The documentary 20 Feet from Stardom is well-crafted and even slick, but it also taps into a deeper spirit that is emotionally satisfying.

The most impressive thing about this film is that it works on at least three levels by providing a historical look at the role of backup singers in popular music, conveying and contextualizing changes in the music industry over time, and sharing personal narratives of backup singers who may not be household names but are enormously talented in their own right.

This layering makes the film chronological, topical, and personal within a structure that feels organic despite its complexity.  And, in this way, the film does justice to the music it showcases.

But, there is more.

20 Feet from Stardom is packed with life lessons that are even bigger than music.  Themes in the film inform but transcend (that’s not a paradox – think about it) the chronological, topical, and individual (maybe not so much the personal in this regard).

This is a film about what it means to embrace your gifts, accept yourself, and find your place in the world.

I did not know about Lisa Fischer before this film, and she is both an awesome talent (not in the overused sense of that word) and an authentic, peaceful person who seems to have figured out when to strive and when to let it be.

Not everyone in the film has found that balance (and Fischer’s is not the only compelling story in the film by a longshot), but these conflicts, as the saying goes, are the stuff that drama is made of.  Or, the stuff of dreams…the stuff dreams are made of…that dreams are made on…and so it goes…

Regardless, of how you feel about dreaming and talent and fame, take in this picture.  I feel sure you’ll find more than one thing to appreciate about it.

There are so many layers, delicious layers!

 

 

The new season of The Newsroom seems a little more promising to me than the first one. 

I always have liked what Aaron Sorkin is saying about the state of television news and American politics and the actors actually mouthing the lines but haven’t much cared for how Sorkin is having them convey his ideology.

Liberal porn?  Maybe.  But, does it have to be so overwrought?

The lawsuit storyline introduced in the season premiere promises to add an element that may make the speechifying Sorkin can’t seem to resist seem a little more motivated and organic because of the question and answer format of preparing for a case. 

We’ll see how that works out.  “You better you better you bet.”

But, while we’re at it, has anyone else been thinking that Jeff Zucker’s presidency of CNN (and his rush to try to gain eyeballs at all costs) is a bit reminiscent of the Reese Lansing character on The Newsroom?  That unhappy thought has occurred to me more than once in the last week.

Call me an idealist – guilty as charged – but I always thought that CNN should focus on solid reporting, a moderate and balanced perspective, and cover a range of important news stories daily on the domestic broadcast even if that is not a moneymaker day in and day out to do the right thing and solidify the brand.  There is always money to be made for the corporation on the international broadcasts, and having a respected domestic brand can only help that enterprise. 

Abandoning coverage of the unrest in Egypt last week while going wall-to-wall on the Zimmerman trial (the same as every other network even when not much was happening) demonstrated to me that CNN has lost its way, and Zucker is going to take the network even further and faster down the wrong path.

 

Last week I did an interview with Joal Ryan about the legacy of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which gave me an opportunity to think (as I often do) about the way depictions of characters in popular culture (even on so-called “reality” shows) influence our cultural perceptions.

http://tv.yahoo.com/blogs/tv-news/-queer-eye-for-the-straight-guy–turns-10–did-it-change-the-world

In the process, I thought about an essay a student (yes, you Emma!) wrote for my seminar Culture and the Sitcom last fall.  She argued that stereotypical depictions of gay characters – like those in Modern Family and The New Normal – may be damaging.

She championed the recently cancelled ABC series Happy Endings as a truly progressive bit of television because of the Max Blum character, a lazy, schlub who happens to be gay.

For me, we will have reached a tipping point when representations of LGBTQ characters run the gamut rather than cluster around the conventional cultural stereotype that (I suspect) some straight viewers may be comfortable with because those narrow representations perpetuate an “us-them” divide that makes gay men an easily identified “other.”  Shows that feed those stereotypes and give them an exclusivity of representation rather than some depictions within a much wider range are not terribly helpful, and – as Emmy points out – may be damaging.

Two final thoughts.  First, it occurs to me that Cyrus on Scandal may be one of the more interesting gay characters on television in recent years because he defies all common stereotypes and is terribly complex.  Just like real people. 

Second, in the two episodes of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo that I watched to see what all the hoopla was about, I learned that Alana’s uncle is gay.  Who’d have seen that coming?  Defying sterotypes is useful, ultimately, to broaden perspectives.

