Remember when the Internet asked people to turn on their video cameras and record the events of a single day of their lives?

Well, 80,000 people really did that last summer. And they shipped 4,500 hours of footage from 192 countries off to Director Kevin MacDonald and Editor Joe Walker. Over the last year, they and their team figured out a way to extract from that footage a documentary called Life in a Day.

It is one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of filmmaking based on sheer volume alone. One can barely imagine the thoughtfulness and discipline required to design and execute a post-production process of that scale. McDonald, Walker and their team may one day explain it all–if they haven’t already–and when they do they’ll offer a master class in crowdsourcing for any business that is still not sure how to turn users into co-creators.

The film is simple. It follows an obvious chronology from dark to dawn to dusk to dark again. Dayparts become characters and the people who made the final cut of the film are used like dialogue. In one scene, one person utters a sentence that encapsulates the greatest value of the film:

“I’m afraid of people who are different than me.”

That is actually a paraphrase, but the idea expressed is accurate. The scene passes by quickly and would be easy to miss. Perhaps the filmmakers intended it to be part of their thesis. Perhaps not. As the film introduces more and more people from more and more corners of the planet, that line becomes difficult to ignore.

Image via SFGate.com

In montage after montage of ordinary people doing ordinary things in the course of an unremarkable Saturday in July, the homogeneity of the human experience comes into focus. None of us like to be awoken by an alarm clock. All of us enjoy cooked food. And each of us is subject to experiencing the exact same range of emotions. Customs and cultures may separate us nominally, but the human race is a singular one.

The finite wisdom of the film shows us our commonalities very plainly. It really marks the first legitimate post-racial moment in Western culture. That the film exists does not mean racism is over. But it does eliminate one crucial justification for racism.

The woman who uttered that sentence about fearing people different than her could claim, at that time, to be unaware of how similar she is to her fellow man, woman and child. Back when time and space separated the earth into what seemed like self-contained planets, reasonable people could fear the inhabitants from the faraway places who did not look like them or speak their language or worship their deity. It is a matter of opinion how long ago that separation began to dissipate. Following the release of A Day in the Life, the separation is completely gone.

Maybe everyone on earth hasn’t seen the film yet. Maybe the entire global population never will. In any case, it is no longer acceptable to say that you have no empathy for the Other. Because you could. If you wanted to.

1995 offered numerous options for the American kid who preferred outrage over sloth. There were corporate scumbags in America to loathe. There were faceless Communist tyrants in China to defeat. There were political prisoners everywhere to be freed. And there were precious resources of an abused planet to save. It was a time when you could choose your own enemy. And then do battle against him or them or it in whatever way made you feel good. The stakes were high and self-serving all at once: an odd cocktail of nobility and narcissism.

We used the word “revolution” because our thesauri offered no better descriptors. And because we hoped our faces may someday be silk-screened onto someone’s t-shirt. Like Malcolm. Or Che. Most of us knew, on some level, that America was already settled. There were no more shining seas to set off in search of. And what bits of inequality remained were relics that would likely die with the generations who insisted upon creating them in the first place. We were, as Palahniuk wrote, history’s middle children. Our task was to wait it all out. We could do so loudly. Or sitting on the couch in front of the big screen.

An unsatisfied and aggressive minority would not stand for those choices. They thought they could see Che and raise him. They went to the place where a line signified the very edge of reasonable, mostly legal protest and took a running leap across it. Those were the kinds of people who joined the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).

Image via TargetOfOpportunity.com

Over the years, that acronym–ELF–has featured in much TV news coverage of a phenomenon that has been named “eco-terrorism.” Those video packages–like most TV news–were cut to scare the milk and cookies out of you. In three minutes or less, members of the ELF were prosecuted, condemned and sentenced. They had committed acts of eco-terrorism and eco-terrorism was bad, we were told.

But what exactly is eco-terrorism? Who or what is harmed by it? And what does it mean to be guilty of it? Those are the questions driving the deep character study portrayed in the film, If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.

The film follows the case of Daniel McGowan who was arrested in 2005 in connection with a series of arsons in the Pacific Northwest and deposited into the federal court system so the US government could contemplate the questions about eco-terrorism. We meet Daniel in the middle of the 1990s when he was a simple letter-writer and protest marcher living in New York City. We follow him to Eugene, Oregon where his passions for the environment drove him to enlist in more radical causes. As Daniel and the people who became his ELF compatriots/co-conspirators recall their various actions, the film toggles between recounting what happened then and what is happening now as Daniel defends himself against severe criminal charges. We ultimately learn both why that collection of radical environmentalists disbanded as an active unit and how Daniel’s trial played out.

The time the film spends in Oregon provides a great history lesson in the civil unrest that comprised public life in Eugene at the close of the 20th Century. It also chronicles the WTO protests that took place just to the north in Seattle. Together, these sequences provide clear context so we may understand how the urge to protect the planet informed the setting of a spectacular series of fires. It is sympathetic to Daniel and his compatriots/co-conspirators. It is also coldly objective in presenting the facts of the arson cases. Some of the people who set the fires–including Daniel–appear on camera to explain why and how they were set. The film makes it plain that crime occurred. The film’s real conflict–with apologies to Daniel’s dilemma of struggling to defend himself against the criminal charges–concerns those questions about what is in a name: “eco-terrorism.”

Image via Berkeleyside.com

Never mind the prefix, terrorism has become the great sofa king of our time. It has lost all meaning even as it continues to be used again and again to separate “us” from “them.” As a tactic, it remains potent. But should every tactic that elicits fear and terror rate as terrorism? At what point does a tactic become a purpose? Thoughtful people should agree on a delicate threshold at the very least. It may be the one thing separating the mobs from ripping each other apart. That, more or less, is the point made in If A Tree Falls.

Two sound bytes really resonate. The first comes from an authority figure (e.g. the police, the FBI, etc) who says, “One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.” The second comes from someone who worked on Daniel’s defense who reports no person or creature was killed–or even injured–in the dozens of fires set by this ELF unit. The film doesn’t track Daniel into a courtroom so we never get to see what his actual defense was, but he and his compatriots/co-conspirators declare in different scenes that the point was never to harm any living soul, but to stop some souls from doing harm to the planet. Their intent, they assure us, was noble. And the execution of their tactic, according to the facts, yielded millions of dollars in property damage and lost business. Nothing more.

