A moment about films…

March 7th, 2010 § 4

Every year I make it my business not to comment about the Oscars, for the most part (partially because I might get ranty and I do still vaguely hold the hope of someday being nominated…yes, laugh it up as a pipe dream). If you want to read some good commentary and predictions quite similar to my ideals, go check out my friend Anita’s thoughts.
But this year I will say a few brief things, because I feel the need to clarify a few positions and unpopular opinions:

- I thought the acting performances in Precious were fantastic. It’s not a Best Picture film, but the acting was phenomenal. I didn’t find it unbelievable…probably because I read the book nearly a decade ago.

- Michael Giacchino deserves an Oscar for Up, but in my mind he’d get it as well for Star Trek, which was utterly amazing in its fit to the film and its play off the original Trek themes and film sound. You get big and you risk going John Williams/Jerry Goldsmith, which is fine but not astounding. Giacchino managed to take a cliché and turn it into something that still inspired wonder and emotion. Between that and Up, he’s the one to watch. Someone give this man more work.

- Team Bigelow. Not just because Hurt Locker is by all accounts lovely and my distaste for Avatar (on about ten different levels) is well-documented, not just because it is high friggin time a woman had a chance and pwned, but because I’ve been a Kathryn Bigelow fan since I watched Near Dark on VHS in 2002. Even when her films aren’t great (…K-19), they are always well-constructed and gorgeous.

- Contrary to popular belief, I don’t hate James Cameron’s work as a whole. Terminator 2 is one of my  top 20, I liked Aliens and I enjoy True Lies. I just firmly believe something snapped in the man’s head when Titanic worked for him; I have a big problem with the auteur theory of cinema, I don’t believe it has a place in the current film industry. Avatar is classically, ridiculously OTT auteurism, and the fact that it cost more than a small nation’s yearly GDP to make is seriously worrisome for its implications about future Hollywood product. Of course, part of my distaste for Cameron could come from the fact that I was first taught film studies by the foremost academic critic of his work…

To sum up: I’d rather not have my heart ripped out. Best Picture is more than OOH THE PRETTY, it does have to have content. Kathryn Bigelow deserves all the acclaim she’s been getting and more. I’m going to go listen to the End Credits from Star Trek about five more times in a row. Good night.

(By the way, I did manage to get a haircut. It took one day notice. I am Paige’s melodramatic firstworldproblem sigh.)

Very much a post of bits and pieces.

January 29th, 2010 § 0

Much as it pains me, Mom was right.

That is, I should really have got a haircut before I left Tosa for the spring, because getting one here in Selly Oak is proving to be a massive undertaking.  Namely, there are no bleeding walk-in places that’ll take a woman anywhere nearby.  Putting out a call on Twitter, I heard from editorialgirl that she didn’t think there were really any besides the city centre Supercuts in the whole of Birmingham.  She signal-boosted, but an hour later, still nothing.

So unless there’s somewhere local who can get me an appointment later today or tomorrow, I’m SOL and using even more hair product until next week, when I will spend my lunchtime frantically ringing round to try and get a Friday or Saturday appointment (unless I don’t have Friday off, it’s not set in stone).

I’m not sure if this is a UK thing or a Brum thing, but it is frustrating.  I mean, seriously, what happens to people who have fluctuating work schedules? It’s not like you see part of the city looking like they’re gonna open for Twisted Sister.

Anyway. Besides whinging, things are actually going all right. I think I may make some cookies today or tomorrow, and I’m out tonight to meet up with the HFTV course people, so that’s good as well.  Now if the weather would only make up its mind about what it’s doing, we’d be in business.

At least the snow and slush and crap got off the streets, cutting a good five minutes off my commute and meaning I’m not scared to go down the hill on the Selfridges side of the Bullring.  Well, that is, if it’s not raining.

Cultural Disconnect (the first in a series)

January 13th, 2010 § 0

Firstly, before I get self-indulgent, it really looks like things in Haiti are getting worse by the hour.  If you can, please donate (I’m currently assessing whether dollars or pounds would be more effective) to one of the relief efforts, or, if you can’t afford to give money, pass on the information.
UNICEF (USA)
Oxfam (UK)
The Humanitarian Coalition (Cda)
MSF/Doctors Without Borders (int’l)

Amongst the other, considerably more worrisome news of the world lately, you may have spotted that the weather here in Britain has been massive, massive suck.

That is, more like rather nice winter weather for any US person north of the Mason-Dixon, and early spring for Canadians.  Personally, I cope rather well with it.  It’s nice not having to worry about wind chill, frostbite and whether or not your engine will turn over, leaving you stranded somewhere in arctic temperatures with no heater and a scratchy army blanket.

