Time Of Fear

-This was a standard PBS documentary. Not mind blowing, but simply meant to just educate you on a subject. I was interested to watch this one because I watched one of those It Gets Better videos with George Takei, looked up his history, and his Wikipedia page mentioned that he was in a Japanese Interment camp….which is insane to think about. Really, what was FDR thinking?!

-This was such a fucked up moment in American history. The government took a bunch of people from the same country, most whom were now citizens, took them away from their homes, had them burn their family pictures, letters, priceless mementos, and got them all together and put them in a camp. That's incredible. That's an incredible scar on our nation's history here. And it's really a shame because WWII is known as being one of the "noble wars" (if that makes sense and is not a complete oxymoron), but with this huge scar on it, it's really tarnished forever. It sort of brings to mind the recent Presidential election which was happy and momentous, but then you think about how Prop 8 passed and that will forever tarnish a great night in American history.

-I tell you what, though, it's interesting to watch this and see how conservative and paranoid the media, press and government were. Implying that all the Japanese in America should go back to Japan and never come back, implying that every Japanese person, citizen or not, was probably working undercover against the United Staes as some kind of sleeper agent. And then to NOW see how times have changed with conservatives constantly complaining that the media is too liberal. Liberal media this and liberal media that. I guess something like this would be what they'd have in mind? A close comparison you can draw to this situation is with the current war and the way this country treats and view Muslims as if they're automatic enemies of the state. To imagine the kind of government that would then take all those people, round them up, put them in a camp (basically for safe keeping), only to be backed up by all the media outlets in the country with little to no protesting on the subject until way later…that is just something I can't even fathom. Of course there's still Fox News and other ridiculous outlets that perpetuate the same hate and fear that I saw in this film. But at least there are now checks and balance when it comes to the media. To imagine prejudice like this just being backed up. At the risk of sounding completely melodramatic, it really makes me kind of sick yo my stomach.

-"I remember our parents telling us we had to do well in school because we would have to try twice as hard to get jobs and things." Well that's a funny perspective of it. And it's ver interesting, once they got to the camps, the wages for teachers inside he camps was almost double what they would make in the public schools. So the camp was staking all the good teachers, basically. And it's incredible that the Arkansas residents actually resented the Japanese in the internment camp because they're provided food, or they're getting hospital stays, or they can go to school. But they're in a camp!! There is no comparison. Absolutely none.

-When it comes to the filmmaking, it was pretty standard PBS kind of stuff. Voice over and archive footage. I tell you what, though, it's pretty tricky to cut a bunch of archive footage together as a narrative. It's like not being around during filming, and going into something completely blind without knowing what it's about or anything that was filmed. That basically is what it is.

-"Americanism is not a matter of blood and color. Americanism has always been a matter of mind and heart." Says the guy that put them in the camps in the first place; that's FDR.

8: The Mormon Proposition

This movie was controversial for some for various reasons. Documentaries are interesting. When you watch a doc, you take at face value that what you're being told is the truth. You want to believe that the filmmakers did their homework and are giving you the facts. I've watched enough of them to know (and actually exist in the world), that that's definitely not always the case. There can be manipulative editing, manipulative narration, and just over all skewing of the facts. I'm going to ignore that where this movie is concerned and just take it for what I saw.

Unfortunately, the way the Mormons went about it was great planning and great organization. It was really pretty impecable, the ways they went about campaigning against gay marriage with commercials, with door to door, with word of mouth. It was exactly like the said, they were a little army.

It did get a bit hard to watch once we got into the sad stories about all the young Mormon people who were thrown out of their houses simply for being gay. It's hard to imagine any parent reacting to their child in such a way. Their flesh and blood. I can't wrap my head around that.

The good thing about tis movie is that we know now it was mostly over turned...sort of. It's getting there.

Life and Debt

-This made me want to never visit Jamaica or any third world country that depends on tourism. Which I guess doesn't help. It would hep more to give them that money. But jeez, the guilt. It's like double edged guilt. I feel like the subtext of voice over narrating the Americans on vacation is like "you're an elitist privileged douche who takes what they have for granted." But it really just makes me sad seeing the employees put on their happy faces and talk to the vacationers like they're idiots who've never been on vacation. I tell you what though, if I had to hear just one more Bob Marley song over that footage, I was going to cut a bitch.

