President Obama inherited a toilet bowl full of problems from his predecessor, to say the least. But tens of thousands of fresh American troops are now on the move and headed to Afghanistan, as part of a reshaped war strategy that is spectacularly ambitious to say the least, given the country’s history (or noted lack thereof) of centralized governance. In Obama’s War, through interviews with the top U.S. commanders on the ground, special embeds with American forces and fresh reporting from Washington, D.C., Frontline producers Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria get into the nitty-gritty of U.S. counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan — a fight that promises to take much longer and be more costly than most Americans really understand.
While a lot of current event DVD titles seem to stand astride their subject or area of inquiry (with all apologies to Larry Craig) with a wide stance, valuing generalized consensus for smoother mass consumption, Obama’s War makes no such concessions. This is no dithering title, nor a cursory one, though it slots in at merely an hour. It’s a substantive investigatory piece about where things are headed, and how past (and current) efforts in Afghanistan have been undermined by both corruption and Pakistani intelligence services’ continued cooperation with the Taliban.
After the briefest of set-ups, the title opens with embed footage from a firefight, and a wounded 20-year-old lance corporal being tended to by his Marine colleagues. (He does not survive.) Special diplomatic envoy Richard Holbrooke, current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen and Stanley McChrystal, current Commander, U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, sit for interview chats, but aren’t just given free reign to wander through administration talking points; they’re actually questioned, and respond in detail. Diplomats and authors like Celeste Ward and Alex Thier also get their time, but Smith and Gaviria tie things together in comprehensive (if unnerving) fashion, detailing the systemic culture of Afghan outpost corruption any attempts at lasting peace must markedly erode. It also shows how the heroin and marijuana trades help fund terrorist operations, to the tune of $100 million per year. There’s a lot of meat here, in other words; most notable is Mullen’s detailed assertion about intercepted communication exchanges between Taliban and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Obama’s War comes to DVD presented in 16×9 widescreen, with an English language stereo audio track that more than adequately handles the disc’s meager aural demands. There are unfortunately no supplemental bonus features. To purchase this DVD, or any other Frontline title, phone (800) PLAY-PBS, or click here. A- (Movie) D (Disc)
Daily Archives: February 12, 2010
Beyond Sherwood Forest
Another iteration of the Robin Hood story lurks on the summer movie horizon, starring Russell Crowe and directed by Ridley Scott. For those who like a little sci-fi injected with their period piece action, however, there’s the new-to-DVD Syfy Channel movie Beyond Sherwood Forest.
Starring Robin Dunne and Erica Durance, the film touts itself as offering up a story of danger and derring-do, of fantasy and phantasms. Twelfth century England is the backdrop, and the narrative focuses on a fairly typical, broadly defined mixture of heroism and villainy. The Sheriff of Nottingham has unleashed a hideous winged monster, a tortured forest spirit, to destroy the gentle towns and woods of England, massacre outlaw archer Robin’s men and capture his Maid Marian (Durance). The question, then, is whether the so-called Prince of Thieves (Dunne) and his gallant crew can defeat this nasty beast from another world, and save all the nearby innocent men and women.
Directed by Peter DeLuise, Beyond Sherwood Forest features the sort of special effects one would expect from a cable production, and rather clumsily presses the keys and levers of tyranny, black magic and in particular romance — the latter of which plays rather like an ironed-on patch. A capable band of supporting players (including Julian Sands, Katharine Isabelle and David Richmond-Peck) inject some underlined emotion into the proceedings, but the movie’s combination of myth and realism never really coalesces in a meaningful or clever way, or transcends its genre roots; this is basically a piece of clamorous entertainment pitched at fourth- and fifth-graders, and even then it only provides desultory, momentary, diversionary delights.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Beyond Sherwood Forest comes presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional English SDH subtitles. Bonus features include a brief behind-the-scenes featurette and the movie’s theatrical trailer. More talk about the reason for this sort of twist on the age-old story (if any, really) would have been a welcome inclusion. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) D (Disc)
Becoming Human
For humans, really nothing is more fascinating to us than, well, us. By which I mean vapid celebrities, certainly, but also our own mundane existences. We are all the stars in our own stories (hence the depth of feeling for moments that are ethereal and fleeting, and of no real significance), and even the least among us have at least a vague sense of metaphorical kinship to the sun — a fixed point around which all else rotates.
How did our biology round into shape, though, and how does our collective and individual knowledge (or lack thereof) of that process inform and relate to our relationships with each other, and other animals? NOVA’s engrossing
documentary Becoming Human gets at this nut, bit by bit, exploring how new scientific and geological discoveries are transforming views of
our earliest ancestors. Featuring interviews with renowned scientists,
footage shot as fossils as unearthed and interesting computer-generated
animation, this
meaty nonfiction special brings early hominids to life in a most engaging fashion, examining how
they lived and how we became the creative, adaptable (and self-centered) modern humans
of today.
Comprised of three hour-long sections, writer-director Graham Townsley’s Becoming Human doles out a lot of university-stamped research, certainly — the type of stuff that Sarah Palin would not want to sit and absorb. Pitched somewhere between a general high school-level class and college lecture, this is come-along, heavy-lifting viewing to a certain degree, but not unduly so. If the facts swim together a bit, what will no doubt most connect with viewers are the computerized recreations of hominid life millions of years ago, which do a good job of charting and underscoring individual development as it relates to group social behavior.
Becoming Human‘s first “episode” centers around the amazingly complete fossilized remains of a three-million-year-old female — nicknamed Selam, but also frequently known as “Lucy’s baby” — packed with clues as to why we split from the apes, came down from the trees and started walking upright. Working forward in time, Townsley looks at what forces led to a great African exodus and why certain ancestral cousins (like a three-foot-tall “hobbit” that never migrated from Indonesia) died out, before eventually, in the final hour, getting into humans’ capacities for survival, competition, invention and artistic expression. No word on where Andy Milonakis fits into all of this, though.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Becoming Human comes to DVD presented crisply and cleanly in widescreen, free of any edge enhancement or artifacting. An English language simple stereo audio track more than adequately handles the meager aural demands of the title. There are unfortunately no supplemental bonus materials. To order a copy of Becoming Human, or other NOVA programs, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here. B (Movie) D+ (Disc)