doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
movies
copyRIP!
22 years ago
Sound Unseen screened rip! a remix manifesto, a film by Brett Gaylor, last night in a small, intimate theater recently established (this was the premiere showing) in Minneapolis, filled almost to capacity.
View the film at http://www.ripremix.com/. Pay what you think it is worth (and it is worth the money, I promise), then can rip it, do a mashup, or simply watch it. Just don’t sell it.
Figuring prominently in the film are Lawrence Lessig (@lessig on Twitter), Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, Cory Doctorow (@doctorow on Twitter), science fiction novelist and blogger, and GirlTalk (aka Gregg Gillis), mashup artist, who not only give us information about remixing and mashups, but give us background and historical references to copyright laws. Each of them also shows how complex this subject is, from Lessig commenting on the illegality of segments of the video, to Doctorow discussing the Dickens / Twain copyright issues of the 19th century, to GirlTalk’s previous career in a field steeped in intellectual property issues (biomedical engineering).
The movie is informative and entertaining. The music is amazing, the sound bites are funny, and Gaylor discusses the reasons behind his advocacy of a remix manifesto. What he doesn’t do is discuss in depth the middle of the road between complete copyright control and no copyright control and what the differences are. There is a sense of US versus THEM to this film, but in the end the lines of US and THEM are definitely blurred.
At the end of the screening, the audience was given the chance to talk to the filmmaker over Skype. The conversation was lively and interesting.
In other news in the copyright fight, BoingBoing reported today the USA, Canada, and the EU attempted to kill a treaty to protect blind people’s access to written material. Doctorow writes
At issue is a treaty to protect the rights of blind people and people with other disabilities that affect reading (people with dyslexia, people who are paralyzed or lack arms or hands for turning pages), introduced by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay. This should be a slam dunk: who wouldn’t want a harmonized system of copyright exceptions that ensure that it’s possible for disabled people to get access to the written word?
Doctorow amends the piece and says there is victory (for now):
Victory! — the treaty proposal survived this meeting and will be back on the agenda at the next one. We’ve got a couple months to lobby our governments and make sure that the next time they show up, they don’t embarrass us by opposing this.
See the the final conclusions of the SCCR Eighteenth Session at Knowledge Ecology Notes.
And finally, the Chronicle of Higher Education, news was posted about different copyright law curricula being offered in higher education. The author, Marc Beja, discusses the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) curriculum for teaching copyright law, and the response of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in releasing their own curriculum. He writes,
The foundation’s program, “Teaching Copyright,” includes a Web site and five 60-minute lessons that the foundation hopes will give students what it calls “the real story” about their rights when it comes to downloading movies, music, and other media from the Internet.
Interesting that Brazil figures predominantly in both the rip/remix issues and the copyright issues. While Lessig was in Brazil talking about Creative Commons, he said
I come from the land where we talk about being free. I come from a land where we are lost. You are our brother in this debate, and you must remind us of what we have lost.
Brazil, again, has reminded us. Now it is up to us to listen.
no name
03 years ago
I was on Netflix, cruising around, browsing for new DVDs to add to my queue, when I came across the blurb for the movie Bubble. I tend to like quirky, off-beat, independent type films. Then I noticed that this film is by Steven Soderbergh. Not necessarily in the so-called indie genre then. But it has that kind of a feel. I read a bit further.
Set in a crumbling Ohio town that revolves around the local doll factory, Steven Soderbergh’s offbeat film follows the antics of townsfolk turned detectives who try to unravel a murder mystery — and end up discovering a bizarre love triangle. In sharp contrast to his high-budget Ocean’s Eleven remake, Soderbergh uses low-cost digital camerawork and employs no-name actors in this quirky small-town drama.
Of course I’ve heard the term “no-name” used before to indicate someone who is not famous, who does not have a specific box office draw. However, it really bothered me. I started to really think about it, maybe even obsess over it a little.
How do the actors, Dustin James Ashley, Katherine Beaumier, Joyce Brookhart, Ross Clegg, Decker Moody, Leonora K. Hornbeck, Debbie Doebereiner, Misty Dawn Wilkins, K. Smith, and Daniel R. Christian like being called “no-name?” Beyond that, do they see themselves as “no-names?” Isn’t the fact that they have these names a direct conflict with the whole notion of being a “no-name?”
Is it belittling or disparaging to say that someone is a no-name? Don’t we remove some of their identity when we do this?
I wasn’t sure if this was the studio’s official release or not, so I went to the official movie site. It doesn’t actually say anything and the only link that works directed me to Best Buy where I could buy the movie. They write
Steven Soderbergh followed up his slick, star-studded sequel, Ocean’s Twelve, with Bubble, a small-town drama about workers in a doll factory, played by a cast of unknowns.
A cast of unknowns seems to be a better choice than no-names because it’s probably closer to the truth (although unknown is tricky, too, isn’t it? I mean, who are they unknown to? Certainly not family, friends, agents, managers, one another, etc.).
