My published writing for this week represents a rather a diverse set of work, so, for a change, the following links don't lead exclusively to snarky reviews of subpar new releases. Not to worry, there's plenty of that, too, (and I save some special venom for the new Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn/Jonah Hill/Richard Ayoade sci-fi/comedy The Watch), but there's also my consideration of Michelangelo Antonioni's 1964 masterpiece Red Desert and profiles of two up-and-coming comedians which I contributed to Variety's "10 comics to watch" feature.
Film reviews
Red Desert (Little White Lies)
The Watch (Slant)
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Slant)
Big Boys Gone Bananas* (Time Out New York)
Deranged (Indiewire)
Comedian profiles:
Kurt Braunohler (Variety)
Rory Scovel (Variety)
1 comment:
In 2009, Swedish film director Fredrik Gertten made a film called Bananas!*, which centered around the depressing lives of the Nicaraguan plantation workers of the popular American company Dole. The work quickly transcended from depressing portrait to involving legal drama as Dole was found to be using an illegal pesticide on their crops of bananas, causing them to be tainted and workers to be sterile. As corporations often thing, they thought no harm, no foul, what the consumers don't know will not hurt them. That all shifted when the film entered eligibility for the L.A. Film Festival. What was originally a documentary whistleblowing on the corruption and wrongdoings of an enormous corporation was the byproduct and immediate target of the same corporation, threatening lawsuits and legal action if the film play in the festival. Gertten, bewildered by the lawsuit from Dole representatives who clearly had not seen the documentary, allowed it to premiere at the festival with a statement at the beginning saying Dole reports it to be fabricated and containing "patent falsehoods." What unfolded was three solid months of breakneck legal action; a corporation of 75,000 versus an indie film company of four, with the corporation using tactics only in play by the person with the bigger piles of money. Dole did everything from buying the name "Fredrik Gertten" on Google, utilize a tactic called "astroturfing," which we discuss later, bribe several news sources, and play filthy with a company completely ill-equipped to fight back. consultoria medicina pediatria medicina medicina dermatologia veterinaria veterinaria veterinarian online especialista abogado españa abogado colombia abogado mexico abogado españa derecho psicologia medicina psicologia derecho psicologo Gertten has done a dirty job to begin with, which is blowing the whistle on unfair corporate practices. He also did anothe
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