Full disclosure: My mom had a couple rounds of breast cancer when I was young (as was she), and due to that, I've recently started my own ritual of yearly mammograms. I also worked with and for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin for a good portion of the aughts, and while there some of my co-workers when involved in Komen grant work involving breast cancer education and screening.
I have also, for the past few years, started to become more and more bothered by the trend of pink, pink, pink everywhere to raise money "for breast cancer" and to "raise awareness." Breast cancer is very serious, but it is by no means the biggest health risk that women face. It's just the one with the best marketing campaign.
]]>Maurice Sendak, like Henson, had a strong hand in shaping my childhood landscape. Where the Wild Things Are became a favorite of mine very early on, and it remains so to this day. I am not alone in this by any means.) I did find the movie version to be enchanting, but I'd probably rather watch the Scholastic Storybook Treasures version.
However, it wasn't just Wild Things. My sister and I had a cassette of the Off-Broadway production of Really Rosie that we played over and over, memorized, and performed on our own. (I was particularly fond of "The Awful Truth.") We had copies of Pierre and Chicken Soup With Rice that got their share of wear. We also loved listening to Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or, There Must Be More to Life on tape, as read by Tammy Grimes.
Like Trina Schart Hyman, he was one of the illustrators whose work I have most admired. I was tremendously excited to find the Pacific Northwest Ballet's production of "Nutcracker", with set a costume designs from Maurice Sendak on VHS in the late 80s. It was a wonder and a delight.
Unsurprisingly, this week I have spent a great deal of time reading other people's memories of Sendak and revisiting my own. We remember and we carry on.
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Look into that face, those eyes, and tell me that it is "just" and animal. James Mollison has taken portrait photographs of 40 different apes, of a variety of species, from Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia. Each one shows a different personality, a different intelligence. Assembled together, the effect is rather striking.
]]>(Warning: the trailer kind of has spoiler. At the same time, really? It's The Amateur Monster Movie, not Inception. Are you really worried about spoilers? I thought not.)
Hilarious. I laughed harder during this than at any film I've seen in a while. There were a couple of sequences that really didn't work at all, but over all it was spot on. As you can guess from the trailer, it has some...language. I left the theater saying "muther feckin' wer-wolf" at the drop of a hat.
If you are a fan of monster movies or B-movies in general, you ought to get a kick out of this one. And I can attest that you might enjoy it even if you usually can't stand that genre. The Amateur Monster Movie is a winner.
]]>It could be because I am lousy at ironing and avoid it whenever I can. It could be the blueish lighting, the steady camera angles, and the lack of soundtrack beyond the quiet, incidental noise of the activity. But seriously, watch that man iron and tell me you wouldn't want to wear that shirt. (Or maybe not *that* shirt, but it's equivalent in your size and style.) Even mundane chores can be beautiful when practiced with skill.
]]>It was amazing because of what it was: After seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, three 12 year old friends, Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb, began filming their own shot-by-shot adaptation in the backyards of their Mississippi homes.
Seven years later their film was in the can.
My. God. I have never, in all my 36 years on this earth, undertaken a project even half so grand as what these kids did over the course of their teenage years. Certainly never did anything like it when I was actually a teen. The movie was a love letter to Raiders of the Lost Ark and a love letter to cinema. I was amazed at what they were able to pull off, and was rather bummed that we weren't able to stay for the Q&A after the film.
If you grew up on Indiana Jones and you get a chance to see this film, you should not pass up the opportunity.
]]>During the pre-show announcements, they mentioned how many sushi restaurants there were within a five minutes walk of the theater. Good thing they did, because I'm pretty sure everyone left the theater dreaming of sushi as well.
While the film wasn't quite as meditative as The Meaning of Tea, it was very peaceful and refreshing. I have an admiration for people like Jiro Ono, who thrive on simplicity and order, and who can do the repetitive work needed to achieve excellence at something. I don't work that way myself: I like the idea of simplicity, but I tend towards complexity, variety, and a wee bit of chaos. But the contrast between my way of life and Jiro's made it particularly pleasant to watch.
The visuals were great. If you didn't want sushi by the end of the film, you probably never liked sushi to begin with. Piece after piece of perfect nigiri was lovingly filmed in lingering close-up shots. Mouth watering. Trips to the fish market were slightly less mouthwatering, but far from disgusting. It is easy to forget how crazy huge tuna are. It's rather a shame how divorced we get from what and where the food we eat comes from.
In some tiny way, I was reminded of Great, a webcomic by Ryan Armand (KIWIS BY BEAT!). Jiro doesn't seem to have much in common with Lyle Phipps (who is often an angry sad sack) but I found myself thinking of Lyle's drive to create the greatest ramen in the world. (I also found myself wanting ramen.)
