If there's one thing that the new film Greedy, Lying Bastards succeeds at is making the viewer want to shout expletives at the screen. But it's not always for the reasons filmmaker Craig Scott Rosebraugh intended.
The documentary, which opened in theaters last Friday, looks at the money flowing between energy Goliaths like ExxonMobil and Koch Industries, their PR agencies, and the politicians who, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence of calamitous man-made climate change, have managed to block carbon emission regulations. It demonstrates that for more than 20 years, these titans of Texas tea and their lackeys have systematically derailed the discourse on climate change, employing the politics of subterfuge to keep major environmental regulations off the table.
If you are a person who listens to music, I have to imagine your reaction to the news that David Bowie would be releasing his first new album in a decade was something along the lines of "OMG! OMG! OMG!" with strong undertones of "Oh God, please let it be decent enough not to retroactively ruin Ziggy Stardust."
The British rock legend faces the classic predicament of artists described as such: how to continue a creative career when everyone secretly just wants to see you back in face paint and six-inch platforms? (Okay, maybe that's just a predicament of being David Bowie.) To his credit, he hasn't shied away from the challenge, but rather confronted it head-on with an album title and cover that hint, not too subtly: "Let's move on."
The last year has been a pretty triumphant one for women, particularly in politics: Single women were key to Obama winning a second term (apparently "binders full of women" voted for him rather than the other guy); a record number of women got elected to Congress, free birth control kicked in, and the electorate made clear that comments about "legitimate," "emergency," and divinely-ordained rape will almost definitely lose you elections. Hell yes.
In honor of International Women's Day 2013, we've gathered some of our favorite Mother Jones coverage of women's issues from the past year, in politics and beyond. We've covered some intriguing history, built some fun interactives and charts, and, of course, been all over the serious policy stories, too:
Women in Congress: After the 2012 election, we charted the record-breaking gains made by women of the 113th Congress, including four states that elected their first female senators, and New Hampshire's all-female congressional delegation—a national first.
Women in sports: Politics wasn't the only area where women have been on a roll. Forty years after Title IX, women have made extraordinary gains in athletics, with participation at the college level increasing by over 600 percent. And while the playing field is still far from level, as our Title IX charts showed, female Olympians kicked some serious ass in the 2012 games.
Birth control: When Rick Santorum and some of his GOP colleagues claimed that birth control basically grows on trees, we made a birth control calculator showing just how much contraceptives can cost (pre-Obamacare) over the span of a woman's child-bearing years. Not pretty, even with insurance.
Just a month later, Rush Limbaugh spent three days railing on Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, starting "the national conversation about sluts of 2012" and raising a burning question: Who, exactly, qualifies as a "slut"? We gave inquiring women the chance to find out for themselves, with this handy slut flowchart.
Recalling the dark ages: After Todd Akin-gate, Mother Jones documented the age-old tradition of men defining rape, from the dudes behind the Code of Hammurabi to tough guys at the FBI. We also traced some intriguing theories about female "hysteria" and some of the toys and bulky contraptions used to "treat" it. A lot less amusing was the look we took back at a not-so-distant time when women, lacking proper access or knowledge of birth control, used Lysol to stay baby-free.
Abortion: Recently, MoJo reporter Kate Sheppard met some of the country's most fervent abortion supporters and foes. She wrote about the small, tireless team operating Mississippi's last abortion clinic, and interviewed the late Dr. George Tiller's assistant, Julie Burkhart, as she readied his old Wichita clinic for reopening this spring. Earlier last year, Sheppard profiled Americans United for Life, which is quickly becoming one of the most successful pro-life organizations in the country.
From Gurf Morlix's Gurf MorlixFinds the Present Tense
ROOTBALL
Liner notes: "You know I like it dark and hot/Torn and twisted, tied in a knot," mutters Gurf Morlix, hitching his weary rasp to eerie organ riffs in this tale of unrequited desire.
Behind the music: Morlix, a producer and guitarist for Lucinda Williams, has also collaborated with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and Warren Zevon.
Check it out if you like: Eloquent troubadours like Kathleen Edwards, Richard Thompson, and Steve Earle.
"You would get a far better understanding," former NRA exec J. Warren Cassidy toldTimein 2001, "if you approached us as if you were approaching one of the great religions." InGun Guys, author Dan Baum embeds with the flock. A Jewish Democrat from suburban New Jersey, he has been hooked on guns since childhood. Packing a sidearm and an NRA cap, Baum embarks on a pre-Newtown tour of shooting ranges, gun shows, and gun shops, tracing the rise of the AR-15, unpacking crime stats, and challenging the notion that America suffers from an "epidemic of gun violence." He tackles this polarizing subject with an anthropologist's eye, and in the end wonders if the left's anti-gun sentiment distracts from a progressive agenda that working-class gun guys might support—if only they didn't think Obama was coming for their arsenal.
