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Movie Reviews |
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| SLGFF celebrates Gay History Month with film screening | |
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SLGFF screening of Word Is Out October 19, 2 PM Harvard Exit Theatre The Pacific Northwest Lesbian Archives is proud to be the community co-presenter of Word Is Out, screening on Sunday, October 19 at 2 p.m. at the Harvard Exit Theatre as part of the 2008 Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Made in 1977, Word Is Out is the first feature-length documentary about Lesbian and Gay identity made by Gay filmmakers. The film is a record of 26 people of all ages, ranging from housewives to drag queens, who talk articulately about their lives. While much has changed in the 30 years since this groundbreaking movie was made, you will recognize yourself or someone you know in these deeply affecting stories. Truly a must-see for anyone - Gay or straight - who has ever felt different. The 13th Annual Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival runs October 17-26 at venues citywide. The largest event of its kind in the Pacific Northwest, the festival continues to gain industry and audience recognition for showcasing the latest and greatest in Queer film, from major motion picture premieres to emerging local talent. For more information on this year's festival and to buy tickets, go to: http://www.ThreeDollarBillCinema.org. For the Pacific Northwest Lesbian Archives, visit www.pnwlesbianarchives.org. |
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| Bill Maher is the smartest guy in the room in Religulous | |
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by Scott Rice -
SGN Contributing Writer Religulous Opening October 3 Do you ever get tired of living under the shadow of perpetual conflict instigated by all those religious zealots ready to die - and, more importantly, kill - for their particular version of God? I do, and so does Bill Maher, thank God. That's why he made a very funny movie about it. While Religulous is a ridiculously funny documentary, Maher seldom shows outright disdain for the people he interviews. He shoots the gap between condescension and curious affection fairly well. You always know he thinks he's the smartest person in the room. In fact, the people he interviews believe the same thing (or try desperately to convince themselves of it anyway). The difference is that Maher usually is the smartest person in the room - by a long shot. Maher admittedly draws largely on the extra-crazy edge of the world's religious communities. However, this only serves to put the more conventional versions of religion; those folks who worship together, vote together, and walk among us incognito, into a clearer context: they're just crazy-light. This religious stuff resonates with many Queer people, too. I mean it's no fun to realize at 13 that all your friends and family believe that God doesn't care much for you, and thus, neither do they. So, we'll all be interested to know that Maher takes up the Queer cause and interviews a couple of Gay Muslims. He also interviews a "recovered" Gay man and the sexual tension (I'm not kidding) is palpable. This might have something to do with Maher's rather prominent package and the fact that, oh yeah, you can't cure Queerness. And all this time I thought Maher got to have sex with Playboy bunnies because he was famous. And I'm a little tired of having organized religion shoved down my throat all the time. How many televangelists does one God need? When did AM radio get hijacked? What's up with megachurches and bomb-toting extremists of every ilk? And these same folks have the nerve to tell me I shove my sexuality down their throat. Well, the last time I shoved my sexuality down a straight person's throat it was at a truck stop outside of Killeen, Texas (this is a total fabrication meant to titillate and enrage). Another thing that makes Religulous a timely documentary is the current attempts to fudge the lines between church and state by our own religious right-wing-nuts. George W. already thinks he's a tool of God (just leave off that prepositional phrase and the sentence becomes accurate). Now we have Sarah Palin and her Wasilla witch-hunting self a possible 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency of the U.S. of A. She doesn't need a newspaper or magazine because she has the Bible, by Gawd! And while it's easy to believe a higher power would be the only way for these two nitwits to get so far, that doesn't solve the problem of original sin. Make no mistake, these folks want to bring you eternity insurance whether you want it or not. Check out Religulous opening Friday, October 3. It's one of the funniest movies I've seen all year. I mean fall-down-laughing funny in a good-natured way that's still going to piss some folks off. And it's nice to find out there are actually tons of us out there who are sick of organized religion. |
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| Ghost Town funniest movie of the year | |
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by Rajkhet Dirzhud-Rashid -
