FILM NEWS: JACC ANNOUNCES PROGIE WINNERS

A scene from Even the Rain.

JACC jumps over what Oscar picks

By Ed Rampell and John Esther

After failing to make the final cut for this year's Academy Awards for Best Film in a Foreign Language (or any other category for that matter), Even the Rain, a smashing Spanish film about an uprising in Bolivia has swept the James Agee Cinema Circle’s fourth annual “Progie” Awards for Best Progressive Films and Filmmakers of 2010.

The James Agee Cinema Circle is an international, independent umbrella group of progressive film critics, reviewers, scholars and historians dedicated to raising public awareness about films dealing with political, social and cultural issues such as: Human rights, workers’ struggles, women’s rights, environmentalism, ethnic rights, free speech, gay rights, civil liberties, immigrant rights, people’s activism and peace.

The JACC annually presents The Progies to the year’s Best Progressive studio features, indies, documentaries and artists. The Progies are the “un-Oscar”, the “people’s alternative Academy Awards,” honoring movies and talents of conscience and consciousness whereas the Best Picture Oscar, for example, consistently goes to movies with centrist-right sensibilities (e.g. Ordinary People; Dances with Wolves; Shakespeare in Love; American Beauty; The Departed; The Hurt Locker) or even politically reactionary films (e.g. Forrest Gump; Driving Miss Daisy; Silence of the Lambs; A Beautiful Mind; Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King; Crash; No Country for Old Men; Slumdog Millionaire) at the Annual Academy Award Ceremony. Of course, this year's Academy Award nominations are not significantly different.

Below is a complete list of all of the 2010 Progies winners, followed by the nominees in every category. (There is an initial nomination process with other films not mentioned below). Each Progie is awarded in a category named after a great cinema artist or film that made a contribution to movies that inspire, enlighten and entertain audiences.

The Trumbo: The Progie Award for Best Progessive Picture is named after Oscar-winning screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, a member of the Hollywood Ten, who was imprisoned for his beliefs and refusing to inform. Trumbo helped break the Blacklist when he received screen credit for Spartacus and Exodus in 1960.

Winner: Even The Rain

Other nominations: Social Network, Casino Jack, Made In Dagenham.

The Garfield: The Progie Award for Best Actor in a progressive picture is named after John Garfield, who rose from the proletarian theater to star in progressive pictures such as Gentleman's Agreement and Force of Evil, only to run afoul of the Hollywood Blacklist.

Co-Winners: Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter; Kevin Spacey, Casino Jack.

Other nominations: James Franco, Howl; Geoffrey Rush, The King’s Speech.

The Karen Morley Award: The Progie Award for Best Actress in a film portraying women in a progressive picture is named for Karen Morley, co-star of 1932’s Scarface and 1934’s Our Daily Bread. Morley was driven out of Hollywood in the 1930s for her leftist views, but maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for New York’s Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954.

Winner: Naomi Watts, Fair Game.

Other nomination: Sally Hawkins, Made In Dagenham.

The Renoir: The Progie Award for Best Anti-War Film is named after the great French filmmaker Jean Renoir, who directed the 1937 anti-militarism masterpiece, Grand Illusion.

Winner: The Green Zone.

Other nominations: Route Irish, Miral.

The Gillo: The Progie Award for Best Progressive Foreign Film is named after the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, who lensed the 1960s classics, The Battle of Algiers and Burn!

Winner: Even The Rain.

Other nomination: Tears Of Gaza.

The Dziga: The Progie Award for Best Progressive Documentary is named after the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov, who directed 1920s nonfiction films such as the Kino Pravda (“Film Truth”) series and The Man With the Movie Camera.

Winner: Inside Job.

Other nominations: Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer; South Of The Border.

Our Daily Bread Award: The Progie Award for the Most Positive and Inspiring Working Class Screen Image is named after director King Vidor’s 1934 classic about an American collective farm, which starred Karen Morley and was produced by Charlie Chaplin.

Winner: Made In Dagenham.

Other nominations: Even The Rain; The Fighter, Fish Tank.

The Robeson: The Progie Award for the Best Portrayal of People of Color that shatters cinema stereotypes, in light of their historically demeaning depictions onscreen. It is named after courageous performing legend, Paul Robeson, who starred in 1936’s Song of Freedom and 1940’s The Proud Valley.

