NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Isa, the kids and I watched Ben-Hur over the weekend. Isa and I had watched parts of it before, but never sat down to experiences its 200+ minutes of epic drama. The kids found it boring for the most part, but the scenes in the slave ship and of course the chariot race, got them very interested and excited. Akli'e' found it particularly difficult to follow, as so many scenes would feature dramatic music in the background and characters looking pained off into space. The tension and emotional complexity was completely lost on the poor boy. Sumahi tends to enjoy movies based on a formula that boils down to "How many animals are in this movie?" and the hope that there be more animals visible than humans in this film. For both Isa and I, we were watching the film with a variety of things in mind. We've been trying to watch more "great" films and then work to analyze the camerawork, the acting, the effects, the writing and other logistics that create a fant

Misty Upham: The Tragic Death and Unscripted Life of Hollywood's Rising Star Kristen Millares Young The Guardian 6/30/15 W hen Misty Upham was 12, she announced herself to a Seattle classroom of aspiring performers. “My name is Misty Upham, and someday you will know that name as the best living Native American actress.” Years later and against all odds, her prophecy became true. She acted alongside some of Hollywood’s best: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Benicio Del Toro. Last October Misty was found dead, skull and ribs broken, flies abuzz, in a wooded ravine in Auburn, Washington. Her body lay just above the turbulence of the White river. She was 32. This story is about her demise. How she went missing for 11 days. How she was found by folks enlisted by her family, and not by the police. How she was mocked when she most needed help. How she survived rapes. How she inspired kids. And how as an indigenous woman, she was not alone in facing injustice. Born on

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 a

Fired-up Ben Affleck clashes with Bill Maher over Islam By Jeff Labrecque   on Oct 4, 2014 at 3:07PM Entertainment Weekly Ben Affleck’s publicity tour to promote Gone Girl took a detour on Friday night, when the outspoken liberal engaged in a heated debate with author Sam Harris and HBO’s Real Time host Bill Maher over their criticism of Islam. “They’ll criticize Christians … but when you want to talk about the treatment of women and homosexuals and free-thinkers and public intellectuals in the muslim world, I would argue that liberals have failed us,” said Harris. “We have been sold this meme of Islamophobia, where criticism of the religion gets conflated with bigotry towards muslims as people. It’s intellectually ridiculous.” Affleck, who frequently expressed impatience and outrage at Harris’ more measured explanations, was offended by the message. “[Your point of view] is gross, it’s racist,” the actor said. “It’s like saying, ‘Oh, you shif

Torture and Zero Dark Thirty   David Bromwich 1/19/13 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/torture-zero-dark-thirty_b_2512767.html  Zero Dark Thirty is a spy thriller about the tracking and killing of Osama Bin Laden. Good police work did it, the film says, and it aims to show what (in the extraordinary circumstances) good police work amounts to. Action movies have been the director Kathryn Bigelow's métier, and Zero Dark Thirty is tense and well-paced. It has the kind of proficiency one associates with, say, The Hunt for Red October . It does not mean to compete with a film like The Battle of Algiers . There is no question here of taking up a complex historical subject and exploring it with a semblance of human depth. Rather, the movie accepts the ready prejudices and fears of its American audience, and builds up pressure for two hours to prepare the thrill and relief at the raid on Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad. The first two hours skip forward s

I'm in Washington D.C. right now and so watching MSNBC and Fox News carries a very different significance when your hotel is within walking distance from the Capitol. The Presidential race is heating up now, but something that caught my eye earlier today really interested me. It was about a ongoing spat between tax avenger and government revenue denier Grover Norquist and Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, most famous for attacking environmental science and putting phantom holds on bills in the Senate in order to stall and drag down legislation. The issue itself doesn't really matter to me, although I will place the op-ed from the New York Times that was the immediate cause of the spat. What really interested me was the random, bizarre yan na'aburido response that Norquist gave when he was trying to illustrate the dimensions of the fight. In addition to the quote below he also suggested that the Oklahoma Senator had "gone native" or was suffering from Stockholm Syndro

From the Huffington Post : Kirk Douglas' tenth book, " I Am Spartacus! Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist ," is being released today by Open Road Integrated Media. ******************** When you reach 95, after you get over your surprise, you start looking back. I've been thinking a lot about my parents, Russian immigrants who came to this country in 1912 -- exactly one hundred years ago. For them, the United States was a dream beyond description. They couldn't read or write, but they saw a better life for their children in a new country half a world away from their tiny shtetl. Against all odds they crossed the Atlantic. And like millions of people before and after, they passed close to the Statue of Liberty as they entered New York Harbor. Perhaps someone who could read English translated the beautiful words of Emma Lazarus, etched in bronze on the pedestal: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe