Oh God, I feel alone. I feel so utterly alone having connected and clicked with a film that many people will reject. This being the directorial debut of the incomparable screenwriter Charlie Kaufmann: Sĭ-něk’də-kē, Nyoo Yawrk. For me, Synecdoche, New York is a tough sell - an unconventional film I genuinely treasure where recommendation demands cautiousness. It’s where I stand with Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), Lars Von Trier’s Breaking The Waves (1996), Bill Forsyth’s Housekeeping (1987) and Robert Altman’s Three Women (1977). These films fly in the face of all the formulaic and commercial creeds of how a movie should work and gives pause for how many ways it could work best. A first impression might twist its face, conclude “it’s weird” and close the investigation - that’s their right; however, Synecdoche, New York deserves better and a meritable audience. The film works, not despite, but because of its extraordinary structure and function being mysterious, opaque, labyrinthian, yet emotional, accessible, and fully-formed.

What I love most about Charlie Kaufman’s exercises in the celluloid medium is how exceeds expectations throughout his most unorthodox and dizzying narratives. Throughout, there is apt teasing and suspense over where this story could go when driven by such a madcap. By the end, I feel as if he has wrung out every playful possibility from his premises. There is also an attentive heart on display that transcends palpable human yearning. Such as when the pitiable Craig Schwartz whose puppets of himself and Maxine, a distant female co-worker, kiss for the first time in Being John Malkovich (1999). Or when Joel Barish frantically races away from his evaporating memories with his ex-girlfriend Clementine at hand, trying to save her in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). Or how about when in Adaptation (2002), New Yorker writer Susan Orlean is struck by the awesome poetry of John Laroche, a toothless orchid thief, musing about the “little dance” between wasps and orchids - “How, when you spot your flower, you can’t let anything get in your way”.

In Synecdoche, New York, our hero tries to find meaning in his existence by resurrecting an evolving metropolis in a gigantic sound-stage where a flock of birds fly off many miles down the structure. The seminal replica of Manhattan is a theater set for a play forever untitled about its director and all of the people in his life. Since the play reflects life, so the play must reflect itself like a microcosm that expands, refracts, grows and deepens. It is a comic-tragic, universal illustration of a life that tries to manage its surrounding citizens in roles (wife, daughter, mistress, 2nd wife, ect.) the participant tries to contain. Of course, everyone else is the lead in their own story, so management of the play of one’s life becomes discombobulated.

Enter the world of theater director Caden Cotard played with great nerve and without vanity by Philip Seymore Hoffman. At year forty, he is mired with anxiety, bad health, failed relationships, and occasionally distracted by lofty goals that feed his great ego which barely hides his low self-esteem. Like an addict, he mercilessly prods, analyzes and compresses his failures; denying himself a much wanted recovery by purging himself deeper into a sea of emotional toxin. What hurts the most is that he tries so hard to preserve what little he has left. While a doctor sews stitches into his forehead after a freak accident with an exploding sink faucet, Caden sheepishly replies “I’d rather there not be a scar”. Ailments arrive and roost inside him at an alarming rate. Every checkup by one doctor leads to the discovery of another problem (”Your pupils don’t work”) and the recommending of another doctor for it. Caden’s body with its cramps, bleeding gums, pustules of ooze, and strange bumps consistently fails him with a vengeance. If his body were a temple, the city council would demolish it in favor of clearing the real estate for a shiny high rise. A man this sick cannot be happy and cannot really live. But for all his flaws and succumbs to temptations, he tries.

Life at home is just as damaging. Married to Adele, a moody and exacting painter who specializes on canvases so small that she and her patrons require magnifying goggles to make out the beautifully rendered figures. Her proposed all-night task of packaging her work for her Berlin exhibition is a gut-buster. Catherine Keener (again opposite Hoffman in Bennett Miller’s Capote back in 2005) makes such a strong impression as Adele with her stringy hair, a tattooed breast, and a haggard complexion verging on exasperation that her absence later is deeply felt. The character is richer because Keener manages to exude compassion and comfort within what a lesser actress would make one-note and abrasive. It makes sense why these two flawed and ambitious people would have tried to make a life together with their four-year-old daughter Olive (Sadie Goldstein).

Just about everyone is sick here. Adele coughs a lot, even in voice-over when a letter by her is read. Olive protests about her wastes being a disquieting colour that her mother insists on being oblivious to. Caden and Adele’s flaky, stone-faced couples counselor Dr. Madeleine Gravis, played by scene-stealer Hope Davis (American Splendor, 2003 - Is Harvey Pekar around here?), has red and white blisters irritated by her sleek, black high heels; even the leggy blonde is flawed. Deliberate attention is made to the deterioration of the human body  weathered by age and disease. Vulnerably and mortality is emphasized with the perplexing passage of time; months, even years pass within minutes. Going from the bathroom on September down the stairs to the kitchen, it’s October. Where did the time go? What happened with my life!? Has it really been six months!!? Six years!!! Conversations with the Cotard family feel rushed, overlapping dialogue, even precious moments with Olive feel short lived instead of cherished. Fasten your safety belt, this film will give you whiplash.

Madeleine commits the foreseeable scam that all best-selling shrinks must, inspiring others to recall Richard Dreyfuss’ Dr. Leo Marvin in What About Bob? (1991). It doesn’t help that Adele dismisses Caden as an artist since he works with previously adapted material, while overlooking his radical realization of the play Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. In an instant, Caden has lost his family abroad, romances sparks from the advances of Hazel (Samantha Morton, Morvern Callar - 2002), a middle-aged buxom box-office girl to his young, leading actress Claire (Michelle Williams, Wendy and Lucy - 2008), and Adele’s manipulative friend Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Last Exit To Brooklyn - 1990) has sensationally corrupted Olive, AND Caden wins the MacArthur Genius Grant surmountable freedom, financial security and infinite time pursue his most ambitious work of art! Such a grant would be evidence enough to place this film in the fantasy genre. ThenCaden’s next project gets personal.

Synecdoche, New York knows what it is to be so painfully conscious, so agonizingly aware of your circumstances that you feel belittled and judged; objectivity just gives you a better view of your own bad performance. There is something creepy and almost sickly undercurrent throughout the film. Kaufman resists explaining away the strange materializations (eg. the fire house) and warped time-line as the result of Caden’s mentally unstable reinterpretation of the world. What Kaufman is suggesting is even scarier and more immediate than placing his story in the safety zone of “it was all a dream”. Yes, every surreal and miraculous thing that is happening before us on the screen is reality. If our perception is illusory and concrete, then it is possible for the real world to be represented with the weight barren in a dream, but nightmarish in its network of logic.

