Showing posts with label documentary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label documentary. Show all posts

hackers are people too

Are they?

Of course they are. They're people, like any brand of geeks. Kind of like movie geeks, really.

Hackers Are People Too is actually a documentary produced by hackers; it premiered at this year's DefCon in Las Vegas.

As I'm not very familiar with that particular subculture, the movie appealed to the Discovery Channel in me. It was interesting... and educational... but perhaps a hazard of a movie produced by its subject is that it came off as a little self-serving. I'm thinking the goal of the film was to humanize hackers to the general public, but in all honesty, hackers would probably enjoy it more than any other group of people.

Still, it's fairly interesting, and less than an hour. If you swing that way, you can get it for $10 here. ...Click here for the rest of this tasty post.
Posted by Nayana Anthony in , , , at 4:20 AM on Friday, August 29, 2008
  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • RSS
4 people had something brilliant to say.

nonreview: man on wire

I massively enjoyed Man On Wire, a documentary about a guy who walked a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. I shit you not.

Click on the links below to read some reviews by two of my favorite movie men.

Fletch at Blog Cabins
Daniel G at Getafilm
Posted by Nayana Anthony in , , , , at 3:26 PM on Monday, August 25, 2008
  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • RSS
3 people had something brilliant to say.

american teen

I hated high school.

It just wasn't for me. I think I'm too much of a non-conformist. As a result, I got made fun of and usually ate lunch at a table by myself, with a book to help pass the 25 minutes. I dated the choir dork (with a voice like a sick mule) and the Star Trek geek (you don't even understand--he wore Star Trek t-shirts to school every day). I did exceptionally well in my classes without really trying, which also added to my social troubles. And I was chubby. So, not a fun four years.

Watching American Teen last weekend was like sitting in the visitors' SUV at Jurassic Park if all had gone well. You sit in the comfort of your protected environment, watch the Tyrannosaurus munch on the goat, you feel a bit of empathy for the goat, but then you also thank your lucky stars that the T-Rex's paddock is electrified.

I remained in the (relative) comfort of Uptown Theatre, watching the carnage (the Tyrannosaurus in this case is blonde, athletic, and goes by the name of Megan Krizmanich), and remembered. The movie depicts a world just like mine 15-odd years ago, sans the texting, instant messaging, and other scary new ways kids can hurt each other.

I would so have been friends with Hannah Bailey in real life.

American Teen's realism is startling, but it's also a very entertaining documentary. I found myself rooting for these adolescent underdogs at least as much as I did for The King of Kong. Oh yeah, and the soundtrack kicks ass. Definitely worth seeing.

 ...Click here for the rest of this tasty post.
Posted by Nayana Anthony in , , , , , at 12:41 PM on Friday, August 8, 2008
  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • RSS
9 people had something brilliant to say.

young @ heart

When I first saw the trailer for Young @ Heart, it elicited a chuckle. Come on. It's old people singing punk songs. That's funny.

I wasn't sure I really wanted to see it, though; would it really stay funny for two hours? Besides, isn't it kind of disrespectful to laugh at old people?

Holy cheeses, was I wrong. Young @ Heart doesn't mock its subjects; it celebrates them.


Granted, it's a bit jarring to watch a 92-year-old British lady singing a Clash song... until you meet her. Said 92-year-old, Eileen Hall, is hilarious, sharp, and a bit of a raucous flirt. Actually, all the folks in the Young @ Heart chorus (average age: 80) are pretty cool people. They joke around, they drink, they (at least in one case) hook up with each other... they're like us.

Imagine that. Old people are just people. That was really the light-bulb moment for me. Of course it shouldn't be so surprising. But the unfortunate fact is that in our society, old people (like people who are disabled or overweight) tend to be invisible. We so easily forget that they were once young, vital, and considered rebels by older generations.

While I was watching this, I kept thinking of my grandma. Now, let me make one thing perfectly clear: Grandma is not old. If you ask her, she'll tell you she's 43. (When we wonder how that can be, since Dad is 52, she snaps, "That's his problem.") Grandma is also disabled. As a young (and gorgeous) eighteen-year-old, she contracted polio. She recovered, but without the use of her left leg. Since that time, she's re-learned to walk (with the use of a brace), she drives, she's thoroughly involved in her community, and is quite honestly more independent than many other *ahem* 43-year-olds.

