Missing the screening sometimes means missing the movie, or having to wait 6 years to watch it. There's a couple I still regret not making it to (and still would like to watch...). Anyway, This documentary is on the subject of « slums » or « bidonville » though the terms are being targetted as inacurrate from the opening, and the way squatters are the principal form of urbanization in the world. New neighborhoods are slums that are being annexed by the city, and there would be a billion of squatters worldwide. Though the movie seem to gloss over the problems going along the way an urban environment and absence of greywater evactuation create problems, it deals a great deal with the positive aspects of self-governance in a matter of housing.
Reviews
75 Reviews
Slums: Cities of Tomorrow
(2013)
the positive aspects of self-governance in a matter of housing.
2 November 2020
The OA
(2016–2019)
The season 2 seem to mostly revolve around tying the unresolved ends of the first one
2 November 2020
No spoilers? Ok. I found out about the filmmaking duo of Brit Marling & Zat Batmanglij some years ago while watching « The East » with some old housemates of mine. We laugh wholeheartedly at the jokes people played on them while they were out researching the film. Then I got to watch their other films, as well as the first season of OA and enjoyed the feeling of mystery when you don't actualy know if there's anything surnatural in it, or if it's all in our heads. This second season, which include its lot of mysteries seem to mostly revolve around tying the unresolved ends of the first one, as if producers had called for its making because they had not « gotten » it.
Before Midnight
(2013)
"I wonder if they'll go as far as making a fourth one..."
2 November 2020
It's twenty years after this and a decade after that as they joke about in the movie, and that third act just killed it. Whenever it was that I first watched the first one, a somewhat untypical romantic comedy starring the 1990's old Julie Delpy, a frenchwoman on her way back from her grandmother, and Ethan Hawke, an american man flying home from vienna after some time backpacking in europe. They talk for a minute before reaching the trainstation, and upon getting out, he crabs his courrage to ask the silly question : do you want to go out with me? Litteraly. Out of the train, meaning. Well, that's the first one. A lengh-long dialog between the two smart 20- something in linklater's screenplaying style, and the second act, shows the man as a writer whom found some success based on a novel he wrote about their encounter. But twenty years later, it seems like none of the rom-com clichés are left to exploit. The two worned out forty something still have some wit if only to satirize over the bad shape of their relationship, after ten years of daily lives and twins, which only makes it more realistic. I wonder if they'll go as far as making a fourth one...
Drone
(II) (2014)
"Turns out video games do kill"
2 November 2020
Again, if we could have an open discussion on the political implications of "pop culture" maybe we wouldn't have to wait for the ties between the military infrastructures and the videogame designers to be exposed, but would be able to criticize it based on the game themselves. Right after "Dirty War : the world is a battlefield", this documentary focuses on exposing the drone warfare from the accounts of drone pilots, the campaigning to make it a more visible cause outside of the strike zones (read, in the west/united states), and the recruiting of geeks.
Black Mirror
(2011– )
"It's hard to do cyberpunk when the world's worst out there."
2 November 2020
Black Mirror is clearly the best attempt to cyberpunk I've seen in years and if it wasn't for not having watched much television, I wouldn't believed I actualy missed out on it for so long. Maybe it's not actualy classified as cyberpunk. It's something different as if we needed a new genre to place this social and technological fiction that isn't so far off from what we already experience in the so-called "first world", or at least in most episodes. Each episode is an hour long and written by different people which makes the two season of the series, with three episodes each very diverse so far. there's also a christmas special and a third one coming out of netflix. It deals with the overabundance of conectivity and communication technologies in our lives, but isn't so far off from the present. Except having a 4-G or 5-G cellphone tracking your everymove seems acceptable while having it inside of your arm, or your eyes, or behind your ears seems different. It's those tiny differences that are making the stories of Black Mirror, but the real ones that are at stake in the criticism. And suddently you understand better why the techies wearing google glasses were getting a beat up when first introduced, or why there are signs baring entry to cyborgs and cameras to the social centers & infoshops. That's what science-fiction does best : changing little things to turn it into fiction, so that we're detached enough to finally understand our surroundings. I hope the netflix produced version is going to stay as critical but somehow doubt it.
