no end in sight Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I was just re-watching Eugene Jarecki's terrific documentary Why We Fight the other day and wondering, "man, how did this not win an Oscar?" Both its ineligibility and the strength of the 2006 feature documentary category aside, it's a really great visual essay on the problems of the U.S. military -- particularly the allowance for the military industrial complex to grow so large -- since the mid-20th century. If you've never seen it, you should. It'll bring you up to speed right up to the Iraq War (and feel free to make it an informative double feature by following it up with Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight).

For his next feature, Jarecki is sticking to the subject of war, though he's going back and focusing on Vietnam, specifically the evacuation of U.S. troops from Saigon in 1975 (maybe it can parallel an exit from Iraq? huh? maybe?). He and screenwriter Jesse Wigutow (It Runs in the Family) are basing the doc, titled Irreparable Harm, on former CIA agent Frank Snepp's book "Irreparable Harm: A Firsthand Account of How One Agent Took on the CIA in an Epic Battle Over Free Speech," which details the author's struggle with the federal government after he published his Saigon evacuation document, "Decent Interval."

Jarecki's film, which is being produced for HBO Films, will be more about Snepp than on the history, and hopefully that won't get him in trouble with the feds too. Also, here's hoping that Irreparable Harm at least makes Jarecki eligible to be nominated for the Oscar he deserves.

Last week, indieWIRE ran a provocative piece by Anthony Kaufman about the financial woes of THINKfilm, one of my favorite indie distributors. Kaufman detailed the cash flow problems at THINKfilm, which were causing acrimony between the distrib and many of its filmmakers, who were alleging that the distributor hadn't paid what it owed to them, as well as to advertising companies charged with marketing films under THINKfilm's banner.

Now indieWIRE has a follow-up piece up by Eugene Hernandez, which says that director/producer Alex Gibney, whose film Taxi to the Darkside won the best documentary Oscar this year and was supposed to receive a major theatrical push by THINKfilm following its win, is seeking more than $1 million in damages from the ailing distributor.

While THINKfilm did pay the film's producers the minimums guaranteed by their contract on May 5, Gibney's complaint alleges that THINKfilm failed to disclose that it did not have the financial resources to support the film's theatrical push following its Oscar win, and "jeopardized the success of the film by failing to abide by the terms of contracts it entered into with public relations firms and advisers and failed to pay such firms for work done and expenses incurred."

Over at indieWIRE, Anthony Kaufman has an excellent piece up on Michael Moore's proposal that theaters across America designate a night each week at "Doc Night at the Movies." Citing the dismal box office returns for docs in the past year (only Moore's Sicko, No End in Sight, and In the Shadow of the Moon grossed over a million dollars), Kaufman seems intrigued by Moore's proposal, if somewhat skeptical it would work. Kaufman raises some interesting points about the feasibility of a "Doc Night," including these questions:

• Who will select the documentaries that are chosen? And on what basis will they be chosen?
• Will the documentaries already have distributors or not? Or will there be a mix?
• Will participating filmmakers pay a fee? Or conversely, will they get a split of the ticket sales?
• If most multiplexes are film-only, and the majority of documentaries are finished in a high-definition digital format, how will they be screened? Will expensive projectors be rented? Or will filmmakers need to pay for costly film transfers?

... and perhaps the most interesting question: Will Moore's next film also go out through the program?

Back in January, we wrote about director AJ Schnack's (Kurt Cobain: About a Son) efforts to create awards for non-fiction filmmaking that would be ... somewhat more relevant than the Academy Awards. Back when the Oscar shortlist for docs came out, Schnack wrote an angry diatribe about the process and the films selected (and, more importantly, those that were not selected) that echoed the sentiments of many of us who write about, or make, documentary films.

Although I'm not at all displeased that Alex Gibney ultimately won the Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side, and would have been equally happy if No End in Sight had won, there were some glaring omissions in the Oscar shortlist that were truly appalling, most notably In the Shadow of the Moon and King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.

When No End in Sight premiered at the Sundance Film Fesitval in 2007, it quickly became one of the most buzzed about films of the fest. The film continued to play well and to generate discussion, culminating in the film's nomination for Best Documentary at this year's Academy Awards. Cinematical talked to director Charles Ferguson by phone recently about the film, the United States government's policies in Iraq, his thoughts on what the next Adminstration needs to do, and whether we'll ever see an end to the US occupation in Iraq.

