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Review: Miss Kiet's Children
Childhood in Peter Lataster and Petra Lataster-Czisch's documentary is the terrain of contradiction and ambiguity.4.0
As a cinematic ode to pedagogy, directors Peter Lataster and Petra Lataster-Czisch's Miss Kiet's Children isn't in a league of its own. Frederick Wiseman's At Berkeley and José Luis Guerín's The Academy of Muses recently, and rapturously, immersed us in the minutia of the teaching process. Lataster and Lataster-Czisch's documentary about traumatized child refugees trying to coexist with their Dutch schoolmates doesn't revel, however, in the irresistible pull of erudite lectures or progressive Cali teens' thirst for knowledge. The film is interested in the most banal of pedagogical experiences, its camera finding more than enough drama in the way a child grabs a peer's eraser without asking, or in the subtle changes in a child's face the moment shame becomes pride, hope becomes desperation, and the void of not knowing becomes the elation of learning how to spell the word "moon."
There's something about this setup that's akin to Nicolas Philibert's To Be and to Have, about a schoolteacher in the Auvergne region of France and his relationship to his young students. But the adults in this film are seldom more than a recurrent voice, as the frame tends to cut off the upper half of primary schoolteacher Miss Kiet's body. Unlike Georges Lopez, the instructor at the center of Philibert's film, Miss Kiet seems to take no pleasure in the power she holds. Instead, she spends her time trying to distribute that power evenly among her students by teaching them how to be accountable for their actions. Camera and educator are always fair and invested in the dignity of the children. It's difficult to say who's the real star of the film; as Miss Kiet's interventions are so soothing, considerate, and effective, it's impossible to not be in complete awe of her mastery. At once acknowledging and dismissing the severity of a child's complaint, she knows that by the time a child arrives in her classroom all she can really do is address their symptoms, not the causes for their aggression: their sleeplessness, nightmares, and inability to focus.
The film moves organically from the particularities of one child to the next. What remains constant is Miss Kiet's sweet self-assertiveness, and the camera's refusal to ever truly grant us establishing shots. We're asked to make due with the children's faces, mostly, and their minute changes as they draw, play with a magic board, rehearse a musical, recount a dream, or hear the bomb-sounding noises of a ball kicking at recess. Miss Kiet's Children doesn't try to sell us the image of the angelic child. Childhood in the film is the terrain of contradiction and ambiguity. At the same time that the children want to hit they also want to embrace; they want their friends to be their enemies and their enemies to be their friends. It's hard to think of many films that have approached childhood with this much respect and with this much integrity.
Nine-year-old Haya, for instance, is a mostly mean child. She's jealous, violent, and she lies. She takes objects away from other children who are using them; she hits her classmates during the class's afternoon break; and she torments the new girl, Lyanne, only to pretend that it was all a big misunderstanding when she gets caught and is asked to explain herself. When we first meet the Arabic-speaking Haya, she's weepy because she's just fallen and her pants are now dirty and wet, and she wants someone to translate her feelings to Miss Kiet in Dutch. She goes around asking her peers to ask the teacher to call her mother because Miss Kiet "never understands me." Every classmate sends her to another classmate who might be willing to ask for her. When one of the refugee boys who speaks better Dutch finally asks Miss Kiet to call Haya's mother, the teacher explains that she won't be calling the woman because falling isn't that bad. This is Miss Kiet's pedagogy at its most illustrative. She doesn't dwell on the problem, doesn't scold, and doesn't ever raise her voice. She listens, responds, and moves on. In her classroom, a child is always heard and seen but also forced to confront the truth.
The question of language, and the ultimately unfair advantage adults tend to have in relationship to it, becomes exacerbated in the context of the film because many of the children speak Arabic but not Dutch very well. And yet it's in Dutch that they're called on to express themselves. At times, this means that the children suffer in silence from not being able to articulate what's happening around them, and at other times they, specially Haya, seem to take advantage of their lack of linguistic proficiency to pretend that they aren't to blame for their own bad deeds. It also means the Dutch children come off as uncomplicatedly joyful, and easily prone to acts of solidarity, whereas their issues may simply be less legible. The filmmakers aren't worried about the Dutch kids, however, almost treating them as self-effacing stage helpers of scenes that are always about someone else: girls whose homes were bombed or boys who may not be as comfortable prancing around in the glittery gender-bending costumes they have to wear for the school musical.
One of the film's most heartbreaking scenes takes place in the gym where each student, regardless of their age and gender, plays every character in the Little Red Riding Hood story. They're each supposed to skip toward a mirror with a flower in their hand and stare at themselves as though they were someone else. Miss Kiet manages the children, some of whom are so distressed by war that they can barely sleep at night, with such grace and care as she whispers, "Look, look at yourself." This proves to be too difficult an exercise for Jorg, from Syria, who can't look at his face in the mirror without looking down as if he's about to collapse. Miss Kiet insists, knowing exactly the brittleness of the child's body she's holding, and doing it justice. She asks if she should cry along with him, and that he should look at himself, even if he's sad. Because one should be able to be sad and to be angry. Soon after, Jorg is alone, away from the theater game when a Dutch boy approaches him and asks what happened, as if to comfort him. Jorg doesn't respond. Instead, he keeps looking down, as if frozen in horror, but learning how to move too.
Director: Peter Lataster, Petra Lataster-Czisch Screenwriter: Petra Lataster-Czisch Distributor: Icarus Films Running Time: 115 min Rating: NR Year: 2016 Buy: Video
American Demons: Martin Bell's Streetwise and Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell
Bell proves uncannily adept at capturing moments that seem to encapsulate a subject's entire emotional temperature.
Decades after its original release, Martin Bell's Streetwise remains a boldly empathetic work of vérité portraiture. Throughout the 1984 documentary, Bell, photographer Mary Ellen Mark, and journalist Cheryl McCall follow a motley group of kids on the streets of Seattle as they panhandle, dig food out of dumpsters, and prostitute themselves to much older men. These scenes are accompanied by voiceovers from the young subjects, who describe their actions with a heartbreaking casualness that communicates two almost contradictory meanings: that they're seasoned hustlers, having bypassed childhood for an everyday form of hell, and that they're desperate to be seen precisely as said hustlers. To show emotion is to be vulnerable, and these subjects can't afford to be seen as weak, yet the filmmakers capture more here than the street children may have suspected. Streetwise is charged by a deep, subterranean yearning to be loved, or even merely felt.
A plot hasn't been imposed on Streetwise, as the audience is allowed to feel the numbing monotony of life on the fringes. People swing in and out of prison, crash in and out of secret hovels, most notably an abandoned hotel, and practice their grifts, while struggling with overlapping tides of addiction and depression. We also learn, startlingly, that not all these children are homeless. Streetwise's most famous subject, Erin Blackwell, a.k.a. "Tiny," lives with her mother, a waitress and alcoholic who rationalizes her daughter's prostitution as a phase and who seems to be impressed with Erin's ability to make a few hundred dollars on a good day. It's little wonder that Erin captured and continued to command the filmmakers' attention for decades after filming Streetwise ended. She has a squinty yet expressive glare that suggests both a deep reservoir of pain as well as intense fierceness.
Bell, Mark, and McCall take Erin and her cohorts, most vividly a skinny boy with potential tonsillitis named DeWayne Pomeroy, at face value. Streetwise is pointedly devoid of the sermonizing that might allow audiences to comfortably distance themselves from these people, regarding them simply as elements of a civics lesson. The film forces us to confront the obviousness of these children's circumstances, as people walk by them just as we all walk by the homeless on a daily basis. This sense of culpability informs Streetwise with an uncomfortable texture that's familiar to documentaries concerned with poor or mentally and emotionally challenged people, so you may wonder how the filmmakers shot what we're seeing without stepping in and helping these people. Particularly disturbing is when Erin, 13 years old at the start of filming, is seen getting into a car with an old man who's obviously a john.
If Streetwise was just a portrait of damnation and delusion, it would be an important document. But the film is also haunting for Bell, Mark, and McCall's attention to the transcendence than can be felt even in such extreme circumstances. After Erin has gotten into trouble, DeWayne tells her of how he will rescue her, and his attempt at gallantry is poignant as well as devastating. When DeWayne visits his father in prison, the old man lectures the boy about keeping his smoking down and laying off the hard drugs, commanding DeWayne to roll up his shirt sleeves for a track-mark inspection. As brutally sad as this confrontation is, one feels this father's love and wonders if DeWayne, clearly a sensitive and lonely boy, can feel it too. Retrospectively, it hardly matters: DeWayne hung himself not long after this visit.
Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell, a 2016 sequel to Streetwise that's been in the works for thirtysomething years, offers a variety of unmooring contrasts from its predecessor. Erin is no longer the slim spitfire of Streetwise, but an overweight fortysomething mother of 10 who understandably appears to always be on the verge of exhaustion, and who takes methadone in an attempt to keep her drug addictions at bay while wrangling with her children's own skirmishes with the law. Looking at Erin now, one sees the scars and weariness left by a hard life, part of which was documented by Streetwise, and one can implicitly feel Erin's need for atonement. Though Erin's gotten off the streets, living in a large home with her partner, Will, and several of her children, the streets have never left her.
Formally, Tiny is much different from Streetwise. The 1984 film abounds in seamy noises and textures, with roving camerawork that seems to be uncovering a new lurid discovery every few seconds; it feels palpably dangerous, and probably inspired films such as Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho and Larry's Clark's Kids. Set predominantly in Erin's home, Tiny is slower and more polished, reflecting the (comparative) stability that Erin has achieved since appearing in Streetwise. Tiny also has a fancier structure than Streetwise, with a framing device in which Erin watches footage of herself over the years, including unused outtakes from the first film, with Mary Ellen Mark. An autumnal tone seeps into the new film, which offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of the unending legacies of crime and addiction.
