This is a simple but powerful documentary about an evangelical summer camp for children in Missouri. There is nothing fancy here. The camera picks out three children, two of them extremely articulate, to follow through the camp, and it watches as their parents talk about homeschooling, and the camp pastor explains that evangelicals have to imitate muslims in getting children to commit to a brand of religion when they are very young. The counterpoint is provided by a radio talk show host (one of the pair that does the ‘Ring of Fire’ program on Air America) who talks of the perversion of religion that emanates from the religious right. For most of the documentary, the evangelicals speak for themselves without commentary.
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How do certain indy films (Little Miss Sunshine, Lost in Translation) achieve Hollywood-style success while others don’t?

I want to return to Little Miss Sunshine, because the film came up in my class today (after class, really). I was speaking with three students who plan to do a group presentation soon. My students are free to come up with their own topics and can structure presentation any way they wish, provided the presentation prompts a class discussion that helps us understand the larger issues of class (this is my American genres class, so the groups should help us advance–in interesting and not-necessarily academic ways–our understanding of genre). The group wants to talk about the indy film as a genre. My first thought was that the indy film is essentially anti-generic. But I didn’t want to dismiss the idea outright (frankly, I don’t know if the indy film can be called a genre or not–it’s an interesting problem), so I asked them to give me some examples.
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Taking a break from papers, prep for our spring semester, and the heavy-duty (and worthwhile) intellectual razzmatazz on this site (and our sibling blog on books), I watched an old western, based on an Elmore Leonard story. Yuma stars a really wonderful Glenn Ford, playing a manipulative, smart-talking serpent of a bad man (who may have some kind of code in there, under the smirk)–caught and guarded, before the titular train to prison, by a smalltime family-man rancher (Van Heflin) trying to make a few bucks to get through a drought. It’s nothing special, but it’s smart and well-made and I set all else aside and sank into the pleasures of a finely-etched B flick.

Anyone got any other less-known, escapist pleasures to recommend, as semesters get going?

I recommend the collection of shorts called The Ossuary and Other Tales particularly the short title film and the longer piece “Don Juan.” “The Ossuary” is a kind of film poem documenting the chapel built from bones in Sedlec, Czechoslavakia–containing bones from the bodies of approximately 40,000 bodies. The disturbing but compelling images are juxtaposed with a soundtrack recorded from a school visit to the church, a teacher lecturing her young students on the work that went into the chapel, but mainly hectoring them with the directive not to touch any of the bones (they must pay a fine if they do!); inevitably one does and the ghoulish tour ends with a vigorous chastisement. It’s a witty film….as much about education as the eerie setting. one may make a chapel of bones but a student cannot touch a single femur.

“Don Juan” is, yes, an adaptation of the legend, with marionettes. when it started, I thought “oh, no…” but minutes into it I was hooked. Chilling, comic, grotesque and suspenseful all at the same time. The marionnettes and the theatrical setting suggest decay, a lost theatricality and an oppressive European past, but the sensibility is one of contemporary modernist irony. the puppets’ impassivity nevertheless suggests an uncanny expressiveness. DVD

For info on The Ossuary

In response to the Danish film Brothers, and in her astute readings of Toni Collette in Little Miss Sunshine, and elsewhere, Gio’s raised some great points about the depictions of female rage and anger. The topic deserves its own focus, so I’ll paste up her opening challenge and then some of the things she got me thinking about:

what if the mother had been the one to go ’round the bend? what if she had started throwing the house around? it would have been so much worse, so much more serious. but women stay put, stay sane, love everyone, understand everyone — while keeping absolutely gorgeous. i’m reminded of john cassavetes’ a woman under the influence but also, because i just saw it (and would like to write about, but please don’t let me stop you — i’ll be happy to comment!), notes on a scandal. and how about the forest for the trees? women’s rage is always a hair’s breadth away from battiness, whereas men’s rage tends to be rooted in cultural dissonances towards which we are meant to be understanding if not sympathetic.

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