crucial

My NY fam here being interviewed for XLR8R:

The Book of Eli – Spoiler Alert ! oh shit he’s a Muslim !  No, actually this is about Denzel carrying the Bible around and everybody tries to kill him for it (because its a potential instrument of control). It has a hollywood desert art film vibe (which I can totally get with).  Very black and white, like Stranger than Paradise.  (tho my russian camcorder rip accentuates this).  Denzel Washington is awesome (martial arts, chaste, a sober survivalist) and everybody else follows his lead.  That chick from that 70s show is still hawt and obviously was just playing dumb on aforementioned show.

The Road – way less fun, way more depressing, but this shows more realistically what you could expect from psychologically damaged people in a post-apocalyptic world.  At first I thought that The Son (born post-apocalypse) had too normal of an American accent considering he’s only known The Father in his entire life.  He should be more feral, or more wild and confident.  But he’s damaged (the Father keeps him in fear and mistrust), and as it goes on he shows his very complicated state.  This apocalypse holds little hope for an afterwards.  You really think after the film is done: ok, they survived, but for how long ? With all the pianos, the moralistic tone (“we would never eat people, would we ?”) and lack of rape scenes, this is almost PG and moralistic, considering its a post-apoc cannibal flick.  Doesn’t that say a lot about our weird society that I can sum it up that way ?  Our value system is so deranged.

Right now I’m going to watch: Music is the Weapon . Fela Kuti doc !!!! Already looks great.

Dub Gabriel feat. U Roy- Luv n’ Liv ep-Out 3/9/10  by  DESTROY ALL CONCEPTS

Luv ‘n Liv – Dub Gabriel featuring U-Roy (DAC 009)

Straight outta Kingston Jamaica via San Francisco and beyond, Luv ‘n Liv is the first single to drop from Dub Gabriel’s upcoming 4th studio album, The Cut Up. Featuring the mighty Dread in a Babylon, U-Roy (The Originator), Luv ‘n Liv lays testament to all that can be when you put a reggae legend in the same room as one of America’s leading producers of nu-dub.

With the original hook-up coming through none other than Scientist himself, U-Roy & Dub Gabriel went deep in Mark Pistel’s (Hercules & The Love Affair/Meat Beat Manifesto) Room 5 studio and emerged with Luv ‘n Liv. To round things out, DG enlisted David J of Bauhaus and Love & Rockets to hold down the bass, and Ysanne Spevack on strings who was fresh from her recent work with the Smashing Pumpkins. The outcome is pretty epic if we say so ourselves.

Bridging the living roots of dub to the future-present world of dubstep, DG also brought in some of the hottest producers in the game to remix the track, including Ming (Ming & FS), Subatomic Sound System (following up on his highly successful remix for Lee “Scratch” Perry), Lloop (The Agriculture Records) and Timeblind (Tigerbeat 6). Finally, for all those who crave a good dosage of roots, Dub Gabriel brings things back down to earth with a soulful version of Luv ‘n Liv backed by none other than Yellowman’s original Sagittarius Band. Respect!

Most everybody on the internets seems to be raving about how great Avatar is. I agree. A splendid moviegoing experience. Except for the plot and the script. And the racial pre-suppositions (us vs. them). And the self-congratulatory viewpoint of a liberal white audience condemning an obvious and uncomplicated evil.

The real world is not simple. People tend to choose an enemy and blame that enemy. Corporate Capitalist Empire or Global Jihad ? Neither thank you.

In some cases the enemy is obvious. That’s why film makers go back to the Nazis over and over again. Safe target. I thought Inglorious Basterds had the political intelligence of a 3 year old, but then again Quentin Tarantino protrays the Jews as psychopathic (but justified) basterds and the Germans are in general stylish, polite and they keep their word. But there is only one side you can root for. In a way this is funny, but I’m not sure if I want to give Tarentino credit for it. OK, I’ll cut him some slack.

Anyway, in case you haven’t seen Avatar, its about a white (American!) dude that goes native and becomes their most awesome leader and achieves an improbable, lo-tech victory (but with soul power! and the animals help them!). Awesome battle sequence ! Good vs. Evil, get it ?

