Cynical Cinema

Heavy Metal in Baghdad is a fascinating, totally new look at the war in Iraq, focused on a heavy metal band named Acrassicauda. The DVD comes out tomorrow, July 8th, from Alliance Films, and is well worth watching. Not just for heavy metal fans, or political watchers, or documentary afficionados. This movie is great for everyone. Frankly, I’m not a big fan of the music of Acrassicauda (whose name, in Arabic, is a type of venomous black scorpion). I just don’t dig that crazy super-heavy, unintelligible, screaming death metal. At the same time, I recognize the skills of their guitar player, and I think that musically these guys are terrific, given their circumstances.

And those circumstances are crazy. They began playing in Iraq, pouring their love of American heavy metal into their music, wearing shirts that, on the right day at the right time, could get them killed. Metallica, Iron Maiden, Slayer. These are not bands that are tolerated by the repressive Islamic fundamentalists over in those parts. In 2005, shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government, VICE magazine teamed up with Acrassicauda to put on a rock concert. The show was a huge success, a sell out, and a year later Suroosh Alvi, the founder of VICE magazine, teamed up with the head of VICE films, Eddy Moretti, to travel back to Baghdad and see what had happened to the band in the intervening year.

What they find is disturbing and sad. The band doesn’t practice. They didn’t mind practicing under the threat of sniper fire, bombs and murder. But onec their rehearsal space was actually bombed, how much practice were they going to get in anyway? The film becomes more a tale of survival than a tale of heavy metal headbanging awesomeness. One of the only films out there that focuses on the youth culture in Iraq, and how the war is affecting those people. This film started out, really, as a magazine article for VICE, which you get in the booklet that comes along with the DVD. And the film makers are clearly not hugely experienced with this kind of filming. Their love for the band and the guys in it is constantly apparent, and their zeal for their “crazy mission” keeps coming through again and again. It’s a little intrusive, frankly, when we want to hear about Iraq and the band and their story more than anything else.

And in this sense, Heavy Metal In Baghdad succeeds despite itself. The story is so amazing, and the window into this world in Iraq has rarely been seen. Not the heavy metal world as such, but rather the world of teenagers and young adults who love many parts of Western culture, who hated Saddam Hussein, who buy bootlegged Metallica records, and who are unable to stand alone on the streets at night for fear of being killed. This is the world these guys inhabit, and this is the world we get to see through their eyes. The film follows them as they are forced to flee as refugees to Damascus, and the more laid-back interviews with the band members there reveal some seriously thoughtful, intelligent people who just want to make their music. They understand the situation they are in, they don’t want to make political statements with their music (although sometimes they are forced to do so), they just want to bang their heads and rock hard.

The personable, charming nature of these guys is the driving force of the movie, and they prove to be very engaging, interesting documentary subjects. They are not the low-brow, dumb-ass metalheads many of us have come to believe are par for the course. And they are not the West-hating, prayer five times a day, war crying Iraqis that so many of us have seen in the media. Heavy Metal In Baghdad is not about the war, or about heavy metal, or about Iraqis or Americans or religion. It’s about people. And it’s amazing.

Meerkat Manor is really, really cool. It’s a lot of things - nature show, documentary, soap opera, and a reality show rolled into one. Cambridge University has been following a family of meerkats in South Africa for the past decade, filming their every move and examining their social behaviour. You might ask, as I did, what is the point of expending that many resources just to find out how meerkats live over the course of a decade? How do you justify this to your bosses who hand out the money? And I think the researchers may have come to this conclusion also. So they decided to justify the entire experiment and at the same time actually make some money by turning the meerkat society into a reality TV show, one that runs on the Animal Planet network. Season One of that show comes out on DVD tomorrow, July 8th, from Alliance Films, and I highly recommend picking it up.

Meerkats, for those of you who don’t know (and I didn’t either until I first saw this show) are tiny little animals that live in the Kalahari desert in South Africa. They are related to the mongoose, make barking noises like dogs, and live in a very complex social environment. Their society is like many human things. It’s like the mafia - you go against the family, you better look out. It’s like a street gang - rival gangs come on our turf, it’s war. It’s like a cult - the leaders are the only ones allowed to have sex, and woe unto all others who do. And it’s like one of those weird communes, where all the women take care of all the babies and breast feed them. And all of this is captured on film for the series, and delivered to us in 13 episodes in the first season of Meerkat Manor.

These creatures are awfully cute, and they have babies all the time, and those are really cute too, so there’s that. But it’s more than just cute animals doing cute things. After a while, you begin to identify with individuals in the group, cheer for them to defeat their enemies, and mourn the loss of the ones who die. (And there are some who die - after all, it is nature.) It’s like a really good, really natural, reality soap opera without irritating people. Which is terrific! Now, I watched all five hours of this show, in one night, with my girlfriend. And it does get a little repetitive. Some of the same information is bound to be repeated if you watch the entire series at once. (She said, before the final episode - I hope this wraps up nicely! And I told her that it was nature, you couldn’t really make them follow a script. And then it wrapped up with a cliffhanger! We have to get season 2 now!)

It’s narrated by Sean Astin (that other hobbit from Lord of the Rings), and he does a good job of keeping the story going when the animals can’t talk for themselves. Again, it will seem repetitive if you watch them all at once. Like hasn’t he used the phrase “discretion is the better part of valour” at least three times now? But it’s very possible that you will want to watch it all at once, because this show is addictive. Pick it up on DVD tomorrow, it’s worth your while. Oh, and your family’s too. The kids might cry a little - you know, with the deaths and all - but they’ll love it.

Released the same day as Season One of Meerkat Manor, the great Animal Planet TV show, is the DVD Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins, which is a documentary that tells the story of the meerkats before the TV show. At a little over an hour long, it is much easier to get a full picture of meerkat society from this film than from the full five hours of the TV show. Both are really good, but The Story Begins is a little more brutal in terms of the deaths (and murders) of some meerkats. This one is narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, who cracks a few lame jokes early on. Thank goodness they dispense with that fairly fast.

Flower is the star of Meerkat Manor, the dominant female who leads the family. The Story Begins is her own, personal Scarface, tracing her rise to power a the top of the meerkat world. (Not quite as swift and brutal a rise as that of Scarface, to be sure.) This documentary would be great for people who are mildly interested and don’t want to sit through the entire TV series, or possibly for people who are obsessive about the TV series and want to know every detail. All in all, the two are very complementary, and I can’t wait for Season Two!

Blood of My Brother is in many ways an incredibly impressive achievement.  It is a documentary on the Iraqi war that is incredible in terms of the access these film makers were given to shoot in Iraq.  They get behind the scenes at fundamentalist, jihad-fueled rallies.  The manage to come along with an attack on American forces.  They ride along on a tank with American forces.  And no judgements are passed one way or another.  There is no narrator in the film.  The only dialogue is from the interview subjects themselves.  It’s therefore almost all in Arabic, with English subtitles.  It follows one particular family so closely that you feel like not only are you there, but you’re almost a family member.

