Ray Pride

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed sniper is king. This week's headlines from Congressional oversight continue to bring more news of the misprisions of America's overpriced mercenaries that enables an occupation of Iraq without a draft army, privatizing and making warfare for-profit, paying six times or more than the Army does our soldiers (who, if they suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, other headlines note, it's often cited as a "pre-existing condition" and a reason to deny benefits to the veteran). Nick Bicanic and Jason Bourque's "Shadow Company" is fine, terse, judicious journalism, tracking what the so-called "private contractors" really do and how governments use them to darker ends. As Canadian filmmakers, they're not interested in the language being vanillaed into euphemistic silence. The serene equanimity of the depiction of the potential for chaos and law-breaking dovetails nicely with Charles Ferguson's vital "No End in Sight." Horrible things deserve apt journalistic scrutiny; agitprop is well and good, but the truth… "Shadow Company" shows shock and awful: this is what bought-and-paid-for pols buy and pay for with your tax dollars, from every wage you earn. (Plus, as the film points out, at least 250 mercenaries have died in this war, but conveniently, are not listed in the casualty rosters.) 86m. 35mm.

"Shadow Company" opens Friday at Siskel.

(2007-10-02)

Also by Ray Pride

Heart of Larkiness
"Into the Wild" is an adaptation of Jon Kracauer's 1995 nonfiction bestseller about Christopher McCandless, who, after graduating from Georgia's Emory University in 1992, hit the road without telling his parents or sister, abandoning his plans for graduate school, forsaking possessions, giving his $24,000 education fund to Oxfam and burning cash on the side of the road. He wants to hitchhike to Alaska. Does he want to find himself? Some deeper meaning to life? Was he naïve? Did he make choices that could mean he was a little unsettled mentally?
(2007-09-25)

Tip of the Week
"Manda Bala" is a wicked eyeful, but I wouldn't count on it for absolute veracity, even while discounting the keepers of cinematic purity and of the Brazilian soul that have been perturbed
(2007-09-25)

Tip of the Week
A much, much better movie than "The Yes Men," Czech film students Filip Remunda and Vit Klusak manage to pull off something more in the vein of that group of social provocateurs’ ongoing pranks-cum-critiques-of-capitalism with their "Czech Dream"
(2007-09-18)

Mush From The Wimp
The Toronto Film Festival came and went, and I couldn't go. I read first dispatches from Canada way, where more than 300 programs would allow any attendee to find a ready twenty or so movies that make any filmgoer's year. From the flood of studio prestige releases to potentially fine new work from Europe and Asia, 2007 will have as many sources of lasting joy as any cinematic annum. Yet a lot of recent writing and posting shows a strange resentment in the air which writers are constantly, compulsively confessing and describing and concerning themselves with their process rather than that of filmmaking
(2007-09-18)

Long Live the New Flesh
(2007-09-11)

Tip of the Week
(2007-09-11)

Tip of the Week
(2007-09-04)

Pulp Infraction
(2007-09-04)

Bitter Biter Bit
(2007-08-28)

Tip of the Week
(2007-08-28)

Under My Umbrella
(2007-08-21)

Needing the Eggs
(2007-08-21)

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