If you believe the first sound byte to be true, the actions of this ELF unit present an either/or proposition. That’s the easy way out and it suggests a very low threshold for terrorism. If they’re not on our side and they play dirty, then they must be terrorists. If they violently disrupt the order of things, then they must be terrorists. If the TV news says they’re terrorists, well…

If you consider the planning necessary to burn dozens of buildings without killing or injuring anyone, you have to wonder about the belief system that informs the conviction of the perpetrators. You also have to wonder about the circumstances that drove them to ignite those infernos. I never lived in Eugene, Oregon but I lived around and among plenty of history’s middle children during the years immediately before and after Y2K. I wrote letters. I marched. I ran from the tear gas and the rubber bullets. When the powers that you’re fighting get to write the rulebook AND decide when the rules don’t matter, it is difficult to stay the course of reasonable, mostly legal protest. Malcolm talked about that in his Ballot or the Bullet speech. Che chose to fire some bullets. The kids from the ELF…they just set fires. Without killing anyone.

Why?

That’s a much better question than are they or are they not terrorists? A tactic, after all, is just a tactic.

Christopher “CJ” Wallace has been making the rounds to promote the flick and to help satisfy the curiosity of his father’s fans. So far, we’ve seen three interviews worth sharing. Following are excerpts from each:

http://www.thebvx.com/2011/05/02/5-questions-with-christopher-cj-wallace/

BJ: What attracted to you to the role?
CW: Kenny was the kid that I’m the opposite of. He’s like really lonely, not athletic kid, doesn’t do much, doesn’t really have friends, only has his sister to look out for him because his mom works all the time. All he does is ride his bike around his neighborhood where Nick (Will) lives. His best friend is an alcoholic who’s losing his wife. He sees Will as an opportunity just possibly to get a friend. No matter if he’s a crazy drunk or whatever. It was kind of a way to draw Kenny in to him, asking so many questions why, why do have so much stuff on your lawn, why do you keep drinking beer…It was almost like a good challenge for me to do it, to see if I could pull it off.

BJ: You’re the son of the most perhaps beloved rapper ever, the Notorious B.I.G. Do you ever think about doing music?
CW: [If I did music], I feel that a lot would be expected of me, and I’m definitely not up to where my father was. Acting just came randomly. I wasn’t even into it at first. When I did ‘Notorious,’ my grandma, Ms. [Voletta] Wallace, she told me that I should come in and read for the part as my father. Honestly, I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do it because it seemed so likely for me to do it, like Biggie’s son is going to play Biggie. After I had my acting coach and really read through it, I started to find out things that I didn’t know about him. Then I took more of an interest into it. It was actually fun, going out to New York, living like him, going into his old apartment, doing what he did. It was cool.

http://www.bet.com/news/celebrities/2011/05/12/q-a-christopher-jordan-wallace-acts-up.html

Let’s talk about your Dad a bit. I know you were still a baby when he passed, but do you understand how iconic and beloved he and his music still is?
I never really knew him—it’s hard to believe that sometimes. Maybe if I would have known him or had conversations with him it would have been different. But I haven’t really understood all of that yet.

Does your mom ever tell you about how you’re similar to your dad?
My mom always says I’m a lot like him. She says I even rub my nose the way he did and the way I breathe and snore is like him, too. She always says that I remind her of him.

So as the son of the Notorious B.I.G., why didn’t you want to become a rapper?
I really just wanted to make my own path. I definitely would not be able to continue my dad’s rapping legacy because I’m not on that level yet—I’m not that good. I rap, I joke around, but I’m not serious about it. I didn’t want people to be like, “Like CJ, little Biggie.” I’d rather them be like, “CJ the actor made his own movie, directed his own film and won the Oscar,” stuff like that.

http://www.movieline.com/2011/05/before-he-made-his-screen.php

Did you start listening to rap by listening to your dad’s music? I think I was your age when I first started listening to him.
I don’t know — I remember one time, when we first moved to L.A. in 2004, being in the car and it came on the radio and said, “And that was Christopher Wallace’s ‘Juicy.’” I asked my mom, I didn’t even know! “That’s me — I’m Christopher Wallace!” She was like, “No, no, no, that’s your dad.” Then I kind of got into it a little more.

Well there’s also the fact that some of his lyrics are a little explicit! Were you even allowed to listen to some of those songs when you were younger?
[Laughs] My parents treat me a little older than I am, and I actually appreciate that. I don’t like being treated like a little kid.

You do seem to have an old soul.
[Laughs] Is that good?

On the weekend that Osama bin Laden was killed by US Navy Seal Team Six, Fast Five roared into American movie theatres to collect $86 million from US consumers. At the big, nameless cineplex in my neighborhood, Fast Five played on three screens that weekend. Next to one of those massive auditoriums, The Conspirator played rather quietly in a much smaller room. One way or another, I witnessed all three events: bin Laden’s death, Vin Diesel’s final(?) ride and Robert Redford’s contemplation of how the mob interacts with the law. I don’t expect that those three men conspired to tell me a unified story. I was kinda grateful they all converged unwittingly—if only for my unintended benefit. (And perhaps yours, too.)

Osama bin Laden was the archiest of arch villains. He starred opposite everyone who has lived in these United States in the drama that has unfolded following September 11, 2001 (or February 26, 1993, if you prefer). Even kindergartners who couldn’t pronounce his name were forced to play opposite bin Laden as TSA probed their Spiderman sneakers and Hanna Montana backpacks before permitting them to board a flight to see Grandma and Grandpa. Bin Laden was also the greatest mystery of the last decade. We were told he existed. And we were told, by his own video testimony no less, that he was responsible for random massacre after random massacre all over the world. That he had been captured, killed and disposed of without a gory public reveal made some sense. For myths to endure, they must never be completely exposed. Belief doesn’t need proof. It just needs conviction. And conviction was never a problem where Osama bin Laden was concerned. The mobs on both sides have always known precisely how they feel about him.

