Vietnam War, Fiber Infrastructure, Chinese Language, Community Engagement

I was in meetings most of today and then went to see the Alaska Humanity Forum's preview of Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam War.  We saw excerpts of each episode.  As someone who lived through that period, I didn't hear anything new.  There was discussion afterward.  But first AKHF director asked audience members who were veterans to stand.  Then those who were Vietnam veterans to stand.  Then those who had family members of friends who were veterans.  Then questions were asked - "Why did you come here tonight?" was the first one - and we were asked to discuss them with people nearby.  

I was struck, after watching the excerpts that covered soldiers from both sides as well as protesters, that people who protested the war weren't asked to stand.  And one of the audience did make that comment to the whole group.

The series will be worth watching when it comes on - not only for people who lived those years, but more so for those who only know the historical myths of that period.

But that's all excuse for why I haven't posted today and to explain why I'm taking the easy way out and letting you know about some talks coming up in the next few days at the UAA bookstore.
They are all free.
(There's free parking for these events in the parking lot near the bookstore.  And for people who can't make them, the videos will eventually be online, probably here.)

Thursday, September 14 from 5:00 pm-7:00 pm
Darrel Hess presents Leave It To Beaver, Cocaine & God: My Journey to Community Engagement

In  Leave It To Beaver, Cocaine & God: My Journey to Community Engagement Darrel Hess talks about growing up in the shadow of domestic violence, his arrest for selling cocaine to an undercover Alaska State Trooper, coming to terms with his sexual orientation, his relationship with God, and his struggles to find himself and his place in the world.
Today, Darrel Hess works as Anchorage’s Municipal Ombudsman and is a member of the Advisory Council for UAA’s Center for Community Engagement and Learning.   A pillar in the Anchorage community, Darrel Hess has served as Anchorage’s first Homeless Coordinator and was a member of the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission.  He has served on the board of Identity, Inc.  and is the recipient of the 2014 Alaska First Lady’s Volunteer of the Year Award.
Everyone is encouraged to welcome and meet the dedicated and amazing Darrel Hess. 
 
There is free parking for this event in the South Lot, Sports Complex NW Lot, West Campus Central Lot, and Sports Campus West Lot.

Friday, September 15 from 3:00 pm-5:00 pm
Dr. Shinian Wu presents Linguistic Challenges in Learning Chinese
Dr. Shinian Wu presents linguistic challenges and cultural congruence in learning Chinese as a second language. His talk will discuss contrasts between Chinese and English, how languages create socio-cognitive processes in language socialization.

 Dr. Shinian Wu. Professor of English and director of the graduate program in Applied Linguistics, English Department, Grand Valley State University, Michigan.
This event is sponsored with the UAA Confucius Institute. Everyone is welcomed to attend. There is free parking at UAA on Fridays.

 Saturday, September 16 from 1:00 pm-3:00 pm
Dr. Sebastian Neumayer presents Fiber Infrastructure and Natural Disasters
Dr. Sebastian Neumayer, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, UAA, shares his research on the effects of natural disasters on fiber infrastructure. While investigating the survivability of networks in the face of geographically correlated failures, he will discuss algorithms that identify the most vulnerable parts of real-world networks to large-scale disasters.
In addition to his academic research, Sebastian Neumayer will discuss The BTC Ring, an open-source Bitcoin project that integrates jewelry and digital assets. The BTC Ring can mitigate the risk that traditional jewelry has to loss and theft as well as can be used as an alternative to diamond engagement rings.
Everyone is invited to attend this fascinating event and learn how we can better prepare for "natural" environmental and emotional disasters.
There is free parking at UAA on Saturdays.  

Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back - Transitioning On Transgender Awareness and Rights

When conservatives cry about liberal control of the national agenda, they think about gay marriage, the shrinking white majority, pornography, legalization of marijuana, loss of public Christian displays.

When liberals cry about conservative control of the national agenda they think about ever increasing abortion restrictions, shrinking government, public funding going to private schools,  tax cuts, the wealth gap, rollbacks of regulations on the environment and corporate mergers and finance, about the attacks on evolution and science in general.

People who identify as liberal or as conservative all seem to think 'the other side' is winning and destroying the country.

Ignorance plays a big role in this,  That's certainly been the case with gay rights.

In this post I want to talk about the issue of transgender rights. On the one hand, great progress has been made, on the other hand there is a backlash to take it back.

At the national level, Trump has decreed that transgender folks should no longer serve in the military.   (I'd agree with this policy if it included all people of all sexual identities.)

On the local level, the forces that have fought gay rights forever here, have now put an initiative on the April Municipal ballot that would roll back transgender rights in Anchorage.

Growing up in the US, I never even had a word for transgender folks (and even now I'm not sure I'm using the right words).  If I search my memory, I'd say my awareness of the issue was when Christine Jorgensen had a sex change in 1951.  I was really young back then, but somehow the news got through to me.  I obviously had no real understanding of what had happened, just that a man had turned into a woman.

I think my real transformation came from reading.  There was Roberta Muldoon in The World According to Garp who was written as just another character who happened to have had a sex change.  The book that really focused my attention on the experience of a transgender person was Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex.  (You can listen to the book on Youtube.)

My son had a college classmate who later transitioned to female.  I've spent time with him before and her after, but we didn't talk much, if any, about the transition.

[I'm running out of time here.  The above is to give people some references to this topic, but I don't pretend this is the best list.  It's my personal list.  There have also been a number of films on this topic I've seen at the Anchorage International Film Festival over the years:  The Prodigal Sons, From This Day Forward, and Real Boy.  All have added nuance to my still limited understanding. So I'm going to leave links here for people who haven't encountered transgender folks and want to understand this better.  And below I'll give people some things they can do to help others understand.]


What You Can Do #1

More recently, I got to know Scott Schofield when he came to Anchorage and headed Out North theater.  He was back again this summer performing his piece, Becoming A Man in 127 Easy Steps.

Yesterday I got an email from Scott saying he's working on making his performance piece into a movie.  So if people want to be supportive during these times of transgender rights backlash, this is a way to do it.  Your contribution will help make this film a reality.  And the more people who see the film, the more people will 'know' a transgender person and have a better understanding of what this is all about.  And they'll get a more complex awareness that our binary male/female dichotomy is not nearly as simple as that.   Here's a short video of Scott explaining the film project.






What You Can Do #2   

I got a another email today pointing me to a presentation here in Anchorage by

"Mara Keisling. She has served as the director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) for 14 years and is one of the country’s most prominent transgender civil rights activists."

