We watched The Cove on Animal Planet last night. Since then I've had an especially ugly nightmare about dolphin slaughter and have been consumed with guilt over having fun at the now-defunct Sea World in Aurora, OH as a youngster. Very effective film.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
I found the film Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037 both fascinating and ultimately uplifting. The process of building a piano may seem prosaic, but there is something wonderful about the painstaking craftmanship that results in an object that is beautiful in both form and function. I heartily recommend giving this film a try.
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rain or showers, moderate or good
The future is already here--it's just not very evenly distributed.
In the last five decades the capital of Afghanistan - Kabul - has witnessed at least seven regime changes and the people there have endured harsh periods of civil war.
In that time neighbourhoods have been destroyed and thousands of lives have changed beyond recognition.
But what has that meant for the people who live there?
Meena Baktash, born and bred in Kabul, tells the story of the city she grew up in.
Her life became a rollercoaster ride of shifting rules and violence, but the environment she lived in was place of beauty with a vibrant culture and populated with inspiring people.
Against a backdrop of a city that is erupting into violence, Meena tells the age-old and intimate story of a family growing up and evolving, celebrating birthdays and weddings.
"But what counter-insurgency really comes down to is the protection of the capitalists back in America, their property and their privileges. US national security, as preached by US leaders, is the security of the capitalist class in the US, not the security of the rest of the people." [1975] CIA Diary by Philip Agee
Migratory bird treaties ban duck hunting during key summer months.
...the only time ducks are on the North Slope.
Inupiat rely on ducks for food during the summer.
Are they gonna enforce?
Yes, ...no, ...maybe, ...oh yeah, definitely!
Game warden wakes up to find over a hundred people waiting outside his door, each with a duck in his hand.
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"...because everyone is ugly as sin, when you rip away their skin."
Once I heard that it was a Photomation (animated photos) documentary, my enthusiasm for the film dropped a bit. Fortunately it turned out to be an excellent way to tell his story. Brilliant, in fact.
I can't quite figure out when and if this movie is coming out in theaters or if it'll be released on the web (the producers' website is abstruse, to say the least), but I saw the trailer yesterday and it looks amazing. It's about traditional suit tailors in Naples. These guys have been cutting suits since they were little kids, like 9 and 10 years old when they started their apprenticeships. They're real characters, of course, and representin' for a slow-moving, retro Neapolitan culture. The jazz score is awesome too.
Everyone who has Netflix stream Girl 27 right now. Everyone else find it elsewhere. It tells the shocking true story of an extra who was violently raped by an MGM salesman at a studio-sponsored party on Hal Roach's ranch. Patricia Douglas was a 17-year-old dancer and a virgin when she was raped by David Ross in 1937. She went public with what had happened to her and "the wild party gone wrong" made headlines for a second, but MGM was so persistent, so ruthless in covering up the rape and in quashing any legal repercussions that the scandal just dropped away like it never happened.
MGM gave the district attorney thousands of dollars in campaign contributions; the doctor who examined her was on MGM's payroll; the valet who found her screaming and crying in the parking lot was given a cushy job in perpetuity by the studio to perjure himself on the stand and say he didn't recognize Ross; MGM made the 120 other dancers they had tricked into being eye-candy/sex slaves at the party fill in questionnaires detailing any gossip they had heard about Patricia; MGM paid for Louis B. Mayer's personal attorney to defend Ross; they paid off Douglas' mother to drop the criminal charges. When the DA declined to try the case, Douglas filed a federal lawsuit against Roach and Ross -- the first one of its kind for rape -- and it went nowhere. Her own attorney simply never showed up in court and it was eventually dismissed for non-prosecution. Wouldn't you know it, he later ran for DA of LA County where MGM was the biggest employer.
Sixty-five years later, author David Stenn came across Patricia Douglas' story while researching a biography of Jean Harlow -- the rape supplanted the headlines about Harlow's untimely death for a minute -- and was surprised that he had never heard of her given his vast knowledge of MGM and Hollywood of that era. He decided to pursue the story. This documentary is the result.
It's very well done, horrifying and deeply compelling. It's a must-see.
Stories like that trigger some kind of claustrophobia in me. Like I hyperventilate and feel all trapped with the person who has nowhere to turn. It's not pleasant. I will try to watch that though.
In less horrifying documentary news, I watched Waiting for Superman. Depending on how you look at it, it's either a propaganda piece for school privatization (code word "Choice" and MO is charter schools rather than vouchers these days) or an expose on the failure of the public schools and an exploration of alternatives by focusing on successful charter schools.
What I find interesting is that the Douglas belongs to the same era some people label "good old days". You know, when people wore respectable clothing, standards of decency were supposedly higher, there weren't all these sex-crimes happening all the time, people were god-fearing.... It makes you realize that what they are really yearning for is a society kept nice and simple by repression, intense corruption and paternalism.
I went to a special screening of Man on a Mission tonight, sponsored by the Austin Film Society. The director and producer were on hand for a Q&A after the film, probably because they're from Austin (as is the film's subject, Richard Garriott). Definitely a must-see for space fans and a fascinating character study, but not widely available yet.