The new documentary about Ralph Nader comes at a fortuitous time. As we begin the long slog toward the 2008 elections it is a good idea to look back at the last decade to understand how we got here. If we don't look both ways before we cross the next street we might just get steamrolled again.

The film An Unreasonable Man first of all has a wonderful website, I encourage you to visit it and explore. The first thing you will see is a quote that explains the title which I will reprint below:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903)

The quote certainly fits Nader and he is given plenty of on-screen time to show us why. We get flashbacks to his youth and the early years after law school when he made an enormous amount of progress and instilled change in this country. Of course that means he hit the corporate and weathy hornet's nest like a pinata. Just going over all of the consumer safety issues he confronted is astonishing and it is refreshing to see him get his due. From seat belts to cleaner air and food this man has left his mark and the list of things he did by the end of the 1970's is downright amazing. No one has done nearly as much in the last half of the 20th century as Nader, much of it with the help of dedicated students and volunteers.

Like all good things, the right-wing forces conspired to slow him down as much as possible. Of course just to show how some things are a constant the Democrats enabled the right to do this starting with the Carter era and it only got worse (didn't everything) under the Reagan era and beyond.

The film inevitably spends a fair amount of time on the 2000 election and I'm so glad it did. It gives the audience a chance to re-examine that race in light of all that has happened since and gives Nader a chance to explain his views while also consulting people on all sides of the issue. I had been one of those people who cried foul in the early years of the Bush era and blamed Nader for being a spoiler. The intervening years have only served to let me know that Nader was right because very few  Democrats (and absolutely no Republicans) address the issues I care most about and a 2nd textbook terrible Democratic candidacy in 2004 by Kerry served to tell us yet again that being Republican-lite is not an alternative, it's just another branch of a sick tree.

I encourage everyone to visit the website, view the trailer and see the film when it comes to your town. The release schedule is on the website too as the film is platformed around the country. To paraphrase the saying, if we don't learn from the mistakes of this country we will be doomed to repeat them. If we go down yet again, let us do it while standing for our true selves and not a facsimile.

cross posted at liberalstreetfighter.com

Where do I begin to tell the tale of this brilliant film? Alfonso Cuaron has fashioned an incredibly relevant tale from P.D. James' novel. It is the story of London 2027 but it is also the story of Earth 2007. We see the future here so we are warned, this is the world that we may very well be  shaping and it is a frightening thought.

Speaking of thought, that is exactly what James and Cuaron have put into this venture. Society is at a perilous juncture, not unlike today. Events are spiraling out of control and the government attempts to reign them in but at the same time governments are engineering the turbulence. They spend the rest of the time routing out illegal immigrants whose countries have imploded. Clive Owen and Julianne Moore star in this film and their performances are rendered with much care. That same care is matched by the collaboration of director Cuaron with his cinematographer Emmanuel Luzbecki, and it yeilds results.

There are so many motifs in this epic tale, from animals surrounding a futuristic St. Francis to the consistently bare feet of our protagonist. So much care has been instilled in this film that it is a symbolic wet dream. From shots of graffiti laden walls at a water filtration plant that echo primitive cave drawings to bolder allusions of a futuristic gitmo complete with Arab men in their underwear being terrorized by guards, dogs and guns to the archway above the camp that says 'homeland security' so unobstrusively that I missed it completely on the first viewing.

It is a tale of a future where rebellion is terrorism. Is that not where we are today? Cheney, Bush and the Neocons have now fashioned a country where the James Deans are just tortured bi-sexuals and where Rebellion=Terrorism. Wouldn't the Boston Tea Party today be just another terrorist act that disrupts commerce? We'll need more than graffiti to help us navigate the treacherous waters ahead. We have seen the future and the terrorists look very scary, but how many realize that we are looking in a mirror? Cuaron does and the fact that this film is being lauded by the critics and ignored by the Academy Awards should tell you all you need to know. There were few minutes of the last 30 that I could watch from eyes not filled with tears at the simple beauty that life can be.

The medium is the message. So much noise and all controlled by corporations who practice suppression of free speech. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a flat-out liberal on the Sunday talkfests? The very same people who were right that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction and that the Iraq invasion and Occupation was all from the Neocon/Thinktank playbook should be the very people the media turns to when looking for balance but that's irrelevant when there is no need for balance. That is why the Fairness Doctrine was repealed by Republicans under Reagan. Now someone is standing up and I want to applaud him. From Raw Story:

Concerns about monopolies and fears of a possible "fascist" takeover of the US media have prompted a Democratic congressman to push to restore the Fairness Doctrine, RAW STORY has learned.

