Start your own currency. Call it the Camellia. Create a national directory of businesses and consumers who deal in the Camellia. Buy and sell as much of your goods and services as you can with it. Start your own banks with it. Heck, start a health-care plan with it. Show the rest of us how healthy a back-to-basics economy would be. Best of all, it could not be taxed.
Act fast, or the liberals will beat you to it.
Last night before the concert, a tall high-school girl in an evening gown spoke to her dad in the front row of the audience, asking him to make sure he would remember to do something. I was sitting in the second row directly behind him, so I could hear her tone. She seemed very even-tempered despite her gown. Maybe there was some of that good-humored concern in her voice, the sort you get from people who have been through some screw-ups and know they'll survive -- like maybe she's experienced her dad not pressing "record" on the camera while she accepted her diploma -- but none of the excited fluttering that goes on with most teenagers in evening gowns. This teenager had more to think about than just getting her picture taken. She had work to do in her gown. Her fingers needed to fly, in tune.
Later in the concert, after the Durham Symphony had played the mutually antagonistic overtures to Nabuco and Rienzi, she walked out, the tallest person on stage, this year's winner of this orchestra's concerto competition, to play Tchaikovsky's violin concerto.
She toyed with the first statement of the first theme in a way I like. The piece soon engulfs the audience in a sweet tidal wave of melody, but at the start, it's appropriate that the soloist just toy with it, as if assembling it by accident, like a little kid pushing matchbox cars around on the rug.
She had that singing quality that shows she is paying attention on a very musical level, not just dealing with the notes. She seemed to purposefully hit some notes a little flat and draw them up to pitch, the way a soulful singer would. She slid around the phrases, making her stringed instrument feel as though it were breathing. Sometimes the technically hard passages had her stiffly sawing through, but mostly, through the difficult stuff, she kept up her expressiveness; and when that first tidal wave of orchestra did hit (a mark of Tchaikovsky that folks could cynically criticize, though we must acknowledge how few composers could rely so extensively on melody), ushered in by her series of arpeggiation gymnastics so impressive live, and framed expertly in the LCD screen of the dad's camera in front of me as if the camera were in its own TV commercial, she took half a step back from her spot on stage and cast her eyes down, hardly in shame, but more to suppress the little smile of satisfaction tweaking her mouth, indicating that she knew she had pretty much banged it.
(In that recording was Pinchas Zuckerman with the Israeli Philharmonic showing a much better side of Israel than settling the West bank)
The soloist with the Durham Symphony in Chatham is a student at Jordan High School and takes lessons from Eric Pritchard. Expect great things to come from her.
Thanks to the Chatham Arts Council for putting on such a great event. In addition to the wonderful Tchaikovsky, the excerpts from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess were a Durham Symphony highlight. According to some, this was the first symphony concert ever in Chatham county. I suppose this could be true if none of the schools in Chatham have student orchestras (just bands instead), and the NC Symphony has never traveled there. As conductor William Henry Curry said to the audience, let's hope this starts an ongoing collaboration, continuing with, perhaps a Christmas concert.
(This blogger thinks maybe the world does not need yet another Christmas concert. But he understands that the Durham Symphony can only learn so much music; and if their fall rehearsals are focusing on the holidays, then that's the kind of music they'll be able to play next fall.)
One problem is the acoustics in the concert hall at Northwoods High School. When a musical group plays on stage, much sound is lost among the curtains hanging overhead in the small flyway. On the other hand, there is a wide "pit" in front of the first audience row which is large enough for a small orchestra, and is not really a pit at all since the floor is on level with the audience floor. So why not put the orchestra there, where more of its sound will reach the audience directly? And if the pit is not big enough for the orchestra, then some orchestra members could sit on the front portion of the stage. This would bring the whole orchestra forward, out from under the flyway, and probably improve acoustics for orchestra concerts.
. . . that the bastion of morals, the Catholic Church, has done so much to protect the pedophiles in its ranks.
. . . that while we were supposed to be experiencing the economic growth that comes from cutting taxes on the rich, we have an economic collapse caused, in part, by the rich who most directly benefitted from the tax cuts.
