Joseph Marohl

Director Ron Howard’s film based on Peter Morgan’s 2007 stage play Frost/Nixon (Morgan wrote the screenplay also) makes a compelling case for television as a medium for truth-telling without over-simplification (as is often charged—by, among others, me, to be frank).

The movie has the usual Hollywood idea of “balance,” but I guess the slash in the title is fair warning of that.  Frank Langella plays Nixon as human, haunted, and smart, while taking nothing away from his being crooked.  He’s also handsomer than the real Nixon (or any of his subsequent impersonators) ever looked.

The plot centers on the conflict between Nixon and television interviewer David Frost (played charismatically by Michael Sheen—both Sheen and Langella acted in the original London stage production).

Nixon and Frost are represented as alpha-dog competitors who pulled themselves up from humble, working-class backgrounds, tasted great success, and, in 1977, the time setting of this story, hit upon the idea of an epic four-part television interview as a way perhaps to regain the limelight—at a time when both stink of failure, Nixon in disgrace, Frost as a laughingstock.

One small point of interest (to me, anyway) is that Pat Nixon is played by Patty McCormick (who, 52 years ago, played Rhoda Penmark—another Type A personality gone wild—in The Bad Seed).  I have to wonder if that’s a bit of trick casting—if so, I got it and enjoyed the hommage, and even if not, McCormick conveys a lot in a very small role.

We see a team of writers and researchers who assist the former President—but his firmest support appears to be former Marine Lt. Col. Jack Brennan (played by Kevin Bacon), a man of respect and stoic loyalty.  Bacon’s performance is understated, with nuances of reserved emotion that Bacon has become a master of.

The film more fully develops Frost ‘s support team, as that is where the drama lies—we have the show-biz professional in producer John Birt (Matthew Macfadyen), the pragmatist in journalist Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt), the idealist in academic researcher James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell), and the unconditional support of girlfriend Caroline Cushing (Rebecca Hall).

The film is riveting—tightly directed by Howard, with smart, insightful dialogue by Morgan, engrossing character work by all the players.  At several points the movie had me near tears—though this is not a tearjerker—notably when Reston states his zeal for seeing Nixon brought to justice and, later, when Frost, not a particularly deep man, but spending money out of his own pocket to produce the interviews, while hammered by his own team for producing schlock television, simply wants to celebrate his birthday.

As I said, the film makes a compelling case for television—its ability to convey nuance, the truthfulness of its “eye” (which “never blinks,” as TV newsman Dan Rather once famously noted).  In my view, the film more convincingly supports a claim for television’s cathartic power, to exercise and purge painful emotions—particularly through the use of the close-up shot.

Ultimately, Frost/Nixon argues for the importance of feeling in reportage, an aspect of understanding that television is uniquely able to provide.  I think this much is unarguable—as the film proves with horrific real footage of the Vietnam conflict, the sort of heartbreaking pictures that have been disallowed for every other conflict the United States has been involved in since then.

In the end, however, catharsis is not really enough, is it?  We must accept that the real Nixon went unpunished for his crimes, that the Frost interviews sped up the rehabilitation of the scandal-ridden Republican Party, and that Nixon’s concept that, when the President does something, it is thus not illegal, an unpopular idea in the 1970s, has become accepted truth for subsequent US Presidents.

I think Frost/Nixon is a brilliant and timely film.  I only hope it does not provide audiences with a false sense of closure for our latest scandal-ridden Presidency.

Joseph Marohl

Despite its title, Doubt, the movie and presumably the play (which latter I have not read or seen), offers a good many answers—and only one question.

First, one thing the film accomplishes with dramatic clarity is to distinguish between pedophilia and homosexuality.  Anyone (say, Rick Warren and his admirers) who has any doubts on this matter should see Doubt.  The film handily separates the two issues—though I won’t say how.

Second, the film answers the question of which is better, doubt or certainty.  Though some audiences may find the film’s answer equivocal, I think it’s fairly direct—doubt is better in building community and a connection with others; certainty is better in reaching short-term solutions to immediate problems—while tending to polarize members of a community and often failing to make needed changes to a larger system of corruption.

Third, the film answers the question of whether it’s all right to do something bad in order to accomplish something that’s good.  Yes.  And no.  Here the answer sounds exactly like what you’d expect your priest to offer you—the same guy who tells you that God does answer every prayer; only sometimes the answer is no.

The question that remains unanswered at the end of Doubt is of what, if anything, is Father Flynn guilty.  Even here, the film offers heavy hints—but ultimately the hints support a multitude of answers, equally plausible.

But neither these answers nor the intriguing brainteaser is the reason to see Doubt.