SGN A&E Writer Ghost Town Now Playing In spite of what that snappy "Patrick Jayne" says on the ad for The Mentalist, there are psychics and there is also an afterlife, and if something as serious as CBS's weekly foray into the world of the dead, The Ghost Whisperer, isn't your cup of tea, have I got a recommendation for you (and that recommendation comes with two great belly laughs and at least one smarting knee slap). And, trust me, in today's world, a good belly laugh is worth its weight in gold. In perhaps the funniest movie I've seen all year, Ricky Gervais (from the English version of The Office), is a tight-assed dentist (I found myself thinking: this guy has to be a Virgo) who goes in for a routine colonoscopy, and then finds himself being visited by dead people after he goes home. Checking in with the surgeon (Kristen Wiig in a delightful change from Saturday Night Live), he finds out that while on the operating table, he croaked for seven minutes. Sort of a Dead Zone scenario with laughter and a gorgeous Tea Leoni, who plays a recent widow (of the first ghost Gervais sees, cheater Greg Kinnear) who's also curating a mummy exhibit. Gervais' character, acting on the advice of Kinnear's ghost (who doesn't want his widow hooking up with a goody-goody lawyer) uses his dental expertise to win her. Only nothing goes as planned, and Ghost Town quickly turns into a mix between Harvey and a completely hilarious The Sixth Sense, with Gervais coming to face his selfishness and help the dead finish old business. A tiny bit hokey, but I found myself with "something in my eye" more than once and left with a huge smile on my face. Go see it, whether your stocks have bottomed out or not, and laugh again. |
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| Stealing America raises serious questions | |
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by Scott Rice -
SGN Contributing Writer Stealing America: Vote by Vote Now Playing We live in frightening times, and our president has rarely let us forget that for the last eight years. From rhetorical mushroom clouds to fictional weapons of mass destruction to pervasive color-coded terror alerts that mysteriously ended just after the 2004 presidential election, the American public has been sold a perpetual war. And we, well-trained consumers that we are, bought it hook, line, and proverbial sinker. However, W. isn't solely responsible for exploiting the fear of the masses these days. The recent Republican National Convention featured a two-minute and 45 second film that purported to be a tribute to the victims of the tragic events of 9/11 but was, in fact, incendiary propaganda. Another bit of proof that, however civilized we think we are; we still live in the age of win-at-all-cost politics. The film covers everything but the victims of 9/11 for the first two minutes and 13 seconds. American hostages, dead bodies, carnage on land and sea, and gun-toting jihadists parade across the screen as the narrator reminds us that Muslim religious radicals want to kill us in the name of God. Fade to black. Fade in to the smoldering World Trade Center and the subsequent slow-mo explosion followed by buildings crumbling over and over. At two minutes and 13 seconds, with less than 1/5th of the film left, we finally see flowers being left in the rubble topped off with images of bloody photographs of the missing their families left affixed to light poles and taped to walls hoping for a miracle. This is a scary movie. I saw another movie this week I think is even scarier. Stealing America: Vote by Vote is the latest film from long time documentarian Dorothy Fadiman and follows a trail of curious election results over the last 10 years. The two main thrusts of the documentary concern the recent disparity between exit polls and election results and the development of new electronic voting machines in our national elections. Since the 1960s, exit polling has been a reliable indicator of election outcomes. Senator Chuck Hagel's 1996 surprise victory over then-sitting governor, Ben Nelson, was the first time problems with exit polling were noticed. The answers voters gave when polled directly after voting simply did not match the elections results. These problems seem to have become progressively worse in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, elections I'm sure we all recall. The filmmakers make a strong case connecting the exit poll disparities with Republican Party operatives like former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell and their unseemly manipulation of state and local election procedures. From last-minute purges of voter rolls and unfairly equipped precinct facilities (largely in heavily Democratic areas), the filmmakers believe the Republican Party purloined the elections of 2000 and 2004. Along with political maneuvering, the advent of electronic voting machines produced by companies whose leaders have right-wing ties also falls under suspicion. The production values are lackluster and the filmmaking is pedestrian. But that's not what this movie is about. This is a riveting and complicated story (it's inspired by the article "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" written by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for Rolling Stone magazine in June of 2006) about the Republican Party stealing elections resulting in the what many feel is an inept and bellicose administration that has with hubristic recklessness squandered public trust and international goodwill and destroyed the American economy. And it's told well. If you don't leave the theater angry, you'll certainly leave with some serious questions. |
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