“The numbers are remarkable, and put to bed the idea that Covid-19 is akin to a bad flu season,” tweets John Burn-Murdoch, one of the authors of the Financial Times study. “You can clearly see that in almost every country, spikes in mortality are *far* higher than what we see from flu etc (grey lines are historical death numbers) .”
The publication compared novel coronavirus deaths reported to deaths from all causes in 14 countries. The authors tried to account for deaths missed in the pandemic because they occurred at home or were otherwise not confirmed by testing:
Mortality statistics show 122,000 deaths in excess of normal levels across these locations, considerably higher than the 77,000 official Covid-19 deaths reported for the same places and time periods.
If the same level of underreporting observed in these countries was happening worldwide, the global Covid-19 death toll would rise from the current official total of 201,000 to as high as 318,000.
To calculate excess deaths, the FT has compared deaths from all causes in the weeks of a location’s outbreak in March and April 2020 to the average for the same period between 2015 and 2019. The total of 122,000 amounts to a 50 per cent rise in overall mortality relative to the historical average for the locations studied.
Only Denmark did not show a significant spike. U.S. figures are not included.
The additional deaths might not all be attributable to COVID-19, authors acknowledge. But the excess deaths tend to occur in locations with the worst outbreaks, suggesting a direct correlation. This is particularly true in urban areas where reporting systems have been overwhelmed. Consider, for example, that in places with stay-at-home orders traffic and job-related deaths would be expected to go down.
Burn-Murdoch adds methodological details in his tweet thread not captured in the actual article.
Since these excess deaths are on top of expected flu season mortality, critics will focus on mortality from the coronavirus alone to argue the death rate from the pandemic itself is no worse. Or that the comparison is not to a particularly bad flu season. Or that these figures compare a disease with a vaccine to one without one, as if that matters to the dead and their families.
In short, those more focused on the health of the economy than on the pandemic’s human cost in lives will dismiss the charts as meaningless, ignore public health officials’ warnings, and argue for restarting the world’s money machines. That’s what Midas cultists do.
The Financial Times expects to team up with The Economist and the New York Times to expand its review in coming weeks.
Update: The Washington Post adds information on U.S. excess deaths. CNN reports 54,000 deaths in a month. Helluva job, Trumpie.
For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like. Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.
President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil was struggling to govern effectively long before the explosive resignation speech of his star cabinet minister, who basically called his soon-to-be former boss a criminal.
Mr. Bolsonaro became a president without a political party in November, after falling out with leaders of the Social Liberal Party, which had backed his presidential bid.
Several political allies — including two of Mr. Bolsonaro’s sons — are under investigation in a series of criminal and legislative inquiries. They include suspected money-laundering schemes and defamatory disinformation campaigns waged online.
In recent weeks, Mr. Bolsonaro’s strikingly dismissive response to the coronavirus pandemic, which he has called a “measly cold” that cannot be allowed to throttle economic growth, generated calls for impeachment at home and bewilderment abroad.
Given those challenges, which have left Mr. Bolsonaro deeply isolated, the dramatic exit of Justice Minister Sergio Moro on Friday was seen by critics and supporters of the president as a potentially destructive blow to his grip on power as his second year in office gets underway amid a public health crisis and a recession.
Known for his bombast and braggadocio, Mr. Bolsonaro may be gambling that lawmakers will not dare to impeach him and put Brazil, Latin America’s largest country, through another political spectacle like the one that felled a predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, four years ago.
It remains unclear what the recent developments will mean for his support base, which includes evangelical Christians and a stable of military leaders he appointed to top jobs.
Mr. Moro, a former federal judge who became the most iconic figure of an anti-corruption crusade that sparked hope across Latin America in recent years, resigned in protest after Mr. Bolsonaro fired the federal police chief, Maurício Valeixo.
In an extraordinary televised address delivered Friday morning from the Justice Ministry in Brasília, the capital, Mr. Moro said Mr. Bolsonaro intended to appoint a new police head that would do his political bidding by keeping him abreast of investigations and compiling intelligence dossiers at the president’s request.
