This is a match made in hell. Cowboy vs. Mutants, and the cowboy comes out the winner.
X-Men: First Class might have been a good film, except the scriptwriters forgot the first rule of comic book adaptations: comic book worlds are not the real world. They should have dropped the stupid Cuban missile crisis plot line and invented a fictional mad scientist who holds the world hostage, ala James Bond. Instead, we get mutants in rubberized, bullet-proof, superhero suits clustered around a black-and-white TV watching old JFK speeches. Yech.
I’ll stick to the boy-on-boy wrestling between Professor X and Magneto. If you’re like me, you’ll be going to this movie to see James McAvoy in the aforementioned rubberized suit, but you’ll soon be asking yourself where did that glorious Michael Fassbender come from? This is his coming out party: other than a bit part in Inglourious Basterds, most people haven’t seen him before. Except maybe in Centurion before it went to DVD. (Note: must log into my Netflix account…)
That’s as close as you’ll get to seeing anything sexy in this film, however, because January Jones and Rose Byrne pull out all the stops in their battle for the Cardboard Cut-out crown. Jones is the winner by a lacquered blonde hair. Byrne, on the other hand, gets the award for Female Stick Figure. Somebody buy that girl a pizza.
You don’t go to see comic book films for the message, but usually there’s one struggling to dig itself out from beneath all the rubble left from the action scenes. X-Men pretends to have something to say about humanity and acceptance of people’s differences. Instead, it sends the message that living in the closet is the best, safest, and most humane thing to do. Yuck.
Buck, on the other hand, provides more than just a man in his chaps. It’s a documentary about Buck Brannaman, the cowboy who trains (not “breaks”) horses. Brannaman, who was rescued from an abusive family situation when he was a young boy, uses his past experiences with people to inform his relationships with animals. His message: if you want a big animal to respect you, you have to respect it…and violence has no place in that relationship.
The filmmakers follow Brannaman as he drives around the country teaching clinics to horse owners. They interview Brannaman, his wife and daughters, his step-mother, several of his friends and clients, the former town sheriff, and Robert Redford, who starred in The Horse Whisperer. And if they could have, they would have interviewed the horses, too, I’m sure.
Brannaman, it turns out, is a very entertaining guy. But he shares the stage with dozens of horses. And, even if they can’t speak, their body language communicates volumes about the kind of respect a person can win by being polite, firm, and nonviolent.
I recommend that you go see Buck; but take a pass on X-Men: First Class, unless you’re dying to see Magneto lift a nuclear submarine ass-first out of the ocean. (Damn, I wish I could do that!)
Monday, June 27, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Why Does Greece Matter?
If you read or watch the news much, you’ve seen news reports about problems with Greece’s economy and its debt. Greece can’t pay back its lenders, and somehow that’s a disaster for the world’s economy. But Greece is a small country, right? How can its problems possibly bring down the whole of Europe and threaten the US economy, too?
Welcome to a world of massively increased bank profits based on hugely magnified risk.
Greece’s debts are not terribly big; for example, French and German banks (its biggest lenders) hold about $90 billion in Greek debt. That’s less than the US spent on the war in Afghanistan last year. For a small country that’s a lot of money, but for the global financial system, it’s peanuts.
So why can’t European banks restructure the debt and give Greece more time to pay off its loans? Answer: healthy banks could do this, but European banks are not healthy. They lack the capital to cover the lost income from Greece’s regular debt payments. European banks are structured the same way US banks are: loans have been used as capital to support making further loans. In accounting terms, banks have treated their loans as tangible assets instead of the intangible assets that they truly are.
That’s common practice in the worldwide banking industry, and most of the negotiation over new reform rules for banks is about what banks should consider “capital” and how much capital banks should have on their books vs. how much money they can lend out. Regulators want banks to stop considering loans as capital, and they think banks should hold more cash as capital. The strictest regulators want banks to hold 14% of all their assets in cash (capital) to offset losses on loans. The banks are holding out for 7% or less, and are arguing about what should be considered “capital.”
