Geo Magneto

Can you name one brown artist -- and I mean a non black and non white artist or actor? That's alot of people in the world today but no one can be found in media to really represent that range. I'll give you a minute to think about it...

Chances are you just had a real hard time. Most of you won't be able to because the binary of black and white is such a dominant control mechanism that when an artist like Maya appears the intitial spectacle of "Error! Life is not black and white!" ends with a whimpering cancellation -- and return to the black-white dynamic. You are just as guilty as I am, and she was, for it.

This documentary is Maya's own chronological year by year log of her own rise from UK streets, as documentarian for Elastica to the fated Superbowl show where she is crucified and exiled from America. However, it's much more than that when you look at it as more complicated than the documentary even get's into. I would say M.I.A's lineage is more Cesar Chavez, Frida Kahlo, Adam Yauch, and Willie Guthrie than Rosa Parks, Malcolm X or the Stonewall Riots. If you understand what I mean then you know. She's complicated. What she represents is complex to most people who live in a very myopic view of culture. I don't blame them or you -- since we are bombarded with binary cultural leaders all day. The little voices hardly get a spoonful of soup unless they make a ruckus.

The documentary asks if she is less a social justice symbol or more a force in time. Is she her own narrative of herself as this reluctant savior for the Tamil people? Or is she a multiplicity of issues, the result of things being arranged in a certain way at the time? I'm not sure a white artist with activist roots could ever be stuck in the same corner as an artist who originates from a place undergoing active genocide can be. Unless of course said white artist made the genocide their issue without being there (Cue Kony 2012.) M.I.A came close to being that because she sort of was "in the mix" of the genocide, or at least tried to be by placing herself there. For M.I.A fans you know. This idea of going back to the homeland to represent the homelands people is a rough slog (read "Seasons of Migrations to the North"), its a heavy load to carry and it almost never resolves to any success for the artist or activist. It historically resolves to sleeping with the dominant race and getting your jollies on despite your people's interests. That's what "Seasons of Migrations" was about -- an African dude sets out to France to achieve success and spends his time having trysts with the white bourgeoisie as his hometown floods to extinction -- and it bares a striking similarity with Maya's tale.

The larger point of celebrities trying to save the downtrodden and failing though still stands. Even the white folks that do this are crucified; the Rachel Corrie incident in Gaza for example (look it up), Adam Yauch from the Beastie Boys' speech at the VMAs (he denounced Islamophobia, and was the lone voice to do so), Brando sending an indigenous woman to collect his Oscar (Brando was protesting Big Oil raiding indigenous land.) These folks were either unalived or tossed off as nutsos for taking these positions. And the issues they were taking a stand on continue to this day unphased by their grandstanding! Why is this a pattern with celebrities? Rather, why do they just say something and then stop at the rest of the work required? ANSWER: Because it's not enough to just take a stand. Community activism is an artform that celebrities seem profoundly unskilled at.

I personally believe she was robbed by the NFL. 16 million dollars, c'mon! That's forcing her into slavery to pay back. It wasn't really that bad and she didn't need to be crucified or made into an example. Didn't Dre and Eminem do the same? Didn't Janet Jackson show full nudity? Placed under a microscope I wonder if the NFL has fined anyone else that ever did something risque who performed at a half-time show. I wonder if that one aspect of the film presents the moral story of M.I.A's rise and fall in America. Or, does it only serves to show the shelf life of non black/non white American artists is around 5 years. Cue Aziz Ansari -- the other jack of all trades, master of none time has forgotten. Combined they were both cancelled; one by the liberal feminist left (Aziz) and the other by the conservative populist right (M.I.A), that's the bigger story I saw. She's got a canary in a coalmine story less about her people and her own personal narrative, but about how "others" in general hit a wall that only generational wealth can solve.

And yes, I realize the word hole I just put myself in since her marrying into Seagrams fortune is what probably kept her alive. And even for a potential revival. I bet she knows exactly how to solve the Sri Lankan issue by now. She commanded fleets of ships for her videos and armies of arabs for "Bad Girls", I bet this is not the last time we hear from M.I.A. I just hope on round 2 she reads "Rules for Radicals" by Saul Alinsky and does the other 14 steps required to create community change. ;)

Take it or leave it, On the Road is a quintessential American novel. There were members of my generation that swore by it as a kind of bible to living, writing and being free. As a matter of fact, I was lucky enough to be in the school Allen Ginsburg was teaching at. I was also lucky enough to get hit on by him in the hallways of said school.