Mr. Bolsonaro intends to appoint Alexandre Ramagem, the current head of Brazil’s intelligence agency, as the new police chief, according to reports in the Brazilian press. Mr. Ramagem was Mr. Bolsonaro’s head of security during his presidential campaign.
Mr. Moro’s accusation prompted Attorney General Augusto Aras to ask the Supreme Court to open a criminal investigation into the conduct Mr. Moro had described, saying that if confirmed, it amounted to obstruction of justice and other crimes.
[…]
Gilmar Mendes, a Supreme Court justice, said Saturday that it was hard to predict just how damaging the investigations will be for Mr. Bolsonaro.
“Up until recently, I had the sense that the political class had no interest in talking about impeachment,” he said. “Now this is being discussed again with greater frequency.”
Mr. Bolsonaro appeared to grasp the political peril he faced when he delivered a long, defiant address Friday night in which he called Mr. Moro a liar and opportunist.
“The government endures,” Mr. Bolsonaro said toward the end, flanked by his remaining ministers.
[…]
José Augusto Rosa, a congressional leader who heads a conservative pro-gun faction colloquially called the “bullet caucus,” called Mr. Moro’s departure a self-inflicted wound for a president struggling to manage the response to the pandemic and the resulting economic contraction, which economists predict will be about five percent this year.
“Moro was a pillar of stability in the government’s base, representing the fight against corruption and organized crime,” said Mr. Rosa, whose faction has broadly supported Mr. Bolsonaro. “This is a huge blow.”
A spokeswoman for Vem Pra Rua, an influential anti-corruption movement, said Mr. Moro’s resignation would erode Mr. Bolsonaro’s support base. The movement led massive demonstrations that helped to weaken the leftist party Mr. Bolsonaro defeated in his presidential bid.
“It was an ugly betrayal,” Adelaide de Oliveira, a spokeswoman for the group, said in reference to Mr. Bolsonaro’s alienation of Mr. Moro. “All Brazil poured out into the streets and we fought for many years to empower someone who genuinely wanted to do away with corruption in the country. Sadly, the dream ended today.”
While several Latin American leaders have seen a bounce in public opinion as they imposed strict quarantine measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus, Mr. Bolsonaro’s popularity has dropped amid what critics call a flailing response. The president’s opposition to social distancing measures led him to fire his popular health minister last week and pick fights with some of the country’s most powerful governors.
He and Trump truly are two peas in a pod aren’t they?
I wish them well. But it’s not easy to dislodge these nuts.
For President Trump, who adores the pomp and precision of military ceremonies, this was the year he would finally get one of the special perks of being president — delivering the commencement address at West Point, the only service academy where he has not spoken.
But the graduation was postponed because of the coronavirus, the cadets were sent home and officials at the school were not sure when it would be held or even whether it was a good idea to hold it.
The Naval Academy, for its part, decided it was too risky to recall its nearly 1,000 graduating midshipmen to Annapolis, Md., for a commencement. Those graduates will have a virtual event. But the Air Force Academy, in contrast to the other schools, sent home its underclassmen, locked down its seniors on campus, moved up graduation, mandated social distancing — and went ahead with plans for Vice President Mike Pence to be its speaker.
And so last Friday, the day before Mr. Pence was to speak at the Air Force ceremony in Colorado, Mr. Trump, never one to be upstaged, abruptly announced that he would, in fact, be speaking at West Point.
That was news to everyone, including officials at West Point, according to three people involved with or briefed on the event. The academy had been looking at the option of a delayed presidential commencement in June, but had yet to complete any plans. With Mr. Trump’s pre-emptive statement, they are now summoning 1,000 cadets scattered across the country to return to campus in New York, the state that is the center of the outbreak.
“He’s the commander in chief, that’s his call,” said Sue Fulton, a West Point graduate and former chairwoman of the academy’s Board of Visitors. “Cadets are certainly excited about the opportunity to have something like the classic graduation, standing together, flinging their hats in the air.
“But everyone is leery about bringing 1,000 cadets into the New York metropolitan area for a ceremony,” she added. “It’s definitely a risk.”