Ok. They are both discouraging terms when describing the cast. They seem like dirty words in some way. Isn’t there something better? Ingenue? A cast of talented actors? Why do they have to point this out at all? Is it because Soderbergh is known for his big blockbuster movies with casts of well-known actors like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and others? The writers are making not-so-subtle comparisons, and I don’t see the point. The targeted audiences for the two films seem to be very different. The styles of the movies are different. If you’re going to compare the types of casts (especially when the audience of Bubble would probably not care who is in the movie), then it seems like a pointless waste of valuable blurb real estate.
It’s almost as if the writers of these blurbs were thinking of a way to sell this movie to an Ocean’s Twelve audience, trying to pull them in, without really thinking about the audience, a more indie-oriented audience, they could have. It’s ok to appeal to various audiences. But it’s not effective to do it in a way that divides your audiences. It certainly doesn’t seem to have been effective for the underrated Bubble and the no-name unknowns who were cast to act in it.
crawford
13 years ago
Hulu recently premiered its first movie. Crawford began as an expose into the ways the Bush campaign took the image of a rustic cowboy, smalltown American man and turned him into a President (when he wasn’t really from a small town, nor really a rustic cowboy). What this movie turned into was a great insight into what makes a nation function: its people.
This is really a film about identity: the identity of a President, a town, the people of the town, and the visitors. The most obvious, of course, is the identity of the President. Look closer though and you’re going to see how a town’s identity changes because of the historic events that take place within it. You’re going to see how the locals shape their identities around not only the town, but the events that occur within that town. The visitors change not only the identity of the town, the people, and the President, but we see such a small piece of them that their identity is set up to establish the idea of “other” within the town.
So much of our personal identities are constructed from where we’ve lived, how we’ve lived, who we call “our people,” and other factors. I think that this movie is an excellent look into that phenomenon, in a microcosm sort of way.
It’s free. It’s online. It’s a great piece of documentary work.
princess bride on steroids
0I love The Princess Bride. It’s one of those movies that I can watch a million times and still enjoy it. The acting is fun. The story is interesting. It’s one of those cult classics that still lives up to the hype.
A friend recently sent me the condensed version. Omigod! It is hilarious. I loved it.
courtesy of Your Studio Blog
mom & pop
0Independent America: The Two-Lane Search for Mom & Pop
Year: 2006
Director: Hanson Hosein
Length: 81 min
Media: On TV
Studio: CustomFlix
UPC for dvd: 883629138282
ID in Amazon.com: B000M32TY0
Rating: out of 5
I also watched this on the Sundance Channel last night (it was the premier showing of it on that channel). This film is also dealing with the haves and have nots but on a more commercial level. The makers of the film, husband and wife reporting team, Hanson Hosein and Heather Hughes, left their home in Vancouver, British Columbia, to take 2-lane highways through 32 states in the United States. They wanted to see the impact of big box stores / commercial giants, WalMart, Starbucks, and Borders Books, on local economies and how that affected the Mom & Pop type stores.
They met some interesting people and toured some great towns. In fact, in Arcata, California, they went to a Co-Op that I wish we could have here. It was almost entirely made up of organic foods and locally grown foods and it was HUGE. The meat they sell is raised specifically for that store and the honeys and jams are all made for that store. Amazing.
They even visited my town, where we had a big fight about having another WalMart come in to town. It was great to see local names that I recognized on the screen and to understand both sides of the argument (sadly, the referendum did not pass and WalMart, who spent millions to make sure it didn’t, will be able to come in with yet another store).
This documentary is fantastic because it goes to the people who are fighting the battles, trying to make a living, and to stay alive. They visited small cities like Flagstaff and very small towns with less than 1,000 people. They were not judgmental with their interviewing styles. They looked at both sides of the topic and let the viewer make his/her own decision about it. I liked that. I didn’t feel pushed to think a certain way.
haves and have nots
0The American Ruling Class
Year: 2005
Writer: Lewis Lapham
Director: John Kirby
Producer: Libby Handros
Length: 100 minutes
Media: On TV
Studio: Cactus Three
Distributor: Maitland Primrose Group
Rating: out of 5
I watched this on the Sundance Channel last night. This film is listed as a documentary but given that the two main characters, Caton Burwell and Paul Cantagallo, are acting a part, it’s more in the realm of “docu-drama.” In fact, Burwell and Cantagallo play Yale graduates but are, in reality, Harvard grads. One plays a wealthy student while the other plays the struggling student who got an Ivy League education to move into better circles.
My question, however, is how can two Harvard (or Yale, for that matter) graduates have any clue about the struggles of the “underclass?” Indeed, at one point Burwell meets up with journalist Barbara Ehrenreich at an IHOP, where she is taking minimum wage jobs around the country to see how people can live on that wage, is treated to a conversation about how he will never be able to understand the struggles of the underclass, with his promising career at Goldman Sachs.
I found this film to be an insult to those of us who are the working class, to those of us who have been homeless, used welfare, or struggled each and every day to have enough money for food, shelter, and clothing. They kept speaking to people who ARE the ruling class and asking them if there IS a ruling class. Of course they wouldn’t think so…they are a part of it. But there is. There are the haves and have nots and those of us who are the have nots do not rule anything. We simply work to stay alive.