 Wendy Williamson Auditorium  (UAA)

7 pm  Tuesday (August 29).

The email goes on to say:

"The focus of our discussion with Mara will be, first and foremost, how we can most effectively fight Prop 1, the harmful anti-transgender initiative on the April 2018 ballot in Anchorage. This ballot question is drawing attention from national organizations—like the NCTE—because it is, unfortunately, the worst anti-transgender ballot initiative in the country.
Through her work with the NCTE, Mara has been on the front lines in so many fights similar to what we’re facing now in Anchorage. Her guidance and words of wisdom will be indispensable, so you will not want to miss out tomorrow."

Even if you aren't sure where you stand on the initiative, this would be a good chance to get to hear a person who has been prominent nationally on this issue.

Whitewashing History

The Guardian has an article by Sunny Singh that asks why Christopher Nolan's film Dunkirk only shows white soldiers fighting and dying.  In fact, the article explains, there were many Indians as well as Asians and Africans recruited from the British empire who fought there too.  The French army also contained many North Africans.

How would knowing this change change modern day attitudes toward immigrants?  That's the basic question the article  asks.

This jumped out at me because I recently read (and posted about) Amitav Ghosh's novel The Glass Palace which also focuses on how Indian troops were vital to the British army in Asia, yet they never got credit (or blame.)  One Indian soldier to another after a Japanese surprise attack in Malaya, from that post:

"You know, yaar Arjun, over these last few days, in the trenches at Jitra - I had an eerie feeling.  It was strange to be sitting on one side of a battle line, knowing that you had to fight and knowing at the same time that it wasn't really your fight; knowing that whether you won or lost, neither the blame nor the credit would be yours.  Knowing that you're risking everything to defend a way of life that pushes you to the sidelines.  It's almost as if you're fighting against yourself.  It's strange to be sitting in a trench, holding a gun and asking yourself:  Who is this weapon really aimed at?  Am I being tricked into pointing it at myself?""I can't say I felt the same way, Hardy."

And Singh's criticism of the movie seems to echo this - that the Indian (and other forces from the empire) will be erased from the story.  

Here are some excerpts from the Guardian article:

"To do so [leave out the darker troops], it erases the Royal Indian Army Services Corp companies, which were not only on the beach, but tasked with transporting supplies over terrain that was inaccessible for the British Expeditionary Force’s motorised transport companies. It also ignores the fact that by 1938, lascars – mostly from South Asia and East Africa – counted for one of four crewmen on British merchant vessels, and thus participated in large numbers in the evacuation.
But Nolan’s erasures are not limited to the British. The French army deployed at Dunkirk included soldiers from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and other colonies, and in substantial numbers. Some non-white faces are visible in one crowd scene, but that’s it. The film forgets the racialised pecking order that determined life and death for both British and French colonial troops at Dunkirk and after it.
This is important, firstly, because it is a matter of factual accuracy in what purports to be an historical portrayal – and also because it was the colonial troops who were crucial in averting absolute catastrophe for the allies. It is also important because, more than history books and school lessons, popular culture shapes and informs our imagination not only of the past, but of our present and future."

It's interesting when you contrast this historical inaccuracy with film makers who say they can't put blacks or Asians into certain roles, because ti would be factually inaccurate.  But here they can put whites into the roles of the Indian and Asian troops, equally inaccurate.  

And Singh believes this whitewashing of history makes it easier to condemn immigrants today and vote for Brexit.

"Could we still see our neighbours as less than human if we also saw them fight shoulder-to-shoulder with “our boys” in the “good” war? Would we call those fleeing war “cockroaches” and demand gunboats to stop them from reaching our white cliffs if we knew they had died for the freedoms we hold so dear? More importantly, would anti-immigration sentiment be so easy to weaponise, even by the left – in the past and the present – if the decent, hardworking Britons knew and recognised how much of their lives, safety and prosperity are results of non-British sacrifices? In a deeply divided, fearful Britain, Nolan’s directorial choices succeed as a Brexiteer costume fantasy, but they fail to tell the story of Operation Dynamo, the war, and Britain. More importantly, they fail us all, as people and a nation."

Donald Cried Coming To Netflix August 15

"Donald Cried" was one of the features in competition at the Anchorage International Film Festival last December.  There was a strong group of features, and as I wrote back then, I could have argued for any of them getting one of the three prizes.  But Donald didn't.  But it made a very powerful impression on me.

Here's what I wrote in after seeing the movie:

"Donald Cried starts with Peter coming back to the small town where he grew up to sell his grandmother's house and settle things after she's died.  You don't know all this as the film starts - you pick up more and more details as things progress.  He's lost his wallet on the bus and so he has no money and goes across the street to a neighbor's, who greets him like a long lost pal and practically kidnaps him taking him around town.  The neighbor, Donald, seems like he's got Asbergers or something as he constantly crosses normal conversational boundaries in politeness and topics.  But the history of Peter, Donald, the grandmother, and others slowly is revealed.  But there were still so many questions I had.  And reading the credits - Kris Avedisian was listed as the writer, the producer, the director, and actor - I knew exactly who I wanted to talk to.  My wife asked, which one was he?  I assumed he played Donald, but then I had this thought, whoa, what if he played Peter?  That would have been so weird.  But as the cast scrolled by, he did play Donald.  So I was ready to go home and start looking for an email address for Kris."

I found that email address, sent a bunch of questions, and got a quick response back with a link to a video interview of Kris at a different film festival talking about the film.  (None of his team made it to Anchorage.)  I posted about that and the video here.

This is a quirky film festival type film with powerful characters and an interesting reveal of these two characters' past relationship which you wouldn't have guessed from the beginning, but ultimately makes sense.  And the interview at the link above answered a lot of my questions.

So yes, I'm making a recommendation to watch this film.  The schedule of August movies was on Lifehacker.  

"It is my job, however, to ensure that your personal ambitions are not entirely delusional and do not carry with them an unacceptable cost for everybody else."

War Machine is a new Netflix film about General Stanley McChrystal (called Gen. Glen McMahon in the film, but see note at the bottom.)  He's the general Obama fired after an incendiary 2010 Rolling Stone article, by Michael Hastings.

