Continuing CIFF Coverage

Critic Mark Pfeiffer blogs the Cleveland Film Festival. I saw his less-than-favorable impressions of Karla coming ... if I weren't, as previously mentioned, a complete true crime junkie I probably wouldn't have been as intrigued by it.

Technorati tags: film

CIFF Day Review

So yesterday was my day at the Cleveland International Film Festival. Unfortunately life won't allow me to spend any more time than that (although I may try to make it back for the last afternoon and Marilynn Hotchkiss). But if I only can see two films from the festival, I'm glad to report that I managed to pick two worthwhile ones.

First up: Three Dollars. This is a film that I have a hard time describing, which is exactly why I liked it. If you can precisely sum up what a film is about, then there was really no point of it being made in the first place ... it's supposed to be an expression that transcends specific explanation; it is its own explanation. One of the most concrete impressions I took away from it is its point that people who hold on to their integrity and compassion in the face of ease and necessity are now living in a world where that is rewarded less and less, and sometimes they end up paying dearly for it - but it's still worth it. This is a film I would recommend you just simply explore on your own.

Then I saw Karla, which I had been looking forward to seeing - not so much as a film fan but as a true crime junkie. The showing was sold out, and the stand-by line was a mile long. This one is a bit easier to describe - it's about Canada's most notorious serial rapist and murderer, and more specifically, his wife Karla, who knew about and even helped in his crimes. Since the tale is told from Karla's point of view, to the doctor who is going to help decide on her parole, it's skewed in her favor, and potrays her as manipulated and victimized herself. But the film is still directed in such a way that you still question her intent, her actual involvement, and if her act of becoming his accomplice in rape and murder despite seeming to know how deeply wrong it was is actually more horrible than Paul's dementia. Actress Laura Prepon definitely carried it off. And I was fortunate enough that the film's director, Joel Bender, was at the screening and spoke about it afterwards.

There are two particular lines of thought Karla provoked in me - one, that I expected it to be much more graphically violent. The subject matter is [retty chilling, and there have been controversies all over the place about the filming of it. But when it came to actual sex and murder depiction, the film was surprisingly coy. I know that a large part had to do with strict Canadian regulations and a completely appropriate consideration for the victims' families. However, deliberate or not, it made the film so much more powerful. Remember in Double Indemnity where Neff kills Phyllis's husband in the car? You don't see either one of the men - all you see is Phyllis's face, looking straight ahead and listening to her husband die. You're not thinking so much about Neff's act as you are about her, and her monstrous indifference, and how much she is still guilty of murder despite never lifting a hand during the physical deed. That's what's in Karla, and stripped of Double Indemnity's noirish elegance.

The other thing I was intrigued about was the role of film itself, or at least video. Paul videotaped their crimes, including the first, the murder of Karla's sister, and kept the tapes. How close is the link between their desire to record and view such acts and the audience's desire to watch the story of a couple who would do a thing like that?

Technorati tags: Karla, film

Bill Napoli

Another proud moment from an elected official on the subject of women's reproductive rights: I give you, Bill Napoli.

Courtesy of the Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels, who I have just discovered are hilarious.

Technorati tags: Bill Napoli, abortion

Clooneygate

Apparently Arianna Huffington is so desperate to prove she has high-profile stars on her political side that she'll fake blog posts from them. How about we just stop caring about celebrities' political opinions in general? Then we can avoid problems like this.

Technorati tags: Arianna Huffington, Clooneygate, politics

Isolatr

Isolatr - the anti-social network.

Technorati tags: networking, web apps

Dunk Malaria

Shoot a basket this Sunday for Malaria Action Day.

Technorati tags: activism, Dunk Malaria, Malaria Action Day

Always Be Prepared

Today's rather disturbing instructional link: what to do if your eyeball falls out of its socket.

Technorati tags: bizarre, Slate.com

The Notorious Bettie Page

I don't know how I've missed the production of the biopic The Notorious Bettie Page, but apparently April 14 is the release date. I was skeptical at first ... but I like Mary Harron as the director, and Gretchen Mol is an dead ringer for Bettie.