 "Media reform is the most important issue confronting our democratic republic and the people of our country," Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) said at the Free Press National Media Reform Conference held in Memphis, Tennessee last weekend. "This is a critical moment in history that may determine the future of our country...maybe forever."

 Hinchey told RAW STORY he plans to reintroduce the Media Ownership Reform Act (MORA) that would break up media monopolies and restore the Fairness Doctrine, which was eliminated by the Federal Communications Commission under the Reagan administration.

 "If Rush shoots his mouth off, he must give equal access to our side," Hinchey said. "The American public will begin to get both sides or all sides of an issue. That is basic - fundamental to a democracy."

There are so few voices in the media speaking about impeachment and freedom of speech that just hearing Rosie O'Donnell on the View today was a cause for joy. Sadly there will be forces trying to make her pay a price for it. From all appearances even Lou Dobbs was cut off the air by ABC for answering her impeachment question.

Why is a film this good being dumped on the market in January? That was my thought leaving the film this week. Well, to be honest my original thought was "Why are they dumping this film in January when they might wrangle a nomination for Hillary Swank to promote the film" but then again I'm a cynical industry member. The reviews came out and were glowing so again I wondered "Why?".

I wish I had the answer to that besides an inept studio decision and an apathetic American public but the most important fact is that the film is indeed very good as the reviews will attest to. Writer/director Richard Lagravenese (Living Out Loud) has done a wonderful job bringing the life of Erin Gruwell to the screen. This is the story of a young teacher fresh out of school and her effort to make a difference with underprivileged students. The film starts with her first fumblings trying to reach them and her determination to find a way into their hearts and minds. A fantastic cast of young kids flesh out the roles of these students and you spend much of the film pulling for all of them to succeed.

Hillary Swank plays against type as a girl from a wealthy background who won't give up when confronted with adversity. She teaches that quality to those in her class as well as other lessons which had tears falling from my eyes. In a time when our country spends 1.2 Trillion dollars on an utterly failed war in Iraq while ignoring our own growing poor a story like this forces you to confront our faltering educational system. Can't the Bush Administration do anything right? We can't get body armor to our soldiers for 1.2 Trillion and we can't get our inner city school kids textbooks and a safe learning environment as well as a decent salary for our educators.

If you get a moment this weekend check this film out before it leaves the theaters. We should support this kind of film in the cinema and not just on DVD.

Here is the INFO:

Tell the New Congress:Act NOW to Bring the Troops Home!

There is a march on Washington, D.C., on Sat., January 27, to call on Congress to take immediate action to end the war. Please spread the word everywhere and consider joining if you can. The nation and media may finally take notice that there is a huge groundswell that wants change in this country and those in Congress better start listening. A million marchers would be a great start to a year of change.

It's about time a new film was released that talks about the woeful state of education in modern society. The History Boys is the film we've been waiting for. Eight young men and 3 teachers cross our paths and tell us so much about youth and learning and the state of education today and you would expect it to be heralded but alas it is not. Although The History Boys was celebrated in London and on Broadway, the film which should jolt larger audiences out of their slumber has hardly generated the rave reviews it deserves.

The film uses the original cast and has the benefit of Nicholas Hytner as a director, yet film reviewers didn't embrace this film properly and it's easy to see why. The critics have been watching too much television because they run away from the smaller theme that runs through it which is that sexuality is alive and well in our schools and they are frightened of it. The History Boys deals with knowledge as it is presented to our young, whether it is classical knowledge or the kind of teaching that earns one a place in higher education and not only does it well but challenges our concepts of what those things are. The radioactive part of the film deals with sexuality and it makes American audiences very uncomforable.

The students and the teachers here not only have dialogue but acknowledge the lure of physical as well as emotional exchanges between students and teachers. Who amongst us cannot remember being bored in grade school, high school or college with our minds occupied with our crushes on fellow students as well as  our teachers. The History Boys talks openly about all of those things, and because we have an all boys class we confront male sexuality in all its forms which is not only fascinating but some is also taboo.

The performances are stupendous, these actors honed their characters onstage from months to years perfecting their motivations and Alan Bennett's writing is remarkable. The marriage of these two with Hytner's direction are sublime. I heartily recommend this film for everyone. If you are looking for a provocative treatise on a myriad of subjects treated with humor and heart, The History Boys is the film for you.

