Catchup: RBG At Bear Tooth, May Day Tree Invasion In Back Yard,

The much abbreviated (from last year) bike rack at Bear Tooth Cinema was packed when I rode over Sunday to see RBG, the movie about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  What I didn't know about her (well there was a lot of personal stuff too) was the key role she played in winning cases at the Supreme Court that broke barriers for women before she got on the court.

I did think about how conservatives might view this movie.  But then we would probably need a couple of hours to define conservative.  After all, Orin Hatch (certainly we'd classify him as a conservative) seemed convinced (in the movie)  that she was well qualified to be on the bench, even though he didn't agree with her on many issues.  I also wondered how I'd react to a similar film on Antonin Scalia, who also had some screen time in RBG.  I was also encouraged by the scenes of her working in the gym with her personal trainer.

I've written in the past about the May Day Tree (also known as choke cherry) invasion in Anchorage.  They've snuck into our backyard.  Last summer I clipped off the branches of one I discovered blooming profusely on the other side of the fence way in the back.  I had to get all the flowers and put them in the garbage.  I didn't want any stray seeds growing in the yard.  The I let the leaves die and fall off and cut up the branches.  Some I've shown out in the garbage, most I've been able to scatter in pieces around the yard.

I was planning on cutting down the tree, but someone - I'm guessing the utility folks since it was growing into the power line - did that for me.  But what they left has green shoots growing out of it this year.

Blooming May Day tree well hidden on left

There is another one near our deck. Last summer I clipped all the flowers off it as well, but decided to leave it for the rest of last summer because the leaves were green and partially blocked the neighbor's yard.  My plan was to get rid of it this summer.  It's green now - and lovely - with only one bunch of flowers. It's going soon.

 But to my dismay, I found another tree, about 14 feet high - full of flowers.  It's well hidden by the other trees - it's on the left in the picture.  But I can't see it, which is why I didn't spot it last summer I guess.  Our yard is just a normal 1/4 acre city lot, but it has a hill and lots of trees.  But I was checking on what's growing and found it.  So yesterday I clipped all the flowers, put a few in vases in the house and bagged the rest.  Cut off all the branches and I'll cut that one down too.

Cut branches of Choke Cherry (May Day)  flowers

The problem is that these trees, which are not native to Alaska,  thrive in Anchorage.  They grow fast and spread seeds all over choking out native plants.  And they make moose sick.  The older post explains the details and how it kills moose.


There are other invasive species as well.  The one I've come to terms with is the dandelion.  Especially now as the new ones start growing; soft and tender leaves make a nutritious mea.  So I go out and pick very fresh greens for omelets and salads.  Here's some nutritional information from an earlier post.

cooking dandelion greens

I also used dandelions as part of blog contest much earlier in this blog's history.

The Death Of Stalin And a Bit More

I just saw The Death of Stalin.  It was a very disturbing film.  Of course, the topic is disturbing, and so perhaps the film was successful.  The film seemed somehow out of sync.  It was in English - mostly British accents, but Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) had an American accent.  And only vaguely looked like Khrushchev.  It didn't seem right in English.

But even more jarring, it was slapstick.

I know too little (maybe that part was also disturbing) about Stalin's last days and the in-fighting that followed his death to judge whether, in fact, the film makers did a good job of their portrayal.  I certainly have never thought of the Soviet leadership in terms of slapstick.

Later:  I wrote that Wednesday night.  I've let it sit a couple of days until I could learn more about the death of Stalin.  This October 2017 Smithsonian article - which notes the (then) upcoming movie - runs through briefly what's known of the last few days of Stalin's life.  It confirms the 'guys' night' atmosphere portrayed in the movie and also the purge of physicians that made it difficult to find a good doctor to call.  The best doctors had all been sent to the Gulag or were on their way.  One of those surrounding Stalin said something like, "If Stalin lives, then the doctor is a good doctor.  If he dies, then Stalin won't know we picked a bad doctor, but we can have the doctor shot."

But I was also disturbed with myself that night.  The woman next to me kept looking at texts.  The light, right next to me, kept pulling me out of the movie.  It's not that big a deal, but people are told over and over again to shut off their phones, or if there is some possible critical call coming in, to sit where they can easily get out and take the call.  The theater was crowded and aisle seats were full, but generally the balcony has lots of room.  Should I say something to the woman?  Should I say something during the movie?  Should I wait for the movie to be over?  Should I just forget about it?  I try to not be accusatory but I also think people should confront, politely and leaving people an opening, about behavior that tends to disturb others for one's own benefit.

At the end I mentally debated if I should say something.  Finally, I said, quietly to the woman, as politely as I could, "Most people consider checking texts during a movie to be rude."  She looked at me upset and said gently, "Did I disturb you?  I'm very sorry.  I was checking my insulin pump monitor."

Boy did I feel like a jerk and I told her I didn't realize that and was terribly sorry for mentioning it. I tried to be polite about it.  I didn't say anything about her specifically and gave her an opening to explain, which she did.  I never would have known what she was really looking at if I hadn't said anything.  Ideally she could have sat on the aisle with her husband next to her and probably no one would have noticed, but aisle seats probably weren't available.

If she ever reads this, I apologize again and thank her for expanding my awareness and reminding me not to jump to conclusions.

But it's one more reminder how easily people judge others based on appearances plus ignorance.   I try to phrase things in ways that give people an out:  "Sir, it appears you turn indicator light isn't working."  "I bet you didn't realize you dropped this paper."  While such an approach calls attention to a violation of a norm, it also gives the guilty a way to ease out of a potentially sticky confrontation and the innocent a way to explain what really happened.  And the observer a way to avoid getting an angry response or looking really callous and stupid.

I think I should see the film again, but only after I read more about the four men who were vying for power around Stalin at the end.

And for those of you with Netflix, I'd strongly recommend the movie Faces, Places.    It's a French documentary about a young photographer who teams up with a much older photographer as they go around France taking pictures of people, the blowing the pictures up into wall size murals and posting them on structures meaningful to the people in the pictures.  A sweet and imaginative story.