However ... part of what makes Bettie Page special is the mystery about her real life persona. I saw her E! True Hollywood Story (the only episode I've ever seen, I swear), and I liked how she refused to have herself photographed as an older woman, or share many details about her current personal life. It wasn't for her own vanity or privacy - it was to keep the glamor and mystique of her model image intact. Bettie Page is, and always has been, a symbol, that trades on our ideas about beauty, sex, taboo, and fun, and out of these things creates a meaning for everyone who admires her. Would learning too much about the reality take her relevance, and her sense of humor, away? Here's hoping the filmmakers were as sensitive to this balance as she was. I really would like to see this film turn out well.

Technorati tags: Bettie Page, film, pinup

WoW Justification

From Andrew Phelps, role playing at fatherhood:

Now I'm not going to stand here and say that everyone who plays RPG's should have eight children. But the connection is obvious - the planning, item management, and exploratory focus are totally congruent with the core of RPG design. At a superficial day-to-day level the process of managing life with a young child can be viewed as a game, a steady process of learning the ins and outs of the event/response pattern of the world around you.

Technorati tags: warcraft, gaming, parenting

Blood on the Red Carpet

Wow, is Annie Proulx bitter about Crash's Oscar win.

She probably has good reason to be. But I've never been a fan of her writing style, and this article reminds me why. Poeticism without the comprehensibility. When I first read her short story "Brokeback Mountain" in a collection a few years ago, it did hit me as a particularly powerful story. But I couldn't make heads or tails out of The Shipping News, or most of her other fiction.

And is she blaming Scientology for the Oscar loss of Brokeback Mountain? That may be stretching it a bit.

Technorati tags: film, writing, Oscars

Dreaming (or, I Suck at Titles Today)

Dreamsbox is kind of a Group Hug for dreams. People submit them anonymously, and some are interesting. Apparently you can also sign up for a private dream log as well.

I've always wished I could remember my dreams better; I rarely retain anything from them. I've tried at various points in my life to start my own dream diary, to practice thinking about and remembering my dreams better, but every time I do I start questioning why I'm not devoting the time and energy to my waking life instead. I still question that - but I'm also still fascinated by my dreams.

I also came across a FAQs for lucid dreaming. I think I need to have much more time to dedicated to sleep before I start tackling anything like this. Maybe when I'm eighty or so.

Technorati tags: dreams, dreaming

Important News

Did you know the official Whitesnake website includes a repository of recipes, contributed by Whitesnake fans? I don't know who came up with this idea, but it's brilliant. I know I automatically trust the delicate taste that must surely define any Whitesnake fan.

By the way, this is one of many of 2005's Web Pages that Suck.

Technorati tags: webdesign

Unnecessary PR Stunt

Finally, some real news: sex advice from Project Runway stars. Note: it's on Nerve.com, so it's a bit ... uninhibited.

Technorati tags: ProjectRunway, sex

Updates

Been busy updating my own little media empire ... most importantly, I have finally, per many requests, set up a feed for this blog. Now, subscribe! The LiveJournal is also active again, and, as I mentioned earlier, will be the depository for most things of the personal and/or irrelevant nature. And I have finally, finally updated Elizabeth's blog. Still on their way: my design site, which is suffering cruelly from the loss of the iBook (my adapter is ordered, but not here yet), and some more improvements to this site. Let me know what's working, what sucks, and what's awesome.

Adequate Consolation

I flirted briefly with the idea of trying to get to SXSW this year, but concluded it just wouldn't work out right now. Maybe next year. Instead, I'm focusing on my schedule for the Cleveland International Film Festival, which starts in a couple of weeks. I'm not sure how much time I'm going to be able to devote to it beyond the first weekend, so I'm just planning on seeing Karla, Three Dollars, Garua, and a shorts collection. If all goes well, I may add a couple more.

I've decided that I need to seriously get back into my film viewing - not only do I miss all my movies, I can use more opportunities to get out by myself and have some thoughtful time. So, readers, be prepared for the influx of unsolicited film opinions. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The Bright Side

Jesse Walker at Hit and Run makes my day by listing David Cronenberg as one of his Oscar winners

... because now a bunch of people are going to rent his Crash by mistake.

That thought fills me with joy.

(By the way, this is what he's talking about.)

Dark Portrait

So apparently, Thomas Kinkade - the devout Christian, massively popular "Painter of Light" who also claims that when he was saved, God became his art agent - is actually a bit of an asshole.

In litigation and interviews with the Los Angeles Times, some former gallery owners depict Kinkade, 48, as a ruthless businessman who drove them to financial ruin at the same time he was fattening his business associates' bank accounts and feathering his nest with tens of millions of dollars....

