(Mehta 2002) Bol­ly­wood / Hollywood
(Krish­na 1991) Masala
(Brock 1984) The Liv­ing Plan­et: Ep.1 The Build­ing of–― the Earth
(Cohen 2005) Stealth
(Col­let-Ser­ra 2005) House of Wax
(Dong 2004) Licensed to Kill
(Brock 1984) The Liv­ing Plan­et: Ep.2 The Frozen World
(Bris­tow 2004) Jane Goodall’s Return to Gombe
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My friend Isaac White mag­i­cal­ly came up with tick­ets to a pre­view show­ing of The Gold­en Com­pass, and we were both pleas­ant­ly sur­prised. We both knew Pullman’s superb nov­el for kids, and did not have high hopes that it would trans­late well into a movie. But we end­ed up quite sat­is­fied with the results. Of course, changes were inevitable, because what works in prose often doesn’t work in film. In order to pre­serve the rather com­plex plot, the pace had to be quick­ened. The book has leisure­ly paced seg­ments punc­tu­at­ed by occa­sion­al bursts of action. By neces­si­ty, the film com­press­es every­thing so that the action sequences dom­i­nate. But the impor­tant thing is that it pre­serves the integri­ty of the book.

And integri­ty is the right word. I’m talk­ing about this on my blog page, because the film is already under vicious attack from all the forces of bar­barism. The book is a pro­found­ly moral one, with a sense of out­rage at injus­tice, that urges its young read­ers to ques­tion author­i­ty, think for them­selves, and rebel against tyran­ny. It has come along just when it is need­ed. The film pre­serves much of this moral strength. So it’s no sur­prise that the march­ing morons are out in force. I have read of numer­ous cas­es where schools are post­ing signs warn­ing their stu­dents against see­ing the movie, and there are boy­cotts being orga­nized by var­i­ous author­i­ties who, appar­ent­ly, have no trou­ble iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as the intol­er­ant Mag­is­teri­um of the film’s fan­ta­sy story.

Con­for­mi­ty, cow­ardice, igno­rance, and grov­el­ing before author­i­ty are the pre­scribed cul­tur­al norms of the last thir­ty years, in both the Unit­ed States and Cana­da. A whole gen­er­a­tion has been raised in a kind of cesspool of Con­ser­v­a­tive immoral­i­ty. That is the only word for it. Orga­nized reli­gion and gov­ern­ment have com­bined forces to destroy the very idea of moral­i­ty, which depends on the func­tion­ing of the inde­pen­dent, autonomous, rea­son­ing indi­vid­ual mind, and sub­sti­tute its own false gods: Super­sti­tion, and Blind Obe­di­ence. The Con­ser­v­a­tive ide­al is always a world with­out moral­i­ty, and with­out reason. 

This film will, per­haps, offer a ton­ic, a bit of inspi­ra­tion for chil­dren raised in the bleak amoral­i­ty of a Con­ser­v­a­tive cul­ture. Its sym­bol­ism is easy for any bright child to absorb. The “gold­en com­pass” of the sto­ry is a gad­get, but it is clear­ly meant to sym­bol­ize the moral com­pass — the indi­vid­ual com­mit­ment to rea­son and jus­tice that allows a human being to dis­tin­guish right from wrong, free­dom from slav­ery, truth from lies, and hon­our from dis­hon­our. Peo­ple with­out a moral com­pass do what they’re told. They tor­ture pris­on­ers in Guan­tanamo when told to, they let med­dling big­ots man­age their sex lives, they accept rigged elec­tions, they don’t talk back to Those In Charge. They become amoral zom­bies, and that is what pow­er­ful reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions and gov­ern­ments have gen­er­al­ly pre­ferred human beings to be.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, young peo­ple have usu­al­ly found their moral com­pass through art. My under­stand­ing (and hatred of) slav­ery was first learned by read­ing Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, as a child. It is invari­ably the books that touch on sig­nif­i­cant moral ques­tions, that encour­age the young to ques­tion author­i­ty and think for them­selves that attract the atten­tion of the cen­so­ri­ous. Usu­al­ly the rea­sons prof­fered to jus­ti­fy the attacks are spu­ri­ous, what­ev­er sounds most plau­si­ble at the moment, because the under­ly­ing rea­son is too igno­ble to make plain.

