NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

One of the presenters at the "Primus Circumdedisti Me: Claves de la Primera Globalizacion" conference focused primarily on the life of those who traveled with Magellan on his voyage. What were the things that they ate? How much did they get paid? What were the rules on these ships? What was the hierarchy like? Were captains the lords over these ships and the men like slaves? Or was there some democracy as we see on pirate ships?

Much of this presentation I was already familiar with from my own study and even from the numerous pirate based video games that I enjoy playing. But there was one part that I found particularly interesting, about how men passed the time on the voyages, or what they did for fun.

Trade voyages to the other side of the world, followed known routes, but still took months and years to complete, the level of ennui on these journeys must have been severe on small ships without may diversions, and a crew too poor and too cramped in to bring much with them.…

Since I've become more involved in film-making, I've been doing more to try to watch "good" movies and see what tips or tricks they might offer. I try to avoid Youtube videos that sort of lay it all out for me, although those can be tempting and intriguing. But I just see if I can sort of translate it or decipher it, given my own understanding of visual language and narrative structure. One thing I have found fascinating however is reading interviews with great directors, where they talk about their choices in film-making and also what films or other creators they look to and try to follow or emulate.

Below is an interview with Alfred Hitchcock from 1964.

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Interview with Alfred Hitchcock
Monitor, BBC July 5, 1964

The following interview, between Alfred Hitchcock and Huw Wheldon, was filmed for the BBC television programme "Monitor" and was first broadcast on 05/Jul/1964.

It was repeated in May 1997 as part of the BBC2's 1997 Hit…

Guaha dos patgon-hu siha. Hohoben ha' i dos. Gof ya-hu kumonne' siha para i fanegga'an para bei in egga' i nuebu na mubin famagu'on siha. Taiguihi i meggaina na manhoben, gof yan-niha umegga' i mubin Pixar. Gof ya-hu este na mubi siha, sa' tahdong i mensahi siha, fihu gof gaisiente, yan sesso mafa'tinas maolek i estoria. Ya-hu lokkue' na fihu gof "simple" i na'an-niha, ya ti mappot mapula' gi fino' Chamoru. 

Anai hu taitai este na lista gi Facebook ha na'hasso yu' put i na'an-niha este na mubi siha gi fino' Chamoru. Sesso hu usa este na pininala' siha gi klas-hu. Para i estudiante-ku siha, mas ki sesso sahnge i fino' Chamoru para siha. Esta hagas mampayon siha nu i fino' Ingles, ya achokka' i fino' Chamoru i fino' Irensia para siha, ti ma gof tungo', ya kalang fifino' lagu ha' gi pachot-niha yan hinasson-niha. 

Ya-hu muna'halom gi klas-hu este na klasin nina'chalek, sa&#…

Hollywood Cowardice
A Deadline Interview with George Clooney
Mike Fleming
December 18, 2014

EXCLUSIVE: As it begins to dawn on everyone in Hollywood the reality that Sony Pictures was the victim of a cyberterrorist act perpetrated by a hostile foreign nation on American soil, questions will be asked about how and why it happened, ending with Sony cancelling the theatrical release of the satirical comedy The Interview because of its depiction of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. One of those issues will be this: Why didn’t anybody speak out while Sony Pictures chiefs Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton were embarrassed by emails served up by the media, bolstering the credibility of hackers for when they attached as a cover letter to Lynton’s emails a threat to blow up theaters if The Interview was released?
George Clooney has the answer. The most powerful people in Hollywood were so fearful to place themselves in the cross hairs of hackers that they all refused to sign a simple petition…

Body Matters
Keira Knightley's latest photoshoot is a protest against all the Photoshopping she's ever received
Kit Steinkellner
November 4, 2014

When you think of a protest, you tend to think of picket signs, sit-ins, rhyming chants,and so on and so forth. What you usually DON’T think of is a topless celebrity photo shoot. However, that’s exactly what actress Keira Knightley had done with her recent photo shoot for Interview—she turned her shoot into a protest. She posed topless for the magazine on the condition that Interview would not enlarge her breasts in post-production, something that apparently happens to Knightley’s photographs constantly.

