I suppose that, had I seen No Country For Old Men on any other day, its unrelenting bleakness would have seemed unnecessarily maudlin—or even worse, comically absurd. But just a few hours before my wife and I walked into the theatre, we read news stories about two shootings in Colorado that ultimately left four people dead. And just a few days earlier, a troubled young man walked into a posh shopping center in my old hometown of Omaha and killed eight people before turning the gun on himself.

Suddenly, No Country For Old Men‘s vision of humanity caught in the clutches of an unstoppable and incomprehensible evil that leaves its few survivors—if you can call them that—reeling and shocked seemed less absurd and all too real. The world depicted on the silver screen looked a little too much like the world I’d left outside the theatre walls.

The latest film from the Coen Brothers—adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s acclaimed novel—bears many similarities to their previous films. There’s that ear for quirky dialog, the obvious love for characters’ idiosyncrasies, and the brief flashes of absurdist humor. But those are merely on the surface. Arguably, they’ve never done anything this unremittingly bleak. Not even Fargo with its wood chipper wanders this far into the wasteland.

Continue reading…

Though many folks probably see films as mindless entertainment, as things to experience once you’ve shut off your brain and begun eating handfuls of popcorn, films have an ability that is unique among all artforms.  That is, they can allow us to enter and experience lives, circumstances, and cultures in a way that music, poetry, or sculpture cannot.  Films can plop folks landlocked in the middle of America smack dab in the middle of a foreign land to see sights and hear sounds would otherwise remain distant and unknown.

This has been the theme, for the past few months anyways, of the movie discussion group that I lead.  And the goal was to see how movies might actually elicit understanding and even compassion, rather than serve as mere escapist entertainment.

As such, it makes sense that the final film we watched was 2004’s A State Of Mind.  This fabulous and fascinating British documentary peels back some of the secrecy that surrounds North Korea, and is probably the closest that any of us will ever come to seeing the citizens of that most isolated country.

There are probably few countries as vilified as North Korea, and this due to a litany of factors: a brutal and oppressive regime; strict isolationistic policies; staunch defiance of international regulations; extremely poor human rights records; and the incredibly poor conditions in which many of its citizens live; to name but a few.  Not surprising, I suppose, for a country that many folks have placed on an “Axis Of Evil.”

However, as I’ve watched A State Of Mind, I’ve found myself growing increasingly uncomfortable with the strong rhetoric that often surrounds North Korea, rhetoric that originates from both within and without its borders.

Continue reading…

It would be way too simple and too easy to label Hot Fuzz—the latest work of cinematic brilliance from the folks behind Shaun Of The Dead and Spaced—as a parody of the stereotypical, big budget Hollywood action movie. Sure, Hot Fuzz contains countless references to such films as Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys (1 and 2), Point Break, and Die Hard (not to mention The Wicker Man, Terminator, Chinatown, He-Man, and Harry Potter).

However, parodies often seem to have an element of mean-spiritedness and cheekiness about them, which is not at all the case with Hot Fuzz. Rather, just as Shaun Of The Dead was obviously the work of folks who knew and loved zombie horror films, Hot Fuzz is the work of folks who obviously know and love action movies.

Continue reading…

One of the more amazing and intriguing concert experiences I’ve ever had took place at a sidestage during the 1998 Cornerstone Festival.  It was late at night, and my friends and I had skipped out on M.C. Hammer(!)‘s main stage performance to catch a couple of Cornerstone oddballs: Soul-Junk and the Danielson Famile. 

The power kept cutting out from time to time, and so at one point, Soul-Junk started pulling people up from the crowd to breakdance onstage.  When the power inevitably cut out during the Famile’s set, the band kept on playing, the passion and quirkiness of their music overcoming any technical difficulties and quickly becoming one of the most invigorating experiences of the fest that year.

In the following years, the Famile’s Cornerstone sets became must-see events for us.  Sure, there was the off-kilter nature of it all—a band composed of brothers and sisters decked out in nurse uniforms and led by a guy singing in a most grating falsetto—that set it apart.  But even more importantly was the amazing passion and even joy that they brought to their music, such that even the most hardened punk kids and metalheads could be found dancing, smiling, and praising during a Danielson Famile set.

All of these memories and impressions came rushing back while watching J.L. Aronson’s 2006 documentary, Danielson: A Family Movie.

Continue reading…