list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Out of Balance on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Out_of_Balance/328529/default.aspx Title: Out of Balance
Year: 2007
Director: Tom Jackson
Plot: An open critique of ExxonMobil and the oil industry as a whole, the documentary Out of Balance investigates how the use of fossil fuels continues to send the planet's temperature further and further out of balance, while oil companies like ExxonMobil continue to exert disproportionate influence in all areas of industry, the media, and governments all over the world. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 12
Number of Lists: 8
Number of blog posts: 16
Number of discussion threads: 1
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:01:49 GMTOut of Balance2007Tom JacksonAn open critique of ExxonMobil and the oil industry as a whole, the documentary Out of Balance investigates how the use of fossil fuels continues to send the planet's temperature further and further out of balance, while oil companies like ExxonMobil continue to exert disproportionate influence in all areas of industry, the media, and governments all over the world. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide12Tag Target (>10)81613http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/u41762ogrr8.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Out_of_Balance/328529/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/unclefestering/archive/2008/9/1/34632.aspx Post By: unclefestering
Post To: unclefestering Blog
Post Date: 9/1/2008 11:38:44 PM
Body: Out of Balance is a documentary of the worst type: pick an easy target, show what they do is wrong and claim a moral victory. It doesn’t attempt to portray any kind of balance to the story it is telling. While there are plenty of talking heads, I expected them to quote from more than three documents to prove ExxonMobil is the greatest threat to the environment. According to this movie, ExxonMobile is the single, greatest source of evil on the face of the planet. The company single handedly is going to destroy every aspect of life on Earth. Am I exagerating the claims made by the documentary? Yes. However, my exaggerations are not as much as you would expect. This movie spends slightly more than an hour featuring one talking head after another from extremely radical environmental groups claiming that ExxonMobile has stifled the debate on global climate change. They claim the company has exerted undue influence on the government. And that they have created massive amounts of doubt in the mind of the public on how serious the problem of global warming is. Of these claims made by the movie, really the middle one is the one I believe most strongly. It is also the one that they have the most documented evidence. It appears to be clear that Exxon and the other oil companies were able to use their personal relationships with the president and the vice president of the United States, to craft an energy policy that favors the current energy producers and prevent any real reform in researching and producing alternative energy sources. This part of the movie comes very late and in a way is the most compelling because, finally, people other than environmental lobbyists are on camera and they have some actual proof the match the claims. During the rest of the movie, when the speakers are not onscreen, the viewers get treated to stock footage of the ecological devastation caused by the Exxon Valdez spill. This footage is shown again and again over the discussion that ExxonMobile funds researchers and organizations which take the position that global warming is a myth or that the effects are greatly exaggerated by the people who believe in it. This is the bulk of the movie and this is what I had the hardest time with. Very little time in the movie is devoted to the idea of what can be done to stop the juggernaut that is ExxonMobile. Other then a couple of the speakers saying they don’t buy gas from Exxon, only about 10 minutes at the end is devoted on what people can do to make a change. And really the conclusion they draw is that the government has to tell the company it has been bad and make them change. I know one person who thinks that global warming is a hoax. I know one other person who tends to doubt the validity of scientific studies and even he believes the global climate change is a real crisis. I think the people who are trying to move the global warming discussion back to the “Is it Real” phase have really long lost the argument. The movie tries to make the claim that this is where the energy debate is. In reality the debate has moved on to the “What can be done to address the problem” stage. This is a fact that the movie doesn’t want to address because it would make Exxon seem like less of a looming threat. The problem with polemics like Out of Balance is that they are all arguments with very little in the way of facts to support those arguments. What made An Inconvenient Truth so compelling was that Al Gore compiled fact after fact to show how serious the issue was and how incontrovertible his conclusions were. Here the facts are just replaced with anger and even if you agree with the idea they present, the undocumented single-mindedness of their attack undermines their position.
]]>Tue, 02 Sep 2008 03:38:44 GMTunclefesteringunclefestering Blog9/1/2008 11:38:44 PM Out of Balance is a documentary of the worst type: pick an easy target, show what they do is wrong and claim a moral victory. It doesn’t attempt to portray any kind of balance to the story it is telling. While there are plenty of talking heads, I expected them to quote from more than three documents to prove ExxonMobil is the greatest threat to the environment. According to this movie, ExxonMobile is the single, greatest source of evil on the face of the planet. The company single handedly is going to destroy every aspect of life on Earth. Am I exagerating the claims made by the documentary? Yes. However, my exaggerations are not as much as you would expect. This movie spends slightly more than an hour featuring one talking head after another from extremely radical environmental groups claiming that ExxonMobile has stifled the debate on global climate change. They claim the company has exerted undue influence on the government. And that they have created massive amounts of doubt in the mind of the public on how serious the problem of global warming is. Of these claims made by the movie, really the middle one is the one I believe most strongly. It is also the one that they have the most documented evidence. It appears to be clear that Exxon and the other oil companies were able to use their personal relationships with the president and the vice president of the United States, to craft an energy policy that favors the current energy producers and prevent any real reform in researching and producing alternative energy sources. This part of the movie comes very late and in a way is the most compelling because, finally, people other than environmental lobbyists are on camera and they have some actual proof the match the claims. During the rest of the movie, when the speakers are not onscreen, the viewers get treated to stock footage of the ecological devastation caused by the Exxon Valdez spill. This footage is shown again and again over the discussion that ExxonMobile funds researchers and organizations which take the position that global warming is a myth or that the effects are greatly exaggerated by the people who believe in it. This is the bulk of the movie and this is what I had the hardest time with. Very little time in the movie is devoted to the idea of what can be done to stop the juggernaut that is ExxonMobile. Other then a couple of the speakers saying they don’t buy gas from Exxon, only about 10 minutes at the end is devoted on what people can do to make a change. And really the conclusion they draw is that the government has to tell the company it has been bad and make them change. I know one person who thinks that global warming is a hoax. I know one other person who tends to doubt the validity of scientific studies and even he believes the global climate change is a real crisis. I think the people who are trying to move the global warming discussion back to the “Is it Real” phase have really long lost the argument. The movie tries to make the claim that this is where the energy debate is. In reality the debate has moved on to the “What can be done to address the problem” stage. This is a fact that the movie doesn’t want to address because it would make Exxon seem like less of a looming threat. The problem with polemics like Out of Balance is that they are all arguments with very little in the way of facts to support those arguments. What made An Inconvenient Truth so compelling was that Al Gore compiled fact after fact to show how serious the issue was and how incontrovertible his conclusions were. Here the facts are just replaced with anger and even if you agree with the idea they present, the undocumented single-mindedness of their attack undermines their position. http://www.spout.com/blogs/tadiv/archive/2008/5/27/30030.aspx Post By: tadiv
Post To: tadiv Blog
Post Date: 5/27/2008 3:20:00 PM
Body: City Lights Pictures, in association with Whitest Pouring Films and Kilo Films, presents Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), a film by Jason Kohn. The film runs 85 minutes and is not rated by the MPAA. Based upon some of the hostage video content, this film would likely be rated NC-17 by the MPAA. Manda Bala is a documentary film covering several social and economic issues in modern Brazil. These issues include political corruption, the kidnapping of the wealthy by the poor, and resulting industries such as frog farming, specialized plastic surgery, Helicopter taxi service, and the retrofitting of automobiles to make them more or less bullet-proof.Very well photographed and cleanly edited, Manda Bala, to a great extent, lacks a central theme. This picture has a good, complimenting soundtrack. Because of a mixture of translation and subtitles, the presentation is at times awkward for the viewer. Manda Bala greatly benefits from stunning cinematography. However, while watching this film I recalled a scene from Finding Forrester where the audience reads criticism that says “Where are you taking me?” And so, while there is stunning cinematography, there is a similar magnitude debt in the way of communicating the central point. There is a lack of content that ties everything together. Stunning cinematography is the highlight of this picture. Without making a study of Brazil, one would never imagine that its modern cities are so very beautiful. To contrast the beauty of the modern high-rise buildings and seemingly clean streets, we see the slums at the edge of the metropolis falling away from the center like the crumbling slopes of a pillar in Monument Valley. Suburbia does not seem to exist around these mountains of wealth, just poverty and squalor. All of this is richly photographed and presented. The only portions of the film that do not stand out from a cinematic perspective are some of the views of the frog farms and some views of the poorer areas of the country. The picture, after a view of a modern Brazilian city, starts in the country at a frog farm. One of the two who run the farm is interviewed and is reluctant to talk about “the scandal”. Farther in the presentation we find that the scandal was a corrupt politician’s alleged embezzlement of public funds intended to be seed money for new frog farms in poorer areas of the country.From the frog farm, we are transported into the city of Sao Paulo to meet “Mr. M.” He is identified as a businessman and sounds like a transplanted American. He tells of being robbed at gunpoint on the streets of Sao Paulo while stopped in traffic. He discusses the crime faced in the city every day and methods used to foil the criminal. These include carrying his real wallet in a hidden pocket and a criminal’s wallet that has only a bit of cash in it. Also in his defense, he has a bullet-proof car. His car is a turbo-charged Porsche 911 – maybe he would less of a target were he driving a Ford Taurus… The Porsche, it seems, cost Mr. M about $415,000 US. I don’t know why we are not told how much ear reconstruction surgery costs.Moving on, we meet a pretty young woman who was a kidnapping victim. Then we meet the plastic surgeon who replaces severed ears. It seems that removing an ear is the kidnapper’s method of choice in making their point that they are not fooling around. Then we meet a policeman who is part of the eighty-strong anti-kidnapping squad. Then we meet a civil lawyer who has had the fortitude to sue an alleged corrupt politician, then back to “M” again. He explains that the really wealthy travel by helicopter since nobody can walk up to you and demand money at gunpoint, and so we see the world’s largest fleet of privately-owned helicopters. On and on it goes – we move between the Dr, the victim, Mr. M, an assistant Attorney General, the policeman, a kidnapper, and, of course, the frog farmer. During one of the frog farm sequences, we see a huge shipment of live frogs departing for JFK. With a hint of related guilt, as in Blood Diamond, there is an inference that the United States supports the political corruption in that it purchases the product from the frog farms. While Manda Bala is a technically high-quality production, the presentation falls short in connecting the themes addressed. We meet many Brazilians. While they all have stories to tell, there is not a complete thread connecting them all. Is the problem the political corruption? Or is it the crime that the leadership seems to choose not to address? A presentation is made on the colonization of Brazil – is there an ingrained culture of raping the wealth? Like Out of Balance, Manda Bala ultimately fails to pinpoint the issue; it fails to deliver a summation of the issues presented. While it is very worth seeing, I’m not sure that it really gets the job done when it comes to making a solid point. So there is evil hidden within the great beauty of modern Brazil – what a surprise!
]]>Tue, 27 May 2008 19:20:00 GMTtadivtadiv Blog5/27/2008 3:20:00 PMCity Lights Pictures, in association with Whitest Pouring Films and Kilo Films, presents Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), a film by Jason Kohn. The film runs 85 minutes and is not rated by the MPAA. Based upon some of the hostage video content, this film would likely be rated NC-17 by the MPAA. Manda Bala is a documentary film covering several social and economic issues in modern Brazil. These issues include political corruption, the kidnapping of the wealthy by the poor, and resulting industries such as frog farming, specialized plastic surgery, Helicopter taxi service, and the retrofitting of automobiles to make them more or less bullet-proof.Very well photographed and cleanly edited, Manda Bala, to a great extent, lacks a central theme. This picture has a good, complimenting soundtrack. Because of a mixture of translation and subtitles, the presentation is at times awkward for the viewer. Manda Bala greatly benefits from stunning cinematography. However, while watching this film I recalled a scene from Finding Forrester where the audience reads criticism that says “Where are you taking me?” And so, while there is stunning cinematography, there is a similar magnitude debt in the way of communicating the central point. There is a lack of content that ties everything together. Stunning cinematography is the highlight of this picture. Without making a study of Brazil, one would never imagine that its modern cities are so very beautiful. To contrast the beauty of the modern high-rise buildings and seemingly clean streets, we see the slums at the edge of the metropolis falling away from the center like the crumbling slopes of a pillar in Monument Valley. Suburbia does not seem to exist around these mountains of wealth, just poverty and squalor. All of this is richly photographed and presented. The only portions of the film that do not stand out from a cinematic perspective are some of the views of the frog farms and some views of the poorer areas of the country. The picture, after a view of a modern Brazilian city, starts in the country at a frog farm. One of the two who run the farm is interviewed and is reluctant to talk about “the scandal”. Farther in the presentation we find that the scandal was a corrupt politician’s alleged embezzlement of public funds intended to be seed money for new frog farms in poorer areas of the country.From the frog farm, we are transported into the city of Sao Paulo to meet “Mr. M.” He is identified as a businessman and sounds like a transplanted American. He tells of being robbed at gunpoint on the streets of Sao Paulo while stopped in traffic. He discusses the crime faced in the city every day and methods used to foil the criminal. These include carrying his real wallet in a hidden pocket and a criminal’s wallet that has only a bit of cash in it. Also in his defense, he has a bullet-proof car. His car is a turbo-charged Porsche 911 – maybe he would less of a target were he driving a Ford Taurus… The Porsche, it seems, cost Mr. M about $415,000 US. I don’t know why we are not told how much ear reconstruction surgery costs.Moving on, we meet a pretty young woman who was a kidnapping victim. Then we meet the plastic surgeon who replaces severed ears. It seems that removing an ear is the kidnapper’s method of choice in making their point that they are not fooling around. Then we meet a policeman who is part of the eighty-strong anti-kidnapping squad. Then we meet a civil lawyer who has had the fortitude to sue an alleged corrupt politician, then back to “M” again. He explains that the really wealthy travel by helicopter since nobody can walk up to you and demand money at gunpoint, and so we see the world’s largest fleet of privately-owned helicopters. On and on it goes – we move between the Dr, the victim, Mr. M, an assistant Attorney General, the policeman, a kidnapper, and, of course, the frog farmer. During one of the frog farm sequences, we see a huge shipment of live frogs departing for JFK. With a hint of related guilt, as in Blood Diamond, there is an inference that the United States supports the political corruption in that it purchases the product from the frog farms. While Manda Bala is a technically high-quality production, the presentation falls short in connecting the themes addressed. We meet many Brazilians. While they all have stories to tell, there is not a complete thread connecting them all. Is the problem the political corruption? Or is it the crime that the leadership seems to choose not to address? A presentation is made on the colonization of Brazil – is there an ingrained culture of raping the wealth? Like Out of Balance, Manda Bala ultimately fails to pinpoint the issue; it fails to deliver a summation of the issues presented. While it is very worth seeing, I’m not sure that it really gets the job done when it comes to making a solid point. So there is evil hidden within the great beauty of modern Brazil – what a surprise! http://www.spout.com/blogs/joem18b/archive/2008/5/5/28210.aspx Post By: joem18b
Post To: joem18b Blog
Post Date: 5/5/2008 5:53:57 PM
Body: Before dealing with the end of the world as we know it, which this movie does not explicitly mention but which is lurking there in the unspoken background - before dealing with that, it being a pet peeve of mine, let me mention first an equally annoying pet peeve: many podcasters, the Spout podcasters occasionally among them, use the expression "begs the question" when they actually mean "raises the question." This error of diction has become so common in the U.S. today that it's probably useless to even mention it here, but since I heard it again on FilmCouch recently, let me remind those who might be unaware of it that "begging the question" is a form of logical fallacy in which an argument is assumed to be true without evidence other than the argument itself. Thank you. Meanwhile, back in the day, if you hated documentaries but had to write a paper on one, you could head down to Ninth and Trawler and catch The Nudist Story at the Jewel Box. The Nudist Story is the film where everybody plays volleyball with their backs turned to the camera. Otherwise, you were stuck with "Hemo the Magnificent" or "Our Mister Sun" or a training film explaining how to avoid the clap and why you ought to do so instead of chasing around after the girls at school who were reputed to be the biggest pushovers. These days, in addition to naked flesh, you can find lots of other quite acceptable entertainment in nonfiction films - crime and corruption in its multivarious forms, incest, child abuse, pedophilia, perversions both common and obscure, the apocalypse, and George Bush. Manda Bala, for example, will get you through the night quite agreeably, with a laugh or two, when you can't count on slipping a review of Hostel II past your Remedial English 2B class instructor. Manda Bala executive summary: That's all you got? But stand by while I rethink that. Manda Bala Cliff Notes: Frog farm launders money for massively corrupt president of the Brazilian congress; kidnappers are mean; a guy worries about getting mugged in Sao Paulo; bulletproof cars (if it's good enough for the Pope, it's good enough for me); plastic-surgery surgery, with blood and music that has a cutting edge; using a helicopter to avoid carjacking; no helicopter-jacking, sadly; and the clincher: politicians can be corrupt. "Manda Bala" ("Send a Bullet") is an expression common in Brazil but hard for me to explain in English, at least as I understand it (feel free to correct me). Imagine a situation like Iraq, for example - sixth year of the war, unrelenting violence, little water or electricity in Baghdad, a sense of inevitable disaster - you might look at that and just say "Manda Bala," meaning "What the hell, go ahead and pull the trigger." I checked out a few reviews of Manda Bala while awaiting my screener, just to pick up on the buzz. The temperature ran hot (except for Stephen Holden): "rich vibrancy of threat," "inexcusable violations of political faith and public safety," "hauntingly mounted voyage," "shocking and scary," "mesmerizing, tense, exciting," "a country and a society entirely out of control," "black humor and stomach-churning detail," "the ravages of political graft and unchecked crime." Documentary Grand Jury prize winner at Sundance. Cleaned up at the Cinema Eye Awards. "A film that cannot be shown in Brazil." Wow. Well, Manda Bala can't be shown in Brazil because one of the guys appearing in the movie told the young men who made it that he'd sue their asses three ways from Sunday if the film ever opened in a theater in that country. Always some sorehead out there with his hand in your pocket. So is it true that if the filmmakers have particular interests, a design, and a message in mind, but I don't share those interests, don't apprehend the design, and misunderstand the message, then how blame is apportioned between maker and viewer for the disconnect will determine whether the movie is good or bad? Because my executive summary above is not in exact accord with the thoughts and intentions of the filmmakers. I believe that in the last analysis, the principal interest of Jason Kohn (the director and principal producer - that is, the guy who made the movie) was to make a feature-length theatrical documentary with the film values of a mainstream motion picture - the values of a Hollywood action flick, for example. Like Earl Morris, and maybe because of Morris' influence, Kohn's aesthetic here represents the flip side of cinema verite, handheld video cameras, minimalism, and made-for-TV documentaries. For example, Morris prepares sets before shooting, recreates scenes, and uses the "Interrotron" - his invention - when interviewing (a device that, when used correctly, lets viewers make eye contact with subjects in the documentary). A Morris quote has it that style doesn't dictate truth, so that the handheld camera should not be a prerequisite these days for making documentaries. Kohn hates (his word) the common belief that content will always win out over form; that form is a slave to content. Cinematic effects can be used to make a point with style (vide The Thin Blue Line). There is a provocative element in this idea. Kohn invokes Robocop and Lethal Weapon as film models and Verhoeven, Ridley Scott, and Terry Gilliam as major influences. He wanted to use film rather than videotape in Manda Bala and was able to obtain 35mm lenses adapted for a 16mm camera. Manda Bala is shot in anamorphic Super 16; at 2.69:1, it's wider than Cinemascope. Kohn says that he made the choice in part as an anti-TV statement. At the time, HBO, the most profitable channel for documentaries, had announced that they wouldn't letterbox. Kohn also is bugged by TV documentaries that add footage to find a theatrical release. He wanted to make a film that delivers visually in the theater. He wanted to light sets, use dollies, and try out filming techniques used in action flicks. He said that film makes everyone look great, like an actor. He didn't want to go down to South America, a rich kid by Latin standards, and stick a handheld camera in the faces of the poor. (In the event, the poor onscreen are few and far between. In an odd turn, most of those interviewed about a country gone terribly wrong appear themselves to be saints.) As Kohn expresses it, he wanted to make a documentary Robocop. To him, documentaries aren't a separate form; they're just another genre. For example, Morris borrowed from noir when making The Thin Blue Line. Heloísa Passos won the Cinematography Award at Sundance for shooting the movie. I, on the other hand, received Manda Bala on DVD in the mail and watched it letterboxed on TV. I might as easily have watched it on a laptop or even on an Ipod. So while I can sing the praises of Lawrence of Arabia or a Terrence Malick flick as seen in the theater, I was never going to be watching this one there. So the sad fact is, I'm not in a position to comment on this aspect of the movie, perhaps the most important to its director. Besides, isn't this supposed to be a golden age