-On a similar note, I feel like I should never buy a banana again! The Honduran workers were forced by gun to go back to work during their strike. Buying Chiquita bananas seems like a carpool lane to Hell. But not buying them and getting others to not buy them has a chances of tanking a job that many people want and many people don't even have in these third world countries. It does most definitely help their economy. What a pickle.

-The way this was cut when it first started, it seemed like it was a feature and not a documentary. The shots used. And the look of it is interesting. It was clearly shot in the same time as Sound and Fury. This feels like a doc that could really only come out of the 90s. A definite product of that decade of documentary filmmaking. The way it was cut, the Day-O part in black and white and slo-mo reminded me of watching the Up series change it's doc style before my very eyes as we catch up with, not just the children, but the filmmaking crew every 7 years. Or similar to seeing Grey Gardens take shape as narrative docs just started to rise in popularity and prevalence in the United States.

-The parts of the doc that were just living just seemed like living. It was interesting to see how that came off. It seems like something that's hard to do. To set a tone like that with the b-roll scenes as if there was absolutely no camera, no releases signed, no boom mic, etc.

-Overall, I wish this were a little more...cohesive and understandable. I still don't really know what the IMF is or how it operates or why. They started out sort of introducing it, but them dropped it midway. I guess the point of this wasn't exactly to spell that out, but they could have spelled that out. What is the IMF and why do they hate Jamaica. After watching, I still don't get what the beef is. Where's the beef?

-This movie really made us come off as villains..which I supposed we are. Just ask North Korea. I mean, we don't pay taxes on the underwear we make them put together in Kingston Free Zone. We have one of the highest proportion of the IMF votes. We don't buy their bananas. We don't pay them right for their work when we outsource everything. We generally don't help them out. And no unions. But I guess England is their mother. Maybe we expect them to worry more about them.

The Art of The Steal

-I feel like art may be similar to film appreciation. If you watch Rebel Without a Cause now a days, if you were to put those same lines in a movie today, film it the same way and use the exact same script in today's film world, it wouldn't be as treasured, I feel. It would be completely unremarkable. But the movies are appreciated now because they were good for their respective time periods. I really feel that to be true. Similar to art, I think. Although lesser so. Art has technique, it has form. There are things about certain paintings that people appreciate (things that I feel like I will never get). It's something that, I imagine, evolves and changes as the times change. As does all forms of art. So it's more like some scribbles by Serrat was brilliant in its time, but if that same piece of art would be done in the exact same way in this day and age, it would look like something that's been done and nothing remarkable. Could that be true?

-It's like they can't win. They want the art in the right location, but when they put it in the right location (the original building at the Barnes museum) and the neighbors get mad. And then everything blows up in the stupidest way ever. So basically, they just want what the will says, no visitors. Which is lame.

-It was funny to see the filmmakers attempt to take both sides, when you know what they really thought about the whole situation. You could sense what side they were on. They interviewed Glanton. Thankfully he said yes and they had the opportunity to TELL both sides, but they didn't really stick up for both sides, so much. Which is a hard thing to do. And not all docs need to even do that. Some docs are MADE to take one position. Some docs are made jsut to give information and tell the story.

-I love how they told us each person that wouldn't speak up and defend themselves on camera. It was like Food Inc in that way. They would talk shit about someone and then let us know that they declined to be interviewed for the film. That made them look even worse than they would have looked if they just got on camera and said no comment for every single question.

-It was an interesting thing, watching this. After watching so many docs that have made me cry; docs about the state of education in America, docs about poverty, and death, and mental illness, and physical deformity, watching something about a bunch of nerds arguing with a bunch of rich people about a bunch of art that's priced by people on the basis of I don't know what characteristics....this seems like such small potatoes. Also valid in its own right, of course, but just not worth heartache. In comparison, of course. I'm sure a lot of these people are rightly heartbroken. And their feelings are justified. I guess.