And in the end, I don’t think this film portrayed that well enough.
self portrait, week #12
05 years ago
Willow and I went to the movies today. We saw Charlotte’s Web, which was absolutely adorable.
And I cried. Every time Charlotte wove a new word, I cried. When Charlotte died, I cried. When the baby spiders were born and rode off on the currents of air, I cried.
It wasn’t because it was particularly sad (although there were noticeable sniffles throughout the theater). I think it was because I can remember reading the book when I was about Willow’s age and how sad it was to me and how much loss I felt when Charlotte died.
It got me to thinking about how I cry at movies and how bad I feel about doing that. I am a sap. A big one, at that. And I hate it. I have a friend that says there is nothing wrong with being a sap. He’s probably right. But the sad fact is that in my head, there is always something wrong with crying during a movie and yet I can’t help myself from doing it because I feel strongly about things in movies.
When I was seventeen, I was at home watching a made-for-tv show about teen suicide. It broke my heart and I was in tears. I couldn’t stop crying. It was so upsetting to me.
My dad looked at me and said, “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about.”
To this day, I hear those words. Over and over. As if it was wrong to feel something. As if it is wrong to be sad or happy or anything other than flat, emotionless, and stoic.
I cry at movies. And I still feel bad about it. But I can’t stop myself and wouldn’t even if I could.
fur
05 years ago
The other night I watched HBO’s First Look for the new movie, Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. I was excited to watch it because it has created a bit of a ruckus in the online photography community.
Some people are appalled at this movie. It’s not a true portrayal of Arbus or her family or her craft, they say. Others say that Kidman is the wrong person to portray Arbus. Still others say that making something up about a real person is an abomination.
I like movies. For me, they are all about escaping from the every day and going into a totally different world. I am interested in movies with photographers in them – real or not. It’s interesting to see a writer’s/director’s portrayal of the art.
As I watched First Look, I found the commitment of the actors in the film to be amazing. They all read up on Arbus and the people she photographed. They studied her photography. They learned as much about her and her craft as possible.
The screenwriter, Patricia Bosworth, also wrote a biography about Arbus. She said that she was interested in taking the reality of the photographer and applying it to a fictional situation. She said that it speaks of the type of person that Arbus was. Amy Danger, the production designer, has created amazing scenery that is worthy of being photographed itself. It is pure eye candy that pulls the viewer into a world that is at once retro and, at the same time, surreal.
If this movie gives us even the smallest glimpse into the kind of person that Arbus was and why she photographed in the way she did, it will mitigate the misgivings of the naysayers. If it delivers on the beautiful colors, subtle nuances and interesting characters as the trailers and First Look intimate, it will be just the type of movie that I can lose myself in for a few hours. I’m looking forward to seeing it.
in her shoes
0
In Her Shoes is definitely a chick flick. There’s no way to get around this. Based on the book written by the famed chick lit writer, Jennifer Weiner, this story brings together all of the ingredients of a good Weiner novel: women in conflict, women dealing with fears of being fat, stupid, ugly, unwanted, lost, and promiscuous.
Weiner (and the screenplay writer Susannah Grant) approach these common issues in a way that makes you feel the struggle of the women, empathize with them, cheer them on, and want to kick their butts to make them see what kinds of fools they are being.
Cameron Diaz plays the part of Maggie, a lost woman who is still a little girl. She is promiscuous (and even sleeps with her sister’s lover). She steals money. She can’t hold down a job. She can’t read. But she is cute and knows how to use that.
Toni Colette is the consumate actress. She plays her roles in such a way that you feel like she could be one of your friends. She is the everywoman in so many ways. She gets what it’s like to be one of us. Colette plays Rose, Maggie’s older, more responsible, more plain sister. Rose watches out for Maggie, rescuing her when she needs to be rescued.
This movie, now out on DVD, is about sisterhood, friendship, love and loss. The poem Maggie quotes at the end defines it all perfectly:
i carry your heart with me
e.e cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is youhere is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars aparti carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
B+
(photo courtesy of imdb)
snakes on a plane
0
Predictable.
We know Samuel L. Jackson’s character is going to carry a big gun. We know he’ll probably shoot something. We also know that he’ll probably fly the plane.
This film is predictable.
And that’s why I don’t understand how it is getting high ratings from movie critics.
The premise goes something like this:
- Cute kid witnesses a murder
- Bad guys chase cute kid
- Cute kid not so smart but hooks up with a badass authority figure.
- Authority figure has to save the day (while losing 50 or so passengers in the meantime) and turns the air back on in the plane, helps fly the plane, and shoots a hole in the cabin of the plane (first class, no less!).
Honestly, the best part of this movie was when the audience started cheering because Mr. Jackson finally used the “motherf-ing” term not once, but twice.
That made the movie fun.
Want mindless action that will make you remember why you hate snakes? Snakes on a Plane is the movie for you.
C-
(photo uploaded by ckirkman)