Went down to Tribeca to one of those screening parties for Robert Greenwald's "Wal-Mart - the high cost of low price". His way of distributing documentaries via house party screenings was pretty ingenious. During last years elections he did "Uncovered" and "Outfoxed" and since he could use the mobilizing muscle of the MoveOn.org mailing lists there were up to 3.000 screening parties a week. It wasn't quite that happening this time around. The point could made that he needs an active nationwide grassroots movement to piggyback, because cinematically and technically his films are rather substandard. They're 90 minutes of mostly talking heads and superimposed statistics, the sound is not mixed right, the light balances are off. But Robert Greenwald definitely makes up his lack in filmmaking skills with outrage. His storytelling and technical ineptitudes are strange though, because he did direct some mainstream Hollywood films, the musical "Xanadu" with Olivia Newton-John being the best known. I guess that wasn't a storytelling masterpiece either, but at least they were on rollerskates.
Anyway - even though it's not exactly a pleasure to sit through his preachy films, Greenwald manges to show a complete picture of how destructive a force Wal-Mart has become. There is no end - from destroying the communities with the ferocity of neutron bomb (a quote from one of the townspeople driven out of business by a Wal-Mart), to the below-poverty-line-wages to their import quotas making them a de facto bridgehead of the Chinese industry in the US, to dismal health, environmental and cultural politics. They seem to know - about the same time Greenwald's film had it's brief run in the theaters, Wal-Mart launched it's own documentary, that was equally propagandist. Just without the educational value and with all the corporate spin.
Also - another version of this blog's title song.
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Trailer - "Wal-Mart - The High Cost Of Low Price"
Trailer - "Outfoxed"
Trailer - "Uncovered"
Trailer - "Xanadu"
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