Life In a Day weaves together moments of joy and sadness, frivolity and struggle, plainness and great beauty into a wonderful fabric of the human experience.  It at once shows the ways in which the routines of our days are shared across cultures and landscapes (we wake, we clean up, we eat, we interact, we travel, we love, we argue, we sleep), but also the stark contrasts of wealthy and poor, privileged and oppressed, healthy and unhealthy, troubled and care-free.

There are only a few “characters” we see multiple times throughout the day -- a man bicycling around the world, a family struggling with cancer -- but the amazing editing and soundtrack create a story arc grounded not in personality or plot twist, but in the experience of having 24 hours pass and all of the amazing (or mundane) things that can happen in that time.  It’s a masterpiece that will perhaps seem quaint in a few decades, but that could not have been possible even 5 or 10 years ago.

Life In a Day is inspiring and moving.  Best of all, it’s real.

Here, you can start watching it right now:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaFVr_cJJIY

Scalene is a dark thriller that tells a story of a mother, her son, and the son’s caretaker as they interact around some events that change their lives significantly.  The film shows the perspectives of each of the three characters using a combination of linear (forward and reverse) and non-linear story-telling, a technique that certainly keeps things interesting and always a bit unsettling.

The movie was filmed in Richmond, and so as a resident it was also “fun” to try to pick out the locations and backdrops along the way – various scenes in the City building, various restaurants, Glen Miller Park, etc.  I’ve even been pulled over by one of the Richmond Police Department officers who makes an appearance in the film, but I don’t think that qualifies me for an on-screen credit.

The story itself is intriguing to watch unfold, despite the darkness of the subject matter – mental disability, sexual assault, unhealthy and co-dependent relationships, and so on.  All three primary cast members hold their own in the 95-minute piece; Margo Martindale’s “Janice” fluctuated between evoking sympathy for her plight and making your skin crawl with her mania; Hanna Hall’s “Paige” brought strength, complex emotion and a grounding presence on screen; Adam Scarimbolo’s “Jakob” was convincing and, despite having few spoken lines, full of personality and nuance.

There were scenes in Scalene when the pacing felt a little slow, and a few occasions where the plot seemed a bit contrived, but as a whole it was a very tightly made film.  Zack Parker has clearly built on each of his past filmmaking experiences to make Scalene; the editing was excellent – especially impressive given the multiple combined story-telling techniques – and the sound production and score were superbly done. Parker has enjoyed his identity as an emerging independent filmmaker, but he clearly strives for a quality of work normally only seen in much bigger budget productions.

From following Zack’s social media updates along the journey of making the film I only know a little bit about what what it took, but it’s enough to realize that between fundraising, coordinating production, directing, editing, marketing and distributing (and I’m sure much more), Mr. Parker is the model of a entrepreneurial film artist who can take an idea and then do whatever it takes to make it a reality.  It takes a lot of hard work to make any kind of film that doesn’t have serious flaws noticeable to the average viewer; Parker has put in that hard work and more.  In Scalene I think he has a film that stands on its own, and that will hopefully also serve as a stepping stone to even more great projects.

You can buy Scalene online from Along the Tracks Productions.

The movie was incredibly well made.  Aaron Sorkin’s writing was as good as the best days of The West Wing, each member of the cast seemed to just nail their role, the editing was some of the best I’ve seen, and so on.

Perhaps most enjoyably, this is a mainstream movie that is at least in part about the culture and goings-on in the modern world of Internet entrepreneurship, I believe the first of its kind. It fully embraces the geekiness that was and is a part of building a web application like Facebook: in the first 30 minutes, the Apache webserver software project is mentioned at least twice, there are dramatic lines about needing more Linux webservers running MySQL, there are punchlines that involve the emacs text editor, and scenes of glorious code writing marathons – wow.

The Social Network also takes on the complex and sometimes dirty aspects of Internet start-ups, business partnerships that go sour, the role of lust, greed, insecurity and power struggles in creating beautiful things, and the general messiness of human relationships in a post-industrial world.  Some of this is probably over-dramatized; if you believe the narrative it presents, success in the world of the Internet means being ready to screw over your friends and then lawyering up to defend against their lawsuits, treating women as decorative sex objects to invite to website launch parties, and deferring basic care of one’s body in order to write software all night long.  My experiences as a web developer in the Midwest have been much less sensational…but then again, I’m not a billionaire, so maybe I’m doin` it wrong.

The movie doesn’t purport to be factually accurate, but there’s enough real history in there that it will likely become the popular understanding of how Facebook actually came to be; it might be close enough.  If you use Facebook, or if you’re interested in some of the crazy stuff that happens to take a start-up business like Facebook to what it is now, I think The Social Network is a great film to check out.

