Category Archives: The Morgue

Boyhood

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Boyhood, Ethan Hawke

Ellar Coltrane & Ethan Hawke in Boyhood

Probably every American interested in film saw Boyhood (trailer) long before I did last week, but somehow I missed it in theaters and, as Boyhood emphasizes, time passes . . . ! From the beginning, the idea of a film following the same actors over a protracted period was both interesting and risk-laden. What if some calamity or professional conflict overrode the cast’s ability to continue? I wonder whether director Richard Linklater cast his daughter Lorelei in the film as a partial insurance policy against that eventuality? She plays as the main character’s annoying older sister Samantha. Quite nicely, too.

Cast intact, filming proceeded off and on for a dozen years, following Mason Evans, Jr. (played by Ellar Coltrane), from ages six to eighteen, and the continuity of characters across situations, levels of maturity, and the ups and downs of life makes for a compelling narrative concept. All the main parts are well acted, including the kids, the parents (Ethan Hawke and Academy Award-winner Patricia Arquette), and the mother’s problematic husbands. The script grew organically, evolving based on what went before (like life), as well as on experiences in the real lives of the actors.

Ethan Hawke, who plays Mason’s biological father, is a person of local interest, having grown up about a mile from where I live. (A few local junior high girls helped answer his fan mail in the early years.) The stage was set for this feat of filmic time travel in Linklater’s Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight trilogy, in which Hawke also starred, and he calls this latest film “human time-lapse photography.”

While many wonderful things can be said about the slow unfolding of personality that the movie conveys, to me it was about a half-hour too long (at 2 hours, 45 minutes), perhaps because I felt insufficiently engaged with the characters at any age. Having shot footage at all these different ages and stages, it’s as if the filmmakers felt obliged to use more of it than they absolutely had to.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 98%; audience rating: 83%.

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NSA Chief Speaks in Princeton

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Mike Rogers, NSA, military

Adm. Mike Rogers (photo: wikipedia)

Admiral Mike Rogers—Director, National Security Agency, and Commander, U.S. Cyber Command (the military’s centralized operational command for cyberspace operations)—spoke at Princeton University yesterday, part of an ongoing effort to establish greater understanding of the NSA mission and encourage private sector partnerships .

He kept his own remarks short, describing the missions of the two agencies he heads, in order to maximize time for audience questions. A key challenge he noted is assuring that efforts to manage the nation’s cyber-threats and foreign intelligence-gathering are appropriately balanced against “the inherent right to privacy” of the American people. In the late 1960s and early 1970s (the Watergate era), revelations of government spying on U.S. citizens led to two new mechanisms for privacy protection: FISA courts (authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) and congressional oversight. Unfortunately, Rogers said, the public has lost confidence in both those approaches at a time when threats have rapidly escalated.

“Would we even be having this conversation if it weren’t for the whistleblowers?” an audience member asked.

Rogers responded, “I don’t know any whistleblowers. I only know of thieves who stole government information.” He went on to say that he wished he had that information back, because the loss of it has imperiled troops overseas and many other individuals and activities, as well as entailed considerable costs. He tells his staff that, if they see any information or process of gathering it that they consider illegal, immoral, or unethical, they should raise it within the chain of command, and it isn’t up to each individual person to pick and choose which laws to obey.

In deciding how to respond to a cyber-attack, his command uses the same principle of proportionality that the military does in general. The exact means of retaliation is a policy decision, not his alone. In North Korea’s hacking attack against Sony last November, for example, he urged the President to “think more broadly,” beyond just cyber-methods, and the U.S. government response to date includes economic sanctions against Pyongyang.

A questioner asked what happens when information amassed on foreigners includes information about Americans (“incidental” information). Rogers wouldn’t speak to whether the FBI or CIA access such information but said the NSA treats it differently, as to whether and how long it is kept, than it does information on foreigners.