And it’s this Iraqi family that defines both the film and the plight in the country itself.  One of their sons and brothers has been killed by American forces while guarding a religious building.  His younger brother, Ibrahim, has become the family’s provider.  In his heart, he’s torn between a desire for revenge toward the Americans and the need to provide for his family, which would be destitute if he died.  This is a real insider’s look at the Iraqi insurgency, as the film takes us inside the Mehdi Army, one of the insurgent groups in Iraq.

 All of which makes for some powerful imagery and moving scenes, especially the scenes of mothers weeping over the death and the gravesites of their sons.  And yet, somehow, without a narrator to move the story along, and without any defineable position or purpose, it feels more like we’re eavesdropping on tragedy and militant anger, rather than understanding any of it at all.  Sure, we understand how the rallies and the speeches and the fury toward the Americans creates an insurgency, and makes suicide bombers out of people who would ordinarily abhor such violence.  All of which is an amazing thing to see, in terms of eavesdropping.  But as a movie, there just isn’t enough continuity to make it exciting or to make it very watchable.  An amazing achievement, a movie that ought to be seen, but one that’s an effort to watch.

An intensive, in-depth, and sometimes exhaustive look at the issue of abortion in America, Lake Of Fire is a more than two-and-a-half-hour documentary.  Which is awfully long, but then, it has an awful lot of people to interview and a lot of information to disseminate.  While the film makers clearly make an effort to stay directly in the middle of the issue, and not take one side or another, in the end, it appears as though they favour the pro-choice side a little more.  Which is fine, it seems like  it would be impossible to make a movie like this without having a little bit of your personal opinion come through. 

This is perhaps the most difficult ethical issue of our time in terms of definition.  When does a fertilized egg become human?  No one has an answer.  But this movie fleshes out the arguments on both sides.  One of the most convincing pro-life advocates is an intellectual colleague of Alan Derschowitz named Nat Hentoff.  His argument, however, is fairly contradictory to the rest of the Pro-Life movement.  His suggestion is that if you are against abortion, then that means you must be against the taking of life in all forms.  Which means you must be against war.  And against capital punishment.  The one follows from the other.  And yet, most of the Pro-Life lobby has historically been hypocritical in this respect.  Noam Chomsky appears in the film as well, taking this train of logic one step further.  If there are 15 million actual, live, real children who die in the world every year from preventable diseases, and all it would take is a change in American foreign policy to provide aid to the countries where this is taking place, if you are anti-abortion then you must be pro-increased foreign aid for Africa, Eastern Asia and South America.  But, in this case, the Pro-Lifers have once again been hypocritical.

Most hypocritical of all are the right-wing Christian zealot nutjobs who actually went so far as to kill doctors and staff at abortion clinics in the 1990s.  Driven to furious, frothing outrage by a few preachers who vehemently advocate the defending of life at all costs, these impressionable men were fashioned into basically suicide bombers of intolerance, bomibing clinics and shooting doctors with the expectation that they were giving up their own lives in the service of saving what they believed to be unborn lives.  Classic Christian zealot martyrdom, not too different from today’s jihadists.  And because 99.9% of the pro-life lobby is hardcore Christian, it becomes difficult to separate the issue from the religion.  Although there are a few who set themselves apart from the religious fanatics, like Hentoff, for the most part the zealots become crazier and crazier and creepier and creepier as we know more and more about them.

And there is another problem with lobbying to change public perception about something.  Here is a group of people who believe passionately in the idea that abortion is murder.  An idea that can be reasoned out in a logical, clear and sensible way by people who are not religious.  Like Hentoff, and Derschowitz, and Chomsky.  (Of the three, only Hentoff is pro-life, but all three make very reasonable arguments on both sides.)  But once you start labeling yourself - and the label “pro-life” certainly carries with it the connotation that if you are against them, then you are “pro-death” - and calling on God’s word to back you up, you are leaving yourself open to the possibility that people will ignore you.  After all, the most angry and passionate anti-abortion people are also the same who believe homosexuals should be executed.  And that Harry Potter is immoral.  And how can anyone, anywhere, really take these people seriously?

So, once again, we get religious bigotry clouding a real issue.  And this movie does what it can to get to the heart of the real issue.  Dozens of interviews, with all kinds of interesting (and sometimes scary) people.  Professors, intellectuals, religious leaders (some pro, some con), women having abortions, abortion clinic doctors and nurses.  Victims of the violence and insanity of the evangelical lunatics.  Those lunatics themselves.  Paul Hill, the Fred Phelps of the abortion issue, who preached the “execution [murder]” of abortion clinic doctors, under the pretext that if you killed them, you were doing God’s work.  Which is the really dangerous thing about these people - they believe they speak FOR God.  That only they know what he’s really saying in his little book there.  And they are insane.  Hill among them, who eventually put his ideas into action and murdered two people, while seriously injuring a third.  He was killed by lethal injection in 2003 - a fate that really underscores the sensible philosophies of Chomsky, Derschowitz and Hentoff in this film.

Throughout Lake of Fire, there are graphic and disturbing images of actual abortion procedures.  And their emotional and physical side-effects.  This is not, I repeat, NOT for the squeamish.  We see women being pried open, in full detail.  We see the actual stuff that comes out of the uterus.  We see more than I’m sure any of us ever wanted to see, ever, in our lives.  For any reason.  But this stuff is essential for the essentially neutral tone of the movie.  When the anti-abortion activists claim that the doctors who perform the abortions used to crush the skulls of the babies, but now they sell the heads because it’s more profitable, we need to know that this is an insane thing to say.  We need to know what’s true and what isn’t.  And Lake Of Fire attempts, over a very long running time, to do just that. 

And it does a good job.  Tony Kaye, the director, worked on this film for more than 15 years.  And there has been ample material to film over those fifteen years.  Which means that this is as complete a film document as you will find on the issue, as well-researched as anything you might find, and will stand for years as the definitive movie about abortion.  Whether you’re pro-choice or anti-abortion, this movie will teach you something you didn’t already know, and is worth watching.  If you have a strong constitution.

Sometimes, it takes star power to get people to watch a movie.  And in this case, the star power comes from George Clooney, the man with about the most star power alive.  Also, of course, Don Cheadle, who actually factors far more into Darfur Now.  Cheadle knows just how powerful a movie can be, having of course starred in Hotel Rwanda.  However, Hotel Rwanda, Shake Hands With The Devil, and dozens of other similar movies share something in common.  They all came to the theatres, to DVD, and to the consciousness of the world AFTER the genocide was over.  In Rwanda, in Cambodia, in Germany and Poland and Yugoslavia and Iraq and elsewhere around the world, the world’s attention was drawn to the horrific events after the fact.  Much of the media tried, in certain circumstances, to tell the story.  But people avoid that until they get it in the more-palatable movie form.

