Review - Congorama

July 4th, 2008 John

“Congorama” did quite well in Canada, winning several awards for best film and found its way easily into their top 10 films of 2006 — this new release gives audiences in the United States a chance to find out why. It’s a delightful film, a voyage of self-discovery via one clumsy visit to Canada, that starts out as one film and then turns itself inside out, becoming something else entirely

Oafish Michel (Olivier Gourmet) is a would-be Belgian inventor who can’t seem to invent anything that fires the imagination — or the purses of big business. His best inventions are a solar-powered robotic lawn mower that no one wants — most people assure him that they like mowing the lawn — and a wire de-icer that doesn’t inspire much in the corporations he tries to sell it to.

When Michel finds out he was adopted in Canada and brought to Belgium, he mixes a business trip with a gratuitous attempt to retrace his roots. He bumbles his way through it until it all ends abruptly, giving director Philippe Falardeau the chance to invert the entire experience and start the film over again, presenting the whole thing from an entirely different viewpoint. It starts out as a slice of life light comedy, but ends up as a comedic conspiracy film criticizing the movement of corporations and countries in co-opting the ideas of the small guy.

“Congorama” is also a film about identity and how a person forges his own. Are the shadows we live under those of biology or culture — or are they a mix of both that take strange forms and cause us to react in ways we don’t even understand — and might never? It’s a film that investigates secrets and realizations and how those conspire to create events with the illusion that there is a plan, rather than a series of interlinked accidents.

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Review - Confessions of a Superhero

June 13th, 2008 John

Superheroes are a curious creature largely because they are such a specific fantasy. There is really no real world equivalent for them — unlike fairy tales of old, superheroes are not supernatural ways to explain natural phenomena or to pose moral lessons to children. Despite some roots in mythology and tall tales — as well as scattered adventure fiction — superheroes really are a unique 20th century fictional construct with little possibility of existing in reality.

Matt Ogens’ documentary film “Confessions of a Superhero” tackles these notions in a fringe way, by focusing on people who dress up as famous superheroes and loiter on Hollywood Boulevard, hoping for tips as they pose for photos with tourists. A lot of people living in the area characterize the superheroes as panhandlers and even many of the superheroes acknowledge that they are. But what starts out as an examination of an odd and isolated social phenomenon shifts into a study of a more general one — an honest and sometimes depressing look at the compulsion to seek attention and, ultimately, fame to the point where the practice is an extreme dysfunction.

At the center of the film is Christopher Dennis, a longtime street Superman who demands a level of professionalism from the other practitioners, often seeming like the voice of authority at the center of a chaotic configuration. Also on hand are Maxwell Allen, who as Batman has gained a reputation for directness and a bit of danger; Jennifer Gehrt, who as Wonder Woman finds an income while she attempts to live out her small town, big dreams fantasies; and Joe McQueen, an amiable former homeless man who is serious about getting acting work and seems dubious about the veracity of some of his co-horts.

The film is structured in such a way that each superhero is presented within his own construct, but slowly the filmmakers move back to present the wider scope in which each operates. Family members are introduced, spouses, girlfriends, and, with each step of the way, the audience is left questioning not only how much of the life each superhero presents is exactly as stated, but, in fact, to what degree the superhero might be delusional. What starts out with the possibility of being an amusing depiction of eccentrics turns into a more studied look a person’s inability to tell the difference between reality and fiction — and to see how they have placed themselves too firmly into the latter. Only McQueen seems to have any real grasp of his place in the world and the difficult task of moving past it.

What becomes very apparent at a certain point in the film is that the rest of the world can help frame the fictions within which people can retreat — it is not so much their own creation, but an example of them taking an opportunity to build upon more universal myths.

For Dennis, it’s the equation of an obsession with the sweeping societal legends of Superman, a vague resemblance to Christopher Reeve and a surprising relationship to a deceased actress — as well as a supportive but equally as odd girlfriend — that buttresses his descent. Allen, meanwhile, builds on the need for mystique and building fear and begins to believe his own version of the truth so much that it’s pathological. By contrast, Gehrt’s single-minded pursuit is like an invisible thread of understanding in her life that doesn’t seem based on any reality of pursuing the Hollywood dream, but a sort of arrested development that never moved past the fantasies she had as a child.