 

 

In the midst of sad, divisive stories about race in America (yes, I’m talking about Trayvon Martin and Paula Deen), are you ready for a happy, unifying story that transcends race and class without ignoring social problems?  This film will sweep over you and offer comfort like a breath of fresh air and a sense of possibilities for a better way of being.

And, in some ways, there couldn’t be a more American story out there because this film also features football – not how football builds character, as some have maintained, but how the game reveals character, as my new hero Coach Bill Courtney says in the documentary Undefeated.

I eagerly anticipated seeing this film after it won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2012, but it never seemed to be available for viewing when I was, and by the time it became readily available, seeing it seemed less time-sensitive.  Undefeated was always “on my list” but invariably crowded out by newer releases.

That’s okay because today is probably when I needed to see this particularly inspiring and even magical film.  As a filmmaker friend of mine told me when he saw it pre-Oscar hoopla, filmmakers Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin “caught lightning in a bottle.”

Yes, they have captured a lovely story that is rare and beautiful and have shared it with the world making lightning in a bottle the perfect metaphor.  It is easy to be cynical and tired and afraid with the glut of tragic stories, misguided intentions. and ignorance permeating news and social media right now.

The perfect antidote may be watching one dedicated coach care about a team of young men as people and love them so much that he changes lives.  Multiple moments in this film are breathtaking.

Did I mention that the high school students from North Memphis, Tennessee are all black and that the coach and most of his assistants are white?  That the players are from poor families and broken homes and that the coach is an affluent business owner?  That Coach Courtney’s personal story makes him uniquely qualified to try to fill gaps in the younger men’s lives because he understands their aches and empty spaces so similar to those he experienced as a boy?

You don’t have to be a fan of the television series Friday Night Lights to appreciate Undefeated, but if you love the series (as I do), you may tremble or get goosebumps to see this real-life “molder of men” in action.

The film is pretty standard in the sense that it documents one stand-out season for an athletic team – we’ve all seen that before – but it sets a new standard for making the story resonate and demonstrating how hard work, sacrifice, service, and love can change the world one person at a time. 

I cried four times watching the movie.  Four.  I cried three times telling someone about it.  Three.  And, it’s not often I get teary-eyed at the movies. 

Just so you know, these were happy tears. 

I enjoy Alessandra Stanley’s work on television in The New York Times.  She is smart, funny, and very often I agree with her assessments (which tends to stoke the embers of fondness, doesn’t it?).

Loved this piece earlier today in which she described how her love affair with television began and declares it remains full-blown.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/11/arts/television/a-tv-lover-grows-up-to-be-a-tv-critic.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130711&_r=0

Nice read, isn’t it?

 

The East is a tight, little thriller that is well worth the investment of time and energy to take it in if you missed it on local screens by adding it to your list to check out when it becomes available in other formats.

The film is directed by Zal Balmanglij, written by Balmanglij and Brit Marling, and stars Marling as a former FBI agent, Sarah, who works for a company that provides intelligence and security for corporate clients to help them avoid or manage situations that turn into public relations nighmares or otherwise damage the bottom line.

Marling takes an assignment undercover to join a small group of anarchists (some would say terrorists) that target companies they believe have harmed people without paying for their actions (some would say crimes).  The group she infiltrates is called The East.

The set-up and overall plot are interesting, the larger themes and ideas that undergird the story are relevant (if not vital), but the real focus of this story is at the personal level, the micro rather than the macro.

We watch Sarah as she begins to question and change, and it is impossible not to follow her along that journey.  Brit Marling – who has said in interviews that she began writing as a way of furthering her acting career – is a big talent.  Without her subtlety and depth in developing this character, The East would not be as believable or as interesting.

…is that I saw it with my mother.

When I think back about the film, three things come to mind:

(1)   I knew that my mother used to watch The Lone Ranger on television in the 1950s after she and her older brother got home from school.  I did not know, however, that they were members of the Lone Ranger Club and each had a silver bullet.  That makes me smile; I’m glad to know this little detail.

(2)   Normally, I can’t stand it when someone talks during a movie, but my mother made several brief comments that contextualized the film perfectly from her perspective and informed my own.  Once she said, “That is not my Lone Ranger.  He is stupid.”  Another time, “What is wrong with Tonto?  He’s supposed to be the strong, silent type.”  And, regarding one of several episodes featuring the horse Silver, “This is weird.”

