Walker (Pilot), on the CW

The original Walker, Texas Ranger largely took place around Dallas, but the reboot relocates to Austin, where the Texas Rangers are indeed headquartered. The shift appears to be cultural as well as geographic, at least judging from the pilot episode of creator Anna Fricke’s [just plain] Walker, which premieres tonight on the CW.

Ranger Cordell Walker has had a rough patch of tragedy and bad timing. Shortly after his wife Emily’s murder, he left on a prolonged undercover assignment, targeting the Mexican drug cartels. Walker finally returns home in the pilot, but he is so tortured with guilt that he could not protect Emily and disturbed by the yet-to-be revealed horrors he witnessed, it is hard for him to be present for his rebellious teen daughter Stella and idol-worshipping son Liam.

His salt-of-the-earth rancher parents and gay prosecutor brother did their best to cover for him, but Stella makes no attempt to hide her resentment. Naturally, Walker functions better when he is back in the Ranger saddle, but his new partner, Mexican-American Micki Ramirez insists they operate “by the book.”

The new Walker goes out of its way to check-off representation boxes, which probably makes sense for its CW demo, but it neglects the fundamental cop show business in the process. The pilot, directed by documentary and TV veteran Jessica Yu (Misconception), is long on angst, but short on action. There is only really one fight scene, plus a little roughing up a suspect (goaded into swinging first). Meanwhile, we see plenty of Walker brooding and ruminating.

In Park City ’16: ForEveryone.net

Sir Tim Berners-Lee did not invent the internet. That was sort of Vint Cert and Bob Kahn and kind of Xerox PARC. Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s often abbreviated “www.” More than anyone, he is responsible for making the net navigable and maintaining its orderly growth. Jessica Yu profiles the internet pioneer and solicits his take on the state of the web in the thirty-five minute documentary ForEveryone.net, which screened for invited guests and media during festival season in Park City.

Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS, etc is not a household name, but that is largely by design. He will do the periodic Ted Talk, but he is not a media attention seeker. As the child of computer scientists, it was apparently in his genes. Fortunately, he was at CERN, Europe’s largest internet juncture, just when people were starting to think about networking and hypertext in conjunction with each other. Berners-Lee really got it and envisioned the resulting user-friendly architecture.

Frankly, it is strange nobody has given Berners-Lee the documentary treatment sooner, because his enthusiasm is quite appealing on screen. His tribute during the London Olympics’ opening ceremony should have also intrigued potential viewers. He was there, driving some pretty critical scientific and sociological history. Yu could probably easily expand ForEveryone.net into a consistently engaging feature length documentary on the early development and adoption of the World Wide Web.

That is all well and good, but Yu allows Berners-Lee to give a lengthy pitch for so-called Net Neutrality, probably the most deliberately misrepresented and demagogued issue of the last ten years. Thanks to Net Neutrality, bit torrent pirates continue to hog ISP bandwidth, get the same speeds, and pay the same fees as the little old ladies who only use the web to post cat pictures on Facebook. Treating these two groups any differently is currently illegal.

Be that as it is, there are still a lot of interesting fascinating details in Yu’s film. Innovation should be exciting and she captures that spirit well. There is a slightly awkward irony of a film advocating universal web access holding a private screening, but maybe it will be free on the internet someday (surely on a bit torrent site, thanks to Net Neutrality). Recommended for fans of science documentaries like Particle Fever, ForEveryone.net is sure to have a lengthy festival life ahead of it.

Tribeca ’14: Misconception

Overpopulation is an issue that can turn an ostensive philanthropist into an evangelist for draconian controls on the unwashed masses. Should we be concerned about hordes of debased people waging global battles for increasingly scarce resources? Filmmaker Jessica Yu went into her latest project expecting to find a crisis but came away with the somewhat more nuanced perspective informing her self-referentially titled documentary Misconception (trailer here), which premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

It was TED Talker Hans Rosling who first tempered Yu’s alarm and duly serves as Misconception’s guru. According to Rosling, 80% of the world’s population now live in countries with 2.5 child birthrates or less. As a result, global population growth has leveled off. The other 20% are still procreating at rates that would give Warren Buffet conniptions, but corresponding life expectancy also happens to be relatively low in those nations. That is all well and good, but if Yu really wanted to rock viewers’ worlds, she would have introduced them to the work of the late great Julian Simon.

The meat of Misconception consists of a triptych of disparate individuals whose lives have been shaped by population planning policies in some fashion. The first is by far the best. With the help of Chinese filmmaker Lixin Fan (director of Last Train Home and executive producer of China Heavyweight), Yu follows Bao Jianxin’s determined efforts to avoid becoming one of China’s “leftover men.”

The implementation has been severe, but the One Child policy has curtailed China’s birthrate dramatically. Yet, it has come at an enormous social cost. Since boys are prized above girls, many couples opt for gender-specific abortions until they have a son. Like many of his “Little Emperor” generation, Bao faces an uphill challenge in his search for a wife. The numbers are simply against him. Yet, Bao also sabotages his best chance with a quite attractive old flame, because she cannot compete with Shu Qi in his favorite film, Love.

Frankly, Yu and company only scratch the surface of the potential social instability resulting from the One Child policy. Misconception also argues part of Bao’s problem is an increasing trend amongst Chinese women to choose careers over traditional family roles, but this too might partly be a function of the entitled attitudes fostered by “Little Emperor Syndrome.”

Perhaps the most loaded segment follows Denise Mountenay, a pro-life activist, who has found her calling lobbying against legalized abortion at the UN. At least she is from Canada, because in most other respects she fits the least charitable stereotype of Evangelical Christians. She is a hard charger, who has had her share of horrific experiences and undoubtedly means well, but she does not serve her cause well on-screen.

Contrasting with the ideological charge of the second segment (clearly heightened by deliberate editing choices), the third POV figure is easily the safest. Journalist Gladys Kalibbala does her best to heighten awareness of the staggering numbers of abandoned Ugandan street orphans, humanizing them in profiles and trying her best to re-connect them with extended family members. It is a noble response to a tragic situation.

There is at least one misconception in Misconception. Essentially, Rosling argues fear of a third world population explosion will increase global warming are misplaced, because it is those who live in the developed world that use the most resources. Yes, but the most precipitous increase in fossil fuel consumption is expected in India and China as they pursue aggressive electrification policies (a worthy goal), at the lowest possible cost.

In fact, you can almost feel Misconception holding back, struggling to maintain some sort of class-conscious, environmentally orthodox message. Still, it is admirable Yu was willing to re-examine her assumptions to any extent. A radically mixed bag, the inconsistent Misconception includes provocative arguments and distracting noise in nearly equal measure. For those who closely follow the work of Yu and Fan, it screens again this Saturday (4/26) during the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival.