Tag: Michael Mann

By Christopher Stipp

The Archives, Right Here

I was able to sit down for a couple of years and pump out a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

And now, you can follow me on TWITTER under the name: Stipp

RIP: A REMIX MANIFESTO – Contest

Girl Talk is without question one of the more progressive musical artists of the 21st century and it’s an abomination that current laws prohibit this man from fully realizing his potential.

Back when albums from The Beastie Boys or Biz Markie in the late 80’s included enough samples to make any litigious lawyer nowadays salivate at the chance to sue for copyright infringement it is a godsend that they did not because these artists brought another dimension to their own vision of what music should be. There is a difference between the wholesale theft of a musician’s original work and what someone else could do with the atoms and particles of it and crafting a pastiche of originality.

RiP: A REMIX MANIFESTO brings this issue and more like it to the surface as a documentary that is out to define what it is to be dealing with the issue of copyright in our modern age. Crafted over 6 years and still not finished as the makers of the film allow viewers to make their own version of the film, their own mash-up of sorts. Further, those living in the US name their own rate for the film which is also available in Apple’s iTunes store.

Lucky for three of you I have the chance for you to watch the film in its entirety for the low low cost of free. Shoot me your name at Christopher_Stipp@yahoo.com and I’ll enter you in a contest for a copy of this brilliant documentary on a subject that you all should care about; the copyright laws have, without a doubt, prevented an album like Paul’s Boutique to change the musical landscape.

More about the film:

In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers.

The film’s central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy? Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig, Brazil’s Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow are also along for the ride.

A participatory media experiment, from day one, Brett shares his raw footage at opensourcecinema.org, for anyone to remix. This movie-as-mash-up method allows these remixes to become an integral part of the film. With RiP: A remix manifesto, Gaylor and Girl Talk sound an urgent alarm and draw the lines of battle.

Which side of the ideas war are you on?

MAFIA – DVD Review

Watching PUBLIC ENEMIES last week put me in the mood to take advantage of watching a series that out some reality back into my television watching.

For some it’s Friends or the Office or some variation on the sitcom we’ve all come to know and revile, for me it’s a solid documentary. Specifically, I’m addicted to the seedier side of our American heritage and nowhere else has this addiction been better satisfied than with the History channel’s examination into the mob with The Mafia. In what feels like 10 brisk hours you go from thinking you know everything about the mob because you’ve watched all the seasons of the Soprano’s to having a better understanding on a subject that has all levels of great storytelling: love, murder, revenge and the dark realization that this is still going on in the world. (Just ask the author of Gomorrah, Roberto Saviano. He wrote an expose on organized crime in Naples and was put under police protection.)

The DVD set is currently available through the History Channel and, an added bonus, on sale. For $28.00 you are getting more than a history lesson, you’re getting a dose of cold reality that even though the Irish help build America it was a sect of Italians who were there to make sure they got a piece of the action.

A little bit more about the DVD:

MAFIA: THE HISTORY OF THE MOB IN AMERICA – VOLUME ONE

Starting with the prohibition years, this groundbreaking investigation traces the origins of the ethnic gangs that capitalized on criminal activities by turning them into family enterprises. With men like Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Lepke Buchalter at its heart, and bootlegging, racketeering, and murder at its soul, this four-part series is a sweeping saga of bloodshed, betrayal, and big business.

* THE PROHIBITION YEARS / BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN MAFIA: Prohibition spells 100 proof profit for local gangs…Until the “families” arrive from Sicily.

* THE KENNEDYS AND THE MOB: The Kennedys’ murky past returns to haunt them.

* UNIONS AND THE MOB: The Mafia takes on the Communists for control of the unions.

* EMPIRE OF CRIME: The Mob steps on a gold mine in World War II.

* BONUS FEATURES: Documentary “American Justice: Mob Hitmen”.

* LUCKY LUCIANO: CHAIRMAN OF THE MOB: He ran the Mob like a corporation–diversifying rackets, organizing gangs and running his own political candidates–and his top-secret war efforts earned him parole from a 50-year sentence.

* MEYER LANSKY: MOB TYCOON: From the pogroms of Eastern Europe to the heyday of the Vegas Mob, rare footage and interviews reveal the double life of the man known as the Mob’s financial leader.

* GENOVESE: PORTRAIT OF A CRIME FAMILY: Known for their high level of sophistication, the Genovese family not only played a leading role in creating the structure of organized crime in America, but in shaping how the mob used its vast power.

* BUGSY SIEGEL: Handsome, glamorous and the most vicious crime boss of all, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel began as a hit man on the streets of Brooklyn and died the victim of a mysterious murder, but not before turning a desert mirage into a Las Vegas dreamland.

* MAN, MOMENT, MACHINE: AL CAPONE AND THE MACHINE GUN MASSACRE: Crime boss Al Capone elevated the violence of Prohibition Chicago to a new level with the Thompson submachine gun, a messenger of death that led to one of the most famous mass murders in history.

* DEAD MEN’S SECRETS: AMERICA AND THE MOB: WARTIME FRIENDS: Did WWII spur a partnership between the U.S. government and organized crime? In 1942, fire broke out on the luxury liner-turned-troop carrier, the Normandie. While some mafia leaders claimed responsibility, an alleged protection deal with the government kept the blame on “Nazi sabotage.”

