There is much to be gleaned from the sagacious writings of Roger Ebert, including some relevant advice for those spending Valentine's Day with someone new. Not sure how to make that first move? Roger lays it all out for the less than romantically adroit young fellas in his review of Shopgirl:
"I've been around a long time, and young men, if there is one thing I know, it is that the only way to kiss
a girl for the first time is to look like you want to and intend to,
and move in fast enough to seem eager but slow enough to give her a
chance to say "So anyway ..." and look up as if she's trying to
remember your name."
And for those of you involved in a long-term relationship, contemplating the next step, Ebert advises:
Never marry somebody you couldn't sit next to on a three-day bus trip.
Sound advice for us all.
I've also been trying to conjure a list of romantic films to recommend for this day of luuuvre, but it's been a struggle. Mostly because I kinda hate romantic movies - they tend to be saccharine and simplistic. I loathe meet-cutes, and usually the dramatic tension in these movies is based on some ridiculous misunderstanding that any normal person would have cleared up pretty quickly.
I could only come up with three good suggestions.
How about you? Have any great romantic movies to help those lonely hearts out there make it through today?
TheWilhelmScream is not a political animal, but there is a time and place for everything.
This Tuesday I voted in the D.C. primary for Barack Obama, and I did it with some apprehension. Whenever someone supports a political candidate, Democratic or Republican, with a blind, religious-like fervor, I tend to roll my eyes. Even the most well-intentioned candidate with the most meticulously constructed policies would probably never accomplish all, or even much, of what he or she promises during a campaign.
And it's much more likely the candidate is just stringing us along, telling us what we want to hear, so they can get elected; the whole process is kinda like getting negged by Mystery from "The Pickup Artist."
So when a politician is portrayed as a savior, it tends to irk me. Obama supporters this campaign have been especially annoying. While he and Jesus are both people of color, that's about all they have in common. Obama might be squeaky clean, but there's a good chance that's only because he hasn't been around long enough to get drawn into the fray like everyone else.
And I think McCain is right when he says that Obama's campaign is more about reciting hopeful platitudes than actually digging in and providing tough answers to tough questions. I admittedly have not studied the various candidates' policy proposals with any great depth, but as far as I can tell, Obama's ideas about Iraq, health care and education aren't really all that different from the other candidates'.
In the end though, I voted for him. After Hillary's campaign got nasty spreading those rumors about Barack's Muslim background and her shady dealings with Norman Hsu, I gave up on her. She's a cog in the machine, which is not what I want in the next president.
Yet something happened on Tuesday that made me feel good about Obama.
I stepped outside my polling precinct, after making my vote, and there he was - surrounded by about 30 cameramen and carrying a big box of Dunkin Donuts.
Following a hunch, I got home and logged on to google, and in about five milliseconds I found this pic of Hillary. She drinks STARBUCKS!
That was all I needed to know - one candidate drinks the coffee brand that represents the gentrification and homogenization of American culture by latte-sipping douchebags.
The other frequents the donut store of the people and will feed us on munchkins, the fucking best hot chocolate ever, and hope.
That's good enough for me. I'll wash down my jelly donut with your Kool-Aid any time, Barack!
In education policy circles, there's a constant debate (and a rancorous one at that) about how the country can close the "achievement gap" - generally defined as the gaping chasm between the scholastic achievement of rich white and Asian kids and low-income black and Hispanic kids.
Trying to pinpoint the roots of the gap can be a political minefield - some blame low-income parents' attitudes toward education, others say it's the lack of good teachers and resources. What doesn't get talked about as much is simply how much being poor totally sucks.
Published today in the Las Vegas Sun was this heartbreaking piece about the increasing numbers of homeless students attending the local public schools co-written by education reporter Emily Richmond. It makes you question a lot. When we think of students from "advantaged" backgrounds, we imagine kids whose parents took them to art museums and ballets and read to them every night.