Whatever you think of War Machine , there's one scene that Americans can only dream about - Tilda Swinton plays a German legislator who questions the general in Berlin.  I've written out this brief (under 4 minutes) interrogation.  (I haven't been able to figure out if something like this actually happened.  The character Michael Hastings is sitting in the audience as well when this takes place, so perhaps it was in the book the movie is based on and comes from an actual event.)

German politician:  General, the US invaded Afghanistan because of the al-Qaeda attacks on September 11th.  This is correct sir?
General:  Yeah
German politician:  You have been speaking to us now for 45 minutes and yet in all of that time you have only mentioned al-Qaeda once.  Your own vice president has advocated a much smaller and simpler counterterrorism approach to incapacitate what is estimated to be  a little more than 100 al-Qaeda fighters that still remain in Afghanistan to refocus on what it was that started this war in the first place.
General:  Ah.
German politician:  Your analysis of the insurgency there  suggests to me there is no monolithic Taliban.  You are spread over the entire country.  You are fighting 1,000 separate battles with locals whose principal ideological position would seem to be simply that they don’t want foreign soldiers in their village.    And that, General, you must know, is a war you will never win.
General:  Ah. Uh, with all due respect, ma’am.  Uh I must beg to differ.  I firmly believe, having traveled to all corners of the country, having spoken with many people from many walks of life . . . that what these people want is the very same thing that you and I want.  Hmmm?  Freedom, security, stability, jobs.  Progress is being made.  Real Progress.  But challenges do remain.
German politician:  Yes, I understand all of that, General.  And . . .and , please let me say quite sincerely that I do not question the goodness of your intent.  I have been listening to you here this morning, and, uh. . . I believe you are a good man.  I do.  What I question is. . . your belief in your power to deliver these things that you describe.  I question your belief in the power of your ideals.
General:  Ah, well. . .

German politician:  I think what I am trying to say, and I apologize, General, if this is sounding impolite, but I question your sense of self. 

General:  I appreciate your commentary.  I do.  But I have a job to do.
German politician:  Yes, I understand, And I also have a job to do.  And I’m trying to do mine.  As an elected representative of the people of Germany, it is my job to ensure that the personal ambitions of those who serve those people are kept in check.  You have devoted your entire life, General, to the fighting of war.  And this situation in Afghanistan, for you, it is the culmination of all your years of training, all your years of ambition.  This is the great moment of your life.
General:  Well. . . .
German politician:  It’s understandable to me that you should have, therefore, a fetish for completion to make your moment glorious.  It is my job, however, to ensure that your personal ambitions are not entirely delusional and do not carry with them an unacceptable cost for everybody else.  (emphasis added.)

The closest we have to someone like this is Elizabeth Warren, though she isn't quite as calm and polite.  And how long do we have to wait for the rest of our Congress to get some backbone and remember who they serve?


I'd note that the Guardian didn't think much about the movie, saying the portrayal of General McChrystal was all wrong.  It had this comment about Tilda Swinton's performance:

"Tilda Swinton has an interesting, if slightly supercilious, cameo as a German politician who questions the general about his personal motivation."

A more positive NY Times review says that another of the characters seems to be Gen. Michael T. Flynn.

I'd note that perhaps the movie makers originally considered actually naming the main character   Gen. Stanley McChrystal.    I say this because when I googled the cast, I got google's quick answer (top in screenshot below) which listed Brad Pitt as "General Stanley McChrystal."  But when you go to the cast listed by IMDb (bottom in screenshot below) Brad Pitt is listed as playing Gen. Glen McMahon.

I can't find anything on line that explains this - whether they were going to use the general's real name and then changed their minds or whether google just messed it up or something else.  

I'd also note that Michael Hastings, the author of the Rolling Stone article and the book this movie comes from, died in a strange car crash in Los Angeles.  A long New York Magazine article examines  Hasting's life and career in an attempt to unearth the cause of the accident, from conspiracy to suicide to accident.  It doesn't declare a cause, but seems to lean towards Hastings being out of control in his life rather than someone tried to kill him.  

Netflix, Race And Gender - Some Really Good Master of None Episodes, Hasan Minhaj, And Midnight Cafe

There are several posts I should have done (and still should do) on the impact of Netflix on my movie viewing.  Succinctly - we've spent a lot less time watching movies in theaters, but we've seen movies and tv shows that offer a much wider view of life, both in the US and beyond, than one normally gets at the cinema.

But I just want to mention a couple Netflix offerings here.  Season 1 of Aziz Ansari's Master of None was a disappointment.  It portrays the life of a Muslim Indian-American.  The topics were good, but it just didn't have the crispness and bite I've come to expect on good Netflix series.

But this second season has a much different tone and I'd like to strongly suggest two episodes:

Season 2 - Episode 6: New York, I Love You

We barely see the main character.  Instead we see glimpses of life in New York from the perspective of people who are outside the normal white, straight, able-bodied mainstream as they deal with life's obstacles because of  being the outside the 'norm.'   It's light, it's well done, and it has an important message for those of us who generally have a 'normal' pass.

Season 2 - Episode 8:  Thanksgiving

Screenshot from Netflix

If you only want to watch one of these episodes, watch this one.  Aziz, in this series, has several close, old friends.  Denise is a black lesbian and up until this episode we didn't know why she was in Dev's (Aziz's character) circle.

This episode corrects that and fills us in on who she is.  It covers a number of Thanksgiving dinners from the early 1990's (the second one is dated 1995, and I would guess Dev was about 8 or 9 in the first one) until the present.   Dev was over because his family didn't really celebrate Thanksgiving, so Denise's mother invited him over for every Thanksgiving.  We watch the two kids grow up together, including Denise coming out to Dev, and then her mom.  And how that first Thanksgiving after she comes out is very awkward and how over the years the family becomes comfortable with her orientation and even her girlfriend.  It's a wonderful show that takes on its own unique structure - compared to the the other episodes (except episode 2) which more or less follow a typical sitcom story arc.   A very insightful episode.  

Screenshot from Netflix

Hasan Minhaj - Homecoming King

Netflix filmed Daily Show correspondent, Hasan Minhaj's comedy show, at his performance in  Davis, California, where he was born and raised.  The audience is very supportive.  Basically, he talks about how he became a comedian and all the bumps along the way as the US born son of Indian immigrants living in a mostly white area.  There's a lot of humor and understanding to help us understand the anger he felt because of the way he was treated because he wasn't white.  Again, insightful, and something white Americans should watch.

Is it a coincidence that Netflix has these two shows (Minhaj is just a single show, not a series) starring Muslim Indian-Amricans?  (I'd love to track that down, but a quick online search didn't find the answer and if I'm going to get anything up today, that will have to be left for someone else.)