If you’ve seen it, tell me what you thought!

In the meantime, as a distraction, here are some things you might want to click on and check out:

1. Is it possible that all this political rage is not actually about healthcare?
2. I enjoyed the documentary “This Film is Not Yet Rated,” which takes a look at the MPAA’s system of assigning maturity ratings to films, and how it affects the production, distribution and success of movies in the U.S.  The themes were that (A) a small group of anonymous and inaccessible people have significant influence in deciding what becomes a part of our culture, (B) anything that depicts the sexual empowerment or fulfillment of women is dangerous or obscene, and (C) anything that isn’t 100% pro-military, pro-war is dangerous or obscene.

   I know these themes will be shocking to you, so just take a minute and catch your breath.

3. There’s a new federal policy that says cycling and other forms of non-motorized transportation should be treated as equal to motorized transportation when we plan our cities and streets.  Yay! But apparently, this is going to lead to economic catastrophe.  RUN FOR–er, uh, I mean DRIVE FOR YOUR LIVES!!
4. Have you tried playing Glenn Beck Bingo?  It’s a great party game.
5. I really hope none of the commenters on my review of Lierre Keith’s “The Vegetarian Myth” were among the militant vegans who assaulted her at a recent speaking engagement.  Um, you’re doing it wrong.

There now, you almost forgot about my blogging transgressions, didn’t you?

(Disclaimer: I’m not here to tell you how to live, but my general sense is that the world would be a better place if people didn’t spend their time watching television.  Period.  That said, and the reality of TV watching as a cultural norm firmly in place for now, I continue with my narrative.)

The end of channel surfing

The first stage in my transition away from “watching TV” was to get free of the notion that my schedule should ever revolve around the schedule of TV broadcasters.

It’s a shame to think about how much of my childhood scheduling might have revolved around wanting to be home at a certain time to watch a certain show, and what other opportunities I might have missed as a part of that.  That’s where the Tivo DVR that I bought a number of years ago really changed everything – because it records the shows you want to watch for later viewing, I never again had to worry about being proximate to my TV at any particular time.  Add in features like fast-forwarding through commercials, having “access” to shows and movies that were on during hours of the day I never would have watched before, and integrating content from the Internet and my computer, and it was quite the little media center.

Yay! I was a little more in control of my TV watching habits, and didn’t spend any more time wandering through channels looking for something mediocre to watch.

Tethered to a TV?

Once my TV-watching was controlled by storing content on an Internet-connected device that would let me retrieve it for later viewing, I thought more about why I couldn’t watch the content from anywhere I had a screen, instead of having to be in front of the TV itself.  The most impressive tool that I found in aiding that un-tethering was the Slingbox, which takes most any audio/video signal and makes it available over the Internet, while also allowing you to remotely control whatever device is playing the signal.  In other words, I could watch my TV from anywhere I had network access.

This meant that not only did I not have to be on time to watch content I wanted thanks to Tivo, I didn’t have to be anywhere in particular either.  While my actual practical uses of this were few, the slight shift in TV watching paradigm was refreshing.

Thank you, Hulu.

A few years ago, to give up cable TV meant giving up the watching of most TV shows altogether, unless you were bumming off of friends and family.  But the recent trend is that most kinds of television content is available in some other digital form, whether it’s on DVD or on the web for free or available for purchase through an online store like Amazon or iTunes.  The emergence of services like Hulu.com, which makes full length episodes of many TV shows available for “free” soon after their broadcast, further drove establishing standards for digital delivery.  (I say “free” in quotes because Hulu still shows you advertisements that take up your time and burn into your soul, and neither time nor souls are free.)

So it was about a year ago that I decided that the few shows I still watched on television were either (A) shows I didn’t need to watch anymore, or (B) shows that I could find within a reasonable amount of time using other means.  I called the cable company and told them so, and haven’t looked back since.

Hello, Roku.

This strange new world of only watching shows over the Internet was working just fine, but I did notice that there was a drop in the convenience factor, as I could no longer sit down in front of the TV, pressing a button and watch something.  If I wanted the TV-watching experience, I took the time to hook my computer up to my TV and sound system, and things like pausing to answer the door or switching between content options became a lot more noticeably distracting.  (Reality check: yes, watching glowing rectangles is the true distraction.)

