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Evidently no one. Irony of the day:

We watched this doc last night and when i woke up this morning the news was showing all the electric cars that are being revealed at the Detroit Auto show this week. idiots. They made amazing technology, crushed it, and are now resurrecting it 10 years later. Not only did they crush the electric models, but the government subsidized SUVs. Was there a conspiracy to screw humanity and destroy the earth?  Must have been. It's the only logical explanation. 

How did a duck have a Panda for a kid? I totally thought he was going to tell Po that he was adopted, but no.

Well, there's a whole host of potentially interesting films coming out this weekend. In weighing my options for Friday night viewing it narrows down pretty quickly to two films:

First, is The Women. It has a great cast and is sure to deliver on lots of the usual chick-flick types of subjects. It could go one of two ways though, really fun and relatable (making me glad to be a woman) or terrible and catty (making me hate my gender). I really like Meg Ryan though and I am glad to see her in a movie again, it's been a while. One of my favorite movies has always been Proof of Life, which I thought she did a great job in.

Secondly and speaking of supporting people I like, the brothers Coen are putting out their newest flick Burn After Reading. I am a big fan of these guys' sense of humor. The quirky characters and laughable scenarios are always entertaining. But it could really go either way for me at this point. I have to recall how little I liked The Ladykillers and this could be just as big of a miss. But Fargo and O Brother, Where Art Thou? were great, so I will just have to wait and see.

So, which one am I going to go and see? It depends on who I can get to go with me. If I can find a lady friend, we'll see The Women, if I take my husband, we'll see Burn After Reading. I'll let you know later.

Heavy Metal in Baghdad delivered an unexpectedly candid look inside the war zone and all the people who are caught in the middle of a conflict that has nothing to do with them. There are no sides in the war for them, just fear, paranoia, chaos, and death. Their lives are destroyed along with the society, culture, and neighborhoods in which they grew up. It's so hard to honestly take in the amount of hopelessness and contempt a lot of people wrestle with everyday. It's their music that keeps them from turning into the thing they hate and they openly admit it. It's as if art tempers the chaos; makes the darkness manageable. We watch a lot of Iraq war docs here at Spout, but this one seems so much more important simple because it's about people and not administrations. I think it's our best shot at becoming involved with our global neighbors, to see them and be with them and join them in their context. I will certainly vote for change abroad, but I wonder what it might do to connect directly with people who are displaced and dying on the other side of the world. What difference would that make for them? or for us? I wonder if it's possible to stop so much senseless violence and death.

It was more of a female, coming-of-age, I-don't-know-who-I-am kind of story than a romantic comedy. The love story was a side note, or at least it seemed that way since it was so underdeveloped. I really liked Laura Linny's character, I think she and Paul Giamatti did a great job. They were nerotic and overbearing, easily dispised. But I thought the tension between Johansson and Linny was a bit much. I have a hard time believing Johansson's character didn't snap earlier in the film. I found her capactiy for tolerating Linny's neglegence a bit unbelievable. Over all, I enjoyed it, but it is certainly not one of Johansson's best.

Can I just say that this movie never gets old. I have been watching it repetitively since I was about 5 and I am stil hooked. I just can't get enough of that 80s beat with those stunning special effects (which are really pretty good for the mid-80s). Also, I think I learned how to use the name "scuz-bucket" from this movie, much to my mother's chagrin.

 

Does Your Soul Have A Cold? by director Mike Mills (Thumbsucker) is a quiet and thoughtful documentary about the effects of the anti-depressant industry on Japan since 2000.  He follows the lives of several young people who have all been taking anti-depressants for a long time. It’s interesting to watch how people’s lives play out while they are on medication. Most of them are simply going through the motions of life, not living with any sense of expectation or anticipation and a lot of them don’t feel any better than they had before they were on the medication. The idea of depression as a disease is very real for them, and calling it a disease seems to make it more manageable. They all talk about it as though they have been told they have cancer and yet no one seemed to know about it before the Pharmaceutical companies came to Japan around 2000.
My reactions to this film have been mixed. I thought their stories were interesting, but the whole time I was waiting for some bit of information to be revealed that would explain why they became depressed. Some people’s issues were more apparent than others, because of abuse or disappointment. Other people had really great lives and families, but they still became depressed. I come from a family with a severe history of depression. In fact almost everyone has been on anti-depressants at one point or another, except for myself. I don’t know how to explain that. Is it a disease? Are some people more predisposed to it by personality?
Maybe, technically speaking, everyone on the planet is clinically depressed to the extent that they have attempted to cope with reality. Part of me thinks that depression is the ultimate realization that things are as bad as you think and there really isn’t any logical way that things will work out. When you find yourself there, it’s as if you have to choose whether or not you are okay with that, and to keep moving forward in spite of it. A lot of people, especially ones with a strong sense of justice, have a hard time coming to grips with it. I am very much like this. We want to control the chaos, and when we can’t, we become ambivalent losing hope that there is any…hope. But others, who are probably more apt to let things roll off their back, tend to accept the dichotomy and move forward anyway. Regardless, at some point, no matter how positive you are or how good your life is, you will have to face the reality of being human and choose your response.
There is a good possibility that I have over simplified here. But I guess this is how I have chosen to view things. I could dig in deeper to ideas of hope and despair, but then we would be treading in the territories of faith and disbelief and I don’t think we have the time to go there. But, all that aside, Does Your Soul Have A Cold? Is a great documentary that will stimulate a lot of conversation on the subject of depression and also bring into question the role of the drug companies in perpetuating a problem that they are promising to cure. It was featured on IFC in October. For more information about the film, visit www.IFC.com.

I heard about this movie last spring when the only thing we knew was that there was come kind of controversy brewing between the director and the studio about the cut that would be released this fall.  I don't know who won, but I loved it.

People put out a lot of disclaimers about this movie, "if you're a Beatles fan...", "If you like Taymor's work...", "If you like musicals...". Well, I don't know what I am a fan of or in to necessarily, I like the Beatles, I have never seen anything else Taymor has done, and I don't like American musical theater, but whatever was in this movie, I liked.

I liked the story. It all came out of the songs. ie. The characters names are all Beatles song characters. It's kind of like if you ever sat back while you were listening to a Beatles album and pictured the people in the song and the scenario they were in and the conversation they were having, that's what this movie seemed like to me.

And better yet, they conveyed the mood of a time period that I never lived through, but have watched a ton of films about. I am not a history expert, but I have an inkling Across The Universe was a good history lesson.  There's a bit of everything in there from typical American family culture to hippies, revolutionaries, and all the guys who got really screwed up in the war. I liked the journey that I experienced with these characters; we went from young idealism to disillusioned realists who over come to find some hope in our crazy world.

Okay, okay. Favorite part. A worn Jude sits depressedly in a British pub, lamenting the loss of his love, Lucy. And all the way in America his good friend Max sits in like fashion in a pub. They are both looking into the mirror behind the bar when Max starts into the first lines of "Hey, Jude". It was like the clouds parted and the sun broke through. I loved how everyone he walks past from that point on starts singing along in unison. It kills me. That scene was worth the price of the movie ticket.

Not to mention the psychedelic cocktail party, which ended up in a wild bus ride to a crazy circus that had me believing I was on drugs too. Plus I love U2 and Bono sang "I Am The Walrus" at the party and all the way through the bus ride.  I love that man.  He does weird theatrical really well. And, to top it all off, the film closes with U2 singing "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds." Hells yes.

So, that's not really a review, its just me gushing. But maybe my love of it will make you go see it and perhaps it will help you to love it as much as I did. Oh, wait its really long; I hope that doesn't bother you too much.