In sworn testimony and interviews, they recount incidents in which an allegedly drunken Kinkade heckled illusionists Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas, cursed a former employee's wife who came to his aid when he fell off a barstool, and palmed a startled woman's breasts at a signing party in South Bend, Ind.

Heckled Siegfied & Roy? That's prety low.

I guess this is in part what I was talking about yesterday with sub-par art and business ... see, it can lead to abuse to of Siegfried & Roy. We've got to stop it now.

The Failure of Feminism

Some interesting things to consider about modern feminism and just what it means after all.

The multicultural feminist canon has not led to independent, tolerant, diverse, or objective ways of thinking. On the contrary. It has led to conformity, totalitarian thinking, and political passivity.

Although author Phyllis Chester focuses on feminist foreign policy (which I agree seems to be somewhat unfocused itself), I'm ready to second her opinions on how they relate to women's everyday lives, and it's inspired me to mention some things I've been thinking for a while.

Going through the drama of being an independent, ambitious, computer science student who found herself pregnant before her degree was finished has given me a lot of insight as to what feminism has in all practicality given us. While I've had a ton of support, I've also had a fair share of disapproval, some open, some masked, for deciding to incorporate child-raising into my life. I know a large part of it is based on the drag on my career. I know some young women who are so career-oriented and so defensive of their rights to their careers that they've become offensive in their militanism and become condescending towards other young women who make different life choices than they do.

That's not feminism to me. Feminism to me is the right to choose one's path freely - it is not just making those choices which correspond to the new prevailing dogma. Although my situation has not turned out the way I previously expected, I've made all my own decisions every step of the way, and right now I can say I'm happy with them all. I am still independent, still ambitious, and I will be receiving my degree by the end of this year. In fact, now my energy is more focused than ever, I've learned a great deal more discipline, and I'm making more progress on my work and personal projects than I would have otherwise.

If anything, I now have the most important reason in the world to fight for feminism - a smart little daughter who is going to look for me for guidance and understanding. I don't want her to be limited by anything, especially an unexamined thought construct that is supposed to be helping her.

Girls Are Really, Really Good at Sniping

So apparently, according to this Wired article, not only are we having trouble getting more girls into video games, we can't even agree on which direction to take to do it. One faction wants to emphasize less-intense puzzle games, and another wants to go blow things up. I'm down with both, as it turns out.

Okay, I'll Rant After All

I really wasn't going to get on my high horse about the Oscars, like I promised ... but posting the previous story has driven me to at least a general rant on the whole sordid Academy business.

I was watching Sunday Morning Shootout yesterday, and the first thing they did was talk to Academy president Sid Ganis. Background in advertising and marketing. Produced, as Wikipedia kindly informs us, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Big Daddy, and Mr. Deeds. He spoke on the show about how much of its own money the Academy put up for advertising this year's awards, since the crop of nominated films were, for the most part, small films without their own popular draw. He explained bringing in Jon Stewart, to rope in the younger folk who otherwise probably couldn't care less, and specifically stated that one of the Academy's biggest concerns was to make their ratings goal.

This sounds like a mass marketing campaign for a leading corporation's new product. I understand that on a certain level, that's exactly what it is and that's exactly what it needs to be - I do get easily frustrated with artists who refuse to consider the business side of their work. But I also get just as easily upset when an artistic business becomes nothing but business. And the art industry seems to be one of the few in the world that can actually thrive on lower-quality product. Consumers wouldn't accept cars, or a million other products, that didn't perform as best as they possibly could. But they consistently accept movies that fall desperately short of what the film medium can possibly accomplish. And the Academy seems more concerned with justifying them than working on raising the bar.

That does sound horribly elitst, and I know if you take the metaphor too far, it says a lot of unfair things about society. But the point is that if the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences is dedicated to honoring and promoting the best of the cinematic arts, it should be willing to do just that, above, if not exclusive, of everything else. Forget ratings, forget advertising, forget tradition - meet the new ideological and technological movements, play a proactive part in their progress, and don't be afraid to hold high standards. Best Picture should mean best picture, period, not the best picture that will make their decision, and them, look good.

