Trouble the Water is a great documentary film about the Katrina hurricane and flood disaster in New Orleans. The story is told primarily by Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rap artist who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with a video camera. With some incredible professional editing work and good direction, her very rough and personal home video footage taken before, during, and after the disaster tells the story of two young people trapped in New Orleans (no public transportation was organized to help anyone get out) and their struggle to survive not only the natural disaster but the government’s indifference to their suffering afterwards. I saw this film at the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman House and walked out of it just shaking my head in disbelief. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at the way the Bush administration botched the entire operation (if you could count on Bush for anything it was to be consistently bad). The film is an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary. See it if you can. Chilly! Highly Recommended.

The official Trouble the Water website.

Yes, I finally did get to the film Revolutionary Road. Director Sam Mendes (Jarhead, Road to Perdition, American Beauty) did a fine job of bringing this challenging existential novel by Richard Yates to screen. It’s a seriously depressing movie about unfulfilled lives and broken dreams, but if you can stomach that, the performances by Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Wheeler and Kate Winslet as April Wheeler are well worth it. And much to my surprise, the film was remarkably faithful to the book. There probably hasn’t been a better attempt to bring an existential novel to the big screen since Lo Straniero (1967), based on Albert Camus’ The Stranger. If you’re a fan of existentialism, as I am, you simply must see it. Frigid! Highly recommended.

A great interview with Richard Yates published in Ploughshares.

For Sci Fi fans, the TV series Battlestar Galactica is in its final season, and the past two episodes have been as good or better than anything I’ve seen on the SCI FI Channel to date. It’s well worth checking out. If you aren’t familiar with the story, you can catch up by watching Battlestar’s What the Frak Recap. Great fun and very cool! Highly Recommended.