Here is yet another time where we, the people of the world, can actually make a difference before it’s all over and a race of people are wiped out.  In Darfur, a small part of Sudan, there is a genocide taking place.  Right now.  It was the subject of a documentary last year called The Devil Came on Horseback, which was a fine look at the problems actually happening in the region.  Darfur Now focusses more on what real people are doing to prevent the extermination of these innocent people.  Cheadle and Clooney do what they can, using their star power, to convince China to stop trading with Sudan, or at least to acknowledge the genocide taking place.  The fact that they are the highest-level delegation to approach Chinese officials on the subject is, as they say themselves in the film, deeply sad.

There is another young man, a college student at UCLA, who with no political experience whatsoever, who manages to pass a state bill in California to prevent any money going to Sudan.  A Darfurian woman who has joined the rebel forces fighting the Janjaweed, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, a United Nations humanitarian who actually takes the film makers through his attempts to deliver aid and food to the refugees, and a community leader in a Darfur refugee camp.  These six people are all trying to do what they can in a cause that is lost unless they can make the people at the top of the governments of the world respond in some way. 

And therein lies the problem.  Not only are governments notoriously slow to respond to things like “genocide” - after all, how long did it take the U.S. to go after Saddam Hussein for gassing the Kurds after it happened?  Fifteen years?  And even then, how much did they really care about the genocide?   Darfur Now, in addition to being compelling viewing, is an attempt to mobilize people, create awareness and call attention to one of these situations that is taking place right now.

With the release of Control on DVD June 17th, there is a market for all things Joy Division, at least for a time. So Alliance Films is releasing a documentary film the same day, simply called Joy Division. Control is a fantastic film about Ian Curtis, the tragic lead singer of Joy Division in the late 70s and early 80s. And while it’s terrific in the way it focuses on Curtis himself, the rest of this powerful and influential band gets pushed aside in favour of the compelling story of their lead singer. Joy Division is the story of the rest of that band, and it’s more a celebration of the band’s history than it is a eulogy for Curtis himself. It features interviews with tons of the great movers and shakers in the Manchester music scene of the time.

Tony Wilson, the now-deceased founder of Factory records, is a big part of the film, and was an even bigger part of the scene in Manchester at the time. He’s the guy who broke Joy Division big in 1978, and was the subject of the terrific 2002 movie 24 Hour Party People. The other band members, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris make appearances here too, talking about their memories of fame and the beginnings of Joy Division, as well as reminiscing about Ian Curtis and his death. Of course, the three of them achieved far greater stardom than Curtis ever did. After his death, they would reform as New Order, and become internationally recognized pop stars.

But it was Joy Division that started it all. To be a little more accurate, the Buzzcocks really started it all in the late-70s Manchester scene, but Joy Division soon became the shining light of that group with the release of their first true album, Unknown Pleasures. That then paved the way for New Order, The Happy Mondays, the Stone Roses, the Inspiral Carpets, and countless other Manchester bands who would all, at the very least, achieve a cult following the world over. But this film doesn’t deal with the legacy of Joy Division, just the moment in music history that was theirs and theirs alone. As the other band members remember Ian Curtis toward the end, you get some lines that were actually used in Control as well. No one, at the time, thought that Curtis’ lyrics were anything more than art. That he, like Neil Young or Bob Dylan, was singing about things that he created as an art form. It was only too late, however, that they discovered that when he sang lyrics like; Mother, I tried, please believe me
I’m doing the best that I can
I’m ashamed of the things
I’ve been put through
I’m ashamed of the person I am

on “Isolation”, he wasn’t just creating art, he really meant it. One of his bandmates calls Curtis’s story “one of the last true stories in pop”, and he is absolutely right.

The whole story of Joy Division in general IS one of the last true stories in popular music. And it’s laid out for us here in stark terms, with an eye to historic relevance and to the feel of the times and the city. The influences on Joy Division that came from the Buzzcocks and, more directly, the Sex Pistols. The brilliance of the music, the effect it had on people, and the legacy the band left in just two staggeringly brilliant albums. Also appearing as interview subjects are producer Martin Hannett and Curtis’ Belgian girlfriend Annik Honore. His wife, Debbie, does not appear in the film, but text shows up on the screen from her biography Touching From A Distance, so her presence is felt throughout the film.

A wonderful retrospective on one of the great unknown bands of our time, Joy Division is essential for lovers of British music, a wonderful companion DVD to those of you who are going to buy Control, and simply well worth watching for anyone else. A fascinating story about a fascinating time, place, and band. If you’re a music lover, pick it up.

The opening scene to For The Bible Tells Me So is great.  It’s a little scary at first.  I was watching, thinking “what have I got myself into?”  It appeared as though the film was going to be a bunch of anti-gay Christian propaganda.  It was an old news clip of a woman talking on television about how homosexuality was a terrible thing, and that she and her associates were not there to condemn the gay folk, but rather to help them by changing their lifestyle and “curing” them.  Then, out of nowhere, a guy shows up and slams her in the face with a pie.  Hilarious!  As it turns out, the film is not anti-gay propaganda, but rather anti-anti-gay propaganda.  It examines the way fundamentalist, right-wing Christians have distorted the meaning of the words in the Bible to further a bizarrely conceived anti-homosexual agenda.

People are quoted everywhere in this movie saying that the bible says homosexuality is “an abomination”.  And many of them can, indeed, quote chapter and verse.  However, the gay-bashers and anti-homosexual preachers and pastors and rabbis are using a very convenient interpretation of the bible.  Of course, we all know that the bible is interpreted very differently by many people.  Which is why some Christians are catholics and others knock on my door to give me pamphlets about doomsday that feature creepy pictures of children feeding goats.  But everyone who has chosen to engage in this crusade against homosexuality is doing more than interpreting the bible differently than sane people.  They are purposely ignoring large portions of the book.

You see, if you took the one passage from Leviticus that homophobes have used as their shining example of God’s hatred of homosexuality, and you took it at face value, you would be entirely missing the point.  This is the passage:  “You shall not lie with a male as those who lie with a female; it is an abomination.”  If that was the only passage you read, and you were a bible-thumping nutjob, you might think God was anti-gay.  But if you read the rest of Leviticus, you would realize that the word “abomination” is not nearly as harsh as it seems.  In fact, anything the least bit out of the ordinary is, in this chapter, an “abomination”.  Like eating shrimp.  Abomination.  Eating rabbit.  Abomination.  Eating bacon, oysters, ham, pork chops, lobster and crab.  Abominations.  But you are allowed to eat locusts.  Huzzah for the bible!  I don’t see Fred Phelps holding rallies outside seafood restaurants or pig farms.  Or eating locusts.  Although I would very much like to see Fred Phelps eat locusts.

Actually, Phelps is not in this movie, amazingly.  Which is kind of great, because he represents the extreme.  The really out-to-lunch lunatic fringe of the church and Christianity in general.  And that isn’t what the movie is about.  It’s about the opinions of regular, ordinary Christians, and how they are affected by those around them.  We meet many devoted religious believers who have had to deal with gay children.  Some are more tolerant than others, some actually became estranged from their children while others became activists for gay rights themselves.  The film also deals with the idea of ordaining gay ministers.  The backlash against those who have become ordained, and the support they received from other parts of the Christian community. 