As in Streetwise, Bell proves uncannily adept at capturing moments that seem to encapsulate a subject's entire emotional temperature. There are frequent shots in Tiny of Erin sleeping with a little dog close to her face, which suggest rare moments of repose for a woman who's used to running her chaotic family like a hostage negotiator. Erin frequently calls the cops on her own children, especially the headstrong teenager Rayshon, which Bell unforgettably rhymes with footage form Streetwise of a younger Erin visiting two of her children in foster care. One of the foster care children, Keanna, is now a mother herself, and resents Erin for abandoning her and for continuing to struggle with drug use.
Which is to say that Tiny is as charged with turmoil as Streetwise, and Bell proves equally capable here of rendering full relationships with only a few images or seconds of running time. As in Streetwise, our sympathies are rarely overtly directed, as Tiny is somehow on every character's contradictory wavelength at once, illustrating how difficult understanding can be to achieve, most notably in the face of disaster. Though it runs a trim 87 minutes, Tiny offers an epic and piercing portrait of a large biracial family that's plagued by essentially every demon known to American society. Erin escaped the streets only to fashion a home that's rife with the very issues that drove her away from her own mother. Like most people, regardless of social stature, Erin is stuck in the temporal loop of her own inherent nature.
Review: Radu Jude's I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians
Jude's film is a bitterly comic essay on nationalist mythologies and historical amnesia.3.5
Prime minister of Romania during most of World War II, Ion Antonescu is one of the era's supreme villains: a virulent anti-Semite, Nazi collaborator, and authoritarian dictator whose troops murdered Jews with such velocity and enthusiasm that even Hitler was shocked by their actions. Upon ordering the forced expulsion—and, if necessary, genocide—of the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina, Antonescu proclaimed, "I do not care if we go down in history as Barbarians." Radu Jude borrows that declaration, so haunting in its cruelty and disarming in its blitheness, for the title of his latest film, a bitterly comic essay on nationalist mythologies and historical amnesia that locates the seeds of Romania's currently resurgent ethno-nationalism in the nation's collective failure to truly confront its own past.
For while Antonescu was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death by firing squad shortly after the war, there have been repeated attempts to rehabilitate his image in Romania since the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Take Sergiu Nicolaescu's 1994 film The Mirror, a hagiographic treatment of Antonescu's rule that portrays the leader as a defiant protector of his people. Jude inserts a substantial clip of that film into I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, having it play on a small TV set positioned in the exact center of the frame as we hear the off-screen voice of Jude's protagonist, Mariana (Ioana Iacob), providing sardonic, outraged commentary on the film's distorted presentation of Antonescu as a misunderstood hero. There's an element of desperation in the scene: While Mariana offers an incontestable rebuttal, no one but her boyfriend (Alex Bogdan) is there to hear it. Meanwhile, The Mirror's comforting nationalist lies are being beamed into homes all across Romania.
A headstrong theater director attempting to stage a public reenactment of the Odessa Massacre of 1941, in which Romanian troops slaughtered thousands of Ukrainian Jews, Mariana is obsessed with bringing the full weight of historical reality to her fellow countrymen. She obsessively reads histories of the period and drops quotations from philosophers and historical figures into everyday conversation. The film is consumed by lengthy, probing conversations—mostly shot by a statically mounted 16mm camera that pans back and forth to cover the actors' movements—in which Mariana discusses art, philosophy, history, and politics with her various collaborators and friends.
Her most persistent interlocutor is Movilă (Alexandru Dabija), a local official tasked with overseeing the publicly funded production, who constantly pleads with Mariana to tone down her work's unvarnished depiction of anti-Semitic violence. Movilă is a relativist, content in the knowledge that all memory is willfully selective, while Mariana truly believes in the power of stark historical truth. Though at times didactic and overloaded with quotations from the likes of Wittgenstein and Arendt, Jude's dialogue nevertheless manages to feel remarkably naturalistic. That's thanks in no small part to the powerfully unaffected performances of a cast that finds the subtle humor and neurotic character details embedded in Jude's dense screenplay. Iacob captures Mariana's unrelenting passion while also finding moments of vulnerability and self-doubt in the role, including moments of hesitation and anxiety borne of the fact that she's a petite, cosmopolitan woman attempting to exert control over a large cast of rugged men, many of whom are diametrically opposed to the vision of her project.
Jude's heavy themes are leavened by a self-effacing sense of modesty. Jude isn't attempting to make grand pronouncements about the nature of memory and truth. Rather, I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians finds the director constantly interrogating his own perspective, questioning Mariana's relationship to the wider public. That theme comes to a head in the film's climactic presentation of the artist's reenactment. Here, Jude switches from the warm dreaminess of 16mm to the harsh hyper-realism of digital video. The scene has the feel of a simple documentation of a live public event, but it isn't clear that it's actually any more "real" than the rest of the film. In particular, whether and to what extent the crowd of onlookers' reactions are coached remains one of the film's most intriguing enigmas.
Ultimately, Mariana finds herself perplexed and deflated by the public's response to her work. One senses this reaction may be autobiographical for Jude, whose film Aferim! attempted to challenge Romanian audiences about the nation's historical treatment of Roma people. As one of the few directors of the so-called Romanian New Wave whose work explores the country's unsavory pre-Soviet past, Jude is swimming against the popular tide of revisionism and historical moral blindness. The anti-Semitic violence and hatred laid out in his latest is truly chilling, as is the contemporary tendency to diminish and obscure that dark past. But perhaps most disturbing of all is the idea put forth in the film's conclusion: that one could present the truth to the public in all its brutality and horror, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference.
Cast: Ioana Iacob, Alexandru Dabija, Alex Bogdan, Ilinca Manolache, Serban Pavlu, Ion Rizea, Claudia Ieremia Director: Radu Jude Screenwriter: Radu Jude Distributor: Big World Pictures Running Time: 140 min Rating: NR Year: 2018
Interview: Lynn Shelton on Honing Her Process for Sword of Trust
The filmmaker discusses how she wants viewers to feel like they're paratrooping into her characters' lives.
Lynn Shelton has amassed a formidable body of work between her eight features and countless television episodes. Her latest outing, the comic adventure Sword of Trust, represents her most topical work to date. After pawn shop owner Mel (played by Marc Maron) purchases an old sword, he gets plunged into world of conspiracy culture as the relic attracts legions of online prowlers convinced that the weapon represents proof that the Confederacy won the Civil War. The logline might be Shelton's wildest yet, but the elements that have made her work indelible for over a decade remain intact: realistic conversations, emotional authenticity, and a commitment to multi-dimensional characters.
I chatted with Shelton on Sword of Trust's opening day, which saw the director, writer, producer, editor, and occasional actress in great spirits. Our conversation covered her pursuit of Maron for this specific project, how she developed her unique script-development process, and why she wants viewers to feel like they're paratrooping into her characters' lives.
Last year on Marc Maron's podcast, you mentioned that you liked exploring relationships between people who wouldn't normally interact. Sword of Trust continues in that tradition for you. What keeps bringing you back to these dynamics?
Have you heard of this theory of multiple intelligences, like different types of intelligences we have? I can't remember the names that [Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner] came up with, I think there's eight. I know I'm not the brightest bulb on all of these scales, but one way that I think I'm pretty high is in emotional intelligence. I like to think I am, anyway. I've always been that close observer of human behavior. I also really love humans. I feel like the thing that makes humans human are their flaws. So, on screen, I don't like to see people who are too smoothed out, all good or all bad. I'm interested in characters who are essentially good people, but they may be total fuck-ups and well-meaning who may sabotage themselves. Individual fucking up often happens in relation to other people. We may have a pre-determined need to connect to other people, but we're constantly sabotaging ourselves.
Sometimes, like I said on the podcast, I'm much more interested in unlikely combinations of people because it's not a prewritten script we're handed. It's not like, "This is who would be appropriate for you as a friend. This is the way you should act. This is the box we've already determined for you." Any kind of out-of-the-box way of living one's life or being surprised by a connection you feel to a human being, all those little happy accidents in life are the things I like to explore. To inspire people, not to just go through life in this sort of "this is what someone else had in mind for me, and I should follow that plan"—that feels very depressing to me. It's more interesting to open your heart and your life up to other experiences.
To explore relationships in that way makes the everyday more interesting and exciting.
Yeah, exactly. It gives you a reason to stick around.
Having been a guest of Marc's on his podcast twice, do you see any of his interviewer "persona" having an impact on the person you film on screen? Does training himself to listen and be present have any effect on making him a better screen partner?
Absolutely! The first time I directed Marc was on his TV show Maron, and I was so fascinated by his process. He's raw and a really natural actor. He steps in front of the camera, and he's looking at his scene partner and really knows how to listen and engage. A lot of that comes from sitting across from people and staring into their eyes. That's why he's such a good interviewer and has the top interview podcast, because he has a genuine conversation with people. And that's all acting really is too. He also has this weird ability to let the camera and crew and other extraneous details just fade away for him, and a lot of people find all that really distracting and difficult to shut out. He doesn't know where the camera is half the time. He said to me, "The next thing I want to do as an actor is figure out when the camera is on me." I said, "What?! That camera's right there!" He's like, "I don't see it. I'm not aware of it. I'm just in this scene with the person." I'm like, "That is a gift, my friend. That is incredible that you're able to not see the lights and craziness, just be in the scene." He's really able to do it. I think that definitely comes from that same skill set he's drawing on.
Where does the genesis of your films occur? They usually have some kind of strong conceptual selling point or hook, but they're often like a Trojan horse to get to deep conversations between the characters about something else.
