August 10th, 2007 by Matt
When you live in Ohio for a decade, you have two choices: join the cult that is Buckeye high school and college football, or do everything in your power to ignore said cult. I chose the latter, if only because I hoped to retain as much of my Empire State identity as possible. This ain’t to say I don’t dig on football (or double negatives, for that matter), because I do. I really do. And Friday Night Lights, a film loosely based on the Permian Panthers high school pigskin team, reminded me of that fact.
The film focuses on the Panthers’ 1988 season, and the small, economically depressed, west-Texas town of Odessa. Both the game sequences and the life in the hamlet are filmed with a dusty cinematography, which perfectly suits the flick, enhancing the overall tone. To show what football means to this community, the film opens with a player studying plays at the breakfast table with his mother. Early on, we hear local sports-talk radio, where callers discuss, not the Dallas Cowboys or the Houston Oilers, but rather the Permian Panthers. Football here–high school football, that is–is everything. The story is passionate and engaging, and addresses, not just sports in America, but the nature of family, racism, poverty, joy, abuse, alcoholism, hopes, the perfection of friendship, the illusion of loss.
I’d rather not give away many details of the narrative, except to say two things:
- This movie avoids being a repeat performance of Hoosiers.
- This movie demonstrates the apparent randomness of events–so much hangs on a single helmet, a coin toss, a yard.
The football sequences are an adrenaline rush (fight, not flight) with the intensity of Tabasco sauce, and the realism is so powerful and engaging I have no idea how they choreographed and filmed this sucker without maiming a dozen people. Pushing the energy further is the soundtrack, a brilliant score created by the instrumental post-rock outfit, Explosions in the Sky. In all seriousness, if you’re a music lover like me, it’s worth it to check out Friday Night Lights just to hear what this band has managed to do.
I’ll close with a line of dialog I found particularly compelling (it’s also a summary of one of the film’s many themes): “It took me a long time to realize there ain’t much difference between winning and losing except how the outside world treats you.”
Enjoy….
August 3rd, 2007 by Matt
Editor’s Note: I just watched An Inconvenient Truth for the second time, and I realized, all over again, how important this documentary is to our culture. It’s a gift. A scary one, but one that brims, ultimately, with hope. If you haven’t checked it out, maybe this review will get you high-tailin’ it to Blockbuster.
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To say that global warming is “inconvenient” is the only exaggeration (in this case, understatement) made in this entire film. Early on watching this movie, I got the sense that whether or not we listen to the film's facts will directly determine if anyone will be around to call it a classic or not. (Check out our Wednesday topic for more related videos.)
An Inconvenient Truth opens with gorgeous video of a river and the forest lining it. This simple image makes what follows all the more heartbreaking, as we see the beautiful innocence of our only home being destroyed. In case you're unaware, the documentary is essentially a slide-show presentation that Al Gore has given around the world over 1,000 times, explaining the incontrovertible facts of global warming through the use of imagery, raw data, and tragic current events. He effectively destroys the myth that global warming isn't real and isn't caused by humanity. He does this with information about glaciers, human population, bird migration, the life-cycles of insects, hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, cyclones, drought, temperature rates, soil evaporation, the extinction of species, vectors for emerging infection diseases, and coral reef bleaching. You can't help but be convinced, because to still doubt global warming would be as ridiculous as doubting that the planet exists.
What makes all this even more interesting are vivid videos and photographs, Gore's self-effacing humor, and his light jabs at political rivals. We also learn about Gore's life, both personal and professional, and his upbringing, all of which adds a texture of honesty to the picture.
One of my writing professors in graduate school once told us that “all nature writing is elegy.– Thankfully, An Inconvenient Truth is no fatalistic final words. Instead, it removes the myth that the problem is too big for us to make a change. Doubters, Gore says, tend to go from denial to despair. But we needn't. The film asks viewers to go to ClimateCrisis.net to learn ways to lessen their impact on our already thin and vulnerable atmosphere. To paraphrase a pretty damned famous politico — we have a choice: we are the enemy; we are either for us or we are against us.
I thought about what I'm about to write closely and carefully and frequently since seeing this film for the first time. I'm done thinking about it because I believe my final sentence to be true as the sky is blue. This is the most important film ever made.
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