And this is what makes this movie wonderful.  It is certainly a movie that takes sides - It has chosen to take the side of common sense over the side of rabid homphobic insanity.  But the fact that it stays right in the middle, with average Christians of all denominations - catholic, baptist, lutheran, you name it - and examine their beliefs and the origin of those beliefs.  And for the most part, these beliefs originate with the ignorance of others.  If your priest is constantly telling you that homosexuality is unnatural and evil, and you have built your life on following the bible and the teachings of your church, then it only stands to reason that you will have a difficult time reconciling those deeply-held beliefs with the truth when you are presented with the real facts.

After watching the film, I wanted to read more about the church and the crazy divide that has been caused by support for, and opposition to, the gay and lesbian community.  In fact, I have done considerable research just for this review.  Here is a great website that examines all six bible chapters that homophobes cite when condemning the gay lifestyle, and explanations for why it’s a little nuts.

http://www.otkenyer.hu/truluck/six_bible_passages.html

And that’s the last thing that makes this movie great.  It knows exactly where it’s going.  It doesn’t talk at all about non-religious people.  And I am most assuredly a non-religious person.  But I found it fascinating nonetheless.  It never makes the easy point that blindly following the bible is a poor way to make any decision.  It never takes the easy road that is constantly presented by fervent religious believers with their crazy behaviour and antics.  It takes on those beliefs at the very root, and presents the facts in such a way that almost any religious person, with the possible exception of the most rabid homophobic ones, would have to really think about their views in the context of this film.  A powerful statement on an important subject.

          American Gangster, the movie, was a great film that did very well behind the acting skills of Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas and Russell Crowe as Ritchie Roberts.  American Gangster, the TV show, is a terrific program that does extremely well behind interviews of the real Frank Lucas and Ritchie Roberts.  And many others like them.  Season Two comes out this coming Tuesday, June 10th, from Paramount Home Entertainment, and it’s a fascinating documentary series.  It examines the most notorious African-American gangsters, from Frank Lucas and Bumpy Johnson to the Philly Black Mafia.  It also, less often, tackles criminals who would not, by strictest definition, be called “gangsters”.  Serial killers like the
Washington, D.C. snipers, and bank robbers like Chaz Williams. 

          The series is narrated by Ving Rhames, and while he doesn’t have the classic Robert Stack or Morgan Freeman narrator voice, he DID play Marsellus Wallace.  And when Marsellus Wallace says the word “gangster”, it certainly conveys a substantial amount of authority.  And the series is very well done.  Extensively researched and very thorough, almost all the principal players, including the criminals themselves when possible, become interview subjects in the show.  An incredible amount of time must be spent digging these people up for the TV program., but it’s certainly worthwhile.  American Gangster doesn’t shy away from the horror and the violence caused by these criminals, and as such never seems to be glamourizing the crime, just relating it in every imaginable detail. 

          It’s awfully interesting to see the real Frank Lucas and the real Ritchie Roberts relating their stories, which so closely mirror the recent American Gangster movie.  Denzel Washington actually appears in the episode himself, talking about Frank Lucas, who consulted a lot on the film set.  Also interesting is the story of Melvin Williams, a
Baltimore gambler with a genius IQ who managed to build up a massive heroin operation, and became one of the inspirations behind the HBO show The Wire, which is now over but available on DVD.  The director of the show appears in the American Gangster episode, and Melvin Williams himself, it turns out, appears on The Wire.  (For fans of that show - he plays that compassionate church deacon guy - a role FAR from his real-life persona.) 

          American Gangster is a terrific show about horrific acts and terrible people.  (And some who aren’t all that bad.)  Ving Rhames adds that terrific extra touch to make this one of the best documentary series on television today.  And Season Two features enough familiar names to be really compelling all the way through.

          Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show comes out June 3rd from Alliance Films, and is a must-watch for any aspiring stand-up comedian.  Not only that, it’s a should-watch for the rest of us.  Although Vince Vaughn has never been known as a stand-up comedian, he clearly loves the art, and decided to take four stand-up guys (no pun intended) on a 30-day, 30-city tour of
America.  Comedians Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Brett Ernst and Sebastian Maniscalco form the bulk of the nightly show, and Vaughn hosts with the help of some surprise guests each night.  And although some of the guests are not exactly surprises (like Jon Favreau), others truly are (like Dwight Yoakam).  Each of the guest stars does a little skit with Vaughn on stage, and some are terrific.  

          One of the best bits in the movie involves Favreau and Vaughn and Justin Long (Live Free or Die Hard, and the Apple-vs-Mac commercials).  Favreau of course famously wrote Swingers, which launched him (and to a lesser extent Ron Livingston) to stardom, and Vaughn to superstardom.  In Swingers, just in case you’re a guy and somehow, amazingly, have not seen Swingers, Vaughn was the man.  The ultimate cool guy, the one character in a movie that every dude wanted to be.  Every guy wants to be one of two characters.  Either John Wayne in
Rio Bravo, or Vince Vaughn in Swingers.  Sometimes both.  Anyway, Favreau decides to prove how easy it would have been for anyone else in the world to play that same character, and he gets Long to read the lines, right there on stage.  Long’s impersonation of Vaughn in Swingers is, to quote a phrase, “money”.  It ranks up there with either Kevin Pollack or Jay Mohr doing Christopher Walken.  Considering it was off-the-cuff and spontaneous, it’s fantastic. 

          But for the most part, this film is about comedy, and the four main guys who do the tour.  It’s not just joke after joke, although their on-stage acts are filmed and we get to see an awful lot of that.  But we also get to see behind the scenes, on the tour bus with five guys living in close quarters for a month.  And we get to see comedians and their real reactions when they bomb, when they get heckled, how sensitive and paranoid and insecure some of them really are.  We also get to see them with their parents, and we understand how accepting parents must be of a career choice like “comedian”.  (Especially Ahmed Ahmed’s Muslim mother and father, who were initially the least supportive of his career choice, but now are the funniest parents on the tour.) 

          The tour was taking place in the middle of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath, and had to be bumped and rescheduled and moved around to accommodate the victims of that disaster.  The guys tour a trailer park that is housing displaced families, and brings the hurricane evacuees out to see the show.  There is a lot more going on in this film than just a bunch of jokes and inane behaviour on a tour bus, and that’s a good thing.  It’s far better and more interesting to see these guys for who they are, to hear their real thoughts, than it would be to just see an hour and a half of standup from a tour.  That being said, however, I was hoping for more of the standup comedy itself on the special features.  I wanted to see the full show of these guys, especially John Caparulo, who I found very funny.  And although there are a few extra skits and a little more comedy buried in the special features, the entire shows aren’t there. 

          A minor complaint, however, since the film itself was not designed to be simply comedic, and works extremely well.  This is a very entertaining, informative, interesting and of course funny show, a funny and captivating group of guys, and a fascinating film experience.  Whether you’re a stand-up fan or not, a Vince Vaughn fan or not, or a documentary buff or not, pick this up.  It’s worth it on a lot of levels.