for documentaries? Seems like most of the Rotten Tomatoes 90+ movies are documentaries, and there is quite a list of them. And if the theatrical version of a documentary is made with TV values and 30 minutes of extra footage, it might bug Kohn but it doesn't matter to me because I won't be paying $10 to see it in the theater anyway. And with the current lively DIY movement and mumblecore and me having just reviewed LOL for example, I'm not especially focused on the photographic values of a film, documentary or fiction, anyway. Although Ten Canoes did knock me out. So watching the film on my couch without knowing anything about what I've said so far, Manda Bala looked ok. It looked good. In addition to these theatrical and cinematical considerations, Kohn wanted to investigate several interesting subjects. In particular, he wanted to go to Brazil and shoot some footage of a frog farm that he knew about and of matters pertaining to a plastic surgeon that he had heard about. And in the process, he wanted to avoid polemics. In Kohn's opinion, feature documentaries are a poor way to push political agendas. With Bush getting elected in spite of Fahrenheit 9/11, maybe I agree with him. And Kohn wasn't interested in documentary filmmaking as journalism. Viewers expecting an expose or other newsworthy story will not find it here. Kohn wanted to go expressionistic, not journalistic. He wanted to experiment and discover what could be done with a documentary, not set out with digitized video in mind. Maybe do something like Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control. I, contrariwise, am not intrigued by frog farms or plastic surgery and I don't have a problem with, and in fact might lean toward, polemical documentaries that observe high journalistic standards and push agendas. So that's another strike against me vs Manda Bala, going in. And the Sundance prizes perturbed my attitude as well. I mean, this is a film made by three very young and inexperienced filmmakers and needs to be, must be, approached and appreciated that way, which in my case, because of the buzz, sadly wasn't. Finally, Kohl learned that he needed a story. He needed to tell a story and make it look good. His second of three editors, Doug Abel, taught him what that meant. Kohn credits Abel with cutting the film into a coherent story. I could be interested in a story. A story, that I could go for. But to back up a little: Jason Kohn graduated from Brandeis in 2001 and got a job as a researcher for Earl Morris. He visited his dad in Brazil at Christmas, 2001, to look into the filming of the frog farm and the plastic surgeon. His dad knew a lot of folks down there and had some influence in the community; Brazil has a lot of poor people, and a collection of the super rich, but the middle class isn't so big. Then, in the summer of 2002 at the age of 23, Kohn flew down to actually shoot some film. He called a friend, Joey Frank, and asked him to come down for a couple of months too, to help in Sao Paulo. Kohn knew Frank from Brandeis, but Frank had transferred to Brown, where he was scheduled to graduate in 2003. When Kohn called him he was 21. Kohn's father is Argentinian, his mother Brazilian. His father had been robbed in his car four or five times in the past seven years and talked about it a lot, and also complained continually about the rampant corruption in Brazil. Jason knew that the frog farm was used for money laundering and that the plastic surgeon specialized in rebuilding the ears cut off kidnapping victims, and he thought that he might make a short film dealing with corruption and the country's concomitant street violence and how they might interrelate, with the farm and surgeon serving as framing examples for the central idea of the film. Frank joined Kohn in Sao Paulo and they asked a third friend, Jared Goldman, who was working at Miramax, to provide backup from the States. Kohn, Frank, and Goldman are credited as Manda Bala's producers. Kohn is also the director, Frank the assistant director. Kohn and Frank spent two and a half months doing preproduction work in Sao Paulo. They used Kohn's dad's house as one office and his mom's house in the States as the other for the duration of the project. Kohn had sold his car and saxaphone to raise money and had otherwise managed to raise 10K or so. Frank brought 10K too. The film began with a summer budget of 25K. Kohn talked Heloísa Passos into shooting the movie. Then they filmed the frog farmer and surgeon, and a detective on kidnapping detail, a paranoid businessman, a microchip salesman, an assistant attorney general, and a kidnapping victim. They came home with 25 hours of film, cut together a trailer, got grants from Sundance and Brandeis, and found an investor. As they worked on their thesis that corruption at the top breeds violence at the bottom, they came to realize that they needed more than the frog farm and some ear surgery to make a decent Robomentary. They went back to Brazil the next summer and shot 25 more hours of film. With that they had a feature film without an ending, as they put it. In fact, "ending" here might be code for "story," "arc," "compelling narrative." They decided that they needed a kidnapper in the film and waited around with 10K in bribes to interview one that they had found in prison. However, a bookkeeping error dealing with the exchange rate meant that they were 20K behind, not 10K ahead. And, the kidnapper was transferred to a different prison. The interview never happened. After finding, finally, funding for a third phase, Kohn went back to Brazil, hung out for six months until a taxi driver taking him to the dentist told him that he could hook him up with a kidnapper. Kohn met the kidnapper at a McDonald's, handed over some money, was taken to the kidnapper's home, interview him multiple times, and also got a brief interview with the corrupt politician at the center of the film. A final version of Manda Bala was cut together and finally, after five years of effort, the filmmakers had their film. Six months later it won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance. So, young men make a movie and it is what it is. No, it isn't what it is; it's something else. It isn't what Kohn says it is, exactly, and probably not what I thought I saw it was, but it's in the neighborhood of what it is. It really struck me how young these fellows were when my daughter, in her last year at Brown, mentioned that one of the boys from her high school, who is also at Brown, was friends with Joey Frank. Frank's Facebook page is not exactly that of a graybeard, either. After Manda Bala was released, Kohn and Frank in commentary and interviews seem to be finding their way a little toward an explanation of the movie that they had made. They represent Manda Bala as an impressionistic collage of scenes that, taken together, recontextualize the relationship of political corruption to street violence. I, however, took the movie to be telling me, as if I might not know it already, that kidnapping is currently a growth industry for the poor in Brazil. This was not Kohn's intention. He well knows that street violence in general and the kidnapping industry in particular in Sao Paulo are not expose-worth in 2008. City of God was released in 2002. In Kohn's view, while City of God (one of the great Brazilian films in his estimation) is a pretend documentary, Manda Bala is a pretend fiction. They make a nice pair. In fact, Manda Bala crew members claimed to belong to the City of God crew a time or two. Opened some doors. So kidnapping for profit isn't popular in the U.S. because there is too much risk for too little gain, penalties too stringent, and a strong law-enforcement focus on the crime. For example, my parent's house was robbed twice before the two addicts across the street decided to go for a bigger payday and were immediately arrested for kidnapping a kid down the block and botching the ransom pickup. But on the other hand, kidnapping for ransom is now common in many parts of the world. In 2007, Baghdad was dubbed kidnapping capitol of the world by whomever it is that does that dubbing. Previous title holders include Mexico and Colombia. You're also a high snatch risk in Haiti, Moscow, and parts of Africa. And in Sao Paulo. Manda Bala does get a little breathless over this fact. In the U.S., selling drugs provides the standard entry-level employment opportunities for some of the poor who can't get a job at Wal-Mart. We're just not into kidnapping-as-a-business yet. I was visiting in Bogota last year and my friend's daughter was crossing from her parked car to the front door of the apartment building one night and got grabbed on the sidewalk. A flash kidnapping. Her abductors drove her to a bank machine where she withdrew the max allowed. This was at 11:55 PM. They drove around for six minutes and then had her do it again. Then they drove her out to a dump on the outskirts of the city. She told them that she was a doctor working with the poor (which was true). Whether or not that was the reason, they let her get out of the car and drove away without shooting her. When the police brought her home, she went into her room and closed the door and didn't come out for three days. Meanwhile, the ear-cutter-offer in the movie tells us that his ill-gotten gains are spent helping the poor in the slums where he lives. A Hezbollah/Hamas/Sadr militia model of social welfare. I'm guessing that the vogue in kidnapping in the past decade has something to do with technology: the spread of cell phones, the Internet, and the availability and affordability of an arsenal of new, powerful weapons. In Sao Paulo, kidnappings are running at a rate of one per day. In Manda Bala we see, first, evil faceless kidnappers. Then, the tough cops who hunt them down like dogs (81 cops in a city of 20 million, poorly paid and prone to accept bribes). As mentioned above, the filmmakers try to find a kidnapper to interview. They learn about one in prison but the bribes necessary to get to him would have busted the movie budget, so eventually, by luck, they hooked up, through that traditional source of connections, the cab driver, with a kidnapper in a ski mask. (Hard to find a ski mask in Brazil? Couple of the classic ski resorts in the Andes have closed because their glaciers have melted.) This man in the mask had killed and would kill again (but as he tells us in his defense, he's mostly just killed policemen). He has robbed. He has kidnapped. He's done ears. He's probably instantly identifiable in that mask to anyone who already knows him, cop, neighbor, or victim, from his eyes, mouth, and voice. This is a man who has lived his life in the slums. Gives freely of his ill-gotten gains to his needy co-slum dwellers. Nine kids. Wife pregnant with number 10. For me, him talking about his family is the most affecting moment in the film. As he is interviewed, police snoop around nearby and the filmmakers are wishing that they had worn Kevlar vests for the occasion. Later, after the movie was completed, the police caught up with the man. He killed two of them and they shot him in the stomach and shoulder. On the way to the hospital, he acquired a third bullet hole, this one in the head. Juxtaposed with the kidnapping material are scenes documenting a serious case of political corruption. That juxtaposition is the point of the movie, not the fact of the corruption itself, which has been endemic in Brazil from the jump in 1500. Europe's relationship with the country was exploitive for centuries, as wood, gold, sugar, and coffee were carried off across the Atlantic. (And if memory serves, the pre-Columbian Native Americans were a shifty-eyed lot around those parts as well.) Regrettably, as I did with the kidnapping segments, I took Manda Bala to be informing me of something that I already knew, not recontextualizing the facts being presented. As I watched, I had the thought that finding corruption in Brazil is like finding penguins in Antarctica. You can make an interesting documentary about your discovery, but the basic fact of it is not surprising. Just to say again, Kohn wasn't finding penguins in Brazil, because he knows a hundred times more about corruption in that country than I ever will, for sure; just that it seemed that way to me as a first-time viewer of the movie. The politician highlighted here, Jadar Barbalho, President of the Senate (or something), took millions - make that two billion, so greedy - from the government via public works programs, and sent it out of the country while in the process created over 400 businesses to wash the money, employing the poor of his state. Who knows how much he kept for himself, but enough trickled out into the community to get him re-elected. Naturally he never paid for his crimes. Compare and contrast this with a president of our own who takes a trillion or so for a bogus war, most of which finds its way into the pockets of the corporations of his buddies. Would he have been reelected in Brazil as he was in the U.S.? But no more snark. I'm just sayin. An oil man becomes president and the oil companies make more money than any business in history. As someone asked the other day, if Colonel Sanders were elected and the price of fried chicken went up 500%, would anybody ask why? But no more snark. Those of us who are Americans (as we blithely call ourselves in the U.S.) live in an environment that fomented the savings and loan debacle of the 80s, the tech collapse of the 90s, energy deregulation and Enron, and the current mortgage crisis. What do I care about a corrupt official in Brazil when the government here has turned me and my 401K over to a global business culture as immoral and rapacious as any fallen angel let loose in the Sacred Heart girls dormitory on the Night of the Dead? Nah, I'm just kidding. But there is a reason to care about corruption in Brazil, in addition to simply exercising our basic humanity, a reason which I'll get around to in a second. Brazil wants and needs foreign investment, but the country's reputation for corruption is a problem for it. Lula da Silva ran on a platform to clean up the government, but whether he really meant that or not, he has encountered a bureaucracy designed, built, and endlessly refined over centuries to encourage and nurture bribery and all the other time-tested methods of fiscal chicanery specific to the human species. Voters hoped that Lulu's election would bring change, but money laundering and manipulation of large government contracts in thousands of cases like the frog farm have continued to be reported. Public trust in the political system is poisoned. Although Lula da Silva himself seems to have remained clean, some of his closest political allies have been or are being investigated. He governs by coalition, and coalition means political bribery. A mensalão (‘monthly pay-off’) bought votes in Congress; scandal resulted in 2005. Polls indicate that a majority of Brazilians still believe that Lula is honest, but only 16% trust the political parties to be honest. The government may be one of the most corrupt in history and that corruption interferes with the government's attempts to control the imbalance in economic status and the unrest and crime that it causes. If it were just a matter of humans preying on humans, the situations in this movie could be applied to many different countries. But unfortunately, Brazil happens to be home to most of the Amazon rainforest. I've already pointed out once, when reviewing Out of Balance, that the world is going straight to hell. But since that is sort of a trippy concept and there are infinite engaging examples that adumbrate the approaching darkness and chaos, a few more words on the subject might not come amiss. That is, forget about the kidnappers and their predilection for de-earing their captives. Brazil is busy tearing out the lungs of the world and has been for years. While Brazilian engineers tout the use of satellite technology to save the Amazon rainforest, loggers, miners, and farmers keep on cutting. 20% of Earth's oxygen is produced by the rainforest (soon to be remembered only as that place down there that gave Amazon.com its name). Marina Silva, Brazil's environment minister and an Amazon native, has developed a plan to stop deforestation, which is currently progressing at 1.3 million hectares a year. She breaks the problem down geographically into specific areas. However, in spite of Brazil's struggle to implement her plan, the country remains the fifth-largest global contributor to greenhouse gases. It's up there with the big boys: the U.S., China, and India. Deforestation is the second most significant source of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the world, contributing 25% of carbon emissions to the atmosphere. In a major operation in 2005, nearly 90 public officials, businessmen, and loggers were arrested. Environmental protection agency (IBAMA) employees charged with protecting the forests from illegal loggers had been accepting bribes from logging companies in return for falsifying permits to transport timber to markets within Brazil and abroad. The illegal logging takes place primarily in Mato Grosso, where environmental organizations estimate that two-thirds of all logging was being carried out illegally. IBAMA has been reorganized in an attempt to eliminate corruption, but it's too early to see if that's doing any good. (Care to hazard a guess?) I'm sure that you've read or heard factoids like "One square mile of rainforest can contain more than 50,000 insect species" or "One hectare (2.47 acres) of land can contain more than 480 species of trees" or "Amazon rivers contain over 2,000 species of fish." 1.5 acres of rainforest is lost every second in the world - 78 million acres a year. At this rate, 85% of Earth's remaining rainforest will disappear by the year 2020. 137 species of plants and animals go extinct every day. Every so often, a ray of light gleams out, such as a recent conference of 11 Latin American countries in Brazil, with Indonesia and Congo as observers, held for and attended by leaders of indigenous groups in those countries. They explored carbon-trading policies that would compensate thier governments for conserving rainforest. In Brazil, indigenous tribes currently retain permanent rights to 12% of the country and 21% of the Amazon, plus 49 million acres of "extractive reserves" for rubber tappers, brazil-nut gatherers, and river communities. They pressure the government, which promises to get tough on logging. Deforestation rates in the country have been declining for several years (with a spike a couple of years ago). But the good news doesn't stretch much farther than that. So while Manda Bala doesn't say much on the subject, here's a toast to that ticking end-of-the-world clock. Brazil is another of America's crazy brothers. When the awards are handed out for biggest environmental f**k-up, Brazil, like the U.S., could be jumping out of its seat to accept a gold statue in the shape of a dead planet. The sanctimonious super-rich in both countries are on their easy ride straight down to the hottest chambers of hell. Brazil, entrusted with the largest, most diverse, most important stretch of biosphere on the planet, contains the struggling yet increasing armies of the poor who are systematically reducing the country to barren baked red mud, so that "Amazonia" will in due course become a synonym for "Martian landscape." Governmental corruption, taken to a degree that proves without doubt that humans, who learned to walk long before learning to think, are true experts at f**king up the world and each other with no hope for the obverse in sight. A Brazilian friend told me the other day that at one point she was worried that the U.S. would send down troops and attack her country because of the way it is destroying the rainforest. I explained to her that we're happy to attack a desert country with oil under it, but that the current E.P.A. wouldn't know a rainforest if it found itself staggering around in one, or care. Another angle to this is Brazil's use of sugar-cane waste to produce ethanol, and the concomitant questions raised about the effect of this production on the environment - encroachment on the rain forest, the practice of burning the fields at harvest time, insecticide and fertilizer runoff, etc. We'll save this for another time. Anyway, do you believe that the Amazon will be saved? We can now see the scars on it from space. But I digress. In addition to the kidnapping and corrupt-politician threads, there are threads for the frogs and Mr. M. I know that the frogs are part of the corruption story but as I watched I just took them to be frogs. I know that they are an in-your-face unsubtle metaphor for the Brazilian people or the Brazilian poor or the Brazilian rich, or whatever, at least until they get eaten, but I remained oblivious to this idea while watching the movie. The frogs remained frogs. At what point in the making of the movie did Jonah, Joey, Jared, and Doug appreciate the metaphorical character of the frogs? Surely not before Jonah and Joey went down to shoot them for the first time? Mr. M, I know now, was meant to show how the current social situation in Brazil can engender a kind of paranoia in its citizenry but unfortunately, while watching the movie, I took Mr. M (originally from Tel Aviv) to be a sort of spokesman for the film's theses. Given my mindset, his exposition of the dire situation in the country went over the top to the detriment of the movie. So is this user error? Missing the expressionist vibe? Merging instead of contrasting the frogs and Mr. M with the kidnappers and the corrupt politician? Because Sao Paulo is huge. Skyscraper gardens. More money than the rest of Latin America. 20 million people is a whole lot of people, poor, rich, and otherwise. Within city limits, only Mumbai, Karachi, Istanbul, and Delhi are larger. (NYC is 9th.) For whatever reason, the sheer size and diversity of the city makes me want to take everything I'm seeing literally. The complexity seems too large for metaphor, too complicated to submit to Mr. M's simple paranoia. The first time in Sao Paulo, I was alone. I walked down to the edge of Paraisópolis, the city's largest favela, and sat down and watched the activity in the street. There was a street game of some kind going one, played by a gang of young boys. One of them, small but intense, was obviously their leader. When in due course they made their way over to me, I hired that boy as my guide for a week, paying him a lot even by U.S. standards. He turned his gang over to his second in command and took control of my stay in the city. By the time I left at the end of the month I was almost dead from exhaustion. By the way, Sao Paulo's U.S. sister city is Miami. Before finishing here, we must deal with the charges of sensationalism lodged against Manda Bala by various reviewers. The filmmakers dismiss the charges by pointing out that: (a) They're exhibiting reality. Calling it sensationalism is snobbish and elitist. It's the movie's responsibility to portray reality. The viewer needs to know that what they are seeing and hearing about is real. (b) The filmmakers are themselves curious. They want to see how things are, what things look like. (c) Kidnappees suffer. It's necessary for you to see that suffering, not just listen to descriptions of it. Regarding the surgery scenes, which were storyboarded, lit, shot using a dolly, but fortunately not rehearsed, I refer you to Nip/Tuck. Regarding the ear-cutting-off footage, I refer you to Fox News any night of the week and to my Abu Ghraib album. Regarding the guns, I refer you to The Wire. Rebuilt earlobes are hard because they're made out of rib. "I watched The Birds the same day they cut my first ear off. That night I dreamed the birds pecked my ear off." Jars of ears cut off with knives, scissors, teeth. "I said to him, How could you sleep? You cut my ears off last night." The filmmakers left out the footage of a frog eating an ear. They did not leave out the footage of a frog eating a frog. And that frog abattoir... the slaughtering and skinning and dressing out and carving up and flouring and deep-fat frying and eating of the frogs. Is this Fast Food Nation, or what? Didn't make me want to buy a bag of Frog McNuggets. Car paintball. Weener dog on pool slide. Wait a minute. Which way am I arguing here? Point is, the scenes in question don't rise to the level of sensationalism, not in today's suicide-bomber-a-day world, nevermind true docuporn. I remember sitting in Symphony Cinema II in Boston watching Mondo Cane in 1962. The guy getting hair plugs - that stayed with me. Would it be so wrong to put in at least one scene at a topless beach? What's wrong with the Sundance awards? We'll deal with that question another time. Is the film fair and balanced? Is it too dark? Is Kohn afraid to show anything positive because it might diminish the points that the movie is attempting to make. Does the lack of good news weaken the film's arguments? Just saw a headline in Drudge: "Global Temps Have Not Risen Since '98." See? From the NYT: "Good News From Brazil. The global economy may not be the happiest of stories these days, but it would be a far more tragic one had Brazil suffered a financial implosion in the past year, as many had feared. If Brazil, Latin America's largest nation, had defaulted on its $250 billion public debt, as neighboring Argentina had done, the consequences would have been catastrophic. The resulting panic would have affected not only Latin America, but all emerging markets." More good news. The rich are not getting poorer. And that recent epidemic of dengue fever, causing many deaths? The good news is that it wasn't the hemorrhagic variety in most cases, which causes a much higher death rate. Manda Bala II: The Good Politician, The Kidnapper Who Found God, and Frogs As Pets. The music track is excellent. So Jonah, Joey, and Jared worked hard and did good and I congratulate them. As Jonah says, "Making the first one is about making the second one." He's currently working on a screenplay. Winning a big award the first time out can be both blessing and curse. Let's hope that it's more of the former and less of the latter for these three. And if you haven't seen Pixote or Cidade de Deus, please do so.