Adventure Time
(2010–2018)
"if you're looking for a kid-appropriate lesser evil : here you go."
2 November 2020
I checked on the file where I saved all of the content that gets to either the blog or the zine and couldn't believe I had never reviewed adventure time before. It wouldn't be very helpful to everyone that I know who's as much into it as I am but I still happen to meet folks who don't know about the cartoon. As much as I enjoy anarchism being steeped into pop culture, I would also settle for less than properly anarchist. no circled vowels, but just good/honest/positive politics put into genre that make it more accessible, like a cartoon. like a cartoon for kids. like a cartoon for kids that also has deeper meanings that makes me sometimes doubt that it's actualy even made for kids to begin with, as I don't know any kid watching it personaly. I wasn't used to the short 11minute format with storylines sometimes starting or finishing randomly but it grew on me. That and the gender neutral language, and the way in which good and bad are relative and how the character being portrayed as the go-to vilain is pictured as a creep. and also replacing oh-my-god with oh my glob, in order to avoid slurs such as "god". well. it's still produced by cartoon network, wich is a subsidiary of time warner, but if you're looking for a kid-appropriate lesser evil : here you go.
Serenity
(2005)
"falling short to conclude firefly, because there should be more of it."
2 November 2020
Television is a difficult format. Either it lasts for too long and starts to run in circles and recycle itself, or it's so good it eventualy gets cancelled mid-season or at the end of the first one. Firefly was one of those short-lived science-fiction series, the original V another one but I'm getting out of line here. Firefly was a space-opera version of a post-civil-war american story, with bitter confederate true-believers as protagonists and an over-reaching union as the bad guys. I'm almost not exagerating, but it was probably produced by fox. That said, the non-aligned army spoke mandarin and didn't seem to rely on slavery because it's fiction afterall, and for every other question raised by watching the series, I wish they had a shot at a second season. Instead, they got a movie to resolve some of them a couple of years later in that movie.
(T)ERROR
(2015)
"a documentary about an undercover fbi informant working on sting operations"
2 November 2020
Terror, or error, is a documentary about an undercover fbi informant working on sting operations. I'm not exactly sure how it really works out administratively as the guy neither is a badged agent, nor an actual informant as he really is acting on making sure the targets are arrested for something. It somehow turned out that the documentary crew was orking on interviews with the informant about an older case in which he had targetted someone in new york, to end up making a documentary about his current job, without any of the parts involved in the process. None of the informant, the target, or the fbi knew about the film makers documenting a sting in the making. The target suspected being harassed by the goverment, the informant knew his situation was compromised and the fbi knew the targets was going to do a press conference about being spied on, which was the reason they were so sloppy in arresting the guy, as the news covered it. What's really at stake on this documentary is that they get to observe it in real time instead of working through later on commentaries, and are able to show the extend of which the "war on terror" is being thought : making up the number of arrests to keep getting funding.
Chappie
(2015)
"to Robocop was District 9 was to independence day..."
2 November 2020
I've been a big fan of Blomkamp since District 9. Or rather I've been a fan of District 9 but hadn't really thought to look out for more recent movies till recently. Another one was made in the mean time. Anyway. Chappie is to Robocop was District 9 was to independence day... Kind of a similar topic, made through an entirely different lens. Complex. Android cops manufactured by an evil-capitalist corporation. But Blomkamp' vision brings the topic of an entirely artificial conscience and what it would mean to consider the rights of such beings, in a backdrop of gangsta style crime and not so petty thieves with heavy weaponry. It's still an action movie even though it gives a lot to reflect on.
Utopia
(I) (2013–2014)
for the conspiracy freaks out there...
2 November 2020
What starts with a nerdy conspiracy over a graphic novel goes on to become a blood-filled chase and many political implications over the average television series. I'm trying to keep up with non-american television series and this brittish gem stands out. Security culture, life on the move, every character having their angle, and the suspens leaves much of the plot unclear till the last episode. As for the political implications, even if they do link a lot of the past events, in between the 1970's and 1990's to actual hits on british officials, it also leads to reflections on the ideals behind the conspiracy itself : drastic population reduction plans and malthusianism and antivivilisation/antihum*n arguments that would make you mix-up for a minute who's on the right side of the story. The pictures also look great, from the opening landscapes to the bloodbaths. It sounded good to my hears that the third season had already been cancelled. I hope to hear that the american remake will be cancelled as well.
