Doc Corner: Michael Moore Goes to 'Trumpland'

Michael Moore in Trumpland is a misnomer of a title. For despite the comically scored pro-Trump vox pop interviews that open the film, and despite the smattering of apparent Trump supporters through the audience, Michael Moore’s has found himself the most liberal of audiences one could hope. “Around here, I ain’t heard nobody for Clinton” says one unidentified woman, but if that were the case then the crowd Moore has amassed are easily swayed because by the end of this brief 70-minute mix of stand-up, pre-filmed comedy sketches, call and response, and personal recollections in monologue, the entire crowd is cheering and whooping for Hillary.

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Tweets and Where To Find Them

Before we get to this week's best and most amusing tweets on topics like HBO's Westworld, film reviews, Ben Affleck, Hillary Clinton and more after the jump, let's start with a few tweets on the next franchise no one has seen yet but is still eager to spend billions on... Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them. (sigh)

The direction I'd take the Harry Potter franchise in... #LetsGetWiested pic.twitter.com/JzuaWRtYzV

— Mark (@dublin_zoetrope) October 16, 2016

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A Brief Jog Right Past "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk." Get Me Outta Here!

a belated finale NYFF moment with your host, Nathaniel R

Before the world premiere of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk the great director Ang Lee appeared and asked the crowd at the NYFF screening to "keep an open mind." He was speaking about the new technology he used to shoot the 3D movie about a Texas soldier named Billy Lynn (played by talented newcomer Joe Alwyn) on leave from Iraq who is used as a patriotic prop at a football game's halftime show. The movie is shot in 4K (much higher clarity than usual) with a "revolutionary" 140 frames per second as opposed to the standard for decades upon decades now which is 24. As a cinephile without much technical savvy and who doesn't get too caught up in aspect ratios or film stocks or whatnot, I thought "no problem, Ang!"  I always attend movies with eyes wide open and the mind ready to join the party should the movie engage it.

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Doc Corner: Ava DuVernay's '13th' is Essential

by Glenn Dunks

Sometimes to be a film-lover is to question why we indulge in certain films. It’s a question we have no doubt all asked ourselves at one point or another after a particularly gruelling film. It would have been so much easier to just let it slip passed us and be content within our bubble. It would be easy to see 13th, for instance, the new documentary from Selma and Middle of Nowhere director Ava DuVernay, on our Netflix screens and think that it is not for us – that because we already see the world through a lens of equality without racism that it is not necessary viewing, that it is just preaching to the converted. Why spend 100 minutes feeling as if the weight of misery is bearing down on us?

But 13th is an essential viewing for everybody. It is essential for you and for myself. Essential for Americans and those outside its borders. Essential most of all for white people and black people and everybody else. That its subject and themes still bear immediate relevance make it so. But DuVernay’s best achievement with the thorough and the soulfully searching 13th isn’t that it is just a wake-up call for race relations in America right at this very moment, but that her film will no doubt prove to be invaluable in the understanding of America’s history of racism for years to come.

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Once More with Tweeting

 In this edition of Tweetweek, Shailene Woodley's arrest, Moonlight fever, the best Supporting Actress winner, a Scarlett Johansson look-a-like, and things overheard in locker rooms. It's all after the jump...

Is this because of "The Descendants"? pic.twitter.com/lYd2p1WGk4

— Jordan Veilleux (@veilleuxwho) October 11, 2016

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