]]>Mon, 05 May 2008 21:53:57 GMTjoem18bjoem18b Blog5/5/2008 5:53:57 PMBefore dealing with the end of the world as we know it, which this movie does not explicitly mention but which is lurking there in the unspoken background - before dealing with that, it being a pet peeve of mine, let me mention first an equally annoying pet peeve: many podcasters, the Spout podcasters occasionally among them, use the expression "begs the question" when they actually mean "raises the question." This error of diction has become so common in the U.S. today that it's probably useless to even mention it here, but since I heard it again on FilmCouch recently, let me remind those who might be unaware of it that "begging the question" is a form of logical fallacy in which an argument is assumed to be true without evidence other than the argument itself. Thank you. Meanwhile, back in the day, if you hated documentaries but had to write a paper on one, you could head down to Ninth and Trawler and catch The Nudist Story at the Jewel Box. The Nudist Story is the film where everybody plays volleyball with their backs turned to the camera. Otherwise, you were stuck with "Hemo the Magnificent" or "Our Mister Sun" or a training film explaining how to avoid the clap and why you ought to do so instead of chasing around after the girls at school who were reputed to be the biggest pushovers. These days, in addition to naked flesh, you can find lots of other quite acceptable entertainment in nonfiction films - crime and corruption in its multivarious forms, incest, child abuse, pedophilia, perversions both common and obscure, the apocalypse, and George Bush. Manda Bala, for example, will get you through the night quite agreeably, with a laugh or two, when you can't count on slipping a review of Hostel II past your Remedial English 2B class instructor. Manda Bala executive summary: That's all you got? But stand by while I rethink that. Manda Bala Cliff Notes: Frog farm launders money for massively corrupt president of the Brazilian congress; kidnappers are mean; a guy worries about getting mugged in Sao Paulo; bulletproof cars (if it's good enough for the Pope, it's good enough for me); plastic-surgery surgery, with blood and music that has a cutting edge; using a helicopter to avoid carjacking; no helicopter-jacking, sadly; and the clincher: politicians can be corrupt. "Manda Bala" ("Send a Bullet") is an expression common in Brazil but hard for me to explain in English, at least as I understand it (feel free to correct me). Imagine a situation like Iraq, for example - sixth year of the war, unrelenting violence, little water or electricity in Baghdad, a sense of inevitable disaster - you might look at that and just say "Manda Bala," meaning "What the hell, go ahead and pull the trigger." I checked out a few reviews of Manda Bala while awaiting my screener, just to pick up on the buzz. The temperature ran hot (except for Stephen Holden): "rich vibrancy of threat," "inexcusable violations of political faith and public safety," "hauntingly mounted voyage," "shocking and scary," "mesmerizing, tense, exciting," "a country and a society entirely out of control," "black humor and stomach-churning detail," "the ravages of political graft and unchecked crime." Documentary Grand Jury prize winner at Sundance. Cleaned up at the Cinema Eye Awards. "A film that cannot be shown in Brazil." Wow. Well, Manda Bala can't be shown in Brazil because one of the guys appearing in the movie told the young men who made it that he'd sue their asses three ways from Sunday if the film ever opened in a theater in that country. Always some sorehead out there with his hand in your pocket. So is it true that if the filmmakers have particular interests, a design, and a message in mind, but I don't share those interests, don't apprehend the design, and misunderstand the message, then how blame is apportioned between maker and viewer for the disconnect will determine whether the movie is good or bad? Because my executive summary above is not in exact accord with the thoughts and intentions of the filmmakers. I believe that in the last analysis, the principal interest of Jason Kohn (the director and principal producer - that is, the guy who made the movie) was to make a feature-length theatrical documentary with the film values of a mainstream motion picture - the values of a Hollywood action flick, for example. Like Earl Morris, and maybe because of Morris' influence, Kohn's aesthetic here represents the flip side of cinema verite, handheld video cameras, minimalism, and made-for-TV documentaries. For example, Morris prepares sets before shooting, recreates scenes, and uses the "Interrotron" - his invention - when interviewing (a device that, when used correctly, lets viewers make eye contact with subjects in the documentary). A Morris quote has it that style doesn't dictate truth, so that the handheld camera should not be a prerequisite these days for making documentaries. Kohn hates (his word) the common belief that content will always win out over form; that form is a slave to content. Cinematic effects can be used to make a point with style (vide The Thin Blue Line). There is a provocative element in this idea. Kohn invokes Robocop and Lethal Weapon as film models and Verhoeven, Ridley Scott, and Terry Gilliam as major influences. He wanted to use film rather than videotape in Manda Bala and was able to obtain 35mm lenses adapted for a 16mm camera. Manda Bala is shot in anamorphic Super 16; at 2.69:1, it's wider than Cinemascope. Kohn says that he made the choice in part as an anti-TV statement. At the time, HBO, the most profitable channel for documentaries, had announced that they wouldn't letterbox. Kohn also is bugged by TV documentaries that add footage to find a theatrical release. He wanted to make a film that delivers visually in the theater. He wanted to light sets, use dollies, and try out filming techniques used in action flicks. He said that film makes everyone look great, like an actor. He didn't want to go down to South America, a rich kid by Latin standards, and stick a handheld camera in the faces of the poor. (In the event, the poor onscreen are few and far between. In an odd turn, most of those interviewed about a country gone terribly wrong appear themselves to be saints.) As Kohn expresses it, he wanted to make a documentary Robocop. To him, documentaries aren't a separate form; they're just another genre. For example, Morris borrowed from noir when making The Thin Blue Line. Heloísa Passos won the Cinematography Award at Sundance for shooting the movie. I, on the other hand, received Manda Bala on DVD in the mail and watched it letterboxed on TV. I might as easily have watched it on a laptop or even on an Ipod. So while I can sing the praises of Lawrence of Arabia or a Terrence Malick flick as seen in the theater, I was never going to be watching this one there. So the sad fact is, I'm not in a position to comment on this aspect of the movie, perhaps the most important to its director. Besides, isn't this supposed to be a golden age for documentaries? Seems like most of the Rotten Tomatoes 90+ movies are documentaries, and there is quite a list of them. And if the theatrical version of a documentary is made with TV values and 30 minutes of extra footage, it might bug Kohn but it doesn't matter to me because I won't be paying $10 to see it in the theater anyway. And with the current lively DIY movement and mumblecore and me having just reviewed LOL for example, I'm not especially focused on the photographic values of a film, documentary or fiction, anyway. Although Ten Canoes did knock me out. So watching the film on my couch without knowing anything about what I've said so far, Manda Bala looked ok. It looked good. In addition to these theatrical and cinematical considerations, Kohn wanted to investigate several interesting subjects. In particular, he wanted to go to Brazil and shoot some footage of a frog farm that he knew about and of matters pertaining to a plastic surgeon that he had heard about. And in the process, he wanted to avoid polemics. In Kohn's opinion, feature documentaries are a poor way to push political agendas. With Bush getting elected in spite of Fahrenheit 9/11, maybe I agree with him. And Kohn wasn't interested in documentary filmmaking as journalism. Viewers expecting an expose or other newsworthy story will not find it here. Kohn wanted to go expressionistic, not journalistic. He wanted to experiment and discover what could be done with a documentary, not set out with digitized video in mind. Maybe do something like Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control. I, contrariwise, am not intrigued by frog farms or plastic surgery and I don't have a problem with, and in fact might lean toward, polemical documentaries that observe high journalistic standards and push agendas. So that's another strike against me vs Manda Bala, going in. And the Sundance prizes perturbed my attitude as well. I mean, this is a film made by three very young and inexperienced filmmakers and needs to be, must be, approached and appreciated that way, which in my case, because of the buzz, sadly wasn't. Finally, Kohl learned that he needed a story. He needed to tell a story and make it look good. His second of three editors, Doug Abel, taught him what that meant. Kohn credits Abel with cutting the film into a coherent story. I could be interested in a story. A story, that I could go for. But to back up a little: Jason Kohn graduated from Brandeis in 2001 and got a job as a researcher for Earl Morris. He visited his dad in Brazil at Christmas, 2001, to look into the filming of the frog farm and the plastic surgeon. His dad knew a lot of folks down there and had some influence in the community; Brazil has a lot of poor people, and a collection of the super rich, but the middle class isn't so big. Then, in the summer of 2002 at the age of 23, Kohn flew down to actually shoot some film. He called a friend, Joey Frank, and asked him to come down for a couple of months too, to help in Sao Paulo. Kohn knew Frank from Brandeis, but Frank had transferred to Brown, where he was scheduled to graduate in 2003. When Kohn called him he was 21. Kohn's father is Argentinian, his mother Brazilian. His father had been robbed in his car four or five times in the past seven years and talked about it a lot, and also complained continually about the rampant corruption in Brazil. Jason knew that the frog farm was used for money laundering and that the plastic surgeon specialized in rebuilding the ears cut off kidnapping victims, and he thought that he might make a short film dealing with corruption and the country's concomitant street violence and how they might interrelate, with the farm and surgeon serving as framing examples for the central idea of the film. Frank joined Kohn in Sao Paulo and they asked a third friend, Jared Goldman, who was working at Miramax, to provide backup from the States. Kohn, Frank, and Goldman are credited as Manda Bala's producers. Kohn is also the director, Frank the assistant director. Kohn and Frank spent two and a half months doing preproduction work in Sao Paulo. They used Kohn's dad's house as one office and his mom's house in the States as the other for the duration of the project. Kohn had sold his car and saxaphone to raise money and had otherwise managed to raise 10K or so. Frank brought 10K too. The film began with a summer budget of 25K. Kohn talked Heloísa Passos into shooting the movie. Then they filmed the frog farmer and surgeon, and a detective on kidnapping detail, a paranoid businessman, a microchip salesman, an assistant attorney general, and a kidnapping victim. They came home with 25 hours of film, cut together a trailer, got grants from Sundance and Brandeis, and found an investor. As they worked on their thesis that corruption at the top breeds violence at the bottom, they came to realize that they needed more than the frog farm and some ear surgery to make a decent Robomentary. They went back to Brazil the next summer and shot 25 more hours of film. With that they had a feature film without an ending, as they put it. In fact, "ending" here might be code for "story," "arc," "compelling narrative." They decided that they needed a kidnapper in the film and waited around with 10K in bribes to interview one that they had found in prison. However, a bookkeeping error dealing with the exchange rate meant that they were 20K behind, not 10K ahead. And, the kidnapper was transferred to a different prison. The interview never happened. After finding, finally, funding for a third phase, Kohn went back to Brazil, hung out for six months until a taxi driver taking him to the dentist told him that he could hook him up with a kidnapper. Kohn met the kidnapper at a McDonald's, handed over some money, was taken to the kidnapper's home, interview him multiple times, and also got a brief interview with the corrupt politician at the center of the film. A final version of Manda Bala was cut together and finally, after five years of effort, the filmmakers had their film. Six months later it won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance. So, young men make a movie and it is what it is. No, it isn't what it is; it's something else. It isn't what Kohn says it is, exactly, and probably not what I thought I saw it was, but it's in the neighborhood of what it is. It really struck me how young these fellows were when my daughter, in her last year at Brown, mentioned that one of the boys from her high school, who is also at Brown, was friends with Joey Frank. Frank's Facebook page is not exactly that of a graybeard, either. After Manda Bala was released, Kohn and Frank in commentary and interviews seem to be finding their way a little toward an explanation of the movie that they had made. They represent Manda Bala as an impressionistic collage of scenes that, taken together, recontextualize the relationship of political corruption to street violence. I, however, took the movie to be telling me, as if I might not know it already, that kidnapping is currently a growth industry for the poor in Brazil. This was not Kohn's intention. He well knows that street violence in general and the kidnapping industry in particular in Sao Paulo are not expose-worth in 2008. City of God was released in 2002. In Kohn's view, while City of God (one of the great Brazilian films in his estimation) is a pretend documentary, Manda Bala is a pretend fiction. They make a nice pair. In fact, Manda Bala crew members claimed to belong to the City of God crew a time or two. Opened some doors. So kidnapping for profit isn't popular in the U.S. because there is too much risk for too little gain, penalties too stringent, and a strong law-enforcement focus on the crime. For example, my parent's house was robbed twice before the two addicts across the street decided to go for a bigger payday and were immediately arrested for kidnapping a kid down the block and botching the ransom pickup. But on the other hand, kidnapping for ransom is now common in many parts of the world. In 2007, Baghdad was dubbed kidnapping capitol of the world by whomever it is that does that dubbing. Previous title holders include Mexico and Colombia. You're also a high snatch risk in Haiti, Moscow, and parts of Africa. And in Sao Paulo. Manda Bala does get a little breathless over this fact. In the U.S., selling drugs provides the standard entry-level employment opportunities for some of the poor who can't get a job at Wal-Mart. We're just not into kidnapping-as-a-business yet. I was visiting in Bogota last year and my friend's daughter was crossing from her parked car to the front door of the apartment building one night and got grabbed on the sidewalk. A flash kidnapping. Her abductors drove her to a bank machine where she withdrew the max allowed. This was at 11:55 PM. They drove around for six minutes and then had her do it again. Then they drove her out to a dump on the outskirts of the city. She told them that she was a doctor working with the poor (which was true). Whether or not that was the reason, they let her get out of the car and drove away without shooting her. When the police brought her home, she went into her room and closed the door and didn't come out for three days. Meanwhile, the ear-cutter-offer in the movie tells us that his ill-gotten gains are spent helping the poor in the slums where he lives. A Hezbollah/Hamas/Sadr militia model of social welfare. I'm guessing that the vogue in kidnapping in the past decade has something to do with technology: the spread of cell phones, the Internet, and the availability and affordability of an arsenal of new, powerful weapons. In Sao Paulo, kidnappings are running at a rate of one per day. In Manda Bala we see, first, evil faceless kidnappers. Then, the tough cops who hunt them down like dogs (81 cops in a city of 20 million, poorly paid and prone to accept bribes). As mentioned above, the filmmakers try to find a kidnapper to interview. They learn about one in prison but the bribes necessary to get to him would have busted the movie budget, so eventually, by luck, they hooked up, through that traditional source of connections, the cab driver, with a kidnapper in a ski mask. (Hard to find a ski mask in Brazil? Couple of the classic ski resorts in the Andes have closed because their glaciers have melted.) This man in the mask had killed and would kill again (but as he tells us in his defense, he's mostly just killed policemen). He has robbed. He has kidnapped. He's done ears. He's probably instantly identifiable in that mask to anyone who already knows him, cop, neighbor, or victim, from his eyes, mouth, and voice. This is a man who has lived his life in the slums. Gives freely of his ill-gotten gains to his needy co-slum dwellers. Nine kids. Wife pregnant with number 10. For me, him talking about his family is the most affecting moment in the film. As he is interviewed, police snoop around nearby and the filmmakers are wishing that they had worn Kevlar vests for the occasion. Later, after the movie was completed, the police caught up with the man. He killed two of them and they shot him in the stomach and shoulder. On the way to the hospital, he acquired a third bullet hole, this one in the head. Juxtaposed with the kidnapping material are scenes documenting a serious case of political corruption. That juxtaposition is the point of the movie, not the fact of the corruption itself, which has been endemic in Brazil from the jump in 1500. Europe's relationship with the country was exploitive for centuries, as wood, gold, sugar, and coffee were carried off across the Atlantic. (And if memory serves, the pre-Columbian Native Americans were a shifty-eyed lot around those parts as well.) Regrettably, as I did with the kidnapping segments, I took Manda Bala to be informing me of something that I already knew, not recontextualizing the facts being presented. As I watched, I had the thought that finding corruption in Brazil is like finding penguins in Antarctica. You can make an interesting documentary about your discovery, but the basic fact of it is not surprising. Just to say again, Kohn wasn't finding penguins in Brazil, because he knows a hundred times more about corruption in that country than I ever will, for sure; just that it seemed that way to me as a first-time viewer of the movie. The politician highlighted here, Jadar Barbalho, President of the Senate (or something), took millions - make that two billion, so greedy - from the government via public works programs, and sent it out of the country while in the process created over 400 businesses to wash the money, employing the poor of his state. Who knows how much he kept for himself, but enough trickled out into the community