By the end of the film, the superheroes are left to their own worlds — places that they have forged for themselves of walls that protect them psychologically. Self-made matrixes, as it were. The people in the film are treated with immense respect and an admirable gentleness — but it still comes off as very sad regardless of the dignity they are given. As a study of the things we tell ourselves in order to excel, of the dreams we latch onto despite all indications that they really are impossible despite motivational thinking, “Confessions of a Superhero” is a profound look at something that is probably inside each of us.

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Rick Piltz interview

June 12th, 2008 John

I spoke to Rick Piltz in regard to his appearance in the film “Everything’s Cool,” which chronicled the efforts to get information on global warming out to the public and past the Republican propaganda machine. Piltz was a senior associate in the Climate Change Science Program Office under Bush — he started under Clinton — a science policy expert who soon became so disgusted with the censorship and altering of data that he went public, an insider who came out.

The film chronicled Piltz’s process of blowing the whistle — I spoke with co-director Judith Helfland about the film — in 2005. Soon after Piltz’s resignation, Philip Cooney was revealed to have been editing government reports on climate change to reflect not the scientific data that was originally in the reports, but the Bush administration’s policies.

Piltz created Climate Science Watch following his life as a civil servant for the purpose of monitoring climate science news and the workings of the government in that regard.

JM: “Everything Cool” manages to be funny and sad at the same time.

RP: They have such a unique filmmaking style, it was so interesting to work with them, I’ve never done anything quite like that before, but I never found myself in a situation quite like that before. I take it as fundamentally being a piece about citizenship, citizen activism, through these personal stories. They get certain things really right, like the focus on this orchestrated disinformation campaign to stall action on global warming, I think they have a really important point, essentially right, in the movie. There’s a very non-cynical take on the value of speaking up, speaking out, and taking action, a very unjaundiced view of that. I appreciate that in them.

JM: When you talk about this disinformation campaign, it is a wider thing other than just global warming — it’s very much a game plan on all fronts.

RP: Sometimes I think, particularly how I’ve criticized and watch dogged the Bush Administration in particular, it seems to me that I have focused on the global warming climate disruption issue  because it’s the thing that I’ve been both engaged with here and where I’ve bumped up against the politicization of science directly, so I speak from that direct experience and expertise. It seems to me that I’ve been covering the global warming beat of a more general pattern and the administration has had a pretty cavalier attitude in regard to misrepresenting the intelligence in different areas in order to suit their political purposes. I think that really until a bit into Bush’s second term, people really tended to think “Well, what’s going on here is just a debate about policy.” If that’s all it were, there would be plenty to debate, but these guys were willing to misrepresent, in a variety of ways, the scientific conclusions about climate change in order to conform the message to what they wanted to make happen politically, and that sort of interference introduces a whole different level of problems around integrity and censorship and accountability that I thought really went over the line.

Global warming is not the only area where the evidence is one thing and the politics is something else and it leaves the nation in a tough position, because if you don’t understand the problem and you don’t have a political leadership that is willing to talk about it straightforwardly with people — what the risk is, how we’re going to manage it — then you have a breakdown of the country’s preparedness to deal with problems. Then you have the aftermath in Iraq, then you have the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — failure of preparedness, failure of preparedness — and we’re doing the same thing on climate change, it’s just a more slow-rolling disaster, so  you don’t see it happen quite so fast.

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Keir Moreano “Unspooled” interview

June 7th, 2008 John

I was intrigued by Keir Moreano’s documentary film “Unspooled” when I first read about it. It’s the tale of an ill-fated student film shoot — it follows a crew of NYU film students trying to work on one guy’s senior project.

I’m a former NYU film student — some might say “failed,” but I would counter “come to my senses,” as I left the program after three years there (some would argue, and I would agree, that the third year there was on paper only) — and I look back on the experience as a very odd thing indeed. It’s a time of ego feeding and arrested development for some, for others its a time where you figure it all out and start looking at creativity as a career path.