Zheng Cheng­gong as por­trayed by an unknown 17th cen­tu­ry artist …

… and by actor Zhao Wenzhou

Tai­wan is an island which was orig­i­nal­ly pop­u­lat­ed by Malayo-Poly­ne­sian peo­ples. Over a peri­od of about five hun­dred years, it absorbed set­tlers from the Chi­nese main­land, main­ly from the province of Fujian. The abo­rig­i­nal peo­ples where dis­placed and absorbed, and only two per­cent of Tai­wan’s pop­u­la­tion are now iden­ti­fied in this group. The bulk of the pop­u­la­tion speak a vari­ety of Min Chi­nese some­what sim­i­lar to that of Fujian. How­ev­er, Man­darin is the offi­cial lan­guage, taught in the schools, and nec­es­sary for all offi­cial and busi­ness pur­pos­es. The Dutch con­trolled the island between 1624 and 1662. Zheng Cheng­gong [鄭成功], or more cor­rect­ly Koxin­ga [國 姓爺] was a Ming loy­al­ist who defeat­ed the Dutch. He’s been adopt­ed as a hero by both the Bei­jing regime,to whom he rep­re­sents Chi­nese rule over Tai­wan, and by Tai­wanese nation­al­ists, for whom his rear-guard action against the Qing rep­re­sents a par­al­lel with Chi­ang’s Kai-shek. When Chi­ang’s Kuom­intang Par­ty was defeat­ed in 1949–50, he and his fol­low­ers retreat­ed to Tai­wan, which had only recent­ly been lib­er­at­ed from Japan. Curi­ous­ly, the Japan­ese rulers of Tai­wan also con­sid­ered Zheng a hero, because his moth­er was Japan­ese! Every­one seems to want a slice of Zheng. Any movie about him is, ipso-fac­to, bound to be polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed. Read more »

If you’re look­ing for a good Hitch­cock film that isn’t con­stant­ly screened, then check out this 1953 item which failed at the box-office, but con­tains all the ele­ments of clas­sic Hitch­cock. Mont­gomery Clift gives one of his typ­i­cal­ly tense and repressed per­for­mances as a priest false­ly accused of a mur­der. The set­ting, Que­bec City in the ear­ly 1950’s, is rep­re­sent­ed with more real­ism than Hol­ly­wood usu­al­ly man­aged with such “exot­ic” locales at that time. The main hook, that the priest can’t clear him­self because the real mur­der­er has con­fessed to him under the “seal of the con­fes­sion­al”, might be a stum­bling block for today’s audi­ence, but giv­en that under­stand­ing, the plot works out log­i­cal­ly. The hero­ine, played by Anne Bax­ter, comes across as a thor­ough­ly dis­lik­able per­son, which may have been the main rea­son the film failed with the pub­lic. By the end of the first reel, I was hop­ing that she would turn out to be the real mur­der­er. Karl Malden gives an odd per­for­mance, obvi­ous­ly uncer­tain how to rep­re­sent a French Cana­di­an police detec­tive, and uncom­fort­able with his stilt­ed dialog.

Masala (1991)

Both these films, made eleven years apart, are sur­re­al­is­tic come­dies about Indo-Cana­di­an fam­i­lies in Toron­to. I first saw Masala with a room­ful of friends, some of South Asian back­ground, some not, but all Cana­di­ans raised in Toron­to. I think we all enjoyed it more for its “Toron­to-ness” than for any­thing as dourly seri­ous as “iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics”. It had the feel of our city, and the same goofi­ness that you would see in Strange Brew. See­ing the ven­er­a­ble Saeed Jaf­frey as the God Krish­na in a Leaf’s goalie uni­form had us rolling on the floor with laugh­ter. And the same actor por­trays the long-suf­fer­ing postal clerk, to whom Lord Krish­na deliv­ers the rarest Cana­di­an stamp, but who is unwill­ing to sell it either to sat­is­fy his wife’s crav­ing for appli­ances, or the gov­ern­men­t’s pres­sure, and is the Cana­di­an Every­man in a nut­shell. Read more »

(McKel­lar 1998) Last Night
(Arbuck­le 1917) The Butch­er Boy [w. Roscoe Arbuck­le & Buster Keaton]
(Arbuck­le 1917) The Rough House [w. Roscoe Arbuck­le & Buster Keaton]
(Arbuck­le 1917) His Wed­ding Night [w. Roscoe Arbuck­le & Buster Keaton]
(Arbuck­le 1917) Oh, Doc­tor! [w. w. Roscoe Arbuck­le & Buster Keaton]
(God­win 1999) Won­ders of the African World: The Road to Timbuktu
(Appio 1999) Won­ders of the African World: Lost Citis of the South
(Hath­away 1953) Nia­gara Read more »

I strong­ly rec­om­mend this film. It’s prob­a­bly the best of the polit­i­cal doc­u­men­taries cir­cu­lat­ing today. Since news­pa­pers, radio and tele­vi­sion have stopped being of any use to any­one who wants to learn things about pol­i­tics, doc­u­men­tary films have emerged as the most effec­tive medi­um for dis­cussing pub­lic affairs.