Now... I know all that about Grandma. But there is still the occasional person who, seeing her in a wheelchair at the store, will speak to Grandma's companion instead of addressing her directly. To many people, because of her age and her disability, my Grandma is invisible.

I wonder how many times I've treated someone like that, just because I don't know them.

Anyway... the movie. It's brilliant. It's beautiful. It reduced me to a sobbing puddle of goo at least three times.

But more importantly, it made me think about the way the world is, and why. I think that should be the ultimate goal of every movie. Young @ Heart, at least, succeeded spectacularly. ...Click here for the rest of this tasty post.
Posted by Nayana Anthony in , , , , , , , , at 1:47 PM on Thursday, May 22, 2008
  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • RSS
5 people had something brilliant to say.

the greatest silence: rape in the congo

There's always something new to be angry about. To be honest, there are times when I feel like throwing my hands in the air and giving up on humanity.

I've seen a lot of documentaries in the last year about the Iraq war, Afghanistan, torture, our broken health care system... all depressing issues having to do with the current state of American politics. All those issues have one thing in common, though: there is an apparent solution.

The HBO documentary I watched the other night was a different story altogether. As I watched The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, I was overcome by a feeling of helplessness, and hopelessness. The problem is evident; the solution, not so much.

Here's the situation:


  1. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a huge nation (about the size of Western Europe) in the central part of Africa.
  2. Congo has a vast wealth of resources: gold, diamonds, and 80% of the world's reserves of coltan (a mineral used in all cell phones and laptops).
  3. Despite the wealth, Congo is a destitute country. The nation has been ravaged by a civil war since 1994.
  4. The war makes it easy to loot Congo's resources: an estimated $1,000,000 in coltan is stolen across the border each day. The war is profitable, so the war continues.
  5. The most striking consequence of this war is rape. Soldiers from every side rape civilian women with impunity, mutilating them afterwards so they lose the use of bladder, uterus, and/or rectum.
  6. Due to societal conventions, women who have been raped are often shunned by their husbands and families, as though the rape were the fault of the victim.

This woman is Maria Namafu. She is 70 years old. As she was raped, the soldiers told her, "You're not too old for us." How does that not make you angry?

I first became aware of this situation a few weeks ago when Ann Curry did a story on NBC's Today show. It's easy to say to yourself, Oh, that sucks. But there's crappy stuff happening all over the world. What can I do about it?

Honestly, I don't really know what can be done about it. There are UN Peacekeepers, but the country is so huge that their efforts barely make a dent. There is a Congolese "Special Victims Unit"... of one officer in a ramshackle wooden hut. There is one hospital, the Panzi Hospital, for treating the victims of sexual violence... but most never make it there. There are vast resources in that country... but they are used to line the pockets of criminals instead of to save the women of Congo.

It's a shit situation.

The only thing I can think of is to raise awareness. So I guess that's what I'm trying to do. Watch the doc if you get HBO... if you don't, research the problem, and donate if you can to the Panzi Hospital or other nonprofits that try to help in the region. This is as good a place to start as any.

I'm not an activist by any stretch, and I'm certainly not a Congolese. But I'm a woman, and I'm a human being, and I'm a citizen of this planet. And those are my brothers and sisters. I'm not sure what can be done...we've just got to do something.

 ...Click here for the rest of this tasty post.
Posted by Nayana Anthony in , , , at 10:30 AM on Thursday, April 10, 2008
  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • RSS
6 people had something brilliant to say.

some things

  1. I'm officially done with the Oscars for the season. If someone else wants to discuss it, cool, but I will not be making any more Oscar posts.
  2. I haven't quit making my daily McDonald's breakfast run. I figure, what the heck? Plus, they're giving the burritos away for free this Thursday and Friday.
  3. Greg and I killed a bottle of Jacob's Creek Sparkling Rosé last night. It sucked. So we switched to Yellow Tail Pinot G. It didn't suck.
  4. Today was "hat day" at work. I love hat day. I wore a Park City, UT trucker cap with pigtails. I want to go to Sundance someday. Anyone want to cart me along?
  5. Captain Crash and I are going to finish watching In the Valley of Elah tonight. Also received from Netflix: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.
  6. I'm getting mixed thoughts from coworkers and friends... but I'll put this to you. I am contemplating dreadlocks. I feel like there's a lot of "edge" inside me that doesn't express itself in my personal style. Does that make any sense? I think I'm definitely going to do it.
  7. I saw Spiderwick Chronicles last Wednesday and was underwhelmed. I intend to do a full post on it in the near future.