Why are the banks fighting against a regulation that would help to stabilize the banking industry and avoid a situation where the collapse of a small country’s economy could threaten the health of their entire industry? Answer: profits.
The more loans a bank can make, the more income it generates. Requiring banks to sit on piles of cash and stop using loans as capital would severely cut down on the amount of loans banks can make, thereby reducing the banks’ income. Huge bank profits mean huge bonuses for bankers and big profits for shareholders. Financial industry stocks have driven much of the growth on Wall Street in the past 15 years.
Okay, so French and German banks would be in trouble. Big deal, right? Why should the US and other countries care about a few foreign banks? If they fold, then that means more business for our banks, right? Wrong. The global financial industry is interconnected. One bank failure can lead to massive problems for all other banks. Think back a few years ago to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and you’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about. The collapse of one bank sent a shockwave through the worldwide banking sector. It led to the near demise of AIG and forced the merger of several large US banks in order to avoid another Lehman Brothers. The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the banking system both in the US and abroad; in fact, the Federal Reserve loaned more money through its discount window to foreign banks than it did to US banks.
But haven’t things changed since then? Well, no. If anything, things are more precarious now. The big banks are even bigger, having swallowed up several of their large competitors and many mid-size banks, too (and taken on bigger debt loads in the process). The Dodd/Frank bill that was supposed to bring real reform to Wall Street contained only a vague restructuring of the regulatory agencies, while leaving the details of new reforms to those agencies to work out. Wall Street and the Republicans in Congress have fought against every change that the regulatory agencies have tried to make, and been extremely successful at stopping any meaningful reforms.
As a consequence, US exposure to Greece’s debt problems may be higher than anyone knows. The US market for derivatives is probably the largest in the world, although no one knows for sure because derivatives are still the unregulated Wild West of the financial world—traded privately, with no reporting to the SEC. In the year since Greece’s troubles first came to light, European banks have probably purchased huge numbers of credit default swaps to insure their investments in Greek debt. In other words, if Greece defaults, US banks may have to make payments on those credit default swaps to European banks. This is what brought AIG to the brink and, while Greece is not as big a problem as the AIG mess was, nobody really knows how big a mess it is, and that’s enough to scare everybody.
Credit default swaps are another risky way that banks boost their profits. But US banks aren’t the only ones with exposure to Greece. US money market funds buy a lot of short-term debt of other financial industry players, and foreign bank debt is particularly popular. Spooked by the 2008 collapse on Wall Street, many investors are keeping their savings in money market funds, which in turn have to hunt for enough short-term debt to buy to ensure a small income for investors. It’s not clear that these funds could sell off their European bank debt even if they wanted to. With record cash inflows and investors demanding safe and steady returns, and with an economic downturn that’s stifled public works projects around the world, where else could money market funds go to buy “safe” debt?
So the pressure on the Greek government is enormous. Twenty or thirty years ago it would have been routine for lenders to refinance or restructure a nation’s debt, as so many developing countries did during the 1980’s and 1990’s. But now the only solution is to force the Greek populace to absorb tax increases, job cuts, wage cuts, cuts in social services, and a sell-off of public assets. These austerity measures were used in the 1980’s and 1990’s, too, but never during a worldwide recession and under conditions that make it impossible for Greece to increase exports to help stimulate it moribund economy.
The global banking industry, because if its own greed, now has to squeeze blood from a stone. From here on, the choices are simple, but stark: Greece will either become the poorest nation in Europe, destabilized by riots and a crippling collapse of its economy, or the banks will have to restructure Greece’s debt. If the banks give in, then maybe the financial ripples will be small. But don’t bet on it, because Greece is not alone: Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Spain, and even Italy are also in trouble because of their debts.
So things are not looking good for Greece. Unfortunately, the political and social turmoil there may get a whole lot worse. Political leaders may find out that allowing banks to operate without any oversight can lead to severe political repercussions, ones they never expected.
Welcome to a world of massively increased bank profits based on hugely magnified risk.
