As you might guess, Michael Moore’s new film “Capitalism: A Love Story” is neither a study in “capitalism” nor “a love story.” Instead, Moore’s edgy movie chronicles the collapse of the middle class “American Dream” at the hands of a corrupt corporately-dominated financial, economic, and political system that, he contends, steals from the many to enrich the few.

“Capitalism: A Love Story” feels like two films in one. The film opens in typical Moore agitprop fashion - a series of jerkily-filmed security camera shots of seemingly random bank robberies intercut with the “dog eat dog” opening credits, followed by a didactic Encyclopedia Britannica voiceover of the excesses of the Roman Empire, montage’d with classical celluloid Hollywood fantasy and images of Moore’s favorite villains - George W, Emperor Cheney, and so on.

From there, Moore launches into what has become now-standard fare: MM’s ominous narration accompanied by creatively-interpreted selective moments from late 20th century politics - Jimmy Carter’s well-intentioned but downer malaise speech, and Ronald Ray-Gun’s sellout of Main Street to Wall Street (as personified by Merrill Lynch bogeyman Don “speed it up” Regan) - “we’re gonna turn the bull loose,” states Reagan. Mr. “Morning in America,” Moore concludes, unleashed the corporate dogs of privatization at the expense of the public good. Moore’s scattershot, almost random approach here is boring – we’ve seen all of this before, and if he intended his narrative to be a focused critique of capitalism, his slings and arrows miss their mark.

From there, Moore gets personal, segueing into a case study of his home town of Flint, Michigan as a microcosm representing the decay of U.S. industrial might. General Motors, a greedy corporate behemoth that placed profit ahead of workers’ needs and innovation, is an old trope for Moore - see his 1989 film “Roger and Me.” To be sure, his interviews with displaced workers are moving. “We put ourselves above and beyond for our republic,” says one tearful auto worker, “and our republic does nothing for us.” But again, what is missing is the bigger picture.

Things get more interesting in hour #2, when Moore focuses on the financial collapse and so-called “bailout,” which is a REAL story that deserves sustained scrutiny, a tale that cries out for Moore’s genius for confrontation. Here again, though, things fall flat. True, Moore does commandeer a Brinks armored vehicle and drive it to Goldman Sachs headquarters to demand our money back, and he does encircle Wall Street banks with crime scene tape. Yet, even these gags fail to set the film on fire, in part because Moore is a lone actor here, unlike his other films, where he finds collaborators. (Think of “Sicko’s” underinsured American workers in a speedboat off the coast of Cuba requesting access to health care, or the paralyzed “Bowling For Columbine” kid in the wheelchair in Wal-Mart’s corporate lobby, asking for justice in the wake of the retail giant’s sale of bullets to two high school assassins.)

Moore is at his most brilliant when he exposes the vagaries of the financial scams and swindles that have swept up and over us all. Watch him skewer slick brokers by capturing them on camera trying to explain “derivatives” - “complex betting schemes” driven by the “insane casino” called Wall Street. See him interview frustrated and courageous Congressional representatives – Ohio’s Marcy Kaptor is particularly heroic – who admit on camera that corporate financiers colluded with federal officials to engineer the national financial “collapse” to enrich their own bottom lines. Some may snort when Moore’s film suggests that Goldman-Sachs is now running the U.S. economy. But, Moore says, simply connect the dots and listen to the voices of people who were there and watched it happen. “Is this the United States Congress,” enraged Congressman Dennis Kucinich asks at one point in the film, “or the board of directors of Goldman Sachs?”

Good question. And I think we know the answer.

The biggest disappointment of the film is how little ire Moore directs at Barack Obama, a Bill Clinton-esque corporate-friendly Wall-Street-loving silver-tongued incrementalist if ever there was one. Instead, after drubbing financial “experts” Tim Geithner and Larry Summers in the film’s first hour, Moore sets up Obama to be the agent of “hope” and “change,” complete with weeping and relieved American voters on election day, without so much as a simple nod to the fact that Geithner, Summers, and the rest of their ilk now comprise Obama’s inner economic circle of advisors. Hello? Did Moore somehow miss this inconvenient truth in the editing room?

Some may consider Moore’s eye for the tragicomedy that is the collapsing U.S. economy worth the price of admission, though the story - angry, cruel, depressing - is not pleasant. More to the point – instead of just comically alluding to the Roman Empire at film’s begin, Moore might have alerted us to the fact that the United States is, IN FACT, no longer a governable republic, in which citizens have even a nominal voice in political and economic decision-making, but an out-of-control Empire, in which multinationals buy politicians on both sides of the “Republicrat” aisle to aggressively push their for-profit uber alles policies of privatization. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens - auto workers (of course), airline pilots (paid very poorly), and other worn out “peasants” - struggle to make ends meet and hold their underpaid, overworked, indebted lives together. At the end of the day, what is missing from Moore’s analysis, such as it is, is a nuanced look at some of the more egregious dilemmas in front of us: Peak Oil, imperial Collapse, the “tapeworm economy,” our broken electoral system - and how these converging crises are already shaping our common future.

[caption id="attachment_552" align="aligncenter" width="200" caption="Listen to Colleen Mari\'s new CD \"Ledges.\""][/caption]

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.

You can’t swing a dead cat(amount) in the Mad River Valley without hitting a talented musician.

And whenever one of our own releases a new CD, that’s cause for celebration.

Especially if we’re talking about Colleen Mari.

My guess is that you’ve heard Colleen before. She co-fronts (along with Liz Levy) the enormously popular MRV-based Big Basin Band, a blues/dance combo out of the wilds of Fayston that has been getting us locals to shake our groove thing for several years now.

Hearing Colleen perform solo on “Ledges” is a different kind of treat. Her ever-expressive voice is front-and-center on this four-song project, a mini-CD of sorts that showcases her remarkable abilities as a songstress. Reared on everything from her mom’s piano music, to church singing, to years performing in the Vermont Symphony Choir, Mari has a real sense of interpretive timing, and it really shines through in this project.

Her new CD kicks off with a tune called “What Ya Do To Me,” a Mari original. Wafting over the sound of an electric guitar comes harp virtuoso Johnny Reid’s harmonica, and then Mari’s ethereal voice, which quickly turns sultry. Mari possesses this really nifty gift – being able to change vocal horses in midstream, and the first cut shows off this ability quite nicely.

Track #2 of “Ledges” is a cover of the classic Fleetwood Mac tune “Songbird,” and I’ll be durned if Mari doesn’t perform it better than the original authors (blasphemy, I know, but there, I said it) – a sort of high, wide, and lonesome sound, backed once again by Reid’s fine harmonica work.

The third tune, “Change Her Mind,” is a mid-tempo rocker, Mari singing it straight ahead with just a bit of sass, backed by Reid and some fine electric guitar work.

The finale (I know, at four songs, I wanted so much more), a tune called “Fly,” does what the first song does– puts Mari’s incredible voice through its paces, from plaintive to edgy to full-on roar. Here, she really lets her hair down vocally, and the listener is all the better for it.

In the liner notes for “Ledges”, Mari pays tribute to a wide variety of musical influences: Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Bonnie Raitt, Joss Stone, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Janis Joplin, Christy Mcvie, Stevie Nicks, Maria Muldaur, Norah Jones, Susan Tedeschi, Billie Holiday, Willie Nelson,Tina Turner, George Jones, Natalie Merchant, Merle Haggard, John Prine, Johnny Cash and June Carter, and many, many more.

I think they’d all be pleased with Mari’s “Ledges” solo effort, and, like me, they’d probably have only one request.

Encore! More!

Support local music and order Colleen’s CD here.

Here are the boys from Newfoundland rocking the house in Portsmouth last week. Long road trip, but well worth the drive. The Music Hall is a sweet venue.

I was a bit underwhelmed by Carbon Leaf at Higher Ground on Tuesday night - maybe because they seemed a bit tired, vocally, and their sound was poorly mixed (not enough background vocal or keyboard.)

“NUMEN” FILM SCREENING!: Montpelier’s SAVOY at 7:00 on Saturday, October 10 and Sunday, October 11.

I have sat through many “talking head” documentaries in my years as a film reviewer, but never before have I found so much to laugh, cry and think about as when I screened “Numen: The Nature of Plants” for the first time just a few days ago.

Terrence Youk and Ann Armbrecht’s wonderful new 95 minute film explores the world of plants, their healing powers, and their central importance (largely forgotten, in this day and age) in providing us with the very building blocks of human civilization, from sustenance to healing. The word “numen” refers to the animating spirit or power infused in an object, and the film makes an impressive argument for reconsidering just how significant “plant power” is. “Herbalism is our oldest system of healing on the planet,” observes rock-star herbalist Rosemary Gladstar (if you’ve never heard of her, get your head out of the drug store aisle and medicine closet and pay attention). “Most parts of the world where you travel today you’ll still find people practicing some remnant of traditional herbalism.”

And “Numen” seems to have found some of the most eloquent herbalist voices from around the world to speak on behalf of the plants, along with many other plant-loving people. Like any good documentary, “Numen” assembles an impressive cast of thoughtful characters: medical doctors like Larry Dossey (editor of EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing); citizen activists like BIONEERS founder Kenny Ausubel; and even Maine-based herbal practitioners like Deb Soule. Youk and Armbrecht have done their research and their homework, capturing, in tightly-edited and thoughtful fashion, why plants matter so much.

But what really sets “Numen” apart is the balance of playfulness and candor with which the filmmakers approach their subject. “Numen” opens, for example, with a sped-up time-lapse sequence of plant shoots literally exploding from the ground, accompanied by a catchy funk-driven electric guitar. I was caught completely by surprise, and totally hooked. In another sequence, we see a sped-up “shopping cart camera” view of a modern grocery store, with harried consumers completely detached from the sources of their food. Refreshingly, there are some moving scenes, too – one researcher, for example, breaks down on camera as he reflects on the sheer beauty and mystery of the plant world. In another interview, a traditional herbalist from Hawai’i grapples with the “deep history” and cultural connections she shares with the plants. “Numen” is filled with powerful moments like these.

The special effects and animation work in “Numen,” too, is impressive – taking us on both a micro (inside the plants themselves) and macro (consider the planet from space) tour explaining why plants matter.

Perhaps the best part of the “Numen” experience, though, is how hopeful, positive, and forward-thinking a film it is. In an era when there is so much to be concerned about – peak oil, climate change, the endless “war on terror,” economic downturns, “too-big-to-fail” banksters, and that constant migraine headache that over-the-counter meds can’t quite chase away, “Numen” reminds us that the answers to many of these problems, magically enough, is growing all around us. It is our job, as 21st century citizens inhabiting a finite planet experiencing “limits to growth,” to reconnect with “plant wisdom.” If “Numen” provides the inspiration for us as audience members to root ourselves once again in the earth and amongst the plants, it will have provided an incredibly valuable service to our struggling 21st century world.