Arab Times :: ‘Yes’ takes swipe at corporate greed

PARK CITY, Utah, Jan 28, (RTRS): In 2004, Sundance screened “The Yes Men,” a documentary about jocular anarchists Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, who engaged in a series of stunts to underscore the crimes and misdemeanors of contemporary corporations. Bichlbaum and Bonanno continue their dangerous games in a choice follow-up feature, “The Yes Men Fix the World,” which played to an appreciative audience at this year’s festival.

The original performed poorly at the box office, but this film has a better chance in today’s climate: Audiences should be far more receptive to a work lampooning the American free-enterprise system. This movie is a hoot, and a pertinent one at that. In the new film’s opening sequence, Bichlbaum and Bonanno present themselves as spokesmen for Dow Chemical prepared to make a major statement on the plant disaster in Bhopal, India, that claimed thousands of lives in 1984. (The plant was owned by Union Carbide, later bought by Dow.) Bichlbaum is interviewed on the BBC claiming to represent Dow, where he apologizes for Bhopal and offers to pay $12 billion in reparations.

Amazingly, the apology is broadcast worldwide before Dow steps in to disown the Yes Men. But they have accomplished their purpose of reminding the world of the insensitivity of many major corporations. Later the duo perpetrates similar pranks exposing Halliburton and the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

The Yes Men’s subversive purpose is commendable, but the film acknowledges that there might be another point of view. After the Bhopal prank, pundits ask whether the duo perpetrated a cruel joke by giving survivors false hope. So Bichlbaum and Bonanno go to India — and, later, New Orleans — to ask residents for their reactions. A few admit they were disappointed upon learning of the fraud, but others seem pleased that the prank called attention to shameful neglect on the part of big business and government. The film is edited energetically by April Merl, an important collaborator for Bichlbaum and Bonanno. While the subject of corporate greed and malfeasance is depressing, there’s something tonic about the impudent laughter this engaging documentary provokes.

Sci-fi converges with present calamities, namely the energy plight, in “Moon.” Sony Pictures Classics should mine solid box office from select sites, but this well-made generic science fiction, which bowed at the Sundance festival, will orbit most assuredly on DVD.
Cloned smartly from trusted story forms, “Moon” converges a frontier saga with an escape mechanism. On the far side of the moon, lone miner Sam (Sam Rockwell) trudges to the end of his three-year stint for a mega-corporation that has hit a gold vein by harvesting lunar rock for energy.

With only a self-mechanized robot (whose only human feature is a Happy Face/Sad Face component) for company, Sam shows signs of cabin fever. Hallucinating and obsessing about his wife and daughter on Earth, his fragile condition deteriorates, exacerbated when he gets whacked on the noggin as he crashes his rover on the lunar surface. Sam emerges from his grog to find an aggressive version of himself tromping around the space vehicle. Hallucination? Clone? Doppelganger?
Screenwriter Nathan Parker capably splices generic sci-fi components with a Big Brother fixture in this well-wrought, modular entertainment. Nonetheless, “Moon” is darkened by its own excellencies: The white, claustrophobic look is apt and moody, but a lack of physical action enervates the story thrust. Despite that, though, Parker’s sharp, individualistic dialogue is a quantum leap above the usual sci-fi drivel and should engage those who usually mock the genre as nerd stuff.

Rockwell is adept at limning his character’s dissolution but lacks the audacious, dominant edge to charge his clone/doppelganger to its scariest dimension. Kevin Spacey’s mellifluous vocalization of the robot is eerie and soothing in a Keyser Soze sort of way. Under Duncan Jones’ kinetic direction, “Moon” also shines on the production front: Cinematographer Gary Shaw’s shaded shots intensify the drama, and Clint Mansell’s music heightens the psycho-scape.
CS: Knowing you wanted to do a project for him, what was the first

idea that came to you - just
Jones: As you know, I mean, this is an indie budget film, and it’s science fiction which is pretty unusual because the production values, it’s difficult to do at an indie budget. So we very much came up with a list of almost rules as to what we wanted the project to be and how it was going to work. And we knew that we needed to keep the cast down to a minimum, we knew that we wanted to keep it – have a completely controlled shooting environment, so I wanted to shoot it in studio. And sort of by creating this list of rules, it gave me a focus on what I needed to write as a story. So the idea of it being on the moon, in the moon base, and using model miniatures, and using my effects background for commercials, and very specific effects, ones that I knew we could achieve at the budget. It just kind of gave me a set of commandments.

It’s funny actually, I was doing this commercial I was going to do a year or two ago where we were going to shoot – you know the Vomit Comet? It’s that plane that flies, it does these big ups and downs. It simulates zero gravity. Yeah, we were going to shoot a commercial in there with the money that they throw at commercials and we could afford to do it, but no,

we didn’t have any of those kinds of luxuries. I’ve always wanted to do feature films and the reason I did commercials was because I was a big admirer of Tony Scott and Ridley Scott as well. But I worked briefly with Tony Scott as a wildcam operator on something. He was very generous with his time, and we had a lot of time to talk, and he was telling me that his route into doing feature films was doing commercials because it’s kind of like a film school and you get to learn, and you get to meet people, and you get to use all of the latest equipment. So, that’s very much what I wanted to do and I went into commercials for the same reason, says Jones.