The JAMES AGEE CINEMA CIRCLE ANTI-OSCARS

The JAMES AGEE CINEMA CIRCLE ANTI-OSCARS 2016:
**Free State Of Jones Rebel Cinema Rules!

*THE TRUMBO: The Award For BEST PROGRESSIVE PICTURE is named after Oscar-winning screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, a member of the Hollywood Ten, who was imprisoned for his beliefs and refusing to inform. Trumbo helped break the Blacklist when he received screen credit for "Spartacus" and "Exodus" in 1960.

 *FREE STATE OF JONES

 **THE GARFIELD: The Award For BEST ACTOR is named after John Garfield, who rose from the proletarian theatre to star in progressive pictures such as "Gentleman's Agreement" and "Force of Evil," only to run afoul of the Hollywood Blacklist.

*Matthew McConaughey, Free State Of Jones 
*Mahershala Ali, Free State Of Jones: Best Supporting Actor

 *KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For BEST ACTRESS Named for Karen Morley, who was driven out of Hollywood in the 1930s for her leftist views, but who maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.

*Taraji Henson, Hidden Figures
*Lily Gladstone, Certain Women: Best Supporting Actress 

*THE RENOIR: The Award For BEST ANTI-WAR FILM is named after the great French filmmaker Jean Renoir, who directed the 1937 anti-militarism masterpiece, "Grand Illusion."

*Free State Of Jones

* *THE TOMAS GUTIERREZ ALEA AWARD: Named after the late legendary Cuban filmmaker. For best depicting mass popular uprising or revolutionary transformation in movies. And Best Action Heroes, for revolutionary rebellion and activist uprising redefined.

*Free State Of Jones
*The Women of Free State Of Jones: Best Female Action Heroes

*THE GILLO: The Award for BEST PROGRESSIVE FOREIGN FILM is named after the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, who lensed the 1960s classics "The Battle of Algiers" and "Burn!"

*The Measure Of A Man 

*THE DZIGA: The Award for BEST PROGRESSIVE DOCUMENTARY is named after the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov, who directed 1920s nonfiction films such as the "Kino Pravda" ("Film Truth") series and "The Man With the Movie Camera."

*13TH
*Prescription Thugs

*THE BOUND FOR GLORY AWARD: The Award for BEST ANTI-CAPITALIST FILM is named after the 1976 Hal Ashby directed biopic about Woody Guthrie, played by the late David Carradine.

*Christine

*OUR DAILY BREAD AWARD: For the most positive and inspiring working class images in movies this year.

*I, Daniel Blake

*THE ROBESON AWARD: Named after courageous performing legend, Paul Robeson. The award is for the movie that best expresses the people of color experience, in light of their historically demeaning portrayals in films.

 *Loving

*LA PASSIONARA AWARD: For the most positive female images in a movie, and in light of the historically demeaning portrayal of women in movies.

*Hidden Figures
*Shailene Woodley: For her Water Protector activism at Standing Rock

*THE LAWSON: The Award for BEST ANTI-FASCIST FILM this year, is named after screenwriter John Howard Lawson, one of the Hollywood Ten, who wrote Hollywood's first feature about the Spanish Civil War, 1938's "Blockade," with Henry Fonda, and anti-Nazi movies such as 1943's "Sahara," starring Humphrey Bogart.

 *Free State Of Jones

 *THE MODERN TIMES: The Award for Best Progressive Film SATIRE is named after Charlie Chaplin, who made 1936's "Modern Times" and 1940's "The Great Dictator."

*Moonwalkers

 *THE ORSON: The Award for BEST OVERLOOKED OR THEATRICALLY UNRELEASED Progressive Film is named after actor/director Orson Welles. After he directed the masterpiece "Citizen Kane" Welles had difficulty getting most of his other movies made.