In the real world you live in a complicated global capital network that sometimes deliberately but mostly inadvertiantly leverages injustices so that your locality can exist with the wealth and convienience it enjoys. You cannot opt out. You can’t just choose the right items on the Health Food store shelf.

You can use your influence to convince specific companies to change behavior and you can make the best decision when you personally have a decision to make. Don’t just say “fuck it”.

That’s the resources issue. The other issue is racial and cultural understanding. Most of the people who see Avatar will not be White Americans. But we get it, its supposed to be a character you can relate to.

Here’s an amazing film I watched the other day. Available, for the moment, in HQ in full on YouTube. Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere in Africa, 2001 German/Swahili/English) is a true story, the auto-biography of a young Jewish girl who fled Nazi Germany in 1938 with her family and went to Kenya to manage a farm.

Regina, the girl, takes to it immediately. She learns Kiswahili, makes friends easily and has the genuine wonderment of a child. Her mother is in denial about what is happening in Germany. “We were as German as anybody, we weren’t religious Jews”. She has lived an upper middle class life. In Nairobi there is colonial splendour, but the family is poor and rural life is hard.

She think’s she is tolerant. In an argument her husband tells her that the way she speaks to their cook and closest friend Owuor reminds him of “certain people in Germany that I don’t think you wish to be compared to”.

Its primarily her that grows throughout the film.

Other parts I liked: Owuor is very big hearted and wise, but he’s real. Its a classic “native” role but its not simplistic. On the second farm there is a new helper and he has a gruff suspicous look. He says he’s lived on the farm for 40 years and demands to be hired. It takes a while to get his trust. In one small scene he says that if somebody steals your cow then you can just forget about it. The cow will be eaten and then it’s gone. If somebody steals your land then its still there. You have to look at it every day of your life.

Real characters with real relationships. As the viewer you really put yourself into what they are going through.

Click to pop it up, watch it on YouTube in HQ.

I was in a bar a few weeks back, drunk, talking to some people and listening to this girl tell us about growing up in East Germany. Just to paint a picture: she was very attractive, blond, very lively and also a bit drunk. She mentioned the dolls that they used to have, an Eastern German version of the Barbie Doll and I accidentally joked something like “were the dolls named Helga ?” — she slapped me. Lightly, but to the point. Then she complained bitterly that people just didn’t understand what its like to have grown up in the east.

I think I do understand, and I’ll get to that in a moment. But first let me say that often we think we understand something but we don’t unless we’ve really been through it. Deep seated things get into your body, your emotions, your language and your way of being. Its about Identity. I didn’t understand the terrors of immigration until I went through it (and mine was mild and my chances very good). Getting a taste of it I could say that I can imagine. But I can’t imagine really what its like to be African and trying to stay in Europe and really having no idea what to do if I got denied. You have no idea the panic that brings a man.

I want to take a stab at this: the DDR was pronounced dead, it was declared unfashionable, its furnishings ugly and laughable, its people (many of my current friends) were poorer and behind the times. And the Western world, still to this day—in particular on this day November 9th 2009 (Mauerfall Tag) says how wonderful it is that these poor bastards got their freedom to be like us, to shop at Karstadt and eat bananas. The relics of the East are diminished by calling it Ostalgie and shoved into a box marked “The Past”.

So its read as something like “you can be like us now” ... but you AREN’T us. You are still “them”, and we’ve declared your culture as dead so now you really have no country. You can’t change who you are (the way you grew up, your memories, the way you talk), but we’ve declared your whole Ossi culture to be over with.

Welcome to the West.

The only thing you can do now is give up and gradually assimilate into the western capitalist culture. As new identities come forth, people take those up and eventually it changes. Perhaps try Football or Rave.

Its like the well dressed older brother came back from college and now teases his little brother constantly.

That is the message that is being read.

I don’t think like that, mostly I’m not even that aware of the cultural war, or I don’t realize its that important. Hence me not realizing that the Helga joke was really insensitive. (I know it wasn’t funny. I was drunk, it was an offhand comment, OK ?) My American method is to use humor to dissolve things.

Can’t wait for a unified Korea, eh ?