Untangling the meaning of "Restrepo"

It's tough to do justice to the documentary I saw at SIFF last night - "Restrepo".  Not because it was great or awful - it was neither of those things.  In fact, my rating is a somewhat uneasy B.  Coupled with a strong recommendation that you see it when it comes out in an art-house sized release this July.  I'm more flummoxed by what this documentary could have been.  And maybe should have been.  As it is, I think this movie will appeal to two margins - the strongly anti-war and the proudly pro-soldier.  Some people surely can belong to both margins.  My point is that a vast middle won't find what they're looking for in this documentary.

For the nugget of backgound, Sebastian Junger (who also wrote the book "War" based on this experience) and Tim Hetherington spent big chunks of time embedded with the US Army in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan.  This movie is a straight up cinema verite` experience - digital video shot while in combat and just plain dickin' around with the soldiers in their precarious base of operations there.  With some post-action interviews shot on the American base in Italy weaved in to provide the narrative skeleton.  In the action footage, you see all the junk included - dirty camera lenses, manic shooting while running around looking for safety amidst the din of activity, lots of far-from-eloquent profanity splattering off the walls in the heat of action or the cold boredom of inaction.  You see some poignancy in the reactions to lives lost (this was the deadliest area in all of Afghanistan for American forces).  But I found myself teetering on the edge of my seat waiting for...something else.  Something like a moral.  Maybe the point is that one wouldn't be, shouldn't be delivered by these men.  They're meant to out there, doing the job and not asking the larger questions.  But isn't that why we have combat journalists?  If they don't ask those questions or disseminate at least the framework for judgment given the context, isn't it all just a bunch of tough guy posturing?  There is no answer to that.  And maybe I'm a cliche` - someone looking for a kernel of answer to a question that no one can pose.  But I think that question is out there.  War?  What is it good for.

"Restrepo" (named for one of the Privates killed in action and the subsequent name of the forward base of operations in "The Kop") is important.  I'm just not yet sure why.  Maybe it's a karmic pairing in my mind with Memorial Day weekend.  And the concern that a vast middle of the American population doesn't even know why they've got Monday off.  If you're in Seattle, there's another showing today (3:45 @ Harvard Exit).  Definitely worth a viewing and the conversation that will result afterward.

Good "Subversive" fun

There exist those rare, successful bloggers that have turned their small "f" fame into book deals.  They are by far the exception to the rule.  And now, thanks to David Goodwillie, there is a novel about a blogger who achieves something else along those lines.  Don't worry - no spoilers here.  But I do need to say a few things about this very good novel - "American Subversive" - in the course of backing up my review.  First of all my rating - a very entertained B-plus.  More importantly, I want to suggest that anyone wanting to blow through an otherwise safe, secure, unaffected summer day give this entertaining read a deserved looksie.  I don't know Goodwillie.  If I did, the first thing I'd do is question him about his family name.  But aside from the easy joke, I would also love to pick his brain about writing a book that is so current, so spot on, and so damn ahead of the ever arching cultural curve.  If this book was a futures market bet, he'd have hit it right on the money.  The basic set-up can be pulled from the book jacket - blogger, domestic terrorist, intertwined destinies.  The point of my appreciation is how he pulled together such a smooth flowing thriller that feels like it was written on the fly in the past month.  But with buckets of polish.  If you go for such reads, this one's a slam dunk.  Especially if you've wasted time blogging (paid or otherwise) or planned to attack the State (you know who you are).

I saw another SIFF film last night @ the Neptune.  It's actually a collection of mini documentaries filmed by Seattle filmmaker John Jeffcoat to be included in Lynn Shelton's new season of the MTV series "$5 Cover" (this summer will focus on Seattle).  It was truly cool.  The crowd was not huge, but there were plenty of film geeks and bands scattered throughout (I saw two of the women from the Tea Cozies - one of the featured bands - sitting near the back on my way out).  I felt comfortably half my age watching all the featured bands doing what musicians do behind the scene - talking about how they work, what they love, and showing how their interactions influence their performances.  Or at least that's what I took from it all.  I wholeheartedly recommend what Jeffcoat's done.  Especially when you hear how he filmed all the HD footage with an unobtrusive Canon SLR and a kit he could fit into his backpack.  If you're a film geek, you know what I mean.  But if you're not - or even if you're not that connected to music being made and performed here in Seattle - it's a compelling mix of personalities.  My rating - a surprised high-quality B.

Hope your own snippets of life are worth some big screen time today.  Rock on.

Wading into the SIFF, needing to wash off that Hollywood oiliness

The Seattle Int'l Film Festival (SIFF) is underway, and this is the year I've promised myself some steady (albeit very selective) viewing.  I started off last night with a skiing/mountain climbing/triumph of the spirit/blah blah blah documentary - "Mount St. Elias".  It was imposingly beautiful, shot in lavish overstatement, chock full of gratuitous Red Bull products placement, and a total piece of self-absorbed crap.  My rating - a very harsh C-minus.  The storyline is all about trying to ski an impossibly tough 18,000 vertical feet from the summit all the way to sea level.  Yawn.  The alpinists were impossible to warm up to.  But the mere fact that I was surrounded by a very appreciate film festival crowd totally eager and wanting to chat it up - whatever the subject - made it all worthwhile.

