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!

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?

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.)

• Smaller Indiana, a social networking site for Indiana people, with an apparent trend toward IT/design professionals. It’s built on Ning, which I’m considering as a platform for a few projects. But mostly I’m just excited to see social networking applied at a more regional/local level – a great trend.
• If you enjoyed Thought to Exist in the Wild, you’ll enjoy this bit of satire: San Diego Zoo, Prison Merge. Yeah.
• The Emergency Party Button – oh yes, I will build this some day soon. They even got the music right.
• What You Do Counts – National Geographic selected this film by an Earlham College student as a finalist
• Someone took the time – a lot of time – to create an interesting map of humanity.
• Wired says you can keep your SUV, don’t bother paying for organic food, forget about the spotted owl, etc. because reducing carbon emissions is the only real battle that matters. Hmm.

No End In Sight is pitched as an insider’s tale of the reckless decision-making and subsequent incompetence that has propelled the invasion and occupation of Iraq forward from the planning stages to the present day, and it satisfies that characterization quite well. I was impressed with the broad scope (in rank, affiliation and political persuasion alike) of the subjects that writer/director Charles Ferguson was able to secure for the film – everyone from former State Department leader Richard Armitage to soldiers and diplomats who had been on the ground in Iraq carrying out the haphazard instructions from afar. What’s more, they seemed unusually candid and authentic, almost humbled by the chance to reflect – saying out loud how badly things were done, clearly second guessing themselves and their decision-making process they engaged in, barely containing their frustration at the conflicts and politicking within the Bush administration that prevented any real meaningful collaboration or planning to take place. It was amazing to hear from some of the people who were ostensibly planning for life in Iraq after the invasion, and all the roadblocks and impossible tasks they encountered. It reminded me somewhat of Errol Morris’s The Fog of War, with the same kinds of long, uncomfortable pauses as people who were directly responsible for life and death decisions came to grips with their place in history.

Beyond the interviews, the film is a great chronology of the invasion and occupation as a whole. With the inattentive and lopsided media coverage the many-hundred-billion dollar adventure gets, it’s all too easy to forget that it’s been going on for more than 4 years and that so many different milestones of presidential, congressional, and national identity (many of them unfortunate) have been reached along the way. But despite the moving stories of discontent from U.S. soldiers and the wrangling of egos and power agendas in the U.S., this is about huge losses of life, total destruction of communities, cities, cultures, livelihoods, and a profound sense of injustice, all sustained by the Iraqi people at the hands of our country’s military/industrial complex. The collection of footage often never shown in mainstream media for its heartbreaking implications is in itself a story of unacceptable disconnection from this tragedy.

One of the soldiers interviewed for the film, Field Artillery Gunner Hugo Gonzales, talked about how his life now was preoccupied by trying to find some meaning in the occupation there, especially given his debilitating injuries and near-constant pain. I felt such sadness for him and his fellow soldiers, knowing they have in most cases done what they believe is right and necessary, and that some of them are now feeling pangs of doubt (if not plain outrage) about the nature and origins of their mission. As I walked out of No End in Sight, it was clear to me that any universally useful meaning will probably only come years from now, when the machinations of national and cultural self-consciousness will finally lead to some wider-spread sense that the whole ordeal was a catastrophic mistake. But until then, the movie gives us as much perspective as might be possible while the battles continue and more lives are needlessly lost.

While President George W. Bush would not be interviewed for the movie, other interviewers have asked him and his advisers about the logic and decision-making process that governed the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and most often the response is to brush off the mistakes of the past, saying that dwelling on them doesn’t really serve a useful purpose, and to talk about what needs to happen to move forward (hey, that sounds familiar!). While I understand this perspective, I think it is horribly flawed.