It is, and the genesis of the vast majority of my films is an actor as a muse that I want to work with. Humpday was Mark Duplass, Outside In was his brother, Jay Duplass, this movie was Marc Maron, who I've been really wanting to make a movie with for three and a half years. Then there's other things, like a territory I want to explore or an element I want to return to, like improvisation, which I haven't done since Your Sister's Sister. I've done several movies in between that have been scripted, but I wanted to allow myself a new genre. I knew I wanted to laugh because the last movie was a drama, and I was ready to laugh—and let myself really laugh by going into the outlandish and ridiculous, plot-wise. Go into some comedy-caper territory, which I've never let myself do before. I've been totally real in every moment, and this time I was like, "What if I have real characters who go to a crazy place?" I wanted to make a culturally relevant movie that didn't make you want to slit your wrists. It referred to what was going on and some of the problematic elements of what we're dealing with in society. We're having this peak moment in conspiracy theories. They've always been around, but this is definitely where they've achieved a peak moment that I find very disturbing. So, it's usually a territory I want to explore and an actor I want to work with.
How do you research or prepare to authentically treat conspiracy culture?
Well, there's this thing called a computer and a thing called the internet, and boy, is it all in there! [laughs] We went down a rabbit hole with Mike O'Brien, my co-writer. It's so fascinating because there's little in-fighting. They really bonded over Pizzagate and the Twin Towers being an inside job, but then when it comes to hollow earth versus the earth is on fire, they're at odds and frenemies for life. It's insane, the shit you find.
How do you approach shooting improvisational dialogue? There's a very naturalistic feel to it, but there are hardly any vocal fillers like "um" or "you know."
Well, you get the right cast, so that really helps. I'll tell you, you can do a lot in the editing room. You'll see it on screen, there are these runs of incredible monologues. But if I'm cutting away to another actor for a reaction shot, it's often because I'm slicing out an "um" or an "ah" or a little bauble. The edit room is the most redemptive place in the universe. It's incredible what you can do and how you can carve out the right story. Especially with improvisation, it really is where the actual script is written. Our first cut—it didn't feel fat, it was funny throughout—was two and a half hours long. I was like, "How am I going to cut out five to seven minutes, much less an hour?" And for me, a comedy has to be 90 minutes, so I knew I needed an hour out of there. It was like, "This is hysterical, this is gold, but it's not serving the story. Ultimately, what is the story? It could be this, or it could include this, but let's just hone it down to Mel's emotional arc and make sure we can track it through the craziness." We want to care about these people just enough and balance it. There was so much work in the edit room.
Sword of Trust is definitely a comedy, but the scene I found most striking was Mel explaining his history to your character, Deidre, and in such a matter-of-fact, serious fashion, in the back of the truck. Did you always intend to set off this important part of the story with such a stark tonal contrast?
No, it wasn't. When Mike O'Brien really insisted that I be in the movie, I finally relented and thought I was going to be a random customer who came in for five seconds. But then, I realized she could be a device that helps us track Mel's arc. I was really panicking for a long time because I couldn't figure out how to make her funny. I can be comedic, but she wasn't comedic. She was so desperate and tragic. Then I finally realized that I wasn't going to worry about it. I wasn't going to try to turn her into some kind of laughing-stock. I was just going to be what she feels like she needs to be. That was an indication that this movie is going to have that real element of heaviness to it, but it happened really organically. I wanted you to care about these people, but I didn't realize there was going to be that much depth to one of them, so much poignant heart and humanity. That was a nice surprise.
You've described your writing process as being "upside-down," where the script develops alongside the characters. How did you develop this writing style?
I never went to traditional film school. I had this long, circuitous route to get to what I'm doing. I started as a theater actor, then I went to photography and started doing experimental work, but everything as a solo artist. The most important work of the film, making the process of the acting, is obstructed at every turn by the process of making it. You're out of order. In theater, you at least get to play a story from beginning to end and feel it out. You're at scene 35 on the first day and like, "What's happened before this? Where am I emotionally?" And then you've got to do it 40 times with the camera in different positions and act like nobody else is there. The whole thing is so hard, unless you're Meryl Streep! But if you're not working with Meryl Streep, what do you do as a director? I need real people on screen.
My second feature, My Effortless Brilliance, was a total experiment. I came up with these characters in my head and tried to cast them from a pretty small pool of actors. They were nothing like the characters. I realized, "What if you did it the other way? What if you had a person you wanted to work with…" That was where I started with that idea, and all I cared about was to make it feel like a documentary. I wanted you to turn the TV on and be like, "What am I watching? Am I in these people's lives?" And people have said they've had that experience where they'll turn it on in the middle of Showtime and have no idea what they're watching but that it feels like a documentary. Which is like, "Yes! That's what I meant."
And then I honed it with Humpday. Once I knew I could work in that way, I upped the stakes. I'll bring in a few lights. I had said, "No lights! Me and another camera operator with tiny cameras, a boom op, that's it." I eliminated the crew. But that was where I came up with that initial impulse, to make it feel really real. If the character fits the actor like a glove because it's half them or three-quarters them and they've developed it with me…I want real humans.
I actually had that experience of picking up one of your movies and not missing a beat. I was late to my showtime of Your Sister's Sister in the theater, but I didn't feel like I was lost. Then a few years later I watched it at home from the beginning, which helped it make a little more sense. But I felt I had easily intuited what I had missed.
It's funny because I want my movies to feel like you're paratrooping into somebody's life. We're taking a little journey down the river of their life for a while, and then we leave again. I don't like to tie things up too neatly at the end because I want you to get the sense that they're continuing to live their lives, and who knows what's going to happen in the future. But you just sort of paratrooped in a little bit later! [laughs]
On that note, there's a line toward the end of the film where Jillian Bell's character, Cynthia, takes a deep breath and says, "What a strange experience." Is that line improvised or scripted? In a lot of ways, the line feels like it sums up where characters often net out at the end of your films.
That was all improvised! It's all ordinary people going into crazy land, but yeah, ordinary people having weird dramas in their everyday lives. I mean, it can happen. I've heard stories of shit happening to random people that feel like…you couldn't write that shit!
Review: Into the Ashes Brings Nothing New to the Country Noir Genre
Aaron Harvey is prone to pulling back from any moment that might give greater depth to his revenge tale.2
Aaron Harvey's Into the Ashes is the latest in an increasing string of so-called country noirs set in the dilapidated backwoods of rural America, places ravaged by the opioid crisis and populated by jobless people long ago abandoned by politicians. It has little to distinguish itself, narratively or thematically, from similarly dour films, and it lets generic images of its rundown Alabama locale (rusted trucks, cramped houses, landlines in a wireless world) stand in as symbols of national decline without truly seeping into the complex social rot of the place. Its plot, of a reformed criminal forced to contend with his old gang leader over some stolen loot, is similarly superficial, hitting the typical beats of its genre.
Where Into the Ashes gets a boost is in its excellent cast of grizzled character actors, all of whom vibrantly express varying degrees of weariness and rage. Luke Grimes plays the erstwhile ne'er-do-well and ex-con Nick Brenner with the nervousness of a man who's just learning to let go of his past and give in to hope. The man's gruff, taciturn nature is leavened by his tender relationship with his wife, Tara (Marguerite Moreau), and he projects his faith in normalcy onto her. Nick relies so heavily on Tara for his emotional wellbeing that he anxiously calls home while on an overnight hunting trip just so he can hear her voice.
Equally human beneath a hard exterior is Nick's father-in-law, Frank (Robert Taylor), the local sheriff whose intimidating Tom Waits-esque voice and stiff demeanor belie his fumbling, masculine attempts to welcome Nick into his family. Strongest of all, though, is Frank Grillo as Sloan, Nick's recently paroled and vengeful boss. Grillo is at home playing big-fish-in-small-pond villains, and the actor makes the most of Sloan's thin characterization, exuding psychopathic menace when Sloan confronts Nick in the latter's home, drawing out every oblique threat as he circles the subject of the money that Nick stole from the crew's last job before Sloan was sent to prison. Grillo expertly inflects even the silliest moments of sub-Tarantino dialogue with a disarming venom, such as an extended riff on pie and ice cream.
But if the actors are primed to explore the contours around a basic premise, Henry constantly pulls back from any moment that might give greater depth to his revenge tale. Women exist to be supportive and to become victims, while character-driven conversations between Nick and Frank devolve into asinine ethics debates over justifiable violence. Worst of all, there's just no sense that the film is saying or revealing much of anything. There's one moment where Into the Ashes achieves a touch of bleak grace akin to the work of Cormac McCarthy by skipping over the events leading to a shootout and focusing only on its grisly aftermath: bodies strewn about in puddles of blood that look like reflective pools of black ice in the pale moonlight. Then, not five minutes later, we get a flashback showing the lead-up to that carnage. As with so much else in the film, a haunting moment of elision is negated by literal representation.
Cast: Luke Grimes, Frank Grillo, Marguerite Moreau, James Badge Dale, Robert Taylor, Brady Smith, Jeff Pope, Andrea Frankle Director: Aaron Harvey Screenwriter: Aaron Harvey Distributor: RLJE Films Running Time: 97 min Rating: NR Year: 2019
Review: Stéphane Brizé's At War Is Politically Charged but Artistically Inert
The film is content to bluntly affirm that corporate attempts at compassion are always secondary to providing profit to shareholders.2
Seven months after the first flare-up of France's Gilets Jaunes, the nascent populist movement shows no signs of ceasing. Combined with the country's ongoing Telecom scandal, in which several executives have been charged with "moral harassment" after 35 workers were allegedly hounded into committing suicide, it's evident that what's simmering there is an extension of the same unease escalating around much of Europe, and the world at large. It's a state of affairs that makes At War seem especially of the moment, and which leaves its eventual failure to offer any special insight so disappointing. Provided with a prime opportunity to animate the zeitgeist, Stéphane Brizé's labor-focused drama instead uses this timeliness to prod along the most obvious of points, its nuts-and-bolts, process-oriented approach never amounting to more than a surface look at the issues it purports to confront.
