There is a point during the first 20 minutes of A Fierce Green Fire at which long-time environmentalist Martin Litton stops to posit, “If you don’t have any hatred in your heart, then what are you living for?” Litton presents the question as if it were a call to action – one clearly reminiscent of the age-old premise that anything worth living for is most assuredly worth fighting for as well.

To that end, A Fierce Green Fire does a pretty decent job of tracing back the ongoing struggle for conservation in this country, chronicling every worthwhile wrinkle from the Audobon Society to the Sierra Club; Green Peace to The EPA; environmental awareness to political activism; King’s Canyon to Love Canal; Earth Day to Kyoto; corporate interest to our climate; Ronald Reagan to Al Gore; air pollution to fierce warming (The list goes on and on). In so doing, the film joins an entire maelstrom of enviro-docs, many of which have been released in the last few years alone (Plastic Planet, Chasing Ice and Surviving Progress among them).

Much like An Inconvenient Truth was able to benefit from Al Gore’s name recognition, A Fierce Green Fire arrives packing some A-list power of its own. Different sections of the film are narrated by the likes of Robert Redford, Meryl Streep and Ashley Judd (to name a few). To his credit, (Director) Mark Kitchell does not exploit any of that talent to his own end. In fact, at no point during the film do any of those A-List narrators actually appear in front of the camera at all.

In the final analysis, what we’re left with is the oft-recurring notion that we’ve traded in our once-proud culture for consumption … a wholly backward state of being in which corporate interests trump the greater good, time and time and time again. The good news is, it’s not too late to set the record straight, provided we have the wherewithal – if not the sheer integrity and guts – to see this battle through.

(A Fierce Green Fire arrives at the Cinema Village in New York City today with a staggered national rollout to follow. For a complete list of opening dates and cities, click here.)

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1. This film was originally released in Japan and the UK way back in 2010 (as something called Shelter), at which point it received a unanimous score of 0% via Rotten Tomatoes’ “Top Critics” meter.
2. This film will be released in the United States as 6 Souls via Video-on-Demand this coming Friday … and it currently maintains a unanimous score of 0% via Rotten Tomatoes’ “Top Critics” meter.
3. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers plays a supernatural psychopath with multiple personalities and several really bad American accents (not to mention a bad pencil mustache).
4. Jeffrey DeMunn, while most assuredly a nice guy, is an absolute eyesore in this movie (He looks like that puppet thing from Saw … seriously. It’s unbelievably irritating.)
5. The storyline includes some weird, convoluted subplot involving mutant hill people.
6. 6 Souls makes the rookie mistake of assuming that in the year 2013 mainstream audiences are still naive enough to accept something this fucking insane as even remotely plausible.
7. 6 Souls is guilty of doing that really lazy B-movie thing wherein the more dire and dangerous a situation, the more insistent the lead character must be about going into it alone.
8. 6 Souls is guilty of doing that really lazy B-movie thing wherein characters call the police for help, then completely forget to mention there’s a supernatural madman on the loose.
9. 6 Souls is guilty of doing that really lazy B-movie thing wherein the bad guy is absolutely all-powerful, yet no one sees any reason for extreme caution or public assistance.
10. 6 Souls is guilty of doing that really lazy B-movie thing wherein the bad guy is absolutely omniscient, and yet he cannot figure out which room a little girl is hiding in.
11. 6 Souls is guilty of doing that really lazy B-movie thing wherein an unspeakable evil has been lying dormant in the mountains for the past century, going completely unnoticed until an entire family comes upon it.
12. 6 Souls is guilty of doing that really lazy B-movie thing wherein every character, plot point and situation conveniently appears exactly where and when the screenwriters need it to.
13. 6 Souls is guilty of doing that really lazy B-movie thing where none of the central characters have any full-time jobs, relationships, or other distractions to keep them from wasting all of their time with this bullshit.
14. 6 Souls is unnecessarily vile.
15. The directors commit the unforgivable – though increasingly frequent – mistake of assuming what makes a good cult film a good cult film is just how utterly absurd it all is (Please note: This is not what makes a good cult film a good cult film).
16. The directors attempt some really misplaced tribute to Stanley Kubrick (ala The Shining) during the first five minutes of the film. It fails miserably.
17. Everything – and I mean everything – about 6 Souls is just soooooooooooooooooo damn spooky.
18. The screenwriters tease the idea that the lead character has a drinking problem during the first 5 minutes of the film, then never (and I mean “never”) follow up on – or even reference – it again.
19. 6 Souls arrives via Video-on-Demand this coming Friday, March 1st (a full month before it arrives in U.S. theaters … not good).

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Click Here for “Princeton, University (Part II)”.

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Time and lack of relevance have rendered it fairly easy to forget just how popular Journey was during its heyday – that the band’s image loomed so large Atari actually built an entire video game around it … that its sound grew so recognizable Budweiser actually enlisted several members to perform commercial jingles … that its songs grew so ubiquitous you can still find a copy of the band’s Greatest Hits lying just beneath the driver’s side of every housewife’s minivan. For good or ill, Journey somehow manages to endure, very often as if driven by its own means of combustion.