A Serious Life And The Two Horses Of Genghis Kahn

I met Michael Sidney Welch a number of years ago when I taught a class at Olé on blogging.  I insisted that we have it in a computer lab and that everyone would get their own blog in the several weeks we met.  My expertise was just my own blogging experience, but I knew if I just talked and they didn't try it out themselves, it would be really boring.

Just about everyone - I think there were about 20 folks - got a blog up and several have kept those blogs going or got new ones up after that.

Michael is a philosopher.  I see him around town, usually he's with his wife, particularly at the Anchorage International Film Festival.  Recently his wife invited us to a group I can best describe as a movie club.  I mean that in the sense of a book club that watches movies rather than reads books.

This week we met to see "The Two Horses of Genghis Kahn" - a really beautiful Mongolian movie about a woman who travels around Inner and Outer Mongolia in search of the lost lyrics of a song her grandmother taught her.  She knows some of them, but there were more inscribed in a horse head violin that was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.  She still had the broken off horse head and sought someone to make a new violin for it while she went searching elders for the missing words.

The broad landscapes and the search for lost culture are familiar to Alaskans and it provoked a lot of discussion about cultural change, both natural and. . .   I'm sitting here thinking about the right word and I'm not succeeding - unnatural isn't right.  Forced comes to mind - as when one culture tries to wipeout another culture by banning the language and music and other ways the culture is transmitted from generation to generation.  And we could talk a long time by what 'natural' cultural change entails.  We talked about how younger generations live in different worlds than their parents' generation.  But is this really natural?  Or is it a product of the industrial revolution that fosters so much rapid change in the last few centuries?

I haven't found any serious reviews, but this one gives an introduction to the film and the director.
Anchorage's Loussac Library has a copy. Youtube has a tease that looks like the whole copy from Netflix, but it doesn't seem to be so.  It apparently has been on Netflix (couldn't find it today) and may be on Prime.   It has a much slower pace than US viewers are used to.  Here's a preview, though we watched it in the original (which I assume was Mongolian, but may have been a dialect) with English subtitles.



As we were leaving Michael told me he has his newish blog - A Serious Life - up now.  When I say he's a philosopher, I'm not joking.  This is not for the Tweet at Heart.  I'll also link it in the right column, since some of the bloggers I've had there have been, shall we say, preoccupied with other things than their blogs.

For those who make it this far, the title of the movie is also the title of the song Uma is seeking.

Money, Amygdala, Adults, Youth, Truth, Fiction, And Violence

We were talking about students from Parkland, Florida rising up in protest, and my daughter said, well, they've been reading books and watching movies that feature young heroes fighting against corrupt adult regimes.

A little later I saw this tweet:

adult fiction: I am riddled w ennui shall I cheat on my wife perhaps

YA fiction: overthrow govt and also kill its grasping maoist successor

— Anthony Oliveira (@meakoopa) December 18, 2016

Nothing can be boiled down to a simple answer, but it is worth playing with ideas to see where they lead.   This post is just thinking out loud.

Capitalism reduces everything to money.  The corporation's bottom line is all that matters.  The only way other values - family, morality, nature - matter in a corporate world is if they impact that bottom line.

Corporations have been by-passing reason and rationality for decades with ads that play directly to people's emotions.  They trigger buying by appealing to the amygdala, sometimes known as the reptilian brain, or primal brain.

'The primal brain is also in charge of, what are often referred to as, the four Fs: Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and… Reproduction' . . " (From Interaction Design Foundation.)

 From Brand Strategy company Tronviggroup:

"The reptilian brain first wants to know if the thing is threatening or desirable (edible, sexually attractive). It ascertains this from what it can see, smell, taste and touch, not what it can deduct by rational means. All these evaluations occur without recourse to the rational mind.

The limbic brain then responds emotionally and asks, “Is this my friend? Can I put my trust here?” This is the essential brand level stuff that generates loyalty, as discussed in The Difference Between Marketing and Branding."

So car companies, food companies, drug companies all get us to buy things not by logic, but by emotion.  And for entertainment companies, emotion is part of the product itself.  So Disney, Weinstein, Viacom, and others use violence and sex to sell movies. [From the Weinstein article cited below.]

". .  one entertainment marketer with 35 years of experience [said]: 'Abject violence has proven successful, and as long as it is, it will be produced because it’s profitable. It’s the accepted way of life rather than asking is this the right thing to do?'”

This is supported by studies that find a correlation between violence and film profit, though one study found that sex and nudity decreased profitability, but

"violence and frightening/tense scenes, were much more likely to predict financial success."

Then there's this interesting quote from Harvey Weinstein in 2014:

“He spoke about his own children and how he no longer wanted to feel like a hypocrite. “The change starts here,” the man who produced Quentin Tarantino’s violent Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and D’jango Unchained told Morgan. “It has already. For me, I can’t do it. I can’t make one movie and say this is what I want for my kids and then just go out and be a hypocrite.” 

So if violence works for film makers, why shouldn't it work for news programs?

Entertainment corporations nowadays own companies that produce the news.  Disney owns ABC.  21st  Century Fox owns Fox News.   One wonders about the amount of time that the news shows spend covering school and other mass shootings.  Particularly compared to  other deaths - like car deaths or heart disease.

Are real life shootings just a form of entertainment for the news industry now?  Certainly were used to sell newspapers all along.

Clearly shootings are important news content to be covered.  But are they becoming the real life entertainment like that portrayed in The Hunger Games?

Perhaps the students see their tragedy as offered up for profit - certainly for the gun companies if not for the media.  And are the students responding to the youth fiction and superhero movies leading them to see themselves as the necessary saviors of humanity against a corrupt and unfair world created and controlled by adults?

‘We’re Children. You Guys Are the Adults.’

First the students said this, demanding the adults take action.  But seeing the adults squirm rather than act, the kids are seeing their own need to take action.

The Right immediately cranked up a conspiracy campaign claiming the students were 'crisis actors' controlled by a left-wing conspiracy.  From the LA Times:

"The video suggested that he is actually a performer, paid by sinister left-wing forces to advocate repeal of the 2nd Amendment. . .