The film in some ways functions as an unofficial prelude to Brizé's prior The Measure of a Man, in which an unemployed machinist played by Vincent Lindon finds a new career as a hyper-market security guard, where he's eventually forced to choose between serving as a traitorous management lackey and losing his job. Here, Lindon's Laurent Amédéo is still in possession of his original occupation, though things are hanging by a thread, as a last-ditch organizing effort attempts to halt the closure of a manufacturing plant in Agen. Surrounded by a cast of convincing non-professionals, Laurent leads the picket line, refusing to waver from the straight and narrow, an intense figure of principle whose scruples are never in doubt.
At War is largely notable for its steadfast devotion to a kind of mechanistic aesthetic, which unfortunately lines up with its cheerless didacticism, the two qualities cohering in a scene-by-scene summation of a strike action that repeatedly hammers home the same general points. The scenes themselves evince heft, fluidity, and an impressive sense of improvisation, but the staging is static and the eventual outcome is always clear. The game is given away by Lindon's stoic face and the gradual unraveling of the plot, which envisions internal disintegration—leveraged by outside pressure—as the insidious method by which solidarity is smashed. Despite some genuine drama in this dissolution, it's always clear who's right and who's wrong, which material interests each is representing, and who's lying and who's telling the truth.
This didn't have to be the case, as proven by David France's procedure-focused documentary How to Survive a Plague, which balanced a similarly diagrammatic narrative with extensive character detail, expanding the stakes while affixing a deeper subtext about the ways the victory of a marginalized group eventually diminishes its radical standing. Intent on emphasizing the connections between callous corporate greed and populist unrest, Brizé's film is bluntly focused on the bottom line. There's a certain dramatic function to this technique, as it examines the individual human actions that allow such interests to put their will into practice, but it doesn't justify the flat, exhortative style of address.
As another example of how well this kind of economic criticism can be carried off, there are the dazzling docu-essays of German filmmaker Harun Farocki, who routinely found surprising intricacies in the cold façade of modern capitalism, while offering empathetic alignment with workers as a matter of course. At War, on the other hand, merely summarizes what its audience already knows, affirming that corporate attempts at compassion are always secondary to providing profit to shareholders, and that genuine humanity and integrity are liabilities when confronting such an unfeeling monolith. Like Ken Loach's recent Palme d'Or winner I, Daniel Blake, it's a film whose political principles are hard to disagree with, yet which leans so heavily on this moral certitude as to render itself entirely inert.
Cast: Vincent Lindon, Melanie Rover, Jacques Borderie, David Rey, Olivier Lemaire Director: Stéphane Brizé Screenwriter: Stéphane Brizé, Olivier Gorce Distributor: Cinema Libre Studio Running Time: 115 min Rating: NR Year: 2019
Review: Bottom of the 9th Strikes Out with Too Much Plot Incident
Raymond De Felitta's film offers a sampler course of formulas, which creates a strangely unfulfilling tension.1.5
Raymond De Felitta's Bottom of the 9th offers a sampler course of formulas, which creates a strangely unfulfilling tension. Just when you expect the film to go in a certain direction, it goes in another, only for it to again switch routes, though there's never a sense of expectations being deliberately challenged or tweaked. Rather, the filmmakers merely seem to be indulging a variety of passing fancies, which is a shame because the actors here are game and occasionally imbue the shopworn scenes with liveliness.
Sonny Stano (Joe Manganiello) is the perfect hero for either a noir or a redemptive sports film, a man approaching middle age who just served a 19-year sentence for manslaughter. Famous in his Bronx neighborhood for being drafted by the Yankees, only to flush his life down the toilet, Sonny is attempting to patch his life together while doing a perpetual apology tour on behalf of friends and strangers alike. He's initially hired by an old friend, Joey (James Madio), to work in a fish market that seems to be a front for something. Joey has a cagey energy, and this narrative isn't without intrigue, but De Felitta and screenwriter Robert Bruzio unceremoniously lose sight of it in succumbing to a number of clichés.
Of course, Sonny is revealed to have a woman who got away, Angela (Sofia Vergara), who one day runs into her old beau at a market. They clearly have chemistry, as do the actors playing them, but their dialogue is composed of nothing but redemptive platitudes. In these scenes, Manganiello and Vergara are stuck in a worst-of-all-worlds situation. Their characters are relentlessly mousey, which is appropriate to the awkward context of Sonny and Angela's reunion, but which also robs these sexy actors of the opportunity to enjoy playing off one another. Meanwhile, said mousiness isn't poignant either, as the characters haven't been imagined beyond the respective stereotypes of the fallen man and jilted woman.
Bottom of the 9th then flirts with a narrative similar to that of Bull Durham and Major League, in which Sonny is hired by a local minor league ball team to rein in the fiery, egotistical talents of a rookie named Manny (Xavier Scott Evans). Evans is ferociously charismatic, suggesting a young Wesley Snipes and giving Manganiello a kinetic vibe to play off of, and so the film finally begins to come to life, with great character actors like Michael Rispoli and Burt Young riffing on the sidelines. However, this conceit is also left hanging, as the film shifts into a story of the unlikely comeback, with Sonny's own talents taking center ring.
De Felitta might've gotten by with these contrivances if he were a natural showman, but the filmmaker displays little interest in the Bronx setting in which his characters live, or in rendering their experiences in a fashion that refutes screenwriterly index-card portraiture. For instance, a prison flashback in which Sonny gets into a fight during a ball game is reduced to trite and melodramatic close-ups, while much of the remainder of the film is composed of medium shots designed to accentuate only the largely uninteresting dialogue. There's truly nothing in Bottom of the 9th but plot incident, and the leisurely, impersonal one-thing-after-another-ness of the film's construction is stifling.
Cast: Joe Manganiello, Sofía Vergara, Denis O'Hare, Burt Young, James Madio, Yancey Arias, Michael Rispoli, Vincent Pastore, Dominik García-Lorido, Michael Maize, Kevin William Paul Director: Raymond De Felitta Screenwriter: Robert Bruzio Distributor: Saban Films Running Time: 111 min Rating: R Year: 2019
Review: Crawl Is Fun and Economical but Lacks Go-for-Broke Inventiveness
The film is more straight-faced than Alexandre Aja's prior work, trading absurd kills for narrow escapes from gaping alligator jaws.2.5
Unlike the giddily crass Piranha 3D, Alexandre Aja's Crawl is a quiet beast of a film. It's built not on a foundation of over-the-top gore, but on a series of escalations. As a hurricane barrels toward Florida, ace swimmer Haley (Kaya Scodelario) becomes worried after her father, Dave (Barry Pepper), doesn't return her phone calls. She travels to her old family home and finds him unconscious in the house's flooded crawl space, with large alligators swimming in the water.
Early on, the camera often lingers on the deceptive stillness of the rising water for maximum suspense. Haley and her father are trapped in the house with no more than the tools they can find or already have on hand, MacGyvering their very survival out of shovels, flashlights, and flares. The best parts of the film slyly set up those tools and other objects, including a swing set and a rat trap, only to bring them back at some later, climactic moment.
If Crawl, then, is an easily digestible piece of workmanlike thrills, its only real bit of gristle is its po-faced father-daughter bonding. Haley and Dave are somewhat estranged; the family home was meant to have been sold off after Dave's recent divorce from Haley's mother; and flashbacks to childhood swim meets show father and daughter tempting fate with flagrantly ironic use of the term "apex predator." In the face of certain death, they cobble their relationship back together through Hallmark-card platitudes while sentimental music plays on the film's soundtrack. It's the absolute thinnest of familial drama, and it will do little to redirect your emotional investment away from the survival of the family dog.
Between these family moments, of course, the flood waters run red as people get got by gators. Aja is prone to lingering in prolonged closeup on things like a protruding bone being shoved back into place, but he otherwise seems to have gotten the most inspired bits of underwater violence out of his system with Piranha 3D. Crawl is more straight-faced than his prior work, trading absurd kills for narrow escapes from gaping alligator jaws. And while these moments are suspenseful, with nail-biting scrapes involving a handgun, some loose pipes, and one particularly clever shower-door maneuver, there's precious little of the go-for-broke invention or outrageousness that might have made the film more than a fun and economical thriller.
Cast: Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper, Ross Anderson, Morfydd Clark Director: Alexandre Aja Screenwriter: Michael Rasmussen, Shawn Rasmussen Distributor: Paramount Pictures Running Time: 87 min Rating: R Year: 2019
Review: The Farewell Thoughtfully Braids the Somber and the Absurd
The film taps into universal truths about the passage of time, the inevitability of loss, and how we prepare one another for it.3.5
In the opening scene of writer-director Lulu Wang's The Farewell, a Chinese grandmother (Zhao Shuzhen), affectionately referred to as Nai Nai by her family, and her Chinese-American granddaughter, Billi (Awkwafina), have a warm, affectionate phone conversation in which each woman incessantly lies to the other. A professionally adrift, financially bereft millennial whose writing ambitions have come to naught, Billi lets her grandmother believe her life is busy and full of social engagements; for her part, Nai Nai insists that she's at her sister's house, rather than in a drably decorated doctor's office. Wang frames Nai Nai against the kitschy, oversized picture of a lagoon that hangs on the wall, as if to emphasize the flimsiness of the illusions the pair is painting for one another.
The sequence calls to mind the advantage of audio-only phone calls: for allowing us to more easily maintain the falsehoods that comprise a not insignificant portion of our relationships. Given that minor mistruths prop up our most basic social connections, Wang focuses The Farewell on the moral quandary of whether a big lie—specifically, culturally contingent situations—might actually be an expression of genuine love. The film takes up the question with a tone of melancholic drollery, a sense of irony that doesn't lose touch with the human feelings at its core. The Farewell is "based on an actual lie," evidently an episode from Wang's life, and its careful mixture of the somber and the absurd rings true to life.