You may be one of the people who has already mobbed theatres to see Fast Five. With $150 million in domestic box office at press time, the odds favor it. Even if you haven’t, I don’t need to tell you much about the movie to give you a rich understanding of it. Big men and pretty women make sexy cars go real fast. It’s the same exact plot as the four films that preceded it. And, truth be told, if you appreciate that sort of thing…the Fast franchise is awesome. So much so that the latest film (which could be the final installment but probably won’t be) is pornographic. It’s money shot after money shot after money shot. And, like a money shot is supposed to do, it satisfies. For the most part. (Personally, I’ve never known Brazilian women to be so startlingly thin and assless, but I’ve not traveled that country as extensively as the filmmakers may have.)

Image via whysoblu.com

If the odds say that you have already seen Fast Five, they also say you haven’t seen The Conspirator. It hasn’t played on more than 500 screens at any one time since its release last month—timed cleverly to coincide with the sesquicentennial of the attack on Fort Sumter that ignited the War Between the States. The Conspirator tells the generally under-reported story of the woman who was tried, convicted and executed for being thought to have conspired in the plot to assassinate President Lincoln. (Whoops. Maybe there should have been a spoiler alert there. Or, you could have taken a 10th grade Social Studies class. In lieu of running a Wikipedia search, of course.)

In The Conspirator, Redford directs an art house dream team: James McAvoy, Robin Wright, Tom Wilkinson, Kevin Kline, Evan Rachel Wood, Danny Huston and Colm Meaney. If that weren’t enough, casting director Avy Kaufman throws in two ex-pats from The Wire, the guy from Rubicon, one of the Boondock Saints, Nucky Thompson’s brother and Rory Gilmore. Some of those people barely have any lines in The Conspirator. (Actors on both coasts must have been tripping over each other to get even a morsel of a chance to work with the Sundance Kid.) The resulting film isn’t bad. It leans more toward Lions for Lambs than Quiz Show. But it isn’t bad. There are a couple of monologues that are pretty compelling. And the steady stream of cameos–which also includes the Stapler Dude from Office Space–makes the screen come alive every few minutes as Redford’s ensemble trudges earnestly through an intriguing history lesson. The lesson may be contextualized within the final throes of the Civil War but the tug-of-war between mob rule and the rule of law is pretty timeless.

Every nation shares a central task: mob management. Those great hordes who pledge allegiance to a system of taxation and get, in return, a preselected flag to attach to their car antennae are an excitable bunch. And they do not discriminate. They will welcome anyone whom they believe agrees with them as long as a noob doesn’t dim the fervor that fuels the mob. If the mob isn’t convinced of your fidelity? Well…too bad for you. The mob must celebrate itself after all. And when it isn’t affirming all that it thinks itself to be, it takes great satisfaction from harshly condemning and swiftly punishing those people or those ideas that would dare to challenge it. If we have learned anything from the oscillations of this grand American experiment, we’ve learned that the mob can yield to genuine democracy. Well, maybe it’s not all that genuine. And maybe it’s not all that democratic. But when the mob fractures and the resulting divergent passions do not wane, what else would you call it?

Image via History Matters

Redford’s film makes no secret of its intention to draw a parallel between the physically brutish intranational divide that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers and the intellectually brutish divide that has driven Red States and Blue States to make each other purple with ideological rage. Rage is a funny thing, really. It can dull as quickly as it can swell. It can yield benevolent change much like it can wreak discriminate mayhem. Way back in the 1860s–when a nation was winding down a war with itself–the mobs on both sides took turns being satisfied. First, the South got its man. Then, the North got its men. And a woman, too. According to the law, at least one of them deserved it. When everyone’s already dead, “deserve” isn’t much of a differentiator. As long as the mob is satisfied, does it really even matter at what cost? Of course it does. But that’s not the mob’s concern. Not until remorse kicks in anyway. If’n it ever does.

Given the subject, it would have been easy for The Conspirator to spend all of its 120 minutes judging the Northern mob that wanted anyone accused of being connected with Lincoln’s assassination to be punished. It does that for a good chunk of those minutes as part of its argument that every actor deserves to be judged objectively within the confines of the law. It also spends more than a few minutes suggesting that the mob isn’t completely unwise as it indulges its own passions.

Image via the Associated Press

Watching the world react to the news of bin Laden’s death was surreal. To say the least. In some ways, it was downright bizarre. The “USA! USA! USA!” cheers erupting outside of Barack Obama’s house and the “I’m so glad he’s gone” sentiments shared on Twitter and Facebook spawned from the same nebulous sense of victory. The boogeyman was dead! Finally! We won! Right? But who are we? And what was won? By the way, was anything lost as a result?

As I trolled for deeper and deeper coverage of bin Laden’s death in the days that followed, I found myself thinking more and more about both The Conspirator and Fast Five. The mob had a pretty good point. Some things are that simple. Given the choice between a dead boogeyman and a not-dead boogeyman, which would you choose? The mobs that flashed on Pennsylvania Ave or on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal were not wrong to celebrate bin Laden’s death. Or to call for any of the things they called for. They weren’t right either. Not entirely. More importantly, they weren’t alone. There was still that mob on the other side: the compatriots of bin Laden. Surely there would be some sort of reprisal, no?

If bin Laden’s mob comprised a sovereign nation, perhaps. If that were the case, those planes never would have crashed into those buildings. No nation built on any kind of law would execute such a desperate tactic. A nation, by definition, has a stake. Stakes make preservation a priority. But preservation is only possible when there is something to preserve. Bin Laden’s mob–like any group of religious extremists–was built on a shared sense of desperation. Desperation tends to hone your focus. Distraction isn’t really an option. If it were, you might abandon your search for meaning in favor of enjoying 90 minutes of fast cars and pretty women. And if you did, you probably enjoyed it. Just as much as any member of the mob relished dancing on the boogeyman’s grave.

The movie started at 9:20. I was at least 15 minutes away from the movie theatre. I’d have to move very quickly if I wanted to see every frame of Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.

