Banksy is at it again – you may have noticed a bunch of really big rats on buildings in downtown NYC. Here are two of them.

UPDATE: And another one!

I just saw this on Matt Dentler’s blog and I feel compelled to post it here too because Charles is so wonderful and his words are so stirring.

You’re supposed to send this video to 5 friends so I’ll put it here for the 5 people who read my blog! It’s an odd mix of earnest and somewhat funny but hey, it’s all for a good cause: VOTE!

Remember those Budweiser ads that were funny and then kinda annoying? Well director Charles Stone is back with the original cast to make a political point about the last 8 years and the change we need. True.

I can’t believe I’ve only just discovered Sarah Haskin’s Target: Women videos. If you ever watch ads marketed to women and you think “huh?” or “WTF?” or even “Please keep your cheesy marketing campaigns out of my living room you patronizing turds” then you will enjoy Haskin’s take on birth control, botox, chick flicks and yogurt!

P.S. Beware of gray hoodies: It’s that “I have a Masters but then I got married” look.

This is very, very cool: breathingearth.net

It is a real time simulation that displays the CO2 emissions of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates. Make sure you move your mouse over the countries to check out their stats.

I’ve always been obsessed with maps. That’s why I love books like You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination and I am really interested to see how people are using new technology to map events, people, places, and ideas in new ways. Thanks to Lina Srivastava for the heads up.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the quote below from C.P. Scott’s A Hundred Years essay, written in 1921. Scott was Editor of the Manchester Guardian (now just The Guardian) for an extraordinary 57 years from 1872 until 1929 and he wrote A Hundred Years to celebrate the centenary of the paper:

Comment is free, but facts are sacred. “Propaganda”, so called, by this means is hateful. The voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard. Comment also is justly subject to a self-imposed restraint. It is well to be frank; it is even better to be fair. This is an ideal. Achievement in such matters is hardly given to man. We can but try, ask pardon for shortcomings, and there leave the matter.

I keep getting all twisted up trying to work out where the line should be drawn when it comes to documentaries supporting social change which are often presenting facts for a cause (and often a very good cause at that). I’ll have to come back to this later as I don’t have time to really flesh out this argument now – but any comments would be welcome. Documentaries are not the same thing as journalism after all. And yet sometimes they are. So how does the audience know the difference? Argh, back down the rabbit hole I go!

I am a big fan of Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking and I kept thinking about this book while I was watching Examined Life, directed by Astra Taylor who previously made Zizek! (having my beloved worlds of academia and documentary coming together like this is geek-bliss for me) At the Q&A after the screening in the lovely Bearsville Theater at the Woodstock Film Festival I was pleasantly surprised when Astra mentioned Wanderlust and said that the film wouldn’t have happened without that book.

Cornel West riffing in Examined Life.

Examined Life is about contemporary philosophers and specifically it is about philosophers walking – or rowing and driving in the case of Michael Hardt and Cornel West, but the dance of thought and movement is a constant. Astra focuses on philosophers who are concerned with how philosophy can interface with ethics and policy in the real world and the film has continued to provoke and inspire me weeks after seeing it. I immediately rushed out to buy Anthony Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers because I was so impressed with his ideas for avoiding both universalism and relativism and finding a better way to approach living together in a globalized world. I have also had endless discussions/arguments since with people about Peter Singer’s Drowning Child ethics (and I am happy to keep arguing so please post comments about your thoughts on his challenge that we expand our circle of ethics and not only do some good occasionally but also not do harm inadvertently – I personally am not convinced by his argument although I appreciate the way that it makes us interogate our priorities). The other philosophers featured in the film are: Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler, Avital Ronell (my hero ever since I read an interview with her in RE:Search Angry Women), and Martha Nussbaum.

The joy of simply being able to THINK about all the issues brought up in Examined Life made me think again of the David Foster Wallace Kenyon Commencement Address that I love so much.

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

…

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

“This is water.”

“This is water.”

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I had a wonderful time up at the Woodstock Film Festival a couple of weeks ago and I feel terrible that I haven’t had a chance to write about it until now. It was great to be up in the country as the leaves started turning and the air grew crisp. I even had a couple of nature epiphanies eating apples off trees and looking at deer in the woods (such a city girl!). Everything smelled of woodsmoke and patchouli oil and I immediately felt both relaxed and reinvigorated. First some photos:

The Woodstock Film Festival logo shows some peace and love.

Discouraging apathy and encouraging dissent sounds like a good message for our times!

Lovely pumpkins at a roadside store on the way to Bearsville.

My favorite photo of The Band by Elliot Landy (I was so tempted to buy a signed print but they were a bit too pricey for me).

A gentle protest on the village green (which coincided with a fashion show!)

Got to love those hippies!

Honorary Trailblazer Award recipient James Schamus is introduced by festival co-founder Meira Blaustein before his brilliantly honest and inspiring conversation with Karen Durbin.

Honorary Maverick Award recipient Kevin Smith (who gave a very funny speech involving at least one reference to anal sex) and Honorary Trailblazer Award recipient James Schamus.

All the winners onstage (Ang Lee was there to honor Schamus and is on the far left of the photo).

The full list of winners is below. Congratulations to all. I love, love, love Medium Cool so was very pleased to see Haskell Wexler get the Lifetime Achievement Award. I’m also beyond chuffed that Jeremiah Zagar’s In A Dream won Best Documentary Feature because I think it is one of the most personal, moving and beautiful films I have seen in a long time. I can’t stop thinking about it.

Best Feature Narrative – The Lee Marvin Award – Prince of Broadway
Best Feature Documentary – In a Dream
Best Short Film-The Diane Seligman Award – Glory at Sea
Best Student Film-The Diane Seligman Award – Sikumi
Best Short Documentary-The Diane Seligman Award – Pickin’ and Trimmin’
Best Cinematography–The Haskell Wexler Award – At the Edge of the World
Best Narrative Editing –The James Lyons Award – Were the World Mine
Best Documentary Editing –The James Lyons Award – In a Dream
Best Animation–Presented by Bill Plympton – Berni’s Doll
Audience Award for Best Feature Narrative – Let the Right One In
Audience Award for Best Feature Documentary – Playing for Change
Lifetime Achievement Award – Haskell Wexler, A.S.C
Honorary Trailblazer Award recipient – James Schamus
Honorary Maverick Award recipient – Kevin Smith

The End of America, based on Naomi Wolf’s book of the same name and directed by Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern (The Trials of Darryl Hunt, The Devil Came on Horseback), just premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival and will be screening at Sheffield Doc/Fest soon but you can watch it right now on SnagFilms. The film is a bit lecturey (it is actually structured around a lecture given by Wolf) but it makes some very important points about the erosion of civil liberties in America.

Update: Karina Longworth has just posted a very astute review of The End of America on Spout: “The MILF + listicle equation never fails. The End of America is political propaganda programmed for the Digg generation.”