ZOO – The Movie

Zoo, a film by The Stranger columnist Charles Mudede and director Robinson Devor, and executive producers Garr Godfrey and Ben Exworthy, is a documentary on the life and death of Kenneth Pinyan (played by Adam T. McLain) a Seattle area man who died of peritonitis due to perforation of the colon after engaging in receptive anal sex with a horse.

The film’s public debut was at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2007, where it was one of 16 winners out of 856 candidates, and played at numerous regional festivals in the USA thereafter. Following Sundance, it was also selected as one of the top five American films to be presented at the prestigious Directors Fortnight sidebar at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

The film was made with co-operation of the two men who took Pinyan to the hospital, as well as other friends of his, in the attempt to explore the life and death of the man, as well as those who came to the farm near Enumclaw for similar reasons, beyond the public understanding of the media. It does contain explicit material of sexual activities, but only in the view of video footage shown on a small television screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

How Bruce Lee Changed the World

The History Channel’s How Bruce Lee Changed the World explores the amazing multitude of ways that Bruce Lee–the first international Asian superstar–has influenced pop culture. Calling Lee “the biggest movie star in history” is a bit of a stretch (though every shot of this hypnotically charismatic performer argues that he might have been, had he not died abruptly before the release of his fourth and most successful movie, Enter the Dragon).

A wealth of interviewees, ranging from filmmakers like Jackie Chan (who was a stunt man on Lee’s movies in his early career), John Woo, and Brett Ratner, comedians like Eddie Griffin and Margaret Cho, musicians like LL Cool J, RZA, and Damon Albarn, athletes like boxer Sugar Ray Leonard and bodybuilder Flex Wheeler, and more, testify to the enormous impression Lee had on them.

The documentary overreaches at some points, but there’s no denying that Lee brought martial arts movies to the West and redefined the image of Asian men in the public consciousness (before him, Asian men were fiends like Fu Manchu, servants, or buffoons).

Lee’s life history is efficiently told and some of the details are delightful–who would have guessed Lee was a champion cha-cha dancer in Hong Kong? His audition for The Green Hornet reveals a movie star just waiting to be discovered. The man himself–lithe and muscular, capable of astonishing speed and grace, radiating both intelligence and passion–makes all commentary unnecessary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

For All Mankind

The movie documents the Apollo missions – perhaps the most definitively of any movie under two hours. Al Reinert watched all the footage shot during the missions–over 6,000,000 feet of it, and picked out the best. Instead of being a newsy, fact-filled documentary, Reinart focuses on the human aspects of the space flights. The only voices heard in the film are the voices of the astronauts and mission control. Reinart uses the astronaunts’ own words from interviews and from the mission footage. The score by Brian Eno underscores the strangeness, wonder, and and beauty of the astronauts’ experiences–experiences which they were privileged to have for a first time “for all mankind.”

 

Read Full Post »

The Tank Man

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3219548376600109729

Standing in front of a column of tanks, no one around him, he was all alone with his shopping bags in his hands. He climbed on top of the tank, banged on the lid and said “get out of my city, you’re not wanted here”. Tank Man, or the Unknown Rebel, is the nickname of an anonymous man who became internationally famous when he was videotaped and photographed during the Tienanmen Square protests on 5 June 1989. Several photographs were taken of the man, who stood in front of a column of Chinese Type 59 tanks, preventing their advance. The most widely reproduced version of the photograph was taken by Jeff Widener (Associated Press), from the sixth floor of the Beijing Hotel, about half a mile (800 m) away, through a 400 mm lens. Another version was taken by photographer Stuart Franklin of Magnum Photos. His photograph has a wider field of view than Widener’s picture, showing more tanks in front of the man.

Franklin subsequently won a World Press Award for the photograph. It was featured in LIFE magazine’s “100 Photos that Changed the World” in 2003. Variations of the image were also recorded by CNN and BBC film crews, on videotape, and were transmitted across the world.

The still and motion photography of the man standing alone before a line of tanks reached international audiences practically overnight. It headlined hundreds of major newspapers and news magazines and was the lead story on countless news broadcasts around the world. In April 1998, the United States magazine TIME included the “Unknown Rebel” in its 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

Read Full Post »

Unconstitutional – The War On Our Civil Liberties

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3105519703637733227

The United States has refused to abide by the Geneva Conventions. They are the rules of war that were developed after World War II. Basically what they say is when you capture people during a war, you have to treat them humanely. You have to give them medical assistance. You have to, first of all, decide who they are. They get this right to this tribunal that decides: Are you a prisoner of war? Are you a civilian? Do you have nothing to do with this war whatsoever? Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties, is the third in a series of Public Interest Pictures films that follows Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election and Uncovered: The War on Iraq. True to their legacy, Unconstitutional provides the facts and stories that illuminate administration lies, wrongheaded policies, and the real victims of these actions – the American people.

