Saturday, December 17, 2011

Brilliant Stairs to Kitchen Homicide - Imaginations Pushing the Ordinary

I'm a sucker for things that cause my brain cells to shift.  So here are a few links to websites that do that.

For example, stairs are pretty straightforward.  Almost all are basically the same.  There is some variation, like spiraling staircases, but the idea has pretty much been exhausted, right?

Well look at the 20 sets of stairs offered at Mdolla to remind you that there's always a new way to conceive of something we take for granted.  Like these on the right.

I don't think you could legally put these in a house in Anchorage. 






  Divine Caroline makes us revisit logos to make sure we've seen the whole logo, like the images in the empty spaces in this logo for the Pittsburgh Zoo.  There are 15 examples, some I see every day, but don't really see, like the hidden symbol in the Fedex logo.  Do you know what's there?








A Crazy Bag of Hammers gives a sampling of these ordinary objects bent-wired into about 20 mini-dramas like this apparent kitchen homicide.


And it's well worth your while to go to Bent Objects itself for more and varied brain candy like a poster for any billionaires planning a protest.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Don't Mess With My Stereotypes - The "All American Muslim" Ad That Lowe's Pulled

[UPDATE 6:50pm:  Ha!  Too good to be true.  See the first comment.  So what was the ad they removed?]

Does anyone not know that Lowe's pulled an ad on the tv show "All American Muslim" because a Christian group in Florida had a letter writing campaign protesting it?

I first thought they were simply protesting that Lowe's supported a show with positive views of American Muslims. But now I've seen the ad itself.

I can see why they would want it pulled. It plays to all their stereotypes about evil Muslim terrorists and then dashes them. Can't let people see such powerful hate antidotes.



Thanks to Gryphen for posting it.

Esther Hong: Transformation of Canvas

There's a little art gallery next to the entrance of the UAA library and it had a wonderful exhibit when I went by yesterday: 

Transformation of Canvas.

I didn't get the title at first. 

I just knew it was cool.










The one above is from the one just to the left.














I just fell in love with the texture, the designs, the muted colors, the imagination, and the perseverance.






Then in the center of the room I saw this canvas covered 'bench' with a video screen of two hands pulling off threads from  . . . a piece of canvas.  And there were pieces of canvas and the little tool she was using there for me to do the same.  And that's when I got it.  Transformation of canvas.

December 16 is the last day of the exhibit.  That's today.  Friday.  At UAA near the entrance to the Consortium Library.  Parking is free on Fridays.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Winter Roads Make Winter Trails All That Much Better




It began snowing about October 30, and I've been able to get in at least twice a week workouts shoveling new snow. I don't remember so much snow so often. The result is that our street is getting narrower. Some of us have been able to carve out parking spots, but most of the street space is now three to four foot high berm - five or six feet wide. People are parking creatively.






After ten days of film festival, I was ready to for bit of a walk, so I took some books back to the UAA library.  Here's the biketrail/sidewalk cut out of the snow. 
Driving the last few days has been as bad as I can remember. (It could be dementia that I can't remember that well.)  The car rattles along the street.  Walking across it was easy to see why.  Lots of random ice humps.  I guess the heavy snow followed by warm followed by cold again allowed for some artistic freezing designs.  And terrible driving conditions. 

The snow plow guys must be exhausted and frustrated.  They've done a pretty good job getting our street cleared, but not picking up the snow.  And now the streets are awful. 










But walking the bike trails on campus is going off into a winter wonderland.


















Wednesday, December 14, 2011

AIFF 2011: How Could A Zombie Musical That Cost "a lot less than" $50K Win Best Feature?





[We saw the last part of the movie again Wednesday night (after seeing the winning shorts).  The visual and audio quality of the movie was significantly better, and the story was clearer.]





This blog is called "What Do I Know?" because a basic theme is the question that underlies everything we know - "How do we know what we know?"  A variation of that theme is:  "How do what know what is true and what is good?"   These are questions that people ask themselves too seldom.

So, when we talk about 'the best' film, there are lots of underlying assumptions about what each of us means by best.  In 2008 I outlined my criteria, as best I could, and related them to movies in that festival.  Let me pull the four headings out now and see if they help me explain why this film is a worthy winner.

Example of Interesting Lighting
    Ink diffusing across the screen

  • Technical Quality A continuum from.. shaky...no problems..very good..innovative. 

