Synchronicity
Conundrums of time travel and collisions of causality run through writer-director Jacob Gentry’s Synchronicity. Jim (Chad McKnight) is a frazzled, sleep-deprived physicist working to open a wormhole as a shortcut across time. Did mysterious femme fatale Abby (Brianne Davis) step from the wormhole or is she an agent for a sinister plutocrat who wants to control time? Making good use of a modest budget, Synchronicity’s nocturnal near-future setting is indebted to Blade Runner.
Theory of Obscurity
With their alternative marketing strategy, The Residents were a rebuke to rock music’s celebrity culture. Rather than focus on faces or personalities, The Residents kept themselves hidden, eventually under giant all-seeing eyeballs. According to interviews in this documentary, they were frustrated filmmakers who turned to music in the ’70s (audio tape was cheaper than film stock). Little wonder that Theory of Obscurity is chock-full of surreal videos and archival material from their 40-year career.
The Highwaymen Live: American Outlaws
Disc four of this collection is a DVD (or Blu-ray) of a two-and-a-half hour concert by the country music supergroup recorded in 1990. The Highwaymen consisted of four figures who deserve the overworked term of legendary: Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. They were unvarnished personalities playing songs from their extensive catalogues, trading verses on some of them, keeping things stripped down and looking like they were having a great old time.
Love is a Verb
As a young Muslim cleric in the 1960s, Fethullah Gulen brought the Koran into dialogue with modernity. He taught that there should be no conflict between faith and science and that Islam is compatible with democracy. An outlaw in his native Turkey, he lives in U.S. exile and heads a worldwide Muslim movement promoting education for girls, aid to the impoverished and interfaith dialogue. He is presented in this documentary as a quietly commanding leader.
