Tim Brough's Black Leather Bookshelf

Talking about the good life in the foodchain
4 Out Of 5 Stars
Werner Herzog was given a strange mission with the film, "Grizzly Man." How do you take 100's of hours of tape made by a delusional, self-centered and mentally imbalanced man who is ultimately killed (along with the poor woman he drags along after him) by his obsession with Alaskan Grizzlies and make him someone somewhat sympathetic? The documentary manages to do just that, with Herzog inserting himslef as a conscience/narrator into the tapes of naturalist and self-described "kind warrior" Timothy Treadwell. For over a decade of summers, Treadwell would haul himself to Alaska, embed himself in a State Park and try to become one with the grizzlies.

Yes, you're right...anyone with a lick of sense would see this as a fool's errand, and the movie doesn't even bother to hide that fact by mentioning at the beginning that Treadwell and lady friend Amie Huguenard become lunch for a "bear full of people and clothes." Treadwell fails to recognize what Herzog knows by instinct and a few millenniums of evolution; nature is "chaos, hostility, and murder." Treadwell looks at nature as some sort of Disney-fied harmony, where if you just dance with the animals, they'll be your friends and all will live in the big unity of the universe. This despite ample evidence to the contrary (adult males eating cubs to foster mating with females, the killing of one of his fox pup 'friends'); Treadwell rails on about the bear world versus the people world.

Herzog keeps Treadwell from looking like a blithering idiot by balancing some of the most intimate footage you'll probably ever see of bears in the wild and commentary from both the friends and enemies of Treadwell, and ultimately sacrificing an opportunity to exploit Treadwell and Amie's death. A narcissist to the very end, Treadwell had a camera running even as he and Amie were being attacked and killed, and Herzog makes the decision to not include the audio (the lens cap was still on the camera) or include the pictures from the coroner, going as far as to implore one of Treadwell's few friends to destroy the final tape and never look back. It's Herzog's sense of compassion for his subject (aided by a terrific score by guitarist Richard Thompson), even as he understands the madness, that makes "Grizzly Man" so compelling.




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Set your sinks on fire

4 Out of 5 Stars


You've probably seen all the America's Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) commercials of late, cheerfully consoling us that safe, clean, natural gas can be easily extracted from the ground while happy people live above, leading clean and healthier lives. The Oscar nominated GASLAND exposes the corporate lie of Natural Gas mining. From the start, where filmmaker Josh Fox receives a letter offering him something near $100,000 for the rights to drill gas from his mountain and creekside home in upstate Pennsylvania, to the end, where you watch New York City and State lawmakers fight to keep the watershed that provides millions of people from polluted drinking water, Fox explores how the Power Companies have managed to manipulate the system with the help of corrupt and gullible politicians the outright greed of the Bush/Cheney administration.


The central point of GASLAND is that, in 2005, the EPA made changes in environmental policy that are called "The Halliburton Loophole." That rule, snuck through by Cheney and his secretive energy board buddies (including then CEO of Enron, Ken Lay), exempted the Halliburton developed technology of hydraulic fracturing (now widely known as 'fracking') from regulations of the old Clean Water Act. The end result? Drilling for natural gas and the unbelievable amount of water and chemicals pumped into the ground required to create a well are all but completely exempt from regulations regarding the toxins that are needed to extract the gas.


Of course, all the companies involved say that they have nothing to do with hundreds of drinking wells across the country suddenly turning unsafe withing weeks of fracking. Or animals getting sick and losing their hair. Or the methane explosions of people's homes. Or the mass die-offs of animals and fish when chemicals leak into a stream. But Fox, who tried to contact companies and individuals in mining throughout the course of his investigation gets the same treatment as the folks in states across the country; either "no comment" or massive run-arounds. When a State Environmental Agency head in Pennsylvania tells Fox that he'd help Fox and other PA citizens of Dimok (the first town Fox visits), only to note when the meeting ends that the state slashed the office's budget and basically dismantled it.


But more revealing than anything else in the movie is the notorious flaming sink footage. When fracking shatters the aquifer of a peace of land, the gases seep into the water table. The chemicals used to pump the gas out also get into the water, and before you know it, you have flammable tapwater. It's not just that water that is getting mixed up, the air outside the well is loading up with toxins to the point where a rural area of Colorado where the population is approximately one person per square mile is as dangerous or more so than a bad day in Los Angeles. GASLAND serves as a warning and reminder; the same smiling advertisers trying to convince you that clean, accessible natural gas is not threat to you at all are the same folks that told you off-shore drilling was both safe and existing regulations guaranteed that even if the miniscule chance accident were to ever take place, they could stop it from becoming disastrous.


When you watch GASLAND, there will probably be a detractor ready to tell you that the film is just lefty propaganda. Just remember the last sentence of the previous paragraph, and make sure to remind your companion of two little words. Deepwater Horizon.







