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The message sent by America's invisible victims | Glenn Greenwald
31 March 2013 9:10 AM, PDT
As two more Afghan children are liberated (from their lives) by Nato this weekend, a new film examines the effects of endless Us aggression
(updated below)
Yesterday I had the privilege to watch Dirty Wars, an upcoming film directed by Richard Rowley that chronicles the investigations of journalist Jeremy Scahill into America's global covert war under President Obama and specifically his ever-growing kill lists. I will write comprehensively about this film closer to the date when it and the book by the same name will be released. For now, it will suffice to say that the film is one of the most important I've seen in years: gripping and emotionally affecting in the extreme, with remarkable, news-breaking revelations even for those of us who have intensely followed these issues. The film won awards at Sundance and rave reviews in unlikely places such as Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. But for now, »
- Glenn Greenwald
Eugene Jarecki and the campaign to end America's war on drugs
30 March 2013 5:08 PM, PDT
The Us war on drugs has cost one trillion dollars and resulted in 45m arrests. And yet nothing has changed, argues film-maker Eugene Jarecki, a polemical campaigner to reform America's drugs laws. So what did the prisoners in a New York jail think when he showed them his documentary?
Once consigned to the fringes of libertarianism, the argument for the legalisation of drugs has received an unlikely boost in America in recent months with the release of a documentary entitled The House I Live In. Coinciding with the decision by the states of Colorado and Washington to legalise marijuana, the film won the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance film festival last year and has arrived at a moment when Americans are beginning to reconsider the efficacy of their nation's drug policy.
Packed with facts, stories and polemics, the film traces the history of America's changing attitudes to drugs and »
- Andrew Anthony
David Simon on America's war on drugs and The House I Live In
30 March 2013 5:08 PM, PDT
The writer/director, who contributed to this hard-hitting documentary, on why Us drugs policy has gone terribly wrong
On Baltimore… I was a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun for 13 years. I covered the drug war extensively. When I started in 1982, the federal prison population was about 550,000, and 35% were violent offenders. When I finished my run as a reporter 15 years later, it was approaching 2 million, and only 7% were violent offenders.'
In my city, Baltimore, we had a mayor, Martin O'Malley, who decided he was going to escalate the drug war. Zero tolerance was his mantra, and he put it out there: "Get everybody off the corners. Clear the corners." He was running for governor, so, for political reasons, he was basically trying to clear the street a year in advance of the election. We were filming The Wire in Baltimore at the time. And it got to the point »
- Andrew Anthony, David Simon
Polish Cinema Classics Volume II
30 March 2013 5:08 PM, PDT
(1972-90, Second Run, U)
This excellent box set contains a first-rate film from each of the three postwar generations of Polish directors. All are accompanied by a revealing interview. The great Andrzej Wajda (b1926), still best known for his second world war trilogy, is represented by his three-hour 1974 version of Nobel laureate Wladyslaw Reymont's 1898 novel The Promised Land. Magnificently staged and never previously released in Britain, it centres on three friends (a Pole, a German and a Jew) being corrupted by the unrestrained capitalism of late-19th-century Poland when they sacrifice principles and common humanity while establishing themselves as textile tycoons.
The second film, Illumination (1972), directed by the most cerebral Polish director, Krzysztof Zanussi (b1939), is a dazzling, cinematic Bildungsroman about a gifted young physicist, his intellectual and spiritual development, his marriage, fatherhood and intimations of mortality. It's relentlessly serious, unlike the extremely funny political comedy Escape from the "Liberty »
- Philip French
Mark Kermode's DVD round-up
30 March 2013 5:08 PM, PDT
Silver Linings Playbook; The Man with the Iron Fists; So Undercover
The prospect of an off-kilter romcom directed by troublesome auteur David O Russell and dealing variously with bereavement, mental illness, marital breakdown and competitive dancing may set alarm bells ringing. Certainly there were those who saw Russell's Oscar-feted latest as a shamelessly manipulative bid for awards glory, a claim which appeared to be backed up when the best picture nods started rolling in. Yet despite suspicions to the contrary, Silver Linings Playbook (2012, Entertainment, 15) is neither cynical nor muddle-headed – indeed, you would have to be pretty cynically muddle-headed to see it as such. It's an unexpectedly winning tragicomedy about ordinary people trapped in tales of everyday madness, although that description does the movie the injustice of making it sound terribly po-faced, which it most definitely is not.
