Wednesday, December 4, 2024

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Ex-Shudder To Think Frontman Scores Ed Norton’s Obama Doc ‘By The People’

Ed Norton’s Class Five Film’s “By The People: The Election of Barack Obama,” is currently playing in New York and L.A. this week to qualify for the Oscars. How was it?

A little toothless and dull for a two hour documentary that had too few rousing moments (though there were a few that brought an inspirational tear to the eye). Jeff Wells saw it this weekend and essentially agrees with us too. “I’m sorry to say it’s a fairly bloodless portrait of one of the most fascinating, breathtaking, sometimes ugly, occasionally transcendent, up-and-down racial-tinderbox elections in our nation’s history. It’s up-close and somewhat intimate and sorta kinda dull at times. Not novacaine dull but glide-along, yeah-yeah dull.”

It suffers from pacing issues and we suggest they re-edit the picture (no offense, but we’re not surprised to hear the people behind it are first time feature-length filmmakers). Musically, Craig Wedren ex frontman of Shudder To Think composed the score. Music, or lack there of seems to be part of the problem, sure you don’t want it to be all galvanizing moments dialed up to 11 the entire time, but it could have used some more music to goose it a little and the few times we can hear Wedren’s score, the film starts to soar.

Wedren became involved because of his wife, according to an interview he did with Gothamist in 2008.

“I have never been much of a political guy. It wasn’t until [my wife] and I started dating; she’s always been very active in politics. She’s been helping our friend Amy Rice who has been directing a documentary about Obama for a while now. So for the past few years they’ve been covering this unbelievable skyrocket, from the time when he was saying he wouldn’t run to what we’re seeing now. And we’ve been watching all this footage which is raw and unedited and I’ve been getting a sense of Barack Obama and his integrity and his honesty and his… I won’t say anti-Capitol Hill because it’s not that aggressive a stance. But he’s a new kind of politician and he has a very refreshing, down to earth and seemingly transparent approach to politics. It really thawed my disgust with politicians and politics in general.”

The film also contains some Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder (“Higher Ground“), U2 (“City Of Blinding Lights“) and concludes with Bruce Springsteen’s cover of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Our Land,” but overall there isn’t a lot of music in the film.

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