Ai Weiwei Never Sorry

I saw Ai Weiwei Never Sorry, the award-winning documentary about the eponymous Chinese artist/dissident, at the Oriental Theater this evening. It's being featured as part of the Milwaukee Film Festival now going on. In a word, it's inspiring. Try to make it to one of the festival screenings - you have three more opportunities: schedule at Milwaukee Film.

You won't be sorry.

For more art related Film Festival recommendations, check out Mary Louise Schumacher's post on Art City.

Louder than a Bomb rocks Milwaukee Film Fest

“Poet, breathe now…because it’s the last thing you’ll ever do for yourself….” – Adam Gottlieb.

When was the last time a poem brought tears to your eyes? When was the last time you saw a documentary and felt like applauding – frequently – and so did everyone in the audience? When was the last time a bunch of teenagers made you feel good about life?

Louder than a Bomb is a documentary about a high school poetry competition – a slam – that manages to do all three. The Louder than a Bomb slam brings together young poets of every kind of background imaginable from all over the Chicago area for an Olympics style competition.

Yes, scoring poetry is stupid. So they say again and again. “The points are not the point; the point is the poetry,” becomes a mantra for the participants. But their enthusiasm and drive to succeed is contagious.

The young poets are exciting and inspiring. Their poems and their stage presence are breathtaking. And not all surface effect and flash, the depth of the work is stunning. The film takes you on an emotional roller coaster ride as it follows four contestants through practices, performances, and the final slam.  

It was Sunday evening, the last night of the Milwaukee Film Festival. We went to the Ridge, a Marcus cinema in New Berlin. There were two film choices. Both sounded appealing. Not knowing anything more than the brief blurb in the program, we picked Louder than a Bomb because we like poetry.

Not knowing that Louder than a Bomb had won awards at film festivals all over the country. Not knowing that a few days later Louder than a Bomb also would be voted best in the Milwaukee Festival. Not knowing that I would laugh and cry and applaud in equal measures throughout the performance. I say performance, although the movie depicted many performances, because it felt more like a performance, like it was happening in real time, than like a documentary movie.

A quick glance at the Louder than a Bomb website shows how unanimous the critics have been in their acclaim of this tour de force. Don’t take my word for it. Nor even the critics. Visit the site and listen to Nate and Adam and Nova and the Steinmenauts recite and perform their incredible works of art. Then find the nearest screening of the film and go see it all.

One of the best features of the Film Festival is the opportunity it provides to learn more about the movies you see. After Louder than a Bomb, the movie, ended we were introduced to Kevin Coval, the poet who started Louder than a Bomb, the teen poetry slam. During the question and answer period someone asked if there was a poetry slam in Milwaukee. Happily, there is!

The next slam is on Oct. 14 at Centennial Hall in the Milwaukee Central Library; at 6 pm. Check it out at Stillwater Collective.

“Poet, breathe now…because there’s a fire inside you that needs oxygen to burn and if you don’t run out of breath you’re gonna run out of time….” – Adam Gottlieb

Thank you, Milwaukee Film.

Memo to Milwaukee Film: ARE YOU KIDDING!!

I suppose it could be seen as an odd kind of experiment: if the entire audience of the large central screen in the Oriental Theater were strung out in a single line, how far would it extend? Just before the doors opened at about 7:30 last night there were a thousand people lined up along Farwell to the corner of Ivanhoe Pl., all the way down to the corner of Prospect Ave. and then most of the distance to the next corner, well over halfway around the entire city block.

The crowd, all ticket-holders and therefore assured (presumably) of a seat, remained calm and good-natured about it, but cell phones were buzzing along the entire line. I guess it could also be seen as a test of Milwaukeeans' patience. One does have to wonder how it would have played out on a cold, rainy day.

Is this a measure of the festival's success or simply someone's misjudgement? Is the movie schedule too crowded to allow one audience to exit the theater in time to let a new audience in without waiting outside?

The good news for the festival is that they are selling a lot of tickets and filling the theater. The festival has endured a couple rocky years and it's great to see the enthusiasm. In order to maintain this momentum, festival organizers will have to consider how to prevent an embarrassing repeat of this situation. The good news for me was that I got in to see the movie this time (see yesterday's post.)

