An Unfocused Imagination

Defining art isn’t easy—it’s like pornography in that you know it when you see it, or hear it, or experience it, as the case may be. I’ll be the first to fess up to the core fact that I don’t always know what art is, since the term is thrown around like discarded tissue. I knew an “artist” in the eighties who actually said if he puked on the sidewalk, and called it art, then it was art, since he, as the artist, defines art. Truth is, puking on a sidewalk, no matter how you rationalize it, is not art. It’s puke on a sidewalk.

The problem with artists defining art is it turns the entire process into an opaque little box of self-congratulation, where like-minded sycophants convince themselves that everybody else just isn’t hip enough to understand that sidewalk barf is art because the artist said so.

The indie film Imagination doesn’t take its pretensions that far, but it does take itself very seriously as “art.” And therein lays its fatal flaw. Ostensibly, Imagination is a film about the varying perceptions of reality—a favorite subject for philosophers, quantum physicists and stoners alike. Co-written by brothers Eric and Jeffrey Leiser, Imagination is the story of twin sisters, one autistic, or actually suffering from Azperger’s Syndrome, and the other, legally blind, fated to be totally blind at some indeterminate point. Being twins, though, they of course share a telepathic bond and a form of communication known only to them. What their parents don’t see is that their daughters are linked by the power of imagination, which in no small part leads to the dissolution of the family—the father runs away, retreating to the local speakeasys, and the mother is killed while driving on the freeway during a conveniently timed earthquake. The twins, effectively orphaned, are taken in by the kindly psychotherapist at his institution, where things take an “unexpected”, if telegraphed, turn.

To say the story is thin is being charitable—the basic premise of linked twins has been done many times before, and usually better, most recently in the indie production Brothers of the Head. The acting here doesn’t fare any better, either—the performers walk through their lines bereft of any semblance of emotion, disconnected from the characters they are supposed to portray. Even though the script doesn’t offer the actors many opportunities to emote, and the direction in the live sequences is reminiscent of a 1950’s educational film, the cast, admittedly mostly first-timers merely recite their lines.

The story in Imagination, though, is an incidental anecdote to showcase Eric’s animation skills and Jeffrey’s music composition talents. In those regards, the brothers show a great deal of promise. It’s in the animation sequences that Imagination shines, even though it’s heavily influenced by the work of Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer. The music backdrop shows traces of Philip Glass, but with a bit more meat to it. It’s here that the brothers work seamlessly together, and come close to achieving the avant garde piece they sought out to make.

The problem with Imagination is that the elements of storyline and surreal animation never quite gel. The result is jarring—on the one hand is a terribly played live action drama, and on the other, a lyrical bit of animation illustrated by a haunting score. As much as the brothers Leiser would like us to accept Imagination as an enigmatic piece of art, it emerges more as an animation portfolio. That being said, the brothers Leiser may well be players in the future of cinema. Once they get over their art for art’s sake fixation, they may make a cohesive film.

Imagination is a nice try, but doesn't quite make it.

Next. Please.

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Speculative fiction writer Philip K. Dick was the mad genius of the genre, pioneering the concept of “inner space” as a storytelling device. The mind was his alien planet, and it was often more unsettling than the environs usually associated with science fiction. It’s no wonder that he’s become a cause celebre since his death in 1982, due in no small part to the success of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Based on Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it managed to more or less translate his challenges to rigid concepts of reality, and remains one of the greatest films of all time.

The good news is that Blade Runner introduced Dick’s works to a potentially wider audience. The bad news is that subsequent films based on his work usually have little to do with the source material. Next is a case in point. Purportedly based on Dick’s short story “The Golden Man,” Next is actually a poorly conceived action thriller that has absolutely nothing to do with Dick’s original story. That’s not entirely true—in both versions, the protagonist is named Cris, and in both versions, Cris has precognitive powers, but that’s it. Well, there is that mater of golden skin. In the story Cris has golden skin that gives him the ability to seduce others of the opposite sex, and in the movie, Cris (Nicholas Cage) wears a cheap yellow leather jacket, which may explain why Liz (Jessica Biel) is inexplicably drawn to him.

In Next, Nicholas Cage portrays Cris Johnson who, under the stage name of Frank Cadillac, uses his ability to see two minutes into the future (but only where it directly affects him) to do a low rent magic act and supplement his income with low stakes gambling. But he’s haunted by visions of a woman (Jessica Biel) who, for some unexplained reason enables him to see further into the future, but only where it concerns the two of them. So far, so good. Romantic tales have been structured around lesser premises. Still, it raises questions of plausibility.

Plausibility isn’t a major concern of this movie, however. A Russian nuclear device has gone missing, and the FBI has no other way to track it down except to abduct Cris and force him to use his abilities to recover the device before it falls into the wrong hands. The wrong hands in this case are a group of Eurotrash terrorists with no discernible motive or affiliation. It’s not the sort of plot that makes for analysis. In fact, it’s not the sort of plot that holds itself up for anything resembling logic. That would only get in the way of the action.

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As an action flick, Next isn’t too bad, in a videogame sort of way. Actually, it’s structured much like a videogame, with every plot development serving to get the protagonist to the next level of play. As a result, romance falls by the wayside, along with international intrigue, lame attempts at social commentary and essentially everything else that has to do with life as we know it. As a trade-off, we’re treated to Rube Goldberg-style landslides, replete with water tanks, SUVs, boulders and sundry debris cascading upon the heroes. We also get an iron-jawed Julianne Moore in an embarrassing action figure performance as the single-minded FBI agent. We get exlosions, bad guys shot from sniper precipices—hell, we even get a nuclear explosion.

What we don’t get is logic, or even an apology for all the whys the movie never addresses. Instead, we find at the end that the entire “plot” of the movie was just another possible outcome. It’s a cheat to be sure, but not surprising. Considering Next went through at least three complete rewrites and various script doctors, it’s a wonder it made it to the screen at all.

As a standard DVD, Next is an alright purchase. The video quality is excellent and the Dolby 5.1 sound is separated seamlessly. The special features are pretty standard fare, consisting of behind the scenes promo films, a feature on the CGI SFX and a pointless interview with Jessica Biel.

There’s nothing really memorable about Next. Like Cris, we see it all coming long before it happens.

Neverwas Is a Film of Might Have Beens

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It rarely bodes well for a movie when the studio skips the theatres altogether in favor of a straight to DVD release. It’s even more perplexing when such a movie boasts a cast the likes of Aaron Eckhart, Ian McKellen, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, and William Hurt. With such a stellar ensemble, it stands to reason the project would garner at least attention, if not respect.

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Neverwas, by writer and first-time director Joshua Michael Stern, valiantly attempts to be a meaningful, uplifting film. Unfortunately, what emerges instead is a movie desperately trying to find its identity. Eckhart plays Zach Riley, a supposedly brilliant Yale researcher who convinces the director of Mill Wood psychiatric hospital (Hurt) to hire him as a staff psychiatrist, a position for which he’s vastly overqualified. Unbeknownst to the Hurt character (since background checks apparently aren’t done at this hospital), Zach’s deceased father (Nolte), an acclaimed novelist best known for the children’s fantasy “Neverwas,” had been a patient there shortly before his suicide. Conveniently enough, Zach encounters a delusional schizophrenic named Cedric (McKellen) during a group session. Cedric insists that Zach is the long-lost savior of Neverwas, which Cedric insists is a very real place, an enchanted land of which he is king.

The problem with Neverwas is everything falls far too neatly into place, without ever engaging the viewer in the story. Zach’s love interest (Britanny Murphy) is conveniently introduced as a childhood friend who’s been enamored of “Neverwas” all these years. Jessica Lange, as Zach’s alcoholic mother, serves only as a bridge between his past and his current state. Sadly, both characters are drawn so broadly that they serve as little more than buoys to keep the plodding story afloat. Only Nolte, seen only in gauzy black and white flashbacks, lends credibility to the premise as the tortured, drug-addled writer of “Neverwas.”

