth portrait, or to allow any critical point of view to enter into the fray. Cinema Verité leaves the spectator with an interesting series of interviews that only provide a brief outline of an important movement within documentary film.

Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.
doanechristine@msn.com

Credits
Peter Wintonick—Director/Sound/Editor
Eric Michel—Producer
Sally Bochner—Executive Producer
Doris Girard– Executive Producer

On January 20th, George W. Bush will bring the Clinton presidency to a close when he takes the oath of office and becomes the 43rd president of the United States. While the press is busy trying to understand what kind of president Bush will become, historians will begin to review Clinton’s eight-year tenure and ask the central question: what will be his legacy? Frontline begins this look back on January 16th when it airs The Clinton Years, a steady look at Clinton’s presidency through the eyes of those who served him.

Click here for the full review by Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

For the curious traveler of Virginia’s back roads, there’s a buffalo farm not too far from the sleepy town of Riner, Virginia, only a few miles away from the Blue Ridge Parkway. The buffalo farm isn’t much different than a number of dairy farms in the area. The only real difference is that there’s been no attempt to rid the grazing land of clumps of brush and trees. In fact, the buffalo seem to like climbing up and down the steep incline that leads to a small stream. This side trip can even take on an air of spirituality, because seeing buffalo, especially in the East, is so rare that one is more likely to have seen one on an old nickel. Here, after all, is a small herd of buffalo thriving, despite everything the federal government did to commit genocide on the species. But the good vibe pretty much vanishes when one realizes that the owners also run a small restaurant in Riner. There, the curious tourist can experience the great American symbol up close—by eating him.

Click here for the full review by Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

When a jackrabbit gets addicted to road-running, it is only a matter of time before he gets smashed-and when a journalist turns into a political junkie he will sooner or later start raving and babbling in print about things that only a person who has Been There can possibly understand.”

- Hunter S. Thompson

 

Filmmaker, muckraker, and liberal activist Michael Moore dares to take his camera where no one has gone before. Anyone familiar with Roger & Me or TV Nation will know his style; everyone else can learn about it by watching one or both seasons of The Awful Truth. Moore’s modus operandi as a public advocate includes:

a. Find someone whose doing something that pisses him off.
b. Visit the offending party at their home or office.
c. Confront the person in the most offensive manner possible.

Like Sinclair Lewis at the turn of the last centaury or Hunter Thompson at the beginning of the 1972 presidential election, Moore sees himself as a renegade on a quest. “No one else will tell you the truth,” he seems to say. “But I will.” When Moore is firing on all pistons, his creative rough & tumble is worthy of Swift.

Watching a few episodes of The Awful Truth reminds one of what 60 Minutes might have looked like if Saturday Night Live had produced it. In one scene, Moore travels to Ken Starr’s home with a small group clad in Colonial clothing. Like the citizens of Salem, they are here to show Starr how to conduct an economical witch trial. Crackers, the crime fighting chicken, travels to Disney World to have a heart-to-heart with Mickey about unfair labor practices, while the Sodomobile, a pink van loaded with gay men, travels from state to state fighting for homosexual rights. These particular scenes are very funny and make great theater.

Of course conservatives will hate The Awful Truth as much as liberals hate Firing Line. They might even be so rude as to point out that Moore never deals with real content (as if Buckley did). But The Awful Truth isn’t a news magazine or an exercise in investigative reporting. Mostly it’s a good excuse to harass companies that pollute, fail to pay insurance claims, and sell cigarettes to kids. In one scene Sal, the Bill Collector, visits the UPS office to interrogate a couple of VPs over a supposed contract violation. Even though Sal isn’t real, the two stiff shirts defend their contract to Sal, on camera. The viewer never receives enough information to understand the UPS contract, much less if it’s been broken. And it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that the two guys with the ties don’t have better sense than to talk to Sal, the Bill Collector, making both executives, and UPS, look like idiots.

The Awful Truth does have one or two drawbacks, even for the bleeding heart crowd. Moore is front-and-center a little too often, and eventually his self-righteous whine grows tiresome. This is especially true when Moore pursues the bad guys and gals as opposed to a personality like Sal. When this happens, a typical episode runs as follows.

a. Moore delivers the opening monolog.
b. Moore institutes a new program called “work care” and illustrates its usefulness.
c. Moore delivers a second monolog.
d. Moore begins a campaign to deliver TVs to Afghanistan.

With this set-up, The Awful Truth begins to look like a program about Michael Moore.

The second and worst offence is that even when Moore is interviewing someone he’s sympathetic with, that person may be the butt of a joke when the footage runs on the program. When he talks to a number of “locals” in a sketch about the crazies who live in Montana, their answers are meant to seem odd and funny. Bill Nichols asks a similar question of an earlier Moore film. “Is it all right to make Miss Michigan look foolish by asking for her opinion about local economic conditions …in one scene from Roger and Me?” In both cases, Moore seems to make an ethical breech by ridiculing innocents.

Liberals will find solace in both seasons of The Awful Truth, because TV programs from a liberal perspective are a rare find. It will help take the sting out of an unfair world as well as balance out that windy guy on the radio named Rush and the right-wing cadre of reporters on the Fox News channel. Even liberals need a little red meat now and then. Sitting down and watching an episode in the evening could be the perfect antidote to the latest calamity from Bush II. Michael Moore sooths us by demonstrating that no one, be they high, low, or in-between, can escape from The Awful Truth.

Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.
doanechristine@msn.com

Both seasons of The Awful Truth are available at www.docurama.com.