They’ve called back all these cadets so that President Trump can have his moment in front of a crowd that’s required to cheer him as their commander in chief. He needs his fix so that’s that.
How much energy is being wasted every day, all day, appeasing this spoiled manchild? There may have been a time when people thought it wasn’t all that important and the government could just carry on without real leadership and in spite of a silly clown being in the White House. I think we now know that just isn’t true.
I don’t know why so many people think this guy is so smart. This is something I could see coming from Louis Gohmert. Via C&L:
“The Chinese Communist Party has been stealing America’s intellectual property for decades and they’re not going to magically stop in the middle of a pandemic. In the middle of a pandemic, what’s the most valuable intellectual property in the world? It’s the research that our great laboratories and life science companies are doing on prophylactic drugs, therapeutic drugs and ultimately a vaccine.”
“So, I have little doubt that the Chinese intelligence services are actively trying to steal America’s intellectual property as it relates to the virus they unleashed on the world,” he continued. “Because of course they want to be the country that claims credit for finding those drugs of finding a vaccine and then use it as leverage against the rest of the world.”
Cotton went on to attack Chinese students who are studying abroad in the U.S.
“It’s a scandal to me that we have trained so many of so many of the Chinese Communist Party’s brightest minds to go back to China, to compete for our jobs, to take our business and ultimately to steal our property,” the senator said.
“I think we need to take a very hard look at the visas we give Chinese nationals to come to the U.S. to study,” he added. “Especially at the post-graduate level in advanced scientific and technological fields.”
According to Cotton, Chinese students should be studying “Shakespeare and the Federalist Papers.”
“That’s what they need to learn from America,” he insisted. “They don’t need to learn quantum computing and artifical intelligence from America.”
Right. Because America doesn’t benefit from having Chinese students in American Universities contributing to scientific research. The world doesn’t need them either.
This latest racist “yellow-peril” hysteria is going to be one of the worst we’ve seen, I’m afraid. They are gearing up for a full-blown war — the only question is whether it will be hot or cold. And it’s such a bad idea. We need global cooperation now more than ever.
I’m pretty sure I don’t need to remind anyne that there is no Nobel Prize for journalism. Trump is obsessed with it because they gave it to Obama. He even strongarmed the japanese Prime Minister to nominate him for one.
That is ridiculous, of course. The man watches more cable TV than I do and I’m a political blogger. Trump thinks that watching Fox and Friends is a form of work. Also rallies and golf. Because it’s all he knows how to do.
This December story about Trump’s visits to his properties from tells the tale:
On average, he visits a Trump property on about 30 percent of the days in a month, making this month (when he will have spent more than 40 percent of days at a Trump property) above average.
As for being the hardest working president ever:
He’s also done nearly 100 feel-good rallies, most of them unconnected to elections. Even during the pandemic he found time to hold 8 rallies from January 28th all the way up to the last one in the second week of March.
But you know all that.
What we are seeing is Donald Trump having a very, very, very bad day and not having the grace or maturity to keep it to himself. He needs feedback from the Death Cult, telling him how great he is just to get through the afternoon.
This Vox explainer on why some place become hot spots and not others is worth a read, particularly as we confront the sad reality that the mitigation strategies to buy ourselves time to build up the health care system and ramp up testing are going to fall apart long before our national government gets its act together, if it ever does:
First, sometimes it just comes down to chance. Some places just happen to have populations, like the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions, that are more vulnerable to Covid-19. Factors beyond an area’s immediate control, such as its population density and perhaps even its weather, can also contribute to the virus’s spread. Whether any given place experiences a super-spreading event, in which one or more individuals transmit the coronavirus to a disproportionate number of people, can partly come down to chance, too.
Second, early action did appear to prevent coronavirus cases. Even in states that are not suffering a high number of Covid-19 deaths, chances are those figures would be even lower if they — or if the country as a whole — had acted sooner. There’s good evidence for this in some states, but there’s also research of past pandemics to back it up.
“A hot spot is a reflection of the combination of the random nature of things — in terms of who gets hit harder earlier — and then the timing of what we call non-pharmaceutical interventions” such as social distancing, William Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard University, told me.