Having earned a deserved Oscar nomination for her breakthrough role in Winter's Bone, »
- Mark Kermode
Rewind radio: Open Air; Inside the Bonus Culture – review
30 March 2013 5:07 PM, PDT
Noise as art raises hackles on Radio 4, but nothing irritates more than the laughter of City traders
Open Air Radio 4 | iPlayer
Inside the Bonus Culture Radio 4 | iPlayer
Art doesn't half get people cross. If you label a piece of creativity as art – "proper" art, as opposed to an amazing musical performance or an arresting photograph, or a stimulating piece of radio – then whoever made it is guaranteed to get a kicking. The status of art is irritating to a lot of people. I'm never quite sure why: surely we've moved beyond the idea that only Really Good Drawing is allowed to be art, haven't we? Not everything that claims the big A as its title is bogus or pretentious or condescending.
Still, perhaps it would be diplomatic to call Radio 4's new Open Air slot something other than art. How about three minutes of sound, as made by various artists? »
- Miranda Sawyer
Good Vibrations – review
30 March 2013 5:04 PM, PDT
This cheerful film reconstructs the violent, deeply divided Belfast of the late 1970s and early 1980s through the career of the idealistic Terri Hooley (Richard Dormer), who opened a record shop called Good Vibrations to sell rock, folk and country music to express his belief in the redemptive power of popular music. He then went on to discover punk and publicise it as the sound that would unite rebellious, non-sectarian youth in Ulster, promoting it on his own label and ultimately receiving the blessing of John Peel and Joe Strummer. It's rather like an Irish version of Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People, and indeed both films are co-produced by Andrew Eaton. Richard Dormer is immensely likable as Hooley, and Karl Johnson brings a dour conviction to his father, an elderly disillusioned communist who finds spiritual victory in electoral defeat.
DramaPunkMichael WinterbottomJohn PeelJoe StrummerPhilip French
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News »
- Philip French
King of the Travellers – review
30 March 2013 5:03 PM, PDT
Mark O'Connor's rough-hewn, low-budget Irish movie revolves around a deadly feud between two families of Travellers disputing some sodden land not far from Dublin. The Powers are more settled, better dressed and less inclined to fight; the Moorehouses are more colourful and less predictable. All are equipped with big thirsts and a short fuse, and neither side is acquainted with restraint when it comes to acting. The movie opens with a scene-setting wedding in the style of The Godfather and centres on the plump boxer John Paul Moorehouse, a figment from the stage and screen. Like Hamlet he's driven by his father's ghost to avenge his murder, and like Romeo he falls in love with a pretty colleen from the Powers family. John Paul virtually reprises the scene between Terry Molloy and his brother Charley in On the Waterfront when he accuses his uncle of ruining his career in the ring. »
- Philip French
Point Blank – review
30 March 2013 5:03 PM, PDT
From a background in documentary and TV realism, John Boorman brought grit to swinging London with his 1965 feature debut Catch Us If You Can. He then brought the hard-edged European avant-garde of Resnais and Antonioni to Hollywood with his groundbreaking 1967 thriller Point Blank, now revived in widescreen (the only way to see it) in cinemas and for an Nft Boorman retrospective. One of the four supreme masterworks in a major oeuvre, it begins and ends on a deserted Alcatraz, bookending the bloody swath Lee Marvin's gangster cuts across Los Angeles that may be a dying man's dream. A landmark in the history of the crime movie, Point Blank's expressive feeling for landscape and architecture anticipates Michael Mann's Heat. The other good news is that Boorman is about to embark on a sequel to Hope and Glory.
CrimeThrillerPhilip French
guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. »
- Philip French
Shanequa Benitez: how I started dealing drugs
30 March 2013 4:00 PM, PDT
Ex-drug dealer and contributor to The House I Live In on the perils of being drawn into the dangerous world of drug dealing
I grew up in a project [housing estate] in Yonkers, New York. It's a drug area: there's a lot of dope and crack where I live. When I was 18, I found out about prescription drugs – that I could play middle man and make money on the top without having to be outside. That's how I started [dealing drugs]. I come from a two-parent household, so even though everything wasn't sunny and palm trees every day, I was a little better off than a lot of people that I was growing up with. But I had this sense of entitlement, like somebody owed me something. Once I started dealing I just got lost – in over my head.