. . . that just two years after Republicans at their convention chanted "Drill Baby Drill" in support of offshore drilling, an offshore oil rig explodes and creates one of our nations worst environmental disasters.
It's not that we should wholly condemn the Catholic church or never cut taxes or never drill for oil offshore. It's that we should give up mantras and lines of absolute thinking. Wise regulation on all fronts would be good. Of course, a politician can never campaign on a platform of "wise regulation."
What is the deal with Foster’s Market? Parking is like perpetual festival parking, the sort of parking you do twice a year at Shakori or the county fair -- but here it’s every day. At least the festivals have volunteers with colored arrows and vests to help you make your way. There is no such service here. You just have to make your own space in the dust and gravel. And the people leaving Fosters don’t go straight back to their cars and vacate their spots. They linger, talking, finishing up that conversation about how Republicans are selling our country out to big business and big oil, all the while clogging the lot and hindering us new customers trying to come to this small business, our engines burning fuel, our turn signals desperately flashing our intent to use their parking spaces until the filaments go numb.
Inside, there’s a line of people waiting to order. Except they are not really waiting to order, they are just waiting to get to where they can see to figure out how to order. From this line you can’t see the chalk-written menus; you can’t see the process whereby you order hot food from the workers and forage on your own baked food and drink. In order to learn this, you have to take a chance and leave your place in line to go around to the front of the counter. This requires pushing yourself through thickets of wandering customers all holding small plates and saucers with teacups at about the eye level of a short person. These folks don’t know how hungry you are. They don’t understand your need for certain information to connect you with your food. What is with their soulless gazes, their needing to be told several times “Excuse me please” before they shuffle a little to the side?
At Moe’s Southwest Grill, you can view the menu while you wait in line, and all your food is ordered in the same place at the end of that line. Now, isn’t that a grand idea?
You steal a glance at the menu and rush back to the line before you lose much ground. Now you have to remember what you saw on the menu. If you do forget, you can’t see it until you are about to order at the head of the line. At that moment, faced with a clerk ready to take your order, you have mere seconds to tilt your head way back and re-read the menu and make your decision. But you realize that now, and during your previous glance, you only saw the breakfast menu. There is a lunch menu hanging a few feet away -- but you can’t read that now because of the glare. So you have to leave your front place in line and go look at that, then come back and make an instant decision, all the while holding up the whole line behind you.
The workers there should be commended for their patience with beleaguered customers. They take your order as if nothing’s wrong, and you feel a little chilled out, even when they tell you there will be a 20 minute wait on “all breakfast orders.”
Umm, okay. 20 minute wait. Now what? There is only one thing to do. Join the ranks of the soulless wanderers you had to push through earlier. You’re in limbo with them now, walking the rough-hewn creaky wooden floor back in forth in front of the counter, getting in the way of those other customers who, like you once did, sought direction and sense in their quest to order food.
This is a health-conscious grocery store, you think. Shouldn’t there be high quality coffee and tea somewhere? You spy it way back in a corner, and you get some. There is juice in a fridge case next to it, so you get one of those too. Now you’ve got a cup and saucer in one hand, and a bottle in the other, and you’re holding them at the eye level of short people.
You overhear a father bringing tea to his family at a table. “Took me a while to get this,” he said, and you’re glad someone else has given voice to the disorder.
You wander back along the counter area because you think you saw muffins somewhere. You had not thought you’d get one, but now, with this wait, you figure, you might as well spend the extra money to have something to nibble on. But you realize the muffins are behind glass and you need to signal counter help to get them -- and the counter help is busy dealing with the folks in line. To get someone's attention you would have to holler as if you were at a crowded bar, and you hate doing that. So you stay mired in your limbo, and Foster’s loses a small sale. How many times a day does this happen? You turn to head back across the counter area again, and nearly bump into an old guy behind you.
“I’m following you,” he says. Which is sad for him, given all you’ve accomplished here.
At Bruegger’s, all the food is in on place. You get it in a single line as your bagel is prepared. You pay and you are free to go.
You have a ticket that was stuck in your hand when you ordered that breakfast. The clerk told you they would bring it to you. You figure, you might as well sit down. You don’t know how they are going to find you, but somehow, there must be a reasonable end to all this. So you get in the cash register line. Now, finally, there is some sense of progress. You pay for the items in your hands -- the tea and the juice, and for what is on the ticket which will be brought to you later. You wish you had it all with you now, but whatever. At least you get to sit down.
