AIFF 2011: An Ordinary Family - Audience Reactions

[NOTE: I'd recommend An Ordinary Family for people looking for something good to see tonight. But read more to see if this is for you.]

I'd decided to just stay at Out North after watching Give Up Tomorrow - a very compelling Filipino documentary about framed convictions on kidnap, rape, and murder.  [The film focused on one of the convicted and identified the film maker as a distant relative.  I assume the film is accurate, but I really know nothing about the case other than what I saw.]

But another festival junkie said she'd heard An Ordinary Family was one of the best films at the festival and the Out North offering was a Polish movie, Odd One Out [Nie ten człowiek], that had the word surreal in the description.  Ordinarily that would be an attraction, but I was tired and thought something I didn't have to work hard at was more appealing.

An Ordinary Family plays again tonight (Thursday).

The video has some audience reaction:




An Ordinary Family turned out to be a good, easy to watch (good characters, fairly predictable plot) film about a man coming to a family vacation with his male lover.  His brother, a minister, doesn't know they're coming.  The film's press kit (pdf) says the family has no clue about the boy friend or that Seth is gay, though it's not that clear in the movie. There are lots of ways a film can be categorized and most probably drive film makers crazy.  That said (and apologies to film maker Mike Akel, who wasn't able to make it last night) the basic theme - adjustments in people's heads to the new realities created by GLBT folks being more open and visible reminded me of the movie The Kids Are Allright without the star power of Annette Bening and Juliane Moore.  In terms of audience appeal, while The Kids, in my memory was technically better [slicker], I think this film would have a similar appeal if it had the same sort of advertising budget and its leads had the same sort of name recognition.  I suspect if you compared budgets and evaluated the two in terms of quality/cost, An Ordinary Family would come out way ahead. (One of the audience reactors  in the video said the photography was "a couple of steps above home video," I didn't notice that at all.)

I was particularly struck by the kids in the movie.  My guess is that they just left the camera running during down time and then used some of that footage of the kids just being kids. [It turns out that the son was the real son of the actor playing Thomas, Troy Schremmer.]

I'd now love to see the very same movie with the actors Troy Schremmer and Greg Wise switching roles (they played the two brothers Thomas and Seth).  It would be interesting to see how that would change the movie.  That thought just popped into my mind near the end of the film.

One question people had after the movie was:  where was it shot?  The director is from Austin, so that was suggested.  Going through the press kit, New York is mentioned several times, but I finally found a few references to the shoot being in Texas.  But nothing more specific.

Other interesting notes:  The character Thomas and his on-screen wife, are off screen husband and wife.  The actor, Troy Schremmer, is quoted making a fascinating observation in the press kit:

On working with his real-life wife on screen: “Fighting with Jonny (Janelle) is much, much more fun with a room full of cameras than it is in real life. Itʼs safer, for one thing, because of all the witnesses. Plus, weʼve got a director in the room to tell us when to stop or when weʼre getting too dull. And if we screw up and say something really out of line, we can just go back and start over again. I highly recommend it to any couple whoʼs looking for a little therapy or to spice things up a little bit”

There's a lot of interesting back story about creating the film in the press kit.
And if anyone is interested, you can get a Grandma ringtone.  (That will make sense after you see the movie.)

Here's the trailer:


AN ORDINARY FAMILY - Official Film Trailer! from Matt Patterson on Vimeo.

AIFF 2011: LA Film Makers With Anchorage Based Movie - Jill Jones and Brent Yontz

I caught Brent and Jill Tuesday night at the Bear Tooth after Moon Point.. They're up from L.A. with their Anchorage based story. It's in the Snowdance Program Thursday - details below. [A comment below suggests it was filmed in Anchorage, but not intended to actually be Anchorage specifically.]