Yes, Caden can be a self-absorbed (Claire is the one who figures out Hazel’s situation for him) and occasionally pretentious. Just look at Hazel’s expression as she awkward sips her drink while Caden talks of his play where “we are all in the same primordial blood stream” (I’m paraphrasing here, I’ve only seen this movie once). Everywhere he goes, he sees himself in advertisements, and as a character in a deranged cartoon Olive is watching. From a first-person account, doesn’t everything seem to be informing us - ME! - only and directly? Caden is not always valiant, but he is always curious and regrets. A flawed protagonist is required as a launching pad for those who must relate to and not genuflect the subject. This is from someone who made self-deprecation look like fun: “Charlie Kaufman! Fat! Bald! Repulsive! Old! Sits at a Hollywood restaurant with Valerie Thomas!”Caden finds out later that Adele “wants joyous and healthy people (in her life)” in a way that is impersonal and devastating. Only a shallow turkey could dismiss sympathy for Caden - I’m looking at you, Ben Lyons! Appearing on the gutted remains of At The Movies, Lyons smiles like slime when he piously calls Caden “The most pathetic individual to ever exist!” Has Ben Lyons ever left his bubble?

During a lunch outside with Hazel, one of the few times Caden is serene, she feeds him lines to woo her. He enjoys taking her dictation; playing his character instead of being himself. This scene foreshadows near the end of the film where Caden takes direction by the sound of a woman’s voice. Here, too, he is also serene. Kaufman again delivers a variety of role plays, bizarre transformations and comic scenarios includingbravado turns by Tom Noonan (Snow Angels, 2008) as a stalker who is hired to play his stalkee and Dianne Weist (Edward Scissorhands, 1990) as an actress who plays the only character Caden has ever made up. There is a brilliant inside joke by casting Emily Watson (Hilary and Jackie, 1998), as arresting as ever, as the stage version of Morton’s Hazel. One time Samantha Morton auditioned for a role and the director complimented her performance in…Hilary and Jackie: awkward.

The same twisted and delicious logic of Kaufman is on display here like the way in Adaptation, a screenwriter’s life is threatened at gunpoint by the very characters he rewrote and corrupted to make his script more commercial. For almost the past decade, Charlie Kaufmann’s scripts have turned into some of my most treasured experiences in a movie theater. I was with Being John Malkovich every step of the way: “What happens to a man who goes down his own portal?” “We’ll see!” That directorial debut of Spike Jonze - who also played the fourth leg of a table called Three Kings that year - was a near-perfect comic-tragedy that I continue to genuflect.

The music used in the Being John Malkovich (and the WALL-E) trailer(s) is from the 1984 Terry Gilliam film Brazil; the track entitled The Office is by Michael Kamen. Come to think of it, Kaufman’s direction is rather Gilliamish. Synecdoche, New York is compacted with strange objects and idiosyncratic details - that pink Christmas present of Olive’s was not an accident: it’s memorable. The set design alone of the city spectacle with the indomitable blimp flying overhead inside the warehouse is a Terry Gilliam wet dream. The score for Synecdoche, New York by composer Jon Brion is high-strung and whimsical with occasional alien notes. There are some playful musical cues of angst near the beginning that pay homage to Brion’s edgy track Hands and Feet (instruments included xylophone, hammers and duct tape) from P.T. Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love (2002). A musical number by Brion for Punch Drunk Love is in the same vein as the sleepy piano ballad Little Person sung by jazz vocalist Deanna Storey. What a smokey and poignant song.

From Little Person:

Somewhere, maybe someday,

Maybe somewhere far away,

I’ll meet a second little person,

And we’ll go out and play.

Here We Go:

There are visual clues throughout Synecdoche, New York, one of the most crucial shows us a digital read-out of 9:44 in the beginning of the film and a brick wall with spray-painted clock-hands pointing to 9:45. Life is so fleeting that could very well pass within a minute. We can’t trust our eyes, but feelings are another matter. Again, the best way to exercise this film is to take everything at face value. Synecdoche, New York shows us that the unexamined life is not worth living, but that a life worth living means enduring a great deal of pain. Because the grim subject matter is approached with an open and searing heart and a great sense of humor, the film is not depressing. I felt exhilaration and joy over the ambition, scope and warm intentions against the dying gray light. For better or for worse, death is being relieved of yourself. It not only depends on the skin you’re inside of, but whether the ends are met.

No! This not another merger-bastardization of the Ridley Scott/James Cameron enterprise. It’s a CGI feature from Dreamworks that comes in ATOMOVISION! - correction - INTRU3D!

It is directed by Dreamworks devotees Rob Letterman (Shark Tale, 2004) and Conrad “Gingerbread Man” Vernon (Shrek 2, 2004).

Watching this reminds me of a Brad Bird feature that was “Bold! Dramatic! Heroic!” Let’s just hope Monsters VS Aliens isn’t another hobo suit. Another denominator is that the score sounds like a low-rent Beetlejuice score.

However, any movie that features a United States President that looks and sounds like Stephen Colbert has my vote - “Hail To The Cheese!”

Others lending their voices are Seth Rogen (Zach and Miri Make A Porno, 2008) , Paul Rudd (The Shape of Things, 2003), Hugh Laurie (House M.D. was in Spice World, 1997) and Reese Witherspoon (Freeway, 1996) as Susan the Fifty-Five Foot Woman - insert Shrinking Lover quip from Pedro Almodóvar’s Talk To Her (2002) here.

It oozes to theaters March 27, 2009.

On the night before the 2004 presidential election, Michael Moore spoke with ferocity and vigor at the final round of his five-week Slacker Uprising tour across the country and visiting sixty cities. Despite being outnumbered by an enthusiastic crowd of Kerry supporters, many Bush pushers chanted “4 more years” voluminously. It was like a bad omen of things to come. New Orleans citizens abandoned for days in the Katrina flood. Nearly 4200 US soldiers dead in Iraq. Thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens tortured and killed. A damning deficit and a broken economy. You know the drill. What’s done is done. Four years after, we have another roll of the dice.

Some remember Bush’s second win back in 2004, his first legitimate one, and wondered if we’d still be alive next year. R.E.M.: “It’s The End of the World As We Know It”. It felt something like that. From the beginning of 2003, I discovered Michael Moore through his stinging documentary/political thesis Bowling For Columbine, which won the Academy Award. I sympathized with Moore’s views and followed up on his work. At the time I worked on tiling roofs, I remember after reading Dude, Where’s My Country? over the weekend in its entirety, I missed out on a Michael Moore signing at the same Chapters (the Canadian version of Borders) the day after I bought the book. The next year, I had seen all of his films, TV shows - TV Nation and The Awful Truth - and read all his books including the elusive copy Adventures in a TV Nation. Having followed Moore’s exploits closely, visiting his website weekly, watching Slacker Uprising now was like catching up with an old sitcom I was all too familiar with.

Moore has made an imprint in movie history by making his Slacker Uprising available for free on the Internet for North Americans. The point of this exercise is to energize the American public to turn out their votes, electing the Democratic nominee in a landslide, thus keep the Republicans at bay while we clean up the mess they’ve made. That’s all Moore cares about now. With my headphones on in front of my Mac computer, I was bobbing my head to the beat of the guitar-raging montages of Moore traveling from state to state and being greeted by thousands of attendants cheering their throats dry. If I went the extra 136 miles, then I could have attended this “concert film” with an American audience sans the National Guard Join The Army promos. It just isn’t the same in Canada.

The film begins with a mournful rendition of When Johnny Goes Marching Home as clips of the Best of Kerry vs. Bush Campaign carries on. That same ominous diddy was used throughout the virtuoso Fort Knox robbery sequence in Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995). The two independent scenes still carry an undertone of thievery. There are also some hilarious faux television spots that satirize the Republican’s sleazy Swift Boat Veterans Attacks on Kerry (”He was only shot three times!”) Moore takes aim at the Bush administration and so-called liberal-media, taking them to task for not informing us about lies that led to invading Iraq back in 2003. I was also reminded of a complaint by independent filmmaker giant John Sayles that everything exposed by Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) should have been done on the evening news.

At Moore’s sold-out shows, sometimes he has a celebrity guest like Eddie Vedder, Monkey Bowl, Steve Earle and Tom Morello perform a patriotic and activist song for the audience. This is also the first film to finish up with a stand-up routine by Rosanne Barr, a comic with acidic wit here. The Right claims they God Almighty on their side, but the Left has a greater power, Viggo Mortensen. When approached by fans, Moore even has the class to deny buxom woman’s request to autograph her chest - an item I pray no one ever considers putting on Ebay. Things really pick up when American soldiers speak out against their president and his war. There are echoes from Fahrenheit 9/11: “(These Soldiers) gave their lives so we can be free. Will they ever trust us again?” A solemn tribute is made when Moore visits Fort Kent State in Ohio where the national guard opened fire and killed four out of many protesting students against the Vietnam War on May 1970.

There is a stirring episode that was also the subject of Kristian Fraga’s Anytown, USA when the state of Utah was involved in a political censorship battle over whether Moore could give his speech in a college. Pro-Bushians speak out against Moore, at times displaying staggering ignorance: “I think he’s a communist!” Considering that Bush and Co. supported the Wall Street Bail-Out just last month, Lenon and Marx must be so proud of them. Moore counterattacks young Republicans in favor of liberating the Iraqis by asking why they don’t volunteer for a war they are so passionate about: “You’d rather let poor people fight that war!”

Make what you will of Michael Moore: Truth Seeker. Muckraker. Anti-Christ. Why so many people not in the richest one-percent of the country up chuck such venom when encountered by Moore is a sad commentary. They scapegoat the filmmaker in the baseball cap who voices outrage over the continued exploitation of the poor. After all the feces the Right-Wing have been flinging at Moore, can you blame him for including so many testimonials from people around the country who treasure the big guy. Sure, he can be a showboat who soaks in the love. Here we are in 2008 and this time Moore doesn’t have to hand out clean underwear and microwavable noodles to get would-be voters’ attention turned toward exercising their own democracy. Slacker Uprising may not be Oscar worthy like Moore’s call-out for free health care for all United States citizens, Sicko (2007). I may be steered otherwise when I see Barack Obama get sworn in as President of the Unted States next January.

UPDATE: Barack Obama won the presidency tonight! Congratulations to all who voted. Peace.

Can you question his sincerity after watching this?

Pauline ‘Poppy’ Cross, the title character of Mike Leigh’s winning comedy Happy-Go-Lucky, is a litmus test like determining whether a glass is half-full or half-empty. Is it so unreal for someone to be so good and so strong? In a world that seems to be over-populated with a bunch of sorry-sacks all too eager to pop the bubbles of others, the outcry is deafening. It is rare how a movie directly tells you who you really are. Some audience members will find her infallible sunniness grating, perhaps worthy of envy. Others will want invite her over to their house for drinks and laughs once the movie is over. I am in the latter category. It is important to first understand how and why you feel the way you do about Poppy. She is the key to how successfully the film will bypass all of your qualms and barriers guarding your heart. You may well find yourself grinning from ear to ear. I did.

Character actress Sally Hawkins has a great challenge playing a woman who looks happy, is happy, and remains complex and wise. Some viewers may argue she deceives them with her depth. There is a prejudice against a smile; anyone who smiles appears shallow and light-minded. Deep thinkers are usually pictured as angst-ridden, haunted, and in great pain. It is a mistake to assume Poppy is bubbly fool. A mistake that her sullen driving instructor Scott, a Bizarro to her Super(girl), makes throughout. He can’t believe she is an elementary school teacher. He can’t stand how she wears those high-heeled boots while driving. Her insistent joking actually counterattacks his punishing personality. At one point he tells her, “You celebrate chaos!”

Eddie Marsen is brilliantly ruthless playing Scott as the kind of man who is forever blaming everyone around him. You’d almost pity him if he wasn’t so irredeemably clingy to his prejudice. He is resigned to his rut. What bitter irony that his job description tempers road rage. He even screams at his pupil. Mike Leigh has dealt with a similar character in his most bleakest film Naked (1993) - its title character Johnny, played by David Thewlis, was scuzzy intellectual who aimlessly drifted into the lives of others only to hurt them. Scott has a way of revealing deep emotional scars with silence. One imagines he privately picks at his insecurities like a scabby wound that will never heal. Like Johnny, he uses his book smarts to conceal his hostility to others. Notice how he responds to two black teens bicycling across the street. What a toxic man.

Why does Poppy keep coming back for another driving lesson when a sane person would change teachers? This and many other choices drives her character, demonstrating what indomitable force her unique point of view makes. One wonders how conscious she is of her spirit, despite how well she can read and navigate through a situation. Watch how superbly she negotiates with a very troubled child in her class. The way that episode develops shows just how much command Poppy has. She is never defensive. She is open and doesn’t accept defeat. Together, Poppy and Scott are dynamic foils. Their quick, incisive dialogue makes their rapport immensely entertaining and also very frightening. Hawkins and Marsen are smart enough not to turn their counterparts into easy targets. They understand their characters so profoundly that what ultimately ignites their final confrontation is almost blindsiding, and inevitable.

Both of Hawkins and Marsen’s performances are stunning when you look back at their previous supporting work in the last two of Mike Leigh’s films. In Vera Drake (2004), Hawkins played a shy, soft-spoken daughter to rich parents who was later raped by her boyfriend and became more insular while trying to obtain an abortion in 1950s London. Marsen, famous in Britain as a comedian, portrayed a gravely timid and lonely man who reluctantly gets set up by sweet Vera (Oscar nominee Imelda Staunton) with her own daughter (Alex Kelly). One of the most poignant scenes in Vera Drake depicted in long-shot Marsen and Kelly, a couple in their mid-thirties, walking in an autumn park and they resemble a couple who has been married for forty years. In All or Nothing (2002), Hawkins played a sullen, lower class young woman who is angered easily by her alcoholic mother. Their range is phenomenal.

Leigh follows his characters to make up their stories, namely their own lives. Over a couple weeks, Poppy attends flamenco dancing lessons. The teacher teeming with passionate gravitas is played by Karina Fernandez. The presence of this character alone shirks away the inclusion of the scenes as a lark. “My space!” Stamp! Stamp! These scenes linger over great comic interaction but don’t resolve so much as a generic plot would demand. Like life, the most pressing matter at the moment sometimes dissipates away without a compact conclusion. Here, those flamenco scenes are too invaluable to dismiss because they are so much fun.