Another controversy raised was the NSA’s practice of bulk data storage. Rogers said that at least some bulk data storage is necessary because the agency does not know now what may be useful down the road. There are limits on how long information is retained, but these are currently “more of an art than a science,” he said. A January report by an expert panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that, at present, there are no screening methods that are a viable alternative to bulk data collection, although privacy protections can be strengthened.

How ISIS is Different

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desert, man in desert

(photo: Ilker Ender, creative commons license)

The issue of terrorism and the response of secular societies to it is the sharp edge of international relations and of much current interest. Recently, this website has included my summary of Graeme Wood’s article in The Atlantic, “What ISIS Really Wants,” as well as a review of the book The Terrorist’s Dilemma, by Princeton professor Jacob Shapiro about how covert organizations organize themselves.

Putting these two analysis side-by-side, ISIS appears to be both fundamentally and functionally different from the “traditional” terrorist organizations Shapiro describes in a number of key ways, including:

  • traditional terrorist organizations, including al-Qa’ida, have political aims (getting Westerners out of the Arabian peninsula, etc.), whereas ISIS’s aims are religious
  • because of their political goals, traditional terrorist organizations have at least some interest in controlling ultra-violence, as it decreases their political capital, whereas ISIS is focused on establishing absolute, undiluted Sharia and the accompanying violence is part of the package
  • traditional terrorist organizations want to protect their leaders, whereas ISIS appears to court confrontation, or at least is not dissuaded from pursuing its tactics by fear of Western reprisal and
  • traditional terrorist organizations must operate “underground” in their host countries, so their activities—including communication with their agents in the field—always carry a security risk, whereas ISIS is operating in the open in its captured territories, and indeed must hold those territories in order to maintain the caliphate it has declared.

With respect to how an organization can behave when it has territory (a safe haven), ISIS does follow the pattern of traditional terrorist organizations by exploiting that benefit. In addition, traditional terrorist organizations suffer when there is a complete security vacuum and see the need to establish social institutions; not surprisingly, then, ISIS’s plans include a kind of social agenda (albeit along lines endorsed by Mohammed), though whether the organization can pull it off is another question.

These differences call for different approaches, not approaching ISIS like a spinoff al-Qa’ida or the Provisional IRA. This is new.

Whiplash

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J.K.Simmons, Miles Teller, Whiplash

J.K.Simmons and Miles Teller in Whiplash

Another Oscar movie (trailer) with a Princeton connection. Director Damien Chazelle was “inspired by” his musical experience at Princeton High School to explore how the drive to excel can become all-consuming. Not that the character Fletcher, superbly played by Oscar-winner J. K. Simmons, the tightly wound and sadistic studio band leader, mirrored Chazelle’s own band leader (“fear inspires greatness”), he is at pains to say, but still . . . Chazelle wanted the film to explore the line between a healthy passion and an obsession, and, boy, did he do that, garnering five Oscar nominations in the process.

Miles Teller is terrific as the young drummer pushed to the limits of his skills and endurance—and beyond—by teacher Fletcher, “sworn enemy of the merely O.K.,” says Anthony Lane in The New Yorker. Characteristically, Fletcher says, “There are no two words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job.’” The Hank Levy tune “Whiplash” is the rack of a tune upon which the drummers in Fletcher’s jazz band are broken.

Here’s a movie where I really felt the tension—it made me clench my fists to the point where my hands, too, were almost bleeding. The playing of the drums enters your skull, and your heart must keep time. If you missed it in theaters, Netflix has it!

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating 95%; viewers, 96%. “Bring a welder’s mask to ward off sparks,” advised critic Donald Clarke in the Irish Times.

The Glass Top-Hat

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NYPD, cops

(photo: Nick Gulotta, Creative Commons license)

Loved this Alexandra Alter article about crime novelist Richard Price and his adoption of a pseudonym, in the hope of producing a quickie novel (and not suffer years over it!). Why not use his skills to dash off a plot-heavy, (shudder) “commercial” novel and reap the proceeds? In fact, he found out he is who he is, and the new book took just as much time and care as ever.

