Oscar's Identity Crisis

Had an over-the-fence chat with my neighbour yesterday. He was appalled that The Hurt Locker had beat out Avatar for Best Picture at the Oscars the night before. And even though I was delighted with the result, I had to agree. How can a film that has just barely made back its budget be considered the Best Picture of the year against the highest grossing film of all time ($1.8 billion and counting) that's still selling out theatres twelve weeks after its release? Shouldn't the Best Picture of the year be the one that the most people like?

An article in this morning's NYTimes called The Academy Smiles With Both Faces addressed this glaring incongruity:

This year the entertainment industry woke up to a clear if troubling realization: the Oscars telecast exposed an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in full-fledged identity crisis. Almost everything about the ceremony was big and commercial; almost everything about the winners was small and arty.

Later in the same article an explanation:

Over the last decade the voting membership of the Academy has skewed increasingly toward indie- and foreign-based filmmakers. That is because revised admissions rules strongly favor Oscar nominees over the kind of Hollywood old hands who were once a shoo-in for admission. As smaller films got a footing in the awards over the last few years, those who made and appeared in them became voters, increasing the tilt toward little movies.

It's an interesting paradox, those who vote for the winners (the members of the Academy) are not the people the television show itself is catering to (you and me). Which, now that I think about it, actually gets back to the whole reason for the awards in the first place - a night for the entertainment industry to pat itself on the back. The fact that the general audiences interests aren't represented shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker is about a team of American Explosive Ordinance Disposal experts working to make the streets of Baghdad safe for both their compatriots and local civilians by disarming and disposing of bombs. It's a standout film in a bevvy of poorly-received hit-and-miss war movies in recent years.

Much like Slumdog Millionaire did last year, The Hurt Locker sweeping all of the awards leading up to the Oscars. It's nominated for 9 awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, even Best Actor for Jeremy Renner (Jeremy who now?) Looks like not even box-office slayer Avatar can beat it. The David and Goliath story here is how director Kathryn Bigelow keeps stealing trophies from former husband James Cameron, even though he seems to be getting all the press for his tech-pioneering 3-D effort.

Salinger's Dead

Two excerpts from the New York Times editorial:

"The last, long stage of J. D. Salinger’s life — the unpublishing of himself — is now over. It began, more or less, when he moved to Cornish, N.H., in 1953, two years after “The Catcher in the Rye” came out. And it ended with his death this week at the age of 91."

"It remains to be seen whether death will now publish Mr. Salinger — whether there is an archive of his later life’s work waiting to be revealed. There was a purity in Mr. Salinger’s separation from the world, whatever its motives, whatever his character. His half-century of solitude and silence was a creative act in itself, requiring extraordinary force of will. "

5 Dangerous Things

While doing some research for what will hopefully become an upcoming doc, I came across a great little TED University video by Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School called: Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do. In case you don't have time to watch the video they are...

1. Play With Fire
2. Own a Pocket Knife
3. Throw a Spear
4. Deconstruct Appliances
5. (a two-parter) a) Break the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
b.) Drive a Car

I'm pretty sure I did all of these things between the ages of 3 and 10. Loved the quote toward the end of the video: "Driving a car is a really empowering act for a young child."

Finding The Story

I know it's been a while, but the doc I've been working on is finally coming together. (The delay has more to do with the life of our subject, Harvey Pollock, and a turn of events in his life that changed the direction of the film, than it does with the procrastination of filmmakers.) It's been a lot of fun to work with our editor, (via email and ftp server), watching how the scenes come together.

A lot of people have asked me how you write a documentary, and how is it different than writing a screenplay? And the best way I've been able to describe it is that you're attempting to find the story rather than create it.

Fantastic

When the Wall Came Down

It's been twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was seventeen at the time, and not particularly interested in world politics. Most of what I knew about East Berlin and the Iron Curtain came to me from the Sunday School comic book God's Smuggler. I may not have even paid it much attention except that my dad was flipping channels one night and came across the story as it was breaking live on the CBC. And the only reason he called us all into the room is because about a month earlier I had brought home a hitchhiker from East Berlin who had taken up residence in the drafty spare bedroom across the hall from mine. He spent the rest of the night sitting speechless, two feet from the television screen, watching as his world was breaking apart.