Behind you in the register line, a teenager needs to worm her way up past people to get to some chocolate on the shelf. “Excuse me,” she says repeatedly. She snags the chocolate and retreats, only to rejoin the line later and pass the chocolate shelf again on her way to check out.
Customers sit at picnic tables distributed through several interior rooms, a porch, and the lawn. When your food is ready, the counter workers have to go all through the place calling out your name until you raise your hand. You can hardly hear what they are saying. Surely this wears on the nerves of the poor staff. And how many people wander off the street, sit down, and just raise their hands when a clerk is passing with an order?
One member of your party of friends had arranged for you all to meet at Foster’s this Sunday. You had warned them, saying, “It’s like a chaotic web page where you can’t figure out where to log in.” Another friend says, “I hate this place.” None of you will be coming back.
Half a year ago I was looking around for larger projects making fuel oil from algae. As you can see from reading my entries on energy, there are plenty of small-scale demonstration facilities, but none big enough to show that algae can really make an impact on the world's fuel supply,
But here is another step toward practical utilization of algae for fuel. The city of Hopewell, VA has started cleaning nitrogen from its wastewater using algae in a demonstration facility. Formerly, nitrogen had not been targeted by the town's wastewater treatment, and the Chesapeake Bay, into which drains the wastewater from Hopewell and the rest of the greater Richmond area, has been notorious for its algae blooms. If this test, which is planned to run through September, is successful, then Hopewell hopes to enlarge the facility and sell the fuel oil grown in the algae. This project was made possible, in part, by stimulus package money.
Watching the video of the project, I see a lot of churning of water in open ponds. Origin Oil says that stirring the water causes the algae to grow more slowly; and in open ponds, specialized genetic strains that produce oil the fastest may not survive. So, I'm not sure Hopewell has implemented the best algae growing facility here. But, what they have implemented might be viewed as an inexpensive first-step. Perhaps they can install better facilities if they scale up. I think they should enter a partnership with Origin Oil, which has publicized an algae wastewater treatment model (that's a pdf).
I suppose the biggest source of algae in the Chesapeake Bay is agricultural runoff, and this would not be treated by any municipal wastewater treatment facility. But still, if the cities can remove their own contribution of nitrogen to the bay while offsetting costs by selling the fuel, then what's not to like?
Once it was about pot. People were out for their routine walks on the streets or the forest trail, and when they would meet, they would exchange the information like ants transferring food: someone had some really good pot down by the river. The news worked its way off the streets and into people’s homes, and as the afternoon wore on and people finished chores, they came out as if answering a summons. The random walking of earlier in the day became a coherent migration toward the river, toward that set of rocks where the good pot was said to be.
This time it was about ice. Svetx and I met Debbie on the river and she told us. She had seen Jack that morning hurtling past her house on the street at 90 mph, his boot heel dug in and his gloved hand dragging, trying to turn that toboggan in the curve before smacking the curb. After the curb it was Larry’s truck, parked on the street because his drive was impassable, that had to be avoided -- but Jack missed this and managed a sharp turn the other direction, onto the access road for one final plunge before the long flat coast on the parking lot for the old mill. Later, Micah had gone under Larry’s truck and hit the curb, but apparently she was okay -- she was back sledding a few minutes later. Anyway, everyone would be at it again that night, because the temperature was going to drop again to 19 degrees. Black Ice Sliding. 8 pm. The winter answer to summer’s Full Moon Tubing.
Svetx and I had missed the day’s sliding, but this would be our chance. We took a nap. We made sure we started on dinner early enough to eat it in time. We drank coconut rum to help conceal the potential pain. We had no toboggan, but we were hoping for a loaner.
Soon after 8 pm we heard screams of delight, so we put on the boots again and walked to the sliding party. People we had seen in daytime now had faces in shadow under hats and hoods. Others came up from the dark run and dropped plastic toboggans onto the ice and said, breathlessly, “Who’s next?”
