D.C.’s  new crime map web site, where you can find out what crimes have occurred recently in a neighborhood near you.

#42 – New Crosswalks in D.C.

Photo via DCist.

Stupid look: American

Lisa of Lisablog went to the airport to pick up her British in-laws:

While waiting for the peops, Thomas and I played the British Airways Arrival Gate Game. We Call it Citizen Of?…

Some tips on determining the citizenship of those weary travelers passing throught the customs gate:

Lopping and/or wide arm-swinging: American

Wardrobe malfunction: British

Gum-chewing: American

Defeated facial expression: British

Angry look: American or British, probably American if also lopping, probably British if accompanied by an utterance such as “f***ing c*nt”

Confused look with mouth slightly ajar: British

Stupid look: American

Very mussed up hair (for men): British

Immediate cell phone use: American

Apologetic look and/or actual verbal apology: British

All-New!

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How ya like the new digs?

I Tried To Expand My Musical Tastes

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In an effort to be more hip and relevant I downloaded some new electronic music but unfortunately I FUCKING HATE IT. I heard good things about Ladytron and Metric but they are so fucking boring and annoying I will never listen to these songs again. Luckily I got them for super-cheap at the possibly illegal Russian mafia MP3 site allofmp3.com.

But I did also discover Feist, which I absolutely adore, and Phoenix, the band of Sofia Coppola’s baby’s French father, and I semi-like it. I like the new, not so crazy about the old. The new is more rockin’ than the old, and less electronic so that explains it.

Also I absolutely adore Stereo Total, I can’t stop listening to them. Much more sense of humor than the aforementioned bores. So I don’t totally hate all electronic music.

I Need a Job in New York, A Subletter in Cambridge

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Ever since it was made official that I am moving to Queens July 1 I have been running into old friends all over the place. One even popped up to say she’s moving one block away from me in Cambridge NEXT WEEK. It’s nice. It feels right. My social schedule for the next month is going to be busier than it ever was in my 6 years in boston.

But aside from social engagements I am going to be spending the next month looking for a job. So is Tony, apparently, but not in New York. If you know of any positions available in New York, preferably film-related but that’s not an absolute necessity, let me know. I’ve got mucho film festival experience, writing experience, editing experience, admin experience, liquor-selling experience, I can do it all.

And if anyone wants to sublet my room, let me know. Also if anyone wants to give me a large sum of money, let me know. Thanks.

See Me In Greek

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Apparently a review of mine has been reprinted in Greek, for a special program for the Thessaloniki Film Festival. Anyone happen to have a copy? I’d love to see myself in Greek. Here’s me in Portuguese. Here’s the original review that was reprinted.

Me me me MEEEEEE!

New Apple Store in NYC

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And it’s open 24 hours. WTF.

via the edge

A Recent Conversation

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“I love Tayor Hicks. I need to find myself a Taylor Hicks.”

“He may be retarded.”

I Agree With the Catholics

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“It’s an obvious misappropriation of a Christian image. But we’re not surprised. This is Madonna. It’s pathetic. Nothing new.” –Kiera McCaffrey, spokeswoman for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

“She has become irrelevant in her desire to be provocative. She’s a caricature. What do you expect?” –The Rev. Robert Carr of St. Benedict’s Church in Somerville, Mass

via perez

I’m a New York Blogger Now

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Beware This Time-Waster

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I really regret having discovered it. It is the dumbest game in the world but it is EXTREMELY ADDICTIVE. Click at your own risk…

No Wonder I�m A Good Writer

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From this NYT op-ed about the plagiarizing Harvard chick-lit novelist:

Ms. Viswanathan is a bookish girl who might have had more success at
fiction if she didn’t bear the burden of the overachiever.
Overachievers don’t generally become writers because the skill set is
so different. As I tell my writing students, if you want to be
a writer work on the finer points of gossip, eavesdropping and
voyeurism; basically the pastimes of the underachiever, ways to while
away the hours.

Gray Stripe

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LOL the Movie Soundtrack

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As I said earlier, I really loved the movie LOL, and I got one of the free copies of the soundtrack at the IFFBoston screening. I’m really digging it, though I’m also perplexed by it, does anyone else out there have a copy? It is all written and recorded by Kevin Bewersdorf, who plays a musician in the film and performs much of the music in the film. It’s all electronic and has a sort of Clockwork Orange feel in some places, and I like the sound, but the lyrics in some places are outright ridiculous, and I don’t know if they’re supposed to be that way. How do you take seriously a song that has a lyric like “The chill of winter/is nothing compared/to watching your lover/be murdered in spring”? That has to be intentionally funny, right? It’s so Spinal Tap. I like the sound of the song though. The scene where he performs it in the film reminds me of a scene in Caveh Zahedi’s A Little Stiff, where he’s trying to impress a girl and shows her one of his films–a completely depressing and dour and graphically violent short animated film–and it falls flat, she’s kind of like “Um, great…” It’s totally the wrong film to show in that moment, and shows he’s a little out of touch when it comes to connecting with people. The character in LOL is supposed to have that same character trait–he relies too much on technology and allows it to screw up his real-life connections to other people–so I’m wondering if this is all intentional. Perhaps I will contact the filmmakers and ask.