Cinematical: Let's start with what inspired you to make No End in Sight.

Charles Ferguson: The idea for the film came from my background in Political Science and policy analysis, and from talking to a number of people who were studying the Iraq war and writing books -- books like Losing Iraq, Squandered Victory, and The Assassin's Gate. In a sense I was stealing from them in that I was doing something similar to what they were doing in terms of wanting to make a film about the decisions that had been made about the war and their consequences.

I found it a little strange -- and frankly still do find it strange -- that no other film like that had been made. There were other films about Iraq but they were about very specific things -- one group of GIs, or one family, or one institution. And some of them were excellent films, but I find it really astonishing that no one else had made a film asking,"How did this happen?"

Here's a dirty little secret: sometimes film critics don't want to see movies. It's true. When we start out, ambitious and full of energy, we'll sit through any old thing, but after a while, when the formulas begin to wear on you, you can smell a turkey from watching the trailer. Sometimes you can smell a stinkbomb just from the title alone. I thought, for fun, I'd go over some titles I haven't seen and give you an idea of what might go through a critic's head. Of course, some of this is self-justification for not being able to see every single movie that comes through town. Frankly, it's impossible for one person to do, and so we resort to a porcupine-like defense, just in case anyone asks us about a movie we haven't seen: "It looked terrible."

Here's one: How to Cook Your Life (1 screen). What is that? Without even looking, it sounds like a bunch of actresses on a single set with too much dialogue, probably a lot of violin music and tears. And what could it mean? Why would I want to cook my life? It sounds painful, doesn't it? (It's really a film by the German director Dorris Dorrie about trying to equate cooking with Zen philosophy.) Then we have Hitman (9 screens), which irritated critics to no end, but seems to have pleased a fair number of moviegoers. Question: how many hitman movies have you seen in the past five or ten years? Is there an actor working today who hasn't played a hitman? What kind of brass cojones must it have taken to actually use the title "Hitman" on a middling, forgettable piece of work like this one?

As my wife said, it's just not the Oscars if there's nothing to complain about. However, I was impressed that two of the year's toughest films, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (389 screens) and Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men took the most nominations. Typically, the Academy is attracted to much less challenging and easy-to-categorize films (like Atonement). Both films are fairly bleak in their vision, but I suspect There Will Be Blood will sneak out ahead for two reasons: it's an epic, and epics almost always win. And, to quote a character from Sunset Boulevard, it "says a little something" about the current sociopolitical climate.

One of the biggest controversies cropped up over the foreign film category, which came up with five nominations that no one has ever heard of. (The Counterfeiters opens sometime next month and Mongol opens in June.) Not to mention that they ignored top contenders like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (opening this week) and Persepolis (30 screens). Thankfully the outrage has begun discussions on changing the stupid, ancient rules for the category. Currently these rules require each country to submit one film, and multi-national films, such as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (107 screens), to be disqualified. A small group of "specialists," rather than the Academy as a whole, votes on the small list of films. The documentary category was less obscure, and although I saw 19 documentaries in 2007, I only managed to see two of the five nominees, No End in Sight and Sicko. I have an Academy screener for Operation Homecoming that I hope to catch soon, and Taxi to the Dark Side (1 screen) is screening for Bay Area press next week.

You're probably thinking you don't need another documentary about the Iraq War. But you're wrong, because Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side is finally being released, and the film is one of three necessary docs dealing with Iraq. The triad, which would make a great box set if only the same company distributed all three films, also includes Charles Ferguson's very highly acclaimed Sundance jury-award-winner No End in Sight (on which Gibney was a producer) and Patricia Foulkrod's under-appreciated 2006 work The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends.

What do they have in common? Well, if you put them together and watch them all, you'll feel like an expert on three important aspects of the war and its most significant repercussions. They may not tell you everything there is to know about the Iraq War, but they're more thorough and informative than most. No End in Sight is the most directly involved with the actual conflict, from its causes to its effects (read Kim's review here). The Ground Truth more specifically deals with the American soldiers, but in an all-encompassing, training-to-homecoming portrait of modern combat and its consequences (see my review here). Taxi to the Dark Side is sort of like a flip side to that film, though it doesn't necessarily focus on the enemy combatants. Instead it deals with suspected enemies, soldiers or otherwise, who are held and oftentimes tortured in prisons such as Iraq's Abu Ghraib.

