Cynical Cinema

There is actually a controversy brewing in Canada over the Canadian porn channel. Like, there isn’t already porn all over TV and the internet. Kids are just as likely to be exposed to porn now as they were before. The real controversy ought to be over whether anyone really wants to see Canadian porn. Ever. The series Webdreams makes a good case for Canadian porn being less interesting than any other kind of porn, but still profitable. After all, it’s naked women and men and it’s porn. It will make money. It costs eleven dollars to produce, and makes at least twenty-two dollars when it’s sold. Simple.

But at the same time, I really don’t understand the appeal of a show like Webdreams. It’s a show that chronicles the behind-the-scenes aspects of the adult entertainment industry, mostly here in Canada. It follows people trying to break into the adult industry. Season three follows two guys trying to get into producing gay porn, a guy who has starred in several movies but is moving on to be a director, and an internet bondage girl who wants to become more mainstream. Make the slightly bigger bucks, you see. So…what’s the audience for this show? I understand that some people are fascinated with porn. But they are simply fascinated with the porn itself, are they not? Do they really care about what happens behind the scenes? Are they really pulling for some no-name internet porn chick to make it to the big time? Am I missing something here?

It strikes me that people want to see actual porn. And as I’m sure we’re all aware, there is porn everywhere. The only people who would watch this show are the ones hoping to catch a glimpse of the actual porn in action. And since those glimpses are few and far between…why bother? I’ve just watched episode one of season three, and it made me irritated. And that’s all. This show is staggeringly boring. And the third season begins tonight at 10:00 p.m. Eastern on Showcase.

Alliance Films is releasing Jane Goodall:  When Animals Talk today, September 2nd, on DVD.  This is another DVD that comes from the people at Animal Planet, one that features Jane Goodall, famous for her 40 years working with chimpanzees.  And she talks to animals.  Like chimpanzees.  It’s easy to roll one’s eyes when we see Goodall beginning a speech by making chimpanzee noises, and it’s also easy to tune out when we see people talking about their pets and how they seem to sense when daddy’s getting home.  Yeah yeah yeah.  They’re animals.  We get it.  Pets are not interesting to me.  Show me a komodo dragon that knows when your husband is getting home.  And waits in his bushes.  THAT would be interesting.

But then there are the creatures that are fascinating.  There are killer whales that actually beach themselves in order to eat sea lions, and in doing so they establish a dialogue with the man who has been studying them for years.  After they rip sea lions to shreds, he goes in the water and plays with them!  (I would rather have seen them eating more sea lions, myself…that was pretty cool.)  Then there is the parrot that not only speaks, but actually understands speech, has conversations with people, and may have a telepathic bond with his owner.  (You have to see this bird to believe it.)  And then there are the elephants, the rats, the whales and…more pets.

Which means that more than half of this DVD is interesting.  Whales and elephants and rats and their methods of communicating with each other and with us are fascinating.  Cats are not.  Dogs are not.  If only this documentary had stayed away from commen house pets, it would be great.  As it is, it’s just decent.  But that parrot alone makes this worth checking out!

I have one complaint with Pete Seeger:  The Power of Song, and I’m going to get it off my chest first.  Pete Seeger is a folk singer who is mostly forgotten today.  You might remember Bruce Springsteen’s recent album, The Seeger Sessions.  Springsteen is a huge Seeger fan and appears in this documentary.  So too does Bob Dylan.  And here’s what bugs me.  One of the biggest stories in Pete Seeger lore involves Bob Dylan.  At the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Bob Dylan went electric, creating a massive controversy.  According to legend, Pete Seeger was so incensed when Dylan plugged in his electric guitar that he stalked the backstage area with an axe, looking to chop through the power cables running his amp.  He apparently had to be physically restrained.  But Bob Dylan appears in this documentary, and there is no mention of this event!  None!  This is one, as a Dylan fanatic, I really wanted to hear about.

But, that really is my only complaint.  There are other Pete Seeger stories, legendary stories, that are explored in full detail in this film.  Like the story about the Vietnam veteran who showed up at one of Seeger’s concerts with the intent to murder him, but after hearing Seeger’s songs and understanding them for the first time, he broke down, didn’t go through with his plan, and told Seeger that his life had been changed.  And that was the kind of man and the kind of artist Seeger was.  This documentary traces his activism and music through his early days, through his pop star days, all the way up to the present day where he still lives with his wife of what must be sixty years at least, and continues his activism even in his 80s.  It’s an incredible portrait of an American patriot, a patriot every bit as great as Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry David Thoreau.