Enter Arnel Pineda: a pint-sized migrant from The Philippines who joined the band back in 2007, personally recruited by Neal Schon. Pineda was not only a revelation, he was also the primary reason Journey had any worthwhile reason to look forward. Arnel’s unique ability to channel Steve Perry without becoming Steve Perry was – and is – pretty goddamned remarkable. But what’s more is his ability to draw power from his boyhood idols, all the while leading them in a whole new (multi-million-dollar) direction.

In terms of continuity, Don’t Stop Believin’ does have a tendency to dawdle, specifically when engaged in Arnel’s backstory. But the feeling sure is there. And, assuming we can all agree that David Chase reinvigorated that whole franchise way back in June of 2007, we can also probably agree that Arnel Pineda was – and is – the primary lynchpin keeping all those other pieces together. His story is an inspiration, to be sure. And it makes for pretty fascinating viewing, regardless of whether you’re a music fan, a movie buff, or just some pint-sized migrant from the cut.

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“Here is the natural instinct, and here is the control. You need to combine the two in harmony. If you should have one to the extreme, and then the other to the extreme, then you become all of a sudden a mechanical man; no longer a human being. And so [the goal] is to become a successful combination of both. Therefore, it is not pure and natural, or even pure and unnatural. The ideal is unnatural naturalness … or natural unnaturalness. Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless; like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow, or it can crash. But running water never grows stale. So you just gotta keep on flowin’.”

IFB’s Quotations Page, General Index

One night – and this happened way back when I was in grade school – I came home to find every member of my family had flown the coop. I knew this because I had run through every room in the house, illuminating an expensive string of ceiling lights in the process. I had never really been at home alone before, and I very quickly realized just how much I did not like it. When you’re a kid, you somehow assume all of the bad things have been locked inside with you. And – as such – paranoia slowly takes its toll.

That particular night I went outside and stood alone on the front driveway. It was dark out, and I had no idea which circuit breaker lit the lamppost. And so instead I set to jumping … jump-jump-thumping up and down, as if to keep the constant fear at bay. I did this because I was young, and alone, and I’d never been young and alone before. I remember thinking it was just about the worst thing any punk kid could be made to endure – that sudden mix of loss and abandonment, shot through with shades of hopelessness. And so instead I just kept right on jumping … jump-jump-thumping up and down, as if to keep the gut-sick fear at bay.

And, that, my friends, is what it feels like to watch the movie, Future Weather – a stark, well-crafted metaphor about the ecological dangers of leaving one’s own house unattended, infused with an ongoing plea for environmental accountability at every level.

(Future Weather arrives in limited release in New York City this Friday, March 1st, with a national rollout via Video-on-Demand on the same day.)

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“This is a stupid town. And it’s a stupid town in the sense that it is maybe one of the largest cities in the world, and it’s lazy. It’s polite. It is so sissy in its mentality; so go-along with everything that goes along. It’s corporate-owned; it’s a town owned by Hollywood. And it’s about time it grew up. It’s about time it took art and said, ‘C’mon, baby! Show me something!’ And we’re showing them something. And there are not many people showing anything. There are not many people who’ll go out there and put themselves on the line in this world today because everyone’s frightened … I’m sick. I’m sick that this is such a little sissy town that people will only go to see something that is going to be successful; that a corporation says is great. We have something so much better … I’m sick because they are just such a bunch of sissies in this world that they won’t go out and see something that is wonderful. And they’ll hear that it’s wonderful, and other people will tell them that it’s wonderful. But ‘Is it going to be a success?’ I don’t care if it’s going to be a success. I want those suckers to come in there, and to see this movie, because they’ll see what they always wanted to be. And that is to be theatrical; to be wonderful; to be liked; to be friends; to have something in their life that is warmer, and to regard someone that has more guts than you do, and to be inspired by people. And I’m not ashamed of it. I really hate this nonsense. ‘Kill somebody! Shoot ’em in the head!‘ The blood pours out. Isn’t that wonderful? I hate it. I HATE IT! And I feel sad for all the youth that has to be coerced into that thing. They feel sick and sorry because they have nothing to go to. I’m not saying that we’re super-human. We just are terrific people. We’re terrific. We are sensational. We’re better than all those guys that steal from their corporations, that stand up and say, ‘We’re gonna rip off [everybody].’ I don’t care. It’s sick! I’m tired of that nonsense. I really feel more for the young people in this world. I really believe in them. I think that they’re terrific, and yet they have nobody to show them the way. And they’re a bunch of sheep. I’m telling you that. They go, ‘Here. No, wait. That’s no good. Oh, OK. We’ll go here. No, wait. That’s no good. But this is wonderful! Oh, OK. We’ll go here.’ Those people are floundering and walking around with nothing in their lives, simply because they are not led by anybody of any responsibility. I don’t want to lead anybody. He’ll lead. I’ll lead. We’ll all lead, and we’ll go and we’ll try and take a chance and express ourselves, and hope that somebody will recognize that expression. I don’t care about CBS, NBC, ABC. Television sucks.”

The Quotations

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