I squeezed some Crest Pro-Health onto my Oral-B toothbrush. Scrubbed my unsponsored teeth. Rinsed and spit into my Kohler sink. Pulled a tattered Triple 5 Soul jacket around my shoulders. Slapped a Kangol onto my bald head. Slid into my Pontiac Grand Prix and zoomed up the I-395 toward the E Street Cinema. I settled into my seat at about 9:23. At least that’s what time my Blackberry registered.

Morgan Spurlock, as you may have heard, has sold his soul. Again. The provocateur’s latest project delves into the mysteries of branding, advertising and film funding to reveal that strategic and aggressive ubiquity is more or less winning the battle against consumer ambivalence. His latest project is brought to you by a cadre of brands including Amy’s, Ban, Hyatt, JetBlue, Merrell, Mini, Old Navy, Sheetz and, of course, Pom Wonderful.

If you’ve seen Super Size Me or FX’s 30 Days, you already know that Spurlock is an earnest entertainer. His documentary and journalism chops are sincere and certified even as they are underplayed in his quests to brave the various treacheries of modern living. His choice to cast himself as the lead creates straightforward narratives that enable audiences to consider some really complex issues. For that, I think he’s pretty smart.

I met him once very briefly at a film screening in LA. I made the mistake of pitching a half-baked idea almost as soon as I shook his hand. He graciously deflected my proposal. Afterward, I wondered exactly how often he was bombarded by such underwhelming pitches. Sitting in the movie theatre before the Pom Wonderful presentation brought that night back to mind. As an indie producer, he is uniquely qualified to understand both sides of what “No thanks, I’m not interested” feels like. We can presume that he knows what it feels like to hear “No” so often that “Yes” is an awkward surprise. We can also presume that he knows the sweet relief of declining desperate solicitations from hair-brained strangers. Those bookends are very large and only rarely offset each other. Most folks know one, but not the other. Few, like Spurlock, understand how precious the squeeze is. There are, after all, only so many ideas that deserve the creative energy of the teams of people it will take to fully pursue and deliver them.

In Pom Wonderful Presents…, Spurlock exposes most of the dirty bits of the process of exploiting a brand’s resources in order to get a film made. We get to see him pitching a variety of brands. Some of the ones who say no get dissed. Most of the ones who say yes have their products prominently displayed, demonstrated and praised as Spurlock delivers his film. We learn about some of the legalities of branding partnerships. We learn what some filmmakers think of the things that happen in order to get their films made. We learn about the neuroscience that is increasingly being used to inform film marketing practices. We learn what some consumers think of all these efforts to attract their attention and, by extension, their dollars. We also get to watch actual commercials for Pom Wonderful, Hyatt, JetBlue and The Original Mane and Tail that star Spurlock and are inserted somewhat randomly into the film.

The film has two rather breezy acts. And then the movie kinda ends. After it did, I re-tied my Asics Tiger Ultimate 81s and walked to the W Hotel in search of a drink. Sipping on Tanqueray and ice, I tried to figure out what I could say about the film. I thought I liked it. It was entertaining. I did learn a couple of things. But it didn’t really have a resolution. By the time the bartender poured my third Tanqueray, it dawned on me: the release of the film was the resolution. Those ads—even though they were scattered about the midsections of the film—were the third act. Spurlock wanted to find out whether he could secure enough brand support to fully fund the film. He did. All he had to do was produce 100-some watchable minutes and release them. Fade to black. Roll credits. Clap clap clap clap clap.

Except, of course, for the unfortunate obligation of demonstrating ROI to all of his brand partners. Maybe that’s the real third act. Or perhaps it is the epilogue. In any case, it is a daunting task. As I post this from my MacBook Pro, I believe I’ve given Mr. Spurlock one of the 600,000,000 media impressions he needs to obtain in order to make good on his end of the sponsorship arrangement. If you’re reading this, Morgan, you’re welcome. And good luck with the other 599,999,999. As a hungry creative type who has bills to pay, I am truly rooting for you, sir. The cost of the lives we choose is a high one. It is rare that we are able to pay for them unaided.

Critics are critics. They will do what critics do. They will criticize. (Sometimes they will praise.)

All of which is to say that whatever you’ve heard about Scream 4 is absolutely true. It’s doesn’t matter what you’ve heard, it’s true. It’s true because someone felt it, thought it, wrote it, said it. That’s all it takes for truth to exist in the age of subjectivity where opinions are commodities and facts are proprietary.

So what will we say here about the fourth film in the Scream franchise? It was mildly entertaining. Far more funny than scary. Gorier than its predecessors. As cartoonish as any Wes Craven film has ever been. We suspect no one will mistake it for a classic.

Go see it if you want to. Or don’t. See it again if you insist. Or again after that. Whatever choice you make, Scream 4 probably won’t change your life. Save, maybe, for one monologue from the film’s denouement.

When we finally learn the identity of the killer(s) in Scream 4, we get Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson’s critique of Generation Y. If you haven’t seen the film, it is harsh. It appears to be justified. And, as of yet, it is without a rebuttal. Within that monologue are a number of lines that rise to the level of quotable. One in particular stands out for its naked narcissism: “I don’t need friends, I need fans.”

Many hands have been wrung over how much Generation Y loves itself. Some of those hands are the ones that changed their diapers. Other of those hands are the ones that bought them their first beer or taught them to drive. The age-old sport of one generation bemoaning the outcomes of their parental (or sibling) obligations has evolved to become a barroom brawl where Boomers throw chairs at Millennials who are busy smashing beer bottles against the heads of Xers who themselves are looking to land a sucker punch against whatever remains of the Greatest Generation. Culture is often messy. But not like this. Perhaps it is all to be expected when wealth feels as if it is utterly accessible and authorship lacks both tradition and hierarchy. Alas, we’re diverting a bit from the topic of the day.

It’s easy to decry Generation Y as self-absorbed and narcissistic. It’s even easier to blame their parents for breeding such behavior. And easier still to cite the rise of a hyper-mediated culture that demands all of us to become broadcasters as the inspiration for a generation’s egomania. That’s pretty much what Craven and Williamson (a Boomer and an Xer, respectively) did with the final monologue in Scream 4. With that line (“I don’t need friends, I need fans.”), they seemed to be issuing a challenge to the Millennials.

