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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There Will Be Blood

There will be blood if this film does not win Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Editing and Best Original Music Score. Directed by the now grown-up wunderkind P.T. Anderson and starring the weatherworn Irish actor Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood is hypnotic, riveting, violent, fascinating and at times painful to watch. It is boldly, unapologetically and immediately an American masterpiece in the company of Citizen Kane, Giant and Raging Bull. I can safely say that because there is little wiggle room here not to say it.

The cinematography is breathtaking. Shot on location in Marfa, Texas and central California by Robert Elswit, we can feel the scope and the grandeur of the wide-open spaces that the West was and in many cases still is. Editing by Dylan Tichenor is tight, slight and seamlessly out of sight.

Jonny Greenwood’s (Radiohead) score is haunting, scary and yes, at times annoying. It surrounds you with electronica and when necessary chokes you with anxiety until you can’t breathe. I mean that in a good way, of course.

While I have respected him as a filmmaker, I have never been a big fan of Paul Thomas Anderson. His films, although heralded as pop culture triumphs, have always left me feeling like he was usurping the styles of greater directors. Boogie Nights, the film that put him on the map in 1997, while entertaining, felt snobbish and filled with intentionally dumbed down characters. You got the sense that he was mimicking Scorsese while ridiculing these Goodfellas of the porno world. Magnolia seemed Robert Altman-lite. Punch-Drunk Love, well that starred Adam Sandler. No reason to pile on.

You could tell from all three of these films (four if you count Hard Eight) that Anderson knew what he was doing. He just seemed to lack the guts to do it.

That is until now.

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  Well, no one wants to say it but you will be reading this shortly: The Golden Globes and the Academy Awards will be cancelled.

On Monday December 17th, the WGA turned down requests for waivers by the Oscars and the Golden Globes to put those telecasts on air without the Guild’s writers. With the rejection of the waivers for the Academy Awards (ABC), set for Sunday February 24th, and the much faster approaching Golden Globes (NBC), set for January 13th, the WGA has essentially cancelled both awards shows by its actions.

The SAG Awards did receive a waiver and are scheduled for Jan. 27th.

But the other two awards shows will be cancelled and no one or should I say everyone in the industry is avoiding the mention of this 600 pound LaMotta because a) they are holding out the now near impossible hope for a settlement and b) no one wants to interrupt the cash flow from the media promotions of the potential nominees.

That is unless they want to go the route of the People’s Choice Awards which announced it will air its show Jan 8th (CBS) in a 2 hour “magazine” format of prerecorded videos and no audience yet featuring Queen Latifah as the prerecorded "host."

The Oscars and the Golden Globes will not play that game.

Leslie Unger, spokeswoman for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said, “It’s very difficult for me to envision that we would follow the model.”

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  C&L's November Film of the Month Review:"20 To Life: The Life and Times of John Sinclair"

Documentary reviewed by Mark Groubert

“Apathy isn’t it. And we can do something. So flower power didn’t work. So what! We start again.”
John Lennon

John Sinclair Freedom Rally, Crisler Arena, Michigan - December 10, 1971.

If it was up to Richard Nixon, 20 To Life: The Life and Times of John Sinclair, a documentary by Steve Gebhardt, would never have seen the light of day. Hired as the private experimental filmmaker for John Lennon and Yoko Ono back in 1971, Gebhardt was working on a full-length music video to help promote Lennon’s upcoming album, Imagine when he and Lennon heard about the benefit concert to help free political activist John Sinclair from prison.
Sinclair, head of the White Panther Party, manager of the seminal rock band the MC5 and one of the leading radical elements of the Midwest had been targeted by Detroit undercover cops who arrested him for passing two joints. Facing 20 years to life and actually sentenced to 9 1/2 years for the crime, Sinclair became the focus of a huge benefit concert at the Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor, Michigan featuring John Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seeger, Phil Ochs, MC-5, Allen Ginsberg, Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels and others.
Over 20,000 people attended the show.
Having already spent nearly three years behind bars, John Sinclair was freed from prison just three days after the event.

