Only, not really.

The Boys of Baraka is actually a documentary about a group of troubled young men growing up in Baltimore, in single parent (or no parent) homes who are chose to spend two years at a boarding school in rural Kenya called the Baraka school.  The film starts off by alerting you to a troubling statistic: that 76% of African American boys in Baltimore will not graduate from high school.  That is truly a travesty and a number that was really shocking to me.  It continues to follow 4 or 5 boys who apply (I guess — this part isn’t shown) to go to the Baraka school in Kenya.  They are all promising in some way: charming, precocious, creative but are being mishandled or simply not handled (read: suspended and ignored) by the Baltimore school system (but if you’ve see The Wire then you KNOW that they’re TRYING THEIR BEST) so off they go, probably many on their first trip out of the city to say nothing of their first time on an airplane  (oh, a little bit of backstory here might have been nice).  Some say tearful goodbyes to their mothers but some simply continue to cause mischief and create concern for fellow air travelers.  To be fair, the flight(s) to Kenya is a long one and I don’t know that twenty 11-14 year old boys from any kind of background is exactly what I would want on my plane either.

Once in Kenya, some of the boys are thrilled (their cabin accommodations are in many respects superior to their housing situations in Baltimore) but do need some time to adjust,  a few of them demanding to go home and one in particular (Montrey) continuing to start fights and cause trouble.  But after a few talking tos and heart to hearts with the (white) staff, they seem to get stuff figured out and by the end of the year, it seems like they’re all having a great time.  As a matter of fact, it gets kind of sad when they have to go back to Baltimore for the summer.  They all seem uncomfortable there, around their mothers and their old friends and ready to go back.

But then tragedy strikes and their parents are informed that the operations of the Baraka school have been suspended due to terrorism and security risks inherent in travel to East Africa.  Of course, the parents proceed to get indignant because WHAT are they supposed to do NOW!!  The response of the Baraka administrator is not even captured, but my response was “Are you kidding?”  True: It is totally sad that the boys won’t get to finish their second year in Kenya.  Also True: Going to Kenya and having a private education is not exactly a right that these kids have.  So sure, be upset and sad, but get angry with the Baraka school for something that is totally out of their control?  Um, really?

So the boys don’t get to go back but Montrey ends up at the best school in Baltimore anyway because he apparently is really good at math (surprise!  thanks for using this as some kind of, I dunno, through line, plot point, touchstone).

Mostly, the idea of the Baraka school is an interesting one.  It’s too bad it got shutdown (apparently for good).  But this documentary was not a particularly compelling portrait of either the school, Baltimore or the eponymous boys.  The filmmakers even seem to know this as they put the boys names up on the screen with them all the way through.  Perhaps if they had created any kind of fleshed out portrait of them we would be able to at least recognize and distinguish between them.  Which one has a dad in jail?  Which one has a mom with a crack problem? Oh, that’s the same one.  I think he has the learning disability too (BARELY ADDRESSED).  The one who wants to be a preacher is cute — what’s wrong with him again?  Does he become a preacher?  Wholly disappointing portrait of a provocative topic.

In happier news, Season 5 starts tonight (in my apartment)!!

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

I am so excited to see EARTH.  Yay!  Parade of cuteness!  Narrated by Patrick Stewart! Darth Vader!

Swim Big Guy!

Simba & Co.!

Cute animal pictures: saving bloggers from writing since 1998!

(1) Documentary about some guy who built some crazy instrument. Documentary consists of black and white digital interview that occasionally zooms in just on his eyes because that’s ‘artistic.’ Second half of documentary is silent footage of said guy while he plays his crazy instrument LIVE. Crazy instrument sounds like something Phillip Glass’ retarded child would make. Only worse.

(2) Silent Super 8 movie in which a woman hires a hitman to kill her husband’s mistress. It’s a good thing the (brilliant) director (of all 3 films) explained the plot before the screening! Thanks, guy!

(3) Silent 16mm movie in which a woman may or may not be the last person on earth. A skeleton follows her around. Then some people make out and drink martinis. Martinis are so cinematic. Also in black and white. And there is a band with a cello in it that plays LIVE.

I never thought that I would long for film school screenings. Mercifully all three films were under 10 minutes in length. After the last one, they tried to trick me into staying to watch the band jam (practice) by not having a pause. Fuck that.

