CNN has an interactive 360° video from Haiti. Apparently, the video was provided by Immersive Media.

Experiential media is both frightening and exciting to me. Viewing this video seems more real than any other moving-image experience available to us at this time. While slowly gaining more control of the image, the viewer can control and create their own unique experience. What will be the social and political effects of this new way of digesting the news?

RJ Cutler’s latest project, The September Issue, gives us unprecedented access to Anna Wintour, sixty year-old editor-in-chief of American Vogue Magazine, zooming in close enough to see her fangs. The film succeeds, but not because of the director’s unique style or his use of revolutionary editing. Rather, Cutler and his crew melt Wintour’s icy shield, revealing not only the super-boss with which we are familiar, but also a mother, sister, and most importantly, a woman.

Executive Producer Molly Thompson has given us access like this before in the Academy-Award nominated Jesus Camp, a film about children who attend Pentecostal summer camp to practice their prophetic gifts. In The September Issue, the subject may be less controversial, but it is no less fascinating. The September 2007 issue of Vogue was the largest, heaviest, and likely most expensive edition of the magazine ever produced.

Wintour, a British high-school dropout, was born into the world of print journalism: her father, Charles Wintour, was the editor of the Evening Standard. Although she has lost most of her accent, her immaculate posture and conservative necklines have followed her across the pond. She enters the frame like a draft of cold air blows through an open window. Yet Cutler succeeds in showing us her warm side too by taking us into her garishly decorated Greenwich Village townhouse where she sits, dressed and ready for the workday, with her daughter still in pajamas. Wintour’s interaction with her daughter is sincere, even though they both look like they could stand to eat a hamburger.

Nevertheless, the film helps save the often deserved reputation of the fashion industry, which has so often fallen prey to those who are quick to blame it for disordered eating and negative body image associated with American adolescence. The September Issue proves to us that behind every anorexic model there is a scary, frigid, ugly witch or an overweight, flamboyant queen. Cameos by famous designers including Oscar de la Renta and Vera Wang show that the people behind the labels have wrinkles and warts too, even if their designer wardrobes cost thousands more than ours.

Always dressed in black, Vogue creative director, Grace Coddington, plays the Mary, Queen of Scots to Wintour’s Elizabeth I. After a disfiguring accident that ended her modeling career, Coddington began working as a Junior Editor at British Vogue. In 1988, both she and Wintour moved to New York to work for the magazine’s American incarnation. The treatment of fashion as an industry and not an art encapsulates the struggle between Wintour and Coddington, whose creativity is so beautifully expressed in her spectacularly composed photographs. Allowing her perfectly made-up models to eat on set, she relaxes the world of fashion, showing us that not everyone is as high-strung as Wintour. In a self-reflexive moment on a photo shoot, while looking over the epic gardens of Versailles, Coddington remarks, “I think I got let behind somewhere because I’m still a romantic.”

Much like a fashion show, the film is punctuated by a pop-music soundtrack. And like Wintour’s magazine, Cutler’s film is technically flawless. With the abundance of mirrors at many of the locations, it is surprising how rarely we see the film crew, camera, or boom. The documentary approach to the deadline-driven production environment of Vogue magazine demystifies the myth of Wintour created by the novel and film The Devil Wears Prada. In contrast to the faces in photographs in her magazine, which are scoured by airbrushing and Photoshop, we catch a glimpse of Wintour sans make-up, albeit in a single shot.

Compared to the titular subjects of Amelia and Julie & Julia who sensationally rise to fame with the financial and emotional assistance of a supporting husband, Coddington and Wintour show that in reality, it takes a lot more than a spouse, a pretty smile, and a joyful laugh to be a successful female capitalist. To succeed as Coddington and Wintour have, one must confidently pursue one’s passions while never taking “no” for an answer. Combined with a zealous work ethic, this will help you become the pope—or at least a bishop—in the career field of your dreams.

One of my favorite films, When We Are Big, directed by Eveline Ketterings, is finally available for free on the internet! The film was screened at the Telluride Film Festival in 2006, where I first saw it. Credit goes to my friend Christi Hedtke at Banana Who for making me aware of its presence on YouTube. Recalling the audience’s unforgettable response, she writes:

When I watched it I was blown away–I thought it beautiful, though-provoking, Surrealist, and, having no dialogue, director Eveline Ketterings really mastered the “universal language” of film. Just as I burst into impassioned applause, the rest of the pack booed profusely.

I have listened to Telluride Film Festival audiences groan, but I have only once in my five-year history of attending, heard them boo. The history of avant-garde film exhibition contains many stories of unrestrained reactions from audiences. In 1930, at one of the first screenings of the Surrealist film, L’Age D’or (dir. Luis Buñuel), members of the fascist League of Patriots threw ink at the screen, assaulted members of the audience, and destroyed art works on display in the lobby by Dalí, Miró, Man Ray, and others. In 1946, the opening of The Potted Psalm (dir. James Broughton and Sidney Peterson) at Art in Cinema in San Fransisco was met with a near riot from members of the audience. Although non-violent in nature, the strong negative reactions to Kettering’s film at the Telluride Film Festival began a dialogue that can now be continued with the unlimited availability of this film on YouTube. You can watch it below.