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Well for starters we've now been in Iraq longer than we fought in WW2. From Yahoo:

As of Sunday, the conflict in Iraq has raged for three years and just over eight months.

Only the Vietnam War (eight years, five months), the Revolutionary War (six years, nine months), and the Civil War (four years), have engaged America longer.

Fighting in Afghanistan, which may or may not be a full-fledged war depending on who is keeping track, has gone on for five years, one month. It continues as the ousted Taliban resurges and the central government is challenged.

It looks like we're right on schedule to be involved in Iraq's Civil War longer than we were involved in our own, only 120 days or so before we break that record too. Sobering, no?

The new film Fast Food Nation covers quite a bit of ground but then it has alot on its mind. This new Richard Linklater ("Dazed and Confused", "Before Sunrise") film is based on the bestselling book of the same name which I hate to admit I haven't read.

Fast Food Nation is set in and around a meatpacking plant in Cody Colorado and the US border where many of the undocumented workers who toil there make their crossing. We view this meatpacking plant from stories by executives from a burger chain who get their meat there, the workers from the plant and employees of a single burger franchise. The interwoven stories cover a canvas of so many different things Americans should be considering: the treatment of animals, immigration, food safety, ecology, the Patriot Act and multi-national Corporations and their influence in America. It's pretty safe to say the Bush Administration, Congress and Corporate America will not embrace this film as it has much to say critically of their neglect of us.

This film plays and is shot in a cinema verite fashion but is scripted and not a documentary. An all-star cast featuring Bruce Willis, Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Greg Kinnear, Wilmer Valderama and Kris Kristofferson amongst others play these characters who interact one way or another with this meatpacking plant. I don't want to give too much away but Linklater weaves them in very cleverly to create a whole fabric of Americana at this moment in time. I recommend this film for anyone who cares about the issues involved as it is very well crafted and always intriguing.

Gay marriage comes to South Africa!

From the AP:

The South African parliament on Tuesday approved new legislation recognizing gay marriages -- a first for a continent where homosexuality is largely taboo.

The National Assembly passed the Civil Union Bill, worked out after months of heated public discussion, by a majority of 230 to 41 votes despite criticism from both traditionalists and gay activists and warnings that it might be unconsitutional. There were three abstentions.
 The bill provides for the "voluntary union of two persons, which is solemnized and registered by either a marriage or civil union." It does not specify whether they are heterosexual or homosexual partnerships.

What a shame that a country like the US still can't comes to terms with what is basically just human love between consenting adults. If only our newly elected Democratic Senators like Webb, Casey and Tester offered even a beacon of hope on the subject but they are just another crop of Neanderthals.

also posted at Liberal Streetfighter

The new film Borat starring Sacha Baron Cohen is flat out brilliant, and I mean highlight of the year kind of brilliant. This ribald satire of life in America circa 2006 is spot on and like a dog with a meaty new bone it never lets its subject out of its teeth for the entire running time.

The film begins with Borat nominally showing us his hometown and then leaves on a mission as a goodwill ambassador from Kazakhstan to the United States. Once he lands in New York the real fun begins. He dispenses with his original plan early on and leaves New York because California calls him. The journey by car (or should i say light truck) between these two places is the core of the film and it delivers both with laughs and shudders in equal proportions as we see Borat encountering all kinds of Americans, many who are quite frightening in their views.

Rarely has improvisation been used as incredibly well in film than Cohen and company. This device enables Cohen to go in fairly unscripted into people's everyday lives and interact with them. His subjects know they are on camera (and have no doubt signed something regarding their participation) but they use Americans love of "reality" to incredible advantage here and what is revealed is many times quite frightening about the psyche of our country.

Borat tackles misogyny, race, homophobia and anti-Semitism relentlessly and with hilarious results. I saw this film in a fairly gay audience and the howls were almost nonstop yet there were times when a collective gasp would ripple through as Americans said the most vicious things and intimated even worse about each other.

I don't want to give anything away per my usual loathing to give out spoilers and plot but suffice it to say that I heartily recommend this fantastic satire to any and all who want to be entertained thoroughly by a master. Mr. Cohen, along with the director Larry Charles have done a superb job. The fact that Borat and Talledega Nights are the two best satires of the year and both star Sacha Baron Cohen is no mere coincidence.