On a whim, I found myself at the Sundance Film Festival last weekend. It’s a weird scene, like everyone that you bump into on Beverly Drive between 1 & 2 PM just decided to buy a puffy jacket and a scarf and head off to Utah. Like everyone’s all makeup’d with straightened hair and sunglasses in case they find themselves in the background of some WireImage photo or something. It’s kind of awesome and was really entertaining to me. Anyway, on to the movie.

The one screening that I got to go to was the world premiere of a documentary about rock legend Patti Smith called Patti Smith: Dream of Life. It’s been well documented that I am a fan of music documentaries (yes, Rockumentaries) and I think that’s what made me like this one, more than the quality of it. It’s a meandering dream of the last 12 years of Smith’s life since her husband died. It seems that the filmmaker (colossally douchey photographer) Steven Sebring (careful, that site takes control of your browser size…classy…) basically just followed her around for about 12 years and they became BFF and he filmed her and put together this movie. It’s definitely a valentine to Smith, who is a totally cool and talented and rocking chick. But as a film, there’s not much of a story which made it wear on me pretty quickly. As a result of budgetary and equipment restraints, there are a lot of different looks to the film – black and white, grainy, saturated, etc. which was kind of interesting but didn’t have any real rhyme or reason to it. Smith herself is captivating, but as someone who wasn’t a fan before this movie, I couldn’t help but think: “Ok, great, but, so…?” I don’t think this will win the Audience Award, but it’s kind of interesting to have what amounts to a backstage pass to such an influential figure’s life.

Smith obviously loves her children and did love her husband, but I wish I had known more about who he was and what their relationship was like. Smith provides a haunting voiceover throughout and frames the film with some candid interviews in her bedroom. This minimal structure definitely helped, but I wanted more – more story, structure, more past. I still liked it, though.

The Q&A afterwards was great, too. Patti Smith was inches away from me and really funny. One exchange with an audience member (seriously, don’t let people ask questions because people are idiots) went like this:

IDIOT: As someone who has basically shaped their life and choices around your music…

PATTI: You know, there are doctors for that

IDIOT: Huh?

Haha – zing!

As I’ve previously stated, I’m not a huge proponent of ‘professional photography’ as a *thing* to be *studied* and *lauded.*  This woman is no Diane Arbus, I can tell you that much.  Her photos are good, I guess, but I could not move past the fact that she has these 2 kids, she takes totally weird pictures of them and drags them around with her and is a really shitty mom!  Like, there’s this one part where she doesn’t want her son to witness the set up of a photo where her mother is going to pretend to breastfeed her newborn (good instinct, Tierney!) but he just keeps coming on in anyway, and finally she’s like “Ok, whatever!” 

Also, when she finds out she’s pregnant (we never meet the dude she’s fucking) she’s like “I really think this baby is going to complete our family.  I can feel it.”  Oh barf.

This woman is the epitome of self-indulgence and self-interest and it’s just horrible to watch.  Really horrible.  Please don’t watch it.

Directed by Greg Whiteley, New York Doll is a documentary about Arthur “Killer” Kane, one of the founding members and bassist for seminal punk band, the New York Dolls.  It seems that after the Dolls broke up, Kane was in a pretty bad state.  Hopelessly alcoholic and without any real direction, he went back and forth between New York and L.A. for a while, forming various bands and just trying to eke out a living.  Until one day he joined the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  He became a fucking Momon!  Isn’t that wild?

Anyway, during the course of this documentary, Kane gets a chance to reunite with the Dolls in a show that Morrissey is putting on in London.  The extent of the movie is basically just following him around while he works in the Momon library in L.A. and gets ready to go play a show for the first time in decades.  Then he goes and plays the show and makes amends with his old bandmates and it’s pretty fucking touching, actually.

The story of his rise & fall was interesting and the way that he is such an unassuming guy is almost mindblowing.  There are these 2 really hilarious old Mormon ladies that were like “Yeah, we had no idea Arthur was such a big deal!”  Then he dies like, weeks after getting back from the show.  It’s kind of sad, but because they had interviews with all these people that were like “All he ever talked about was getting the Dolls back together” the fact that he actually got to have that happen before he died is sort of awesome.