It's possible that a concert lineup actually discriminates against the headlining act. By the time these bands saunter onstage, folks in the audience have been standing for hours, shifting weight from their bruised heels, and dealing with the fact that they are slowly, involuntarily being pressed into a malodorous neighbor as the venue fills. We're cranky, we're impatient, and our personal space has probably been violated. It's part of the reason why headlining bands have a responsibility to be better than their openers. Sometimes they aren't worth the wait.
While Noise Pop 2013 offered an expertly curated lineup, we found that some of the headliners fell flat. Toro y Moi's anticlimactic experimentation lost the crowd, and new material from Rogue Wave was charming but boilerplate. Some of the festival's most pleasant surprises were found off the beaten path (in a warehouse on a dead-end block), or opening for the larger acts. Here's our abridged roundup of festival highlights (and frustrations).
Tiny Telephone Anniversary Party
Thursday, 2/28, Tiny Telephone studio
Approaching the address typed into a phone, past the empty playground and toward a cluster of darkened warehouses on a dead-end street, you can't help but wonder if your GPS is trying to get you killed. But tonight, the faint beats from a DJ set signaled that it was the right place: Tucked away at the southeastern edge of the Mission District is Tiny Telephone, the recording studio responsible for recording Death Cab For Cutie, the Magnetic Fields, Spoon, and countless other projects from indie royalty.
Owned by California music legend John Vanderslice, the studio celebrated 15 years in business last week, inviting friends and band members to come hang out around the keg and sound boards. With his vast collection of digital and analog equipment and his cadre of highly trained, not to mention super friendly, engineers, Vanderslice, or JV as his friends and clients know him, has cultivated a reputation for helping artists achieve exactly the sound they seek. On Thursday, Tiny Telephone pilgrims got to see the inside of that operation, mingling in hallways lined with vintage recording gear and reading love letters from musicians posted on the kitchen fridge. For its first-ever open house, Tiny Telephone hit just the right note. —Maggie Caldwell
Shmoozing over a Tiny Telephone soundboard. Maggie Caldwell
!!!
Thursday, 2/28, Great American Music Hall
"Like I give a fuck!" belted out Nic Offer, the frontman of Sacramento based dance-punk group !!! (pronounced chk-chk-chk), Thursday night at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall. (Read our Q&A with Offer here.) But perhaps that's what makes his performances stand out. Dressed in shorts and a simple white tee, Offer danced on top of speakers, waded into the crowd, and leaped off the stage, effectively catalyzing the audience into a massive rave. !!! rewarded the crowd for its enthusiasm, playing the new track "Slyd" live for the first time. Like !!!'s other songs, "Slyd" drilled the crowd with a repetitive beat and acid-house grooves, while strobe lights stoked the dance party. But odds are that concert-goers weren't playing close or critical attention to the introduction of new material—everyone seemed content to dance and drink until the show ended, going home soaked in sweat and beer. —Mitchell Grummon
Nic Offer fronts !!! at the Great American last Thursday night. Mitchell Grummon
Rogue Wave
Friday, 3/01, Bottom of the Hill
Roughly halfway through his set at the Bottom of the Hill late last Friday night, lead singer Zach Rogue leaned into the mic and asked, with complete earnestness, "Are you guys comfortable?" Despite the fact that the band has played just one show in two years (and had three new members along with a bevy of new songs to test out during the set), Rogue definitely seemed comfortable; like a kid at the first pool party of the summer, Rogue was back on old turf, looking for familiar faces and a chance to get his feet in the water. This palpable giddiness was arguably the most enjoyable thing about the show, which consisted mostly of simple, straight renditions of crowd-pleasers like "Lake Michigan" that earned them indie fame in the mid-2000's. The new songs harken back to the band's early Guided by Voices-meets-Springsteen style, a feel that has been thoroughly mined by other indie rock bands in recent years, though the audience didn't seem to mind. —Maggie Severns
Toro Y Moi
Friday, 3/01, The Independent
Fresh off the cover of SF Weekly and consecutive nights of sold-out shows, I came to The Independent on Friday filled with hope about Toro y Moi, a.k.a. Chaz Bundick. The show started with promise. Opening with "Rose Quartz" off his new album Anything in Return, Bundick slowly began to build layers of sound, combining synth, keyboard, and a sparse beat culminating in a chorus: "Don’t lie to me/ Because I feel weak." But that's about where my hope ended. I felt as if the song never reached its full potential, seemingly unsure of what it wanted to be.