Snowdance Program
Thursday, Dec. 8, 2011 - 
Out North Theatre - Main

My Offering | T Scott 2011
Bike/Ski/Raft Denali Traverse | 2011
Chablis | Slavik Boyechko 2011
Change | Michael Burns, Dean Q. Mitchell 2011
Nanuq | Jill Jones 2011
My Six (Known) Brushes With Death | Peter Dunlap-Shohl 2010
The Way | Kelly Gwynn, Jay Rapoza 2011
Eyes for Amber | Kyle Murphy 2011
Hell Yeah | Claudio Oakley 2011


I was a little concerned when I learned they did a movie set in Anchorage without ever having been to Anchorage.  But their short film is really about the little girl and her connection to Nanuq and the live action is all in the hospital.  (They gave me a DVD so I could see it.) The shots out the window are ok.  The parts that distort Anchorage badly are animated dream sequences and anything can happen in a dream. [UPDATE:  See comment below that says dream sequence wasn't intended to portray Anchorage, but stylized winter setting.] The film itself is believable and the acting is fine.

Pear, Satsuma, Apple, Cabbage, Kale, Carrots Leek, Cucumber

I picked up our Full Circle Farm box today.  All those fruits and vegetables to perk up a grey December day.  To remind me that the solstice is two weeks away, and then the days start getting longer. 

"Its fruit is sweet and usually seedless, about the size of other mandarin oranges (Citrus reticulata), smaller than an orange. One of the distinguishing features of the satsuma is the distinctive thin, leathery skin dotted with large and prominent oil glands, which is lightly attached around the fruit, enabling it to be peeled very easily in comparison to other citrus fruits. The satsuma also has particularly delicate flesh, which cannot withstand the effects of careless handling" [Wikipedia]

Dental Spam Response Part 2: "I understand you have an opinion, but I am respectfully asking that you . . ."

You can see Part 1 of this here.
The original post about the spam is here.

The first response to the post from the dentist was a threat of legal action. I sent a response to the threat [in Part 1] via email Tuesday night - a week ago.  Wednesday morning there was an 8:04am email waiting for me. 

Steve,
I am proactively looking into why this happened in the first place as I was not aware that the SEO company that we work with was doing this. The internet, though, is a free market and what they did is completely legal. If it was a problem that you didnt want this comment on your log, it would have been as simple as to call my office and request that we take it down or like your website states“Comments will be reviewed, not for content (except ads), but for style. . . Ads disguised as comments, unless closely related to the post and of value to readers(my call) will be deleted.” It seems that you are going completely out of your way to make calls to the local paper and have a reporter check into it and waste your time. The first line of your blog states that "..I have better things to do than this, but I can't help it." but it doesnt seem that way. I appreciate that you are educating people about this matter but I do not want my practice specifically mentioned as your comments about sleezy dentist and XXXXXX Dental Arts can be easily misconstrued by any patient or potential patient of mine. I understand you have an opinion, but I am respectfully asking that you take the  XXXXXXX Dental Arts name out of your blog.

"It started out as a snarky post about a tacky dentist. Now I'm not sure how tacky the dentist is..." -This negative opinion has no baring and is not helpful and doesn't compare at all to your example of diagnosing a cavity
"They are a tacky, factory dental clinic that will do whatever it takes to get customers." -All of this information is deduced from from one comment on one blog?
"I still think there are signs of tackiness here on the dentist's part - the long hours, the heavy push on SEO, including a staff member who knows the term, and the multiple offices in the area." We have long hours as to accommodate patients at all times due to the patient population that we see. We are one of only 3 medicaid providers in the greater XXXXXXX area. There are about 140 dentists in the area that do not take insurance or only take a few of the best insurances. I pride myself and my practice on the ability to see all of these lower middle class and low income families that nobody else wants see because of the very low insurance reimbursement. This is in no way tacky. Also, my marketing team is very familiar with the term SEO as they should be considering that is what their job entails...marketing. And Im not sure what multiple offices in the area means either since this is my only practice.
These are just a few of the things that are offensive and untrue. I do not want them associated with any names at my practice or the name of my practice. Otherwise, say what you want but I hope this is a lesson to you that things aren't always what they seem.

