UU Mom

We finally saw it! You can read about the movie vs. the true story on Wikipedia. My favorite quote is: "The time for justice, the time for freedom, and the time for equality is always, is always right now!" A lot has changed since 1935, but we still have our work cut out for us. How many debaters do you know?! It was good to see there was a young woman debater - I don't know why they changed her name in the movie. Actually, I see she's still alive and did an interview. There's so much to learn. It wasn't a dry documentary, though, it had excitement and romance and gave me some teary moments. It should get an Academy Award.

How are you spending the day? The idea is to do community service work &, to be honest, I'm not planning on going out today, but I do community service work almost every day and I do it via email and web development besides organizations I belong to, so I'll probably be doing it today, too. I will be encouraging people to attend the new Davies Forum that starts this Sat.

I was watching the Color Line on WETA. It was a good segment about how color (particularly among African Americans) affects Hollywood. That makes me want to go out and see "The Great Debaters" all the more instead of waiting until it comes on On Demand the way I usually do. We've been sick, so I don't know that we're going out. It's playing in Largo & Waldorf, so it's still playing locally. Did I mention here (I know I wrote about it in other blogs) that I won the CD? I got it last week and it is all historic African American music - most of them are remade using performers who specialize in that kind of music. They really did their research on this movie.

I'm the first winner of the contest that I posted about in this blog post. If you're not interested in winning a CD, spread the word to others who might. You have to follow the link from my blog post to the contest information to YouTube. I've seen the various videos, but not the movie yet. It looks good, so I hope to see the movie in the new year. Anyone want to see it with me?

Happy New Year! (I won't be at the church party; we get to "sit" for our granddaughter - a pleasure we're looking forward to.)

I just saw "The Weather Man". I thought most of the movie was depressing and was thinking about changing the channel, but there wasn't anything better on. In the end, I liked it - a little sappy, but I was in the mood for sappy. I'm nursing an ear infection and have laryngitis. My cold started over 2 weeks ago and the sea air on my first cruise to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary didn't help. I got lots of rest last week, but it didn't help. I don't really believe that being an adult is never easy, but lately it's felt that way. I have so many things I'd like to do, but I can't do any of them (besides a little blogging & email).

Maybe it's just that I haven't watched much tv lately, but I thought it was neat that on "My Name is Earl" they focussed on a gay couple during 8 PM primetime television. Way to go! They were prisoners, but I still think it's another step for glbt rights. "30 Rock" (not a show I look forward to watching regularly) apparently also has a gay couple. I taped "Ugly Betty" which has the first transgender person in primetime tv (my son reminded me about that - it kind of breezed over me, because I thought it was a pretty unrealistic & cruel scenario, though I like the show enough to record it). My son also told me that Tia Taquila is the first openly bi-sexual star in primetime tv (she started on myspace & now stars on MTV). I think this is all quite exciting! When I was on my cruise, I knew there was at least one same sex couple on board and probably several, but none on the dance floor or married partner game show. I hope I see the day when the hate subsides enough to allow for that. I can't imagine what it would feel like to not be able to fully participate in society if I wanted to. We're having a real struggle with marriage equality in Maryland, but there are increasingly more official "welcoming congregations" - mine is becoming one. Unfortunately, I might miss the first workshop due to my illness.

Cruise photos coming soon, I hope. And we were in the news (scroll about half-way down - it was left column of page 2 with bolded title and spaces between all the words in the local paper).

I also made a new post on race matters and will be updating the county blog soon.

I watched "Heart of the Beholder" again, with my mother-in-law this time - the owner of the film sent me a DVD after I did all the blogging about it before. As we watched the film, I went to the St. Louis Dispatcher newspaper online at the public library (an online friend in St. Louis gave me his login info - isn't the internet great!). Here are the dates and titles of the articles that I found and copied: ( Read more... )

Hope you're all having a good Labor Day weekend!

Usually when I find more about something I posted about, I just edit the original post with a note at the bottom for the new information, but this warranted a new post.