Here, you’ll get the real story behind the USA PATRIOT Act and other administration policies and the gut wrenching stories behind those affected-from law-abiding store clerks to United States Olympians unable to travel. It’ll remind you of what America used to stand for and what it seems we’re falling for now. In short, this one-hour film will affirm why you’re angry and give you a tool to help others join your ranks.

Read Full Post »

This Is What A Democracy Looks Like

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2007206186362541122

This film, shot by 100 amateur camera operators, tells the story of the enormous street protests in Seattle, Washington in November 1999, against the World Trade Organization summit being held there. Vowing to oppose, among other faults, the WTO’s power to arbitrarily overrule nations’ environmental, social and labor policies in favor of unbridled corporate greed, protesters from all around came out in force to make their views known and stop the summit.

Against them is a brutal police force and a hostile media as well as the stain of a minority of destructively overzealous comrades. Against all odds, the protesters bravely faced fierce opposition to take back the rightful democratic power that the political and corporate elite of the world is determined to deny the little people.

Read Full Post »

The Miami Model

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7557174318773212602

The Miami model is a term used by political activists to describe the tactics employed by law enforcement agencies during demonstrations relating to the negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) trade agreement. The meeting related protests took place in Miami, Florida in November 2003. The Miami Model is also the title of a documentary film, produced by Indymedia, about the FTAA, the police action in Miami, and political organizing led by people of color in the Miami area.

This term refers to the distinctive features of crowd control technique used in Miami, which included large scale pre-emptive arrests, heavily armed sometimes unidentifiable law enforcement, the collection of intelligence from protesters, and the “embedding” of corporate media with the police.

Miami Activist Defense and National Lawyers Guild filed a federal lawsuit against the City, the Mayor, Police Chief Timoney, Homeland Defense Secretary Ridge, and Attorney General Ashcroft for rampant abuse of the constitution.

Among the groups which organized against the FTAA were the Green Bloc, United for Peace and Justice, Root Cause, several AFL-CIO affiliated unions, Midwest Unrest, Pittsburgh Organizing Group, Food Not Bombs and many others.

Read Full Post »

Liberty Bound

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1360211088519253730

Liberty Bound takes an entertaining look at America’s ongoing struggle to keep a comfortable balance between democracy, capitalism, and fascism. This is a film about historic events that shape history. It is a film about courage and fear; ignorance and knowledge; propaganda and rhetoric.

Christine set out to answer these questions on her quest across America: What is fascism and why does that word increasingly appear in the alternative and foreign media when referencing the United States? Are we losing our civil liberties? Is our very constitution and Bill of Rights in jeopardy? Do Americans know what their government is doing? How much of the daily news is well-disguised propaganda?

Through original footage, archived footage, and interviews with people such as Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, and Michael Ruppert, Liberty Bound explores the state of the union and its ostensible move toward fascism. We talk with people who have been interrogated by the Secret Service and threatened with arrest for doing such benign things as sending an email, turning around during a Bush speech, and having a philosophical discussion on a train.

Christine also explores the unanswered questions surrounding the attacks of 9/11, and she takes a closer look at the timeline of that terrible day. She examines the US Government’s reasons for going to war with Afghanistan and Iraq. She also delves into the accusations that the Bush Administration knew about the 9/11 attacks and their warlike agenda is actually centered on oil.

Finally, she studies the elements of previous empires and fascist states as compared to recent occurrences in the United States: the loss of civil liberties, police brutality, homeland security, etc. Liberty Bound leaves us with the question: “Is the United States bound for liberty – or does it just have liberty bound?

Read Full Post »

The Corporation

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1271317900361690951

If Academy Awards were given for films most likely to start arguments at dinner tables, this hot-button polemic would have won the 2005 Oscar hands down. It begins with the revelation that, according to a Supreme Court ruling, a corporation must be considered a person rather than an entity. Under this definition, reasons profiler Robert Hare, corporations can be categorized as psychopathic because they exhibit a personality disorder: that of single-mindedly pursuing their objectives without regard for the people in and around them.

Read Full Post »

Triumph Of The Will

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=721544746508320698

Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens) is a filmed record of the 1934 Nazi Party Convention, in Nuremberg. No, it is more than just a record: it is an exultation of Adolf Hitler, who from the moment his plane descends from Valhalla-like clouds is visually characterized as a God on Earth. The “Jewish question” is disposed of with a few fleeting closeups; filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl prefers to concentrate on cheering crowds, precision marching, military bands, and Hitler’s climactic speech, all orchestrated, choreographed and illuminated on a scale that makes Griffith and DeMille look like poverty-row directors.

It has been alleged that the climactic rally, “spontaneous” Sieg-Heils and all, was pre-planned according to Riefenstahl’s specifications, the better to take full advantage of its cinematic potential.

Allegedly, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels resented the presence and intrusion of a woman director, but finally had to admit that her images, achieved through the use of 30 cameras and 120 assistants, were worth a thousand speeches. Possibly the most powerful propaganda film ever made, Triumph of the Will is also, in retrospect, one of the most horrifying.

Read Full Post »