REUTERS: Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara died on Monday aged 93. He will be remembered most as the leading architect of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. McNamara also forged brilliant careers in industry and international finance, but his painful legacy remains Vietnam. More than anyone else except possibly President Lyndon Johnson, McNamara became to anti-war critics the symbol of a failed policy that left more than 58,000 U.S. troops dead and the nation bogged down in a seemingly endless disaster in Southeast Asia. Pundits came to call the conflict “McNamara’s War.” With his slicked-back hair and rimless glasses, he […]
CINEMA: Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
PUBLIC ENEMIES (2009, directed by Michael Mann, 140 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It should have been a natural: action director Michael Mann and the Dillinger legend. Tommy guns, fedoras, prison breaks and the final gundown in the streets of Chicago; it is easy to imagine the tough-minded Mann making one of his most compelling films out of these elements. Such a film may be easy for Mann fans to imagine it but somehow the possibilities have completely escaped Mann himself, who has against all odds served up a joyless and unmoving portrait of the final year of […]
CINEMA: I Love My Bicycle
I Love My Bicycle: The Story of FBM Bikes Trailer from Joe Stakun on Vimeo. I Love My Bicycle: The Story of FBM Bikes Trailer from BAD BREAKS on Vimeo. BY KYLEE MESSNER It’s hard to pinpoint just when BMX riding began, though there are stories of southern California teens riding their bikes on dirt roads in the early 1970s. It wasn’t until 1981 that the International BMX Federation was formed. Following the evolution of most industries, BMX companies began very hands on and mom-and-pop, only to become more corporate in the pursuit of a wider audiences. FBM is one […]
WEEKEND UPDATE: The Good News Flower Hour
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CINEMA: You Are What You Eat
FOOD INC. (2008, directed by Robet Kenner, 94 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FOOD CRITIC As investigative reporting has dried up in TV newsrooms, the investigative documentary feature film has enjoyed a golden age over the last decade. Health care, defense policy, globalization and the financial industry have all been taken to task over the last few years, with facts, figures and foreboding drones giving gravitas to the warnings of expert talking heads. The analysis they provide is valuable, the problems they uncover serious and well-documented yet it is easy to write many of them off as problems that we […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR After more than five decades of making movies, Academy Award-winning writer and director Woody Allen recently released his 40th film, Whatever Works. The movie, which stars Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood, tells the story a “genius” professor in New York who ditches his upper-class life for something simpler — winning, along the way, the devotion of a beautiful and very young girl from Mississippi. Allen’s first film, What’s Up Tiger Lily, was released in 1966. The director then went on to make Play It Again Sam, Manhattan and Radio Days, to name just a few of his […]
CINEMA: Play It Again Sam
AWAY WE GO (2009, directed by Sam Mendes, 98 minutes, U.S.) PRESSURE COOKER (2008, directed by Mark Becker and Jennifer Grausman, 99 minutes, U.S) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Almost a decade ago a 30-year-old writer named Dave Eggers burst into the literary world with his acclaimed memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. The Pulitzer-nominated book told the story of Eggers being tossed into the role of guardian when both his parents die unexpectedly, leaving the twenty-something freelance writer with the uncomfortable responsibility of raising his nine year old brother. Heartbreaking Work had a fresh and intelligent sense of […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Perhaps best known for his role on the NBC comedy series The Office as Andy Bernard, the salesman who loves a cappella, actor Ed Helms takes to the big screen this summer in The Hangover, a buddy movie about three groomsmen who lose their soon-to-be married friend in Las Vegas. A graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio, Helms got his start in comedy with numerous sketch comedy groups. Prior to joining the cast of The Office, he was a senior correspondent on The Daily Show. ALSO, Journalist Gretchen Morgenson discusses efforts in Congress to regulate default swaps, which […]
CINEMA: The Soprano
IL DIVO (2008, directed by Paolo Sorrentino, 110 minutes, Italy) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Set mostly in the late 1980s, before something called “The Bribesville Scandal” brought down his Christian Democratic Party, Il Divo looks at the world through the heavily-lidded eyes of Giulio Andreotti’s, widely regarded as the most influential Italian political figure of the 20th. In his late eighties, Andreotti seems calcified by his own corruption, his shoulders hunched and his face a near-emotionless mask. He spends his time being escorted from one beautiful ancient room to the next, living his life in unacknowledged splendor, while occasionally […]
Sometimes Good Things DO Happen To Good People
As you may have heard, Woodshop Films/Scrapple TV founder Marc Brodzik, our partner in New Media crime, has been awarded a Pew Grant for media art. We could not be more proud or horny. For those unfamiliar with the Big Man, here’s his Pew bio: Marc Brodzik, media arts Born 1967 Marc Brodzik is a documentary filmmaker interested in filming portraits of the common man. In a recent documentary he focuses on small family owned coal mines and the struggles they face to stay in business in today’s market dominated by large corporations. His work has been screened at the […]
CINEMA: Chaka No Like
LAND OF THE LOST (2009, directed by Brad Siberling, 93 minutes, USA) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC No matter how crappy the new Land of the Lost film might be, it would be hard to say it is less competent than the original seventies kid’s show. Sure, you might be fond of the cute ape boy Cha–Ka, you might have loved the bug-eyed reptilian Sleestaks, but can you remember a single plot line from the original forty-three episodes? I couldn’t, and going back to that Sid & Marty Kroft Saturday favorite recently I was surprised to see just how cheesy […]
BILL KILLED: David Carradine Dead At 72
BBC: Kill Bill and Kung Fu star David Carradine has been found dead in a Bangkok hotel room on Thursday. Thai police told the BBC the 72-year-old was found naked by a hotel maid in a wardrobe with a cord around his neck and other parts of his body. The US star was in Thailand filming his latest film, Stretch, according to his personal manager Chuck Binder. Thai newspaper The Nation reported that police believe the actor took his own life, and preliminary investigations found that he hanged himself. Carradine was part of an acting dynasty which included his father, […]
RIP: Koko Taylor, Chicago Blues Icon, Dead At 80
[Koko Taylor – Up In Flames (Wild At Heart)] LOS ANGELES TIMES: Koko Taylor, a Chicago musical icon who became one of the most revered female blues vocalists of her time with signature hits such as “Wang Dang Doodle,” “I’m a Woman” and “Hey Bartender,” died Wednesday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago of complications from gastrointestinal surgery. She was 80. Her death came less than four weeks after her last performance, at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis, where she collected her record 29th Blues Music Award. She had surgery May 19 and appeared to be recovering until taking […]