Price, interviewed this week on the PBS New Hour, is the author of the well-crafted and popular novels Freedomland, Lush Life, and Clockers. This pseudonymous endeavor has now emerged as his ninth novel, The Whites, which The New Yorker review by Joyce Carol Oates describes as “a maze of a novel” about a case that haunts NYPD detective Billy Graves. (The ghosts of unsolved cases are a universal occupational hazard for cops, as Price described it for PBS.) The book’s awkward parentage is displayed on the cover as “Richard Price Writing as Harry Brandt.” Even though The Whites came out only about two weeks ago, it’s already a hardcover fiction best-sellers (#5 on the NYT list in it first week).

“You realize you only know one way to write,” Price said during his New York Times interview. In keeping with his stripped-down approach, he did no new research, but instead called upon his extensive experience in ride-alongs with police and their lengthy conversations for his previous novels, as well as in his writing for HBO’s The Wire.

The whole pseudonym exercise was a failure, Price now says. “It seemed like a good idea in the beginning, and now I wish I hadn’t done it.” And, in a line for the ages: “This pen name is like pulling a rabbit out of a glass hat.”

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It’s Tso Good

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Chinese food, General Tso's chicken

General Tso’s chicken (photo by Jason Lam, Creative Commons license)

The Search for General Tso (trailer) is an engaging chronicle of cultural assimilation told “with the verve of a good detective story” by writer-director Ian Cheney and producers Amanda Murray and Jennifer 8. Lee, based on a ubiquitous restaurant menu item adapted to Americans’ palate. (A recipe is included on the film website, above.)

Shown during the recent Sedona International Film Festival, at other film festivals around the country, and available for viewing through the link above, this popular, humor-laced documentary also traces the history of the real General Tso, a fearsome warrior from the late 19th Century.

The dish was inspired by President Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972 and was introduced at the venerable Shun Lee Palace, near Lincoln Center in New York City. But the dish’s history predates its American introduction. Its originator was a Hunan chef named Peng Chang-kuei, who fled Communist China and settled in Taipei, Taiwan. He created General Tso’s chicken in 1955 for Chiang Kai-shek.

Now 90 years old, Chef Peng frowns when shown a picture of the dish, noting he would never use scallions or decorate the plate with broccoli! To achieve a sweet-and-sour taste, the American version adds sugar—another touch unheard of in traditional Chinese cooking.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 94%.

By Tucson-based guest reviewer Jodi Goalstone, who writes the highly entertaining blog Going Yard, Offbeat Baseball Musings. It made me hungry just to post this!

A Coffee in Berlin

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coffee, creativity

(photo: farm3.staticflickr.com)

The title of this award-winning 2014 German film (trailer) is a tease, since the protagonist spends the day the movie describes trying—and failing—to score a cup of joe. Would he had gotten it, and he might have been better prepared for his frustrating encounters with girlfriends, his dad, the creator of an unintentionally hilarious performance art piece, and some drunken toughs, among others. He doesn’t want any of these interactions to go the way they do, but he is “a victim of inertia,” says Washington Post reviewer Stephanie Merry, a young man who, so far, has chucked his opportunities into an ocean of cool.

Jan Ole Gerster’s debut film, starring Tom Schilling as Niko (originally titled Oh, Boy), has created a likeable if drifting protagonist and given him situations punctuated with sometimes absurd humor. You want Niko to pull himself together and for the sparks of empathy we see to flame into action. One of those flames occurs near the end of the film, when he hears a rambling, drunken tale about people who really had it bad. Great musical score by Cherilyn MacNeil and The Major Minors.

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating is 72%–considerably lower than other reviewers give it (or I would)–with 75% of audiences liking it.