For many, it’s the last time that creativity is allowed to be totally self-indulgent.

I liked Moreano’s film a lot because it got inside that world and really showed the combination of professionalism and fumbling that lies in its atmosphere. It’s also a movie that can speak to anyone who is trying to achieve something and who has realized that among the insurmountable odds that they face might just be their own ability against biting off more than they can chew.

Moreano is originally from Seattle, where he currently lives.

JM: Your film really captures how delicate and collaborative a process filmmaking is — and it really presented the tug of war between the impression that the director completely makes the film and the reality that its the result of multiple personalities and capabilities coming together to make this one thing. Was that something you wanted to reveal?

KM: I think you touch on something that is really true, which is that it’s such a highly collaborative thing, and it isn’t something that people think about when they start to make a film. I think that a lot of people come in thinking that they can do it on their own because that’s the way they’ve always done it. I’m of the generation that grew up with digital cameras and Final Cut Pro, all high schools had video programs, and so I think that a lot of people came into it feeling like, “Oh, yeah, I can do this on my own and I’ll just get some people to help out, to act and get everyone pizza,” and, of course, the reality of it is that it’s highly, highly collaborative. I think my film testifies a little bit that, in the end, it’s not even one person’s film, it’s a collective experience and a collective ownership over that experience. I think it’s hard to be an auteur.

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Review - Autism: The Musical

May 22nd, 2008 John

In “Autism: The Musical,” an extra-curricular program for autistic kids provides the framing device to gather different families and look into their lives.

Autism has gotten a lot of press lately, sometimes in the form of Asperger’s Syndrome, other times in the continued and controversial debate over causes and cures (science has found no conclusive evidence in the slow march to the resolution of those issues, which hasn’t stopped celebrities and hucksters from getting involved with get cured quick schemes that point fingers at outside causes). The saturation, however, has not necessarily resulted in a greater understanding of the condition, nor of its effects on a family — and the presentation too often drifts to the extremes, either the Asperger’s kid who will make a great engineer or the entirely dysfunctional savant who has one area of expertise but little in the way of communication or survivals skills.

In other words, perceived intelligence is often presented as a silver lining, as if selling these kids as gifted in this way somehow supercedes the hard parts. By the same token, there is a prevalence of shock stories that some recent documentaries have put forth, portraying autistic situations as entirely hopeless. “Autism: The Musical” succeeds by providing a realistic middle ground in which the lives of these families unfold in terms dictated by their own realities, rather than the preconceptions of a filmmaker going into them.

At the center of the film is Elaine Hall, an acting coach whose adopted son, Neal, was diagnosed as autistic. With minimal verbal communication skills, Hall found that Neal blossomed when exposed to fellow theater people who could enter into Neal’s world as a way of bringing him into ours. Hall translated that knowledge into her own theater program for autistic kids, called the Miracle Project — a daunting task for anyone familiar with autistic children. It’s an invitation to chaos, a mandate to walk a line between structure and no structure, to deal with the numerous sensory issues and social dysfunctions of every child in the room as they bounce off each other and somehow form all that into the semblance of a cohesive presentation that will make the kid feel great rather than commandeered.

First and foremost, the film is a vehicle to get to know the kids, including Henry, with his sophisticated phraseology and loud fascination with dinosaurs; Lexi, a bundle of awkward sweetness, with her sing-song voice that works like a signpost to the world that she is different but also the vessel of a remarkable singing voice that masks any difference; Wyatt, whose humor and perspective can sometimes mask the realities of his capabilities; and Adam, a pistol of a pipsqueak whose focus on cello is his most desired method of communication.

As the viewer gets to know each kid as an individual, there is also plenty of time spent on the family and, most specifically, how each unit turns into a wheel that spokes out from that autistic child through necessity. The picture as revealed through the wider scope is not a happy one. While the musical program is rewarding and the individual victories of the children are undeniably marvelous, there is no ignoring the destruction forged from such caretaking — the film is scattered with depression, marital problems, legal issues, medical frustrations, education woes, and the numbing exhaustion inherent in raising an autistic child. These are the hidden terrors that couples grapple with continually behind the scenes, away from the eyes of friends and family — piled up on top of one another every day — but they are revealed with an honest clarity here.