It was us. I climbed in, and the toboggan wanted to start its slide before Svetx could get in between my legs. Then we were off with the barest shove. Good speed came right away, the gouged ice beneath us giving a hard Moroccan massage to our butts.
Passing the first house on each side, already, it felt too fast. I tried to jam my outstretched heels into the ice, but they hardly made a difference. It would be a brake early, brake often situation.
We passed the house where once lived May who worked at a biodiesel plant but told me that a huge room full of algae would only generate a teaspoon of oil in a day. I told her it depends on the strain of algae and the growing conditions, but she didn’t seem to believe me.
The road steepened and I felt, for the first time, that I should not be dong this. We had angled toward the curb, too, and my heels weren’t helping. I leaned to the right, and that helped a little. I told Svetx to lean right, and this did turn us better. “Straight,” I said, trying not to turn us past center toward the other curb.
We passed the tiny house on stilts, hardly bigger than a deer blind, half of it a screened porch, the other half probably one room, which was built by the artist who lives in it and whom nobody ever sees. It’s high up the bank from the river so I don’t know why it’s on stilts, unless she was worried about snakes getting in, a concern I would have too.
Then was the house where lives the woman who has a PhD. in carnivorous cats and says that the ones at the Carnivore Preservation Land Trust could easily climb the fences and get out, but stay in because they don’t know this. Her husband had tried to get his Scion out earlier that day, but once it left the bare patch of gravel where it had been parked, it’s front drive wheels could not climb up onto the top of the ice layer. So he drove it back to the bare patch and declared he wasn’t going to work the next day.
We were veering too far right, so I had us lean left briefly. We passed close to cars parked along the right, and we were set up poorly for the coming curve. I jammed both heels down harder, thinking again that we should not be doing this.
There came the house Svetx used to live in, with its mildew which activates and blossoms, invisibly, all summer, in closets, behind walls, in shoes; and where, this time of year, the tiny wood stove must be run nearly constantly to barely keep one room warm. Svetx, working late hours, would come home and head directly for the electric blanket, hardly bothering to heat the house. The current residents stay home all day and keep that stove fed.
There came the area of road where we had seen Rascal tearing up a fresh, glistening carcass earlier that day. The frozen remains could have been one of the myriad of bumps rubbing our butts.
The curve was approaching, with the next neighbor laughing from the safety of her dark front porch. Earlier that day she had gouged a bare patch in the ice just in front of her front walkway, nonsensically. This was next to the curb, not really a hindrance to sledders, but still, why had she bothered?
We were close to the right and would be inside on the curve. I would have preferred to have been on the left and then aim for the inside as we entered it, but this was not to happen. A dark wall of trees loomed ahead on the outside of the curve, with that hard curb somewhere at its base. I thought again that I should not be doing this. I could break my arm, and then I would not be able to work. To avoid crashing, we would need to lean hard, but without knowing how much the toboggan would skid, how would we know when exactly?
Just lean. We did, sideways, all the way, with our shoulders dragging ice, practically bailed out of the toboggan altogether. We slowed a lot, more than I wanted, but coming up straight again, we had made the curve and just missed a truck parked on the right. (Later a member of the Paperhand Puppet Intervention complimented us on making a graceful turn. Coming from one of those folks, that means a lot.) We leaned again, straightened, bottomed-out, and did not try to turn into the access road to the mill parking lot. Instead we coasted up toward the left and crunched to a stop behind another pickup truck there. Our blood recollected itself toward our heads because we were reclined backwards now, and as long as the folks on the next run had enough control to not crash into us, it would be easiest to simply lie back the rest of the way and stay for a while.
I think about this past slow year and I panic. Going into it, I knew I would not be making much money, and I accept that. The problem is, I fear I have not developed myself enough personally in the extra leisure time. Sure, I write, but I know I could be doing more and better stuff, and I don’t focus nearly as well as I should; and even if I do think I make momentary accomplishments in writing, overall, that endeavor will remain a daunting, yawning pit for my time and self-esteem.
In ballroom, my partner and I have received some valuable coaching which has really opened us up to more intensive, better-styled moving; but dancing feels like a side-show in my life, something I can progress fairly well in, but which is not so distinctive to me.
Then I remember this other thing I’ve done this year, and I feel some peace. Southland of the Heart.