The key here is that states have direct control over one of these two factors. They can’t do much about luck. They have little ability to predict whether someone infected within their borders happens to spread the virus to a lot of people, and little control over their local weather or population density. But they can take swift, aggressive action to mitigate their chances of an outbreak — to limit the risk, for example, that someone becomes a super-spreader or that people are gathering in very dense crowds.
[…]
They point out that luck does matter:
For example, the age and general health of a population can contribute to just how bad a major outbreak gets, with older and less healthy populations more likely to become seriously ill and die from Covid-19. Italy has suffered one of the deadliest coronavirus outbreaks in the world — with a death rate of more than 10 percent among confirmed cases — and one potential explanation for that is it has the second-oldest population in the world.
Cities, states, and countries could perhaps have taken some steps prior to Covid-19 to shield their more vulnerable residents from infectious disease — by, for example, providing better health care or elderly care services. But once the coronavirus hit, places had to deal with the realities on the ground.
There are other factors outside of any particular place’s immediate control, too.
Timing is a big one. If a place is among the first hit by a new disease outbreak, it’s going to have fewer examples to learn from in figuring out what to do. States now look to New York as an example of things going very wrong, but that was possible only because New York got hit hard before most of them. Whether a place is among the first hit is largely up to chance or, at least, variables largely outside of any government’s control.
Places with higher population density are likely more vulnerable to the spread of the coronavirus. Places that rely on packed public transportation are likely more vulnerable, too. It’s possible that colder weather can make the virus easier to spread, as is true with some other viruses. (New York City, perhaps not coincidentally, checks all of these boxes as the densest city in the US, with the highest rates of public transportation ridership, and relatively cold weather.)
Whether a place gets hit by a super-spreading event can also come down to chance. There are things that governments and members of the public can do to mitigate the chance of such an event, like trying to keep people at home, restricting travel, and stopping large gatherings.
But there are some things that are harder to control. Perhaps someone spreads a virus widely before she’s symptomatic and before it’s known that the community is having a problem with that virus. Maybe some people are just more infectious for reasons we don’t yet know. Some communities can have infected people travel to them at the wrong time, widely spreading a disease.
It’s kind of like rolling a die. A die can be loaded in all sorts of ways, which vary from place to place and time to time, to prevent a bad roll that leads to a massive outbreak. But there’s always a chance that the roll goes very, very wrong — maybe the one person in an otherwise well-behaved town who disobeys a stay-at-home order turns out to be highly infectious despite showing no symptoms, launching a super-spreading event.
With the coronavirus, there’s also a lot we don’t know, from exactly how and where the virus most often spreads to just how deadly Covid-19 truly is. There could be variables affecting coronavirus outbreaks that we don’t even know exist. That makes outbreaks of the virus less predictable, leaving more of the situation to chance than would otherwise be true.
Of course, governments can do a lot to prevent things from getting out of hand. Sadly, some of them are led by idiots.
While chance plays a role in any place becoming a hot spot, that doesn’t mean countries, states, and cities are powerless — far from it. Experts say that during a big outbreak, governments should do what can feel like an overreaction: The big goal is to prevent things from getting bad, so once policymakers are reacting to a bad outbreak, they’re already acting too slowly…
Consider the stories of California and New York. Despite reporting some of the first Covid-19 cases in the US, California has avoided a massive outbreak. Again, some of that could come down to chance or uncontrollable variables, such as New York City’s higher population density and use of public transit, or California’s generally warmer weather.
But one likely contributor is that California, particularly the San Francisco Bay Area, reacted quicker to the outbreak. The Bay Area issued the first shelter-in-place order in the US on March 16, and California issued a statewide stay-at-home order three days later — while New York didn’t impose its own mandate until March 22. Even before these orders, some parts of California seemed to adopt social distancing early: OpenTable data suggests that seated dining on March 1 was down just 2 percent in New York City, but 18 percent in San Francisco. (It was down by only 3 percent in Los Angeles, though, so not every city in California acted the same.)