Well, there you go. I couldn't muster up a full-on, well-thought-out post, so I just thought I'd catch you up on some of the myriad thoughts bouncing around in my noodle.

Posted by Nayana Anthony in , , , , , , , , , , at 4:55 PM on Wednesday, February 27, 2008
  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • RSS
4 people had something brilliant to say.

LAMB Devours the Oscars: Best Documentary Short Subject

Best Documentary Short is a frustrating category for me. Like this year's foreign film nominees, these films have not been available to the average viewer who can't make it to the myriad film festivals (Nayana's world tour is still several years away). Therefore, you should maybe keep in mind while reading this that I haven't seen any of these films.

The 2007 nominees for Best Documentary Short Subject are as follows:


1. Freeheld
This is the story of Laurel Hester, a lesbian New Jersey police officer. The 23-year veteran of the Ocean County prosecutor's office contracted an aggressive form of lung cancer, which metastasized and spread to her brain. She spent her last months petitioning her county's board of freeholders to allow her pension to be transferred to her registered domestic partner upon her death (who otherwise would not have been able to stay in their home). If the trailer is any indication, it's a moving, heartbreaking piece. However, while I'm all for GLBT rights, this one frankly looks like a big fat bummer.

2. La Corona
In Colombia, apparently they go crazy for beauty pageants; the national obsession even spills over to the.... prison system? Yep, each cellblock at El Buen Pastor prison gets to nominate their own contestant for the prison's yearly beauty pageant. The women are murderers, armed robbers, you name it... but they're also nationally televised, and critiqued by celebrity judges. According to the Sundance website (it was featured at the Park City, Utah film festival this year), it has moments of humor, as well as sadness. Oh, what the heck. It looks like fun to me.

3. Salim Baba
This is the story of Salim, a 55-year-old man in Kolkata (most of us remember "Calcutta"), India, who supports his wife and five children in a unique way. He splices together discarded scraps of film from movie theaters, as well as trailers and other bits of movies, and shows them on an ancient hand-cranked projector which he inherited from his father. Salim entertains the children of his neighborhood, and apparently makes a living at it; he hopes to leave the projector to his children so that they, too, will have a viable livelihood. There has been a bit of controversy with regard to this particular film: as reported by Vanity Fair, a reporter from a major Indian newspaper claims that Salim, the subject of the film, was misled and underpaid. The charges seem to be without merit, and Salim himself has retracted some of his claims, but the controversy may make Oscar a bit gun-shy with this one.

4. Sari's Mother
One more documentary about Iraq. Yes, Iraq is a disaster; yes, we screwed up; yes, people are suffering; yes, people are dying. But I (and I suspect the Academy) am just so dang tired of thinking about it. All right, with that out of the way: this short focuses on a ten-year-old boy named Sari who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion. His mother stubbornly, hopefully, and smilingly cares for him and tries to get him treatment, though the healthcare system over there is even more screwed up than our own. *sigh* I suppose I'll watch it. It looks important. But it looks exhausting, too.
Documentaries (especially in our times) so often seem to be downers, don't they? I understand why that is, and I also understand how important documentaries are, especially in rough times like these.... but just because I've got so much outrage fatigue, I'm going for the nominee that looks halfway lighthearted: La Corona. We'll see if the Academy agrees with me.
 ...Click here for the rest of this tasty post.
Posted by Nayana Anthony in , , , , , , , , at 2:25 PM on Friday, February 22, 2008
  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • RSS
0 people had something brilliant to say.

taxi to the dark side of kong: a fistful of quarters

Somewhere in the world right now, there are prisoners being brutally tormented by U.S. forces without ever having stood trial. Somewhere else, there is a middle-aged man sitting at a vintage video game, trying feverishly, obsessively, to nudge that electronic score higher than it's ever been. And in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Nayana's head is about to explode as she tries to digest both these slices of America in one night.