Taxi to the Dark Side somewhat falls outside the box (set), though, in that it really isn't about Iraq. In fact, Gibney insists that his documentary is not an 'Iraq film.' Yes, it does feature a lot of details about, and footage of, Iraq's Abu Ghraib, which is probably the best-known prison of its kind, but it also prominently features Bagram, in Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, the two other facilities used in the detention and interrogation of individuals presumed to be involved with Al-Qaeda, the Iraqi insurgency or any other enemy of the U.S. in its "War on Terror."

It was a damn fine year for movies, 2007. It's hard enough picking 10 top flicks from the crop after a just-decent year, so the task was especially tricky this time around. (At least at Moviefone we're able to pick the 50 best.) That's why I'm thankful for the unwritten critics' rule that Top 10 lists can start with a tie, so long as there's common thematic bond between them. Here are my 11 10 favorite movies of the 007.

10. Tie: Dan in Real Life / Grace is Gone (Widower Special)
What can I say, I'm a sucker for widowers. Some critics found the loving family in Steve Carell's poignant dramedy Dan unrealistic. I feel sorry for some critics. Plot contrivances aside, it succeeds both in capturing the dynamics of a large clan and telling a helluva love story. In a career-best performance in Grace, John Cusack is a flag-waving father of two whose wife is killed in Iraq. This tear-jerking drama might be misconstrued as a political statement, but finally it's a heartrending tale of human loss.

9. Hot Fuzz
Yes, this hilarious send-up of (tribute to?) Bruckheimer schlock tops Shaun of the Dead, the brilliant debut from Brits Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright. Whereas Shaun's first hour is pure bliss, it loses some steam in the third act. Fuzz gets better as it speeds along, offering up surprises and side-splitters in equal measure. Really, who would've thought anyone would ever pay homage to Bad Boys II?

8. No End in Sight
As you can surmise from the title, this ain't exactly a sunshiney look at the Iraq War. But it's the most thorough, eye-opening detailing of the mega-blunders made the Bush Administration in planning and executing the war to date (so THAT'S where the insurgency came from!), with nary a Michael Moore stunt in sight. Prepared to be educated, maddened.

7. Ratatouille
Like I've been saying it for a while now: The machines at Pixar appear to be challenging themselves more and more with each release: "What DON'T audiences think they'll fall in love with? How about a rat who cooks? Better yet, a French rat!" And of course, after 111 minutes of Pixar magic, most of us left with a newfound respect for rodents. (Reminds me of '91 when I saw Beauty and the Beast; haven't been afraid of beasts since.)

6. Superbad
Forget Knocked Up. Forget Walk Hard. This deliciously raunchy buddy comedy/love story will stand the test of time and prevail as the most influential Apatow movie of '07, defining a generation like Dazed and Confused and Fast Times at Ridgemont High did before it. Here's hoping Christopher Mintz-Passe (a.k.a. McLovin) will ever be able to convincingly play another character, though I wouldn't mind more McLovin.

Yahoo reports that the National Society of Film Critics (made up of 61 film critics across the country) has chosen Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood as the Best Picture of the Year, beating The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and No Country for Old Men. Anderson also won Best Director, over Julian Schnabel and the Coen Brothers. Daniel Day-Lewis was named Best Actor for Blood, and Robert Elswit received an award for its cinematography. The critics are clearly crazy for Blood, but I don't think it'll take the Best Picture Oscar. It's too cold a film for Oscar voters to fully embrace, and though I know I'm practically alone in this assessment, it's too flawed.

Julie Christie was named Best Actress for her understated performance in Away from Her. Casey Affleck was named Best Supporting Actor for his excellent work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. And Cate Blanchett was selected as Best Supporting Actress for a performance that, for me, didn't amount to much more than a pretty good Bob Dylan impression. No End in Sight, a straightforward account of the bad decisions made by the Bush administration after the invasion of Iraq, won Best Documentary. Tamara Jenkins' script for The Savages was named Best Screenplay. I really loved the first half of The Savages but felt the second got distracted with side stories that thinned out the story's impact. Only 41 of the Society's 61 members cast ballots this year (?), and their choices frequently differ from Oscar voters. We'll find out just how much they differ when the Academy Award nominations are announced on January 22nd.