This independent feature movie was made piecemeal on weekends, about half of all weekend days since August; was captured mostly on my Sanken CS-1, run through cables in my hands and under pots beneath my fingers, stored on flash memory in the camera along with Ken’s footage, which always blows me away when I get a chance to see it long after it's been shot. I learned the dialogue and swung the boom with it, kneeling on gravel or standing on two desks if I had to, dodging the curveballs of accidental and intentional improvisation as best I could, and getting burned occasionally. I griped about background noises, I asked diner owners to shut down their giant freezers and their computers, I bitched about electrical cables running through doors from the outside and necessitating letting noise in. Sometimes I held up production to find a better mic position, or asked for another (and another) take to have a chance to boom boom it better. Sometimes they gave it to me, and sometimes they said “tough shit.” But the director and actors have been genuinely appreciative and complimentary of the audio. This strokes my ego. I need a community of people stroking my ego from time to time. This is what gives me peace.
And the movie is coming out pretty well, if I may say so.
I had known Southland’s director Todd since January of 2008 when he shot another director’s, Nic’s, Nightlife, for which I did the audio. (On Vimeo, the video has a sound/video synch problem which seems to be the fault of the website). Both Todd and Nic make several movies a year on weekends, and they are getting good at it. Over a year later, in April of 2009 I had purchased my own sound equipment package and was not working enough to really break it in -- or to break myself in on it, as they say. So one day I happened to be in the car with Todd while driving to work at a conference for this conservative think-tank, and I asked him if he had any projects coming up. He said yes, in two weeks, he would be shooting a short, Mary and Jennifer, which is currently not available for viewing.
While shooting that short, there was a moment when, kneeling on the tile floor of the kitchen, I noticed the hard set of Jennifer's face in my peripheral vision past the tip of the microphone, and I thought, “damn, she’s on time.”
In the following weeks I was thinking Todd could do a lot more with those characters. And I was thinking that I liked his style of directing, in which he would go to the actors and have a short conversation in a low voice, like, “You know how when you’ve had an argument and you’re close to apologizing, but you still are holding back, not giving it up yet . . . .” He would speak quietly with them, then go back behind camera and leave the actors to make it sing.
In June of this recession year, he called me and told me what I was thinking he should do. He was going to make a feature movie with the two characters, and asked if I could work on it for no pay. I had few prospects for paying audio engagement, so I said I certainly could, as long as I could dump him at the last minute if paying work were to come up.
It only came up on two days, and one of those days, I raced back from shooting an ACC PSA with the basketball coaches in Greensboro to work late into the night on Southland.
Now it’s January 2010, and people keep asking me, “Isn’t that free movie done yet?” I say it’s the never-ending story. No, it’s still not quite done. We have a couple serious dialogue scenes to do, and this coming Monday, MLK day, we are doing a light-dialogue day. But it will get there. And it will be good, if I may say so.
I hope I will always be able to experience times when the actors really nail it -- when they cry and act like they are experiencing the biggest kick in the gut of their life, and they pretty much convince me of this -- and I have the mic right in position, not a little off-axis but right in there, to not just hear it well but make a little extra tickle of immediacy in my headphones -- and the noise from outside is at a lull, and nobody’s stomach growls, and I look over at the director and assistant director and gaffer standing at the monitor and see tears brimming in their eyes too, and know that a lot of things are working out at once -- and feel peace.
Avatar might be the movie James Cameron has wanted to make since he was a boy, but District 9 is the sci-fi movie I have wanted to see since I was disappointed by E.T. when I was 14. District follows the notion presented in Philip K. Dick’s statement, paraphrased here (I can’t find it online right now): You could be broke, and your wife could leave you, and still . . . aliens could come through the roof and get you. In a general sense, I take this to mean that aliens can come and become part of the messy milieu of life. They don’t have to be lithe, exotic creatures in silver suits. They don’t have to have a meaningful message for humanity. They don’t have to be here to conquer. Maybe we don’t even have to know why they are here. And what happens between the humans and aliens can be just as ordinarily degenerate as what happens between humans. 