You should see Doubt for one main reason:  Meryl Streep.

How this actress continues to astound is, well, um, astounding.  My dear friend Mary and I have deified Streep as a goddess in our own private religion.  What is remarkable about her talent is that she accomplishes both ends of the movie star’s typical dilemma—do I lose myself in the character? or do I make myself impossible not to watch?  Streep, of course, does both … in virtually every film she’s made … and nowhere better than in the role of Sister Aloysius in this film.

The wonder of this incredible actor is not how she has earned an astounding number (14!) of Oscar nominations, but rather why the fuck she hasn’t won them all … and even more.  That she has won only two is a stain on the reputation of the Academy Awards.

Sure, other actors are in Doubt and they all do remarkable work, blah blah blah.  No disrespect intended—I love them all.  But without Meryl Streep, this movie would have been merely a reasonably strong film adaptation of a stage play.  With Streep, it is something of an event—life altering as well as brain teasing.

I also want to add some good words for the writer and director John Patrick Shanley.  Having twenty years ago won an Oscar for his original screenplay Moonstruck, Shanley takes his first shot as a director in this, the adaptation of his successful stage play starring Cherry Jones.

I do think the last minute of the film suffers from an overly theatrical gesture and an arguably incongruous change of heart (or, at any rate, affect).  But the film up to that point is nearly flawless on a number of levels.  It beautifully captures the setting of mid-1960s America.  It is a visually arresting movie.

It maintains a single stark tone for 104 minutes—relies heavily on dialogue, even monologue (three sermons!)—while remaining entirely cinematic.

Especially early in the film, it makes lucid though only implicit comparisons between post-JFK-assassination angst and post-9/11 angst.

It captures, too, the still problematic way American society treats its minority groups—how lack of understanding or tolerance quickly evolves into violence, both physical and emotional. It portrays the marginalized position of women in the Church—most eloquently in crosscut scenes of priests chortling over their red wine and rare steaks and nuns silently sipping their milk and—what was that shit? —porridge?

We see in this film that abuse is not just a matter of sexual abuse or physical brutality.  Spiritual, psychological abuse, including self-abuse, appears to be the most damning form of abuse of all.

Doubt is a film that believers and infidels can alike enjoy and learn from.  It touches on much more than Christian faith.  It addresses the ways we know the truth, any truth, and the responsibilities we must take on, on the basis of that knowledge.

Joseph Marohl

I’m hard pressed to find much to distinguish what director Gus Van Sant accomplishes in his biopic Milk that was not already accomplished in the Academy Award-winning 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, directed by Rob Epstein.

Both are excellent films. Both use archival footage to chronicle the life and times of America’s first openly gay public official. Both use Milk’s taped last will—recorded in the event of his assassination—as the thread upon which to construct the plot. Both regard their central figure as both a devious politician and a true American idealist.

What most obviously distinguishes the more recent film is the bravura performance (another one) by Sean Penn as Milk. Penn breaks my heart in this. Not just because of his character’s fate, which, like the Epstein documentary, opens the film, so that the imminence of death is felt at every step, but mostly because Penn captures Milk’s magnetism and mannerisms, along with, more profoundly, merely human moments—like the thrill of falling in love or fighting for a great, just cause.

Van Sant’s film covers Milk’s life from 1970 to his death in 1978 and appropriately reduces the events subsequent to Dan White’s assassination of Milk and Mayor George Moscone to a brief captioned epilogue.

Instead, it provides deeper insight to Milk’s loving relationships with Scott Smith (James Franco) and Jack Lira (Diego Luna). Van Sant is able to use these relationships to portray a more complex picture of gay life—not pleading for tolerance and equality, as did the documentary—but showing how the personal and the political can converge and clash and presenting us the audience with a fuller panoply of gay characters than we usually get to see at the movies.

Josh Brolin’s nuanced performance as Dan White is also remarkable. Whereas Epstein’s film mainly presents White as the iceberg that would eventually sink Milk’s Titanic, Van Sant’s film shows the pressures of maintaining and upholding hetero-normativity as a political issue and the toll of staking too much of one’s self-identity on one’s being “normal.”

What makes the new film in many ways a more (or differently) elegant film than its predecessor is its attempt to show how, over and over, Milk and White attempt and fail to reach out to each other—especially in a realistic scene of White’s drunkenly pathetic exchange with Milk at the latter’s birthday party—and this is the tragic heart of the film.