Greece’s debts are not terribly big; for example, French and German banks (its biggest lenders) hold about $90 billion in Greek debt. That’s less than the US spent on the war in Afghanistan last year. For a small country that’s a lot of money, but for the global financial system, it’s peanuts.
So why can’t European banks restructure the debt and give Greece more time to pay off its loans? Answer: healthy banks could do this, but European banks are not healthy. They lack the capital to cover the lost income from Greece’s regular debt payments. European banks are structured the same way US banks are: loans have been used as capital to support making further loans. In accounting terms, banks have treated their loans as tangible assets instead of the intangible assets that they truly are.
That’s common practice in the worldwide banking industry, and most of the negotiation over new reform rules for banks is about what banks should consider “capital” and how much capital banks should have on their books vs. how much money they can lend out. Regulators want banks to stop considering loans as capital, and they think banks should hold more cash as capital. The strictest regulators want banks to hold 14% of all their assets in cash (capital) to offset losses on loans. The banks are holding out for 7% or less, and are arguing about what should be considered “capital.”
Why are the banks fighting against a regulation that would help to stabilize the banking industry and avoid a situation where the collapse of a small country’s economy could threaten the health of their entire industry? Answer: profits.
The more loans a bank can make, the more income it generates. Requiring banks to sit on piles of cash and stop using loans as capital would severely cut down on the amount of loans banks can make, thereby reducing the banks’ income. Huge bank profits mean huge bonuses for bankers and big profits for shareholders. Financial industry stocks have driven much of the growth on Wall Street in the past 15 years.
Okay, so French and German banks would be in trouble. Big deal, right? Why should the US and other countries care about a few foreign banks? If they fold, then that means more business for our banks, right? Wrong. The global financial industry is interconnected. One bank failure can lead to massive problems for all other banks. Think back a few years ago to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and you’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about. The collapse of one bank sent a shockwave through the worldwide banking sector. It led to the near demise of AIG and forced the merger of several large US banks in order to avoid another Lehman Brothers. The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the banking system both in the US and abroad; in fact, the Federal Reserve loaned more money through its discount window to foreign banks than it did to US banks.
But haven’t things changed since then? Well, no. If anything, things are more precarious now. The big banks are even bigger, having swallowed up several of their large competitors and many mid-size banks, too (and taken on bigger debt loads in the process). The Dodd/Frank bill that was supposed to bring real reform to Wall Street contained only a vague restructuring of the regulatory agencies, while leaving the details of new reforms to those agencies to work out. Wall Street and the Republicans in Congress have fought against every change that the regulatory agencies have tried to make, and been extremely successful at stopping any meaningful reforms.
As a consequence, US exposure to Greece’s debt problems may be higher than anyone knows. The US market for derivatives is probably the largest in the world, although no one knows for sure because derivatives are still the unregulated Wild West of the financial world—traded privately, with no reporting to the SEC. In the year since Greece’s troubles first came to light, European banks have probably purchased huge numbers of credit default swaps to insure their investments in Greek debt. In other words, if Greece defaults, US banks may have to make payments on those credit default swaps to European banks. This is what brought AIG to the brink and, while Greece is not as big a problem as the AIG mess was, nobody really knows how big a mess it is, and that’s enough to scare everybody.
Credit default swaps are another risky way that banks boost their profits. But US banks aren’t the only ones with exposure to Greece. US money market funds buy a lot of short-term debt of other financial industry players, and foreign bank debt is particularly popular. Spooked by the 2008 collapse on Wall Street, many investors are keeping their savings in money market funds, which in turn have to hunt for enough short-term debt to buy to ensure a small income for investors. It’s not clear that these funds could sell off their European bank debt even if they wanted to. With record cash inflows and investors demanding safe and steady returns, and with an economic downturn that’s stifled public works projects around the world, where else could money market funds go to buy “safe” debt?
So the pressure on the Greek government is enormous. Twenty or thirty years ago it would have been routine for lenders to refinance or restructure a nation’s debt, as so many developing countries did during the 1980’s and 1990’s. But now the only solution is to force the Greek populace to absorb tax increases, job cuts, wage cuts, cuts in social services, and a sell-off of public assets. These austerity measures were used in the 1980’s and 1990’s, too, but never during a worldwide recession and under conditions that make it impossible for Greece to increase exports to help stimulate it moribund economy.
