It could almost be a “Beatles or Elvis” or “Mac or PC” question, this: are you an Inconvenient Truth person, or is The 11th Hour more your bag?

I really came to this expecting a tragically hip makeover of Al Gore’s dull scare-mongering slideshow (that description should let you in on my answer to the above question, lol). But though there’s certainly something about Leonardo DiCaprio squinting at the audience that’s at times potentially as annoying as Gore, and the movie does feel at times like a good sit-down-telling-off session, it’s probably put best towards the end by one of the ‘experts’ when he says, “It’s not just global warming …”

I found the movie overall much closer to the “What the Bleep?!” movies (1 2) – though all the talking heads in some way support the overall message that we need to do something about global warming, they’re all very distinct personalities and have very different philosophies about the why of it all. My favourite line in the documentary comes towards the end (sorry to those concerned, I didn’t note down any names): “We need to be slower and we need to be smarter. That means disengaging from consumerism as the main avenue of experience.” It’s really as much about us being plain better as a race as it is about turning off the lights when we’re not in the room. To complete the first quote I began with, “It’s not just global warming – it’s an outward mirror of an inward condition.”

Like I said, it does feel a lot like being told off for 90 minutes. Oddly, my response to that is: if you really feel like you’re above being told off just ‘cos you left school a few years ago, then perhaps you deserve the shitstorm that’s coming. I found it a much more intelligent movie than Al Gore’s, perhaps because the things it’s asking people to do – which really amount to just being a little more considerate – apply whether global warming is real or not. Viewed that way, I can’t deny, this movie really kinda gave me chills.

“They said we’re gonna fit right in over there. She said they’re kids and dreamers. They’re kids and dreamers!”

This is immediately cuter than expected – like, part of me was avoiding it for fear of just being jealous of the guy involved lol, like, come on, Drew is mine!!!! lol But as soon as the movie begins, you get a sense of the guy and his attitude, the silliness and whatnot, and it’s actually no surprise that his mission was ultimately successful (I’m sure that’s not too much of a spoiler: she’s in the movie; it’s the journey that’s the fun part) because – as far as I know, at least, and as someone even says on the street to him early on – he’s just exactly the kind of guy she’s always saying she looks for … he’s singing “Cool Rider” from Grease 2 at the end to psych himself up for the meeting lol, what more do you need?!

Basically, if you’ve ever had a celebrity crush – better still if you’ve taken that crush to levels bordering on obsession and psychosis, or if you’ve done the whole stage door or premiere thing or whatever (especially if you froze up to some degree while doing it lol) – the movie’s for you, it totally tackles that whole thing of the freaky way we sometimes think of ourselves as close to famous people etc. It kind of falls apart in some places when you see how many connections he has anyway (like, the fact he lives in L.A. makes it less impressive an endeavor to begin with – maybe I should do “My Date With Dakota” in a few years lol. THAT would be a challenge KIDDING! sorta …), the weird lookalike sequence, and the fake pass moment – but overall, it’s as sweet as any Drew movie I’ve seen … in fact, it’s probably sweeter in its own way than some of the more “official” productions. It’s just unbelievably sweet. The fact that for most of its duration it’s a Drew movie with no Drew yet I still was hooked on the screen speaks volumes; the fifth heart in the rating here is for the conversation with Drew at the end. If you’re not a big fan of Drew and all she stands for, you mightn’t get as much out of the movie as I did; but I’m sure you won’t be totally let down.

This is almost one of those movies I could almost have reviewed perfectly well without even seeing it. As expected, it raises questions both about the exploitation of the young and of the questionable judgment of the modern art world.

It’s about a little girl, Marla, whose paintings somehow got to the level of success that most professional artists would be envious of. We meet the dealer who discovered her, looking scarily like a drunken fratboy who’s faced a lot of rejection in life simply stoked by the little girl’s popularity, who speaks of her within minutes of our meeting him in undeniably creepy terms: “Marla, when you see her, is a doll ... both [her brother] and Marla could be Gap ads …”

We’re told that four-year-old Marla is “blissfully unaware” of the bally-hoo around her, but even as we hear those words, they’re juxtaposed with the image of her looking around one of her exhibitions confused at why so many people are calling her name.

A journalist involved at the start of the phenomenon says of the guy who ‘discovered’ her, “He framed it to me as a family human interest story.” Another guy talks about Pollock and other works selling for millions not perhaps because of the art itself but because of the story behind the art – which would completely explain the Marla thing, being as it is an interesting story, which explains the movie. It’s one of those issues that just triggers a chain reaction of questions when you ponder it, “the thin line between prodigy and freak,” “it must be art, look what people are paying for it!” “But why do they want it, hmm?” To the evil looking dealer guy’s credit, even he acknowledges this “value of marketing” in the process.