Allison Bricker

Government television, PBS, has begrudgingly agreed to air “Torturing Democracy”. However, the program will air on January 21st, 2009, one day after President Bush officially leaves office. Truth be told it should have been shown at its earliest availability, as the abuse evidenced within the documentary is enough to make one’s stomach turn, yet must be repudiated by our nation as wholly unacceptable. The evidence presented makes me ashamed to be an individual living in Neo-America. Everything our founders fought so hard to secure, has been squandered away. Not only have we allowed our inherent liberties to be legislatively curtailed in a post 9/11 world, almost silently the Bush Administration and its demented perverse sycophants, wholly jettisoned every last shred of our Republic’s decency.

The thought occurred to me as I watched memo after memo and heard line after line of official interrogation detail, that had I been taken captive or kidnapped via a rendition, that my retaliation to such treatment would be to bash my head against the wall until I was dead. Shortly thereafter, actual film from inside Abu Ghraib shows a detainee doing exactly this after being subjected to a variety of acts no reasonably decent person could even fathom.

Many of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” come from the C.I.A.’s 1963 “KUBARK”¹ manual which was so severe and inhumane that it was originally shelved. That is at least until Afghanistan, when it was dusted off and its techniques reemployed on enemy combatants. Techniques range from multiyear isolation, total sleep deprivation, water-boarding, to threats of repeatedly raping or killing one’s family members all in the hopes of obtaining a confession. In fact some of the techniques employed date back to punishments inflicted by the Spanish Inquisition as well as those of the former Soviet Union’s K.G.B.

Experienced soldiers and other military personnel will tell you, torturing only yields whatever will make the interrogator stop the abuse. Nonetheless and even though 500 of the approximately 700 to 800 detainees at Guantanamo have been released and never charged, countless were subjected to these techniques of dehumanization and legalized torture thanks to the sociopaths within the Bush Administration.

If we are to retain and restore the image of America, we must begin by forever outlawing this type of treatment in precise words so as not to give any room for a future John Yoo or Alberto Gonzales. Secondly, we must demand as decent law abiding Americans that all of those in the Bush Administration including the President, be tried and found guilty of Treason for their gross negligence both to their oaths of office and torturous war crimes; legalized, advanced, and committed on their behalf.

The film may be viewed in its entirety ahead of the scheduled January 21st, 2009 broadcast at TorturingDemocracy.org Additionally, their website has every single Presidential Directive, memo, and interrogation detail cited in the movie for your personal review.

Source(s): TorturingDemocracy.org “Torturing Democracy the Movie” • Hamden -v- Rumsfeld et al, No. 05-184. Argued March 28, 2006–Decided June 29, 2006 • ¹The National Security Archive at George Washington University

Allison Bricker

As our Republic continues to swerve recklessly away from its Constitutional founding, the opportunity for us to salvage what so many have died for, slides further away from our grasp. Just as Winter has begun to set in across the nation, our Liberties seem to have fallen away like leaves lost into the breeze. Whether it be legalized torture or the Department of Homeland Security suspending the Constitution along the border, the country I fell in love with as a child, looks less and less like the land of the free.

Many amongst us are pinning their hopes of a better tomorrow on yet another politician who promises “change” from the status-quo and business as usual in Washington. However, within hours of the election, his “transition” website, laid out his and his enforcer’s vision of mandatory unpaid servitude for the youth of our nation. Shortly thereafter upon echoing criticism ringing across the blogosphere, they whitewashed the website and scurried their indentured labor force back under the rug. The Obama transition team decided to replace the compulsory service text with toned down verbiage so as not to cause a scandal prior to his formal coronation.

In this Winter of our discontent, there are a few sparks which seek to reignite our lost sense of self. It has for a long time now been my opinion that the planets must have aligned to have allowed such an assembly of thinkers such a Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and the rest of the founding generation to have known to each other in order to be able to hammer out Independence and beat back tyranny. Perhaps, we may be so fortunate yet again, to recapture that spirit of ‘76 with a new gathering of minds dedicated to reason and human liberty. One such intellect where parallels can be drawn is Naomi Wolf. Her latest works, “The End of America” and “Give Me Liberty” are written with such a dedication and sound resolve towards the virtues of freedom that the pages in her books seem to echo the spirit and tenacity of Thomas Paine.

In support of the ideas presented in, “The End of America”, and to help spread the word virally in the internet age, Ms. Wolf has released an online video where she covers the ten steps taken time and again, by all would-be tyrants in a closing society. The movie is available free for online viewing and is a must see for those in tune with our current state of affairs. Her content and tone is so well reasoned and articulated, even those who refuse to acknowledge the danger, must at least pause to question, what our Republic will resemble in two, five, or ten years from now.

The video can be viewed here, and please if you find her presentation to be a powerful arguement as to why we need to restore, preserve and defend our American Republic, please consider passing it along via DiGG, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, etcetrera.