Josh Ritter The Beast in its Tracks Pytheas Recordings
When one of the best living songwriters gets divorced, it's hard to know what to expect: Josh Ritter isn't one for "angry, over-the-top, knee-jerk breakup songs," as NPR puts it, but The Beast in its Tracks, out this week, is such a clean, joyful trip across the Americana landscape that you'd be forgiven for thinking that Ritter just got hitched to a new bride, wearing tweed. It's a little deceiving—like if your best friend got dumped, showed up to your birthday party insisting that everything was just peachy, God damn it, and then wandered off into the woods with a handle of whiskey.
Don't let that stop you from acquiring the album when it comes out on Tuesday. (NPR is streaming it in full, but don't be lame; artists need to eat, too.) Ritter's album convincingly recalls everyone from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen to Paul Simon, and I already have at least three favorite songs looping on my stereo ("A Certain Light," "New Lover," and "Hopeful").
Each week, I'll be sitting down to chat with ThinkProgress critic Alyssa Rosenberg (who also does killer work at The Atlanticand Slate's "Double X"). We'll talk, argue, and laugh about the latest movies, television shows, and pop-cultural nonsense—with some politics thrown in just for the hell of it.
Alyssa describes herself as being "equally devoted to the Star Wars expanded universe and Barbara Stanwyck, to Better Off Ted and Deadwood." I (everyone calls me Swin) am a devoted lover of low-brow dark humor, Yuengling, and movies with high body counts. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and tune in during the weeks to come.
We'll be featuring guests on the program, and also taking listeners' questions, so feel free to Tweet them at me here, and we'll see if we can get to them during a show.
Thank you for listening!
Click here for more movie and TV features from Mother Jones. To read more of Asawin's reviews, click here.
To find more episodes of this podcast, click here.
To check out Alyssa's Bloggingheads show, click here.
It's the comedy-film equivalent of an empty calorie. It's inexcusably tiresome, and you've seen the same movie at least eight dozen times in the past three years. But unlike most movies about hormonal drunkards, this one is unique in the sense that it was at the center of a human rights controversy.
Yep. Here's an excerpt from an AP story from October 2011:
Rights activists have criticized a Hollywood studio for filming a buddy comedy in an eastern Chinese city where a blind, self-taught activist lawyer is being held under house arrest and reportedly beaten.
Relativity Media is shooting part of the comedy 21 and Over in Linyi, a city in Shandong province where the activist Chen Guangcheng's village is located. Authorities have turned Chen's village of Dongshigu into a hostile, no-go zone and activists, foreign diplomats and reporters have been turned back, threatened and had stones thrown at them by men patrolling the village...Relativity declined comment but said in a press release that filming in Linyi began last Wednesday. In the release, Linyi's top Communist Party official Zhang Shajun is quoted as calling Relativity's chief executive Ryan Kavanaugh a "good friend" while Relativity's Co-President Tucker Tooley describes Linyi as an "amazing" place.
(Chen Guangcheng is the blind Chinese civil rights and anti-poverty activist who gained international fame for his work documenting the Chinese government's policy of forced late-term abortions and sterilization. He was arbitrarily detained in August 2005 and escaped house arrest in April 2012. He also looks like a fantastic Grand Theft Auto character.)
Relativity Media (a studio previously involved in films like Bridesmaids and Shark Night 3D) caught the ire of a lot of Chinese human rights campaigners and pissed off their allies in the West. "Picking Linyi as a film location is probably not a good idea, but signing a deal with [Zhang Shajun] a person who is directly responsible for one of [the] most egregious and cruel abuses of a human rights defender in China is really beyond the pale," Nicholas Bequelin, senior researcher in the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, told TheWrap.
21 and Over was the first film made under Relativity's Chinese co-production venture. The decision to film in the city in Eastern China was a result of Relativity's deal with Chinese authorities: In order to distribute in the People's Republic's hugely profitable market, the studio was required to produce an alternate cut of the film specifically for Chinese theaters. The Chinese version is a cautionary tale; it changes the main character to a Chinese native who travels to an American college campus as an exchange student, becomes ensnared in a world of objectionable youthful dissipation, and then returns to China having learned his lesson. (The filmmakers' Chinese "liaison" had creative input.)
The United States looks bad, and Chinese moviegoers presumably get to have a nationalistic chuckle along with their cultural propaganda.
Now here's a trailer for the miserably unfunny waste of time that human rights advocates also don't like:
21 and Over gets a wide release on Friday, March 1. The film is rated R for crude and sexual content, and crimes against humanity. Click here for local showtimes and tickets.