If you need to know more, Newsweek reviews Homecoming King in detail.


And don't miss Midnight Diner

Screenshot from Netflix

I also have to mention Midnight Diner - Tokyo Stories.  This is a gem of a show with short, poignant episodes that give us glimpses into the lives of ordinary folks in Tokyo who work late and stop at the Midnight Diner on the way home.  Each episode tells the story of a different person.  As it tells their stories, it also reminds us that people are people everywhere - they just dress and speak differently, but under all the cultural camouflage, they're just human beings with the same kinds of needs and dreams and foibles of humans everywhere.  This is such a charming show and each episode just takes 20 minutes or so.  And the music is good.

Of course, you have to subscribe to Netflix, or know someone who does, to watch these.  I resisted long enough and only joined so I could show my mom a movie, which turned out not to be on Netflix.  But there were other good movies she enjoyed.  And at about $9 per month (for online only, including dvd's is a little more), it's less than the price of one person at most theaters for one viewing. (Yes, I know, Anchorage's great Bear Tooth theater is less.)

There are lots and lots of interesting movies on Netflix, including many international films and television shows that give you a very different view of the world.

The Case For Hidden Figures As Best Film For 2016

When I started thinking about this, La La Land was getting lots of raves and I was thinking about why Hidden Figures was a better candidate for the Academy Award for best film.  Since then,  I've seen two more films - Fences and Moonlight -  which I'll add in.

Defining 'best' is always tricky.  There are lots of factors to consider and how important one factor is compared to another is up to the viewer.

I'm borrowing  criteria I used to explain my favorites at the 2007 Anchorage International Film Festival, and I'll use those here to help explain the case for Hidden Figures.


So what were my criteria? There are several factors.

1.  Technical Quality - There's a rough continuum from

shaky...........no problems.............very good...............innovative.

You can see this is not exactly a continuum.  Innovative is good when it works, but not when it doesn't.  The technical stuff, ideally, works so well it enhances rather than distracts from the story.

2.  Content - There's a vague continuum from:

Negative/disrespectful ............Boring.........good story.........original.......current.........important

Again, as I look at the line above, this is more a list of factors to consider than a continuum.

3.  Use of Medium. Movies combine sight and sound and movement and timing. The best movies are those that take advantage of the medium and tell their stories in ways that you couldn't tell it orally, in a book, etc.


4.  Whole Package. Even with weaknesses here and there, a film could pull it off by doing some things so well that the problems don't really matter.


Applying the criteria

As I mentally compared La La Land and Hidden Figures, it's clear that Content became my most important category.

La La Land scores high on Use of the Medium.  My brief review of it after I saw it mentioned that the camera was one of the actors in the film.  It wove in and out of scenes like another person on the set.  It wouldn't have worked as a book, you have to see it to get the effect.  I walked out of the theater happy.   But eventually, I realized that the whole movie was like a bubble - beautiful and shimmering and . . . empty and ephemeral.  There was no real content, the singing and dancing were acceptable.  Like a bubble, after it popped there was nothing left.  (Well, if you had just been through a similar kind of disrupted relationship it might feel more meaningful, but it didn't really tell us all that much about that either.)

Hidden Figures on the other hand was rich in Content.  It was a great story that not only told about  the lives of the three main characters, but their place in a pretty much unknown part of American history.  It smashed so many stereotypes about blacks, about women, about the US space program that it's impact is huge.

The three women were part of the 'colored women calculators' at NASA.  Their job was to do the math before computers were installed.  Despite American stereotypes, they were all three extremely bright mathematicians.  The film helps demonstrate why women aren't considered good at math and science.  The movie is replete with ways their brains were used, but they were kept invisible while the men got the credit for their work.  It also powerfully shows the obstacles that black women faced in the Jim Crow South.  Most vivid was Katherine's regular run nearly a mile each way to get to the only colored women's room on the NASA campus - in the heels that women were required to wear.  She was assumed to be the janitor when she walked in, and someone puts up a colored coffee pot so she won't contaminate the white folks' coffee.  And given the level of racial conflict in the US today, being reminded of sanctioned racism in place in the 60s.  And it's important to see real historical role models of smart, resourceful, black women and to be reminded (for some it will be the first introduction) that  black women can be, were, and are brilliant mathematicians and scientists if they're allowed to be.

Technical Quality and Use of the Medium were high, moving the story along without being flashy or in any other ways calling attention away from the story.

Fences and Moonlight are also good films with important stories about black lives.  The language in Fences is exquisite.  The story in Moonlight is compelling, but the structure is sometimes hard to follow.  That's not necessarily a bad thing.  Any good work of  art reveals itself more and more with each new encounter.  I could learn a lot by seeing Moonlight a few more times.

Ultimately though, the characters portrayed in Fences and Moonlight  are African-American characters we've seen on screen over and over again, though usually not in such a rich and understanding way.

But the characters in Hidden Figures are ones we have never seen portrayed on screen before - brilliant, gutsy black women who are vital to the US Apollo program, not because of their unsung physical labor, but because of their brains and insight.  This is a movie that corrects a huge oversight in the narrative of African-Americans in the space race, and by extension probably in a lot more areas that we don't know about.

Thus the content of this compelling story starts to fill a huge gap in our knowledge of how African-American women contributed to the United States, and thus to our understanding of the huge loss we've suffered by not fully using the talent of ethnic minorities and women as we strive for a better, stronger USA and world.  Ultimately, Hidden Figures just tells the best story and the story we know the least.  Thus, for me, it's the movie that matters the most.

A Few Important Links You Might Want To Check Out

Here are a few links that have come my way over the last week.  I thank the people who first posted them - you'll recognize who you are.  These all pushed my brain around a bit and are worth checking out.

1.  New heat storing technology  - Despite the fact that we know of how people have repeatedly been proven wrong throughout history when they said one idea or another is impossible, we still say that today - particularly about alternative energy.

"The technology uses the chemical sodium hydroxide (NaOH), commonly known as lye, to store the heat. When dry sodium hydroxide is exposed to water, it undergoes a chemical reaction that releases a large amount of heat. In sunlight, that water evaporates, drying out the sodium hydroxide and resetting the reaction. The dry sodium hydroxide is very stable, which means it can be stored for months or even years as long as it isn't exposed to water."

