The best socially provocative films do not wear a patch on their sleeves announcing them as such. I am speaking of indies such as Vera Drake and Naked, both written and directed by Mike Leigh, or Matewan, written and directed by John Sayles.

Winter’s Bone is in that league.

Based on the gritty short novel of the same name by Daniel Woodrell, Winter’s Bone is directed and co-written by Debra Granik (Down To The Bone starring Vera Farmiga) and Anne Rossellini (who also co-produced). Industry veteran Alix Madigan-Yorkin (co-producer), whose credits include Neil LaBute’s Your Friends And Neighbors provided a steady hand throughout the creative process.

Shot entirely in the Ozarks of Southwestern Missouri, the low-budget Winter’s Bone has racked up Sundance’s 2010 Grand Jury Prize as well as the prestigious Waldo Salt Screening Award.

On the surface, the film is a simply told tale of a daughter seeking her missing father. 17-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) must find her meth-cooking dad, who has put their house up as collateral for his bail. Ree must locate him before she, her disabled mother and her two young siblings are tossed out into the cold Ozark winter. The search for her outlaw dad takes her through a harrowing trail of loose-knit kin, crazed Vietnam vets, and meth addicts who would sooner kill her as serve her venison stew.

A subdued scene with an actual military recruiter -- which finds Ree attempting to enlist in order to resolve her overwhelming problems -- should leave a massive patriotic lump in your throat. Another key scene that features Ree and some Deliverance-looking relatives rowing through a murky cold swamp at night may haunt you for years to come.

Stunningly exquisite performances, a fantastic soundtrack (including a haunting rendition of the traditional “Farther Along” by Marideth Sisco) and the earthy textural cinematography of Michael McDonough (with the RED camera) clearly make Winter’s Bone the indie film of the year.

For whatever it’s worth to you, in recent weeks Oscar whispers have faintly heard as audiences exited various screening rooms around this town.

Every once and awhile a diamond emerges from the rough world of American indie cinema. Winter’s Bone can cut glass.

[Winter’s Bone opens Friday June 11th at the Lincoln Square and Sunshine Theaters in New York and at The Landmark Theater in Los Angeles.]

Mark Groubert is a screenwriter currently living and working in Los Angeles.

Che

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Part One: The Argentine written by Peter Buchman and Benjamin A. Van Der Veen

Part Two: Guerrilla written by Peter Buchman

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

Che Guevara

There is a silent fragment of a scene in Guerrilla, the second part of Steven Soderbergh’s epic cinematic experience, Che that is very telling. Che Guevara, portrayed brilliantly by Benicio Del Toro, is trying to motivate a group of reluctant Bolivian peasants to join him in overthrowing their own government, but most of them are not buying it. Mario Monje, portrayed by Lou Diamond Phillips, one of only a handful of recognizable actors in this film, has also heard enough politics and leaves. Someone suggests that maybe democracy could work. Silence. In this group is a dead ringer for a young Evo Morales, the indigenous President of Bolivia, who recently won a recall election with 67.4% of the vote.

This is one of the few political messages that Soderbergh leaves even a trace of his own fingerprints on.

Last October, Che’s death was marked, in the Bolivian village where he was killed, by President Morales proclaiming his own political movement to be “100% Guevarist and socialist.”

The CIA may have killed the man, but his ideas have lived on, especially in South America today.

I attended Che-stock (4 ½ hours in length) at its Los Angeles premiere Saturday night at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Red carpet, bright lights, flashing cameras, movie stars – the works. After a short speech by the president of the AFI, Steven Soderbergh spoke to the audience humorously about his non-Che-like ride to the theatre in an Audi (one of the sponsors for the festival). Benicio Del Toro (Best Actor at this year’s Cannes Film Festival) then spoke briefly and thanked many others, including producer Laura Bickford.

The first part of Che, entitled "The Argentine," is sharp, energetic, visceral and historic. It covers the meeting of the Argentinean doctor Ernesto “Che” Guevara with Fidel Castro as well as, many of the battle scenes and training that provided the framework for the Cuban revolution from 1956-1959 ending with the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.