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Other movies have blurred the lines between fantasy and reality much more deftly — The Fisher King and Finding Neverland come to mind. But where those films coupled a sense of wonder with an empathy for the mentally ill, Neverwas skirts those facets in favor of sugar-coated melodrama. As a consequence, its potential metaphors are discarded, leaving only a shell of a story rife with obvious clichés. What we’re left with is a film that has the aura of a made for Lifetime TV movie. Even its climax is contrived so as to provide a happy, if ill-advised ending.

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Neverwas, with its tagline of “Every fairy tale needs its hero,” held the promise of allegory, and indeed, it could have been. Had Stern focused his story rather than let it slip into pandering, and had the actors involved not called in their performances, and had they perhaps not gone with light and airy cinematography against a droning Philip Glass soundtrack, it might have been a movie that spoke to the human condition. The opposite happened, though, leaving Neverwas as a film more about might have beens than it ever intended.

The Very Inconvenient Truths About How We Fucked Up In Iraq

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I was watching the news the other day — MSNBC, CNN, it doesn’t matter — when I saw a video clip that was almost surreal. The Prez was jogging with two double amputees. Apparently, they were Iraq War veterans who had been outfitted with the latest in prosthetics, proving that they can run with the best of them. Now, while it’s great that technology in that area has progressed to the point that people can function regardless of disabilities, it’s distasteful as hell that Bush would use the jog as another photo op and a plug for his latest half-assed assurance that veterans will be afforded the very best in medical care. It caused me to flashback to the first of May 2003, when Bush, resplendent in fighter pilot gear, stood astride an aircraft carrier and proclaimed that the Coalition had emerged victorious in the Iraqi War.

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Over four years later, over 4000 American soldiers have died in Iraq, and more than 20,000 have been wounded. Some estimates put the Iraqi civilian death toll at well over 600,000. Clearly, in the summer of 2003, the battle to secure Iraq was just beginning.

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No End in Sight is a film that coldly details the crucial missteps by the Bush administration in the days following the fall of Baghdad. First-time director Charles Ferguson’s film cannot be described as a left wing diatribe — there are no Michael Moore-style bombastics here. Rather, this is a film that raises emotional temperature by virtue of its objective approach. Ferguson, a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, with a solid background in political science, steers away from obvious ideology, allowing the chronology of events to speak for themselves.

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Putting those events into perspective are a number of administration officials, including former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, General Jay Garner (who was initially in charge of the Iraqi occupation) and Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who was in charge of Baghdad in 2003. Many of the people interviewed were on the ground in Iraq, and those who weren’t, were directly involved in the planning stages of Iraqi reconstruction. The most impassioned of the interviewees is Col. Paul Hughes, former officer of strategic policy in Iraq. He pulls no punches as he recounts how his efforts, and those of other advisors, were trivialized, and in many cases outright ignored, by administration officials at home.

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No End in Sight takes no position on our justifications for going to war with Iraq. It does look at how we fucked up the aftermath by allowing career politicians with no military experience to oversee the rebuilding of the country. As a result, we were left with insufficient troop levels to maintain the unsteady peace. Donald Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration labored under the fallacious premise that the Coalition forces would be greeted as liberators. As a result, they paid scant attention to the realities of what was happening on the ground, and essentially turned a deaf ear to military officials working there. In effect, there was no plan to rebuild Iraq. Consequently, the military, with no police authority, did nothing to stop the widespread looting following the fall of Baghdad. That early looting also included robbing weapons caches of the Hussein regime.That was only the beginning.

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Under the auspices of Paul Bremer, the Iraqi military was dismantled, and all Ba’athists were purged from the government. This left thousands of highly trained professional and military personnel unemployed and disgruntled. That move was largely instrumental in the origins of the current insurgency. By 2006, Americans were hardly seen as liberators, but rather as an occupying force.

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This film doesn’t delve into the current troop surge, or any of the current debates surrounding the war. It doesn’t need to. It graphically illustrates how we got into this mess. From the outset, the Bush administration mishandled the reconstruction of Iraq with recklessness, arrogance, and incompetence. The beauty of No End in Sight is the way in which it deftly pursues that history relentlessly, but with chilling objectivity.