"Effective smear campaigns don't just tell you what you want to hear. They're also arousing. Unlike harassment and bullying, but like gory and pornographic images (or drugs like meth and cocaine), attack propaganda shoots straight to the limbic system where our baser nature resides: fear, anger, sex and the instinct to protect children.
The Hogg video hit the spot, stimulating viewers through the crude intoxication of fury. No need to feel sympathy for this survivor. He's a player in a vast conspiracy. . . 

"The video simply excited the hindbrain more than the demonstrations, and we couldn't get enough of it.
Indeed, the attack on Hogg created a taste for more of the same, or at least YouTube did. As Paul Lewis observed in the Guardian, YouTube with its "Up Next" algorithm rewards consumers of pornography with more pornography, and propaganda with more propaganda."

Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook are also businesses that profit by people being punched in the amygdala.

But I do hope that people with experience and expertise in administration and mobilization do come to assist these kids, because passion gets you started, but organization gets you to the finish line.


Extra:
This is related but seemed to distract from the topic, so let me play it out here.

I've been wondering about how much sex and nudity in movies is there simply because directors took advantage of their power over actors to get them to take off their clothes and simulate sex acts.  With the Weinstein aftermath, that seems a lot more likely.  And are those who gain power in the film industry necessarily Type A personalities, just to get into those positions?  And are they more inclined to make movies that are full of ways to kill people?  And would average people be as imaginative in how to use guns if they didn't have so many role models on television, video games, and movies?

Babylon Berlin (Netflix) Looks At 1929 Berlin As Democracy Struggles To Survive

Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch)

This tight German series focuses on a Köln (Cologne) police officer, Gereon Rath, transferred to Berlin.  There are lots of plots and subplots.   A secret army unit is rebuilding the German air force clandestinely in Lipetsk outside of Moscow and plotting with a rich industrialist.  Trotskyites have brought a train full of poison gas and gold to Berlin.  There's factions inside the police department, and everyone seems to cross paths in the Armenian's nightclub/whore house, which gives the Armenian useful knowledge and power.

The Weimar Republic is only a few years old as Germany tries to recover from WWI and the sanctions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, which, forbade Germany from having an air force.

Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries)

There are lots of other characters with rich parts, but the other key character is Charlotte Ritter, living in a wretched flat with difficult relatives, making ends meet working at the Armenians nightclub and aspiring to become a police detective in a force where women are only in supportive roles.

The New York Times writes:

This new epic crime drama, set during the Weimar Republic, the chaotic 15-year era that preceded the Third Reich, is widely predicted to become an international television sensation. Reportedly the most expensive German-language TV show ever produced,  . . .

"The makers of “Babylon Berlin,” however, were interested in exploring the prelude to the Third Reich. 'All these people didn’t fall from the sky as Nazis,' Mr. Handloegten said. 'They had to become Nazis. . .'

“In 1929, there were no Nazis in Berlin,” said the producer Stefan Arndt. “You cannot see or even smell that there’s danger coming.”

The acting is superb and the story gripping, with a dash of history just before the collapse into fascism.   A big hit since it began airing in Germany last October, it's on Netflix now.

[Screenshots turned out black, so I took photos of the screen to get the images.  These stills don't do these two charming actors justice.  And if you're having trouble seeing links to the NYTimes and other papers, try opening a "new private window" in your browser and pasting in the URL.]

Two Movies Two Nights, One About Love, One About Anger - Naming and Billboards (Updated)

Monday night we saw Call Me By Your Name, a movie as devoid of violence as you can get.  There was blood - Elia got a nose bleed while eating dinner.  Oscar scraped his stomach in a bike accident.  If there was more than that, I don't remember.  The movie was about love in many different forms from love among family members, friends, and sexual love.  It's about intelligent, well educated, multilingual people interacting not just with civility, but with affection.  It all takes place in a lushly sensual summer in Northern Italy.

The movie has gotten a lot of praise.  The New Yorker has one gushing review and one thoroughly nasty review.  It wasn't merely critical, but relentlessly churlish.  The first paragraph ends with:

"Elio affirms that his parents were aware of the relationship and offered their approval, to which Oliver responds, “You’re so lucky; my father would have carted me off to a correctional facility.” And that’s the premise of the film: in order to have anything like a happy adolescence and avoid the sexual repression and frustration that seem to be the common lot, it’s essential to pick the right parents. The movie is about, to put it plainly, being raised right."

I had thought about how loving Elio and his parents were with each other, and as well as I got along with my parents, this family really had a great rapport.  But to say that the movie was all about being raised by the right parents, hints that perhaps something about the warmth of the family irritated Brody, the reviewer, enough to color his whole view of the movie.  There were things he said that had  merit.  He basically said it was all a tourist promotion scheme for Northern Italy, and I did think, when I saw the waterfall, about all the people who will add it to their itineraries when the go to Italy.  And I thought about his criticism of the camera shots.  There were no point of view shots - and I realized I couldn't remember seeing what was happening from the eyes of the main characters. (I'd have to see it again to be sure.  I'm not sure it's true.  We do see Oscar's arrival from the upstairs window where Elio is, for example.)  That criticism also made me feel sorry for someone so steeped in film making that he sees the film making instead of the film.

I did raise the question to my wife about Armie Hammer's name.  I joked that he was the grandson of the oil man Armand Hammer.  It turns out, according to The Times of Israel that he's the great grandson of Armand Hammer.  The review focuses on the Jewish themes of the movie.


Tuesday night we saw Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a movie full of violence, foul language, and anger.  The film erases the idea of good guys and bad guys - everyone is flawed, and there's anger deep in all of them.  With one exception.  It doesn't paint a pretty picture of the United States, but it does force anyone watching it to think about our uncivil society and the troubled lives of people who never experienced dependable, unconditioned love.  This is, for me, a movie about anger and how it causes us to do stupid things, to hurt other people as a way of trying to lessen our own pain.

All that said, Three Billboards got a slew of Golden Globe awards Sunday night and Call Me By Your Name got shut out, though it did have a lot of nominations.

This post is for Casey, but he's probably already asleep.

