http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sknoKWsVlAA
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GRASS: THE HISTORY of MARIJUANA
Movie Review Grass (1999) May 31, 2000
FILM REVIEW; Insanity! Communism! Indolence! The Works!
By ELVIS MITCHELL Published: May 31, 2000
''Grass,'' which opens today at the Film Forum, begins with the adoption of anti-marijuana laws as part of an institutionalized racism toward Mexicans in the Southwest early in the century. Eventually, the film says, the laws were a bludgeon against anyone who threatened the status quo: the young during the 1960's, and before that, entertainers like Robert Mitchum and Gene Krupa. ''Grass'' misses out by not including a clip from the ''The Gene Krupa Story,'' a middlebrow attempt to depict the lurid world of jazz in 1959.
''Grass'' offers meticulous sound design, and some snappy graphics put together by the film's art director, Paul Mavrides, who once toiled in the underground comics world. There's a brief, unidentified cameo by the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, the cannabis heroes of the comics whose adventures Mr. Mavrides helped depict.
The picture is broken up into sections recounting the varying official takes on the effects of marijuana, like its leading to insanity, heroin abuse, Communism and finally, indolence. The movie doesn't focus exclusively on the gaunt, wide-eyed stereotype of the pot addict, though it does use that image to score a number of laughs. There are views of maniacal pot smokers like those that appeared in the 1950's publications of E.C. Comics, which figured prominently in ''Comic Book Confidential,'' one of Mr. Mann's early films.
Like ''Comic Book Confidential'' and Mr. Mann's documentary ''Twist,'' ''Grass'' fixes on a frightened mainstream reaction to a cultural phenomenon and a overzealous, singleminded crusader. . Anslinger lends himself to the Javert treatment; it doesn't help that he, and most of the other law enforcement officers shown here, all age to look like J. Edgar Hoover.
The film is narrated by the celebrity weed aficionado Woody Harrelson, whose very name in the credits will ensure a laugh from audiences. But ''Grass'' doesn't just limit itself to easy potshots like showing scenes from the infamous ''Reefer Madness'' (1936), although it does use a number of the propaganda films that sought to frighten the naive. In those overwrought little dramatizations, marijuana smokers were driven to rape, violence and in the 1960's, even to the shocking implication of miscegenation. The film also leaps ahead to the days of ''Just Say No,'' just to show that the swing of the anti-pot pendulum in the other direction was useless.
''Grass'' is a huge step forward in cool and confidence for Mr. Mann, who makes his case here with seductive, fun Pop Art graphics and very smart use of music and clips: Cab Calloway and other jazz hipsters are among those seen extolling the virtues of marijuana, though Rick James, whose ''Busting Out'' is heard on the soundtrack, probably isn't exactly the best choice for a pro-pot poster child. President Richard M. Nixon, to show his tough-on-crime stance, is seen waging his own war against pot and deputizing another unlikely drug warrior, Elvis Presley.
With its pointed narrative, the film makes its case with a minimum of pushiness and a subtle nod to its crowd. ''Grass'' begins and ends with the credits, as if assuming its target audience might suffer short-term memory loss for some reason.
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American Drug War: The Last White Hope
http://americandrugwar.com/
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CyuBuT_7I4
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Veview by Robert D. Steele - Oakton, VA
This review is from: American Drug War: The Last White Hope (DVD)
This is a very serious movie and I volunteered to appear in it, April 22, 2008
I must disclose that I came into this movie at the very end when the brilliant producer realized I could provide a few bits that would bring it all together. I volunteered my time because I felt then--and I feel now--that this film was totally righteous. So I am listed as one of the "actors" but unlike some of them for whom file clips were used, I was taped speaking about this specific situation for this specific movie.
Our government is BROKEN. The civil servants and uniformed personnel are good people trapped in a bad system--a cesspool. Standing above them, hoarding the wealth, the power, and the personal privilege, are "elected" officials and their appointed cronies that have no business at all governing this great nation. They are inept and should be dismissed. We need a Constitutional Convention, an end to the Elctoral College, and deep Electoral, Financial, and National Security Reforms.
I have tagged this DVD with the word treason, because that is what CIA, DEA, the FBI, and the White House are guilty of when they protect drug wholesalers and allow entire neighborhoods to go down the crack drain, not because of Ricky Ross, but because of high crimes and misdemeanors all the way up the chain above him.
In my world, accountability is supposed to start and be enforced from the top down, not the bottom up. I hold John Deutch and later George Tenet accountable for failing to manage all five of the CIAs (the Wall Street CIA, the White House CIA, the front CIA, the paramilitary CIA, and the sodomy Safari Club CIA). I can only imagine the counterparts in DEA and the FBI and other elements of the government with the power to commit treason and get away with it while making a personal profit from the power We the People have assigned to them.
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