75: Operation Peter Pan: Flying Back to Cuba (LAFF 2011)
(This review is crossposted as part of The House Next Door’s coverage of the 2011 LA Film Fest.) Operation Peter Pan was a facet of the powder keg that was early 1960s U.S.-Cuban relations, less visible than the Bay of Pigs or the Missile Crisis, but with its own traumatic historical legacy. Supported by the CIA [...]
71: Salaam Dunk (LAFF 2011)
(This review is crossposted as part of The House Next Door’s coverage of the 2011 LA Film Fest.) When you put together dozens of feature films in the concentrated time and space of a festival, a sense of juxtaposition and convergence develops. Common ground and shared ideas are more visible, and it’s easier to see when [...]
60: Sawdust City (LAFF 2011)
Sawdust City is titled after the nickname of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where the film is set. It’s a poignant title in many ways: sawdust is the detritus that’s left behind after the work is done and the finished product is sent elsewhere. It’s also something used to clean up vomit. That’s not a comment on the [...]
59: Once I Was a Champion (LAFF 2011)
Biography is such a precarious act, trying to reconstruct a person and their life from the chorus of overlapping and conflicting voices that were touched by that life. When that person was a celebrity who died under troubling circumstances, the challenges multiply. Such is the task for Gerard Roxburgh and his documentary Once I Was [...]
58: Page One: Inside the New York Times (LAFF 2011)
Page One: Inside the New York Times (directed by Andrew Rossi and written by Rossi and Kate Novack) is a documentary that takes America’s newspaper of record and subjects it to a battery of tests not unlike a medical exam — Are you getting enough ad revenue or are you going to have to go [...]
56: Somewhere Between (LAFF 2011)
Linda Goldstein Knowlton explores the phenomenon of international adoption in her documentary Somewhere Between, which follows a quartet of teenage girls from across America—Fang, Ann, Jenna, and Haley—adopted from China when they young and raised in the United States. The film finds it focus in how these girls grow into and cope with their adopted [...]
54: Unraveled (LAFF 2011)
In responding to the paradigm shift instigated by the recent global financial crisis, the conscientious documentarian can generally pursue one of two strategies. They can burn with the righteous fury of activism and issue a systemic structural indictment, as the Academy Award-winning Inside Job did. Marc H. Simon chooses the other path with Unraveled and breaks out the microscope to examine how the individual is positioned in that system, and how one criminal’s story, however emblematic of something larger, is still something utterly personal.
Politics and Porn
On Monday Radar Online released X-rated Facebook transcripts between New 
York Representative Anthony Weiner and Las Vegas blackjack dealer Lisa Weiss. Everyone paying attention to the news should be aware of the details of this political sex scandal so I won’t go into them. Weiner’s confession comes only weeks after another prominent ‘ex’-politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger, admitted to having an affair and fathering an illegitimate child with his housekeeper ten years ago. In an unfortunate turn of events Weiner’s wife, and aide to Hillary Clinton, has revealed that she is pregnant with their first child.
Sic Semper Terrorists
The most notorious terrorist in the world is dead. We hope that the death of Osama bin Laden offers those who have suffered from his crimes a belated sense of closure. We receive the news with somber hearts and hope that the price America and the world paid for his capture was not too great.
Why Chinese Mothers Are Crazy
Amy Chua’s provocative piece in the Wall Street Journal has stirred up considerable debate, and rightly so. Her strict, even draconian, method of parenting is one that many parents will recognize, though perhaps in diluted form. She outlines the steps that she, a proud Chinese mother, took to ensure her children’s success. She doesn’t allow her children to attend sleepovers or playdates, to watch TV or play computer games. In a tautological flourish she says they are not allowed to “play any instrument other than the piano or violin” or “not play the piano or violin.” All the while she examines the difference between so-called “Chinese mothers” and “Western parents,” clearly favoring the former. But while she presents her regimen with confidence and pride, she neglects to examine the drawbacks of such austere parenting.
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