*Free State Of Jones 
 *Snowden

ELIA KAZAN HALL OF SHAME

The Oscars: For nominating as documentary and also inviting The White Helmets, who are ISIS collaborators and ISIS Fake News producers in Syria, to the Oscar Awards Ceremony.

The Oscars: For nominating as documentary Joe's Violin, a promotional infomercial for corporate, anti-labor charter schools.

STX Entertaiment: For burying Free State Of Jones, and refusing to make it available for awards consideration. 

Tribeca Film Festival: For removing Vaxxed from the festival, under pressure from the US pharmaceutical corporations who profit from vaccines exposed in this documentary.


**For more information, please contact The James Agee Cinema Circle at Miguel Gardel, ProgressiveCritics@gmail.com. Guest submissions are welcome.

Final Word On The Oscars...

FINAL WORD ON THE OSCARS 2017...

Generation Zero Review: Steve Bannon Fascist Frolicking On Screen

 COUNTERPUNCH
Tells The Facts, Names The Names
Fearless Muckraking Since 1993

MARCH 26, 2010
Teabagger Cinema
by PRAIRIE MILLER

Dredging up tired old myths about America while concocting misleading new ones, the documentary Generation Zero assembles a host of valid gripes currently troubling the nation, but is more than careful to detour around any proposed remedies anchored in reality. In other words, all dressed up in undercover Republican in rebel’s clothing, and with basically nowhere new to go.

Written and directed by reactionary Reagan partisan propagandist Stephen K. Bannon (In the Face of Evil: Reagan’s War in Word and Deed, and Border War: The Battle Over Illegal Immigration) the inaugural Tea Party cinema documentary Generation Zero boasts an exceedingly odd couple combo of assorted right wing egghead think tank rhetoric talking heads and angry white middle class rants. And all wrapped up in highly sophisticated production values fueling alarmist high speed imagery, and topped off with a musical score seemingly gleaned from really scary slasher movies.

Invoking intimidating biblical scriptures that are fused visually with looming tornadoes, rotting fruit, paper money on fire, and a man versus lion beatdown, Generation Zero gets down to business on fast forward by blaming the current economic crisis retroactively on Lucifer, Woodstock, Dems, post-hippie yuppies lighting up cigars with burning Ben Franklins, Hollywood, Black Panthers, anti-war protesters and disrespectful post-WWII youth. Which might leave the marginalized left in this country scratching their collective heads while caught between pondering these neo-McCarthyite attacks, and shock that they seem to wield such enormous power over the course of history.

At the same time, the right wing populist thrust of this documentary mourns the economic tragedy of the Great Depression, while reticently longing for the good old days of capitalism unregulated by the government. History alert, that’s exactly what led to the Great Depression. And in glaring contradiction, the current ‘incestuous’ relationship between government and big business is condemned as contributing to the economic woes facing us today. But if in reality those two entities have merged into one and the same with politicians the actual under the radar conflict-of-interest corporate partners, isn’t that unregulated capitalism after all?

In a case of repeatedly not saying what you mean moviemaking in the extreme, Generation Zero is ironically advocating in its own way, a utopian nation grounded in a prevailing small business society that no longer exists, and is in effect hardly different from the hippie fantasy back to nature version of the world. And in this small business interests butting of heads with big capitalism that is the core grievance of this film, where exactly do the American masses you’re inflaming – with no businesses of their own, let alone even a job or home in many cases – fit in?

Now while there’s nothing wrong with spouting your opinions loudly in a movie, at the same time it’s respectful of your audience to come out of your political closet and say so. Instead of manipulatively shouting at viewers about everything that’s ailing America and rightly so, while quietly tiptoeing around your own hidden agenda solutions that’s really a same politics, different day, voting booth Republican pep rally.

Generation Zero: A Tea Party animal all steamed up, but whose tempest in a teapot is basically empty.



WATCH GENERATION ZERO HERE

PRAIRIE MILLER is a WBAI film critic, and host and executive producer of Arts Express. She can be reached at: pmiller@wbai.org.