Talk about All Power To The People.

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Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy By Charlie Savage

“Charlie Savage’s Takeover reads like a political thriller because it is one: the story of Dick Cheney and his hapless boss pushing the presidency off its constitutional foundation.”

John W. Dean, former Nixon White House Counsel

In Takeover, author Charlie Savage takes us through the steel doors of power to peer over the shoulders of the Bush-Cheney lawyers who secretly devised ways for American presidents to circumvent laws and treaties. He pulls back the iron curtains which hide the political motivations behind Bush's selections for the Supreme Court. He takes us along the road that leads to the current executive branch addiction to secrecy. On the trip, Savage's book gives us clear translations of the Bush-Cheney gang's bizarre radical theories.

For all this we must say thank you, sir.

This is an incredible master work from Charlie Savage, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist from the Boston Globe who first brought to our attention the Bush Administration's abuse of so-called signing statements. For that he won himself the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. Thank you, Charlie Savage. Thank you for showing us what intellectual heroism is all about. Thank you for helping us understand our own current political quagmire. Thank you, well, thank you for not giving up when so many of us are burdened with great despair regarding our nation's condition.

Now here are some additional "thank yous" for the upcoming Holiday Season from the folks at Crooks and Liars.

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Terror’s Advocate: "A documentary directed by Barbet Schroeder French w/ English subtitles
140 minutes."

When I saw The Last King of Scotland, Forest Whitaker seemed almost cartoonish to me. Not that it was a bad performance. It wasn’t. There were problems with the film for sure, but there was a different reason. Thirty years prior I had seen another film, General Idi Amin Dada, the groundbreaking documentary from French director Barbet Schroeder. It successfully captured the personification of evil on celluloid. For years I was haunted by its stark brutal revelations.

Barbet Schroeder can do that to the viewer. Born in Teheran, Iran in 1946 to a Swiss geologist father, he spent time in Central Africa and Columbia as a child but was raised in France where he has done the bulk of his work. American viewers probably know him for his feature films, Barfly (1987), Reversal of Fortune (1990), and Single White Female (1992), but these are just three small windows to his overall worldview.

Schroeder’s feature films have always had a documentary feel to them while his documentaries more often feel like fictional cinema. This is not accidental. His feature films often have their roots in non-fiction events while his documentaries are so fantastical in their narrative that they feel like works of dramatic fiction.

Terror’s Advocate, Schroeder’s latest adventure, has themes similar to those found in his Oscar nominated, Reversal of Fortune. In the latter, Claus von Bulow, a lawyer of European descent who comes from a family which had close ties to the Nazis finds himself embroiled in a sensational court case. The lawyer featured in Terror’s Advocate is of European descent, has close ties to a Nazi and finds himself embroiled in numerous sensational court cases.

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Of all the insane Bush privatization efforts, none is more frightening than the corporatizing of military combat forces. Jeremy Scahill admirably exposes a devastating example of this sinister scheme.

Michael Moore

On March 31st, 2004, four Americans were set upon by an angry mob of Iraqis in the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah. They were riddled with bullets, burned beyond recognition and two were strung up like charred cattle from a bridge over the Euphrates River. This day marked the unofficial beginning of the Iraqi insurgence and the end of “Mission Accomplished.” These four Americans were not soldiers in the U.S. Army nor were they civilians, but rather highly trained mercenaries from a reclusive private army based in the wilderness of North Carolina.

An army now known to the American people as Blackwater USA.

Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Army tells the story of the creation of one of the most powerful and secretive forces yet to crawl out of the swamp known as the U.S. military-industrial complex. (Ironically, Blackwater started out as a private military training camp located near the black waters of the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina). Sounding like it came out of the mind of an over-caffeinated screenwriter, this B-grade Hollywood action film is all too real and its author, Jeremy Scahill shows us a movie that will chill you to the bone.

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