Jesus Camp

A movie that would've been disturbing to me if I didn't know that these people already existed, and have had too many exchanges with them already. Jesus Camp instead just became boring to me and we eventually turned it off. I normally hate doing that, but the filmmakers were making every attempt to not judge the people on screen, and their seeming indifference to the goings on just left me not caring in the slightest whether I finished the movie or not.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

The one I'd most looked forward to, as I'd heard nothing but the highest praise, I'm still thinking on this. It's extremely entertaining, as street art legend Banksy takes the reins for the first time as a film director and leads us through the bizarre world surrounding Thierry Guetta. Guetta is a strangely hypnotically fascinating character, and his worship of street artists and his eventual becoming of one makes for a nice narrative. Banksy's insistence on keeping his identity secret is a little annoying, but I expected that going in. The community turning on Guetta once he "creates" his own art and has an exhibition was slightly surprising and I'm still not quite sure where everyone was coming from on that front, but Exit Through the Gift Shop is certainly a wonderful ride to take and one that still has me thinking a couple of days later.

How to Cook Your Life

I went through moments of zoning out while watching this one, I was tired and I was actually kind of annoyed by "Zen Chef" Edward Brown. Much of the food on display was delicious looking, I'm always a sucker for homemade bread (his apparent specialty), but a lot of Brown's babbling just became monotonous white noise after a while. Nice enough for a lazy afternoon, but not one I'll be going back to anytime soon.

Babies

This one was absolutely delightful! I was happily surprised to find that there is no distinct narrative, and no narration, to the story of about a year in the lives of four babies around the world. Instead, we're treated to just under 80 minutes of these adorable babies getting into all kinds of entertaining situations, and just being all around cute. It was a nice break from the seriousness of watching Lost, which my wife and I also started watching over break (more on that when I get further into it).

Super High Me

This one was really disappointing to me. It was a pleasant watch, and Doug Benson is a good comedian who carries us through the movie, but it doesn't really dig for anything. I was hoping for an intelligent and informed defense of the effects of marijuana on the system, and the case for its legalization in the US. I have long been a proponent of its legalization if only for the tax dollars it would bring into our economy. I don't smoke it, and have no interest in using it, but its continued illegality has baffled me for years. All I really got instead was seeing Doug Benson not be able to explain why he likes smoking weed, then not smoke it for 30 days, then smoke it almost every waking hour for the next 30 days. It was easy to watch, but I was hoping for something more substantial.

The Buddha

A nice little PBS doc, narrated by Richard Gere, about the life and philosophy of Buddha. Being that I live in central Oklahoma, I don't get much exposure to Buddhism, and I gotta say that it's very interesting and a wonderful alternative to the dogma crazy religions we're surrounded by on a daily basis. Nothing special from an artistic standpoint, but well worth watching for anyone searching for spiritual answers in their life.

This Film is Not Yet Rated

Award winning documentarian Kirby Dick takes on the Motion Picture Association of America (the MPAA), the board that hands out the ratings for the movies we watch. Dick angrily and humorously examines the double standards the board has for male and female pleasure, straight and gay sex, and violence and sex in general. Dick shows side by side comparisons of scenes in which the straight sex or male pleasure got an R rating, where the gay sex or female orgasm received the dreaded NC-17. The NC-17 is supposed to be a workable rating for non-pornographic adult movies, yet most theater chains won't show the movie, most newspapers won't carry ads for it. And the same newspapers and theaters still won't carry anything for an Unrated movie if the filmmakers tried to release the film to the public without a rating, even though the ratings are technically optional.

Dick also shows the shadowy nature of the board and how none of its members' identities are released to the public, so he hires a Private Investigator to find out who they are. This section of the movie is fairly interesting, but I would've love if the whole movie were dedicated to examining the ratings themselves and the politics behind them and less on the "gotcha" kind of moments that this part focuses on. Still, it's a terrific movie and highly recommended to those of us who have been angered so many times over the years by the many idiotic decisions the MPAA has made.

