Sundance Installment Two - I.O.U.S.A. and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired - 4 out of 4 stars

I was somewhat reluctant to see this movie. While I am a fan of Polanski's work as a director, I thought it would turn out to be an apologist's love-letter to Polanski in the midst of a statutory rape of a 13 year-old girl in California in 1977, an event that led him to flee the country for refuge in Paris. When Polanski won a Best Director Oscar for 2002's The Pianist, he wasn't present to accept the award because he could face arrest for fleeing prosecution.

That's about all I knew about the case going into this film and upon viewing the screening I realized how sensationalized the story had become. The film deftly produces objectivity and factual reporting while providing both a biographical sketch of the French-born Polish director (his parents were killed in the Holocaust and the only stable relationship in his life - with his wife Sharon Tate - ended with her murder by Charles Manson's clan) and a compelling view of the court case that followed Polanski's police charges.

The court case involved the judge's love of media attention and it culminated in shady (and possibly illegal) attempts by the judge to compel both the defense and prosecutor involved in the case to help make him look good. He neglected recommendations by the legal system regarding sentencing, altered promises made to the defense and prosecution, ultimately Polanski's pre-sentencing flight from the country. The movie is both well-researched biography and compelling courtroom drama.


I.O.U.S.A. - 4 out of 4 stars

What's the biggest threat to our nation today - Terrorism? Illegal Immigrants? According to the sensible and persuasive United States Comptroller General David Walker, it's the nation's ballooning debt, which is $9.2 trillion dollars.

That's 9,200,000,000,000.

I.O.U.S.A. focuses on Walker and Robert Bixby, the Tab-swilling executive director of the Concord Coalition, a non-partisan group advocating responsible fiscal policy as they go on a nationwide Fiscal Wake-Up Tour to educate Americans about America's perilous financial situation. What could have been a rather dry, didactic sermon about the United States' debt and economic policies past and present is instead an urgent, fascinating call-to-arms for citizens to take the initiative in demanding responsible governmental spending and financial planning.

The film doesn't blame any single president or administration for the catastrophic way our nation has dealt with its federal debt since World War II. (Though during the current President Bush's two terms the debt has swelled from over $5 trillion to its current $9 trillion. I feel slightly vindicated in my exasperating confusion over how doling out corporate and individual tax cuts while boosting spending and paying for a war helps the country's economy in the long run.)

What the film does do is bring in well-educated officials from the financial arena, from Warren Buffett to Comptroller Walker to Robert Rubin to Ron Paul, to explain in a plain-spoken manner the way that the crisis could come (48% of our debt is held by foreign nationals; the debt issue is often buried in news coverage and on the campaign trail by sexier subjects; government entitlements need to be cut and taxes need to be raised). The film urges people to become informed and hold their elected officials responsible to help fix this problem. In the interest of education, see this movie and check out these web sites:

Government Accountability Office
The Concord Coalition
I.O.U.S.A. official site
Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis (the book that inspired the movie's director, Patrick Creadon)

Sundance - Installment One: Under The Bombs, Recycled, Shorts Program V

I've seen a few Sundance screenings the past couple of days and here's some short reviews.

Under The Bombs - 3 and 1/2 out of 4 stars

This French-produced film based in Lebanon during the Israeli incursion into Lebanon during the summer of 2006 and lasted 31 days until a cease-fire was brokered, avoids making political statements about who was right and who was wrong and instead focused on the impact that it (and all wars) have on the innocents who are forced to live through war. Zeina is a woman who arrives in Beirut from Dubai during the massive Israeli bombings in search of her son, who she sent to stay with her sister in southern Lebanon. She is finally able to find a taxi driver who will take the dangerous and often broken roads to the south and may have some alterior motives of his own. This film was heartbreaking, human and raw (it was conceived and partially shot during the conflict itself), using mostly real non-actors to play the incidental characters. My favorite decision about the film was to not let the story linger on the personal aspects of the characters, but rather to end it in a way that leaves the audience reeling at the very real consequences that disagreeing factions can leave on civilians caught in the middle.


