Bodily Fluids Awash at Sundance

The 2005 Sundance Film Festival is over (and I missed it again - well.... someday - the combination of skiing, celebrity sighting and watching some great new movies is a thrilling combination). The Independent Film Weblog sites an article from Lou Lemenick of the New York Post claiming the following:

"...Sundance screens were awash in semen, and all other kinds of bodily fluids, as audiences were treated to graphic scenes of rape, castration, dismemberment and sex acts that crossed the threshold of almost every imaginable taboo - sometimes by performers who will be too young to attend these movies when (or if) they make it into theaters..."

Highly praised movies include The Aristocrats, The Squid and The Whale, The Dying Gaul, Mysterious Skin - and Grand Jury Prize winner, 40 Shades of Blue. For a complete list of awards please see the PDF Press Release here.

Pure Evil

Most crimes against children are obviously pretty abhorrent. It seems like lately there have a number of mothers that have killed or injured their children in the news. While completely unacceptable, these cases are almost always the result of some sort of mental illness or extreme depression - it clearly doesn't make it less horrible but it does sort of rationalize the maliciousness to me a bit.

But this case is one of a pure evil. Brian Schellenberger (a 42 year old computer/analyst for SAS - which is one or the reasons this case caught my eye - similar demographic to me!) pleaded guilty on Thursday for several felonies including making homemade sex videos with children, trading child sex videos and porn online, and plotting to have his wife killed. He was plotting to have wife killed apparently to keep her away from finding out about his kiddy porn dealings.

There is no mental depression or disease breakdown here - at least it certainly doesn't look like it. What capped it for me was his desire to kill his wife. Everything here is planned. Everything he committed is not just a small infraction of how we exist and survive in social life but a complete and clearly distinct shattering of it. Makes me shudder...

SpongeBob Likes Boys?

Have you seen that some conservative Christian groups are accusing SpongeBob SquarePants of promoting homosexuality to children? I hesitate to admit but I have tevoed a couple of SpongeBob shows and generally found it funny if a bit juvenile. I didn't detect any slant on sexuality. Apparently these Christian groups are all upset about a video that celebrates diversity to children starring SpongeBob and other animated 'celebrities'.

Is it just me or does it seem that these groups are just trying to pick a fight where there really is none? It feels to me that it is just a grab for some headlines (and it worked I guess) to pursue an agenda of 'moral' values. But grabbing at straws like this one will, no doubt, have a negative affect on these groups as they become more seen as out-of-control Chicken Little's with no resonance to the majority of us regular folks.

A sideline - what is this fear of 'promoting' homosexuality to children about anyways? Do these nuts really think a kid gets to puberty and actively makes a decision about which way to go sexually? Nature works wonders and most of us (90%?) find we're attracted to the other sex (without a lot of pondering by the way!) while the others are attracted to the same sex. I really don't think outside 'advertising' is going to pursuade them otherwise!

My Eyes - the Good and the Bad

I have a crazy combination of glasses and contact lenses that has been driving me nuts. It used to be (just a year ago) when I could wear my contact lenses for anything - reading, driving, etc.. But lately I've been having trouble with reading and computer work with them. Two years ago, I had a prescription made for reading glasses to complement my prescription for regular glasses for when I wasn't wearing the contacts. Thus, already I was managing two sets of glasses along with the contact lenses.

So I go the eye doctor this week and received good news and bad news. The good news was that 'far' vision (i.e. driving, normal wear) is the same it has been for years - yeah! no detriment. The other good news is that my prescriptions for contacts and the two sets of glasses require no change (which is good on the $$$). So what gives? How do I read with my contact lenses now? Well, the bad news is that my 'near' vision (along with almost anybody else - so I'm not alone) gets worse with age and will likely just keep getting worse. So my doctor recommended keeping my current contacts but getting some dime store reading glasses. I've tried this combination and frankly, the prescription glasses that I have for reading (without contacts) works better. Ughhh... I guess the window of time to happily wear my contact lenses for all occasions is over.

I suppose some aspects of aging are just not meant to be particularly pleasant but I also suppose I really have no right to complain - the other piece of good news I received was through a battery of tests on the eyes - everything else looks healthy. What more can you ask, ... (i guess)

Review - "Nobody Knows" et al

"Nobody Knows" (Dare mo shiranai) is Japan's official entry to the 2005 Oscars. It releases in the US in February. I got to see it in my Talk Cinema series. The film's 14-year old star won the Best Actor's award at the Cannes Film Festival. This movie is based on a true story of four children raging in age between 4 and 12 left abandoned in a Tokyo apartment. It's a bit long at about 140 minutes and the pace is very slow. But with a slow pace often comes depth that is rarely seen in a typical US movie. This is the case with this one.

There are so many scenes that I still recall and will probably be with me for awhile. It's amazing to watch these children slowly realize that 'mommy is not coming home'. The kids are unbelievable actors and, of course, much of the credit for that comes from the director, Hirokazu Koreeda, who apparently only gave the children their lines at the beginning of each filming day and tried to capture their 'adlib' as much as possible. It works. They don't feel like actors - they feel like children who just want to go to school, learn to play piano and baseball, have friends but cannot.

I would recommend this movie to those that appreciate subtlety and other cultures. Others may find the movie too long. The movie is hauntingly beautiful and life affirming in a strange way though, even I,was pretty much ready for it to end.

