Free Pussy Riot

By

Shawn Barron

Friday while driving to work, the radio announced that the heatwave hitting the Midwest will soon end. As it moves onto hit the Mid-Atlantic and northeast, oh what fun! Here it is 105(38 celsius), right now in Moscow however the weather is a calm and nice 75 degrees, while most Muscovites would enjoy the weather, the members of Pussy Riot are not so lucky. Who is Pussy Riot you ask? Well they are an all female punk band that is strongly against Vladimir Putin, former KGB offcial and Russia’s current dictat… I mean president.  Throughout 2011 and early 2012 Pussy Riot was known for giving flash mob style concerts throughout Moscow. Decked out on Balaclavas members of the group would storm a public venue in Moscow and bleat out their songs till police or bystanders broke it up.

This song roughly translates to “Burn Putin’s Glory,” not too bad if you ask me. On February 21^st of this year the members decided to launch a similar stunt to perform their song “Blessed Mother, Deliver us from Putin.” They didn’t get very far, and were stopped after about a minute.

 The video above is actually edited together with a pre-recorded track put over it. For this stunt two of the band’s members Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were arrested, they have been accused on hooliganism and insulting religion, which means they could face up to seven years in jail.

A dangerous Russian criminal!

One of her villainous co-conspirators!

How is this possible, you might ask? Well two men, Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kiril, have helped to make it so. Putin has been ruling Russia more or less unopposed for the past 12 years, and funneling money out of it for some time. According a recent Al-Jazeera documentary Putin’s watches alone are worth more than his annual salary. Never a fan of criticism, Putin has allied himself with the Orthodox Church, and its rather corrupt leader Patriarch Kirill. The Patriarch has been accused of hiding money as well as possessing enormous property holdings outside of Russia.

After being photographed wearing a 30K watch the Patriarch's people airbrushed out the watch,
but not it's reflection.

The church has been urging for the jailing of Pussy riot since the February incident, they’ve also worked to ban abortion, and were one of the forces that had the St. Petersburg gay pride parade banned recently. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, feminism and gay rights, simply didn’t exist for many most of Eastern Europe. While tremendous changes have occurred in these societies over the past two decades it seems that patriarchy and tyranny die-hard. Russia’s leaders still pine for the old days, when criticizing authority was unthinkable.

Truly only a traitorous monster would want to criticize this man!

People in modern, internet-connected societies, frequently and great vocalization criticize leaders. This is a fact Putin and many like him still can’t wrap their head around.

According to a later news broadcast by a network loyal to Putin, the audience was actual booing the American fighter who had just lost. It’s unlikely that Putin will grant a last minute pardon to the members of Pussy Riot, meaning that they very well could serve their full term. So until major changes happen in Russia free Pussy Riot and maybe we can all experience a day of Россия без Путина(Russia without Putin)!

07/08/12 

The Johnsons

By

Rudolf Van Den berg 

My friend Heider Turnarossa suggested that I should start writing about more obscure cult films. Since the heat refuses to abate, why not? The Johnsons was released in 1992 and is that rarest of animals, a Dutch horror film. Dutch Directors have produced some very interesting horror films, De Lift and Amsterdamned by Dick Maas, The Vanishing by George Sluizer, and one of my favorites The Fourth Man by Paul Verhoeven. Despite all of these wonderful products the Dutch film community has a very poor few of locally produced horror. Few directors therefore are able to really grow as horror director. The Dutch have a dark sense of humor that is well suited for horror films. However these impulses towards darkness are directing towards the traditional Dutch genres of melodramas, period films, and surrealistic comedies. When this sense of darkness is channeled into making a film like The Johnsons the results are far from perfect, but a lot of fun.

The film tells of Xagandix a demonic fetus in a crystal womb(yes really) from Suriname(a former Dutch colony in South America) trying to be reborn in The Netherlands in order to bring about the end of the world. Dutch icon Monique van de Ven(Turkish Delight, Amsterdamned) stars as Victoria a photographer. Her daughter Emalee has been suffering from recurring dreams in which bald children covered in blood are coming to capture her. Kenneth Herdigein plays Professor Keller an expert on Suriname who is recruited by the government to help investigate the link between his research and a group of psychopaths being held by the government. When the psychopaths escape from jail they come after Emalee in order to return Xagandix, and destroy the world. The film was written by future SVA professor Roy Frumkes and like his über-offensive Street Trash, this film has a lot of tone shifts, subplots, and un-explained ideas.

