Albums

THE CAREER OF AN AMERICAN CELEBRITY Providing no evidence unavailable in a half-dozen better documentaries on the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, the 2012 The Prosecution of an American President serves as a 100 minute advertisement for Vincent Bugliosi’s 2008 book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. One may agree with its themes…

HARD ENOUGH AND THEN SOME If ordinary movies and television make you wish for more and less at the same time, New York artist Ron Rocheleau has a Christmas present for your inner savage intellectual.   His ongoing collage series Concrete T.V., a cult favorite broadcast on New York’s Channel 67 since 1993, is now available…

VAGUE ETCH Cartoon College, a film by Josh Melrod and Tara Wray, chronicles the experiences of a group of aspiring cartoonists enrolled in the selective two-year MFA program offered by the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont.   Featuring interviews with students and a prestigious faculty, it covers ’” loosely ’” one class’s…

NEEDS A MIXER Douglas Tirola’s Hey Bartender is an ode to mixology in three parts: one part historical survey, one part character study, and one part massive, unquestioning endorsement.   Although it is generally well-put-together, and packed with information about a thriving socioeconomic subculture, this film does not venture far enough outside the realm of trivia…

LOVE IS ALL AROUND US Stephen Mosher and Pat Dwyer met in undergrad at North Texas State University and have been inseparable ever since.   As their twenty-five-year anniversary approaches, they decide it’s finally time to tie the knot.   The trouble is, in most states, that decision isn’t theirs to make.   Stephen and Pat are gay….

WHAT AN ASP During one of the tamer scenes of Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor’s Queen of the Nile leads Julius Caesar to the tomb of Alexander the Great. Staring down at the (pretend) grave of Western Civilization’s greatest conqueror, it’s possible that Taylor was thinking, “Amateur!” Whereas Alexander tried and failed to take with force the…

STRANGELY FAMILIAR Srange Frame isn’t perfect.   But there’s something fairly good for everyone here, because (contrary to its narrative’s revolutionary politics) the movie goes out of its way for its consumers.   It has danceable songs, spaceships, nipples, clever dialogue, and an Up the Proletariat subversive pretext, the kind of nonspecific general “revolution” that appeals to…

AND YOU THOUGHT THIS WAS THE HOUSE THAT CRACK BUILT As with any empire which has come before, America has a nasty habit of singling out groups of its denizens to  bear the blame for  the country’s ills.   Since landing in Virginia over 400 years ago, fringe groups and individuals have been chosen by the powers that…

IMPERFECTLY INSPIRING Kumaré, Vikram Gandhi’s spiritual alter ego and the subject of his navel-gazing documentary, questions the growing Western trend of seeking personal fulfillment through self-sublimation to Eastern gurus. Gandhi, who was raised devoutly in the Hindu tradition and even studied religion in college, initially begins work on a documentary about seeking a true guru….

MERCIFULLY, A DOCUMENTARY WHICH IS NOT MILKED FOR SENTIMENT Cecily Pingree and Jason Mann’s superb documentary focuses on a group of Maine organic dairy farmers who are unceremoniously dropped by their distributor (H.P. Hood, the off-camera villain of the film).   The farmers decide that rather than let their lives be ruined by this arbitrary outside…