THE OBENSON REPORT

Good call Spike! I'm with you all the way. Now just don't screw up the "St Anna" movie!

The filmmaker's name is Yehdego Abeselom who was born and raised in Ethiopia. From the film's website: he arrived in the United States at the age of 18... moved to California to attend Chapman University, where he directed and produced several short films...

For screening info and more interesting specifics about the film go here: www.screeningsightings.com

Here's the trailer:

READ THE REST HERE.

Why Do Political Lies Work?

Anyone who wants to reform American politics has to seriously consider the pros and cons of lying. Telling people what they want to hear has rarely lost an election. Yet nobody wants to be on the Titanic, reassured that what they felt was just a tiny bump. To begin with, there's an assumption that no candidate can win by telling the whole truth . The Dennis Kucinich school of bald-faced candor is usually fatal. The phrase "lying politician" rolls easily off the tongue, and yet a balancing act is required. We expect politicians to lie in some areas but not others. Pollsters have not found a simple formula for success, although being positive comes as close as any. Voters don't elect whistle-blowers and Cassandras. In the present climate there are certain painful truths that cannot be safely uttered in public.

--America's going to lose this war in the end. Iraq and Iran will form a Shiite coalition controlling almost as much oil as Saudi Arabia.
--The Army contains a lot of disadvantaged kids who enlisted because it was an easy option that paid well.
--The death penalty is barbaric and doesn't work.
--Millions of prison inmates don't deserve to be there, the victims of draconian drug laws.
--Drugs aren't going away, no matter how many crusades are mounted against them.
-- American democracy panders to the masses once every few years but is run on a day-to-day basis by privileged elites.
-- If you're poor or ethnic, your interests take a back seat in Washington.
--The military-industrial complex fuels American exports, so while preaching peace, our pocketbooks depend on selling war.
--The Christian right would be totally ignored if they hadn't found a way to vote en bloc and employ character assassination against anyone who opposes them.
-- It's immoral to force a politician to prove he loves God in public.
-- The deterioration of public discourse since Watergate has driven the best and the brightest out of politics.
-- No problem is so big that Washington can't find a way to postpone facing it.

This is a discouraging list, but I'm sure any thoughtful person who keeps up with politics could add to it with many more examples. Succeeding in political office means either avoiding the truth, masking it over, replacing it with distractions that have little or nothing to do with everyday life (e.g., school prayer, abortion, and the flag), or if need be, creating straw men to knock down. It's no secret that the right-wing revolution begun by Nixon and spectacularly advanced by Reagan was fueled by social resentment. Why else did the entire South go Republican after the civil rights era? Why else did 'liberal' become a dirty word and war protestors were blamed for losing in Vietnam? Finding a group to hate and vent resentment toward is far easier than telling hard truths to your supporters.

Will this time-honored avoidance of truth-telling, which breaks down only in dire crisis, ever change? The Democrats are running on the hope that it will. But a double bind seems to be tightening on them, especially on Sen. Obama. When he tells the truth too plainly, he is accused of being unrealistic, naive, too idealistic for his own good. When he resorts to placating gun owners, church goers, and the working class after offending them, he is accused of returning to politics as usual. This double bind has always existed. Pres. Kennedy, for fear of looking soft on Communism, ran on a fictional missile gap with the Soviet Union, a naked appeal to voter fear and hatred of the enemy. The trick is to infuse false rhetoric and sham promises with enough integrity that voters can read between the lines. In America you must convince people that you grasp reality without giving them too big a dose of it.

At exactly 8PM last night, as I was about to turn off my TV and turn on some ambient sounds, ready to shift focus onto my screenplay, I thought I'd run through my favorite channels one last time, just to make sure there wasn't anything of interest (I'm quite the procrastinator when it comes to writing, a process I actually don't like very much, so I'm always looking for an excuse not to do it).

