ripe tomatoes

set in haifa, it's dramatic and sometimes hard to watch, but i really liked it. definitely worth seeing if you're that way inclined.















the series for this is apparently still playing in the states. from the guy that did "supersize me" (about eating maccers for a month), this is a tv series that each week has a different individual living in someone else's shoes for a month. last night shaun and i watched morgan spurlock and his girlfriend live on minimum wage. some of the insights into experience gained were outraging, to me.













i could watch this again, and again, and again, and again ...

no sweary words, lots of funny bits, and wise philosophising.














this one was recommended to me by a colleague who shares my aversion to violence. she said it was a good movie and that i could just cover my eyes for the hardcore bits (like she did). and i did like it. i certainly missed minutes at a time because i was looking in another direction and plugging my ears, but that did not detract from my understanding, obviously. or from feeling it. it has an interesting chronology, and the premise of the school paper as framework for unfolding story is well done, too. when finding an image for this post, i noticed that on our (video store's) copy, the swastika tatoo was twinked out. so i decided not to post it here either, have it spiralling out at you like a delerious, demonic design.

but the thing is i was thinking that why is there so much emphasis on the good, white guys? i don't know whether this is a pattern in american cinema or what, but i think that, for instance, on the cover of the box and in the story line of the film itself, more representation and attention could have been paid to the agency of the African American characters in transforming a neo-nazi into a neo-who's-taken-the-red-pill. (okay, whatever, you give me an appropriate political term for it, and i'll modify the sentence. aiight?)

i'm just saying that the African American characters were, overall, marginalized in this story. but i did like the character with whom he does the prisoners' laundry, because his sense of humour and patience with an obviously hateful person were admirable and exemplary.

another issue i had was that while the amount of neo-nazi rhetoric in the film is useful for a person like me, who's not really familiar with racist hate-speech and its internal logic and therefore doesn't understand the sustainability of a racist political position, i felt that the film should have provided more information from a non-xenophobic/-racist position. do you know what i mean? it's like there was an imbalance of verbal ideas.

right. so it's good, but cover your eyes during the scary parts, and don't watch the deleted scenes. we started to, but there was one involving hooligans and a homeless woman that broke my heart so quickly; it was the worst part of the film. except it wasn't. and that's what i think about that.

love from leila