You think Obama has a challenge (check out Iron Ladies of Liberia)

Yeah, sure the economy is in the toilet and we've got a couple intractable wars going on. Sounds like a tough challenge for a presidential newbie like Obama.

But if you want to look at someone who really has to do a turnaround job, consider Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who was elected as president of Liberia in 2005. Not only was she the first woman elected president in Africa, she also happened to be taking over a country that was essentially broken. Years of civil war and corrupt rule by Charles Taylor left behind a bankrupt nation with an infrastructure in shambles. With a population of just over 3 million and a national debt of over $3 billion, President Sirleaf had only a very small budget with which to try to make even the most basic changes.

The first year of her presidency is documented beautifully in the film, Iron Ladies of Liberia. Directed by Daniel Junge (who also happens to be my step-brother-in-law, and who has another film that's short-listed for the Oscars this year), the movie looks not only at the president, but at the strong women that she appoints to her government, especially her minister of finance and chief of police. I was really taken by how President Johnson Sirleaf could balance talking to the folks at the IMF (she's a Harvard-trained economist) at one meeting, and then talk openly (and toughly and compassionately) with workers protesting at a rubber plantation or soldiers seeking pensions.

It's hard to see how she can fix Liberia, but from the film, you can see that Liberia is lucky to have her.

(There is a nice short interview with her in September in the Brown Daily Herald.)

You can see a clip from the film at www.just-media.org.

2008 Round Up, Part 3--creative input

Okay, this is really the last post about 2008. I'm a number guy and a list-maker (mildly compulsive, perhaps...), so the end of the year is great time for tallies. I keep track of how many books, movies, and plays I take in every year, which I look on as sort of creative compost for the mind.

Here's how I did in 2008:

Movies watched: 46 (my goal was 52, but I coached my daughter's travel soccer team this year, which meant I coached about 20 games and ran about 40 practices. All that time has to come from somewhere.)

Favorites: Slumdog Millionaire, No Country for Old Men, Juno.

I had a goal of reading a handful of screenplays, but came up empty on that one.


Plays (and readings of plays) watched: 14. (In the old days, before kids, I might see 75 plays and readings in a year, but that's not possible anymore. Plus, this year, I intentionally dialed back some of my playgoing--I just needed a break (my goal was only 12). This year, I'd like to see a lot more. Luckily I have a StageSource membership, which gets me access to free tickets, because, to be honest, I can't afford to buy tickets to plays very often (see previous post on income).

Favorites: An Ocean of Air by Rough & Tumble, and the Rhombus plays in the Six Views Festival we put on.


Plays read: 9. (my goal was 4. Which I know is very unimpressive, but I've been more into reading books than plays lately.)

Favorite: August: Osage County by Tracy Letts. Intense, high-energy, and obviously theatrical. Reading Doubt by John Patrick Shanley was a big disappointment for me--it just seemed so theatrically uninteresting, and though the stakes are high, part of me felt like it's getting done a lot because it's really cheap to stage (small cast, no set). (Heresy, I'm sure.)

Books read: 29. (my goal was 24. I'm a slow reader, sad to say. And busy with a lot of stuff (see above).)

Favorites:

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• The Blind Side by Michael Lewis
• Into the Wild and Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
• The New Kings of Non-Fiction edited by Ira Glass
• Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
• Master and Comander by Patrick O'Brian
• Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
• Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman

I know that's an excessively long list of favorites (especially since I only read 29 books) but I liked all of these a lot. It helps that Tracy reads more than twice as much as I do, and knows what I like, so she filters out the other stuff. And I've gotten terrific recommendations from friends.

So that's a bunch of the stuff that went into my head. I'm curious to see what will come out in 2009.

I'm Through With White Girls

Just got back from the Roxbury Film Festival's opening night feature, I'm Through With White Girls. The romantic comedy, directed by Jennifer Sharp, showed to a packed house at the Museum of Fine Arts theatre, must have been about 500 people. It's been a long time since I've been to a movie where I missed hearing lines, because the audience was laughing so hard. When it was over the filmmakers and cast received a standing ovation.

If you're in the Boston area, you can see the film at 2pm on Sunday, at the Mass. College of Art. If you don't, then who knows if you'll get the chance. It's a low-budget film, without any "name" actors (though the two leads, Lia Johnson and Anthony Montgomery, are terrific, with great chemistry). And it's about black people. Who don't live in the 'hood. Who aren't all stereotypes. I know the filmmakers are still looking for theatrical distribution, but it could be a tough sell to the white guys wearing suits. Damn shame, because there aren't that many funny romantic comedies anymore that aren't just stupid.

Saving myself for Michael

Sicko comes out in wide release on Friday. There are a whole lot of people spending a whole lot of money trying to tell me what to think about it before I've seen it (quite a few of them would prefer that I don't see it at all). So at the moment, I'm on a slightly careful media diet, avoiding reviews and commentaries. I even turned off an NPR piece that was going through the film blow-by-blow giving the thumbs up and thumbs down on each of Moore's claims. I'd like to hear that after the movie, but such news pieces miss the whole narrative aspect of Moore's films, and why they're successful. He tells an interesting story. (Yeah, it's often manipulative. Hello, it's a movie.)