If there is one possible problem with the film, it is that all the families portrayed seem to be upper middle class and above (though the DVD extras do rectify this a bit) and you have to wonder how families with fewer resources function. However, by the end of the film, that problem ceases to exist, as one of the primary lessons of the documentary is that no one is immune to the personal perils involved in raising an autistic child. Money really doesn’t solve anything and the rich despair as much as anyone else — it can only get worse as you move down the income scale.

That said, this is not a depressing film, but rather an enlightening one. It’s sad a lot, but it’s happy sometimes. It’s honest and helpful in its portrayal of the lives of families with autistic children, but the children themselves manage to add light — as does the fact that, despite all the problems, there are parents this devoted to their kids. It’s also a call to action for ordinary people that societal changes are required. So often, autism is presented as a condition where people “think differently” — and that may indeed be the case. But with as many as one in every 150 children now possibly on the spectrum, everyone else is going to have to start thinking differently as well. Years of cultural notions are required to go right out the window in order to transition these kids into society. “Autism: The Musical” presents the challenges and possibilities for victory, as well as defeat.

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Review - Automatons

April 9th, 2008 John

Featuring a major dose of retro trash colliding with a pulp sensibility, “Automatons” is like an old fashioned cautionary science fiction short story melded with a ‘70s NYC underground feel. The result can be claustrophobic and sometimes wincingly gory, but it’s never, ever as dull as the basic CGI techno show-off reels that get shown at local cineplexes.

The story follows the frantic and lonely work of a young girl (Christine Spencer) in some kind of bunker filled with video screens, robots and loads of scattered wires and pieces of electronics. Her day is filled with two basic activities — repairing damaged robots and playing old video diaries from a scientist (Angus Scrimm) relating the early days of the world she is part of. How do these two fit together? The robots are being used in a war against an unknown enemy and her work is fueled by a paranoid and jingoistic monologue from the past giving her context for her job.

Much of the film involves this daily routine, and the history of the end of the world unfolds slowly as the scientist tells the tale of the destruction of everything in order to achieve technological advance, and of the other nation who attacks because they hate freedom. The war is in the name of security. It’s all a bit obvious, certainly, but as obvious as the pulp roots from which the film springs and, in that way, true to its heritage, taking a complicated subject and commenting on it though crackpot science, pie in the sky technology and overwrought allegory.

The icing on the cake is the style in which the film is realized — the kind of stark black and white where the white is almost blinding, as filtered through intentionally fuzzy visuals, surface scratches and flaws on the film, and the feeling that the broadcast is not quite hitting your screen correctly. The robots themselves are amateurish and creepy at the same time, either portrayed in giant robot suits with actors in them or rickety, automated miniatures in abstract outside battle scenes. It hearkens back to another time — a better one for creativity, I believe, when all visuals were not culled from the same computer application utilized by guys all going to the same universities, but rather the stumbling result of model makers, amateurs, and enthusiasts whose personalities are all over their creations.

In fact, director James Felix McKenney reveals his inspiration for the film is not only old science fiction films, but those as a child that he watched on a fuzzy TV screen — if anyone under 40 even remembers such a thing — populated by robots. He was convinced that there was a whole genre of robot soldiers, much like westerns, but as an adult, came to understand something different. With this swirl of memories in brain, McKenney crafted the film of his childhood dreams, a brand new addition to a genre of film that never existed in the first place.

Is it a great film? Nah. Is it for everyone? Nope by a long shot. It’s a neat and likable film, though, with great energy and effort, and it’s something that will appeal to anyone who the slick nature of modern science fiction has replaced ideas with fast editing and design with a sad fetish for hyper-realism but, at the same time, aren’t looking for a slavish sort of nostalgia. Besides, it’s just nice to see a movie where the robots are robots for a change and not sexy cyborgs.