XXXXX  XXXXXXX

I took some time to think about it.  I'd like to think I'm not into win-lose type competition.  Most situations can be imagined in new ways that allow everyone to come out ok, if not well.  What did he want?  What did I want?  Most of what I wanted had already happened.  We'd moved from "Take this down or I'll sue" to "I'm respectfully asking . . ."

But underlying that, and even more important, we went from trying to use power to get one's way to using reason and persuasion to work out an acceptable solution for us both. 

I don't agree with everything said in the email.  I didn't make statements as much as speculate possibilities, for example.  But I don't need to quibble with him about the details. [Readers can read the original post and then Part 1 of this post to see for themselves.] 

And he made some good points.  Do I have an invalid stereotype about chain dentists just being out to make money? I even said "factory dentists."  But if one moves from the professional model of dentistry to the business model, then one moves from the polite to the rough and tumble, including occasional bad reviews.  But dentists always had to run a business as well as care for their patients.  And I certainly think assisting medicaid patients is a good thing but it's not without risks. I heard many tales from my mother who worked in a doctor's office about how medicaid (and medicare) often didn't cover the doctor's expenses and how easy it is to get in trouble over paperwork mistakes.

Am I biased because all my life I've only gone to small private dental offices that got patients through word of mouth, not a marketing team?  Does that mean that there aren't other legitimate models?  I don't need a fight with a  Dental Center in the Eastern time zone.  I made my point that businesses should be careful about hiring sleazy SEO operations.  (BTW, the original post collected two more dental spam comments and I had to delete two comments from an airport taxi service.) There's no real need to have a particular dentist's name in the post. (The one dentist whose spam/comment to this post I left as an example, put his own name there.)

I sent the new email to my attorney and proposed that I would delete references to the specific dentist office and town, but add the follow up emails.  I didn't hear from my attorney. [I just found his quick Wednesday response in my spam folder.] I did see him at the film festival though on Monday.

I told him the dentist had called me that morning (I wish East Coast people would check time zones before calling Alaska.)  We had a pleasant conversation and I spelled out my proposal and he was agreeable as long as his name was left out of things.

So, we each got what we wanted through civil rational discussion.  Neither of us will have to pay for an expensive legal battle.  Both of us are satisfied with the resolution. 

I will quibble on one point.  I simply called a reporter in his area to find out if this dental center had a reputation or not since I had no local connections I could check with.  I wasn't trying to stir up trouble.  

On the blogging side, yes, we have the First Amendment that allows us to say quite a bit.  But just because we have the right doesn't mean we should always use it.  We should be mindful of the unnecessary harm we can cause others.  There should be a good reason for inconveniencing (or worse) others in our exercise of free speech.  And there are also times when we need to hold our ground.  I respect a dentist willing to care for this medically under served population and I have no reason to disbelieve what he says.

Thanks, Dr. XXX for engaging me civilly.  I learned something through this, and I hope that you've  taken something positive from this as well. 

And other bloggers, you might want to consider joining a blogging association if only to get some coverage for unanticipated legal expenses. [I tried getting a link to the Media Bloggers website, but I got "Forbidden" messages.]

AIFF 2011: Total Drama's Chris McLean Alter Ego Christian Potenza Talks About Moon Point

 Walking out of The Wedding Party  I ran into Christian Potenza.  How could I miss him with his wild hat and goggles?  It turns out this Canadian from Toronto is the host Chris McLean on the Canadian online animated reality show Total Drama.  

Image from Total Drama

He's in Anchorage for the showing of the film Moon Point,  which he co-produced. He also acts in it.    But let him tell you himself in the video.  Director Sean Cisterna is also in the video.  He also has some nice words for The Wedding Party which we'd just seen.