Is Michael Moore a egotistical blowhard? I guess so. Sometimes. Does he have a point of view? Hell yeah, he's not a newsman, he's a filmmaker and an agitator, with strong opinions and a sense of outrage.

I've really enjoyed his films. (I think I liked Bowling for Columbine best.) And I love how he's managed to survive and continue to stick it to the Man, despite the big ton of bricks the establishment has dumped on him over the years.

I can't help but admire his ability to work the media (even the parts that hate him) to get exposure for his films. Anyway, I'm looking forward to making up my own mind (and dragging my wife with me to the movies).

What I'm Watching: Lives, Smoking, and Courage

I've had a chance to watch a few movies lately, and for one of them I actually watched at the movie theatre, which has become rare for me lately.

On Saturday night, I went down to the Coolidge Corner Theatre, which is a terrific local movie house, which does goofy things like host a Buffy The Vampire Slayer Sing-Along midnight show (it had a prom night theme this year, so on my way after watching my movie, there were scores of folks clad in suits and evening gowns waiting in line). As for me, I finally got to watch The Lives of Others, written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. I figured that since it has been out for a while, I'd be by myself, but the small theatre was completely sold out (as was the earlier showing).

The movie completely deserved to be sold out. It's a spare, tense film, about a playwright and actress in East German under surveillance from a taciturn (and arts loving) Stasi agent. It's a movie that shows how you can offer an illuminating view of an expansive, oppressive regime and time, by focusing closely, intensely on the lives of just a few people. The actors were completely convincing, breathtaking really. For me, it was one of those rare films, where I was completely caught up for the entire time, and afterwards wasn't even tempted to try to look for parts that didn't work. It all meshed together for me. I'd actually love to watch it again, just so that I could look more closely at how he put it all together.

Thank You for Smoking, written and directed by Jason Reitman from Christopher's Buckley's novel, was on a Netflix DVD that lurked around our house for weeks. It was a movie that ended up on the list somehow, I guess it sounded good, but then once it was here, it never really caught our interest. We finally watched it and wondered why we'd waited so long.

Aaron Eckhart turns on the charm full blast as a spokesman for Big Tobacco. Thank you For Smoking is a rare case of a satire that manages to walk along the knife edge between preachiness and silliness, and come out intact. Though it's about spin in the world of business, the movie feels especially relevant today to our current political situation, living in a country whose political leadership is constantly trying to paint a happy face onto a war without popular support, and scandal after scandal in the executive branch. The character of Nick Naylor makes a point of teaching his young son how to direct an argument away from factual truth, and shows him how to make it all about winning and losing (and how to make sure you always win).

If this was a typical Hollywood movie, you'd expect Naylor to eventually get his comeuppance, and there's some of that, but it doesn't quite work the way you'd expect. The tricky thing is that we're rooting for this grand deceiver, in the same way that you end up sympathizing with the gangsters in the Godfather, or the crooks in a jewel heist movie. Naylor loves what he does and he's good at it, and Eckhart's clear love of his character is infectious.

Last night our Netflix copy of Munich wouldn't play, so we were onto Courage Under Fire, starring Denzel Washington (and nominally Meg Ryan). (Directed by Edward Zwick and written by Patrick Sheane Duncan.) Released in 1996, this is a film about the first Iraq war and the aftermath of a friendly fire incident. It's a bit of a character piece about Col. Serling (played by Washington), who, while trying to deal with a deadly error in Iraq, also has to investigate the details of the first woman up for the Medal of Honor.

Ah, the first Gulf War. I fear that we'll look back on it fondly someday (or do we already). I can guarantee you that the war movies made about the current Iraq war will look nothing at all like this. The combat, what little there is, is out in the empty desert, with a few anonymous Iraqis getting shot by the Americans. But the war was over so quickly, the films have to deal with American v. American violence and conflict. And there's no political comment by anyone over whether it was a good idea to be there or not.

The movie is a bit of a mess. The big incident that haunts Serling isn't given the weight it needs to explain Denzel's struggles, and the puzzle that he tries to unravel around Meg Ryan's character, feels awkward and forced. I guess, ultimately, this movie is trying to deal with the notion of "the truth shall set you free" but you'd be better off watching something else for that, or even to get a sense of war (for a good Gulf War movie, I think you head to Three Kings.

Mostly Courage Under Fire made me very curious about what sorts of movies we'll see about our current war, five years from now. I think they'll be much more powerful, emotionally and politically.

What I'm Watching: The Departed

Last night I finally had a chance to watch The Departed, on DVD. I definitely didn't fall asleep during this one. In fact, it was so intense, that I had a tough time falling asleep afterwards and dreamt uneasy dreams all night. I was a big Scorcese fan, back when I was a youngster. Taxi Driver and Raging Bull were important films to me. And I think The King of Comedy is astounding (could Rupert Pupkin be one the most interesting roles De Niro every played?). I wasn't a big fan of Goodfellas, and I thought that Bringing out the Dead and Gangs of New York were low points.

