FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 2010
KLMNO A resounding, moving dialogue silverdocs from C1
of McKinley Nolan”), Davis Gug- genheim (“Waiting for ‘Super- man’ ”) and Frederick Wiseman, who will be honored for his career in pioneering the unnarrated, im- mersive filmmaking style known as “direct cinema.” And if that term sounds highfalutin, just think “The Office,” but with fewer laughs and more investigative fer- vor. The main attractions at Silver- docs aren’t directors or actors, though, but the movies on offer. And a sampling of some of the best documentaries to be screened this year reveals themes that smoothly migrate between films, uncannily echoing and har- monizing with one another across a wide range of styles and subject matter. War, peace, the burdens of history and unresolved loss weave in and out of many of the films, whether they have to do with the most public current events or pri- vate agonies. Thus two films set in the midst of the Arab-Israeli dispute, “Bu- drus” and “My So Called En- emy,” have much to say, along with two portraits of extremism and its costs: “HolyWars,” Ste- phen Marshall’s alternately irri- tating, unsettling and surprising portrait of an evangelical Chris- tian and pro-global-jihad Muslim, and “War Don Don,” about a war crimes trial in Sierra Leone. And the teenage girls who make such compelling protagonists in “Bu- drus” and “My So Called Enemy” — both of which offer inspiring examples of reconciliation in that embattled region — would most likely feel at home with Francesca Woodman, the gifted young pho- tographer whose search for self- expression and 1981 suicide are sensitively portrayed in C. Scott Willis’s family portrait “The Woodmans.” Fittingingly, the festival’s clos- ing-night selection, “The Tillman Story,” revisits all the themes that weave through those films, from its investigation of how the U.S. government tried to propa- gandize Army Ranger Pat Till- man’s 2004 death in Afghanistan to its wrenching portrayal of a family dealing with unresolved loss. And its searing critique of re- visionism strikes an unmistak- able chord with two films that ap- proach that subject with dramat- ically different points of view. In “A Film Unfinished,” Yael Her- sonski reconstitutes a Nazi propa- ganda film made in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942 to prove that pow- erful truths can be found even within such a compromised con- text. That’s the same impression left by “Marwencol,” Jeff Malm- berg’s entrancing film about Mark Hogancamp, who after suf- fering near-fatal brain damage af- ter a brutal beating in Kingston, N.Y., reconstitutes his life by cre- ating a miniature World War II- era world inhabited entirely by Barbie dolls.
With such echoes and unex-
pected harmonies, this year’s Sil- verdocs often resembles a sprawl-
MOVIE REVIEW ‘Hex’: Not much more than an ugly face
by Michael O’Sullivan “Jonah Hex” may not be the
longest 81 minutes you ever spend, but it might well be the most tedious. Inspired by the comic-book cowboy character of the same name — a scar-faced CivilWar-era bounty hunter who can commune with the dead, and who seems impervious to bullets himself — the movie plods for- ward, one leaden step at a time, in single-minded pursuit of a goal. No, not brains, as in some zom- bie movies. There’s precious little of that commodity here, under the ser- viceable but uninspired direction of Jimmy Hayward, making his live-action debut after “Horton Hears a Who.” Instead, Hex (Josh Brolin) is driven by revenge. Re- venge for his slain wife and child, who were murdered by a dement- ed Confederate officer named Turnbull (John Malkovich, in full snake mode). In a prologue, we learn that they were killed as punishment for the death of Turnbull’s son (Jeffrey Dean Mor- gan) at Hex’s hands. Will Hex catch Turnbull? And will he be able to stop him in his fiendish plan to attack Washing- ton with a secret, and wildly im- plausible, super-weapon? Who cares. There are diversions along the
way. Megan Fox is one. As the prostitute Lilah and Hex’s love in- terest, Fox, the buxom hottie of “Transformers” fame, will appeal to the same lad-mag crowd that “Jonah Hex’s” crunching hard- rock score does.
S
C3 BOOK WORLD
For this woman, marriage is brutal
by Carolyn See The subject of Joshilyn Jack- COURTESY OF SILVERDOCS
LIFE, RECONSTRUCTED: Jeff Malmberg’s film “Marwencol” follows the journey of Mark Hogancamp, who, after a near-fatal beating, builds a miniature World War II-era village.
