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‘'RESTREPO'
RAGTAG OUTPOST
By Sean Chavel

The term "apolitical war documentary" has a particular dishonesty to it because it is hard to believe that a feature containing real deaths doesn't have some kind of agenda to it. Restrepo, a real deal guerilla documentary, isn't obscenely graphic in presenting the deaths but it is as vicarious in combat as you can get - that level of intimacy can be riv- eting. Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger are the credited directors, and cinematogra-phers, who were not only there but risked their necks out in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan.

The cameras arrive on location along with the platoon, with an attack on the very first day. They build their own outpost, named after Restrepo, a medic who became the first casualty, and the shaggy construction is as rag-tag as the battle company. The out-post rests on a hillside that is exposed to everyday fire. Interspersed interviews inform us that "It was considered one of the most dangerous postings in the U.S. military." The soldiers will spend a year there, some admitting nakedly that they didn't read too much into the area before their arrival but now are afraid that they will die there before the end of their tour of duty.

There is not an interview subject that isn't interesting, but even though their reminisces are supplied post-combat, you feel their existential distress. The film is allowed stretches of no-combat oxygen with the young men jollily horse-playing and singing guitar songs. But the film knows its business of why they are there and with an elongated green valley diffi- cult to scale and travel sideways; it results in long range gun battles. The soldiers, and the cameramen, actually get themselves ambushed from all angles at high elevation at one particularly scary, intense segment.

This is very hairy, as an action film would say. If you had seen a documentary like "Gunner Palace" than you would have seen a war documentary that leaves out the war - it's a doc in Iraq that hardly gave you a sense that there were any battles, nor danger (the result, no reason to watch).

"Restrepo" is a rare work of courage, first and foremost, for actually being there during its hairy moments, and for show- ing you a part of Afghanistan and its insurgents that you had probably not seen or considered previously.

The film has a lack of commentary at times, but you do witness pathetic attempts at diplomacy between infantrymen and Afghanis.

Yet for all its rawness the film suffers for not having an organized narrative structure or sturdy timeline. That's the tradeoff supposedly, skimping on the implications of world history for the sake of personal soldier history. The camerawork and editing meets first-rate standards especially for a guerilla piece.

This leaves us OK for not having more. But even though its apolitical for its lack of words, lack of speeches, it is hard to not find this anti-war when you witness soldiers bawling right on camera. And what did the boys accomplish for the U.S. military in their year on duty?

Viscera 2010 Film Festival
By Jonathan Weichsel

Since 2007 The Viscera Film Festival has been honoring short horror films directed by women by releasing them on DVD and creating awareness at film festivals and in the media.

In 2010 The Viscera Film Festival held its first big screen premier, featuring over thirty short horror films, all directed by women. The festival was broken up into three sections, the comedic program, the experimental/psychological program, and the scary program.

Modern horror films tend to rely on a lot of gore in order to communicate that they are supposed to be scary. But, many of the films in the scary program were actually gen- uinely frightening. These films used story, character, atmosphere, and unexpected twists to freak you out. The most jaded gore-hound would still be more than satisfied by the scary program, but in nearly every case the gore was there to serve the story, as opposed to the story serving the gore. The scary program was introduced by Brea Grant, author of the horror comic series We Will Bury You, which deals with a 1920’s zombie attack on New York.

Highlights of the Scary program include Side Effects by Liz Adams, which won best director and the audience award for best film. Side Effects is a very well told story that explores the horrible mistakes that can be made when a young over-achiever takes too much Adderall. Wretched, written by festival director Heidi Martinuzzi and directed by Leslie Delano, is a horror film about bulimia. Living up to its title, Wretched had me cover-
ing my eyes during an extended scene of the protagonist vomiting blood.

The 17th man is an eerie tale about a best selling-author who is haunted by his protagonist, a femme fatale serial killer. He wants to kill her off and end the book series, while she wants him dead so that she can live on in a continuation of the series written by a ghost writer.

Void is about an FBI agent investigating a series of monster attacks in a small town. As she gets deeper into the mystery, she learns that the monsters are being created by a small boy whose drawings come to life, and comes to the chilling realization that she may not actually exist.

The comedic program was introduced by Amber Benson, director of the feature length alien invasion film Drones.