[UPDATE Jan 10, 2017:  I've had a night to sleep on this second film.  What hadn't quite formed itself into words last night:  This is a fairy tale, constructed to make a point about the destructiveness of anger and the importance of forgiveness.  The characters and the town are less real people than constructs to teach a lesson, a parable perhaps.  That's the unease I walked away from the theater with.  Will it work?  I don't know.  This town is in the same state as Ferguson and racism in the police station isn't below the surface.  While partisan politics aren't mentioned, this town clearly voted for Trump and Mildred is probably one of the few who didn't.  The town is divided between troubled whites and others - blacks, a gay guy, and a dwarf.  I suspect the obviousness of that will have many Trump voters immune to the message about the destructiveness of anger and hate.  It will come across like Clinton's deplorable comment did.  With the exception of one (very cool) white resident of Ebbing, the only people who supported Mildred were the outsiders - blacks, a gay, a midget.   But perhaps people who originally side with Mildred will recognize their own obsessiveness.

In a SlashFilm interview, director McDonagh says the screenplay was written eight years ago, so it's not about Trump and current politics, but it doesn't say how much time he spent in small town Missouri.  (Sam Rockwell, in a Vanity Fair interview says the movie was filmed in Asheville, North Carolina, but he spent time in Missouri doing ride-alongs with police.) So I simply don't know how well this reflects the people in a town like this.

All that said, each film maker, each author should make the story they have in them.  Short of intentionally manipulative propaganda, it's not their responsibility how people react.   Riling people up is not a bad thing.  so long as they think about the issues raised and their own positions.]

Famous People Born 1918 Part 2: ""Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says 'Make Me Feel Important.' Not only will you succeed in business, you will succeed in life."

Science

It was a good year for Nobel Prize winners.  (There were two Peace Prize winners in yesterday's post.)

Header	Died	Comments
Richard Feynman	1988	Nobel Prize Physics
Julian Schwinger	1994	"Indeed, relativistic quantum mechanics - the union of the complementarity  principle of Bohr with the relativity principle of Einstein - is quantum field theory. " *
Gertrude Elion	1999	Nobel Prize Medicine - Leukemia, Herpes Drug Pioneer
Franco Modigliani	2003	Nobel Prize Economics
Frederick Sanger	2013	Nobel Prize Chemistry 1958 and 1980
Katherine G. Johnson	**	NASA Mathematician portrayed in "Hidden Figures"
Jens C. Skou	**	Nobel Prize Chemistry

*From Schwinger's Nobel lecture in 1965

**As I write this, Katherine G. Johnson and Jens C. Skou appear to be still alive.  Johnson's 100th birthday will be next August 26,  Skou's will be next October 8

Here's some video that shows why Feynman was such a popular physicist.

xxx

[UPDATE Jan 6, 2017:  Barbara Carlson points out in the comments that this video doesn't download.  I've checked and I have the right embed code, so don't know why it's not working.  Here's the link:

https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_feynman?utm_campaign=tedspread--b&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare  ]


Business

	Died	Comments
Sam Walton	1992	Founder of Walmart and Sam's Club
Mary Kay Ash	2001	Founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics

The headline quote comes from Mary Kay Ash.  I think it's a great way to view the world.  I've recommended that we all treat everyone we meet or see on the street as if they were actual or future Nobel Prize winners or US presidents.  (The presidency will regain its luster post eventually.)  Here suggestion is more direct.  But it's only good advice if it's genuine and not a sales strategy.

Read the link above that tells the rosy story of Mary Kay Ash.  But then also read this story that argues Mary Kay's company doesn't do its women salesforce nearly as much good as officially claimed.


Film

	Died	Comments
William Holden	1981	Academy & Emmy Award Winning Actor
Rita Hayworth	1987	Dancer, Pinup, Actor
Art Carney	2003	Academy Award Winning Actor - Honeymooners Actor
Ingmar Bergman	2007	Academy Award Winning Swedish Director

Below is a short homage of sorts to Ingmar Bergman, De Düve.  I can't resist.  I remember first seeing this in a theater and slowly figuring out what was going on.






Sports

	Died	Comments
Bob Feller	2010	Cleveland Pitcher, Hall of Famer
Leroy Walker	2012	First Black To Lead US Olympic Committee, Coach US Olympic Team

Religion

	Died	Comments
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi	2008	Transcendental Meditation Guru To Beatles and world
Oral Roberts	2009	Pentacostal Televangelist, Founder Oral Roberts University
Billy Graham	*[2018]	"The Pope Of Protestant America" Religious Advisor to Presidents

*As I write this, Billy Graham is still alive. [UPDATED Feb 23, 2018:  Billy Graham passed away February 21, 2018.]



A Few Others

These don't fit into neat categories.

	Died	Comments
Frank M. Johnson	1999	White Alabama Judge Who Ruled Against Segregation
Ann Landers	2002	Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer - Advice Columnist
Jack Paar	2004	Investor and Host Of The Late Night Show
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	2008	Nobel Prize in Literature, Expelled from Soviet Union
Abigail Van Buren	2013	Pauline Ester Friedman Phillips, and Twin Sister of Ann Landers

Here's Jack Paar interviewen Judy Garland:



As I mentioned in Famous People Born In 2018 Part I, all these folks, had they grown up in the same neighborhood, would have been in the same class at school.

In case you haven't figured it out, in each category, people are listed in the order that they died.

How To Get More Variety From Netflix And Follow Up On Scam Film Festivals

"Netflix is always using algorithms to help you find the best movies based on your taste, but what if you want something completely different?"

So starts an article at Data Hand, which then goes on to list lots of codes that get you to very specific genres.

Hidden Netflix codes to help you find movies Netflix doesn't know you might like.