Another scene that seems to come from left field is when late one night, Poppy comes across a man, maybe a schizophrenic, who fervently chants gibberish. Poppy, so empathetic, foolhardy and brave, approaches the stranger in the shadows. She talks to him. He seems unsettled. We are worried about her. He excuses himself to urinate in private from a distance. At point she asks herself, “What am I doing?” He comes back. Their conversation continues awkwardly and becomes more relaxed. She asks if he has anywhere to sleep. He says he has a bed. It is never confirmed, but I suspect that maybe he does have a home where he rests. However strange and improbable the moment appears, it becomes important and inseparable from the film as a whole. Leave it Leigh to take a chance and like a magician reveal that he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Leigh, now 65, takes a radical approach to filmmaking by employing actors of his choice and developing a script from there. For a six month period, Leigh works with his actors to build their characters up through improvisation and study. Leigh shoots the film in chronological order, keeping the finished script to his chest, and films the results. During the rehearsal period of this film, Leigh lay in the backseat of the Ford Focus while Hawkins and Marsen improvised and refined their scenes while driving in London traffic. Leigh’s last condition is final cut. Every film he has made employs this technique, despite the rewarding results, Leigh struggles to find backers to finance a film without a shooting script in the beginning.

I think what makes all of Mike Leigh’s films so emotionally volatile is that he always channels the hardships of the human condition so mercilessly. He never lightens his material unnecessarily. Secret And Lies (1996), for example, contains devastating moments where loved ones say things that make one reconsider the term “loved ones”. For such a quirky film like Happy-Go-Lucky, on par with Leigh’s comic Life Is Sweet (1991), being a comedy doesn’t mean there won’t be honest and harrowing moments. There are moments that feel so right, when one character protests, “I want to go home!” There is also a lovely scene that takes place in a chiropractor’s office; completely vulnerable in her underwear and fishnet stockings, Poppy is getting her back pains popped out. She is at such ease, ripe with laughter, and cracking jokes that she doesn’t feel nearly naked. The long lens aerial view of her body across the table simply shows a beautiful and happy woman.

The issue of happiness here reminds of an underrated indie that probed its mystery, Jill Spreacher’s Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2002). That film focused on Gene, an insurance adjuster (Alan Arkin), who envied the beaming optimism of an employee nicknamed Smiley Bowman (William Wise). The Arkin character thought he finally found a way to wipe the grin from Smiley’s face…by firing him. What happens then and much later in the film underlines the central mystery of how some people always find the upside while others linger in a despond. There is a familiar dilemma in Happy-Go-Lucky when Poppy and her friends come over to visit her conservative and pregnant sister.

Watch more Happy Go Lucky videos on AOL Video

Not only are the performances so infectious, but the look of the film by Leigh collaborator Dick Pope is so sumptuous and vivid. Filmed using a newly-developed stock of Fuji film, the colours of the London flats, the blue sky, and Poppy’s colourful attire pop with a sparkling vibrancy. There is a shot where Poppy looks out a window; white, refined clouds slowly stretch across day-lit town below. It reminded me of a similar composition taken over a Grand Canyon vista early in Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi (1982). The composer Gary Yershon has made a simple, catchy score using horn instruments that’s reminiscent of High Hopes (1988) by Andrew Dickson, another Leigh regular.

Question: Will Andrew Dickson’s haunting soundtracks ever be available?

This year, Sally Hawkins has realized as great a lead performance this side of Melissa Leo in Frozen River and Kristin Scott Thomas in Il Y A Longtemps Que Je T’Aime (I’ve Loved You So Long). If anything, you’ll never look at chicken cutlet the same way again. Not only does this comedy succeed with wit and empathy, it has much richer undertones that lesser filmmakers would avoid out of fear of transcending genres. It is also the best film I have seen about women since Nicole Holofcener’s Lovely and Amazing (2002). Poppy never declares it, but she wants to make the world a better place - there is a lot to be angry about (ie. the economy), so that is no easy feat. I can’t wait to visit Poppy again because she is not merely a ‘happy person’. Poppy is able to perform the herculean feat of recognizing your losses, being blind to the offset of things to come and approaching it with enthusiasm. Happy-Go-Lucky deserves more than just three cheers.

I love this poster.

Happy-Go-Lucky will be in limited release October 23rd.

Q: How many Coen brothers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: They wouldn’t. It would be more funny to film Francis McDormand and George Clooney accomplish that.

A few months shy of a year, right after winning Academy Awards for best written, produced and directed film of 2007, Joel and Ethan Coen breathlessly churn out something completely different. Such confident, heady, speedy workmanship that is Burn After Reading makes me wonder if the Coens realize No Country For Old Men - a film full of Chigurh - actually won the Best Picture. For a comedy about government intelligence, it is curiously, though appropriately ominous. This coming from the Coen Brothers, I am not surprised. I am overjoyed.

Burn After Reading is not as broad and eccentric as Raising Arizona (1987) and O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000). Don’t get me wrong, it’s still eccentric. The comedy is more subdued like Barton Fink (1991) where the stuck up title character (John Tuturro) proclaims himself a writer of the common man (“The life of the mind. There’s no road map for that territory”.) while ignoring a bumbling insurance salesman (John Goodman) who says “I could tell you some stories”.

Osborne Cox (John Malkovich from Being John Malkovich), an intelligent analyst for the CIA, is demoted due to his alcoholism. He doesn’t believe that’s the case because he personally examines how much liquor is in his first glass and then pours just a little bit back into the bottle. Such a conscientious act would never be perform by an alcoholic. Osborne quits to the immediate displeasure of his forever exasperated working-wife Katie (Tilda Swinston who is having a ball here). Fed up with pointless bureaucracy, Osborne decides to write a book detailing his work history and Katie plots to divorce and bleed him dry.

Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) is cheating on his wife Sally (Elizabeth Marvel) with Katie. Both women separately confide to Harry that the other is a “cold-hearted bitch”. He must be attracted to that type. Considering this, it’s funny which target audience both women’s careers aim towards. Being a notorious sexaholic, Harry is flexible toward the other women he meets online and eventually beds. He makes good company. What an adorable adulterer; he schemes rather lightheartedly and is genuinely surprised (and hurt) when those he trusts turn on him.

Over at the fitness club Hardbodies, we meet its motivational trainers Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand, Mrs. Joel Coen) and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt). Chad is an aging hipster who tries to stay young by streaking his hair, keeping exercise priority number one, and occasionally breaking into dance when excited. Linda is sweet, lonely and pushing forty. She has resorted to finding a mate online. Desiring a man with a great sense of humor (who doesn’t?), she screens her dates with the same romantic comedy playing in theaters. She has (wrongly) convinced herself no man wants her because of her body and seeks modifications under the knife. Her plastic surgeon, mercilessly dotting her flesh with a felt pen, sells her on tummy tucks, breast augmentation, face lifts like a car salesman ticking off new features at a price inflation.