Recycle - 2 out of 4 stars

I had high hopes for this documentary in which the filmmaker returns to his hometown of Zarqa, Jordan, hometown of the infamous Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musa al Zarqawi, to investigate the beginnings of what makes a person make the kind of choices that Zarqawi did. While it scratches the surface in interviews with a few sheiks in the city (economic hardships, religious persecution), it loses focus of both that investigation and the life of its main subject, a struggling religious man in a poor part of the city. The editing and information that director Muhammad al Massad chose to put in the film reflects some questionable and sometimes confusing choices and in the audience is left with too many questions about the motivations and characters - questions that seemed like the could have been answered if a more polished touch and deeper reporting were involved. The highlight - the main subjects young son, who he lets steer his truck around town and at one point directs his father to "hit that camel for me."


Shorts Program V - 3 out of 4 stars

One of the programs of short films presented at the festival, this one was entertaining enough to earn my recommendation. Nine shorts (3 of which were Isabella Rossellini's short and funny interpretations on how certain insects procreate) are in this group and they progressively get better as the program rolls on. The best are the final three - the Chinese August 15, which is the tale of two robbers who board a bus in rural China and the results; Sara St. Onge's film about a woman preparing her final wishes (rife with gallows humor) appropriately called The Funeral, and the Australian bizzaro short about teenagers and zombies, I Love Sarah Jane. Yeah, I'm a sucker for zombies.

Sundance 2008 is here!

Utah has just entered the best part of the winter. January in this state means ample snow for skiing and snowshoeing and, of course, the Sundance Film Festival. While I'm cynical about the growing popularity of the festival in terms of celebrity-gawkers rather than film-goers and too many movies about dysfunctional, but quirkily endearing families, it is still a showcase of great independent film and great cultural event to have in this state. I'll be staying mostly in Salt Lake City for screenings this year, doing the wait-list thing and avoiding the movie star vehicles that will likely end up at the local megaplex in the coming months. One thing I've learned about Sundancing over the years: There are some pretty terrible dramatic features every year, but I've never come across a bad documentary. While some are certainly more engrossing than others, they are a safer bet for enjoyable viewing.

Tonight: Under the Bombs

The movie is set (and was filmed during) the Israeli-Lebanese fighting of 2006, with the main character Zelna, returning home to search for her family during the conflict and the taxi driver who agrees to drive her.

I'll be posting short reviews of the movies I see, so check back daily.

The Best Show on Television - The Wire

I'll do what I can to help y'all. But, the game's out there, and it's play or get played. That simple. - Omar


I love storytelling. Always have. I remember laying my head against my mother's shoulder, closing my eyes, and listening to her read stories to me since I can remember memories. Storytelling has pulled me to rock, country, hip-hop, blues and folk music, spoken word monologues, books, books, movies, storytelling festivals, television and more books in my life. And though my taste has gotten more complex since the days of The Mouse and the Motorcycle, I am drawn to a great yarn like a dog to a bone, whether fiction or non-fiction.

Though books will always be what I consider the ultimate of the storytelling templates, the visual filming of a story is one of the most intriguing, as it can assault your senses not only with words, but images and sounds as well. I love television ("good" TV, that is, though "The Soup" is a "bad TV" guilty pleasure of mine) that tells a good story, whether it be in half-hour sitcoms and animated comedies (Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Arrested Development) or hour-long dramas (The Sopranos, The West Wing, The X-Files, Deadwood).

However, the most effective, engrossing and well-written stories to ever grace the small screen is creator David Simon's ode to Baltimore, The Wire. It is the tale of a decaying urban American city, the tale of the fogotten people who are casualties of the machinary of class and inhuman institutions. It is the tale of the police who chase the drug pushers and hitman, of the individuals who try to beat the shitty hand that was dealt to them. It is the tale of a broken society, where hope is sometimes spoken of, but only cautiously and by those who can afford to say it.

The Wire is, on surface, a show about cops and the criminals they deal with. But when discovered, it is the tale of the modern American city, warts and all. There is no solidified group of good guys and bad guys. The overall theme would have to be the way the machine of the institutions crush the individuals, no matter whether the individual is deserving or not, or if the institution is ideal (justice system) or a reality to be dealt with (the drug trade). The way that the issues and characters are dealt with are why it is often referred to by critics as a "visual novel." You get to know the lives of those who push drugs in western Baltimore and the police who pursue them (season 1); the unionized longshoremen trying to survive and the smugglers who take advantage of the situation (dwindling boats to unload) on the docks (season 2); the politicians and powerbrokers vying for positions, sometimes with good intentions, sometimes bad and the way that redevelopment can shake up a city (season 3), and; the children who suffer through a woefully underfunded education system, with bad role models or no role models at all at home and tough choices about their reality at such young ages (season 4). All the while, the storylines are followed by elements of the Baltimore legal system-- some admirable characters, some unctuous ones, and a couple who are just plain corrupt. Each season unravels slowly, building characters and story while depicting the harsh realities of a dying industrial city on a level unprecedented in television.