One time, I met some people who were supposed to sell me some OxyContin [a prescription opioid] and »
- Killian Fox
Brad Pitt: America's war on drugs is a charade, and a failure
30 March 2013 4:00 PM, PDT
The actor and executive producer of the documentary The House I Live In says Us drugs policy needs a radical rethink
Today, with very little effort, anyone can land in virtually any city in this country, and within a day or two, procure their drug of choice. Since declaring a war on drugs 40 years ago, the United States has spent more than a trillion dollars, arrested more than 45 million people, and racked up the highest incarceration rate in the world. Yet it remains laughably easy to obtain illegal drugs. So why do we continue down this same path? Why do we talk about the drug war as if it's a success? It's a charade.
The drug war continues because it is a system that perpetuates itself. On a local level, any time a bust is made, scarcity drives up prices and, of course, the profit potential. History has taught us »
- Brad Pitt
Rufus Sewell: almost famous
30 March 2013 2:00 AM, PDT
Rufus Sewell was a pin-up in the 1990s, then his career stalled. He tells us about moving to La, giving up drinking and why he can't wait to lose his looks
There was a moment in the mid-1990s when Rufus Sewell's international stardom was assured. Before his 30th birthday, he had starred in two hugely successful TV adaptations, of Middlemarch and Cold Comfort Farm, and taken a lead role in the original production of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, alongside Felicity Kendal and Bill Nighy. He would clearly become stupidly famous. But then he… didn't.
"People talk about opportunity knocking," he says, "but the gate was always swinging in the breeze before I got to the door. I was the lead in Interview With The Vampire, until Tom Cruise decided he was interested. I was in The Wings Of The Dove with Uma Thurman, until that got cancelled. I »
- Liese Spencer
This week's new film events
29 March 2013 11:00 PM, PDT
John Boorman Season | Fuaim Is Solas | Rendez-Vous With French Cinema | Birds Eye View Film Festival
John Boorman Season, London
Boorman is one of those directors whose films everyone knows but whose name often gets left behind somewhere. Deliverance, for example, has become a universal point of reference for hicksville paranoia; Excalibur raised the bar for amped-up swords and sorcery movies; Hope And Glory has seeped into our collective wartime memory; Point Blank, which is going on general release, is a textbook case of how to be stylish, violent and hard-boiled. In fact, Boorman seems to have added something to every genre you can think of since he started in the 1950s, making documentaries for the BBC. Why isn't he better appreciated? He is here, at least, with a BFI Fellowship and a retrospective that includes his daughter's touching film portrait Me And Me Dad.
BFI Southbank, SE1, Sat to 30 Apr
Fuaim Is Solas, »
- Steve Rose
This week's new films
29 March 2013 11:00 PM, PDT
In The House | Trance | Good Vibrations | 12 In A Box | The Host | GI Joe: Retaliation | One Mile Away | King Of The Travellers | We Went To War | Point Blank | Finding Nemo 3D
In The House (15)
(François Ozon, 2012, Fra) Fabrice Luchini, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ernst Umhauer, Emmanuelle Seigner. 105 mins
A French teacher is instantly drawn in by a student's essay on infiltrating his friend's family, and so are we. Before we know it, we're swept off on a self-reflexive journey into storytelling, voyeurism and ethical boundaries. Both the boy's story and the movie struggle to find an ending, but it's another distinctly "Ozonian" comedy-thriller.
Trance (15)
(Danny Boyle, 2013, UK) James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson, Vincent Cassel. 101 mins
Boyle chucks everything he can (maybe too much) at this twisty, visceral art-heist thriller, which hinges on McAvoy's hypnosis to reveal the whereabouts of a stolen Goya painting. The result is more of a Jackson Pollock.
Good Vibrations (15)
(Lisa Barros D'Sa, »
- Steve Rose
Harmony Korine interviewed
29 March 2013 11:00 PM, PDT
What happened when Harmony Korine cast Disney starlet Selena Gomez alongside Gucci Mane and 1,000 horny extras? 'It's a hyper-candy-textural, hyper-stylised reality,' he says
"Note: this movie is not for my littles," wrote Selena Gomez on her Facebook page recently. Gomez, 20, Disney starlet, singer of songs, breaker of Bieber's heart, is followed by 41 million people on Facebook, the vast majority of whom you'd hope are indeed "littles". She's heavily promoting Spring Breakers on her page, among the fashion line plugs ("My favorites the yellow with the hearts what's yours?") and Disney show ads. But she's right. It's not for them. Spring Breakers is a glorious beast of a film, a morally ambiguous piece of pop art, a lurid trip with hallucinatory highs and ugly comedowns. Substances are abused, humans are murdered. Guns are fellated. In Gomez World, it is very much off-message. Cover your eyes, littles.