The extra days and weeks may not seem like that much time. But when coronavirus cases and deaths can double every few days, that short time span is important. “It’s exponential,” Hanage said. “And if you’re too late with it, you’re making the problem much, much, much worse.”
This is, of course, because we now know that the virus can be spread by asymptomatic people. Without adequate testing that means it spreads before people are aware that its in your community. If they wait until people start showing up at the hospital it’s too late.
The experts all warn that that anyone who thinks they’ve escaped the pandemic and don’t need to bother preparing, should think again
“Even if you’re not rolling the dice now,” Hanage said, “you’re almost certainly going to be rolling them before this is over.”
The only answer is for the nation to continue social distancing as much as possible and building up the testing capacity and, hopefully, the development of a vaccine. The article goes on to explore just how massively we are failing.
It’s unbelievably depressing to realize that the country that sent a man to the moon and back is simply incompetent on every level. It means this will go on much, much longer and cause much, much more suffering than it should.
I think you all know why we are in this situation — our toxic right wing has ruined us. For too long we’ve accepted that American politics are a form of crude entertainment. This is where it’s gotten us.
Read the whole article if you get the chance. It’s vital that they get the testing regime going if we have any hope of coming out of this halfway intact. I wish I had more hope that this government is capable of leading such an effort.
Anti-vaccine activists protesting in the middle of the pandemic side-by-side with a bunch of flag-waving wingnuts waving flags in front of nurses to “protest” government guidelines to save their lives says it all about America 2020.
The President of the United States is mentally unstable. But you knew that. That was clear long before he took office. Donald J. Trump possesses other undesirable qualities too numerous to list here that make him uniquely unqualified to lead the country through a deadly pandemic. Including the fact that he sucks as a leader when the country desperately needs a damned good one.
It is not often that Thomas Friedman is either concise or correct, but this almost sums it up:
We need a president who is a cross between F.D.R., Justice Brandeis and Jonas Salk. We got a president who is a cross between Dr. Phil, Dr. Strangelove and Dr. Seuss.
Except Dr. Seuss was brilliant. He attended Dartmouth and Oxford. And he had a conscience.
Friedman, naturally, wants to see the economy restarted as soon as possible. Like Trump’s pursuit of a miracle cure, Freidman wants a miracle strategy that will “minimize the threat of this virus to those most vulnerable while we maximize the chances for as many Americans as possible to safely go back to work as soon as possible.” Because any time we’re talking about saving lives, serious people consider the economic trade-offs. Money and lives carrying equal moral weight, placing lives on the opposite side of the scales from the economy is what serious people do.
Dr. David Katz, a public health expert at Yale, tells Friedman health professionals he knows want this balanced approach to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. Economic costs have human impacts too. But we must be smart about it. “The moment you stop respecting this virus, it will kill someone you love,” Katz says.
That recalls what characters say in movies about space. Coincidentally, I rewatched Ridley Scott’s The Martian last night. Safely back on Earth, Mark Whatney (Matt Damon) tells a class of astronaut candidates:
It’s space. It’s filled with chance, circumstance, and bad luck. It doesn’t cooperate. At some point, I promise, at some point every single thing is gonna go south on you, and you’ll think: this is it. This is how I end. (then) And you can either accept that… or you can get to work.
You begin. Solve one problem. Then the next. And the next. Solve enough and you survive.
Yeah. That’s what this time feels like. Except we are not solving enough problems and morekeepcropping up. The biggest impediment is the problem in the Oval Office whom cowards in his party refuse to solve. They are desperate to retain power, save the economy … oh, and save lives. Their boss cannot focus on one problem long enough to solve it and move on to the next. Neither can they. Not to mention their priorities are screwed up because their ethics are.
In a deleted scene, astronaut Watney ponders the hundreds of millions of dollars it cost to save his “sorry ass”:
They saved me because that’s what we do. Every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people coordinate a search. If an earthquake levels the city, people all over the world send emergency supplies. This instinct is found in every culture without exception. And because of it, I had an entire planet on my side.
I don’t know if that’s true, but I want it to be. Trump & Co. don’t. That’s why these problems won’t be solved until we solve the problem that is their misrule.
