Category Archives: Documentary

Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, October 7: WAGNER’S JEWS

Hilan Warshaw’s exploration of the legacy of the composer’s anti-Semitism premiered at the University of South Carolina’s WagnerWorldWide bicentennial symposium last year. Beyond European television outlets, it’s gone on to screen at DocAviv, and at various Jewish fests in San Diego, Houston, Miami, East Bay, and Seattle.

Warshaw’s film uses as its starting point the boycott of an Israeli Wagner concert, prompting an understanding of the complicated relationship the composer had with Jewish people in the 19th century, and, of course, why and how he was embraced by the Third Reich. Viewers with only a casual understanding of Nazi history may be surprised to learn that Wagner wasn’t simply innocently elevated as some nationalistic paragon, but instead had propagated virulently anti-Semitic essays, first under an alias and later under his own name, in his own day. Complicating matters, he paradoxically counted among his patrons and ardent admirers several Jewish people, apparently willing to ignore his beliefs – and later his paranoia about a Jewish conspiracy out to destroy him – because they loved his music. He also initially was mentored and introduced to important music circles by accomplished composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, a Jew, who he later went out of his way to criticize, and also took on self-loathing Jewish assistants who he treated with affection. While the information provided is interesting, Warshaw’s approach is utterly pedestrian, with stentorian narration and a surfeit of talking heads suited most to history-focused TV outlets than to a theatrical setting.

Coming to DVD and VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, October 7: THE PROSECUTION OF AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT

David Hagen and David J Burke’s indictment of George W Bush debuted in theatres in the Fall of 2012. It now comes to iTunes and DVD.

I previously wrote about the doc upon its release here.

Coming to DVD and VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, October 7: RUDE DUDE

Ian Fischer’s portrait of an acclaimed but troubled comic book artist has screened at various Comic Cons this past year, including San Diego, Philadelphia, Denver, and Phoenix. It now comes to DVD as well as to iTunes and Amazon.

To comic book fans of the 1980s and 1990s, Steve Rude is known as an artist who co-created an acclaimed independent series, NEXUS, about a superhero who executes cosmic mass murderers. While he’s done work for the major publishers, DC and Marvel, his style is rooted in a classical mode that modern readers might find old-fashioned. What’s more, as explored in Fischer’s film, he’s developed a bad reputation after bad experiences in the industry, and, as the film commences, he’s attempting to leave the field and transition to fine art, where he anticipates he will easily make billions. If that delusion, or his irritating tendency to refer to himself as “The Dude” in the third person, don’t clue the viewer in, Rude is seriously unhinged. Suffering from bipolar disorder, he also has severe anger issues, and is remarkably self-absorbed, potentially costing his family their home, and making his poor, suffering wife bear the brunt. Despite the promise of this set-up, Fischer’s film is a workmanlike fanboy appreciation for most its running time, largely inaccessible or of very limited interest to non-comic fans, while those elements that could crossover – “The Dude’s” personal/psychological struggles – unfortunately paint him as so thoroughly unpleasant that he engenders next to no sympathy.

Coming to HBO tonight Monday, October 6: HUNTED: THE WAR AGAINST GAYS IN RUSSIA

Ben Steele’s exposé of homophobia in Putin’s Russia has held special screenings at the Savannah Film Festival and elsewhere before its broadcast premiere tonight.

In the wake of the passage of blatantly homophobic laws by the Russian government that curry favor with the Russian Orthodox church and create a politically beneficial distraction via scapegoating, gaybashing, unsurprisingly, not only has been on the rise, but has seen its perpetrators emboldened. Encouraging the actions of vigilantes who rationalize their actions as upholding the law, or simply giving license to deeply disturbed, violent individuals, Putin’s war on homosexuality has created a sense of impunity for the victimizers, and depressing realization that there’s no official hope for redress by its victims. Steele’s film graphically demonstrates this, as the filmmaker, with seeming ease, gains the trust of several rabidly homophobic groups to follow them as they set sadistic traps or intimidate LGBT individuals, all on the very shaky pretense that they are instead targeting pedophiles – which they equate, unquestioningly, with homosexuals. These disturbing scenes, more powerful than the brief profiles of LGBT individuals offered here, provide the viewer with a palpable understanding of the atmosphere that’s been created in the nation. Though shot in a very straightforward style, with an often clunky narration delivered by Matt Bomer, what Steele’s featurette lacks in style, it makes up for in immediacy.