Winner: Even The Rain.

Other nominations: Night Catches Us; Miral; Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench; Frankie & Alice.

The Buñuel: The Progie Award for the Most Slyly Subversive Satirical Cinematic Film in terms of form, style and content is named after Luis Buñuel, the Spanish surrealist who directed 1967’s Belle de Jour and 1972’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

Winner: The Social Network.

Other nominations: Enter the Void; Hitler in Hollywood. 

The Pasolini: The Progie Award for Best Pro-Gay Rights film is named after Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who directed 1964's The Gospel According to St. Matthew. 

Winner: The Kids Are All Right.

Other nominations: Howl; I Love You Philip Morris. 

The Lawson: The Progie Award for Best Anti-Fascist Film is named after John Howard Lawson, screenwriter of 1938’s anti-Franco film, Blockade, and the 1940s anti-nazi films, Four Sons, Action in the North Atlantic, Sahara and Counter-Attack. 

Winner: Even The Rain.

Other nominations: The King’s Speech, Casino Jack, The Last Circus. 

The Langlois: For Best Progressive Picture Deserving Theatrical Release in the US and distribution in other countries and platforms is named after film archivist Henri Langlois, co-founder of Paris’ Cinémathèque.

Winner: Film Socialisme.

Other nominations: Amigo, Vlast, Cleveland Versus Wall Street, Nostalgia For The Light.

 

The Sergei: The Progie Award for Lifetime Progressive Achievement On or Off Screen is named after Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet director of masterpieces such as Potemkin and 10 Days That Shook the World.

Winner: Jean-Luc Godard.
Other nominations: Sean Penn, Mike Leigh, Ed Asner.

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PSIFF 2011: OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS

Sierva (Eliza Triana) in Love and Other Demons

Rabid with religion

By Miranda Inganni

Director Hilda Hidalgo’s film based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel of the same name is a stunningly supple fairy/morality (mortality?) tale set in colonial South America. 

The film stars Eliza Triana as the copper haired, young noble 13-year-old girl, Sierva Maria, whose ethereal image pops in stark contrast against the gritty backdrop.

Heavily influenced by the indigenous community around her parents’ jungle home, Sierva wishes for her own death as her beloved nanny lays dying. At the market, Sierva is bitten by a rabid dog and is thought to have contracted the disease, which the Catholic Church insists is demonic possession. Because of pressure from the Church, her father (Joaquín Climent), reluctantly agrees to send her to a convent where a young handsome priest, Cayetano Delaura (Pablo Derqui) oversees her exorcism. Subsequently, Sierva and Cayetano’s dreams seem only to reinforce their waking lives and the intense, desirous connection they have for each other.

Costa Rica's Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film.

Recommended.

(Of Love and Other Demons screens Jan. 7, 5 p.m., Palm Springs Regal 9; Jan. 9, 10 a.m., Palm Springs Regal 9. For more information: http://www.psfilmfest.org)

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FILM REVIEW: WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS

Gordon (Michael Douglas) and Jake (Shia LeBeouf) in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

Stone aged capitalism

By Ed Rampell

Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a bold, visually stunning movie and the best critique of the capitalist system and its 2008 financial meltdown since Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story. 

The film opens with uber-financier Gordon Gekko’s (Michael Douglas) release from prison, where he has served around eight years for insider trading and other crimes he perpetrated in Stone’s 1987 Wall Street classic. This sequel, which is probably superior to the original, follows Gekko as he tries to re-establish himself in the world of high finance – where, Gekko observes, “greed got greedier” -- and in his daughter Winnie’s (Carey Mulligan) life. (In the original Wall Street, Stone had a son, not a daughter.)

The film explores whether Gekko’s imprisonment has humanized the “Greed is good” guru, and follows Winnie’s relationship with Jake Moore (Shia LeBeouf), a Wall Street trader who walks a tightrope between the type of predatory capitalism epitomized by his would-be father-in-law and a deep interest in green energy. Jake encounters another archetypal robber baron, Bretton James (played by Josh Brolin – a bit of canny casting, as he starred as one of the culprits of 2008’s economic catastrophe, George W. Bush, in Stone’s 2008 W.), who is sort of the Reagan era Gekko on 21st century steroids. At one point Bretton asks the alternative energy-touting Jake if he’s “an idealist or a capitalist?” Meanwhile, capitalism collapses around the characters.