There are some impressive interview appearances from the likes of Dylan and Springsteen, as well as Natalie Maines from the Dixie Chicks, Joan Baez, Bonnie Raitt and Arlo Guthrie.  And some of Seeger’s great songs are featured as well - “Stickin’ To The Union”, “If I Had a Hammer”, “We Shall Overcome”, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”, and “Big Muddy”.  There is footage from Seeger’s appearance in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he refused to testify and faced jail time.  His activism is traced right up to the present day, and another impressive moment is when he built a boat and lobbied (successfully) to clean up the Hudson River.

This is the best DVD out this week, from Alliance Films.  Check it out.

The Jeff Corwin Experience is a show on Animal Planet starring a Crocodile Hunter type guy who visits exotic locations, seeking out exotic animals, then picks them up and shows them to the camera.  The first season comes out on DVD tomorrow, September 2nd, from Alliance Films, and starts out in Borneo.  Corwin finds elephants, sea turtles, orangutans, snakes, bats, creepy-looking proboscis monkeys, and tree frogs.  He then moves on to India for episode 2, where he finds cobras and all kinds of other exotic wildlife.  The animals are cool, the locations are cool, and the episodes feature as many animals as possible.  As Season One continues through Arizona, Alaska, Indonesia, Thailand, Madagascar and the Galapagos, we get to meet many animals we would ordinarily not get to see.

But the show isn’t great.  And the problem is the host.  Jeff Corwin is a likeable guy.  He kind of looks (and acts) like Ryan Reynolds, only without the really funny stuff.  Just the kind-of funny stuff.  But he talks too much.  He does a few set-pieces that are meant to be funny, but really we just want to see more animals.  Enough about you, already!  Let’s get to the proboscis monkeys!  That being said, this show is certainly good for kids.  They will be entertained, and at the same time they will learn about the natural world and perhaps something about conservation as well.

ESPN Inside Access DVDs are incredible.  ESPN takes absolutely every bit of footage they can find of a sports star and crams it all onto one DVD.  In this case, that star is Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees.  SportsCentury shows, interviews, highlight reels, Chris Meyers.  It’s all here on yet another amazingly complete package.  So complete that there are some obscure items that no one but the Derek Jeter rabid fanatics of the world would ever want to see.  Jeter cross-dressing on the set of Saturday Night Live.  Jeter being interviewed by Freddie Prinze Jr.  Highlights from the Triple A all-star game the year before he was called up to the major leagues.  And a feature on the “World’s Sexiest Athlete”.

All in all, this is as complete a collection as you will ever find on an athlete, and Derek Jeter is certainly deserving.  His best highlights are truly unbelievable, his best plays seem to be reserved for the biggest stages - Championship Series, World Series, this is where he shines brightest.  But in the end, it’s not as exciting as it should be.  And that’s because Derek Jeter, the athlete, is sensational.  Derek Jeter, the person, is boring.  He’s the stereotypical, “one game at a time”, “110 percent” quote machine.  His interviews are boring.  His quotes are boring.  The interviews with his teammates and coaches hint at the possibility that there is more to him.  He flips out on teammates when they need to be called out.  He is an aggressive team leader and a passionate personality.  Behind closed doors.  But we sure don’t get to see that.

A great DVD jammed with information, this is an exciting look at an amazing baseball player.  But that’s about it.  And after more than two hours of various features showing just how boring Derek Jeter really is in public, I was really hoping that ESPN comes out with something more interesting soon.  Like David Ortiz.  Or Barry Bonds.  Or - especially - Manny Ramirez.  THAT guy is entertaining!  Derek Jeter:  Inside Access comes out tomorrow, from Alliance Films.

Paramount Home Entertainment is coming out with a movie called Chicago 10 on August 26th. It’s a very strange take on the famous Democratic National Convention held in Chicago in 1968, and the anti-war demonstrations at that convention that led to riots, arrests, and a really bizarre trial. Chicago 10 is basically a documentary about that trial, featuring archival footage of Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Bobby Seale, and the rest of the people involved with the trial. Interviews with them at the time, footage of Hoffman and David Dellinger at speaking engagements, and of course footage of the demonstrations, the police response, and the riots that took place. What happened after the disturbance in 1968 was that eight people were put on trial for “crossing state lines for the purposes of inciting a riot”. The trial really was a farce, and film maker Brett Morgen wants to accentuate this by creating a cartoon representation of the trial itself.