Mr. Robot
(2015–2019)
"What's with television series becoming all about anticapitalism these days anyway?"
2 November 2020
What if christian slater's character didn't died in the highschool explosion at the end of Heathers, or from getting shot, and after being released from prison at the end of pump up the volume? Every good highschool movie from the 1990's ends in an highschool exploding in the middle of nowhere, usa. But now christian slater is in his fifties, and still causing chaos with that sneaky smile. I seem to be flagging every instance of anarchists in pop culture and get hooked up. In the trail of anonymous, "Mr Robot" delivers one season of crypto anarchists making their move on a corporation nicknamed Evil CORP. There are abusive villains types coming up the corporate ladder, and reclusive good guys with a social anxiety problem, but both seem just as manipulative. In the end they're control-freaks with a lot of power. What's with television series becoming all about anticapitalism these days anyway?
Museum Hours
(2012)
"you can't win, but maybe one day everyone will lose less and both movies and museums will be free"
2 November 2020
"you can't win, but maybe one day everyone will lose less and both movies and museums will be free". Jem's cohen's style, with long scenes and essay-like commentaries, this time having a character based story. Set in wien, it follows a fifty year-old or so ex-punk roadie turned museum employee who meets visitors at his work and share moments of conversations with them, that often starts around some art criticism. The other main character is a middle aged woman who came from montréal for a distant relative sick at the hospital, and starts to visit the museum to have a place to hang out sheltered from the cold.
Dark Days
(2000)
"follows the tunnel folks in their lives"
2 November 2020
This movie is set around the some of the same tunnel people interviewed for the book I reviewed last month. This documentary doesn't research as much the administrative parts like the book, but rather follows the tunnel folks in their lives. underground, can collecting, foraging and discussions about drug abuses. It's interesting that for the most part, the words are left to the squatters, rather an off-camera narrator. I'm bringing the term "squatters" myself which is odd because no link is being made through the movie with the squatter's movement, strong in NYC at about the same time, and despite all of the times interviewed insist on not being homeless.
The Blacklist
(2013–2023)
"television series making the apology of the deep state, black sites and the banality of torture"
2 November 2020
One day, I came back to my computer to find a tab opened on the page of the most wanted list. I don't remember if it was france's or some other countries, but it's a mystery I never solved. I did put a password on my computer though. This is about one of them on that list, or a fictional one. the sort you would never hear about in the news. Elite spy turned against his masters and leaving to become an underground crimelord for decades before surrendering himself to the J edgar hoover headquarters in washington D.C, to work with them as a confidential informant. the rest is a television series making the apology of the deep state, black sites, banality of torture, and blaming the bad aspects on a cabale of conspirationists in he higher circles of the security and industrial apparatus. It was rather funny I caught my first episode right after the interview of an historian on the newly published biography of Allan Dulles, the head of the CIA from the fifties to failed invasion of the bay of pigs , and possibly the organizer of the kennedy assassination. spoiler : the head of the CIA is the villain in that series, and so the problem is never ever a structural one then.
Orphan Black
(2013–2017)
"The first season of this series was intense"
2 November 2020
The first season of this series was intense as you don't really know what to expect from an episode to the next, and are left in the creepy situations the main characters find themselves in. Sara, a con-artist, drop-out, absentee mother and drug dealer wants to do good and come back in town, only to see someone who looks just like her jump underneath a train, and decides to get rid of all of her problems by pretending she's the one who died, and stealing the other person' identity, not knowing she'll also have to start assuming her responsabilities, and it only gets worse when she finds out they're clones. All played by the same actor, and all different so that if this series talks a lot about genetics, nurture is indeed the side winning there. transhuman dreams, christian scientists, christian fundamentalists, pharmaceutical capitalists, military research gone bad and corruption. This series has all of that, high paced. The third season left me with a bad taste. By then, most of the vilains have already died and the interest of the tight group of clones making the main set of characters going toward one faction or the other, that blured the lines so far stops, concluding in making everyone turned for their survival and against worm-like parasites who infected all scientists involved, which is a big disappointment. Turns out all of the craving for power, money, and the greed and manipulation they created was nothing human afterall...