This article in today's NY Times made my Texan-born blood boil. Here's the main gist:

Peggy Lee Penley's marriage was going sour when she turned to her pastor. They had been friends for years and had started a Bible church together in Fort Worth. He was more than Ms. Penley's spiritual shepherd, also serving as a licensed professional counselor, and had helped her before.

But Ms. Penley says that after she confided her sexual relationship with another man and her plans for divorce, the pastor, C. L. Westbrook Jr., disclosed her "biblically inappropriate relationship" to church elders. Mr. Westbrook eventually informed the full congregation of the church, CrossLand Community Bible, she says, shaming her publicly and urging members to discipline her by shunning her.

This hideous man abused his position as pastor and confidante and now wants protection for his ethical wrongdoing. What's even worse is that the courts are on the whole refusing to get involved in such cases like these:

In Mississippi, the former wife of the governor sued her Episcopal priest and her church after learning that the priest had taped her admission of adultery for use against her in a custody case by her ex-husband. The case was dismissed.

 In Royal Oak, Mich., outside Detroit, a man who had left his church sued his pastor for revealing the confidence that he had been with prostitutes. That case was also dismissed.

Courts have had no trouble convicting religious figures of sexual misconduct, since the charges involve clearly secular actions that by their nature fall outside accepted religious practices.

Thank goodness these parishoners are refusing to lie down and be trampled by these faux-Christian wildebeasts. If we don't stop this and stop it soon, 5 years from now I'll be writing about the congregation that stoned a member and thinks they are immune from prosecution.

The terrific new documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated takes us into the murky world of American censorship. Not only is it murky because its critirea is so arbitrary but it is done entirely in secret, or at least it was until this film was released!

The director (the wonderful Kirby Dick) is on screen in the film as he hires a pair of detectives to find out who these people are and how they make their ratings. He and the detectives do a great job of finding out who these people are and Mr. Dick then weaves this in to other information he uncovers and puts it all into context. Why the secrecy?  It's because they have something to hide of course.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) run for decades by Jack Valenti is a group in the film industry with government ties that self-regulates supposedly so the government won't. This is really a joke because as it explained, if the government got involved there would be a judiciary branch to oversee abuses. As it is now there is no recourse if the MPAA gives your film an R or a NC-17. You can appeal but if you lose and get an NC-17 newspapers and television stations will not carry your ads so you have no way of reaching the masses. The same corporate entities that own the film industry also own much of that media.

Also important is that the media is now owned by 6 entities and their parent companies, they now literally own 90% of all mainstream media in the US. May I add yet again this is why we desperately need to bust media consolidation hard, we all lose with no competition and the power it gives these corporations is everything our Founding Fathers would weep over.
We learn so many things in the documentary, like who views and votes on the films and who sits on the appeals board. One of the most shocking is that there are 2 clergy members on the board and they vote even thought we are told officially that they don't (always an Episcopalian and a Catholic priest).  We also learn via the South Park co-creator Matt Stone that independent films are treated much worse than Studio films (he has done both) and we learn that it is sex and not violence that is censored. There are so many horrendous scenes of violence in PG, PG-13, R and NC-17 films but it is the sex that freaks these censors. They say that one is not considered worse than the other but Mr. Dick shows that sex is 75% of what is objected to and violence only 25%.

There are wonderful filmmakers from Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don't Cry) to John Waters as well as the actress Maria Bello who take their careers in their hands by talking on the record about their problems with the MPAA, the very board who will rate their next films. These brave people are to be applauded, in a time when people are afraid to speak out these people tell their stories.

A few former members of the ratings board speak out (although now they are made to sign something forbidding them from ever talking or writing about this, a true abuse of power in asking people to give up their first amendment rights). We find out there have not been any openly gay members of the ratings board and the director shows instances of gay sex in exactly the same form as straight sex side by side on screen, only the gay sex is always carries a stronger rating. Love is love and sex is sex but the ratings board thinks same sex is dirty or more objectionable (anyone sense the clergy here?). There are loads of film clips all throughout the film to illustrate and since many of these are explicit this documentary is given an NC-17!

Please check this film if it comes to your town and if it doesn't then look for it on DVD or cable. It's entertaining and incredibly informative. Here are a list of Theaters and Dates where the film will be playing.