2.  Since White House comment lines are reported shut down, someone has set up the website https://whitehouseinc.org.  You leave your phone number and email and someone will call you back and connect you to a Trump property somewhere around the world where you can leave your comment.  The site says,

"Foreign leaders and Wall Street executives know that if they want to reach out to our President, they can just connect with his business associates. Now the American people have a direct line to Trump too."

3.  Commodifying Language - This is a ten page letter from a company called Language Inc. about the financial outlook (good) for companies that privatize public information.  Lots to think about here.


4.  Lit Hub on What to Do during these times  Get inspiration on how to resist.



5.  State Department is Taking ppeople off the Global Entry program - Americans of Iranian-descent are reporting that though they've signed up and paid to be on the Global Entry program and been vetted after a thorough investigation, they are getting notices that they no longer qualify.  How long are we going to let Steve Bannon run the US?


6.  Thirteenth (the movie) is a available at Netflix.
This isn't an easy movie to watch, but if anyone wants to understand why Black Lives Matters matters, then they need to watch how incarceration has been aimed at enslaving blacks in a way that everyone - including the Clintons - could get behind.  It shows how by using the word criminal instead of black, they could get blacks off the streets, and could keep them from voting forever.  Don't argue with me about this until you watch the movie.

Jane Wyman's 100th Birthday, Rain, Clouds, And Fences

Jane Wyman was an Oscar winning actress and she married a B movie actor in 1940 named Ronald Reagan until they split in 1949.   Here's the New York Times obituary.  She'd be 100 today.  Here is the first birthday from my list of people born in 1917.

It's been mostly cloudy, with breaks of sun and breaks of rain.  Southern California can use every drop of rain it can get, so I'm not complaining. When we came home after seeing Fences Thursday evening, it was raining, which I tried to catch, not too successfully, in the lights at this soccer field.  But the fence is a good lead into talking about the film.

Fences was powerful.  The language was magnificent, but then it was written by August Wilson, a playwright who has written some of the best American plays of the 20th Century.  I couldn't help thinking about Death of a Salesman - another play about a father who was doing all he could to cope in his role as the family provider.  But while we can see that Willie Loman is a victim of the social expectations of his times, he's essentially a weak man who could have made different choices in his life.

But in Fences the father, Troy, - played by Denzel Washington in the film - was a much stronger and competent man, restricted by much harsher limits.  But flawed as well.  His anger at the injustices he experienced and perhaps some he just perceived prevents him from enjoying the comparatively decent life he has built.   He was a great baseball player, he hit home runs against Satchel Paige he claims, but it was before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball.  Now he's fighting the system to break out of the restrictions of the Pittsburgh sanitation department.  He's tired of throwing the garbage into the truck.  He wants a promotion to the job reserved for white men - driver.

As the play progresses, we learn why he's such a hard ass father, and why he can't tell his son, Corey (Courtney B. Vance  in the 1987 version and Chris Chalk in the 2010 version)  he likes him, let alone loves him.   Here's that scene I found online from the play - first the 1987 version with James Earl Jones as Troy and then in the 2010 version with Denzel Washington in the role he plays in the movie.  (Washington also directs the film.)




Troy's father had abandoned him and we can see throughout the play* how stretched he is trying to provide for his family - which includes his mentally unhinged brother, a son from an earlier wife, and a son from his present wife of 18 years or so, played by Viola Davis. And you can see the pressure he feels to raise his son to be responsible and tough in a world that shortchanges black men.

And Davis is fantastic. Here's a later scene, after Washington had told Davis he's going to be a father again, and how he just needed a place where he could let go of all those pressures, where he didn't have responsibilities to pay the rent and feed the family, where he could escape and laugh and be himself. She doesn't take kindly to that at all.



No one should be saying that while men have it easy in today's world. Few people have it easy.  The system isn't kind to human beings.  But all things considered, there have been fewer barriers to success for white men than for black men. (I'm avoiding women because that's a whole other issue.) 

But I wonder how many white men who hate the slogan 'black lives matter' can watch this film and get its humanity. The issues are universal, but will the racist wing of the Trump team  be able to see past the skin color and the language? One would hope so, but how many will ever see it? And if they do, and if they felt Troy's pain, could they tell their friends?  I don't know, I'm just asking.

* I say play deliberately as I'm vaguely aware of some critics finding the movie not cinematic enough.  As I was looking for cast names I saw a link to a New Yorker article on that topic, but haven't looked because I wanted to finish this first.  I'll look now.

Before I found it, I found an article by Kareem Abdul Jabbar and I can't think of a smarter or more suited man to talk about this film.  The link also includes a video interview he had with the two lead characters of the film.  Jabbar writes as part of the intro:

"The Maxson family's unhappiness results from a toxic mixture of the patriarch's unapologetic hubris and the pressures of being raised black in a white society that marginalizes, degrades and oppresses anyone not in the mainstream. Troy Maxson (Washington) isn't aware that while he battles for equality from the white society, he's imposing the same tyrannical restrictions he's struggling against on his own family. He has become the very enemy he's fighting."

Most of it is the transcript of the video and the video itself.  They are exactly the same.  There are a few things in the written interview that aren't in the video and vice versa.  Also, in the video Davis correctly says 'baseball league,' not the 'football league' that's written.

Thursday was a break from the rain.  When I did a quick bike ride down to the beach just to move my legs a bit, the clouds were out over the ocean, but it wasn't the solid gray we'd had.

We had dinner with a friend of my mom's, a woman who came by weekly and always brought some food for my mom.  They'd been good friends for a long time.  She told us stories about after WWII when she met her husband in London.  They were both young refugees in England during the war.  They'd both gotten out of Germany before the war started.  His sister had lived through the war in Berlin with fake papers.  They had both applied for jobs as translators for the American military in Europe.  Her father took her down to the station and started talking to a young man while she was away a moment.  So, it turned out he introduced her to her future husband.  She was 20 and they first were sent to Paris for a week of training and then to Germany where their fluency in German and English were helpful.  Despite the hardships of those immediate postwar days in Germany, love and adventure are what she remembered most.

For those of you who are wondering about the New Yorker article, I did find it after I finished this.  I think the reviewer got so hung up on the idea that this should have been done more cinematically that he missed the fundamental power of the story.  He's focused on technique, even when he has praise, which he has.

La La Land - Movie Where The Camera Is One of the Actors

We're in LA and the reviews I scanned sounded like La La Land was worth seeing.