Moon Point plays at the Bear Tooth Tuesday, Dec. 6, at 8pm. Followed by the Canadian Consulate's reception.  It plays again Wednesday Dec. 7 at Out North at 7pm.

For more information check Moon Point's official website.

AIFF 2011: Tibet, A Polish Hedghog, And An Australian "Greencard" Wedding

We saw Mila's Journey - Dutch Woman hitchhikes to India with her boyfriend and his super 8 camera about 1968.  They film a three month trek across Tibet.  They break up. He keeps half the film and she keeps the other half.  40 some years later his wife contacts her that he's dying.  She takes all the film (which no one has looked at) and gets it digitized and shows him as he's dying.  Then she retraces some of the journey in Tibet.

The film is her recounting all this - using the old footage and new.  I didn't connect with the  Mila, so that didn't help.  I also was around for many of the events - visited Amsterdam a few times while a student in Germany 1964-65, went to Monterrey Pop in 1967, then after Peace Corps Thailand spent ten days in Kathmandu.  Mainly I was thinking, if I'm this boring no wonder my kids don't want to hear about all this.

I don't know that others agreed with my feelings. 

We stuck our heads into George the Hedgehog, the feature length Polish animation which the AIFF website describes this way:

George is a skateboarding hedgehog who likes to drink beer and fondle women. However, he finds it difficult to pursue his passions when he's being tormented by neo-Nazi skinheads, mad scientist and the drooling, flatulent clone of himself.

From the ten minutes I saw of it, I'm not sure why this didn't get into the competition among the animated films.   It appeared to be a fairly potent social commentary in an uncouth South Park irreverence.  This could have been one of the best films at the Festival, but maybe ten minutes is the perfect amount to watch.  It plays again Saturday at 8:30pm at the Alaska Experience Theater. 

Amanda Jane begins Q&A as credits role

But we rushed off to the Bear Tooth to watch Amanda Jane's The Wedding Party which got an enthusiastic reception from the almost full house.  Guy needs money to pay debts so he can marry his true love.  Gets opportunity to make the money - by marrying a gorgeous young Russian woman so she can get her immigration settled.   People laughed at all the right places and there was loud applause at the end.  Film maker Amanda Jane was clearly, and rightfully, happy at the end when she did her Q&A.  It was a fairly complicated film, structurally, with separate sub-narratives for all of the members of the wedding party  - Robert Altman like.  She pulled it off well. 

My only problem was a personal one in which I'm clearly an outlier in terms of what people consider funny.  I prefer self-deprecating humor or humor used by people who have no other way to stand up to the powerful.  Here the biggest laughs seemed to be at people who were struggling as human beings, often in awkward sexual situations.  I felt sympathy for them in their unsuccessful attempts to connect with their mates.  One could counter argue that the audience was laughing at themselves as portrayed by the characters.   Maybe I had too much exposure to what bullying looks like lately when Brent Scarpo was in town.

I was impressed with the solid acting - every character was, as an audience member said, spot on.  The movie was well paced.  This is certainly as good or better than a lot of the films that make money in the US these days.  No one needs to be charitable to this film as a 'festival indie' film.  It stands on its own merits as a well made AND entertaining movie.  And it has great audience appeal.  It has a good chance for an audience award. It's not listed as 'in competition.'  I need to check on whether it was a special selection.

There probably should have been a warning not to bring the kids.  It plays again Saturday at noon at Out North.  You'll have fun with this one.

Dental Spam Response Part 1: ". . . if nothing is done within 24hrs, I will be forced to take legal action."

Blogging has its hazards.  I put up a post about a spam dental comment on Monday 11/28/11 at 10:52pm.   I got this email [dated 11/29/11 7:52am (Alaska time)]:

To Whom it May Concern,

My name is Dr XXX  XXXXX I am the owner of XXXXX Dental Arts. I was made aware of your blog today and I wanted to know what, exactly, is the purpose of this negativity in your blog? You do not know who I am or what I do in my practice but to say such things is considered defamation of character and is illegal. The way in which I advertise on the internet or increase traffic to my website shouldn't be any concern to yourself. You do not know me, nor do you know anything about me. I ask that you take down your recent post about XXXXXXX Dental Arts. I do not want to escalate this to my attorney but if nothing is done within 24hrs, I will be forced to take legal action.

