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Services at Santa Barbara

Anath White

“The church of baseball.” That’s a term from Annie Savoy, Susan Sarandon’s vivid character in “Bull Durham,” that film of men, women and baseball, written and directed by Santa Barbara native Ron Shelton. I’m lifting the phrase here, adapting it for films and film festivals.Call it the church of cinema. That’s been my experience and my “church” since age 18, a kid in college. I’d escape the campus upheaval, both political (this was the anti-war era) and personal (the sexual revolution hitting big time), and my search for identity, with a respite every Wednesday afternoon; with a couple dozen others, I became a weekly acolyte at screenings of the International Film Series at the University of Colorado at Boulder. There I discovered Belmondo, Bertolucci, “The Battle of Algiers.” My world blew open and I never looked back.

A man with storms in his head

A professor at my department who studied neuroscience, once told us something you have probably heard elsewhere: If you think you’re crazy or getting crazy, that means you are not crazy because crazy people do not know that they are crazy. This sounds like the famous dilemma in Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.” I thought it was useful advice for students who had to deal with lots of pressure and stress in the academic process. It could also be good advice for the hero of “Take Shelter” (2011), because he thinks at first something is wrong with his head, but cannot ignore what disturbs deeply him. He tries to quell his mental turbulence as much as he can, but is transformed into a more disturbed man obsessed with visions attacking him every night. It is possible that he himself is the threat to the family he wants to protect, not the catastrophe of epic proportion he fears.

The Magic of Magic and Bird

Scott Jordan Harris

The saying in boxing is that “styles make fights”. It means that two elegant matadors like Muhammad Ali, or two rampaging bulls like Joe Frazier, wouldn’t have contested the classics fought by one Muhammad Ali and one Joe Frazier. The saying is true, and its truth extends beyond boxing to all sporting rivalries.

And, just as “fights” is not limited to boxing matches, “style” is not limited to physical methods of competition. “Style” includes styles of speaking, styles of thinking, styles of living. And, of course, “style” also includes skin color.

Political Persecution, American Style

Omer M. Mozaffar

Just a few months ago, our President signed the National Defense Authorization Act 2012 after almost unanimous bipartisan support in both the House and Senate, while the media almost unanimously ignored it. This is that same troubling act that permits indefinite detentions of American citizens without trial. There was a time in our recent history when we were debating over trials for so-called Enemy Combatants detained in Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo; the debate was over whether the trials should be military or civilian but the consensus was that prisoners should at least get some sort of a trial.

And, there was a time when we were surprised that the CIA held secret prisons all across the globe. Well, it seems that that time was so, so long ago and we’ve been so inoculated that now not even the media cares. Now, when we walk through X-Ray machines whose companies were represented by our former Head of Homeland Security, we do not think much about it anymore.

So it is with gratitude that I mention that Line Halvorsen, a filmmaker from Norway, chose to make the outstanding documentary “USA vs. Al-Arian,” (2007) chronicling a short period in the life of a family that has been suffering what is nothing less than American political persecution right in our suburbs for over a decade. On the one hand, this is the story of America seeking to keep itself secure. On the other hand, it is the story of the impact these sometimes questionable efforts have on a family.

Six keys to “Cloud Atlas”

Omer M. Mozaffar

“Cloud Atlas” (2012), directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, is a thing of beauty, the likes of which I have not seen in American Cinema. While I regard Rian Johnson’s “Looper” as easily the best film of the year thus far, this film might be the best film of the decade. Nevertheless, considering how many people walked out of the screening within the first hour, I suspect that this film will successfully alienate or confuse most of its viewers, earning more appreciation in the years to come, long after most of us have expired. If you have the patience, it might take forty minutes to begin to understand it, and to subsequently immerse yourself into it. In that way, it also reminded me of Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” (2011). It is that good. It is so good that I can tell you everything about this movie, and I will still have told you nothing.

A bad night for the Warriors

Gerardo Valero

If one is to make a balanced judgment of Walter Hill’s 1979 “The Warriors” it is crucial to view this film exactly for what it is, one of the most exhilarating and peculiar action films of the 1970s, famous for the riots it provoked but much closer to Greek mythology than to reality.

Clearly a cult classic, “The Warriors” can also be seen as simply a great “chase movie”, sort of a concrete jungle’s “Apocalypto.” An unusual film even in today’s terms, during times when we feel we’ve seen it all.

“The Warriors” follows the adventures of the group in what turns out to be a very bad night for them.

Apocalypto: Epic in a real jungle

Gerardo Valero

I truly enjoy Mel Gibson’s work as a director. His films, whether he stars in them or not, always reflect a passion and heart like few others. His best work these days, more and more, seems to be coming from behind the camera. It seems to me he really makes the movies for himself first and second for everybody else, no test audience previews to influence the final product.