The global banking industry, because if its own greed, now has to squeeze blood from a stone. From here on, the choices are simple, but stark: Greece will either become the poorest nation in Europe, destabilized by riots and a crippling collapse of its economy, or the banks will have to restructure Greece’s debt. If the banks give in, then maybe the financial ripples will be small. But don’t bet on it, because Greece is not alone: Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Spain, and even Italy are also in trouble because of their debts.
So things are not looking good for Greece. Unfortunately, the political and social turmoil there may get a whole lot worse. Political leaders may find out that allowing banks to operate without any oversight can lead to severe political repercussions, ones they never expected.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Improvements at Metro? We'll See!
No more empty Metro buses running to the ‘burbs! Metro may end the 40/40/20 rule.
The King County Council’s transportation committee voted last week to change the way Metro allocates bus service. In the past, Metro used a 40/40/20 ratio to allocate new bus service: 40% would go to south county routes, 40% would go to east county routes, and the remaining 20% would go to routes inside the city of Seattle (even though the vast majority of bus riders live inside the city). The 40/40/20 rule was a compromise with the conservative members of the county council who didn’t want to fund new bus service unless their constituents in the suburbs and rural areas of the county got the majority of new routes.
But in the last two years, as Metro has struggled to provide funding for basic bus service in the face of an economic downturn, the 40/40/20 rule has proven to be a huge liability and a system-breaker. Last year Metro had to balance its budget by cutting 75,000 hours of service. The cuts were spread evenly across the system, based not on ridership or demand, but on the service hours on each route. The in-city routes, which had received only 20% of new service hours in the past decade, were forced to take 60% of all the cuts last year, leaving a lot of Seattleites and north-county riders standing at their stops while full buses passed them by.
Last year, an advisory group recommended that Metro transit do away with the 40/40/20 rule. The county council is finally on the way to making that a reality. The full council will vote on new allocation criteria within the next few weeks. Under the proposed new rules, service levels will be based on the number of households on each route, the number of jobs in a given area, the number of low-income households on each route (as lower income folks tend to use the bus more than wealthy folks do), and the location of natural “growth hubs” (for example, major employers, like Microsoft or the University of Washington, or major retail areas, like the Northgate Mall, Bellevue Square, or Southcenter.)
Under the new rules, Metro expects that only 1% of its bus service will shift to in-city routes, which doesn’t match the expectations of most in-city riders I’ve talked to. Nor is it a cure for Metro’s worst problems: its growing budget shortfalls and its worsening on-time record.
Crowded buses are one thing. Buses that run chronically late (when they bother to show up at all) is another. Metro’s on-time record for its in-city routes has become abysmal. There is no excuse for making passengers stand for more than half an hour in the downtown bus tunnel at 7 pm waiting for a bus to the University District; yet this is becoming a common occurrence--and these are the most frequently travelled routes in the entire system. It’s also common to stand in the bus tunnel for long periods of time (20 to 40 minutes) with no buses arriving at all, but plenty of empty light-rail trains at seven minute intervals.
Even worse are the drivers who are routinely early and who suffer no consequences for it. I recently flagged down a #67 bus that was speeding by a stop a full ten minutes early. The driver shrugged his shoulders and said: “those times are just estimates.” Well, no. They're not, at least not for the rider. We expect the bus to be on-time when we’re standing outside in the rain in 40-degree weather. Ten minutes late is okay, but ten minutes early? Never!
The main cause of Metro’s on-time problem is simple: Metro recently shortened drivers’ layover times at the end of each route. Now drivers have every incentive to zoom through their routes early; otherwise, they barely get a bathroom break before they have to begin their next route. This is a prescription for a chronic on-time problem. Extending driver’s break times, of course, would cost money which Metro doesn’t have.
