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The Sundance Film Festival wraps up today—a virtual event this year. My first instinct is always to go look at the documentaries that are playing there and hoping to pick up nationwide distributors. Here are a handful to keep an eye out for that look like they're worth a tub of popcorn or two:
In 1969, during the same summer as Woodstock, a different music festival took place 100 miles away. More than 300,000 people attended the summer concert series known as the Harlem Cultural Festival. It was filmed, but after that summer, the footage sat in a basement for 50 years. It has never been seen. Until now.Summer Of Soul is a stunning unearthed treasure destined to become a pillar of American music and African American history. This rich tapestry deftly incorporates an unforgettable musical revue that includes many rare gems, such as a Stevie Wonder drum solo and a duet between Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples. Summer Of Soul shines a light on the importance of history to our spiritual well-being and stands as a testament to the healing power of music.
Continued...
Bring Your Own Brigade(Director: Lucy Walker) Raging, out-of-control wildfires have become part of the new normal around the globe, leaving heartbreaking devastation and death in their wake. In California, this harsh reality was underscored on November 8, 2018, when several parts of the state were ablaze—the Camp Fire destroying most of the Northern California town of Paradise and the Woolsey Fire roaring through Malibu in the south. Filmmaker Lucy Walker…digs into the surprising history and complex range of causes of uncontrolled fires—from climate change and ill-considered fire suppression policies to the influence of wealthy corporate interests. Her film reveals how responsibility continually gets shifted, with ordinary people left suffering the dangerous consequences.
All Light, Everywhere (Director: Theo Anthony) The “observer effect” is a term used in physics to describe the process in which the act of observation disturbs the system that’s being observed. Humans are such observers—and we have our inherent limitations, biases, and blind spots that skew how we perceive and interpret. In his remarkable, kaleidoscopic essay film, Theo Anthony investigates the correlation between how we see things and the tools and practices involved in the act of seeing. All Light, Everywhere directs our gaze to some fascinating, often surprising connections among technology, weapons, and mechanics of motion, as well as the effect of those factors on the ways in which we construct our realities. Without being prescriptive or didactic, Anthony skillfully points out how politicized the act of seeing is and just how flawed our framing methods can be.
You can check out all the movies from Sundance 2021 here. They'll keep us occupied for awhile until this year's marquee documentary series debuts this summer on PBS: Ken Burns' The Complete History of Jewish Space Lasers.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers forWednesday, February 3, 2021
Note: I'm thrilled I get to share my recipe for blizzard stew again—we made some fresh last night and it's so easy. Mix one part snow with two parts snow, bring to a boil, simmer, add two cups of snow and then gently stir in half a tablespoon of snow. In a separate bowl, mix snow, snow, snow and snow, then add mixture to the snow. Add snowballs. Season with snow. Stir until snowy. If you feel daring, toss in a pinch of snow for a dash of "Zing!" Serves several million...whether they want it or not.
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By the Numbers:
4 days ‘til Tampa Bay plays Kansas City.
Days 'til the Super Bowl: 4
Aye-Nay Senate confirmation vote total for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg: 86-13
Portion of Georgians polled by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution/U. of Georgia who have a negative impression of Trump's presidency: 6-in-10
Favorable opinion among Georgians of the Democratic and Republican party, respectively: 50%, 34%
Number of hate groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2020, down from 940 in 2019: 838
Percent of Americans who took money out of their retirement accounts in 2020, 63% to use for living expenses during the pandemic, according to a Kiplinger-Personal Capital poll: 32%
Age of the "sawing someone in half" magic trick as of this year: 100
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Mid-weekRapture Index: 186 (including 3 Tribulation Temples and 1 GOP trip to the Biden PainCave). Soul Protection Factor 46 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
CHEERS to taking matters into your own hands. House Democrats who have all the power to House Republicans who have none: boot that insurrectionist mushbrain from Georgia off her committee assignments or we'll do it ourselves:
House Democrats are moving expeditiously to remove GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments, a decisive step that comes as they pressure Republicans to rebuke the Georgia congresswoman over recently unearthed incendiary past statements.
A House committee booting boot. (Actual size: 8 ft. tall.)
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat…is expected to tell McCarthy that Republicans have 72 hours to strip Greene of her committee assignments, or Democrats will bring the issue to the House floor. […]
The House Rules Committee is slated to meet [today] to approve a rule for a resolution to kick Greene off the House Education and Labor Committee and the Budget Committee.
And just to give their actions the proper sting, I suggest they also separate Greene from her parking space, executive washroom key, and access to the House cafeteria's freedom fries. (I would've also suggested they separate her from her paranoid delusions, but dammit they’re representatives, not miracle workers.)