Treme
(2010–2013)
"It had been a long time since I had seen such good television."
2 November 2020
It had been a long time since I had seen such good television. while the wire left me with a good feeling, I didn't wanted to keep watching beyond the first season. This other TV series is about New Orleans after the katrina superstorm. the story starts late 2005, just a couple of months after, and shows the recovery, the capitalist vultures trying to make profits out of it and the make believes of the federal recovery system. One of the other interest was the fact that, at the beginning at least, the series protagonists mostly are musicians, wether in the brassbands, the clubs, or busking in touristy neighborhoods. It also does a great job at giving insights of the many forms of cultural appropriation taking place : the white DJ coming from an affluent family thinking and talking as if he was black, the westcoast guy passing as a southern man or the "tribes" of "indians" in the carnival. But it also shows folks, born and raised, or who moved there later trying to keep new orleans weird, and resist the assimilation to the american mainstream culture.
Mad Max: Fury Road
(2015)
"one of the few that passes the bechdel test, but like most action movie, it seems pretty light on the story"
2 November 2020
The challenge is/was to review anything, right? I'm the only one setting the rules here and likely the only one reading these reviews. I got to say I wasn't particularly excited about the revival of yet another franchise, even though I enjoyed the first three episodes of the post-environmental collapse series made in the 1980's, but when armies of masculinists took to their keyboards to attack this movie with their uninvited comments about a feminist takeover of the series, I sort of had to watch it. So yeah, turns out max is arrested and used as a slave, or as a "bloodbag" to transfuse a soldier of a local warlord. Even if it doesn't seem to follow the timeline of the previous episodes, the character is the same, haunted by the ghosts of the people he couldn't save, to the point that he is mostly an antihero, talking only in whispers and awkward short sentences. The main character of the story is furiosa, played by charlize therron, driver of the oil-rig who is going to escape and be purchased for the entire lengh of the movie because it's a road-movie afterall, in order to save the five women of the warlord who didn't want to be "breeders" anymore, and trying to reach a safe space, furiosa' home from which she had been abducted as a child, except it turns out hope was a mistake and "home" also collapsed. It's a fast-paced action movie in which most of the developped characters are women and likely one of the few that passes the bechdel test, but like most action movie, it seems pretty light on the story, especially the background of the characters, except for max' which are deducted from the previous episodes of the franchise.
The Lego Movie
(2014)
"maybe that's just me daydreaming about how warner bros, and other corporations are building new generations of their enemies..."
2 November 2020
When I figured out I was enjoying everything I watched from a list of recommandation, I also figured I should no longer dismiss one I had previously thought of as a joke. I mean, who would have seriously thought the lego movie would have some content in it? I sure didn't. In a way, it's a plastic colored-brick version of the society of spectacles, with a starting plot that feels a lot like the rhetorics of "the end of history" of our corporate capitalist new world order, and in this movie, the end of history actually means just that, in the form of superglue about to seal together everything that is, according the the plans provided with the pieces and nothing else. There you got the "end of history", "the society of spectacles" (with an actual backstage area for the outlaws, who when captured have their ideas recuperated and recycled into plans"), and "creative evolution", presented as talking lego characters, fighting against the spectacular capitalism. Or maybe that's just me daydreaming about how warner bros, and other corporations are building new generations of their enemies...
Crash
(I) (2004)
"...until the story comes full circle."
2 November 2020
Intertwinned individual stories revolving around police investigations, crime and so many instances of racism. The storyless movie in that sense reminded me a lot of Slackers, trading austin' hipsters for los angeles' police & thieves, in which every characters appears both as victim & perpetrator, although some more than others, until the story comes full circle.
Wristcutters: A Love Story
(2006)
"suicide & romantic comedy"
2 November 2020
The movie starts with the main character's death, but it goes forward instead of through flashbacks. Avoided the wreck of such an overplayed cliché, the character lends in a place where everyone "offed" themselves. With everyone being a suicidee, the world doesn't really look worst than ours, and the characters encountered within the plot actually seem better off in this new "life". Follows a quest for the manix pixie dreamgirl character he killed himself over, friendship with a dead rocker and a hitchhiker on her way to meet the people in charge of this new life over the mistake of having her accidental overdose being filed as a suicide. So yeah, it's starts with a suicide but it's actually a romantic comedy.