We just finished watching this movie. Those clips aren't the whole movie and there are numerous short ones that makes it not worth it to watch that way.

We paid $1.99 for a 7 day download. We had to adjust the computer to give high priority to the video software so it would stream without any glitches. There were scenes that were quite dramatized, not appearing very realistic, but it was still very enjoyable. If you like "revenge movies" that's part of the twist ending. It was fun even if it's not entirely true. I recommend it.

I would NOT recommend watching the Behind-the-Scenes clips before watching the movie, though. They don't make sense without the movie first and there are deleted scenes that appear hokie and make the movie look ridiculous.

After watching the movie, the behind-the-scenes pieces tell about how difficult it was for them to make this movie. Wikipedia has next to nothing about it. The film "Special" starring Ken Tipton who wrote, edited, and produced it, helps make this whole incredible story seem more plausible (well the story of how he struggled to get this movie produced) along with the bio on IMDb. One thing I found that makes me wonder, though, is that the bio doesn't mention "Our First Time" which Wikipedia says "was one of the first widely popularized Internet hoaxes.... produced and promoted by aspiring filmmaker Ken Tipton". I don't like being told a movie is a true story if it's a hoax. I wish I had time to research it more. Just the tidbits I've found make the whole thing seem even more interesting. Well, we know they didn't just have one kid and they left out other aspects of his life, so I suspect a lot of the movie is not true, but if anyone sees a story about how the movie compares to the truth, I'd be interested in it. Just curious....

One more thing I found: a 2005 email on w3.org giving newspaper resources for the part of the story about the politician. All we need is a St. Louis library card number to read the stories. Anyone have a friend in St. Louis?

Their site says:

"HEART of the BEHOLDER has won more Best Feature Film Awards than any other independent movie ever.

Distributors agree that it is a quality film with superb acting, a riveting story, and production values much higher than our actual budget. But those same distributors complain that our movie is too controversial to pick up for distribution.

It took us 12 years to make our passion project and we want it to be seen. We have serialized our movie into short clips to make it easy to watch."

Some claim it's not being shown because it's about standing up to religious fundamentalists, others say it's because it was created by atheists.

IMDb gives it a 7.3

You can watch clips here (I think this is actually the whole movie, but I haven't seen it all yet): http://www.beholder.com/WebTheater/PlayMovie/play_movie.aspx.3

Just saw Blood Diamond which was a really good movie. Reminded me of when we went to the Hague international peace conference and saw some real child soldiers.

This has been presented in a somewhat religious way for the masses, but it is not just for the religious. You can think of it as the good salesman message - the basics of how to be a successful salesman that's taught by all the biggest sales companies. I know there are details that the skeptics can debate. This message is using materialism, but I don't think it's really about materialism - it's a way to communicate it that the masses in the U.S. can understand. I haven't seen the full movie yet, but Peggy is here, so, for those of you who know her, you know we're going out to get it if we can find it (Borders' warehouse is totally out of stock & thinks that means everyone is out). Don't know what I'll think of the whole movie, but I definately think the message in this clip is worthwhile (it's 7 mins.) [note: update below]:



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Update:

I have since watched the whole movie ( Read more... )

And finally, if you're looking for a secret to life and success in a simple message, besides positive thinking, you also need to live actively - continuing to learn in many ways, especially experience and critical thinking and applying those things in the way you live your life also.

"Walking Across Egypt"

I'm posting this in my own blog on the off chance that anyone might be reading this who might be interested in a movie discussion or in watching this kind of movie & reflect on it for themselves in this way. I've especially written this for people who are working on anti-racism (steps toward ending racism).

I just saw this movie. It's what they call a "sleeper" I believe. It's excellent, but I think few have seen it. Only a few hundred have reviewed it on IMDb, which is rather unusual for such a high quality movie that was released as recently as 1999. Any way, it has nothing to do with racism, but it would still make an excellent discussion about racism. There are elements of white culture in today's society in a small town in the south. It has nothing to do with Egypt (the tagline say why it was named that - maybe it was a poor choice of a name seeing as so few people saw it.)
( Read more... )