Some films have a combination of more than one of these which makes it harder to judge.  In a movie, good sound makes up for poor video.  Think of Blair Witch Project or home-made YouTube footage of police confrontations.   Dead Inside had a few technical issues I noticed - the voices in the musical numbers were sometimes too low compared to the instruments and the music itself might have been a bit louder.  There were a couple of spots that seemed unintentionally out of focus.  But there were also many great shots throughout.  They played with the light and dark and color.  With spaces and shapes.  The make-up of the zombies would have been good for a high budget film, but was incredible
Max and Harper
for this very low budget movie. I'm not sure what the spreading inky images signified, but I like them.  They told us, in the opening scenes, that something supernatural was coming.  (Good, Steve, you don't think we got that from the zombies walking through the desert in the opening scene?)
And I like the editing.  The transitions worked for me and the background music and sounds helped a lot.
  • Content -
    Content is probably the most variable issue, since what interests me may not interest you.  But any story, done really well, no matter the subject, will capture any one. And while for most movies the narrative is key, great  movies that intentionally leave the narrative fuzzy or have no narrative, can offer important alternative ways to use film.  (And if you want to push this further, not having a narrative becomes itself another narrative.)  But this is far riskier to pull off. 


    There's a vague continuum for me that roughly goes from bad to good:
Disrespectful ...Boring...good story....original...currency...high positive impact
  Bad...................................................................................................................Good

Writing The Story As Part of the Story
This film has a narrative and themes, though after one viewing there are still  loose ends for me.  I saw the overarching theme as a variation of the Orpheus story. A lover (Wes) goes to extremes to get his love (Fi - pronounced Fee) back. In this case a ghost takes over Fi's body and Wes has to figure out how to oust the ghost and help Fi reclaim her body.  Another theme is the difficulty of creating a work of art/literature.  Fi is a writer with writer's block.  We watch her sit, fingers at the keyboard, writing, then erasing.  But the story she's writing seems to be the script in the movie.  Emily (the ghost who takes over Fi's body) tries to write Fi out of the story.  I think that basically Fi was writing a zombie script and I'm still not sure about the relationship between the zombies (Max and Harper) and Fi and Max [Wes. See I'm still a bit confused.]  They are the same actors and sometimes we have Max with Fi.

I haven't thought through all the possible themes, but I'm sure with enough time I could come up with half a dozen that the film makers never even thought of.  In some cases that's part of what good art does - allows, even pushes, the audience to think and to gain insights into their own lives reflected in the art.  


  • Use of Medium. Movies combine sight and sound and movement, verbal and non-verbal messages.  The best movies are those that take advantage of the medium completely.  They tells stories you can't convey as well in other media.
Three photos on wall
This is a very visual movie, but it's also very auditory. After all, it is a musical. This is not an adaptation of a book.  This was conceived as film (or the digital components that make up film today.)  One device I liked was the use of three photos on the wall.  When we first see it, we see Fi in the left hand frame reaching out, Wes in the right hand frame reaching out to Fi, and the two hands not quite touching in the middle frame. (Symbolic of the main theme.)  Throughout the film we see these photos, but sometimes they change or the characters move into the frames and act out the story in the background on the wall. 

[Note:  The photos are saved frames from clips of the movie taken during the showing.  I didn't have the dvd to carefully pick my examples from.  You'll see them again in the video.]
  • 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. 
It's the whole package that had audience members smiling in amazement at the end of this.  This was truly an independent movie, the kind that film festivals are all about.  It is ridiculously ambitious.  It's conventional enough to be accessible to most viewers, yet it breaks rules to make a film that's not your every day cookie cutter film.

And one has to acknowledge that one of the wonders of this film is that its budget would have been used up in less than a minute on a major Hollywood set.  The  budget factor is something I've written about before in evaluating movies.  Just as in diving and skating, where you can get more points for trying something more difficult, film makers, in my scoring system, get more points for doing more with less.  It's like including miles/gallon in evaluating a car.  One could argue convincingly that Kinyarwanda or The Wedding Party or Inuk should have been best picture.  They were all good movies.  And they each had their emotional tugs to claim the prize.  And with different judges any one of them might have won.  And people might criticize the selection of The Dead Inside.

But I give the judges  a lot of credit (as did others I talked to) for recognizing how much this film did through improvising with almost no money.  (I said to Travis after seeing the film, "This was great for a movie under $100K."  He laughed and said, "Way under."  I then said, "This was great for a movie under $50K."  He laughed and said, "Way under.")