A Band Called Death
(2012)
How many punk gems are still unreleased?
2 November 2020
How many punk gems are still unreleased and almost unheard of these days ? this is the history of one of them, recorded in 1974 and released in 2009. The story is set as a biopic of the detroit band for the first half, and the story of the actual release of the record through record collectors & punk dj parties in california. the main lines of the story became somewhat famous, but the documentary goes beyond, including the turn to christian rock the band members took after being given a lot of problems for their names, including a vermont cop thinking their poster was one of a gang looking for recruits. There's an happy ending.
La haine
(1995)
"Police violence and the rest of us"
2 November 2020
History repeats itself, fiction gets back at reality and all of these others ready-made philosophies sometimes become to real to handle. reading the news on a monthly paper, and watching it as podcasts, I sometimes get a bit behind, and many of these hours get intertwined with watching or reading fiction, and there are times like last night get hard to distinguish. As a cop in cincinnati gets prosecuted for shooting a black man in the head for a traffic stop, I started watching la haine, a black & white movie set the day after a riot in a working class & migrant suburb of paris. Started after a kid from the neighborhood got sent to coma by a police beating during his custody, the story follows three young men in their day. dealing with police, with each other, with the city officials who want to calm the violence (although only the one of the rioters), but also their daily lives, in which the event of a boxing match brings them out to the city center of paris, and it's violence through more police brutality, strange interractions with white/upperclass french folks and also some nazis. the friend who recommanded it to me told me it was the only thing they knew of france politics and it also feels accurate, in the divide of french society and it's unwillingness to become inclusive outside of its assimilationist agenda. and refusal of that said assimilation is only met with the repression we see in the movie. as they say in the intro and ending, and still true twenty years later, we're still falling but it's not the fall that's important, but how we crash. we'll get there soon enough.
1971
(2014)
"Breaking into the FBI during the superbowl, revealing COINTELPRO to the public"
2 November 2020
It's interesting how mass media works on a very-short-term memory. Things that happened today are always said to never have happened before. And then once in a while, they just unearth old information in the form of documentaries. This is a documentary about the 1971 breaking in the FBI office in Media, a suburb of philadelphia to expose infiltration practices of the amerikan political police, which will lead to the exposition of cointelpro. This documentary isn't all about old news though, as the time has passed long enough for the activist to become public about it without any fear of repression. Over forty years later, they get to tell their own stories and the security culture involved in remaining free and unsuspected in the four decades since. It was being streamed on PBS for free during the time of anniversary of the burglary.
The Hunger Games
(2012)
"pop culture bringing out a good looking take on insurrections to teens and I shed some tears"
2 November 2020
One of the good things about flying someplace is the access to a lot of movies. I have to say that despite reading all of the ker-bloom issues dedicated to the hobbit I felt more compelled toward the hunger games, not knowing anything about the movie or book series except that they're popular and that I'm way behind on the subject of pop culture than any prospective librarian could be. In a 6hours and 20 minute flight, I did watched all of the movies of the series. I mean seriously, pop culture bringing out a good looking take on insurrections to teens and I shed some tears. I liked how the movie deals with submissions to the law as obbeying the rules of a game and that the talks about refusing it are met with violence. the spectacle... In the later movies of the series, I enjoyed the criticism of the avant-garde as opposed to the improvised rebellions and the ways they feed each other. Maybe the last one will be my first time in a 3D theatre. who knows?
Building a Broken Mousetrap
(2006)
"There's the show inside, and the antiwar protest outside, and it all comes together nicely"
2 November 2020
On the aforementionned issue of cometbus, I was relieved to figure out that the piece presenting Jem Cohen wasn't an obituary. You never know... It made me want to watch more movies he made. You probably saw his work in the video documentary Instruments with Fugazi, or in the live screenings at Godspeed you black emperor shows. This one is a film mostly shot around the dutch punkband THE EX and a show they did in new york city in 2004. The live music video is intertwinned with shots from new york's streets, and some pictures of demonstration against bush and the war, mixing well with the music. Now I feel like I need to watch more of his work.
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