In The Loop (Armando Iannucci, 2009)

After suffering through years of documentaries and fiction films that aimed to reveal the "truth" about the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its fallout, Iannucci finally made the one that dared to be the one with the facts "in a world of truth." Facts, of course, not as "smoking guns" (something, and the media obsession to which, that the film made a point of satirizing) to the "truth" behind the invasion, but rather the world that crafted the facts and thus the truths: the bureaucrats and political careerists who, mired in their own self delusion and and narcissism, lead the world to war. Unlike the political documentaries of 2004, or the series of dramas produced in 2005 and 2006, Iannucci doesn't pit pacifists against war-mongers, left versus right, Bush against everyone else. Instead, he portrays the political creatures that crafted and adopted the war as people who, although having moral ideas of their own, must balance everything else to their prospects as insiders in Washington. There is a sense of people who want to do what is right, but also people who feel the need to be in the thick of Washington games not only to do what is right, but out of their sheer need to believe that they are instrumental in bringing rectitude about. Unlike previous efforts that also focused on the politics of war, Iannucci gives us characters who have moral and emotional investment to doing what is right, no matter how venal their actions become, or how misguided and dogmatic their beliefs have become. Although Iannucci uses cinema verite style filtered through exploitative TV tactics, his story ultimately points out the contradiction of reality via television broadcasts, and reveals that his spastic characters, through severe overacting and over the top cursing, are ultimately just banal characters existing in a world where war is just business as usual. Beyond portrayals of torture, revelations of lies and deceptions, and seedy stories of who is responsible for what, the truth of war's everydayness and bureaucratic casualness is the most horrifying.

Theodora Goes Wild (Richard Boleslawski, 1936)

The genius of Theodora Goes Wild isn't really that it shatters American small-town conservatism in a time when it dominates Americal social decorum, but that it reveals such "small minded conservatism" as being a social standard at all, regardless of the size of the town. As the title suggests, the film doesn't really start before Theodora goes wild. From the beginning, we already see small glimpses of her more "liberated" side, never really accepting her as a straight-laced busybody like her aunts and their friends. Also, the town itself is already portrayed as not being so straight-laced and close-minded: Theodora's uncle John, a rebel who moves to New York and has a string of lovers, is abhorred but secretly loved by his sisters; and Theodora herself must be a product of a marriage-gone-wrong to have to be raised by her aunts; and the very strong women of the town take to running it. In addition, Theodora herself seems to be more concilliatory than repressive, who with a roll of her eyes show that she does not care as much as everyone else in Lynnefield about sex. No wonder it is no surprise that she is Caroline Adams.

When Michael tries to "liberate" her, it's just annoying. We already know that Theodora is already cognizant of her choking conservatism, so Michael's efforts only appeared cloying. But Theodora's efforts to "liberate" Michael on the other hand--at which point she "goes wild"--is a clever skewering of the more "sophisticated" urban New York culture. She reveals them more concerned about traditional notions of marriage and family, and worse that they adhere to it more out of personal gain rather than integrity. Whereas small-town Lynnfield is a matriarchal society where the women have power to control the social and moral direction of their town, New York men prefer to keep their women in the background (one seemingly insignificant scene where reporters interview Ms. Adams have the filmmaker emphasizing one reporter repeatedly shushing a female reporter), brought out to parade their "decency" but stuffed back into the house when the limelight temporarily goes away. Funny though, in the background the women all have the knowing "Mona Lisa smile," as if secretly they already know what's inside Pandora's box, and that they only disapprove of Ms. Adams to the extent that she decided to reveal it. The best part of it all is the end: she disappears for a few days and returns to Lynnefield, victorious, still crazy, and carrying a baby. A femme fatale who turned New York society on its head, she returns home unscathed and unpunished.

