Film Review: Deforce

There are few cities that have experienced American history as dramatically as Detroit. During most of the 20^th century, Detroit had a reputation as a model city, and during World War II, as an arsenal of democracy. Through the 1950s, the city’s largely integrated industrial workforce supported a prosperous middle class. At its peak population level in 1950, the city’s median household income was a third higher than the nation’s. With these facts, Deforce begins a heartbreaking history of decline and violence that not only helps explain Detroit’s current crisis, but also deeply challenges our understanding of poverty, urban politics, and especially race.

Film Review: !WAR: Women Art Revolution

Anyone who lived feminism will enjoy !WAR, but those that didn’t are the ones who most need to watch it. We need to see life breathed back into feminism, see its passion and creative problem-solving made contagious. We need to be reminded that feminism was once cool and, though gains have been made, the fight for equality is not over.

Ten years and two wars after 9/11, America’s struggle against Islamist terrorism is nowhere close to succeeding. If a superpower like America can’t vanquish this scourge, is there any force in the world that can?

There might well be: Bollywood, India’s flamboyant film industry. Just as the Beatles and rock ’n’ roll helped bring down the Kremlin, Bollywood might yet prove to be the undoing of the most noxious brand of Islamic fundamentalism.

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“I’ve dealt with situational depression. I do have an addictive personality. I can be self- destructive. I can be vindictive.”

That confession could come straight from the lips of Mavis Gary, the caustic antiheroine of “Young Adult.” Charlize Theron stars in the provocative comedy, which opens Friday in the Twin Cities. But screenwriter Diablo Cody didn’t pen that stinging self-assessment as dialogue for Theron. It’s Cody describing herself.

“Occasionally I think about experiences I’ve had or things I’ve lost, and I still feel bitterness about it,” she said from New York City. “Definitely, I’ve related to Mavis at times of my life. But I hope I have a lot more lightness than Mavis does.” No question about it. Cody, 33, is an irreverent, unfailingly candid wit, with a presence that outshines many a star.

(via Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

The Accidental On-Purpose Documentarian: “We’ve set the bar so low that we don’t feel any pressure from the outside,” says Mika Rättö, front man of an obscure Finnish experimental rock band called Circle, at the beginning of Esko Lönnberg’s meta-meta-documentary, Man with a Video Camera.

To be sure, Rättö’s words aren’t very reassuring to someone just sitting down to a 50-minute-long film with a jumpy timeline and English subtitles. But for artists, musicians, and documentary buffs with even a junior varsity-level of intellectual stamina, Man with a Video Camera is an interesting, experimental peek into what is often seen as an impenetrable subject: the creative process.

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