The King County Council is currently looking at a proposal for a $20 car tab fee to fund Metro transit. But for the proposal to pass the council, it would need a supermajority of 6 out of 9 council members to vote for it. Four of the most conservative council members have already said they’ll vote it down. Alternatively, the council could vote with a simple majority (5 to 4) to put the tab fee on the ballot for voters to decide in November. They should do this as soon as possible, so transit advocates have time to gear up a campaign in support of the ballot measure.
Without that funding, Metro will have to cut 200,000 service hours next year in order to plug the hole in its budget. The bus system is already in trouble; a cut of 200,000 hours could cause one of the nation’s largest and most reliable transit systems to collapse.
The King County Council’s transportation committee voted last week to change the way Metro allocates bus service. In the past, Metro used a 40/40/20 ratio to allocate new bus service: 40% would go to south county routes, 40% would go to east county routes, and the remaining 20% would go to routes inside the city of Seattle (even though the vast majority of bus riders live inside the city). The 40/40/20 rule was a compromise with the conservative members of the county council who didn’t want to fund new bus service unless their constituents in the suburbs and rural areas of the county got the majority of new routes.
But in the last two years, as Metro has struggled to provide funding for basic bus service in the face of an economic downturn, the 40/40/20 rule has proven to be a huge liability and a system-breaker. Last year Metro had to balance its budget by cutting 75,000 hours of service. The cuts were spread evenly across the system, based not on ridership or demand, but on the service hours on each route. The in-city routes, which had received only 20% of new service hours in the past decade, were forced to take 60% of all the cuts last year, leaving a lot of Seattleites and north-county riders standing at their stops while full buses passed them by.
Last year, an advisory group recommended that Metro transit do away with the 40/40/20 rule. The county council is finally on the way to making that a reality. The full council will vote on new allocation criteria within the next few weeks. Under the proposed new rules, service levels will be based on the number of households on each route, the number of jobs in a given area, the number of low-income households on each route (as lower income folks tend to use the bus more than wealthy folks do), and the location of natural “growth hubs” (for example, major employers, like Microsoft or the University of Washington, or major retail areas, like the Northgate Mall, Bellevue Square, or Southcenter.)
Under the new rules, Metro expects that only 1% of its bus service will shift to in-city routes, which doesn’t match the expectations of most in-city riders I’ve talked to. Nor is it a cure for Metro’s worst problems: its growing budget shortfalls and its worsening on-time record.
Crowded buses are one thing. Buses that run chronically late (when they bother to show up at all) is another. Metro’s on-time record for its in-city routes has become abysmal. There is no excuse for making passengers stand for more than half an hour in the downtown bus tunnel at 7 pm waiting for a bus to the University District; yet this is becoming a common occurrence--and these are the most frequently travelled routes in the entire system. It’s also common to stand in the bus tunnel for long periods of time (20 to 40 minutes) with no buses arriving at all, but plenty of empty light-rail trains at seven minute intervals.
Even worse are the drivers who are routinely early and who suffer no consequences for it. I recently flagged down a #67 bus that was speeding by a stop a full ten minutes early. The driver shrugged his shoulders and said: “those times are just estimates.” Well, no. They're not, at least not for the rider. We expect the bus to be on-time when we’re standing outside in the rain in 40-degree weather. Ten minutes late is okay, but ten minutes early? Never!
The main cause of Metro’s on-time problem is simple: Metro recently shortened drivers’ layover times at the end of each route. Now drivers have every incentive to zoom through their routes early; otherwise, they barely get a bathroom break before they have to begin their next route. This is a prescription for a chronic on-time problem. Extending driver’s break times, of course, would cost money which Metro doesn’t have.
The King County Council is currently looking at a proposal for a $20 car tab fee to fund Metro transit. But for the proposal to pass the council, it would need a supermajority of 6 out of 9 council members to vote for it. Four of the most conservative council members have already said they’ll vote it down. Alternatively, the council could vote with a simple majority (5 to 4) to put the tab fee on the ballot for voters to decide in November. They should do this as soon as possible, so transit advocates have time to gear up a campaign in support of the ballot measure.