Anyway, here’s one problem you might solve starting tomorrow. RuralOrganizing.org sent this on Friday:
On Monday, we’re launching a campaign to use the mail to save the mail and I wanted to make sure you had the weekend to get a pen, paper, some stamps, and two envelopes ready.
On Monday, April 27, 2020, thousands of Americans are sending letters through the mail. The purpose of our campaign is to:
1. Show our support for the USPS workers who are heroically working to keep us all connected through this pandemic
2. Tell our Senators to fully fund the United States Postal Service in the next stimulus bill
Congress will soon begin debating the next stimulus package. We know that handwritten letters leave a lasting impact on elected officials. In fact, most elected officials receive a morning briefing from their staff about the letters they received the day before.
Together, we generated over 350,000 petition signatures demanding that the White House and Congress fully fund the USPS!
There’s no doubt about it. If we work together—all 350,000 of us—and mail handwritten letters to our Senators, we can ensure the United States Postal Service is fully funded in the next stimulus bill.
Stop feeling powerless and solve one problem. Then the next.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like. Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.
Like other film festivals that have had to cancel their “real world” event due to the pandemic, Tribeca is keeping the spirit and mission of their programming alive by devising inventive “virtual” solutions for carrying on. They are offering quarantined film fans access to select programming curated for online viewing through April 26 (so you are still good to go through this weekend). From the Festival’s April 3rd press release:
…we wanted to move as fast as possible to bring some of our programming from the festival to audiences worldwide. Tribeca Immersive’s audience-facing Cinema360 (in partnership with Oculus) features 15 VR films, curated into four 30-40 minute programs. The public will be able to access Cinema360 via Oculus TV, for Oculus Go and Oculus Quest. The millions of people who own Oculus headsets will be able to participate in this unique programming from home. Tribeca is one of the first and only festivals to introduce this curated immersive experience to consumers.
[…] “As human beings, we are navigating uncharted waters,” said Tribeca Enterprises and Tribeca Film Festival Co-Founder and CEO Jane Rosenthal. “While we cannot gather in person to lock arms, laugh, and cry, it’s important for us to stay socially and spiritually connected. Tribeca is about resiliency, and we fiercely believe in the power of artists to bring us together. We were founded after the devastation of 9/11 and it’s in our DNA to bring communities together through the arts.”
In support of the filmmakers, Tribeca has also provided accredited press access to some of this year’s festival selections. I’m happy to report I was granted access, so I’m sharing some festival highlights with you…even though I’m not really “there” (and frankly I haven’t been “all there” for years anyway…but longtime readers already know that). Hopefully, these films will be coming soon to a theater (or streaming platform) near you!
Ainu Mosir (***) – This drama from writer-director Takeshi Fukunaga offers a rare glimpse into Japan’s Ainu culture (historically marginalized, the Ainu people were not officially acknowledged as “indigenous” by that country’s government until it passed a bipartisan, non-binding resolution in 2008 that also urged an end to discrimination against the group).
14-year-old Kanto (Kanto Shimokura) lives with his mother in an Ainu village with a tourist-based economy. Kanto’s mother encourages him to take counsel from a long-time friend of his late father who strongly believes in passing on the cultural traditions of the Ainu to its young people. When the family friend invites the teen to join him in clandestine preparations for a sacrificial ceremony certain to stir up discord within the community, Kanto must navigate a way to embrace his heritage and honor his father’s memory while reconciling with modern mores. Sensitively directed and acted.
Banksy Most Wanted (**½)– Almost everybody knows what internationally celebrated guerilla street artist Banksy does, but despite years of investigative journalism, amateur-to-professional sleuthing and “outings”…nobody but he/she/themselves knows who the real McCoy(s) is/are. Co-directors Aurélia Rouvier and Seamus Haley give it a whirl in their slickly made but ultimately frustrating documentary. Promising leads are followed, but no Big Reveals. The best parts of this globe-trotting quest are the glimpses at Banksy’s brilliant work, which continues to defy logic as to how he/she/they manage to pull it off while cunningly remaining hidden in plain sight. To be fair, the directors had a tough act to follow: Banksy’s own meta-documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010).