From the long opening long take* of people stuck in freeway traffic getting out of their vehicles to sing and dance with downtown in the background, to the very end, the camera (cinematographer Linus Sandgren) was a key player in the film.  Generally, the camera should do its magic without the viewer noticing it.  But in this case it becomes one of the dancers, so to speak, twisting between the cars, moving in and out, circling around.  And it participates vigorously throughout the movie.

This is a fun movie with lots to like.

Having grown up in LA, there are iconic locations - like the Griffith Park Observatory - which played a big role in my first 20 years.  And then there's the emphasis on jazz.

But I don't remember La La Land as name for LA as a kid, and it's not a name for LA I ever used.   I suspect it would only be used as the title of this movie by someone who moved to Los Angeles from elsewhere, which is the case of film maker Damien Chazelle.

And just to double check my memory I looked up the origins of the term.  It seems to have come into use after I left LA.

The Word Detective writes, in part,

“La-La Land,” by which is generally meant Los Angeles (although occasionally all of California), certainly has the ring of Royko, but it’s not one of his inventions.  The earliest appearance of the term (in reference to Los Angeles) so far found comes from 1979.  Interestingly, at about the same time, “la-la land” came into use as a slang phrase meaning “a state of dreamy disconnection from reality,” whether due to drunkenness or dementia.

The LA Times pondered the origins of La La Land in 1987, and decided it was probably the invention of a San Francisco snob.

*a  long take is when the camera rolls continuously through the scene.  There are no cuts from one shot to another.  IndieWire has a list (with videos) of a number of long shots from different movies.  But if this term is new for you, watch carefully.  Many, if not most, of the examples have some cuts at the beginning and the end.  In the long shot, the eye of the camera follows the action (or inaction) without a break.


Here's a little more than a trailer to whet your appetite.

AIFF2016: Donald Cried Follow Up

I sent a long list of questions to Kris Avedisian last night (well, early this morning) about his film Donald Cried.



I heard back from Kris and Kyle Espeleta (one of the producers.)  I sent the questions via the Donald Cried website contact page, so I don't have a copy of all the questions I sent.  But one was about who Tom Luke was (the film was dedicated to him in the credits).  Kris wrote,

"Tom Luke is my beloved uncle who passed away right before the film was made. I believe he was in some way responsible for all the snow given to us during production."

For anyone else for whom the characters in the movie were like real people you felt you knew, and about whom you still have lots of questions, here's an April 7, 2016 interview Kyle shared with me of Kris and others at the Film Society of Lincoln Center that addresses some of those questions.  

AIFF2016 Documentaries In Competition Tibetan Nomads, Tuvan Throat Singers, Slanty Eyed Mamas, Thai Boxing, And Those Ruby Slippers

Here are the documentaries in competition with descriptions below.

Docs in Competition	Director	Country	Length
Best and Most Beautiful Things	Garrett Zevgetis	USA	90 min
Drokpa	Yan Chun S	China	79 min
Goodbye Darling, I’m Off to Fight	Simone Manetti	Italy,Australia, United States	73 min
SHU-DE!	Michael R Faulkner	United States	85 min
Happy Lucky Golden Tofu Panda	Carrie Preston	United States	75 min
The Slippers	Morgan White	USA	min
The Cinema Travelers	Shirley Abraham	India	min

Best and Most Beautiful Things
Garrett Zevgetis
USA
90 min

Tuesday December 6, 2016 5:30pm - 7:30pm *** Warning - one showing only!!
BearTooth 


From the film's website:

"In 2009 director Garrett Zevgetis googled the word “Beauty.”
He had been working on a number of darker-themed documentaries and was determined to find an uplifting story for a future project. The search returned a poignant Helen Keller quote that led Garrett to Perkins School for the Blind outside Boston, a renowned institution where a feature documentary had never before been made. He began volunteering at Perkins. On the last day of his scheduled term, a bubbly student introduced herself – Michelle had found him.
BEST AND MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS is a celebration of outcasts everywhere, following a precocious young blind woman who disappears into quirky obsessions and isolation. With humor and bold curiosity, "

The Cinema Traveler
Shirley Abraham
India
96 minutes
Thursday December 8, 2016 5:30pm - 7:00pm **WARNING - Just one showing
BearTooth 

This film debuted at Cannes last May where it won a Special Jury Prize.  This seems to be one not to miss.  I did get see some films shown in rural Thailand on a sheet across a dirt road in Thailand in the 60s, it wasn't quite what this film seems to be documenting.  The annual visit by the Chinese opera troupe probably was more like this.  From the reviews, it sounds like the film captures the excitement of these events.

From a much longer article at the Guardian:

"In Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya’s understated documentary, we’re given intimate access to a unique experience: two travelling cinemas that travel across rural India sharing films with people who would otherwise have limited access. It focuses on the lives of the men who put the show on the road, faced with a changing medium and a demanding audience.
Shot over five years, we follow a set of men with different key roles in the process of the two companies. There’s the easygoing manager trying to provide for his family while on the road, the 70-year-old projector mechanic whose weathered hands have helped bring the joy of cinema to thousands and the many serious-minded cineastes who work around them."

From the Hollywood Reporter:

"The traveling cinema world, mostly based around Maharashtra, the vast state whose capital is Mumbai, has been bringing the magic of the silver screen to remote villages for some 70 years. Setting up tents in rural fairs that often are several hours from anything even approaching a local multiplex, the screenings draw hundreds, who line up to see the latest Bollywood hits, old Hindi classics and even the odd dubbed Hollywood title.
But it’s a tradition that is nearing extinction. "There are very few of these cinemas left," says Shirley Abraham, who together with her co-director Amit Madheshiya, has spent eight years tracking those remaining in the industry for The Cinema Travelers, screening in the Cannes Classics sidebar on May 15. 'It has been petering out over the years. I don’t think they’re going to survive the march of time and technology.'"

The film's website's press page has lots and lots of links to articles about the film.
The video below features a discussion with the film makers talking about the film. The video isn't great. I haven't found a trailer.