As it turns out, Nai Nai has terminal lung cancer, but Billi's father's family elects to lie to the woman about her MRI results, an action that's evidently within the bounds of Chinese law. But as Billi's assimilated immigrant father, Haiyan (Tzi Ma), points out to his brother, Haibin (Jiang Yongbo), during a crisis of conscience, such a thing is both frowned upon in America and prosecutable. Struggling even more with the decision, of course, is the more Americanized Billi, who can't reconcile her Western notions of love and the sanctity of the individual with the widespread practice of lying to family members about their impending deaths.
To create a cover for a family visit to Beijing, the family forces Billi's cousin, Hao Hao (Chen Hanwei), who lives in Japan, to marry his girlfriend, Aiko (Aoi Mizuhara), of three months. This plan provides plenty of fodder for Wang's dry humor, as the family attempts to maintain the veneer of celebration while also bidding farewell to their ostensibly clueless matriarch, who's confused by Hao Hao and Aiko's lack of affection and the generally dour mood that predominates in the lead-up to the wedding. It's potential material for a farce, but even in its funny moments, Wang's film is contemplative rather than frenetic, preferring to hold shots as her characters gradually, often comically adjust to the reality that Nai Nai will soon be gone.
Awkwafina, hitherto notable mostly for her comic supporting roles, gives a revelatory lead performance as Billi, the thirtysomething prone to bouts of adolescent sullenness. Perhaps playing a Bushwick-based, first-generation-American creative type isn't much of a stretch for the Queens-born rapper/actress, but she immediately brings to the role the depth of lived experience: We believe from the first frames in the long-distance love between Billi and her grandmother, and the existential crisis the young woman feels as she negotiates two cultures' differing approaches to death and disease. In taking us to Beijing through Billi's eyes, which are often blinking back tears as she says goodbye without articulating "goodbye," The Farewell's morose but not hopeless comedy taps into universal truths about the passage of time, the inevitability of loss, and how we prepare one another for it.
Cast: Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Zhao Shuzhen, Lu Hong, Jiang Yongbo, Chen Hanwei Director: Lulu Wang Screenwriter: Lulu Wang Distributor: A24 Running Time: 98 min Rating: PG Year: 2018
Review: The Lion King Remake Finds Its Place in the Circle of Consumption
This ostentatiously expensive remake is reliant on our memory of the original to accentuate every significant moment.1
It's somewhat paradoxical to critique Disney's recent series of "live-action" remakes for precisely repeating the narratives, emotional cues, shot sequences, and soundscapes of their earlier animated versions. More than young children, who might well be content watching the story in vibrant 2D, it's the parents who are the target audience of this new take on The Lion King, which aims to light up adults' nostalgia neurons. In this sense, Jon Favreau's film achieves its goals, running through a text beloved by an entire generation almost line for line, and shot for shot—with some scenes extended to reach the two hours seemingly required of Hollywood tentpoles. Throughout, though, one gets the impression that there's something very cheap at the core of this overtly, ostentatiously expensive film, reliant as it is on our memory of the original to accentuate every significant moment.
The new film differs from its source in simulating a realistic African savannah and wildlife through digital animation and compositing, but it doesn't provide anything resembling a genuinely new idea, visually or dramatically. Favreau meticulously recreates the framing and montage of 1994's The Lion King as he runs through the unaltered storyline. The young lion prince Simba (voiced as a cub by JD McCrary and as a grown lion by Donald Glover) witnesses his father Mufasa's (James Earl Jones) seemingly accidental death by stampede. Unknown to Simba, his uncle, Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor), murdered his own brother, but the jealous would-be heir manipulates the rambunctious young lion into accepting the blame for his father's death. In self-exile, Simba represses his guilt by adopting the carefree philosophy of meercat Timon (Billy Eichner) and warthog Pumbaa (Seth Rogen), until his long-lost betrothed, Nala (Beyoncé Knowles-Carter), happens across him and convinces him to return to reclaim his throne.
The film's world, as conceived by Favreau's camera and an army of CG animators, is far less expressive than the one Disney's original artists created in 1994. Tied to the idea of recompositing a reality, the filmmakers take less license in making the elephant graveyard where malicious hyenas Shenzi (Florence Kasumba), Azizi (Eric André), and Kamari (Keegan-Michael Key) live a fantastical, nightmarish terrain, and they constrain the choreography of the animals during Simba's performance of "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" to the bounds of actual animal physiology. Such musical sequences suffer under the regime of realism: Scar's villainous exposition song, "Be Prepared," appears in a truncated version spoken more than sung by Ejiofor, effectively robbing the original song of its devious exuberance.
The characters' faces are also less pliable, less anthropomorphized—their demeanor harder to read—than in the traditional animation format of the original film. This isn't necessarily a hindrance to crafting an affecting story (see Chris Noonan's Babe), but the closeness with which Favreau hews to the original film means that the moments crafted for the earlier medium don't quite land in this one. Scar isn't nearly so menacing when he's simply a gaunt lion with a scar, and Nala and Simba's reunion isn't as meaningful when their features can't soften in humanlike fashion when they recognize each other. The Lion King invites—indeed, attempts to feed off of—reference to the original but consistently pales in comparison.
There's another important difference one feels lurking in the margins of this film. The attitude of the first Lion King toward nature approached something like deference. The original film isn't flawless: In its depiction of a patrilineal kingdom being saved from a usurper and his army of lazy serfs by the rightful heir, it questionably projected human politics into a nonhuman world. But it was an ambitious project by the then comparatively modest Walt Disney Studios to craft an expressive, living portrait of the animal kingdom. In contrast, there's a hubristic quality to this CG-infused remake, as if Disney is demonstrating that its digitally fabricated imagery can fully capture the reality of a healthy, autonomous animal world—at a historical moment when that world is in danger of being totally snuffed out by the human race's endless cycles of production and reproduction. The subject of this tiresome retread is ultimately less the "circle of life" and more the circle of consumption.
Cast: Donald Glover, James Earl Jones, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alfre Woodard, Billy Eichner, Seth Rogen, Keegan-Michael Key, Eric André, John Kani, JD McCrary, John Oliver Director: Jon Favreau Screenwriter: Jeff Nathanson, Brenda Chapman Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Running Time: 118 min Rating: PG Year: 2019 Buy: Soundtrack
Review: Rojo Is a Chilly Allegory for the Distance Between Classes
It masterfully sustains a sense of "wrongness" that will be felt even by those unfamiliar with Argentina's history.3
With Rojo, writer-director Benjamín Naishtat conjures a haunting aura of debauched boredom, evoking a climate in which something vast yet barely acknowledged is happening under the characters' noses. Though the film is set in Argentina in 1975, on the cusp of a coup and at the height of the Dirty War, when U.S.-backed far-right military groups were kidnapping, torturing, and killing perceived liberal threats, these events are never explicitly mentioned. Instead, the characters do what people choosing to ignore atrocity always have, talking around uncomfortable subjects and focusing on the mundane textures of their lives. Meanwhile, Naishtat expresses Argentina's turmoil via symbols and sequences in which aggression erupts out of seemingly nowhere, actualizing the tension that's hidden in plain sight. Throughout the film, Naishtat masterfully sustains a sense of "wrongness" that will be felt even by audiences who're unfamiliar with Argentina's history.
The film opens with a home being emptied of its belongings—an image that will come to scan as a metaphor for a country that's "cleaning house." Naishtat then springs an odd and creepy encounter between a famous attorney, Claudio (Darío Grandinetti), and a man who will eventually come to be known as "the hippie" (Diego Cremonesi). Claudio is sitting at a stylish restaurant minding his own business and waiting for his wife, Susana (Andrea Frigerio), when the hippie storms in and demands that Claudio give up his table. The hippie reasons that he's ready to eat now, while Claudio is inhabiting unused space. Claudio gives up the table and proceeds, with his unexpected civility in the face of the hippie's hostility, to humiliate this interloper. And this scene reflects how skillful Naishtat is at tying us in knots: In the moment, Claudio is the sympathetic party, but this confrontation becomes a parable of how people like the hippie are being pushed out—"disappeared"—by a country riven with political divisions.
Tensions between Claudio and the hippie escalate, and the hippie eventually shoots himself in the face with a pistol. Rather than taking the man to the hospital, Claudio drives him out to the desert, leaving his body there and allowing him to die. What's shocking here is the matter-of-fact-ness of Claudio's actions; based on his demeanor, Claudio might as well be carrying trash out to the dump, and he moves on with his life, returning to work and basking in the adulation that his profession has granted him. In a conventional thriller, this moral trespass would be the driving motor of the film, yet Naishtat drops the incident with the hippie for the majority of Rojo's running time, following Claudio as he networks and engages in other scams.
Naishtat emulates, without editorializing, the casualness of his characters, and so Rojo is most disturbing for so convincingly suggesting idealism to be dead—with gritty brownish cinematography that further suggests a sensorial muddying. With little-to-no sense of stability, of faith in a social compass, the characters here often emphasize what should be trivial happenings. Susana's decision to drink water at a gathering, rather than coffee or tea, becomes a kind of proxy gesture for the resistance that her and her social class are failing to show elsewhere, while a comic disappearance during a magic show macabrely mirrors the government's killing and kidnapping of dissidents. Rojo's centerpiece, however, is an eclipse that engulfs a beach in the color red, as Susana wanders a wooded area lost while Claudio, lacking sunglasses, blocks his eyes. The color red is also associated with communism, of course, as if the targets of this regime are demanding to be recognized.
Rojo eventually reprises the hippie narrative, as a famed Chilean detective, Sinclair (Alfredo Castro), comes hounding Claudio for answers, yet this development is soon revealed to be an elaborate fake-out. Out in the desert, one's primed to expect the ruthlessly intelligent Sinclair to provide the wandering narrative a catharsis by forcing Claudio to take responsibility for something. But these men, both wealthy and respected, are of the same ilk. Though they're each bound by routine and pretense, the death of lower classes means equally little to both of them. At this point, it's clear that Rojo is less a thriller than a brutally chilly satire, concerning men who have the privilege, like other people who haven't been deemed expendable by their government, to playact, offering ceremonial outrage that gratifies their egos while allowing a diseased society that benefits them to carry on with business as usual.