* BIOGRAPHY: THE GAMBINOS: THE FIRST FAMILY OF CRIME: Trace the rise and fall of one of the most famous Mafia families, from crime legend Carlo Gambino to his successor Paul Castellano, and the reign of John Gotti.

PUBLIC ENEMIES – Review

The very thing that makes PUBLIC ENEMIES a fresh entry into the summer movie dogfight is its Achilles heel.

When Michael Mann made the decision to shoot the film about the notorious gangster John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and the FBI agent assigned to catch him, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), he shot a film throughout the Midwest corridor that tries to capture 1933’s America.

Banks were seen as the real public enemy, much like if we had a gangster knocking down AIG branches if there were any, their locations already familiar to Mann who knows how to break down and block a bank robbery, down to the detail of the crook letting the common man know that their money is not the money they want. There is a kind of reverse vigilantism at play in some portions in this film but one of the sticking points this story has is that Dillinger was not ever ready to go back to jail and, if given the opportunity, he would just as soon as mow down a pack of coppers with his tommy gun as he would proclaiming how untouchable he is. Marion Cotillard, playing Dillinger’s flavor of choice throughout the movie, is another Mann trademark, a woman whose odd sense of independence is overwhelmed by the machismo of her male suitor to the point of rendering her all but feeble and powerless to fend off the advances of such a Lothario. One of the frustrating things about women like her, like HEAT’s Brenneman, is that they are caught up in this gangster lifestyle without so much as a terrible crisis of faith. It’s easy to see how a man like Depp could become the criminal he is just by the quickly shot opening moments of this film but Marion’s flip to a life of crime just doesn’t connect and that’s really what prevents this film from becoming anything else but a slicker dramatization of something you could see on the History channel any night of the week.

The set pieces, though, are gorgeous. Mann takes full advantage of this HD world in a way that challenges an audience’s expectations of what a period piece should look like. Mann brings an immediacy to the moment and takes what could have been a very simple recreation of past events look and feel like something that happened yesterday. This plays into Mann’s favor. One of the things that linger with you, or ought to, is that for anyone who thinks that using HD somehow disturbs the sense of time and place go to any moment when Depp walks into a bank. The richness of the colors, the polish on the floor, the marble that shines everywhere, the ornateness of the ceilings it all adds another dimension to the world that Mann wants to create. To those people in the 30’s life was in HD to them. This was how their world looked and felt. What some may fail to recognize is that Mann faithfully executes 1930’s America in a way that has never before been done in cinema. When Depp traipses through Purvis’ office, leisurely, quietly you cannot help but feel that you are there in moment with him. The only issue with the way he has decided to shoot his film, however, comes in the moments when you see the limitations of the technology plays with trying to capture a time when there was none.

There are great gun battles, to be sure. Outside of a bank, a couple of banks actually, fleeing from a jail in a daring and brazen prison break and a fantastic fire fight that occurs late at night. It’s the latter tussle that causes some of the weaker moments of this film to be exposed. It is HD’s inability to be consistently crisp which can lead some viewers to be jarred while keeping an eye on the action. There are moments when the characters “ghost” on the screen, they leave a faint trail at times that can be distracting to those paying attention if the action moves too fast, and can actually get in the way for real cinematic tricks where film, actually, could have brought a better result.

As well, the movie cannot stand on just the promise of derring-do and double-speak for those looking to an escape for a true crime film. The movie actually suffers from a lack of context. John Dillinger, yes, was a crook and criminal but where are the moments that show a more defined man? To deny Dillinger his humanity, and anyone pointing to his treatment of Cotillard as an example might as well long for the days when cavemen dragged their ladies by the scruff of their hair, is to deny the audience a real opportunity to feel emotionally invested in what happens to the man. Surprising as it is coming from Mann who so effortlessly humanized Robert De Niro in HEAT in a moment that few people could ever forget, the scene where he plays against Al Pacino in a diner, and made you root for him when he came to settle things up with Waingro. It’s surprising because you know how it ends for Dillinger. Any text book could tell you, any television show could recreate the moment but a real opportunity was missed in bringing some semblance of a human being to the screen.

To think more about Christian Bale’s performance only highlights the egregious oversight about Dillinger’s wasted character arc as Bale simply exists in this landscape with nothing more to do than just act out the lines he’s given. It’s not that he can’t bring something exciting as the man in charge of bringing Dillinger in but unless Purvis was a real drip Bale’s performance illustrates his inability to actually bring some emotional depth to this agent of the law. It’s disappointing that what we get is just Bale being Bale but with a twangy accent to go along for the ride. Billy Crudup provides some of the best unintentional comedic relief as his J. Edgar Hoover impersonation feels as if it belongs in a Saturday Night Live sketch about the man who founded the FBI as it fails to embody the sense that here was a man who was in charge of bringing some kind of order, some semblance of safety to a landscape that felt out of control.

While the film plods along, it’s examination into what happened in these pivotal years when Dillinger strolled free through Chicago before eventually meeting his demise simply does nothing more than just regurgitate recreated moments on the screen, it still is a wonder to look at on the big screen. There are real moments of good filmmaking here but it is a disappointment that there aren’t real moments of excellent filmmaking from a man who shown better depth dealing with men who bear arms.