 

It will take decades to undo this damage
5 Out Of 5 Stars

A few years ago, I watched the documentary "The Smartest Guys In The Room," about how Enron systematically duped the system, employees and the public into believing their fraudulent practices were a legitimate business. In 2005, they went from the USA's seventh largest company to bankruptcy, leaving a trail of death, debt and broke employees while the principles scooted away with the bulk of their fortunes. It was revealing to watch how they cozied up to presidents, regulators, and essentially eliminated anyone that caught on to the giant ponzi scheme the company was. I watched and wondered, how did they get away with this, and could we stop it from ever happening again. The Oscar Winning "Inside Job" answers that creeps like Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were only the tip of the iceberg.

"Inside Job" takes an in-depth look at how, starting with Reagan and continuing with President Obama, the financial pirates of Wall Street bought their way into massive paper fortunes, played the markets like parlor games and then got the world to buy them free passes when the house of cards came down. Narrated by Matt Damon, featuring plenty of interviews by several key government players, including Elliott Spitzer and Barney Frank (who, the film does NOT mention, voted for the "Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000", which is a key bill in the slippery slope). Several of the key Government types get sudden convenient cases of memory loss when pressed for certain details that they were intricately involved in (see the financial lobbyist who gives his Wall Street masters a 'B' grade for their handling of the collapse), and how major ratings firms suddenly turn their respected viewpoints of Triple A commodities ratings for companies on the verge of collapse into "it's just an opinion."

Nobody, left or right, gets out unscathed. Reagan gets first whacks for elimination of regulatory agencies, put in Alan Greenspan as his ideological watch-dog, and opened the world up to Savings and Loans. It took about nine years for them to collapse (under Bush One), so Wall Street had to come up with something new. That became derivatives, which Clinton legalized despite strong strong objections (and the person objecting is told firmly to keep her mouth shut) under Graham/Leach in '99 and effectively repealing the Glass-Steagall act from The Depression. With all the regulatory firewalls removed, banks could now effectively make a poorly advised loan, bundle it to a whole bunch of risky loans, sell this to someone else, then that group could sell it up the chain, with the complicity of the bonding agencies that gave these ticking time bombs triple A ratings.

When it comes to deregulating, though, nobody did it better than Bush the second. In 2004, he got the Securities and Exchange Commission to drop regulations against predatory lending, unleashing a new wave of sub-prime lending to the poor even if it was obvious that the loans wouldn't be repayable. Just bundle it into securities/assets, sell it and the risk belonged to someone else. By 2004, banks could leverage funds beyond their wildest dreams, so they did; some up to 33 times their available cash. Then came the biggest hit of all, the watchdog arm of the SEC was cut to a single employee. In an industry that has 5 lobbyists for each elected official, there was only one person left to investigate wrongdoing.

"Inside Job" also tackles the thorny issue of morality; when is too much not enough? Banks began to figure out that these bundled securities weren't going to be able to withstand the market much longer, they insured themselves against their failure then sold them even harder to drive the profits up before the explosion. They could profit now, success or failure, and things began to resemble a competition. Who has the most jets? Who has the most houses? Who has a private elevator that no-one else can use? So when the explosion came, starting with Bear Stearns in Spring 2007, the bankers had already covered their own behinds. And again, thanks to Bush Two, when the bankers realized the house of cards was about to enter meltdown, when they came crying to the government with their hands out, AIG and Goldman Sachs got 100 cents on the dollar. No risk, all reward.

President Obama fairs little better. He is criticized for putting the same old robber-barons in place (Tim Geithner, Larry Summers) and not pushing for tougher regulations post-crash. Even scarier is how these old hands are now advisers to business schools AND financial groups, which means the same flawed rules they played by to create this septic situation are being bought and paid for by financial institutions and taught and sold for by educational institutions. That is what is so maddening and ultimately depressing bout "Inside Job." While Enron (and folks like Bernie Madoff, Bernard Ebbers (MCI), Allen Stanford and his ilk) give you a convenient and singular target, "Inside Job" shows just how spread the dominoes are, and just how eager most of the players are to reset the table just as it was before.

In the intriguing documentary "All Boys," film maker Markku Heikkinen travels to Prague and takes on the rise and stagnation of the Czech Boys gay porn phenomenon. While he talks to many in the scene, he concentrates on four particular men; Director Dan Komar, and three of his actors Rudy (stage name Aaron Hawke), Josef and Filip. While each of these men has a striking story, it is Aaron's that forms the film's emotional core.
However, the dark side of this story is Rudu, who gets discovered sleeping under a bridge. He is the hot new kid on the DVD player, makes a load of fast money, and when his features no longer fit the Czech Boys mold, he doesn't have the maturity to move on. He goes from being a "superstar...like Jim Carrey" to a homeless drunk sleeping in a junkyard. From fresh new face to junkie in barely two years is a depressing arc to behold.



While Josef and Filip found their way out of porn and into a life after their twinky expiration dates, it is Rudu's face that stays with you. There's another man who appears briefly, admitting to being a prostitute after being in porn and is already damaged beyond likely repair...at the age of 27. (I won't even go into the fact that these boys are almost all barebacking.) "All Boys" takes a hard look behind the bright lights and gaudy colors to stare at what happens after the clock runs out.