From CBC.ca Berlin, 20 Years After
"It was a completely unexpected event, a dizzying moment shared by millions across the world. The Berlin Wall, which, for close to thirty years, had divided a nation and seemed as permanent as the concrete out of which it was built, had fallen. What had once been a powerful symbol of Communist repression and the Cold War had suddenly become the site of a jubilant and seemingly never-ending street party. A country had been freed, a people reunited. Communism was dead. All without a single shot."

His name was Alexander - although he preferred to be called Xandie (Sandy). He had travelled to our little rural enclave on the tip from a friend that work could be found with a certain farmer at harvest time. That farmer happened to be my neighbour, so I gave him a ride only to find out that said neighbour was in Calgary visiting relatives. The sun was setting, and there was no where else to take him but home.

It was an event without precedent in our family, me coming home from work long after dark with a tall, lanky, somewhat bedraggled East-German hitchhiker. Xandie spent most of the next year with us, using our home as a jumping-off point for exploring much of the rest of Canada, always returning to regroup and earn a little pocket money.

My only regret is that we didn't talk more than we did. I knew a little German and he knew a little English, but we more often than not seemed to miss each other. Life experience had taught him a good deal more than it had me at that point, even though he was only (maybe) a year older. We kept in touch, loosely over the next several years. We had become good enough friends that there was talk of going to visit him. Some of his most interesting letters were of his disillusionment with the westernization of his environment and the loss of the security blanket that was communism, even as he extolled the virtues of being out from under from its bootheel. He sent me a little graffiti-smudged piece of the wall in the mail. I think it's still in my parent's China cabinet.

Naturally, I googled him this week, and found him. He seems to be living the life I imagined he would be, and I wish him well on this momentous anniversary.

The CBC has a great site dedicated to marking the occasiton, which includes a 45 minnute documenatry, and even an interview with Mikhail Gorbachev.

Lance Mountain

This made me smile today:

Update: Video of LM rocking a backyard pool - better than ever at 45! - removed. Wish you could've seen it, it was a beaut.

Courtesy of All Hail the Black Market

El Más Loco

I've been following the story of the Mexican drug cartel, La Familia, for the past six months or so. It reads like Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, only it's real, and as fascinating as any movie that has ever tackled the subject. From it's messianic leader, Nazario Moreno González, known as El Más Loco (The Craziest One) who carries a bible and a book of his own quotes, to their brutal methods which include beheading their enemies and leaving cryptic messages stating that the dead received divine justice. It's like reading a script you wished you'd written.

From today's story in the NYT:

'The group first gained attention in 2006 when more than a dozen masked gunmen burst into a nightclub in Uruapan and tossed five heads of drug dealers on the dance floor, with the message: “The family doesn’t kill for money. It doesn’t kill women. It doesn’t kill innocent people, only those who deserve to die. Know that this is divine justice.'

Apparently La Familia started out as a vigilante organization dedicated to ridding Mexico of the scourge of drugs and dealers, only to emerge as its most prominent and brutal cartel itself a few years later.

Six months ago President Phillipe Calderon moved 10,000 federal troops into the bordertown of Juárez to bolster overwhelmed and corrupted local authorities. Spitting distance from El Paso, Texas, Juárez has become ground zero for a turf war between La Familia and rival cartels over the lucrative trafficing routes into the US. But with 326 murders in the month of August, (in a city of 1.4 million people) the effort has proven a failure.

US Justice Department raids in 38 cities across 19 states yesterday and today netted 303 people, $32 million in American currency, 2,700 pounds of methamphetamine, 4,400 pounds of cocaine, 16,000 pounds of marijuana and 29 pounds of heroin, not to mention a bevy of arms and ammunition.

But El Más Loco and his top liutenants remain at large.

Eight Years On

Interesting article in the NYTimes this morning about how the New York spirit has rebounded in the eight years since 9/11, despite feelings of dread that it would become a dystopian fortress city in which no one would ever feel safe again.

In sharp contrast, little progress has been made at Ground Zero, due in large part to conflicting interests and infighting.