In District 9, aliens have come to earth -- Johannesburg, South Africa to be exact -- and become part of the social problems that plague this and many other parts of the world: overcrowding, slums, refugees, crime. The aliens are the new base on the pecking order of racism, with all races of humans speaking against the alien presence, using arguments we’ve heard and still hear from separatists -- that “It is for their own good,” that “they don’t belong here.”
The South African government wants to move the aliens from their current shanty town in Soweto to a refugee camp farther outside the city. The movie focuses on one obsequious bureaucrat, Wikus van de Merwe, who heads the process of going door-to-door and serving the aliens their notices.
What I see as the power of this movie is its raw and “realistic” presentation. Living in the shanty town, aliens are repeatedly shown digging through garbage, hacking animals to pieces for food, drinking and eating out of discarded containers. There are language and cultural barriers (though, remarkably, Wikus and some humans understand the aliens, and vice-versa) and misunderstandings ensue that lead to violence. When aliens don’t comply immediately with the humans’ demands, they are forced to their knees with hands behind their heads, forced to sign documents acquiescing to their eviction; and, when an alien does sometimes retaliate and throw a human aside, that alien gets blown away by the humans. One can not help but sense the parallels to our door-to-door operations early in the Iraq war; and a friend commented that these scenes from District 9 looked like a documentary he had seen on vigilante groups that patrol our border with Mexico and harass Latin Americans, apparently trying to provoke reactions against which the vigilantes can retaliate.
One wonders why the aliens let themselves get pushed around as much as they do, and this leads to some of the deeper issues in the movie. The aliens do have, after all, powerful weapons. Why not use them against the humans, when clearly their own self-defense is justified?
What the aliens do use the weapons for is currency. With their weapons, they buy, on a black market set up by a Nigerian criminal gang, cat food. The aliens are addicted to this cat food and hand over weapons readily in exchange for it while the humans are fascinated with the weapons and acquire them greedily.
We all know humans love weapons. Weapons provide the quickest way to power here on Earth. But the aliens loving cat food? This is incredible to me. Does this mean the aliens are not power-hungry? Is it that weapons are so commonplace for them, and easy to build, that they view them as a basic commodity, as we view the cat food that we trade to them?
(The aliens may feel safe selling the weapons to the humans since the humans can’t use the weapons. Governments and corporations and the Nigerian gang all hope for the day when they can make the weapons work; but for now, all they can do is acquire them and study them.)
Through the entire movie, nothing more than a desire for cat food is revealed of the alien population’s motives. We never learn why they came or if they even want to leave. I question whether they even know they are living in a slum. I mean, if they don’t know that weapons are awesome, and that cat food is nothing special, would they even know to prefer Spoleto to Soweto?
(Svetx suggests that the aliens were lost on the way to Spoleto and ended up in Soweto. Maybe they typed it into their Garmin wrong.)
Since I saw District 9 last spring, I have held it in nearly the highest esteem I have for any movie. I raved about it to my friend who, just the other night, called us over to watch it on Blu-Ray, the second viewing for myself and Svetx.
Here’s a bit of advice: If you love a movie, maybe you don’t want to hear the director’s commentary. We only listened to part of it, but in his commentary, director Neill Blomkamp reveals the insensitive way he constructed the Nigerian gang.
On my first viewing, I could have deemed the portrayal of the Nigerians as racist. But given the level of detail throughout the movie, and given the fact that all the humans in the movie are self-centered opportunists -- not even our accidental hero Wikus is admirable -- I accepted the Nigerians as a reasonably accurate portrayal of an aspect of human condition that would occur in an alien slum.
Lots of people do think the portrayal of the Nigerians is racist, as a quick Google search will tell you. In the movie, the Nigerians believe in witchcraft and eat aliens’ bodies on the presumption that this will enable them to use the aliens’ weapons. There is also mention that they run a prostitution operation for the aliens. This is definitely a negative image of the Nigerians. But the white South African government officials and their business and science cohorts are essentially doing the same thing -- using and abusing the aliens to get command of their weapons. I say this could be one of the valuable themes in the movie.
