Alex Is Back

CNN is making another attempt at broadcasting its Alex Jones documentary tonight.

The documentary was originally scheduled to air this past March, but CNN pulled it at the last minute when viewers complained that the film would merely give Jones and his cockamamie conspiracy theories more exposure.  But, as I argued back then, it was necessary for CNN to air it so that viewers who do not follow Jones would have a better understanding of who he is and how dangerous he is - the better to show what we're up against.  CNN apparently agreed after some deliberation, hence it will air tonight at 8:00 PM Eastern.  And not a moment to soon.  He must be getting ready to spin new conspiracy theories about some evil plot being undertaken by the January 6 House select committee.

Don't Let Me Down

I'd been waiting patiently to see The Beatles: Get Back, New Zealandic director Peter Jackson's new two-hour documentary on the Beatles' session for what became their last LP release, since it was first announced in 2019.  The movie was supposed to be out in theaters in September 2020, but COVID delayed it.  The it was supposed to premiere this fall, and I still kept waiting.  Then, just last month (June 2021), it was announced that it would instead be a six-hour documentary series.

Great news . . . until I found out that it would be streaming on Disney +.

I don't have Disney +.  So that means . . . I'm screwed.

This is so unfair.  Beatles fans have been waiting patiently to see this new documentary, as it promised to feature previously unseen footage of the Beatles' Get Back / Let It Be sessions from January 1969 and show us a more lighthearted and enjoyable look at the group rehearsing and then recording the Let It Be LP.   Now you're expected to pay extra to get a streaming service that, for the most part, is only good if you have kids in the house who want to see Frozen at home.  True, you also get all of the Star Wars movies, but how many times can you see all nine of them?

Had Jackson's project been a two-hour movie in the theaters, I could have seen it and paid only the price of admission,  and that would have been it.  Instead, I and everyone else have to subscribe to Disney + and be at the ready in front of our computers when the series premieres.  Disney, which owns ABC, could have shown us the original two-hour documentary on regular TV and still presented the six-hour documentary for streaming, just as The Beatles Anthology, aired on ABC in 1995, was a six-hour broadcast complimented by a home-video ten-hour version.  That would have been fairer to those who don't stream and can't afford streaming.  But no, that would have been too sensible, and someone is always around to prevent something like that.

Part of the Beatles' appeal is that their music was and remains a universal, democratic experience; it's always accessible, it's there for anyone who wants it, and to this day you can't turn on a classic-rock or oldies radio station without hearing a Beatles song.  (You don't hear their ballads on so-called "light" pop stations anymore, but that's another bone of contention.)  Disney +'s monopoly on The Beatles: Get Back smacks of elitism, the sort John Lennon would have disparaged.  And why Disney?  The last thing Lennon or the other Beatles would have wanted was to sell out to Mickey Mouse.  Disney's product is American, homogenized, wholesome, and lightweight.  The Beatles were none of those things, and homogenizing them for family entertainment on an Internet channel only a few can watch is completely at odds with the egalitarianism the Beatles stood for.

I may just subscribe to Disney + to watch The Beatles: Get Back . . . and then cancel my subscription once I've seen it.

The Beatles: Get Back streams over three nights during the Thanksgiving holiday, November 25, 26, and 27.

Review: 'Model,' A Documentary by Frederick Wiseman

The model's face in the picture below is perfect and serene.  She smiles gently into the camera lens, with a subtle backdrop in a close, intimate setting.  It's the type of picture you'd expect in a newspaper ad for a department store, with its unmistakable greyscale texture.   But that placid tableau was made possible only by carefully applied makeup, countless photos, strategically placed lighting, and an interesting prop - the model sat behind a partition with a square cut out from the front for the camera to project into.  The photo session for this picture is one of many behind-the-scenes surprises in Model, Frederick Wiseman's 1980 documentary about the world's most glamorous profession.