These detailed military actions have very rarely been depicted in dramatic cinema. Here for the first time we see through Soderbergh’s cinéma vérité style what it would have been like for the Fidelistas to liberate village after village while gathering the support they needed to take their revolution into Havana. In December of 1958, we see Che leading his “suicide squad” in the attack on Santa Clara.

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Oh my name it is nothin'

My age it means less

The country I come from

Is called the Midwest

I's taught and brought up there

The laws to abide

And the land that I live in

Has God on its side.

With God On Our Side by Bob Dylan

As the end credits roll marking the finale of W and the completion of director Oliver Stone’s troika of Presidential bio-pics (JFK, Nixon, W), the voice of another generation lashes out of the screen. Almost a half-century-old now, With God On Our Side recorded by Bob Dylan in 1963, served as a litany of American hubris and military actions which are philosophically defended by claiming to have God on the side of America.

The Iraq War can now be added to that list.

W is a far, far better picture than I expected. It is not as some critics have suggested, a black comedy. It is not a farce. While there are some loopy dream sequences and flights of fancy, it is a powerful, straightforward biography depicting the guilt-ridden son of a hugely successful man.

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Hey kids, looking for an early Christmas gift for that cantankerous cretin of an uncle in Chattanooga? How about a Cheney/Bush '08 bumper sticker (get it?) for that mentally-challenged maniac of a step-mom up in Montana? Now you can go to the Red State Store and get all your right wing gift needs for the upcoming holiday season. The Obama Anti-Christ logo is a huge seller, as is the Obama Nation T- Shirt. There is also a Stop the Galactic Brain Spiders line of goods for the science fiction oriented kids trying to figure out creationism after cutting home schooling class on the history of the dinosaurs. Oh and don't forget the Hamas Hearts Obama: Change We Can Bleed In stickers. They are only $2.99 for the family on that tight bail out budget.

Nicole posted about these casting choices back in May for Oliver Stone's new movie, W. The Stray Cat Bar in Shreveport, Louisiana was the site of a massive bar fight early Saturday morning which led to the arrest of two actors portraying President George W. Bush and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Josh Brolin, 40, who portrays President Bush and Jeffrey Wright, 42, who depicts Colin Powell in Oliver Stone's upcoming film, "W," were taken into custody along with five others around 2 am. Apparently in casting Brolin as Bush, director Oliver Stone liked what he saw. In 2004, Brolin was arrested and charged with spousal battery for hitting his wife, award-winning actress Diane Lane. Brolin was later released after posting $20,000 bail. "There was a misunderstanding at their home," explained the couple's spokesperson Kelly Bush.

You can't make this stuff up folks.

Cunning linguist and social satirist George Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug problems, died at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California shortly after being admitted with chest pains around 6 pm PDT.

Carlin made world news in 1978 when, in the case of FCC vs. Pacifica Foundation the top court ruled that seven words cited in Carlin’s routine were indeed indecent and should be banned when children might be listening. The words came from his routine, “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.” Carlin received 2 Emmys for his albums “FM&AM” and “Jammin’ in New York.”

The first true bust-out comic of the counter-culture, Carlin knowingly or unknowingly, was an amalgam of two social comic legends: Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl. With the death of the former in 1966 and the generation gap wounding the latter, Carlin after re-inventing himself with drugs, a political point of view and a pony tail, had the field of political/social comedy all to himself. By the time his breakthrough album “Class Clown” was recorded live at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1972, featuring the previously mentioned “7 Words”, Carlin was a rock star.

According to Carlin, he was conceived at Curley’s Hotel in Rockaway Beach, New York. He was born May 12th, 1937.
He was raised for 25 years at 519 W. 121st Street in upper Manhattan and took in everything the neighborhood had to offer. And it had everything.

