Pay 2 Play

Here is another outstanding wake-up call to the American people. Your political system; your government at every level, local, state, and national is egregiously corrupt.    This film demonstrates clearly that America is no longer a democracy. It is a Konfederacy of Kleptocrats  for sale to any billionaire, banker, or corporate executive willing to shell out big money to buy the public policy they want, with no regard for the consequences.

This is the core issue... the core challenge of our time. The singular focus on profit above all else is shredding the fabric of life on Earth.  Fixing this problem must be job one. 

Here is a link to a trailer for the feature documentary, Pay 2 Play...http://vimeo.com/87025347

He3re is a link to the webpage for Pay 2 Play...  http://pay2play.nationbuilder.com/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=advertising-pay-2-play-20140910-2&utm_campaign=Advertising%20-%20Pay%202%20Play%20-%2020140910

Burt's Buzz

There's a movie out now called Burt's Buzz.  It's about the quirky beekeeper from Maine that founded the  billion dollar company, Burt's Bees.  I haven't seen the movie yet, but I hope to see it soon.  It's about Burt Shavitz the man. He appears to be a genuine 'Down East' character, who has been transformed by some very sophisticated marketing into a brand, worth a billion dollars. 

Here is the link to the trailer for Burt's Buzz...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdGZoABFYYA

PES Films

PES is an artist who makes incredibly clever, stop-motion video.  One called Fresh Guacamole was nominated for an Academy Award.  My favorite is called The Deep.

Way to go, PES. You're a creative force of nature.

Here is a link to PES Films... http://www.eatpes.com/

Final Countdown Dogfight Scene

My all time favorite aviation movie is,  The Final Countdown.   It was produced in 1980, and starred Kirk Douglass and the US Navy supercarrier Nimitz. Simple premise: what if a modern era US Navy carrier taskforce found itself in a time warp and ended up poised to resist the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that triggered World War Two?

The scene that never fails to thrill involves World War Two era Japanese zero fighter aircraft attacking a defenseless cabin cruising yacht. 

The propeller driven zeros are then confronted by two modern era F-14 Tomcat fighter jet aircraft.  The Tomcat is now retired from duty, but 33 years ago, when The Final Countdown was made, it was the Navy's 'Top Gun' airborne, lethal weapon.
 
The thing I like about this aerial combat sequence is the morality dance at play  The zeros cravenly attack an unarmed civilian vessel and blow it up.  Enter the US Navy jets with vastly superior performance and the moral high ground to boot.  The overmatched, bad boy Zeros get what's coming to them. Not complicated; stirring music, good versus evil, designed to elicit cheering and emotion.

Japanese Zero Fighter

F-14 Tomcat Navy Fighter Jet

Here is a link to this very exciting movie example of aerial combat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyjNInIH4Hw

Mr. Bumptious

In 1910, the Edison Company was making some of the very first movies designed to entertain.  They were silent. I mean totally silent.  No audio track at all. When these first movies were shown in theaters, they were most often accompanied by a pianist.  In the top theaters in places like New York and Los Angeles, these silent films might also have backstage people operating sound machines.

backstage wind machine

The definition of bumptious is a person overly confident  or arrogant.

A series of short movies were made around 1910 that featured a character named, Mr. Bumptious.  The one attached is about an arrogant fool from the Inspector Clouseau School of Acting. It's a very engaging reflection of the culture and technical sophistication of that era.

 

 

 Amazing how far we've come in less than a hundred years.

Here is a You Tube link to the Edison silent, Mr. Bumptious Papered the Parlor.      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXDOkdYtim4

Climate Change - Do The Math

It's disheartening to see the public policy that comes from our government on energy and climate change.  Any non-ideological,  rational person can see the moral bankruptcy of our continued reliance on fossil forms of energy.  I'm talking about coal, oil, and natural gas. Beyond the economic arguments, which are clearly reflected in rising prices for these fuels, the biggest reason we need to wean ourselves from their use as soon as possible is the scourge of climate change. Fossil fuels pollute. They are the direct cause of atmospheric warming, a global scale challenge unprecedented in the history of humanity.

So, why does the energy policy of the United States government continue to encourage our dependence oil, coal, and natural gas? It's because the people behind these traditional fossil forms of energy have a stranglehold on our nation's energy policy. It's because in America, big dirty energy shapes public policy to fit their agenda. They are entrenched, in control through the use of their political influence money. They use it to stuff the pockets of politicians willing to do their bidding.

Pushing back against the corrupt influence of the fossil and nuclear energy industry is s huge problem.

Building public awareness and consensus for change in the energy arena is ongoing on many fronts.  Groups like 350.org, run by climate activist Bill McKibben, are using grassroots organizing to educate and combat the big money influence of the fossil industry.

There is a new feature length movie out titled, Do The Math.   It offers a clear picture of the challenges we face with climate change and the forces at work, who are doing their best to undermine any efforts to sway public opinion toward meaningful climate action. 

Here is a link to a video trailer about, Do The Math... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLr_lfyRfqY#at=73

The 100 Greatest Movie Insults of All Time

Sometimes a quirky gem appears out of nowhere. I ran across one today on You Tube.  It's a relentless compilation of motion picture insults. The greatest examples of cursing and vile comeuppance ever seen in the movies.  Enjoy.