CHEERS to history of the history-making kind. The American Civil Liberties Union—whose founders, I was unaware, included Helen Keller— was indispensable during the attempted-Constitution-shredding reign of President Biden's predecessor, and they deserve every accolade we can toss their way. Now they're garnering praise for electing the New York University School of Law's Deborah Archer as their first Black president:
As the ACLU’s eighth president since 1920, Archer will act as chair of its board of directors, overseeing organizational matters and the setting of civil liberties policies. The fight against racial injustice is expected to be a top priority.
Deborah Archer: Tyranny’s new #1 foe.
During former President Donald Trump’s four years in office, the ACLU filed an unprecedented 413 lawsuits and other legal actions against his administration, challenging policies related to immigrant rights, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, racial justice and other issues. The campaign against Trump’s administration—promoted in a catchy “See You In Court” ad campaign—fueled huge increases in donations and membership.
We wish Deborah success in her new venture with the traditional C&J advice we always impart to fighters of evildoers: aim for the shins first, then the bank accounts.
CHEERS to compassionate liberalism. Twenty-eight years ago this week, Congress approved the Family and Medical Leave Act, giving employees unpaid leave in the event of a birth or a medical emergency in their family. President Clinton signed it into law after doing something the D.C. establishment considers radical: he read it.
CHEERS to today's edition of Republicans Say the Darndest Things Sometimes When They're Not Drunk On Cult Juice. Courtesy this morning of Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchison, clearly running afoul of his party's #1 commandment: Thou shalt not speak highly of a Democrat...
Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Sunday the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine has been “seamless” under the administration of President Joe Biden. Hutchinson said on ABC’s “This Week” that anything that can be done to speed up production of vaccines, including invoking the Defense Production Act, would be good.
“In terms of the vaccine distribution, it’s been seamless. And I was delighted that we had a 14-percent increase in vaccine supply last week. This is going to be very, very important for us,” Hutchinson said.
This has been today's edition of Republicans Say the Darndest Things Sometimes When They're Not Drunk On Cult Juice.
JEERS to lying liars. 20 years ago this week, President George W. Bush promised to "act boldly and swiftly" to deal with our challenges concerning energy. His brilliant idea: put Cheney in charge of a secret task force that would make sure nothing happened boldly or swiftly. As a result, the big oil companies were forced to deal with the challenge of where to sock away all their record profits. (I guess that explains why the Exxon-Mobil CEO's mattress ended up twelve stories high.)
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Ten years ago in C&J:February 3, 2011
CHEERS to blowin' this popsicle stand...kinda sorta. After spending over 200 days in "space," a team of astronauts is about to "land" on "Mars" in a simulator that will help prepare humans for a real voyage at some point in the future. It's pretty amazing. Everything has been created to reflect actual conditions that they'd encounter on such a trip, including the Martian surface, which is a desolate place, cold and oxygen-starved and void of intelligent life. The only hitch in their routine: Michele Bachmann says they gotta clear out of her office by 5.
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And just one more…
CHEERS and JEERS to one of the two things in life that are certain. On February 3, 1913, the 16th Amendment, establishing the income tax, was ratified and became part of the U.S. Constitution. Here is our annual posting of the full text—in italics so it looks old and wrinkled and historic:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Congress shall also have the power to conspire with giant corporations to use tax dollars to build a war machine that can destroy every planet in the solar system many times over. We want guns. BIG guns! Tanks, planes, nukes,drones, bunker busters, aircraft carriers. Anything that proves to the rest of the world that we've got the biggest penis on the planet must be arsenalized. We are woefully short on laser cannons—let's fix that with a glorious Space Force sometime within the next, say, 107 years.
Sadly, language stating that “tax monies devoted to the purchase of pizza and beer will not contribute to the deficit” was removed. But thanks for trying.
At various times, taxpayer-funded corporate bailouts may be necessary. These bailouts will be prioritized in the following order: white collar idiots, white collar dolts, white collar crooks, white collar morons, white collar charlatans, and white collar bloodsuckers.
Congress shall impose the strictest penalties on citizen scofflaws who fail to pay their income taxes on time and in full without exception. And by 'without exception' we mean except if you're rich and can afford savvy CPAs and lawyers who can get you out of paying them by, say, stashing them offshore...or except if you're rich and you "forget" to pay them, in which case: tut tut.
And finally, under NO circumstances are taxpayer monies allowed to be used by the executive branch to make secret back-channel deals with another country to swing an election under penalty of both impeachment in the House and a mild shrug from conservative senators under the loving gaze of the Chief Justice.
It's worked perfectly ever since. Go us!
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
The Queen "is much livelier in Cheers and Jeers than what the public sees," royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith, author of Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch, tells PEOPLE. “You can hear her laugh in the kiddie pool. She has a big laugh!"
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