Because each season is 12-13 hours long, it is much more densely layered and rich than films can be. Characters and storylines don't end with a season, either. The show is more like a 60-hour movie than anything else.Creator David Simon approached the serial from the beginning like it was a novel, unfafraid to let it be a slow and intense burn or to throw popular characters in the background for long lengths of time (or kill them off) so the story can develop.

Season 5 (starting tonight and available on HBO OnDemand) will focus on the media and its contribution/detraction to the realities of the world in which it works through journalists at the fictional (of course, not based on the real newspaper that Simon worked at) Baltimore Sun. The season premier is tonight on HBO.

I got into The Wire late in the game. A friend and I were void of a television show to watch on our usual Sunday night get-together that was usually augmented by HBO, so we decided to check out the hype we had read about. I was hooked. Although the show offers the most rich and rewarding viewing to those viewers who know the characters and storyline from the beginning, the beginning of a season is a good time to jump on board and you won't be lost.

The show has been characterized by some as a downer, as it observes some of the brutality and sadness that is reality to some in this land, but there are acts of heroism and times of joy littered throughout the series, as performed by the individuals who fight against the odds stacked against them. It is the most rewarding television you'll experience. Simply put, it is television as art. And if you watch, you'll have a symbiotic relationship with your television to see what is to come of McNulty, Bubbles, Omar, Kima, Namond, Dukie and the rest.

My Year In Books

So I read a lot more in 2007 than I have in the past couple of years. Part of this is because I haven't been in school for the calendar year, so I didn't have much requried reading to throw me off. It is also partly because I was more anti-social this year than I have been in awhile. But, as always, I still didn't read enough.

Reading is the ultimate alone-but-still-connected activity. The reader has an intimate and symbiotic relationship with the author. The author has decided the language, the characters, the context, the setting, but only the reader can assign sounds and images and the mental details and judgements which the author left out. In a sense, the author creates a vague set of directions, but it is up to the reader to observe, as she is on the journey and each individual experience will be different and unique. Without the reader, the author wouldn't exist (at least his book contract wouldn't) and without the author, the reader wouldn't get access to such a godly feelings of omniscience that fiction can bring.

A novel may have certain philosophies, the author may assign her characters certain traits and a few clues to the visual appearance of the characters and locations, but it is the reader who takes these fragments and forms them into a cohesive, living world inside their mind. The author may preliminarily set the time frame in which the story begins and ends, but the reader has the last say over the elasticity of the conclusion. If they don't like the book, the reader can smash the cover on the author's world hundreds of pages before the author envisioned his creation's story would end. And even when the book ends, the characters and stories can continue far beyond bounds created by the physicality of a cardboard book cover: I constantly hear Holden Caulfield's caustic cynicism as I journey through the everyday world; Kilgore Trout has been creating fantastical observations and plots in my head, even since Vonnegut has died; Sam Spade has been informing me of how he would react in certain sticky situations.

I'm setting a goal to read 45 books next year, which I can do as long as I manage my time well. I want to include more histories and biographies than I did this year, but fiction is closest to my heart, so I'll see how it goes. I didn't make any goals about reading in 2007, but after compiling the list of what I read (there may be a few I'm not remember just right now), I figured I'd set a number goal for 2008, the ideal is to beat it, but I'll at least meet the mark. I won't be including books assigned by the classes I'll be taking at school.

On the list are a few books I started this year but didn't finish (I usually am reading at least 3 or 4 at a time, sometimes books will escape me and lose them in the shuffle) are Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, Crossing To Safety by Wallace Stegner, Jay Anthony Lukas' account of class and turn-of-the-20th Century Western United States, Big Trouble, and David McCullogh's John Adams. Also on the list is: David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism by Gregory Prince and Robert Wright, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, Strong Opinions, a collection of letters, reviews and such by Vladimir Nabokov, In The Arena by Richard M. Nixon, Jonathan Franzen's Strong Motion and Steinbeck's East of Eden, which I started to fall in love with a couple of years back, but was derailed by school a hundred pages into it. Any suggestions for the 2008 list?