They both come across a burnt disc (“Mac or PC?”) holding Osborne’s secret files. This property could pad their accounts. Their scam is in the same spirit as the one in Waking Ned Devine (1998). To them it’s rather harmless. Chad is the kind of dope who thinks “Reward!” for going out of his way to return sacred government files instead of blackmail. Even after the issue of blackmail is made very clear, he still thinks “Reward!” because his own goodwill counterattacks any notion of perceiving himself as an exploiter. Whenever he’s found out of something wicked, he immediately smiles cheerfully, convinced that whatever trouble he’s in can be laughed off. Heck, he’d just as soon treat you to a large health shake and an afternoon of laughs to make sure bygones are bygones.

The richly experienced character actor Richard Jenkins is such a good sport after his rewarding lead work in this year’s The Visitor. Here he plays Ted, a middle-aged manager of the gym who secretly pines for Linda’s heart. He’s a sweet, uncomplicated man who has the disadvantage of loving her for exactly who she is. She is not attracted to that kind of guy (translation: loser). He knows this but that still doesn’t stop him from doing just about anything to make her happy. It helps the pain of unrealized expectations and actions to be good to someone whose opinion actually matters.

Most of the humor is in observing the way people speak. How people deep in conversation are oblivious to their art (“Appearances can be very deceptive”.) versus the way smart people still sound dumb. Note how Osborne pronounces “memoirs”. He enunciates it so excruciatingly and dryly as if to say: “See! I am one of those rare exceptions on this planet who are naturally well-versed!” He’s like a stuck-up nincompoop who says “absolutely”, the four-syllable equivalent of “yes”, instead of just saying “yes”.

There are small and wonderful pleasures to be had in the crevasses and corners of this film. When Linda looks through the wallet of a one-night stand, she uncovers gift cards from 7-Eleven and Safeway (’Ingredients for Life!’). The engagement between a father and son’s heart-to-heart on a drifting boat. How Chad approaches Osborne’s car for an important rendezvous and remembers to take off the headphones to his iPod before entering. The way a chirpy television morning host interrupts her guest, an author reading her children’s book, to show viewers at home “the illustration” - the book’s cover credits the writer with no mention of the illustrator.

The biggest gut-buster is the revelation of Harry’s secret project he’s building in his basement. The build-up carries an apprehensively dark and mysterious tone. The payoff is in the vein as the Stonehenge prop in Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap - on a scale from one to ten, it’s an eleven. It had me howling well into the next scene. Once you get past how wrong and creepy it is, it is actually rather sweet. The purpose of the device is well-intentioned, especially given the means of Harry. Many men would be appalled and insulted if their partner were to use such a device. Harry is an exception. What a lucky woman to have such an endearing knucklehead for a husband.

The versatile Carter Burwell, as dedicated a musical collaborator to the Coens as Howard Shore to David Cronenberg, has scored Burn After Reading with an urgent, thumping, and somewhat melancholy soundtrack. It is a hybrid of his scores from the predatory chords of the underrated James Foley thriller Fear (1996) and the apocalyptic jungle-like tones of Spike Jonze’s magical Adaptation (2003). Earlier this year, Burwell committed work to Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, a darkly comical and dramatic masterpiece that was my favorite film of 2008 for six months until The Dark Knight bumped it to second place (Between you and me, whenever I watch my In Bruges DVD, sometimes I’m tempted to put it back on top).

The Coens and their cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Children Of Men, 2006) apply a very straight-forward, yet engaging visual approach to contrast with the labyrinthine, oddball events on screen. There’s even an intimating yet quirky sensibility in the framing as if the space around the characters make them more insignificant. Burn After Reading doesn’t look like a general comedy that’s over-lit as a ploy to make the audience happier and receptive to hysteria. It stays true to the look of its adult thriller, while letting the madcap characters themselves lighten their dark surroundings.

One striking image depicts Harry stranded and paranoid on a suburban road where he is back-lit by a yellow sunset and dark leafy trees create a shadowy frame around him. There are a few sensationalistic shots. A couple of Dutch angles are used when looking up a staircase from Harry’s basement where Sandy inquires what’s behind gated curtain and another looking downstairs at a very shaken Harry in a different house. A moving shot at floor level following an agent’s footsteps across the stark CIA hallway is a reverse homage to running dress shoes in The Hudsucker Proxy (1993), the one that starts the infamous Hula Hoop Montage - a worthy candidate for Scene To Be Seen. Much like déjà vu, one violent confrontation near the film’s end is a visual quotation including composition, action, and execution from the masterpiece Fargo (1996).

The Coens transcend their targeted genres; improving upon the espionage thriller, the social satire, and the romantic comedy. Like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love (2002), Burn After Reading applies tension and danger in its romantic comedy, a genre generally treated as passively light where tension is needed to be more effective. Both films examine the lonely heart yearning for a compassionate partner in a way that is painfully real and delightfully zany. ‘Here We Go’. The Coens could have easily made a devastating drama about the dead ends of Internet Dating, the temptations and consequences of adultery, and the dire cover-ups made by a calmly, sanctimonious government agency. The screwball elements just make these compelling issues easier to digest.

Somehow, while reminiscing about Burn After Reading, it is at once so thoughtful and yet it seems like such a lark. This film is so smart that it doesn’t resort to having a dimwit like Chad pick up on the crude connotation of Osborne’s surname. However, they are not above naming the intelligence expert Cox. There is a difference between celebrating crudeness - it is human nature, after all - and wallowing in it. The Coens, like all good comedians, don’t coach you to laugh at their jokes. They remain stone-faced and quietly relish the joy when people laugh of their own accord. You can’t hold hands with wit.

People deserve the movies they choose. So many movies are made to cater to those with lowered expectations. A laugh track is welcomed by those who tense up at being challenged after paying the price of admission. So many movies are merely okay. They are rolled and doled like dough; geared toward the lowest common denominator with lame story lines that logically feature very stupid characters. Burn After Reading is about stupid characters. This is what happens when the filmmakers are as bright as a professionally-manned film projection bulb. We really deserve Burn After Reading.

The new Nanette Burstein documentary American Teen observes and even tampers with a senior class’ transcendence through a high school (“Total chaste system”) in Warsaw, Indiana; a small American town that’s labeled “Red State all the way”. To set the stage, the filmmakers all but steal the compact and diverse grouping of easy types from the influential John Hughes cult film The Breakfast Club (1985). We are introduced to five main players attending Warsaw Community High School: Colin Clemens (The Jock), Megan Krizmanich (The Princess), Jake Tusing (The Geek), Mitch Reinholt (The Heartthrob in place of The Criminal), and Hannah Bailey (The Rebel). Any moment in American Teen would have been appropriate to play ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ by Simple Minds.

This film is really about the fear that stems in adolescence and stirs into oncoming adulthood. The fear of being defined by your vices and insecurities brought up by those vicious, maddening years of being a teenager. The fear of realizing your idealistic youth spent in middling, regretful past times that are glibly called ‘the best years of your life’. It is dominated by the fear that things will not get better while the present is eaten up by internal bitterness. High school can really suck. Thankfully the clouds clear and the sun is out on graduation day.