And so I really appreciate that in The Assault on Reason, Al Gore took the time to look deeply at the thought processes, public and private conversations, and general approach to decision making that has dominated the Bush administration’s tenure, not the least outcome of which was the mess in Iraq. Gore starts with the psychology of fear and takes us on a whirlwind tour of how it is used to subvert our appreciation of reason, even to the point where the decisions we make are not in our own self-interest. He looks at the language and framing used by modern politicians (certainly with a critical focus pointed right at conservatives) and how every pressing issue of the day — from climate change to foreign policy to immigration to Katrina to the economy — are being poorly addressed or not addressed at all because of the paralysis of the nation due to these tactics. The sad part of his thesis is that, for those who are assaulting reason, it’s all about power:

Throughout history, our innate fear of others-who-are-different-from-us has combined all too frequently with some malignant dogma, masquerading as a message from God, to unleash the most horrific violence and oppression in the repertoire of hell. Moreover, this deadly form of exclusivist group passion can be virtually invulnerable to reason. So it is especially useful to demagogues who learn how to fan it and exploit it to gain and consolidate power. –p. 48

Like some interviewees in No End In Sight, Gore effectively lambastes the Bush administration for its approach to Iraq, but does so in the context of the notion that the Iraq invasion was a distraction from the search for Osama bin Laden and those who attacked the U.S. on 9-11. He returns to the amazing phenomenon where some high percentage of U.S. citizens surveyed incorrectly believed Saddam Hussein had something to do with those attacks, and the rhetoric and carefully planned talking points of the neocon planners that facilitated that trend. In other words, because of the way reason has been assaulted and the truth twisted, lots of people died.

Gore is optimistic about possibilities for improvement and solutions to the phenomenon he lays out, but I’m not sure I can agree with the specific paths he sees to resolution. His primary conclusion is that if Americans can reclaim the practice of meaningful public debate about the issues that face us, we can once again be a nation governed by reason and true democracy. Specifically, Gore sees the promise of the Internet as the key vehicle to that reclaiming, and goes on to promote some of his own efforts with Current TV to that effect.

…the Internet is perhaps the greatest source of hope for reestablishing an open communications environment in which conversation of democracy can flourish. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. The ideas that individuals contribute are dealt with, in the main, according to the rules of a meritocracy of ideas. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. –p. 260

It sounds really good, but as George Lakoff and others have identified, pinning our hopes for the resurrection of a nation driven by progressive values on the notion that everyone just needs to be more reasonable is NOT a strategy for success. The reality is that people will let their understanding of the world and their short-term preferences override any deep comprehension of what might be reasonable or right; even, as I mentioned above, when they are making decisions that conflict with their own self-interest. I’ve experienced that often here in my home town, where some of my attempts to engage those with opposing viewpoints using the tools of logic and reason results only in further misunderstanding, animosity, and even outright resentment at the attempt. I’ve come to understand this as something I can’t really completely blame on the people I’m engaging – if I can’t interact with them in a way that is meaningful and useful to both of us, then that’s partly my fault, too.

Still, Gore’s clarity of vision is worth hearing out, even if it isn’t a comprehensive one. As with soldier Gonzales` attempt to find meaning in the events of the past four years, Gore does manage to make a lot of sense of how we got where we are in a fear-based national identity, and I consider The Assault on Reason to be an essential contribution to the discussion about what we want for ourselves from here on out.

Thanks to the folks at PhilQuinnForCouncil.com for linking here so prominently on the site. Of course, as much as I like and admire Phil, please know that I have not (nor do I plan to) endorsed any local political candidates here. I do wish them all the best in fulfilling the promise of the democratic process.

If you haven’t already, you can head on over to GetWellJoe.com, a site I set up for Joe Augustin after he was assaulted earlier this week. The technical details are mundane compared to what Joe is going through, but it was a strange experience going from scratch to a full-blown weblog with hundreds of visitors and comments pouring in in a matter of an hour or two. Thanks to all the people who are holding Joe up now and keeping each other posted on his progress.

In a little bit, I’m heading out to IU East to help unveil the preview and website for the new documentary being produced here, 1:47. I’m at Summersault right now working with my team on the final prep for actually making the new site live, so you can check that out shortly. I haven’t gotten to do as much lately with video production as I would like, so it’s at least rewarding to be peripherally involved in a project where some really great production work is being done.

Have a good weekend.

So (or, despite that), I decided to throw up a few videos I’ve produced over the years to see what happens. There’s my trip to Washington D.C. to ask the president not to invade Iraq, highlights from a conference on cultural change that I organized, a clip from an inspiring talk about peak oil, and highlights from the raising of a wind turbine at the Cope Environmental Center, which I’ve mentioned here before. These were shot with everything from a digital still camera to my GL-2 MiniDV rig, so the quality varies widely, but I’ve already generated 1 subscriber to my “channel”, 49 views of my videos, and a comment. I love web-based social networking!

Let me know what you think.