Every March, for a week, »
- Alex Godfrey
The age of the geriaction hero
29 March 2013 11:00 PM, PDT
In the aftermath of The Expendables, Hollywood is increasingly using older actors in lead roles. But where are tomorrow's Van Dammes going to come from?
Having assumed the identity of the Us president, compulsive evildoer Zartan threatens to decimate the population of Earth. A crack covert mission team must call on the only man who can save the day: General Joseph Colton, the original GI Joe. Why a 58-year-old Bruce Willis might be better equipped to bring down a terrorist ringleader than walking Wmd Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is never made clear during the 110 minutes of GI Joe: Retaliation, but right now it seems that action heroes – like the cheeses with which many of them share an acting style – get better with age.
Ever since The Expendables grossed $274m worldwide - a figure almost as high as its cast's combined ages - the geriaction subgenre has exploded, making born-again stars »
- Charlie Lyne
This week's new DVD & Blu-ray
29 March 2013 10:59 PM, PDT
Room 237 | Silver Linings Playbook | The Man With The Iron Fists | Star Trek: Enterprise - Season One | Parks And Recreation: Season One
Even if you've seen Stanley Kubrick's film of The Shining a dozen times, it's doubtful you've seen it quite the same way the contributors to this often hilarious documentary have. For them, it's not just an effective, stylish, spooky tale that plays fast and loose with the Stephen King source material; it's a cryptic maze full of symbolism and puzzles to be unlocked.
They may be right on some scores, since The Shining is full of things hidden in plain sight, like the recurring Native American motif. There are even things investigated here that Kubrick definitely had an eye on, such as the impossible geography of the Overlook Hotel, where windows look out on to nothing and doors lead to nowhere. But they take »
- Phelim O'Neill
Richard Griffiths by James Corden: goodbye Rizzo – we miss you already
29 March 2013 6:18 PM, PDT
The comedian and actor recalls fun, kindness – and Uncle Monty's brief return – in tribute to Griffiths, who has died aged 65
The first time I met Richard Griffiths I was standing in the vast space of rehearsal room 2 at the National Theatre and about to begin my first day as a History Boy. I'd never done a play before. I was standing by the tea and coffee station, clutching my script and hoping my northern accent was up to scratch when Richard walked over. "Don't look so frightened," he said with the broadest smile. "The scary days working here are when you get your first payslip."
He popped a custard cream into his mouth and walked off. Neither of us knew that day what the play was going to become or quite how much time we as a company were about to spend together. We'd all signed up to do 75 shows »
Richard Griffiths: comic master who gave us the unforgettable Uncle Monty
29 March 2013 5:08 PM, PDT
While his stage work won him awards, it was his corpulent, fastidious bachelor in Withnail & I that won our hearts
"It is the most shattering experience of a young man's life when one morning he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself: 'I shall never play the Dane.'" Perhaps Richard Griffiths himself went through the traumatic realisation, famously declaimed by his great character Uncle Monty from Withnail & I – or perhaps not. He was never a leading man, not as such, although his leading role as the schoolmaster in the Alan Bennett play and movie The History Boys won him a raft of prizes. He was the quintessential supporting character actor, and his massive physical presence was lasered into the minds of a young generation as Harry Potter's malign foster father, Vernon Dursley.
But he had already owned the role that made him a legend while dozens of Hamlets had »
- Peter Bradshaw
Richard Griffiths obituary
29 March 2013 5:07 PM, PDT
Actor of geniality, grace and solemnity, he excelled in playing characters on the margins of society
Richard Griffiths, who has died aged 65 from complications following heart surgery, was a fine actor defined by his largeness of spirit, his comic instinct and his empathy with outsiders, as well as his undeniable physical size. He was the kind of actor whom everyone remembers with affection, whether as the flawed but inspirational Hector in Alan Bennett's The History Boys (first staged in 2004, then filmed in 2006) or as the eccentrically gay Uncle Monty in Bruce Robinson's Withnail and I (1987).
Like most actors who have a thriving career in film and television, he learned his craft in theatre. I first became aware of him in the late 1970s when he rose steadily through the ranks of the Royal Shakespeare Company. I was especially struck by his ability to speak verse with mellifluous clarity. »
- Michael Billington
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company.