On May 27th, Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing Jackass presents: Mat Hoffma’s Tribute To Evel Knievel. It’s a 45-minute film of Johnny Knoxville yapping about nothing while BMX legend Mat Hoffman gets a bunch of the best stunt guys in the world together to attempt to break some world records. The actual connection to Evel Knievel is dubious at best, but there is a very little bit of decent footage of Evel’s biggest stunts at the beginning of the movie. Then, we get Knoxville doing his I-talk-a-lot thing, as some seriously cool stunts are attempted in a dirt pit somewhere in America. Flying motorbikes, tandem jumps with midgets, funny crashes and painful crashes, and general…well…jackassery.

In the end, it’s 15 minutes of motorbike jumping and cool stuff like that shoehorned into 45 minutes. How is that extra 30 minutes filled? With Johnny Knoxville. Talking. And then trying some stunts himself, injuring himself in the junk…blah blah blah. Have we not seen all that before? Maybe a hundred times? C’mon Knoxville. Just shut up and show us the stunts. And the stunts are truly impressive. Travis Pastrana and Allen Cooke are true daredevils, maniacs with no fear whatsoever, who wax eloquent about Evel Knievel for a brief moment before attempting some death-defying motorbike action. Again, the connection to Evel Knievel is loose at best. He was a stunt guy, they’re stunt guys…you see?

That being said, there is one stunt which is totally worth the price of admission. It is even worth sitting through thirty superfluous minutes of braying Johnny Knoxville. And it’s one that actually has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the movie. You see, forty minutes of the movie are about motorbike stunts. And five minutes are about skydiving. We get to see Scott Plamer jump out of an airplane, tens of thousands of feet above the ground - without a parachute. He then, in the air, hooks up with another skydiver, attaches himself, and pulls the cord, landing what is not only an impressive stunt, but seemingly a staggeringly stupid one as well. Then it’s back to the motorbikes, but we’re pretty bored of them after seeing this one.

Michael Moore had a short-lived TV show called The Awful Truth a while back, that presented a series of left-leaning half-hour episodes where he used humour and publicity stunts to educate people about some of the world’s ugly truths. Penn and Teller: Bullshit! Is pretty well the antithesis of The Awful Truth. Basically the same thing, only with a heavier focus on humour, more mean-spiritedness, a LOT more profanity, WAY more naked boobs, and it’s slightly right-leaning. The basic premise of the show is that famed magicians Penn Jillette (who has two names) and Teller (who has one) try to uncover the myths and well, the BS behind some of society’s most treasured beliefs. God, I’m trying to type this while re-watching the episode about women’s breasts. It’s called Breast Hysteria and it’s really distracting.

Anyway, Michael Moore’s show was hit-and-miss, because it’s fairly difficult to really hit the mark on social causes in a half hour. And this is similar. It is very hit-and-miss. Like the episode on Wal-Mart. Penn and Teller take on the people who made the movie Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and others who protest against Wal-Mart. Their position on Wal-Mart is that it’s good, not evil, and that people who protest against it are stupid jackasses. But that’s about all they have. They take on some of the ideas people have about Wal-Mart, but they don’t really provide much information to tell them they’re wrong, or to present the other side. They just say they don’t care. Like, Wal-Mart drives small stores out of business in little towns. The movie made the point that if Wal-Mart is prevented from opening in that town, they will open just outside that town, taking the business anyway and denying the town the business, and thereby forcing towns to either accept Wal-Mart or suffer the consequences. Penn and Teller ignore the second part, and just say “who cares? It’s capitalism - just let Wal-Mart into your town!” OK, it’s a good reason to yell and be angry, but it isn’t exactly informative.

Which is about all they do. They take issues or beliefs that people have, hear from both sides, pick a side, and rage against the other side. Which sometimes works. There are quite a few good episodes. The one about the conspiracy behind the weight-loss industry, and how it’s such a massive multi-billion dollar industry that it becomes in their best interests to keep people fat so they can buy into weight-loss programs and diets. And the one about anger management is great too. The BS behind court-ordered anger management, and some particularly hilarious “treatments” for peoples’ anger. And, of course, the breast episode, which I am still watching. So please forgive any spelling mistakes.

Of course, as in many episodes, there are many, many naked boobs. But it’s also very well done, as the guys take on societal stereotypes about breasts and the women who have them. Idiotic ideas about the blasphemy of public breast-feeding, the stupid double standard that says it’s OK for men to go topless and not OK for women, and lots of other stuff. Really - how come men’s nipples are a body part that just happen to be on their chests, whereas women’s are strictly sexual organs that shouldn’t be seen by anybody? It is a pretty silly double standard, when one really thinks about it. And Penn and Teller don’t stop there - they take on the breast cancer lobby in a bit that makes a lot of sense. If lung cancer kills more than twice as many women every year as does breast cancer, how come there are way more movements to reduce breast cancer? In the end, it is because breasts, even in the world of charity and disease fighting, are sexualized. Which means that fighting breast cancer is sexier than fighting lung cancer. And despite the gigantic amount of effort that is made to raise money to fight breast cancer, more of it goes into raising more awareness of the problem than goes into fighting it or finding a cure. In fact, there is no organized effort in the States to find a cause or a cure for breast cancer.

I keep calling them Penn and Teller. But, of course, it’s really just Penn. Teller is the one who doesn’t talk. So Penn narrates and stars in every episode, and Teller just shows up to stand next to the naked models. I wonder what his paycheque is for this? The breast episode is over, so I am able to concentrate better, and this is what I’m thinking. Now it’s a gross episode about colon cleansing, detoxing, and the parasites that supposedly live in your body. There’s a vole necropsy going on, and it’s gross. I want to watch something else now. OK, I’m going back to the breast episode. Penn and Teller: Bullshit! The Complete Fifth Season comes out on DVD today, May 20th, courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment.

There’s a documentary from Alliance Atlantis coming out on Tuesday that is well worth your while to check out. It’s called Deep Water, and it’s the story of a race around the world that took place in 1967. Nine people set off from England in nine individual sailboats in a race to see who could circumnavigate the globe the fastest. Eight of the competitors were lifelong sailors, who had years worth of experience and wanted to pit themselves against the ultimate test of survival. The ninth was a younger man, named Donald Crowhurst, a 35-year-old amateur sailor who risked everything to compete in the race. By everything, I mean his business, his family, his friends, his finances and of course his life.

There was a movie with a similar tone recently, called Grizzly Man. Werner Herzog crafted a staggeringly intense portrait of a man who wanted to live with grizzly bears, and was eventually killed by one. It was a wonderful film, capturing the essence of a man who was one-tenth visionary and nine-tenths lunatic. Donald Crowhurst was a similar character, only he was half visionary and half lunatic when he started out, and nine tenths lunatic by the time the race was over. Ten months alone at sea will do that to someone.