Gnarles Barkley

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Yes, it’s as good as everyone is saying it is … CAUTION: the song starts automatically when you hit that page, so turn your sound down if you’re at work.

New Blog Look

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Someone landed on my blog on an ask.com search for HOW DO I GET FOOD UNSTUCK IN MY ESOPHAGUS. If I had something stuck in my esophagus I know the first thing I would do is go browsing blogs for advice on what to do. And I sure am glad I posted that treatise on “How to Get Food Unstuck in your Esophagus” a few months ago, looks like I might’ve saved someone’s life.

So Harvard’s got a new blog server and this blog is going to get a new look soon. Actually it already has one and you can see a preview here. Don’t change your bookmarks though, that’s just a test blog and when the changeover happens it’ll still be here at this address.

Marie Antoinette Trailer�

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…looks utterly ridiculous. How can you not laugh at Jason Schwartzman as a French fop? Not to mention perky cheerleader Kirsten Dunst as a fucking French queen. Ridiculous. Let’s hope it’s meant to be funny.

IFFBoston Roundup

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Well I ended up skipping Walking to Werner last night, figuring it might be brought back at some point while a Jeanne Dielman screening is too rare to pass up. So let’s hope Walking to Werner comes back. And if anyone else out there saw it, please let me know what you thought. It seemed to have the potential to be ridiculously self-indulgent and irritating (and probably full of shakycam) so maybe I didn’t miss much.

As for the rest of the screenings–I’d still say LOL was the best in the festival, and among the others I saw, In Between Days was a runner-up. It did make me a little nauseous with the shakycam, but I loved the simple storyline of a teenage Korean girl’s quasi-unrequited crush on her male best friend, as well as getting a peek into the world of first-generation Korean immigrants moving about in their own subculture in America. Barely a word of English in the film, and it takes some time to even realize where they are.

Another favorite was Arctic Son, a documentary about a man living in tough terrain in the Yukon who brings his teenage son to live with him in an attempt to get him off drugs and alcohol and out of trouble. The boy is also an artist, and he shows us his book of drawings, most of which feature women suffering, he says, “because women go through a lot of pain in their lives. A lot more than men.” One is of his female friend who killed herself, another is of his mother, who raised him by herself after her husband, his father, left. “I’m really angry at him for not being there,” he says. While this issue is never discussed between the two–indeed, nothing intimate is ever discussed, it’s mostly lots of hard work and small talk–over the course of the film a bond develops between this stoic, unaffectionate man and his wayward son.

One of the most hyped films in the festival was Guatemalan Handshake, which sold out most likely on its advanced press comparisons to Napoleon Dynamite (a film I hated). But I went, and while the film has some superficial similarities–rural setting, a cast of weirdos who do inexplicable things, etc–it’s really not very similar. It’s not a comedy first of all. And the storyline doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I read an interview with the filmmaker who said he was worried it made no sense and people wouldn’t get it, and I think that’s a reasonable concern, because what he says it’s ‘about’ wasn’t really what I got out of it, but I think people will like it anyway. These days your film doesn’t have to make sense for people to like it. In fact that might be a benefit. Quirky and amusing is good enough.

I also caught The Legend of Lucy Keyes which is representative of everything that’s wrong with the term “independent film.” It has stars (Julie Delpy and Justin Theroux) and a completely conventional ghost-story plot, and the director said afterward that the film was just bought by Lifetime. The film is moderately interesting (apparently the people sitting behind me were involved in the making of the film and were pointing out their names in the credits–one a hairstylist, the other a videographer–and when the film was over they said “well, it wasn’t that bad.”) but more interesting is the story of its making. It was shot on high-definition video using one of those cameras that has a hard drive–not a single tape was used in the making of the film. And it looks like film, doesn’t look like video at all. The future is here, baby.

And finally, I went to the podcasting panel, mostly to see the makers of the Four-Eyed Monsters podcasts, which I have been following and I really like. Gerald Peary was in the audience and is apparently a big fan as well. You should check them out if you get a chance–they have six podcasts up, and showed us a sneak preview of episode 7. I was so inspired. Now I want to get a video camera and start podcasting myself.

Overall the festival was a lot of fun–makes me want to be a filmmmaker and just travel around to festivals and party and meet new friends and make connections. I think that is my next goal in life. Better get cracking on that screenplay…

I (Heart) Photoshop

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You can erase your whole nose!

My final IFFBoston update coming up tonight…I’m feeling very torn because the only film that I was DYING to see in the festival was Walking to Werner, a doc about a guy re-creating Werner Herzog’s legendary (and dubious) walk from Germany to Paris to see Lotte Eisner. But the only screening is tonight, and I T/A class tonight, and the
screening in class is Chantal Akerman’s Jean Dielman, a 3-hour film
that is very rare. Not really something I can pick up at Blockbuster,
nor something that I want to see any way other than on print anyway. Decisions, decisions…