Later in the day we stopped at T. Sushi, to give the newest sushi restaurant a try. It was good, but definitely no Sukiyabashi. I might go there again, but it won't be at the top of my list of Madison sushi restaurants. (I have a hard time taking a sushi restaurant seriously if you order tea and are given a cup of hot water and a generic food-service tea packet.)
Next up: Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation
]]>(The trailer lack subtitles, but the subtitled version I found also featured a terrible American movie trailer voice over. Too awful to link.)
The festival write-up describes this as "a thriller with all the boring parts cut out" and they were not lying. My adrenaline was elevated from the first scene to the last, and even though it was very late when I left the movie, I was very keyed up.
There are some very important details that would be spoilers for the very first scene, but I can say that the majority of the film is a tense, high-stakes game of cat and mouse in a loud, crowded nightclub. They skip right over many of the usual cliches that make up the slow moments in action movies and keep you right in the midst of the actual action. I'm sure that they inevitable American remake will have some sort of goofy comic relief and a love interest. I'd recommend seeing this, and not bothering with any Hollywood follow-up.
I'd seen Wisconsin when it was first uploaded to YouTube in March of last year, but it was great to see it again. So much has happened since then. Cold, snow, crowds, mud, pizza... Show me what democracy looks like: petitions, boxes and boxes of petitions.
It isn't the best of the little films that came out of the protests (the uncertain focus and camera angles was a bit maddening) but it was great to see and hear a variety of faces and voices.
We're Not Broke was well made, and if there was a person in the theater who didn't find themselves getting furious while watching it, I think they might have been asleep. It detailed the lengths to which American multinational corporations will go to avoid paying taxes in the U.S. and the ways in which they do so. They are literally willing to spend millions of dollars on lobbyists, campaign contributions, lawyers, and accountants in order to reduce or eliminate their tax bills. The things they do *may* be legal at this time, but they are in no way right or ethical.
As is often the case in documentaries like this, there were occasional moments where the protesters came off looking a bit silly, but that was mostly due to the fact that they are not professionals. But it was corporate America that came off looking like jackasses at best.
I particularly enjoyed the interviews with Lee Shephard., who was incredibly droll with a dry and acerbic wit.
I ended up sitting next to two older women, whose sotte voce comments I could overhear during the course of the film. If I was seething internally at the nefarious practices of the corps, they were visibly (and audibly) bristling with indignation.
It was rather a good thing for me that it wasn't the last film of the night, because if it had been, I'd probably have seethed all night long. As it was, I had about an hour after the end to glower about corporate tax dodgers, after which I was plunged into French action sequences, and it was my adrenaline being raised, rather than my blood pressure. It has stayed with me, though, and I will definitely recommend it to other people, if they get the opportunity. This is something we should be made about.
]]>The ensemble includes a 175-voice chorus, and 85-piece orchestra and 4 soloists, and has a sound that fills the hall. The "Dies Irae," in particular, features an explosion of sound, with a particularly wrathful chorus and an extra large bass drum ushering in the judgment day.
Tickets are still available and priced at a number of levels ($10, $15, $20, and $25). You can purchase tickets online, by phone (608-258-4141), or at the Overture Center box office.
]]>Yes, this is a collection of ridiculous, dated photos. Glamour Shots and it's ilk had/have some very silly things going on. As a photographer who really strives to capture my subjects in the best possible way, this hurts my aesthetic sensibilities.
And yet, the mockery of the photos was also a mockery of the women in them. I don't know them, maybe some of them are/were genuinely mock-worthy people. But neither do the people doing the mocking. It may be just a random collection of silly pictures to them, but each one is a photo of an individual woman, who may very see this (or someone who knows her might.) What did they do that deserved to be mocked? Try to live up to society's demand for feminine beauty...for glamour...and fail. Shame! Point them out and let them know how stupid they look.
This collection is mean-spirited and cruel. I'll bet many of the women (and girls) in those photos went to have their portraits taken so they could look at the image and feel pretty, something that the world around them went out of its way to deny them on a regular basis. If your beauty doesn't completely conform to the basis of what society is celebrating that minute, someone is always going to tell you how you need to improve. You hair is too flat, too mousy. You need to lose a few pounds. Your boobs should be bigger. Your teeth are crooked. You're too old.
So you go to the place that promises to make you look like a model. They do your hair, they do your makeup, they give you something to wear. They make sure you have fun. Now, the photo stores in the mall probably aren't employing the best hair and make-up people, the top-notch photographers. They are hiring folks for a little bit above minimum wage and then instructing them to sell, sell, and up-sell. They get a small wardrobe to work with, and a set of poses they like (it saves a lot of time). Which means you get some silly end results. But I'll bet that most of the women looked at the photo they got and felt happy, felt pretty, even if just for a little while. Until society started reminding them how much they fail at looking like an ideal. How plain, how fat, how old, how silly.
And then we come along, a decade or so later, to point and laugh at their aspirations to glamour.
Good job, internet. Good job.
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