What ISIS Really Wants

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world on fire

(photo: pixabay)

Graeme Wood’s penetrating article, “What ISIS Really Wants” in the March 2015 Atlantic tries to answer deceptively simple, yet strategically essential questions related to the intentions of ISIS’s self-declared caliphate and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Although the organization’s motives and aims apparently have eluded many Westerners, Wood says its propaganda machine, much of which operates online, makes those answers knowable.

According to Wood, analysis of these resources reveals that ISIS “rejects peace as a matter of principle,” hungers for genocide, is prevented by its religious views from adopting certain practices (even if they are key to its survival), and “considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.” Understanding ISIS’s beliefs about the path to the Day of Judgment—its “dystopian alternate reality”—can help the West predict its actions and develop more effective countermeasures, Wood says.

Osama bin Laden operated a geographically diffuse network of relatively autonomous cells that had political aims, such as getting Westerners out of the Saudi Arabian peninsula. These cells operated more-or-less independently, in countries and territory they didn’t control, and attempting to exercise central authority over these scattered cells would have created a high security risk for al-Qaeda leaders.

In total contrast, ISIS has been able to seize and hold territory, thanks to the vacuum of authority in Syria and Iraq, and can therefore effectively implement a top-down, highly controlled structure. In fact, ISIS must continue to hang onto this territory in order to maintain the caliphate. But the key distinction between ISIS and al-Qaeda is that ISIS’s aims are religious, not political, and underpin “the group’s commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse,” Wood says.

We have diluted the meaning of this word with the snowpocalypse, the zombie apocalypse, and so on, but to ISIS, what they foresee is the original meaning: that is, the complete and final destruction of the world. With total annihilation looming, why not court death? What difference does one life–or a dozen, or a hundred–make?

Westerners have a difficult time accepting a theological basis for the mass executions, beheadings, stonings, crucifixions, and immolations taking place in the Middle East. Yet, secular societies should not dismiss ISIS followers as merely a congregation of disaffected Muslims from around the world (and some few from the United States). It is a mistake, Wood believes, to see ISIS as anything other than a religious, end-of-days group, built on a coherent (if controversial) interpretation of Islam, whose members follow the exact letter of the law, as they understand it.

Meanwhile, the politically correct “Islam is a religion of peace” mantra does not fit the brutal laws of war as laid out in the Koran, and which were developed during a violent era. Wood quotes Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel as saying that Islamic fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.”

Wood says that the rest of the world must recognize ISIS’s “intellectual genealogy” if it is to react in ways “that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal.”

This summary is based primarily on the introduction to this thought-provoking essay. Here is the link to the entirety.

Get Ready for Oscar II – Live Action Shorts

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5330266850_a1678cfde1_o_convertedIt’s great that these notable short films are finding more screens to be soon on in movie houses and at home via disc and streaming (via vimeo). Short films are a low-budget way for new directors to show their talent and occasionally lead to bigger and better deals. On Friday, I posted capsule reviews of the five Academy Award nominees for Best Short Documentary, and here’s my take on the five nominees for Best Live Action Shorts—“a diverse and satisfying two-hour program,” says Peter Debruge in Variety. Notably, none of the nominees are from the United States.