Here's are a few examples:

Anime Features: 3063
Anime Horror: 10695
Anime Sci-Fi: 2729
Anime Series: 6721
Art House Movies: 29764
Asian Action Movies: 77232
Australian Movies: 5230
B-Horror Movies: 8195
Baseball Movies: 12339
Basketball Movies: 12762
Belgian Movies: 262
Biographical Documentaries: 3652
Biographical Dramas: 3179
Boxing Movies: 12443
British Movies: 10757
British TV Shows: 52117
Campy Movies: 1252
Children & Family Movies: 783
Chinese Movies: 3960

Dramas based on Books: 4961
Dramas based on real life: 3653
Dutch Movies: 10606
Eastern European Movies: 5254
Education for Kids: 10659
Epics: 52858
Experimental Movies: 11079
Faith & Spirituality: 26835
Faith & Spirituality Movies: 52804
Family Features: 51056
Fantasy Movies: 9744
Film Noir: 7687
Food & Travel TV: 72436  

Martial Arts Movies: 8985
Martial Arts, Boxing & Wrestling: 6695
Middle Eastern Movies: 5875
Military Action & Adventure: 2125
Military Documentaries: 4006
Military Dramas: 11
Military TV Shows: 25804
Miniseries: 4814
Mockumentaries: 26
Monster Movies: 947
Movies based on children's books: 10056

Sports & Fitness: 9327
Sports Comedies: 5286
Sports Documentaries: 180
Sports Dramas: 7243
Sports Movies: 4370
Spy Action & Adventure: 10702
Spy Thrillers: 9147
Stage Musicals: 55774
Stand-up Comedy: 11559
Steamy Romantic Movies: 35800
Steamy Thrillers: 972

The numbers are the code you put in, not the number of films in that category.


On another track, though still related to films, back in 2009 I wrote about a copycat film festival that mimicked the Anchorage International Film Festival's name, but showed no films and had no Alaska connection at all except for a post office box that forwarded submissions somewhere.  That post, and a threat from the festival's lawyer for using the word scam in my post, led me to several other posts about legitimate film festivals and more questionable ones festivals.

A recent piece in a German film site - Shortfilm.de - cited one of my posts and went on to talk about the proliferation of festivals that take advantage of film makers.  It looks in depth at the  the “International Filmmaker Festival of World Cinema” in Berlin.  Here's the English version.  Or, if you prefer, the original German version.

If Alabamans Had Seen "The Shape Of Water"," Doug Jones Would Have Won By A Landslide

The workers came to replace the popcorn ceiling at my mom's house yesterday - we weren't expecting them until Tuesday, but they called Thursday and said, "how bout we start tomorrow?"  So my daughter's family we're getting ready to go back to Seattle.  I was busily packing things and moving furniture to the garage, before the workers came.  I dropped the family at the airport at 2pm (really hard to see my little angel go, but we'll catch up with them in Seattle in a few weeks), and then rushed to meet my college roommate for a late lunch before he went to a UCLA basketball game.  (We did that together in the Golden Age of UCLA basketball in the mid-sixties.)  Then we were free and wanted to let the workers do whatever they were doing without us.  So we checked the films showing at the theater nearby.

I'd seen the LA Times Billboard Critics Choices for Best Films yesterday.  I tend to agree with Kenneth Turan, so I wanted to see his top pick, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri.

I've put the six critics' choices into a table.  You can see their picks for other categories as well here.

	Chang LATimes	Turan LATimes	O'Neil Gold Derby	Thompson Indiewire	Sperling Vanity Fair	Whipp The Envelope
Call Me By Your Name	1	8	5	6	3	9
Darkest Hour	2	4	4	4	2	5
Dunkirk	3	3	3	1	1	4
The Florida Project	4		7			1
Get Out	5			7	4	6
Lady Bird	6	10	8	5	5	7
Mudbound	7	5		9
The Post	8	6	1		6
The Shape of Water	9	2	2	3	7	3
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri	10	1	9	2	8	2
Phantom Thread		7	6
The Big Sick		9		8		8
Blade Runner 2049				10		10
Detroit			10

[The numbers show the order the critics listed them.  I'm assuming they ranked them with their favorites on top.]

But Three Billboards had already begun, so we went for The Shape of Water.

NOTE:  I'd suggest going to see The Shape of Water without reading anything about it.  Let it unfold without any preconceptions or expectations.

I sat there in amazement through the whole film.  It's was a totally unexpected story, a little bizarre, but I got past that pretty quickly.  I'm just beginning to think about the symbolic meaning of the story.  This definitely goes to on my top movies of the year - though admittedly I haven't seen too many on the list (Florida Project, Get Out, and Mudbound).  This one is so original and powerful and good;  it's why I rely on Kenneth Turan's judgment.  So now I have to see Three Billboards.

So What Does Doug Jones Have To Do With This?

One of the actors is Doug Jones - like the new Senator from Alabama.  And it's no spoiler if I tell you that we never see Doug Jones' face, so it is possible it's the same person.  And if it had been shown in Alabama, I suspect many of the people would have been impressed by the character Doug Jones played, and voted for him.  Though I can imagine some of those folks who take the bible literally might have some serious problems with the Doug Jones character.

Alabama Means Red States No Longer Reliably Red

Sure, this was an exceptional race with a particularly awful Republican candidate.  And 48% of Alabamans still voted for Moore.  But let's look at the demographics from the Washington Post.

Now let's look at Alaska demographics:

White:  66.7%
Black    3.6%
Asian    5.4%
American Indian or Alaskan Nativee  14.8%
Pacific Islander - 1%
Two or more races - 7.3%
Other   - 1.7%

These are 2010 stats.  Things have gotten more diverse since.  And the Alabama numbers are just people who voted today while Alaska numbers are the whole population, not just voter aged.

65% of Alabama's voters were white, and in 2010 66% of Alaska's population was white.

Anchorage is already a blue city as of the last mayoral and assembly election.

There are lots of differences between Alaska and Alabama besides the middle letters.
Alabama's non-white vote is mostly black, Alaska's is more diverse.
Roy Moore was a particularly terrible candidate.

The Post article broke the elections down by a lot of different factors.  It's worth checking.  I didn't see anything about first time voters.  But I suspect this election will provide great motivation for first time voters to see that their vote does really count.

But let's also look at age of voters - this is really telling.

But Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski better not take Alaska for granted.  Alabama proves what new voters can do, even in the reddest state in the union.  Red states are no longer reliably red.

[UPDATE 11:30 pm - We just watched Mudbound on Netflix.  An excellent way to bring meaning to the Alabama election. It takes place in Mississippi, but close enough.]

AIFF 2017: Some Of The Film Makers I've Met This Weekend

It's been a film-packed weekend.  Not much time to post about everything, but here are some of the people I had a chance to meet.  Meant to get this up already, but busy trying to catch up with movies, blogging, sleep, and the rest of my life.