Which means that between the archival footage and the documentary pieces, we get a re-enactment of the Chicago trial by cartoon characters. They look like the people they represent, they talk like the people they represent, and Morgen has recruited some big names to help voice these characters. Jeffrey Wright, Amy Adams, Hank Azaria, Nick Nolte, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schrieber and many others participated in this film. Which is impressive, and really adds punch to the courtroom scenes, which are taken directly from the transcripts of the trial itself. A trial which saw the judge order Bobby Seale, the national leader of the Black Panther Party, to be bound and gagged right in the courtroom because of his frequent outbursts. This was an absolutely crazy time in North American history, and this trial really encapsulates what was craziest about it. And this movie provides a really interesting look into that trial.

Interesting, but not as interesting as it should be. This trial and these events in Chicago in the late sixties fascinate me, and I wanted to learn everything I could. And in watching this movie, I learned an awful lot. But the style of the movie and the “artsy” nature of the animated segments don’t really help. It’s better than one of those cheesy “courtroom re-enactment” scenes from other, worse documentaries, and I frankly don’t know what I would have preferred to see in it’s place. But the style of the movie becomes overpowering, and I found myself getting distracted from the actual story by the animation. It isn’t a major fault, because this movie is still impressive and thorough, but it prevents the film from being a great one.

Where In The World is Osama Bin Laden comes out August 26th from Alliance Films, and it’s a terrific premise for a movie. After watching The Hunting Party, and witnessing the amazingly easy capture of Radovan Karadzic a month ago in Belgrade, it isn’t actually a giant stretch to think that one guy with a camera crew could conceivably find the man. Or at the very least come pretty close. And certainly one guy with a camera crew who interviews the people closest to Bin Laden would bring out some information as to his whereabouts that would come as a shock to the general public. After all, it has been SEVEN years since September 11th. SEVEN. And has anyone, anywhere, come within sniffing distance of this guy? At the very least, a movie like this one will remind us that Public Enemy Number One is still at large. Like, hey! You remember that guy, who did the thing with the planes? Yeah, we still don’t have him. And perhaps we’ve stopped trying.

And, at the very least, that’s what this movie does. And that’s ALL it’s good for. Morgan Spurlock, the man who brought us the fantastic film Super-Size Me in 2003, has taken his second stab at directing, producing and starring in a documentary. And he has, for the most part, failed. While there is nothing overtly wrong with Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden, there is also nothing particularly right. He talks to people all over the world, in places where Osama Bin Laden may be hiding, and other places where he is obviously not hiding, getting their opinions on American foreign policy, and he talks to soldiers in Afghanistan and he makes a little bit of commentary on the situation. But here’s the thing - this is a documentary. And I learned nothing. Documentaries are supposed to teach you something. Either give you a window into a world you have never heard about, or give you a new insight into something with which you are already familiar. This movie does neither.

In the end, it feels just like one of those TV news pieces where they go out on the street and ask people’s opinions about something. Like high gas prices or Dion’s green shift. It’s just done in other parts of the world rather than in the United States. And Morgan Spurlock, while he has the ability to be funny, attempts to inject humour into this film where it doesn’t really belong, and it ends up being less funny and more irritating. Interspersed in between his interviews with the regular people of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, we get treated to phone calls between Spurlock and his pregnant wife who is waiting at home for him to return. I don’t know if these conversations are thrown in there as a way of justifying the fact that the film maker never really puts himself in harm’s way, or if they are just another way of making the movie more about Spurlock himself. Either way, it’s just distracting.

And I don’t think he needed to put himself in harm’s way. He seems to be doing so, at certain points in the movie, but you get the sense that at no time is he really in any danger at all. And if you’re going to make a movie like this, you have to do one of two things. Either go all the way - search through the mountains, dodge bullets, and talk to potentially dangerous terrorist targets. Or, make a movie that is so insightful and compelling that no one will care about the fact that you aren’t really trying to catch Osama Bin Laden. Spurlock has done neither, and therefore the movie doesn’t work. To find a really good movie about this conflict and this sort of subject matter, check out Blood Of My Brother. And ignore Where In The World is Osama Bin Laden.