What you get from watching this film is seeing what happens when you filter a genre from one film culture through the eyes of another. The template the filmmakers used is based upon horror movies of the 1980s like American Werewolf in London and Re-Animator. This means that the film features some over the top gore, but also a large amount of bad-jokes and one-liners.  It’s from this attempt at comedy that some of the film’s biggest problems emerge. The character of Professor Keller has a father meant to be comic relief but is just offensive and annoying. The father is a ladies’ man despite his advancing age, which according to the filmmakers is funniest joke in history. There are also multiple culture clash jokes since the father grew up in Suriname. One of the other recurring gags is multiple characters saying HOLY SHIT or other profanity in English not Dutch. There are scenes of comedy that might be unintended. Midway through the film Emalee experiences her first period. Mother and Daughter embrace, and the movie becomes that video they showed all the girls in 6^th grade after the boys had left the room.

This movie is really a cult hit waiting to be rediscovered. The version I watched was the old Anchor Bay dvd from 1999. The subtitles were fine, but this film really needs to be cleaned up. There are a lot of scenes which are too bright, and many in which all the blacks have muddied together. If you are able to watch this film it’s either from this dvd or a torrent of it. Somebody should really restore this. Synapse, Blue Underground, Criterion, I’m looking at you guys. This film might not make a lot of sense, but it is a lot of fun.

Shawn Barron

07/03/2012

As the ungodly summer of 2012 continues to bake the east coast, and wildfires several square miles rage in Colorado, it’s important to remember Global Warming is just a myth kids. Saturday with much of the greater D.C, area facing power outages, which seemed to hit mostly stoplights, enjoying AC and stuffing my face with popcorn seemed like a good idea. I decided to grab Woody Allen’s latest feature To Rome With Love. Following the trend of Allen’s recent films such as Scoop, Vicky Christina Barcelona, and Midnight in Paris, telling a story of several Americans and their comical experiences in a famous European city.

The film consists of several different stories, in a variety of styles, in the somewhat magical city of Rome. I found this to be one of the films greatest charms, but I can also see why many audiences would find it frustrating. One story consisted of Alec Baldwin(30 Rock, Rock of Ages), as a man who lived in Rome years earlier, befriending  Jesse Eisenberg(Zombieland) a young man who lives on the same street he used to. Baldwin becomes a sort of inner monologue for Eisenberg, who tries to pursue an affair with his Girlfriend  closest friend played by Ellen Paige(Juno).  The film never makes it clear if Baldwin is imagining the situations of Eisenberg or vice versa. The film also features Roberto Benigni(Life is Beautiful) as a businessman who becomes famous for no apparent reason. Alessandra Mastronardi and Allesandro Tiberi play a pair of newlyweds on their Honeymoon who get separated and end up in a series of rather ribald adventures.  Woody Allen plays a retiree from America, who becomes determined to turn his future son-in-law’s father into a successful opera singer. Within all these stories there are also a wide variety of sub-plots, such as Penelope Cruz(Vanilla Sky, Volver) as the hooker forced to pretend to be meek accountant Allesandro Tiberi’s wife,  Confused Yet?

Allen stated that his biggest influence in making the film was the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. The Decameron is a 14^th century work from Italy telling of series of stories of wildly different styles about life at the time. Many of the stories depicted were comic, and eroticism though frequent, was depicted as natural, beautiful, and often silly. Allen keeps these traditions alive and well in his film, there is a good deal of discussion and jokes about sex, but nothing is actually shown. Each narrative thread in the film is done in its own style. The Baldwin/Eisenberg Vingette with its manipulation of narrative structure seems like a film by Abbas Kiarostami. Robert Begnini’s sequence seems like a surreal gag by Luis Bunuel. The sequence with the newlyweds harkens back to films like Roman Holiday staring Audrey Hepburn. The sequence featuring Allen is the least interesting of all the threads and is filmed in the most conventional style of the four.

While it’s easy to bash on this film for having a bit too many characters and story to be easy to follow, this film unlike so many others is trying. The night before I saw To Rome With Love, I went to see Ted. While I was in pains from laughter during Seth Mcfarlane’s opus, within 30 minutes after it ended I struggled to recall a really memorable joke. Ten years from now I’m going to remember Benigni’s confused salaryman.

Not every part of this film works and at some parts it really does drag, but what makes it worthwhile is its sweetness and that it’s trying. Turn on the news and everyone is yelling if not about healthcare, it’s taxes, or housing, or jobs. Go to see the movies and it’s often the same dumb-it-down and blow-it-up nonsense. It was nice to see a dialogue driven film, about romance, with beautiful people and a beautiful city. So if you don’t want to die of sunstroke, enjoy some ac for two hours, and take Mr. Allen’s tour of Bella Roma.

Shawn Barron

07/01/2012