Colin, a self-described jock, is a nice enough guy. Whenever he smiles, the bottom half of his face reminds me of the Elephant Man (John Hurt). High school basketball is a populist blood sport in this town. Adults actually wear all-body painted team colors in the gym stands. It’s citizens are about as obsessed as the Massillon, Ohio populace was with high school football in the Ken Carlson documentary Go Tigers! (2001) where it is custom to hold back boys to repeat the eighth grade because they’ll be older and bigger as football players in senior year.

The stakes are considerably higher for poor Colin if he doesn’t get a scholarship to play basketball in college, he will have to join the army and go to Iraq. His dad says “get the rebounds or its the army with a smile”. However engaging this subplot is, it pales in comparison with Steve James’ masterful Hoop Dreams (1993), the pedestal of documentary filmmaking that showed us the hardships and brimming humanity of two inner-city Chicago teens playing high school basketball and dreaming of making the NBA. There were scenarios in that three-hour movie that were laced with deep ironies and great joys.

Samantha stands in as the princess who many speculate in awe over her dulled beauty. Her appearance is as lazy as Paris Hilton’s facial features that a lot of stupid people go nuts over. Samantha, for the most part, teeters between indifference and vindictiveness. A scene of her using a firearm in target practice is an appropriate metaphor for her lethality. Early in the school term, she displays a mean streak that is sociopathic. First she is instrumental in sending an image of a female classmate topless to every other student and then leaves cruel remarks in the victim’s voice-mail. After laughing hysterically, Samantha comes to her senses long enough to suggest “…leav(ing) her a message not to kill herself”. She has the makings of a Sgt. Charles Graner.

Samantha’s repugnant acts escalate until she gets caught, which is her only regret: “It’s horrible to be backstabbed at the last minute”. Very late in the film, a tragic event revealed around Samantha’s troubled family history isn’t enough to garner her sympathy. Finally, Samantha pines for a future where she will be surrounded by healthy, like-minded people. She simply exhausts my versatile ability to empathize. I make a point to keep away from people like her.

Justin chastises himself for his band participation, his awkwardness, his monotone, his acne-riddled cheeks, and he plays Warcraft. With the upcoming student dance approaching, he bemoans “I wish I had a girl to dance with”. He has an animated dream sequence where he is virtual warrior who battles monsters and saves the damsel-hobbit in distress. The short remains faithful to that most irritating cliche where the pretty girl’s smile reveals, of all horrors, braces.

Rising above his insecurity, Justin occasionally gets girlfriends who don’t stay for very long and for good reason. Perhaps being the subject of a documentary is a likely attraction considering the YouTube-posting, fifteen-seconds-of-fame mentality on display. When Justin is dumped in a food court, his ex’s eyes never rise away from her blackberry. Justin becomes downright pitiful as he lays his cheek against the table and remarks how much grease he has left. Much of Justin’s antics and eventual spiral into excess drinking and kissing strangers in Mexico is off-putting. Justin gives geeks a bad name.

Hanna, the brightest star here, is a rebellious and funky art girl who aspires to become a filmmaker: “I want people to remember me. Not work nine to five and die”. It’s a no-brainer. She inspires guys who developed crushes for Juno - that snarky, pregnant geek immortalized by Ellen Page. Despite her eccentric and lively demeanor, she has taken some very low blows. After being emotionally pulverized by her then-boyfriend in a very vulnerable position, she is so devastated that she cannot go back to school with him there. Her lengthy absence is called on by the tepid school administration threatening to deny her graduation if she avoids another day at school.

Exasperated with living in this suffocating town, she talks to her parents about moving to California and is told coldly told by her conservative mother that “(she) is not special”. Hanna is the most likable and following suite, the most sympathetic and deserving of a better future. She has a stand-off near the end of the film that inspired cheers from the audience and yours truly. Hanna redeems the geek title.

Mitch is a fine of piece of man meat who plays basketball, likes to socialize, and isn’t a very interesting person. Midway he has an epiphany about his feelings for Hanna, a girl outside his social circle. She is struck by the surface. After her previous break-up, Hanna embraces her good fortune that a popular hunk would even consider her. While “Love Is In The Air” is sung by John Paul Young on the soundtrack, the two youths even hold hands while driving in her car.  In my notes, I referred to Mitch as a “lucky bastard” and the next page reads “worthless anus-scum” for what he does later. Forget being a heartthrob, Mitch is a criminal.

While watching American Teen, you might catch yourself tempted to hum Mountain Town by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. There are some keen details depicting the routine of a middle American high school. There are updates from lame student news videos that are broadcast on thirteen-inch televisions in each classroom. The National Anthem is uniformly pledged every morning. From a Canadian point of view, this seems rather excessive. The parking lot in front of the school building looks more like a shopping mall. Would it be rude to observe that the all-white basketball team has a token black guy? The most chilling observation is a marine and army memorial shrine dedicated to past students who were killed fighting in Iraq.

Director Nanette Burstein has made a moderately entertaining documentary that doesn’t measure up to her previous works On The Ropes (1999), a powerful account about a group of boxers that follows one innocent, Tyrene Manson, into an unjust criminal trial, and The Kid Stays In Pictures (2002), a fascinating memoir depicting the rise and fall and semi-rise of Hollywood producer Robert Evans (The Godfather, Chinatown). The visual flair that drive these stories is well exercised by Burstein; however, The Jeff Danna score for The Kid Stays In Pictures is infinitely more memorable and effective than anything music editors Chris Douridas and Jim Schultz have contributed to American Teen.

Frankly, the material in American Teen isn’t as consistently compelling, but it is rarely boring despite a few lags. Much of it looks as if it were shot like a fictional film with double-takes and conversation set pieces that seem too good to be true. There is a contrivance mostly throughout that feels staged rather than captured. I doubt that montage depicting each of everyone’s reaction to a scandalizing image by computer and cellphone was not prepped for. Though there are moments I am tempted to forgive such as Colin’s father sending off his son in a get-up I would never reveal here. Each of the main characters have an animated sequence that visualizes their deepest thoughts. My personal favorite was a piece of stop-motion depicting “Hanna’s Depression” that is like a cross between Caroline and Clive Barker.

American Teen is worth seeing; however, it is not in the same league as this year’s most prestige documentaries Standard Operating Procedure and Man On Wire. Watching these teenagers graduate, I wonder if Burstein would revisit them in ten years in time for the reunion. The update could be in the same vein as Michael Apted’s Up documentary series. American Teen may not be Oscar worthy, but it obliterates any nostalgia from your own high school experience. Outside the theatre on my way out, there were ushers giving out buttons depicting whose team of the five one would like to belong to. Had I chosen, I’d have jumped on the Hanna bandwagon in a second. I hope to see a film of hers one day.