(3)   The problem is not that any one element of the film is terrible, it’s just that what comes together is – as one of my friends says frequently – a hot mess.  It’s good-looking enough but utterly foolish.

The Lone Ranger is two-and-a-half hours of empty calories, but I don’t want my time back because I saw the movie with my Mama. 

As for my mother, she didn’t like the film but reports that she is glad we went to see it because otherwise she would have wondered about it.  Sometimes that is enough of a reason to spend an afternoon at the cinema.

 

There’s nothing original or especially clever about The Heat except the chemistry generated by Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy.

This is a conventional buddy picture where mis-matched cops unravel a criminal dynasty and generate some laughs along the way.  Bullock plays an uptight, by-the-book FBI agent who is a loner and too much of a smarty-pants for her own good while McCarthy plays a tough as nails, grubby, potty-mouthed Boston city police detective with family problems.

The contrasts between the two are pointed, the outcome is predictable, but the movie is still fun to watch.  The Heat is a crowd-pleaser and notable mainly because women characters fill the two leading roles.

It passes The Bechdel Test.

Haven’t heard of The Bechdel Test?

Alison Bechdel, creator of the award-winning, 2006 graphic novel Fun Home and the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, introduced the test against gender bias in film through a character in the comic strip, and it has gained a lot of cultural currency because it is astonishingly true!

The rules are simple and, one would think, easy for a film to pass.

(1)  There must be at least two women characters (some sources add that they must be named).

(2)  The two characters must talk with one another.

(3)  These women characters must talk about something other than a man.

Check around if you want to read more about this.  In addition to www.bechdeltest.com, there are a variety of sites that talk about the many films that do not pass the test.

Two of my favorites are clips posted by Anita Sarkeesian, a media critic and the creator of Feminist Frequency, a video webseries examining representations of women in popular culture.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLF6sAAMb4s and a 2012 Oscar update http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH8JuizIXw8.

So, what’s my favorite thing about The Heat?

It may be fun and forgettable, but it also passes The Bechdel Test easily.

And, while doing so, it opened second at the box office for the weekend (behind Monsters University) with solid support from audiences despite its mixed critical reception.

They are women.  Hear them roar.

I don’t use the b-word very often, but Sarah Polley’s new documentary is brilliant.

Polley was a familiar face to me from various acting roles in 2006 when she made her debut as a feature director.  With the release of the achingly accomplished film Away From Her, she is now always a writer-director in the forefront of my mind.  

Her new film, a remarkable documentary, explores truth, memory, and family secrets with Polley mainly behind the camera interviewing family members and a few close friends and colleagues of her late mother.

What is most extraordinary about the film is not the stories they tell – though some of them are a bit eye-opening – but the way Polley pieces, paces, and crafts them into a glorious whole that is so much more than the sum of the film’s many parts.

The pacing of the film and balancing of the various stories is carefully calibrated to give each participant just the right amount of screen time at just the right point in the telling of the overarching story to speak to the larger truths of the situation.  And – with incredible nuance and skill – this unfolding reveals Polley’s own emotional arc as a character and establishes her own set of complex and evolving emotions about the stories she hears.

Many, if not most, of the stories told affect her profoundly, and I won’t delve into the particulars of that because to do so would diminish your surprise when watching the film, but here Polley reveals herself as the filmmaker with a transparency of process that is perfectly integrated into the rest of the film, a presence that both complements and cements the other essential elements of the film.

Seldom is it I have seen a film that so skillfully adapts forms and conventions to serve the needs of the story at hand.  Stories We Tell is original, accomplished, and engaging.  I consider it a must-see documentary. 

If you haven’t seen Away From Her, make it a point to see Polley’s debut narrative feature after you take in Stories We Tell.

 

I liked the pilot episode of the Showtime original series Ray Donovan enough to watch a little further into the season. 

Liev Schreiber plays a Hollywood fixer – think Olivia Pope in Tinseltown instead of DC but more of a lone wolf – with family problems that match if not exceed those he handles on the job. 

 

One of those problems is his father, played by Jon Voight, who kills an abusive priest straightaway from finishing his 20-year-stint in Walpole State Prison then heads to the West Coast to weak havoc (or will he?) with his son’s life. 

Stay tuned…to see if I do…