A few months later, I saw the announcement of a new $100 device called the Roku player that would make digital content as easy to browse and view as “regular TV” had once been.  By linking it with a Netflix account at the lowest price level ($9/month with 1 physical DVD at a time) or paying per-use for Amazon.com selections, I had access to a significant collection of movies and TV shows available for on-demand viewing, and I was back to navigating all of that with a remote control – no computer hookup needed.

A little bit after that, the folks at Hulu made available the great “Hulu Desktop” application, which basically turned navigating their content into something you could also do with a remote control, and so while there was still some computer hookup needed there, it wasn’t as distracting.

Am I there yet?

That’s where I’m at right now.  I can sit down with a remote control and have a real “TV Watching Experience.”  I have a wide variety of interesting (some of it is even, dare I say, socially redeeming) content available to me on demand, and I don’t miss cable or broadcast TV at all.  I go to the movie theater a lot less because I have (IMHO) an equivalent or better experience with my own technical setup.

I can’t make any claims around living a life free of the distractions and time-wasting activities that cable TV brought with it – I spend plenty of time staring at glowing screens, I still watch shows produced for TV, I’m still bombarded with messages not of my choosing, and I’m still subject to information overload.   But I’ve got a lot more control over how and when I experience that information than I ever did when I subscribed to cable.

While watching this content (especially documentaries) is something I enjoy greatly, I hope to continue to reduce the amount of time I spend in front of a TV for any reason, trading it for time spent experiencing the world in other, less passive ways.

If you have experiences with making changes in how you “experience television,” (whether you own one or not), I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Book, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz: a great little book, a quick read full of wisdom that seems like it should just be common sense.  To find happiness, be impeccable with your word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, and always do your best.

Book, Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor: moving reflections on a life devoted to ministry and service, and the unexpected twists and turns in how that was manifested.  As someone who has vacillated widely in my relationship with organized religion over time, much of it rang true for me.

Books in progress or coming up soon: The River Why by David James Duncan (thanks Derric), The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (thanks Artie), The Chaos Scenario by Bob Garfield (thanks Bob).

Magazine, Men’s Health: I was somehow subscribed to this magazine through some purchase or survey I took, and when I track down who it was, I’ll let them know that they’ll never get another dollar or opinion from me (so far I’ve traced the path through three agencies, waiting on a call back from the third).  As you might guess, the magazine presents ridiculous ideals of what an actual healthy man is like, objectifies women into puzzles to be solved so that they’ll be more available for servicing men, and encourages rampant consumerism as the true path to personal happiness.  Umm, no thanks.

Live Performance, Second City in Chicago.  I’ve seen this Saturday Night Live feeder troupe do their thing in the past and it’s been really, really funny.  When I went again recently, the material was not funny, the actors were not in to it, and the show dragged on.  Lest you think it was just me, one of the longest jokes in the performance centered around a man describing for several minutes in graphic detail the brutal rape of a woman his character met at a bar; apparently it was supposed to be funny because it was edgy, but it was actually just wrong.

Live Performance, Cats: What the hell was Andrew Lloyd-Webber smoking when he created that?  And oh, there was some good singing and dancing and stuff.

Television, Glee: I shook my head in disbelief when my co-workers described the premise to me, but I ended up watching it anyway.  It’s part high school drama a la “Friday Night Lights,” part Auto-Tuned musical production, part ridiculously contrived sitcom.  I’m worried that, like the dreadful mess that was Prison Break, the show’s creators never really expected it to take off, and therefore have no idea where they’re taking the story or character development, and so they inject artificial plot twists to delay the season finale so they have the off-season to make something better up.  I can’t say I recommend it on the whole, but the interesting renditions and mash-ups of the musical numbers are pretty impressive nonetheless.

Television, V: I love a good “the aliens have come to destroy us” sci-fi drama, and it’s harder to resist when the story is couched in the hopes, fears, technologies and personalities of the present day.  V (for Visitors) has done a reasonable job of creating just that, but it seems like they’ve unleashed their entire bag of tricks in the first few episodes, so (like Glee) it’s hard to imagine a sustaining storyline and character development.  The hardcore fans of the original show must be really ticked off, and having been a fan of her work in Lost, it’s too bad to see Elizabeth Mitchell compelled to say such campy lines.  I will give maybe one or two more episodes of my time, and then I will go back to watching old Star Trek: TNG episodes, because it was never campy.

Movie, 51 Birch Street: a really neat documentary that anyone who’s ever thought about life, love, family, relationships or marriage would probably enjoy at some level.  It was a helpful reminder for me that even the marriages of my parents and grandparents and their peers, which may seem to me frozen as unquestionably pure during unquestionably better times, were probably actually more complicated than that.  It’s also a great story about never quite knowing what your moment in the spotlight will look like.

