Munich and Mad Cow Girl

Saw Munich Friday night. Intense, violent, powerful, all these things. A bit heavy-handed in that Spielberg way when he wants to make a point. It was a powerful statement I thought about how violence and vengeance tear people down in spite of their best efforts, destroying their humanity, leaving them paranoid and insane. I don't know enough about the history of Munich, Black September, and the role of Golda Meier and Israeli assassins to comment on the historical angle, but it was a powerful film, not as a good film but in the context of these historical events, perhaps roughly sketched. The Wikipedia article goes into the history and controversy around the film.

The main character becomes increasingly isolated as he carries out his mission to assassinate all those involved in the kidnapping and execution of Israeli athletes at the Munich games. Janislovski's normal pretty camera work was noticeably absent here except for a few key points. Everything looked pretty normal. This was not Minority Report or Schindler's List. Better than MR and maybe in some ways a sequel to SL.

from Wikipedia: "Of those believed to have planned the Munich massacre, only Mohammed Daoud Oudeh (Abu Daoud), the man who says Munich was his idea, is known to be alive, and is in somewhere in the Middle East or Africa. He was shot thirteen times from a distance of around two meters on July 27, 1981 in a Warsaw hotel coffee shop, but survived the attack with surprising strength. It is even said he chased his would-be assassin down to the front entrance of the hotel before collapsing."

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Tonight I went to the San Francisco Independent Film Festival and saw Mad Cow Girl. Fragmented, experimental, lots of blood, beef, cows, sex, sex with ministers, martial arts, various strange murders, mad cow disease, lust, etc. Interesting stuff. Walter Koenig from Star Trek played the crazy obsessed preacher. The lead was a woman who looked a bit like Sarah Silverman, did just as good a job as SS would have done, probably. She is a woman who inspects beef, packing plants, butchers, whatever. She is sexually obsessed with a minister, a televangelist. She loves meat and martial arts movies, and while we see news broadcasts about mad cow disease she is eating lots and lots of beef and being told she has some kind of brain tumor. She vomits a lot and eventually goes insane in a confessional, going on a Kill Bill type spree. Most excellent stuff. Definitely full of wonderful gags, bizarre sex, enough gross meat scenes to get you off beef for a while, etc. etc.

It's true that the audience was more or less speechless during the Q&A. I thought that even though some of the production was lower quality it really didn't matter which is problem the ultimate for a low budget film. And I don't think it will give me nightmares which is a plus.