Backrground of Mali

 
            750 - 1076                                   1230 - 1600                                              1340 - 1591

During the Colonial era, cinematic images of Africa and its people were entirely the work of Western filmmakers. The Tarzan movies, African Queen, King Solomon's Mines and others were usually filmed on soundstages half a world away from Africa and made little to no effort toward authenticity, instead trading in exoticism aimed primarily at exploiting Western tastes.



Senegal gained its independence from France in 1960. Like most West African countries, Senegal is highly diverse. The Wolof, Peul, Halpulaaren, Serer, Lebou, Jola, Mandinka, Moors, Soninke and Bassari are all long established in the country. There are also substantial populations of French, Mauritanians, Lebanese and Vietnamese. Three years after independence, the first Senegalese film was made by Ousmane Sembene titled Borrom sarret, which would set the standards for a uniquely African cinematic language that would establish Senegal as the capital of African Cinema.



The Filmmakers:

  

Ousmane Sembène, as the first sub-Saharan director to make a film in Africa, is universally recognized as the "Father of African film." Son of a Wolof fisherman, he attended both Islamic and a French-run school until he was kicked out. After fighting in World War II, he illegally immigrated to France and became a member of several Communist groups. His creative career began as a writer. His first novel, Le Docker Noir (published in 1956), was based on his own encounters with racism as a dock worker in Marseille. In the novel, a black dock worker with literary aspirations writes a novel which is stolen by a white woman and published as her own. He confronts her, accidentally kills her, is tried and executed.  After a two more novels, Semebene, driven by his desire to affect social change, decided that he could reach larger audiences through film rather than critically-lauded, mostly unread novels. He adapted and developed cinematic techniques that would influence most West African filmmakers who followed (with the notable exception of the prolific, commercial Nollywood scene of Nigeria).

Even in a multicultural, polyglot city like L.A. (which has the largest population of Asian-Americans (1.4 million) in the country and where the percentage of the population which is Asian-American is roughly equal to that which is black) most discussions of race appear to still be framed in the outmoded, bipolar terms of  black and white.  For example, whereas a lot of people and many organizations honor Black History Month, Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month is almost completely unrecognized except by some Asian-Americans. The centuries-long struggle and strife of blacks in America is well-documented and worth honoring- but Asians have also been subjected to legal segregation, racist violence, widespread discrimination and harassment. So why is it that the Asian-American experience is so downplayed?

According to polls, 23% of Americans are uncomfortable voting for an Asian-American to be President of the United States. This is in contrast to 15% compared with an African-American candidate and 14% compared with a woman candidate. A lot of Asians are suspected and viewed of holding allegiances to Asia, and not the U.S. which plays into the "perpetual foreigner" syndrome. True, many Asians are more recent immigrants than the white or black population but even Asians born in America often speak, in my experience,  of "Americans" only in the third person. Last year, coming up with movies to showcase for APA Heritage Month resulted in the suggestion of Chinese Kung Fu movies the distinction between Asians in Asia and Asians in America remains a lot harder than distinguishing African-Americans from Africans or white people from Europeans partly because America loves Asian movies and Korean dramas seem to show at all hours of the day, but Hollywood almost never casts Asian-Americans in anything and, to date, there have only been three TV shows to focus on Asian-Americans.

    Lars... whoops- David Arquette                                                               The real Lars

In Lars and the Real Girl Ryan Gosling plays a shy loner who is henpecked by nagging family and friends determined to engage him. He reacts to their attempts to set him up on dates and hang out in familiar and realistic shy guy fashion. Then he buys a sex doll which he falls in love with and all at once we're transported to a world I could only recognize as the familiarly formulaic "quirky indie film". Of course it's in the Middle West (Ontario in real life), the last bastion of quirky, lovable, soft-headed townsfolk with hearts of gold and fresh-baked good intentions.
     What I had hoped was going to be a semi-comic observation along the lines of Punch Drunk Love or Chuck & Buck in one contrived bit plunged straight into the territory of an SNL sketch-cum-movie or an Improv skit that goes on for way too long (i.e. over 3 seconds). OK, it's not as bad as those examples, mostly because of the casting and because you don't have Horatio Sanz cracking up at the hilarity of it all. Ryan Gosling goes a long way in making Lars a character we care about even while the script or direction provide almost no insight into what's going on in his head aside from contrived instances with a psychiatrist. We never know if he really thinks the doll is real, does he ever have moments of clarity? What made him change from a believable loner into a delusional cinematic joke? We never know much of anything that goes on inside. You won't laugh, you won't cry even though it's calculated to make you do just that. Ultimately Lars is just an icon with funny hair, funny clothes, a funny name and a funny relationship with others a la Napoleon Dynamite. Here's hoping he doesn't similarly inspire a legion of "hipster" imitators or else I'm going to have to make a lot more calls to the Redneck Squad.
     I get the feeling that director Craig Gillespie (who also made the critically-despised Mr. Woodcock) didn't keep us distant from Lars deliberately like Todd Haynes did in Safe with Julian Moore.  Lars is viewed as a curiosity from arms length through the eyes of a guy whose prescription for social heterogeneity seems to be getting the world's "weirdos" laid or at the very least, some hugs.
     There are a couple of shots of the sex doll that register on the outskirts of funny and disturbing but for the most part Lars and the Real Girl is (like Waitress or Little Miss Sunshine) only about as quirky as a Halloween episode of Friends. Almost too edgy for an in-flight movie or your great grandmother. The story slowly flows along toward inevitable plot markers at molasses speed and then ends, gratefully, sort of abruptly.
     If you need more convincing if the film's mediocrity, check out these particularly rote hyperboles it inspired among some of the nation's blandest critics:

Joe Morgenstern of Wall Street Journal "nothing short of a miracle"

Ann Hornaday for the Washington Post "a small miracle"

Wesley Morris for the Boston Globe "something miraculous has occurred"

The Lookout was written and directed by Scott Frank. It took ten years to get made and is a labor of love... and a big piece of crap.

It's set in Kansas City. Why? Scott Frank  says, "I spent time there, but mostly what I loved was that there was an urban environment right next to a rural environment and they're very close together. He can live downtown but work two hours away in the middle of nowhere and I really liked that." That is true, if you drive two hours outside Kansas City you're in the sticks, or another city. So, the setting is very important obviously. Kansas City is like a character in the film, you might say. Of course, his observation applies to nearly every city in the country between the east and west coasts. Obviously Frank had a window seat on a cross country flight or maybe a just layover at Kansas City International. And the in-flight entertainment, I'm guessing, was Memento.
 
"I really didn't know why, but I just loved where it was. I loved that the mob was no longer there, that it was sort of a dying mob city and more of a "sons and sons of" place now. I just thought it was kind of interesting. I ended up doing a lot of research." Apparently meaning he watched lots of old movies with Kansas City in the title because Kansas City has a very high crime rate most gangs there don't look much like the Lookout's. 


Note to Frank. If you'd googled "Kansas City" and "mafia" you'd have learned this:




 Despite being in prison in 1995, Anthony “Tony Ripes” Civella was seen as the new crime boss. In 1992 he had been convicted of a scheme to divert pharmaceutical drugs from traditional sellers on to the gray market. He was convicted and sentenced to 4 years. Since 1996 he has been free and very active. The remaining Las Vegas interests fall under power of Kansas City LCN Family member Peter Ribaste. His underboss is William Cammisano, Jr. In 1997 all three were placed in Las Vegas’s Black Book and are barred from casinos in that area. Today the Kansas City LCN [la Cosa Nostra] Family is reported to have 20-30 “made” members and is a very tight knit group controlling many street-level rackets.

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