Captain Mike Review and Drawing Blood on the Red Carpet
The first day of the festival started for me with a screening of Michael Moore's latest doc, "Captain Mike Across America."
A QUICK REVIEW:
The film follows "Captain Mike" across the country as he tries to get out the youth vote to oust George Bush 5 weeks before the 2004 election. His failure to sway the election is acknowledged in a lengthy title card sequence that opens the film. What follows is Michael Moore's brand of the tent revival with himself as the charismatic evangelic leader as he speaks to college campuses across America. There's lots of funny moments and great music performances by Eddie Vedder and Steve Earle. The film fails to give any new information to the converted and comes across as a little self-absorbed. It's documentary melodrama at its finest. It's not hard to let your emotional buttons get pushed if the Iraq war, the Bush administration and the lazy mainstream media already sadden and anger you. He obviously cheaped out on the photography and more than half of the film is lo-res. No digital projector in the world can make this film look good. In the end, I enjoyed it, but felt that it was nowhere near its potential. All it needed was a lot more money and a little more foresight. Weinstein Co. is sure to make a mint off this one. Wait for the DVD, this is no Fahrenheit 911. (did someone say Bit Torrent?)
Production of ReelerTV got in the way of me seeing "Control" and "My Winnepeg" (see previous post below), but we have a great episode that I'm really proud of. "My Winnepeg" is playing again on Saturday night and "Control" is being released in a couple of weeks in NY so I'm sure to see at least one in the near future.
We went to an unruly red carpet to cover "The Brave One", Neil Jordan's new revenge flick set in NY starring Jodi Foster and Terrence Howard. I had to yell at a Belgian videographer to stop hitting me. I nearly grabbed his camera and pulled him off his step-ladder perch. The "funny" thing was, if I can be snotty for a second, is that despite their HD gear, step-ladder(used for a better view) and obnoxiously long microphone, they were unable to glean a single interview while we, with our unassuming Panasonic DVX were able to get time with Neil Jordan and Terrence Howard. You can see their bombastic yellow wind muff shoving in to our frame.
Here she is trying to shove it in Jodi Foster's face!
They did, however, provide us with light. Jodie Foster's Army of publicists kept her walking at a brief pace past us. We vowed to never do another red carpet again. Let's hope we can stick to it.
Watch the episode in the post above.