November 18, 2008 reviews

“The camera never lies.”
“That’s bullshit.”

To ‘redact’ is a to make multiple texts appear unified by theme, famously in One Thousand and One Nights. More commonly, ‘redacted’ refers to the removal of sensitive information prior to publication, such as in an intelligence dossier or by editing a video so it’s ironic that despite the title, and narrative device of a video diary, nothing is really ‘redacted’ here.

The film follows the exploits of a would-be auteur Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz, a three time valet on Entourage heads a no-name cast), who chronicles the often banal, yet at times intensely harrowing exploits of his fellow squadron members stationed in Samarra, Iraq, with video footage he hopes will one day get him into film school.

His pals include the usual assortment of war movie stereotypes, the gruff, yet kind African American Sergeant Sweet, the backwoods trigger-happy dimwit, ridiculously named ‘Reno’ (with a sibling ‘Vegas’),  who doesn’t even bother feigning a Cajun accent, the honorable do-gooder McCoy (the real?) and the nervous nebbish, the butt of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ jokes, ‘Blix’, a highly unlikely nickname derived from the Swedish UN weapons inspector.

Without a backstory to engage, they’re all left to react solely on instinct and the southerner and gruff sergeant happily oblige, dispassionately blowing away a pregnant mother and son and warning the “Midget Ali Babas’ tugging at their gear are all spies, respectively.

Blix is interviewed on camera by Salazar reading aloud the Maugham-penned epigraph to ‘The Appointment in Samarra‘,  about meeting your maker in Iraq—not exactly ‘Win one for the Gipper’ reading material on the battlefront and then the young documentarian is fascinated by a large scorpion, which he films succumbing to an attack by numerous tiny ants. With warriors like these, the exit strategy should be a quick exit.

POV camera work interspersed with fake French documentary footage about the extreme dangers of checkpoints, online video clips, blogs and grainy security footage sets the backdrop of the film—intensely claustrophobic and innards-wrenching,  with bomb sniffing dogs and fingers on trigger, split seconds between life and breathing a final breath, eased with comic relief during down time:  ‘You’re so white, you wouldn’t wear yourself after Labor Day’ or ‘Is it wrong to fall in love with the King of Clubs?’ during a poker game with nudie cards.

However before and after the main plot point—a plan to rape a young girl whose home was just raided— is introduced, Salazar’s camera details racism, bigotry, xenophobia, sexism of every stripe that is not only extremely patronizing to soldiers, but the audience as well, expected to believe that a video camera can be casually brought out at every turn and without any recourse through the chains of command.

‘Hajjis’ and ‘Shit-birds’ are used in every day conservation as is ‘Sand Nigger’, casual racism despite their professed admiration for and camaraderie with the black Sergeant Sweet.

When the rape scheme reaches its ugly conclusion, the do-gooder McCoy who took no part in it, yet didn’t tip off any hire ups, confides in his no-nonsense military dad over webcam and is sternly warned against whistle-blowing, yet another bad apple in De Palma’s orchard harvest.

Platitudes like ‘an American life is worth that of 100 Iraqis’, and ‘Welcome to the fuckin’ army!’, are sounded and grim statistics flashed across the screen courtesy of the mock impartial French doc (as if their hands were clean as a major international arms dealer).

The film then reaches a conclusion as inevitable as an exploded IED: McCoy’s testimony discounted, subsequent mental breakdown and justice unserved—not by anything ‘redacted’ mind you, but by good old fashioned threats, lack of video evidence, witness corroboration, and then moral equivalency justice meted out through Jihadist beheading.

As the Puccini score reaches a crescendo, a photo montage of Iraqi victims attempts a poignancy not delivered by the preceding 90 minutes (and even then, their eyes were apparently blacked out for fear they might sue), 90 minutes of flunked cinema verite, uni-dimensional characters and bi-national condescension.

Chris, Toronto

September 8, 2008 reviews

Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions

Christian Lander
Random House

Hipster Navel Gazing through a tattered Vintage T.

(This article originally appeared in a July edition of The Globe & Mail and can serve as a primer for those of you following the Democratic Party campaign to elect Barack Obama and Joe Biden)

Stuff White People Like would certainly make the podium if there were a Book Olympics for Controversial Titles. Along with bronze and silver medalists The Trouble with Islam and The God Delusion, SWPL remained affixed to my lap whenever I ventured outside my apartment or onto public transit (incidentally, trying to find a comfortable spot to read on a crowded bus in rush hour will shake the foundations of anyone’s core beliefs).

Stuff White People Like the book, came hot on the heels of LA-based Canadian author and former copywriter Christian Lander’s 33 million-visited website of the same name (a figure that I, a fellow blogger, would reach if my children’s children’s children were to upload content five times a week as stipulated by my will).

‘Whitey’ Lander, a Ph.D. drop-out, (in exactly what, the book jacket doesn’t say, but a safe bet would be critical theory) takes us on a solipsistic blue state urban safari of sorts here. Dinner Parties, Public Radio, Authenticity, Whole Foods, Having Gay Friends, Microbreweries, Co-ed Sports and my personal favorites, ‘Standing Still at Concerts’ and ‘Public Transportation That is Not a Bus’ coming under his thorough, squinty eyed (with glasses, natch) hipster analysis and self flagellation.