to get him re-elected. Naturally he never paid for his crimes. Compare and contrast this with a president of our own who takes a trillion or so for a bogus war, most of which finds its way into the pockets of the corporations of his buddies. Would he have been reelected in Brazil as he was in the U.S.? But no more snark. I'm just sayin. An oil man becomes president and the oil companies make more money than any business in history. As someone asked the other day, if Colonel Sanders were elected and the price of fried chicken went up 500%, would anybody ask why? But no more snark. Those of us who are Americans (as we blithely call ourselves in the U.S.) live in an environment that fomented the savings and loan debacle of the 80s, the tech collapse of the 90s, energy deregulation and Enron, and the current mortgage crisis. What do I care about a corrupt official in Brazil when the government here has turned me and my 401K over to a global business culture as immoral and rapacious as any fallen angel let loose in the Sacred Heart girls dormitory on the Night of the Dead? Nah, I'm just kidding. But there is a reason to care about corruption in Brazil, in addition to simply exercising our basic humanity, a reason which I'll get around to in a second. Brazil wants and needs foreign investment, but the country's reputation for corruption is a problem for it. Lula da Silva ran on a platform to clean up the government, but whether he really meant that or not, he has encountered a bureaucracy designed, built, and endlessly refined over centuries to encourage and nurture bribery and all the other time-tested methods of fiscal chicanery specific to the human species. Voters hoped that Lulu's election would bring change, but money laundering and manipulation of large government contracts in thousands of cases like the frog farm have continued to be reported. Public trust in the political system is poisoned. Although Lula da Silva himself seems to have remained clean, some of his closest political allies have been or are being investigated. He governs by coalition, and coalition means political bribery. A mensalão (‘monthly pay-off’) bought votes in Congress; scandal resulted in 2005. Polls indicate that a majority of Brazilians still believe that Lula is honest, but only 16% trust the political parties to be honest. The government may be one of the most corrupt in history and that corruption interferes with the government's attempts to control the imbalance in economic status and the unrest and crime that it causes. If it were just a matter of humans preying on humans, the situations in this movie could be applied to many different countries. But unfortunately, Brazil happens to be home to most of the Amazon rainforest. I've already pointed out once, when reviewing Out of Balance, that the world is going straight to hell. But since that is sort of a trippy concept and there are infinite engaging examples that adumbrate the approaching darkness and chaos, a few more words on the subject might not come amiss. That is, forget about the kidnappers and their predilection for de-earing their captives. Brazil is busy tearing out the lungs of the world and has been for years. While Brazilian engineers tout the use of satellite technology to save the Amazon rainforest, loggers, miners, and farmers keep on cutting. 20% of Earth's oxygen is produced by the rainforest (soon to be remembered only as that place down there that gave Amazon.com its name). Marina Silva, Brazil's environment minister and an Amazon native, has developed a plan to stop deforestation, which is currently progressing at 1.3 million hectares a year. She breaks the problem down geographically into specific areas. However, in spite of Brazil's struggle to implement her plan, the country remains the fifth-largest global contributor to greenhouse gases. It's up there with the big boys: the U.S., China, and India. Deforestation is the second most significant source of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the world, contributing 25% of carbon emissions to the atmosphere. In a major operation in 2005, nearly 90 public officials, businessmen, and loggers were arrested. Environmental protection agency (IBAMA) employees charged with protecting the forests from illegal loggers had been accepting bribes from logging companies in return for falsifying permits to transport timber to markets within Brazil and abroad. The illegal logging takes place primarily in Mato Grosso, where environmental organizations estimate that two-thirds of all logging was being carried out illegally. IBAMA has been reorganized in an attempt to eliminate corruption, but it's too early to see if that's doing any good. (Care to hazard a guess?) I'm sure that you've read or heard factoids like "One square mile of rainforest can contain more than 50,000 insect species" or "One hectare (2.47 acres) of land can contain more than 480 species of trees" or "Amazon rivers contain over 2,000 species of fish." 1.5 acres of rainforest is lost every second in the world - 78 million acres a year. At this rate, 85% of Earth's remaining rainforest will disappear by the year 2020. 137 species of plants and animals go extinct every day. Every so often, a ray of light gleams out, such as a recent conference of 11 Latin American countries in Brazil, with Indonesia and Congo as observers, held for and attended by leaders of indigenous groups in those countries. They explored carbon-trading policies that would compensate thier governments for conserving rainforest. In Brazil, indigenous tribes currently retain permanent rights to 12% of the country and 21% of the Amazon, plus 49 million acres of "extractive reserves" for rubber tappers, brazil-nut gatherers, and river communities. They pressure the government, which promises to get tough on logging. Deforestation rates in the country have been declining for several years (with a spike a couple of years ago). But the good news doesn't stretch much farther than that. So while Manda Bala doesn't say much on the subject, here's a toast to that ticking end-of-the-world clock. Brazil is another of America's crazy brothers. When the awards are handed out for biggest environmental f**k-up, Brazil, like the U.S., could be jumping out of its seat to accept a gold statue in the shape of a dead planet. The sanctimonious super-rich in both countries are on their easy ride straight down to the hottest chambers of hell. Brazil, entrusted with the largest, most diverse, most important stretch of biosphere on the planet, contains the struggling yet increasing armies of the poor who are systematically reducing the country to barren baked red mud, so that "Amazonia" will in due course become a synonym for "Martian landscape." Governmental corruption, taken to a degree that proves without doubt that humans, who learned to walk long before learning to think, are true experts at f**king up the world and each other with no hope for the obverse in sight. A Brazilian friend told me the other day that at one point she was worried that the U.S. would send down troops and attack her country because of the way it is destroying the rainforest. I explained to her that we're happy to attack a desert country with oil under it, but that the current E.P.A. wouldn't know a rainforest if it found itself staggering around in one, or care. Another angle to this is Brazil's use of sugar-cane waste to produce ethanol, and the concomitant questions raised about the effect of this production on the environment - encroachment on the rain forest, the practice of burning the fields at harvest time, insecticide and fertilizer runoff, etc. We'll save this for another time. Anyway, do you believe that the Amazon will be saved? We can now see the scars on it from space. But I digress. In addition to the kidnapping and corrupt-politician threads, there are threads for the frogs and Mr. M. I know that the frogs are part of the corruption story but as I watched I just took them to be frogs. I know that they are an in-your-face unsubtle metaphor for the Brazilian people or the Brazilian poor or the Brazilian rich, or whatever, at least until they get eaten, but I remained oblivious to this idea while watching the movie. The frogs remained frogs. At what point in the making of the movie did Jonah, Joey, Jared, and Doug appreciate the metaphorical character of the frogs? Surely not before Jonah and Joey went down to shoot them for the first time? Mr. M, I know now, was meant to show how the current social situation in Brazil can engender a kind of paranoia in its citizenry but unfortunately, while watching the movie, I took Mr. M (originally from Tel Aviv) to be a sort of spokesman for the film's theses. Given my mindset, his exposition of the dire situation in the country went over the top to the detriment of the movie. So is this user error? Missing the expressionist vibe? Merging instead of contrasting the frogs and Mr. M with the kidnappers and the corrupt politician? Because Sao Paulo is huge. Skyscraper gardens. More money than the rest of Latin America. 20 million people is a whole lot of people, poor, rich, and otherwise. Within city limits, only Mumbai, Karachi, Istanbul, and Delhi are larger. (NYC is 9th.) For whatever reason, the sheer size and diversity of the city makes me want to take everything I'm seeing literally. The complexity seems too large for metaphor, too complicated to submit to Mr. M's simple paranoia. The first time in Sao Paulo, I was alone. I walked down to the edge of Paraisópolis, the city's largest favela, and sat down and watched the activity in the street. There was a street game of some kind going one, played by a gang of young boys. One of them, small but intense, was obviously their leader. When in due course they made their way over to me, I hired that boy as my guide for a week, paying him a lot even by U.S. standards. He turned his gang over to his second in command and took control of my stay in the city. By the time I left at the end of the month I was almost dead from exhaustion. By the way, Sao Paulo's U.S. sister city is Miami. Before finishing here, we must deal with the charges of sensationalism lodged against Manda Bala by various reviewers. The filmmakers dismiss the charges by pointing out that: (a) They're exhibiting reality. Calling it sensationalism is snobbish and elitist. It's the movie's responsibility to portray reality. The viewer needs to know that what they are seeing and hearing about is real. (b) The filmmakers are themselves curious. They want to see how things are, what things look like. (c) Kidnappees suffer. It's necessary for you to see that suffering, not just listen to descriptions of it. Regarding the surgery scenes, which were storyboarded, lit, shot using a dolly, but fortunately not rehearsed, I refer you to Nip/Tuck. Regarding the ear-cutting-off footage, I refer you to Fox News any night of the week and to my Abu Ghraib album. Regarding the guns, I refer you to The Wire. Rebuilt earlobes are hard because they're made out of rib. "I watched The Birds the same day they cut my first ear off. That night I dreamed the birds pecked my ear off." Jars of ears cut off with knives, scissors, teeth. "I said to him, How could you sleep? You cut my ears off last night." The filmmakers left out the footage of a frog eating an ear. They did not leave out the footage of a frog eating a frog. And that frog abattoir... the slaughtering and skinning and dressing out and carving up and flouring and deep-fat frying and eating of the frogs. Is this Fast Food Nation, or what? Didn't make me want to buy a bag of Frog McNuggets. Car paintball. Weener dog on pool slide. Wait a minute. Which way am I arguing here? Point is, the scenes in question don't rise to the level of sensationalism, not in today's suicide-bomber-a-day world, nevermind true docuporn. I remember sitting in Symphony Cinema II in Boston watching Mondo Cane in 1962. The guy getting hair plugs - that stayed with me. Would it be so wrong to put in at least one scene at a topless beach? What's wrong with the Sundance awards? We'll deal with that question another time. Is the film fair and balanced? Is it too dark? Is Kohn afraid to show anything positive because it might diminish the points that the movie is attempting to make. Does the lack of good news weaken the film's arguments? Just saw a headline in Drudge: "Global Temps Have Not Risen Since '98." See? From the NYT: "Good News From Brazil. The global economy may not be the happiest of stories these days, but it would be a far more tragic one had Brazil suffered a financial implosion in the past year, as many had feared. If Brazil, Latin America's largest nation, had defaulted on its $250 billion public debt, as neighboring Argentina had done, the consequences would have been catastrophic. The resulting panic would have affected not only Latin America, but all emerging markets." More good news. The rich are not getting poorer. And that recent epidemic of dengue fever, causing many deaths? The good news is that it wasn't the hemorrhagic variety in most cases, which causes a much higher death rate. Manda Bala II: The Good Politician, The Kidnapper Who Found God, and Frogs As Pets. The music track is excellent. So Jonah, Joey, and Jared worked hard and did good and I congratulate them. As Jonah says, "Making the first one is about making the second one." He's currently working on a screenplay. Winning a big award the first time out can be both blessing and curse. Let's hope that it's more of the former and less of the latter for these three. And if you haven't seen Pixote or Cidade de Deus, please do so. http://www.spout.com/blogs/minerwerks/archive/2008/5/4/28159.aspx Post By: minerwerks
Post To: minerwerks Blog
Post Date: 5/4/2008 7:04:21 PM
Body: The overdue reviews of two DVDs sent to me by Spout: "Out of Balance" and "Africa Unite." At a recent film screening I attended, an audience questioned the cast and crew, "Was that a movie or a message?"The surprisingly appropriate reply from an actor was, "What is a movie BUT a message?" In recent years, we have seen the venues for self-expression blossom, and among the various clutter out there, determined people with a message have found ways to break through. Two documentaries I viewed rely to some extent on the portable camera to collect material for their stories.The first of these is "Out of Balance," subtitled as "ExxonMobil's Impact on Climate Change." Writer/Director/Narrator Tom Jackson takes viewers through the basics of climate science and global warming before moving on to the corporate actions of ExxonMobil to vaunt public image and profits over public responsibility. The documentary relies on the modern approach epitomized by the works of Michael Moore, with the documentarian taking a central role in the proceedings and linking his personal story to a larger issue. Unlike Michael Moore, however, Jackson hasn't succeeded in developing a structure that engages the viewer's emotions. Outside of the open and close, the bulk of the film is a standard talking-head/fact-and-figure affair, admittedly with a strong roster of participants.What I appreciated about this doc was the early section that addresses the studies and data that lead to scientists' conclusions about global warming. This part does succeed in making the material accessible. The rest of the film unfortunately couldn't maintain my attention. When judging a documentary, I struggle with the question of how much my personal opinions of the subject should play into my critique. I'd hate to discourage people who have good ideas, but I am also offended by the idea of giving a pass on shoddy work because it means well. Ultimately, I believe a political documentary should strive to engage viewers who hold opposing viewpoints, and to reach those people, facts, figures and style must be extremely well thought out. This is not to say a film can't be partisan, but a conscious choice to do this suggests a filmmaker knows he is likely to be criticized and should be prepared. Unfortunately, "Out of Balance" just barely rises above the norm for the grassroots political docs exemplified by Robert Greenwald's "Outfoxed" and "Uncovered: The War on Iraq." Most of the auxiliary graphics are extremely basic and illustrations are poorly integrated with the interviews. In the end, "Out of Balance" is just average, and therefore probably will only reach sympathetic audiences.A slightly better example of documentary is "Africa Unite," billed as "A Celebration of Bob Marley's Vision." At first glance, this appeared to be a record of a 2005 concert that both commemorated Bob Marley's 60th birthday and encouraged the uniting of the African nations. The film actually succeeds, oddly enough, by relegating the concert to a lower priority in the mix.Early on, "Africa Unite" follows several delegates and attendees that made their way to Ethiopia for a conference on African unity. As the film slides sideways into the issue, it becomes a compelling chronicle on the history of Rastafari, the movement made famous worldwide by Bob Marley. While not explicitly a Rasta documentary, "Africa Unite" operates from the viewpoint of the Rastas, who believe in the divinity of Haile Selassie, former ruler of Ethiopia, as he was the sole native ruler on a continent that had fallen prey to European colonialism. The film's view of Ethiopia is reverential, dwelling on the spiritual significance of the country and some locations within. These angles are most compellingly personified in a 70 year-old named Bongo Tawney, who makes his way to the celebration from Jamaica. The filmmaker also makes clear the connections between Selassie and the political content in Bob Marley's music. In possibly the best sequence, we see how a speech by Selassie inspired one of Marley's most famous songs, seamlessly transitioning to the contemporary concert where one of Marley's sons continues the performance.In the quest for the positive message, "Africa Unite" tends to ignore the unrest that pervades many parts of the continent. In a way, I can't blame the film, because ultimately, the people who travelled to Ethiopia - itself an unstable country - came to honestly seek answers and guidance on how to be good neighbors. The goal is not to convince the uncertain or profile the hurdles the activists face. The film is about the vision.The vision is persuasive, but unfortunately, not all elements of "Africa Unite" are working together positively. Several different types of cameras captured the modern-day footage of the events, and occasionally this clash is incredibly distracting. Adding to the disconnect are many handheld shots that indicate a complete lack of skill on the behalf of the camera operator. Many of the decent shots are marred by a horrible strobe-like effect that makes movements blurry and jumpy. This is something that should simply never be applied to handheld footage. The effect continues in many of the concert scenes, exaggerated by scattershot cutting. At one point, I felt sorry for UN Goodwill Ambassador Danny Glover being shot handheld, in profile, with a strobe effect applied. To make matters worse, a flickering lightbulb could be seen over his shoulder. His family probably has home movies that blow this away.Being someone who doesn't really get into reggae music or Bob Marley, I have to admit that I found "Africa Unite" more interesting than expected. This is probably due to the fact that there is more political content than musical content. For those disappointed by hearing this, the screener DVD promises the regular version will include 45 minutes of the concert as a bonus. But I also warn anyone looking for a cogent analysis of the political environment in Africa. It's only alluded to occasionally here. The message, you see, is hope.