Emily Pando (director) and Jesse Amorratanasuchad (cinematographer - I think I got that right) whose short "8 A.M." showed Saturday morning in the program Love and Pain.  It shows again Friday Dec 8 at 7pm at the AK Exp Theater.

"8 A.M." plays on one well used trope - the alarm clock and groggy sleeper - and one well used premise - the audience knows that someone is going to die but the characters don't.  But in this case they use an incredible set of twins who act as the Greek Chorus.  A very well done film with an important message.  You can see a little more - including a screenshot with the twins - on my Shorts in Competition post.

I met Jason Mott between films in a film maker meet and greet session.  It turns out he's the winner of the film festival's screen writing contest.  His script is called Endings LLC about a company that helps plan people's demise.

Jason's from North Carolina and is a novelist.  He mentioned two books - The Returned and Wonder of All Things.  I looked them up and they are available at Loussac.  Actually, he was being modest.  There are several more titles with his name on them.

Here's AIFF director Rebecca Pottebaum hamming it up with volunteer Pablo who sold tickets this weekend at the Alaska Experience Theater..









And here's John Zahs, the subject of the documentary Saving Brinton which played at the Bear Tooth Sunday evening.  It was a great film festival film that looked at John's successful efforts to save and restore films of the Brinton family that were found when the estate was sold.  These are films from the first decade of the 20th Century and some are the only existing copies.  I've got video of his Q&A after the showing along with some of his saved movies.  He said it would be ok to post them here.  So when I catch up, I'll get them up.  You can see more about the film and the trailer at my post on the Docs In Competition.

And, again I think I have this right, here's Dita Gruze who is the co-producer and film editor for the documentary A to B Roller Ski about a Latvian Olympic champion's trip from the Arctic to Baja on roller skis.  It plays again Friday Dec 8 at 9pm at the AK Experience Theater.













Here's AIFF President Rich Curtner (right) introducing Yochi Executive Producer Craig Holden for Q&A after the Shorts program Global Village in which Yochi played.



There's more on video, but that takes me a little longer to turn around.

Seattle Day With Family and Friends, A little Wyeth Time, A Movie, and More Food

We took the 8:45 am ferry from Bainbridge Island into Seattle Wednesday.  The sun was sneaking past the clouds, it felt much warmer than it's been.  (A sign at one point said 66˚F.)

The day held promise.  My son and family were headed into Seattle to see an old friend and our other granddaughter was with us all too.  We were headed to see other friends.

The sky was mostly cloudy, but another ferry headed back to Bainbridge was sunlit.

We walked from the terminal.  Caught a bus.  Then took the monorail.  M is a big vehicle fan at 3 years old and hadn't been on a monorail.

Then another bus and a walk through the park to the Elliot Bay bookstore where we were meeting.  A lot of political stuff on the new books counter.

Our friends got us at the bookstore, the kids were at a story hour and we said good bye.

First to the Seattle Art Museum to see the Andrew Wyeth exhibit.

At first I was conflicted - I wanted to just talk to our friends, but I also wanted to absorb the Wyeth exhibit.  I must admit, I haven't been that big a fan of Wyeth.  The stuff was nice, but didn't really talk to me.  But I saw a lot of different styles and was much more impressed.  For instance, this early water color lobster is NOT something I would have identified as a Wyeth.

This picture of Siri is more familiar.  I couldn't help thinking about the current debates on sexual assault and also on child porn when I saw the nudes of Siri.  From a 1981 Time magazine article on Wyeth:

". . . teenage Siri Erickson, another Cushing resident, from 1967 to 1972. The paintings of her were also withheld, until she turned 21, and their release in 1975 caused a little of the same stir that the Helgas have. Siri, now 32 and the mother of two girls, recalls no embarrassment or awe about posing nude for Wyeth when she was 13. 'He would get totally involved in his work. It was as if you were a tree,' she says. 'He's a normal, everyday person. He does paint good, but he's just Andy.'"

By some standards, a picture of a nude 13 year old would be considered child porn.  By other standards it's great art.  I think we need to be much more discerning than we are at the moment about what we are seeing and how we classify it.  This CBC article talks about the fine line between sexting and child porn.  And this discussion of Wyeth's nudes is on the Catholic online forum Suscipe Domine.


Here are two folks regarding another Wyeth painting.

The exhibit was well laid out - with introductory posters discussing different groups of pictures.  My initial feelings of being overwhelmed lessened and I could wanter and view.  Sometimes looking at the descriptions of individual paintings, other times not.  While we ought to be able to appreciate a painting just by looking at, in theory, the background information helps me get a deeper sense of the each piece

But after two hours or so we were hungry.  And while I wished I could wonder around and look at other parts - like this modern section with this Andy Warhol "Double Elvis" . . . I too was interested in eating.






Someone wants to go to Boka to eat.  When we got there, we found out it is now All Water, in the lobby of Hotel 1000.  I was curious about the name All Water, when P pointed out this explanation on the menu.


Since the picture isn't that clear (but it is if you click on it), I'll help you out.

"In the 1880s the all water route would take prospectors from Seattle across the northern Pacific to the Alaskan coast.  In  the gold rush era this route created the trade in salmon and halibut industries. . . " 

It was a little after 2pm and we were told lunch was until 2pm and Happy Hour began at 3.  When I said, "So this is the unhappy hour?" we were told, "I'm sure we can get the kitchen to still do lunch."
It's only been open a few weeks.  We were all happy with our choices.





Then the group agreed to go see The Florida Project.  By this time, we'd had clouds, sunshine, drizzle, rain, more clouds, and more sunshine.  As we walked to the SIFF theater the sun was out and it was raining.  And a vibrant rainbow cleaned up the drab buildings.






 There was a lot I liked about The Florida Project, particularly the visual richness and the way the young kids had adventures.  I wandered my neighborhood like that with friends and wee also got into all sorts of mischief.  But the brashness of the mom, which got her out of some jams, made other ones worse, was painful to watch. Willem Dafoe's character Bobby was wonderful.  Justin Chang at the LA Times liked it a lot more than I did.

And finally we wandered down to "a Czech German beerhall."

