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This interesting doc was recommended to me by Silenus, and I am going to recommend it to you because Timothy "Speed" Levitch is worth spending time with. I liked it almost as much as I liked My Dinner With Andre, and that's saying something.

Of course "Speed" is the main narrator of the doc and its focus, but the Big Apple is the main character.

I'd encountered "Speed" elsewhere and not known it: in Waking Life, and in a TV show I saw on the Cartoon Network whilst under the influence of skunk bud. A cop named Hoop asked the question "Why is 'seedy' bad? Seeds are miraculous!" That was "Speed."

Sicko

Moore drops that increasingly annoying confrontational "gotcha" gimmick* and the result is his most effective film to date. His trademark cornball folksy exasperation works well as he tells the stories of a few people without health insurance before getting quickly to the true subject of Sicko: people with full coverage whose insurance companies fucked them. Sometimes to death.

Sicko is a grim catalogue of pointless suffering and waste. Many in the crowded theater were reduced to loud and continual blubbering. On July 4th at The Charles the outrage and disgust were palpable. I hope everyone who sees Sicko carries that outrage into action. It will take hard work and activism for the US to end the barbaric negligence of its citizens' health by rich amoral corporations and sycophantic politicians. Just as the criminal actions of HMOs and insurers become unbearable in the film, Moore pauses to ask "What is wrong with us?" It's a powerful moment.

Sicko isn't perfect. Moore meanders a bit too much, lingering in France and Cuba for too long, getting a bit off topic in the former and a bit maudlin in the latter. I'm a huge fan of French Republican idealism but Moore ignores the heavy cost of its nanny state in his glowing portrait.**It's also likely that the Cuba sequences were stage-managed to some degree by government officials eager for good PR. But considering the cloud of insurance company obfuscation Americans have breathed for years, Moore's approach is hardly unwarranted. At a time when the Democratic Party has removed universal health care from its platform the debate Sicko hopefully inspires is badly needed. See it before you pay your next premium.

*With one glaring exception, which I shan't spoil.
**At least the French make providing health care to everyone a priority; financing it is a secondary consideration, and the idea of prioritizing profits over health is regarded as obscene.

[Image courtesy VCReporter]

Netflix

I very much enjoyed this reminiscence of Carl Jung by fellow analysts, former patients, and his family and friends. I particularly enjoyed the footage of his house and tower at Bollingen, and the clips of Carl digging tiny springs in the sand by Lake Zurich.

I spent five years working through Jung's Collected Works, and got a third of the way into his Mysterium Conjunctionis before admitting defeat.

What brought me to Jung? Dreams. Dreams of dismembered horses bleeding in cauldrons. Dreams of Egyptian gardens and the presence of precious stones in my hands and feet. Dreams of black-hooded figures engaged in bloody fights, and of ethereal crystalline palaces against night skies, deep black with stars. Dreams of crabs and goats and twins and archers and bulls...My junior English paper in high school was about Jungian symbolism in the dream fiction of H.P. Lovecraft.

Whether you buy his theories or no, Jung was amongst the greatest of the 20th century's intellectuals, and inspired not only psychoanalysts but artists and musicians and writers and occultists and politicians and even physicists. What I'd give to hear recordings of his dinner chats with Albert Einstein!

Matter of Heart can get a bit cultish now and again, portraying as it does the gushing admiration of Jung's closest associates. But the filmmakers also engage his naughty affair with a patient during transference, a great moral failing that nevertheless resulted in a fecund period of creativity. There's no hint, however, of Jung's brief enthusiasm for German fascism...

I recommend it if you're into old Carl. Otherwise you'd be bored silly. Also included is a remarkable BBC interview from the '50s series Face to Face, and a 20-minute film about Maud Oakes and her individuation work with a stone Jung carved for his 75th birthday.

Netflix

Yes, children, there was a time when pornographic films didn't grow on trees. They were hard to come by (ugh) indeed. Deep Throat changed everything, and made athletic fellatio the ultimate fantasy for hetero males. The film grossed a ridiculous amount of cash, made porn briefly mainstream (my mother saw it, for Christ's sake--in a small-town PA theater), and resulted in equally venomous feminist and Fundamentalist backlashes. The stars became global celebrities and suffered terribly as a result. Linda Lovelace claimed she was coerced and forced into porn, joined forces with Gloria Steinem, then disavowed her coercion claim and started doing photo shoots in her fifties again. She died tragically in a car accident shortly thereafter. Harry Reems nearly drank himself to death before becoming a minister. The director and producers spent decades fearful that their mob financiers might decide to break legs--or worse.