Click here for more movie and TV coverage from Mother Jones.
Thao Nguyen performing at Treasure Island, 2009.kata rokkar/Compfight
Small discovery music festivals are different from the major money-makers, and for that, lord bless 'em. Like New York's College Music Journal marathon, or CMJ, which floods lower Manhattan with hundreds of bands every fall, the Bay Area's Noise Pop offers an action-packed week, a paralysis of choice, and the possibility of stumbling upon the unknown band that happens to blow up in 2013.
Typically, this might mean that there are plenty of duds amid the treasures, but I have to say that the 2013 assembly looks exquisite. Maybe it's a testament to the Bay Area's fertile music scene, or a renewed manifest destiny that's pulled talent to the spot, but the seven bands below—from the snarling guitars of the Bay Area garage scene to Thao Nguyen's inimitable vocals—represent just a slice of what's out there. If it helps ease the pain of choosing where to use your festival badge, here are my picks, which are by no means comprehensive, and of course, totally subjective.
Body/Head
Tuesday, 2/26 @The Rickshaw Stop
It still feels a little raw to discuss Kim Gordon's new project, Body/Head, with Sonic Youth on an indefinite break. But all three members of the band have kept busy—Lee Ranaldo released a solo album in 2012; Thurston Moore is set to tour in March with his new outfit, Chelsea Light Moving; and last year, Gordon started playing shows with free-noise guitarist Bill Nace as Body/Head. Nace and Gordon's performances flower from on-stage improvisation, and from what few clips are available online, they promise to deliver something heavy and ferocious, tapping into Gordon's idolized experimental aesthetic.
The Mallard
Thursday, 2/28 @The Great American Music Hall
There's something wholly bewitching about The Mallard's lead singer Greer McGettrick, between her rude, twangy guitar rhythms and her drawling assault on the microphone. McGettrick spent five years working the Fresno music scene before coming to San Francisco, where Thee Oh Sees' John Dwyer encouraged her to put out an album on his label Castle Face Records. That was last year's fuzzy and addictive Yes On Blood, and this year, the band is set to put out a "weirder" and "darker" followup. This might very well be the season that The Mallard comes into its own, though the band's shows are plenty dark and deliciously weird as is. (The Mallard will also be playing this show with Tehran's The Yellow Dogs, who deserve an honorable mention: Before moving to the States in 2010, they played underground—literally—risking imprisonment for pursuing a musical genre banned by the theocracy as too Western.)
OBN IIIs/FUZZ, Blasted Canyons
Thursday, 2/28 @The Knockout
There were too many bands I wanted to write about that were playing this particular show, so forgive the abridged descriptions of each: Austin's OBN IIIs are co-headlining, having put out an irrepressibly catchy punk rock album on Matador last year. They're sharing top spot with Fuzz, the latest music project from the Bay Area's Ty Segall, who takes on vocal duties from behind a drum set. (Don't worry—Segall's just as raucous with sticks as he is with a guitar.) Also representing the Bay Area are Blasted Canyons, instrument-swapping ambassadors of noisy punk, featuring Wax Idols' fierce Heather Fedewa. All three bands are very much worth seeing on their own, but together, Thursday night at the Knockout makes for one stellar lineup.
Rogue Wave
Friday, 3/1, @Bottom of the Hill
Whatever happened to Rogue Wave? The Oakland band's discography is loaded with expertly crafted indie rock classics, but their history has been plagued by tragic hiatuses over the past decade. With members weathering slipped discs, a kidney transplant, and an apartment fire resulting in the death of former bassist Evan Farrell, the band took another year-and-a-half break after the release of 2010's Permalight. This year, Rogue Wave will make an "intimate" appearance at Noise Pop, and then perform at Napa Valley's Bottle Rock music festival in May. It's a rare opportunity to catch them live, and an even better one to revisit and get lost in albums like Out of the Shadow and Descended Like Vultures beforehand.
Thao & The Get Down Stay Down
Saturday, 3/2 @The Great American Music Hall
There's no real substitute for the sting and shape of Thao Nguyen's voice, her keen, imaginative lyrics, and the deceptively simple "pop" hooks embedded in the colorful, rough-around-the-edges compositions for which she's known. Earlier this month, the San Francisco songwriter and her band, The Get Down Stay Down, put out We the Common, an album inspired in part by Nguyen's work with a women prisoner's advocacy program, and maybe Nguyen's most ambitious yet. Noise Pop is one of Nguyen's few California shows before she tours the country in March and April, and I intend to make the most of it.
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