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DTLA FILM FESTIVAL Film Reviews

By Ed Rampell

The 11th annual DTLA Film Festival is now underway. According to the Festival’s website: “Our programming reflects downtown L.A.’s vibrant new urbanism, the unique ethnic and cultural diversity of its neighborhoods, its burgeoning independent film community, its singular blend of late 19th and 20th century architecture, and the seminal role it played in the early days of American cinema (epitomized by the world’s largest group of vintage movie palaces located in the Broadway Theater District).”

DTLAFF is screening features, shorts, documentaries etc., at two primary locations: Regal L.A. LIVE 1000 West Olympic Blvd., L.A., CA 90015 while the Dome Series is at the Wisdome Immersive Art Park in DTLA’s Arts District, 1147 Palmetto St., L.A. or the Vortex Dome Theater at L.A. Center Studios. Panels, parties, etc., are being presented at various Downtown L.A. locations. For info on the DTLA Film Festival see: https://www.dtlaff.com/.

INDIRECT ACTIONS

A Futuristic Film Form for a Traditional Struggle

There were whispers in the village, high up in the mountains of Afghanistan. There was a Stranger here. He had made a friend and been invited to live in a home despite not being family, despite probably not even being of the ethnicity or religion of every person who could be trusted.

The Stranger had obtained for a family a small interest-free loan and helped them create a store. He’d hired kids off the street. Now the kids were inviting other kids to come and talk with the Stranger about working for peace. And they were coming out of friendship, despite not knowing what “working for peace” meant.

Soon they would have some idea. Some of them, who had perhaps not even spoken with someone of a different ethnicity before, formed a live-in multi-ethnic community. They began projects such as a walk for peace with international observers, and the creation of a peace park.

Definitions:

Vaccine Efficacy (VE)is the percentage reduction of disease outcomes in a vaccinated group of people compared to an unvaccinated group, using the most favorable conditions. It is best measured using double-blind, randomized, placebo controlled trials, which are rarely done. A VE of 60% means that a vaccinated group of people has a 60% Relative Risk Reduction (see definition immediately below) of a given outcome compared to an unvaccinated group.

Oh, how the simplistic certainty resonates.

Russsiagate, recently stoked by Hillary Clinton, comes saturated in ironies, which are usually media-invisible.

The Democrats’ winning-but-nonetheless-losing presidential candidate of 2016 loosed some pent-up fury at democracy the other day, as well as annoyance with those who challenge the sacred status quo of the American governing process, when she tried to re-marginalize Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein, along with the generic concept of, good Lord, third parties.

1984 Theater Review

Watch Big Brother Watching You: Actors’ Gang Stages Oracle Orwell’s Prophetic Thought Crime

By Ed Rampell

[NOTE: This review may contain plot spoilers for those unfamiliar with 1984.]

Halloween is the spookiest time of the year, when scary shows are de rigueur on stage and screen. For example, Oct. 25-31 Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 scream-fest Psycho is being screamed - uh, I mean screened - in Downtown L.A.’s ornate Theatre at Ace Hotel, accompanied by LA Opera Orchestra performing live Bernard Herrmann’s hair-raising score. (See: https://www.laopera.org/performances/201920-season/psycho/.)

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Army Chief Gen. Apirat Kongsompong has announced
a communist conspiracy is plotting to seize power in Thailand, led by
elderly politicians and academics who had "implanted communist chips"
in their brains.

These secretive Thai communists have allied with Hong Kong's new
generation of protesters and could lure Thai youths to unleash an
insurrection in Bangkok, he warned.

Gen. Apirat's speech came after the military spent more than $480
million in recent purchases of U.S. weaponry including eight attack
reconnaissance helicopters, 50 Hellfire missiles, 60 Stryker infantry
carrier vehicles, 200 Advance Precision Kill Weapon System rockets,
plus .50 caliber machine guns, grenade launchers and other arms and
ammunition.

The general's 90-minute speech at the Royal Thai Army Headquarters on
October 11 was titled "Our Land From a Security Perspective." The
audience of 500 included university students, academics, local leaders
and the media.

While speaking, Gen. Apirat -- who trained in the U.S. -- appeared on
the verge of tears.

Pete Buttigieg burst on the national scene early this year as a new sort of presidential candidate. But it turns out he’s a very old kind—a glib ally of corporate America posing as an advocate for working people and their families. That has become apparent this fall as Buttigieg escalates his offensive against Medicare for All.

There was what might be described as an extraordinary amount of nonsense being promoted by last week’s media. Unfortunately, some of it was quite dangerous. Admiral William McRaven, who commanded the Navy Seals when Osama bin Laden was captured and killed and who has been riding that horse ever since, announced that if Donald Trump continues to fail to provide the type of leadership the country needs, he should be replaced by whatever means are necessary. The op-ed entitled “Our Republic is Under Attack by the President” with the subtitle “If President Trump doesn’t demonstrate the leadership that America needs, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office” was featured in the New York Times, suggesting that the Gray Lady was providing its newspaper of record seal of approval for what might well be regarded as a call for a military coup.

Maori moviemaker Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit is in the tradition of Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 anti-Nazi masterpiece The Great Dictator. Rabbit blasts off with a laugh-out-loud sequence comparing Beatle-mania-like celebrity worship to the Third Reich’s cult of personality for the Führer. In this tragic-comic satire Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) is a boy growing up during World War II who fantasizes that Adolph Hitler (Waititi, who also wrote and directed) is his best friend.

The picaresque picture follows Jojo’s misadventures in wartime Germany (but actually shot in the Czech Republic), where he joins the Hitler Youth, the Nazis’ militaristic counterpart to the Boy Scouts. Aided by goofy true believer Fraulein Rahm (Rebel Wilson), the Hitler-Jugend unit is commanded by Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell), a wounded soldier transferred from the frontlines back to the homeland to train the Aryan youngsters for combat. As they blunder through exercises such as tossing grenades, Rockwell slyly portrays the one-eyed officer as realizing that the Hitler Youth are, like National Socialism and the war effort, futile and farcical.