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Chris Metlzer - Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea

April 7th, 2008 John

The Salton Sea is a man-made body of water created in 1901 after developers diverted water from the Colorado River and created a prosperous farming community in the Imperial Valley. Silt created by run-off from the farms blocked water entries to the canals, so engineers made cuts to allow the water to flow through, which caused flooding in the valley. Because of the silt, the Salton Sea was a salt water body that did not evaporate. In the 1950s, it was stocked with water in an effort to turn it into a beach resort with fishing opportunities and a high-priced retirement community, but tragedy kept striking — floods returned, followed by two tropical storms, decimating the property, while an over-abundence of algae have caused massive fish die-offs and the 1990s saw thousands of birds die in a plague of avian botulism.

Christopher Metzler co-directed “Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea” with Jeff Springer as a way of exploring the community and telling a story that he felt had fallen way off other people’s radar. The sea itself has a 100-year history in California — the simple story is that the Salton Sea is a failed resort town that could’ve been Las Vegas if not for some ecological problems. If was championed by Sonny Bono prior to his death, and discussion about saving it continued.

It’s a huge body of water and yet Metzler only ever discovered the place by accident.

JM: How did you first become aware of the Salton Sea?

CM: I grew up in the midwest, so my knowledge of the Salton Sea didn’t start until more recently — in fact, I think that’s one of the things that threw me into the project, because I was on a road trip one time through Southern California and made a few wrong turns and ended up at the Salton Sea. Given how weird the place, the idea of water in the desert, especially such a huge body of water, it took be aback, then I fell in love with the place. The Salton Sea was this old failed resort town that I had come upon in the late ‘90s and after Sonny Bono died, there was all this discussion about saving the Salton Sea and that was the impetus for going and telling the Salton Sea stories. We thought that anything could happen, it could be this tremendous success along the lines of Las Vegas or it could be just be this big boondoggle and either one could be an interesting story. So it was all accidental and a lot of things in the documentary are completely serendipitous.

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Sarah Lamm “Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox” interview

March 14th, 2008 John

Sarah Lamm’s film, “Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox,” tells the story behind Dr. Bronner’s Magical Soap, a product as renowned for its packaging as it is for its efficacy — which is considerable in its own right. The soap is a multi-purpose cleaning agent — it’s reported to perform as a body and hand soap, as well as shampoo and toothpaste, and additionally as household and industrial cleaner and who knows what else. It’s a product that has been embraced by the counter culture — plenty of interviewees in the film can attest to using it in communes — and has most recently been lauded for its progressive practices in the realm of employment and production.

The soap’s unusual label doubles as a pamphlet for the beliefs of the soaps creator, Dr. Emmanuel H. Bronner, which center around the idea that there is one god featured in all religions (something Bronner called “All-One-God-Faith) and that this god was heralded to different generations of prophets through Halley’s Comet, but also includes Bronner’s “Moral ABCs,” a somewhat labyrinthine code of behavior totaling 30,000 words (that’s six soap labels) and pulling ideas from all the world’s religion. At the heart of Bronner’s somewhat confusing — and to some, totally insane — self-made religious philosophy was the very simple desire for world peace through the brotherhood of mankind and the proper stewardship of what he called “Spaceship Earth.”

Since his death, the company has been run by the family, who tries to stay true to Bronner’s ideals. Dr. Bronner’s vision was one of “Constructive Capitalism,” where profits were shared — not communism, however, which Bronner was not a fan of. Dr. Bronner’s ideas, though they spring forth from an eccentric and confusing source, were embraced by the family. Nowadays, the company makes $18 million and gives away 70 percent of its profits — the family have capped their salaries so that they may never make more than five times that of the lowest paid employee.

JM: What got you to the point where you made a movie about this product?

SL: I was a soap user and a curious one, but I was doing some live performance art projects and I decided to do an adaptation of the soap label for a short theater piece. I wrote to the company and asked them if they would donate soap to our theater and Ralph Bronner is such an extraordinarily enthusiastic person that he called me up in person and then wanted to talk to me about what I was doing and the he sent soap and sent literature, he sent $50 and said, “Go out to lunch on me,” and then he continued to call and check in and see what was going on, so our relationship developed over time over the phone. After September 11 happened, he called me up and wanted to send me on a mission to send soap out to Ground Zero, he wanted to give it away to the people who lived down there. That sort of solidified our peculiar friendship. And then he called again — it was a series of these funny phone calls from the soap guy, you know? He called again and said that he wanted to come to New York City and perform a show about his dad, and so I said that I know how to figure that out, but can we also start documenting this? So I picked up a video camera and started following him around.

