Naomi Klein would point to the economic Shock Doctrine employed by those actually in power throughout the world, not just America, as explaining the rambunctious and radical roller- coaster ride of the world's markets lately since my last film review on The Fall of the Roman Empire.
Dylan Ratigan makes viral web video out of his rant on the Global Economic conspiracy theory pointing to the theft, or "bail out" of Wall Street, of TRILLIONS, not just billions, of dollars as the movie lights from Hollywood grow dim all across the country with little directly to say on the matter.
Still, Hollywood occasionally gets it right. Sort of.
Someone douse the lights, plz., and join me over the flip-flop for some richly buttered popcorn fare at the theaters...
Epp, epp!!!
NOW SHOWING
Rise of The Planet of the Apes (2011)
Answering the cinematic question of where these Teatardy Patriots came from in the first place comes Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
'Nuff said. Probably not a total waste of time when viewed through the right kind of lens.
OPENING TODAY
The Help (2011)
Although the rule is that films open nationwide on a Friday, The Help actually opened on Wednesday, Aug 10th, for some strange unexplained reason beyond wanting to stand out in bucking the status quo. The Help tells the tale of African American domestic maids in the early 1960s in the white ruled society of the deep south, though what people need to take away from this film as much as the strength and perseverance of the oppressed during the early Civil Rights movement is that today in America, if you're lucky enough to have any kind of job, you are "the help" to people like the Koch brothers. "The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry..."
From the New York Times Film Review, - "Black-and-White Struggle With a Rosy Glow":
In this breach all manner of documentary and feature films, from earnest biographies to goofy musicals, have tried to illuminate, not just this period of American history, but also the myriad ways in which humans react when faced with profound moral choices. The latest cinematic endeavor is a feature adaptation of “The Help,” a 2009 novel by Kathryn Stockett that has been on the best-seller list pretty much since its release and has been published in 35 countries.
Crucial to the novel’s success, just as it was in “Eyes(On The Prize)” was the narrative point of view. Hampton’s documentary slides powerfully from one witness to another, giving little-known organizers equal weight with the Dr. Kings and Rosa Parkses of the movement. Ms. Stockett, a white woman who toiled for five years on “The Help,” uses the voices of three women (Skeeter, an emerging white liberal writer, and Minny and Aibileen, two black maids she persuades to tell their stories) to telescope a wide range of emotions and experiences in the Jim Crow Mississippi of 1962.
In the film adaptation the director-writer Tate Taylor, a childhood friend of Ms. Stockett’s, adopts a clever strategy. The film opens and closes with voice-over narration by Viola Davis’s Aibileen, and her voice is interspersed throughout the film. But the narrative is driven by Skeeter’s journey from oddball college graduate to rebellious neo-liberal muckraker, action that happens in the book but is given more prominence in the stripped-down screenplay structure. Minny, played with great wit by Octavia Spencer, is still a huge part of the film, but her narrative voice is sublimated to Aibileen’s and Skeeter’s, which may simply be the difference between a sprawling novel and a Hollywood feature.
A larger problem for anyone interested in the true social drama of the era is that the film’s candy-coated cinematography and anachronistic super-skinny Southern belles are part of a strategy that buffers viewers from the era’s violence. The maids who tell Skeeter their stories speak of the risks they are taking, but the sense of physical danger that hovered over the civil rights movement is mostly absent.
Medgar Evers is murdered in Jackson during the course of the story, but it is more a TV event, very much like the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, than a felt tragedy. The only physical violence inflicted on any of the central characters is a beating Minny endures at the hands of a heard, but unseen, husband. At its core the film is a small domestic drama that sketches in the society surrounding its characters but avoids looking into the shadows just outside the frame.
Definitely a must see recommendation.
INTERMISSION
MOVIE CLIPS
Nothing To Loose (1997)
A couple of modern-day, unemployable Robinhoods decide to go shopping in the jungle.
CLASSIC FILMS
They Live (1988)
The idea that alien, un-dead forces control our Murdoc owned media, making subliminal use of billboards, commercials and even scandal driven pulp news like The New York Post and wacko magazine periodicals to subvert our thinking probably isn't that hard for most of us to believe any longer. So credibility isn't really a problem with John Carpenter's prophetic 1988 film "They Live," nor is the attention given to producing a thoroughly "B" film so far as casting and cheesy special effects go. Just slip on a pair of what seem to be ordinary cheap sun-glasses and everything comes into focus...
A street-corner preacher, affiliated with a church next to Justiceville, sounds the first alarm when he warns that ''they'' are exploiting a sleeping middle class. Later on, when Nada learns that the church is merely a front for a resistance movement, he discovers more. ''Our impulses are being redirected,'' someone warns. ''We are living in an artificially induced state of consciousness that resembles sleep.''
The NY Times
"Resembles" sleep.... Yeah, that's rich.
End Credits / Closing Remarks:
Given that the greater part of our site's purpose here on the Street of Prophets is to provide a place where people who might describe themselves as faithful progressives can come together to explore not only faith but the larger questions that revolve around it and our hopes of impacting the world in a positive, progressive way, I am providing these sometime weekly film reviews (whenever). I thought that submitting reviews of controversial or off-the-beaten-track films that often nudge this kind of thought and discussion might be a plus. I'll be offering this each week on Fridays (as the Spirit moves me) and would happily entertain recommendations for future reviews. Feel free to post comments about the films reviewed here today as well as your own recommendations of films you feel may fall along these lines.
And for progressive Deocrats disheartened by the results from Wisconsin's recall effort: Don't give up....
My religion is to seek for truth in life and for life in truth, even knowing that I shall not find them while I live. Miguel de Unamuno