Back to Sundance for one final review

Most of you probably know John Krasinski as the loveable Jim Halpert on the American version of The Office. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is Krasinski’s screenwriting and directorial debut, in which he adapts David Foster Wallace’s 1999 collection of short stories into a sometimes funny, sometimes intense story of one woman’s attempts to understand the underlying motives of men’s behavior. Sara is a doctoral candidate in anthropology who, after her boyfriend Ryan (Krasinski) leaves her for another woman, focuses her anthropological dissertation on discovering what makes men act the way they do. She does this by conducting a series of one-on-one interviews, in which her subjects reveal a more complicated set of motives for their behavior than she had expected. The story is told mostly through nonlinear flashbacks, which tend to convolute the message, but was overall very interesting and well acted. That is, until the last scene, in which Sara demands that Ryan elaborate on his reasons for leaving her. Krasinski’s diatribe sounds as if he is reading directly from one of Wallace’s stories, word for word. It’s an entirely unrealistic conversation that sounds like a bad stump speech. I would have had an overall positive impression of this film, but this last scene really ruined the whole thing. Honestly, Krasinski’s performance was so bad, I don’t think I’ll even watch The Office in the same way from now on.

Back to reality…

As the number of (mostly civilian) casualties rises in the aftermath of the Israeli aggression in the already ravaged Gaza Strip, personal stories of those affected by Israel’s brutality are emerging. On Democracy Now! this morning, Amer Shurrab tells the heart-wrenching story of how his two brothers were killed in an example of the Israeli Army’s indiscriminate killing of civilians in their ruthless invasion of Gaza. I urge you to listen to this segment if you want to gain a better perspective of what happened on the ground.

Also, as Israel denies the use of white phosphorous (a war crime if used in dense civilian populations), the U.N. has released pictures of the white phosphorous bombing of one of their Relief and Works Agency compounds, killing two Palestinian boys ages five and seven. Israel has said they will perform an internal investigation to determine if their forces used white phosphorous illegally and if war crimes were perpetrated. I’m no fortune teller, but I can, with certainty, tell you the results of these internal investigations. The Israeli Army will be exonerated, and what’s more, the real investigations of international human rights organizations will be ignored by Israel like so many U.N. resolutions.

Links! And a comical film review!

As you may have noticed, I’ve added some links to the blog, and I encourage our other contributors to do the same. McSweeney’s is a place for writers to exorcise their satiric demons; The Huffington Post, well, it’s The Huffington Post; Fuck You Penguin is a blog that tells cute animals what is what; Democracy Now! is the premiere independent news site on the web (I recommend daily listening); Crossfit is a kick ass daily work out that will put you in the best shape of your life if you follow it with some regularity; and, while last on the list, first in my heart, Wise Ax (you know you want to read it!)

Now on to the Sundance movie review of the day. At first, I was going to write about Afghan Star, but you can already find an excellent review and trailer at Wise Ax. I will, however, take this opportunity to review the short film that preceded it called Theresa’s Story. Some of you may have read my review of My Surfing Lucifer at the end of Saturday’s rant, in which I now feel I spoke too soon when I said it was, “the worst thing that has ever graced the big screen.” Teresa’s Story - now this “film” is not only a steaming pile of wasted resources, it seems like its sole purpose is to annoy. Watching it was like having an epileptic orangutan shave away at my soul with a cheese grater. The entire “film” (it hurts me to even use that word, because it denotes at least an attempt to create something artistic or socially redeeming) consists of a split screen of a child sitting on a staircase telling an obnoxiously overlapping, incoherent story punctuated by random, shrill screams and shouts. It’s basically an intensive case study of everything a child should NOT do, unless they want to get smacked upside the head by an attentive parent. My only solace after seeing this is hopefully, this is the filmmaker’s child, and that he or she will be tortured by this little “artist” until the day they die.

Slovenia is shaped like chicken

The film Big River Man follows Martin Strel in his quest to swim the length of the Amazon river. Strel, however, is far from what you would picture as an endurance athlete. Infamous in his native Slovenia, Strel is 53 years old, overweight (5-foot-9, 253 pounds), and drinks two bottles of wine a day. His previous accomplishments include swimming the Mississippi, the Danube, and the Yangtze, all to bring attention to the world’s polluted waterways. During his swims, Strel has encountered deadly rapids and whirlpools, water predators, and toxic pollution and bacteria (including floating corpses in the Yangtze). Strel’s latest adventure is led by his son, who serves as Strel’s manager, logistician, promoter, and as the swimmer himself in interviews with Western media. Strel’s chosen navigator is a young, American friend of his, whose river navigating skills are limited to finding fishing holes in his native Wisconsin. Over the course of 66 days, history's longest, most perilous swim takes its toll on Strel mentally as well as physically as the filmmakers deftly draw the audience into the world of these colorful characters and their extraordinary expedition.

Sundance review #2

The Glass House

The title of the movie references a center in Tehran started by Marjaneh Halati, an Iranian expatriate schooled in London. Marjaneh returned to Iran to start the center, whose social workers, teachers, and staff psychologist teach young, lower class Iranian women the skills they need to enter the work force and become independent. The movie follows a handful of the girls through their eighteen months of training, probing into their private lives as well as their time at the center.