]]>Sun, 04 May 2008 23:04:21 GMTminerwerksminerwerks Blog5/4/2008 7:04:21 PMThe overdue reviews of two DVDs sent to me by Spout: "Out of Balance" and "Africa Unite." At a recent film screening I attended, an audience questioned the cast and crew, "Was that a movie or a message?"The surprisingly appropriate reply from an actor was, "What is a movie BUT a message?" In recent years, we have seen the venues for self-expression blossom, and among the various clutter out there, determined people with a message have found ways to break through. Two documentaries I viewed rely to some extent on the portable camera to collect material for their stories.The first of these is "Out of Balance," subtitled as "ExxonMobil's Impact on Climate Change." Writer/Director/Narrator Tom Jackson takes viewers through the basics of climate science and global warming before moving on to the corporate actions of ExxonMobil to vaunt public image and profits over public responsibility. The documentary relies on the modern approach epitomized by the works of Michael Moore, with the documentarian taking a central role in the proceedings and linking his personal story to a larger issue. Unlike Michael Moore, however, Jackson hasn't succeeded in developing a structure that engages the viewer's emotions. Outside of the open and close, the bulk of the film is a standard talking-head/fact-and-figure affair, admittedly with a strong roster of participants.What I appreciated about this doc was the early section that addresses the studies and data that lead to scientists' conclusions about global warming. This part does succeed in making the material accessible. The rest of the film unfortunately couldn't maintain my attention. When judging a documentary, I struggle with the question of how much my personal opinions of the subject should play into my critique. I'd hate to discourage people who have good ideas, but I am also offended by the idea of giving a pass on shoddy work because it means well. Ultimately, I believe a political documentary should strive to engage viewers who hold opposing viewpoints, and to reach those people, facts, figures and style must be extremely well thought out. This is not to say a film can't be partisan, but a conscious choice to do this suggests a filmmaker knows he is likely to be criticized and should be prepared. Unfortunately, "Out of Balance" just barely rises above the norm for the grassroots political docs exemplified by Robert Greenwald's "Outfoxed" and "Uncovered: The War on Iraq." Most of the auxiliary graphics are extremely basic and illustrations are poorly integrated with the interviews. In the end, "Out of Balance" is just average, and therefore probably will only reach sympathetic audiences.A slightly better example of documentary is "Africa Unite," billed as "A Celebration of Bob Marley's Vision." At first glance, this appeared to be a record of a 2005 concert that both commemorated Bob Marley's 60th birthday and encouraged the uniting of the African nations. The film actually succeeds, oddly enough, by relegating the concert to a lower priority in the mix.Early on, "Africa Unite" follows several delegates and attendees that made their way to Ethiopia for a conference on African unity. As the film slides sideways into the issue, it becomes a compelling chronicle on the history of Rastafari, the movement made famous worldwide by Bob Marley. While not explicitly a Rasta documentary, "Africa Unite" operates from the viewpoint of the Rastas, who believe in the divinity of Haile Selassie, former ruler of Ethiopia, as he was the sole native ruler on a continent that had fallen prey to European colonialism. The film's view of Ethiopia is reverential, dwelling on the spiritual significance of the country and some locations within. These angles are most compellingly personified in a 70 year-old named Bongo Tawney, who makes his way to the celebration from Jamaica. The filmmaker also makes clear the connections between Selassie and the political content in Bob Marley's music. In possibly the best sequence, we see how a speech by Selassie inspired one of Marley's most famous songs, seamlessly transitioning to the contemporary concert where one of Marley's sons continues the performance.In the quest for the positive message, "Africa Unite" tends to ignore the unrest that pervades many parts of the continent. In a way, I can't blame the film, because ultimately, the people who travelled to Ethiopia - itself an unstable country - came to honestly seek answers and guidance on how to be good neighbors. The goal is not to convince the uncertain or profile the hurdles the activists face. The film is about the vision.The vision is persuasive, but unfortunately, not all elements of "Africa Unite" are working together positively. Several different types of cameras captured the modern-day footage of the events, and occasionally this clash is incredibly distracting. Adding to the disconnect are many handheld shots that indicate a complete lack of skill on the behalf of the camera operator. Many of the decent shots are marred by a horrible strobe-like effect that makes movements blurry and jumpy. This is something that should simply never be applied to handheld footage. The effect continues in many of the concert scenes, exaggerated by scattershot cutting. At one point, I felt sorry for UN Goodwill Ambassador Danny Glover being shot handheld, in profile, with a strobe effect applied. To make matters worse, a flickering lightbulb could be seen over his shoulder. His family probably has home movies that blow this away.Being someone who doesn't really get into reggae music or Bob Marley, I have to admit that I found "Africa Unite" more interesting than expected. This is probably due to the fact that there is more political content than musical content. For those disappointed by hearing this, the screener DVD promises the regular version will include 45 minutes of the concert as a bonus. But I also warn anyone looking for a cogent analysis of the political environment in Africa. It's only alluded to occasionally here. The message, you see, is hope. http://www.spout.com/blogs/joem18b/archive/2008/3/28/26734.aspx Post By: joem18b
Post To: joem18b Blog
Post Date: 3/28/2008 10:03:51 PM
Body: Before beginning this review, a tip of the hat to sun dogs, aka parhelia, those common bright circular spots on a solar halo. Sun dogs are "an atmospheric optical phenomenon primarily associated with the reflection or refraction of sunlight by small ice crystals making up cirrus or cirrostratus clouds." Also, a little love for the Arizona Sundogs in the Central Hockey League and for a few favorite dog movies: snow dogs, rain dogs, desert dogs, moon dogs, straw dogs, stray dogs, reservoir dogs, dish dogs, lawn dogs, dead dogs, rabid dogs, chilly dogs, sleeping dogs, miracle dogs, road dogs, old dogs, dealing dogs, tap dogs, angry dogs, war dogs, catwalk dogs, deck dogs, top dogs, lost dogs, trinity dogs, urinoir dogs, bad dogs, barking dogs, fence dogs, devil dogs, gift dogs, good dogs, hot dogs, performing dogs, sea dogs, restricted dogs, society dogs, trained dogs, tokyo dogs, training dogs, wild dogs, zombie dogs, prairie dogs, and a dog's dog. And to note that Kingston is overrun with dogs. Dogs of all colors but of similar size. Dogs tough in body and in spirit; wary dogs, but not as wary as the cats; and hungry without exception. No other Caribbean island that I know of, and that includes the DR, has such a wealth of stray dogs. I don't remember seeing any at all on Trinidad or Barbados. There might be a thesis for someone in this. So. Sun Dogs. A documentary filmed in Jamaica, Minnesota, and Scotland. Stray dogs and huskies. Scenery. Socially responsible slum scenes. More scenery. Talking heads. Easy-listening and upbeat get-the-juices-flowing we're-having-fun it's-sunny-and-warm-down-here trust-what-you're watching Jamaican music. Accents. When is the last time you heard white folks talkin with heavy Jamaican accents? It's fun. More scenery. 90 minutes. First time out for the director of the film and for the director of photography. The director of photography did a swell job. About cynical movie reviews: The world is full of cynicism. It leaks into our lives. We can't avoid it. The demands of the 24/7 newscycle breed it, for example. In the world of cinema, a director starts out to make a movie - something caring and responsible, but also fun - a movie about saving a few strays, canine and human - a movie that might give Jamaica a little boost that it can surely use - and invariably some sorehead comes along and eyeballs the whole project and all the good work that it entails, and treats it as if it were some hack job with a (barely) hidden personal commercial agenda. If this sort of thing disturbs you as much as it does me, read no farther. Or further. But again, that beginning: Jamaica. Lush. A paradise. Happy tourists. But lots of poor Jamaicans. One of the poorest countries in the world. Wouldn't it be cool to gather up some stray dogs from the slums of Kingston and train them as sled dogs? There is a line between silly/stupid/entertaining and silly/stupid/toxic. Which side of that line are we on here? Assorted talking heads ensue, alternately dour and avuncular. "No harm done, no humans or animals injured during the making of this documentary. You will be entertained." Or, "Brudda, if you want a movie about the social ills of Jamaica, don't queue up a movie about dog sleds on wheels." Or is it that the first ten minutes of this movie are just utterly wrong? Is the director tone deaf? Is she oblivious to the dissonance created by juxtaposing a bunch of comfortable white guys talking about a crazy-but-fun idea with the sights and sounds of a nation of seriously freeped-up black Jamaicans? Saving a few strays who are left to represent the poor of the island by doing a little cart-pulling? Is this film like a movie made in a veteran's hospital, forgetting the amputees and brain-damaged patients while focusing on the pigeon-racing project out back? Is it like working for PETA in the middle of a holocaust? That is, is this a priority thing? Not to say that you can't collect stamps during a genocide, but if you want to make a philately documentary, please leave the death camps out of it. Whoa. Let's not go off the deep end here. Instead, let's just ignore the intro and restart 10 minutes in. But, no. At 20 minutes, we're back into it. The dogs go to school. Segue to problems with the education of children in Jamaica. Talking heads. But, hey, a lot of great closeups and, as mentioned above, I realize that I can't remember ever hearing heavy in-country Jamaican accents falling from Caucasian lips. It's like grandma acting rasta. Different. And horseback riding. Diverting. So just watch the damn movie and worry about the poor later? Take the ride? Dog interest, musher training, social conditions on the island, sledding as sport, Carribean history. A Jamaican pu pu platter of subjects. Sigh. I paused the movie to take a minute to find out who is who or whom here and why I should care, and why instead of righting social wrongs these old white guys are fooling around with dog sleds on wheels. In other words, sadly, I decided to follow the money. Some years ago, businessman Danny Melville (a guy with a John McCain vibe, I thought), the first old white guy to speak in the movie, tripped over a metal frame with wheels in a fabrication shop in Edmonton, Canada, while shopping for dune buggies. An employee in the shop told him that the thing was a snowless dog sled. Warm-weather dog sledding is picking up around the world because of global warming - rig racing, canicross, dog scootering, bikejoring - an ecological silver lining. Refer to my reviw of Out of Balance for more good news along these lines. Anyway, the notion of a Jamaican dog sled team came to Melville on the spot, as he tells it. With the success and noteriety of the Jamaican bobsled team in mind (Cool Runnings, the Calgary Olympics), Melville swung into action. We see him for the first time in Sun Dogs at the beginning of the movie, his idea implemented, dogcarts in action. Following that quick, upbeat, life-is-good montage of beautiful scenery and happy poverty-stricken island inhabitants that I noted, with a rousing Jamaican beat urging us to jump up and dance, Melville speaks with great earnestness about this crazy sled-dog idea of his, and then Jimmy Buffet pops up to endorse him, with a quick cut to Buffett performing in front of a crowd of ten thousand or so, to remind us that this isn't some washed-up bum we're listening to, so pay attention. Then quick shots of endearing mutts in harness, with folks cheering them along in some unknown sunny context, a woman getting her shirt autographed by Buffet, dog urinating on tourist, so forth. Melville, sitting by the dog pens in a casual open-necked shirt, a personable sincere old duffer with a neat white beard, tells us that his plans include touring dog teams, sled racing, and promoting Jamaica to the hilt. "Sustainable" teams, that is, which means that they're to pay their own way, mutts or not. Melville tells us that he also had the idea of making a movie about the dogs, the day after he had the idea of starting the sled dog project - a feature-length cartoon, maybe, with Jamaican mutts racing against Russian Mafia huskies, something for Disney Pixar to implement. That would work! Samples of such a cartoon are cut in throughout Sun Dogs. Behind Melville in the frame, folks mill about in a country setting. Jamaica must project itself into the world, the dog sleds will help, so forth, Melville tells us. He's a loquacious guy. Brand Jamaica. 2.5 million visitors a year. More shots of happy people, turquoise water. But then serious talk by the government's national image-and-identity advisor: the country and the people don't benefit from the tourist proceeds; annual revenues are funneled into the pockets of others, others who remain unnamed by the advisor onscreen; we presume that offshore leisure-based corporations and the upper-tier Jamaican rich figure into this. Next a serious word from the executive director of Jamaicans for Justice, Dr. Carolyn Gomes. "We're the best at what we do, be it criminality or murder." Deadpan. Next a serious word from a member of the bobsled team. Then serious words from Wilmot Perkins, talk-show host and perhaps the strongest public voice regarding the dysfunctional understanding, behavior, and social problems between races on the island. Gist: Jamaicans are bright, energetic, full of promise, but led astray. Shots of bright, energetic, but glowering poor citizens in the slums. Then all of this again, with similar but different words. Melville deplores the situation along with the rest. The music has become exceedingly somber by now. Somber. Then Melville explains that the dog sled project is just another zany idea of his, so that people will shake their heads and say Jamaica! (Ok, this makes no sense, but the man is just riffing.) And people will say, Why didn't I think of that! (That is, "Melville has scored another win.") Now the music picks up again. Jamaica! And with the music appears a shot of the sign at the entrance to Melville's Chukka Cove. Adventure Tours. Experience the Real Jamaica! Danny Melville's dad bought Tropical Battery back when Jamaica was protected from U.S. companies by high tariffs. The company manufactured vehicle batteries and enjoyed a monopoly on the island. When the tariffs began to be removed, the Melvilles left the island, with only Danny remaining to run the business, which in due course went downhill as the competition moved in. Melville also purchased 50 acres of undeveloped land in St. Ann in the early 80s and subsequently started an equestrian center at Chukka Cove. He hoped to lure dressage and polo enthusiasts away from Argentina and the UK, but failed. At this point he contacted his sons, away at school in Florida, and told them that he could sell everything or they could come back and help him try to save the businesses. Andrew and Mark returned to the island and joined the company. Long story short: the battery company switched from manufacture to import and bounced back, and the family got into the soft adventure business. If you've ever been on a cruise, you're familiar with soft adventures. You get a great price on the cruise itself, but hopefully you've factored additional costs into your vacation budget, because at each port you're confronted with a variety of extra fun activities, each at a sometimes-fancy price. If you've tubed or taken a canopy tour or rode a horse on Jamaica or in the Dominican or Belize or various other locations, there's a good chance you've paid the Melvilles something for the privilege. Expansion. Gaming machines. Evolving relationships with cruise lines. 500 or so horses. 500 or so employees. Over a billion a year in revenues from a number of interlocking companies shared with long-time business partners, and that's not counting the auto-supply business. See, the thing is, I'm sitting here remembering the ruined wreck of a home at the edge of the Yaque river where it curls through Santiago in the Dominican Republic. Santiago is the DR's second-largest city. On December 11 in the early morning, as hurricane Olga brushed the island, Tavera dam workers upriver decided to open all six floodgates, fearing a dam failure that could kill thousands in Santiago. This sent 1.6 million gallons of water/second into the river.The lives of the family of ten living in the house that I visited were snuffed out by the water roaring downstream in the dead of night. And the members of that family weren't the only casualties. For months after that night, folks have come to the edge of the cliff above, standing along Av. Mirador del Yaque to look down on the wreckage below. For many of the poor, it was no more than luck that they lived far enough from the river's edge to escape drowning. This was the second time in the year that this happened. I spoke to more than one upper-class resident of Santiago who, privately of course, were not sorry to see the mostly ramshackle buildings along the river washed away, along with the poor living in them. If a movie, documentary or otherwise, wants to add footage meant to raise the consciousness of viewers about the plight of so many in the Caribbean, whether the film be documentary or drama or cartoon or science-fiction flick about life on Venus, I for one will cut it some slack. I will not say "Ok, I get it. Move on." However, if the footage is doing no more than wrapping one more big-business vacuum cleaner for middle-class dollars in a flag of righteousness, then burn the film. I found plenty to savor in Sun Dogs: young men conversing quietly in a lilting Jamaican English that almost required subtitles; the enlistment of Newton, a poor young man living in a tin shack, to be a musher; Newton applying for a passport; Newton visiting Twig, Minnesota in the winter, to see snow for the first time and to learn about real dog sleds and sledding; Newton eating a fig newton; Jamaican music in the snowy north; Newton learning to drive and later taking his boss' car without permission, totaling it, and being banished, sent back to sit on the plank in front of his shack; the enlistment of Devon Anderson, then, to train as Jamaica's first musher, getting the dog sled 101 crash course from sledding experts from Twig; serious Scots commenting seriously on Anderson, over to Scotland from his island to theirs to compete in his first sled race and to win the "Came the Farthest" prize; Anderson at the end of his race exhausted with one dog from his team out of harness and on the sled tucked into an emergency dog bag; first class photography, great color, great closeups; driving around Jamaica on the wrong side of the road; a call to renowned dog sled trainer Alan Stewart in Scotland; and, of course, the recruitment and training of the dogs. Several dogs picked out at the pound. The dogs' names appear onscreen in big yellow letters - so that you can remember to ask for them when you come down? Scenes of the dogs being introduced to the dogcarts and other wheeled conveyances that they will pull. Benji the scared hound. The biggest dog, who doesn't relate to the other dogs. I remember hearing once that if a dog doesn't learn social skills early, it can't learn them later. Guess that doesn't apply to this big dog, because apparently he does, after first gnawing one or two of his mates. The last movie that I reviewed as a Spout Maven was Africa Unite, a Palm Pictures documentary in which the Marley family journeys from Jamaica to Africa in search of peace and/or treasure. Sun Dogs is also a Palm Pictures documentary, wherein stray dogs replace the Marleys but remain in Kingston. Chris Blackwell, the founder and head of Palm Pictures, and David Koh, head of acquisitions and production, negotiated the financial terms of the movie with Andrea Stewart and Danny Melville. Stewart produced