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Driving here yesterday, I passed a billboard on I-85 that boasted that North Carolina was the most military-friendly state in the nation, which makes the slate of war docs hit harder, sting more, somehow. War is very much with us. One quick example: The first words you hear in Occupation: Dreamland, a doc that aspires to the Sam Fuller model of representing the reality of war [machine-gunning the audience], is a soldier saying "If you had told me I would end up in the army, I'd have said 'fuck you.' I was playing in a death metal band." Yeah, it's funny, but it's also heartbreaking.
Even blacker than death metal is the mordant humor of Marie Colvin, the cinetrix's new crush. Colvin, a foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times of London, is one of five female war reporters in doc-darling Barbara Kopple's newest film, the opening night selection [and world premiere] Bearing Witness. Holy shit, is Colvin badass. The woman lost an eye to grenade shrapnel and sports the hottest eyepatch ever [and a gorgeous pedicure visible from the second balcony during the post-film Q&A last night]. The film deserves my better-rested prose efforts: a full review TK, but the short version is see this film.
Elsewhere, an excerpt from an appreciation on itv by her colleague Bill Neely:
Many of us wrote to her on Facebook in the last two days. In her last hours, she posted back “Thanks for all your help…A nightmare here. Mx”
To one friend she joked “thanks..for offer to be a human shield. photographer paul conroy with me as well and has posted some amazing photo”
And to another “you are a star. and have clearly joined the 21st century. i’ll get there one day.”
To Paul Wood of the BBC,who filed some memorable reports from the same city just a few weeks ago she wrote “Following in your footsteps. Everyone here remembers you as 2amazing”. Very irritating. X.”
Lovely, generous Marie.
FOC Andy Smith, executive director of the Nickelodeon Theatre in Columbia, SC, has flushed one Michael Fassbender un-fan from the brush. If this poster finds you eye-rolling and saying [as the cinetrix finds herself doing with increasing, incredulous frequency], "C'mon, people! It's 2012!" consider channeling your rage into a donation to the Nick's eminently worthy Move the Nick campaign.
Fuck the haters instead of hating the fuckers!
As you were talking about your ride on the train from the airport, I was thinking of the way in which the train itself is a cinematic experience.
There’s a big link between trains and film. One of the first filmed objects was a train. The clickety-clack of the projector and the clickety-clack of the train are similar. There is the idea of the voyage—every voyage is a story. I wonder if film would have been invented without the train. Somehow, the invention of tracks and all of that made us think a certain way about the world, and that led eventually to the idea of the sprocketed film, with its frame lines.