Screenshot from Dropka trailer

Drokpa
Yan Chun Su
China
79 minutes

Saturday December 3, 2016 2:00pm - 3:30pm 
Anchorage Museum
Saturday December 10, 2016 12:00pm - 1:30pm 
Alaska Experience - SMALL

The site only lists three other festivals in addition to AIFF so we're some of the first people to see this film.  From their website:

"DROKPA (Nomads of Tibet) is a portrait of the lives and struggles of nomads on the Eastern Tibetan Plateau. Through intimate individual stories, the film reveals the unprecedented environmental and sociopolitical forces that are pushing the nomads to the edge of their existence. "

Goodbye Darling, I’m Off to Fight
Simone Manetti
Italy
73

Wednesday December 7, 2016 8:00pm - 9:30pm 
BearTooth
Sunday December 11, 2016 2:00pm - 3:15pm 
Alaska Experience - SMALL


The trailer of this Italian movie is in English with Italian sub-titles. The trailer has the title in English, Italian, and Thai.  It's about boxing.  And that seems to be confirmed in the English description I found at DocsMX:

"After a painful break-up with her boyfriend, Italian actress and fashion model Chantal Ughi discovered that Muay Thai was the only way to confront the violence she suffered as a child. She went to Thailand to train for four weeks, but ended up living there for five years—training and fighting, becoming stronger than a man."

Happy Lucky Golden Tofu 

Panda
Carrie Preston
USA
75 min

Saturday December 3, 2016 1:30pm - 3:00pm 
Alaska Experience - SMALL 
Saturday December 10, 2016 6:00pm - 7:30pm 
49th State Brewing Company 

Where do I start this?  There's a duo called Slanty Eyed Mamas.  I'll let their own words from their website explain:

"TWO GOOD ASIAN GIRLS GONE BADASS.
Thoroughly modern, urban, sexy sounds from the very fresh, street infused Asian-American duo that always causes a stir...You've never seen anything quite like it--part hip hop, part rock, part electroclash, from two rock n roll asian chicks. Slanty Eyed Mama sees the world through the searing electric violin and beats of virtuoso Lyris Hung and the iconoclastic rants from Kate Rigg, aka. Lady K-Sian. Kate is also a Juilliard trained actor/playwright and a well known comedian, who has been on Fox's Family Guy, 2 seasons of the Dr. Phil show where she talked about the Asian American Experience to 5 million people, and has toured extensively as a stand up comic. Electric violinist Lyris Hung is also a Juilliard graduate who also has a metal band called HUNG, tours with The Indigo Girls and has played with Jay Z, Bono, Quincy Jones, and many others."

And the movie?  On her website, Kate writes about the movie:

"In addition to keeping busy with theater and TV work, 2016 sees the release of the thoroughly original, mind bending, but gusting, comedy music and spoken word mashup film Happy Lucky Golden Tofu Panda Dragon Good Tie Fun Fun Show- The movie. Shot on location in New York and directed by Emmy Award Winning actress Carrie Preston. The movie captures the downtown New York spirit with live portions filmed in an East Village Club, with musical numbers and sketches blown up and shot on location throughout the City. It examines the "East meets west experience" ways in which we see "Asian-ness" in the West through culture, media, commodities and familiar images-- Hello Kitty, Nail Salons, Chinatown bargain shopping, Pokemon, bowl cuts. Kate's Stand up weaves the show together, with sharp observational, political and outrageous out-there jokes."

 It premiered in New York in June, but I can't find much except their own promotional stuff.  Eclipse Magazine mentions it in passing when discussing what people will find at the SOHO film festival:

"intriguing oddities like Happy Lucky Golden Tofu Panda Dragon Good Time Fun Fun Show" 

Here's the teaser.

SHU-DE!
Michael R Faulkner
USA 
85 min

Saturday, Dec 3, 2016: BearTooth 6:00 PM Sunday, Dec 11, 2016:Alaska Exp - SMALL, 
4:00 PM

I remember first seeing live Tuvan throat singing 20 or 30 years ago at the Fly-by-Night Club in Spenard.  It's other-worldly.  So this one piques  my interest.

From the Shu-De website:

"Khoomei (hoo-may) or Tuvan throat singing, is an ancient vocal tradition originating in the remote Republic of Tuva, which is located in the center of Asia in Siberia, and now, part of the Russian Federation. Considered to predate modern linguistics, Khoomei, involves a remarkable technique for singing two or more pitches simultaneously. The sounds are said to come from the land and harmonize with nature itself. The Alash Ensemble are masters of this vocal art and have been touring the world, sharing their music with other cultures, for years.
Shodekeh, a beatboxer and vocal percussionist from Baltimore, with a vision for creating an "oasis of unity through musical collaboration," has spent his life mastering new sounds and using them, while fostering seemingly unlikely collaborations. SHU-DE! is the story of what happened when these artists came together, utilizing their common instrument: the voice and body."

The Baltimore Sun did a profile of the film maker, Michael Faulkner.  Here's a snippet from it:

" . . .The resulting film, "Shu-De!" – Tuvan for "Let's go!" — was one of the crowd favorites at May's 18th Maryland Film festival, where it had its East Coast premiere (its world premiere was a few weeks earlier, at the Nashville Film Festival). Its mix of local interest and exotic locales, not to mention its haunting melodies, proved a crowd-pleaser of the first order. It's since screened at several other festivals, and will be going on a seven-city tour in October
"It's amazing to see your work on a big screen — especially me being a cinephile, someone who loves movies and story in general," says Faulkner, a freelance location manager and film producer who moved from Kalamazoo, Mich., to Baltimore in 1998. 'I was really happy to notice — it's a real movie. It's there; it stands up on the big screen.'"

There's something very film-festivalish about this film, and I mean that in the best possible way.

We don't learn much about what the film is about in the trailer, but we learn a lot about what it feels like.

The Slippers

Morgan White

USA

90 minutes

Saturday December 3, 2016 4:00pm - 6:00pm 

Anchorage Museum 

Sunday December 11, 2016 12:00pm - 1:30pm 

Alaska Experience - SMALL

From Letter Box:

"THE SLIPPERS pulls back the Wizard’s curtain on the unbelievable story and cultural impact of Dorothy's Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz.  Through first-hand accounts and archival interviews, THE SLIPPERS will detail the life of the Ruby Slippers after their sale at the famed 1970 MGM auction. Discovered by costumer Kent Warner, it is unclear how many pairs were found and how many pairs exist. That mystery has only helped to propel the shoes to the forefront of the Hollywood memorabilia market. They have been bought, stolen, and coveted by many. They are considered the most important piece of Hollywood memorabilia and the catalyst for the creation of Hollywood memorabilia collecting."