Highlights include Confederate Zombie Massacre, directed by Devi Snively, which tells the story of a little known Civil War Battle in which Union soldiers use chemical weapons in order to kill Confederates. The plan backfires when the chemicals cause the Confederates to awaken from the dead as zombies. The film is filled with irreverent, often absurdist humor. For example, there is a lazy Union soldier who would rather practice tap dancing steps than fight in battles.

Snively’s film I Spit on Eli Roth is about a group of female horror directors who kidnap Eli Roth and begin torturing him Hostel-style in revenge for his misogyny, only to learn an important lesson about torture porn.

BRAINS, by Shannon Lark and Amber Steele, is a zombie film parodying the music video SHOES.

Beautiful as You Are, by Doug Mallette and Mary Katherine Sisco, is about a television obsessed man who attempts to live a favorite romantic moment from an old movie with an animated corpse which has a television attached to her neck.

Distraught, by Brenda Fies, is a cautionary tale about letting children play with guns.

The festival also featured trailers for feature length horror films directed by women. Highlights include Dead Hooker in a Trunk, directed by the Soska sisters. Dead Hooker looks like Grind-House style fun. The trailer for Tara Cardinal’s Legend of the Red Reaper makes it look like an exciting sword and sorcery adventure.

To learn more about the Viscera Film Festival, or to order DVD’s of past programs, visit them at www.viscerafilmfestival.com.

“VIDEOCRACY”
Uncovering Italy’s La Dolce Vita Politics
By Gerry Furth-Sides

Imagine if you will what would happen if the “celebrity-for-celebrity sake” Hiltons, Kardashians and “real housewives” would rule the airwaves and the national political scene. The nightmare unfolds in director-producer Erik Gandini's punchy documentary, Videocracy, as mesmerizing and jolting as any commercial, special effects blockbuster.

Videocracy is accurately described as “diving right into the foray of the mercenary underbelly of the high- glitz, low-politics, half naked media culture promulgated by prime minister and media mega mogul Silvio Berlusconi.”

The film starts off light-heartedly enough by recounting how, thirty years ago; Silvio Berlusconi bought a local television channel and aired a late-night quiz show featuring a sexy housewife who took off her clothes to reward callers for correct answers. The only complaints came from local factories whose employees stayed up late to watch and were too tired to work the next day! So simple, cheap and effective.

Berlusconi sure knew it, and as his empire grew, his shows came to feature scant-
ily clad veline, sexy, young ladies whose main talent was silently posing and prancing next to the host – think Vanna White morphed into cheerleader - chosen through national competitions rivaling footballer tryouts. The male counterpart to this is the talent show winner. One such aspirant is a blue collar combination body builder-singer in the film, who explains his motivation with the rhetorical question, “would a girl go out with a dirty, honest factory worker or a TV star?”

Actually, being on TV is now entree into a lavish but vacuous La Dolce Vita and currently just about everyone in the country aspires to it. Berlusconi’s talent “agent” in these ventures, Lele Mora, makes Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet look angelic in comparison. And he, like everyone else, sports that unmistakable Italian tan.

The story of infamous millionaire- paparazzo Fabrizio Corona, who began his career as an extortionist and rose to national stardom after being jailed, is alone worth the price of admission. That Berlusconi paid $20,000 for a Corona’s “unflattering” photo of the prime minister’s daughter – and then ran it himself in one of his publications- exemplifies every notion about Italian behavior I have, even here in America. To quote the best explanation for the most absurd of it: “They’re Italian.”.

The facts of the devolution of the politics and media culture of Italy into the morass that is run by prime minister- media emperor Berlusconi continue as stranger than fiction. Because he controls the majority of the country's private television stations and the country's largest motion picture producer as Italy's political leader and leading executive, there is no need for tyranny and guns to numb the minds of the populace and shape public opinion to his benefit.

Director-producer Erik Gandini richly illustrates Videocracy with the trashy TV clips, bucolic, pandering political spots and brazen press conferences that swept Berlusconi into power. Gandini gains remarkable access to Berlusconi’s opulent and tempting world and his armies of willing wannabes that swarm around them. Gandini got his independent film distributed after initial government censorship, just prior to its world premiere at the
Venice Film Festival. That it was allowed proves how ensconced and fearless Berlusconi’s forces are today. Nevertheless, perhaps a turning point is arriving in the bizarre Italian scene since Berlusconi was recently assaulted in Milan when a man threw a statuette at the prime minister hitting him in the face.