On the other hand, big budget bunk didn't exactly caress my movie-going rump a few weeks back.  Namely, "Iron Man 2" was a waste of time and as unoriginal as another GOP "Contract With America".  Unfortunately, I think this movie was bland and undeserving enough to actually start taking the sheen off Robert Downey Jr.  Or to do so once again.  The good news is that, of course, everyone looks good and there are light moments.  Still, what a sad follow-up to the utterly lovable original.  My rating - a flat C.  I'll need to look elsewhere for the hotness this summer, obviously.  Hence, more SIFF to come.

Hope your own Festival line-up also gives you plenty of selections to pick through today.  Rock on.

And the Macaulay Culkin goes to...

On my run early this morning I found myself trying to summarize three new albums.  Three very different kinds of music.  Three utterly different acts.  But they all share this time, this moment that is the summer of 2010.  Then I stumbled upon a contrivance to connect them all into a somewhat lumpy triple-header review.  Well, let's see how that goes. 

The National came out with one of the most-anticipated albums of the summer just a week ago.  "High Violet" was meant to take them to the next level.  They came across as a most writerly band in a NYTimes Sunday Magazine profile a few week's back, where they were described as constantly re-writing and mixing their multi-layered songs.  The result?  A slow burn that I'm afraid may never generate much heat.  Record store geeks will still love them.  But they certainly won't cross over into big love from the masses with this effort.  If they were a 1980s John Hughes movie, they would be "Weird Science".  My rating - a flat C. 

LCD Soundsystem just came out with "This Is Happening" earlier this week.  James Murphy is LCD Soundsystem, no matter what else is going on there.  He says he's done after this album, and I believe him.  Is it a classic?  Time will tell.  On many levels, it feels like everything we've heard before - great dance moves mixed with enough brains to make it look like a very complete package.  There are great moments.  But in the end, this album is Jake from "Sixteen Candles" soon to head off into obscurity to make furniture and be missed by all sorts of people that will struggle for the reasons why.  My rating - a very minor B.

Much more interesting, Sleigh Bells came out of nowhere with "Treats" last week.  They are a duo, loud, fresh as dew, in your face and smarter than they deserve to be at this stage in their lives.  No one has really figured them out yet, and I believe they are just messing with us thus far.  It never seems to work to predict how a band will develop down the road, but they have everything they need to be insanely big.  There's just something vaguely familiar and cool going on with them, even though they're utterly new.  In other words, they are the Ferris Bueller of this summer's big intros.  My rating - a strong B-plus, maybe heading north with more listens.

So there you have it - a Gen X cliche` forcibly contorted to yet another try at cultural relevance.  Hope your own cartwheels actually get you somewhere today.  Rock on.

Drawing pictures of characters that make you throw up in your mouth just a little

Here's two book reviews that I need to add to the ether.  One with tons of press, one a fictional version of a heavy topic regarding newspapers.  Tenuous connection to toss out as an intro - my apologies.

"Game Change" by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin is that truly rare political journalism book - one that is good enough to stand on the writing alone.  But in this case there is also a great deal of well-crafted narrative there.  Obviously.  The stunning thing about "Game Change" for me is that while they don't craft new character profiles (everyone already knows the personalities of Obama, the Clintons, the Edwards, McCain, and Palin), they absolutely NAIL the air in the room around them.  You can see and feel what they're like.  That's great reporting.  Any political junkie in your life that hasn't read this must be instructed to do so immediately.  For all the journalism that I read, I'll nonetheless admit that this book shaped my view of all those players more than anything I've read since 2007.  My rating - a strong A-minus.

"The Imperfectionists" by Tom Rachman is the sort of novel I generally love.  Hot, topical, smart, full of characters that surprise and impress.  I tore through it, compared to my usual limp while being too easily distracted by a half dozen other things I'm reading.  It's not long, and the writing for a first novel is, without a doubt, impressive.  It reminded me of Colson Whitehead's first book ("The Intuitionist").  That's a double-edged sword.  Because in both cases, I wanted desperately to see what they'd do next, while not being especially thrilled with the way I felt after this book was done.  For completely different reasons, mind you.  Rachman paints a vivid, cleverly formatted picture of a dying newspaper and the largely horrible people that orbit around that institution's rotting core.  Early on, I was knocked flat and happy by how well he drew his characters - introduced and covered deeply in each section, then dropped completely unless by incidental references in other sections.  Then I began to hate how cynical the pictures were that he'd painted.  Eventually I wanted to tell him to knock it off.  At the end, I tossed the book aside and muttered something not especially nice about the time spent getting dicked around.  So I can't recommend it.  I give it a C-rating.  If only judged by the quality of the writing, I'd give him at least a B-plus.  But the people he draws - oh gawd, that's at best a high-D.  Which I feel sort of bad about, because I was rooting for this author big time going in.

