Over the past two years I wrote, produced and directed a film called “We Will Make You Whole Again” with my co-director, editor and cinematographer Trevor Hawkins of Mammoth Media. Some of you know this because a couple months back I shared the trailer for the film and told you a little bit about what it was all about.

So now I wanted to make sure you knew that the film is available for download for just $5.

Still, why should you spend your hard earned money to watch it? After all, it’s just another short film.

Well, here are some reasons why you should check it out:

1. The themes of illegal immigration, sexual identity, domestic terrorism, the casualties of war and a post-racial society are definitely top of mind these days, and the film explores all of these through characters who are universally relatable yet also surprisingly unique.
2. In the increasingly noisy world of radio shock jocks and talking heads, the film only has one line of dialogue and is driven almost entirely by an original score, which has been described by the Kansas City Star as “melancholic, majestic, ethereal, ominous, somber and beautiful.”
3. The title of the film comes from a phrase an Exxon representative said to fisherman in Alaska during their very first meeting back in 1989. And our film premiered about a week before the current tragedy in the Gulf struck. Eerie timing to say the least.
4. Maybe I’m naive, but I believe the work I produce has value. In particular, when I work this long and hard on something, I think giving it away for free is silly. And I hope you know that I wouldn’t ask you to spend $5 to purchase this film if I didn’t think it was worth it. So while I won’t guarantee that everybody who watches it will enjoy it, I’m confident that the vast majority will.

But hey, don’t just take my word for it. The following are reviews from some folks who’ve seen it locally here in Kansas City…

The Pitch:

Strangers cross paths. They brush shoulders or hold a glance a beat too long. In that brief moment, lives can be changed. By now, this set up is familiar — it’s a theme routinely seen in movies because it speaks volumes about the human condition. Kansas City acts as the backdrop for another such film, the beautifully shot We Will Make You Whole Again.

Shane Adams:

The movie is really great. They’ve did a terrific job telling a compelling story about 6 strangers that feel disconnected from the world and each other because of things like age, race, sexuality, gender, language and culture, while revealing the common, everyday actions and emotions that unite them all.

kckimchi:

enjoyed the local short film We Will Make You Whole Again (@wwmywa) + the Q&A w/ @jpgardner last night. Check it out if you haven’t yet

strangegirl76:

Saw @wwmywa last night & thought it was amazing! You can download it for $5. DO IT!

inaki:

Wow. Beautiful work. Really well done. :)

platterscratch:

@wwmywa moving and brilliant. Bravo.

As mentioned, the film is available for download for just $5. That gets you both a high quality .mov file that you can view on laptops and HDTVs and a medium quality .m4v file that you can use on most any portable media player, the most common being the iPod and iPhone.

So, if you’re a fan on independent film consider buying a copy. And if you’re a blogger, please consider writing about the film.

Thanks much and I hope you enjoy, “We Will Make You Whole Again.”

Alex Gibney, the filmmaker behind Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, is back with his take on the Abramoff scandal and it seems like it’ll be illuminating…and scary.

Check out this featurette…

Basically…Money + Power = Problems. Especially when it comes to the upcoming financial reform legislation. Which is why I’m heartened that the Dems are pushing to get a bill to the floor sooner rather than later and force the Repubs to choose between voter discontent and campaign contributions.

However, Dems don’t get off the hook in Gibney’s doc. In fact, if you watched the vid, you’ll know that Chuck Schumer was called out as asking for concessions for hedge fund managers that are unsavory to say the least. Especially since their income does not fall into the long term capital gains category but is still taxed at 15%.

And this gets to the basic problem of economic fairness. Because folks who make their income off of investments shouldn’t be given preferential treatment above those who work day in and day out to make a hard earned dollar. Why? Well, currently, a guy like Warren Buffet who does nothing but shift money around pays a lot less income tax than his secretary…and even he doesn’t think that’s fair.

By the way, the Obama administration has come out forcefully from the start on closing this loophole and Schumer has recently signaled he may buck his constituents and back the change.

Either way, I can’t wait to see this film. Should be an eye opener.