Call Your Mother (**½)– Why are some people inherently “funny”? Funny, as in-other people will pay to watch them crack wise in front of a brick wall? Where does a “sense of humor” come from…nature or nurture? In this breezy (if lightweight) documentary, co-directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady suggest it is …your mom. And they mean that in a nice way-as demonstrated by comics Louie Anderson, Tig Notaro, Kristen Schaal, Bobby Lee, Judy Gold, David Spade, Rachel Feinstein, et.al. who share anecdotes about (in some cases, camera time with) their moms. Initially fun and even endearing, but ultimately eschews any real insight for seeking 50 ways to say “My mom is such a card!”
Love Spreads (***½) – I’m a sucker for stories about the creative process, because as far as I’m concerned, that’s what separates us from the animals (even if my “inner Douglas Adams” persists in raising the possibility that “there’s an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they’ve worked out.”). Welsh writer-director Jamie Adams’ dramedy is right in that wheelhouse.
“Glass Heart” is an all-female rock band who have holed up Led Zep style in an isolated country cottage to record a follow-up to their well-received debut album. Everyone is raring to go, the record company is bankrolling the sessions, and the only thing missing is…some new songs. The pressure has fallen on lead singer and primary songwriter Kelly (Alia Shawcat) to cough them up, pronto. Unfortunately, the dreaded “sophomore curse” has landed squarely on her shoulders, and she is completely blocked. The inevitable tensions and ego clashes arise as her three band mates and manager struggle to stay sane as Kelly awaits the Muse. It’s a little bit Spinal Tap, with a dash of Love and Mercy-bolstered by a smart script, wonderful performances, and catchy original songs (in the power-pop vein).
Pacified (***½) – The impoverished, densely populated favelas of Rio and the volatile political climate of contemporary Brazil provide a compelling backdrop for writer- director Paxton Winters’ crime drama. Sort of a cross between The King of New York and City of God, the story takes place during the height of the strong-arm “pacification” measures conducted by the government to “clean up” the favelas in preparation for the 2016 Rio Olympics.
The narrative centers on the relationship between 13-year old Tati (Cassia Gil), her single (and drug-addicted) mother Andrea (Débora Nascimento), and Jaca (Bukassa Kabengele), the former “godfather” of the neighborhood who has just been released from prison. Jaca, who has mellowed while in the joint, is nonetheless chagrined to learn that the young protégé he left in charge has essentially declared himself boss, become a neighborhood terror and now views Jaca as a threat to his regime. Tight direction, excellent performances and gorgeous cinematography by Laura Merians.
P.S. Burn This Letter Please (***) – Can we dish? I admit that going into this documentary, what I knew about the history of the 50’s drag scene in New York City wouldn’t have filled a flea’s codpiece. But some 100-odd minutes and several fabulously accessorized costume changes later…my codpiece was full. That did not come out sounding right. Suffice it to say Michael Seilgman and Jennifer Tiexiera’s Ken Burns-style documentary is an eye-opener. Inspired by a box of letters found in an abandoned storage unit, the film is an intimate history of a unique art form that managed to persevere and thrive during an era not too long ago when the LGBTQ community was relentlessly persecuted and forced to live in the shadows.
Somebody Up There Likes Me (***) – This glossy portrait of Ronnie Wood from Eagle Rock Films looks back on the venerable British rocker’s career and catches up with his current life and interests. Viable and animated as ever, the seemingly indestructible Wood sits down with director Mike Figgis (Stormy Monday, The Browning Version, Leaving Las Vegas) and chats about everything from his 45 years with the Stones, early days with his first band The Birds, his creative association with Rod Stewart (in both the Jeff Beck Group and The Faces) to his “second career” as an artist and his longtime struggle with drugs and drink.
The amiable Wood is quite the raconteur and comes off as a fun bloke to hang out with. I would have loved more footage of the Jeff Beck Group and The Faces, but that is a personal problem. Also, on hand: Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Wood’s wife Sally. This film is catnip for classic rock aficionados.