Joseph Marohl

There’s a special category of film fanatics who specialize in spotting continuity errors in movies. Continuity errors are disconnects between two shots, inappropriate and inexplicable given the time frame and events of a scene—for instance, when a half-smoked cigarette in one shot has suddenly shot back out to full length in the next shot.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo would offer a goldmine of comparable “mistakes,” were it not for the fact that clearly most if not all of them are intentional on the filmmakers’ part. This is, after all, a movie about time and our clumsy efforts to erase the unpleasant effects of the past—to create false continuities in the mess of existence—to dispel guilt—to revise history by making it over—a driving purpose not only for the film’s hero, John “Scottie” Ferguson, played by James Stewart, but also for his antagonist—who, not to spoil the film’s ending for anyone who hasn’t already seen it—will remain unidentified.

What I’d like to do here is simply list these discontinuities—at least the ones I personally find perplexing and intriguing. I offer no film analysis here, no interpretations, no attempts to explain what, as I’m sure Hitchcock intended, should remain an unsolved mystery.

The film’s opening sequence ends with an unresolved action. Police detective Scottie hangs on the ledge, but we never see how he gets down. The next shot shows him in Midge’s apartment, calculating how he might be able to beat his fear of heights.

We find out that Scottie and Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) were engaged once. She called it off, but we never are told why, even though then and later in the film it’s obvious that she still loves him. Perhaps the fact that he’s blithely best chums with the woman who dumped him is a clue as to what was wrong with the relationship in the first place. Or perhaps it’s her stalking tendencies—control issues evident when, later in the film, she plays the Mozart phonograph that Scottie told her he disliked earlier and tries to comfort him, saying, “Mother’s here.”

We also learn that Scotty has quit the police force, though his innocence in the policeman’s accidental death is unquestioned and the department has offered to keep him on. However, his chipper mood with Midge suggests that he is not deeply haunted by the officer’s death at all; despite Midge’s suspicions and concern, he seems ready to accept that it was not his fault.

Scotty tails Madeleine Elster (Kim Novack), who her husband suspects is haunted by her late great-grandmother Carlotta Valdes, to the florist’s shop, the chapel graveyard where Carlotta is buried, the art museum, and finally the McKendrick Hotel, where she rents a room and is well known to the proprietress. He even sees her opening a window. However, when a minute later he questions the proprietress, she states with certainty that “Carlotta” has not been there, even pointing to the unclaimed room keys and ultimately the empty room itself as proof. Why did the proprietress not see her?

Later, Scottie and Midge visit an antiquarian bookshop owner in search of answers to the mystery of the historical Carlotta. As the storyteller recounts his long and rather boring exposition (rather like Simon Oakland’s tedious explanation of split personalities in Psycho), the bookshop gradually darkens. When Scottie and Midge step out into the street, which has also darkened at dusk, I assume, the bookshop behind them suddenly brightens. Pop, the shop owner, is nowhere near a light switch, so the sudden illumination of a space associated with dead history has no natural explanation.

Of course, the central mystery of the film is the dead Carlotta, who haunts at least one character in the film, if not more. A tragic and (perhaps importantly) ethnic figure from California’s past, whose mystery is ultimately displaced when Scottie falls in love with Madeleine. However, the romantic mystery of her madness and death is never explained—and, more important, and, sorry, here a hint of a spoiler is unavoidable, we later learn that Elster’s wife may never have really been obsessed with (or possessed by) Carlotta after all—Carlotta’s story may be a “McGuffin” (Hitchcock’s term for illogical elements that nevertheless propel a plot—even a sinister one—forward). But later in the film, just when we’re convinced that the Madeleine/Carlotta story arc is a fraud, we see a distinctive necklace, which is hard evidence that a connection between Carlotta and Madeleine existed. This mystery has a logical explanation, of course, in fact, several logical explanations—which we’ll leave alone here.

I find it interesting that now, fifty years after the film’s release, America is mulling over its past—the 1960s, the Hanoi Hilton, the Weathermen, the civil rights movement, and assassinations (or threat of assassination), perhaps nowhere more particularly than in AMC’s series Mad Men, elements of which have been pegged by critics as Hitchcockian.

I should say “mulling over its past yet again,” since for such a young nation, America has an odd propensity for nostalgia. So here are other discontinuities, signs perhaps of the nation’s lightheadedness over the dizzying heights it reached over the last 100 years:

A war in Iraq that was conceived to “correct” an earlier war in Iraq.

A collapse of the world’s strongest economy in a shadow image of the Great Depression, a faltering of capitalism which, on paper, at least, could never happen again.