(PS – By the way…if we raised the income tax on investment income…do we really think these folks would stop investing? Because the big dogs would still make so much money, even with a higher tax rate, that they wouldn’t care about the tax. We’re talking BILLIONS here, not a few thousand dollars that day traders would care about. I’m just saying…)

I’ve been genuinely intrigued at how much fiction and reality have been intersecting recently.

See, there’s this film called MOON and it follows the story of a guy working on the far side of the moon who figures out that there’s a lot more to his mission than collecting the natural resource Helium-3. It’s a fantastic piece of science fiction cinema and if you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and catch it while it’s still in theatres.

But after seeing it I discovered that not only is the energy source they talked about in the movie real, but it’s clean, supposedly economically viable and extremely plentiful on the moon’s surface.

More at True/Slant.

How did the BBC find out what happened to untold billions in Iraq, but we somehow haven’t yet?

I’ll be checking this out later tonight, so I’ll have more thoughts then.

The award winning documentarian trains his patented eye on the events that happened at Abu Ghraib prison in a film coming out on April 25.

From watching the following clips, as well as Frontline’s searing Bush’s War, a pretty clear picture emerges and makes it incredibly difficult for the Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to put the responsibility for these things on some wayward guards. Intelligence officers were clearly involved and this was part of the “gloves come off” strategy we had post 9/11. And when the gloves come off, stuff like Abu Ghraib happens.

In any event, here’s the trailer for Standard Operating Procedure:

Here’s a clip from an interview with Megan Ambuhl Graner, Specialist, 372nd MP Company:

Here’s another interview with Javal Davis, Sergeant, 372nd MP Company:

And here’s a deleted scene from the film…

I know many who are reading this may not want to relive these events, and that’s understandable. But if we don’t seek to understand what truly happened at Abu Ghraib, we’re very likely to repeat it at some point in the future.

The film Rendition was recently released on video, and if you haven’t seen it you should. It’s well told, heartbreaking and speaks to exactly why the practice of extraordinary rendition is not only inhumane but completely unjust, regardless of what the Jack Bauer crowd claims.

The DVD also includes a documentary called Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition, Torture, and Disappearances in the “War on Terror.” This films details the rendition tales of two men, one of which we’ve talked about at a couple times here, Khaled el-Masri. The other is Binyam Mohamed. el-Masri was released a few months after he was detained. Mohamed has not yet been released.

Thankfully, you don’t have to rent the DVD to watch it, as the filmmakers have provided it free of charge on Google Video. It’s only 27 minutes long so please watch the whole thing.

This is what happens when we allow blind fear to steer our actions. The results are devastating for everybody except the terrorists, who welcome such policies as evidence that we are exactly who they say we are. But we are better than this, and the only way we can prove it is to stop the policy extraordinary rendition now.

I second Sully.

The thing that makes Coverfield endlessly watchable is the fact that it repackages a very political event without being political. Because what makes the story and the conceit of the “one camera perspective” so effective is 9/11. Sure, this film could be made in a pre-9/11 world, but it wouldn’t be nearly as powerful or terrifying.

But 9/11 is really just the cultural backdrop, and the film never delves into that territory long enough to take away from the ride that some of the most believable special effects work in the history of filmmaking delivers. I’m not being dramatic. Cloverfield is so realistic that days later I’m still myself, “How in the hell did they do that?”

One last bit of praise for the film, there are some subtle hints toward the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, and anybody who has read his work knows where this all could be going in the next film. And yes, there will be a next film since it cost roughly $25 million to make and grossed $47 million over the weekend.

Seriously. Go see it. Even if you think you might get motion sickness from all the shaky camera work. Odds are you won’t, and instead you’ll find yourself enjoying the hell out it.

Oh, and if you have seen it, drop your review in the comments section.

Manufacturing Dissent is a new documentary about Moore and his tendency to bend the truth to fit into his seemingly predetermined storylines.

The Daily Dish reports on what it’s all about…

The film was produced by two Canadian, self-described liberals, who began as fans of Moore’s movies but in the process of investigating his claims, came to see that he is a self-aggrandizing fraud. The movie is not a right-wing hit job by any means, but a meticulous, carefully constructed case that demolishes not just crucial arguments Moore makes, but also the cynicism behind some of his artistic decisions.

