It seemed at the time like one of those super-ambitious, globe trotting sophomore projects that filmmakers often undertake to prove themselves after having a successful first film. So going into it I had pretty low expectations. It felt like sort of a mash-up of several cultural tolerance themed episodes of 30 Days and Farenheight 9/11 with its efforts to point out the hypocrisy of the past 50 years of US foreign policy especially where the Middle East is concerned. All in all it was pretty good albeit spending a lot of time to get to the pretty obvious message that terrorists are extremists and do not represent all Afghanis/Muslims/Arabs/etc. Similarly the distinction was made by many of the men-on-the-street interviewed that the people of the USA are fine folks despite the actions of the US government. This is pretty much the theme of every episode of 30 Days and its a message that needs to be hammered home these days - people are all basically the same and have similar goals: to live a peaceful life, take care of their kids and hope they have a better life than their parents.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
more than a warlock
Sam and I are both very excited about tonight's presentation by Super Size Me filmmaker Morgan Spurlock at UNT. I like Spurlock and his Michael Moore-esque style of Direct Cinema and also his sweet biker mustache. I really enjoyed Super Size Me and 30 Days, the doc/reality show he produced for FX (canceled after its third season as of this month), and so when we found out some organization was screening his newest documentary, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden, we decided to check it out. I had heard some interviews with Spurlock on NPR about this project and honestly it sounded pretty crappy.
It seemed at the time like one of those super-ambitious, globe trotting sophomore projects that filmmakers often undertake to prove themselves after having a successful first film. So going into it I had pretty low expectations. It felt like sort of a mash-up of several cultural tolerance themed episodes of 30 Days and Farenheight 9/11 with its efforts to point out the hypocrisy of the past 50 years of US foreign policy especially where the Middle East is concerned. All in all it was pretty good albeit spending a lot of time to get to the pretty obvious message that terrorists are extremists and do not represent all Afghanis/Muslims/Arabs/etc. Similarly the distinction was made by many of the men-on-the-street interviewed that the people of the USA are fine folks despite the actions of the US government. This is pretty much the theme of every episode of 30 Days and its a message that needs to be hammered home these days - people are all basically the same and have similar goals: to live a peaceful life, take care of their kids and hope they have a better life than their parents.
It seemed at the time like one of those super-ambitious, globe trotting sophomore projects that filmmakers often undertake to prove themselves after having a successful first film. So going into it I had pretty low expectations. It felt like sort of a mash-up of several cultural tolerance themed episodes of 30 Days and Farenheight 9/11 with its efforts to point out the hypocrisy of the past 50 years of US foreign policy especially where the Middle East is concerned. All in all it was pretty good albeit spending a lot of time to get to the pretty obvious message that terrorists are extremists and do not represent all Afghanis/Muslims/Arabs/etc. Similarly the distinction was made by many of the men-on-the-street interviewed that the people of the USA are fine folks despite the actions of the US government. This is pretty much the theme of every episode of 30 Days and its a message that needs to be hammered home these days - people are all basically the same and have similar goals: to live a peaceful life, take care of their kids and hope they have a better life than their parents.
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