A nation’s election-year love affair with “hope,” “change,” and “country first,” while remaining hopelessly cynical, reactionary, and self-involved.

Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, descendants of the continent’s first European settlers, who may, like Carlotta Valdes, now hold the key to the future.

Allison Bricker

Have you ever really been a fan of something only to find out it is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, i.e. the classic bait and switch? My partner and I enjoyed watching the original Zeitgeist last year as it railed against the establishment, the Federal Reserve, and threw a critical eye to the origins of modern religion. We applauded what seemed to be a philosophy based in challenging the status quo.

This past Summer, while leaving a comment on a friend’s MySpace profile, I stumbled across the trailer for “Zeitgeist II: Addendum”.  The trailer indicated it would premiere on October 3rd, 2008 and as such I eagerly awaited its online release.  However, having researched further into the Zeitgeist website, its source material, and underlying philosophical motivations, this blogger is thoroughly convinced it is yet another finely crafted slick marketing piece advocating globalism.

The Zeitgeist homepage has a link beneath the Addendum place holder image, listed as
“-IMPORTANT REFERENCE SOURCES-”.  Clicking the link takes you to a page that states:

Note: We at Zeitgeistmovie.com promote the following “Zeitgeist: Addendum”
reference material because of our belief in the importance of the message. We
make absolutely no money off of sales.

Following their fervent non threatening statement of “belief in the message” the site then points viewers to “One of the Most Important Books you will ever read”, entitled “The Best that Money Can’t Buy” by, Jacque Fresco. Peter Joseph, director and producer of ZeitGeist I and II further reinforces his adamant support for the aforementioned book stating:

This book was a critical influence for Parts 3 and 4 of “ZeitGeist: Addendum”

Unfortunately, this book is nothing more than another half-ass attempt at “perfecting human society” through a “resource based economy”.  This same “goal” has been advocated relentlessly by the plutocratic oligarchs in their veiled attempt to market humanity oppression, disguised in benign gift wrapping.  This is the same ultimate goal as the failed “League of Nations” and its predecessor, “The United Nations” which also advocates, one world governed without borders for the benefit of humanity. (insert Kum-Ba-Yah chorus here).

Following the link to the “Venus Project”, one is taken to what looks like a Star Trek junkie’s bad acid trip, who is obviously stuck in some bizarre 1970’s science-fiction-midlife crisis.  Behind the gaudy rendering of future buildings, home, bridges etc, is the real bowl of crazy behind “The Venus Project”. Clicking on the Venus Project’s statement on a “Resource Based Economy”, one is greeted by the insidious goal of the group.  The 6th paragraph or setup, of the group’s statement, utterly contradicts subsequent paragraphs, stating:

We must emphasize that this approach to global governance has nothing whatever in common with the present aims of an elite to form a world government with themselves and large corporations at the helm, and the vast majority of the world’s population subservient to them. Our vision of globalization empowers each and every person on the planet to be the best they can be, not to live in abject subjugation to a corporate governing body.

However, just two paragraphs down, they state their philosophy’s mean to achieve its end:

At present, we have enough material resources to provide a very high standard of living for all of Earth’s inhabitants. Only when population exceeds the carrying capacity of the land do many problems such as greed, crime and violence emerge. By overcoming scarcity, most of the crimes and even the prisons of today’s society would no longer be necessary.

So since we as intellectual, intelligent, individuals, who do not live under rocks know; resources are already less than balanced for a population of 6.8 Billion and rising.

So how exactly does Mr. Jacque Fresco expect to “balance the carrying capacity of the land” and do away with prisons? Furthermore,  how is it any different than this Council on Foreign relations globalist asshole?

Or this statement from the United Nations 1994 International Conference on Population and Development:

Full Document

With these changes, the focus of United Nations population conferences shifted from expertise to policy. In the minds of donor governments and population activists, the main purpose of population conferences became, arguably, the effort to make governments more aware of their population problems and to encourage and assist them in lowering the birthrate.

So while I am all for getting rid of the Federal Reserve and the debt based economy, challenging those in power, questioning the origins of modern religions, abolishing the Income Tax, etcetera. My philosophy does not align with yet another example of elite statism, disguised by Peter Joseph and his movie as revolutionary.  My great hope is that there will be a second age of reason, whereby humanity regains its inherent rights and liberty by throwing off the oppressive hands of tyranny, not merely replacing one group of elitist plutocrats with another.

Don’t Tread on Me!

Source(s): ZeitgeistTheMovie.com - TheVenusProject.com -  United Nations: 1994 International Conference on Population and Development