The post points out that you can watch some clips at AOL, but I’d suggest the website I linked to in the title above.

Here’s the larger issue…and it speaks to what the CenterSphere is all about. You can’t be intellectually dishonest for as long as Moore has and not get targeted by earnest people seeking to set the record straight. With every truth he twists to make “fact” more interesting, he trades credibility for cash, and that’s not a sustainable path. He should realize this, and many said he turned a corner with Sicko.

I guess we’ll see…

“It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine – I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they’re in a better position to make a decision.â€Â?
- Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) – The Hill

It is just fair. A simple concept. It is hard to believe that anyone would oppose simple fairness. Yet they do. There are politicians against fairness, like Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minn) who sponsored anti-fairness legislation, bloggers against fairness, like Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters, as well as meddling foreign media like The Economist, who oppose fairness in America.

I bring this to your attention, because (as obviously wrong headed as this anti-fairness coalition may be) they do make a point that we – the common sense Americans who believe in fairness – should carefully consider. Certainly there is a fairness problem with broadcasters, but if we look at this problem objectively, we see it cannot be solved by dealing with the broadcasters alone. The bigger problem resides in the listeners, watchers, and readers, who are so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of opinion and debate available in all kinds of media, that they fail to ingest a fair and balanced diet of divergent opinion. No worries. Information technology created this problem, information technology can solve it. Divided We Stand United We Fall Enterprises intrduces the right technology solution for all fair-minded Americans.

Yes – exciting news – DWSUWF is branching out! We are announcing right here and right now the development of three new products that will (just like the wildly successful V-chip) soon be integrated into your life. And it will happen just as soon as our many bipartisan campaign contribution checks clear the bank. Without further ado:

From the DWSUWF Semiconductor division – announcing the FairChipâ„¢

From the DWSUWF Software division – announcing FairBuyâ„¢ software

As exciting as these products are, we have even better things in store for the future:

From the DWSUWF BioTech division a pre-release announcement of FairThinkâ„¢ ocular/cochlear integrated implants.

Pictured here is a test of FairThinkâ„¢ technology using an early prototype of the product (Full Discolsure: These images resulted from a product placement deal DWSUWF cut with Stanley Kubrick in the film A Clockwork Orange). In the top picture on this post, a registered Democrat beta tester is watching Michael Moore’s Sicko, and in the bottom picture he is watching back to back episodes of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Nanotechnology and computing advances have improved the technology since the prototype appeared in the movie. The new FairThinkâ„¢ implants will be discreetly installed subcutaneously with minimal, almost unnoticeable scarring.

What a convenience! No need to worry about keeping each individual device in balance, your FairThinkâ„¢ implants track and balance it all. The FairThinkâ„¢ implants communicate with all FairChipâ„¢ enabled devices through the FairToothâ„¢ proprietary network. All part of the FairLifeâ„¢ balanced life you know you want to live, because that is what fair Americans do.

x-posted from Divided We Stand United We Fall. Inspired by comments on Justin’s recent post.

The following preview is for a documentary that details our incompetence in trying to rebuild Iraq . The people in it were people who were there, saw the train headed in the wrong direction and couldn’t convince our administration they were going to end up where we are today.

Powerful stuff.

I also found a public television program about the film, presented here in three parts.

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

For more on this, see my post about Sicko and how it could scuttle the health care debate.

This has nothing to do with politics, unless you count fighting Nazis as political…

In any event…Indiana Jones is coming back! w00t!

As you all well know, Sicko is coming out soon and I’m holding my breath in fear. Why?

Well, of course I sympathize with the notion that things need to change since so many Americans live without healthcare and are one hospital visit away from financial ruin. And as I’ve said on this blog many times, its immoral that we don’t have some form of healthcare for all at this point. However, could Moore achieve the exact opposite of what he proposes? Could he turn even more people against the idea of health care for all?

Well, remember the Cuban stunt? He pulled his old schtick and our Treasury Deapartment took notice.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control notified Moore in a letter dated May 2 that it was conducting a civil investigation for possible violations of the U.S. trade embargo restricting travel to Cuba. A copy of the letter was obtained Tuesday by the AP.