Rarely, do we categorize getting enough to eat every day and having bed to sleep in as an education advantage, but sadly that's the reality.
From the Sun article:
In Mariah Velasquez’s case, homelessness has taken a toll on her emotions and her education.
Being homeless makes her “a little sad,” she says. The freckle-faced 7-year-old adds, “I’m angry sometimes.”
Daniel Velasquez later explains that his daughter sometimes shakes and shouts, which she never did before the family’s pick-up-and-leave living began about 12 months ago.
Mariah goes to Hollingsworth Elementary School, her second school in the past three months.
The family’s situation has improved, but it wasn’t long ago that most days started with only bread and butter for breakfast and ended with Mariah losing her homework and her temper.
Unfortunately, it's a trend that's occurring elsewhere. A couple years ago, the Baltimore Sun published an award-winning series, "On Their Own," a riveting story of two homeless high school seniors struggling to earn their diplomas.
We have to be careful about where we're heading. I don't think it's crazy to think if inequities in educational opportunities persist that we could become a country as stratified as India - a small, rich class of Brahmins at the top presiding over a giant class of publicly schooled Untouchables at the bottom.
It's also important for people like me, who did come from a privileged background, to stop and think: What if I were born into Mariah Velasquez's situation? Would I have ended up where I am now?
It might be hard to admit, but the answer is this: Almost certainly not.
There is a growing movement in independent film that I've nicknamed the Gazing-Out-The-Window-Towards-A-Bleak-Landscape genre. These films are minimalist and realist, usually shot with handheld cameras in grainy digital video (increasingly becoming the bane of TheWilhelmSream's existence).
Characters in these films are always laconic and Type B personalities who have trouble expressing their emotions much less even showing them. (Personally I think this is likely due to socially retarded, pale-faced writers subconsciously yearning to believe the world is full of people like them. But that's just a theory.)
The idea is that where there is a lack of exposition and expression, the audience will compensate for it by filling in the blanks themselves through the actors' emoting and directors' contextual hints.
While the Dardennes brothers are examples of directors who excel in this mode, my sneaking suspicion is most directors use this style because it's cheap, and it allows them to stretch out a story that really should be a short into a full-length feature. Hence, my name for this genre - even the Dardennes' L'Enfant must have about 20 minutes of the main character staring wistfully out the windows of buses and trains.
"Day Night Day Night" is a film that abuses the minimalist style at the expense and betrayal of its characters. It tells the story of a 19-year-old girl who's been recruited by terrorists to blow up Times Square (and herself in the process). She is of an ambiguous ethnicity and speaks softly and fearfully with an American accent. The movie begins with her arrival from the West Coast in New York City, and trundles along at an arduously slow pace. We are treated to extended sequences of her shaving her legs, brushing her teeth, cleaning her only pair of underwear (Because Dear God! She only brought one pair of underwear! Because she's going to kill herself the next day! And doesn't need another pair!).
It's as though the filmmakers constantly expect us to be blown away by this iconoclastic depiction of a terrorist. Wow, this young, sweet, soft-spoken and inveterately self-conscious teenager is a suicide bomber! Omigosh, my whole world view has changed!
Within the first 10 to 15 minutes I understood their point, but they kept hammering away at it without adding any nuance or depth.
And by the climax of the film, I didn't buy it. We are given almost no background about the girl who is only named "She" in the credits. No explanation for how she developed the rage and anger that is need to desire to murder a few hundred people in cold blood. The character comes off as suicidal rather than homicidal. There is a difference.
The director is playing a dirty trick here. She's taking a highly implausible character and masking it stylistically in realism.
Don't get me wrong - there are moments when the film is well-acted and well-directed, such as the heart-stopping sequence when the unnamed girl approaches Times Square with the bomb inside a yellow backpack hanging loosely from her shoulders. But in the end it's all window dressing for a film that's really just a simplistic, stick-figure drawing of a ghostly nightmare.