Inevitably, there are films that
get away. Two of the biggest hits at Cannes in May — “Inside Job” and “Countdown to Zero” — are con- spicuously missing from Silver- docs this year, as well as a highly anticipated film about Eliot Spitz- er by Alex Gibney, “12th and Dela- ware” by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, and Steven Soderbergh’s “And Everything Is Going Fine,” about the late Spalding Gray. The gaps are all the more pal- pable because Gibney, Grady and Ewing will be at Silverdocs on be- half of “Freakonomics,” based on the best-selling book. Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me”), Eu- gene Jarecki (“Why We Fight”) and Seth Gordon (“The King of Kong”) also made “chapters” of the omnibus, which promises to be diverting enough but, as a “for hire” project, not particularly fired by personality or passions. The fact that distributors feel
COURTESY OF SILVERDOCS
SOBERING VIEW: “The Other City” explores the impact of HIV/AIDS on the District, based on Post reports.
ing conversation, with the films and their subjects the most lively and contentious interlocutors. The round robin is part coinci- dence, part collective uncon- scious, according to Silverdocs Artistic Director Sky Sitney. “There are these wonderful surprises,” she says, “so the festi- val itself becomes a wonderful surprise.” Each year, she adds, thousands of filmmakers submit their work, hoping for one of 50 coveted feature slots (the festival will also screen 41 shorts). Sitney also travels regularly to the To- ronto and Sundance film festi- vals, as well as documentary festi- vals from Amsterdam to Missou- ri, to find promising candidates. “As a programmer, I have to be re- sponsive, but I also have to lead, and it’s a really interesting dance.”
they can skip Silverdocs suggests the festival has a way to go to be- come an essential stop to the mar- ketplace. But in some cases, Sit- ney explains, she simply has to make a tough call. For example, in the case of “Countdown to Zero,” Lucy Walk- er’s galvanizing call-to-dis-arms about nuclear nonproliferation, Sitney says that the film will be in theaters soon, and she preferred to program “Waste Land,” Walk- er’s film about artist Vik Muniz. “I was grappling with whether to show both,” she says. “But I knew [‘Countdown to Zero’] was open- ing immediately after Silverdocs, and I thought, ‘We could probably use this cherished slot to help a filmmaker who doesn’t necessari- ly have as much support or isn’t destined for theatrical release.’ ” And once in a while you land a
big fish. Sitney adds that an im- portant “get” this year was Gug- genheim’s “Waiting for ‘Super- man,’ ” a documentary about the educational system that was part-
ly filmed in Washington, and that was acquired by Paramount Pic- tures just as it made its debut at Sundance, where it won the audi- ence award. Guggenheim, who grew up in Washington as the son of the filmmaker Charles Guggen- heim, will attend the Silverdocs screening along with Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and teachers’ union chief Randi Wein- garten. He’ll also lead a discus- sion with Wiseman, this year’s Charles Guggenheim Symposium honoree. As a look at entrenched local bureaucracies, it stands to reason that “Waiting for ‘Superman’ ” will have something to say to “The Other City,” Susan Koch’s sobering film about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Washington, based on articles written for The Wash- ington Post by Jose Antonio Var- gas in 2006. In other words, the conversation that is Silverdocs continues, sure to reverberate long after the films themselves have had their say.
hornadaya@washpost.com
The AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Festival
runs from June 21 through June 27 at the American Film Institute’s Silver Theatre, 8633 Colesville Rd., and Discovery HD Theater, One Discovery Place, both in Silver Spring. Tickets to individual screenings may be purchased in the Silver Theatre lobby for $10 (unless otherwise noted), and voucher packages are available from $150 for 20 tickets to $1,200 for an all-access platinum pass. For a complete schedule, see Page 32 in Weekend or visit www.
silverdocs.com.
ON WASHINGTONPOST.COM To view more photos of the films
that will screen during the festival, go to
washingtonpost.com/style.
More
son’s powerful new novel is wife- beating. The beatings are ren- dered so graphically and merci- lessly that you can’t help being both sickened and mesmerized, and the story line is set up so that either the husband or the wife will have to die if their awful conflict is to end. This isn’t a Gothic tale, but an ultra-realistic domestic drama narrated by a Southern housewife who spends her time between beatings mak- ing meatloaf and sweet tea. Rose Mae Lolley was the pret- tiest girl in high school, origi- nally from the little Alabama town of Fruiton. She dropped out, though, because of a terrible childhood; her moth- er ran off when Rose was only 8, leaving her in the care of a father who routinely beat her. When circum- stances dictated that she run away, too, she waitressed her way around the South un- til she fetched up in Amarillo, Tex., where she married Thom, a bully whose father runs a chain of gun stores. Until now, Rose has made every effort to act the part of a good girl, and Thom actually tries once in a while to be a good husband, but not very hard. To cope with being married to a creep like Thom, Rose invents an alter ego, Ro — in fact, that is what her spouse calls her, too. Ro wears full skirts and ballerina flats and lives with awful Thom in a little brick starter house painted mint green. She works in her father-in-law’s stores for minimum wage and faces an endless sea of shirts to be ironed, meals to be made, conjugal acts to be performed: “An hour be- fore the sex, he’d held my head sideways in his big hand, my oth- er cheek pressed into the cool plaster of the wall. I’d been pinned, limbs flailing helplessly sideways, while he ran four fast punches down one side of my back. Then he’d let me go and I’d slid down the wall into a heap and he’d said, ‘Lord, Ro, why do you push me like that?’ ” (This occurs at the very beginning of the book; Thom is just getting started.)