But then there’s this: in his commentary, the director admits that he could find no Nigerian actors to play those roles. And, he says, none of the non-Nigerians playing Nigerians could speak a Nigerian language. So, the gang leader, the witch doctor, and other gang members are all speaking whatever native African languages those actors know, and they are not actually understanding each other. Subtitles solve the problem for the viewer, telling us whatever the director actually wants us to hear. I’ll guess that most people in the world watching the movie can not tell the difference. But as my friend who bought the Blu-Ray said, “Surely they could have found some Nigerians to portray the Nigerians.” And then, as Svetx said, “Then they would have had someone who knows the culture and what it’s really like.”
In a movie that I want to celebrate for its “realistic” portrayal of race and alien relations, and human motives, this sloppy treatment of the Nigerians is a serious disappointment.
So how could the director have done better, or do better when the time comes to make District 10?
First, the prostitution could easily have been tossed out of the movie. This was, as I said, a brief mention; and given the vast differences between human and alien anatomy, I doubt that there would be enough interest to keep a prostitution racket going.
Second, the witchcraft was not even necessary for the plot. As it stands, the Nigerians capture Wikus, who is growing an alien arm because of an accidental encounter with alien DNA, and attempt to eat his alien arm. This drives Wikus to escape using the fancy alien weapons that only he among humans can use. Essentially the same scenario could have been achieved if the Nigerians, instead of trying to eat him, were to confine him and force him with torture to use the weapons on their behalf. (Torture is still a negative portrayal, you say? Sure, but in this scenario they’d be on par with the United States of America.)
In his director’s commentary, Neill Blomkamp says that he portrayed the Nigerians this way as a joke, and he apologizes to them (all Nigerians?) and anyone else who is offended by it.
Here is what I say. Neill, meet me at camera three. For District 10, there’s no need to joke like this. We are all humans together in your story. Your movie is not afraid to show us humans the bad news about ourselves. We are all power-hungry, lying, cowardly bitches -- with aliens thrown in. So, show us like we are, and be reasonably authentic, so that if anyone complains that you show Nigerians or anyone else as crooks at all, you can more honestly say that you are holding up the mirror, and it’s up to us what gets reflected in it.
I’ll finish off with a little more praise for your movie.
I love the faux documentary style. I love how the camera floats like my uncle shot it, and the acting is largely improvised (as you explain in your commentary), and somehow you “painted” in alien creatures while keeping it all spontaneous.
I love how you portray many layers of character in some of the interviews. Wikus wife, for instance, shows us a little bowl he had made for her. She says she sat on it (implying some disregard for Wikus’ feelings) and then says that all Wikus’ presents for her were taken away for the investigation . . . but then she made them bring them back (meaning she may have newfound respect for her husband given what she suspects he is going through).
I love that we never learn what the aliens were doing here. I love that, when the humans first blowtorched their way into the alien spaceship, the aliens were huddled in there, covered with feces perhaps, striking a parallel to factory farm animals.
Basically, I love your movie, But you can, and should, be more thorough, when you are trying to portray serious subject matter and make serious points.
How many pairs of glasses does it take to watch a movie these days, anyway? Going in, I hoped previews would still be playing, because we were late. But when I saw the intentionally blurred double-vision images on the screen, I knew we were in to it already. I tried to watch without the glasses, but that was impossible. I had to keep them on and cope with the artificial feeling of paper cutouts set at varying distances in front of me, like the layered images in a Viewmaster or targets at the shooting range. You could tell that everything in the frame had a discrete distance classification: there would be the foreground image, like maybe some seed pods lazily floating; then the middle-ground images, like maybe the characters in the scene; and then the background, which was usually a single flat plane like a normal movie. I would have preferred the whole movie to be on a single plane so that I would not have been thinking about the 3-D effect. When someone in the seats ahead of us got up to go to the bathroom, he looked like he, too, was a part of the movie. Indeed, some objects in the movie looked closer than the real people in front of me, and this makes me think of combining live-action with 3-D cinema. Let’s remake Rocky Horror so that it blends better with its simultaneous re-enactors.
I heard that this is the movie James Cameron had wanted to make since he was 14. I believe it. With a planet called “Pandora” and the precious metal called “unobtainium,” it seems like he wrote it more like when he was 4 and did not revise it since. The alien Na’vi are portrayed with the same lack of nuance, with obvious elements of African and Native American hunting, dance, spirituality, and medicine mixed to achieve generic foreign-ness. If you wondered where banal world music comes from, it is probably James Cameron’s Pandora.
