Dear President Obama ... (an open letter on Afghanistan)

Posted by Bel. The time is 9:11am here in Wellington, NZ.

From Brian D McLaren's website. Hat tip to the Bartlett for the link, via Google Reader*.

Dear President Obama ... (an open letter on Afghanistan)

I am a loyal supporter of your presidency. I worked hard in the campaign and have never been as proud of my country as I was when we elected you.

I'm writing to ask you to find another way ahead in Afghanistan. I wrote a similar letter to President Bush when he was preparing for war in Iraq.

I believe now, as you and I both did then, that war is not the answer. Violence breeds violence, and as Dr. King said, you can murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder. As the apostle Paul said, evil must be overcome with good, which means that violence and hate must be overcome with justice and love, not more of the same.

Obviously, you know things the rest of us don't know. And you have pressures and responsibilities the rest of us don't have. But we have based our lives on the moral principles that guided leaders like Dr. King, Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela. We share a profound faith in a loving, non-violent God. We share a commitment to live in the way of Jesus the peacemaker. That's why escalation is not a change we can believe in.

I don't argue for leaving Afghanistan high and dry as we've done too often in the past. Evil can't be overcome by passivity or abdication, but only by positive good and creative action. In that spirit, I offer this humble proposal:

1. Take the 65 billion we would have spent there in the coming year and turn it into an aid and development fund. If you want to go farther, you could put a value on the cost of American lives that would be lost there (I have no idea how this inestimable cost could be calculated), and add that sum to the fund. 65 billion could build a lot of peace-oriented schools and hospitals in Afghanistan. It could serve as start-up capital for a lot of new businesses and it could pave a lot of roads. It could train a lot of police officers and it could enhance a lot of social infrastructure. It could give hope to a lot of women and girls who currently don't have much hope, and it could provide a lot of constructive outlets for men and boys who right now don't have many options besides picking up a machine gun and joining a warlord.

2. Other nations might contribute to this fund as well, and the fund could be extended into the future based on the number of years our military would have been engaged in Afghanistan. The fund could be administered by the US, or better (in the spirit of international cooperation), an IAEC-like agency could be created, subsidiary to the United Nations, to monitor progress in Afghanistan.

3. Then a set of benchmarks could be set, and the money could be released for development in Afghanistan as the nation reached appropriate benchmarks. This fund would be an enticement to mobilize public opinion in the direction of peace and justice, as people would know that their lives could be substantially improved if their factionalized leaders would start collaborating nonviolently for the common good.

4. With this kind of approach, the people of Afghanistan (and Pakistan) would have two clear choices. Al Queda and other extremists offer violence and unrest. But the international community would be offering support for order, rebuilding, collaboration, justice, and peace. This choice is a much clearer and better one than the choice between two groups of leaders who both depend on violence to achieve their aims.

5. Conservatives could support this kind of approach because it emphasizes personal choice and responsibility among the Afghan people. It would come alongside them in their own nation-building efforts at their own best pace, rather than trying to impose our own nation-building on them at a pace we determine. Progressives could support this approach because it changes the role of the US in the global neighborhood - from reactive bully or intentional dominator to responsible neighbor and partner for the common good.

Mr. President, you have my respect and my prayers at this important time. I believe you have the intelligence and insight to find a creative way to use a new kind of force in the world ... something far more powerful than bombs, guns, and bullets: the generative force of creativity, of justice, of collaboration, and yes, of hope. Can we find a new and better way to help Afghanistan rise out of chaos and complicity with Al Queda? You know the answer many of us will shout and chant: yes, we can.

With respect and hope,
A citizen

*Any other Google Reader fans out there? I have gotten hooked and it has improved my life dramatically/destroyed my professional productivity.

Away We Go to the cinema (Bel's review)

Posted by Bel. The time is 3:49pm here in Wellington, NZ.

Thanks to Flicks.co.nz, I got a sneak preview of Away We Go, which is due for general release here in New Zealand next week. Directed by Sam Mendes from a script by husband and wife team, Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, this film is a romantic comedy with real laughs and no sickly sweet after taste.

Lou mentioned in her review that some people might be irritated by the film, whereas other would really connect with it. I think the film is enough of a crowd-pleaser that it could be recommended generally - it is in the vein of Little Miss Sunshine, with that same edgy humour and occasional poignancy, not to mention its portrayal of your 'average family' as being pretty much dysfunctional.

