Spanish Unemployment Brought Home - The Wicked Power of Great Animation

Fellow blogger and friend, Spanish architect and wicked* artist, Tomás Serrano, just posted a short animated film he made that is NOT in the Anchorage International Film Festival this year (maybe next year?)  But it shows the power of animation to convey the emotional impact of Europe's economic hard times. Even though this short cartoon is in Spanish - spoken so fast only a supersonic speed reader could keep up with subtitles if there were any  - it's completely comprehensible to anyone whether they understand Spanish or not. 



MR. ARCHITECT EN CRISIS from TOMAS SERRANO on Vimeo.

*Since English is not Tomás' first language and I've used a slang version of the word 'wicked,' I guess I should explain.  The Urban Dictionary doesn't quite cover the meaning I intend.  "Wicked" here, means "something so honest about an unfortunate truth that it is both painful and delicious." 

IPS - Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, Canada

I've still got a couple more interviews and other video from the Indigenous Peoples Global Summit on Climate Change (click link for all the posts on the summit). I also have more observations after four days at the summit. This video was done Friday. Eriel was one of the youth representatives and had just been interviewed by an AP reporter and was upset because she felt the AP reporter had gotten her to say more than she should have. I'll have more to write about that topic - I saw that same AP reporter again soon after at the press conference, which I reported on here. She's identified in the rough transcripts as Mary. In any case, I mention that because Eriel was a little distracted when we did this quick video. But I think the content is important for Alaskans and others to hear.









[UPDATE Feb 12, 2012: Note today's comment from Maz - He's just finished mixing "Elemental" a movie that will get Eriel's message wider attention.]

Anchorage 24 Hour Film Competition Winner

Someone got here Sunday googling 24 hour film contest. Well, I knew there was one as part of the Anchorage International Film Festival back in December and that's where they got.

But last night at the Bear Tooth I learned there was another competition this past weekend. Before "Waltzing with Bashir" we got to "Oscar." The first video is from the Bear Tooth tonight when they explained the requirements of the competition and introduced the winner "Oscar".





And here's the winner straight from YouTube.

Hanoi Traffic

We spent the day walking. I did get my ATM card back and it still works. It seems if you don't get the right pin the first time, they keep the card. I didn't get it right because I didn't push the buttons hard enough. Viet (above) whose headed to school in Texas worked out the card.




This is the headquarters of the bank whose ATM ate my card. The guard came over to tell me not to take pictures. Then when I asked Viet if I could take his picture he said sure, right in front of the guard, who got angry, so we went outside to take his picture.



We're booked on a tour to Halong Bay tomorrow. Overnight onland in a hotel, then back on the boat Sunday. Everyone assures us the water is totally calm. Prices shifted from the original recommended internet company that wanted $250 per person, to $125 per person, and finally we got it at $57 per person. Granted, we aren't staying on the boat overnight so that lowers the price, but J was worried about being seasick. And I think the first one included a private car and now were in a van with others, but that's fine.

So here's why I'm feeling a bit headachy today. The video is short, but gives you a good sense of getting across the street in the old quarter of Hanoi.

First Annual 30 Second (More or Less) Film Festival - Part 3

Part 1 and Part 2 had three videos each from Mariano Gonzales' Art 257 class at the University of Alaska Anchorage. These are art students (except for me) and only the last project of the semester was a video/animation project. This first one is one of my favorites. But they all have something of interest. And they're all short.

Whirlwind - the Movie

I liked this movie. It was an entertaining 99 minutes. It took me into a different world that turned out not that different at all. And all of the characters were likable, even the villain, though they all had their issues. It's not a great movie and I'm going to explain why I think that, but I did want to say it is well worth seeing.

This was another feature in the Anchorage Pride Fest Film Festival at Out North. (The link shows the current scheduled events, so if you look at this after June 28, you probably won't get anything about the film festival.) No one's competing for awards, but rather it's a chance for people in Anchorage to see films that wouldn't normally be shown here, or we wouldn't see until years from now. This film, for example, was first shown in New York and L.A. this month.

I enjoyed watching Whirlwind. It's not a great film. It's not even a good film, as films go. OK, I'm picky. With a good film, I get so caught up in the film that I forget I'm watching a movie. The actors ARE the characters. The music helps tell the story, but it never calls attention to itself. The same with the camera work. It moves the story along, but not in ways that pull you out of the story to think, "Wow wasn't that a cool shot?"

