From Brian Brooks’ 9.26 Indiewire account of the Inside Llewyn Davis press conference, held at the New York Film Festival’s press venue, the Walter Reade theatre. Here, by the way, is Marcus Mumford and Oscar Isaac‘s cover of folk classic “Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song),” which is heard at least a couple of times (thrice?) in the Coen brothers film. We’ll have to wait until 11.12 for the official Davis soundtrack and especially “Please Mr. Kennedy,” which, when performed by Isaac, Justin Timberlake and Adam Driver, is easily the most conventionally entertaining moment in the film.
Jacob Kornbluth‘s Inequality For All (Radius/TWC, 9.27) , which I first saw nine months ago in Park City, is easily one of the smartest and most articulate docs of 2013. A profile of economist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, it explains with cool clarity how the game has become more and more rigged by the rich since the Reagan era, and why so many wage-earning middle-classers (including Tea Party lowlifes) are feeling so shafted and angry these days. Everybody knows the dice are loaded. Everybody knows the fight is fixed. The poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That’s how it goes. Everybody knows.
You could say that Alex Gibney‘s The Armstrong Lie (Sony Classics, 11.8), which I saw a good portion of last night at Sony Studios, is only nominally about the ethical outing of Lance Armstrong, the competitive cycling superstar who won the Tour de France seven times (between 1999 and 2005) only to be stripped of his titles in 2012 for doping and thereby exposed as an opportunistic liar. The film is really about the worldwide belief system known as moral relativism, which basically says “it’s not cool to lie or cut corners or cheat or steal, but if you do these things…uhhm, well, you wouldn’t be the first and…uhhm, if they come after you it’s probably better to deny, deny and double-deny and give them no quarter until there’s absolutely no viable option other than to come clean. And you can even grow that into a plus if you play your cards right and wear the right attitude (i.e., I was blind but now I can see).”