I don't want anyone to think this wasn't a very good movie that got the award because it cost so little.  It was a very good movie.  The film makers had to be creative.  It was all done inside their apartment, with the exception of the opening scenes in the desert.  There were five people involved in the production. (More in post production.)  They found ways to tell their story with the budget they had.  And I haven't mentioned the music much.  There's a whole musical in here - a very credible one.  As I listen to bits of it on a couple of clips I took during the showing Saturday, I realize how good it is and how important the music and sound is to the movie.

I don't think I exaggerate when I say that most people (pretty much everyone I talked to) were surprised that The Dead Inside won best picture, but happily surprised.  It's the kind of thing that should happen at film festivals.  One could make a movie about this.  This is an important film maker, early in his career.  Whether this is the peak or just the early signs of greatness remains to be seen. 

Here are some clips from the film.  These are intentionally crooked and include much more than the screen so no one will think I'm trying to bootleg the film.  And since I only took a few random shots without knowing what was coming, it's, well, random.  But it gives you a hint at the film that's different from the trailer which you can see here.

The video offers some illustration of the points I made - that this is a musical with good music, there are good visuals, the inky blobs, the zombie makeup, and bit of how they go in and out of the three pictures over the bed. 


The actors - who sing the original music themselves - are Sarah Lassez and Dustin Fasching.  The music is from Joel Van Vliet.  The film has a strong website that gives some background of the characters.



Tuesday, December 13, 2011

AIFF 2011: No Love Tonight, But Meet You at Apartment in Athens at 7:15pm

I emailed AIFF features coordinator Tony Sheppard to get some more information about the film Apartment in Athens.  It appears our showing is the North American premiere.

I was conflicted between seeing Apartment or Love Me To Death which I missed the first time round.  But it turns out the copies of Love You To Death have gone missing.

So, unless something happens between now and 7pm, Love You To Death is cancelled according to the email I just got.  I don't have to make a decision.

The only film tonight is 

Apartment in Athens 7:15pm Alaska Experience Theater.  Tonight (Tuesday).  

This is a seriously good film.  I just posted about it here.  When it was first supposed to play, Sunday Dec. 4, the DVD didn't last past the first 15 minutes or so.  It kept stopping.  I haven't been able to find anything using the English title on Google except the Anchorage International Film Festival.  Using the Italian title (the film is an Italian film, but the 15 minutes I saw were in German and Greek [Italian]), I found that the world premiere was October 14 at the Bombay International Film Festival.  It played again - and won best film - at the Rome International Film Festival about Oct. 22.

I can't find any record of it playing in any US or Canadian film festivals.


[UPDATE Dec. 17:  I wasn't as impressed with the whole movie as I was with the view of the beginning I had a week earlier.  Most of the movie was shown in the wrong aspect ratio which made everyone look shorter and stouter.  Then about 60 minutes in, the disk stuttering problems started again.  The projectionist switched it to his Mac for the end of the movie and the aspect ratio seemed better and there were no problems.  But the technical problems didn't help my appreciation of the movie.  But this was an adaptation of a novel, and I think that trying to get the whole novel into a movie meant subtleties were lost.  The significant change in the German officer when he returned from Germany is explained, but it still seems extreme - especially given how he subsequently acts.  Perhaps in the novel this is better explained.

But this is a good movie that raises interesting questions about how humans use and react to power with a number of interesting twists to make it more complex.  The father's role is perhaps the most interesting.]

AIFF 2011: An Apartment in Athens or Love You To Death?

[UPDATE:  It's not totally clear, but this could be the North American premiere of Apartment in Athens.]

I haven't seen Love You to Death because it was playing at the same time as In The Shadow.  The good news is that Love You to Death was the runner up for Audience Choice Award for best feature at the festival, so it is playing again tonight in Best of the Fest.  The bad news is that it's playing at the same time as Apartment in Athens.

Both appear to be very good films.  Love You To Death got the Audience Choice Award Runner Up for feature films at the Anchorage Festival.  Apartment in Athens was Best Film at the Rome International Film Festival in October. 


Love You to Death begins at 7pm and An Apartment in Athens at 7:15pm.  Both are at the Alaska Experience Theater (mall at C St. and 4th Avenue.)

I saw about 15 minutes of Apartment last week, before the disk started stopping.  It got so bad they shut it down and tried a second disk.  It did the same thing.  I've talked to Brandon McElroy who was the technician.  I'll do a post on the topic of glitches during the film festival, an issue that has bothered film makers and audiences alike over the years.  Brandon has given me some explanations for why it happens and what we'd lose in order to make it rare.  And film makers I've talked to say it also happens in much bigger festivals than Anchorage.