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No End in Sight won the Special Jury prize for Best Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Expect it to be in the running for an Oscar this year. It is, without doubt, the most relevant documentary about the Iraq War thus far. No End in Sight is now playing in select theatres in New York and Washington, DC, and will be playing across the country later in August. A DVD release is tentatively scheduled for 30 October.

The Circuitous Journey of Circle of Iron

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Let’s begin with what the newly remastered, two-disc “kick ass” edition of 1978’s Circle of Iron is not. Despite the promo blurb, there is very little “kick ass” about this film. It has its moments, but if you’re expecting nonstop martial arts action, you’ll be sorely disappointed. If, on the other hand, you think this film might give you some insight into Taoism, you’ll end up with a few kernels of SoCal pop Zen that might leave you amused, but hardly enlightened.

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Once those two minor issues are dismissed, Circle of Iron (aka The Silent Flute) is an enjoyable, if simplistic parable, best regarded as a guilty pleasure. The protagonist of the film, Cord the Seeker (Jeff Cooper), is a headstrong, undisciplined fighter on an unsanctioned quest to find the Book of All Knowledge, guarded by the wizard Zetan (Christopher Lee). As is usually the case with quests, Cord’s journey to enlightenment is fraught with challenges and perils, all borne, in one form or another, of the trappings of his own ego. It’s sort of Siddhartha meets TV’s Kung Fu.

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Despite its shortcomings, Circle of Iron offers some interesting performances, most notably those by David Carradine, who shines in four separate roles. As Blind Man, he’s an extension of his Caine role, older, perhaps more jaded, but even more predisposed to fortune-cookie bits of wisdom. His portrayal of Changsha, chieftain of a nomadic tribe (who apparently got their clothes from whatever happened to be available in the costuming department), is equal parts greasy biker and crown jester. He’s unrecognizable as Monkey Man, leader of a half-simian, half-human race who are the first line of defense against those who would take the Book of All Knowledge. Here, as in his brief appearance as Death the Panther, his performance relies more on his background in dance than in martial arts.

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Jeff Cooper, who would go on to a stellar, if short-lived career as a Dallas bit player, doesn’t fare so well as Cord. Looking like a cross between a surfer dude and Beastmaster, he romps through his quest with a “whatever, dude” emotional range. Even when he finds his lover from the night before (Erica Creer) crucified the next morning, he can only muster a grim expression before sallying forth on his search for the damn Book.

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Shot in some gorgeous, remote locations in Israel, Circle of Iron manages to evoke an otherwordly atmosphere befitting the nature of the story. Cameo performances by Eli Wallach, Roddy McDowell, and Christopher Lee also save the movie from complete mediocrity.What’s most fascinating about Circle of Iron, though, is the circuitous journey it made from concept to “product.” It was originally penned by the then relatively unknown Bruce Lee, along with James Coburn and Stirling Silliphant, back in the late sixties. Lee at the time was known to American audiences as the Green Hornet’s sidekick, Kato, and he desperately wanted to break into mainstream films. He had an idea for a film, which he called “The Silent Flute,” that he thought might not only propel him to stardom, but would also promote his own vision of Zen and Martial Arts. James Coburn and Sterling Silliphant, both Hollywood names and both students of Lee, helped him flesh out his idea into a script — well, actually, more a treatment, since it was only seventy pages long.

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To make a very long story short, the project stalled for years. Lee was passed over for the lead role (which went to David Carradine) in the Kung Fu TV series because he was too Asian, and departed to Hong Kong, where he became the ultimate action star. Perhaps embittered when he returned to the States, he was no longer interested in the project. He died under still mysterious circumstances in 1973, and in death, he achieved superstar status. Suddenly, his forgotten project was a hot commodity. Five years later, The Silent Flute, now titled the focus group-approved Circle of Iron was released.