Many of my friends and extended family have plunged into the world of parenthood over the last couple of years, not to mention myself. There was more than one cringe of recognition and unintended raucous burst of laughter, I'll tell ya. The host of supporting characters, played to perfection by actors from Jeff Daniels to Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Melanie Lynskey to (love her) Catherine O'Hara, would seem over the top if they didn't bring to mind so quickly... this person... that person...

I'm not familiar with Vida's work, but much of Egger's writing has dealt with themes of abandonment and establishing identity and searching for a sense of propriety while throwing off boundaries. I liked the way this film explored this, and that it was done in the context of a monogamous couple, happy within their relationship.

The film was shot by cinematographer Ellen Kuras, who has collaborated with Spike Lee and Michel Gondry among others, and her work here is subtle but impactful (similar to Lou's feelings regarding Sam Mendes' directing).

To read Lou's review of Away We Go, click here!

And click here to read a great interview with Our Dave, talking about the creation of Away We Go and why Sam Mendes got on board, as well as his screenplay for Where The Wild Things Are, what Toph is up to know, and other things that are just fascinating to know if you care about him as much as we do. Which you should.

The Heart Is a Lonely Handbag

Posted by Bel. The time is 10:41am here in Wellington, NZ.

Carson McCullers' The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter as a clutch handbag by Olympia Le-Tan

Stylish and somewhat practical, I love these beautifully embroidered handbags made by Parisian Olympia Le-Tan.

Handmade in limited runs, Le-Tan chooses the first edition covers of her favourite classics to recreate. She says, "unfortunately the covers of books nowadays are not as nice as they used to be".

And yes, Christmas is coming up - but don't get too excited. I dug around and found that these puppies cost about $1,500 each. I'm not sure if that's US$, pounds or euros - but either way I think I'll have to stick to just putting books inside my boring old bag, the usual way...

Read more with an interview with Olympia Le-Tan at Dazed Digital.

My review of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (including ravings about the gorgeousness of the first edition's cover design) can be read here.

Films: something old, something new, something bonkers, nothing blue

Posted by Lou. The time is 12.20pm here in London, UK.

I totally forgot another of my festival outings - French-Senegalese film The Absence. After 15 years in Paris a successful scientist comes back to see his grandmother and hearing- and speech-impaired younger sister in Senegal. His sister is a stranger to him but is desperate for him to learn to communicate with her - he however has no interest and is heading straight back to Paris. Then out that night with a friend he discovers that his sister is working as a prostitute and embroiled in a dark underbelly of the city. She gets in trouble with her pimp lover and goes on the run, and it is up to her brother to find her before the bad guys do.
The sister is treated in an unrelentingly bleak manner - by her brother and the bad guys. I read the film as her being a metaphor for the country itself - desperate for help from the ex-pats who have the education and resources but who aren't interested, and caught in a web of violence and corruption of the criminal underbelly. A noteworthy aspect is that the film was entirely introspective in terms of the state of the country and its future - whilst there were the nature signs of imperialism from the west, it was kept in the background to what is told as essentially a Senegalese story, situation and solution.


I attended a bad film club screening of Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, surprised to find out the film actually exists and isn't just a piss-take fake trailer. Whilst it does certainly exist, it is probably the worst film ever made - but utterly hilarious from start to finish when viewed with the live comedic commentary provided by the two people who run the bad film club. Do not ever watch this film in any other circumstance - it is just awful: the effects suck, the acting is appalling, it is the worst script and plotline of all time, and it is made in an horrifically amateur and gobsmackingly crap manner. Let me tell you the plot to help convey this:

A maverick marine biologist played by Debbie Gibson (yes, the '80s pop-singer) is in a stolen submarine (we don't know why) and comes across a giant iceberg that whales are smashing themselves against because the American military have dropped a charge down there which goes off and shatters the iceberg away into nothing immediately releasing and enlivening a mega shark and a giant octopus that have been frozen for 17 million years. Mysterious things are happening: you know, a giant octopus destroying an oil rig, a mega shark leaping out of the water to take a passenger jet out of the sky, and a giant whale turning up dead with big chunks missing. She meets up with her ridiculously Irish mentor to go "hmmm" whilst looking into microscopes and pouring liquids into each other trying to figure out what killed the whale. But then they are sent a DVD of her submarine trip in which a fuzzy freezeframe reveals the shark and octopus, which she apparently didn't notice at the time. They join up with a Japanese scientist and the navy and in a cardboard set, I mean high-tech US navy sub (coincidentally identical to the big navy ships and the Japanese subs (where they speak English, by the way)), they pour coloured liquids into each other trying to figure out how to get rid of the threat posed by the giant beasts but strangely the coloured liquids just aren't revealing an answer. After our maverick and the Japanese scientist have sex in a broom cupboard (navy subs do have broom cupboards apparently) they realise the key is pheromones. So they decide that naturally they should plant the shark pheromones in San Francisco Bay, and the octopus pheromones in Tokyo Bay (because choosing two of the most populous bays in the world is the obvious thing to do). Things go badly (who'd've thunk) and death and destruction occurs (mostly off-screen) and so they decide to lead the beasts to each other. Somehow they all very quickly get to the original site of their finding (this is merely coincidence) but whilst the mega shark that can travel at the speed of a jet is chasing their submarine they stop to have a gun stand-off between the driver and the captain. Eventually the shark and octopus fight to the death, the end.

Yeah, I know.


I finally got round to seeing the classic tale of Joan Crawford's hideousness as a mother, Mommie Dearest. It's quite interesting to watch now, seeing it as a cult classic, knowing that at the time it was meant to be a serious drama. As a serious drama it is ludicrous, but seen with the perspective of time it's brilliantly over-the-top. And I know what Halloween costume I'm going to have next year. There's only one more thing to say really: No wire hangers!!

Fattism

Posted by Lou. The time is 1.55pm here in London, UK.

Recently in the UK there have been public outcries over things perceived as being bigoted: a dancer on Strictly Come Dancing received accusations of racism after (in jest) calling his dance partner a "paki", and Danni Minogue found herself at the centre of (incorrect) homophobia accusations after a badly made attempt at repartee with a contestant on X Factor. To a certain extent this is great - there should be an outcry when comments/ attitudes deemed unacceptable by society are broadcast or made by public figures.

So I was left rather surprised when X Factor host Dermot made a blatantly fattist comment to a contestant, leaving me and my flatmate with our mouths literally hanging open in shock, but without even prompting a trickle of controversy. In fact, people seemed to take his "you used to be quite big but now you look really cool" as a perfectly okay thing to say (because people who are even slightly fat are ugly). It once again demonstrated the total double-standard in society that says it's okay to position fat as ugly/ lazy/ bad, whilst frowning upon other forms of bigotry.

Anyway, really I just wanted to highlight this excellent piece about it on BBC today.

The rest of my fest: Precious, Samson and Delilah, At the End of Daybreak

Posted by Lou. The time is 8.10pm here in London, UK.


Precious: Based on the novel by Sapphire is amazing - totally one of those films that comes out of nowhere and stuns people with its power and might. It is the first time I have ever sat in a cinema audience where alongside laughing and crying is actual shrieking. The shrieking is the best way I can convey to you how involved you become, and how real this story seems, as it unfurls onscreen.

But if I tell you what the story is it will seem patronising and cliche - a poor, obese, black 16-y-o with an abusive mother and an absent (except when raping her) father who finds herself pregnant and put into an alternative education school. Yeah, I know... but... the filmmaking is far from patronising (it feels told from 'within'), it is portrayed in a fresh and stylistic way but retaining utter realism, and the casting is fucken genius: newbie Gabourey Sidibe fills her character with pride and sass and humour, and Mo'Nique is absolutely incredible as her mother (a certainty for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, methinks).

Go see this film!!

I saw Samson and Delilah straight after and, as I was feeling horridly ill anyway, it was sort of just a ridiculously depressing and emotive day of cinema. It is the story of two young teenagers from an isolated Aboriginal community who silently bond, and then run off to Alice Springs together to a life on the streets after things turn sour at home. I wasn't sure what to think of the film at the end (it is ambiguous and one of those ones where I need to know the context within which it was made - for that same point of patronising vs from 'within'), but having read more about it since I am retrospectively blown away.

To fill you in: the film is made by a first-time feature filmmaker who is himself Aboriginal and made the film to express things he himself grew up around; the budget was a paltry $Aus1.6m; the two leads are non-actors with personal experience of the issues portrayed; he cast his own older brother - a non-actor with acute alcohol dependency issues for which he was sent to rehab prior to filming - to portray a homeless man with alcohol dependency; he intends the film to ask questions that can't - and haven't been able to - be answered for Australia.

Seen in this light, the film is absolutely stunning.