Be that as it may, he croaked teaching Whitmans Leaves of Grass before I graduated. It was the “challenger explosion” for my peer group of wannabe beatnicks. Not for me. I wasn’t very much into the beatnick era, alive or dead. Even though I shared space with one and even though I should due to a similar writing, nomadic life.

Now with all that bs out of the way I hope you realize I’m qualified to make an assessment on authenticity of people, product, and position — why? I don’t just idolize sh:t for no reason. Why am I writing what I think about idolizing sh:t? Because this film is an idolizers version of an objectively unreadable book. With that being said the performances are better than expected. Kristen Stewart is a cameo considering she get main stage on the poster art.

And the dude playing Kerouac pulls it off. Its polished grit made me want it to be grittier. But alas, we cant get gritty anymore with these GenZ flex mongers trying to gloss up everything with claymorphic dilly dallying. Not your fault GenX. Im sure these GenZ Euphoria idolizers wont get three seconds into the film without get lost browsing TikTok. Hey, at least the streaming numbers show the movie is playing. Amirite?

In deciding how to tackle the issue of “Karening”, the writers of “Karen” decided to mix the stalker-thriller elements with racial justice commentary. This is not a task for the ill-hearted since “Get Out” and other films in the same genre (House of Sand and Fog, The Neighbor, etc) have already tackled the premise very well. “Karen” fails to invoke the seriousness of those films while somehow taking itself very seriously. Almost to the point of being a parody of itself. As if, the filmmakers were aware how unready for primetime the script was, so they relied on pacing (making it watchable) and predictability rather than say, “Misery” did to profound effect by digging deep into the stalker psychology.

To Karen, as a verb, is a recent term that evolved out of the compounding hysterics of primarily white women screaming like the Joker on an off-day at people of color, usually making entitled demands to be treated like Gods (or else they will “speak to the manager.”) These videos are best seen in the Cooper vs Cooper drama prior to the George Floyd murder that sparked BLM protests around the United States. Or on any number of Karen compilations now on youtube. The entire phenomenon lends itself to deep psychological analysis, this film attempts but gets wrong. Karens are no longer just white women. The word now is applied to anyone, of any race, who is freaking out with entitlement and mania. Yes, even black people can be Karens in 2021.

The writers seem late to the cultural show here. I think they decided to remake “House of Sand and Fog” with C-list actors and toss in a pinch of BLM. Does it succeed?

You decide. It’s remarkably watchable. The actress playing Karen invokes Christina Ricci from “Black Snake Moan” in an alternate suburban timeline. Their are moments that are super-cringe but also moments that seem like they should be interesting, so you watch them, even though it turns out they weren’t. For instance, none of the characters develop over the storyline. They all remain exactly the same as they were when the movie begins. So, be ready for a rather average script with above average ambitions.

These guys reminded me of the 'better men' from my mediterranean side of the family. If you enjoyed Zorba the Greek, Lion of the Desert and Scorcese street gangster films simultaneously (or you're a woman who has a thing for Anthony Quinn-like men), instead of the Costnerian didactic (my word for plain white bread actors that come out of the military industrial complex to serve some 1940's version of cowboy america), you'll love the Projectionist.

Filled with little Pacino-types that talk with accents and have unique facial tick and lanky Ferraras wanking around Little Italy and Palestinian neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Astoria talking about the good old days of porn theaters on 42nd street.

The last film I saw at Cinema Village before Hurricane Sandy made Los Angeles a better idea (before these damn wild fires), was The Master with Philip Seymore Hoffman & Joaquin Pheonix. A great little film at the time that was only playing at the arthouse theater. Cinema Village. Well -- I come to find out, howdy friggan doo, its owned by the protagonist of this documentary. As a a matter of fact, this whole documentary is about him. It's not about Anthony Quinn although, spoiler, you will feel by the end that this guy who owns all the little theaters in tri-state, is the last real New Yorker. The kind that lived off "heart movies", like he referred to Last Tango in Paris lines around the porn theater block back in 82. You're going to leave this film wishing you had real people in your life that made movie theaters for a living. I want this man to adopt me.

Fascinating documentary on what was a negligible late 90s festival. The director makes the case Woodstock 99 was an expression of “white rage” and examines the musical performances as a bunch of shallow musicians egging on the primarily “frat bot” crowd to misbehave — which they did.

I remember in 99, thinking how awful music had become and witnessing every event being horrible, so I would make the case it wasn’t just Woodstock 99, but everything that year was filled with chaos. Whether its the the fault of MTV sinking backwards to pop acts, the rage of nu-metal acts or a statement on “white behaviour”, its up to you in the end. What you get out of this documentary will entirely depend on where you fall in relation to those aspects. Gen-Z respectively might not care at all and see Woodstock 99 as a primordial pig stew of their parents culture war. Gen X however, might be able to squeeze some meaning out by remembering where they stood in relation the the nonsense at the event. I know I was too busy trying to build a career and saw the burning stages on the news as a sign that American alternative music culture had completely failed to escort us into the diverse daydream of a Nirvana based early 90s promise.