It plays out like a thriller in the "Hitchockian" mold, although not quite Hitchcock (there is only one). However, as I watched it, I remember being reminded of Hitchock's Rope, a film notable for its single location (much of Slender takes place at the suicide clinic with Poitier on the phone), taking place in real time (Slender mimics this as well).

It's not Poitier's best performance, but we are treated to his trademark business-like intensity that doesn't always work well in this particular film. Luckily it's not too distracting. I was still able to enjoy it for 98-minutes. It's not necessarily a "Poitier film," since he shares screen time with Bancroft and a peripheral cast of recognizable names and faces (although at the time they were mostly unknowns), but he commands your attention when he is on screen. His earnestness draws you in, as it seems like he took much pleasure from portraying his character.

Bancroft is believable as an ailing 30-something year old suicidal woman, although, Pollack chose to keep her character invisible during most of the phone call with Poitier. We hear her voice, but we don't see her. Instead, Pollack incorporates several flashbacks during which Bancroft's character retells her story to Poitier's volunteer over the phone - essentially, recapping the events that led up to her current suicidal state. I won't go into detail as to what those events were, but suffice it to say that she kept a secret from her husband - a secret he soon discovers, with devastating consequences. It is through these flashbacks that we meet and get to know her fragile character.

Race isn't at all an issue in the film, and really didn't need to be. Poitier's role could have been played by anyone, as could have Bancroft's. I think those 2 facts added to the air of modernity I felt from the film. I would expect that it was probably quite progressive for its time (1965). I can also imagine how exciting this must have been for audiences at the time to have 2 stars, both whom had just won the industry's highest honor, (Bancroft 2 years prior, and Poitier the previous year), together in a film, even though they never appear on screen together, given the film's plot, which could have been disappointing to that same audience, in the end.

The story (which was based on real life events) obviously didn't lend itself to a romance of any sort between the two leads, so there weren't any opportunities to exploit the sexuality of the characters, or any attraction they might have felt to each other otherwise. Given that their entire relationship exists solely from one end of the slender thread to the other, connecting them, both characters never meet each other in person. Although as the clock ticks towards her potential end, Poitier's character learns much more about her than she does about him, since he has the police on his side, as they work together trying to trace her whereabouts, giving him a slight upper hand in what feels like a tennis match between the two, as he uses his limited psychiatric knowledge of suicidal patients (after all he's just a student volunteer) to engage her as long as he can, and she does her best to maintain some secrecy, keeping him in the dark, even though she clearly needs him to save her.

If you've seen a Pollack film, one thing I think you'd remember most is just how polished his films usually are. There's a tidiness to them that never escapes me, more so than a lot of other filmmakers, even in those films of his that don't register highly on my critical scale. This film is no different, even though it was his first. It's just really "clean," for lack of a better phrase - very well shot (he's not one to experiment with the camera or atmospheric lighting, but the work is solid); it's fairly-well paced and edited, although I think it could lose about 10 minutes of its running time, but a minor quibble. And, aside from Poitier's infrequent over-acting, it's mostly well acted, both the starring and supporting cast, which included Telly Savalas (pre-Kojak), Ed Asner, and Steven Hill (former Law & Order star) - all 3 looking very young and virile! Pollack, an actor himself, has always been known as an actor's director, and even though this was his first feature film, and he was working with 2 Oscar winners, I can tell that he was in command of his cast and crew, and the entire production.

Overall, it's standard studio fare. I was mostly entertained, and can't say that I learned much from the experience. No poignant message to be delivered, no subversions, no calls to action... rather just a mostly taut drama/thriller from a first-time feature-film director who would go on to direct many more. Of course, watching Sidney Poitier was a bonus. This is the first and only time that he and Pollack worked together - at least in a director/actor relationship. Actually, if I didn't see Poitier's name on the marquee, I probably wouldn't have stuck around to watch the entire film, and instead would have turned off the television and worked on my screenplay! No regrets though :o)

I'd give it 3 1/2 out of 5 stars. It's available on DVD for those interested.