Without that funding, Metro will have to cut 200,000 service hours next year in order to plug the hole in its budget. The bus system is already in trouble; a cut of 200,000 hours could cause one of the nation’s largest and most reliable transit systems to collapse.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
My Favorite Films at SIFF 2011
Here’s a list of the best films that I saw at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival:
Documentaries:
How to Die in Oregon (directed by Peter Richardson) – Oregon’s Death With Dignity law has been in force for a while now, and Richardson wanted to find out who is using it and why. The film is a finely crafted, humane, and hopeful examination of a subject that no one wants to think about until it happens to them or someone they love: if you’re nearing the end of your life and the pain becomes too much to manage, what do you do? This was, hands down, the best documentary that I saw at this year’s festival. It will have a repeat showing as part of The Best of SIFF program at the SIFF Cinema (in the Seattle Center) on Sunday, June 19, 2011, at 1 pm.
The Interrupters (directed by Steve James) – My second favorite documentary this year is about a group of Chicagoans, many of whom are former gang members, who are working to decrease the number of shootings and related gang violence in poor neighborhoods of Chicago. They call themselves “violence interrupters,” and this film follows them around as they do their jobs. It’s a long documentary (over 2 hours), but each story is important and complex, just like real life.
My other favorite documentaries, in no particular order, are:
Mama Africa – a film directed by Mika Kaurismaki, one of the Finnish Kaurismaki brothers (Aki is the better known brother here in the US, and his film Match Factory Girl is a must-see). Mama Africa pieces together the story of South African singer Miriam Makeba, who was exiled from her home country for her anti-apartheid activism. She came to the US to pursue her career in the early 1960’s, but was blacklisted after marrying Black Panther spokesman Stokely Carmichael. Then the two of them moved to Africa, where she proceeded to have a long and illustrious career singing (and teaching) African music in numerous native languages. Add to that her incredible voice and some great concert footage, and you have a thoroughly enjoyable film.
Project Nim (directed by James Marsh) – It was the Sixties, so why not adopt a chimpanzee into your family? This film follows the fortunes of the first chimpanzee to be raised like a human baby, as part of an experiment to try and teach an animal human language (and, almost coincidentally, human culture). In the process, it also reveals the shocking treatment of animal test subjects in laboratories. After watching Nim frolic with his human brothers and sisters and hang out with his 20-something friends at a university laboratory, it’s difficult to watch him get sold off to a medical laboratory. Will Nim be rescued? What happens to the other chimpanzees who were sold along with him? Watch the film and find out.
Revenge of the Electric Car (directed by Chris Paine) – A follow up to Paine’s very popular film Who Killed the Electric Car, this documentary will probably also get a wide release. It’s slicker than its predecessor, with a bigger budget and a lot more access to the movers and shakers in the auto industry. That access shows in the tone the film takes: it unquestioningly portrays all efforts to build an electric vehicle, whether it’s Tesla Motors’ fits and starts, Nissan’s drive to be the first with a vehicle on the market, GM’s new Volt, or some random guy in a battered warehouse converting gasoline cars into EV’s. I suppose you could call that being objective or comprehensive. But I couldn’t help thinking, “Why all this fuss about the personal automobile, when we should be trying to get more people out of their cars and into mass transit?” Still, this a great film for your car-loving, beer drinking buddies; take a few to see this (when it gets wide release) and have a good argument afterwards.
Best documentaries I didn’t get to see:
At the top of this list is If a Tree Falls (directed by Marshall Curry), a documentary about the Earth Liberation Front. I had a ticket to see it, but the film was cancelled by a twitchy theater manager who thought there might be a bomb in the building (there wasn’t). Shame on SIFF for sending 90% of the audience home, then continuing the screening for an audience of only 20 people, and then not giving one of its “to be announced” slots to it so it could be shown again in Seattle. (It screened in Everett, but who’s gonna go all that way to see one film?) Fortunately, it will be showing again in Seattle sometime in July.
