Fighting Killer Worms

By Patrick Skelly, Scientific American May 2008

“Bloodsucking worms called schistosomes are among the world’s most worrisome human parasites. A new genome sequence and powerful genetic tools promise to help crack their secrets.”

As I skimmed the article this historical nugget jumped out.

“The worms, also known as flukes, once brought down an army. They spread in water, and in 1948 they incapacitated large numbers of soldiers from the People’s Republic of China who were preparing for an amphibious assault on Taiwan (formerly Formosa). One histor-ian thus dubbed the worm ‘the fluke that saved Formosa.’”

Thomas Allen collects pulp paperbacks for their covers. He then carefully slices up the cover images. The graphics are then creatively repositioned and arranged in 3 dimensional layouts. Finally these dramatic scenes are photographed. The result has been beautifully presented in his new book published by Aperture.

Uncovered: Photographs by Thomas Allen

The Art and Farm Report is the blog of Michigan artist Thomas Allen. HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF is a post he made January 24, 2007 about his grandmother and is worth a read. Gardeners and lovers fresh food should check out his wife’s blog Fast Grow The Weeds .

TCFF 2007 Fiction Jury Awards

Best Feature: Rocket Science

This entertaining film stars Reece Daniel Thompson as Hal Hafner, a young man of few words. He is a high school student in Plainsboro, New Jersey where his persistent stutter leads to countless indignities at the hands of his classmates.

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Special Jury Prize For Visual Impact: Tuya’s Marriage

Not only was this film gorgeous, it had wonderful set design and the most magnificent camel we have ever seen. Below is the best picture of this great animal I could find on the web.

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Special Jury Prize For Outstanding Writing

Talk To Me

Talk to Me is written by Michael Genet and Rick Famuyiwa. The film recreates the turbulent sixties and tells the real life story of Washington D.C. radio personality Ralph “Petey” Greene. The cast is led by Don Cheadle, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Taraji P. Henson, Cedric The Entertainer and Martin Sheen. They give flesh to the words in a this very entertaining film.

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Special Jury Prize For Narrative Perspective

Blame It On Fidel

Nine year old Anna struggles to adjust and understand her parents when they become political activists. This film is told from the point of view of a child. The performance by Nina Kervel is wonderful, you can’t take your eyes off her.

I just meet Michigan artist John Gutoskey, who does these wonderfully creative assemblages using found objects, antiques and ephemera. Having worked on stage and film he calls these assemblages his personal “magic theater”. If you love cinema you will enjoy these small wonderous worlds. His work will be on exhibit at the at Gallery 50 the month of August.

The Assemblage Art of John Gutoskey
Exhibition & Sale August 1 - August 31, 2007
Artist reception
Thursday, August 16, 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.

A map to Gallery 50 is here.

John has drawn inspiration from Joseph Cornell (1903-72) an American sculptor and one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponent of assemblages .
The Smithsonian has an interactive slide show of their Cornell Exhibition that ended earlier this year.

Peter Bart is the editor of the venerable entertainment trade paper Variety. He and producer Peter Guber do a show called Sunday Morning Shootout on AMC-TV. This Sunday their featured guest will be Nikki Blonsky the new star of Hairspray. The buzz and early reports are that Hairspray is a crowd-pleaser.

In a recent column in Variety he talked about how big studio’s business of making tent-pole films is affecting European filmmakers.Peter wrote column while visiting the Karlovy Film Festival. “Presiding over a jury at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic, I had abundant opportunity to talk with diverse filmmakers from around Europe and learn about their hopes and apprehensions.” His comments are perceptive and enlightening. While the cultural divide can lead to both good and bad films; the blockbuster sequel producing Hollywood is intimidating European filmmakers as foreign language films struggle to make a dent at the US boxoffice.

Two recent articles in Variety point up the difficulty’s in marketing and distributing smaller more specialized films in the United States. Elizabeth Guider was at the Cannes Film Festival and talked with various distribution acquisition staffers about buying specialized films. Pamela McClintock writes on the difficulty’s niche films are having staying on screen in the face of a glut of wide release summer blockbusters.