  • Aya (Israel and France, trailer) – the longest of the bunch, at 39 minutes, is the comic story of a chance encounter between a young woman waiting at the airport and an arriving passenger. Rotten Tomatoes provides this insightful sentence: “She, charmed Makraioto woven minute before it, is in no hurry to correct him their.” To decode this a bit, the man mistakes her for his assigned driver, and she is in no hurry to correct him there. Directed by Oded Binnun and Mihal Brezis.
  • Boogaloo and Graham (UK, trailer) – These are the names of the chickens lively Belfast children Jamesy and Malachy have raised, delighted in their pets and dreaming of running a chicken farm, until changes in the family threaten to shake up the chicken coop. Reportedly, the charming 14-minute movie has received requests from 80 film festivals around the world to show it. Directed by Ronan Blaney and Michael Lennox. My sentimental pick for the Oscar.
  • Butter Lamp (France and China, trailer) – Nomadic Tibetan families pose for an itinerant photographer and his assistant in front of absurd and symbolic backgrounds, with the true background to the scene not revealed until the end. In only 15 minutes, this unconventional and memorable film captures the impact of globalization on Tibetans and the erosion of their traditional culture. Directed by Hu Wei.
  • Parvaneh (Switzerland, trailer) – in this 25-minute film, an Afghan girl living in a Swiss refugee camp encounters bureaucratic difficulties when she tries to send money home to her ailing father. Only an unlikely friend can help. An award-winning student film, Swiss-Iranian Talkhon Hamzavi directed.
  • The Phone Call (UK, trailer) – a shy woman working in a help line call center receives a call from a mystery man that will “change her life forever,” the movie’s promotion says, a “gather ye rosebuds” outcome only modestly hinted at. Featuring Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent, who handle the telephone call beautifully and movingly, with Edward Hogg and Prunella Scales. “You’ll wonder how it can do in 20 minutes what some full length features can’t in two hours,” says Casey Cipriani for Indiewire. Directed by Mat Kirkby. Perhaps the more likely Oscar recipient. [And the winner!]
Sally Hawkins, live action short film,The Phone Call

Sally Hawkins in The Phone Call

Get Ready for Oscar! The Documentary Shorts

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Oscar, Academy Awards

(photo by Rachel Jackson, Creative Commons license)

Two theaters in our area are showing the Oscar-nominated short films this year, and last night I watched the five documentary short nominees, ranging from 20 to 40 minutes long and in total almost three hours’ worth of powerful—and pretty depressing—filmmaking. The nominees are:

  • Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 – A timelier topic is hard to imagine. It’s the story of a crisis hotline in Canandaigua, New York, which receives some 22,000 calls a month from struggling veterans (trailer). These hotline workers are invisible front-line heroes in the battle against suicide, one that a U.S. veteran, somewhere, loses every 80 minutes. An HBO film by award-winning Ellen Goosenberg Kent and Dana Perry, it is my pick for the Oscar.[YES!! The Winner]
  • Joanna – a Polish documentary (trailer) by Aneta Kopacz, nominated for innumerable awards. The film tells the story of Joanna Sałyga, who used her diagnosis of terminal cancer to inspire a blog about her daily life, to leave her son something of her after she’s gone. The blog became popular, and perhaps people familiar with it gained more from the snippets of insight in the subtitles than I did. Bottom line: well-intended, but over-long, with a muddled story arc, because it was not chronological, so the viewer cannot tell whether and how her views develop.
  • Our Curse – another Polish film, this one by film student Tomasz Śliwiński and Maciej Slesicki, about how Śliwiński and his wife came to terms with the life-threatening medical condition of their infant son, who must wear a respirator at night to be sure he continues breathing. (He has a rare, lifelong genetic disease called Ondine’s Curse.) Bottom line: At least there’s a tiny story arc, with the parents progressing from anxiety, guilt, and fear to some measure of happiness with their baby, but again, chronological presentation would make more sense to viewers.
  • The Reaper (La Parka), by Nicaraguan filmmaker Gabriel Serra Arguello (not the current horror movie directed by Wen-Han Shih), is based on interviews with Efraín Jiménez García, who has worked in a Mexico City slaughterhouse for a quarter-century. The story, in the filmmaker’s words is about “the way (García) connects with death.” And he does connect with it, killing approximately 500 bulls a day, six days a week, for 25 years. Bottom line: A good argument for vegetarianism
  • White Earth – by J. Christian Jensen (see it here) documents the conditions for workers and their families drawn to North Dakota’s oil boom, as seen through the “unexpected eyes” and differing perspectives of three children and an immigrant mother: The American Dream, c. 2014. In a word: bleak. North Dakota oil fields at night make for some eerie scenery.

Sunday morning: the dramatic shorts!