And it was definitely worth waiting for (in the pleasant conditions and with the cooperative crowd.) A Funny Kind of Story takes us inside a psych ward - and inside the head of Craig, the depressive main character who can't quite commit to following through with his suicidal inclinations. Vaguely reminiscent of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, this is a more restrained, subtle, and introspective story. It is clever, funny, and thoughtful. Although it's been a long time since I was an adolescent myself, I could easily identify with Craig's internal confusion and tribulations. After convincing the ER doctor to admit him to the psych ward, Craig quickly decides that he's in over his head and the audience, too, is subjected to the relativity of mental distress. Craig seems so normal. (I'm crazier than him!) How many kids grow up today driven by familial and societal pressures to this malaise, this vague unease and incipient anxiety? How many of us, even as adults, need to be medicated to withstand a world full of ever-increasing pressures--to succeed, to consume, to raise healthy children, to see this show, to write about that, to do the right thing?

Again, to see more about the Milwaukee Film Festival, go to Milwaukee Film.

The Kids are Alright and the Milwaukee Film Festival is even better!

At least if you go by the size of the audience it is. I guess it’s a good problem to have, though I’m not on the inside of Milwaukee Film and know little about the logistics of scheduling and less about their bottom line. What I do know is that lots of people went to the Oriental Theater Friday evening to see the festival offerings and many could not get in to see what they came for. Lynn and I went there to see Baraboo only to find ourselves at the tail end of a long rush line of people hoping that those who had the foresight to buy advance tickets wouldn’t show up to claim their seats.

Our hectic lives make it difficult to plan ahead and in the many previous years of the festival we had never been shut out of a movie before. I hope this means success for the festival. Perhaps it means they needed to book a larger venue and if they had they’d have sold more tickets.

We ended up skipping the long, futile line and seeing the one non-festival moving left playing at the Oriental, The Kids are Alright. More evidence that someone hadn’t planned the Oriental’s screening schedule with sufficient prescience came as we entered and found ourselves among eight or ten people enjoying the pre-movie organ music as it echoed in the huge, ornate, empty theater. We also discovered that this movie deserved a larger audience!

On one level, The Kids are Alright is a pretty standard comedy about two parents trying to raise two teenagers. The plot revolves around the kids’ secret decision to locate the man who had donated sperm to their mothers eighteen and fifteen years ago respectively. The story moves along a fairly predictable trajectory that includes a clandestine meeting, discovery, recriminations, jealousy, sexual shenanigans, guilt, etc. There are a couple twists I won’t reveal. A relationship-driven story like this depends upon the actors’ abilities to create believable characters and the entire ensemble is seamless. There’s the uptight, over-involved breadwinning parent, the insecure, lassez-faire stay-at-home parent, the introverted, overachieving high school graduate ambivalent about leaving the nest, and the emotionally withdrawn star athlete. Then there’s the organic food-growing, motorcycle-riding, happy-go-lucky sperm donor who drives a wedge into the familial mix with iconoclastic charm. I write this as if they’re all stereotypes, but they don’t come across that way because of the exceptional acting and honest depiction of family interactions. Annette Benning’s performance as the overwrought, overprotective doctor is especially engaging.

The thing that separates The Kids are Alright from similar stories is the fact that it is all happening to a family with two lesbian parents, played with intelligence, compassion, and gritty realism by Benning and Julianne Moore. But what is most remarkable, I think, is how completely matter-of-fact this is. How refreshing to see a story of such unself-conscious normality! Let’s hope life in the U.S. can imitate art because the kids are alright.

If you want to read more reviews of this highly rated film, go to Rottentomatoes.

To learn more about the Milwaukee Film Festival, go to Milwaukee Film.

Milwaukee Film Festival starts today!

Clear your calendar for the next week and a half. I know, it's hard. I've tried in past years with varying success. But when I made it to more movies I found it was worth it. You don't see movies like these in regular theater schedules.

Living in Tosa as I do I miss having festival movies at the Times Cinema. It would help us west siders to bring that back!

If you don't have the print version of the schedule, go to Milwaukee Film.