The $20,000,000 Club

When I first debuted the $20 Million club last summer, I figured that I would have to update it whenever another high-grossing doc burst upon the scene. That moment has happened, with the cursed Bieber movie. As an amateur journalist, I could not ignore this event, unfortunately. The newest entry to the $20 Million club, the cinematic masterpiece: Justin Bieber: Never Say Never.

The $20 Million Club
1. Fahrenheit 9/11: $119,194,771 (2004)
2. March of the Penguins: $77,437,223 (2005)
3. Justin Bieber: Never Say Never: $72,754,535 (2011)
4. Earth: $32,011,576 (2009)
5. Sicko: $24,540,079 (2007)
6. An Inconvenient Truth: $24,146,161 (2006)
7. Bowling for Columbine: $21,576,018 (2002)

Some other new faces in the Top 20 Domestic Box Office: Waiting for "Superman," Babies, Oceans, and Capitalism: A Love Story. This list favors newer documentaries since there has been a surge of doc interest of late, and because of inflation, which I certainly did not account for.

(click to enlarge)

Bieber's movie is still in the theaters, making money. Since I made the graph earlier today, its sales have gone up on Box Office Mojo by almost $3,000. Seeing as it happens to be the traditional tax day, I think I'm going to update this every April 15. That way, I won't have to break news when Bieber II comes out. I can't believe I've written Bieber this many times. I'm sorry.

Data from BoxOffice Mojo.com (link will be outdated).

Restrepo

Directors: Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger
(2010)

Afghanistan’s Korangal Valley is a remote, rugged region located deep in Taliban territory. It is such a volatile area that it has been dubbed "The Valley of Death" by American forces and “the most dangerous place in the world” by CNN. Restrepo documents the 15-month deployment of a platoon of men assigned to the explosive area. While there have been myriad documentaries released in the last decade addressing the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, none of them have offered the same kind of ground-level perspective seen in this film.

While the soldiers are fired upon every single day, they are still ordered to set up an outpost deeper in the valley. Under the leadership of the unflappable Captain Dan Kearney, they push forward. They set up a new camp, digging out trenches and setting up barricades. The only break from digging comes when they are suddenly faced with enemy fire. They fire back, wait until the shooting subsides, then start digging again. This world is beyond dystopian.



The soldiers are the reason the film is so compelling. Their captivating stories, often given intimacy thanks to the use of extremely tight shots, range from nerve-racking to quite humorous. It’s not often that subjects give so much of themselves during interviews. This may be due, in part, to their relationship with the filmmakers. The soldiers develop close relationships with each other due to the environment they are in. They may have developed similar bonds to the filmmakers, who had bore witness to the same harrowing events over the course of the 15-month deployment.

It would be difficult to overestimate the risk that the filmmakers took in shooting this footage. British photographer Tim Hetherington and American journalist Sebastian Junger (author of The Perfect Storm) embedded themselves in the trenches alongside the soldiers for 15 months. They sacrificed their lives in order to provide this perspective from the front lines, an invaluable account for posterity’s sake. It’s delights the mind's eye to imagine the possibility of watching footage from the American Revolution, as future generations will have this priceless account of the current conflict.

official film site * trailer * buy it here

Trivial Tidbits:

• Restrepo received the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.
• Nominated for the 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Trivial Epilogue:

• Junger’s Vanity Fair article on OP Restrepo
  

2011 Oscar Nominations Announced

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the nominees for the 83rd Academy Awards. The King's Speech has "won" the most nominations, with 12. Co-hosting the ceremony will be Hollywood darlings James Franco and Anne Hathaway (the first time for each). The gala is slated for Sunday, February 27, 2011 at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles.

The nominees are:

Documentary (Feature)

• Exit through the Gift Shop Banksy and Jaimie D'Cruz
• Gasland Josh Fox and Trish Adlesic
• Inside Job Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs
• Restrepo Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger
• Waste Land Lucy Walker and Angus Aynsley

Documentary (Short Subject)

• Killing in the Name Jed Rothstein
• Poster Girl Sara Nesson and Mitchell W. Block
• Strangers No More Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon
• Sun Come Up Jennifer Redfearn and Tim Metzger
• The Warriors of Qiugang Ruby Yang and Thomas Lennon

The Red Chapel

Danish Title: Det Røde Kapel
Director: Mads Brügger
(2009)

It’s hard to believe that The Red Chapel is anything but fiction. The premise sounds downright absurd: Danish filmmaker Mads Brügger and two Danish-Korean comedians are permitted into the hermetic country of North Korea to perform a comedy show under the facade of a “cultural exchange.” However, unbeknownst to the regime of the “Supreme Leader,” Kim Jong-il, the Danes intend to shoot a film during their trip that will expose North Korea for the totalitarian dictatorship that it is.

The routine itself – performed by comedians Jacob Nossell (who has a disability that effects his speech, and refers to himself as “spastic”) and Simon Jul – could hardly qualify as amusing. It’s as though it was written to entertain a kindergarten class, complete with kazoos, amateur tap dancing, farting sounds, nonsensical yelling, and other various asinine noises. It is not as though the Danes are under the delusion that their act is hilarious. At one point, Jul himself exasperates that it is not funny. After the first rehearsal, the government emissaries make their extensive revisions. These modification are meant to censure rather than enrich the routine, including limiting the exposure of Nossell due to his disability.



Mrs. Pak, an envoy of the government, is delegated to chaperone the Danes during their stint in the country. She is the most prominently featured native in the film, and her interactions with the foreigners offer some insight into life as a North Korean citizen. Despite the damnable stance of the regime towards those with disabilities, she immediately takes a strong liking to Nossell. She goes so far as to say that he is like a son to her just hours after their first meeting. It’s as though she is trying to assuage the guilt she feels about her government’s policy. Later, when Jul innocuously asks her a mundane question regarding what it’s like living in North Korea, she has a hard time fighting tears. The fact that she was struck by such intense emotion at such a pedestrian question clearly indicates that she is either very unhappy or is perhaps not permitted to express how she truly feels.

At one point, Brügger and Nossell attend an anti-US rally eerily reminiscent of a National Socialist gathering in 1940s Berlin. (Jul, as Brügger explains, couldn’t attend due to “diarrhea.” However, one suspects that Jul’s own conscience precluded him from attending.) Brügger falls in line, raising his fist in solidarity with the nationalists. Nossell boldly refuses to comply, even as he advances in his wheelchair between flanks of soldiers. While he had been apprehensive about the trip from the start, this display of moral fortitude cements Nossell as the film’s contrarian. Brügger misses an opportunity here to see what would happen if he, too, had become defiant at such a public event. He was presumably (and justifiably) nervous that all of his footage would have then been confiscated.

There is something intrinsically interesting about a film that was shot in cloistered North Korea, just as a film about Yale’s Skull and Bones society would be worthy of note. The urban streets, seen from the window of a van, are totally deserted. Brügger explains the lack of any advertisements is due to the alleged “socialist” government. While it is somewhat disappointing that the film was not even more of a revealing exposé on the government’s deplorable human rights record, had Brügger et al pushed their luck any further, they may have had all of their footage confiscated…or ended up in a labor camp.

official film site * trailer * buy it (n/a)

Trivial Tidbits:

• Won Best Foreign Documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival
• Won Best Nordic Documentary at Nordisk Panorama 2009

Trivial Epilogue:

• "Sundance Film Festival follow up: THE RED CHAPEL"