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All of this is detailed in this two-disc edition via interviews and commentary with and by the principals. Most informative of these is the interview with Carradine, who considers it his best work, but sidesteps the irony of how he took a role intended for Lee not once, but twice. Besides the interviews, obligatory theatrical trailers and assorted miscellany, this edition also includes the original treatment by Lee and cohorts, reproduced in DVD-ROM, down to the typewritten page. The audio and video reproduction on this widescreen edition are nothing short of superb.

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Circle of Iron, for all its flaws, remains a cult classic. This is a set that is worthy addition to any student of film history. It’s a so-so action film, but the extras provide a glimpse into the machinations of moviemaking, and how compromise rules in Hollywood.

When a Sequel Isn't a Sequal. . .Exactly

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Fay Grim is a fascinating movie, albeit not always for the right reasons. Ostensibly a sequel to 1998’s acclaimed Henry Fool, Fay Grim works more as a cross between the Bourne movies and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. As a result, it can be maddening at times, leaving us to wonder if it’s intended as farce, espionage thriller, social parable, or a combination of all three.

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Writer/director Hal Hartley picks up the story ten years after the events of Henry Fool in a deceptively pedestrian way. The characters from the original film return intact, if a bit altered. Henry is presumed to be living in Sweden, Fay (Parker Posey) is trying to raise their now adolescent son Ned (Liam Aiken) in Queens, and her brother, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Simon Grim (James Urbaniak), is doing time for aiding and abetting Henry’s flight from prosecution on a murder charge. It’s typical suburban mayhem until CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) comes visiting one day, and informs Fay that Henry wasn’t what he appeared to be, and that his unpublishable “Confessions” are actually encoded texts with enough information to destabilize several governments.

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From there, things get a bit convoluted. After negotiating Simon’s release from prison, Fay is sent to Paris by the CIA to retrieve the notebooks. Other governments want them, too — the Israelis, the French, the Pakistanis, and though it’s never clear how damaging these notebooks could be in the wrong hands, Fay finds herself at the center of an international web of intrigue. The story often borders on the ridiculous, but manages to keep us poised at the precipice of disbelief.

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Shot in high def video, and on a shoestring budget, Fay Grim is in some ways reminiscent of the low-key espionage thrillers of the sixties. Hartley’s use of off-kilter camera angles (in almost every frame) heightens that sense of tension, in counterpoint to the otherwise deadpan pacing of the film. But it’s the inimitable Parker Posey in the title role who ultimately makes the film work. Her portrayal of Fay is a fascinating character study in self-awareness.When we first meet Fay, she’s a single mom with a moody adolescent son, trying to hold things together, depending on her brother’s royalty checks to make ends meet. Even at that, she confronts potentially adversarial situations with a blasé attitude. Nothing fazes her in that regard — an attitude that serves her well as she gradually evolves into a woman of international sophistication. In fact, the only moment she becomes visibly flustered involves a scene in which her cell phone, set to “vibrate”, rings at an inopportune time.

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As much as Fay Grim is a satire on the paranoia of the 21st century political mindset, it’s ultimately about a woman’s journey to discover her potential. Every action Fay takes, especially when she’s following directives, has unforeseen repercussions. It’s only when she takes matters into her own hands that she becomes a fully realized character. Given the somewhat cliffhanger nature of the ending, Fay remains a work in progress.

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Hartley has said he envisions Fay Grim as the second part of the Henry Fool trilogy. Let’s hope he doesn’t wait another decade before filming the final installment. For all its faults, Fay Grim remains a testament to the power of the independent film, proving mega-budgets do not necessarily a good film make.

Where Were You That Night in June?

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We don't recognize the days that shape our lives until the moment has passed. They're just days, like any other day, unless some unexpected something comes along with such overbearing force that a particular day becomes seared in our memory-- where we were, what we were doing-- suddenly takes on an otherworldly significance.

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Bobby is a film about such a day. What writer/director Emilio Estevez attempts to do here is present June 4, 1968 as just another day that happens to culminate with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. It all takes place at the Ambassador Hotel, where Kennedy would be mortally wounded before the day's end, and focuses on the ordinary travails of staff members and guests at the Ambassador that fateful day. It's an ambitious, if uneven, effort that teeters between melodrama and significance.