Once Upon A Time: Six-year-old Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), one of the injured patients in a Los Angeles hospital circa 1920, wanders the limey and creamy walls looking for something to help pass the time. She has a doughy and lovable face that is genuine, animated, and suggests a definite sharpness of thought. She comes across Roy Walker (Lee Pace), an American stuntman working in the Hollywood “flickers”, who is now being treated for his paralyzed legs from an occupational hazard. He is welcoming and befriends the little Romanian girl. Her presence distracts him from an inky cloud of depression.

Their bond grows when he tells her an epic story that is silly yet strong, perplexing yet straight-forward, fantastical yet damned. Her own imagination manifests, reinterprets, and even edits his words into a hodgepodge of visually radical planes, structures, and characters. A whole new universe takes us away from the confines of the hospital and into a land of eye candy.

The Fall is not the best film of the year, but it is one of the most special. While watching it, I realized that I have never seen this movie before. What I mean is that most of the movies I’ve seen are a variation on other films I have seen. Out of the cookie-cutter machine a la Edward Scissorhands, a strange butterfly-shaped cookie has escaped the line: The Fall is a genuine original. What a fresh breeze it is to have a filmmaker throw out that unwritten book that rules out exploration and approaches deemed too strange and melodramatic for mainstream expectations. Here is a work by an artist who exercises his liberties selfishly in the best sense of the word, but not without purpose.

I did, however, come up with a few films that vaguely resemble its surface. One is Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride (1987) where a guardian entertains a sick child in bed with a fantasy story. The exotic, foreign and colorfully vibrant environments of The Fall reminded me of the Arabian fantasy The Thief of Baghdad (1940), an Alexander Korda production. The most recent one is Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), one of the very best films of this decade, resembling The Fall in spirit but not emotionally. The Guillermo del Toro masterpiece (the adult equivalent) has different motives than The Fall (the child equivalent) and should not be felt the same way. Ophelia comes to conclusions about human nature that Alexandria is too young to even conceive.

For seventeen years, Tarsem traveled the world playing location scout for his dream film - a seed growing inside his mind. In that time he worked with great success as a director of music videos and commercials for large conglomerates, earning millions of dollars for his visionary talents. Many directors in advertising would often muse that they would personally finance their own feature film (always a would-be masterpiece) until time caught up to snuff that claim from becoming a reality. Not Tarsem. After losing his long-time girlfriend and potential family, he turned his savings into making art. A movie will substitute a child for now. David Fincher (Zodiac, 2007), one of the film’s producers and no stranger to advertising, told Tarsem “You happen to be the fool that has done it”.

A year after appearing at the Telluride Film Festival back in 2006, every distributor was too timid to pick it up. It was Roy Andersson’s Songs From The Second Floor (2002) all over again.  When released (more like saved) by amigos Fincher and music video-turned-wunderbar filmmaker Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, 1999), The Fall was granted a limited theatrical release last Spring. Living in Vancouver wasn’t much fun where no screening of The Fall was held. I know people who were looking forward to it and are still traumatized by the experience of Tarsem Withdrawal.

The make-believe story involves a band of unique men who each have just cause to seek out and destroy the near-omnipresent villain Governor Odious (Daniel Caltagirone). Our heroes include The Masked Bandit who leads The Indian (Jeetu Merma - perceived by Alexandria that he is from India in place of Roy’s Native American), Otta Benga (Marcus Wesley) the Ex-Slave from Africa whose expertise is archery, Luigi the Italian Explosives Expert (Robin Smith - who reminds me of the ruler of the Moulin Rogue! played by Jim Broadbent), and would-be evolution theorist Charles Darwin (Leo Bill) and his pet monkey Wallace. There is snide play with the characters for those familiar with the rival-collaboration between Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace.

Throughout the told story, the characters are loosely perceived as looking like people Alexandria has seen before. The ominous henchmen are in a guise similar to the darkly glad X-Ray engineers who roam the hospital corridors. The Masked Bandit is originally played by Alexandria’s father (Emil Hostina) who is gap-toothed (Fun Fact: In Chaucer’s time, a woman with a gap-tooth possessed a sexy attribute.) until she informs Roy her dad is dead. For the duration of the story, the role of The Masked Bandit is played by Roy. Governor Odious, when revealed later, stands in as a rival of Roy’s, an otherwise humane man, whose depravity is greatly exaggerated.

Back in reality, about midway into the movie, it becomes clear that Roy’s cliffhangers are motivated by his need to persuade Alexandria to fetch him enough medicine to commit suicide with. Not only is Roy a handicap, he is trapped in the private hell of being deliriously in love with a woman who has given her heart to another man. Roy’s bouts of depression and utter pessimism first occasionally and then ultimately influence his fantasy world into darkness. There is a funny-sad scene where Roy is cobbling down Morphine pills, while Alexandria innocently picks up those he dropped so he can consume them.

Vivid and luridly odd costume design by Eiko Ishioka (Mishima, 1985) marks her second distinguishable collaboration with Tarsem after The Cell (2000). The fantasy sequences were shot in over two dozen counties in South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Tarsem and cinematographer Colin Watkinson realize phenomenal visuals with wise framing and subtle dissolves placed creatively in strange architecture and landscapes. There is so little in the way of computer rendering that what looks gorgeous beyond reason is actually just photographed. The Voodoo of Location, a philosophy by German maverick Werner Herzog, is played out fruitfully as opposed to the tiresome green screen approach.

The Fall demonstrates my philosophy of The Authenticity of Light (trademark), a means of achieving visuals effects by hand and controlling real light while filming. The reality of the shot is grounded; manipulated before the camera and not after. The use of CGI, a reworking of pixels that carries no weight subconsciously, is an exercise of The Inauthenticity of Light (trademark). It is more exhilarating to realize an image that carries weight and is actually tactile in the real world. A stone is more valuable than a dream.

Tarsem and his composer Krishna Levy get great mileage out of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, II. Allegretto. This instrumental score hasn’t been used so effectively since its placement over the near-devastating finale of Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible (2002). It can also be heard over the scene in Stephen Herek’s Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995) where Mr. Holland (Richard Dreyfuss) lectures his class about Beethoven continuing to compose masterfully despite the loss of hearing. Meanwhile Mr. Holland can’t help but tearfully contemplate the loss of his own newborn son being deaf: “Well, Beethoven wasn’t born deaf”.

That music introduces and bookends The Fall beginning with a lusciously photographed sequence in black-and-white depicting the horrific aftermath of a stunt turned tragic. The compositions, its heightened values, and dreamy slow-motion capturing a rescue on train tracks suspended high over a body of water. The steam-engine train blows a long puff of bright white smoke against the warm gray sky like a man-made cloud. The last sequence is a montage of death-defying stunts accumulated from silent pictures starring Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd whom Alexandria figures must be Roy doing all that work.

The Fall is one of those rare films that doesn’t come to you, but you must come to it. It doesn’t fulfill the conventional needs we usually come to expect from a feature film. It comes bearing gifts you might not have prepared for. Remember that trailer for Julie Taymor’s Across The Universe that promised us “the most original, exhilerating, spectacular, groundbreaking motion picture of the year!” The Fall, for the most part, actually capitalizes on that promise this year. Most people will turn away from it, the same who demand more originality in film and are shocked when they see something like The Fall. This one isn’t for everybody and that’s more reason to treasure it.