The Departed definitely had my pulse racing the entire time. It's a tightly crafted piece, and the performances are strong across the board (though Jack Nicholson ends up hamming it up too much for my taste). And it was fun to watch a movie set in Boston and actually filmed in Boston (since I live here). I appreciate the storytelling, and I enjoyed the complexity of the narrative, though sometimes I just wanted to get to know the two main characters better. Especially DiCaprio's character (he gets that furrowed brow look and holds it forever in this one). If you look back at my favorite Scorcese films, they've got plot, but also some real deep character explorations. The kind of depth I've also wanted to pull off but am still attempting. Still, I think The Departed is one of his better pieces, and it wasn't undeserving of the awards it won.

What I'm Watching: The Ant Bully

I know there are critics out there who go see the first act of a play and then write a review. Well, I'm not like that (I'm not a critic, either). Or am I?

I got The Ant Bully to watch with my twelve-year-old daughter, who wasn't exactly impressed with my choice. If she'd been around, I would have let her fiddle with the Netflix queue, but she wasn't, so there.

As is (sadly) my Friday night habit, I got through about the first fifteen minutes of the movie and then fell fast asleep. The weeks are busy and by Friday night I'm kaput.

The first fifteen minutes have plenty of fine computer graphics, but the script was an absolute mess. The story made little sense, the characters were uninteresting. It's hard not to compare this film to A Bug's Life, since they both have lots of ants (thought I'll give the Ant Bully folks credit--theirs have six legs, not four), bullies, people who don't fit in. However, A Bug's Life is a fantastic movie, from the get-go. And the reason why it's fantastic isn't because the computer graphics work, it's because the story is so well told, carefully introducing you to the the characters and their problems and desires. The reason why Pixar has been so successful over the years is the incredible effort they put into the scripts. Screenwriters really rule the roost when it comes to animated pictures.

I think I'll have to get out our copy of A Bug's Life. I know I won't fall asleep, even though I've already seen it fifty times.

What I'm Watching: Sankofa

Part of my plan with this blog is not just to write about writing, but also about the films, plays, and novels that I'm taking in.

Last night I went to a film series in the town where I live. I can't remember the actual title of the series, films about the African diaspora, or something like that. I'd thought that I was going to watch Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust, but I was a week off, and so instead we watched Sankofa, written and directed by Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima (released in 1993).

I've been troubled by the film all day today, for various reasons. The movie is nominally about a black fashion model who is mysteriously transported (in a dream, or spiritually?) from the ruins of a Ghanaian slave fortress in the modern day, to a life/persona of her ancestor, where she is a slave on a plantation in the West Indies.

The plot is complex, and sometimes a little disjointed, but overall the film shows the cruelty of slave life on a sugar plantation in many horrific aspects, and almost entirely focused on the black slaves, with a little time spent on a Spanish priest. The white slave owners are present, but not really characters. (Which is fine by me.)

Sankofa powerfully examines the struggle of a community of slaves to preserve their own dignity while still attempting to survive, and even more than survive, actively rebel. It also looks into the relationship between current descendants of slaves and the bondage, rape, and murder that dwells permeates their history.

Unfortunately, I found myself unable to completely latch onto this film. Though the acting, especially by the lead actress, was often fiercely raw, it also was uneven, with many of the smaller roles clearly filled by non-actors. Sometimes the dialogue felt trite, even as it dealt with intensely interesting, complex social and racial situations. And, as a viewer used to slick Hollywood films, and also as a sometime filmmaker myself, the visual elements of the film were often jarring in their lack of skill. Shots might inexplicably linger on a landscape element, or we'd see a microphone boom at the edge of the frame. The camera might pan or track at odd moments. The entire piece felt like it needed re-editing. And the story fluttered about between several different sub-plots, some of which were engaging, and others that made me keep looking at the clock.

I haven't decided if the technical elements kept me at a distance from the film just because they were bad, or if because the material is so difficult and painful that I subconsciously latched onto these distractions to keep some sense of emotional composure. Probably a combination.

Making a film about slavery in the Americas is a tough act. You want to make a movie that really gets to the heart of what it was like, the violence and despair. And at the same time, it needs to be watchable. I don't know that I've seen the film about slavery that really makes me say, "Oh, I get how this worked." Most tend to show the triumph of the spirit of the slave over the degradation of his bondage. But I'm also interested in what it did to the slave owners--how did it affect and corrupt their own humanity? And for the slaves, I don't feel I've yet gotten a sense of the continuous despair that must have been part of life.

I got a hint of it last night, when one of the slaves talked briefly about not being able to continue as a head slave for the rest of his life, that the stress of the brutality that he was required to inflict up on his own people was too great. The tough thing to remember about the enslavement of African-Americans is that it didn't just go on for a few years. When we look at a Holocaust film, it seems like the Jews were in concentration camps forever. But the first camp opened in 1933 (Dachau) and then it was all over by 1945. Slavery in the Americas lasted from 1503 to 1865. More than 350 years! I find it tough to get my head around the implications.

So, I guess Sankofa (and the task of writing about it) definitely got me thinking about all of these issues (I've been at work on an historical piece about a slave during the Civil War, so I've been in this territory before) . That seems like a decent accomplishment