as well as directed. Blackwell, Koh, Leigh Ingleby, and Melville were the executive producers (i.e., they put up the money). Palm Pictures nailed down all worldwide rights to the movie. The rumor is that the third film in this Jamaican documentary trilogy, nearing completion, is Spawn of Love, about the homeless illegitimate children fathered by rich white men vacationing at island resorts and sneaking away from their spouses at night for a few moments of forbidden love. Sign me up for the trifecta! Blackwell also founded Island Records back in 1960 (he's 71) and signed up an unknown Bob Marley, earning a reputation as the man responsible for the popularity of reggae. I didn't deal with the question of personal financial gain in the case of the Marleys and Africa Unite, although some other reviewers did. At the time, I was more interested in the dynamics of holding a conference meant to be liberal and democratic in an illiberal country. If I had examined the financial aspects of Africa Unite and the movie's effect on future iterations of the event, I might have mentioned that after the first edition of it in Addis Ababa, in October, a Ghanaian delegation came to Jamaica to discuss business opportunities between the two countries. Alexander Melville attended the talks and the second Africa Unite was held in Ghana four months later. However, I'm not aware of any other particular connections between Melville and Blackwell, which might argue for taking Sun Dogs as a fun movie and letting it go at that. Danny Melville started Chukka Caribbean Adventures in 1983. It's now the largest land-based nature adventure tour provider in the region, offering more than thirty tours in Jamaica, The Bahamas, Belize, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. The business sells more than a quarter of a million adventure tours to cruise and hotel guests every year, including canopy tours over the jungle, mountain-to-sea cycling, river kayaking, a horseback ride and swim, and a Bob Marley retrospective bus trip. Plus, of course, the Jamaica dog sled Experience. "With a commitment to deliver the highest quality tours with well-trained guides and stringent safety standards, Chukka takes pride in showcasing the natural beauty of the Caribbean through unique and sensational experiences and providing opportunities for local residents and businesses." (chukkacaribbean.com) Chukka Cove, where it all started, caters to horse lovers who stay on the estate's landscaped grounds, near the stables. There are six two-bedroom villas, each suitable for four guests, each with a veranda, plank floors, and the feel of Old-Country gentry. Meals are prepared for you on-site. Nickering, and presumably barking, can be heard through open bedroom windows in the moonlight. The Melvilles are businessmen and make no bones about the fact. When Danny had the sleddog idea, he approached the thing as a money-making proposition from the start and is clear about that throughout the film. "It's good business," he says. (N.b., I'm paraphrasing these quotes from memory and notes.) "We've got an unexploited brand. If we can be successful, like the Jamaican bobsled team, the tourists will become ambassadors for us." (Here in the movie a quick clip of the bobsled team, stars of the 1988 Calgary Olympics.) "You know, you have to believe in it and dive into it wholeheartedly. Tourists will go home and say, 'I went dog sledding in Jamaica!' Of course I hope to make a profit: the Jamaica Dog Sled Experience. Our dogs come from the local pound - because, you know, if Jamaica didn't have the image of being crime-ridden, violent, and poor, it would fly. So, dog sleds pulled by strays, after they've been neutered and vaccinated for rabies, that's the good news. Listen, after Devon's first race, we were in the Indian newspaper. We were in the Australian newspaper." Tourists trot past on Melville horses. Guests first receive an orientation on sled-dog racing and how the Jamaican team was formed. They also get a lecture on the stray situation in Jamaica. (A percentage of the tour fee goes to the JSPCA.) Finally, visitors get to meet, hug and pet the dogs and learn their personal stories before receiving instruction on mushing technique and heading out on the three-kilometer trail around Chukka Cove Farm. "This is going to help the dogs because you'll soon have everybody wanting to get a dog to train them to pull a sled or cart," says musher Anderson, standing with dogs milling around his ankles. "And eventually, we'll get rid of the stray dogs on the street." 20 down and 35,000 to go. "The Jamaica Dog Sled Encounter at Chukka Caribbean Adventures, home to the only dog sled team and dog sled tours in the Caribbean, is offering children between 6 and 12 years a complimentary Jamaica Dog sled Encounter, with one child free per paying adult. The tour includes a visit to Dunn's River Falls, and to Island Village for shopping, plus complimentary lunch at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville." Bottom line on the movie, if not the tour: If you're more interested in the dogs in particular, or the mushers learning about and training with the dogs, or social and economic conditions on the island, or the physical aspects of the island itself, or the sport of dog sledding, or Caribbean history in general, to the exclusion of interest in the other elements of the movie, then you will not get much of what you crave and will probably feel impatient, dissatisfied, and that your time has been misspent. On the other hand, if your interest runs to the conception, inception, nuture, and support of a fledgling business, then the dogs, mushers, and scenery provide a little spice, or spoonfuls of sugar, to the business; that is, as aids in getting you to hear, learn, and internalize the root message, or hook. Stewart might have been making her first feature-length film, but her backers knew exactly what they wanted and what they needed from the film and there is no doubt that they vetted her work every step of the way to make sure that they got what they wanted. A little local color; a story line that takes you out behind your resort hotel room and not to the Iditarod; a little upbeat music; a break from the intensity of Rick Steves; a story arc of "Dogs learn to pull sled -> Come down and ride on one," not "Dogs learn to pull sled -> Compete and win/lose." I thought about calling the director about this movie and asking her where her head was at when she made it, and how much "input" she got from Melville and Blackwell and Koh, and Leigh Ingleby (audio-visual interests and arts funding), but I didn't because I'm conflict-shy and a question like that might really piss her off. Instead, I called Dr. Gomes at Jamaicans For Justice. She impressed me in the movie and I felt that I could trust her answers. I missed her twice at her office but she was kind enough to return my calls. After a few introductory niceties, I asked her if she had seen Sun Dogs. She had. I told her that I was calling with one question in mind, namely, that although the film raised some questions about social justice and poverty in Jamaica, it struck me more simply as a commercial for one more "Caribbean adventure" from a large leisure company, an adventure which, so far as I could tell at present, hasn't materially aided the poor of the country. So, Were the sun dogs in fact, in her view, of some use as a pro-social force on the island? It took a while for me to get all that out. She listened in silence and her reply, as it struck me, was stony. She said that she had consented to be interviewed for the film and that she had answered the questions put to her to the best of her ability. Period. No love shown by Dr. Gomes for the sun dogs. So come on down for a ride ($100 adults, $76 children, or $352 plus tax for a family of four if you don't find a coupon to use in advance, or buy a package of adventures). The dogs pull in, say, $1000 an hour, ten hours a day, 350 days a year, two sites. A modest $7 mil a year. Overhead costs: kibble. An unknown percentage of the net returned to the JSPCA, which from the looks of it hasn't been spending it on glitz at the pound. The ride is a nice addition to the many adventures in many locales that help put the Melville enterprises over the billion-a-year mark. We can hope that Newton is not still sitting on his plank down at his tin shack. If you do decide to go on down and stay at Chukka Cove Farm, you'll know what to expect after watching this movie. The north-central coast of Jamaica. Turquoise ocean. Lush hills. Magnificent waterfalls. Cool mountain rivers. The poor of the island changing your sheets and refilling your wine glass at dinner. Good. I got all the way through the review without using the word "infomercial."
]]>Sat, 29 Mar 2008 02:03:51 GMTjoem18bjoem18b Blog3/28/2008 10:03:51 PMBefore beginning this review, a tip of the hat to sun dogs, aka parhelia, those common bright circular spots on a solar halo. Sun dogs are "an atmospheric optical phenomenon primarily associated with the reflection or refraction of sunlight by small ice crystals making up cirrus or cirrostratus clouds." Also, a little love for the Arizona Sundogs in the Central Hockey League and for a few favorite dog movies: snow dogs, rain dogs, desert dogs, moon dogs, straw dogs, stray dogs, reservoir dogs, dish dogs, lawn dogs, dead dogs, rabid dogs, chilly dogs, sleeping dogs, miracle dogs, road dogs, old dogs, dealing dogs, tap dogs, angry dogs, war dogs, catwalk dogs, deck dogs, top dogs, lost dogs, trinity dogs, urinoir dogs, bad dogs, barking dogs, fence dogs, devil dogs, gift dogs, good dogs, hot dogs, performing dogs, sea dogs, restricted dogs, society dogs, trained dogs, tokyo dogs, training dogs, wild dogs, zombie dogs, prairie dogs, and a dog's dog. And to note that Kingston is overrun with dogs. Dogs of all colors but of similar size. Dogs tough in body and in spirit; wary dogs, but not as wary as the cats; and hungry without exception. No other Caribbean island that I know of, and that includes the DR, has such a wealth of stray dogs. I don't remember seeing any at all on Trinidad or Barbados. There might be a thesis for someone in this. So. Sun Dogs. A documentary filmed in Jamaica, Minnesota, and Scotland. Stray dogs and huskies. Scenery. Socially responsible slum scenes. More scenery. Talking heads. Easy-listening and upbeat get-the-juices-flowing we're-having-fun it's-sunny-and-warm-down-here trust-what-you're watching Jamaican music. Accents. When is the last time you heard white folks talkin with heavy Jamaican accents? It's fun. More scenery. 90 minutes. First time out for the director of the film and for the director of photography. The director of photography did a swell job. About cynical movie reviews: The world is full of cynicism. It leaks into our lives. We can't avoid it. The demands of the 24/7 newscycle breed it, for example. In the world of cinema, a director starts out to make a movie - something caring and responsible, but also fun - a movie about saving a few strays, canine and human - a movie that might give Jamaica a little boost that it can surely use - and invariably some sorehead comes along and eyeballs the whole project and all the good work that it entails, and treats it as if it were some hack job with a (barely) hidden personal commercial agenda. If this sort of thing disturbs you as much as it does me, read no farther. Or further. But again, that beginning: Jamaica. Lush. A paradise. Happy tourists. But lots of poor Jamaicans. One of the poorest countries in the world. Wouldn't it be cool to gather up some stray dogs from the slums of Kingston and train them as sled dogs? There is a line between silly/stupid/entertaining and silly/stupid/toxic. Which side of that line are we on here? Assorted talking heads ensue, alternately dour and avuncular. "No harm done, no humans or animals injured during the making of this documentary. You will be entertained." Or, "Brudda, if you want a movie about the social ills of Jamaica, don't queue up a movie about dog sleds on wheels." Or is it that the first ten minutes of this movie are just utterly wrong? Is the director tone deaf? Is she oblivious to the dissonance created by juxtaposing a bunch of comfortable white guys talking about a crazy-but-fun idea with the sights and sounds of a nation of seriously freeped-up black Jamaicans? Saving a few strays who are left to represent the poor of the island by doing a little cart-pulling? Is this film like a movie made in a veteran's hospital, forgetting the amputees and brain-damaged patients while focusing on the pigeon-racing project out back? Is it like working for PETA in the middle of a holocaust? That is, is this a priority thing? Not to say that you can't collect stamps during a genocide, but if you want to make a philately documentary, please leave the death camps out of it. Whoa. Let's not go off the deep end here. Instead, let's just ignore the intro and restart 10 minutes in. But, no. At 20 minutes, we're back into it. The dogs go to school. Segue to problems with the education of children in Jamaica. Talking heads. But, hey, a lot of great closeups and, as mentioned above, I realize that I can't remember ever hearing heavy in-country Jamaican accents falling from Caucasian lips. It's like grandma acting rasta. Different. And horseback riding. Diverting. So just watch the damn movie and worry about the poor later? Take the ride? Dog interest, musher training, social conditions on the island, sledding as sport, Carribean history. A Jamaican pu pu platter of subjects. Sigh. I paused the movie to take a minute to find out who is who or whom here and why I should care, and why instead of righting social wrongs these old white guys are fooling around with dog sleds on wheels. In other words, sadly, I decided to follow the money. Some years ago, businessman Danny Melville (a guy with a John McCain vibe, I thought), the first old white guy to speak in the movie, tripped over a metal frame with wheels in a fabrication shop in Edmonton, Canada, while shopping for dune buggies. An employee in the shop told him that the thing was a snowless dog sled. Warm-weather dog sledding is picking up around the world because of global warming - rig racing, canicross, dog scootering, bikejoring - an ecological silver lining. Refer to my reviw of Out of Balance for more good news along these lines. Anyway, the notion of a Jamaican dog sled team came to Melville on the spot, as he tells it. With the success and noteriety of the Jamaican bobsled team in mind (Cool Runnings, the Calgary Olympics), Melville swung into action. We see him for the first time in Sun Dogs at the beginning of the movie, his idea implemented, dogcarts in action. Following that quick, upbeat, life-is-good montage of beautiful scenery and happy poverty-stricken island inhabitants that I noted, with a rousing Jamaican beat urging us to jump up and dance, Melville speaks with great earnestness about this crazy sled-dog idea of his, and then Jimmy Buffet pops up to endorse him, with a quick cut to Buffett performing in front of a crowd of ten thousand or so, to remind us that this isn't some washed-up bum we're listening to, so pay attention. Then quick shots of endearing mutts in harness, with folks cheering them along in some unknown sunny context, a woman getting her shirt autographed by Buffet, dog urinating on tourist, so forth. Melville, sitting by the dog pens in a casual open-necked shirt, a personable sincere old duffer with a neat white beard, tells us that his plans include touring dog teams, sled racing, and promoting Jamaica to the hilt. "Sustainable" teams, that is, which means that they're to pay their own way, mutts or not. Melville tells us that he also had the idea of making a movie about the dogs, the day after he had the idea of starting the sled dog project - a feature-length cartoon, maybe, with Jamaican mutts racing against Russian Mafia huskies, something for Disney Pixar to implement. That would work! Samples of such a cartoon are cut in throughout Sun Dogs. Behind Melville in the frame, folks mill about in a country setting. Jamaica must project itself into the world, the dog sleds will help, so forth, Melville tells us. He's a loquacious guy. Brand Jamaica. 2.5 million visitors a year. More shots of happy people, turquoise water. But then serious talk by the government's national image-and-identity advisor: the country and the people don't benefit from the tourist proceeds; annual revenues are funneled into the pockets of others, others who remain unnamed by the advisor onscreen; we presume that offshore leisure-based corporations and the upper-tier Jamaican rich figure into this. Next a serious word from the executive director of Jamaicans for Justice, Dr. Carolyn Gomes. "We're the best at what we do, be it criminality or murder." Deadpan. Next a serious word from a member of the bobsled team. Then serious words from Wilmot Perkins, talk-show host and perhaps the strongest public voice regarding the dysfunctional understanding, behavior, and social problems between races on the island. Gist: Jamaicans are bright, energetic, full of promise, but led astray. Shots of bright, energetic, but glowering poor citizens in the slums. Then all of this again, with similar but different words. Melville deplores the situation along with the rest. The music has become exceedingly somber by now. Somber. Then Melville explains that the dog sled project is just another zany idea of his, so that people will shake their heads and say Jamaica! (Ok, this makes no sense, but the man is just riffing.) And people will say, Why didn't I think of that! (That is, "Melville has scored another win.") Now the music picks up again. Jamaica! And with the music appears a shot of the sign at the entrance to Melville's Chukka Cove. Adventure Tours. Experience the Real Jamaica! Danny Melville's dad bought Tropical Battery back when Jamaica was protected from U.S. companies by high tariffs. The company manufactured vehicle batteries and enjoyed a monopoly on the island. When the tariffs began to be removed, the Melvilles left the island, with only Danny remaining to run the business, which in due course went downhill as the competition moved in. Melville also purchased 50 acres of undeveloped land in St. Ann in the early 80s and subsequently started an equestrian center at Chukka Cove. He hoped to lure dressage and polo enthusiasts away from Argentina and the UK, but failed. At this point he contacted his sons, away at school in Florida, and told them that he could sell everything or they could come back and help him try to save the businesses. Andrew and Mark returned to the island and joined the company. Long story short: the battery company switched from manufacture to import and bounced back, and the family got into the soft adventure business. If you've ever been on a cruise, you're familiar with soft adventures. You get a great price on the cruise itself, but hopefully you've factored additional costs into your vacation budget, because at each port you're confronted with a variety of extra fun activities, each at a sometimes-fancy price. If you've tubed or taken a canopy tour or rode a horse on Jamaica or in the Dominican or Belize or various other locations, there's a good chance you've paid the Melvilles something for the privilege. Expansion. Gaming machines. Evolving relationships with cruise lines. 500 or so horses. 