Katrina Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Get out a whole box of Kleenex, one of the jumbo packs, before you see Mine. Movies about post-Katrina problems can be sad enough, but this documentary is about pets, too. You know you're not going to get through this movie dry-eyed unless you have no heart whatsoever. You may even find yourself headed for an animal shelter afterwards, if you're not careful. Director Geralyn Pezanoski skillfully tells an emotional story that rarely resorts to the obvious, or to "good guys vs. bad guys."

Mine focuses on Katrina evacuees who were separated from their pets (involuntarily in one case), and who are trying to find and reunite with the animals. The movie opens with Malvin, a man in his eighties, reminiscing about his dog Bandit while carrying the dog's leash, which he found in his yard after the floods. I immediately suspected this story wouldn't end happily at all. The movie then shows us post-Katrina animal rescue. Shelters and many hotels didn't accept pets, so many evacuees had to leave the animals behind. They assumed it would only be for a few days, but the impact of the disaster was such that people couldn't return to their homes for weeks.

In the meantime, animal rescue teams were able to find and round up many of the stranded pets. Some pets were taken to animal shelters in other states, some of which offered the pets not for fostering but for adoption. Heartbreaking situations resulted, and Mine focuses on a few of them. For example, Victor's dog Max was sent to Florida and adopted by Tiffany, who bonded with her new pet immediately. But Victor missed Max. How could this be resolved?

I grew up in the New Orleans area, so I can't resist movies set in that location, especially documentaries. The only problem is that I worry about seeing anything involving the term "post-Katrina" in a theater, because I'm always worried I'll end up in tears or enraged in public. Fortunately, Don't Eat the Baby: Adventures at Post-Katrina Mardi Gras kept me more amused than sad, but at the same time managed to accurately represent the problems that South Louisianians faced in the six months after the hurricane and ensuing floods.

Don't Eat the Baby focuses on the ways in which New Orleanians dealt with Mardi Gras in 2006. The city was devastated, with much of its population forced to live elsewhere, and for many people it seemed inappropriate to spend money and other resources on a big celebration. Still, the large parade organizations (called krewes) wanted to roll, the mayor and other politicians hoped that the festivities would draw tourism and thus bring needed revenue to local businesses, and many New Orleanians simply wanted to take a little time to forget about the bad things in their lives, and celebrate as they have done every year.

The Emmys may be for television programming, but often the nonfiction categories include some great documentary films that would be just as much at home in a theater; some have even had theatrical exposure at festivals before selling distribution rights to TV. When the Primetime Emmy nominations were announced this week, I noticed a couple of familiar documentary titles, most notably Spike Lee's amazing documentary about New Orleans, When the Levees Broke -- one of my top ten film picks from 2006. The four-hour HBO film has been nominated not only for best nonfiction filmmaking, but five other awards in the nonfiction categories: direction, cinematography, picture editing, sound editing and sound mixing. I'm sorry not to see the Terence Blanchard score nominated -- the documentary had a rich, haunting soundtrack -- but pleased the movie is being honored overall.

AJ Schnack, whose blog All these wonderful things is a go-to place for news and analysis about documentaries, has posted a list of nominations for just the nonfiction Emmy categories, if you don't want to wade through the long lists on the Emmy website. He also pointed out several other documentaries that played film fests and are nominated for Emmys: Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple and A Lion in the House. I noticed that Thin, which premiered at Sundance in 2006 before playing on HBO, is up for a direction award for Lauren Greenfield. Finally, since we're discussing movie-related programming here, it's only fair to note that the "AFI's 100 Years ...100 Cheers: America's Most Inspiring Movies" special is up for some of these awards, but I'm hoping the documentaries win in those categories.

It was only a few months ago that speculation arose about whether When the Levees Broke would ever get a DVD release. Spike Lee's four-hour made-for-HBO documentary about the New Orleans-area floods resulting from Hurricane Katrina and a faulty levee system premiered a year after New Orleans flooded. Speculation arose that rights issues, either for the footage or the score, might prevent HBO Home Video from releasing the movie on DVD. I was worried it might end up like the civil-rights documentary Eyes on the Prize, which was not available for public viewing for years, although in the past couple of years, an unscrupulous person might be able to find and watch an illegal copy through the internet.

Thankfully, I found out that When the Levees Broke has been given a DVD release: in fact, it went on sale yesterday. I haven't seen much news about the release -- it was under the radar enough that Scott missed it in this week's new DVD roundup, and I can't find many reviews of the DVD. A review at DVD Talk informs us that the three-disc set includes a full-length commentary track by Spike Lee as well as a 90-minute "epilogue" with updated footage about New Orleans. Honestly, Lee could go back every six months for the next five years and probably find 90 more minutes to tack on ... the difficulties there are far from over. DVD Talk also mentions the excerpts from Inside Man's soundtrack remaining on the DVD, so that must not have been an unavoidable rights-issues problem. I'd love to find out whether the documentary had to be edited in any way to avoid rights issues for the DVD. But that's just me being curious, because I don't mind a few minor edits or music changes if it means I can see the movie again. (As long as they keep "St. James Infirmary" on the soundtrack, even though it does make me cry.)

[Special thanks to John DeFore of Hollywood Reporter and the Austin American-Statesman for the tip, otherwise I would never have known about the DVD release.]