Anything you’d like to suggest?

Every year, high school students around Indiana are encouraged to submit their films for judging and showing at the festival.  The top ten or so films are selected by a panel of judges, and then shown at the screening night (which was tonight).  Before the screening is a panel discussion with professional filmmakers and those involved in the film industry.

The event has gotten better and better every year.  Tonight there was a great panel that included Zack Parker (long-time filmmaker from Richmond who has produced two feature films), the Herbert brothers (who created a Superbowl commercial that recently won $1 million in a contest!), Erin Newell (the director of the statewide film initiative Film Indiana), and Krista Hoffmann-Longtin (who has been involved in Indiana film stuff for some time now).  The quality of the films were a clear step above last year’s submissions, with better sound production, plots, directing and photography all around.  There were three documentaries and an animated short!  Horror, comedy, romance and more!  Even the format of the evening was more energizing, with Oscars-like introduction and award presentation, and a great MC in Scott Tucker.  Well done, all for free.

Again, I’m not sure why the auditorium wasn’t packed.  Sadly, there were no submissions from Richmond students that were screened, so perhaps we’re a bit behind in encouraging our young folks to consider filmmaking for fun, inspiration, or even a career. I’m hopeful that we’ll do that and more, encouraging support for this artform in non-highschool settings too (e.g. have a 48-hour film project here).

Hopefully more people will become aware of this refreshing and impressive burst of creativity on display, and ask what we can to do take better advantage of it in our community.  If you’re at all interested in the creative arts and filmmaking in particular, I hope you’ll consider coming next year.

The Reader is one of those films that haunts my thoughts and dreams for some time after I’ve seen it – in part because of the subject matter, and in part because of how beautifully and authentically it was rendered.  Director Stephen Daldry rightly relied heavily on the amazing ability of his cast to communicate so much through the slightest changes in expression or well-timed pauses, and the cinematography only complemented this by just getting out of their way.

The weight of the story revolves around a very specific plot twist that ripples out into the parts of the movie you’ve already seen and every scene after, but the emotional components of the movie as a whole span no less than every challenge a human being and its culture might face in a lifetime: love, war, genocide, justice, family, aging, integrity, honest, class, fear and more.  The film also reminds present day viewers that the Holocaust is not just a part of history – the things that happened then are very much still playing out today in ways someone of my generation can probably not imagine.  There are no sweeping conclusions or black and white moments of morality here – it very much shows the complexity of being human, and that we are all under construction until the very end.

If you appreciate gray areas in what it means to be human, you will probably also enjoy Then She Found Me, which Helen Hunt directs and stars in.  Despite the other big name cast members – Colin Firth, Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick – this is no nicely wrapped romantic comedy.  It cuts to the bone of what it means to be in love, in partnership, in a family and shows no mercy in trying to genuinely portray the gut-wrenching ups and downs that comes with it.  It’s not all painful and there are moments of joy, hilarity and redemption that are only possible when a filmmaker helps you fall in love with the characters at some level, but this is not brain candy by any stretch.

A favorite exchange in the movie’s recurring theme of what it means to love, and then hurt the ones we love:

I know what I did to you. To you in particular.

Like a worst nightmare kind of thing, right?

I knew that.

Even at the time, I knew that.

- What else? – I’ll do it again.

I will. I’ll hurt you again and again.

Not like that.

You’d have to leave me if I hurt you like that.

If we were together, you’d leave me if I hurt you like that again, wouldn’t you?

Yes. Yes, I would.

Good.

But I’ll hurt you in other ways. Little ways. I won’t mean to, but I will.

And sometimes, I will mean to.

This is quite an offer you’ve worked up.

You’ll hurt me, too, you know? You’ll hurt me and change on me.

You might leave me after you promise you won’t. How about that?

- I wouldn’t. – You might.

- But I wouldn’t! – But…

you might.

Yeah, I guess I might.

Well done.

And lastly, you know what the exact opposite of well done is?  Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End, that’s what.  Hopefully most people know by now that seeing a “3″ of any film franchise is a big risk to start with, but for some reason we tried it out, and we quit halfway through (which, for a 3 hour movie, was still quite a bit of time wasted).  I’m here to warn you off of this movie, so I won’t offer any analysis other than to say that it’s clear the script for this movie was essentially vomited out of of someone’s brain while they were under the influence of some sort of illegal narcotic, and then hurriedly made into a film before anyone could say out loud what they must have all been thinking: “we are doing this to make enough money on opening weekend to cover our costs and a little more, and we don’t care if it makes absolutely no sense at all and totally wastes the talent of our cast.“  Mission accomplished.