“This office has no record that a specific license was issued authorizing you to engage in travel-related transactions involving Cuba,” Dale Thompson, OFAC chief of general investigations and field operations, wrote in the letter to Moore.

In February, Moore took about 10 ailing workers from the Ground Zero rescue effort in Manhattan for treatment in Cuba, said a person working with the filmmaker on the release of “Sicko.” The person requested anonymity because Moore’s attorneys had not yet determined how to respond.

Here’s the best part…

Moore declined to comment, said spokeswoman Lisa Cohen.

Nice. Let’s not forget that Castro has been brutal with dissidents…but I digress…

Listen, I thought Roger & Me was a damn fine piece of citizen activism, but the fame has gotten to Moore and he’s become increasingly hacky, even going as far as saying his movies are satire when questioned about the validity of certain facts. Well, Ann Coulter calls herself a satrist too. I’m not saying he’s as bad as her, but I am saying his excuses allow people to easily place him in a similar group.

And just in case you’re wondering, it’s being reported that Sicko calls for government-run health care, which has been political poison since I can remember…

In “Sicko,” the filmmaker calls for abolishing the insurance industry, putting a tight regulatory collar on pharmaceutical companies and embracing a Canadian-style government-run system.

Oye…here’s more…

Rejecting Moore’s prescription on healthcare could alienate liberal activists, who will play a big role in choosing the party’s next standard-bearer. However, his proposal â€â€? wiping out private health insurance and replacing it with a massive federal program â€â€? could be political poison with the larger electorate. [...]

If Moore’s fire-breathing proposal catches on among party activists, who tend to be suspicious of the private sector and supportive of direct government action, the candidates’ pragmatic, consensus-seeking ideas could look like weak-kneed temporizing â€â€? much the way their rejection of an immediate pullout from Iraq has drawn heated criticism from antiwar activists.

So could he screw us all over? Do know that I think we’ll eventually get universal health care, but could Moore set us back another decade? It would certainly be an ironic footnote that the very film that was made to help the cause actually ended up hurting it.

And here’s the biggest problem I have with Moore in all of this…he’s calling for something that will NEVER happen, and I think he knows it. So he’ll always have something to fight against. Because even if we do get universal health care in some form (most likely a mix of private and public), he won’t be satisified.

Weigh in with your thoughts…

Let’s not even get into the fact that the movie shows planes flying into buildings. Bad taste alone should have prevented this being played INSIDE AN AIRCRAFT.

Thankfully people threw a fit over this move and Virgin has subsequently reconsidered showing the pathetic ‘Loose Change 2′ movie.

Find out more over at Hot Air.

The following YouTube vid is just one segment from the upcoming film Friends of God: A Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi, and it certainly makes me think of Jesus Camp.

Much of this won’t come as a surprise to many of you, but I think it’s a good demonstration of what our children are being taught, and more importantly how they’re being taught.

I hope you get a chance to take a look.

A little Saturday movie blogging.

I can’t wait to see this one.

Brilliant.

I can’t wait to see this movie.

How about you?

UPDATE:
I just saw it tonight. It’s nice! I like!

But what’s truly frightening is what the character of Borat, who’s extremely racist and bigoted, brings out in the people who open up to him. Wow. If you go see it, you’ll understand.

In any event, I highly, highly recommend it. Extremely good.

For all you fellow Kubrick fans…there’s this…

Stanley Kubrick never threw anything away. On the other hand, he didn’t have much of a filing system, and when he moved � permanently, it turned out � from Hollywood to London in 1962, a great many things went astray. Among them was the sole copy of a film treatment called “Lunatic at Large,� which Mr. Kubrick had commissioned in the late ’50s from the noir pulp novelist Jim Thompson, with whom he had worked on “The Killing,� a 1956 bank-heist story that became his first successful feature, and then on 1957’s “Paths of Glory.�

The manuscript remained lost until after Mr. Kubrick’s death, in 1999, when his son-in-law, Philip Hobbs, working with an archivist, turned it up, along with a couple of other scripts, and set about trying to make it into a movie.

Very cool. I can’t wait.