I was very - very - underwhelmed and quite disappointed in the other of my film fest films, At the End of Daybreak. It's entry in the festival programme talked of it being an illicit Malaysian modern-day film noir - a 23-y-o man faces charges of statutory rape after his girlfriend's parents find out about their relationship: plenty of potential to play with the power dynamics of sexual relationships and add in some thriller elements. Instead we get a dreary and contradictory tale that has the unfortunate collision of one fantastic performance (the mother of the boy) and one extremely bland and meaningless performance (the teenage girl).

Due to the bland portrayal of the relationship and the teenage girl we don't know what he is meant to be being saved from - there is no chemistry to the relationship (in fact, I didn't actually realise they were meant to be shagging), the teenage girl is portrayed in a terribly blank manner so we don't know if she is meant to be complicit in the events or taken advantage of or a robot with human skin on or taking out her frustration towards other factors on the boy or her parents or everything and everyone... Not to mention that I find it quite offensive that they used the genre classification "film noir", one of the calling cards of which is the femme fatale. There was nothing femme fatale about this character or performance, and can a 15-y-o girl be a femme fatale? (Now that question could have provided the basis for an interesting film.) The sympathy gained by the mother can't make up for what seemed to be an unintentional ambiguity of everything and everyone else.

Jane Campion Screen Talk

Posted by Lou. The time is 12.50pm here in London, UK.

I was going to email Bel some points from the Jane Campion film festival Screen Talk I had the pleasure of attending the other night, but may as well put them here in case anyone else is interested. It is a mix of thoughts and observations from me, and some second-hand anecdotes from her. I didn't take notes so treat my paraphrasing as being very loose! The person asking the questions was Sandra Hebron, the film festival's Artistic Director. This is a list in no particular order as I recall things:

Jane is incredibly engaging, lively and down-to-earth (in that very Kiwi way!) - she's the exact person you'd want to be put next to at a formal dinner. You can tell that she is able to find humour and depth in everything. I want to be her best friend.

She is very humble and has a lot of grace towards her colleagues - constantly mentioning collaborators and sharing the praise that was given to her work. This was particularly interesting as it is in total opposition to the manner of Werner Herzog, another great filmmaker I saw speak recently. Whilst he positions himself as the sole driving force and the genius of his own work (in a way that does manage to be endearing rather than entirely arrogant), she positions herself as someone who is just doing something she finds interesting with a lot of other people who help make the finished product good. This is super particularly interesting as, whilst I think they are both cinematic geniuses of a kind, hers is actually the more polished and flawless work - hers retains that perspective of films being something you make for an audience; whereas his have that feeling of being something he has made for himself, and if you happen to like it then that's just an incidental bonus.

Sandra asked about something she read in the media, wherein Jane had spoken about a young guy who is on set every day sitting beside her operating the video playback, who - at the grand age of 18 or 19 - would give her "tips" to make the film better ("move the camera more", "don't you need some sex?", etc). Sandra seemed to be quite taken aback by this behaviour - as if it somehow insulted or undermined Jane's role as Director. But Jane obviously finds these guys (who she says are always like this on any film) hilarious, as of course to her they're an over-enthusiastic guy acting like 18- and 19-year-old film guys do and don't have any of her experience or knowledge. This, to me, embodies her under-stated confidence: you know that she knows that she is completely in control. She doesn't need to prance around acting like the king of the world, because she is the king of the world. And she had the grace to say that occasionally these tips are actually useful.

She went on to tell a story about how this guy was gotten back in a way as he was seeing one girl and text-flirting with another and getting input from all the other assistants on set about how to juggle the two girls, and one day was showing a draft text he'd written to one girl to an assistant who just hit "send" instead of helping him with the wording. This is obviously an entirely tangental, unrelated, flippant and banal anecdote from on-set and I love that - I love that she pays that much attention to the people around her and that she finds everybody interesting including the lowest of assistants. Sandra didn't seem so amused by it.

Someone asked a question about the difference in the ending of her film In The Cut versus the ending of the same-named novel upon which it is based. She openly stated that actually the only reason she changed the ending was because the financiers told her she couldn't make it with the book's ending. This prompted someone else to ask for tips on how to deal with funders who are pressuring you to change your artistic vision. Her response was something like: "Well, films need to make the money back. That's economics. Or perhaps that's me being a New Zealander!" (we are a thrifty sort). Having worked for a major funding body, I loved her response as it is the truth: if you're asking someone/an entity to put major investment into your film, you need to listen to what they have to say. There is no obligation owed by The World to filmmakers to give them millions to make their vision as they and only they want it. The money talks. (This is why only paying money to see films that you want to see more of is so important!!) I also, of course, loved that she clearly positioned herself as a New Zealander, as all-too-often she is called an Australian. Anyone who grows up in New Zealand and moves away in their 20s is a New Zealander, no matter where they live or where they work.