500 or so employees. Over a billion a year in revenues from a number of interlocking companies shared with long-time business partners, and that's not counting the auto-supply business. See, the thing is, I'm sitting here remembering the ruined wreck of a home at the edge of the Yaque river where it curls through Santiago in the Dominican Republic. Santiago is the DR's second-largest city. On December 11 in the early morning, as hurricane Olga brushed the island, Tavera dam workers upriver decided to open all six floodgates, fearing a dam failure that could kill thousands in Santiago. This sent 1.6 million gallons of water/second into the river.The lives of the family of ten living in the house that I visited were snuffed out by the water roaring downstream in the dead of night. And the members of that family weren't the only casualties. For months after that night, folks have come to the edge of the cliff above, standing along Av. Mirador del Yaque to look down on the wreckage below. For many of the poor, it was no more than luck that they lived far enough from the river's edge to escape drowning. This was the second time in the year that this happened. I spoke to more than one upper-class resident of Santiago who, privately of course, were not sorry to see the mostly ramshackle buildings along the river washed away, along with the poor living in them. If a movie, documentary or otherwise, wants to add footage meant to raise the consciousness of viewers about the plight of so many in the Caribbean, whether the film be documentary or drama or cartoon or science-fiction flick about life on Venus, I for one will cut it some slack. I will not say "Ok, I get it. Move on." However, if the footage is doing no more than wrapping one more big-business vacuum cleaner for middle-class dollars in a flag of righteousness, then burn the film. I found plenty to savor in Sun Dogs: young men conversing quietly in a lilting Jamaican English that almost required subtitles; the enlistment of Newton, a poor young man living in a tin shack, to be a musher; Newton applying for a passport; Newton visiting Twig, Minnesota in the winter, to see snow for the first time and to learn about real dog sleds and sledding; Newton eating a fig newton; Jamaican music in the snowy north; Newton learning to drive and later taking his boss' car without permission, totaling it, and being banished, sent back to sit on the plank in front of his shack; the enlistment of Devon Anderson, then, to train as Jamaica's first musher, getting the dog sled 101 crash course from sledding experts from Twig; serious Scots commenting seriously on Anderson, over to Scotland from his island to theirs to compete in his first sled race and to win the "Came the Farthest" prize; Anderson at the end of his race exhausted with one dog from his team out of harness and on the sled tucked into an emergency dog bag; first class photography, great color, great closeups; driving around Jamaica on the wrong side of the road; a call to renowned dog sled trainer Alan Stewart in Scotland; and, of course, the recruitment and training of the dogs. Several dogs picked out at the pound. The dogs' names appear onscreen in big yellow letters - so that you can remember to ask for them when you come down? Scenes of the dogs being introduced to the dogcarts and other wheeled conveyances that they will pull. Benji the scared hound. The biggest dog, who doesn't relate to the other dogs. I remember hearing once that if a dog doesn't learn social skills early, it can't learn them later. Guess that doesn't apply to this big dog, because apparently he does, after first gnawing one or two of his mates. The last movie that I reviewed as a Spout Maven was Africa Unite, a Palm Pictures documentary in which the Marley family journeys from Jamaica to Africa in search of peace and/or treasure. Sun Dogs is also a Palm Pictures documentary, wherein stray dogs replace the Marleys but remain in Kingston. Chris Blackwell, the founder and head of Palm Pictures, and David Koh, head of acquisitions and production, negotiated the financial terms of the movie with Andrea Stewart and Danny Melville. Stewart produced as well as directed. Blackwell, Koh, Leigh Ingleby, and Melville were the executive producers (i.e., they put up the money). Palm Pictures nailed down all worldwide rights to the movie. The rumor is that the third film in this Jamaican documentary trilogy, nearing completion, is Spawn of Love, about the homeless illegitimate children fathered by rich white men vacationing at island resorts and sneaking away from their spouses at night for a few moments of forbidden love. Sign me up for the trifecta! Blackwell also founded Island Records back in 1960 (he's 71) and signed up an unknown Bob Marley, earning a reputation as the man responsible for the popularity of reggae. I didn't deal with the question of personal financial gain in the case of the Marleys and Africa Unite, although some other reviewers did. At the time, I was more interested in the dynamics of holding a conference meant to be liberal and democratic in an illiberal country. If I had examined the financial aspects of Africa Unite and the movie's effect on future iterations of the event, I might have mentioned that after the first edition of it in Addis Ababa, in October, a Ghanaian delegation came to Jamaica to discuss business opportunities between the two countries. Alexander Melville attended the talks and the second Africa Unite was held in Ghana four months later. However, I'm not aware of any other particular connections between Melville and Blackwell, which might argue for taking Sun Dogs as a fun movie and letting it go at that. Danny Melville started Chukka Caribbean Adventures in 1983. It's now the largest land-based nature adventure tour provider in the region, offering more than thirty tours in Jamaica, The Bahamas, Belize, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. The business sells more than a quarter of a million adventure tours to cruise and hotel guests every year, including canopy tours over the jungle, mountain-to-sea cycling, river kayaking, a horseback ride and swim, and a Bob Marley retrospective bus trip. Plus, of course, the Jamaica dog sled Experience. "With a commitment to deliver the highest quality tours with well-trained guides and stringent safety standards, Chukka takes pride in showcasing the natural beauty of the Caribbean through unique and sensational experiences and providing opportunities for local residents and businesses." (chukkacaribbean.com) Chukka Cove, where it all started, caters to horse lovers who stay on the estate's landscaped grounds, near the stables. There are six two-bedroom villas, each suitable for four guests, each with a veranda, plank floors, and the feel of Old-Country gentry. Meals are prepared for you on-site. Nickering, and presumably barking, can be heard through open bedroom windows in the moonlight. The Melvilles are businessmen and make no bones about the fact. When Danny had the sleddog idea, he approached the thing as a money-making proposition from the start and is clear about that throughout the film. "It's good business," he says. (N.b., I'm paraphrasing these quotes from memory and notes.) "We've got an unexploited brand. If we can be successful, like the Jamaican bobsled team, the tourists will become ambassadors for us." (Here in the movie a quick clip of the bobsled team, stars of the 1988 Calgary Olympics.) "You know, you have to believe in it and dive into it wholeheartedly. Tourists will go home and say, 'I went dog sledding in Jamaica!' Of course I hope to make a profit: the Jamaica Dog Sled Experience. Our dogs come from the local pound - because, you know, if Jamaica didn't have the image of being crime-ridden, violent, and poor, it would fly. So, dog sleds pulled by strays, after they've been neutered and vaccinated for rabies, that's the good news. Listen, after Devon's first race, we were in the Indian newspaper. We were in the Australian newspaper." Tourists trot past on Melville horses. Guests first receive an orientation on sled-dog racing and how the Jamaican team was formed. They also get a lecture on the stray situation in Jamaica. (A percentage of the tour fee goes to the JSPCA.) Finally, visitors get to meet, hug and pet the dogs and learn their personal stories before receiving instruction on mushing technique and heading out on the three-kilometer trail around Chukka Cove Farm. "This is going to help the dogs because you'll soon have everybody wanting to get a dog to train them to pull a sled or cart," says musher Anderson, standing with dogs milling around his ankles. "And eventually, we'll get rid of the stray dogs on the street." 20 down and 35,000 to go. "The Jamaica Dog Sled Encounter at Chukka Caribbean Adventures, home to the only dog sled team and dog sled tours in the Caribbean, is offering children between 6 and 12 years a complimentary Jamaica Dog sled Encounter, with one child free per paying adult. The tour includes a visit to Dunn's River Falls, and to Island Village for shopping, plus complimentary lunch at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville." Bottom line on the movie, if not the tour: If you're more interested in the dogs in particular, or the mushers learning about and training with the dogs, or social and economic conditions on the island, or the physical aspects of the island itself, or the sport of dog sledding, or Caribbean history in general, to the exclusion of interest in the other elements of the movie, then you will not get much of what you crave and will probably feel impatient, dissatisfied, and that your time has been misspent. On the other hand, if your interest runs to the conception, inception, nuture, and support of a fledgling business, then the dogs, mushers, and scenery provide a little spice, or spoonfuls of sugar, to the business; that is, as aids in getting you to hear, learn, and internalize the root message, or hook. Stewart might have been making her first feature-length film, but her backers knew exactly what they wanted and what they needed from the film and there is no doubt that they vetted her work every step of the way to make sure that they got what they wanted. A little local color; a story line that takes you out behind your resort hotel room and not to the Iditarod; a little upbeat music; a break from the intensity of Rick Steves; a story arc of "Dogs learn to pull sled -> Come down and ride on one," not "Dogs learn to pull sled -> Compete and win/lose." I thought about calling the director about this movie and asking her where her head was at when she made it, and how much "input" she got from Melville and Blackwell and Koh, and Leigh Ingleby (audio-visual interests and arts funding), but I didn't because I'm conflict-shy and a question like that might really piss her off. Instead, I called Dr. Gomes at Jamaicans For Justice. She impressed me in the movie and I felt that I could trust her answers. I missed her twice at her office but she was kind enough to return my calls. After a few introductory niceties, I asked her if she had seen Sun Dogs. She had. I told her that I was calling with one question in mind, namely, that although the film raised some questions about social justice and poverty in Jamaica, it struck me more simply as a commercial for one more "Caribbean adventure" from a large leisure company, an adventure which, so far as I could tell at present, hasn't materially aided the poor of the country. So, Were the sun dogs in fact, in her view, of some use as a pro-social force on the island? It took a while for me to get all that out. She listened in silence and her reply, as it struck me, was stony. She said that she had consented to be interviewed for the film and that she had answered the questions put to her to the best of her ability. Period. No love shown by Dr. Gomes for the sun dogs. So come on down for a ride ($100 adults, $76 children, or $352 plus tax for a family of four if you don't find a coupon to use in advance, or buy a package of adventures). The dogs pull in, say, $1000 an hour, ten hours a day, 350 days a year, two sites. A modest $7 mil a year. Overhead costs: kibble. An unknown percentage of the net returned to the JSPCA, which from the looks of it hasn't been spending it on glitz at the pound. The ride is a nice addition to the many adventures in many locales that help put the Melville enterprises over the billion-a-year mark. We can hope that Newton is not still sitting on his plank down at his tin shack. If you do decide to go on down and stay at Chukka Cove Farm, you'll know what to expect after watching this movie. The north-central coast of Jamaica. Turquoise ocean. Lush hills. Magnificent waterfalls. Cool mountain rivers. The poor of the island changing your sheets and refilling your wine glass at dinner. Good. I got all the way through the review without using the word "infomercial." http://www.spout.com/blogs/slipofthetongue/archive/2008/2/23/25491.aspx Post By: slipofthetongue
Post To: SlipOfTheTongue Blog
Post Date: 2/23/2008 12:25:11 AM
Body: OUT OF BALANCE (a rather mediocre title by the way) is a documentary which cries out to the heavens about global warming. It points a stiff finger at ExxonMobil, claiming them to be complicit in delaying the U.S. response to this incredibly urgent problem. This is an interesting but hardly groundbreaking documentary and it feels a little light on the implicating evidence. I'm going to fess up to not having seen An Inconvenient Truth so I don't have another doc on this subject to compare it to but OUT OF BALANCE feels home grown and a bit too personal to be taken seriously as either filmmaking or journalism. I did find much of what is put forth in the film to be credible but this doc wants to blaze trails and that just doesn't happen. We all know that major corporations (whether tobacco companies, oil companies, or auto manufacturers) use deceptive advertising and phony p.r. to steer the American people away from any feelings of righteous indignation when it comes to infractions of morality or even of the law. Corporations know that if you can delay and frustrate legal claims and put confusing p.r. out there you can stall and eventually get away with just about anything. The American people are easily distracted and the legal system can often be manipulated toward nefarious ends.The evidence in Tom Jackson's doc feels presumptive and I could have used more back up to his many assertions against ExxonMobil. Essentially he expects us to believe what the talking heads are saying and to take it at face value. There is some fact, and some detail but it's less than one would like to see.That having been said, I did enjoy the film and I do believe most of its assertions. Global warming is a reality. Our climate is changing. The earth is being affected. We do not know what the ultimate toll will be. However, as they say, it seems that "there will be blood". We are already paying the price. Just ask those who have lost their homes in the disproportionate number of hurricanes that have cropped up in the last five years. Look at the increased drought in many areas, the increase in large scale forest fires. The list goes on. Finally, the oil companies do represent greed unparalleled and we do let them get away with it because many people own stock. These corporations are responsible for massive misinformation campaigns and ExxonMobil is responsible for the oil spill in Alaska. They did a crappy job of cleaning it up. Our buddy "W" is complicit for supporting them over the years and for putting corporate interests before the good of the American people. What can you say? It's pretty depressing.Even a dog knows not to soil its own bed but human beings just keep destroying their own planet and, as of yet, no one is doing anything substantive about it. Karma's a bitch. And it's coming if we don't begin to act soon.
]]>Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:25:11 GMTslipofthetongueSlipOfTheTongue Blog2/23/2008 12:25:11 AMOUT OF BALANCE (a rather mediocre title by the way) is a documentary which cries out to the heavens about global warming. It points a stiff finger at ExxonMobil, claiming them to be complicit in delaying the U.S. response to this incredibly urgent problem. This is an interesting but hardly groundbreaking documentary and it feels a little light on the implicating evidence. I'm going to fess up to not having seen An Inconvenient Truth so I don't have another doc on this subject to compare it to but OUT OF BALANCE feels home grown and a bit too personal to be taken seriously as either filmmaking or journalism. I did find much of what is put forth in the film to be credible but this doc wants to blaze trails and that just doesn't happen. We all know that major corporations (whether tobacco companies, oil companies, or auto manufacturers) use deceptive advertising and phony p.r. to steer the American people away from any feelings of righteous indignation when it comes to infractions of morality or even of the law. Corporations know that if you can delay and frustrate legal claims and put confusing p.r. out there you can stall and eventually get away with just about anything. The American people are easily distracted and the legal system can often be manipulated toward nefarious ends.The evidence in Tom Jackson's doc feels presumptive and I could have used more back up to his many assertions against ExxonMobil. Essentially he expects us to believe what the talking heads are saying and to take it at face value. There is some fact, and some detail but it's less than one would like to see.That having been said, I did enjoy the film and I do believe most of its assertions. Global warming is a reality. Our climate is changing. The earth is being affected. We do not know what the ultimate toll will be. However, as they say, it seems that "there will be blood". We are already paying the price. Just ask those who have lost their homes in the disproportionate number of hurricanes that have cropped up in the last five years. Look at the increased drought in many areas, the increase in large scale forest fires. The list goes on. Finally, the oil companies do represent greed unparalleled and we do let them get away with it because many people own stock. These corporations are responsible for massive misinformation campaigns and ExxonMobil is responsible for the oil spill in Alaska. They did a crappy job of cleaning it up. Our buddy "W" is complicit for supporting them over the years and for putting corporate interests before the good of the American people. What can you say? It's pretty depressing.Even a dog knows not to soil its own bed but human beings just keep destroying their own planet and, as of yet, no one is doing anything substantive about it. Karma's a bitch. And it's coming if we don't begin to act soon. http://www.spout.com/blogs/vhsparrow/archive/2008/2/17/25232.aspx Post By: vhsparrow
Post To: vhsparrow Blog
Post Date: 2/17/2008 2:42:59 PM
Body: And that's just about the only place where this film falls flat. 'Out of Balance' is a concise, thoughtful condensation of the Climate Change issue that makes creative, if not authoritative use of interviews and stock footage to make the case for Global Warming and the damage than man has done to the Earth's climate. Tom Jackson has managed to package the science, politics and business concerns related to climate change into a coherent and persuasive film that's fully accessible to a general audience. In particular, Jackson tracks the history and growth of Exxon/Mobil, the largest publicall-traded oil company, taking account of it's failures, specifically that of the Exxon Valdez tragedy and the corporation's efforts to control and manipulate the social and ecological damage done by that accident. 'Balance' is a fine informational documentary replete with many valuable interviews with scientists, reserchers and stakeholders, etc. The film's only shortcoming is filmmaker Tom Jackson's half-serious 'confessional' contributions to his film. But not everybody can be Michael Moore -- Moore's intimate relationship with his subjects -- the Auto Industry, the NRA, even socialized medicine -- is unparalelled because Moore takes the time to develop his narratives: As a Flint, Michigan native, he watched as his relatives and neighbors suffered because of GM's failures; Moore consistently makes an effort to create a personal connection between himself and the institutions that he chooses to roast. In 'Roger and Me' it was the economic devastation reaped upon Moore's hometown as a result of a GM plant closing. In 'The Big One', Moore expanded Roger's technique to deal with other plant closings throuhout the United States. 'Bowling for Columbine' and 'Fahrenheit 9/11' were expansions of the same premise, essentially looking at corporate and Executive malfeasance and it's effect on the common, blue-collar working man. It also doesn't hurt that Moore is a natural entertainer, who adopts a feckless, Columbo-like persona when he takes to the streets and corporate HQ elevators in search of his interviews. And that's the one problem with 'Out of Balance' -- Tom Jackson is no Michael Moore -- his self-deprecating monologue at the beginning of the film falls a little flat and at no point in his documentary does he create a personal connection betweenn himself and the greed-heads of Big Oil, much less the target of his documentary, the Exxon/Mobil Corporation. It has been well established that with Valdez, Exxon/Mobil perpertated one of the worst-ever ecological disasters of any major corporation -- why has Exxon earned the rebuke of this film from Jackson -- for an accident that occurred back in 1989? Is Exxon more guilty of damaging the environment than any of the other oil companies? More guilty than the car manufacturers for whom this oil is lifeblood? Now, I don't mean to diminish Mr. Jackson's film here - rather, it just seems as though he stopped short of creating a more effective film. Rather than simply manifest a vendetta against Exxon/Mobil, he could have crafted a simple fact-based film that addresses the problems we face as an oil-dependent civilization. Of course, these movies work best when there's an identifiable villain, but by singling-out Exxon, jackson diminishes his message somewhat. Mr. Jackson ought to leave the self-deprecating humor to Michael Moore and simply present his interviews as the focus of his films, a technique used to it's greatest effect in documentaries like Charles Ferguson's 'No End in Sight'.