Another documentary that deserves a wide release is the film that won the Grand Jury Prize at SIFF for best documentary, Hot Coffee (directed by Susan Saladoff). Also, animal lovers and nonviolence activists should see a great little film entitled Buck (directed by Cindy Meehl) about Buck Brannaman, who trains horses (not breaks them) and trains people how to get along with, and communicate with, their horses.
Feature Films:
I love a good feature film, but there has to be a theme or message that resonates with me. My favorite this year was the following:
King of Devil’s Island (directed by Marius Holst, in Norwegian with subtitles) – A prison for boys on a rock off the coast of Norway is the setting for this historical film that examines how young people choose to resist abusive power, and the consequences. This powerful film will have another showing at The Best of SIFF at the SIFF Cinema on Sunday, June 19, 2011, at 8 pm. I highly recommend that you see it.
There were four other feature films I enjoyed, in no particular order:
Route Irish (in working class British English, so you should turn on the subtitles) – one of Ken Loach’s better films about a security contractor returning from Iraq who investigates a cover-up surrounding the death of his best friend.
All Your Dead Ones (directed by Carlos Moreno, in Spanish with subtitles) – Shot in the director’s home province of Cali, Colombia, this black comedy is about a simple farmer who finds a pile of bodies in his cornfield, but can’t get the local officials to do anything about it because it’s Election Day. Sounds a little like here, doesn’t it? This film hasn’t been shown in Colombia yet, but (gulp) the director wants it to be. My fingers are crossed.
The Names of Love (directed by Michal LeClerc, in French with subtitles) – Sexy, French, funny, leftist Characters who can laugh at the themselves. What more do you need for a fun film experience?
Maybe a little chaos and a lot of sound? Sound of Noise (directed by Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjarne Nilsson, in Swedish with subtitles) subverts the musical genre by supplying an entertaining film about experimental music. One scene of tuxedoed and diamond-clad audience members fleeing a concert hall reminded me of a recent Seattle Symphony audience’s tepid reaction to a fantastic program of modern music at Benaroya Hall. As one of the movie’s heroes puts it: “You have to forgive them. Music is all they know.”
I urge everyone to check out SIFF’s Best of SIFF program this coming weekend. You can find more info at www.siff.net.
Documentaries:
How to Die in Oregon (directed by Peter Richardson) – Oregon’s Death With Dignity law has been in force for a while now, and Richardson wanted to find out who is using it and why. The film is a finely crafted, humane, and hopeful examination of a subject that no one wants to think about until it happens to them or someone they love: if you’re nearing the end of your life and the pain becomes too much to manage, what do you do? This was, hands down, the best documentary that I saw at this year’s festival. It will have a repeat showing as part of The Best of SIFF program at the SIFF Cinema (in the Seattle Center) on Sunday, June 19, 2011, at 1 pm.
The Interrupters (directed by Steve James) – My second favorite documentary this year is about a group of Chicagoans, many of whom are former gang members, who are working to decrease the number of shootings and related gang violence in poor neighborhoods of Chicago. They call themselves “violence interrupters,” and this film follows them around as they do their jobs. It’s a long documentary (over 2 hours), but each story is important and complex, just like real life.
My other favorite documentaries, in no particular order, are:
Mama Africa – a film directed by Mika Kaurismaki, one of the Finnish Kaurismaki brothers (Aki is the better known brother here in the US, and his film Match Factory Girl is a must-see). Mama Africa pieces together the story of South African singer Miriam Makeba, who was exiled from her home country for her anti-apartheid activism. She came to the US to pursue her career in the early 1960’s, but was blacklisted after marrying Black Panther spokesman Stokely Carmichael. Then the two of them moved to Africa, where she proceeded to have a long and illustrious career singing (and teaching) African music in numerous native languages. Add to that her incredible voice and some great concert footage, and you have a thoroughly enjoyable film.