Thanks,

XXX   XXXX

This happened once before when an attorney for the Alaska International Film Festival sent a longer letter.  In that case, I contacted attorney John McKay who wrote a long response letter.

In this case, this was directly from the dentist, not his attorney.  And he did say, "thanks" at the end.  And he didn't use his title in his signature.  Those are good signs to me.  So I drafted a response and checked with my attorney and then sent it off Tuesday night:

Dr. XXXXXXXXX,

Let me try to address your questions:

1. “I was made aware of your blog today and I wanted to know what, exactly, is the purpose of this negativity in your blog?”

You mention negativity as though talking about something negative is a bad thing.   Surely, when you find that a patient has a cavity, you must raise that negativity with your patient so you can proceed to fix it.

The purpose of the post is to point out the dangers of legitimate businesses hiring SEO firms that use sleazy tactics. Like filling a cavity, I’m trying to help businesses, like your own, protect themselves from sleazy SEO tactics. And like filling a cavity, it might hurt a bit, but I mean you no malice, as you mean your patients no malice.

2. "You do not know who I am or what I do in my practice. . .”

I do not know much about you, nor do you know me. But I do know
something about your marketing practices because an advertisement for your business was posted on my blog. Your SEO came to me, I didn’t go looking for you. My blog has a warning above the comment box that says (in part):

“Comments will be reviewed, not for content (except ads), but for style. . .  Ads disguised as comments, unless closely related to the post and of value to readers (my call) will be deleted.”

Despite this warning, a spam advertisement was left as a comment directing my readers to your dental clinic. The comment had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the blog post. In my mind this is tacky, because it pretends to be a comment, but really is an ad. In this case, there was not even an effort made to find a post about dentistry (I have some) or to even pretend to relate to the post at all. (Some SEO people write things like “This is a very interesting post” before leaving their links. And, in fact, another dentist has left another spam comment, but it talks about dentistry at least on this post which mentions 'dentist' though the main topic is SEO and spam.)

I went to the effort to call your office to check if you knew about the ad. Someone who identified herself as YYYYYY said this must be related to your SEO. I posted that on the blog so that my readers (and you) could see that I had checked  and that your office was not aware.

3. “but to say such things is considered defamation of character and is
illegal.”

I’m a professor emeritus of public administration at the University of Alaska  Anchorage. I write carefully and I try to present different possible interpretations rather than state things as fact. The post speculated different possibilities and provided evidence for the different possibilities. As I review it I see nothing that could be considered defamation.

You have not specifically identified what ‘things’ you consider  defamation of character or how it is illegal. If you can do that, I will share your  comments with my attorney, and consider any edits he advises.

I was threatened with legal action once before. That ended abruptly when my attorney responded to their threat. My attorney has represented news media and others engaged in exercising their First Amendment rights for over three decades, and has taught a university course dealing with these subjects for almost as long.

In conclusion, please identify the specific parts of the post that you consider defamation of character or illegal so I can consider making edits if my attorney agrees with your assessment.

Sincerely,

Steve Aufrecht

This all happened about a week ago.  I'll put this up now and Part 2 which includes the dentist's response and mine.

Here's the resolution in Response Part 2.

AIFF 2011: The Wedding Party - Australian Amanda Jane Talks About Her Film

I got to meet Australian director Amanda Jane Saturday night at an Anchorage International Film Festival party at the Spenard Roadhouse. (This was a public party that was free and open to anyone.) Her film, The Wedding Party, shows tonight at 8pm at the Bear Tooth. It also shows on Saturday Dec. 10 at 12pm at Out North.