-I really extremely don't see the big deal here. This guy bought a bunch of art, and then wanted it specified in his will that after he's dead and gone and no longer living on this earth in any way shape and form, no one should be able to publicly see these pieces...that he didn't make, he just paid for. No one should be able to borrow these pieces. No one should be able to sell the art. No one can ever visit these priceless (although very expensive) pieces of art. Says the dead man. What a selfish guy with a selfish will. It's not the city of Philidelphia's art. That's true. it's Mr. Barnes art. But you know what? Mr. Barnes is dead. I get the objection to not wanting it made profitable, just for a "damn the man" kind of reason. But I don't get not wanting it to be viewed by the public so they could appreciate and learn from it. Also, he's dead. They probably thought of this guy as a eccentric misanthropic genius, but I see his as a controlling almost psycho. You can't take it with you, dude. These guys being interviews just seem, more than anything, to be like butt hurt fanboys. They actually sound very similarly to the fanboys from The King of Kong. And I don't knwo if I mentioned this already, but he'd very dead.

Pressure Cooker

I figured it was about time to go through my "eh, I'll watch it eventually" list that I've been making for myself. Started with Bigger, Stronger, Faster, went to Mad Hot Ballroom, and I've just finished this one.

I was a puddle after this one. I watched a few Rachel Ray videos, updates they did with the same class from the move and Wilma Stepheson, the teacher. They gave her a new bistro, a new kitchen, and a 5 day vacation. The tears just started flowing out of me. Funny thing is, I don't feel like I cry a lot at movie, but I looked through the tags on my blog (I tag it every time I cry during one of them) and lets just say I have plenty of "tears" tags.

Then I thought more about it. Something like this is so bittersweet. More sweet than bitter, of course. But even still, it's great that something like this happened to THIS inner city school and THIS class and THIS teacher and THIS group of students, but there are thousands of other schools like it. That's what it makes me think of (after I get over the initial happiness of celebrating the kids' success.) It made me think of the culinary art school at Mackenzie Career Center. What are they up to now?

It's funny that I watched this so close to Mad Hot Ballroom. The featured teachers were similar while being very different. Similar right down to the kiss on teh cheek before competition, but this lady was absolutely insane. Just completely hard core and a bit vicious. I can really imagine having a teacher like her or knowing of a teacher like her at my school. And she really wants them to succeed and do well and get into college. She really cares. She's involved in the lives of the students just like the teacher in Washington Heights was. Buying dress shirts for her students similar to the way the teacher at Washington Heights was buying the performing skirts for her students. Attending the football games in support of her students like the other teacher attended the final Grand Finale. What an experience, to have a teacher who cares that much. And this lady has been doing it for FOURTY years.

I feel like the camera had to have some influence on the students when to comes to being nervous for the competition. You look down, concentrating and working, and you look up and there's a camera in your face. And watching a documentary, it's easy to forget the camera's there. Being filmed, it's a little less easy. Especially if you're asked questions in the middle of doing whatever it is you're doing. I do wonder how Fatoumata had the clearance to be followed by a camera crew, but not much freedom when it came to anything else.

Last point, this movie was so hopeful and inspiring, it basically reminded me of an opposite Waiting For Superman. Superman actually did actually do a good job in showing up for this one. One thing that was interesting about this one is that it wasn't just about the competition. That was definitely a huge part, but it was more about the characters and their journeys. It was interesting to watch this and Mad Hot Ballroom back to back. There very similar in their ways but also had their difference in the way they approached the material. It's interesting how different two docs can be when they begin with very similar structures.

Mad Hot Ballroom

Competition is a great way to make a documentary moving. Unfortunately for me, the competition becomes less about celebrating the people who won and more about being sad for the poor bastards who lost. I like that they didn't dwell too long on the kids that didn't get chosen to represent their school for the competition because that would have been a little sad.

I love watching kids like this because I remember being this young and thinking I was so old and old enough to be dating and doing all kinds of things I was nowhere near old enough to be doing. They're playing it up for the camera and trying to come off as cool. Funny.

It was interesting that they got the clearance to be following these kids. They follow them walking home and they follow them hanging out with their friends. Their parents, their immigrant parents and grandparent parents and non-native English speaking parents allowed this to happen. Which is interesting.

