Reviews
A.K.A. Doc Pomus (2012)
Amazing life, amazing man, too long of a movie
The film is a dazzling explanation of who Doc Pomus became and how much he had to overcome to get there. The amount of hits he wrote and stars who sang them is insanely awesome and you get a real sense of his magnetism and personality.
I thought the flow and watch-ability of the film suffered a bit due to trying to jam in *too many* of his songs and collaborators. B.B. King could have just garnered a mention, for instance. Sometimes I felt like, "OK, I get it. He worked with A LOT of awesome people. I was way more impressed when it was Dion and Elvis." I think some of them could have been done with some quick clips to give a flavor for some of the less-important (either to his life/career or to the viewer) figures.
All that said, there were several moments in the film with real emotional resonance and I would recommend it to any music lover.
Couro de Gato (1962)
Wonderful small film about big moral issues
First off, the film's score is a thoroughly charming slice of early 1960s samba. There are hints of Tom Jobim at certain points. (is that "Desafinado" playing in the scenes with the rich woman?)
The film is available on YouTube and I recommend it to all. If you have ever struggled with the treatment of animals in impoverished countries and areas, this film may spur more thoughts and discussions of those issues. The descriptions elsewhere on this page are all you need to be able to watch it, even if, like me, you do not speak Portuguese. The film addresses how we treat the less fortunate humans, and how we treat animals.
If you've seen City of God (2002), it was interesting/sad to think about how long those slums have been there in Rio, as they looked almost exactly the same in Couro de Gato as they do nearly 40 years later.
I have a feeling it will stick with me for some time.
Before the Mountain Was Moved (1970)
A snapshot of the early days of strip mining activism.
As a West Virginian, viewing this film is both very inspiring and very, very sad. The inspiring part is how many dedicated activists there were, some from outside the state, who were willing to work long, hard hours to protect the people from the impacts of greed. It was fantastic to see my hometown, Charleston, from above back then and to see the State Capitol looking essentially the same (but sans Lincoln statue).
From a legal standpoint, this was a decade before the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act ("SMCRA")and it is about how the milestone 1967 West Virginia Surface Mining Reclamation Act was enacted. The documentary follows a small group of citizens from Raleigh County who went up against the coal lobby and got the strongest law on the books in any U.S. state up to that point. The film demonstrates well how bad situations can inspire individuals to act outside their comfort zone for a cause they strongly believe in.
As a film, it is short enough to tell the simple story it needs to tell, and does so in a way that generally works well, walking us from getting people to show up to an informational meeting, to speaking at the meeting, and ultimately, to lobbying in Charleston. There was a fascinating discussion on the anti-strip mining activists' drive to Charleston about racial equality (two of the activists were black, while the other handful of activists were white). I thought that the film did not showcase the large scale aspect of strip mining, although maybe strip mining was just starting t be done, so the striking images in the Gates's In Memory of the Land and People (1977) were not available. This film had a sequence that, I thought, showed how valley fills become mudslides in an artful way.
My greatest criticism to the filmmaking was that I wish I didn't have to do research on the internet (something that filmgoers back then would not have been able to do, obviously) to learn that the younger activists were part of Appalachian Volunteers. In the film, Naomi Weintraub alluded to "we" and "other issues," but some context would have been nice. I gather that they were using tax dollars through the Office of Economic Opportunity to fund the film, so perhaps they didn't want to attract too much attention.
There is a certain naiveté to the subjects, but that is only because of the hindsight that we know now. The Act, which gave great powers to regulators over the coal industry, was not strongly enforced and coal companies were able to continue to do the destructive mining that they did before its enaction. From what I can gather, I think the movement would have somewhat of a schism over whether to push for complete abolition of strip mining or for federal regulation. The latter won out, with the SMCRA in 1977. Of course, that too would prove to be inadequate due to a loophole for large-scale mountaintop removal. But that's a story for a later decade.
If you are interested in the origins of the fight against mountaintop removal and the evolution of the attitudes of Appalachians, I highly recommend the film.
My Perestroika (2010)
Soviet Seven Up
Combining vintage footage with modern interviews gives an informative glimpse into the everyday life of children in the Soviet Union and how different things are today for both the children and the adults. The interviews with the now-adults about their childhood were, in my opinion the most enlightening and interesting, as well as the portions about what it was actually like going through perestroika and glasnost. I thought it could have had a stronger theme tying the people together, but it may have just been a product of what the premise of the film was. Anyone interested in what Communism was actually like should definitely watch this.