Brave New Review at Brave New Films

BRAVE NEW REVIEW: Blood & Oil

2008-07-20T03:30:21Z

(Blood & Oil – documentary – 52 min – directed by Jeremy Earp – narrated by Michael T. Klare)

If you want to understand how the US got into the predicament we're in with oil and the wars we fight to get it, Blood & Oil, the Media Education Foundation's newest documentary, is required viewing.

(Full Disclosure: Jeremy Earp and his team at MEF were instrumental in the making of FOX ATTACKS! Iran. They provided much of the early FOX footage during the lead up to the Iraq war, and I'll always be grateful for their assistance.)

Last year, I reviewed MEF's terrific documentary, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, and was mightily impressed with the long, non-partisan view of how the media and the US government convinces Americans of the "necessity" of going to war. After seeing Blood & Oil, I now realize that this long view might be MEF's signature strength. Narrated by Michael T. Klare, correspondent for the Nation and one of the world's top experts on energy and security issues, B&O takes you through the complete history of America and oil, from when the US produced nearly 100% of its own oil (and used it to win World War II) up to the embarrassing, self-destructive mess we now find ourselves in, where more and more of our paychecks go towards buying an increasing amount of oil from governments that don’t like us.

While WME did a fantastic job of smashing the myth of a “liberal” media that is oddly enthusiastic about repeating the government’s warmongering propaganda, B&O dispels the right wing myth that the US never goes to war for oil. From FDR to Jimmy Carter to the Bushes to Bill Clinton, America’s hunger for and pursuit of oil has been at the heart of US foreign policy for the past 60 years. Like WME, B&O lets no party or administration off the hook. The film contains footage, declassified documents, and excerpts from presidential doctrines to show that the US government has long believed that control over the world’s dwindling supply of oil is worth sacrificing countless American lives and dollars while supporting some of the world’s most repressive, anti-democratic regimes.

The idea that the US goes to war for oil is not a liberal conspiracy theory — it’s America’s officially-stated foreign policy. In most cases, America’s foreign policy and energy policy are virtually indistinguishable. The problem is that Americans overwhelmingly do not view oil as a suitable reason to go to war, which is why “freedom”, “new Hitler”, and “WMDs” becomes the justification while we give billions of dollars a year to a country that forbids women to drive.

BRAVE NEW REVIEW: Body of War

2008-06-16T03:29:47Z

(Body of War - documentary - 87 min - produced and directed by Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue - starring Tomas Young, Cathy Smith, Brie Young - 2008)

Inspired by George W. Bush's promise to catch the "evildoers" as he stood atop the rubble of Ground Zero, Tomas Young of Kansas City, Missouri decided to quit his job at K-Mart and called up an army recruiter on September 13, 2001. Tomas assumed he'd be sent to Afghanistan to hunt down Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but in March 2004, he found himself in Iraq. Just days after arriving, he was riding in an open-top, unarmored personnel carrier when a bullet severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him from the chest down. Tomas had never fired a shot. He was 24 years old.

Tomas's paralyzed body is the subject of Body of War, a new documentary from co-producers/co-directors Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue. But Tomas's wounded, malfunctioning body is both a symbol and evidence of so much more: the lies that led the US into the Iraq war; the failure of Congress to exercise its duties and judgment to prevent this historic blunder; a broken and neglected system for taking care of wounded veterans; and the destructive toll inflicted on the tiny percentage of Americans who are doing virtually all of the sacrificing in this conflict. It is a sad reminder of what happens when a nation, or a young man, rushes to war. But it's also about how, with the benefit of hindsight, a person or a nation crippled by a criminal war can emerge from tragedy to demand accountability and change.

Brave New Review: Michael Clayton

2008-06-14T03:30:04Z

If a person or company has enough money, they can pervert the law and get away with anything, even murder. But what happens to the people who help them pervert it, and what are they really fighting for? This is the question confronted by the characters in Michael Clayton, one of the best films of 2007.

BRAVE NEW REVIEW: Shut Up & Sing — the Dixie Chicks vs. War-Crazy America

2008-07-09T15:55:52Z

(Shut Up & Sing – documentary - 93 min – directed by Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck – starring Natalie Maines, Emily Robison, Martie Maguire - 2006)

We're branching out here at bravenewfilms.org, and I thought a good step would be movie reviews. The movies we'll be reviewing at BNF will be ones with political aspects or significance, which will be defined as broadly as possible. Sometimes the movies will be current releases, but in this age of NetFlix, DVDs will probably make up the majority. But we can all use a few more movies for our queues, right? Several months ago, I reviewed Jeremy Earp and Loretta Alper's great documentary "War Made Easy", but I'll try to review a movie on a more regular basis (schedule permitting).

So I'm starting with Shut Up & Sing, a documentary about the Dixie Chicks and the turbulent ordeal and transformation they experienced during the firestorm created when Chicks’ lead singer Natalie Maines' had the audacity to tell a British audience days before the start of the Iraq war, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.”

The first thing I'd like to say is that I don't like the Dixie Chicks' music, though I like it slightly more than I did before watching the movie. I always saw their music as belonging to the genre of what I call pop country, which sounds to me like Christian rock from the 80s but with country accents and occasional songs about murder, adultery, and alcoholism. And in the movie’s concert footage, you can see that the Chicks perform dressed as some weird kind of cyberpunk hooker clowns, which I find odd. So I didn’t approach the movie as a fan.

If You Want to Learn How Politicians and the "Liberal" Media Lead Us to War, See WAR MADE EASY

2008-07-25T19:28:32Z

I came across this film as I was doing the research for FOX ATTACKS! Iran. I had been searching with little success for information and footage of FOX before the current Iraq war — while much had been written about the supposedly "liberal" media's overall failure to do its job before the war, I could find surprisingly little that was specifically about FOX. Robert lent me a copy of War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, a terrific documentary that traces the history of the American media's unholy relationship with the government to convince US citizens to support wars, and I quickly realized that this movie had exactly the kind of footage I was looking for.

Robert got me in touch with Jeremy Earp, who co-wrote and co-directed WME with the film's producer, Loretta Alper. I was hoping to lock FA Iran in about a week, and Jeremy and his crew at the Media Education Foundation (which produced WME) worked with astonishing speed to get us the footage we were looking for. This is essentially a long way to explain my biases in writing this review — there would be no FA Iran if it wasn't for Jeremy and the folks at MEF, and I'm forever indebted to them. And Jeremy is a super cool guy, to boot.

However, even if I had never had contact with Jeremy, I would be just as enthusiastic in my praise and admiration for War Made Easy. The film, based on Norman Solomon's book of the same name, expertly uses footage from World War II to present day to illustrate how both Democratic and Republican administrations have used the same set of propaganda tools and a compliant, fawning media to repeatedly push the US into war. Some of these tools, created by the government and internalized by the media, include comparing our enemies to Hitler, celebrating military technology (instead of the death and destruction it is designed to inflict), the silencing of dissenting voices, the sanitizing of the realities of war, and false pronouncements of America's reluctance to fight, even as it leads the attack. WME is occasionally narrated by Sean Penn, though an interview with Solomon provides the bulk of the dialogue.