Through these doors we walked into another world - a big warehouse like space with rows of communal wooden tables, a live band that was playing jazz (not polkas) when we walked in, and lots of beer.

Down the table from us the guys had 2 litre boots of beer.  (The two refers to the number of liters not the number of boots.)   Queen Ann Beer Hall is the official name, but doesn't really capture the mood for me.



Later J and I got in a good walk back to the ferry after rescuing our grandson's jacket from a restaurant where he'd left it.

A fun and busy day with family and good friends.

AIFF 2017: Docs In Competition - Saving Brinton, Over The River, The Last Animals, The Cage Fighter, Among Wolves, Alphago

Here are the Anchorage International Film Festival in Competition.

Documentaries are non-fiction feature length films.  "In Competition" means, at AIFF,  these films have been selected by the programmers to be eligible for awards at the festival.  Another way of saying that is these are the films that the programmers collectively liked the best.   There are usually other films that appealed more to individual programmers, this list is there collective choices.

 I haven't seen any of these.  My goal here is simply to make it easy for people to know what's coming at the festival beginning December 1.

My experiences is that the documentary category tends to be very strong at the Anchorage International Film Festival.  They're in alphabetical order.

Docs in Competition	Director	Country	Length
AlphaGo	Greg Kohs	USA	1:30:28
Among Wolves	Shawn Convey	USA	1:27:00
The Last Animals	Kate Brooks	USA	1:31:50
Over the River	Vanina Lappa	Italy	1:14:00
Saving Brinton	Morgan White	USA	1:27:30

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AlphaGo
Greg Kohs
USA
1:30:28 
Showing:  Tuesday, Dec 5, Bear Tooth, 8pm
Sat. Dec 9, Alaska Exp Small 7pm


This appears to be a man against machine movie - can a computer beat the best human go players?


Here's the Director's Statement:  (Watch for the Alaska connection)

"Early in my career I worked at NFL Films. That experience, of being able to see the drama on the field while having access to the people and stories unfolding off the field, has always been a fascinating intersection for me. In my recent film, The Great Alone, I was able to explore the epic scale of the Iditarod through the comeback story of a single competitor. In AlphaGo, the competition between man and machine provided a similar backdrop, albeit with far larger consequences. 

The complexity of the game of Go, combined with the technical depth of an emerging technology like artificial intelligence seemed like it might create an insurmountable barrier for a film like this. The fact that I was so innocently unaware of Go and AlphaGo actually proved to be beneficial. It allowed me to approach the action and interviews with pure curiosity, the kind that helps make any subject matter emotionally accessible. 

Unlike the film’s human characters – who turn their curious quest for knowledge into an epic spectacle with great existential implications, who dare to risk their reputation and pride to contest that curiosity – AI might not yet possess the ability to empathize. ​But it can teach us profound things about our humanness – the way we play board games, the way we think and feel and grow.​ It’s a deep, vast premise, but my hope is, by sharing it, we can discover something within ourselves we never saw before."

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Image from Among Wolves Kickstarter page

Among Wolves
Shawn Convey
USA
1:27:00
Showing:  Monday, Dec 4, Bear Tooth 8:15pm 

From the beginning of the trailer, my thought was:  This is not the movie the title suggests to most Alaskans. 

This is a movie about veterans of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, specifically in Bosnia.  Here's elaboration on that from the Among Wolves  website:

"A paramilitary leader at the young age of 20, Lija helped defend the town while neighbors fell to the invading forces. Now he heads the Wolves, a motorcycle club that resembles the stereotype in rough image only. Under his leadership, this wild crew has become a positive force for good with a self-defined humanitarian focus. As their numbers grow, so do their successes, like holding charity events for the neediest in their community and securing badly needed supplies for hospitals in Livno an Srebrenica. 

One mission, though, rich in symbolism, captures their spirit more than any other. On what was once the front line, they now tend to and defend a herd of wild horses that society has similarly deemed expendable. A harsh environment, poachers, and urbanization continually threaten the herd. Stirred by their strength, the Wolves are determined to control their own fate and finally emerge from the shadow of war."

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From The Last Animals website

The Last Animals
Kate Brooks
USA
1:31:50
Showing:  Tuesday, Dec 5  Bear Tooth  5:30 pm

This is a movie about how rhinos and elephants are being slaughtered for their horns and tusks.  Hard to watch stuff.  As I wander the internet reading about this film, it's clear it's doing a good job of marketing itself.  The website is slick and full of gorgeous photos. There's even a piece about it in Glamor, not where you normally see stories about film festival documentaries.

"Kate Brooks may be missing the fear gene: At age 20 she was infiltrating state orphanages in Russia to document child abuse, work she published in The Boston Globe and *Newsweek*. By 25 she was capturing the American invasion of Iraq for Time. Ever since, she’s lived in war zones, sending back images of bombings in Pakistan, conflict in Syria, and amputees in Afghanistan.
In 2010 she finally took a much-needed vacation and headed to a national wildlife reserve in Kenya. “I was lounging by an infinity pool,” remembers Brooks, now 39, “and out on the horizon this herd of elephants walked by. It realigned everything inside of me. I left knowing I wanted to give the animals back some of the peace they gave me.” She returned to work, but the memory of those roaming giants stayed with her, and in 2012 she began looking into why such a staggering number—30,000—are killed every year for their tusks. When she learned the reason was related to terrorism, she set out to tell the world. The result is her eye-opening documentary, The Last Animals, which takes viewers on a journey into the violent epicenter of the ivory trade."

I doubt though that it will be screening at the White House any time soon, given that the Trump administration has reversed the ban on importing elephant ivory from Africa trophy hunts.

Here's a bit from Screen Daily:

"What distinguishes The Last Animals from other films on the subject (in particular last year’s Netflix doc The Ivory Game) is the raw urgency of Brooks’ direct conflict reportage: she is a war correspondent who lets us understand that what is happening here is nothing short of an all-out battle. This investigative mission, coupled with her painterly eye, elevates this doc – for the most part – into something filmic, often elegiac, and hopefully galvanising. After all, who are we, she asks, as guardians of this planet, if we allow the slaughter of these mystical, beautiful beasts to continue."