JM: What was your background prior to this?

SL: I had done live theater and some kinds of oral history sorts of projects, but never a documentary film.

JM: What did you have to do to get yourself in the place where you were going to work on a documentary?

SL: I just sort of fell into it. The early phases were fairly simple, because basically if you can get together some mics and a digital video camera you can start shooting. Once I had gotten underway, I realized, okay, I’m going to have to figure out how to finish this project. I was lucky enough to meet a lot of supportive people and people are such fans of the soap that it was amazing how people were willing to help out, mostly based on the fact that they loved the product.

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Lizzie Gottlieb “Today’s Man” interview

January 2nd, 2008 John

When Lizzie Gottlieb decided to make a documentary about her brother, she hoped that it would lead to some understanding of his life for her family and herself. Since the release of her film “Today’s Man,” it has opened up a world of people who share his disabilities and have helped open up a world of possibilities.

Gottlieb’s brother, Nicky, was revealed to have Asperger’s Syndrome sometime after she began her project. The disorder, which is on a more functional area of the Autism spectrum, is characterized by varying degrees of social dysfunction and intellectual fixation, as well as possibly extreme sensory issues and accompanying disorders, like depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive and others.

Children with Asperger’s Syndrome are known for becoming fixated on certain subjects, but despite eventual expertise and often high IQs, usually require a very specialized education plan in order to optimize their strengths and not be overcome by their disabilities. Contrary to popular belief, there is no medication to cure or sate the disorder.

Gottlieb wanted to show the story of what happened to these kids when they were grown-up. Nicky’s parents — former New Yorker editor Robert Gottlieb and actress Maria Tucci— are attempting to figure out that fine line where their son is part of the world, but not thrown to the wolves — allowed to be himself, but not dependent on other people to caretake him while he dawdles through the day on the things that interest him.

Gottlieb is a theater director in New York City and founder and producer of Pure Orange Productions. “Today’s Man” will have its U.S. television premiere on PBS’ “Independent Lens” on January 8.

JM: It seemed obvious to your parents from his birth that Nicky was different.

LG: This is not typical of Asperger’s or Autism, but he had these seizures when he was nine months old that became very extreme. My mother noticed that there was something different about him from when he was born. I don’t think she would have pursued it in any way, but because he had these seizures, he went to many, many doctors. What they noticed with the seizures was that he had something called hypthorhythmia which was an EEG that had high, irregular brain rhythms and nobody knew what that meant. He was put on cortozone, which made his whole body bloat up and stopped the seizures. Because of that, they were on the lookout for things so early. And then he didn’t speak when typical kids begin to speak, so it was clear from pretty early that something was different.

But then he had these incredible abilities. He couldn’t speak and we were going to Italy to visit my mother’s family and all the doctors said to not expose him to another language because he doesn’t speak English yet, it would be very bad for him. We went to Italy and within two weeks, he spoke fluent Italian at three-years old. It was like he would learn English as if it were a foreign language, it was that part of his brain – it was like the way you learn your own language and the way you learn other languages are with different parts of your brain and he couldn’t learn English the way the rest of us do. After he spoke Italian, then he started to speak English, but in an odd way.

JM: As a child, how did you react to this new, needy brother?

LG: I was significantly older and I think that made a big, big difference. I had really wanted a younger sibling and my parents were really extraordinary, they always made it feel like the three of us had a problem to deal with and I never felt excluded, like the attention had shifted away and onto him. I think that was really incredible and really important.

I remember coming home from school and my mother was on the phone with a doctor and she was crying. My grandmother made me leave the room and my mother said, “No, bring her back in,” and she got off the phone and she was crying and she said “Nicky’s going to have a hard time learning.” I said “That’s okay, mom, I’ll teach him.”

I think that feeling came from my parents, from their way of handling it.

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