Stuff White People Like is very droll navel-gazing, where a vintage T would be hiked up to remove the lint, and when it’s spot on, it’s very funny indeed: “White people don’t like stuff that’s easy to acquire’, or ‘White People like to live in these [up and coming] neighborhoods because they get credibility and respect from other white people for living in a more ‘authentic’ neighborhood, where they are exposed to ‘true culture’ every day….they are like modern day Lewis and Clarks, except that instead of searching for the ocean, they are searching for old houses to renovate.”

Graphical charts are especially inspired, with a ‘Gentrification Timeline’ that seems particularly Hog Town Toronto-influenced and includes ‘Announcement of Planned Starbucks Opening’, ‘Protest of Planned Starbucks Opening’, ‘Starbucks Opens’, a ‘White Career Guidance’ trajectory that includes ‘producer of organic dog food/vegan caterer’ and an uproarious fill-in-the-blanks White Globetrotter mass email from a fictional, but all too real, backpacker abroad.

Lander’s muted Canadian roots are also present in an entry entitled ‘Assists’, which references both The Great One Wayne Gretzky and Canuck MVP baller Steve Nash. Lander writes ‘In basketball, passing is a must, so that white guys can carve out a niche’.

Much like stand up comic Jeff Foxworthy did for ‘Red’ states with his ‘Redneck Dictionary’, Lander does for ‘Blue’ with this Caucasian nomenclature, albeit with a more satirical bent than Foxworthy’s ‘Climbing up a water tower with a paint brush and a bucket of paint to defend your sister’s honor’ backwoods shtick. Faux reactionary Stephen Colbert thrives on similarly racially charged material as well and the Comedy Central host is always on the lookout for ‘a new black friend’.

Working equally contentious territory was www.blackpeopleloveus.com, a site run by a hopelessly melanin-deficient mock yuppie duo ‘Sally and Johnny’, varsity sweater-clad chardonnay aficionados who pose for pictures with black friends and have fake testimonials from them, like “I work with Johnny, and sometimes he stops in the middle of our corporate hallways, but instead of shaking my hands he gives me a fist pound and says “what up.” He’s so in touch with the street, it’s astonishing.”
In the entry on raunchy comic Sarah Silverman, Lander says:

“Her whole shtick is about saying really offensive things! But it’s OK because she’s pretty and has a small voice so it all sounds so cute! Get it? It’s not offensive, because when she says racist or sexist things she knows they are offensive. So it’s OK.”

No doubt that many will find this offensive too as Lander’s blog and now book, have become lightning rods for controversy. His SWPL blog entries are inundated with hundreds of reader comments, many of which are from frenzied anti-Semites and raging bigots of all stripes from the bowels of the blogosphere. Straw Man ‘Well, what about black people who…?’ rejoinders also come from Angry White Males, none of whom, ironically (yes, there is a section for ‘Irony’ too) are targets of this book, but who would enjoy a whole barbecue of this liberal skewering.

Even copycat sites have sprung up such as Stuff Asian People Like and Stuff Black People Like, using taxonomy once reserved for stereotyping them, reflected back at the white majority—unsettling to a Caucasian reader, not only due to white guilt, but because the targets of their send-ups are not of the dominant elite/majority (or at the their inane, skinny-jeaned, modern-furniture buying, studying abroad, coffee-drinking offspring).

Therein lies the problem with Stuff White People Like. Unlike the tumultuous online debate, none of these issues is addressed either in either chapter essays (there are none of each) or in an introductory one. It would be interesting to have been provided some context rather than a giant list the publisher deemed worthy of standing on its own, or maybe that’s just my inner ‘grad school’ guy seeking endless explication instead of just kicking back and enjoying.

Christopher Lombardo is the co-author of The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery (Penguin) and one half of www.thesharkguys.com. He also scored a ‘40%’ in the ‘how white are you?’ survey

September 5, 2008 reviews

Shark Bite Review: Vicky Cristina Barcelona **½ / 5

Those of you looking for the old Woody Allen will find an old Woody Allen

Uprooting from the Five Boroughs overseas, far from giving him a creative spark he so likely sought, finds Allen revisiting past themes with decidedly mixed results.

With Match Point, it was infidelity and murder again, without the comedy and gravitas of Crimes and Misdemeanors while Cassandra’s Dream, similarly explored fraternal relations set against the backdrop of a murder-for-hire. This time, a trek to continental Europe sees infidelity the theme again, though without conspiracy to commit murder, unless you count this reviewer’s criminal intent toward the cast.

Spain is the setting for this recent Allen misfire, an Italian-made rifle aimed from a grassy knoll misfire, with current muse the vacant Scarlett Johnansson as the eponymous Cristina, on a care-free trip to Spain with friend Vicky (Rebecca Hall) whose cares are much less free—trying to remain faithful to a stockbroker New York city fiancé who is duller than a PBS pledge drive, while she secretly yearns to be a free spirit like her friend. Cristina is a wanna-be actress and in this instance the casting of Johansson is spot-on, while Vicky is a verbose grad student consumed with Catalan culture.