Case in point, check out the (virtual) boob job Knightley received when she was featured as Guinevere on the poster of her 2004  film King Arthur.




That is a cup size difference for sure. If I were Keira Knightley I’d be weirded out by my body always looking like someone else’s body every time I did publicity shoots for films or …

When Christopher Columbus flopped at the Box Office...Twice
Scott Mendelson
10/13/14
Forbes.com

Yes, today is Columbus Day, when government offices and many schools are closed to celebrate the Italian explorer who allegedly discovered America. I’m not going to get into the historical accuracy or moral difficulties of the previous sentence, but if you need a refresher go HERE. No, what I am here to discuss today is a bit of forgotten box office history involving the “reason for the season.” I am speaking of course about movies revolving around Christopher Columbus. As the old song goes, “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue!” So, since 1992 was in fact the 500-year anniversary of the year Columbus allegedly discovered America, Hollywood set out to “honor” the occasion with not one, but two big-budget big-screen adventures featuring the explorer. There have been any number of occasions in the last few decades of very similar films opening within a short period of each o…

October 2, 2014 12:00 am JST Yamaguchi dies at 94 YASUNOBU NOSE, Nikkei senior staff writer
Yoshiko Yamaguchi © Kyodo

TOKYO -- Wartime actress Yoshiko Yamaguchi, who later served 18 years in the upper house of the Japanese Diet, died of heart failure at her home in Tokyo on Sept. 7, her family announced. She was 94.

     She grew up in Japan-occupied Manchuria, which is now northeast China, and debuted under the Chinese screen name of Li Hsianglan (Ri Koran in Japanese) in 1938 as a member of the Manchuria Film Association. She broke out in Japan with the 1940 film "Shina no Yoru" ("China Nights"), starring opposite Kazuo Hasegawa. The song "Soshu Yakyoku" ("Suzhou Serenade"), which she sang in the film, also became a big hit.

     When she held a concert in Tokyo in 1941, there was famously a line for tickets that circled the theater more than seven times.

     Afte…

In July of this year, the Marianas said goodbye to Senådot Ben Pangelinan, a longtime champion of the Chamorro people, their language and their rights. In the context of Chamorro struggles today, Senådot Ben was taiachaigua especially in terms of our elected leaders.

Senådot Ben was known for being an outspoken and highly principled person. One of the ways in which this manifested was through his and his office’s support for the decolonization of Guam and his work to help make possible a political status plebiscite. Senådot Ben was born in Saipan and traced his Chamorro lineage to Saipan. This made him ineligible to vote in a political status for Guam. This did not deter him from seeing decolonization as a critical issue and one he should take seriously in his life, as a matter of justice worth supporting and fighting for. Because of the efforts of his office, thousands of people were added to the decolonization registry, pushing it closer than it ever had been before to meeting th…

INTERVIEW FROM FILM SCHOOL REJECTS:

At the start of Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrowour hero, Lt. Col. Bill Cage (Tom Cruise), is a coward. He’s more than ready to runaway from a fight he knows he’s not equipped for. That’s not the kind of hero we expect from a blockbuster, but it’s the type of subversive choice we should expect from screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie, who had a hand in bring Hiroshi Sakurazak’s graphic novel, All You Need IsKill, to the big screen.

A protagonist unwilling to help save the world isn’t the only fresh idea in Edge of Tomorrow. Even when Cage becomes a fierce soldier, he’s still no match for the bad-ass helicopter-blade-wielding Rita Vrastaski(Emily Blunt). She is the hero of this movie. Vrastaski drives the story. Cruise, once again playing a role a lot of movie stars would pass on, consistently pushed for his co-star to be this film’s true hero.

Cruise and McQuarrie’s creative partnership is built on risky choices. Valkyrie, a one-eyed Nazi movie …