How would the generation under fire respond? Twitter can be a bottomless pit. It may not be the best place to find a thoughtful rebuttal, but you can count on some semblance of a conversation happening there. Predictably, the Scream 4-related Twitter posts have centered mostly on gushing, grumbling and guestimation for what could happen in the next Scream movie. Facebook and the blogosphere have been similarly absent of any fierce rebuke. So far.

If we understand narcissism, we know that those who practice it tend to be immune to criticism. They receive only external affirmations and brush off any idea or fact that contradicts their self-mythology. If the critique of Generation Y were to elicit a response, it would likely contain a nonchalant dismissal. Maybe the Millenial response already lives on some t-shirt. Like this one:

Can it all be so simple? T-shirts are pretty reliable sources, but maybe we should go out and poll a living, breathing Millennial. Which is what we did. Twice. If what is true to one person represents a version of the truth at large, then what is true to two people must be even truthier, no?

The first Generation Yer, a 21-year-old graphic design intern, argued that narcissism is an American tradition. Individual rights, she asserted, are a declaration made by our nation that we all intend to be highly self-involved. The second Millennial, an 18-year-old preparing to graduate high school, reported that she couldn’t imagine trying to survive without her friends. As for how she accepts criticism, the high schooler described the most important trait demonstrated by her best friend as “being available to help me better myself.” Maybe these kids aren’t so lost in themselves after all.

And maybe the reason not one of them has emerged to shout down Craven and Williamson is that they don’t really care what is said about them. They may not have the capacity for critique that their predecessors would want for them, but they’re not exactly hopeless.

Not yet.

LOOSELY RELATED RANT: I found it downright offensive that the term “ghostface killer” was used so freely in Scream 4 without any acknowledgment of the work of Dennis Coles. I don’t remember if that was true of the other three films, but that’s a pretty despicable omission. He slap-boxed with Jesus, son. Jesus.

“I may be half sleep, but I’m pretty sure I just saw a commercial that told me there was a movie where the Incredible Hulk was gonna teach the Lovely Bones how to be an assassin…”

The Liberian Girl lifted her head and nodded, “Well…that is kinda what just happened…so…when are you taking me to see it?”

Two weeks ago, the Liberian Girl and I saw a matinee screening of Limitless in Georgetown. It was a decent film built on an intriguing idea about drugs, brainpower and acts of extreme brilliance. While I had modest expectations for it, I was a bit worried by the collection of trailers that preceded the film: Fast Five; The Hangover, Part II; Scre4m; Arthur; Thor and X-Men: First Class. One, or some, of those films could be good. Hell, maybe all of them will be. But none of their trailers demonstrated much of an imagination. Each felt so much like a property. Almost like they were commercials for commercials. The meta was pretty uninspiring. Appropriate, I suppose, to set up a film adapted from a novel. As the opening credits for Limitless began rolling, I second-guessed that day’s movie choice. For just a moment. Thankfully, the intriguing premise we gambled on kinda delivered. At the very least, it didn’t feel like a waste of money. Or time. (Thank you, Bradley Cooper, for not making crap movies.)

Two days ago, the Liberian Girl and I bought tickets for a matinee screening of Hanna. In Georgetown. As we took our seats, I remembered the pack of trailers that set up the last movie we saw in that theater. And I grew very curious about what kind of preamble we might get this time. It was a bit more eclectic: The Conspirator; Crazy, Stupid, Love; Captain America; Anonymous and Fast Five. What that said about the anticipated audience for Hanna was anyone’s guess. Mine would be that some marketers believe there’s still room for acts of art to mingle with acts of commerce. Show business is ever the paradox.

Hanna, the main feature, was equal parts character study and semi-classic chase film. The titular character still wears a training bra when we meet her. She is also finishing training with her father to be capable of killing any creature or any combination of creatures. We know that her father did something, that the something involved the CIA and that he needed to hole up somewhere way off the grid to avoid CIA detection. That’s how Hanna and her Papa ended up living somewhere deep in the Arctic woods. Hella far from any kind of civilization, Papa (played by the first feature-length Incredible Hulk) raised Hanna (played by the Lovely Bones) with only the aid of his own warrior expertise and an encyclopedia. Consequently, when Hanna fully matures as a warrior, she is also ill-equipped socially for the modern world.

The chase begins after Hanna flips a switch daring the CIA to come and find her. (You may have seen that part in one of the ads for the film.) The pursuit dashes and dips through Northern Africa and Eastern Europe as a CIA agent and her flamboyant Neo-Nazi operatives inch closer and closer to Hanna. Along the way, Hanna befriends a civilian British family and has to deal with alien appliances like coffee makers and remote control TVs. Lurking at the end of the trail is Papa and…well…we don’t quite know what. I probably shouldn’t say any more for fear of spoiling it.

The quickie analysis is that Hanna is a really well made film. It’s got a solid cast. (In addition to the Hulk and the Lovely Bones, Cate Blanchett plays the CIA lead.) The script gives them plenty of room to explore and discover in the midst of the chase. It also has enough lightness and humor to offset the intensity of the 100-minute chase. The cinematography alternates appropriately between frenetic and patient. The Chemical Brothers score is pretty sick. But the smartest thing Hanna does is to resist the temptation to play up the sexuality of its teenaged female lead. She is presented instead as very icey, yet believably naive. While Hanna has been trained to do battle with the CIA’s best, she has no clue how to go about kissing a cute boy. (The Liberian Girl said he was cute. I wasn’t so sure.)

While watching the film, I found myself thinking, “There’s no way an American made this.” When I mentioned that notion to the Liberian Girl after the movie, she whipped out her Blackberry and quickly discovered that director Joe Wright is British while screenwriter Seth Lochhead is Canadian. We sat at the bar contemplating what that meant exactly. Neither of us was sure. Smart, mature American filmmakers aren’t extinct. Nor are their domestic audiences. After all, the auditorium we sat in for Hanna was at about 70% capacity. Still…something just felt weird about all of it.