For those who are too young to rec­og­nize the name, Robert Strange McNa­ma­ra was one of the pio­neers of strate­gic sys­tems analy­sis dur­ing WWII, and served as Sec­re­tary of Defense for Kennedy and John­son from 1961 to 1968. He then became Pres­i­dent of the World Bank until his retire­ment in 1981. What is now called “pol­i­cy analy­sis” is an ampli­fi­ca­tion of the “sys­tems analy­sis” that he intro­duced to the Pen­ta­gon. Under­stand­ing McNa­ma­ra’s back­ground, psy­chol­o­gy and motives is essen­tial for any attempt to eval­u­ate Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy dur­ing the 1960s. Read more »

This fas­ci­nat­ing film, based on the best-sell­ing 1958 nov­el by Eugene Bur­dick, and filmed in the trau­mat­ic year of 1963, con­tains one of Mar­lin Bran­do’s best per­for­mances. Bran­do was at the height of his pow­ers, and instinc­tive­ly knew how to act with his body, mak­ing every ges­ture, every slump of a shoul­der or crease of a brow advance the story.

The film is also fas­ci­nat­ing from a polit­i­cal point of view. Amer­i­cans were just start­ing to expe­ri­ence a series of embar­rass­ing set­backs in for­eign pol­i­cy. They were com­mit­ted to an immoral and aston­ish­ing­ly stu­pid pol­i­cy of sup­port­ing dic­ta­tors and betray­ing under­dogs. Every intel­li­gent and humane per­son in the U.S. knew this. How­ev­er, the analy­sis of the pol­i­cy’s oppo­nents suf­fered from some seri­ous flaws. The ortho­doxy among crit­ics of Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy was that peo­ple like Fidel Cas­tro were mere­ly patri­ot­ic nation­al lead­ers who were being “dri­ven into the arms” of the Sovi­et Union by the fool­ish hos­til­i­ty of the White House. This idea was pure non­sense. Cas­tro, and oth­er like him, were clients of the Sovi­et Union from the start, and tyrants from day one. Their adher­ence to the Sovi­et Empire was auto­mat­ic, and dri­ven by the fun­da­men­tal evil of their natures. Clever for­eign pol­i­cy might have bought them off, or bet­ter yet, allowed their local vic­tims to over­throw them. How­ev­er, the U.S. State Depart­ment did not employ any­one with either brains or prin­ci­ples. Every infan­tile and cor­rupt “strate­gic” step they took, usu­al­ly jus­ti­fied with smarmy plat­i­tudes about “real­ism”, mere­ly played into the hands of the Sovi­ets and entrenched the sovi­et clients in power.

In oth­er words, both the pro­po­nents and the crit­ics of U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy, at the time, didn”t know what the hell they were talk­ing about. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, short­ly after the release of this movie, Amer­i­ca began its dis­as­trous war in Vietnam.

This bizarre doc­u­men­tary about a North­ern Ontario inven­tor who is deter­mined to pro­duce a griz­zly-bear-proof suit is one of the fun­ni­est things I’ve seen all year. What makes it fun­ny is that there is no spoof involved. The man real­ly exists, and he has devot­ed his life and for­tune to devel­op­ing a prod­uct which is not only absurd in con­cep­tion, but com­plete­ly use­less. With a cir­cle of friends, some doubt­ful, some indul­gent, some caught up in his vision quest, he sub­mits his pro­to­types to a series of extreme tests. He devel­ops a fire-proof­ing coat­ing for the suit, in which one of the active ingre­di­ents in the for­mu­la is diet pep­si. One of the draw­backs of the suit is that you can’t walk in it if there is a slope or a rough sur­face, and you can’t get up if you fall over. How­ev­er, you will be safe from bears.

(Jones & Upton 1999) Wild Europe: Ep.6 ― Wild Cities
(Chow 2004) Kung Fu Hustle
(Vicente, Chas­se & Arntz 2004) What tHe βLєєP Dө wΣ (k)πow!?
(Gold 1987) Inspec­tor Morse: The Remorse­ful Day
(G. W. Pab­st 1929) Die Büchse der Pan­do­ra [Pandora’s Box]
(Sales 1990) The Silk Road: Khotan, Oasis of Silk and Jade
(Zauber­man 1993) Moi Ivan, toi Abraham
(Davis 1997) Nova: Curse of T. Rex
(Grint 1984) The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes: The Crooked Man
(Proyas 2004) I, Robot
*(Boyle 2007) Sunshine
Read more »