BTW - other movies I have seen this holiday season include "Million Dollar Baby", "Hotel Rwanda", "Finding Neverland", "The Aviator", "In Good Company" , "Closer" and "House of Flying Daggers". I would recommend ALL of them - what a great season for movies!!

Reading, Writing, and Getting Fit

It seems that a legislator in the State of Texas wants to add body mass index (BMI) into the report cards for school-age kids. It is not clear from the newspaper article I read whether this would be a part of the overall grade or simply a notification to parents. The movie "Supersize Me" that came out last year really got to the heart of this matter and, in fact, picked on Texas. It turns out that both Dallas and Houston rank among the top 10 fattest cities in the United States - I think Houston was number 1 actually.

I like the idea of health and physical education at the primary education level and I would propose a grading scheme tied to yearly or semester improvements of BMI. Schools serving crap food and educators doing nothing about a statistic like 33% of school age kids being overweight are simply unacceptable.

Obesity is a problem because as an adult it is hard to get rid of. Society pays a toll in rising health costs associated with obesity related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. In addition, issues related to how obesity is viewed in our society often plague obese adults. If obesity prevention can be taught and executed at the primary level, maybe - just maybe - some of this would stick and we wouldn't be such an overweight country.

Espresso Express

I bought myself an espresso maker for Christmas and have been using it now for a couple of weeks. The machine is the Nespresso C-190 and I am absolutely loving it. It's so fun to make espresso that I find myself pretty caffienated lately! As usual, before buying it I did a lot of research on the internet and it has gotten rave reviews especially in Europe where it is made. I figure if it's fared well among the coffee-cultured Eureopean's, it's probably good enough for me. It is a sub-$400 machine that makes espresso like a $1000 maker. Even better though, is the fact that I can make a cup of espresso in about 1 1/2 minutes - no tapping, no grinding, no blending, etc... It uses a 'pod'. Just turn on the machine and warm it up, slip in the pod, and move the top lever and fill your cup. When done, lift the lid and the used pod ejects into a repository in the machine that is easily removed and emptied every so often.

Lots of smooth creamy 'crema' and great rich coffee. Nestle, the manufacturer makes 9 different espresso blends (including a suprisingly nice decaf - thank goodness) and 3 'lungo' blends for larger cups. The only negative thing about it is you have to buy the pods from Nestle and they are only available through their website. But since they guarantee delivery in 2 business days (and so far in two orders, they have done great) - it's arguably even more convenient than running out to the grocer. Yea - I worry a BIT about the fact that if they stop making these pods I have a useless machine - but Nestle is a big company and they are using these same pods for several of their increasingly popular machines. And it would be nice to not have a single source for the pods for pricing reasons - but Nestle probably isn't going to be motivated to jack up the price too much - it would not only anger existing customers but also hijack the product.

Some say that the automation in this machine takes the 'romance' out of blending, grinding, and tapping but I can't say that that the mess and fuss for what often turns out as less-than-perfect espresso is romantic to me. Just give me a good cup of consistently yummy espresso in short order and then I will show you some romance!

The Cause of the Tsunami

Apparently some really awful people are using this terrible tragedy to manipulate people's thoughts. This article in the Washington Post this morning contains the following quotes from Indonesia's Banda Aceh.

"God is angry with Aceh people, because most of them do not do what is written in the Koran and the Hadith," the collected sayings and actions of the prophet Muhammad, explained Cut Bukhaini, 35, an imam. "I hope this will lead all Muslims in Aceh to do what is in the Koran and its teachings. If we do so, God will be merciful and compassionate." Imams in last Friday's sermon and in statements since then have said the disaster should be a lesson to Muslims to more closely observe Islamic laws, including those governing consumption of alcohol and relations between the sexes, according to Aceh residents who attended weekly services in their mosques. "I think people were making love before marriage, doing bad things, forgetting to pray to God," said Jack Solong, 25, a waiter and dishwasher at a popular Banda Aceh coffee shop. "God punished us. I believe that." "Before the tsunami, all the people were full of bad conduct," he said. "Boys were sitting close to the girls. There was corruption in the government. This was God's punishment." "We have to make a lot of changes in our lives, and this is God's way of letting us know," said Hetty Meutia Dewy, an agriculture student at Bogor University and a member of the Islamic Association of Students. "The imams have said it was a warning. They said God loves the Aceh people, but the tsunami was a warning to be better people. Neva Zarlinda, an 18-year-old high school student camped beside Baitush Shakhir Mosque, said she also viewed the disaster as a warning from God and, as a result, planned to be more observant. "I hope that I will pray more now, because I have done a lot of wrong things," she said, hanging around the government-provided tent where she, her mother, her father and her five siblings have taken up residence. "I seldom prayed. God willing, I will pray more." Ansufri Sabow, 34, another member and college lecturer on mathematics and Islamic studies, said the tsunami could "cleanse the sins of the people" as well as caution them. "God has warned us," he said. "Wake up. Wake up. Wake up."

I certainly hope that people are not as gullible as these quotes would suggest. Albeit I'm sure that there is a tendency to reach for your God in times of trouble and wrestle with understanding. I suppose to 'rationalize' or explain something that is unexplainable or random at best is a part of human nature but I do wonder if we would do the same thing in the United States faced with a tragedy of this proportion.