Maybe the ultimate takeaway from seeing Hanna had something to do with the gross necessity of marketing. I kept thinking back to the contrasting sets of trailers–and the ad that inspired us to choose to see Hanna in the first place. I understand that studios (or the corporations that own them) need to make sure consumers are A) aware their films exist and B) sufficiently excited so as to go out and see them. But who decided it was a good idea to spend as much marketing a film as is spent to make the thing? I know that Fast Five is coming soon to a theater near me. I been knowing that, actually. And I suspect I’ll spend the next few weeks trying to escape that damn’d movie. (Although I may go see it with the homie if he buys enough bourbon to make it worth my while.) The way the average medium-to-large-budget film is marketed implies there is a fifth (ironically) silent P in the Marketing Mix: Pulverize. As in: “we need to pulverize the sensibilities of our potential consumers.” To what end, I’m not sure. I think I grew numb to all of it some time ago.

[Post-Script: The screenplay for Hanna was selected as one of the best unproduced scripts of both 2006 and 2009. That's a dubious distinction to earn once. Let alone twice. Why it took so long to get made, I don't know. Go figure.]

The Liberian Girl and I were running 20 minutes late for a late Sunday Brunch on U Street with our favorite lesbians. After the light at 12th Street turned green, I whipped into a parking spot. We tumbled out of the car and stumbled into Creme. Our favorite bartender had already poured our drinks. The brunch was chatty, laughy, delicious and drunk like it usually is. We lingered lazily until the dinner menus emerged and our favorite bartender had to clock out.

The E Street Cinema had two early evening show times for Blue Valentine that night: 7pm and 8:15pm. The Liberian Girl suggested that we grab a quick drink at Lounge of III before heading to the theatre for the 8:15. With several ounces of gin swirling around in my belly, that sounded like an act of genius. So we hugged the lesbians goodbye and walked a few blocks up U Street to visit our other favorite bartender–who is known for making the drunkest drinks in the neighborhood. He happily obliged us as we continued on a pre-movie, mini-bender.

I think we scored two seats in the theatre while the first trailer began rolling. Or maybe it was the third trailer. It was definitely before the film started. And it was definitely the E Street Cinema. Also, it was for a screening of Blue Valentine. At least, I think that’s the movie we saw. There was a lot of alcohol involved, so this writer’s memory is probably not to be trusted. (His opinion, however, is always to be trusted. Unless you’re the Liberian Girl. Then you tend to trust it about 40% of the time.)

A bit about the film shall we? Two people from the New Jersey-york-ylvania area meet and become entangled in a working class love affair that…well…the most succinct way to relay the plot of the film is to call it the lovechild of a Bon Jovi song and a Bruce Springsteen song. That may be a lazy summation, but it is apt. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams play Tommy and Gina, respectively. (Although I believe the film’s lead characters had names that weren’t chosen by Jon Bon Jovi.) Their relationship plays out via a highly fractured timeline (kinda like 21 Grams). The costuming and make-up departments do a brilliant job of making clear exactly what point we’re at in the relationship continuum so the film is remarkably easy to follow. The two lead actors perform with similar deftness in representing their characters at different ages. More than merely playing assorted ages, both leads deliver performances that pull you into the screen where you are forced to walk alongside them as they take their journeys.

As in all relationships, there is a crisis point in the film that threatens the very fabric of Tommy and Gina’s warm and fuzzy union. After that crisis point, things got a bit fuzzy for me. You could attribute that to the alcohol. But I think it had just as much to do with one sequence where an unplanned pregnancy leads to the contemplation of having an abortion.

The general rawness and intensity of the film would make anyone squirm in their seats. It’s really a two-hour confrontation that challenges the viewer to embrace a fairy tale and a great torment in parallel. But the way it interjected the pregnancy episode with both hindsight and foresight took me to a place I wasn’t prepared to go.

Years ago, there was a different girl who sat next to me at the movie theatre and let me put my arm around her. Early in that relationship, she peed a plus sign onto a home pregnancy test. After she visited her doctor, we did some math and calculated that whomever was growing inside her belly didn’t belong to me. After consulting her ex, they decided to abort. The girl and I decided to carry on with our fledgling affair. I felt a combination of relief and remorse. It was the first and only time I ever personally faced a scenario involving that type of choice. Things didn’t work out with that girl. She and I both moved on. I think she eventually married and had a couple of kids, but I can’t say for sure. I haven’t spoken to her in a few years. And I hadn’t thought of that moment where she made that choice in nearly a decade.

Yet there I was in the E Street Cinema covering my eyes and swallowing tears as Tommy and Gina chased their dreams and wrestled with their nightmares. The Liberian Girl squeezed my knee and whispered to me that it was only a movie. It was only a movie. But it made me think about the real kid who didn’t make it way back when I was cast as a supporting player in a scene where real people had to make unspeakably heavy decisions. And I felt this odd sense of loss that I just couldn’t shake. Thankfully, there was still some alcohol in the plastic cup hanging from the end of my armrest. I gulped that down and excused myself to buy another round for the Liberian Girl and I. She got a single. I got a triple. I’m not sure what part of the film I missed, but I settled very quickly back into both my buzz and the zigzagged narrative.

After the film ended, the Liberian Girl and I peeled ourselves out of our seats. As we crawled up the escalator toward the cinema’s exit, I slapped my forehead and leaned desperately toward the Liberian Girl’s ear. “Um…I have no idea where we parked.” She laughed. “Hon, we didn’t drive.”

She was right. We found the car the next morning right where we had left it on U Street. Before Sunday Brunch. Back when we were stone sober without the help of any of the films playing at the E Street Cinema.

*A lot of facts–along with a number of brain cells–were irreparably harmed in the making of this post.

Before Waiting for Superman made its big screen debut–even before Oprah dedicated a whole show to the film–the decibels were rising in the discourse about the state of public education in these United States. It was as if every Janey (and every Dick, too) had arrived at the same conclusion simultaneously: our schools are in bad shape and we really need to do something about that.