Videocracy answers the question of what happened to “Bella Figura.” The phrase symbolized Italy and the ideal of “living the beautiful life” from the time it originated during the Roman Empire and represented the highest standards and honorable actions in every phase of life, until it came to incorporate the worship of beauty and currently has come to mean “high style, if empry, physical beauty.” It shows how any aspect of “honorable” has slid right over the edge, unraveling and revealing a modern Italy as both comedy and tragedy. Forza Italia!

‘GET LOW’
RECLUSE FROM THE WOODS - CANTANKEROUS DUVALL STYLE
By Sean Chavel

You don’t need to take a leap of faith to know that Robert Duvall is still as good as ever after all these years. He is not one of those fading icons like DeNiro or Hoffman that has thrown in the towel for a hefty paycheck. But with Get Low, in particular, it is his most com- plicated role he has been given in quite some time. He plays a 1930’s character named Felix Bush, a back- woods recluse who has stayed away from folks for decades but now wants to throw a funeral – while he’s still alive – so he can hear what attendees really have to say about him.

Supposedly this is based on a true story of a man and his “living funeral,” although the drama has been embellished (almost to a fault). Felix is a hard man submerged in the squalor of his cabin in the woods before he comes to town with a shot-gun and a bundle of saved cash, but he is not a stupid man. His case gets mileage out of the local funeral director Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) and his apprentice Buddy Robinson (Lucas Black) who think in 1930’s “modern” terms how they can spruce up and promote this unorthodox funeral and turn it into something of a festival.

Sissy Spacek as Widow Maddie Darrow, and Bill Cobbs as preacher Charlie Jackson, play the other key Southern characters.

Duvall is Duvall, the fine-tempered crazy genius with just enough articulate composure that makes him less the crazy type and more the genius type. When has this acting icon ever disappointed? He hasn’t, although this is surely his richest gruff and growl per- formance since the western “Open Range” (2003). From the roster of supporting characters, Bill Murray nevertheless stands out more than anyone else, because you think, there must have been loosey-goosey guys like Murray that existed somewhere back then in the 1930’s.

Murray’s specialty has become bringing comedy to dramatic roles, as proved with “Lost in Translation” (2003) and “Broken Flowers” (2005). Here his character is a huckster who operates on half sincerity, one with a salesman smile.

The details of how the radio and poster ads are configured to publicize Felix’s funeral becomes a focal interest. Until a dramatic “secret” begins to make the narrative drag, bypassing whimsy and folksiness for the sake of creating faux mystery in Felix’s charac-ter, a secret that he has been harboring for decades. When Felix is let down by his associates, he wants to call the whole thing off, this sends Frank into panic over this unusually high-priced funeral arrangement that he has sunk all business cash into. Also trouble is that with Felix’s passing there was a promised raffle for his property, but after pulling out, he hardly cares that he has inconvenienced everyone.

Do you think that his ensemble of new friends will coax him to attend his own “living funeral” as promised? The secret itself, not revealed until the end, is nothing that will shatter the soul, but Duvall gets a grandstanding, if beautifully modulated delivery, out of a monologue that says all. “Get Low,” as you can tell, has beautiful acting from top to bottom. The story, wrapping around the mysterious secret, only passes for mustard only because it is in the context of the 1930’s period setting where obsession about God and Devil, and of the sin of adultery, could have only taken place so dogmatically then.

‘INCEPTION’
DREAM EXISTENTIAL
By Sean Chavel

Dreams wrapped inside dreams, riddles wrapped inside riddles. Inception is the brainiest blockbuster in many a moon, selecting to confuse and bewilder its audience deliberately, not because it doesn’t know what it’s doing but because it’s a Pandora’s Box that keeps you guessing.

Director Christopher Nolan (the extraordinary talent behind “Memento,” “The Dark Knight”)
doesn’t just want to keep you guessing, he wants you to keep deconstructing the intersecting puzzles he has created for the screen – the brain-teaser work never rests. Nolan presents multiple threads of reality, or dream stories, toppling over each other, ripples linking to each other, throttling the narrative forward and explaining little. The film is as aggravating as it is enthralling.

The futuristic technology is not fully explained and the multi-national corporations are faceless, but Leonardo DiCaprio is a virtual dreamcatcher named Cobb, hired to steal ideas from competitors by infiltrating their minds. His target in the first chapter is Saito (Ken Watanabe), but his mind has a defense safeguard, and near impossible to purge. Saito now hires Cobb to work for him, this time to not extract but to plant ideas inside the head of rival corporate raider Robert Fischer, Jr. (Cillian Murphy), heir to his dying father, to surrender his financial empire. “Ideas grow on the mind like cancer,” Cobb says.