The teacher in the Dominican Republican school didn't really come off very well for some people, I bet. Which is really just a shame because she probably basically just did her best to help these kids. You can tell she's doing it for them because she really cares about these kids and their future. All good teachers do. The scene where they go out to buy dresses is particularly revealing of that. And it's not like the filmmakers went out to go after her and make her look bad. As if they only included scenes where she said something terrible. That wasn't the plan. So...it just was what it was. Although, I mean, she did work those kids pretty hard and speak to them pretty hard compared to the to her teachers. But that's how winners win. And, also, some things are lost in translation. Take that into consideration. Overall, I thought she did a great job and was a very loving teacher. On another note, having the Dominican students do well at dancing the meringue to me was kind of like letting Nicole Schirzinger compete and win Dancing with the Stars. Also funny.

It was interesting that we were introduced to last year's winners (the people who got last year's huge trophy) halfway through the film. They were clearly a school with higher income families and more resources. So clearly, they were the villains against the Washington Heights school's underdogs. The faceless yuppies who get things handed to them. We had to beat them this time. Kind of an interesting way to go about building the roles of a narrative within a documentary. I wonder if that school minded. They clearly invited them into their school and gave them access to their students like any of the other school. But they weren't like any of the other school in the end. Not really.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster*

This gave me what I want from docs. I learned something. I love that. People are attempting to shit on this because they think of it as a pro-steroids doc, but I didn't see it that way, really. This was pretty fair in trying to examine and trying to present both sides. It was also, in some way, probably trying to excuse Chris Bell's brother's behavior in some way n the same way anyone else would want to explain away a siblings bad behavior. Very similar to something I can see myself making and HAVE attempted to make in the past. In fact, this opening reminded me so much of some of the stuff we used to make when I worked at 360. The pop music. The montage of pop culture movies and tv shows with a voice over that I did myself because there was really not anyone else who would do it the way I had it in my head. Unfortunately, this dudes voice was kind of grating.

This made me feel bad again for Marion Jones all over again, who didn't even go to jail for doping, but for lying about doping. Also, makes me think about the Olympics and the fact that so many of those athletes take performance enhancing drugs. It's a slippery slope. You don't want to se drugs because their illegal and you'll feel like you're cheating, but you have to use steroids because if you don't, everyone else who's using them (which is literally almost EVERYONE else) will outplay you in every way.

It's funny, I assumed this guy wasn't into filmmaking, just because he didn't seem all that into and it seemed kind of green with the whole thing. Like he doesn't know shit about filmmaking and he'd have to get a lot of help with the editing. he'd be over your shoulder like, "can we, like, do this one effect were the screen zooms in? oh yeah, that looks pretty good." Then I come to find out he went to USC and graduated from the film program. Whoops. One thing I appreciated was that he attempted to ask the tough questions but in a sensitive way. Tiptoing up to Carl Lewis to question him about his positive test for steroids BEFORE the controversial 1988 Olympics. Talking to the Hooton dad (who I'm guessing was probably not very happy with how the doc turned out) about his son's suicide having to possibly do with the anti-dpressants he was on. He did a good job in attempting to get those controversial answers.

That does make me wonder though. Do people forget that they're on film and this little video he's making is going to be turned into a movie or something? They question his brother's students about whether or not their coach (his brother) takes steroids and those kids say that he himself told them no. He said to their faces that he did not do steroids. He lied to them and yet, now, when the movie comes out, everyone's going to know. They sit at the dinner table and try not to say anything to their parents, but the when the movie comes out, everyone' s going to know. It's hard not to take that into account when watching. It's in the back of your mind the whole time. Like when two costars are dating in a feature and it's in your mind during the whole movie.

I like that this didn't solve any problems or give any answers. It wasn't really like Super Size Me in that way. It just was what it was. There really IS no right answer in all of this. It's a complicated matter. I'll leave you with this, though: "Peanuts are dangerous. There are people who eat a Peanut and they go into anaphylactic shock. Does that mean we ban peanuts and sue God for making them?"