With a mid-term election looming, education would likely be a central issue given the small number of A-list offices up for grabs. It is, after all, a classic rallying cause for those seeking re-election or those hoping to unseat them. But jobs, God and the reach of government appear to be the major plot points in this November’s story. (Oh, and taxes.)

So, what is driving the bump in volume on the education conversation? The answer, believe it or not, is…documentaries. There’s 2 Million Minutes. Heart of Stone. The Lottery. The War on Kids. Race to Nowhere. And, of course, Waiting for Superman.

(via gapingvoid)

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
Waiting for Superman is the latest film from Davis Guggenheim, the man who helped bring you An Inconvenient Truth. (He also directed a 2001 Peabody-winning documentary for PBS about teachers called The First Year.) Waiting for Superman is very clearly meant to help shift the conversation about public education in the United States. But in which direction is not quite so clear.

In the film, we meet four kids. Two from New York. And two from California. The age range, roughly, is first grade, third grade, fifth grade and seventh grade. We follow two Black kids and one young Latina from working class households as well as one White kid whose family lives in Silicon Valley. All four journeys deliver us to the same destination: school lotteries. School lotteries, by the way, are required by law when there are more applicants than there are available spaces at magnet or charter schools. (I think.) They operate just like you’d expect them to: kids’ names are etched onto something (ping pong ball, note card, discarded orange peel, etc) and are dropped into a hopper for a random drawing. This usually happens in public view and provides some pretty intense theatre.

Each of our kids and their families find themselves struggling against one of the ugly heads in the U.S. education hydra. Two attend neighborhood schools that look like Eastside High before Joe Clark arrived. One can’t afford to keep paying private school tuition. And one has a fairly simple dream that her school simply cannot help her achieve. (Something about wanting to become a teacher.) In short, none of the kids is (or manages to stay) enrolled at a good school. Each of them–at the behest of their families–submit to the lottery process in order to escape their respective shit shows in search of better opportunities at schools that are worth a crap.

As we get to know about the lives of the core characters–and the circumstances that shape those lives–Guggenheim lays out the stakes in the most dramatic terms. The difference between winning a lottery to attend a good school and being left to fight one’s way through the most geographically convenient school concerns not merely the amount of money a person can earn in a lifetime. It is, he shows us, the difference between having basic access to a modest version of the American Dream and being relegated to that other America. The one where you’re free to be, more or less, an indentured servant. If you don’t end up in prison. Or dead.

By the time we get to the climax of the film–the absurd school lotteries–what happens to those four harmless, innocent kids is shockingly heartbreaking. It’s the kind of thing that any Janey would probably curse at through her tears. “Is this bullshit really happening in America? How in the fuck did things get this way? Whose ass can we kick to fix it?”

The answer, according to Guggenheim’s film, is the teachers’ unions.

(via llisallindsay)

Say Hi to the Bad Guy
The title, Waiting for Superman, draws from a sound byte delivered by Geoffrey Canada, one of the more charismatic and authoritative education figures who appears in the film. It references a conversation he once had with his mother about the existence of Superman. (SPOILER: Superman is not real, yo.) The title doubles as a clarion call. And it is dangerously reductive. If there is to be a hero in our story, there must be a villain as well. Good storytelling can be that kind of simple if it chooses to be. And this film does.

Guggenheim, at his core, believes that great teachers create great educational experiences. In the film, he shows us the great, the awful and the unseemly. He tours all of the schools that are the destinations for the winners of the lotteries. Regardless of where they are in America, each of those four schools has in common a culture that nurtures and rewards great teachers for being…well…great.

The awful schools, on the other hand, do not share that culture. Guggenheim shows us failing (or failed) schools in Milwaukee, Detroit and Washington, DC. What all of those schools appear to have in common is an exceedingly restrictive relationship with their teachers’ unions. The best example of this comes from Detroit where union contracts and state laws conspire to ship bad teachers off to detention–with full pay and full benefits–instead of firing them. We also learn about the great travesty of tenure whereby union-negotiated contracts enable teachers who work in a certain capacity for a certain amount of time to qualify for automatic pay hikes based strictly on time served. Tenured teachers, we’re told, are virtually unfireable.

To underscore the point that teachers’ unions are to blame, Guggenheim explains to us that union contracts have made it exponentially more difficult to take away a teacher’s license in Illinois than it is to relieve a lawyer or a doctor of their right to practice. And by exponentially, he means a kajillion times less likely. It is as if the the U.S. public education system has chosen to condone educational malpractice. Or, in some cases, to reward it.

(If you’re a Janey, your blood should really be boiling now.)

The head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) gets some screen time in the film to rebut portions of Guggenheim’s narrative. Truth be told, her case is a pretty difficult one to make. Is tenure a collective bargaining accomplishment that, in some states, has made it really tough to fire terrible teachers? Probably. Is tenure a fact of life for every teacher in every school district in the U.S.? Not really. From what I’m told, tenure is actually a bit of a mirage for the average teacher. It’s not as common as Waiting for Superman suggests.

So…we know that some of the things some teachers’ unions have accomplished at the bargaining table have resulted in some ill consequences for some school districts. But can all of the blame for the troubles of public education be laid at the feet of the unions? They might deserve some of it. But it’s not as if the AFT exists solely to bring about ruin in our nation’s schools. If Superman showed up tomorrow, would he visit the AFT or Washington, DC first?

(via Top Slam Dunks)

Who’s Gonna Take the Weight?
Shortly after Adrian Fenty was elected mayor of the District of Columbia in 2007, he did something that established our nation’s capitol as ground zero in the battle for education reform: he hired Michelle Rhee as the chancellor of DC’s schools.

Before she resigned her post, Rhee became famous for: 1) having no previous experience running a school district, 2) having a communication style that is direct and not very diplomatic and 3) firing a whole bunch of DC PS teachers.

(She has also overseen the closing, re-building and building of a bunch of schools and kindasorta gets credit for helping improve the overall performance of public schools in DC. But that’s probably another topic for another blog.)

At some point in her monologue, she wrote on her dry erase board, “Know your influences. Know your competition. Be them if you must. But find a way to play them from inside the mask of yourself.”