It is tough not to love someone like Donald Crowhurst, a guy who really went for it, despite the overwhelming odds against him. And there was a lot against him. Experience, the ocean, the weather, and common sense. I find it difficult to write a review of the movie without spoiling it, because what happens during the race is one of the most compelling stories I have ever seen in a documentary. But I really don’t want to tell that story, because you have to see it for yourself. Deep Water is a terrific story about some incredible people. Man vs. the elements, vs. his own demons, vs. his mind after ten months at sea, it all makes for an incredibly watchable story.

The 1967 race around the world was an event I’ve never heard about before, and I’m surprised. After all, I have spent an awful lot of time with sailors, and this sounds like the kind of thing that would be pervasive in the yarns of the old-timers who sit at the stools of the Grand Banker in Lunenberg and entertain the passers-by with tales of the nautical deep and their days on the Bluenose. And yet, Deep Water was the first I had heard about it, and it was absolutely fascinating. Again, I am tempted to tell the whole story, but it would ruin it for those of you who would be interested in watching the film. And I hope a lot of you want to watch this film. Deep Water is the best non-political documentary (Sicko, No End in Sight) since Grizzly Man.

There are a few telling scenes in the new documentary Jonas: The Quest. One is where a woman describes the effect Jonas has on an audience. She says it’s very telling when you see a guy perform on stage, and look at the crowd. If the women are excited and turned on, and the men are not pissed off, then you have a really special act. This is probably true. Then she cites some examples of rockers who have been able to pull this off, starting with Jon Bon Jovi. What?

Jonas: The Quest is a documentary from Quebec being released by Alliance Atlantis on January 15th. It’s about a Quebecois rock star named Jonas, who is searching desperately for his big break. A lot of it rings true. I have never heard of Jonas. The movie explains that it is much easier for many French Canadian artists to get their break in the U.S. than it is in Canada. I believe that. How many French Canadian musicians can most of English Canada name? Celine Dion and Roch Voisine? Mitsou? Yeah. Not exactly a proud heritage there. But there are definitely many artists labouring in Quebec that never get the mainstream recognition they deserve. But I’m not sure Jonas is one of them. There are constant comparisons to Nickelback. That’s kind of telling as well. His band is good, his voice is good, but his songs are not exactly world beaters.

Jonas: The Quest is an interesting movie, especially for those who want a real inside look at the Canadian music business. But for anyone else, there isn’t much here. None of the personalities are huge enough to be engaging, and the music itself is mediocre. Would you watch a documentary about the undiscovered Coldplay? Especially if there was no real conclusion, none of the characters were interesting, nothing really happens from beginning to end, and you have to watch a lot of Coldplay songs? I would guess no.

Yesterday, I had a conversation with Christian, one of our tech guys. He was wearing a Splinter Cell hat, and I asked him if that had been a Tom Clancy book before it had become a Tom Clancy video game. This led to a very long discussion about the four different Splinter Cell games, their story lines, which ones were most interesting, which were bleak, and what other PC games were similar. Something called Day of Sex. Or Deus Ex. I couldn’t tell, Christian talks very fast. Now, during this whole conversation, I had very little idea what he was talking about. I have never played any of these games. But I was very interested. Clearly, this is a man who is very into these games, and listening to someone discuss something they love is always a good conversation. And sure, it’s a little nerdy. But there are an awful lot of people who are similarly nerdy about these very same games. So it’s a little nerdy, it’s not scary nerdy.

I went home yesterday and watched a movie about the scary nerdy. The crazy, over-the-top, maddeningly geeky world of video games. And not Splinter Cell or Day of Sex or Doom or Grand Theft Auto or whatever. Old-school games. The ones I have actually played at some point in my life at some arcade during lunch hour in Grade 7. Pac-Man, Q-Bert, and of course, Donkey Kong! There is a guy, apparently, named Billy Mitchell, somewhere in the United States, who is an absolute legend in the world of old-school arcade games. He is the first man ever to have a perfect score in Pac-Man. He is the world record holder in Donkey Kong. In fact, he holds down five spots in the world records of video games. He is the Tiger Woods, the Michael Jordan, the Babe Ruth of arcade games! And these are not my words. These are the words of the twenty or thirty people who still inhabit this arcade game world, to whom Billy Mitchell is an absolute God.

And Billy Mitchell apparently sees himself as some kind of deity also. During the documentary King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, he compares himself to the Red Baron. (Richtofen clocked 89 kills in WWI, the closest pilot had 24. Mitchell is that much better, says Mitchell.) The fact that his numbers are wrong is irrelevant. So don’t bother pointing that out to me, I am already aware of the story of Billy Bishop. However, Billy Bishop is a very apt comparison to Billy Mitchell in this movie. There was intense controversy in World War I when Billy Bishop claimed to have taken off in his plane before dawn, conducted a solitary raid in German territory, and claimed to have destroyed several planes on the ground before getting shot at and returning to his base. These alleged kills added to his total, but they happened in very suspicious circumstances, and many people believed that Bishop had invented the story. And in the King of Kong, Billy Mitchell makes a very similar claim, that causes enormous controversy. I won’t divulge the details, because I hope you watch this movie.

Mitchell also makes other bizarre claims. He says that whatever he says will be controversial, like the abortion issue, because he is just that huge and that important in the video game world. You roll your eyes and sigh, until you realize he isn’t bluffing! To these other weirdos, his word is like that of God himself! The nerds in the arcade compare him to Tiger, Jordan, they suggest that he should be the next one on a Wheaties box, that he should have Olyumpic medals, and they ALL call him the most luminous superstar. One guy compares him - quite seriously - to a Jedi. I couldn’t make this up. And why? Because in 1985, Billy Mitchell set a record in Donkey Kong that, like Joe DiMaggio’s 1941 hitting streak, was believed to be unassailable. This is a record that will never be broken. But wait! Maybe someone has a lot of time on their hands and wants to make a run at it? Well, lo and behold, here comes Steve Wiebe, a teacher who happened to have a lot of time on his hands.

Steve Wiebe breaks Mitchell’s record. He sends the videotape of the record-breaking game to the world authority on video games. The world of nerds goes nuts! (I must say though, that compared to these arcade guys, Wiebe seems like the most socially well-adjusted person on Earth.) So what happens? Billy Mitchell, God, has been taken down! Well, we had better make damn sure. So - again, I am not making this up - the video game authority sends two “judges” to Wiebe’s house, where his Donkey Kong game is set up in his garage. They force their way into his garage, and dismantle his machine! I won’t explain any more about this movie, because, again, I really hope that people watch this film. I will say this - the Mitchell - Wiebe showdown is billed by the geeks as Mantel - Maris, Yankees - Red Sox, Lakers - Celtics, and Darth - Luke. I will also say this: Seeing a name appear on the screen beside the words “Donkey Kong expert”, as though that is this gentleman’s actual job, is hilarious.

The best line in the movie:
“We don’t see too many DDGs in here.”
“DDGs?”
“Drop Dead Gorgeous. Uh, girls.”