From an interview with director White at Hammer To Nail:

HtN: So how about access? Did you have any issues there, interview-wise, or footage-wise?
 MW: Footage-wise wasn’t so hard. I spent a lot of time trying to collect stuff. So I became very obsessed with the idea that I should collect as much of the material that’s in the film as possible, because I’m making a movie about collecting. So a lot of the things that are in there come from 16mm prints that I bought, on eBay, or on the black market of 16mm-print collecting. Or I bought magazines and newspapers and articles and…whatever I could find on eBay. So in terms of that stuff, it was just me spending time looking for it. Access-wise, for interviews, I mean, everybody was pretty great. Michael Shaw, who was one of the owners of the shoes, he was a little bit complicated to get, because he’s a little bit complicated of a person…

From the interview, it's clear this is movie is about collecting movie memorabilia, not just the Ruby Slippers.

AIFF 2016: Shorts In Competition - Old Stars Dominate: Danny DeVito, Ed Asner, Valerie Harper

"In competition" means these films were selected by the screeners to be eligible for awards at the festival.  

"Features" are 'stories' that are 55 to  140 minutes. "Shorts" are stories that are 10-55 minutes.  Super shorts  are stories under 10 minutes.  'Stories' are fictional and distinguished from documentaries.  

This looks like a particularly strong group this year.  Danny DeVito is in one, Ed Asner in another, Valerie Harper in yet another.  Bruce Springsteen played a role in getting one to screen (because of issues over music rights.)  


Here's the list and below is a bit more about each.  

Shorts in Competition	Director	Country	Length
Curmudgeons	Jake DeVito	USA	17 min
Gorilla	Tibo Pinsard	France	14 min
Il Campione (The Champion )	Boming Jiang	Italy	12 min
Like A Butterfly	Eitan Pitigliani	United States	28 min
My Mom and the Girl	Susie Singer Carter	United States	20 min
Thunder Road	Jim Cummings	USA	13  min

 Since shorts are short, they are grouped into programs. These are the programs that the films are in and when those programs show:  Hard Knocks, Love and Pain, and Global Village.  The Martini Matinee is a regular AIFF event and takes a few shorts from different programs.  Also, there are some super shorts mixed in some of the programs.

This chart is my attempt to help you find which program each of the shorts in competition is in and when you can see them.  I'd note that those shorts not in competition can also be really good.  I often find films at the festival that are not in competition that I think should have been.  But seeing the ones in competition is a good bet.  And the others are mixed into the programs.

Program (right)   Film (below)	HARD KNOCKS Saturday - 1st Dec 3, 2016 11:30am -1 pm - AK Exper Small Thursday -2nd Dec. 8 5:30-7:30pm AK EX Large	MARTINI MATINEE Friday. Dec 9 2-4 PM BEAR TOOTH	LOVE AND PAIN Wed.  1st  Dec. 7 5:30-7 pm BEAR TOOTH Sat 2nd Dec. 10 5:45-7:15pm AK Ex Small	GLOBAL VILLAGE Sunday, DEC. 13  1PM-2:45PM AK Exper Large
Curmudgeons		√	√	√
Gorilla			√
Il Campione (The Champion )		√	√
Like A Butterfly			√	√
My Mom and the Girl	√			√
Thunder Road		√	√	√

------------------------------------------------------------------

Curmudgeons
Jake DeVito
USA
0:17:00
✓
Danny DeVito is actually listed as the director and an actor in the film.  Jake is one of the producers and one of several other DeVito's in the credits.

This is the whole film*:

Curmudgeons from Jersey 2nd Avenue on Vimeo.


------------------------------------------------------------------

Gorilla
Tibo Pinsard
France
0:14:00
 ✓

From Gorilla's Kickstarter page:

 "THE INSPIRATION. I love apes. Not you? I love real monkeys, but also "fake" apes, like the old King Kong, those played by actors in the original The Planet of the Apes, or the wonderfully created apes by makeup master artist Rick Baker for Greystoke, with Christopher Lambert and Ian Holm. All these films and these movie apes have profoundly marked my viewer's imagination, the universe they live in, the dangerous and fascinating jungle, but mainly because it talks to my "inner ape". We do not think enough about our "inner ape". Do we ?"







------------------------------------------------------------------

Il Campione (The Champion )
Boming Jiang
Italy
0:12:00
 ✓
I'm having trouble finding much about this film, so I'll just leave you with the trailer for now.








------------------------------------------------------------------

Like A Butterfly

Eitan Pitigliani

USA

0:28:00

"About a man who dreams he's a butterfly and he becomes so involved in this dream that he no longer knows if he's a man dreaming he's a butterfly, or if he's a butterfly dreaming he's a man."

From an Italoeurope  interview with Eitan Pitigliani

"the reason why I became a director, which is the need to capture the essence of life ­ and of what life could be ­ and then put it on screen, through a special medium: the film. What is great about films is that you make them together with other people, in my case with wonderful and special individuals that helped me take the idea I first had to the final stage. The story of the film came from a series of personal experiences that I have had over time, that I then jotted down in words together with the screenwriter Alessandro Regaldo. There were so many things that inspired me while I was writing the story."

------------------------------------------------------------------
My Mom and the Girl
Susie Singer Carter
USA
0:20:00


From Richard Rossi website which includes an interview with Susie Singer Carter.

"MY MOM AND THE GIRL is a true story based on an odd encounter my East Coast mother, who suffers with Alzheimer's, shared one evening on the streets of East L.A. The story takes off after dinner with family & friends takes a dark turn and my mother is led to a proverbial crossroads where 3 very disparate, desperate women are unpredictably pulled back into the light. It's a funny, poignant and surprisingly rich story where apparent disabilities can be seen as gifts."

------------------------------------------------------------------


Thunder Road
Jim Cummings
USA
0:13:00
 ✓

"As Cummings tells it, the film very unexpectedly got into Sundance, where it then won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Short Film. Of course, this brought some heat to the short and Cummings, which meant attention was also paid to a major question from the film: If he’d secured the rights to Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” which plays during a pivotal scene.  After paying $7,000 for the rights to the song so it could travel the festival circuit, Cummings was faced with a $40,000 to 50,000 licensing fee to put his short online. This prompted Cummings to take his case to Springsteen in the form of an open letter he posted on the internet."

This is the whole film*:

Thunder Road from Jim Cummings on Vimeo.




*When I first starting blogging the film festival, films that were available online were not eligible for most festivals and there was some concern when I would find the whole film somewhere.  But online video has gone from the dark ages to the present in just a few years.  If a film is good, you should want to see it several times, and on the big screen as well as on your computer.