Tag Archives: HBO

Palm Springs International Film Festival – The Docs

Or should I say, The Docs I saw. Which were only two this year, The Island President and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory.

The Island President

I liked Jon Shenk’s The Island President for a few reasons. First of all, I know next to nothing about The Maldives, islands in the Indian Ocean (more than 1200 of them, which make up this watery nation). Or should I say I knew next to nothing, because I saw this film, and so now I know something.

And what I know is that this nation is going to sink into the ocean.

The structure of the film: we’re introduced to the charismatic young leader of The Maldives, Mohammed Nasheed, and given a little political history – he was a dissident during a long dictatorship, imprisoned with all that entails. The government is eventually liberated and he’s elected president, and not a moment too soon, because of the coming environmental calamity of rising water levels.

The rest of the film documents his efforts to broker some kind of climate change agreement at the Copenhagen Climate Summit of 2009, where he has to fight the superpowers – including the United States, China and India. So it’s your basic David vs. Goliath scenario, but the implications are really so much more for both The Maldives and for the planet. It shocked me that the theater wasn’t full for this. If we don’t have a planet that’s habitable for people, clearly we won’t be having any film festivals.

The Maldives look like a beautiful place to visit and to live. The prognosis is not good, however, so you better go while they’re still above water. Continue reading →

More customers drop cable TV; is Internet or cost to blame? – USATODAY.com

Link to: More customers drop cable TV; is Internet or cost to blame? – USATODAY.com.

I think it’s both internet AND cost. Nice to see that I’m part of a trend – or not. I haven’t had television since I moved – I watch DVDs on the set, but no broadcast reception as I never got the converter box for digital. When I had cable – I usually just watched a couple of things – like Project Runway, certain HBO and Showtime series, some HGTV – but really, not much. Most of the time the set was off.

I don’t miss it, usually. Actually, I missed not having CNN or MSNBC on Tuesday for the election returns. But you know, between Huffington Post, the LA Times, the MSNBC website, and probably a few others, I was kept up-to-date without those annoying video loops.

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I also watch Netflix online, more and more as they make more and more of their content available. Who can resist immediate gratification? Once you’ve started doing it that way, the whole deal of the little red mailers and sleeves seems so cumbersome and inelegant.

Oh – and the other thing the story touches on – landlines vs. cell – gave up my landline years ago. If I need to fax something that can’t go straight through the computer, I just take it over to a local printshop.

HBO’s Temple Grandin, an Emmy-winning biopic

Claire Danes as Temple Grandin

Watched the DVD of Temple Grandin over the weekend. A biopic, it reminded me initially of A Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard’s bio movie of John Nash starring Russell Crowe. It seemed, however, more heartfelt? Perhaps having something to do with the focus on a young person trying to find herself in the world – so it is a rising up rather than a falling apart (of someone who had already made it) as in the case of A Beautiful Mind.

Filmmakers using the medium to really tell the story, with mathematical animations (I think Beautiful Mind had these too) and stills montages of thinking processes were helpful in understanding autism – as explained in the movie, understanding the world from pictures, not from language.

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One thing I would have loved seen explored is the whole idea of whether or not raising beef for food is a good idea at all – it’s taken as a given by the characters in the movie, which is a period piece (although a recent period). As a near vegetarian and avid reader of Michael Pollan, it’s hard not to think of this when watching all these cows.

Go rent the movie or watch it on HBO. It’s pretty wonderful.