With Alliance Films’ release of Morgan Spurlock’s disappointing Where In The World is Osama Bin Laden, two other documentaries have been released through Alliance with Spurlock’s stamp of approval. The excellent The Future Of Food, and the charming Confessions of a Superhero. It’s the story of four people who dress up as superheroes on Hollywood boulevard, working for tips as tourists take pictures with them. Many documentaries have been made about similar people, characters with limited talent but powerful delusions of grandeur. The best of these documentaries remains American Movie, one of the all-time great examinations of people whose dreams are far greater than their skills. And Confessions of a Superhero manages to convey the same charm as the best of these documentaries.

These men and women in costumes are, really, no more than extra-innovative panhandlers. They have a gimmick, tourists take their pictures, and they ask for “tips”. Sometimes they might make thirty dollars a day, sometimes several hundred. Jennifer Gehrt (Wonder Woman) is a beautiful young woman who moved from her small town out to Hollywood with dreams of stardom, but managed to get only this far. Joe McQueen (The Hulk) is the most compelling character in the film, a man who makes his living dressing up as The Hulk while hating the whole experience. It’s a way to make ends meet for now, but McQueen hasn’t given up, and he continues attending screen tests and auditions with the hopes of making it big. Maximus “Batman” Allen is a bit of a powder keg whose temper is barely kept under control and whose stories of his murderous youth are either slightly exaggerated, VERY exaggerated, or downright terrifying. And then there’s Superman. Christopher Lloyd Dennis is…unusual, to say the least. This is a man who buys into the Superman persona to a degree that can be described only as “obsessive”. He figures he has about a million dollars worth of Superman memorabilia in his apartment. That figure may be largely exaggerated. He also claims to be the son of actress Sandy Dennis. That claim (may) be largely…untrue. He says that on her deathbed, she told him she had a dream for him to become a famous actor, and he has been trying to attain that goal ever since. By dressing up as Superman and looking a little like Christopher Reeve.

The movie takes us back to Wonder Woman’s hometown of Maynardville, where we meet her parents. They say they always knew she would end up being a superstar. We travel with Superman to a major Superman convention in Metropolis, Illinois. We learn that The Hulk feels the only thing preventing him from getting movie work is that his teeth aren’t perfect. We also learn that he arrived in Hollywood in the middle of the LA riots, and fled to the hills to avoid the craziness. He was then homeless for four years. We get to meet the cops who crack down on the superheroes when they panhandling becomes too aggressive. The movie expands a little to feature the arrests of Elmo and Mr. Incredible for aggressive panhandling, the arrest of Batman for going berserk, and the appearances on the Jimmy Kimmel show of a few of these characters in the wake of the Elmo arrest.

And it’s the segments on the Kimmel show that are the saddest. We realize that fame is the motivating factor behind the decision to dress up in superhero gear, and that this fame is more important than anything else. There is no such thing as bad publicity - any appearance is a good one - Superman tells us before he wrestles Batman in from of a national audience in what amounts to be a very small step up from a hobo fight. And the idea that fame will come to them if they become well known as impersonators is fairly sad. Superman is convinced that a casting agent will someday walk by him and realize that he has the look they need for a part of some kind, and will offer it to him. Batman has actually appeared in a truly awful movie that disappeared as soon as it was released, but appears to have given up the dream of being a real actor. Wonder Woman has an agent, and goes to some casting calls for commercials, but still seems like a lost little girl. The only guy who still has some ambition AND an idea of how to get somewhere with it is The Hulk, who closes out the movie when he gets an actual part in a film - Finishing The Game, also out on DVD right now from Alliance Films.

While the characters in Confessions of a Superhero are all, to some degree, deluded, it is a charming delusion. It certainly doesn’t hurt anyone to dress up as a superhero and entertain tourists for tips. Unless you’re Batman and you go crazy on someone during a dispute over the use of a port-a-potty. And while this film isn’t nearly as compelling and inspirational as other, similar films (American Movie), it remains good solid entertainment and a fascinating look at four people you would otherwise know nothing about.

Alliance Films is releasing the Morgan Spurlock documentary Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden on August 26th. It’s a pretty weak second effort after his excellent 2003 film Super-Size Me. But it has had a very beneficial side-effect, that being the release of a terrific 2005 documentary under Spurlock’s name. I guess he’s the Tarantino of documentaries now, adding his name to those films he feels are worth watching. And in the case of The Future of Food, he’s absolutely right. This film, also being released by Alliance Films on the 26th, is magnificent. While it’s called The Future of Food, it really deals with the history of food. The amazing corporate greed in the United States that has affected the food of the entire world. The documentary examines how farming used to be one of the most common professions in America, but now the food that reaches dinner tables, both in the States and in Canada, comes from a handful of large agricultural corporations.