The Real Dirt on Farmer John is a documentary that has appeared in video stores recently, and it’s pretty good. Not great, but good. You see, it’s about fifty different things, and any one of those things would be interesting, but none of them are delved into with any huge depth. Farmer John Peterson is a real farmer, raised on a farm in small-town-USA, who turned out a bit different from his neighbours. A man who took over the family farm in the 60s, and invited his new friends to stay there and help him work the land. This turned into sort of a hippy commune at the time, while still working as a fully functioning farm, the hippies were actually pitching in as farm hands, lifting the hay bales and turning the soil and doing the grunt work. Peterson was able to embrace the cultural climate of the 70s, which meant he had a lot of friends, but none among his conservative, old-school farming neighbours. Peterson became a pariah in the community. Rumours of murder and Satan worship…why did I capitalize Satan as I would God, I wonder…hedging my bets, I guess. Anyway, these rumours abounded.

Peterson went on to become a playwright, an actor, a painter, an artist in all types of materials, an ecologist and an pioneer in both organic foods and farming co-ops. But through it all, he remains, at heart, a farmer first. All these things are dealt with in a tight 82 minutes, which is why I say I would have liked to see more on each of these topics. The film also touches on the demise of the family farm, the urban sprawl that has taken the place of the food we eat, the tough times for American small business and farm industry, and the problems inherent in the American economic system, as they relate to farming. Not only that, but the film has time to fit in a few rays of hope and a few potential solutions to these problems, many of them possibly coming courtesy of Peterson himself. An eccentric man, a fascinating story, but one that I would have been happy to watch for two hours, rather than just over one.

Paramount is releasing The Jewish Americans, a PBS documentary, on February 5th (this coming Tuesday). Like most PBS documentaries, it is very long, very methodical, and extremely informative. It is six hours of information, which is just about enough time to cover 350 years of Jewish history in America. The two-disc set even has space for a few DVD extras, which are not terribly enticing, especially after sitting through the other six hours. It tells the history of Jewish people in many ways, and of course much attention is paid to anti-semitism. One of the most amazing things I learned in watching the film was that it was the mob hanging (following the wrongful conviction) of a Jewish man named Leo Frank that spurred the resurrection of the KKK. I must admit, I have rarely thought of the Jews in the same context as I have thought of black people, in terms of racism throughout history. Of course, the holocaust is the most horrific event perhaps in the history of mankind, but when I have considered Jewish people in North America, their battle against racism did not seem to me to be on a level with that of the black people. It’s stories like the one of Leo Frank that make us realize that the difference is not so great.

That attitude changed for me a few years ago when I watched an excellent documentary, The Life And Times of Hank Greenberg. (I highly recommend picking this one up - it’s available to order at stores that sell movies for like 6 bucks.) I have always been very excited to learn about the history of baseball, and as a child I used to take out the giant book of baseball from the library once a month and marvel over the stats put up by the likes of Jimmie Foxx, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Hack Wilson and of course, Hank Greenberg. 183 RBIs in a season! 58 home runs! Of course, with the advent of the steroid era in baseball, those numbers no longer seem astronomical, but I was a child before the steroids. When I watched that documentary, the idea that he was comparable to Jackie Robinson in any way was ridiculous to me. In fact, I wasn’t even aware that Hank Greenberg was Jewish. But in many ways, he broke a barrier in baseball much the same way Robinson did. The crowds and the other players taunted him and berated him and showered him with anti-semitic vitriol.

And “The Jewish Americans” talks about Greenberg too. The fact that he sat out a game on Yom Kippur, something that was considered heresy by the baseball fanatics, drew all kids of ire from the anti-semites. The fact that he returned the next day to hit two home runs and win the pennant for the Tigers made him a hero to Jewish Americans everywhere. Other Jewish heroes touched upon include Irving Berlin, Kirk Douglas, Edward G. Robinson, and countless others. Modern Jewish celebrities make appearances - the best one is Jerry Stiller (father Costanza on Seinfeld), and the worst one is Liev Schrieber, who really drones on and on about yay America. Skip his segment. The Jewish Americans is an impressively researched, gigantic achievement for PBS, and it’s something well worth watching for anyone interested in history. Not just Jewish history, but the history of immigration, racism, popular culture, and the United States. But be warned. It IS six hours long.

Everything is not cool. By everything, I of course mean the world. But we know that. We ALL know that. Sure there are the climate chage “deniers” out there, the poor misguided future architects of their own demise. The fact that climate change and global warming is even a political issue, or a controversy at all, is due in large part to the Bush administration in the U.S. and the media. I mean, seriously, if the U.S. and Bush and the rest of the Republican party elite took global warming seriously, and put policies into effect to reduce emissions and save civilization, do you really think the Conservative government in Canada would be resisting science as much as they do? That they would be ignoring the environment the way they are? I’m going to say no. If the Americans took it seriously, and had signed on to Kyoto or put strict regulations in place, we (and Harper’s Conservatives) would be right there one step behind them, doing the same things. I think we can safely say there is no doubt about this.

But these are the people who have the most power to effect change. Every administration in every government in every country in the world is concerned about their legacy. And think about the legacy of some of our recent leaders. At the moment, Jean Chretien is best remembered for the sponsorship scandal, but fifty years from now, what will be his legacy? I think it will be NOT sending Canadians to Iraq. Saying “no” to the Bush government. That is what he will be most remembered for fifty years down the road. And Bush? What will be his legacy? At the moment it looks like the complete screw-up that is Iraq will be the lasting memory of Bush. But, again, fifty years from now, when people look back on it, that may not be his legacy at all. The destruction of a country, it’s people, the creation of enormous amounts of terrorists all over the world, disastrous foreign policy and heavy-handed top-down control of the government, the downward spiral and possible future crash of the American economy, and the invasion of American freedom with the Patriot Act and other measures. Legacy? Maybe. But all of those things, fifty years from now, may pale in comparison to one thing. Inaction on the environment. If, fifty years from now, the United States are largely uninhabitable, the number one scapegoat will be Bush and his cronies.

“Everything’s Cool” takes a look at the “backlash” against global warming. It examines the American attitude toward the crisis, which largely has been “what crisis? Really?” Hundreds, maybe thousands, of scientists have presented reports to the American government saying global warming is happening. Now. It is helping to create all the crazy weather and bizarre climate happenings of the last few years. It is here, it is now, it is incontrovertable. There is no doubt. The government takes these reports and edits them. In editing them, they remove words like “is” and replace them with words like “may be”. Well, “the world IS in crisis” and “the world MAY BE in crisis” are two very different statements. What big oil and the Bush government want to create is controversy. They don’t want to win - they can’t possibly win, they are arguing against facts and science. So what they want to do is muddy the issue as much as possible. As long as people continue thinking there is a “controversy” about global warming, they have succeeded, and they can say things like “it needs more research”. Balls!