Pressure Cooker

One of the better docs, Pressure Cooker focuses on Wilma Stephenson, a Culinary Arts teacher in Philadelphia. A no nonsense fireball with a heart of gold, Ms. Stephenson pushes her inner city kids to compete in a city-wide cooking competition where winners are awarded scholarships to Arts colleges around the country. The year previous to the documentary, her students were awarded over $750,000, and we follow three of her students as they navigate their difficult lives and grasp for the hope of something better. To see the pressure as the students are being evaluated by real cooking professionals (including Philadelphia based Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, intimidatingly silent as he watches), you really feel for the kids in their quest to make a better life for themselves. The hope filled ending had me nearly tearing up as we watch the scholarship ceremony taking place. I highly recommend this one, and if you have Netflix, it's an easy find.

Doc crazy!

So, snowed in for the last week, my wife and I watched quite a few movies. We were in a documentary mood and really went through quite a few that we had on our Netflix Instant Watch queue. So here's a rundown of them.

Song of the week: Regina Spektor's "Two Birds"

Ok, so I stopped doing this because of Christmas, then because of New Year's, and then I just got busy and stopped writing altogether, but now I'm back at it. I'm gonna start putting the video up top so that maybe you can listen to the song while I talk about it.



Regina Spektor is one of the most interesting artists around these days. Her incredibly powerful and yet delicately nimble voice coupled with her piano skills and effortless quirkiness make her at the very least interesting to listen to. On her last studio album, Far, she wrote about a wide range of topics, from people's belief in God depending on their place in life, to the color blue, and a song called "Dance Anthem of the 80's" as well. But the one that has really stayed in my memory is the possible love song "Two Birds".

Now, because of the way Spektor writes the lyrics, you could take the song as a triumph of love, or being about fear and lack of change.:

Two birds on a wire
One tries to fly away, and the other
watches him close from that wire
He says he wants to as well
But he is a liar

Here's she's setting up our characters and their situation. I'll call them the male and female, I get the feeling that the male bird is afraid to leave the comfort of the wire for the possibility of something new, i.e. whatever the female bird leads him to once they leave. He says he wants to leave, but is giving her some reason as to why he won't. She thinks he's lying, and in the next part she reassures him:

I'll believe it all
There's nothing I won't understand

I'll believe it all
I won't let go of your hand

This is the part that really touches me. I think this is what love is all about. She's telling him that whatever his reason is for not leaving the wire, she won't judge him, she'll support him, she'll still be there for him emotionally and physically. She won't even let go of his hand, even after he's taken that initial leap off of the wire.

Two birds on a wire
One says c'mon and the other says "I'm tired"
The sky is overcast and I'm sorry
One more or one less
Nobody's worried

So he's just making more excuses, but she's not giving up...

I'll believe it all
There's nothing I won't understand

I'll believe it all
I won't let go of your hand

"You're safe with me, no matter what. Please take this journey with me." is what she's trying to get him to understand. It could be a metaphor for the journey of marriage, or it could simply be a physical journey off of the wire.

Two birds of a feather
Say that they're always gonna stay together
But one's never going to let go of that wire
He says that he will
But he's just a liar

Two birds on a wire
One tries to fly away and the other
Watches him close from that wire
He says he wants to as well, but he is a liar

So she's continuing to try and get him off that wire, but he hasn't budged yet.

Two birds on a wire
Once tries to fly away and the other...

Now, one could easily take Spektor's ending the song this way to be a kind of sadness that he never will get off that wire and she doesn't even need to finish that refrain. But for a hopeful romantic like myself, I think she doesn't finish that line because just as she thinks he's not going to get off that wire and she's lamenting the fact again, he jumps. I would definitely understand an opposite interpretation to mine, since it's left deliberately ambiguous, but that's my take on it.

It's a brilliant song, of which Spektor has a few, and one I can listen to over and over again. I love the way she builds and builds and then has the release type moments back into the near silence. She plays with dynamics in a wonderfully fascinating way. I wish more artists put that kind of work and thought and care into their music. I guess that's why she's one of the bright lights out there in the music world.