Category: Watch Movies!

By Joe Bendel. For many kids, comic book collecting provided lessons in duty and sacrifice as well as their first practical experience with the laws of supply and demand. Ironically, just as the bottom fell out of the collectible market, the intellectual property value of Superhero franchises climbed to all time highs. This Tuesday, PBS chronicles the development of the costumed crime fighter in American culture with the three-part, one-night special broadcast of Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle, co-written by Michael Kantor & Laurence Maslon.

There will always be a demand for Action Comics #1. In fitting superhero style, part one, Truth, Justice, and the American Way begins with the origin story: the first proper comic book appearance of Superman. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the Man of Steel almost immediately captured the public imagination. Siegel and Shuster churned out adventures like assembly line employees, with all rights to their iconic creation retained by the company, DC Comics. Eventually, Siegel and Shuster will re-enter the narrative, like long lost characters resurrected to shake up the heroes’ universe.

Without question, part one is dominated by DC. This is the Golden Age of comics, when patriotic superheroes like Wonder Woman and Captain America brought the full force of their powers to bear against the National Socialist war menace. There was no question whose side they were on.

However, superheroes face an identity crisis in part two, Great Power, Great Responsibility. After pulling no punches against America’s enemies, do-gooder child psychologists started a hand-wringing campaign against comic book violence. The majors formed the self-regulating Comics Code Authority and watered down their content to conform to the new guidelines. Still, an upstart company was able to appeal to a new generation with a roster of characters who had to navigate real world problems as well as battle super villains. That would be Marvel.

Naturally, Stan the Man Lee is a prominent presence throughout Never-Ending. He was a game-changer. However, Steve Ditko is given rather short shrift for his contributions, including co-creating Spiderman and Doctor Strange. (It is an unfortunate omission many might suspect is motivated by the Objectivist influence reflected in Ditko’s later work). On the other hand, Great Power pays proper homage to the bold modernist style of Jim Steranko that re-invigorated the pages of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Superheroes truly arrive when technology can finally do them justice on the big screen. Part three, Anyone Can Be a Hero, identifies Richard Donner’s Superman as the first and still perhaps the best-realized example. It also celebrates edgier storylines while dismissing the recent decline in comic book sales as an unavoidable consequence of the E-Book age. Yet, the comic industry’s rather Hollywood like agnostic response to post-September 11 terrorism, which part three covers in extensive detail, could just as easily be depressing single copy sales. Would Captain America have been as popular in the 1940’s if he never fought the Axis?

It is not an idle question. As one commentator argues, it is the regularity of comics that prevents these characters from becoming ossified artifacts, like The Shadow or Mandrake the Magician. Ironically, the movie business seems to get the appeal of these characters today better than many of their daily custodians.

Breezily directed by Kantor, Never-Ending is like a greatest hit package, delivering plenty of television and film clips for fans. It features a first class battery of expert talking heads, including many of the medium’s most influential artists and writers, including Steranko, Joe Simon, Len Wein, Louise Simonson, Jim Lee, Denny O’Neil, Todd McFarlane, Jerry Robinson, and Chris Claremont. Liev Schreiber is also a perfect choice to narrate, as an experienced voice-over performer and an alumnus of the Wolverine series, but the video-backdrops he periodically strolls through looks like the old In Search of show’s set updated for the Comic-Con crowd.

Obviously, Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle is an attempt to broaden PBS’s audience. It hits all the necessary bases, but its biases periodically peak through. It is cool to hear from so many comic luminaries on national television, but there is still room for a definitive Ken Burns-style history of the American superhero. Recommended for casual fans looking for something easy to digest (and diehards eager to pick it apart), all three installments of Superheroes air this Tuesday (10/15) on most PBS stations nationwide.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on October 14th, 2013 at 2:06pm.

By Joe Bendel. TOLO TV is like the Al Jazeera of Afghanistan, except it is critical of terrorism. Founded by Saad Mohseni, his brothers Zaid and Jahid, and their sister Wajma to be an agent of change, TOLO TV is the first and largest media outlet in Afghanistan. For three months, filmmaker Eve Orner documented the Mohsenis and many of their 900 employees at work and on their guard in The Network, which releases on VOD platforms today.

If TOLO TV sounds familiar, you might remember Havana Marking’s Afghan Star, the behind-the-scenes look at the pop idol reality show produced by that station. Marking followed the travails of a particular contest who faced death threats for modestly swaying to her music. Several years later, contestants regularly show off a few non-twerking moves and often appear sans head trappings. This constitutes progress and it was made possible by TOLO.