But what “Everything’s Cool” is saying is that the main reason the environmentallists have failed in persuading governments that we are running out of time is that they are going about it the wrong way. When you show people melting ice, and a lonely polar bear on an ice floe, and pictures of Hurricane Katrina, it is effective for some people. But not for most. Most people will say “oh, that’s too bad. Someone should do something.” But then they have more important concerns. They are out of a job because the economy is crumbling. They can’t afford to pay their property taxes, they need to find health care or a family doctor…these things are far more important to the average person than a polar bear on an ice floe. Therefore, no one is really seeing the big picture, mostly because they don’t want to. If people are given two options to believe, they will more often than not choose to believe the one that is more convenient for them. So…the solution the Bushies have is - give them two options! Even if one does not exist.

But global warming is not Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or Sasquatch or UFOs. It is not something you can either “believe in” or not. They call it “theory” because that makes it easier to ignore. Well, evolution is called a “theory”. Why? Because then hardcore right-wing extremist religious fanatics can ignore it. After all, it’s just a theory. For them, it’s inconvenient for them to believe in evolution. If it were inconvenient for people to believe in the “theory” of gravity, there would be newspaper columns and millions of websites and right-wing radio host nutjobs doing their very best to “disprove” gravity. And “Everything’s Cool” offers (somewhat) a solution. Don’t tell people all this negative stuff, like “you’re about to die”. A person will understand that. People will tune it out. It’s too upsetting. So, here’s what you do. You prove to people what these same scientists have been saying for years. Ending our dependence on foreign oil, converting to clean alternative energy sources, and cutting emissions drastically can be good. Not just for the environment, but for the economy! For YOUR wallet! Environmentallists have not gone this route up until now, because they figured the polar bear on the ice floe would move people more. And yes, it certainly should. But it doesn’t. Giving them the positive news will actually spur people into action.

This is certainly possible, and I think it’s high time we try. After all, the old methods are clearly not working. We need to start fixing this yesterday, and it’s already tomorrow, and we have page upon page upon volumes of reports, and a lot of gum flapping and talk in the very places where action needs to begin. For more information about this excellent movie and about global warming and about what you can do, go to:

In The Shadow Of The Moon is a documentary, out now, about the Apollo 11 mission that landed a man on the moon for the first time. And while I still agree with Gil Scott-Heron, that perhaps the whole excercise was unnecessary - I mean, what did these guys do that a remote-control drone couldn’t do? It is still an awe-inspiring feat, all these years later. Although I was not alive when all this drama was taking place, I still felt a small child’s wonder when I watched this film. When I was a kid in Grade Four at McNabb public school, the teachers liked to encourage our creativity, and every week we would do something called “learning centres”, where we would study one particular subject in small groups. The class was basically from Grades one through four, and everyone would participate. Each group would choose their own project, centred around the larger theme, and at the end of the day each Friday we would present our small group’s findings to the class. One such learning centre was on Outer Space.

It was January, 1986, and the reason we were doing this group project on Outer Space that week was that there was to be a shuttle launch that week. The class (and teachers) were very excited, because the Challenger would be taking a teacher with them, in the first teacher-in-space program. We were ready to gather around the TV in school and watch the launch as a class, having just completed our projects on outer space. However, the launch was delayed. We were unable to watch, and a few days later, we were gathered around the television again. Again, the shuttle lauch was delayed. I don’t know if my life would have changed, as a nine-year-old watching this with my class, had we ever seen the actual launch in 1986 of the Challenger. Had the launch not been pushed back so far that we all ended up missing it, and were not watching live with our class when the Challenger was launched, and 73 seconds later was consumed in a ball of fire, taking seven crew members with it, including the first teacher in space.

These are the dangers faced by the astronauts who went up there. These are people who must ignore the danger inherent in any attempt to reach a new high for humankind. Is that all one word? Humankind? My blog doesn’t have spellcheck. Anyway, the 1969 Neil Armstrong first step on the moon is something we have all seen hundreds if not thousands of times, whether we were alive at the time or not. We no longer televise launches, at least not that I have seen, and it no longer captures the imagination of the world the way it once did. But at that time, in 1969, in that place, it was an event over which the entire world came together. And hearing the astronauts tell their story is wonderful. Many things I did not know - the many failed attempts just to get a rocket launched before the actual Apollo 11 moon mission, and the fact that the entire crew that was originally scheduled to go died. On a training run at NASA, a spark set off a fire that burned the entire crew alive. The crew that ended up actually going to the moon were the replacement crew.

All this is interesting, and tragic, but where In The Shadow of the Moon really takes off is when the astronauts get to the rocket for the launch. The reverential way they still speak about it is fascinating, and each one has a personality that is engaging in a totally different way. Gene Cernan, Charlie Duke, Buzz Aldrin, Mike Collins, Alan Bean, James Lovell and Edgar Mitchell remain the only people alive who have been to the moon, of the 24 people who have undertaken that journey in history. They each reminisce about their trips, their experiences, and the sense of wonder upon looking back at the Earth and seeing it alone there, suspended in space. The astronauts who have gone on moon missions remain the only people ever to see the Earth in this context. For some, it was a religious experience, for others, it was bigger than religion, but for each of them it was something that connected them in a very real way to all of their fellow men. The reaction of the rest of the world to this achievement is shown in the film, and that too is inspiring.

In The Shadow of the Moon is more a celebration of humanity than it is a straight-forward story about some men and a spaceship. It is inspirational, educational, and breathtaking. I highly recommend watching this documentary with your kids, because whatever mystique has gone out of the space program and NASA in the intervening years is recaptured brilliantly in this movie. And wouldn’t you rather have your kids aspiring to be astronauts than rappers?

Alliance Films is releasing Francois Girard En Trois Actes this coming Tuesday. I think the main reason for this is likely because they are releasing “Silk” the same day, and that movie may well taint the legacy of Girard. It is, without a doubt, the worst movie he has ever done. He has done some good ones (The Red Violin) and some great ones (Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould). And now, a really terrible film. But Francois Girard en Trois Actes is worth watching. Far more so than Silk, anyway. It deals with three massive stage productions put on by Girard, who has been a brilliant director of both stage and screen. These productions are “Le Proces”, “Lost Objects” and “Sigfried”. There are interviews with dozens of people who are either involved with the projects themselves and also outsiders who just admire Girard’s talent. Atom Egoyan, maybe the most celebrated Canadian film director of them all, makes several appearances, and his entire interview is available on the DVD as a special feature. So too is the interview with Martin Scorcese, an interview that is both informative and fun.

Martin Scorcese is without a doubt the most interesting interview subject for any documentary about film. He is so passionate and excitable that he can create interest in anything, even if it’s something we would never have considered cool to begin with. (His personal documentary, A Journey Through American Films With Martin Scorcese, is a must-watch for any film buff.) But Francois Girard En Trois Actes is about stage productions, not film. And it would definitely help to be bilingual to watch this documentary, since so many of the interview subjects are francophone. It’s a fascinating look at what goes on behind the scenes of a stage production, and how massive an undertaking it really is to put on an opera or a play. And that really is a huge job. Francois Girard En Trois Actes. Disponible Mardi aux magazins qui vent les DVDs. Just don’t rent Silk.