It is fascinating to follow filmmakers as they bet years of their lives and large sums of money on projects that require collaboration, tenacity and faith. One of the few specialized films staying on screens this summer is SiCKO. Michael Moore is one filmmaker that has achieved success where so many fail. It is our community’s good fortune that he has leveraged this success and placed himself behind the Traverse City Film Festival.

Sent to Park City Utah by The Hollywood Reporter to cover the Sundance Film Festival, Greg Goldstein found himself seated amongst participating filmmakers. Two of them were the couple behind “Four Eyed Monsters,” directors Susan Buice and Arin Crumley.

Shortly after I read Greg’s blog I received an email from Emerging Pictures. This company is pioneering large screen national release of digital content. They announced that they will be distributing “Four Eyed Monsters” digitally in multiple formats for Valentines Day. Because I find this story is so interesting I’m quoting the entire film synopsis from Emerging Picture:

‘Arin and Susan both live in New York. Both live lonely lives in one of the most populous cities in the world until they find each other on-line and begin their alternative courtship. Wanting to avoid a mundane date they decide to only communicate through artistic mediums and have no verbal communication while they work through the start up phase of their relationship. Communicating via note pads, emails and video cameras the question begins to arise, is their relationship just an artistic experiment or will they give in to being a couple and become a living breathing “four eyed monster.”‘

According to the reports I’ve read this year’s festival has had many of the specialized distributors pay large sums for film rights. While not one of these select films, “Four Eyed Monsters” appears to have found a unique path to the big screen and found theatrical life beyond the Sundance Film Festival.

Those interested in my post on Second Life should check out the February issue of Inc. Magazine. They coverage of business, people and ideas is always interesting. Their piece titled “How They Did It” tells how Philip Rosedale and Linden Lab created Second Life.

It also has a fascinating story on Mitchell Baker of Mozilla. As a women running a tech company she is leading a team of volunteers and creating a hybrid business: part for-profit and part non-profit. Her title is Chief Lizard Wrangler!

As part of the baby boomer generation my participation in electronic games included pinball, space invaders and pac man. Since than the world of gamers has grown exponentially leaving me in the dust. Occasionally I get pulled into the game world when my kids play. But I’m not really interested in advancing my skills. I would much rather read a book or see a movie than pursue the offerings of GameCube, XBox and Nintendo.

But the business of electronic games is huge and its economic impact surpassed movies years ago. The phenomenon bears critical attention if one is to understand where the entertainment industry is headed. Recently theatres have explored interactive video games in movie theatres with Halo and other games.

I recently ran across an article about a virtual movie theatre. You must join the virtual world “Second Life” on the web. Once you create an avatar (a graphical image that represents a you) you can participate in this virtual world. “Second Life” hosted the Machinima Awards at their Luguana Beach Theater.

The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences gives their Mackie awards to the best film-making done within a real time, 3D environment.  You can see this years nominees and winners at their website. Real people participated in the ceremonies held at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York.

The virtual world premiere of feature length film “Four Eyed Monsters” happened yesterday. Space was limited to 5o avatars at each virtual screening room. Both of the filmmakers were there as their avatars and did a live video stream to introduce the film, answer questions and interact with the audience.

Directors Susan Buice and Arin Crumley

“Digichromatography” is the process that was used to restore the photos for this extraordinary exhibiton from The Library Congress. “The Empire That Was Russia” presents Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii’s color photographs. Shot for Tsar Nicholas II between the years 1909-1912, and again in 1915 they give us a unique look into the past.

Queen Antinea (Stacia Napierkowska), a woman so beautiful that men kill themselves when she rejects them.

Yikes!

The name BackBay is appropriate seeing how often I post. Maybe BarnacleBay would be better. I sometimes get stuck on things and I stop in my tracks. As I wrote of my reaction to La Moustache I mulled on the issue of how much of the film one should reveal. Anyone that loves film prefers cold viewings so that the experience is unmediated by others. Of course we all need gatekeepers; those whose opinions we respect to winnow down the choices and point out paths we might take.

The so called “plasticity of film”, the unique character of film to manipulate time and space is used masterfully in La Moustache. It is a wonderfully enigmatic film that requires viewer investment in the main character and participation in its narrative meaning. La Moustache seems a study of the internal/external psychological space of a man in crisis. What happens to him only becomes clear if you connect the very first images and sounds to the middle and end of the film. I found it fascinating and deserving of a second viewing.