Anvil! The Story of Anvil

I know I’m late to the par­ty, but what a fun doc­u­men­tary! I wish I could catch their show at the TLA next weekend.

Anvil! The Sto­ry of Anvil remind­ed me a bit of Amer­i­can Splen­dor, except Har­vey Pekar’s ten­den­cy to accen­tu­ate the neg­a­tive aspects of pub­lic­i­ty are 180 degrees out of phase with Lips’ out­look. Who knows how far they’ll take it, but it’s great to see that they’re cap­i­tal­iz­ing on the film’s suc­cess and get­ting out on the road. It should be a great show!

Geeta Dayal’s Another Green World

I think I speak for every­one when I say that Gee­ta’s take on Bri­an Eno’s Anoth­er Green World for the 33 1/3 series was hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed. I can think of few titles in the series that gen­er­at­ed as much excite­ment from the time her pitch was accept­ed to pub­li­ca­tion. Those who wait­ed will be rich­ly reward­ed by her insight­ful look into Eno and his approach to record­ing his land­mark album, Anoth­er Green World.

Gee­ta avoids the land­mines that sur­round a work like this. She brought her A game when it came to research­ing this book, dig­ging up cool quotes and get­ting great input from the peo­ple who helped Eno make this record. She does­n’t fetishize Eno’s genius; rather, she inves­ti­gates his meth­ods to demys­ti­fy the way in which Eno made the album. For any­one who’s been intim­i­dat­ed by Bri­an Eno as a mono­lith, this is a great way to get into his work, and the book offers a glimpse into his approach to his lat­er ambi­ent works that makes them much more accessible.

For a book series that can be pret­ty hit or miss, Gee­ta’s take on Anoth­er Green World sets the bar high for oth­er authors who want to dis­sect an album they love. Con­grat­u­la­tions, Gee­ta! It was well worth the wait.

Buy it from Ama­zon for just $7.88!

The Exiles

Kent MacKen­zie’s film The Exiles is like watch­ing Ger­many Year Zero set in L.A. The film tells the sto­ry of a hand­ful of Native Amer­i­cans who’ve moved to Los Ange­les. Like Charles Bur­net­t’s Killer of Sheep, also released by Mile­stone Films, it shows anoth­er Los Ange­les, stripped of the glitz and glamor.

Think Cas­savetes’ Shad­ows star­ring a cast of Native Amer­i­cans who are strug­gling to find a way to fit into a soci­ety that’s locked them out. This isn’t a bunch of beat­niks who feel them­selves apart from the main­stream; this is a film about peo­ple who live par­al­lel lives.

It’s amaz­ing to see movies from this peri­od shot in a neo­re­al­ist style. Not only do you get a great sense of the char­ac­ters in con­text, you get to see the city as it is. The streetscapes are as grit­ty as any­thing in a Hol­ly­wood noir. It’s an amaz­ing glimpse into a world almost com­plete­ly ignored in film. Def­i­nite­ly worth check­ing out.

Food Inc.

Want a sure­fire way to bum your­self out on New Year’s Eve? Watch Food Inc.

I’ve scaled back the num­ber of mind-numb­ing­ly depress­ing doc­u­men­taries I’ve watched in the past few years. Too many of them tread the same ter­ri­to­ry, preach to the choir, and fall far short of inform­ing the broad­er pub­lic of the issues at hand. Food Inc. isn’t one of them.

This is a great doc­u­men­tary for any­one who wants to get a basic under­stand­ing of what’s hap­pen­ing in Amer­i­can food pol­i­cy. Let me put it this way: if Upton Sin­clair would­n’t have words to describe the state of the food indus­try. It’s that bad. I def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend this flick. It’ll make you think twice about how and what you eat.

The Baader Meinhof Complex

This was an absolute­ly spell­bind­ing film. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see the par­al­lels between the splin­ter fac­tions in both Amer­i­ca and Ger­many. How the Weath­er­men and the Baad­er Mein­hof Group became self-appoint­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a so-called rad­i­cal left is a strange epi­logue to the advances made world­wide dur­ing the Sixties. 

The Baad­er Mein­hof Com­plex does a fine job of show­ing their descent into mad­ness, as botched jobs lead them to take even more des­per­ate mea­sures, irre­spec­tive of the costs. Most inter­est­ing was the man­ner in which the orig­i­nal mem­bers dis­avowed lat­er gen­er­a­tions of the Red Army Fac­tion. The movie goes to great lengths to show how bru­tal polit­i­cal vio­lence is. To sum up: the Baad­er Mein­hof Gruppe went to extreme lengths to protest Amer­i­can impe­ri­al­ism, but those RAF sol­diers who remained were real­ly cuck­oo for cocoa puffs.

If you’re into polit­i­cal thrillers, it’s def­i­nite­ly worth check­ing out.