Cast: Darío Grandinetti, Andrea Frigerio, Alfredo Castro, Laura Grandinetti, Rafael Federman, Mara Bestelli, Claudio Martínez Bel, Abel Ledesma, Raymond E. Lee Director: Benjamín Naishtat Screenwriter: Benjamín Naishtat Distributor: Distrib Films Running Time: 109 min Rating: NR Year: 2018
Review: The Lion King Remake Finds Its Place in the Circle of Consumption
Review: Thom Yorke's Anima Finds the Singer Raging Against the Apocalypse
Interview: Paul Tremblay on Growing Things and the Hope of Horror Fiction
Review: Banks's III Comes on Strong but Falls Short of Pushing the Limits
Review: Crawl Is Fun and Economical but Lacks Go-for-Broke Inventiveness
American Demons: Martin Bell's Streetwise and Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell
Review: Radu Jude's I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians
Interview: Lynn Shelton on Honing Her Process for Sword of Trust
Review: Thom Yorke's Anima Finds the Singer Raging Against the Apocalypse
Review: Into the Ashes Brings Nothing New to the Country Noir Genre
- Film6 days ago
Review: The Lion King Remake Finds Its Place in the Circle of Consumption
- Music3 days ago
Review: Thom Yorke's Anima Finds the Singer Raging Against the Apocalypse
- Books6 days ago
Interview: Paul Tremblay on Growing Things and the Hope of Horror Fiction
- Music3 days ago
Review: Banks's III Comes on Strong but Falls Short of Pushing the Limits


text:
- SpecsConvert Specs to MetricWidth16.54 "Length18.11 "
- Product Overview
Model DYC70
Size 4642
Width(w) 460
Length(L) 420
Height(H) 58
Net Weight(kg) 88
Poles 20
- About Company
Zhejiang Lishuai Magnetic Co., Ltd. is a high-tech manufacturing enterprise, producing magnetic lifting tools with high starting point and profound industrial foundation. In our product development, we also have qualified staff to absorb the world's advanced technology. At the same time we are still continuing to absorb world-latest useful information and set up the scientific and complete products recearch and development system. We are specialized in producing Permanent Magnet Lifter (also called Permanent Magnet Loading Equipment, Permanent Magnetic Chuck) ,Automatic Permanent Magnet lifter, pemanent magnet electric sucker, powerful permanent magnet sucker,multifuctional permanent magnet worktable,permanent magnet rotary worktable and permanent magnet worktable.We have set up advanced quality-control system to make sure the high quality of every product. We are the leader in magnetic equipment industry. We have set up the enterprise aim of "Making the World-top Magnetic lifting equipment". With our belief of "Honest, Pragmatic and Mutual", we are dedicated to establishing the brand effect "Lishuai". Lishuai is always your partner.

subset: commoncrawl


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Cylindrical CNT MOSFET Simulator
Simulate 2-D electrons transport in CNTFET
Version 0.9.6 - published on 15 Aug 2014
doi:10.4231/D39C6S20D cite this
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Ballistic transport in carbon nanotube metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (CNT-MOSFETs) is simulated using the Non-equilibrium Green's function formalism. A cylindrical transistor geometry with wrapped-around gate and doped source/drain regions are assumed. It should be noted that this code does NOT treat Schottky-barrier CNTFETs. Additional information on the device geometry and the simulation procedure is described in [1]. The code can readily simulate band-to-band tunneling in CNT-MOSFETs, as well as p-i-n type device architectures, by appropriately modifying the source/drain doping conditions [2,3]. This abstract is taken from the original one from the original MOSCNT MATLAB code
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Copyright of all codes contained in this archive by Purdue Research Foundation, 2003. See attached license which governs distribution, copying and modification.
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Intellect Automation partners provide quality products globally. Currently Intellect Automation partners with following companies.
Forbes Marshall is a leader in process efficiency and energy conservation for Process Industry, with over seven decades of experience building steam engineering and control instrumentation solutions. Our unique complementary expertise enables us to engineer customised systems that improve manufacturing processes, conserve energy and are environmentally sustainable. We offer our customers a comprehensive range of services, products and solutions for utilities and process control. We are present in over 50 locations globally, with 5 manufacturing facilities. Our knowledge, innovative solutions, reliable products and global presence make us a trusted partner.


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Hope College staff members were recognized for service during the college's annual service award luncheon, held on Friday, Feb. 19, at the Haworth Inn and ConferenceCenter.
Hope College staff members were recognized for service during the college's annual service award luncheon, held on Friday, Feb. 19, at the Haworth Inn and ConferenceCenter.
° Honored as retirees were Barb Albers, education, 13 years of service; Gerald Rademaker, physical plant, 15 years of service; Merrie Bannink, registrar's office, 22 years of service; Lois Roelofs, geological and environmental sciences, 24 years of service; and Gordon A. Borg, physical plant, 30 years of service.
° Recognized for 40 years of service was Jon J. Huisken, registrar's office.
° Honored for 35 years of service was Phyllis K. Hooyman, financial aid.
° Recognized for 30 years of service were Timothy W. Dys, physical plant; Alfredo Gonzales, multicultural education and international education; Christine Nelson, Van Wylen Library; and Cheryl A. Shea, computing and information technology.
° Honored for 25 years of service was Andrea Mireles, Upward Bound.
° Marking 20 years of service were Paul K. Anderson, theatre; Kathleen Arnold, physical plant; Derek Emerson, events and conferences; Richard A. Frost, student development; John B. Gant, transportation; Sally K. Hoekstra, Hope-Geneva Bookstore; Michael P. Lafata, campus safety; Khamprasong Lotkhamnga, physical plant; Barbara A. Miller, admissions; Patricia L. O'Brien, Van Wylen Library; Janet C. Pinkham, Academic Support Center; Pamela J. Valkema, religion; Kathy A. Waterstone, music; and Jan Zessin, Van Wylen Library.
° Fifteen-year honorees were Paul H. Boersma, campus ministries; Susan Beth Carlson, DeWitt Tennis Center; Patricia L. Gosselar, DeWitt Tennis Center; Kristen Gray, counseling; Debra Kay Hardy, physical plant; Linda Koetje, communication; Todd M. Lynema, campus safety; Michael F. McCluskey, physical plant; Deborah J. Nykamp, advancement services; Carol A. Ray, health services; Kimberly L. Salisbury, college advancement; Cheryl L. Smith, health services; and Randall Vereeke, physical plant.
° Honored for 10 years of service were Robert L. Bos, mail room; James E. Bultman, president; Fred Cronberg, physical plant; Marlene B. Field, dean for the natural and applied sciences office; Wilma J. Hart, student development; John R. Hoyer, Van Wylen Library; Gregory C. Kern, admissions; Lisa M. Lampen, Academic Support Center; Amy E. Otis-DeGrau, international education; Heather L. Roden, events and conferences; Cindy L. Sabo, health services; and Steven M. Scholl, campus safety.
° Marking five years of service were Paul Chamness, campus ministries; Krista M. Deur, human resources; Sharon K. Dreyer, physical plant; John J. Dykstra, Van Wylen Library; Daphne P. Fairbanks, Van Wylen Library; Eric K. Foster, college advancement; Lisa Frissora, education; William C. Large, physical plant; Edward Serrano, physical plant; Cathy L. Stoel, mathematics; Trudi A. VanderPloeg, career services; and Hector Zuniga, physical plant.


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Boards & Commissions
Urban Design Committee Agenda
Urban Design Committee
Notice is hereby given that the Urban Design Committee will hold a meeting on Wednesday, August 14, 2013 at 3:00 p.m. in the County-City Building, 555 S. 10th Street, Lincoln, Nebraska, in Room 214 on the 2nd Floor. For more information, please contact the Lincoln City/Lancaster County Planning Department at 402-441-7491.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
- Adoption of meeting records from the UDC meeting of June 12, 2013, July 10, 2013, and from the joint UDC/HPC meeting of July 18, 2013.
- Fence replacement/upgrade, 11th & N St. bus stop (StarTran).
- LES Substation screening, 8th & N St. substation (Clark Enersen for LES).
- Public gardens maintenance building, Antelope Park (south of WaterPark/former A St. Light & Water Building).
- Staff report/miscellaneous.


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An anonymous Ukranian buyer purchased the most expensive apartment in the United Kingdom in 2007, paying $221 million in cash through an offshore trust to buy the penthouse of the One Hyde Park apartment complex. What does $221 million get you?
Well: In this case, three whole floors in One Hyde Park, which was completed this past January. Plus the building's many amenities, including a "dedicated team of 60 Mandarin Oriental hotel trained staff," a "private cinema" and bulletproof windows. (Because what's the point of being rich if you can't be paranoid?) The building is also made from "15 different types of stone," if that's the kind of thing that gets you going. Anyway: If you want one of these flats, you'd better act now, as most of them have apparently been sold.
Here are some images and a floorplan of a "typical five bedroom"
[Telegraph; images via The Real Estalker]


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Billy Joel and Elton John still haven't spoken since the John went public about Joel's drinking problems and urged him to take rehab seriously the next time during a 2011 interview.
The Brit has been trying to mend his 30-year friendship with Joel after making the remarks, and he revealed last year that the only contact he has had with Joel is an angry letter, chiding him for making his thoughts public in a Rolling Stone magazine article.
And now Joel admits he still hasn't spoken to the new dad, but accepts his old friend's heart was "in the right place" when he made the comments.