The new documentary by Robert Greenwald "Iraq For Sale" starts off slowly but ends with a whallop. The film interviews a wide variety of people, from families of slain Americans, soldiers, as well as former private contractors of Halliburton. They speak of how the war profiteers have had a heyday like never before in the last 5 years. The website can be found HERE.

There are stories of how the contractors didn't protect their workers and they are harrowing. The stories are told by the families of those who died as well as former contractors who survived the attacks. These are just one drop in a massive bucket of the lives lost and ruined by this dreadful war.

The most hard-hitting facts in the documentary appear in the section where former Halliburton and KBR employees talk about the massive fraud that these companies perpetrated on the American people, and their stories will make your blood boil. They include stories of the company's managers driving $40,000 (and more) vehicles like Hummers and Escalades around the Kuwait compound, stories about trucks running empty in both directions in convoys to only feeding soldiers at select mealtimes because they are paid by the meal and not by the hour (this enabled them to be attacked during known mealtimes!). They accuse these companies of running up huge tabs under a system called Cost Plus that seem to give them unlimited freedom to spend.

The most moving part was the story of a man who is a  water purification specialist. He tells of finding no chlorine in water that the soldiers were bathing in every day. When he checked the water supply he found contamination in 63 out of 67 water sources. He breaks down in tears when he conveys that our soldiers were being exposed to malaria, typhus and he named several other things that sounded like parasites or worse. He wept as he said that soldiers would return to the US with these pathogens in their bloodstreams and would not even be aware of the danger they carry. I sat in shock listening to this. We'll hear about this in years to come as our veterans become ill like in Vietnam and the Gulf War.

I do have a few quibbles with the documentary. First it starts off with what seems like a trailer for the film with an appearance by Mr. Greenwald that I found a bit jarring, it should have been cut out or put at the end over the credits. Also they interview Chris Lehane and Janice Karpinsky, both of whom I could live without ever having to listen to again. The second half of the film is more interesting than the earlier part, usually in a documentary there is too much footage to edit but in this case I think they should have shot more. Mr. Greenwald's earlier films, "Outfoxed", "Wal-Mart" and "Uncovered" were stronger overall but this film still has alot to recommend.

Are you as sick as I am of the 24/7 "JonBenet non-story" coverage? Then it is a good time to scratch this surface and see what squirms underneath. There is a fantastic piece at Slate today. Here is a taste:

This story allows us to fulminate against trivial problems while ignoring huge problems close to home, meanwhile wallowing in self-righteous porn babble: We are able to use the half-clothed bodies of children as centerfolds while professing shock that anyone would so display them.

For kids really do not fare very well in our culture: Millions of children are, in fact, abused in unspeakable ways. Five hundred thousand kids every year are classified as "throwaways" (children whose parents or guardians will not let them live at home, as distinguished from "runaways"). As many as 800,000 are beaten horribly. Even more are subject to emotional abuse and neglect. How much attention do they get? Instead, we focus our attention, almost all of it, on stranger-danger: things like abductions, of which there are between 100 and 200 annually. Our carefully controlled outrage is generated for our own purposes, certainly not to protect the children.

Then we get to an all important fact that our society wants swept right under the rug:

And when kids are indeed abused, who is doing it? Mom and Dad and Uncle Ted and Aunt May. As little as 2 percent of child abuse is committed by strangers. Again, why are we exercised over JonBenet?

We know who the boogeyman is, he is us when we are talking about women and children. Most women are attacked by those they know, not strangers. Their muderers are most often their own husbands or boyfriends but this doesn't play well enough to the media who needs us in fear constantly. People are more easily swayed when they are afraid which is why corporations and our government wants us afraid. They are the ones trying to manipulate us, whether it is to by a new product or a government wanting more power and understanding that fear will be the mechanism by which people will hand it over to them.

Now that corporations own the media and there is little regulation as to how much they can own, a few of them are giving citizens the vast majority of what they ingest. Those same corporations give heartily to the Republican Party and their K Street representatives want more all the time. Right now Rove and the Administration want something, they want Iraq, Israel's dismal failure and Bush's fall from grace buried until the November elections and the JonBenet non-story is just the ticket. They are putting a mentally disturbed man front and center in an investigation that was full of holes from the get-go. My hunch is that the news organizations already know how weak the case is but push it loudly and we must begin to ask why.

There is every reason to believe that the corporate-owned media and their lobbyists want things from the government and right now there is something this Administration wants from them. If there is a deal made in hell being played out right now, it's best to be on the lookout for it and to me this situation is not passing the smell test.