So Wednesday night, Captain Crash and I attended an advance screening of the Oscar-nominated documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side. As is my preference, I knew almost nothing about the movie before we went to see it, only that it was a documentary about Afghanistan. Yeah. It was a documentary about an innocent taxi driver (in Afghanistan) who had been arrested by U.S. forces, held without trial, and tortured for days until he died. I had already gotten a small dose of the-United-States-tortures-people-now-and-apparently-that's-ok outrage when I saw The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, but Taxi went much more in depth. According to the film, those horrifying pictures from Abu Ghraib that were supposedly the work of just "a few bad apples" reflect a systematic pattern of psychological torture, developed by the CIA, and used on thousands of military prisoners. Yep...thousands of prisoners were (and are) held by the United States, without ever being brought to trial.


It's awful. And it pissed me off. But, to be honest, I (and much of the rest of this country) have been pissed off for quite a while. Remember when I mentioned "outrage fatigue"? That is exactly how I felt when walking out of the theater. To be sure, the film was impeccably produced, and the message is urgently relevant (especially in an election year), but I'm so freaking tired of being pissed off!

So when I got home, I thought it would be a great idea to lighten the mood with The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. It had just come in the mail from Netflix, and I thought, hey, my evening has just been one big bummer. Maybe this will give me a laugh. Boy, did that backfire.


The King of Kong was another very well-done documentary... but it just fell flat with me because of the circumstances. Basically, this really nice guy named Steve Wiebe, who hasn't had a whole lot of luck in his life, sets out to beat the all-time world record for Donkey Kong that was set by Billy Mitchell in 1982. Billy Mitchell, apparently, is not a really nice guy. He's got this whole posse of hangers-on (who seem to have their own sad little lives), sneaky tactics, and a Styx haircut/Jesus beard combo that he was probably sporting when he set the world record 26 years ago. Sure, it was entertaining. It definitely got me rooting for the "good guy"... but the whole time I kept thinking "there are people in Guantanamo Bay being waterboarded right now. Is it really crucial that Mario jumps all the barrels?"

I think I'll have to catch it again sometime when I'm not so utterly bummed out. That's the problem with outrage, I think. It takes away all the joy of the stupid stuff in life. I miss the stupid stuff.
...Click here for the rest of this tasty post.
Posted by Nayana Anthony in , , , , , , , , at 10:48 AM on Friday, February 8, 2008
  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • RSS
11 people had something brilliant to say.

no end in sight

I'm a very naughty girl. I have The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford sitting in its Netflix envelope on my coffee table, untouched. I caucussed yesterday, so maybe I have an excuse? I'll try to get to it tomorrow; tonight, Captain Crash and I are catching an advance screening of Taxi to the Dark Side.

I did see No End In Sight this weekend, though. The critics all seemed to love it (a rare "A" rating from Entertainment Weekly and a 94% on the Tomatometer), and Mark Harris of EW's back page feature wrote a full column just on why this movie was a must-see. That's generally more than enough to get me to throw it on my Netflix queue, but then it got its very own Oscar nod for Best Documentary Feature. OK, done deal.



I don't know what I was expecting. This was the year I saw Sicko and Ghosts of Abu Ghraib... so I was braced for another angry documentary, bellowing for political change. Instead, it was more like a cool-headed History Channel presentation. No End In Sight walks the viewer carefully, methodically, almost dispassionately, through the myriad mistakes that transformed the liberation of Iraq into a violent insurgency, and then civil war. There was no political posturing, just a cold recounting of events. Of course it made me angry (how could it not?), but the facts were presented in such a calm, matter-of-fact way that the anger came from inside me, not from the words of the filmmakers.

Even if you have what Mark Harris calls "outrage fatigue", you've got to see this movie. It's not outrage ... It's just chilling, distilled truth.

P.S. The press are reporting that Heath Ledger died of an accidental overdose from prescription medication. We all knew he wouldn't have left his little girl on purpose, but it's nice to have it confirmed. Such a devastating tragedy... there will always be a Heath-shaped hole in American cinema. Rest in peace. ...Click here for the rest of this tasty post.
Posted by Nayana Anthony in , , , , , , , , , , , at 9:17 AM on Wednesday, February 6, 2008
  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • RSS
5 people had something brilliant to say.
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
Copyright © 2008-2010 The Center Seat
Free WordPress Themes designed by EZwpthemes
Converted by Theme Craft
Powered by Blogger Templates