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.
The End of America, based on Naomi Wolf’s book
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.”
Thanks to Agnes Varnum at Doc It Out for the heads up about this. Frontline’s The Choice 2008 is available to watch free online in its entirety. I’ve only watched part of it so far but it’s definitely vital viewing on the political and personal histories of Obama and McCain and I’m looking forward to watching the rest when I can give it my full attention (although giving ANYTHING my full attention at the moment is proving tricky).
Also, women of the world I do salute you but make sure you vote. Emily Wilding Davison threw herself in front of the King’s horse in the UK for the right to vote. All we have to do is go to the polling station.
Continuing with my epic embedding I thought this SnagFilms politics widget was appropriate. I recommend watching Run Granny Run and Can Mr. Smith Get To Washington Anymore?
Also just a heads up that the latest film from Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern, The End of America, based on the book by Naomi Wolf, will be on Snag from October 21st just after it has premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival. Sundberg and Stern previously made the powerful docs The Trials of Daryl Hunt and The Devil Came on Horseback. I just watched the trailer of The End of America and have to say I swallowed rather hard at the line “Americans feel differently inside than other people do because liberty is internal.” I think liberty is internal to many people in many nations across the globe and to think otherwise is a worrying example of the kind of American hubris that keeps getting all of us into all kinds of trouble but, that said, this does look like an important film for these dark times.
Apologies to readers outside of the US who can’t watch some of the films I am embedding here (damn that geo blocking – I can’t watch a lot of British TV online if that makes you feel any better) but for those of you who can, Mary Bronstein’s Yeast is on Dailymotion this weekend only. I am not going to lie to you, this is a hard film to watch, but it captures the dynamics of toxic female friendships in a way that I haven’t seen done before. Karina Longworth’s Spout review is right on the money: “It’s obscene, but in a sing-song, adolescent way that’s actually unsettling in its casual violence.”
Eeek, drowning in work so apologies for blogging silence. But at least I bring good tidings of films on the web! Richard Linklater’s cult fave Slacker and David Modigliani’s documentary Crawford are both streaming on Hulu in their entirity for your viewing pleasure at the moment. Kevin Smith’s introduction to Slacker on Hulu includes the following pap smear inspired-memory:
The day of my 21st birthday. Most folks elect to cut loose and enjoy the freedom that turning 21 affords. I, however — being a total loser — opted, instead, to take the 50-mile drive up the Jersey Turnpike with my friend Vincent Pereira so we could peep a film reviewed, quite favorably, by J. Hoberman in the Village Voice. It was unheard of in my neck of the woods to drive that far to see a movie (let alone a movie with zero movie stars in it), but the promise of a scene centered on a Madonna pap smear of questionable authenticity was bait enough to lure us from the Jersey ‘burbs into the wilds of Manhattan-after-dark.
I haven’t seen Crawford yet, but this is good timing in the run up to the election – George W. Bush moved to Crawford in 1999, just before he announced his candidacy for president, thereby thrusting the small Texan town into the spotlight. As Modigliani describes it: It’s about a town that goes from 15 minutes of fame to ground zero for 20,000 protesters, becoming a microcosm for national conflict in the process.
Regular blogging will resume tomorrow I promise – I saw so many amazing films at the Woodstock Film Festival last weekend that I still want to write about and I also have lots of thoughts about the video republic to unleash upon you. Oh yes.
No End in Sight, Charles Ferguson’s devastating documentary about the Bush administration’s catastrophic involvement in Iraq is free to view on YouTube at the moment – helpfully coinciding with the run up to the election. This really is a must-see film and even the more dedicated political pundits among you will find its surgical unravelling of what went wrong very informative.
Cinemocracy invited short film submissions addressing the question: “what is democracy?” The top ten films were screened last night at an event at the Democratic National Convention. You can watch all the submissions online too. I rather like this one:
Belated congrats to my friend and Shooting People colleague, Jesse Epstein, for being one of the “25 new faces of independent film” in Filmmaker Magazine. In addition to getting to pose in a big red truck for Filmmaker, her film 34×25x36 is also playing in the YouTube screening room. Ms Epstein is awesome.
Still from 34×25x36
Big indie film news this morning as SnagFilms launches a Beta site with free streaming features including Super Size Me, Run Granny Run and Dig! – films that you can also embed as a widget which I am very excited about (I’m a big fan of widgets). I’m desperate to have a play with SnagFilms but am so snowed with work in London that I only have time to write this very brief blog post. So check out all the news on indieWIRE and explore SnagFilms on my behalf.