Growing up in exile as a result of the Soviet invasion, the Mohsenis, especially London-born Saad, are clearly entrepreneurs on a mission. Arriving in Kabul with waves of returning expats, they shared the general euphoria following the fall of the Taliban. Perceiving a need and an opportunity, they started the radio station that would eventually blossom into the TOLO mini-empire. It was a risky venture, because there was absolutely no media whatsoever in the country at the time. None. Zero. The Islamist Taliban had forbidden such a sacrilege. As one TOLO reporter dramatically recalls, the only sanctioned form of entertainment during the regime were public executions. Yet despite the years of doing without, the Afghan people immediately took to TOLO’s offerings.

On one hand, The Network is a success story, charting TOLO’s growth as a business and a cultural phenomenon. However, an uneasy pessimism hangs over the film. The Mohsenis and their employees openly fear the consequences when the western military powers cut-and-run. After all, TOLO personnel have definitely become targets of the Taliban and their allies. Orner documents many of the tight spots they just barely survived. Ironically, some of the most tragic episodes were instances when TOLO staffers were literally caught in the crossfire.

Arguably, Saad Mohseni is a media visionary. Yet, TOLO often walks a fine line to avoid angering the Islamist element. Their answer to Dr. Phil is particularly problematic, but one could make a case that the open criticism expressed by TOLO’s female employees of his “just be virtuous” advice is a promising sign. Granted, their melodramas look rather cheesy, but not as amateurish as the grade-Z Pashto films gonzo documentarian George Gittoes produced. TOLO also challenges many pre-conceptions viewers might hold, especially with regards to the success they have had with their anti-terrorist cop show, partly underwritten by the U.S. embassy.

Indeed, there is little anti-American sentiment in The Network, per se, and there is absolutely no nostalgia for the Communist regime. This is fascinating stuff, with far reaching social, economic, and geopolitical implications. Orner captures plenty of telling moments and conveys a good sense of the increasingly uncertain vibe in-country. It is a smart doc that is all muscle and no fat. Highly recommended for Middle East watchers and strategic thinkers, The Network is now available for VOD viewing.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on October 8th, 2013 at 11:05am.

By Joe Bendel. Doc Pomus was one of the first legit white blues singers and he had some legitimate blues. However, he would make his lasting mark on the music business as a songwriter. The man who brought soul to the Brill Building is affectionately profiled in Peter Miller & Will Hechter’s A.K.A. Doc Pomus, which opens this Friday in New York.

The man born Jerome Solon Felder might not sound like much of a blues or R&B vocalist, but soulful African American music just spoke to the young Jewish boy stricken with polio. After serendipitously discovering his talent, Felder redubbed himself “Doc Pomus,” embracing music as a calling he could still pursue. Unfortunately, he was not exactly the major labels’ idea of a front man, but he could write a tune.

You will know his songs, even if you don’t know his name. Without Pomus, the world would not have “Lonely Avenue,” “Viva Las Vegas,” “This Magic Moment,” “There Must Be a Better World,” or “Save the Last Dance For Me,” the Ben E. King hit that serves as the film’s touchstone song.

Conceived and co-produced by Pomus’s daughter, Sharyn Felder, AKA is an unusually revealing look inside the creative psyche. Incorporating Pomus’s uncomfortably candid journals (read by Lou Reed), Miller and Hechter create an unflinching portrait of an artist prone to severe bouts of depression. The Felder family participated in force, with Pomus’s daughter Sharyn, his Broadway actress ex-wife, and his brother Raoul Felder, the celebrity lawyer, all discussing their relationships with the larger than life songwriter. Plenty of his musical colleagues and admirers also duly pay their respects, including Ben E. King, Dion, and Jimmy Scott, whose career Pomus posthumously rejuvenated. Nearly forgotten by the industry, Scott was signed by Sire Records after his moving performance at Pomus’s memorial.

AKA is often a deeply personal film, but its musical analysis is still pretty on target, especially the defense of the soulfulness of Pomus’s “Sweets for My Sweet,” as performed by the Drifters (James Moody also recorded a wonderfully funky instrumental version with Gil Fuller’s big band). Well assembled and surprisingly frank, it is a good cut above most installments of American Masters. Recommended for fans of the blues and American pop music, A.K.A. Doc Pomus opens this Friday (10/4) in New York at the Village East.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 3rd, 2013 at 5:11pm.