But, I enjoyed this one. I like the look of not as polished independent films. You don't need $100 million to tell a good story. If we rate movies on a scale of product per dollar spent making it, this would be much better than most Hollywood movies.

The acting was good most of the time, but there were a few times when I felt the actor and the character separated. words were being recited rather than spoken naturally.

That the story follows a formula, by itself, isn't a problem. But it shouldn't be quite so close to the surface. And the explanation for Drake's behavior, and his one-night stand counterpart in the group (he's the one character whose name escapes me - Desmond is in my mind, but I'd remember that if it were really Desmond), were the opposite of subtle.

Here we have a group that appears to be working well. Then something comes in to disturb and test them. They face the challenge and overcome it. It made me think of the tv show Friends. And The Big Chill. There the friends had scattered and it's the death of one of the group that brings them back together and tests them. Whirlwind's group is five gay men and a couple of women who sometimes hang out with them. They're planning a 25th Anniversary party for a gay couple they know, when sexy Drake slips into their circle and attempts to destroy it by exploiting each of their weaknesses. (I'm not giving anything away that wasn't on the blurb in the brochure, and that you can't figure out pretty quickly.)

I knew exactly where things were going. But it was ok. I wanted to see how it got there. I cared about the characters. I think that was the strength of the movie. They were all real people with a real mix of strengths and weaknesses trying to be happy. We can all identify. Not every movie has to end badly. It's just when that happy ending is totally improbable that there's a problem. Here there is no reason why these folks shouldn't get back together and shouldn't be stronger for the challenge.

This is NOT a gay movie. It's a movie about human beings who just happen to be gay. One could change the script slightly and film it over again with completely straight characters.





I had my Canon Powershot with me at the movie, but after emailing back and forth with Rob Tate, one of the directors of Eleven Minutes [see added comments under the YouTube trailer that replaces the video I posted], I've decided to try out just sticking with the trailers I can find online rather than using my own video. I think the video is useful in conveying the feel of the movie. While I understand Rob's concern that the quality of the video I post is terrible and doesn't reflect what he worked so hard to create, I think mine gives the feel of being in the theater watching the movie and the readers here understand that. And as I look at the trailer for Whirlwind (and this is no different from other movies) it also distorts the movie in a different way.

I don't know how television movie reviewers select the video they show in their reviews, or if they just take what is given to them. But it seems to me that if you are going to review a movie, you should be picking out the shots you want to talk about. Of course, if you have a whole movie to choose from, it could take a while to pick exactly the right shots. Fortunately, my memory disk doesn't hold too much video so I have to make do with the shots I get by trying to anticipate what might be good. An iffy proposition at best. Anyway, I don't know that my clips are more of a distortion than the trailer. Each just distorts the film in different ways.

The Film Panel Note Taker has an interview with Director Richard LeMay & Screenwriter Jason Brown. The Rob Tate link above goes to a brief YouTube video of the two directors and Jay McCarroll.

[Update: In my review of Before I Forget (Avant Que Joublie), a couple days after seeing Whirlwind, I was able to explain why my review of Whirlwind was just lukewarm. "Before I Forgot" was a much more penetrating look at the human condition.]

Black White + Gray, Museum, Bernie's Bungalow

We biked down to the museum to see Black White + Gray, a movie about Sam Wagstaff, Robert Maplethorpe's patron. It gave a lot insight into how a photographer whose best known images were homo erotic photos became such a celebrated artist in a homophobic nation. Essentially, Wagstaff an extremely handsome, wealthy gay man who had become the major collector of photographs, took Maplethorpe in. According to the film, Wagstaff made photography a recognized art form. Maplethorpe, over 20 years Wagstaff's junior, showed Wagstaff some of the wilder sides of gay New York. Both died of AIDS, Maplethorpe in 1989, Wagstaff in 1987.

This April 2007 NY Times review gives more details of the film.











We walked out of the movie past one more of the new buildings in Anchorage - the still very much under construction addition to the museum.






We wandered down the street to Bernie's Bungalow. We hadn't been to Bernie's since it was in the Sears Mall. Bernie talked to us about Thailand a while - he'd been in Chiang Mai for a week while we had been there - and he said it was 11 years since he'd been at the Sears Mall. He's ready for warmer climes and is looking for a buyer.