In his previous film, South of the Border, Stone examined the phenomenon of what Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez calls “21st century socialism.” (The DVD will be released by Cinema Libre Studios on Oct. 26.) Now, in this bookend movie, Stone examines modern corporate capitalism, placing it under a Sherlock Holmes-like magnifying glass. The feature correctly, insightfully observes that more profit is derived from financial services than production in contemporary America. 

(A recent issue of the longtime independent socialist magazine, Monthly Review, ran a story on how capitalists in the financial sector have -- given the fact that the only things Made In USA nowadays are weaponry and mass entertainment -- surpassed the traditional industrial bourgeoisie as the ruling class’ dominant faction. Does anybody really think this decline in manufacturing is economically sustainable?) 

This film is a perfect goodbye gift for Larry Summers, as this pro-corporate wrecker of the American economy leaves his post on President Obama’s mostly woe-begotten team of economic mis-advisers. Their departures are eloquent admissions of the failures of their idiotic policies -- as if letting the foxes in the hen houses has ever worked as a crime-fighting tactic. Don’t let the screen door hit your ass on your way out of the White House, Summers!  

The superb cast includes Frank Langella, whose previous star turns as Dracula and Tricky Dick (he was Oscar-nominated for 2008’s Frost/Nixon) provided basic training for Langella’s portrayal of Louis Zabel, head of the doomed Keller Zabel Investments. (To be fair, unlike the Prince of Darkness or the disgraced ex-president, Zabel is actually human.) Venerable thespian Eli Wallach whimsically portrays another Wall Street veteran, who can remember the 1929 stock market crash. Oscar winner Susan Sarandon embodies Americans living beyond their means, depicting Jake’s mother, Sylvia, once a nurse who, her son muses, used to save lives, and is now a realtor ensnared in the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Sylvia Miles, who hilariously hustled Jon Voight’s male hustler in 1969’s Midnight Cowboy and played a realtor 23 years ago in the original Wall Street, is back for some more real estate wheeling, dealing and wheedling in the sequel, which includes cameo appearances by the original’s co-star, Charlie Sheen (Bud Fox), and by Stone himself, who is glimpsed onscreen a la Alfred Hitchcock.

Douglas is best of all in a stellar performance, reprising his Gekko part with a commanding presence that is absolutely guaranteed to win him an Oscar nomination -- and, I predict, another Oscar for portraying Gekko. A Douglas/Gekko win would be a first for the Oscars. Actors such as Raymond Massey portrayed abolitionist John Brown in 1940’s Santa Fe Trail and 1955’s Seven Angry Men, as well as Abe Lincoln in 1940’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois (for which Massey received his sole Best Actor nomination) plus in 1962’s How the West Was Won. Bing Crosby won the Best Actor Academy Award for 1944’s Going My way, and was nominated the following year for again playing Father Chuck O’Malley in The Bells of St. Mary’s, but did not win. Larry Parks was nominated for 1946’s The Jolson Story, but did not win the Best Actor Oscar, nor was he nominated for its 1949 sequel. During the 1970s Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro both won Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor Oscars, respectively, for portraying Don Corleone in The Godfather and Godfather II, respectively. Cate Blanchett was twice nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role for playing Queen Elizabeth in 1998’s Elizabeth and 2007’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age, but did not win either time.

So if Douglas wins a second Oscar for portraying Gekko he’ll make Academy Award history. (By the way, the closest thing to this is Harold Russell, the real life disabled vet who won both a Best Supporting Oscar and an Honorary Oscar for playing Homer Parrish, a handless, wounded veteran in 1946’s The Best Years of Their Lives.) 

Awards or not, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is much more than simply a sequel, it is an original work of art that stands on its own, even as it draws from the original source. Unlike, say, bonehead Michael Bay’s Transformers flicks, this is much more than a mere money-making franchise (even if Gekko might wish otherwise, LOL).  Stone, the director of the 1980s Vietnam masterpieces Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July and 1991’s JFK, etc.,  is at the top of his game, and I predict many well-deserved Academy Award nominations for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps – if not an Oscar gold rush. Don’t miss it – and don’t miss my interview with Stone in the September issue of The Progressive Magazine. (Say, if you can’t give yourself a shameless plug when reviewing a movie about capitalism, when can you?)