Here is the link to the 100 greatest movie insults of all time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSEYXWmEse8&feature=related

Alien Encounters

The latest sci-fi adventure about a human/alien encounter hit the movie theaters this week. Promethius is another example of human existence being threatened with annihilation.  I haven't seen this one, but it's directed by Ridley Scott, who also directed the first of the Alien series. 

My favorite by far in that series was the second, written and directed by the great James Cameron.

The one I'm talking about, Aliens, starred Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, a genuine,  balls of steel female, who saves a child from the acid-blooded mother alien. Ripley had one of the greatest lines ever in a movie, when she tells the ugly,formidable alien mommy to 'Get away from her you bitch!'

Back to my point,  given the vast distances between potentially habitable places in our own galaxy, it doesn't appear that aliens are a viable threat to life on earth.  Some very smart scientists have been seeking the slightest hint of alien life for several decades. They're using some very sophisticated equipment to identify incoming radio signals.  Thusfar, despite their best efforts, they've found nothing.

Just for the sake of argument, let's say there was an alien civilization that had technology that made interstellar travel possible.  Would they be like E.T.,  or more like Darth Vadar?  

It seems unlikely aliens would  travel light years to come here unless we had something they wanted, like a new place to plant their seed. Jeeze, it's not as if that hasn't happened on Earth before.  The best, most close-to-home example is what Europeans did to the indigenous people of North, Central, and South America, starting in the 17th century.  Indians on this side of the Atlantic were enslaved, pushed aside, or very often, exterminated, because the European newcomers awarded themselves the right to take what they wanted.  The concept was and is called 'manifest destiny'.  It's an incendiary mix of religious animus, greed, and brazen ambition.   White Europeans considered the Indians of the Americas to be vermin with no rights. That's just one cold-blooded and very real example of an alien encounter gone very wrong.  Moreover, it's still happening on a grand scale. Right now, in 2012, the Republican legislators and the governor of the state of Michigan have given themselves the right to victimize and asset strip a number of struggling city and county governments in their state.  What they are doing in Michigan is another damnable example of manifest destiny.

The great cosmologist Stephen Hawking thinks we are foolish to assume alien visitors would behave any way other that rapaciously if they took the trouble to travel light years to get here. And, given the huge advantage they would have in technology, taking what we have would be as easy as engineering a virus that would eliminate humanity in short order, leaving them free to settle in and exploit earth's resources as we have for many millennium.  

Bottom line; where aliens are concerned, if they are out there, probably the best thing would be for them to stay in their own neighborhoods, galactic or otherwise.

Hysteria

I learned about Hysteria, a movie scheduled for release sometime this Spring by Sony Classic pictures, when my path crossed with Tracey Becker, one of that project's producers. Tracey became engaged on Change Agents, a project I am currently developing with my colleague, Chad Kirkpatrick.    I knew when I saw the trailer for Hysteria that Tracey was the right person to comment on the work we are doing.

The trailer for Hysteria is a hoot. I haven't seen the movie yet, but if it turns out to be as much fun as the trailer is, we're all in for a big league treat. The subject of this movie is a malady a great many women suffered with in the 19th century and before. Hysteria was not any kind of illness, but instead was a reflection of women's frustration over having to deny their natural inclination to sexual orgasm. Built around the story of the doctor in Victorian England, who invented the 'vibrator', Hysteria was directed by Tanya Wexler, a young filmmaker perfectly suited to translate this story into a totally delicious movie experience.

Take a moment to look at this. It's really fun.

The link to the Hysteria trailer follows...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkEw3mWs86g

Koyaanisqatsi

'Life out of balance', that is the meaning of Koyaanisqatsi, a word in the Hopi indian language that was applied in 1982 to a remarkable work by filmmaker, Godfrey Reggio. It's hard to believe that 30 years have passed since I saw Koyaanisqatsi the first time, when I was still a very young man. It had an indeliable impact on me, with its relentless montage of troubling images of the Earth and man, punctuated by a powerful soundtrack by Phillip Glass. Koyaanisqatsi helped bring focus to my life. I've traveled a meandering, unconventional path ever since, seeking ways to leave a positive mark.

Here is the trailer for the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PirH8PADDgQ

I had the privilege of spending time with Godfrey Reggio a few years after Koyaanisqatsi was released. He was and remains a remarkable human being, in a life committed to exposing the troubling relationsip between humans and the planet they all depend on to survive. Reggio followed up Koyaanisqatsi with a second film, Powaqquasti, which means, 'Life in Transformation'

Here is a link to some moments from that film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFHQ8dhAJWU

I recently learned that now, all these years later, Reggio is working on what he calls the final piece of his triology. He calls it Naqoyqatsi, 'Life as War'. That suggests that Reggio's final shot across humanity's bow will be rather apocalyptic.

Here is a link to Godfrey Reggio's website.

http://www.koyaanisqatsi.org/films/film.php

Godfrey Reggio was a big part of my personal wake-up call. I recommend his marvelous work to anyone who cares about the future of human life on Earth.