“Apocalypto” is a film about the demise of the Mayan civilization. It tells the story of Jaguar Paw, whose small village is attacked by a group of hunters from the nearby metropolis, their job literally being to pillage small defenseless groups while looking for “volunteers” for their “most dangerous game”: the sacrificing rituals that the city’s leaders use to keep the masses entertained.

Is Bill Maher a performer, a preacher, or a pimp?

Omer M. Mozaffar

On Netflix and Amazon Instant.

Considering that we normally think of documentaries as some sort of academic discourse at the fringes of popular cinema, this relatively new genre of Celebrity-driven docs is something peculiar. That we now watch documentaries starring Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock, and Bill Maher is something inevitable, I suppose. We already have that tradition of following on-screen directors as characters in their features, including Kevin Smith, Spike Lee, and Woody Allen. But, the point here is that we watch some documentaries because of their host celebrities, more than the topic, even though the topics seem to be extensions of those same celebrities.

I suspect few people outside of his fan base will watch this movie: in Larry Charles’ documentary “Religulous,” (2008) popular Television talk show host Bill Maher is a playful microphone-toting cynic, roaming the landscapes of Christianity, with a few references to Judaism, Islam, and Scientology. The film is very strong and vastly entertaining in finding absurdities in absurd places, but fizzles when it attempts any serious commentary.

The death of a talk host

Anath White

Roger Ebert writes: Alan Berg was a Denver talk-radio host who was murdered on June 18, 1984. He was a goofy-looking bird, with a thin face and a bristly white beard that hid the ravages of teenage acne. He wore reading glasses perched far down on his nose, and he dressed in unlikely combinations of checks and stripes and garments that looked left over from the 1950s. When the members of a lunatic right-wing group gunned him down in the driveway of his home, they could not have mistaken him for anybody else.

I was on Berg’s radio show three or four times. I listened to him as I drove down from Boulder to Denver. He was chewing out some hapless housewife whose brain was a reservoir of prejudices against anyone who was the slightest bit different from her. Berg was telling her that no one in his right mind would want to be anything like her at all.

D D L J – Dee Dee Ell Jay

Omer M. Mozaffar

Streaming on Netflix Instant.

The movie starts out so beautifully. The great Indian actor Amrish Puri stands there with his dignity, dressed in a perfect mix of Western and native Indian attire, feeding a flock of pigeons in London’s monochrome rain-soaked concrete Trafalgar Square, thinking fondly about the sunny, colorful, musical world he left behind in the bright green and yellow fields of his home country. Twenty years of life in England, he runs a generic convenience store, with the goals of giving his daughters the life he never had. In his daydreams, however, he is longingly feeding pigeons not here, but in India.

That very short moment provided a profound insight into the lives of a whole population of first generation immigrants. But, I’d say that the movie takes a nose dive from there, and it does temporarily, because Puri seems to spend the rest of the film with a frozen glare that is frightening enough to make Indiana Jones pull out his own heart. And, similarly, I just wish that that punk Raj (Shah Rukh Khan) would stop his giggling. This is Aditya Chopra’s “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” (1995) and it is easily one of the most popular of all Bollywood films, at least for a certain demographic of women between the ages 15 and 45, in a way that “Sholay” is the most popular of all Bollywood films for whatever male demographic I belong to.

Suicide by way of homicide

Omer M. Mozaffar

Rian Johnson’s hyperviolent “Looper” (2102) is the smartest movie I have seen in a long time. It has that fearless edge of an independent film, throwing out all the stops. Its masterful plot carefully hides its foreshadows as elements of its constructed universe. It is a science fiction movie with rudiments of mystery, thriller, horror, comedy and even eschatology. So many characters, young and old, were loaded with charisma, sometimes unexpectedly. My fellow critic Nick Allen was correct when he told me not to watch any trailers (too late) and not to let anyone tell me about this movie. Because of its hyperkinetic, volatile unpredictability, I cannot help but to call this movie “crazy.” After watching it, you might have to go look at snails for a few hours to calm down. More than that, this movie is clearly one of the best of the year.

A man who lives between Here and There

Omer M. Mozaffar

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” was utter torture, and I loved it. Javier Bardem is Uxbal, a soft-spoken man living somewhere along the border between Here and There. He gently hides from life in some anonymous place in crowded, noisy Barcelona. He is a hustler, compassionately exploiting families of undocumented refugees from other lands, protecting them from deportation. He is a telepath, speaking to the newly deceased, helping free their crossing to the next world. He is a son who hardly knew his father, and a father seeking to nurture his own little daughter and son against the pull of an unpredictable ex-wife and an irresponsible brother. But, what does he seek?

A British boutique festival without an identity crisis

Scott Jordan Harris

Britain is overrun with film festivals. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn we have more per hundred miles per year than any nation on Earth. But there is room for more, provided they are carefully conceived, intelligently programmed and don’t overreach themselves in their early years. ID Fest, which ran this year between May 24 and 27, is a fine example.