Other espionage members, all on the legit, include Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Eames (Tom Hardy), Yusuf (Dileep Rao), and new collegiate analyst Ariadne (Ellen Page) – all specialists in the art of deception and brain pathology. You also need these characters to spout quick philosophical and theoretical references, but their most valuable commodity is to explain the subconscious to the audience. As a final staple, you have Michael Caine as a professor, and as you might know, Caine shows up in every Nolan film, acting with restraint and bearing himself as perhaps keymaster to the mystery.

As a rule, five minutes of sleeping equals one hour in the dreamworld. When Cobb hacks into other people’s minds, he can spend an hour navigating the mind within. Other people within the dreamworld are “projections” and if a person dies within their dream than they can awaken in the real world. When Fischer, or any other mark, become aware that it is just a dream they try to make them- selves dead, pointing guns at their own skulls, and Cobb within the dream does what he can to thwart suicide. Guys like Fischer, by the way, experience eternal threats within their subconscious.

While inside Fischer’s paranoid and violent-addicted head, this leads to permeating violence within the four interlinking dream stories in the final third (a proposed explanation: to keep the illusion consistent to Fischer all the dreams toppling each other have to inflect each other). Nolan circumnavigates between a white truck falling into the bay, a swank hotel room that turns into zero gravity exploits for Arthur who attempts to simulate free-falling for other sleepers, a snow summit stock with machinegun soldiers on skis and a secret vault, and a row of personal history architecture in a decimated fantasy city.

All of these bits hinge on each other in exploitive complexity, but it is Nolan cranking up the filmmaking wizardry: the slow-motion on the white truck, the allusions to “2001:
Space Odyssey” in the hotel corridors and elevator, the snow summit choreographed like a James Bond invasion and more allusions to “2001” once inside the vault, and imaginary row of ersatz architecture built on subconscious projections that feels out of the Alex Proyas’ film “Dark City.”

Nolan also uses the symbolic object of a thimble in the same way that Ridley Scott used a unicorn in “Blade Runner,” and when Nolan nods the camera on the object in the final shot he is telling his audience more than he is telling his own character what his surroundings signify. But if we back step a moment and fall into a criticism, the action at the snow summit feels rather gratuitous after awhile. We know it is part of Fischer’s subconscious (or whatever) to crop up violent projection characters, but these dreams feel more
belonging to a 21st century Warner Bros. action picture than it does from a character.

The music score by Hans Zimmer is pulsating and throbbing in the same spectacular way that “The Dark Knight” was, and the production design by Guy Dyas is so good that he would have been worthy to have been on the production team of “2001” or “Blade Runner” had he a career that went back that far (Dyas helmed the production design on the last Indiana Jones picture), the partic- ular highlight, is the origami city of a new re-imagining of Paris, France. There is hardly a second that goes by that isn’t memorably traced to Zimmer or Dyas’ touch on this production.

An emotional backbone supports all this eye candy with the inclusion of Marion Cotillard (she was Billie Frechette in “Public Enemies”) as Mal, the former wife to Cobb who supposedly at one point could not tell the difference between dreams and reality following what one could describe mildly as, she had a deep sleep. Now she permeates through all of Cobb’s dreams, and then whenever infiltrates and shares dreams with others.

Coincidentally, the character of the fallen wife is similar to that in “Shutter Island,” also with DiCaprio haunted twice now by recent past withered love. This is not a case of DiCaprio forcing motifs in all of his pictures. DiCaprio just merely selects good scripts, or gets lucky by good scripts, and gets chosen by top-notch directors like Nolan and Martin Scorsese, whom themselves are not trying to compete with each other.

Some movies require a bottle of wine (if it’s a chick flick), some action movies require a six-pack of beer shared between friends, and “Inception” is a rare movie that requires three cups of coffee. Maybe not just for the morning after, but three cups a day for a week, consulting your friends at Starbucks and together going over what you think you know about “Inception.” A $160 million Warner Bros. picture that’s adventure and mindbender has been made, a super rarity if there ever was one, and you might as well have something to talk about for the rest of the summer. Aggravating it may well be, but there won’t be another movie this layered to talk about for a very long time.

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