I couldn't find a trailer, but maybe this interview at the 2016 Women in the World Summit in New York City with the director Kate Brooks about the film is a better introduction.







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[UPDATE Nov 29, 2017:  I have a new post on this film with a video of my Skype conversation with film maker Vanina Lappa.]

Over the River 
Vanina Lappa
Italy
1:14:00
Showing: Sunday, Dec 3, Alaska Exp Small, 4pm
Sunday, Dec. 9 Alaska Exp Small 5pm

I've learned from the director via FB, that this film has been seen in Europe and Kathmandu, the showing in Anchorage will be its North American premiere.

As I looked this film up, I forgot we are in the documentary category.  It has the look of a feature.  But it's not.  Which will make it interesting.

From Film Italy:

"'We are too old, that's the problem. We look at the moon, look at too many things ...'. So it's been said to Angelo, a young waiter who lives in Caselle in Pittari, a small town that lies on a river basin Bussento in southern Cilento, at the foot of a sacred mountain, where there is the St. Michael's cave, inside which , the legend says, there's an ancient guarded secret."

Here's from an Italian review of the movie, you can get the whole review here:

"Angelo, giovane cameriere di Caselle in Pittari, nel Cilento meridionale, vive nel tempo sospeso e fuori dalla storia che sembra caratterizzare l’intero paese. La comunità, ancorata a rituali più o meno antichi, è insieme nutrice e gabbia per il giovane; e tale è anche per il suo omonimo Angelo, barista più anziano di lui, con uno sguardo sulla vita più radicale e disilluso. I due dovranno decidere tra la permanenza e la fuga: ovvero tra due, contrastanti, idee di esistenza. [sinossi]
C’è costantemente una doppia dimensione, la percorrenza di un doppio binario, a guidare lo svolgimento di un lavoro come Sopra il fiume. Il documentario di Vanina Lappa, regista e montatrice italo-francese, è infatti saldamente ancorato alla terra che racconta, ai suoi rituali, al carattere misterico e al potere aggregante delle sue simbologie, ma contemporaneamente punta a mettere in scena la tensione con l’esterno, la pressione della modernità, la voglia di fuggire di alcuni abitanti del paesino che è teatro del film (quello di Caselle in Pittari, nel Cilento meridionale). La regista approccia qui il genere del documentario etnografico mettendo sempre in primo piano questa dialettica: lo fa fin dalla sequenza iniziale, che racconta il territorio attraverso un’antica leggenda che viene narrata al protagonista quand’era bambino, a illustrare lo sguardo sul fiume e sugli incontaminati territori che sovrastano e cingono il paese; poi, l’obiettivo si sposta sulla vita quotidiana della cittadina, sulla concretezza delle sue i(n)terazioni, sempre uguali a se stesse, su un tessuto sociale che sembra demograficamente condannato, incapace di favorire il ricambio tra generazioni, e quindi la sua stessa sopravvivenza."

Here's how Bing.com/translator renders this in English:

"Angelo, a young waiter of boxes in Pitters, in southern Cilento, lives in the suspended time and out of history that seems to characterize the whole country. The community, anchored to more or less ancient rituals, is together nourishment and cage for the young; And such is also for his namesake angel, bartender older than him, with a look on the most radical and disillusioned life. The two will have to decide between permanence and escape: that is between two, contrasting, ideas of existence. Synopsis]
There is constantly a double size, the journey of a double track, to guide the conduct of a job as above the river. The documentary of Vania Lappa, Italian-French director and upright, is firmly anchored to the earth that tells, its rituals, the mystery character and the aggregating power of its symbology, but at the same time aims to stage the tension With the exterior, the pressure of modernity, the desire to flee some inhabitants of the village that is the theatre of the film (that of Caselle in Pitti, in southern Cilento). The director approaches here the genre of the ethnographic documentary always putting in the foreground this dialectic: it does so from the initial sequence, which tells the territory through an ancient legend that is narrated to the protagonist when he was a child, to To illustrate the gaze on the river and the uncontaminated territories that dominate and surround the country; Then, the goal moves on the everyday life of the town, on the concreteness of its I (n) teras, always equal to themselves, on a social fabric that seems demographically condemned, unable to favor the replacement between generations, and therefore its Same survival."

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From Box Office Mojo

Saving Brinton
Tommy Haines & Andrew Sherburne
USA
1:27:30
Showing:  Sunday, Dec 3  Bear Tooth, 7:30pm


This feels like a film makers' film - it's about the finding and restoring of turn of the (20th) century films in Iowa.  Last year we had an Indian film, The Cinema Travelers, about a business that traveled the festival circuit in India showing large reel-to-reel films as DVD's and online downloading were starting to challenge this old film showing tradition.  It won best documentary.

We can get a sense of things by looking at where the film comes from: Northland Films:

"Northland Films are non-fiction storytellers in the Upper Midwest devoted to producing challenging and engaging films on timely social issues. Working throughout North America, the filmmakers work boldly to uncover themes of nature, history & community and in unexpected places."

From an interview with the filmmakers at the American Film Institute (AFI) where the film premiered June 17, this year:

"AFI: What inspired you to tell the story of SAVING BRINTON?
TH & AS: The common threads through all of our feature documentaries are notions of community and place and the interplay of tradition and modernity. This story had all of those elements.
TH, JR & AS: On top of all that, we’re film nerds. So here are 130 films, many of them unseen for a century, and we get to be a part of bringing these back into the public consciousness. Of course, we were in from day one.
AFI: How did you find Michael Zahs?
TH & AS: Our last film, GOLD FEVER, was about gold mining in Guatemala, and we were looking for something closer to home. Our eyes lit up when we got a call about a man, in a small town just south of us, who had discovered a basement full of nitrate films from Thomas Edison and Georges Méliès. Our first reaction was the same as most everyone: “In Iowa? Really?” That was the beginning. But in that first visit to Mike’s house, we sensed that the man who had saved these things was the real story — you can see it in the opening scene of the film. I think we left that day and told Mike 'you’ll be seeing a lot more of us.'”

[TH is Tommy Haines, AS is Andrew Sherburne, and JR is John Richards - Director of Photography]









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UPDATE Nov. 18, 2017:  A film that was in this list before dropped out because of 'distribution.'