So what exactly does Spike Lee want to tell us about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath? Whatever it is, he wants New Orleans-area residents to hear it first. Lee will screen the first half of his four-hour documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts at the New Orleans Arena on August 16. Lee is expected to attend the premiere. The arena is adjacent to the Superdome, where crowds of survivors took refuge under horrible circumstances after last year's hurricane and subsequent flooding devastated the New Orleans area.

Lee was under fire earlier this year for refusing to discredit the theory that the levees had been intentionally bombed in order to flood poor neighborhoods. However, he now claims that the documentary will cite the Army Corps of Engineers' poor construction of the levees as the cause of the flooding. HBO will air When the Levees Broke in two parts on August 21 and 22, and then replay the entire film on August 29, the anniversary of the hurricane's landfall. Tickets for the New Orleans event are free through the Arena box office.

There's certainly no "We need time to heal!" thinking going on when it comes to Hurricane Katrina. Both When the Levees Broke, Spike Lee's documentary about the storm and its aftermath, and Wong Kar-Wai's rumored fictional project (which may or may not be shot in New York and may or may not star Adrien Brody) popped up in the news just a few months after the hurricane hit. And today, we have two more: Jette reported this morning about Walking on Dead Fish, and also in the works is an indie picture called Cut Throat City. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie "is a heist story that begins in the grimy, decimated Lower Ninth Ward and then hits the road" -- plus, it's got "social relevance." Woo hoo! The film will mark the cinematic debut of music video director Aaron Courseault; New Orleans rappers Baby and Lil Wayne are expected to star.

Depending on the acting skills of its central duo (I though Baby had been in at least one movie before, but he doesn't seem to be listed in the IMDb), this actually might have some potential. It seems to me that a little indie picture is probably the best way to look at post-Katrina New Orleans -- this is a situation where low-budget might be a blessing rather than a curse, because it could lend the movie a convincing sort of grittiness.

Is it too soon for a feature film about the effects of Hurricane Katrina? Universal doesn't think so. The studio is planning to make Hurricane Season, a feature based on an as yet unreleased documentary called Walking on Dead Fish. The documentary focuses on the East St. John High School football team, which added evacuee students from New Orleans as teammates after the hurricane. The high school is in Reserve, a small town about 30 miles outside of New Orleans. It sounds like Hurricane Season could be one of those feel-good sports-focused films like the kind Disney recently decided to stop making, but with hurricane drama added.

Speaking as someone who grew up in the New Orleans area, I'd like to see some of the many and varied documentaries that local and regional filmmakers have produced about post-Katrina New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. However, a slick studio-produced feature related to those events isn't something I want to see anytime soon. Maybe by the time the film releases, I'll feel different about it.

Hurricane Katrina and its effects on the Gulf Coast have provided material for a number of documentaries -- a whole category was devoted to these films during the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in April. One  documentary shown during the festival premiered in New Orleans on Sunday. In New Orleans Music in Exile, filmmaker Robert Mugge took his camera on a quest to find New Orleans musicians whom he hadn't heard about since before Katrina hit. Mugge traveled as far as Houston, Austin, and Memphis to track down musicians such as Irma Thomas (shown above with Mugge), Cyril Neville, Kermit Ruffins, Cowboy Mouth, and The Iguanas. He must have been at least partially successful, since most of those acts played Jazz Fest a week or two ago.

The film's New Orleans premiere was followed by live performances from Thomas, Ruffins, and the ReBirth Brass Band. If you don't live in New Orleans, you still have a chance to see New Orleans Music in Exile. The documentary will be shown on Friday and Saturday on the cable channel Starz. Since I know Cyril Neville and some of The Iguanas live in Austin now, I hope the documentary gets a theatrical showing here as well as in the other cities featured in the film.

In addition to the two new movies about which we've already heard  - The Lady from Shanghai (thankfully not a remake) and his Katrina-except-in-NYC flick - Wong Kar Wai is reportedly working on a third film called Blueberry Nights. Like both Lady and the Katrina film, it will be shot in New York, and is expected to be Wong's first English-language project. The film is set to star Norah Jones, and Rachel Weisz, too, might be involved - she's told the press that she is going to appear in Wong's "next film," but it's unclear which project she's talking about (or, indeed, if she even knows). The movie will be based (at least right now - who knows what will happen once Wong starts filming) on a short in which "a shopkeeper falls for a mysterious female client who eats blueberry pies."

Call me crazy, but that sounds awesome - after all, half of Chungking Express revolves around a guy eating canned pineapple, and that movie is practically perfect. Blueberry Nights has a budget of about $10 million and is expected to start shooting in New York sometimes before The Lady from Shanghai, which was recently pushed back, goes into production in 2007.

Wong Kar-Wai, the incredibly talented Hong Kong director who will be chairing this year's Cannes jury, has reportedly decided to do a little work on this side of the Atlantic as well. According to a Hong Kong newspaper, Wong plans to make a movie - in English, presumably - about Hurricane Katrina; the film will be based on "moving" events that actually occurred during the storm and her aftermath. Additionally, Wong appears to have at least spoken with Adrien Brody about starring in the film, though the actor won't formally accept a role until he sees a completed script. Oddly, Wong's project would be shot in New York City, because his scouts felt that the damage in New Orleans was "too severe" to shoot there. Jeez, someone better tell the crew making Deja Vu to get out while there's still time!

While news of anything new from Wong is cause for great excitement, the fact that Brody won't move on the project until he gets a completed script is a bad sign for his involvement - I mean, when was the last time Wong finished a script before he started shooting? Has he ever done that?