The Visitor

We haven't been to a movie almost forever - well since we left for Thailand in February. J wanted to go to a movie. The Visitor got the got the highest rating (4*) and had a bizarre enough description in the Anchorage Daily News that we decided to go.

A man sleepwalking through life discovers a way to open his eyes with the help of a Syrian man, his Senegalese girlfriend, an African drum and the myriad depths of friendship.

I guess that's all true, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) also play a big role in this. Anyone with an interest in immigration issues should see this movie. While it doesn't have anything good to say about ICE, it also raises some uncomfortable truths about the immigrants in the movie as well. But basically it tells the story from the perspective of the immigrants.

As a movie, it was a gem.

There were no actors - well, yes, there were. What I mean is that they were all totally the characters they were playing. The camera work was sublime. So much of what we needed to know unfolded naturally. Partly this was through the scenes the writers offered. Partly this was beautiful camera work and editing. We learn a lot about Walter in the scene in the office with the student. We learn his academic discipline through a poster at the conference.

I don't know how much longer it will be in Anchorage.

Seven Minute Trip to Thailand

OK, here's the video. It's long, Seven minutes or so. I really did cut a lot out. But it gives you a lot more of the sense of being at the Consecration Festival at the Temple last Saturday night.



The last minute is worth waiting for or skipping ahead to.

Morning Birds - Black Crested Bulbul

It's at times like this that I'm jealous of whatever camera Anonymous has at Bird Anonymous. But I've left my ancient pentax and telephoto lens at home because the Canon Powershot fits in my pocket and I can have it conveniently with me all the time. But still, times like this I wish I had a better camera. My pics here are only to help me document that I saw them and to help identify them and I leave the fantastic close ups to Anonymous and the lucky times a bird lands on my nose.

So, here are some sketchy shots from our fourth floor balcony of today's visit by the Black Crested bulbul. Also saw to greater racket tailed drongos fly by. Thought maybe they were the ones making the the two toned doorbell like call in the video. But a little googling got me to Dave Farrow's incredible pages on SoundSnap which have different calls for that drongo.

So turn on the video and listen to the bird calls while you look at the bulbul shots. And you can go here for some better shots of the black crested bulbul.







It's in the middle, just to the left on the branch in the middle of the tree. You can double click all of these to enlarge them a lot.

AIFF: A Taxi to the Dark Side

[March 2, 2008: Taxi didn't win the best doc at the Anchorage International Film Festival, but it did win the Academy Award. Gibney sold the broadcast rights to the Discovery Channel, but they decided not to show it. But they did sell it to HBO which plans to show it in September.]

I began this about 2pm Sunday but I didn’t have wifi access.

I still need to post on last night’s showing of Joe Strummer. I’m at OutNorth now where the power went out during a showing of Taxi to the Dark Side. We’d seen about 85 minutes of it so we had enough to be pretty incensed (about the content of the movie, not the power outage.)

"Taxi" discusses an Afghan villager who manages to save enough to buy a taxi. He hasn't had the taxi long when he disappears. It turns out he was arrested and imprisoned at American run Baghran prison. A reporter manages to find his family and is shown the documentation they were given with the body. Cause of death, marked by the American doctor, was "homicide."


The power has just come back on so Autism the Musical should be starting.



Many films (there were a bunch in the animation show) later:

The movie interviews guards who were at Baghran at the time of the death as well as senior military officials, journalists, and military attorneys. I try to be objective and even handed. I said to myself, “Well they could be taking things out of context, they could be slanting this” and they could. But they have interviewed enough people intimately involved in the Baghran and Abu Ghraib prisons and senior military personnel - people who would normally be thought of as pro-Bush Republicans - and what they say is consistent with other disturbing things I’m hearing.

The movie was disturbing in many ways, but I was totally sucked into it. Those who continue to deny that the Cheney administration has authorized - unofficially if not officially - torture have to be basing their beliefs on various ideological and/or emotional bases, not logic or reason. In any case, every American voter should see this movie. If it has serious holes, then go at it. But see the evidence that's out there and make your own conclusions.

The video includes the response to the film of audience member JM. I managed to get him in a shaft of sunlight in the powerless Out North.