Sussan, beaten by her temporary husband and raped by her older brother, finds it hard to accept the concept of self reliance, and believes security can only come from being wed. Sixteen year old Mitra works to break away from her existence as cook and maid to her verbally and physically abusive father and brother through her writing. Nazila is fiercely independent, finding an outlet in writing rap songs and recording them in an underground studio (women singing in public is illegal in Iran).

Overall, The Glass House is a fascinating look into Iran’s fiercely patriarchal social structure and the traditional place that women hold in this Islamic theocracy. Check out the trailer below.

Let’s talk about movie theater etiquette.

A wide variety of people attend the Sundance Film Festival (including yours truly and Mrs. Libertine). While many are movie fans, anxious to take advantage of the opportunity to see documentaries and feature films that they may otherwise never get a chance to see, it seems that some come merely to annoy the general Sundance populous. For those people, I have put together a short list of movie etiquette.

1. Even if you think you’re more important than everyone else standing in line in front of you, it is still considered a common courtesy to say, “Pardon me” or “Excuse me” when you blithely push others aside in order to tell the ticket taker that you have to get into the screening (and attempt to push past them as well, forcing them to chase after you, thus, leaving the rest of us peasants waiting even longer).

2. The same applies when, after the tickets are taken and people are moving in an orderly fashion into the theater, you push past those in front of you, only to stop dead in your tracks, bottlenecking the entire procession, while having some sort of extended discussion with their girlfriend about where you should sit. Those who know me know that I am no xenophobe (or Euracist?); however, I would like to take this opportunity to say the following: HEY EUROPEANS! LEARN SOME FUCKING MANNERS! Every year you I’m-so-cool-and-important-I-wear-my-sunglasses-inside douchebags think you own the fucking place and butt in line in front of me or throw your $3000 ski coat on my lap if I’m sitting next to you while yammering to each other for the entire fucking movie. If I spoke your language I would tell you to SHUTTEN DER FUCKEN UPPEN!, because you don’t seem to respond to the more subtle REALLY!?! stare. Let’s move on.

3. If the movie starts at 3:15, and for whatever reason you get there when the movie is just about to start and the theater is pretty much full (for example, you’re last in the wait list line, or you’ve never been to one o’ them picture shows in a big fancy movie theater so you don’t know you have to get there before the movie actually starts to get a seat), the fact is, YOU’LL HAVE TO SIT IN A CRAPPY SEAT! and/or split from your companion and find single seats! So, in the interest of saving other moviegoers some time and frustration, here’s what to do: (1) If the uber-patient Sundance volunteers tell you that the only seats are in the front section and stand blocking the access to the upper section to emphasize the point, don’t walk to the other side of the theater and spend five minutes wandering around the upper section looking for a seat, because the volunteer ALREADY SAID THERE WEREN’T ANY SEATS UP THERE! So guess what – YOU HAVE TO SIT IN A CRAPPY SEAT! Accept your fate. If you wanted to get a good seat, you would have planned ahead like the rest of us. (2) If you have to separate from you movie going companion because there are only single seats left, don’t sit down and immediately start asking the people around you if they would like to trade seats with your wife/husband/girlfriend (or whoever would go to the movies with an over bearing, uncouth motherfucker like yourself). This breeds animosity among those who were, again, forward thinking enough to get to the theater on time. And (3), just because you have put your Blackberry on silent mode, doesn’t mean it’s any less distracting when you are sitting in front of me, constantly text messaging for the entire movie. News flash – YOU ARE NOT THAT FUCKING IMPORTANT! GET OVER YOURSELF YOU POMPOUS, SELF-CENTERED JAGG-OFF! I HOPE YOUR FUCKING THUMBS FALL OFF SO YOU’RE NO LONGER ABLE TO HOLD A FORK AND FEED YOURSELF AND SLOWLY STARVE TO DEATH! And when that happens, I shall text you and say LOL! UR 1 S2PD FKR! CNT W8 TILL UR DED!

OK, now onto the first movie review, more to come.

The first short we saw at Sundance yesterday was called, “My Surfing Lucifer”, and let me just say, this could possibly be the worst thing that has ever graced the big screen. This abbreviated look at an upcoming documentary about Bunker Spreckels, a teenage surfing phenom turned millionaire Los Angeles party boy who died at age 27 in 1977, is like a poorly thought out Hunter S. Thompson vignette. In it we get to see Bunker surfing, smoking, big game hunting, parading around in tight jeans, and yes, urinating (full frontal, now that's art!). The score (if you could call it that) is straight from a bad 1950's sci-fi movie, and the psychedelic video effects are just pointless. Really, crap is too kind a word. It was directed by experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger, and let me just say, Mr. Anger should experiment instead with mixing bleach and ammonia and save the rest of us from anymore of his cinematic disasters.

Barak Obama on the Inauguration

In this short video, Obama outlines some of the inaugural events to take place next week and how you can get involved. My favorite is that you can text 'open' to 56333 for news, transportation updates, and way to participate in the inauguration.