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At its worst, Bobby plays like a cross between The Love Boat and Crash. The ensemble cast, featuring Anthony Hopkins, Sharon Stone, William H. Macy, Lindsay Lohan, Harry Belafonte, Laurence Fishburne, Christian Slater, Elijah Wood, Demi Moore, Freddie Rodriguez, Ashton Kutcher and a host of other rising and fading stars, often distracts from the intent of the film. Their substories are mostly banal--the alcoholic diva (Demi Moore) and her cuckolded husband (Emilio Estevez), the philandering hotel manager (Macy) and his silently suffering hairdresser wife (Stone), the reminiscing hotel retirees (Hopkins and Belafonte)--and don't add to the weight to which the film strives. They serve more as counterpoint to the more interesting stories interspersed with them. Lindsay Lohan is surprisingly good as an idealistic girl marrying Elijah Wood to keep him from having to serve in Vietnam. Martin Sheen and Helen Hunt portray aging liberal socialites representing the passing of more civilized culture, and the interaction between Fishburne and Rodriguez are quiet testaments to the evolving socio-racial awareness among minorities.

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The first third of Bobby establishes all these characters and their stories, and it's a bit haphazard at first, more a game of "spot the star" than anything else. But as the film progresses, their stories intertwine in remarkably subtle ways that reflect the timbre of the times. Kennedy himself is more metaphor than character through most of the movie, with archival footage of him punctuating the film's main point of how a single moment can alter the shape of a society.

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When it works--which it mostly does, once the establishing sequences are out of the way--Bobby is a compelling statement. Estevez doesn't dwell on conspiracy theories or political machinations. By taking the sociopolitical climate of 1968 and viewing it through the eyes of people unaware they were microcosms of the upheaval taking place all around them, he makes the assassination of Robert Kennedy deeply personal and moving. When he was killed, the dreams of many Americans for a more tolerant society were all but shattered. Yet, the senselessness of it, coming so soon after the assassination of Martin Luther King, united us in some ways, if even for a short time.

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As a film, Bobby sometimes overreaches its ambitions. But as a snapshot of American life and how we viewed ourselves on the day that RFK was shot, it's a powerful achievement. The DVD release has special features that enhance its significance, including a "making of " documentary and eyewitness accounts by people who were there the night it happened. It's not a masterpiece, but it is a movie that stands repeating viewings.

'Blood Diamond': A Message in the Rough

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The conflict diamond trade--diamonds illegally traded to finance rebellions and terrorism--has come under international scrutiny of late, due at least in some small measure to the movie Blood Diamond. Set in 1999 Sierra Leone during its brutal civil war , this 2006 film raised the mainstream public's awareness of the problem. And while conflict diamond operations now account for less than 1% of the international diamond business ( by industry estimates), it remains a threat to global stability.

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While Blood Diamond may appear to have "social conscience" written all over it, it's by no means preachy. The illicit diamond trade instead serves as a backdrop for what emerges as a brilliantly executed action thriller threaded with themes of greed, honor and redemption. Produced and directed by Edward Zwick, whose previous credits include Glory and The Last Samauri, Blood Diamond is a relatively straightforward tale told in a circuitous, winding style.

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Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Danny Archer, a Rhodesian mercenary turned diamond smuggler whose whose life becomes inextricably bound with that of Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou), as both seek to recover a very large, very valuable, very rare pink diamond. It's an uneasy alliance at best, as their motives for recovering the diamond are at polar extremes--Archer sees the diamond as his ticket out of Africa, while Solomon views it as a means of rescuing his family--particularly his son, who has been brainwashed by the RUF, from the horrors of war.

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It's hardly surprising that both DiCaprio and Hounsou were nominated for Oscars for their performances. Hounsou plays Solomon with an unswerving dignity tempered with quiet desperation, while DiCaprio's portrayal of Archer rivals Bogart's unflinching cynicism in his most memorable roles. .