Technically speaking, the movie is kind of so-so, mostly beacuse it seems kind of Ex Post Facto – like the director heard about the Morrissey show and then tracked down Arthur and decided to make a documentary and just got lucky that he died at the end, so it seemed kind of epic and important.  I’m sure all the other interviews were shot after Arthur died.  There were some pretty cool animations though, but the whole thing could have been a little better.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

In contrast, The Devil and Daniel Johnston was clearly a labor of love for director Jeff Feuerzeig who obviously spent years on it.  And it was totally worth it, because I thought it was great.

As I have previously mentioned, I was not a cool kid.  I’m not claiming to be a cool adult (especially not when it comes to music), but there is no way I would have heard of Daniel Johnston even though a lot of people have.  I just like documentaries. 

Apparently this guy was this totally brilliant underground singer/songwriter who also happened to be batshit crazy (seriously, majorly, unmedicatedly bipolar).  But he was also extremely driven to be a musician and made his way on to MTV and Kurt Cobain wore one of his t-shirts and people definitely knew about him.  But once he finally got a record deal, he went all paranoid crazy and wouldn’t sign the damn contract!

Anyway, I really enjoyed this movie because it introduced me to this guy who seriously, even though he really sucks at guitar writes these really awesome Bob Dylan-esque songs that are kind of great!  And it’s one of those Better Than Fiction stories.

A group of developmentally disabled adults get in a Winnebago with some filmmakers and interview people on the street and sing songs.  I guess it’s meant to be heartwarming and/or provocative but I just found it incredibly uncomfortable.  The part that made me turn it off was when they put a camera in some glasses (you know, like those ones they use on the blowjob [btw, this text editor thinks blow-job should be hyphenated?] amateur porn videos, um, not that I know anything about that) on this one guy who doesn’t speak English.  I should rephrase that – he doesn’t speak *any* language.  Rather, he communicates with grunts and pointing and some very scribbly writing.  And they just sent him up to people on the street with a little notecard that said “How’s your news?” (this phrase annoys me too – is it a colloquialism?  Who says this?) and he proceeded to grunt at them and they either ignored him or smiled politely and looked horribly uncomfortable.  I mean, what is the point of this, really?  What does that prove?  How does that give me insight into the human condition?  I would argue that it doesn’t, because the guy doesn’t know what he’s doing, the people don’t know what he’s doing and it’s just, like, creepy.

There was one lady, Susan Harrington, who was kind of awesome and would sing crazy songs in this loud operatic voice and maybe I could stomach more of that.  But like, if I’m going to be that uncomfortable, I expect a Happy Ending…

Fact: I fell asleep during Darfur Now.

Fact: It is not a cool phenomenon, but Janjaweed is a really cool word.  Its definition is “Devil on Horseback” which is also pretty bitchin’.  Sorry, it is! 

Fact: The Spanish prosecutor for war crimes from the International Court of Justice is really charming!  The Hague is another cool phrase.

Fact: George Clooney could cook filet mignon for everyone in Africa using only his smoldering glances.

10. It started late.

9. The Netflix Original Content chick who introduced it and seemed like she had never held a microphone.  Ok, I should cut her slack because she was probably really nervous.  It was annoying though.

8. The girl who sat beside me and blackberry-d

7. The name “Dr. Sanjay Gupta”

6. The special looked slapped together – bad photography, bad utilization of HD, too much Anderson Cooper looking like a total prissy lameass.  (My gay joke: “This is the only time you’ll ever see Anderson Cooper go on a search for beavers.”)

5. They didn’t update the CNN logo to be HD so it was all pixelized in the bottom corner of the screen. 

4. The Executive Producer that attempted “banter” with Anderson Cooper et al who was such a total douchebag but thought himself to be hilarious when he WAS NOT AT ALL.

3. Anderson Cooper, Jeff Corwin and Sanjay Gupta are all the same height: short.

2. They spliced the special down to about 45 minutes and ended it right before Jeff Corwin is going to play with polar bears!!

and the number one thing that pissed me off about this screening was…

1. Anderson Cooper is so not that hot in person.

I take solace in this:

*Sigh*

But seriously, Global Warming Is A Serious Issue And We Should All Curb Our Carbon Emissions, Etc.

This movie had a lot of really nice graphics and was very informative and educational but Al Gore’s even-keeled southern drawl put me right to sleep.

Also, I wrote a paper about this subject in 7th grade and no one gave me an Oscar.

But look how broodingly sexy Al Gore was back in the day: