Retail Resistance

Passionate About Anti-Semitism

I don't very much like to traffic in gossip (there's a difference between reading it, enjoying it, and trafficking in it). I will, however, make an exception in the case of one holier than thou Mel Gibson.

You may or may not have heard about Saint Mel being arrested for drunk driving in Malibu; essentially resisting arrest, threatening, and verbally abusing every officer that came within ear-shot. Gibson, bless his heart, issued an apology for being a drunk driver, acting like an ass, and making "despicable" comments. All actions that I'm sure will do nothing to jeopardize his pre-ordained place in heaven and imminent sainthood.

But it wasn't just the police who became the targets of his divine wrath. AOL's gossip site Tmz.com reported that for some irrational reason the ecumenical Gibson decided the Jews were somehow to blame for, well, every war in history. The police report immediately after the arrest says Gibson launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements, saying, "F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?"

Religion aside, I can't think of anything Gibson would know more about than war. He's made a career of making movies about war (which is what makes him such an expert in the field): Braveheart, the Patriot, Air America, We Were Soldiers, The Year of Living Dangerously, Gallipoli. Scotland, the American civl war, Cambodia, Vietnam, World War 1, all wars the Jews are responsible for. Tell me something I didn't already know.

His newest project - besides finishing his new movie Apacolypto, which judging by the trailer looks insanely racist -is a Holocaust mini-series. Why the hell not? Being an anti-semite shouldn't effect his ability to cash in on the Holocaust, as well as in the process explain how the Jews were responsible for their own genocide.

But what I want to know is, why hasn't he made a movie about the Crusades. I think the world deserves a historically accurate account of how the Jews bear responsibility for that.

Heady

To those people obsessed with the movie world there are a couple of the continually on going intellectual discourses. Currently raging among the film intelligentsia is the meaning and/or relevance of film criticism. Another question I love to follow is the epistemological quest to define "independent film." I'd be surprised if anyone could adequately define independent at all at this societal moment.

Complications aside, this is a great definition from one of the directors of Brothers of the Head. I saw the movie at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, and judging by the lack of buzz was in the minority of people who loved it. However, if recent pre-release press is any indication, that buzzing minority seems to be growing, at least on the critical front.

Keith Fulton, (co-director of "Brothers of the Head" and, before that, "Lost in La Mancha") at indieWIRE:

What is your definition of "independent film"?

I think that this notion has become very difficult to define. It used to describe films that were made outside the studio system and without the same kinds of pressures that movies made within that system face. I think of Spike Lee's early films and Robert Rodriguez paying for everything with a credit card. Now it seems to me that the same pressures apply to so-called independent films to stack the cast with as many celebrities as you can get and with an equal number of executive producers. It sounds really hateful, but now I actually use the word "indie" as a negative. It usually means to me a family drama with the same actors who were in the last family drama with a title that sounds unusual but which will be explained by the time the film ends.

Doing It For Us

Sometimes I feel privileged to order movies for Box Office Video. Case in point, "Kama Sutra: The Secrets of Making Love." The advertising print reads, "According to the Kama Sutra, amorous desire and sexual pleasures are prerequisites to world harmony." The add also says "that the goal of sexual union is not only pleasure, but also mutual evolution."

This is cosmic kismet, because we at Box Office Video share these very same goals of mutual evolution and world harmony. They are the very reasons we open the store every day. This is no mere petit bourgeois entrepreneurial enterprise on our part.

But what makes this Kama Sutra DVD different than all of the other cheap quasi-educational faux soft porn Kama Sutras? How will this DVD elevate our love making into new spiritual planes and achieve world peace? For one, the makers have winnowed out the less effective positions. I'm not sure how they decided what made the cut, trial and error I suppose, but "the 50 most representative positions from the Kama Sutra have been chosen to arouse and ignite sexual awakening." This is important I think, because judging by what I see around us, we don't have much time to waste.

However, this doesn't fully answer the question of why I have decided to chose this DVD over all the others. The key I believe is in the format. First off, like any movie, I would always opt for the widescreen version over the amputated fullscreen. How we receive this movie is crucial, and that is where this version has made the biggest of leaps. Because this DVD will be "graphically presented in 3-D."

Imagine the difference this could make. Watching people pretend to have sex in 3-D is the kind of evolutionary breakthrough I've been waiting my whole life for. They even include 2 pairs of 3D glasses. That doesn't mean you have a replacement if you lose one. It means you can bring a partner on board the voyage of self-discovery and world harmony creation that will happen every time you "insert disc and hit play."

Does Life Imitate Documentary, or Documentary, Life?

First was Michael Winterbottom's harrowing film The Road to Guantanamo. Now another true story of wrongful imprisonment and human rights abuse is coming to light. Actually, it sounds not altogether unlike the post-modern portions Winterbottom's oeuvre, but with a screenplay written by Charlie Kaufman.

Here's the pitch to the studio:

This guy named Cyrus Kar goes to Iraq to make a documentary about another guy named Cyrus, King of Persia, who wrote the first human rights charter. During the filming of his documentary about Cyrus the Great, Cyrus the filmmaker gets arrested and sent to Abu Ghraib. Now Cyrus is out of prison, suing Donald Rumselfd and the Pentagon, and looking for post-production financing to finish his documentary about Cyrus the human rights activist.