Whether you're interested in fashion, intrigued with how the magic in the fashion and beauty world happens, or just attracted to beautiful women (or handsome men; male models are presented here too), Model is a fascinating look at the New York modeling world in the late 1970s, a time when professional models and not celebrities defined taste and image in fashion and beauty and when models were just beginning to become celebrities themselves.  It's filmed in grainy black and white, so that the entire movie looks like a photo from the New York Times come to life, and the landscapes of late-seventies Manhattan appear in all their gritty, vivid glory.  In pure cinema vérité fashion, Wiseman features little commentary and very few interviews; the camera follows models, photographers and motion picture crews like a human observer.

Model shows the viewer several revealing scenes of how clients such as department stores and fashion houses get that special elegance and class in their ads, with closeups of the women being transformed by makeup artists and the men getting immaculately groomed, as well as emphasis on props such as mirrors and lights.   Photo sessions take place anywhere and everywhere in New York City and its environs  - on the streets, in grimy low-rise buildings, in staid townhouses or, in one instance, on a windswept airfield in what appears to be New Jersey.  The photo above shows the latter session, with a male and female pair posing in a particularly interesting prop - a right-hand-drive Toyota Celica with Japanese-style rear-view side mirrors.

Wiseman doesn't pull the curtain back to cast modeling in a negative light.  Quite the contrary; Model shows the profession in the most positive manner, detailing the grueling preparation for photo sessions, the devotion models have to their profession, and the attention and dedication of the agencies - in the case, the Zoli agency, in whose offices and waiting rooms the agents advise and interview young women who hope to make it into the business.  We see a commercial audition in a small studio, countless photo reshoots, patient direction from the photographers, and meticulous studies of proof sheets.  Perhaps the most fascinating scene of Model is a segment lasting a little over ten minutes showing the making of a commercial for Evan-Picone hosiery.  The commercial was filmed on location in front of an apartment house (below) and in a studio where constant shots of a model's leg adorned in the product were choreographed over a day's work to create the effect of multiple legs fanning out over the television screen.  Takes from the two different shoots were edited together to create the final 30-second commercial, which is shown here in its entirety. 

Scenes from the outside world intersect playfully with this insular profession, with people walking the streets of  Manhattan, fruit vendors peddling their wares, children trick-or-treating on Halloween, and a leftover placard from Pope John Paul II's October 1979 visit to New York, eventually cutting to scenes of curious onlookers watching a photo session or a commercial shoot.  Indeed, the gritty, raw Manhattan of 1979 is as much a star of the movie as the men and women modeling the clothes.  (Inevitably, Andy Warhol does show up to converse with a couple of models, both men, about the profession.)  There's also a poignant commentary from a Zoli agent (likely agency founder Zoltan Rendessy himself, though he's not identified as such), who defends models from the inaccurate stereotype of being stupid and lazy. His observation that many of them speak multiple languages and are quite worldly as a result of their travels ought to give the viewer pause, if the sight of these men and women putting in long hours on the set hasn't already convinced said viewer of their incomparable work ethic.

Not many of the models themselves are identified, though I recognized several of the women; I spotted Alva Chinn, Tara Shannon, Sara Kapp (above), Pia Gronning, Donna Sexton, and, in the still image below,  Apollonia Van Ravenstein, at left, standing next to her future sister-in-law Pat Cleveland, a force of nature all her own.  To witness these women on the job is to see a golden age of a profession being captured forever.

Model ends with the backstage festivities of an Oscar de la Renta runway show, with an appearance by Mr. de la Renta himself, followed by the show.  It's a far cry from today's fashion trade, in which  celebrities appear at fashion shows to be seen rather than to look at the latest styles, just as the preponderance of celebrities on fashion magazine covers have almost pushed models out of the very profession they helped pioneer.  Indeed, Model is a loving and sincere look at a period in the profession that has long since gone away; as someone who knows nothing about fashion, I came away from this film with a bigger appreciation for these men and women than I already had.