Ang Huling El Bimbo (dir. Auraeus Solito, 1996)

Solito's video for the Eraserheads' hugely popular "Ang Huling El Bimbo." Solito later directed the hugely popular Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros. One could see Solito developing his interest in depicting the painful passage to adulthood in a specifically Filipino context. He is to some extent the Philippines' Wes Anderson. The biggest difference is that unlike Anderson's characters, who find adulthood through the recognition of responsibility, Solito's characters grow up by discovering their sexuality. Here, Solito matches the song by at first expressing sexuality through juvenile innuendos, and finally by expressing the painful crescendo through the weirdly horrific images--as seen through the eys of a child--of responsibility being forced through the enactment of one's sexual urges.

The Lost Swordship (Chia Li, 1977)

A surprisingly good "lost" wuxia film from Taiwan recently (as in 2007) revived by Rarescope, a DVD company that "restores" (that is, put on DVD and nothing else) old Hong Kong/Chinese/Taiwanesee martial arts films otherwise forgotten due to their relative insignificance. Insignificance, of course, doesn't say anything about the film's quality, and this particular movie is an indication of that. This movie, about a dangerous cult led by a masked woman named "The Bishop" who will stop at nothing to attain the secret of the Fragrant Sword from the Li clan (I love how Hitchcock is touted as the master of the cinematic MacGuffin, when the wuxia is built upon MacGuffins such as "the Fragrant Sword." What does the fragrant swords does? Leave a scent after it kills its victim. Somehow it will lead to world domination, but how it will do that is a mystery. But hey look, SWORDFIGHTS!), features great cinematography (albeit horrible costume design - the women sport ugly fringed skirts when they are about to turn somebody on) and an exciting plot that, common to many wuxia films, is too complex for its own good, and all the better for us the viewers. Of course, it's no King Hu (King Hu would have just ditched the plot complexities and just have one long showdown in the middle of Western China), but King Hu wouldn't be royalty if anyone else in China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan did things the way he did things. Like many other wuxia films, this movie's male characters are there simply to kill or be killed; the women on the other hand are complex, playing the men and the other women for their own benefit. One could say that the plot's actors are the men, but the story revolves around its strong women. With a slip of a leg, a sign of helplessness, or an indication ripe sexuality, the women have the men under their thumbs. Here, the women characters are doomed to fail (the film's ultimate revelation is "men have to find their way," which leaves women just perpetually lost), but fail in a prospect higher than any other cinema allowed.

One comment about the DVD: Although I am eternally grateful to Rarescope for releasing this film, the movie's aspect ratio is deceptive. Sure, it is widescreen, but it is so severely cropped that it might as well just be full screen. Judging from the burned subtitles, the horizontal crops probably takes out 25% or more of the image. Sad, because this really functions as a widescreen movie, but beggars aren't choosers...

El lugar sin limites (Arturo Ripstein, 1978)

Arturo Ripstein's early study of machismo through the experiences of an ostracized gay whore in a dying Mexican town is legendary for being a brave overt critique of a Mexican institution when few previously existed. But beyond this, the film is flawed and does not improve upon the effectiveness of the critique already implicit in such Mexican films as El Rapto (1954) or Soy puro mexicano (1942), or the playfullness in which Ripstein's mentor, Luis Bunuel approached the topic in Ensayo de un crimen (1955). Unlike these films, El lugar sin limites does not question machismo itself, rather see it from the perspective of those that exist outside of it. Instead of seeing men as enacting machismo, the film sees men as machismo. In turn, the film emphasizes and affirms that which it tries to criticize: machismo or not, those who are not men or not "bruto"like men orbit around those that give Mexican culture its "essential" identity. Ultimately, Ripstein choice to treat the film's theme of exploitation as a given dooms its characters to the reality and "lugar" they exist. To an extent it isn't machismo that is the problem, it is the unexamined need to co-depend and to exploit that gives the film its weak thrust. To put it in other words, it isn't about machismo, but about the need to feel dour for no good reason. This pseudo-critique (grand platitudes, short on subtlety and moral ambiguousness) is almost a hallmark of Ripstein, whose Profundo carmesi (1996) remakes Honeymoon Killers (1970) by removing the latter's trashiness that gave it the moral weight of a B-movie but the immediacy of a newsreel, and loading it with self-righteous moral judgements about the alienating doomed love that exist between two messed up characters. I guess one can say that he is the complete opposite of the Cuarons and del Toros of today, making seriously no-fun movies loaded with a social, moral, and ethical agenda. Either way, both extremes for the most part are unsatisfying, veering very far from the classical cinema of Mexico's Golden Age, the great artists of which balanced populism and ethics through the mastery of their craft and the greatness of their produced works. The lesser artists of today have to rely on message or bombast; the great artists of the Golden Age simply had to rely on the light and shadow their cameras capture.