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The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
A Citizen’s Call To Action

By Naomi Wolf

Fascism: Fast and furious in ten historic steps.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens’ groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

Naomi Wolf says: Recent history has profound lessons for us in the U.S. today about how fascist, totalitarian, and other repressive leaders seize and maintain power, especially in what were once democracies. The secret is that these leaders all tend to take very similar, parallel steps.

In the true spirit of Thomas Paine, Wolf takes her slender pamphlet/book (155 pages) to the streets of America. Our job is to read it, write about it and Revere it. Ride through the towns across the land yelling: “The fascists are coming. The fascists are coming.”

That is, if it isn’t too late.

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It takes a clever man to make money, it takes a genius to stay alive.

The Counterfeiters is the powerful Oscar-nominated feature selected as part of this year’s Best Foreign Language Film category from Austria. Directed and co-written (with Adolph Burger) by Stefan Ruzowitsky, the picture is the dramatized account of Operation Bernard, the Nazis secret plan to destabilize the United Kingdom by flooding its economy with forged Bank of England currency. The protagonist is a Berlin-based Jewish counterfeiter named Salomon Sorowitsch.

Sorowitsch, a petty criminal, womanizer and a lush, is determined to survive the war at all costs. Based on the memoirs of professional printer Adolph Burger, (portrayed by the rising young actor, August Diehl) who himself imprisoned by the Nazis for political dissent, the film takes us into 1936 Berlin where we meet Sorowitsch, a successful forger of currency and passports. In Berlin he is well known as The King of the Counterfeiters.

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Researched and compiled by Mark Groubert

This is it. Finally, the Official Crooks and Liars Top 100 Stand-up Comedians of all time. Let's face it, whether you're David Letterman or Oskar Schindler, everyone loves lists. While highly subjective, this list has been scientifically vetted by recently deceased members of the Friar's Club for accuracy and fairness. There is no wiggle room. This is the official list. Anyone thinking otherwise is of course in error but can explain their massive feelings in the comments section. (Please remember to keep all comments to ten words or less so more can vent.)

]John Amato: There are videos hyperlinked to each name so that you can see a small performance of as many of the great stand-ups as we could find. (language alert) Have fun--agree or disagree, but sit down for a few minutes and enjoy a laugh with us.

1. Lenny Bruce
2. Richard Pryor
3. Woody Allen
4. Mort Sahl
5. Buddy Hackett
6. George Carlin
7. Eddie Murphy
8. Richard Lewis
9. Robin Williams
10. Rodney Dangerfield

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The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism By Naomi Klein

Men like Jonas Salk, Lenny Bruce and J. Edgar Hoover, these men thrive upon the continuance of segregation, violence, and disease. The purity they dost protest a need for, they dost feed upon. Thank You, Masked Man
Lenny Bruce

A divinely inspired work, Naomi Klein has tapped into the zeitgeist of modern day destruction capitalism. In 400-plus pages and extensive footnotes, she melts the myths surrounding the so-called global free market. Apparently, it is neither global, nor free and anything but a market. The Shock Doctrine, based on her historical research, and four years of boots-on-the-ground investigation by Klein, reveals the shocking truth that connects Pinochet’s Chile, the Falklands War, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Asian financial crisis and Hurricane Mitch all in terms of rapid fire corporate restructuring of these societies and their economies. Along the way, we go through Poland following communism, South Africa after apartheid, Sri Lanka recovering from the tsunami, Iraq after mission accomplished and New Orleans’ privatization post Katrina.

Enjoy the feeling of avoiding the usual hurricane evacuation nightmare. Help Jet Luxury Airlines of W. Palm Beach helps you avoid the next Katrina. : Actual ad pitch for Help Jet Luxury Airlines

The Shock Doctrine reads like an economic disaster film, Die Hard With a Calculator, if you will. Its antagonist is the late economist Milton Friedman and his gang of Chicago Boys, economic free marketeers trained by the University of Chicago to spread their gospel to an unreceptive and reluctant world.

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