Sandra asked what about the story of Keats and Brawne had prompted her to get back into feature filmmaking and she told the most gorgeous story about being in a field and having a horse come up and develop a curiosity for what was in her rucksack, and sort of nudge it open with its nose. She said that she thought it was beautifully tender, and it made her want to make a film about tenderness.

They showed a 5-minute clip from The Piano - a film that I haven't seen for far too many years - and I found it more engaging and moving and beautiful than most filmmakers can hope to achieve in an entire career.

Sandra asked Jane about the fact that many of her protagonists are quite wild and insane, and whether to Jane they are normal or if she is consciously writing insane characters. Jane laughed a lot at this one, and to explain it properly I have to specify: Sandra seemed very much like one of those perfectly groomed, well-spoken people who are (to people like me) perhaps - how shall we say it - a little controlled. So Jane's response is along the lines of "aren't we all just pretending to be sane?" - a sentiment most of us can relate to. But it seemed that Sandra couldn't. And Jane went on to say that anyone who doesn't seem a little bit wild or insane is just trying to look good, and Sandra sort of laughed and disputed it a bit, and Jane reiterated the point, and there was this moment where I think a lot of us realised that perhaps it was hitting a nerve, and it was rather hilarious.

During the clips, as they were seated in front of the screen, Jane just threw herself onto the floor to watch them from down there out of sight, so Sandra had to follow suit, and that was also rather amusing as you could tell it wasn't an organic thing for her to do but an entirely natural thing to Jane.

Okay, so, as you may be picking up, there was this brilliant juxtaposition between the two women which often served to emphasise Jane's points and add a layer of hilarity, but also at times held the conversation back as Sandra would paraphrase what Jane was saying but not quite get it right. (This isn't a criticism of Sandra - I think she came off very well, just entirely different in personality.)

Another anecdote I loved was mentioning that a specific moment in Bright Star - a moment that will give you butterflies and may cause swooning - was improvised by Ben Whishaw. (Ben was in the audience - just quietly sitting there for no-one to notice, obviously having enough esteem and respect for his director to be interested in listening to her speak for 90 minutes about filmmaking.) This is another example of her always giving credit to others.

She spoke about how in film school her teachers were largely negative towards her work, but that she took this positively: it can mean that they think your work is worth pulling apart and specifically critiquing, and it is a great primer for being in the industry and being able to maintain confidence and vision in the face of negative pressure.

And on the subject of critiquing, she told how learning first of all to critique something totally handicaps your ability to then do the something because your first instinct will be to critique yourself. This hits a nerve for me as I find it difficult to write now as I spent two years critiquing other people's writing: all I can see is the faults.

I really desperately wanted to ask a question about how she formed the screenplay in relation to Keats' own words - whether she had particular extracts she weaved her writing around, or whether she wove his words in as she went, or if they were the cherry on the top that were added once she had her story in place. My interest stems from Bright Star being such a great example of the organic blending of two artists' work (the filmmaker and the subject) that leaves neither dominating or dictating to the other. Alas, given the chance to directly question my idol, I went all shy. But maybe one day I'll find myself sat next to her at a dinner...

Edited by Lou. The time is 11.50am here in London, UK.

I left out the best bit!!!

Sandra spoke about how Jane's films feature strong, unconventional female protagonists and then asked her why she thinks this is so rare. Jane did the pause that says "well duh" and said "...because only 3% of directors are women" like hello Sandra. Instead of laughing and going "of course" (because, um, yeah, that's pretty much it in a nutshell) Sandra tried to push it further sort of saying "but your characters in particular", which was not a great line of questioning as, well, yeah, her characters in particular because she is one of the few women given funding to make generously budgeted art films with female protagonists (I'm sure there are hundreds - thousands - of other woman filmmakers out there with great strong female protagonists who would fucken love to make films about them if the industry wasn't so wholly sexist). But Jane went with it and further said that it seems natural to her to make films that express her experience of life as a woman. Love her.