It doesn’t swing me anymore towards the whole outsider/modern art thing … and like, if anything could, you know what I’m gonna say, then it’s a beautiful 4 year old girl. There’s a montage of the paintings towards the end and to me, they just look like the same scribbles you hurry past in the Tate Modern – like, it amazes me how many people in the movie are seen to be demanding proof that little Marla painted them, like, seriously, is it that hard to believe when you look at them? Worst of all, in this montage, and later when we see the dad selling them, the things bear titles. Which is fine when the title is something like “Blue Sun”, but when you get to “Ode to Pollock” and “the triptych”, surely even the most open-minded pseudo-intellectual is gonna go, “Yah-huh? A four-year-old?” How the power of words can sometimes make me sick.

What can I say … it’s interesting, it’s 80 minutes, and a lot of it is a cute four-year-old girl scribbling in her underwear lol. You kind of know whether you’re gonna like/be interested in this kind of movie from the summary, a review is pretty pointless. Like I said, I could’ve pretty much written this without even watching it.

I was a little baffled to say the least when this documentary didn’t make it to the shortlist for this year’s Best Documentary Feature Oscar; even though I hadn’t seen it yet, it just seemed like it couldn’t fail to convey something more than the average music doc. 90 minutes later, and I kinda see why the Academy ignored it. Though this compilation of conversations with Kurt himself laid over seemingly random shots of moody locales naturally stumbles upon its share of profound moments, it’s not a lot more than the sum of its parts, and I’d sooner watch Gus Van Sant’s Last Days again, or finally get around to reading the man’s journals (if the movie accomplished anything, it’s putting that very task back up on my to-do list).

Unlike the Scott Walker doc I watched before this, which was awash with the work of the artist, there’s nary a note of his own music to be heard. The film makers clearly made a conscious decision to distance the artist from the art – you don’t even see his face until the very end – and succeeded so well that ultimately the movie feels as distant as Kurt ever did at his most cryptic and defensive … or worse, like Courtney. His “narration” often feels a little like Malcolm McLaren’s stuff in The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (“Terrorise, threaten, and insult your own useless generation…”), just a great eff-ewe to anyone who feels an artist “owes” something to the public. Though I realise there’s something in that argument, it’s really not something I like to hear an artist whine about; especially not this artist, and especially not for 90 minutes. It’s intriguing as anything about Kurt would be by default; but absolutely nothing more.

It’s the Kermode working again – I pretty much ran to hear all I could of Scott Walker after Mark Kermode’s review of this doc, astonished that I’d never heard of the man prior to it, even more astonished after I listened. I pretty much knew that I’d like Scott Walker the minute I heard about him, kinda like Nick Drake, Donovan, and others; and in the same way, having heard him, I kinda knew I’d like this documentary, since I even liked his latest work, “The Drift”. I think the BBC show “Imagine” broadcast a shortened version of this very film, too, ‘cos I recognised a lot of it from somewhere. So it could’ve been a dual influence that brought me to fandom.

On one level I guess this is a very flat telling of Walker’s story – an artist who worked in the confines of pop just so he could write, who finally broke free, who reached a pinnacle only to be inexplicably tossed aside by the public, but who kept on working in exile to make some of the most extraordinary, difficult, unique music of the last 30 years. It’s at its best in the cool stretches where we see Walker fans simply listening to his and the “Brothers” records – their own arranger commenting on one, “I must listen to some of these … and you’re sure I did this one?” ... everyone, even Bowie, still visibly overwhelmed by the sounds he brought into the world.

One issue I have, and it’s something I guess I’ve kind of been itching to talk about overall here or elsewhere so I might protest too strong here, but it’s the narration that speaks of the past in the present tense (”... they begin to record their last album ever …”) ... I hate when historians do that more than anything in the world, and it’s even worse when it’s inter-cut with the onscreen interviewees who, naturally, speak of the past in the past tense. Just a silly grr, I guess most people are fine with this lol.

In any case, it’s a gorgeous documentary about a gorgeous artist. To go back to the Mark Kermode connection, I think this unlike Heart of Gold really could bring Walker new fans – you’ve only to hear a bar of his early work to fall in love, and even though there’s a part of me that’s naturally repelled by his more recent stuff including “The Drift”, it’s impossible to ignore and irresistible not to delve further. And if you’ve any artistic inclinations whatsoever, you’ll be inspired more than you thought possible.

There isn’t a lot to say that’s unique about this documentary though I’d heartily recommend it to anyone just developing an interest in the subject it covers – that is Seventies cinema – ie, if you’ve not yet read the many better books etc that cover it already. “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls”, which I’ve not read nor have I seen the documentary adaptation, comes to mind. The Kid Stays in the Picture, too – a movie I’d much sooner watch than this again. This is mostly talking heads and clips. Not that it’s not a fun watch if you’re into the period; and I’m glad I finally saw it as it was the last production Ted Demme was involved with (his death is touched on lightly at the close, which I kinda take uncomfortable issue with – a post-credits thing maybe, but sad an occurrence as it was, it had nothing to do with the documentary subject). With him fresh off Blow, though, and with the title it has, I kinda expected a little more on the drugs side of things. Like the horror doc Going to Pieces from a couple of years ago, it’s really only useful as a perfect introduction or fun refresher on the subject.