Because Athens didn't get played during the festival, they are showing it again tonight.  If they can get a disk that works.  (It's in PAL format which limits the machines here that can use it.) 


Apartment in Athens

Image from Appartento Ad Atene
Athens felt like a very good movie for the short part I saw.  It takes place in WW II when a German officer moves into the apartment of a Greek family.  The officer takes a fancy to the young ten year old daughter.  The father is troubled but hopes that with the officer in the house, they might get better food rations.  The mother is upset, but knows how to act properly in front of the officer.  The 12 year old son doesn't hide his anger.  And that's about all we saw.  But it had the makings of a powerful movie.  And a translated Italian review suggested this was a film which explored deep issues about freedom and subservience.

The image - the only page of the movie's website - says it won Best Film at the  Rome International Film Festival last month. An Italian Website says its world premier was to be at the Bombay Film Festival (ironic that Yuki Ellias, actor in Love You to Death, is from Bombay).  It was scheduled in Bombay October 14.    It's based on a 1945 novel by Glenway Wescott.  From Wikipedia:

. . .  Wescott was born on a farm in Kewaskum, Wisconsin in 1901. . . He studied at the University of Chicago, where he was a member of a literary circle including Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Yvor Winters, and Janet Lewis.  Independently wealthy, he began his writing career as a poet, but is best known for his short stories and novels, notably The Grandmothers (1927). He lived in Germany (1921–22), and in France (c.1925–33), where he mixed with Gertrude Stein and other members of the American expatriate community; Wescott was the model for the character Robert Prentiss in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.


. . . Apartment in Athens (1945), the story of a Greek couple in Nazi-occupied Athens who must share their living quarters with a German officer, was a popular success. From then on he ceased to write fiction, although he published essays and edited the works of others. In her essay on The Pilgrim Hawk Ingrid Norton writes, "After...Apartment in Athens, Wescott lived until 1987 without writing another novel: journals (published posthumously as Continual Lessons) and the occasional article, yes, but no more fiction. . .
[See further comments made after seeing the whole movie here.]

Love You To Death
An Anchorage friend who was born and raised in India had high praise for Love You to Death.  It's not a typical Bollywood film, but an alternative look at the same old stars and same old ways of making Indian movies, she said.  It's in Hinglish - a mix of Hindi and English.  As you can see in the video below, the star's English is excellent.  There are subtitles when needed. 
Here's the video I got of Love You To Death actor Yuki Ellias when she was in Anchorage last week.

AIFF 2011: "You Wanna Touch My Penis?" Asks Best Feature Director




The prizes in the Anchorage International Film Festival are called "Golden Oosikars."  Oosikar is a fusion of Oosik and Oscar.  Everyone who's seen the Academy Awards knows what an Oscar is.  But Oosiks are not as well known.  From a page on walrus ivory and bone at BooneTrading:

RW10 WALRUS OOSIK SPECIMENS (walrus penile bone). Oosik (pronounced "oo' sik") is the Eskimo word for the walrus penile bone (baculum). Oosik is the original "ugly stick"; large ones were used as clubs by the Eskimos or used for making tools like picks and knives because the bone is so dense. They're an excellent conversation piece, color's mostly a rich brown tone.  These ancient specimens are polished glassy smooth. Available July - October, prices are approximate, these sell out quickly so order early.

From a post on the legal sale of ivory on Gustavus.com:

WALRUS (non-fossil)-
Regulated by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act. Raw walrus ivory predating the Dec. 21, 1972 law, tusks bearing the Alaska state walrus ivory registration tags or post-law walrus ivory that has been carved or scrimshawed by an Alaskan native (Eskimo) are legal to buy, possess, and sell.

Raw walrus ivory obtained after 12/21/72 is not legal to buy or sell unless both parties are Eskimo (it is legal to own). A $30 export permit is required to ship walrus ivory or oosik (legal as per above) out of the United States.
FOSSIL WALRUS IVORY-
Not restricted as it pre-dates the 1972 cutoff, it is legal to buy and sell anywhere within the United States. Shipping ivory or oosik (fossil walrus penal bone) out of the U. S. requires a $30 permit.

So after receiving his Golden Oosikar last night (Sunday) for Best Feature Film, Director Travis Betz would smile when people came up to him and ask, "Do you wanna touch my penis?"  And then he'd whip out his oosikar.