Chain Reaction

Via Wiley Wiggins, a fascinating article with filmmaker Jen Cohen about her film Chain. I'm really drawn to the idea of this film, which seems to be as much, if not more, about the significance of its locations than its fictional story elements. It's heavily focused on the evolving suburban landscape of indistinct, interchangeable strip malls and stores - despite appearing to be shot in one location, it was actually filmed in eleven different states and five different countries. Unfortunately, Cohen hasn't found a distributor yet, but she sums up perfectly why that shouldn't be:

See, I never look at myself as being experimental or avant-garde. I make films about the world we live in. Why should that be more inaccessible than the films that have nothing to do with it?

Visual Complexity

"... a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks."

The project's main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web.

Had some server errors, but I'm assuming that's a temporary thing. The idea itself is super cool.

Disaster on an Unprecedented Scale

Yesterday evening the power cord for my laptop broke, and so Spike the iBook is currently in suspended animation. And it's driving me crazy. Even though I have my programming work PC, I'm so attached to my iBook at this point that it's torture to do design work on anything else. Plus, I'm right in the middle of building a couple of sites, and didn't get them backed up on the external before Spike died (since it's an older G3 with original battery, it doesn't hold a charge for anything). Grrr.

I can hardly believe that I never even owned a computer of my own until a year or two ago. What on earth did I do with myself without one?

Probably watched TV. Although I'm proud to report that I spent almost all of my day today cleaning and organizing the pad, running errands, and visiting with the mom and sis - and not watching the SVU marathon, or the various Project Runway episodes that have been on.

Except for now. I need consolation for the absence of the iBook.

Can Technology Break the Abortion Stalemate?

I agree with William Saletan - it's the only thing that can.

Politically, legally, and technologically, the 33-year-old court decision is increasingly obsolete as a framework for managing decisions about reproduction. But pro-lifers can't launch the post-Roe era, because they're determined to abolish its guarantee of individual autonomy, and the public won't stand for that. Only pro-choicers can give the public what it wants: abortion reduction within a framework of autonomy.

I'm a bit frightened about the way this issue has been going recently. And I don't see it getting better in the very near future.

Free Comic Book Day!

What a fantastic idea. Haven't yet tracked down participating stores in the area, but I'll post once I get them.

Top 10 Worst Best Picture Winners

Drew does the honors.

I personally don't have much to say about the Oscars. Despite being a notorious filmhead, I haven't seen any of the nominated films because I live a completely inconvenient distance from theaters that show good films, even mainstream ones, plus having an infant daughter cuts down on movie theater time. I figure once the movies get to the second-run theaters I'll watch them all and then rant about how the winner didn't deserve it and how stupid the Academy is, about three months after the ceremony when no one cares anymore.

Female Role Models

A nice list of some up-and-coming female role models in the tech industry.

The Geopolitics of Sexual Frustration

It's hard to believe some science fiction writer didn't foresee this scenario a couple of decades ago. In China, where male children are more valued than female, the technological ability to discover the gender of an unborn child has led to a generation without enough women. Now the country is facing a variety of social imbalance issues, including a rise in criminal female trafficking to meet the increasing sexual frustration of a huge number of young men without wives and families.

This article reminds me of a book I read a couple of years ago in a history of technology course - The Pinball Effect. It traces the sometimes bizarre paths technological innovations take through society and how far-reaching their effects can be. Who would have thought that the invention of the ultrasound would eventually lead to a scholar suggesting that "in 2020 it may seem to China that it would be worth it to have a very bloody battle in which a lot of their young men could die in some glorious cause"?

Technical Issues

Yes, I have a new layout. I'm going to be modifying my previous one for another project. Still have some typography things to fix, and I'm finally really working on getting RSS feeds set up. But, since I'm relatively happy with this layout and need to start devoting more energy to other sites, it will stay around for a while.

Speaking of other sites, my web design business, which has become the stuff of legend since it's been "under construction" for so long, is actually nearly complete and will be live by the end of the weekend. Right now I'm creating small websites and doing related work for free to build up my portfolio, so if you or someone you know needs anything let me know.

Also - since I think too much of my private drama has seeped into this blog recently, I'm going to go back to my practice of keeping a large part of my life details in my LiveJournal. So those of you who desperately need to know that sort of stuff can head over there, and those of you who rightly don't care don't have to worry about it.

The Dot and the Line

Over at Screenhead, you can watch The Dot and the Line, a perfectly lovely little film and Chuck Jones's Academy Award-winning animated 1965 short.

Blue Velvet

The wordiest movie review ever. It even includes the word "porno-entomological," which I'm not sure is truly a word, or, if it is, what the hell it means. But it's all about Blue Velvet, which is cool.