Peter Rodger criss-crossed the globe on a three year trek to discover the key to religious divisiveness for “Oh My God” (Varsity, Nov. 27-Dec 3), a more sympathetic portrait of world religious beliefs than Bill Maher’s funny but smug and self-righteous “Religulous.” Unlike Maher, Rodgers isn’t cruel towards his believers, but he is sly. In one scene, he places a priest commenting on condom use in front of a fountain with some very active spouts. In another, he uses television game show music to pace the time it takes a radical Muslim to find the passage in the Koran that says all Christians and Jews are going to hell. Among the dozens of interviews are celebrity moments with David Copperfield, Ringo Starr, Seal. Bob Geldorf, and just about everybody on the set of “Australia,” which he apparently crashed. Examining religious ritual in exotic places while exploring the landscapes at different film speeds results in something like a cross between “Mondo Cane” and “Koyaanisqatsi,” especially when he underscores the imagery with techno world sounds. Eventually, Rodgers approaches something more than touristy curiosity when he settles down to give serious considerations to the various belief systems, “Oh My God” concludes, perhaps inevitably, as a call to peace, directed at all those who claim to believe in a supreme being whose essential nature is love.
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It is not much different from their first movie, but there is a special incentive for Seattle audiences to revisit the corporate pranksters in “The Yes Men Fix the World” (NWFF, No 27-Dec 3). It is the big-screen debut of local musician/comedian Reggie Watts, former lead singer of Maktub, one of the hottest Seattle bands of the 1990’s. Watts is hilarious as Exxon’s climate-victim who is donating his body to the manufacture of a new candle made of human flesh. For those unfamiliar with the Yes Men, they are Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, two guys who put up mock web sites of big corporations and them wait for interview and speaking invitations. This time around, as representatives of Dow Chemical, they give an interview to the BBC promising to properly compensate the victims of their lethal carelessness in Bhopal, India. They also pose as representatives of Halliburton and HUD, and encore with a faux-edition of The New York Times that reports on a day in the life of a perfect world. “The Yes Men Fix the World” is smart, daring, irreverent, and funny. We need more guys like Bichlbaum and Bonanno as a reminder that a perfect world is within our reach, if we only have the courage to build it.
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