]]>Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:42:59 GMTvhsparrowvhsparrow Blog2/17/2008 2:42:59 PMAnd that's just about the only place where this film falls flat. 'Out of Balance' is a concise, thoughtful condensation of the Climate Change issue that makes creative, if not authoritative use of interviews and stock footage to make the case for Global Warming and the damage than man has done to the Earth's climate. Tom Jackson has managed to package the science, politics and business concerns related to climate change into a coherent and persuasive film that's fully accessible to a general audience. In particular, Jackson tracks the history and growth of Exxon/Mobil, the largest publicall-traded oil company, taking account of it's failures, specifically that of the Exxon Valdez tragedy and the corporation's efforts to control and manipulate the social and ecological damage done by that accident. 'Balance' is a fine informational documentary replete with many valuable interviews with scientists, reserchers and stakeholders, etc. The film's only shortcoming is filmmaker Tom Jackson's half-serious 'confessional' contributions to his film. But not everybody can be Michael Moore -- Moore's intimate relationship with his subjects -- the Auto Industry, the NRA, even socialized medicine -- is unparalelled because Moore takes the time to develop his narratives: As a Flint, Michigan native, he watched as his relatives and neighbors suffered because of GM's failures; Moore consistently makes an effort to create a personal connection between himself and the institutions that he chooses to roast. In 'Roger and Me' it was the economic devastation reaped upon Moore's hometown as a result of a GM plant closing. In 'The Big One', Moore expanded Roger's technique to deal with other plant closings throuhout the United States. 'Bowling for Columbine' and 'Fahrenheit 9/11' were expansions of the same premise, essentially looking at corporate and Executive malfeasance and it's effect on the common, blue-collar working man. It also doesn't hurt that Moore is a natural entertainer, who adopts a feckless, Columbo-like persona when he takes to the streets and corporate HQ elevators in search of his interviews. And that's the one problem with 'Out of Balance' -- Tom Jackson is no Michael Moore -- his self-deprecating monologue at the beginning of the film falls a little flat and at no point in his documentary does he create a personal connection betweenn himself and the greed-heads of Big Oil, much less the target of his documentary, the Exxon/Mobil Corporation. It has been well established that with Valdez, Exxon/Mobil perpertated one of the worst-ever ecological disasters of any major corporation -- why has Exxon earned the rebuke of this film from Jackson -- for an accident that occurred back in 1989? Is Exxon more guilty of damaging the environment than any of the other oil companies? More guilty than the car manufacturers for whom this oil is lifeblood? Now, I don't mean to diminish Mr. Jackson's film here - rather, it just seems as though he stopped short of creating a more effective film. Rather than simply manifest a vendetta against Exxon/Mobil, he could have crafted a simple fact-based film that addresses the problems we face as an oil-dependent civilization. Of course, these movies work best when there's an identifiable villain, but by singling-out Exxon, jackson diminishes his message somewhat. Mr. Jackson ought to leave the self-deprecating humor to Michael Moore and simply present his interviews as the focus of his films, a technique used to it's greatest effect in documentaries like Charles Ferguson's 'No End in Sight'. http://www.spout.com/blogs/rik_tod/archive/2008/1/16/23943.aspx Post By: rik_tod
Post To: The Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost
Post Date: 1/16/2008 12:31:45 AM
Body: There has been much discussion lately about whether a film marked primarily with the label "documentary" has a certain responsibility to present a balanced detailing of the particulars surrounding a subject, representing opinions on both or multiple sides of a debatable issue. Certainly, Michael Moore is due a certain amount of blame for this discussion. His films are unfailingly one-sided, and yes, he does have a tendency to push things in his favor; some even go so far to say he creates situations to lead to such a result. I couldn't care less for two reasons. The first is that I am, without any doubt, squarely on his side on all of the issues upon which he has has planted his weighted camera lens, even if he is a bit of a tad of a not-even-sort-of a dickhead. So, don't come crying to me if you feel he treated Charlton Heston in much the same manner that Heston chewed his merciless way through script after script over the years; if you take a very public position within a uniquely asinine organization, you deserve to have your ancient bones raked over the coals a little bit. The second reason I couldn't care less is that, whatever their demerits as actual journalism, Moore's liberal screeds are entertaining simply as "films." If a Republican-leaning filmmaker came along and made "documentaries" half as entertaining, I'd be inclined to check them out as well.Out of Balance will get numerous reviews from those with oily pockets, who will undoubtedly note that the title certainly lives up to the content. There is not a doubt where director/writer Tom Jackson stands from the very first frame, and there is little in the way of denial from the target company apart from their snooty and ridiculous behavior over the years in relation to their epic attacks on the only planet we possess. Oh, I should mention at this point, and remind those that already know, that I am from Alaska and even visited some of the coastline affected by the Exxon Valdez disaster. I have seen oily, dying birds, and I know numerous fishermen who have felt the cost deeply in their declining way of life. Also, I do not drive at all, hate any corporation above a mon-and-pop level, and also believe that individual transportation should be phased completely out of the picture. If this makes me a bad candidate for an unbiased film review about the savage environmental and economical raping a single corporation has visited upon not just our country, but mankind in general, then call me guilty. I am not the guy for the job.Or am I? Because this is a film review, not a political position paper, I feel that I should review this DVD in much the same manner I would review anything: not just for its content, but for the way in which it is presented. In this regard, I am very sorry, for even at just over an hour, I found Out of Balance, despite my zealotry for the subject matter, literally put me to sleep three times. I was forced to jump back chapter by chapter over and over due to the dullness of the presentation. Please don't try and accuse me of merely finding this film a drone because I am now used to Moore docu-antics and can't watch a straight documentary, because it is quite clear throughout Out of Balance that Jackson is a dedicated follower of Moore's once unique style. But it is the difference between Buster Keaton performing a stunt, and Donald O'Connor portraying Buster Keaton performing a stunt. Something gets lost between generations. Jackson tries to liven things up in a minor fashion, as Moore does, with humorous graphics, but he is best when he outright attacks the objects of his fury. These were the parts where I was fervently caught up in the piece, booing the evil corporation for all I was worth. It was in Jackson's brief tangents from the main attack where I would lose consciousness.That said, I eventually rallied myself, finished the film, struck my fist against the sky in anger over ExxonMobil, made some popcorn (without oil, mind you) and watched it straight through a second time. I wouldn't do this for most films that put me to sleep three times, but its brevity proved to be a double positive in this case. And then I went outside and threw a rock at the tiny oil well across the street (I am not joking) that a local landscaping company has pumping relentlessly day and night. After I threw the rock, I felt bad, if only because I started to brood about what would have happened if I had caused a rupture and the oil well started spewing oil all over the brood of unchecked neighbor kids who seem to sprout all over the sidewalks in greater and greater numbers every day in this place. Next thing you know, both I and the landscaping company would get hit with a bill for the expense of the cleanup and the damage we did to the denizens of my street. This bill would have been $318.63.Did I mention that human life is cheap in this place? And that it was a tiny oil well? The parents of the kids covered in the oil would have been day-hired from the front of the local Home Depot to clean up the mess. This means that not only would we save money on the clean-up, but that it would also get done right and without complaining, since the unions weren't involved. See? (Si...)There are positives in every situation.The positive in ExxonMobil's case is that, ultimately, unlike the film that aims to shred their reputation, they are entertaining. The main thing that Out of Balance has going for it is that Jackson has cast an incredible villain. And if there is one thing that has proven itself true throughout the history of film, it's that you can't lose with a great villain. Out of Balance may indeed unbalanced as a documentary, but it will keep you watching, as I eventually did, for the asshole in the black hat. That black hat is covered in oil, but ExxonMobil will never admit to it.
]]>Wed, 16 Jan 2008 05:31:45 GMTrik_todThe Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost1/16/2008 12:31:45 AMThere has been much discussion lately about whether a film marked primarily with the label "documentary" has a certain responsibility to present a balanced detailing of the particulars surrounding a subject, representing opinions on both or multiple sides of a debatable issue. Certainly, Michael Moore is due a certain amount of blame for this discussion. His films are unfailingly one-sided, and yes, he does have a tendency to push things in his favor; some even go so far to say he creates situations to lead to such a result. I couldn't care less for two reasons. The first is that I am, without any doubt, squarely on his side on all of the issues upon which he has has planted his weighted camera lens, even if he is a bit of a tad of a not-even-sort-of a dickhead. So, don't come crying to me if you feel he treated Charlton Heston in much the same manner that Heston chewed his merciless way through script after script over the years; if you take a very public position within a uniquely asinine organization, you deserve to have your ancient bones raked over the coals a little bit. The second reason I couldn't care less is that, whatever their demerits as actual journalism, Moore's liberal screeds are entertaining simply as "films." If a Republican-leaning filmmaker came along and made "documentaries" half as entertaining, I'd be inclined to check them out as well.Out of Balance will get numerous reviews from those with oily pockets, who will undoubtedly note that the title certainly lives up to the content. There is not a doubt where director/writer Tom Jackson stands from the very first frame, and there is little in the way of denial from the target company apart from their snooty and ridiculous behavior over the years in relation to their epic attacks on the only planet we possess. Oh, I should mention at this point, and remind those that already know, that I am from Alaska and even visited some of the coastline affected by the Exxon Valdez disaster. I have seen oily, dying birds, and I know numerous fishermen who have felt the cost deeply in their declining way of life. Also, I do not drive at all, hate any corporation above a mon-and-pop level, and also believe that individual transportation should be phased completely out of the picture. If this makes me a bad candidate for an unbiased film review about the savage environmental and economical raping a single corporation has visited upon not just our country, but mankind in general, then call me guilty. I am not the guy for the job.Or am I? Because this is a film review, not a political position paper, I feel that I should review this DVD in much the same manner I would review anything: not just for its content, but for the way in which it is presented. In this regard, I am very sorry, for even at just over an hour, I found Out of Balance, despite my zealotry for the subject matter, literally put me to sleep three times. I was forced to jump back chapter by chapter over and over due to the dullness of the presentation. Please don't try and accuse me of merely finding this film a drone because I am now used to Moore docu-antics and can't watch a straight documentary, because it is quite clear throughout Out of Balance that Jackson is a dedicated follower of Moore's once unique style. But it is the difference between Buster Keaton performing a stunt, and Donald O'Connor portraying Buster Keaton performing a stunt. Something gets lost between generations. Jackson tries to liven things up in a minor fashion, as Moore does, with humorous graphics, but he is best when he outright attacks the objects of his fury. These were the parts where I was fervently caught up in the piece, booing the evil corporation for all I was worth. It was in Jackson's brief tangents from the main attack where I would lose consciousness.That said, I eventually rallied myself, finished the film, struck my fist against the sky in anger over ExxonMobil, made some popcorn (without oil, mind you) and watched it straight through a second time. I wouldn't do this for most films that put me to sleep three times, but its brevity proved to be a double positive in this case. And then I went outside and threw a rock at the tiny oil well across the street (I am not joking) that a local landscaping company has pumping relentlessly day and night. After I threw the rock, I felt bad, if only because I started to brood about what would have happened if I had caused a rupture and the oil well started spewing oil all over the brood of unchecked neighbor kids who seem to sprout all over the sidewalks in greater and greater numbers every day in this place. Next thing you know, both I and the landscaping company would get hit with a bill for the expense of the cleanup and the damage we did to the denizens of my street. This bill would have been $318.63.Did I mention that human life is cheap in this place? And that it was a tiny oil well? The parents of the kids covered in the oil would have been day-hired from the front of the local Home Depot to clean up the mess. This means that not only would we save money on the clean-up, but that it would also get done right and without complaining, since the unions weren't involved. See? (Si...)There are positives in every situation.The positive in ExxonMobil's case is that, ultimately, unlike the film that aims to shred their reputation, they are entertaining. The main thing that Out of Balance has going for it is that Jackson has cast an incredible villain. And if there is one thing that has proven itself true throughout the history of film, it's that you can't lose with a great villain. Out of Balance may indeed unbalanced as a documentary, but it will keep you watching, as I eventually did, for the asshole in the black hat. That black hat is covered in oil, but ExxonMobil will never admit to it. http://www.spout.com/blogs/analogzombie/archive/2008/1/13/23852.aspx Post By: analogzombie
Post To: analogzombie Blog
Post Date: 1/13/2008 6:03:28 PM
Body: These days you can throw a rock and hit any number of anti-Bush, anti-corporation, or environmentally conscious documentaries. Some are better than others, but most are completely horrid. Out of Balance: ExxonMobil’s Impact on Climate Change falls somewhere in the middle. The film attempts to tackle an extremely huge issue by focusing on one company’s history of irresponsible and often abhorrent business practices. The central point of Tom Jackson’s film is that Exxon is so mega-large that they alone have the industrial might to negatively affect the entire Earth. What’s even worse is that the corporation actively seeks to block environmental legislation and fund pseudo-scientists to act as the voice of skepticism on the issue. The film makes some large claims and assertions about just how evil Exxon truly is and, for the most part, they ring true. Jackson trots out the familiar torrent of scientists, authors, and politicos to help explain the science and make his point. None of them carry massive weight on their own, but collectively they create a very cohesive image of what the planet is going through, how it’s happening, and who’s making it happen. The film spends a large amount of its time on the general topic of climate change. From it’s science and history, to possible future effects of continued global warming, every facet imaginable is covered. This forms the bedrock of the film and allows Jackson to explore the real villain. Special attention is paid to the history of ExxonMobil aka Standard Oil, It’s legacy of monopolistic business practices (John D. Rockefeller), and environmental disasters (Exxon Valdez). This back story is disturbing enough but the film really hits its stride with the investigation of the company’s funding of hack science meant to create a debate around the idea that A) climate change is occurring, and B) that humans are responsible for it. It’s the “jury is still out” line of thinking on the subject. This perception is absolutely key to the strategy of oil corporations and their continued record profits. As global temperatures rise, CO2 levels keep in step, and so do oil profits. The only real flaw of the film is the budget. Production values are extremely low. Stock footage is used throughout like any documentary, but the quality varies wildly. Often extremely dark and grainy, transitions can be jarring. Furthermore, the scientists and other talking heads are done disservice by the use of PowerPoint title graphics. I can’t believe no one told the filmmaker to just use a title dissolve instead of the extremely ugly fly in style. It’s amateurish at best. Still, these are middling problems, and they don’t detract from the core message. The sad underlying truth of any business enterprise is that ethics in the corporate world only extends as far as the law. A company’s role is to make a profit, period. Out of Balance asserts that no entity has ever embraced this philosophy as much as ExxonMobil has. I for one, agree with that assessment.
]]>Sun, 13 Jan 2008 23:03:28 GMTanalogzombieanalogzombie Blog1/13/2008 6:03:28 PM These days you can throw a rock and hit any number of anti-Bush, anti-corporation, or environmentally conscious documentaries. Some are better than others, but most are completely horrid. Out of Balance: ExxonMobil’s Impact on Climate Change falls somewhere in the middle. The film attempts to tackle an extremely huge issue by focusing on one company’s history of irresponsible and often abhorrent business practices. The central point of Tom Jackson’s film is that Exxon is so mega-large that they alone have the industrial might to negatively affect the entire Earth. What’s even worse is that the corporation actively seeks to block environmental legislation and fund pseudo-scientists to act as the voice of skepticism on the issue. The film makes some large claims and assertions about just how evil Exxon truly is and, for the most part, they ring true. Jackson trots out the familiar torrent of scientists, authors, and politicos to help explain the science and make his point. None of them carry massive weight on their own, but collectively they create a very cohesive image of what the planet is going through, how it’s happening, and who’s making it happen. The film spends a large amount of its time on the general topic of climate change. From it’s science and history, to possible future effects of continued global warming, every facet imaginable is covered. This forms the bedrock of the film and allows Jackson to explore the real villain. Special attention is paid to the history of ExxonMobil aka Standard Oil, It’s legacy of monopolistic business practices (John D. Rockefeller), and environmental disasters (Exxon Valdez). This back story is disturbing enough but the film really hits its stride with the investigation of the company’s funding of hack science meant to create a debate around the idea that A) climate change is occurring, and B) that humans are responsible for it. It’s the “jury is still out” line of thinking on the subject. This perception is absolutely key to the strategy of oil corporations and their continued record profits. As global temperatures rise, CO2 levels keep in step, and so do oil profits. The only real flaw of the film is the budget. Production values are extremely low. Stock footage is used throughout like any documentary, but the quality varies wildly. Often extremely dark and grainy, transitions can be jarring. Furthermore, the scientists and other talking heads are done disservice by the use of PowerPoint title graphics. I can’t believe no one told the filmmaker to just use a title dissolve instead of the extremely ugly fly in style. It’s amateurish at best. Still, these are middling problems, and they don’t detract from the core message. The sad underlying truth of any business enterprise is that ethics in the corporate world only extends as far as the law. A company’s role is to make a profit, period. Out of Balance asserts that no entity has ever embraced this philosophy as much as ExxonMobil has. I for one, agree with that assessment. http://www.spout.com/blogs/qflw/archive/2007/12/29/23310.aspx Post By: QFLW
Post To: QFLW Blog
Post Date: 12/29/2007 2:30:05 PM
Body: Out of Balance: ExxonMobil’s Impact on Climate Change Written, directed and narrated by Tom JacksonI put off watching this film because I guessed (correctly) that it would outrage and depress me further regarding Big Oil’s sway over the planet. I was pleased, however, to see that despite the gloomy, alarming cover artwork, the documentary is calm and clear, presenting its information rationally, without stooping very much (as far as I could tell) to the rhetoric or histrionics of propaganda.The film’s primary focus is in disclosing ExxonMobil’s steady campaign to confuse the public, keep us from understanding that the current changes in global climate are unnatural and are definitely a solvable problem. For of course, as the world’s largest corporation and largest oil company, if public and governmental opinion were to go against it, that would cut into its enormous profits. The corporation is so pervasively powerful and wealthy that it has pretty much gotten away with doing exactly as it pleases, without having to bother about the ecological problem it has contributed to, says Jackson.I’m suspect of claims that any one person or entity is all to blame for anything, but Jackson doesn’t make that assertion. He acknowledges that we are all, to one degree or another, contributors to the current state of affairs. He chose EM as a focus because it is the largest of the oil companies. I would have liked to hear about some of the others in the industry, whether they have behaved in a similar manner in order to sustain profits. Talking about only one of the oil giants could seem to imply that it’s the only “bad guy” instead of merely being Big Oil’s top dog.Still, hearing of EM’s refusal to acknowledge responsibility and its ability to avoid significant consequences has re-ignited my indignation. I remember when the Exxon Valdese spilled its devastating cargo in 1989. The film touches on how the company did more harm than good while trying to appear that it was cleaning up the spill and asserting that the effects were not as detrimental as claimed. At the time, I chose to never again buy anything from Exxon, but over the years lazily slid out of such determined protest. I’ve decided to go back to boycotting EM, and will look into which political candidates have accepted money from them (or any other oil companies, for that matter). It won’t make a huge difference, of course, but it’s the principle of the thing.I’d like to see films like this and An Inconvenient Truth shown in science and economics classes. Not as gospels or tools of anti-global warming indoctrination but as starting points for raising questions and concerns.
]]>Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:30:05 GMTQFLWQFLW Blog12/29/2007 2:30:05 PMOut of Balance: ExxonMobil’s Impact on Climate Change Written, directed and narrated by Tom JacksonI put off watching this film because I guessed (correctly) that it would outrage and depress me further regarding Big Oil’s sway over the planet. I was pleased, however, to see that despite the gloomy, alarming cover artwork, the documentary is calm and clear, presenting its information rationally, without stooping very much (as far as I could tell) to the rhetoric or histrionics of propaganda.The film’s primary focus is in disclosing ExxonMobil’s steady campaign to confuse the public, keep us from understanding that the current changes in global climate are unnatural and are definitely a solvable problem. For of course, as the world’s largest corporation and largest oil company, if public and governmental opinion were to go against it, that would cut into its enormous profits. The corporation is so pervasively powerful and wealthy that it has pretty much gotten away with doing exactly as it pleases, without having to bother about the ecological problem it has contributed to, says Jackson.I’m suspect of claims that any one person or entity is all to blame for anything, but Jackson doesn’t make that assertion. He acknowledges that we are all, to one degree or another, contributors to the current state of affairs. He chose EM as a focus because it is the largest of the oil companies. I would have liked to hear about some of the others in the industry, whether they have behaved in a similar manner in order to sustain profits. Talking about only one of the oil giants could seem to imply that it’s the only “bad guy” instead of merely being Big Oil’s top dog.Still, hearing of EM’s refusal to acknowledge responsibility and its ability to avoid significant consequences has re-ignited my indignation. I remember when the Exxon Valdese spilled its devastating cargo in 1989. The film touches on how the company did more harm than good while trying to appear that it was cleaning up the spill and asserting that the effects were not as detrimental as claimed. At the time, I chose to never again buy anything from Exxon, but over the years lazily slid out of such determined protest. I’ve decided to go back to boycotting EM, and will look into which political candidates have accepted money from them (or any other oil companies, for that matter). It won’t make a huge difference, of course, but it’s the principle of the thing.I’d like to see films like this and An Inconvenient Truth shown in science and economics classes. Not as gospels or tools of anti-global warming indoctrination but as starting points for raising questions and concerns. http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/documentary/MemberTagFilms.aspxdocumentary
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