Over at Pullquote, the Cinetrix has reminded me of one more movie that fit in with this so-called “Year of the Unplanned Pregnancy” trend: Shoot ‘Em Up. She doesn’t really go into details, though, of how it fits in. So, allow me to elaborate. First off, as far as I recall, the pregnancy isn’t actually unplanned. But no matter, I’m going to have fun with this anyway. So, let’s pretend that Shoot ‘Em Up is a pro-life movie. Despite the fact that the baby in the film is already born, there’s a bad guy trying to kill it. Let’s call him the abortionist (aka the pro-choicer). Then there’s a do-gooder hero who aims to keep the baby alive. Let’s call him the pro-lifer. Guess who wins out in the end? And you thought the movie was just a silly take on the gun control issue. There’s political topics all over the place!
As you can probably tell, I’m being a bit ridiculous. But sometimes it’s important to get absurd when you’re dealing with too many serious people out there, and too many year-end labels and summaries. Yes, there were surprisingly a lot of preggers movies out in 2007 (Waitress, Knocked Up, Juno), but there’s much more to mention than simply lumping those similarly themed movies together and clapping your hands and saying “yeah!” The more significant thing to address is how these movies and others this year provided balanced discussion fodder for the abortion issue. Each of those unplanned pregnancy comedies could be interpreted as being pro-life, yet each could also be interpreted as being pro-choice (don’t forget, choice can also mean choosing not to abort).
It’s pretty upsetting when you see more documentaries than most Americans, and yet you haven’t seen any of the 15 docs deemed best of the year by the Academy. This is my case this year, and I guess I was slacking. Or maybe the real problem is that Oscar has shortlisted too many films that haven’t been released commercially. In his IN DEPTH look at the shortlisted docs, Kurt Cobain About a Sonfilmmaker AJ Schnack points out that only 6 of the films have pursued a true theatrical release and 2/3 have not been available for review by critics nor have they reported their box office. For commentary on Schnack’s earlier analysis of both this year and last year’s eligible docs, check out Karina’s post from last week.
So, there’s my excuse. Anyway, I still have many months to see the docs that are most likely to receive the five nominations. My guesses of what I need to see before Oscar night: Sicko, No End in Sight, Lake of Fire, Body of Warand War/Dance (or Taxi to the Dark Side, if the Academy allows so many Iraq War docs). Of course, if I want to be a true doc fan, I should make sure to see all 15, as well as a lot of other films left outside the shortlist.
The fall festival and new release schedule is so jam-packed that every week it seems like two or three new movies open that I’ve long wanted to see, but have had absolutely no time to watch a screener or go to a screening. The smaller the movie, the worse I feel when I have to let it slip through the cracks unseen. I really don’t care that I never made it to a screening of In The Valley of Elah; it breaks my heart that I didn’t get a chance to see The Last Winterbefore it opened, or that I saw Great World of Sound but didn’t have a chance to write about it between Sundance and its New York premiere last month.
This week, the two films that have unfortunately eluded my grasp are Tony Kaye’s abortion documentary Lake of Fire, which opens at Film Forum on Wednesday; and Desert Bayou, a documentary about Hurricane Katrina victims evacuated to a National Guard camp in Utah.
I’m planning to go see Fire on Wednesday and will have more to say after that. But Bayou has been on my gotta-see list since it screened at the Full Frame Film Festival in Spring of 2006, and as I’ve basically become obsessed with seeing every independent film about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath that I can get my hands on, I really can’t wait to get a look at it. You can check out the trailer above; after the jump, you’ll find a synopsis of the film taken from its MySpace page. Bayou opens in New York on October 5 and in Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Chicago on October 19.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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It’s pretty upsetting when you see more documentaries than most Americans, and yet you haven’t seen any of the 15 docs deemed best of the year by the Academy. This is my case this year, and I guess I was slacking. Or maybe the real problem is that Oscar has shortlisted too many films that haven’t been released commercially. In his IN DEPTH look at the shortlisted docs, Kurt Cobain About a Son filmmaker AJ Schnack points out that only 6 of the films have pursued a true theatrical release and 2/3 have not been available for review by critics nor have they reported their box office. For commentary on Schnack’s earlier analysis of both this year and last year’s eligible docs, check out Karina’s post from last week.