But don't take my word for it. The film can be seen here.  Oh yeah, it's 129 minutes long. :-)  

Michael Moore's 'Where To Invade Next'

Michael Moore has decided that we Americans need a new foreign policy.  Rather than invade a country with our military and try to influence the people there only to lose the war, he's advocating that we invade countries with our open minds and take over their ideas.  Hence Where To Invade Next, Moore's most pointed documentary ever.  He "invades" various countries and takes back with him ideas for social programs, policies, and amenities that America is infamous for not having.  And if we do invade this way, as Moore demonstrates, this time we can win.

Moore travels to different nations to observe how they handles education, workers' rights, criminal justice, and other issues.  Although he admits that other countries have other problems like we do, he's not concerned with any of that; he prefers to pick the flowers rather than the weeds (his own phrase).  After watching Where To Invade Next, though, I was enraged to see how much of a field of crabgrass America is - and why we're not doing something about it by considering these better ideas that Moore found elsewhere.  Moore travels to Italy to find nationally mandated paid vacations and shows Italians more productive at their jobs and less stressed.  He goes to Finland and France to show how school students are respected; in Finland they're encouraged to learn through curiosity rather than through rote instruction, and in France they're served real food during lunch break - and in France's poorest communities as well.  From worker's rights in Germany, where a middle class still thrives, to free higher education in Slovenia, a country the size of New Jersey with one-fourth as many people, Moore shows more humane ways in which countries treat their citizens and how they can't imagine anyone being left to fend for themselves . . . as in the United States.

Some of Moore's discoveries are astonishing.  Norway's maximum-security prisons are laid out like country clubs with rehabilitation programs for even of its most dangerous murderers (who work freely with knives in the prison kitchen), and women's rights are constitutionally guaranteed in, of all places, Tunisia.  By the time he gets around to talking about how Iceland got out of the great financial crisis of 2008 by punishing errant bankers instead of bailing them out, you're left asking again and again and again: "Why can't we do this here??"   

The joke in Where To Invade Next is that many of these ideas actually did originate here.  Europeans may boast about having eliminated the death penalty while the U.S. government has not, but Moore notes that his home state of Michigan was the first English-speaking political entity to abolish capital punishment in the world - in 1846.  Workers' vacations, prison reform, some of the ideas the Finns used to make their children the best educated children in the world - all of those ideas were thought up in the United States but were either not implemented correctly (paid vacations are a privilege, not a right, in These States) or never implemented at all.  Moore makes no more than a passing reference to high-speed rail, but he could have also mentioned that magnetic levitation rail - the next big advancement in passenger trains - was invented in the United States but was never pursued here beyond some basic experiments.  (Why not?  Because the government apparently didn't want to fund any program that might produce a transportation system that would cut into the profits of auto companies or airlines.)  The biggest and best reason to watch this entertaining and enlightening movie is to see that Moore isn't invading anyone at all for their ingenuity; like Bob Dylan with rock and roll in Great Britain, Moore's taking a stand and bringing it all back home.

(Tellingly, Moore doesn't "invade" Great Britain for any ideas.  Perhaps that's appropriate; after nearly two decades of Conservative and centrist Labour rule, the British haven't given the world any new ideas, and, ironically, they're too busy trying to implement our bad ideas these days.)

This movie made me want to do something, and I hope more people see it and decide that they want to do something - anything - to, well, make America great again. But not through the two-party system.   Donald Trump may be correct in saying that America is no longer great, but he doesn't notice the real reasons for that and offers no real solutions; Hillary Clinton says that America never stopped being great, but she doesn't notice the low literacy rates and substandard infrastructure (among other things) that contradict her rebuttal to Trump's slogan.   Moore ends Where To Invade Next with a hopeful message that explains how Americans habituated to expecting no change have it in them to change something almost literally overnight (how? well, I don't want to spoil it for you), and if enough people do see this documentary, hope and change can be more than just a mantra.

Let's do more than just occupy a street in Lower Manhattan.