We've had some great Australian movies at the AIFF. Street Sweeper and Birthday come to mind immediately.

AIFF 2011: Pebble Mine's Rio Tinto Subject of "Locked Out" Tonight 8pm Out North

The Anchorage Film Festival schedule for today is shortened compared to the weekend, starting at 6pm at Out North.  Out North has an 8pm showing of Locked Out  in the main theater that might be of interest to  anyone who wants to know more about the owners of Pebble Mine.  Whether you're pro- or anti- Pebble Mine or still making up your mind, here's a chance to learn more about the operations of one of the owners - Rio Tinto.


Rio Tinto Buys Into Alaska's "Pebble" Project -

Kennecott, through its parent company Rio Tinto, has purchased Galahad Gold Ltd.’s 19.8% share in Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum prospect, making it the largest single individual shareholder.[1] In February 2007, Northern Dynasty Minerals announced it would receive the Thayer Lindsley International Discovery Award from the Prospector's and Developer's Association of Canada for discovering the 32 square mile Pebble East deposit.[2]

This was a 2007 article and I wanted to check whether Rio Tinto was still connected to Pebble Mine.  If the Pebble Mine Partnership website lists its owners, I couldn't find it.  But Wikipedia does still list Rio Tinto as a major stockholder of the Northern Dynasty the original owner, as I understand it, of the Pebble Mine project.

Important stockholders in Northern Dynasty Minerals Limited include Kennecott (19.8%) which is a wholly owned affiliate of Rio Tinto, management (13%), and Mitsubishi (9.1%). One non-executive member of the Northern Dynasty board is a Rio Tinto representative. The corporate officers and executive board members of Northern Dynasty Minerals Limited are all, also, executive board members and corporate officers of Hunter Dickinson Corporation. Northern Dynasty is one of ten public mining companies driven by Hunter Dickinson, a Vancouver-based Canadian corporation.^[35]

Like any documentary, this film should be considered a source of information which leads you to ask more questions to determine how complete, accurate, and balanced the film's claims are.  From the Locked Out's website:

This is a compelling story of 560 unionized borax miners in the desert town of Boron, California who faced off against Rio Tinto, a British-Australian multi-billion dollar global corporation, which is the 3rd largest mining company in the world. Boron, population 2000, is home to many miners and their families, and is a close knit community of small businesses, churches, the boy scouts, the little league and many single family homes where workers have lived stable middle class lives for many generations. But their jobs and way of life were threatened when Rio Tinto locked them out of work on January 31st, 2010 and replaced them with scabs. Will the workers' middle class way of life be destroyed? Who will win this David and Goliath struggle?

This is the only time this film is scheduled at the Festival.  It is one of the Documentaries in Competition - meaning it was chosen as one of the best and is eligible for an award.


Mila's Journey - another documentary in competition - begins at 6pm and the adult's only Polish animated film George the Hedgehog is from 7pm - 8pm at Out North before Locked Out.

6:00 PM		Mila's Journey Annie Perkins, Rinku Kalsy 2011 | Documentary, In Competition | 70 min.	Out North Theatre - Main
7:00 PM		George the Hedgehog [Jeż Jerzy] Wojciech Wawszczyk, Jakub Tarkowski, Tomek Lesniak 2011 | Animation, Feature | 80 min.	Out NorthGallery

Also at 8pm at the Bear Tooth is the Australian film The Wedding Party which shows again Saturday at 12pm.  I'll have another post on this film.

AIFF 2011: This Is Not Real Director Hungarian Gergely Wootsch

I caught up with Gergely at the film makers' forum this morning, then at the showing of In The Shadow where I got this brief video. There's more information about his film at my post on the animated films in competition.



We got to see the film Sunday night before The Flood.  The visuals are wonderful.  Here's just one frame, with an audience member silhouetted in front.  Ropi, did you watch the whole video?