Joel tells the same publication, "We haven't spoken, and I don't know why. Elton doesn't really know me that well. We toured together for 16 years and never really hung out.
"Elton assumes a lot about me that he doesn't really know. If he thought I was screwing up or doing something bad, I don't know why he didn't just call me. I wasn't as mad as I was disappointed."


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If there's one person I love to pamper, it's my mom. I love making her feel special and beautiful. I only hope that one day, I have children that share this same philosophy. And I'll have hopefully trained them all to be beauty lovers, too. An army of product girls and boys is what I'm aiming for. If you're looking for some ideas to spoil your mama this holiday season, here are our picks!
- Bobbi Brown Party Collection Mini Brush Set – Moms love Bobbi Brown. I mean, who doesn't, really? Even for the non-makeup maven mama, Bobbi Brown is known as a trusted beauty advisor. This brush set, featuring one of my most-used brushes, the Mini Face Blender, also comes with a gunmetal carrying clutch. $60, BobbiBrown.com
- Kate Somerville Refinery29 Winter Essentials Kit – If there is one thing a mom will appreciate it, it's quality skin care. Plus, this set contains an anti-aging powerhouse (Kate's Clinic-to-Go pads) without the words "anti-aging" blasted over it. Perhaps desired, but not always what you want to overtly gift mom. Through December 24, purchase for $69 at Refinery29 Reserve. (Oh, and we're giving away a kit — enter here by Friday, Dec. 16!)
- Laura Mercier Baked Eye Colour Palette – The soft and feminine shades in this eyeshadow palette have mom written all over it. It's sophisticated and sexy, and even comes with a double-sided brush. $48, Nordstrom
- Kérastase Elixir Ultime – Chances are, your mom color treats her hair. To help minimize heat and styling damage, a hair oil is a necessary luxury. Emphasis on the luxury. What's more pampering than Elixir Ultime, with a blend of four oils that work on all hair types? $54, Birchbox.com
- Fresh Mini Sugar Kissing Trio – Why get one, when you can get three? Fresh packed its three newest Sugar Balms – Sugar Plum, Sugar Honey and Sugar Passion – into a made-for-gifting (and hoarding) set. My mom loves these (like mother, like daughter), but I know she's not likely to splurge on lip balm on her own. I picked this set up for my mother-in-law, and am anticipating she'll be hooked, too. $28, Sephora
- Decleor Nourshing Treasure Trove Set – This set is so beautifully packaged, and contains just what mom needs to feel pampered and hydrated. The trove includes Nutridivine Soft Cream, Aromessence Angelique, Aroma Solutions Lip Balm and Aroma Night Angelique Night Balm. $77, DecleorUSA.com


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9/11/13 Athletics at Twins: Target Field
Yet another game, and it was again time to head to the second game of the Athletics series against the Twins at Target Field:
But sadly this would be the definition of my day:
More or less a conglomeration of semi-facetious sadness. The emotion was being caused here by the fact that my ballhawk friends Tony Voda and Paul Kom were inside early for season ticket holder early BP and I was stuck on the outside for the extent of it. That didn't change my no-custom, though, of going to Gate 3 to actually get in the stadium:
Once I got in, it took me very little time to get Jarrod Parker to toss me a baseball. I then quickly turned and tossed it to one of the kids in the following picture for a reason I don't remember:
(As I write this, the game happened over three weeks ago, so excuse me for not remembering which of the three kids in the picture I gave it away to.) I then had a lull in terms of snagging, but it was ended when I made my way to the right field bleachers. There I got Chris Young to toss me a ball by being the only one to call him by name:
I'll spoil a part of this entry right now: I only got toss-ups this game. That said, I went on a mini-toss-up rampage. First I got A.J. Griffin to toss me a ball over a kid who was in front of me. Because I felt kind of bad for how cruel it must have seemed to see a ball be thrown at him but go over his head, I gave it to him:
Additionally, I told him Jerry Blevins'–since Blevins had seen me get the ball from Griffin but not me give it away–name and told him to ask him for a ball. My hope was that Blevins would overthrow him and I would get the ball. And that's what happened…sort of. Blevins did miss the kid, but it was to his side. If you are not familiar with the right field bleachers at Target Field, they kind of jut out from the wall in right. But that's not what's important here. Do you see the flower pots that outline the box that is the "jut?" Well Blevins missed the kid to our right, so the ball went in the flower pots tot the right side of the "box" of the right field seats. And it then kind of went up the flowers. I ran over, picked the ball out of the flowers, and handed the ball to the kid for my fourth ball of the day:
I then figured I had exhausted my toss-up opportunities in right, so I headed to the right-center field seats. This was the best thing I could have done. As I got there, Ariel Prieto–a person listed on the A's roster as simply "coach"–tossed a ball to a kid that landed a little short. As a result, it landed in the flower pots in front of him. As this happened, I told the kid that I would get the ball for him. So as Prieto watched, I pulled the ball out of the flowers and handed it to the boy:
After he saw me do this, Prieto gave me a thumbs-up, and a very promising gesture: the "I'll give you the next one" gesture. Only one problem: as Prieto was trying to get a ball, Chip Hale tossed me a ball:
…or so I thought. Even though Prieto saw me get the ball from Hale, he tossed me the second "thank you for giving tha other one away to that kid" ball:
And that was it for the snagging for me on the day. After BP, though, I was on the second deck, and so I gave a ball to a vendor who I had promised one if I got more than a couple. I don't know which one it was exactly, but here it is:
After which, I talked to an usher by that concession stand. And after talking to him for a while and learning that he is an usher for not only the Twins, but Gopher football and basketball games, I also gave him a ball. Basically, if you haven't been keeping track, out of the seven balls I snagged, I gave away six.
I then headed down to the dugout to reunite with Tony and Paul, both of whom had been doing very well to that point (seven and eight balls snagged respectively) due to their early admission into the ballpark. They had both never snagged double digits, so I just stepped back while an A's coach that they identified as Casey Chavez cleared the baseballs out of the bullpen. My hope was Chavez would overthrow one, but I was also perfectly content with my seven baseballs I had snagged to that point. Fortunately for Tony and Paul, Chavez didn't throw any up, and they both got one step closer to their first ever double-digits games. I don't know where Tony wandered off to, but I did manage to get this picture of Paul just before he left to go to the dugout and secure his first ever ten-ball performance:
And that's when the game (read: frustration) commenced. Since I had and would be going to so many games this week, I had to find somewhere to do my reading for my classes. And since I wanted to go for home runs this game, the flag court seemed like the perfect place:
(For the record, that is a Kinesiology book, but the highlights aren't mine. I always get used books whenever possible and make sure that I get the book in the bookstore with the highest amount of highlighted material that doesn't look completely arbitrarily in case that person actually knew what they were doing in the class and the highlights could actually help me later on.) Well that was my view when the A's catcher Stephen Vogt came up in the fourth inning. The A's had already begun a ridiculous inning, but since Vogt had only hit like three home runs the whole season, I figured I might as well keep reading. And then this happened:
For the record, yes, I was the one in the bright green shirt who just barely missed the ball. As I read a part of my book, I heard the roar of the crowd and then looked up into the air. As I saw a white speck that was clearly headed over my head, I sprinted back as fast as I could. I then turned around right before I knew the ball was going to bounce, but it was three feet over my head and a bit to my left. So then, my only hope was it would bounce off the gate and back to me. But as I turned my head to the gate, there was a guy who was randomly right where the ball was bouncing to. My only hope was that he would drop the ball, but he didn't.
That particular homer upset me, because I picked the ball up when it was almost at its apex. Had I started running as soon as it was hit, I could have had a ten foot head start and almost definitely could have turned around and caught the ball on the fly. I will say this, though: the homer was an absolute blast. I think it's the furthest I've seen a ball hit on the fly during a game in person out there. That home run also capped off a ten-run fourth inning for the A's which left the game at 13-1 going into the fifth inning.
Which brings up the next disappointment. I'll say only two thing about this next clip. 1. I was completely prepared for this ball. 2. I don't think I misplayed it at all, since it was hit at the same angle as the Vogt home run:
And with that, my day of "excitement" ended.
Oh, but wait…it didn't. The Twins always have *some* group sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." But when there's no group lined up, they often just ask people in the flag court if they want to be a part of that. Well since I was already out there, I went ahead and joined in the group:
But since it was September 11th, there was a big deal made of the singing of God Bless America. So big, in fact, that my friend Nick Badders saw me on TV all the way from the Bay Area in California:
Meanwhile, here was my view of the singing of it:
After that, I simply sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and then watched the painful rest of the game.
After the game, I headed to the dugout and managed to get a picture of Tony getting his then-eleventh ball of the game from the dugout attendant, Mario:
And then I just had to capture the magical moment where I was essentially the only person left in the stadium:
Why was I there so late? Because I had to go over to the other side of the stadium where I had entered at Gate 3 because my cup trick had been stopped at the gate by the security guard who checked my bag, citing: "they don't like those here:"
And with that final "snag" of the night (happening a little after 11:00, since the game had gone four hours despite going only nine innings), I headed out to my bus and a much-needed day off from ballhawking.
- 7 Baseballs at this game (1 pictured because I gave the other 6 away)
Numbers 707-713:
- 267 Balls in 57 Games= 4.64 Balls Per Game
- 7 Balls x 24,522 Fans= 171,654 Competition Factor
- 119 straight Games with at least 1 Ball
- 24 straight Games with 2 Balls
- 21 straight Games with 3 Balls
- 13 straight Games with 4 Balls
- 3 straight Games with 5-6 Balls
- 151 Balls in 31 Games at Target Field= 4.87 Balls Per Game
- 29 straight Games with at least 1 Ball at Target Field
- 9 straight Games with at least 2-4 Balls at Target Field
- 3 straight Games with at least 5-6 Balls at Target Field
- Time Spent On Game 3:36-11:57= 8 Hours 21 Minutes


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Judge Nixes Samsung's Request to Ban Apple Devices in Japan
Mar 1, 2013 5:00 AM PT
Apple won a victory over Samsung in a Japanese district court Thursday that will allow it to continue to sell iPads and iPhones in that country.