This was supposed to be my first movie of this year but I had technical problems. I can’t not mention Mark Kermode on this review, I’m afraid (so it’s a good thing I didn’t make a resolution to mention him less, I guess, lol), ‘cos this was one of the first movies I heard him review on his podcast towards the end of 2006, and he’s mentioned it many times since (not to mention interviewing Young early last year on The Culture Show). This was the movie that “converted” him to a Young fan having pretty much despised him previously.

I was never so passionate about my basic apathy towards him and his work – when I was starting to really get back into music a few years ago, I tried listening to most of his stuff and I later listened to “Prairie Wind” (the album that forms most of this concert) and “Living With War” but didn’t get a lot out of them. For me, it was his most recent album, “Chrome Dreams II” – which I thought was by leaps and bounds the best album of last year – that finally made me “get” Neil Young. I don’t know, maybe it’s just ‘cos Kermode told me to like him, lol. But anyway, what I’m saying is, I came to this show already primed to love it.

I wasn’t quite “moved to tears” as Kermode has repeatedly said he was; but I can see where it touched him, I think. This was a very philosophical album, with lines like, “this old guitar ain’t mine to keep, it’s mine to play for a while,” and “when god made me, did he just make me in his image, or every living thing?” and the whole matter and God thing is clearly big on Kermode’s mind. Then there’s the whole age thing that pervades the whole concert, and I’ll admit even got me; though I have to say, I was pleased by the anecdote about writing “Old Man” (”... look at my life, Twenty four and there’s so much more, Live alone in a paradise …”).

One thing I was worried about in watching this was the sound sync problems I’d heard about. Things like that can really make me hate a movie. I don’t know if they fixed this when it went to DVD, but I barely noticed any such problems. If there are any, it’s down to the fact that they shot over 2 nights and obviously picked the better shots at times, sync be damned. It really didn’t bug me at all, and those who are whining oughta pick up a copy of The Phantom of the Opera.

In the end, it’s a filmed concert of Neil Young – you kind of know what you’re gonna get, especially if you’ve fleetingly touched on his music at some point; and I wouldn’t expect it to have the “conversion” effect on many people other than Kermode. It has a really nice “pre-concert” sequence with a few mini-interviews and even a cute little POV shot of someone handing in their ticket at the door. It really would’ve made a good start to a new year, it’s a shame … but there are plenty more years to follow that plan, and I’ll probably relax to this on many late nights / early mornings to come.

“The Devil goes after the young. Those who cannot fend for themselves.”

You said it, Miss Fischer …

You kind of get the gist of where this documentary is going early on, when evangelist leader Becky Fischer asks a crowd of parents and children, “who believes God can do anything?” and we see one mother forcing the hands of her two kids – who don’t look old enough to even raise their own hands on command let alone have such an opinion – in the air.

It’s hard to write a lot on this documentary, or any like it, without spilling over into a mess of a babble on the contentious issues and one’s own opinion on it rather than focusing on the basic film-making quality, such are the touchy topics it covers.

In a nutshell, this movie shows a pretty intense “camp” – a training ground for young evangelists where I guess the highlight is Fischer talking about Harry Potter, referring to him as a warlock, and therefore he makes the baby Jesus cry.

But apparently Fischer isn’t as upset about the movie as you’d expect from the picture it paints – I read on Wikipedia, “To Fischer, the real message of Jesus Camp is to show how passionate children can be when given the right opportunities.” Right. And there are moments here where the pendulum does swing her way, you do see good things coming out of it; one girl, for example, has unbelievable strength against the obvious taunts she gets at school for her beliefs etc. But, y’know, as to the passion thing? You could get that by giving them large quantities of junk food too. It doesn’t make it good. Like a radio DJ – the only real voice in the movie that calls a spade a spade and tells her how crazy she is, since you really don’t need any voice but her own to tell you that – tells her over the phone, you can get kids to do anything, you can turn them into soldiers, anything. Now I guess the argument for Fischer in answer to that is – well, at least she’s not doing that. The worst most of these kids are ever gonna really do is annoy people. It could be worse. But it’s still incredibly sad to see kids – at times, incredibly smart kids – basically having their lives snatched away from them in the name of God.

I don’t have problems with other people’s beliefs, and I’m sure for some of these kids whatever the camp leaves them with might be much better than any other alternatives. But anything that teaches, nay forces, children so young to be so certain about something which, by its very nature, is forever uncertain – that’s what bugs me the most.

As to the film itself, it is certainly well-made, arresting, and at only 90 minutes, refreshingly short for a documentary. Like I said, really only the DJ flat-out “makes a case” either way for or against Fischer, she pretty much damns herself. There’s no narration and only a few snippets of text impart basic pieces of information about locations and names etc. There’s really not a lot of gimmickery involved. It’s what I’d call “a proper documentary”, and it’s pretty scary.