The winning movie, The Dead Inside, plays again Wednesday at 7pm at the Alaska Experience Theater.  A lot of people I talked to were both surprised, but in agreement, with the choice of the zombie musical love story as the winner.  I'll try to write about the film tomorrow.

Tonight (Tuesday), at 7pm also at Alaska Experience Theater, they are showing Audience Award Runner up  Love You To Death, a modern Indian comedy that I haven't seen yet.  So I'm glad it plays again.  Except it plays at the same time as Apartment in Athens which had DVD problems when it showed in the festival.  The first 15 minutes were great and I pestered features programmer Tony that they had to show it again.  But I can't be in two theaters at the same time.  (Thanks for scheduling it, I know there's not much time available, but grrrrr.)  It is contingent on them working out the disk problems they had the first time.  (I'm planning a post on technical glitches sometime soon.)

And to take the Oosik theme in another direction, you can listen to the music of a group called OosiK if you click here and listen.  Or just watch the video.
OosiK "Dark Toffee" (excerpt) from Ryan K Adams on Vimeo.

AIFF 2011: The Awards List

Here's the whole list from the Official AIFF 2011 website.  I've added some pictures,  and links to posts if I had one about the film. (Super short director Dan Holechek's video hasn't been up before this post.)

Golden Oosikar Awards
Feature
Winner
The Dead Inside directed by Travis Betz

Runner-Up ”The Flood [Mabul]” directed by Guy Nattiv
Honorable Mention ”Kinyarwanda” directed by Alrick Brown


Documentary
Winner “Give Up Tomorrow” directed by Michael Collins
Runner-Up “Goold’s Gold” directed by Tucker Capps and Ryan Sevy
Honorable Mention “With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story” directed by Will Hess

Snowdance Documentary
Winner “Tashalaska” directed by Tessa Morgan
Runner-Up “Chad Carpenter: The Man Behind the Comic” directed by Stefan Quinth

Snowdance Short
Winner “Bike, Ski, Raft Denali Traverse” directed by Luc Mehl
Runner-Up “Could’ve Been More” directed by Matt Jardin

Short Film
Winner “North Atlantic” directed by Bernardo Nascimento
Runner-Up “Two-Legged Rat Bastards” directed by Scott Weintrob
Honorable Mention “I’m Coming Over” directed by Sam Handel

Super Short
Winner “Love, At Last” directed by Alexander Jeffery
Runner-Up “A Finger, Two Dots Then Me” directed by David Holechek and Daniel Holechek
Honorable Mention “The Man at the Counter” directed by Brian McAllister

Animation
Winner “Something Left, Something Taken” directed by Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata





Runner-Up “This Is Not Real” directed by Gergely Wootsch


Honorable Mention “Year Zero” directed by Richard Cunningham III





Aurora Winner
“Andante” directed by Assaf Tager


Quick Freeze
Winner
Runner-Up
Honorable Mention



Audience Choice Awards
Feature
Winner “Inuk” directed by Mike Magidson
Runner-Up “Love You To Death” directed by Rafeeq Ellias
Honorable Mention “The Wedding Party” directed by Amanda Jane









Documentary
Winner “With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story” directed by Will Hess
Runner-Up “Lesson Plan” directed by Philip Neel and David Jeffery
Honorable Mention “Goold’s Gold” directed by Tucker Capps and Ryan Sevy

Monday, December 12, 2011

AIFF 2011 - Inuk Wins Audience Award for Feature - Plays Tonight at 7pm

(l-r) Jean Michel, Ole, Mike thanking everyone for the award



I paced myself to make it through the festival which ended yesterday.  But Best of the Fest is a three day addition where some of the winners are shown again.

Tonight, Audience Award favorite for features Inuk will play at the Alaska Experience Theater at 7pm.

Three of the film makers - the American producer-director Mike Magidson, the French writer Jean-Michel Huctin , and actor Ole-Jørgen Hammeken have been in Alaska this week. They were here for the opening night, then went off to Barrow, and were back for the awards last night.  I'm guessing they'll be at the screening.

This is a powerful film, very relevant to Alaska.  A Greenland Inuit young man is having troubles and gets sent to a shelter for kids with problems in the north.  There he connects with his traditional culture on a seal hunt when he and the seal hunter (Ole-Jørgen Hammeken) connect.

Ole is pretty amazing - he's circumnavigated the arctic in a small boat (over six years I think he said).  I'll try to post a video of him talking about the part from Point Hope back to Greenland.

Or you can go tonight and ask him yourself.    Get there a bit early.  The other two times it played it sold out.