For the week ending May 12th

This week's had two distinct themes for me: Film and Politics.

Frameline announced the dates for their Film Fest this year and I'll get the program guide in two weeks. If you liked last year's coverage, stay tuned.

Redundancy

I'm still looking for full time work. I had a really nice interview at one place and I think they liked me. When I know more, you'll read about it here!

Pre-Approved

I'm so glad that telemarketers keep calling me. If it wasn't for them, I might forget that my phone works. I'm ecstatic that they have so much confidence in my ability to pay back the unsecured debt at exorbitant rates on all of the credit cards I'm pre-approved for! If they believe in me, I can believe in myself even as I laugh at them before hanging up.

Webslinger

So much hype around the first "Blockbuster" of the summer didn't give me a lot of confidence in this movie, but I used to be a die hard Spiderman fan. When we were 6, I used to watch the animated Spiderman TV series everyday after school and I've been curious to see what they would do with it for the live action version. It's got a solid love story with the annoyingly thin Kirsten Dunst who's hair is almost the same colour red as the costume. It got a little sappy in spots, but the sentiment was obviously restrained, especially as they depicted 9-11's ground zero.

I'm glad I saw this film as a matinee. I think it's an excellent movie to rent as well, but doesn't warrent much more. They spent so much of the first act building up his super powers that it left me baffled at the climax when they were unused or ineffectual during most of the fight scenes. I suppose it was done for dramatic effect and it's an action movie so I'm not supposed to read to much into it, but couldn't they at least support a plausible character arc? The ending to the love story is totally unrealistic and seemed overly contrived to set up a sequel. At least the digitally enhanced Tobey is easy on the eyes even if the real life version isn't.

Conspiracy Theory Paranoia

During the previews for Spiderman, I was shocked by the amount of movie trailers and future film releases depicted the CIA and special operations. In real life, they murder innocent people, especially afghans, circumvent the Geneva convention at every oportunity and hide behind "national security" as a way to propegate "corporate security" for US interests. Of course they need to put a good spin on it, I'm just appalled that the movie industry is using such subtle ways to do it. At least in WW2, they were honest and upfront about their war efforts. The CIA murdered three captives in Afghanistan that sparked a prison riot and less than a year later, there's more than a handful of movies that glamourize this type of behaviour. As a patriot, I think it's deplorable.

German Punk Princess

The Goethe Institute is presenting a series of films by Peter Sempel. Most of them are overly contrived and frivoulous, "non-naratives" in a home movie format which makes them perfect to document the lives of punkers and their DIY ethic.

NINA HAGEN: KALI, PUNK, GLORY
Was only enjoyable as a die hard Nina Hagen fan. She is utterly amazing as a Spiritually psychotic, totally unique and outspoken auteur. The film depicts her travels with her two children into the hollywood hills and the Malibu area as well as their journeys through New York, Germany and India. I loved the story of the British guy walking the Portabello Road late one night to find a woman digging through the rubbish bins and it turned out to be Nina.

The strength of her Spiritual convictions overshadow any particular religion and they provide a counterpoint to her outrageous outfits and sexualized, brutish stage behavour. This is the woman who is a classically trained opera singer, vocal mimic and rapper. She was the first person to masturbate on Austrian National Television and had the first punk/pop crossover in Germany. It was wonderful to see she's still alive and well and keeping it real!

Democracy is an Illusion... part two

Last week's discussion of right wing politics inspired a slew of emails and some interesting conversations. I was shocked to read on Monday morning, that the openly gay, right-wing politician, Pim Fortuyn was murdered in The Netherlands.

This is the first political assassination in The Netherlands in modern times and is being compared to the Kennedy Assassination in the scope of its shock on the general public.

Most political leaders take public transportation and even the royal family can be found riding bicycles on public streets.

I'm sure this event will mark a major turning point for The Netherlands and my heart goes out to the Dutch people in their time of national crisis.

Media Bias

I think the news media does a grave disservice when they call Pim Fortyun a right wing extremist in American media. Sure in his country he would be considered right wing and maybe extreme, but there's no real correlation on the American political landscape (unless you'd like to consider Clinton and his "Welfare Reforms")

The American Right-Wing is against gay marriage, against abortion, pro-gun and pro-dogmatic churchianity. Pim was a gay man and supported gay marriage, supported a women's right to choose, the Dutch gun control laws, as well as a host of other things like drug laws that most American's would deem "liberal" but in the Netherlands they are just deemed "practical"

Hypocritical Shrub

I find it absolutely hilarious that the American Government's UN representative had the audacity to say that the US Government didn't like the way Zimbabwe's last presidential election was run. The BBC reported that President Mugabe hit the roof saying, that he didn't like the way the last US presidential election was run and that the US was in no position to comment on any elections anywhere in the world. Then he allegedly went into a ten minute shouting tirade, the level of which, could be heard down the hall.

Of course all of this was reported as second hand information because the BBC correspondent couldn't get off the plane as they're still banned from Zimbabwe.

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