I digress.  Honestly, I would be fine with the whinging and complaining that is done here in Birmingham with an extended period of temperatures hovering around 0 degrees C (32 deg F) and snow every other day. I could maybe even handle that the entire country shuts down when there’s more than an inch of the white stuff.  Flights are cancelled, trains are delayed, people drive stupid, which is a problem in the US too, sometimes…

But no one in this entire nation seems to own a bleeding shovel.  Or a sidewalk ice scraper.  Some businesses may potentially have sand (kudos to the Selly Oak Aldi), but other than that, nothing.  Also, there is a good deal more walking going on than driving.  So let’s take a look at this equation:
(temps right above/below freezing + [heavy sidewalk foot traffic - adequate snow removal]) ^ damp weather

What does that equal?  If you said MASSIVE DEATH TRAPS OF DEATH, you would be correct.

A good portion of anything that is not a main road here in Brum turns to a big sheet of slushy half-ice, and it has been this way for a good week, off and on.  Some days are better, others are worse.  And it is supposed to get up to 6.5 or so degrees C (44 degrees F) on Saturday, so that might clear things a bit, perhaps. Or the rain supposedly coming tomorrow.  But I’ll believe that when I see it.  My Swiss flatmate D and I are thinking of a shovel import business, as winters like this in the UK are becoming a bit of a trend thanks to climate change, but no one here really wants one, as my classmate Aaron put it today.  My theory, which he agreed with, is that people here believe that ignoring it will make it go away.  All I can say is that I plan on living here and I would rather not fall on my arse, thanks, as I’m thinking I may end up commuting like Hans Brinker on the canals in Broek.

There are many things I love about the UK.  This, sadly, is not one of them.  Though the walking penguin style is probably doing some good for my thighs.

‘Feel a fool/Running your stateside games…’

January 10th, 2010 § 2

Well, I’m back in the UK, having started at least one post for this blog while on holiday at home in Wisconsin.  However, I ended up tweeting random things and failing miserably at finishing it as it is a far, far bigger project than I anticipated.  In looking for the best movies of the decade…that I’ve seen…I’ve found that I can’t just cut myself down to a Top Ten, because that’d be too simple.  And I might have seen less than half of the Best Picture Oscar noms between 2000 and 2009, losing my street cred.  Oops.

If you want some film reviews in the meantime, my friend Anita is trying to watch a film a day in 2010.  You can find her effort here–she’s not afraid to tell it how it is, which gets major props from me, even when I may or may not agree.

Meanwhile, instead of blogging, I’ll be over here braving the British weather, wherein no one knows what to do with a shovel and a snowy sidewalk.  Translation: much slipperiness.

h/t to James Taylor for the subject line, by the way.

Tracing my hand to make a turkey: Thanksgiving

November 26th, 2009 § 3

I do a lot of explaining.  Voluntarily, mostly because I get the notion that Americans Do Things and don’t explain them most of the time, or when they do it’s patronising, and that’s crap.  So when I’m asked, or when something comes up, I explain, trying to do it without mansplaining, except for when people talk trash about American football.  (Hint: Don’t.)

Lately, I’ve been asked to explain Thanksgiving.

This has happened more than once, actually–five or six times–and it’s always a little difficult to do.  People here know of Thanksgiving because it’s so embedded in American culture that there are tons and tons of throwaway references, but there aren’t really that many films about Thanksgiving.  (Probably because the theme of dysfunctional family has already been done for Christmas, and who would watch a film about ‘eating a lot, talking with the fam, and falling asleep in front of the football game’?) Americans don’t need Thanksgiving explained, it’s universal, so mentions on American telly are simply in this sort of tacit context.

Truth is, Thanksgiving is actually really hard to explain without sounding either corny or dull, neither of which really conveys the cultural significance of the holiday.  While I’m planning on doing a Thanksgiving guide as a class project, I figured I might as well get some thoughts down in text format, for the folks at home, not only to enlighten non-American readers, but to sort of deconstruct Thanksgiving as modern event for USA people too. You might learn something.

Please note: What Thanksgiving can mean in terms of colonialism and racism could be a whole book, and I don’t feel I can speak adequately on the subject.  But at the same time, I don’t want to skip over it entirely; here is a historical overview by Karl Jacoby, and a point by point breakdown of the dominant narrative by Judy Dow (Abenaki) and Beverly Slapin on Oyate; additional guides to deconstructing the narrative for children can be found here at Resist Racism. Thanksgiving in its current form is primarily the result of 19th century advocacy by Sarah Josepha Hale…for better or worse.

What I do feel I can talk about is how, in a very general sense, Thanksgiving is celebrated in the US.  Please note that this does not address everyone’s experience of Thanksgiving: it merely provides some tangible background information for the dominant paradigm as seen in the media. Wikipedia’s version of things really doesn’t provide a good breakdown, in my mind.  So here’s a timeline, with the salient overall points at the end.

More behind the cut.

» Read the rest of this entry «

Moving on up…

November 19th, 2009 § 2

After ages of waiting about, I’ve installed WordPress on my own domain, which means the former Not Be Televised will be archived as I move forward into another part of my life.

Go me?

Look for more content to come.