As flamenco guitar strings are plucked in the background, the two become infatuated with a tormented, passionate artist, Juan Antonio, played by Javier Bardem, who’s been involved in a violent relationship with ex, Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz)—a key point touched upon briefly and then abandoned—as the two girls accept an offer to join him for a weekend getaway upon first meeting at a restaurant (and aren’t put off by his offer of a threesome, casually brought up in their first conservation before he’d even sat down to join them for drinks).

Generally, an offer of this sort from an abusive creep would have the waiter calling for the prep cooks to toss the guy out on his ear; but not here as Vicky, (the grad student who should know better and knows it), abandoning thoughts of her guy back home, is sweet talked by his brush strokes, while Cristina, who was much more receptive to his backward advances, is laid up with food poisoning. Not telling Cristina about how she slept with a guy she was really interested in (or as it’s known in male circles, mowing your buddy’s grass) and gradually having second thoughts about her pending nuptials, even as the dull as dishwater hubby-to-be flies to Spain–are the twin duplicities Allen works with here, with minimal comic/dramatic impact (unless you count the audience tittering at the sweatered, braggart bore that is the fiancé, or the ridiculous and obvious voice-overs: ‘The two walked the streets of Barcelona, enjoying the works of Gaudi’)

Vardem’s tortured artist, assured there’s a walk-in clinic nearby, then beds Cristina, though not at the same time as initially intended—and after co-habitating with her, a suicide attempt by the ex-wife,brings Cruz’ Maria Elena into the picture: and not a moment too soon as Cruz injects some much need passion.

Artist Juan Antonio apparently cannot abandon feelings for his ex-wife and suggests that she stays with the new couple until she recuperates—just like it would happen in real life. [Editor's note: it's at this point where an entirely un-erotic, nudity-free triad is hinted at, and Cruz and Johansson exchange dark room smooches]

Cruz, a fellow artist, naturally, as Allen has been incapable lately, of portraying people with average occupations, looks gorgeous, yells a lot in Spanish, gets yelled at repeatedly in return for not speaking English in the presence of Cristina and argues with him about who stole whose artistic vision, as a gun goes off, attempted seductions take place and a few choice zingers are uttered.

A tortured artist, a garrulous grad student, a would-be actress who couldn’t cut it in a 12-minute student film (played by Johansson who can’t cut it in any 90 minute feature) and another tortured artist, get mixed up in something that they thought would offer fulfilment but ultimately leaves them wanting more. Exactly.

August 23, 2008 reviews

****/5

Bob Dylan, Copps Coliseum, Hamilton Ontario August 20, 2008

“Every day your memory grows dimmer
It doesn’t haunt me like it did before”

Dylan might be haunted by his musical past, but as he nears closer to the Heaven in the song, (or its counterpart, reserved for musicians, even those who’ve given us Time out of Mind) he’s embraced it—though not warmly. Continuing to delight in undermining his audience’s expectations, he forges ahead on this long and lonesome road, playing to packed houses of fans, the majority of whom, by all accounts, haven’t made the musical journey with him beyond Highway 61 Revisited.

Those who have though, were the sizable contingent of those (mostly younger) who warmly welcomed newer material with which their parents were less than familiar like Thunder on the Mountain, a rollicking stand-out, or the stunning When the Deal Goes Down (“More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours. That keep us so tightly bound”), maintaining a generation gap that went beyond the choice of intoxicants and demonstrating that the true measure of any performer is a multi-generational legacy that isn’t a chaperoned minivan accompaniment to a Jonas Brothers scream-fest.

Dylan and his entirely capable matching Zorro-chapeau (and confederate army doppelganger) backing band, was positively energized with this newer material, with Bob even doing a half-jig, or stretching out one leg, than the other, depending on how you look at it, as they blew a hole through Rollin’ and Tumblin’, transferring kinetic energy into stand-outs Highway 61 and Stuck Inside of Mobile.

Nashville Skyline’s Girl from the North Country, was virtually unrecognizable without Johnny Cash’s canyon baritone, as were other muddled classics reverberating in the home of the Hamilton Bulldogs hockey team, where some songs were only decipherable by snippets of chorus. Just Like a Woman, with her ‘fog, her amphetamine and her pearls’ became a peppy, creepy crowd sing-a-long, with a Copps Coliseum capacity breaking into song as she broke like a little girl. A set list heavily weighted toward the gorgeous Modern Times, Ain’t Talkin’ was less moody than the album version, (carryin’ a dead man’s shield), probably not a bad thing in a Blackberry-back lit stadium setting and clocking in at nearly 10 minutes.
A considerable increase in volume accompanied the twin crowd pleasing encores Like a Rolling Stone and a heavily staccato keyboard All Along the Watchtower, which closed the show, one could say in Dylanesque fashion—with the house lights coming up after a significant delay, and much second guessing about whether another song was forthcoming.