Afghan Star

Review in the New York Times of Afghan Star, a documentary about the Afghani television show 'Afghan Star' produced for Tolo-TV.

The documentary is excellent (especially its first three-quarters) and deserves an audience. It won a couple of prizes at Sundance earlier in 2009.

Afghan Star” subverts the cliché image of Afghanistan as a nation of intractably primitive, superstitious tribespeople who have little in common with Westerners. Most of the Afghans in the film speak decent English, and the kind of hysteria kicked up by the show is identical to the hoopla surrounding “American Idol.” The popularity of “Afghan Star” among the country’s youth is presented as a hopeful sign that Afghanistan is ready to exchange “guns for music,” to quote one talking head.

...

Daoud Sediqi, the show’s presenter and director, is as gung-ho a television personality as Ryan Seacrest. Near the end of the film he declares, “The Taliban is finished.” But what does it say that after attending the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, where “Afghan Star” won the directing and audience awards in the world documentary competition, he didn’t return to his native country and is thought to be seeking asylum in the United States?

Cretinous

Very funny review of Transformers 2 in the New York Times.

The creative people behind the cretinous “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” the second blockbuster inspired by the popular Hasbro toys, have segmented their demographic into four discrete categories:

1. Young teenage boys who still play with Transformer toys (or keep them under the bed).

2. Older teenage boys who identify with the professional doofus Shia LaBeouf.

3. Somewhat older teenage boys who would like to play with the professional hottie Megan Fox.

4. Boys of all ages who think it would be cool to go to war and run around the desert shooting guns.

and

Of course, viewers can embrace several categories at once; say, those who collect toys and liked Mr. LaBeouf in the last “Indiana Jones” movie. Or those who fantasize about having sex with Ms. Fox while shooting guns, a vision that distills the auteurist ambitions and popular appeal of the movie’s director, Michael Bay.

Is it even possible to have liked Shia LaBeouf in the last Indiana Jones movie? I guess almost anything is theoretically possible - but it never occurred to me, having seen the film.

and

There’s a serious disconnect in the movie between the image of power that those GM brands are meant to convey and the bankrupt car industry they now signify. That disconnect only deepens with the introduction of two new Autobot characters, the illiterate, bickering twins Skids (Tom Kenny) and Mudflap (Reno Wilson), both of which take the shape of Chevrolet concept cars. The characters have been given conspicuously cartoonish, so-called black voices that indicate that minstrelsy remains as much in fashion in Hollywood as when, well, Jar Jar Binks was set loose by George Lucas. For what it’s worth, the script, by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, also includes a crack about Simmons, who’s coded as Jewish, and his “pubic-fro head.”

Towelhead

Recently saw Towelhead (AKA Nothing is Private) , an awesome but extremely difficult film about a confused half-Lebanese teenage girl growing up in Texas and - particularly- her sexual confusion and distant parents.

It had a cinema release in the USA in 2008 and did miniscule business - unsurprising given the subject matter - but great performances by (inter alia) Aaron Eckhart, the teenage girl (Summer Bishil) and Toni Collette. It was written for the screen (adapted from a novel) and directed by Alan Ball (6 Feet Under, True Blood, American Beauty, etc).

Aaron Eckart has an absolute lock on playing seemingly all-American but rotten-on-the-inside characters (In the Company of Men, Thank You for Smoking) and he is perfect in Towelhead.

I recommend it next time you're in the mood for something malignant but sort-of-beautiful-and-hopeful.