We meet farmers who have been sued by these massive corporations. You see, the corporation has created a certain type of seed, one that resists the pesticide that they also sell. Meaning that farmers must purchase those seeds from that corporation once they start using their pesticide. And the corporation owns the patent on those seeds. If a farmer doesn’t want to use their seeds, that farmer is not allowed to have any of those seeds. Which means that if his neighbour DOES use those seeds, and those canola crops cross-pollinate with his own canola crops, that means that now his own canola contains the genetically engineered seeds owned by the corporation. So now the giant company can come to his farm, test his seeds, and sue him for illegally using their patent. And get this - the corporations WIN these court cases. There is absolutely no way for a small farmer to prevent his own crops from mixing with the genetically modified ones, so he has two choices. He can either pay a massive settlement to the big company, (in most cases that company is Monsanto), or he can settle out of court and start buying their seeds so as to be in compliance. Well, three choices. He can also just quit farming.

Why is this a problem? Well, it isn’t merely the idea that a company can patent something which is a part of nature. And it isn’t the fact that this same company can successfully go after small-time farmers for something that they can’t possibly avoid. In short, it isn’t the lousy, underhanded way they conduct business. It’s the genetic engineering itself that is the problem. When crops all come from the exact same genetically engineered seeds, then they are unusually susceptible to diseases and pests. Anything that would destroy one of those plants would destroy them all. Also, there is painfully inadequate testing and laughable controls on these products. Which means that if a genetically engineered food, say a tomato, was making certain people sick with an allergic reaction, there would be no real way to prove it. Because there is no label on the food that states that it is genetically engineered in such-and-such a place by such-and-such a company, there is no way to check across the board to find out if all the sick people ate the same tomatoes from the same company, or if it’s just all tomatoes in the U.S. that are contaminated, or in fact whether it is tomatoes that are to blame at all.

Then there is the “terminator” gene. Much like the concept of “planned obsolescence” in everything electronic or mechanical we buy now. (Cars are designed to last, say, eight years. Because that way, after eight years, you must buy another.) Now crops are being engineered the same way. They last one year. And after that one year, they basically commit suicide. They are now useless. Which means the farmer has to buy more of the same seeds. Every year. Which, again, doesn’t sound so bad until we think about the cross-pollination that occurs with the crops in America. What happens when the starving countries in the world, the countries that grow all of their own food and farm just to barely manage to eat, come across these plants? Suppose the suicide plants cross-breed with the plants in Sudan? And after one year, 2 percent of their crops are dead, never to return. And after two years, four percent are gone. We see commercials touting “genetic engineering” of food as a way to help starving countries. But in fact it could well cause an amount of devastation we can only imagine.

The Future Of Food ends, as do most politically or socially motivated documentaries, with a message of hope. An look toward the actual future of food. And what we learn is that although these giant corporations are basically controlling every aspect of what we eat, in the end the consumers are always in control. To some degree, anyway. There is a revolution going on in the fields of America. And this movie, having been made in 2005, hasn’t seen the full measure of this revolution yet, while we consumers are just beginning to see it. A wonderful, informative film, The Future of Food is well worth picking up on Tuesday.

I have always wanted to get onto Jeopardy, but the biggest problem I have is that I just don’t know enough about American politics and history. At least twice a week, there is a category on American Presidents where I am unable to answer any questions at all. But now my problems have been solved. Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing The Presidents on Tuesday August 26th. This is a massive PBS box set from their series The American Experience that features 10 20th century presidents, from Teddy Roosevelt to George H.W. Bush. Massive doesn’t begin to describe this box. Ten presidents on fifteen discs, each one exhaustively researched and incredibly complete. Their early lives and their post-presidential lives are shown in great detail, but the most information, appropriately, is reserved for their presidencies themselves. Each disc features in-depth interviews with the people closest to that president, and each is an in-depth examination worthy of Ken Burns (who, incidentally, does most of his work with PBS as well).

Some of the presidents get two discs, others just one. Some get just three hours worth of film, others get four and a half. (FDR and Truman each get 4 ½ hours, I suppose because more happened during their presidencies than during others.) If, after 35 hours of learning about presidents, and a further ten plus hours of special features, you are not ready to take on Jeopardy, then you never will be. And even if you don’t care at all about Jeopardy, pick this box set up anyway if you have even a passing interest in American history. It could give you something to watch for a whole year.