Hugh Grant Helps Expose Phone Hacking by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation

This is simply mind-boggling. Actor Hugh Grant breaks down in his car and gets help from a passing motorist who happens to be an editor at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World paper. This obviously troubled editor then proceeds to boast to Mr. Grant about his phone hacking schemes at News of the World! Grant then wears his own wire and goes to meet the fool at a bar where he records every word the guy says!

But watch how the editor, Paul McMullen, debates Grant by defending the phone hacking! Grant just nails this imbecile to the floor with a withering verbal assault that just about sums up this whole affair.

This conspiracy to hack into personal and possibly business phone accounts by Rupert Murdoch’s news people is spreading all over the place like a brush fire. The FBI has announced that it is opening an investigation into the News Corporation here in the U.S. The criminality is obviously very widespread and will begin to reach into the highest echelons of the news world. It is a shame that a bit of excrement like Rupert Murdoch can amass so much power and then create such humiliation for the entire profession of journalism. We can ill afford government efforts to exert more control over journalists. I am almost certain that this spreading criminality in the News Corporation will lead to politicians screaming for more oversight and regulation of free speech and journalism in the U.S.

Los Angeles Plays Itself: Documentary Through the Eyes of Fiction

This astounding 2003 documentary by Thom Andersen takes what I am certain is the most thorough look ever at how films, both popular and obscure, have depicted the city of Los Angeles. Through the accumulation and precise organizing of clips, Andersen actually describes the essential heart of Los Angeles better than anyone I have seen before. Unfortunately, the film has never been released due to rights issues with some of the clips in the film. I can’t imaging what those issues might be since this all looks like fair use for a documentary to me. This is quite obviously a journalistic essay and he has every right to use the clips in short portions.

The film’s narration has a sort of dry weariness that tends to fit the general tendency toward crime or noirish films and their views of the city. His description of the brutal destruction of Bunker Hill is a masterpiece of documentary filmmaking, illustrating the horror of a corporate dead zone built on top of a once vibrant and colorful community that served as inspiration to many down-at-the-heel artists like John Fante, the great Los Angeles novelist who wrote ‘Ask the Dust.’

Andersen moves through a dizzying array of films including, Point Blank, Zabriskie Point, Double Indemnity, The Outsider, The Exiles, Kiss Me Deadly, Chinatown, The Omega Man, Blade Runner, Heat, Rebel Without a Cause, and many many more. It’s a tour with attitude through Hollywood’s fascination with Los Angeles. It’s also a look at how wrong many depictions of the city have been – how twisted, altered, faked and misrepresented L.A. has been. The film is a lifelong Los Angeles resident who knows what’s missing in the superficial portraits of the city and gets mad about it. But in general, Andersen’s film gradually and unremittingly builds a detailed portrait of the city like no other portrait ever attempted. He reserves some snide comments for a director that I have always considered to be one of the best at portraying L.A., Michael Mann. Andersen’s comments about the characters of ‘Heat’ who live in the hills overlooking the flats of L.A. are accurate but somewhat literal. Here’s an article that Andersen later wrote about Mann’s film ‘Collateral’ which was apparently an improvement on the city’s portrayal.

But Andersen’s irritation with fakery and distortion are what make this film work. He insists on showing the false, exposing it for what it is, and then showing us a contradictory viewpoint. One of the kickers in this magnificent film is when Andersen makes a very obvious and clear note of Steve Martin’s racist perspective on Los Angeles in ‘L.A. Story,’ where any non-white character must work in a restaurant. Frankly, I’m so tired of hearing about how brilliant the idiotic and dull Martin is that I vote for this film on that basis alone! He has scathing remarks for writers like Joan Didion who wrote about car culture, maintaining that nobody walked in L.A., but really meant to say that no rich white people walked in L.A. Meanwhile, the city has always had a huge and fully utilized mass transit system.

A further thought that comes to me while watching this film is that over the past 100 years, racism in the U.S. has in fact been led and encouraged by Hollywood. The mass majority of its product over the decades has portrayed non-whites in demeaning fashion. The treatment of black characters throughout the Hollywood studio heyday is an embarrassment to the nation. All you need to know about Hollywood is on view in any Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn romantic comedy. Just watch the way they treat their household employees. Casual and appalling.

I found this film while working on my own Los Angeles film that looks at the city through the prism of the imagination as conditioned by films. But my film looks at this distortion as actually being the real heart and living soul of the city. What makes Los Angeles the greatest American city is precisely its hidden history, its distorted images, and its ability to exist in different forms entirely within the imaginations of people who think they live there. There are vast numbers of people who live and work in Los Angeles who have never actually seen Los Angeles. When you summon the false gods and demons of L.A. they actually appear.

Part 2:

Parts 3 – 12 after the jump…

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Redbook’s Portrait of the American Suburbs: 1957 Advermentary

Seems almost like a horror film on its surface. This is a 1957 documentary/advertisement for Redbook Magazine. But it presents a portrait of the American migration to suburbia that one could film in almost exactly the same way today. There’s nothing in here that you can’t find looking just the same today. The film’s constant referral to the ‘young adults’ who cherish their lives away from the crowded cities begins to sound downright weird after the tenth repetition. These ‘young adults’ can still be found today in suburbs all around Los Angeles. I’ve had plenty of backyard experience with these suburban young adults. You walk out into your pool area and you hear the neighbors playing some loud music. You know what they’re playing? Bad Company. The Who. Bruce Springsteen. The Bee Gees. John Cougar.

Living in the past. Some glory days lived right around high school graduation time. Then it was all downhill from there and a job that paid for the Sea-Doo and the Ford pickup. Spit in your barbecue if you know what I’m talking about.

There’s some damn fine filmmaking going on in this little advermentary though. I love the shots in part two with the car’s sideview mirror and the suburban yard people.

1955 Urban Renewal Animation: Man of Action

In 1955 The American Council to Improve Our Neighborhoods produced this animation to encourage people to get together and work hard to rebuild and clean up impoverished neighborhoods and slums. Its focus on individual effort, painting old garage doors, and forming groups seems hopelessly naive, but it does at least make an effort to encourage people. The production actually has quite an impressive audio track and I think that’s Ray Walston voicing the Devil. The film calls itself: ‘a film dedicated to the purpose of better living in homes and neighborhoods for… All Americans.’

Short Film: Attackazoids!

Here’s a wild underground science fiction short produced by a company called Robot Hand. This fun and narratively loose assault on the alien invasion/mechanical overlord genre was directed by Brian Lonano and uses old-style lo-fi analog techniques for its special effects. The apparently concerned and helpful robots seem intent on wiping out every last vestige of life on the planet. Maybe they come from Wall Street!

Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film has posted more about the filmmakers and festivals showing their work.