Beginning in 2010, with a year off in 2011, ID Fest is “a boutique festival”, with each instalment programmed around a specific theme branching from the larger theme of identity – hence “ID” Fest. As such, it separates itself from Britain’s large international festivals; small, un-themed local festivals; and genre fests, of which there seem to be more each month. The first ID Fest investigated what it means to be English (as opposed to British) but the second had a far broader focus, befitting its ambitions to become a truly international festival. In 2012, its theme was heroism.

Hostages to honor

Jana Monji

The Kobayashi movie “Harakiri” is available on Hulu and Netflix. Miike’s “Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai” is available on Amazon.com.

In this remake of the 1962 Masaki Kobayashi movie known as “Harakiri” in America, but “Seppuku” in Japan, Takashi Miike considers the value of one life or “Ichimei.” (一命 Ichimei). In the U.S., the film is also re-named “Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai.”

Kids are as solid as rock

When I watched a film directed by François Truffaut for the first time during one Sunday afternoon in 2008, I had a little expectation about the movie, which was shown on TV as “Pocket Money.” Although I was already familiar with many of Truffaut’s famous works including “The 400 Blows” (1959) or “Day for Night” (1973), I had not heard about the title, and nor did I know that its alternative title in North America region was “Small Change.” Funny thing is, I remember that alternative title very well because Roger Ebert said in the introduction to one part of his book Awake in the Dark that he still could not explain how he came to choose “Small Change” as the best film of 1976 instead of “Taxi Driver” (1976), which he placed on No. 2 on his annual list.

Grace Wang of Toronto discusses “The Hurt Locker”

I am a dreamer, a traveler, a student, a teacher, a friend, a stranger, an Asian, a Canadian, a daughter, a woman, a photographer, a model, an immigrant, a citizen, a writer…but these are all just labels, and they wouldn’t begin to tell you why I have an infinite love for hole-in-the-wall bars and coffee shops and black & white everything, or why live music of any kind just captivates me, or how Chinese novels move me in a way so deep that I wish every person in the world could understand the language, or why I can never ever hold back a smile watching the sun rise on a different continent.

Traveling is a huge part of my life, as is writing. With a pen and a backpack, I’ve had some of the most memorable moments of my life at some of the most random corners around the world.

If traveling is how one experiences reality, then writing is how I weave my dreams. It has always been the most natural, intimate, and truest expression of myself. And we all just want to tell our own stories in this lifetime, don’t we?

It’s like breathing, and as clichéd as that sounds, how can you explain why you need to breathe?

He wants to marry a hairdresser

“Film is the medium that gives room to our fantasies, most of the time harmless, since they are fantasies. The cinema is often more beautiful than life, if only because we write the screenplay.” – Leconte

The Hairdresser’s husband (1990) is a film so fantastical, so sensual, so romantic, that you can not help but sigh in ached longing…a longing that, deep down, you know is untouchable, but how good it is to be drenched so thoroughly in it in a French hairdressing salon, on sunny afternoons and stormy nights?

Dreamers. Lovers. However they came to be we do not know, and it does not matter. They are so content together, indeed so happy that they seem immune to the ravishing of life’s toil. Passion consumes their lives. The day begins with it, and ends with it.

Charlatan, Louisiana

Omer M. Mozaffar

On Netflix Instant

Robert Duvall’s “The Apostle” (1997) is the story of a preacher who believes he has unique permission to phone call the Divine. As is the case with such preachers, the rules of goodness and morality seem to apply to everyone else before they apply to him. Meaning, he is above the law until he gets frightened for breaking the law. So, his combination of impious exhilaration, impatient devotion, and self-righteous rage reveals a man in sunglasses, open palms, and fiery sermons, who plants trees while burning bridges. I love this movie as much as I despise its central character. This movie exists only because of its central character.

The Persistence of Memory

Olivia Collette

Memories don’t really have a beginning, a middle and an end. They’re more like vignetted sensations, impressions and paraphrases, where the most prominent detail might be sticky fingers from handling a bunch of wheat. If you could only live with one memory for all eternity, which would it be? That’s the question Hirokazu Koreeda’s “After Life” asks, while also showing us what makes something memorable.

Understanding the Dung Fly

Sang-hoon is a terrifying piece of work. He is someone you never want to mess up with. He is callous, narrow-minded, vulgar and, above all very volatile. Whenever his hair-trigger fury erupts, there’s more than hell to pay — and that happens often.

Even when his temper relatively abates, he is still difficult and hostile to communicate with, probably even with himself. In the opening sequence, we see a young woman being beaten by some guy in the night streets. Sang-hoon appears and he savagely beats that guy. And then, he spits at her, smacks her, and insults her.