A friend said it would have helped to see some kind of exchange in the alien society -- a place where they are gambling, or paying taxes. “Like the cantina in Star Wars!” Svetx said. Indeed. The basic grit and grind of life. As it stands, you think the Na’vi do nothing but pay homage to nature and hunt, hardly a believable or even interesting existence.
People are marveling at the special effects, but wasn’t the flying more exciting in the Superman movies of the ’70’s? The battle more exciting at the end of Star Wars episode IV? Who can forget the quick character development of showing each fighter pilot in his cockpit talking on his intercom?
In more recent history, I remember almost being moved to tears by two awesome movie battles: The battle on the fields of Pelennor in Return of the King, for all its orchestration couched in desperation and forboding; and the middle of The Incredibles where it showed the family working together with all its awesome powers unleashed. There was nothing so satisfying in Avatar.
There is one thing I do admire about this movie, and that is it’s own paradoxical nature. It is the feel-good blockbuster of this holiday season. But what we feel good about is the pagan nature-creatures triumphing over a U.S. military that is essentially working for a large corporation. Anyone who has looked at a newspaper headline in recent years surely can’t miss the parallel to U.S. involvement in the Middle East. I expect this movie to draw fire from war supporters as well as fundamentalist Christians. Looking on the Internet now though, I can’t find scathing reviews from a Christian website. If anyone finds one, please let me know. If there really are none, then maybe the Christian Right does not notice the connections to our foreign policy, or doesn’t think this is what our foreign policy amounts to. In that case, in a seasonal action blockbuster, what’s not to like?
Carrie Prejean is saying thatbreast implants are not un-Christian because the Bible does not mention them at all, and thus, they are not forbidden.
Now, I don't claim to be a Christian. And I'm no Bible expert. But I think it's safe to say that another thing the Bible does not mention is sex videos. So why is Prejean claiming she made her sex video before her conversion to Christianity? (Her then-boyfriend counters that it was made after her conversion.) If it's not mentioned in the Bible, then, like implants, it's not forbidden. And it's not like God isn't watching anyway, sex video or not!
But back to those implants. While the Bible does not mention them specifically, Timothy 2:9 - 2:11 from Bible Wiki says "In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection." I would not call breast implants modest or associate them with shamefacedness; and with a price of $4000 to $10,000, I would call them "costly array." On the other hand, the next passage in Timothy says, "But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve." This could be taken to mean that, since beauty pageant officials forced Prejean to get the implants, that she was obeying this authority of a man.
Interpretations aside, I think we all know exactly what breast implants are for: enhancement of sex appeal for personal gain. While some Christians claim that another aspect of sexuality, homosexuality, is a choice, I think we can all agree that breast implants are a choice. In fact, Prejean says it's a personal choice. So I say to Prejean: St. Anthony the Abbot gave up all his personal possessions; for you, the path to wisdom lies in giving up your breast implants.
Sit back and relax. Here is one big 8 minute wild track of the ocean, composed of several smaller clips recorded for possible use in Todd Tinkham's Southland of the Heart.
Two Blackhawk helicopters fly over the beach during shooting of the final scenes of Todd Tinkham's Southland of the Heart.
There were the big grocery stores, like Harris-Teeter, with all their food (except for produce) in packages. Then came Whole Foods where bulk food is in bins and you package it yourself. Then came Trader Joe's which is like the bulk food aisle at Whole Foods, but the food is pre-packaged for you.
There was classic literature where morals and basic tenets espousing God and patriotism were expressed; then there was modernism where long-held beliefs did not necessarily prevail, and post-modernism which broke structures into pieces and played with them. Then there came Stephen Colbert who uses the elements of post-modernism to reconstruct a classical character espousing God, morals, and patriotism again.
There was art that depicted, as drawing or painting on flat surfaces, 3-dimensional images; and there were 3-dimensional sculptures made of flat paper. Then there was Picasso whose work looks like he took pieces of paper from 3-D sculptures and glued them back onto a single plane, bringing renewed flatness to what had once been 3-dimensional.