Here is the whole sordid story, with the usual cast of innalectshuls commenting: Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Dick Cavett, Erica Jong, John Waters, Doctor Ruth. My favorite is Helen Gurley Brown discussing how wonderful it is to witness a spurting penis, and how rubbing ejaculate on your face is really good for you. Thanks, Helen, for the crippling and unforgettable image of you miming this behavior, talking about proteins and hormones. I can't get it out of my mind now.

Warning: the documentary features clips from the original, including Linda's trademark technique (which seems a bit quaint nowadays). If you object to such footage, stay away.

Netflix

Jesus Camp brings back those wonderful days spent in the creepy churches my maternal grandparents attended. People lathered and spitting gibberish, the laying on of hands, continuous re-interpretation of the news using The Book of Revelations. One fun afternoon featured the condemnation of a waitress at the local Denny's as a witch because one church-goer got ill after her Grand Slam breakfast: eye of newt, frog's leg, mandrake and salmonella. Fortunately Evangelical cultists can't sally forth with brands and ignite the targets of their wrath any more. At least not yet.

There are terrifying scenes of brainwashed children hugging a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush, and several close-ups of beautiful babies bawling out their desire for righteous judges made me want to contact social services. But I'm not so horrified by this documentary as other lefties. I lived through many Vacation Bible School experiences, complete with End Times Puppet Theater and the condemnation of everyone whose mindset didn't precisely mirror the conventional wisdom of rural Adams County, PA. I have faith that many of the charismatic, talented, and bright kids featured in Jesus Camp will end up like the youngins I knew at VBS: suspicious of the entire Jesus industry at the least, and diehard contrary to organized faith at best. We always found a place during break to smoke and play doctor just behind the brick barbecue on the far side of the parking lot, and I don't doubt the same things go on at Jesus Camp, where the kids are compelled for a variety of reasons to behave a certain way while the parents are around.

Ironically in my experience the most devout Bible-thumpers get knocked up at 16 and have abortions, then start in on Glade huffing before moving to less aromatic crystal meth use. The firebrand preacher at Gramma's Gettysburg looney bin absconded with the church till after being found with a suitcase full of heroin in the rectory. He ended up in China.

Many Evangelicals whose shuttered beliefs are based in fiery self-loathing find fuel in hateful churches, and none of us should get too exercised about them. Yes, they are alarming, their views are painfully moribund and childish, and their Christianity is buffoonish thuggery based in the worst bits of Leviticus. There are many millions of them to boot, and they are organized and powerful and anti-democratic.

But they have always been organized, powerful, and anti-democratic, and the Republic has fumbled forward. Read any page at random in the collected works of H.L. Mencken, who had the best solution. Expose their foolishness, hypocrisy, and influence wherever possible, and drive a stake of bitter satire through their hearts. Let's hope the crashing fall of Bush and his fundy crowd minimizes Evangelical/Pentecostal political influence for a generation at least.

Most of the right-wing end-timers I grew up around were good citizens with limited exposure to outside ideas. Perhaps we need secularist missions to go deep into red country, funded by Soros.



I like best documentaries about things I don't know, and I know very little about the hardcore scene in the early 1980s. I was living in northern Baltimore County at the time, attending a school with its own space/time fabric. We didn't even have suburbia to rebel against. Any movement whose primary goal was anti-Reaganism is alright by me, and American Hardcore brings those days back with a vengeance.

There were a handful of Black Flag devotees at Hereford High, but they were merely another clan amongst the dozens of others: burnouts, jocks, hippies, cheerleaders, nerds, metal heads, etc. They didn't fit in with the prevailing Southern Rock aesthetics to say the least.

American Hardcore has lots of VHS footage of old shows by bands like Bad Brains, DOA, the Circle Jerks, Jerry's Kids, etc. There are interesting interviews about the scene with lots of key players from DC, LA, Austin, OC. My favorite part was a great clip of some guy in the audience trying to get into a fight with Henry Rollins, who tautingly plays with his tormentor before punching the shit out of him. A good time was had by all. I'm sure fans will kvetch that certain bands are ignored, but I'm out of the loop there.

What ties the doc together most are its fantastic graphics and innovative design. Love the clever logo play and the appropriately gloomy gray and black maps. Excellent use of montage and rapid-fire collage. Very polished and engaging.

Netflix

If you get a chance check out A Family Undertaking. It's less than an hour long but packs quite a whollop. I'm all for a return to home-based celebrations at death, and a cardboard box decorated by friends and family would suit me fine. The ill and quite old should not be carted off to sterile institutions for their final days--they should be at home with their nearest and dearest (one laid-out corpse in the movie is guarded by his dog companion, who sits under the bed growling at guests). The funeral industry too often whisks remains away from hospitals without families even knowing there are far cheaper options for their dearly departed. A scam of the first order.

A Family Undertaking includes touching footage of several home funerals, and follows two families through the deaths of loved ones. The Nebraska grampa who assists in the making of his own coffin is a hoot.

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