Bias Alert: This news comes just I have recently finished Michael Moore’s Election Guide 2008, thus having read every published word he has ever written including those from the obscure Adventures in a TV Nation.

That waskly old Liberal Michael Moore is rocking the vote (and the boat) with his new film Slackers Uprising. Much like in The Big One (1997) which chronicled Moore’s book tour for Downsize This!, this documentary follows Moore across the country’s universities and colleges. With young adults in attendance months before the Presidential Election of 2004, Moore beseeched the Slackers of America to find their shorts, scarf down their Fruit Loops sans milk and VOTE! The race was between Bush and Kerry and arguably over half the country felt the stakes were near-apocalyptic over four more years of the Sitting Duck in Office.

This caused some ridiculous controversy by the right-wing pundits who spoke out against Moore’s tactic. Now Moore didn’t outright demand to the twenty-somethings which candidate’s name they had to puncture in the ballot. What did Bill O’ “DO IT LIVE!” Reilly and the gang have to fear of young voters participating in their right to democracy. They could very well have stuck it to old man Kerry and gone back to suckling the warm, freedom-flavored teat of Dubya.

Starting September 23rd, Michael Moore is generously releasing his new film Slackers Uprising as a free download for three weeks in North America. As a Canadian, this cheers me greatly. Usually downloadable media from the US is unavailable to your Neighbor of the North - I’m looking at you NBC (30 ROCK), CBS (Swing Town) and Comedy Central (The Daily Show + Colbert Report)! Being the first mainstream film to reach personal computer screens for the admission of bupkis, Michael Moore is not only a pioneer but truely appreciates his fortune in turn by his audience: “This is being done entirely as a gift to my fans. The only return any of us are hoping for is the largest turnout of young voters ever at the polls in November.”

This may very well tip a close presidential race away from the Republican Party’s John ‘Hot Head’ McCain and that media-trashing, earmark-embracing hockey mom Sarah Palin.

A DVD of the said film will also be released. It’s Special Features include:

Go Obama/Biden 08′

Two years ago, Hungarian filmmaker György Pálfi made a darkly comic familial splatter film based on the short stories of absurdist writer Lajos Parti Nagy. A vomtorium that dissects the inner workings, obsessions, and gluttonous fetishes of the Kálmán’s past three generations. A timeline laced and dripped into the warm, spent human ooze from Dante’s Circles of Hell. This film Taxidermia (2006) sounds like John “Se7en” Doe’s cup of tea.

The three generations syndrome by German novelist Thomas Mann follows the scheme that the grandfather starts the family on its course, then his son, the father, raises the family to the pinnacle of success so that the last generation’s son would waste it and start anew.

Dutch, once upon a time English, filmmaker Peter Greenaway applied this three generation scheme to filmmaking and concluded that the bold grandfather of the cinema was D.W. Griffiths who made the first narrative-sophisticated feature film Birth of a Nation (1915) - a pity it is irredeemably racist. The renegade father of the cinema was Orson Welles who perfected the medium with the towering Citizen Kane (1939). Then the mutinous son of the cinema being Jean-Luc Godard broke and rearranged cinematic conventions by way of the French New Wave with Breathless (1960).

I was about to summarize the plot but I think the trailer does a better job than I ever could.

Fair warning: the trailer gets pretty freaky.

I really dig that smash cut with the crying rooster.

Here’s the international one: it’s quite vivid.

A round of applause for the sickly fascinating website with the droning music and the decadently gruesome images. When you get to the spinning pin wheel, click on the same image twice to navigate to a new link in the site. Montreal-based Brazilian musician/DJ Amon Tobin scores the film and it sounds subterranean.

Taxidermia was Hungary’s official entry for the Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Film.  I wonder how long before its judges walked out of the screening room to get a bucket. Roger Ebert, after watching it at the Cannes Film Festival wrote, “I am sure Taxidermia is an important film and certainly a brave one, but I doubt if I know anyone who would thank me for recommending it”. European art critic Boyd van Hoeij called it the best film of 2006.

I have not seen this film just yet, not for a lack of stomach mind you. I’d have gladly bought a DVD released by Tartan outside of North America had I not found out about the Hungarian produced two-disc special edition. It is packaged like a slab of meat wrapped in cellophane - “Cause you can look right through me. Walk right by me” (couldn’t help myself!) - sold in supermarket.

Disc One features the film in an anamorphic widescreen transfer with Dolby 2.0, Dolby 5.1 and DTS 5.1 soundtracks. Optional English subtitles are included. Supposedly there is a DVD version that includes a director’s commentary but is not included here.

Disc Two has a 42 minute production, 30 minutes of deleted scenes, with optional director’s commentary, 8-minute visual design and concept gallery, 3 minute stills gallery, Hungarian and International trailers, two music videos by the band Hollywoodoo, Taltosember vs Ikarus - a 20 minute short film by György Pálfi, storyboards, and an interactive game.

Unfortunately, the Hungarian retailers are keeping this DVD edition a secret from the rest of the world. Anyone who knows how I can get a copy of this special edition would be greatly appreciated.

Calling all agnostics, come November 5th have plenty of body armor on because the unapologetic documentary Religulous is hitting theaters. That all heart, brainy and quick-witted political commentator, Bill Maher, takes us around the world to prod people about that hot button called God. There’s already some right-wing evangelist backlash against it. One wonders if there will be a boycott for the likes of Kevin Smith’s underrated Dogma (1999). Thank (insert your diety here) there are people out there willing tackle the bully boys that ram literal readings of the Old Testament down our collective throats.

It’s funny how defensive some (er…most) people get when you even suggest plausible doubt that takes them out of their theological comfort zone. That’s what Maher is doing and I applaud him for it. Questioning is good for achieving a moderate and curious society. This keeps the threat of evangelical movements that want to conquer and not listen at bay. I know people who think that world peace would be realized had everyone become a devout Christian as well those (like John Lennon) who believe there would be no wars without religion. I think people will use any excuse to find prejudice and make enemies whether religion is existant or not because it is the easiest to exploit.

Now I believe in a healthy open mind. I’m willing to entertain the plausibility of a conscious and omnipresent being surrounding our wacky universe so long as others don’t deny that our surroundings are governed by scientific means. It would be just as depressing to have worldly people obliterate their personal beliefs and histories for a unified one decided by a majority as would the option of obliterating them altogether. What appeals to me about all religions, popular as well as obscure ones, are the imaginations and the varied identities made possible for individuals around the world. It would be downright boring to be so certain about one outcome. It only becomes a problem when others are harmed in the name of an idea.

Lions Gate is distributing Religulous. No surprise, this studio often releases heady and controversial films like Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), The Passion of the Christ (2004), Hard Candy (2005), American Psycho (2000), and Shadow of the Vampire (2000), as well as Repetitive Vomitoriums and Spoofs For The Lobotomized.

Throughout Maher’s theological search, I’ll have time to muse why I find atheism so sexy.

My sister thought the man on the toast looked like Jeff Bridges.