Ro and Rose share a problem:
Though they both inhabit the same body, one is good, one is bad. Ro is limitlessly perky and acts just the way (she thinks) her
BACKSEAT SAINTS By Joshilyn Jackson Grand Central. 344 pp. $24.99
husband wants her to be. Her “bad” side, Rose, is a little more complex: She doesn’t cheat on Thom, although he is obsessed with the idea; she doesn’t drink or smoke; she rarely even fights back. Her “badness” consists of goading her husband into more and more brutality. Thom is por- trayed as a one-dimensional monster here. His one weak ex- cuse is that from time to time he must endure humiliating lec- tures from his own oafish dad. Thom and Rose have come to a terrible impasse. It’s kill or be killed. Neither of them is terribly bright; it never occurs to them that there’s another way to live. But then Rose gets a literal Gyp- sy’s warning. That is, someone who looks like a Gypsy does a tarot reading, telling her that it’s a fight to the finish. Could this woman possibly be the moth- er who abandoned her years ago? Does Rose (or Ro) have the guts to kill the wretched Thom? If Thom does make up his mind to kill his wife, will she be able to escape? Whom can she turn to, she who has scorned girls and women all her life and has only bully- men for friends? Questions like these keep the pages turn- ing: The author is an
expert at manipulating intrica- cies of plot. All the way through, Joshilyn
Jackson makes it seem as if the only way to stop a battering hus- band is to shoot his head off (not much comfort for women in the real world making meatloaf and enduring their own beatings). Wife-beating is still often con- doned or ignored in this country, and shooting husbands is still against the law. But the author gives the reader no real solution at all in this otherwise interest- ing book.
bookworld@washpost.com
See regularly reviews books for The Post.
Sunday in Style
Look for a special pull-out edi- tion of Book World. Flame-throwing books from the right and the left. The last empty places in America. Audiobooks for your summer travels. Big novels to take you away. The best books for children. And the delicate art of presi- dential speechwriting.
‘Say Say Say’ most popular Jackson song Associated Press
reviews Turn to Weekend for reviews of all the movies opening today, including:
Toy Story 3 Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie and others return to face owner Andy’s departure for college. BBB W25
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work Documentary about the groundbreaking comedian doesn’t go below the surface. BB W25
Winter’s Bone Absorbing, austere drama tracks a young woman’s mythic journey
FRANK MASI/WARNER BROS. VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
THE VILLAIN, AGAIN: Turnbull (John Malkovich, left, with Wes Bentley) wants to avenge his son’s death in “Jonah Hex.”
Michael Fassbender (“Inglou- rious Basterds”) makes an inter- esting-enough villain as Turn- bull’s tattooed Irish henchman, Burke. Though, truth be told, his fights with Hex only serve to pro- long the story unnecessarily. As for the title character, Brolin has a suitably embittered, hard- boiled presence. Most of his act- ing, however, is done by his facial prosthesis, a gruesome-looking hole in his right cheek, courtesy of Turnbull, that has left him with a mouth that doesn’t quite work. No matter. There’s nothing of par- ticular importance in the dia- logue, which largely consists of such schoolyard taunts as “Is that all you’ve got?” Of course there’s plenty of shooting, if you like that sort of
thing, including from Hex’s horse-mounted, twin Gatling guns, which are kind of cool. But the way Hex can resurrect a corpse, simply by touching it, to perform a bit of postmortem in- terrogation, is the film’s most original touch. Would that he could accom- plish that same miracle with the film. Like Hex himself, the movie may not exactly be dead, but it sure as heck ain’t living.
osullivanm@washpost.com
Jonah Hex B1
⁄2
(81 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for frequent violence and brief sensuality.
through tribulation and poverty. BB1
⁄2 W26
The Necessities of Life Well-acted but dreary drama of clashing cultures addresses a difficult episode in Canada’s history. B1
⁄2 Air Doll
Japanese love story about a guy and his inflatable girlfriend has a
sweet message, but the film falls flat. B1
⁄2 W27
To view movie trailers, read more reviews and buy tickets online, go to
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new york — Michael Jackson had dozens of hits, but his most popular one wasn’t a solo smash or a tune with his brothers. It was a song with another icon. Billboard says that “Say Say
Say,” his 1983 hit with Paul Mc- Cartney, is the most popular Jackson song. That was followed
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by “Billie Jean,” the Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There,” “Beat It” and “Rock with You.” “Billie Jean” was at No. 1 for
seven weeks, while “Say Say Say” held the top spot for six weeks. But the McCartney-Jackson hit stayed in the top 10 longer. Billboard is releasing Jackson
statistics ahead of the anniversa- ry of the King of Pop’s death. He died June 25, 2009, at age 50.
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