Hope your own double-sided coin is good either way today.  Rock on.

Maya jammin' with the buskers.

Maya's jammin' with the buskers.
Originally uploaded by emaggie

We did our best to support the University District Street Fair over the past weekend. To add some description to the claim, here's a few pics. If you're disappointed that my posts are getting a bit spare, feel free to hop on over to my running blog (daily kvetching on training for a marathon and all things going through my mind while doing so). Or the massive waste of time that is my weekly contribution to the long-dead-but-not-buried Seattle PI (where I write about Northeast Seattle or whatever I may find worth wasting electronic newsprint on any given Monday). Regardless, thanks for checking in. Rock on.

The one thing Maya wanted, the one thing she got. Besides all the other things, of course.

The one thing Maya wanted, the one thing she got. Besides all the other things, of course.
Originally uploaded by emaggie

Facepainting done by an alleged pro. I still think my own effort back at Purim was a smidge better.

Facepainting done by an alleged pro. I still think my own effort back at Purim was a smidge better.
Originally uploaded by emaggie

Just to repost an earlier entry for the sake of comparison - Facepainting by Mr. Daddy's Salon.

Maya's Indian fairy princess costume for Purim. Facepainting by Mr. Daddy's Salon.
Originally uploaded by emaggie

Sarah puts those years on the court to use at long last as a Coach.

Sarah's puts those years on the court to use at long last as a Coach.
Originally uploaded by emaggie

What better way to celebrate Mother's Day than to stand at the net, coaching Maya's forehand. Here's hoping she gets the tennis gene from her Mother's side of the family tree.

A sah-wiiing!

A sah-wiiing!
Originally uploaded by emaggie

Oooo, she got alla that one!

Maya looks to scare off our backyard moss with unorthodox methods.

Maya looks to scare off our backyard moss with unorthodox methods.
Originally uploaded by emaggie

We've got lots of growth back there. Some of it even growing as intended.

Sizing up the ol' Chrome Peacock once more (cough!)

Coffee.  I've always been a big fan.  Well, maybe not when I was a teenager.  But I got all excited about coffee in college.  From that point on, I've taken pains to parse and improve my coffee intake.  I won't go to certain nutso extremes (civet crap coffee being the most extreme recent example I've seen bandied about).  What I use to brew it up, though, has always been a topic of improvement and refinement.  

That's why I'm flummoxed and nonetheless excited this morning after getting my manual La Pavoni out of the shop.  I bought it online from Italy a decade ago.  It's had some issues over the years, mainly from overuse.  But when it's been at the top of its form, it sits in the center of our kitchen and I commune with it a few times daily.  That's why when those "issues" require a professional's help, I'm a bit off my game.  A french press works fine when necessary - I still use one extra-large pot that I bought 15 years ago.  But who am I kidding.  I need my baby back.  Which is what I got yesterday.  Some new parts were required (one lever pin and the associated roller).  The piston had slipped again (happened years ago for the first time - akin to functional sciatica that will never fully go away without major surgery).  The real change is that this local repair guy (Home Espresso Repair on Phinney Ridge) seemed to have reset enough things so that it feels utterly different when pulling a shot.  As if your spouse went in for a medical check-up, but came home a few inches shorter, smelled different, developed an ability to speak Portugese and became a raging nymphomaniac.  So things are a bit different, to say the least.  I like the way it's working.  And my love affair with coffee is rekindled.

Hope your own appliances give back some good lovin' today.  Rock on.

Bank on this dude's brainy art

Before I get Maya off to preschool, I've got one quick review for a movie I simply loved.  My rating - a totally rare full A.  "Exit Through the Gift Shop" will probably not be a huge success.  But I am very glad that it got at the very least an art-house distribution deal.  I've actually spent the last few months waiting for this movie after not being able to catch one of its screenings as a part of the Sundance Festival in January.  We'd gone to Salt Lake City for what turned out to be the last weekend of the Festival.  I asked some people we were seeing (they were recruiting my wife for a job) if they could get tix for "Exit Through The Gift Shop" and they came up empty.  It had gotten some buzz, mainly because the central character in this small documentary on street art (translation: graffiti and the culture around it) is such an enigma.  That character is Banksy.  And what he does in the course of this documentary is turn the subject 180-degrees - making it a movie about the person that was supposedly making a movie about Banksy.  It's funny, incredibly engaging, great education for someone who's at best marginally aware of the story around the art, and just vague enough to let everyone have a ton of fun debating the movie afterwards.  I haven't wanted to recommend a movie this emphatically for ages and ages.  Lots of people won't give a rip.  But if you care even a smidge about how pop art is surrounded by idiots or how trendiness gets in the way of actual taste, you're gonna love it.  Go see it.

Hope your own school bus is leaving on time today.  Rock on.