Category: Reviews (DVD Only)

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Review (DVD): Smash His Camara

4 Star, Culture, DVD - Light, Reviews (DVD Only)
Amazon Page

Floyd Abrams (Actor), Gilbert M. ‘Broncho Billy' Anderson (Actor), Leon Gast (Director)

4.0 out of 5 stars Classic View of Greatest American Photo-Stalker

January 27, 2011

Rough patches, but a period cultural piece and for me quite fascinating. Almost a five and not left at four for itself but rather in comparison with other movies as alternative ways of spending time. This is a documentary of one of the greatest American “paraparatzi” of our time, in blends live interviews with re-collective discussions of specific photos that have made history including, most memorably, “windblown Jackie,” and as an American I found it both fascinating and not done deeply or broadly enough. I would have like to see much more. HOWEVER, the movie does whet the appetite for the book No Pictures, and I recommend both.

This movie, and the act of writing the review, brought to my attention other books by this photographer and out of respect I list them:

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Short Videos – Eye-opening, heart-opening, mind-opening, amazing

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Reviews (DVD Only), TED Videos, YouTube
Tom Atlee

Dear friends,

Sometimes when this work seems too hard, someone will send me a video link… and I'll suddenly find myself bathed in one more reason why it is worth pouring so much of life into creating a decent, joyful, healthy society.

There is so much going on in the world that is worth preserving, so much worth celebrating, so much worth nurturing.  And, of course, most of it is not on videos.

But a lot of it is…

I thought I'd take a moment to share some of my favorites.  Most of them are 2-10 minutes long.  I've marked the longer ones.

Coheartedly,
Tom

All Links with Descriptions Below the Line

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Review: Harry Brown

4 Star, Culture, DVD - Light, Reviews (DVD Only)
Amazon Page

4.0 out of 5 stars Surprising–Did Not Disappoint

December 4, 2010

I got this on a whim because Michael Caine is one of my top three serious actors along with Alec Guinness and Anthony Hopkins, and my assumption was that he would not stoop to a simple Death Wish kind of film. This is a uniquely British film that melds themes well-described by other reviewers.

My primary purpose here is to flag this at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog as one of 117 DVDs for smart people that don't like run of the mill movies. This is worth watching and the ending is especially surprising and alone worth the wait.

A few other crime-related action films I recommend:

From Paris with Love
Brooklyn's Finest
Righteous Kill
The Departed (Widescreen Edition)
Gran Torino (Widescreen Edition)
Human Target: The Complete First Season
Five Minutes of Heaven
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
The Limits of Control
Twisted (Special Collector's Edition)

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Review (DVD): Robin Hood

5 Star, Crime (Government), Culture, DVD - Light, History, Insurgency & Revolution, Justice (Failure, Reform), Leadership, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Reviews (DVD Only), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Righteous, Timely, Absorbing

December 4, 2010

I like the first and most popular review by the scholar. Here I will provide a snap-shot of my own and a couple of quotations from a rather good wikipedia review of Thoreau.

The film was longer, better, and had more stars than I expected, including William Hurt. Triteness was avoided. Above all, this movie is righteous and timely as we contemplate the present situation.

From Wikipedia on Thoreau:

The government, according to Thoreau, is not just a little corrupt or unjust in the course of doing its otherwise-important work, but in fact the government is primarily an agent of corruption and injustice. Because of this, it is “not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.”

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison…. where the State places those who are not with her, but against her,- the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor…. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.

The movie ends where I expected to begin. And now America begins anew, with a convergence of forces in 2012, where I had hoped it might end with peace and prosperity for all. The fight has only now begun as the public has awakened to the injustices done at our expense and in our name.

RIGHTEOUS.

Here are two lists of lists of summary reviews of non-fiction work that bears on the current and future nature of the world. Both are at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog under REVIEWS.

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)

Down at the bottom of the middle column I also have 116 DVD reviews for smart people that dislike run of the mill fare.

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Review (DVD): Date Night with Tiny Fey

4 Star, Culture, DVD - Light, Reviews (DVD Only)
Amazon Page

4.0 out of 5 stars All About Tina Fey–She is Leslie Nielsen for Smart People

December 5, 2010

I cut this movie off a third of the way into it, then came back to it later, and my over-all conclusion as a result is that this movie is all about Tina Fey, her audition for the future, and if viewed in that light, it is both a delight and worth watching all the way through.

In a nutshell, she is Leslie Nielsen for smart people. This is not Blind Date, or True Lies, or The Naked Gun – From the Files of Police Squad! or American Beauty or Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Widescreen Edition), all of which I recommend, this is “all about Tiny Fey” as a potential actress with recurring hits.

She passes and is worthy.

The movie is a mixed bag of boring married pathos made funny, Tiny Fey practicing a wide variety of subtle and not-so-subtle emotions and facial expressions and body language (including an upper body that is world class, a lower body that could use a little trimming), and over-all, a full-length screen test.

Bottom line: more of Tiny Fey on screen would be most welcome. She will find her groove, and when she does, it will be richly rewarding for all of us.

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Review (Guest) (DVD): The Social Network

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, DVD - Light, Information Society, Reviews (DVD Only)
Amazon Page

Jesse Eisenberg (Actor), Andrew Garfield (Actor), David Fincher (Director)

Review by Jon Lebkowsky

The David Fincher/Aaron Sorkin film collaboration called “The Social Network” is not about technology, though there are scenes that suggest how code is produced through focused work (which actually looks boring when you’re watching it “IRL” (in real life), without Fincher’s hyperactive perspective – but is so engaging you can lose yourself totally in the process when you’re the one actually producing the code).  The film is more about the entrepreneurial spirit, what it takes to have a vision and see it through. The real visionary in the film, Mark Zuckerberg, appears far less intense IRL than Jesse Eisenberg’s interpretation would suggest, but his drive and work ethic are undeniable. It’s not an accident that a guy in his twenties produced a billion-dollar platform; he could have been derailed if he’d lacked the persistence of vision and intent that the film shows so clearly. And, of course, he was kind of a jerk, probably without meaning to be. That kind of focus and drive tends to override comfortable social graces, kind of ironic when you’re building a social platform.

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Review (DVD): Restrepo

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Force Structure (Military), Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Reviews (DVD Only), Science & Politics of Science, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), War & Face of Battle
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Strong Recommendation from MajGen Robert Scales, USA (Ret)

September 27, 2010

  • Actors: Dan Kearney, Lamonta Caldwell, Kevin Rice, Misha C. Pemble-Belkin, Kyle Steiner
  • Directors: Sebastian Junger;Tim Hetherington

    • General (and PhD) Robert Scales strongly recommended this movie to an audience at the Brookings Institute today. He used it as a backdrop to his official remarks on how 4% of the total force (the engaged infantry) suffers 80% of the total casualties, but less than 1% of the total Pentagon budget is spent on training and equipping them.

    My trip report on his remarks is at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, search for <Robert Scales> without the brackets.

    General Scales is the author of three books, one of which I have reviewed that remains a classic, on the disconnect between the needs of the infantry and the pie in the sky $75 billion US national intelligence community that prefers to build expensive satellites that do not work and whose collection cannot be processed.

    Firepower in Limited War: Revised Edition
    Yellow Smoke: The Future of Land Warfare for America's Military
    The Iraq War: A Military History

    To understand the continued corruption in US military management, see also:
    War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
    Defense Facts of Life: The Plans/Reality Mismatch
    The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World

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