Culture

Children of Men, released last week on DVD, is an ultramodern tale of a war-torn world in which the human race has not successfully reproduced for the past 18 years.

Based on the book by author/director James D. Scurlock, Magnolia Pictures documentary Maxed Out aims to open a few eyes on the enormous amount of personal debt in America as well as the overwhelming total of national debt.

In recent years, erotica has slunk into ever-more-acceptable territory. At some point, it reached the coffee-table stage and big, glossy books with pictures of artfully shadowed buttocks became popular fare in many a living room. nEuROTIC is not one of those books.

The Birth of Graffiti is filled with photographs of graffiti from 1970s New York. Graffiti groupies will probably recognize Jon Naar’s name—he published a much sought-after and now out-of-print book called The Faith of Graffiti in 1974.

“Animation and cartoons are part of our global contemporary culture,” Arturo Herrera says in an interview from the book Comic Abstraction: Image Breaking, Image Making. “Their simplified forms and friendly colors are precise and carefully orchestrated to make an immediate impact.”

Not a Photograph: The Mission of Burma Story (Element Productions, 2006) frames its tale as the answer to the following question: “What happens when the most influential band you never heard reunites after 19 years?” The premise is enticing—mostly because since 1979 Mission of Burma has, in fact, had a major shaping effect on a lot of burgeoning musicians.

One major, nagging question claws at the subtext of Danielson: A Family Movie: If the Christians of America can put the smack down in the voting booth, stack millions for hacks like Thomas Kinkade, and rack bestsellers for the Left Behind series, why can’t they embrace a Christian band like Danielson that makes fun, provocative, and exceedingly Jesus-friendly music?

In examining the life and recent times of Ralph Nader, often from the perspective of his admirers and colleagues but also from that of his detractors, IFC Films documentary An Unreasonable Man paints as much of a sad truth as a lasting legacy of citizen beneficence.

Bigger, better barter. Kyle MacDonald embarked on a fascinating sociological experiment when he decided to see whether the bartering system could get him from one red paperclip to a house. He succeeded, and his book follows his experience of fourteen trades in the course of one year.