Embedded below is another film by Ketterings, A Hole in the Ground.

At first, this decision seemed like it may have come a little from left field – Haj’s acting credits on imdb far outweigh her producing credits. After a little more research, it is clear that her interests are not completely irrelevant. I’ll be curious to hear more of the politics behind this decision. For the sake of Full Frame, I hope it was a good one.

From the press release:

Haj has a long and distinguished career in film and communications, including her work as a documentary producer and consultant on a variety of film projects. Haj was the producer of the award-winning documentary Scene Smoking which, among other places, aired on Discovery Health Network. She was also producer of Brushes with Life, a documentary exploring art and mental illness. Prior to her career in film production she was a successful theater and film actor.

Precious is the latest film festival success from Sundance, Cannes, and the New York Film Festival. By success, I mean it has accrued the attention and support of the New York Times Magazine, Tyler Perry, Oprah, as well as U.S. distributor Lionsgate. Winning multiple audience awards, it is in the position of becoming the next “indie” film to make it all the way to Oscar night. Yet like Juno or Little Miss Sunshine, Precious only slightly breaks out of Hollywood conventions.

Based on the novelPush by Sapphire, Precious is a fictional story set in Harlem in 1987 about an abused, raped, morbidly obese, H.I.V.-positive, pregnant, teenage-mother (played by Gabourey Sidibe). All of these descriptors have been dealt with before in dramatic film, except one: Precious’s morbid obesity. For the first time in recent history of film dramas, the audience is in a position to identify with a very fat person. For this reason, Precious is unique.

Like many a casting story, director Lee Daniels claims the honor of finding Sidibe at the last minute after months of searching and casting calls. The only untrained actor in a cast of pop culture idols, she plays her challenging leading role with natural poise. However, the best performance belongs to Mo’Nique in her frightening portrayal of Precious’s mother, Mary Jones. Resembling a Miyazaki monster, she belongs only in nightmares. Unfortunately for Precious, she has to live with her abusive mother who throws glasses at her, steals her welfare money, and worst of all, forces Precious to perform oral sex on her (thankfully, off screen). She is as disgusting as she is horrifying.

Because Precious is pregnant, she is sent to an alternative school with a benevolent teacher, Ms. Rain (Paula Patton). In a film with otherwise phenomenal acting, Patton is the weakest link. With her made-up face and well-maintained weave, she lacks the necessary fatigue and frustration of a teacher at an alternative school. In Daniels’s characteristic casting selections, supporting roles are performed by musician Lenny Kravitz and multi-talented Mariah Carey.

The character-driven story is shot in a somewhat haphazard manner, occasionally using handheld cameras for no apparent reason. The film is decorated with sporadic fantasy scenes in which Precious attends a red carpet event and participates in a magazine-style photo-shoot. In contrast to these dreamlike moments, we sometimes witness her haunting flashbacks. The effect of these is so physical that we literally feel her brain clicking into the instinctive fight-or-flight syndrome.

While many critics have been quick to call Precious a success for African-American independent film, it is not independent in terms of its recognizable supporting cast or its budget. Following the film’s success at Sundance, both Oprah and Tyler Perry signed on as executive producers. Perry helped convince the distributor of his films, Lionsgate, to purchase the distribution rights for $5.5 million, a little over half of the $10 million budget.

In regard to the racial commentary made by the film, it is not enough to say that the film reinforces old stereotypes. At the beginning of the film, Mary shouts at Precious as their buzzer repeatedly rings, “Stupid crackheads, giving the ghetto a bad name.” I hesitate to make the claim that this film does the same thing. It is possible to portray the ghetto in a respectful way – Charles Burnett showed in his seminal film Killer of Sheep that the ghetto, while ripe with poverty, feels like home for many, with all the warmth and security that comes with the word.

It is not race, abuse, incest, or rape that is the primary elephant in the room when it comes to the critical discussion provoked by the grim subject of Precious. It is morbid obesity, an epidemic that affects African-American women more than any other part of our population. Sidibe is an actress of unprecedented proportion, but also of unprecedented dramatic talent – a disconcerting rarity in film. Most importantly, Precious, the film, and Sidibe, the actor, show us that there is certainly a place for obese actors in Hollywood. In an interview with Lynn Hirschberg, Daniels himself said, “I’ll never look at a fat girl walking down the street the same way again.”

I will also post a list of the top documentary films and top animated films of the decade. It doesn’t seem correct to include them the following list of films. That being said, I’m not quite sure what the qualifications for this list are, but they include the following: fiction, feature (or longer) length, reviewed in the New York Times (i.e. screened in New York), and released in the United States between 2000 and 2009. In order of year of release:

The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, USA, 2001)

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