Once upon a time, Ben Affleck made a great movie set in Boston. Once upon a time, a great gangster movie was made about Boston. Today, which will surely be hailed as a once-upon-a-time of its own, Ben Affleck has made a great gangster movie set in Boston. The former has been accused of borrowing from both the latters–and from other films like Heat–but that doesn’t devalue its accomplishment. Derivatives–as long as they have nothing to do with Wall Street–are the sincerest form of flattery. And, one could argue, the only thing left to create.

If you haven’t seen the trailer yet–or the film itself–here’s the executive summary of The Town: Ben Affleck plays a dude from Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood. He works with three of his friends to rob banks and other high-reward institutional targets. One of his friends, played by Jeremy Renner, is a brother by experience but not by blood. Together, they represent the brains (Affleck) and the heart (Renner) of the crew. During a bank job, they uncharacteristically take a hostage, played by Rebecca Hall, and immediately release her into the Boston wild as soon as the crew has found its way back to the friendly confines of Charlestown.

The conflict in our story occurs in three layers. The first concerns what the crew will do with the woman they briefly held as a hostage. The second concerns whether the FBI will finally unmask the costumed bandits who have thus far eluded capture. And the third, as you could guess, concerns what choices Affleck’s character will make about his own future.

As the conflicts weave together to create the fabric of The Town‘s story, the Affleck and the Renner characters wage a war between two classic villain archetypes: one side chooses a life of crime reluctantly because he is good at it while the other chooses it eagerly because it appears to be the only available choice. The reluctant one mourns his crimes. The eager one celebrates his. While they do compliment each other quite well with their mix of ability and ambition, death will invariably come for one or both because the two sides cannot coexist forever.

The Hall character–despite the more literal presence of a neighborhood dimepiece (played by Blake Lively) who doubles as flame/sister–serves the role of Helen of Troy in this drama. Here, Helen causes the brains and the heart of the bank-robbing crew to swap roles as each wrestles with a simple question: how smart is it to become emotionally entangled with the one reliable witness to your crime? That swapping of roles is what drives the battle between the two villain archetypes. You get a lot more Affleck than you do Renner in The Town, but their interpersonal conflict is ever present in the film.

In addition to that battle, the crew struggles to remain undetected by the FBI. Jon Hamm–more frequently known as Don Draper–plays a character who leads the FBI team pursuing the bank robbers. Ordinarily, Hamm’s team would be the guys wearing the white hats. But they don’t wear white hats. They don’t wear any hats at all. Affleck–in his other role as director of the film–doesn’t permit them to. We get to know very little of Hamm’s character other than that he thinks he is excellent at his job and he seems to enjoy the competitive pursuit of people who commit crimes. It’s a really smart decision by a clever filmmaker–one that suggests more of a style than a simple choice in how to handle one character in one story.

Hamm–or Don Draper if you prefer–can more or less own the frame. You may not have heard of him before Mad Men, but now it is hard to imagine him as anything other than a leading man. How do you relegate an actor like that to the background of your story? You define his character very narrowly and you limit the space he can explore. The result is that we kinda see Hamm’s agent as human, but we’re more likely to see him only as an unrelenting man on a mission. It’s as if director Affleck told Hamm to watch Tommy Lee Jones’ performance in The Fugitive and crib liberally from it.

Affleck made a similar decision with Lively’s character. Many of you may know her from Gossip Girl. I don’t. I still think of her as the hot blonde from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. And when I do, I think of the chick who kindasorta looks like a star. Given how early she is in her career, you would not be crazy to assume that Lively’s agent or publicist or someone else on her team might advise her to take on opportunities to topline. In The Town, Lively is almost an afterthought. Except for the fact that she isn’t. Like the decision in how to include Hamm’s character, Lively’s character is also pushed to the narrative’s periphery–but much moreso. She’s supposed to be hot. She’s supposed to be hot for Affleck’s character. And she’s not supposed to be able to stand on her own two feet. Lively could probably nail the first two on her own. And she does. The third one–which she may be capable of as well–seems to be borrowed in part from Emily Mortimer’s most nervous moments in Redbelt. Given how it parallels Hamm’s performance, you’re left to conclude that director Affleck had a strong hand in guiding it.

Some of the best directors treat the characters in their films as if they are individual shades of the human spectrum. Some characters represent multiple hues, but it’s perfectly okay for other characters to be limited to a single shade of a single color. There is freedom in that choice to limit. On one hand, the actors are free to play directly to the gut of their narrowly defined characters giving us a magnified view of that specific shade of the human experience. On the other hand, the audience doesn’t have to be distracted by how it feels about one supporting character or another. Instead, the audience can immediately acknowledge the simple purpose of the supporting shades and journey with the multiple-hued main players into some experience which may illuminate life as we all think we know it in a unique or fascinating way.

Think back to some of Stanley Kramer’s films like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? or Inherit the Wind. His supporting characters tended to be present in very deliberate ways. As if they were tasked with bringing to life the atmosphere within which the primary characters were challenged to make the big choices around which the film would be built. The characters played by Hamm and Lively in The Town appear to be directed in such a way. Maybe director Affleck is a fan of Kramer’s. Maybe not. But there’s certainly no harm in saying that the work of one emerging filmmaker compares favorably with the work of an old master. At least, there is no harm done to Affleck, the director.

It’s worth noting that The Town is an adaptation of Chuck Hogan’s Prince of Thieves. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t speak to how faithful the film is to the spirit of the novel. There is certainly a patience in the film that calls to mind the pacing of a good novel. We get dumped directly into the conflict between the two villain archetypes, but the way the romance between the Affleck character and the Hall character unfolds gives us some space to feel sympathy for the human being who reluctantly robs banks for a living. So much so that it is reasonable to root for the guy-who-is-technically-bad-but-kinda-seems-good.

The Town is a film that we’ve all seen before. And we’ll all probably see again. It is a story that has been worn out. And then worn out some more. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It is something of an inevitability. And, in director Ben Affleck’s case, it works out pretty well. Very well, I’d say.

DYL MAG SCORE: An 8 that thinks its a 9.