The Finale is Fini/C'est la Vie

I've watched soccer games in every conceivable place, and all over the world. I've watched them in Marseille and Milan, New York and Chicago, at home alone, and at a friend's with a group. I've many times been to one sportsbar or another to watch a game with other fans (especially during the times of my life that I can't afford cable), but one place I've never watched a game, until today that is, is in a movie theatre.

I've never been the type to compartmentalize my passions - movies, soccer, politics. Why separate a holy trinity? So when I saw a movie theatre advertise the World Cup final it seemed like the most natural coupling in the world. Why not opt for the biggest screen possible to watch the biggest spectacle possible?

Gravitating thusly, I went to the Riverview Theatre in Minneapolis expecting, if nothing else, to see larger than life superstars like Zidane...well...larger than life. The theatre seats 700, and there were easily 750 strong in attendance.

One of the most overlooked components of the American soccer fan is that their love of the game usually doesn't come from cultural traditions or national identity. Soccer is beloved for soccer's sake. Soccer in Italy may be a passion, or even a religion, but it's played mostly without concern for the game's aesthetic possibilities. For all we know Machiavelli was the country's first soccer coach, because the Italian style generally never strays from an ends justifies the means negativity. Eurocentric as Americans can be, the American soccer fan believes in the ideal of soccer and will, therefore, root for whichever team comes closest to the ideals of that most cliched of phrases, the beautiful game. That said, the crowd was probably two-thirds for France.

But there's something about soccer, something intrinsic in its eleven a side design and fluid weave of movement with and without the ball, that creates community. I don't remember whether it was Godard or Chris Marker that said - and this is my best attempt at paraphrase - that communism only truly ever existed during the ninety minutes in 1953 when Hungary beat England 6-3. Many of the greatest moments of community I've experienced were on soccer fields. This time, however, I experienced a community while watching a soccer game.

Perhaps not coincidentally, I also for the first time in my life experienced the kind of communal experience that cinephiles speak of when they bemoan the lost collective experience of a theatre.
People clapped, cheered, and jeered, together. There was applause everytime the game restarted, and boos every time they showed golf during the stoppages. And just in case you think the standing room only crowd wasn't American, the place went wild when they showed Bill Clinton.

I'll probably go into a postpartum World Cup depression now. My only hope, besides Jurgen Klinsmann becoming our national team coach, is that I can go back to a movie theatre in the near future and see a film that will elicit the same feelings of shared experience that I had at the cinema today.

Germany v. Italy

I've undertaken a thought exercise. Based on the characteristics of each national team competing in the World Cup semis I will choose a movie from that country to represent it in a double feature. Originally I thought this wouldn't be hard; I know a little something about soccer, and I know my fair share of movies. Just a case of putting two and two together. The truth, alas, is my exercise has become more difficult than I expected.

First Germany. As a national team they are traditionally dour, disciplined, organized, and relentlessly driven until the final whistle (I can't tell you the number of times they have forced an overtime in the final seconds, and beaten the more attacking team in penalty kicks). This year's team, under Jurgen Klinsmann, however, has replaced the dour with fast paced offensive soccer. The entire country has gone from calling for his ousting before the tournament to unabashed pride and joy at his results as they overachieve into the semis.

Therefore, I'm choosing Run Lola Run. Before Klinsmann I could never have made this choice, but with his new style of soccer the door has opened and the team of Tykvwer and Potente have stepped through. For those who haven't seen it, the movie is organized to the minute, is relentlessly driven by its techno soundtrack, and is breathlessly paced. There's also a small matter of the film being literally kicked off with a philosophical soccer metaphor.

Now Italy. They are counter attacking, histrionic, religious, and believe in a tactic of tightly structured defensive imperviousness. Often they will have one of the best players in the world, i.e.. Baggio, but play through him begrudgingly, if at all, because they favor low scoring defensive soccer built around the counter attack (the cattenacio). To put it in political terms, their defensiveness is conservative, and their counter attack is reactionary. They have an anarchist streak of individaul creativity, but opt instead for the familial, non-individual, fascist numbers of the majority. The fist over the fingers.

For all of these reasons I am choosing The Best of Youth as Italy's filmic representative. The epic and historical 6 hour film essentially follows two brothers as they chose different paths through history after passing through the crucible of the 1968. It embodies the contradictions of the country's fascism and the resistance to it (for instance, at a magazine stand in Milan I once bought two calendars at the same time out of sheer irony; one of Che Guevera, the other of Mussolini). The one brother Matteo joins the riot police. The other, Nicola, eschews communism in favor of liberal humanism, while his wife choses militancy and the Red Brigade. And what becomes of Italy, the fascist leaning Burlesconi becomes Prime Minister, while virtually no one will admit to voting for him. Thus despite the country's sometimes violent Gramscian contradictions, family, religion, and national tradition, prevail. And that is why I pick The Best of Youth over, say a Nanni Moretti film, because Moretti's leftist fight is never won, and Italy will always revert to the cattenacio.

And the Good News Is....

After last year's fiasco of Cache being snubbed because it was from Austrian director Hanecke but filmed in French with Binoche and Autieul, the Academy is revamping its foreign language Oscar category. Entries no longer need to be in language of the submitting country, and a new voting system will include a second stage in which 30 members will decide the nominees from a nine-film shortlist. I'm sure eggregious errors will still be made, but it is a step in the right direction, so long as the Weinsteins can't go anywhere near the Starchamber of 30.