Seen any good films lately?

“Hey, man, I know this is a strange request, but could I get a glass of water? I just had some really spicy wings for lunch and my mouth is really really dry.”  Hmm.

I obliged, wanting to keep the person who was about to drill holes through the side of my house happy.

“Thanks, man, gosh those wings were SO spicy, can I get a fill up?”

Sure.

He proceeded to wander around the house, checking out the cable install possibilities, chatting all the way. He started drilling, laughed a bit when he started to use the wrong bit. He didn’t mind me looking over his shoulder, and in fact was quite talkative about the inner workings of the cable company installer industry, how they were paid, and so on. He asked me what I did, got all excited about technology consulting and website development, and was just overjoyed beyond belief when I offered him a Summersault t-shirt. “This guy is nice,” I thought. “Extra friendly.”

When he was done, he implied that he could set me up with some channels I wouldn’t necessarily be paying for. He told me about the things that could be tweaked out on the wiring pole in the alley to adjust that channel setup. Lots of useful info for a geek, probably not so great for the cable company.

After another glass of water, we bid a fond farewell as he continued to thank me for the shirt and smile and say if there was anything else I needed just to call.

Super friendly, if a little oddly thirsty.

This second visit from the cable company the next day was a little unexpected.  “We just need to go over the work that the installer who was here yesterday performed,” he said.  I thought it was just an extra bit of quality assurance. How nice.

Until the next part: “yeah, that guy who was here yesterday apparently did his rounds while he was high…before he came to your house he was involved in an altercation at another customer’s house. Umm, He actually threw a wrench through a car windshield.”

Oh my.

At least now I know about the “spicy wings” code-phrase, as I’m notoriously bad about being aware of it when people around me are in altered states of consciousness. If there are others you’ve encountered in your service technician experiences, please do share.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is part documentary, part tribute, and part lamentation on the state of the world. As a documentary, it put Thompson’s life in the context of his times and honestly contrasts the larger-than-life myth of the man with the reality of his personal life. As a tribute, it uses a broad spectrum of interviews with friends, family members, business associates, and even foes to honor a life that was lived so fully, if not in line with what was expected of him. And as a lamentation on the state of the world, it puts the corruption and power struggles of early 1970s presidential politics next to the way things are done today, and notes that we’ve mostly gotten worse instead of better. (It certainly made me want to learn more about George McGovern’s campaign and platform.)

I came away with a portrait of a man who was radically self-absorbed and self-indulgent, leaving a trail of broken relationships and lives in his wake. At the same time, he was clearly one of those rare people who can speak truth to power, actually have a positive impact, and have a great deal of fun while doing it. Of course, “fun” often meant consuming much drugs and alcohol, and while I can’t endorse this lifestyle (nor does the film), it seemed to work as well for Dr. Thompson as it could for anyone.

Overall, the film was very well done and quite compelling, with only a few unnecessary ventures into the storytelling tactics of cheesy “true hollywood”-style shows. The narrative, peppered with voiceovers by Johnny Depp who played Thompson in the 1998 movie adapted from his book “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, was a good mix of driving as fast as possible between all of the unbelievable things that its subject did in his life and stepping back to look at some of the recurring themes that fueled the legend.

It’s clear that the more material that’s created around Hunter S. Thompson’s life now that he’s dead, the more he will be absorbed into the mainstream of our cultural mythology. At the end of this film, the scenes from his funeral show the big names of entertainment and politics coming out to celebrate his life, but I suspect many of these people wouldn’t have touched his approach to life with a 10 foot pole while he was alive, if it even remotely implied their endorsement. Thompson always seemed gearing up to declare that the whole ball of wax is screwed up beyond repair, ready to name names and make a scene until something got better, or at least until he got the attention he wanted. Now that he’s gone, he’s a little more safe, a little more endearing, a little more like a friend that’s been taken from us than the violent, rowdy, instigator of a counter-cultural icon that took his own life just when he darn well felt like it.

But this is the way of history, and one can only hope that by watching “Gonzo,” once we’ve gotten past the parts of Thompson’s life that are troubling or even repulsive to us, a part of us can find some kind of inspiration in his refusal to do anything except pursue the work and the life that he believed in, no matter the cost.

“Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson” is in theaters now.

(By the way, if I’ve ever encountered anyone remotely like Hunter S. Thompson from my generation, his name is Sander Hicks, and he’s a playwright/journalist/song-writer/activist/instigator/entrepreneur living in New York City. I also think he’s probably a little bit less crazy than Thompson, and probably owns fewer guns.)