I had been wanting to see Last King of Scotland for a while, in fact ever since it was in theaters and I didn't get to see it then. We wanted to see it with some friends and we never got all our schedules together, so we just missed it completely. Then I had to wait for it to come out on DVD, and right when it was about to I bumped it to the top of my Netflix queue and I had it in hand within a day of the DVD release.
I was not disappointed when I watched it. Forest Whitaker won a ton of awards for it, and they were well-deserved. I was kind of surprised that there was very little mention made of the atrocities committed by Idi Amin, instead it was about Amin's insanity - not how he acted out his madness. And it's hard to think that one could ever empathize with a murderous dictator, but Forest Whitaker really makes the character someone you want to see succeed.
We know how it ends, of course - the story of Idi Amin can't end happily. But the movie is nowhere near as much of a downer as I was expecting, and I definitely liked it.
My sister-in-law also subscribes to Netflix, and she gave me a DVD the other day. It was Paris is Burning - she said she had to watch it for a course she's taking, but it's about drag queens so she thought I might like it.
It was great. For all of my involvement in the gay community and leather pageantry, and even with my awareness of drag queen competitions, I had no idea that Harlem in the late 1980s was a hotspot for performance art and drag shows like those shown in the movie. I also didn't know that these balls were vogue-ing long before Madonna - well, at least a little bit, since the documentary was already in production when her song came out.
Ultimately, though, Paris is Burning is a tragic story. The participants find great joy in the balls, but the viewer is frequently reminded that this is often their only joy, as many of them are poor and lower-class, and some experience discrimination for being gay or transgender. And although I didn't realize it while watching the movie, most of the stars have died since the film was made - several from AIDS-related causes - and one who is still alive is living with AIDS herself. This movie is educational and fascinating, but it makes me sad to realize that the world it depicts has been morphed beyond recognition or even left behind completely.
This is copied from my regular journal; it's not so much a review of the movie as it is writing down thoughts provoked by the movie.
I watched JFK this past weekend because I've been reading about it for a long time, off and on. I think the reason the investigation continues is not because people can't move on from JFK's death - it is more about the government itself, not just one man.
People need to know whether their government was right or wrong in its analysis. If it is wrong, was that due to carelessness? Was that carelessness simply sloppy investigation, or did they unwittingly overlook evidence because they wanted to have an answer? Or was the report deliberately falsified? If so, was it because the government wanted to placate the public, or because there was a deliberate intentional coverup? What was being covered up? Could the deliberate falsification be due to the government knowing its investigation was careless and wanting to seem competent despite some evidence simply being lost? Or was it a deliberate falsification to cover up a true conspiracy? Who was involved in the conspiracy, and how far did it go?
Although "Mr. X" in Oliver Stone's movie JFK says the important question is not who or how, but why, I disagree with this. The American public has moved on from Vietnam, Cuba, etc. Although "why" would be nice to know, it doesn't have any bearing on modern politics. That's all history now. But knowing who did it would let the public trust its government, or find fault with it and change it. The continued importance of the JFK assassination investigation is not even about the killing itself: the reason we need to know who killed Kennedy is because we need to know if the Warren Report, a government-generated document, was true or false. That information is why thousands of people spend hours upon hours researching this.
Unfortunately, I don't think we will ever know the truth. Virtually all of the records are already available; the remainder will be opened over the next 10 years. (Yes, there's a line in that link about some records possibly remaining sealed forever, I did see that.) But really...we already know pretty much everything there is to know. If there is a massive conspiracy and coverup, we will never know that...what would anybody who is still holding onto the secrets want to divulge them for at this point? It's a painful part of American history, and we can talk about it till the sun goes supernova, but I just don't think what really happened will ever be revealed.
