The Yes Men Fix the World

Part documentary, part elaborate hoax, this enlightening new film exposes the folly and arrogance of big business and government in a decidedly direct manner. The Yes Men are Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, pranksters with a conscience who were previously filmed for the 2004 documentary The Yes Men. Where other filmmakers such as Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock tread similar territory from a mostly observational standpoint, the Yes Men pass themselves off as agents of their intended targets.

Acting as the stars and directors this time, the duo set up fake websites purporting to belong to major corporations or government agencies, then wait to get invited to public forums where they claim to be representatives of those companies. They’re not just passive observers; they actually take to the stage at these events and make seemingly legitimate presentations that emphatically portray the extent to which capitalism at any cost has undermined basic human decency. The goal is to shame big business and government into doing the right thing, and while the results appear to be fairly unsuccessful during the course of the film, their exploits clearly raise some valid red flags that will hopefully lead to greater impact and discussion through this more widely accessible venue.

In their most high-profile stunt, the boys pass themselves off to the mighty BBC as representatives of industrial giant Dow Chemical. In an interview broadcast live on the BBC to an audience of millions, Bichlbaum in his guise as a Dow spokesperson states that Dow has agreed to compensate the victims of the 1984 Bhopal, India gas disaster to the tune of $12 billion as part of their buyout of culprit Union Carbide. The resulting tremendous dive in Dow’s stock price comes as no surprise, but also shows the moral depravity of big business as a seemingly honorable humanitarian effort creates a huge negative hit to the company. It’s questionable whether the Yes Men acted in poor taste by temporarily raising the hopes of the actual victims of the disaster, but they take pains to travel to Bhopal to get some positive feedback about the stunt from select local representatives. It’s also questionable whether they had any real impact, as Dow has still failed to make amends to the disaster victims and the company share price quickly recovered when the hoax was exposed, but at the very least it’s extremely gripping footage.

Elsewhere, the boys poke at HUD’s response to Hurricane Katrina, come up with an inventive alternative energy solution for Exxon, and unveil a fake Halliburton survival suit called the Survivaball. Remarkably, they avoid arrest and get through most of their public presentations to unsuspecting audiences without interruption, even when demonstrating a financial model that purports to calculate the value of human life against potential business profitability. They are compelling figures and concoct some truly fascinating hoaxes, but the real power of their work is their exposure of the unabashed nonchalance and failure of their targets to mend their ways.

The Yes Men Fix the World opens today in Los Angeles and continues its national and UK rollouts in the coming weeks. For more information and theaters, visit http://www.theyesmenfixtheworld.com/.

More Than This: The Story of Roxy Music

One of the most influential bands of all time, Roxy Music gets a well-deserved and expertly produced career retrospective in this new DVD. Originally broadcast by the BBC in late 2008, the documentary covers the entire active recording career of the band as well as their recent reunions. The DVD expands on the original broadcast with nearly a half hour of additional interviews, as well as three previously unreleased live tracks from a 2006 London concert.

The film is endorsed by and features new interviews with all of the principal players in the band, including early member Brian Eno. To flesh out their legacy with outside perspectives, the film includes exclusive interviews with other music luminaries inspired by the band including Bono, John Taylor (Duran Duran), Steve Jones (Sex Pistols), Siouxsie Sioux, and Nile Rodgers (Chic). The production team’s exhaustive research also led to inclusion of interviews with the band’s cover photographer for all of their album covers, the cover model from the first album (still looking good over 35 years later), and legendary studio engineer Bob Clearmountain among others. With this unprecedented level of artist, acolyte, and associate participation, More Than This is almost certain to be the definitive document of the band.

The band was formed in the early 70s by art school grad Bryan Ferry as an outlet for him to make “weird music for art school students” with little thoughts to fame, fortune, or conformity. Their flamboyant emergence on the UK scene signaled the dawn of art rock, but also acted as a direct predecessor for the soon-to-come punk and new wave movements. Steve Jones and Bono comment that the band’s early work had a huge influence on the punk movement, while John Taylor exposes how their glam rock look dictated the fashion checklist for his future band: denim no, eyeliner yes.

Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry both talk candidly about Eno’s brief tenure in the band (he left before the 3rd album), giving viewers valuable insight to the band’s politics of the time. The other members, especially drummer Paul Thompson, let on that Ferry may have feared being overshadowed by Eno, and Eno clearly indicates that they both had different musical directions they wished to take, but there don’t appear to be any deep-seated grudges on either side as the film also documents a historic recording session of new material by all of the original members including Eno in 2006.

The film follows a strictly chronological format from the band’s early days through their apparent end after the Avalon tour, using each album as a milestone. It also covers their reunions in the 2000s, nearly 20 years after their disbandment. Although their final original incarnation for the glossy, almost New Age Avalon album bears little resemblance to the gritty art rock sound they pioneered, their continuing evolvement throughout their career led to a passionate fanbase at each stage and clearly showed the strong direction of band founder Ferry. Clearmountain’s best sound bite comes when he reveals that he still gets far more compliments about Avalon than anything else he’s ever done, including Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. Regardless of which stage of the band you like the best, the film offers superb archival footage and new reminiscences that will expand your appreciation.

More Than This: The Story of Roxy Music is now available on DVD.

Wild Pacific

Did you like Planet Earth? Are you looking for some more BBC nature shows? Wild Pacific continues their string of excellence and offers a fascinating in-depth study of the flora, fauna, geology, and people of the South Pacific. The US DVD release has been retitled from the original BBC broadcast appropriately named South Pacific, perhaps to avoid any angry letters from aging US musical fans duped into a purchasing error. Unlike the US broadcast of Planet Earth, the new series retains the original British narration. Unfortunately, the narrator isn’t BBC legend David Attenborough, but the new kid with the preposterous moniker of Benedict Cumberbatch does a serviceable job.

The series has six hour-long episodes that try to assign a different theme to each one (“Castaways”, “Strange Islands”), but the formula is largely unchanged from show to show, basically stringing together an enchanting mix of rare land and sea animals with some information about their specific Pacific homes and humanity’s impact on them. Like Planet Earth and other BBC nature productions, the show has a definite evolutionary stance that may grate on some sensitive creationists out there, but there’s no denying that the footage is absolutely breathtaking and in some cases groundbreaking.

As noted in the first episode, the Pacific is largest ocean on Earth, and the series goes on to explore the isolation of its islands, the perilous journeys wildlife and humans have gone through to reach them, and what happened to both after their arrival. While the distance between its islands can be hundreds or thousands of miles, life made it to most places, although it didn’t always stay that way, as evidenced by the man-made desolation of Easter Island. Where life did flourish, it often adapted in unique ways that are explored in the series, such as giant crabs that crack open coconuts and insect-eating caterpillars. The series doesn’t just travel to Tahiti and Fiji, it digs deep and explores the entire ocean, even landing on a miniscule and remote island with only a few hundred inhabitants.

Also similar to Planet Earth, each episode contains some bonus footage at the end detailing the challenges they faced in filming a particular segment of that episode, for instance some stunning surfing footage in the first episode that required them to build a custom underwater rig for their hi def camera, avoid the jagged reef under the shallow water, and come back a second time weeks after they intended to shoot in order to capture the best waves.

Deserving of special mention: this DVD series arrived on our shores a mere two months after its original UK broadcast, a delightfully speedy turnaround. Wild Pacific is now available on DVD and Blu-ray, but if you have Blu capability you’d be doing yourself a disservice to even consider it on DVD, especially considering the Blu-ray’s relatively modest $5 list price premium over DVD.