Here's the 2007 list of what I read:


Immortality - Milan Kundera

Refuge - Terry Tempest Williams

A Kind of Flying - Ron Carlson

Practical Demon Keeping - Christopher Moore
A Dirty Job - Christopher Moore
The Stupidist Angel - Christopher Moore

Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

The Twenty-Seventh City - Jonathan Franzen

The Tie That Binds - Kent Haruf

No Country For Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy

Without Remorse - Tom Clancy

Coronado - Dennis Lehane

The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett

The March - E.L. Doctorow

On Beauty - Zadie Smith
The Autograph Man - Zadie Smith

Letting Loose The Hounds - Brady Udall

Laughter In The Dark - Vladimir Nabokov

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers

The Final Solution - Michael Chabon

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

No One Belongs Here More Than You - Miranda July

Choke - Chuck Palahniuk

Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris

The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin - Gordon Wood

Into The Wild - Jon Krakauer

Merry Christmas!

In lieu of writing a long post or digging myself in a deeper theological hole (see previous post) so close to Christmas, I'll give you all the gift of humorist/essayist David Sedaris. "The SantaLand Diaries" put Sedaris on the map after it aired in December, 1992 on NPR's Morning Edition. It is one of my favorite Christmas stories, as it recalls his holiday season as an elf at the SantaLand within the Macy's Department store in New York City. Sedaris is always gold in his writing - very self-deprecating and full of wit and observation - but hearing him perform them in his dry, almost disconnected, subdued manner brings out a magic in his work that just can't be matched when read internally. Hope you all find joy and love this holiday season, that you give as much as you receive. Merry Christmas.


David Sedaris - The SantaLand Diaries


Purchase fine works by David Sedaris from Amazon

Drive-By Truckers - The Mike Cooley Files

2007 ain't quite through yet, but 2008 is bringing a triple dose of good news from one of my favorite bands, Drive-By Truckers, as they are releasing a brand spanking new album Brighter Than Creation's Dark and getting their back catalog released on vinyl and happen to be stopping in Salt Lake for a show on February 20th. I have no idea what or where The Paladium is (must be a new venue, but can I maybe cross my fingers that the old Zephyr Club is re-opening under this name?) but that is where I'll be on that cold winter evening. If you haven't experienced DBT live for their Rock Show, you haven't truly experienced Rock 'N Roll. I'm dead serious.

The Truckers are one of the most criminally under-appreciated bands in America - the only band in the country I can think of that has been producing music at or above their level this decade is Wilco. Much like the Jeff Tweedy & Co. Drive-By Truckers are a truly American experience. I think one of the reasons they are discounted by some is because they are often labeled "southern rock", probably because of their 2001 concept album Southern Rock Opera.
If pressed, I would simply call them Americana - but if you like your rock with a pedal steel and some twang in the electric guitars, this band is definitely for you. The band is down one stellar songwriter in Jason Isbell (playing in at Suede on February 2nd), but they still boast two great ones in Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley (plus Shonna Tucker even takes lead vocals on a few of her songs on the new album!).

I'm gonna end up posting more on DBT in the coming while, so I figured I'd start with a killer mix of my favorite band member, Mike Cooley. His songs are detailed enough to feel personal, yet broadly themed to feel universal and he can turn a line better than almost anyone writing in rock today. Oh, and dude freakin' owns on the kind of guitar licks that make you pump your fist in the air.

Some of my favorite Cooley lines:

"Well, my daddy didn’t pull out, but he never apologized / Rock and Roll means well, but it can’t help tellin’ young boys lies." - from "Marry Me"

"And don't ever let them make you feel like saying what you want is unbecoming / If you were supposed to watch you're mouth all the time I doubt your eyes would be above it." - from "Gravity's Gone"

"You say you're tired of me taking you for granted / Waiting' up till the last minute to call you up and see what you want to do / Well you're only fifteen, girl, you ain't got no secretary / And "for granted" is a mighty big word for a country girl like you." - from "Zip City"

"We've been this close to death before, we were just too drunk to know it / Guess the price of being sobers being scared out of your mind ... Living in fear's just another way of dying before your time." -- from "Shut Up and Get on the Plane"

DBT: The Cooley Files
(pay close attention to "Space City" and "Loaded Gun in the Closet" - the lyrics and musical accompaniment are unbelievably beautiful)

A Ghost to Most
Marry Me (live)
Space City
Guitar Man Upstairs
Women Without Whiskey
Where The Devil Don't Stay
Loaded Gun in the Closet
Gravity's Gone
Zip City
Shut Up and Get on the Plane