Catching Up on My Music Videos

Monkey "Monkey Bee"

Chinese epic Zhang Yimou and King Hu would be jealous of. It's Chinese enough that the high-wire act is exhilarating without the deprecating tongue-cheekiness of the typical Western parody, Western enough that it would not surprise anyone if Wu Tang decided to crash the party.




Roisin Murphy "Movie Star"

Maybe I just watched it one too many times while utilizing the gym (it is way overplayed on MTV Arabia), but it is a good song. And who wouldn't want lobster rape and drag queens once in a while?

Pulp Fiction Series #1: Demon Caravan, John Eagle Expeditor: Valley of Vultures, The Destroyer: The Final Death

I'm adding a new section here where I review pul fiction novels I read. Being deployed, there are a lot of organizations who like to send us free books to enjoy in our free time. Unfortunately, most of these books are crap. Here, I get to write a small ditty about the best of them! Some of them actually turn out pretty good--pretty good as in, they are crazy as hell and too cool for irony. Here are the first books of the series.

The Demon Caravan (Georges Surdez, 1927)
Action, romance, and adventure in the Sahara--belied by the era it was from, this book is total and complete French colonial romanticism. African slaves, violent Arabs, peaceful Berbers, and the civilized French caught right in the middle, it largely toes the French colonial bent, with the distant metropole always alluded to by reminiscing French Soldiers (that is, reminiscing for civilization) or barbarians admiring examples of what it is to be civil. However, as much as cluelessly colonial the story is, there are peeks of self-doubt: many a times, Surdez's French captain hero questions what civilization and conquest has brought to the savage beauty of North Africa. It almost pushes self-examination, but the answer is simple: the great ordering effect of Western law and civility.

John Eagle Expeditor: Valley of Vultures (Paul Edwards, 1975)

A James Bond wannabe, John Eagle is a white man raised as a native american (street cred) working for an unknown boss to bring about peace and harmony by kicking ass. Many dead people, many bombed houses, and many pleasured ladies (in this story, Eagle's only untouched female conquest is the Jewish female assasin that looks like she's sixty). In Valley of the Vultures, John Eagle tracks down Nazis who transplant testicles in the middle of South America. Yeah, apparently his nemeses throughout the series are the Nazis. But of course, he kicks their asses, until a lunatic member escapes right before he kills him, cackling and promising revenge. It's actually an engaging read, still much of the 60s, dedicated to world peace, yet also entering the 70s with its obession with manly men who can kick ass and pleasure women at the same time.

The Destroyer: The Final Death (Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy, 1977)

If John Eagle is the conscientous hero, Remo is the clueless athlete who could care less--that is, until it involves killing somebody with special kung fu moves. The Final Death is full-on Nixon anti-60s revenge era, where racial gags, mysoginism, and right-wing ideology abound. In this one, Remo tries to hunt down a clan of Chinese vegetarian activists who try to punish America by killing all meat-eaters in the country. Worse still, however, is when they reveal their true identity: Chinese vegetarian vampires! And oh shit, they can kung fu too. (Un)Fortunately, Remo is the white man with a funny Korean sidekick who writes a script for a TV soap opera, and he kicks all of their asses in many varied ways. Gore, sex, kung fu, and killing Chinese vampires...this one has all of them. But it's not really entertaining, more like "who comes up with this shit!?"