Lollapalooza 1 and 2 were better than Woodstock 99 or 94 (the latter is constantly referenced as being this ideal version when in fact, the absolutely never-mentioned Beastie Boy "Tibetan Freedom Concerts" were the real evolution of the Woodstock vibe.)

So, its a good documentary, but it’s based -- because it doesn’t consider the "better festivals" I mentioned above, which require critical examination in our culture on how we do a modern peace event. For example, where's the Uygher Awareness music festival (to match the Tibetan Freedom Concerts of the 90s) or the Anti-Fascist Music Festival (to match the LiveAid Anti-Apartheid festivals of the 80s, which can be argued effectively ended apartheid in South Africa.) Right? Where's the discussion on what worked instead of documentaries on festivals that failed due to privledge and whiteness - we know about Fyre, we know about Woodstock 99. That examination is nowhere to be seen, therefore the documentary is based -- a symptom of an overwhelmingly cultural bankruptcy in American culture right now.

America had a single export in the 90s -- our music culture, an attitude of anger towards racism and white supremacy, a repulsion towards the objectification of women and the privileged materialism of the 80s, all wrapped up in our music scene (conscious hip hop included within Nirvana, RATM and even Janes Addiction/Sublime/Pixies mystiques.) All of those mystiques were systemically dismantled by a war-mongering mindset of corporate commodification of (a) our concerts and (b) the acts that played in them. By the late 90s we were back where the 80s left off, overwhelmed with contrived boy bands (Limp Bizcuit included) through various consolidations of media companies, betrayals of peace-love-unity vibe and "colonization" of a rave scene that was probably the most vital historical outgrowth of it all. The commentary by Moby in the documentary contains gems to this perspective which can be expanded on tenfold for another documentary -- we'll see. The point is that Durst did go on to run Sony Music, so his moronic display in 99 had some kind connection to what the record companies saw him as beholden to. As a kind of white-Kali destroyer to the white-Christ Moby figure.

These aspects of white-rage, the subtleties explored in Woodstock 99 are now active in US politics (down to the unironically adornments of "red hats" repeating echoes of Fred Dursts moronic manipulations of the crowd. Much like the red hats storming the capitol looking to "break stuff." In that sense, Woodstock 99 begins a conversation about the poisons in American culture actively still destroying us, that began in the late 90s. What we do know is that the exported American coolness that went out to the rest of the world — our musical diversity, our punk rock, our skate scene, our real street music, our real trauma inspired grunge scene -- have been gutted by something. The mystery of what that was will not be answered in Woodstock 99 but maybe in a future revolution we will rediscover who we are again. The central question Woodstock 99 brings up therefore is not so much how to get it back, but to ask ourselves why, in 22 years since has not a single "good cause" festival occurred.

Disappearance on Clifton Hill is more like a disappearance of your valuable time on an absurdly cliche masterwork in hot garbage.

Canadian so-called “mystery” that feels like a overwrought cut-scene for a bad video game. Spare yourself this blithering tax write-off for whoever financed it. One dimensional over-dramatic cast of characters lack a single iota of purpose running around like headless chickens at the whim of a personalitiness cliche female brooder. Yes, I found myself wondering by act 2 why she even cared about what she was doing hunting down a crime she witnessed at 7. From scene to scene I kept wondering how such a purposeless film could get made let alone cameo David Cronenberg, who is as terrible an actor as can be despite his directorial brilliance.

Cronenberg himself, as a cinematic icon of psychological horror, being in this poor excuse for some kind of deeper level of corruption in the movie budget bizness reveals much. Not to diverge on why awful movies like this are drowning streaming services (corruption in the movie biz on all levels) but when I found out David “F*ckin” Cronenberg was physically in this movie, playing a conspiracy theorist boomer, I felt a need to react.

If you don’t figure out the end of this ronk-fest within the first 5 minutes you deserve to be trapped in a cabin and only have this garbage to watch for eternity. If you’re a film geek like me watch it for Cronenbergs cameo and balk at the levels of horrible the rest of the cast, script and so-called “mystery aspects” are — tropes so simple to predict they point to evidence of my assertion this was a “scam film”, seemingly contrived by the Producers tax illiterate fourteen year old step-daughter to skimp on script costs while still receiving a hefty payday on this bonafied loss unopportunity.