Project Nim (directed by James Marsh) – It was the Sixties, so why not adopt a chimpanzee into your family? This film follows the fortunes of the first chimpanzee to be raised like a human baby, as part of an experiment to try and teach an animal human language (and, almost coincidentally, human culture). In the process, it also reveals the shocking treatment of animal test subjects in laboratories. After watching Nim frolic with his human brothers and sisters and hang out with his 20-something friends at a university laboratory, it’s difficult to watch him get sold off to a medical laboratory. Will Nim be rescued? What happens to the other chimpanzees who were sold along with him? Watch the film and find out.
Revenge of the Electric Car (directed by Chris Paine) – A follow up to Paine’s very popular film Who Killed the Electric Car, this documentary will probably also get a wide release. It’s slicker than its predecessor, with a bigger budget and a lot more access to the movers and shakers in the auto industry. That access shows in the tone the film takes: it unquestioningly portrays all efforts to build an electric vehicle, whether it’s Tesla Motors’ fits and starts, Nissan’s drive to be the first with a vehicle on the market, GM’s new Volt, or some random guy in a battered warehouse converting gasoline cars into EV’s. I suppose you could call that being objective or comprehensive. But I couldn’t help thinking, “Why all this fuss about the personal automobile, when we should be trying to get more people out of their cars and into mass transit?” Still, this a great film for your car-loving, beer drinking buddies; take a few to see this (when it gets wide release) and have a good argument afterwards.
Best documentaries I didn’t get to see:
At the top of this list is If a Tree Falls (directed by Marshall Curry), a documentary about the Earth Liberation Front. I had a ticket to see it, but the film was cancelled by a twitchy theater manager who thought there might be a bomb in the building (there wasn’t). Shame on SIFF for sending 90% of the audience home, then continuing the screening for an audience of only 20 people, and then not giving one of its “to be announced” slots to it so it could be shown again in Seattle. (It screened in Everett, but who’s gonna go all that way to see one film?) Fortunately, it will be showing again in Seattle sometime in July.
Another documentary that deserves a wide release is the film that won the Grand Jury Prize at SIFF for best documentary, Hot Coffee (directed by Susan Saladoff). Also, animal lovers and nonviolence activists should see a great little film entitled Buck (directed by Cindy Meehl) about Buck Brannaman, who trains horses (not breaks them) and trains people how to get along with, and communicate with, their horses.
Feature Films:
I love a good feature film, but there has to be a theme or message that resonates with me. My favorite this year was the following:
King of Devil’s Island (directed by Marius Holst, in Norwegian with subtitles) – A prison for boys on a rock off the coast of Norway is the setting for this historical film that examines how young people choose to resist abusive power, and the consequences. This powerful film will have another showing at The Best of SIFF at the SIFF Cinema on Sunday, June 19, 2011, at 8 pm. I highly recommend that you see it.
There were four other feature films I enjoyed, in no particular order:
Route Irish (in working class British English, so you should turn on the subtitles) – one of Ken Loach’s better films about a security contractor returning from Iraq who investigates a cover-up surrounding the death of his best friend.
All Your Dead Ones (directed by Carlos Moreno, in Spanish with subtitles) – Shot in the director’s home province of Cali, Colombia, this black comedy is about a simple farmer who finds a pile of bodies in his cornfield, but can’t get the local officials to do anything about it because it’s Election Day. Sounds a little like here, doesn’t it? This film hasn’t been shown in Colombia yet, but (gulp) the director wants it to be. My fingers are crossed.
The Names of Love (directed by Michal LeClerc, in French with subtitles) – Sexy, French, funny, leftist Characters who can laugh at the themselves. What more do you need for a fun film experience?
Maybe a little chaos and a lot of sound? Sound of Noise (directed by Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjarne Nilsson, in Swedish with subtitles) subverts the musical genre by supplying an entertaining film about experimental music. One scene of tuxedoed and diamond-clad audience members fleeing a concert hall reminded me of a recent Seattle Symphony audience’s tepid reaction to a fantastic program of modern music at Benaroya Hall. As one of the movie’s heroes puts it: “You have to forgive them. Music is all they know.”
I urge everyone to check out SIFF’s Best of SIFF program this coming weekend. You can find more info at www.siff.net.
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