Samsung tried to block the sale of the Apple devices in Japan because it said they stepped on some data transfer patents that the company owned. Tokyo District Court Judge Ichiro Otaka, however, refused to approve the injunction because Samsung failed to "sincerely" negotiate with Apple to iron out the dispute between the companies.
Apple did not respond to our request to comment for this story.
"We are disappointed by today's court decision," Samsung spokesperson Melissa Zabell told MacNewsWorld. "Following a thorough review of the ruling, we will take the measures necessary to protect our intellectual property rights."
No Damages
Blocking the sale of a product while a patent case is in progress is difficult to do, said Ken Horton, an IP attorney with Kirton McConkie. "It's hard to get a court to agree to that because you have to prove infringement," he told MacNewsWorld.
"Even if you can't get an injunction, you can still get damages if you prove infringement in a trial," he added.
The Tokyo court, though, also ruled that Samsung did not have the right to seek damages from Apple.
Samsung spokesperson Zabell would not comment on whether or not the company will try to appeal the decision. Such an appeal might be weighed in Apple's favor, noted Horton.
"It's always better to win at the lower court," he said. "Most upper courts will give some degree of deference to lower court rulings, because those judges are in the trenches and closer to the case."
Android Onslaught
Apple's victory in the Tokyo court is an important one for the company, as Japan is its second most important market in Asia, and one with room for growth.
"Up to now, this lawsuit hasn't had that much effect on Apple sales," Yankee Group Research Director Carl Howe told MacNewsWorld. "The iPhone was the top selling smartphone in Japan last quarter, which surprised a lot of people."
The iPhone has 30 percent of the smartphone market in Japan, but it's only carried by the second and third-place carriers in the country, according to Michael Morgan, a mobile devices analyst with ABI Research.
"Should NTT Docomo [Japan's largest carrier] pick it up, Apple could take its market share even further," he told MacNewsWorld.
Android is also doing well in Japan, with 68 percent of the market.
"Android is holding its own against even the newest iPhone models," he said. "That technology gap isn't there any more. The ability of the iPhone to steal high-end customers from Android is decreasing every day."
Hiring Judges
Last year, Apple tried to block Samsung's smartphones and tablets from being sold in Japan because they allegedly violated an Apple invention for synchronizing music and video data with servers. The district court ruled against Apple in that case.
Apple was seeking US$100 million in damages from Samsung in that lawsuit.
Apple and Samsung have been battling each other all over the world over intellectual property issues. Apple has been able to top Samsung in most of the cases that have been decided.
A country where Apple stumbled was the UK, where a judge ordered the company to post an apology on its website after losing an IP case against Samsung.
That decision may now seem tainted to some, however, since it was discovered that the judge, Sir Robin Jacob, has been hired by Samsung as an expert in a dispute with Ericsson.


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It dominates any discussion on new soundtracks, and while it's too early to draw conclusions on where this Vishal Bhardwaj offering stands in terms of its lasting appeal and appropriateness to the film it's in, there's no question the lyrics (Gulzar) to it are among the most hopeful we've come across since the last collaborative effort between Bhardwaj and Gulzar, that to Ishqiya (2010). The soundtrack to the upcoming multi-starrer 7 Khoon Maaf -- based on Ruskin Bond's short story, "Susanna's Seven Husbands" -- is a mixed bag of sorts. There isn't one genre of song that stands out as dominant, but trademark Gulzarisms (okay, can I please coin the term already?) are well on display throughout, and make for an irresistible soundtrack.
I'll get to the song that's the subject of this post, but first, a few comments on the rest, with snippets from the lyrics.
"Darling," which appears twice with slightly modified lyrics and tempo, features two of the darlingest vocalists for the kind of song it is. Usha Uthup (brilliant, here) and Rekha Bhardwaj serve up a duet in what reminds me of the kind of song I've heard live during weekend house parties in Bombay and Goa. "Darling, let me lock eyes with you; Stop me not, let me love you," go the base lines. "I'm a mere slave, let me dress the princess," says she in one version. "Darling, let the slave acquire *some* control over her heart," in the other.
"Bekaraan" (Boundless) is a beautifully worded love song, and it's where Bhardwaj's instrumental arrangements shine through. Respect as a product of love is its central theme – "My eyes bow before you" – and that really is the best kind of love, isn't it? "Tell time to let me caress your fleeting glances." As it refers to the boundlessness of the character, it also hints vociferously at being out of control and having a strong desire to retain some of it. It also indirectly alludes to the income demographics of the characters, which are sure to play some part in the film.
The heart starts to attain significant prominence with "O Mama". "My heart only thinks with the heart now; My heart often scratches my head now." For whom, we ask? "A cat-eyed meow-type chick!" K.K., as reliable as he has quietly been for some years now in Bollywood rock, the perfect choice to sing this.
"Awara"( Wanderer) has Master Saleem pulling off some extremely heavy classical vocals that are atypical of film sound. "The branches don't meet, the roots don't hold. What a purposeless season, (like) a dry leaf." The song offers the first hint of serious angst.
Suresh Wadekar sings a beautiful love song that has the ambiance of a Jack Johnson track, seemingly blending casually into the background of any romantic setting, that of a lunch or dinner date, say, with glass separating a couple from the ocean. (Excuse the ridiculousness of these settings, I'm just documenting what my initial impressions are for each of these songs – I could well be way off. But can't you hear the silverware striking glass in the background here? It's perfect for that setting! :D) "Tere Liye" (For you) is subtle but splendid. "For you, I have (wedding) carriages full of sweet moments in my words." Am I a poet then? Regardless, "I" am well written!
"Dil Dil Hai" (The Heart is a Heart) by Suraj Jagan would fit right into Kaminey (2009) or even Dil Se from Dil Se (1996), both with songs written by Gulzar. "Deserving a hundred heavens, it (the heart) is shore to the drowning. The most ignorant of the foolish, the most intelligent of intellectuals."
The angst continues
and ends with the kind of song that, as a stand-alone piece of art, is simply marvelous, no matter that it's oh so full of despair! A prayer for death, perhaps fitting in a film with 'seven murders' in its title. The kind of prayer that's disliked by the deities, yet of no less significance than, say, the self-discovery and self-regulation that would help avoid putting one in a situation of such despair to begin with. (But perhaps I'm getting ahead of things here, crediting the self with more control than we have in actuality.)
"Yeshu" by Rekha Bhardwaj has many bests of the album. Arguably the best vocals. Excellent lyrics. Most definitely the best musical score, with changes in tone and pitch at exactly the right points in time. A quick search of the term Yeshu reveals the historical significance of the word, some of it controversial. Most agree it refers to Jesus Christ. For the purposes of this translation, then, let's use the word 'Savior'. You can see the song could just as well be addressed to any deity of a school of religious thought that advocates for belief in an afterlife. Here are the lyrics and my translation:
|Click to enlarge
Official film website: www.7khoonmaaf.com
A big thank you to Sony Music India for sponsoring this contest. Hope you avail of the chance to win one of these 7 Khoon Maaf CDs. Again, there are several copies of the soundtrack to give away, so have at it!
How to Enter
Again, all you need to do to enter is comment on this post and answer the following question: Which is your favorite soundtrack with lyrics by Gulzar? A list of his works is available at this Wikipedia link. Feel free to discuss why it is your favorite, and any of your favorite Gulzarisms!
Eligibility Requirements
To qualify to win a prize, you must:
- Submit your entry by Tuesday, February 9, at 1:30 p.m. Indian Standard Time.
- Reside in India. Per distributor's rules, contest is open to Indian residents only -- in your comment, please specifically note that you live in India. (I hope those of you outside India participate in the discussions, though. I trust we're always down to comment on Gulzar's songs!)
- "Like" the Sony Music India page on Facebook at facebook.com/sonymusicindia
- Be willing to e-mail me your name and mailing address in the event you are selected as a winner. I will then forward your mailing information to the distributors, who will mail you your prize. Please also see notes on winning and privacy below.
- Winners will be selected judgmentally by me.
- Winners will be announced on Thursday, February 10, in the comments section of this post, in the post above as well, and via a link in the sidebar. Please visit this blog on February 9 to check if you are a winner.
- If you provide your e-mail address or blog/Twitter link in your comment, I shall contact you directly.
- If you do not provide any contact information, and do not respond to a request (via announcement at this blog noted in #3 above) to e-mail me your information by Friday, February 10, at 1:30 p.m. Indian Standard Time, your prize will be forfeited to another contestant. There are no exceptions to this rule.
Please feel free to link to this post and re-tweet if on Twitter.
Good luck, everyone! Let's see how many Gulzarisms we end up with in this discussion!
Notes on Privacy
- I am in no way affiliated with Sony Music India or any Sony Corporation subsidiary or affiliate, or with the film 7 Khoon Maaf and any media partners.
- Should you choose to provide your e-mail address in the comments section for purposes of this contest, it will be available to the public domain.
- If you are selected as a winner and e-mail me your name and address (a requirement to receive your prize), I shall, upon forwarding your information to the distributor, delete your information from my mailbox.
- As the blog's disclaimer in the sidebar suggests, your participation in any activity or communication here, or at sites linked to from here, is entirely voluntary, and absolves me and this blog of any liabilities related to resulting damages, no matter how material.


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Adapted with permission from a work created by Tcat Houser.
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CertiGuide to A+ (Core Hardware) (http://www.CertiGuide.com/aplush/) on CertiGuide.com
Version 1.0 - Version Date: December 6, 2004
Adapted with permission from a work created by Tcat Houser.
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