  



         

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FILM REVIEW: THE WHITE RIBBON

A scene from Germany's Oscar entry, The White Ribbon.
 
Unhappy Haneke
 
By Don Simpson

Welcome to the cold and grey environs of the Protestant north-German village of Eichwald during the fall harvest of 1913. Not long before the outbreak of World War I, Eichwald is still functioning as a semi-feudal society. The lord of the manor, the baron (Ulrich Tukur), possesses a majority of the wealth and workforce of the village; the pastor (Burghart Klaußner) and the doctor (Rainer Bock) also wield some power due to their societal status. The three men enjoy absolute moral authority over the women, children and peasants of Eichwald.

The baron treats his workers like slaves, caring little of their health and safety –- one woman falls to her death through rotten floorboards of the baron’s sawmill, yet no one seems to care but her children. The baron has a strained relationship with his wife (Ursina Lardi), who seems petrified to remain in Eichwald –- thus she spends a majority of the film off-screen with their son Sigmund (Fion Mutert) in the warm and safe seclusion of the Mediterranean coast.

The uber-puritanical pastor causes his pubescent children to have guilty consciences over trivial offences. When his son Martin (Leonard Proxauf) confesses to losing sleep due to masturbation the pastor has Martin’s hands tied to his bed frame to alleviate the nighttime temptation of his wayward hands. Additionally, Martin and his sister Klara (Maria-Victoria Dragus) are forced to don white ribbons of purity to remind them of the path of righteousness from which both perpetually stray.

The doctor seems on the surface to be a good person –- treating the village children in a kindly way. That is until we discover that he enjoys humiliating and taking sexual advantage of his housekeeper (Susanne Lothar) and molesting his young daughter, Anna (Roxane Duran).

As the baron, pastor and doctor attempt to retain their tyrannical brand of moral sanctity within their community, mysterious and violent events occur in Eichwald: a trip wire is stretched between two trees causing the doctor to fall from his horse; the baron’s son is abducted; a window is purposefully opened to expose a newborn baby to the intense winter cold; the handicapped son of the midwife is brutally attacked; the pastor’s canary is cruelly killed. 

The purpose and perpetrator(s) of these seemingly random acts is unknown. Are these acts of unbridled retaliatory malice? Or merely signs to prompt societal change? Or purely a means to ignite fear within the village?

One might say there is a terrorist afoot in Eichwald and chances are the terrorist is a direct result of the tyranny and fundamentalism inherent within Eichwald’s social structure. The strict class structure of the feudal society traps the village’s inhabitants in their roles thus propagating greed, jealousy, animosity and suspicion amongst neighbors; while the unforgiving nature of the Protestant religion –- the sole religion of the village -– promotes guilt, fear and hatred.

Then, think of the children –- with their perfect Aryan appearance –- growing up in such a restricted, unforgiving and negative atmosphere. These children are the very same people for whom Adolph Hitler will be their savior in 20 years. The White Ribbon thoughtfully contemplates how German villages such as Eichwald literally bred Nazis; just as fundamentalist (and other close-minded) societies of today breed fear, hatred and terrorism.

The White Ribbon is narrated by the village’s school teacher (Ernst Jacobi) as he contemplates the facts and fictions of his memory in an absurd attempt to piece this oblique and dire puzzle together from some point in the distant future (onscreen, the school teacher is played by Christian Friedel). Because the story is being told from school teacher’s perspective, it is somewhat suspect that he is privy to the solitary heartwarming and uplifting subplot of The White Ribbon –- as he relentlessly courts the lovely and innocent Eva (Leonie Benesch).

Judging by the sparse opening title sequence, black and white cinematography, and simplistic editing and lighting design, this is by no means a modern piece of filmmaking by Michael Haneke (one might say that The White Ribbon is the antithesis of his oeuvre to date). The White Ribbon possesses the finely-aged quality of northern European films from the 1930s and 1940s. The films of Robert Bresson -– a director whom Haneke has often sited as an influence –- would be a good reference point for The White Ribbon.
 

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