American Blackout — obivously intended to be most flattering to Ms. McKinney, but a lot of the accolades are warranted since she is one of the few elected people at the federal level speaking truth to power; at this point she’s got nothing to lose, so she’s tackling issues and taking positions that other politicians won’t touch since she was taken down in 2002’s conflagration of media attention.
The doc is of course absolutely correct in its representation of the core issue of black voter disenfranchisement. but these docs don’t reach broad audiences and are likely to alienate moderates that they do reach, and so these docs like these an be seen much like the similar (but opposing) films that play to the conservative megachurch crowds in the white exurbs.
I suppose that there is still value in preaching to choir, perhaps energizing that choir; but the fact is that, as she observed on Election Night 2004, the right-wing is simply better at this; they can distort facts, hone simple messages and manipulate people into voting against their own self-interest. Further, they are now demonstrated experts at the disenfranchisement tactics that worked in Florida and then Ohio, and they’ll continue to stay one step (one election cycle) ahead of those of us who just want an honest vote. Democrats/liberals/progressives simply can’t execute on these kinds of tactics that modern politics require — I don’t know if it’s the diversity in the tent that prevents them from being able to dumb their message down to a simple set and then staying on message, or simply scruples, but it’s just not happening.
Oh, and, I’m probably naive about this, but I still blame Denise Majette for screwing up Cathy Woolard’s political career …
Pope Dreams — Damn them for making such an effective tearjerker; they just hammered away at all the big buttons. In general it’s a by-the-numbers romantic comedy that might star John Cusack or Meg Ryan, and thus it’s appropriate that the writing is pretty bad (like Saved-By-The-Bell bad) but as the movie wore on it kept getting better and better. The acting was good, although it was kind of hard to tell behind all that cliche’d writing. William Faulkner said “love, money and death are the only three things to write about”, and they thoroughly covered all three in this movie. I imagine that it was probably a tough call for the AFF folks about whether to include this film in the festival, what with the vigorously dopey 10th-grader writing and kleenex artillery, but there’s a lot of raw talent here and I’m sure we’ll see more from a lot of these people. Noel Fisher steals all his scenes, and Stephen Tobolowksy turned in his usual solid performance. Character development is messy but there’s lots to chew on.
Oh, Mr. Faulkner, Do You Write? — nice insight into Faulkner the man, adaption of a one-man play, although there’s hardly any “adaptation” since they just ran a few cameras during his stage performance, a la Spalding Gray, with audience engagement. Note: seeing movies with old people in the audience (a la Prairie Home Companion) is really annoying, what with their astonished gasps, agreeing mutters and other emotive grunts. I need to read another Faulkner book.