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The World Is My Block
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
The World Is My Block is on HIATUS - Soon Come!
Posted by Tahirah
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Tahirah - the landlady of the Block - self-proclaimed Amazing One, she often says things like "do you know who I AM??" while riding public transport at obscure hours of the night. You can also find her striking up conversations with random people, singing out-of-tune in public, looking for new tunes to play on radio, writing stories on her BlackBerry, spending not enough time in her university library/reading anything except for coursework books, scribing for The Block & SoulCulture while perfecting the art of styling on a budget.
Blaze Oh My Dayz AKA AJ King - the only Block Resident known by multiple monikers - he's the resident you'll catch doing insanely cool sh*t like jumping from rooftop to rooftop, playing big tunes, making ish happen, plotting to take over the world and perfecting the art of mind control. He is unstoppable.
Lady V - the lady of the manor & the best resident to go to if you need a cup of sugar or the scoop on the latest sneakers/trainers. When she's not on the Block you can find her jumping on the speakers in a drum & bass rave, drooling over the latest Nikes, threatening to sit on John Mayer/Johnny Depp/Jude Law's face, saying things like "yeah, but I'm well fit!" and scribing for Hot 110.
Nee Nee - The youngest resident of the Block, with an unhealthy obsession for UK grime boys, the radio, twitter and sitting on the internet. When she's not on the Block, she's at school refusing to bluetooth her classmates the latest [insert grime artist here] leak, she's on one of her 10 phones talking to the "gyal-dem", following Tahirah around, or she's parring people on her blog Par's Accessories.
Simone - Simone is the resident who'll sit you down with a cup of hot chocolate and educate you on life. Aspiring movie-maker and industry girl, Simone has a passion for films, MJ, 2Pac, Spike Lee, music and culture, a quiet appreciation for Pop&B boys (cue Chris Brown, Bow Wow & the like) and she has an innate skill of tweeting 24-7...even when sleeping.
Bougie - The resident to hit up if you need to figure out how to make a quick dollar - always on a [legal] hustle, you'll find Bougie making phone-calls, editing film pieces and writing out treatments before she's even gotten out of bed to brush her teeth. Repping hard for the Canadian Urban scene, you can also find her supporting dope hip-hop and R&B acts who say "aye" more than Juelz Santana and reference Tim Hortons in their tracks.
BLOCK SHOT: The Block's Top 5 with Melanie Fiona
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Two Pussy Riot members are to make an appearance at a U.S. human rights concert next month.
Amnesty International has confirmed that Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova will appear at an event in Brooklyn, New York on February 5.
The Russian pair spent 16 months in prison after being arrested in March 2012 for singing protest songs in a Moscow cathedral.
They were eventually freed in December, in what the pair described as a publicity stunt.
"A month ago, we were freed from Russian prison camps," Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina said in a joint statement.
"We will never forget what it's like to be in prison after a political conviction. We have vowed to continue helping those who remain behind bars."
It has not been confirmed if they will perform at the concert at the Barclays Center.
The Flaming Lips, Imagine Dragons, Lauryn Hill, and Tegan and Sara are among the event's lineup of acts.
The third Pussy Riot member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was released from jail on appeal in October 2012.
From: Cosmopolitan US

subset: commoncrawl


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Kristen Bell has spoken about how her views on marriage equality have held up her wedding planning with fiance/father of her daughter Dax Shepard. She told the Advocate last year, "The reason we're not rushing to get married is because I don't feel appropriate taking advantage of a right that's denied to my [LGBT] friends. That's why we've been so hesitant."
This morning, after the Supreme Court rulings on the Defense of Marriage Act and Prop. 8, Bell took to Twitter to propose to her Shepard. Here's their exchange:
.@daxshepard1 will you marry me? Xo #marriageequality #loveislove"
— Kristen Bell (@IMKristenBell) June 26, 2013
To which he replied with an eloquent, "F— Yes!!!!!!!!!!!"
And then followed with:
DOMA is dead. Prop 8 is dead. Now let's bring my big, gay marriage to @IMKristenBell to Life!!!!
— dax shepard (@daxshepard1) June 26, 2013


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Please visit our Open House at 104 8560 GENERAL CURRIE RD in Richmond.
Open House on Saturday, September 17, 2016 2:00PM - 4:00PM
Welcome to Queens Gate! This oversized 2 bedroom, 2 bath suite features huge principal rooms and, at 1282 sqft, is one of the largest in the complex. Well appointed with a large kitchen, spacious living room, cozy gas fireplace. The complex is fully rain-screened and features amazing amenities including 4 guest suites, Indoor pool/hot tub, steam room, gym, workshop, pub and library. 55+. OPEN HOUSE 2-4PM SAT SEPT 17, 2016.


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- Health
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Or find a doctor at another Johns Hopkins Medicine Member Hospital:
Phuoc T. Tran, M.D., Ph.D.
Phuoc Tho Tran, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences
Expertise: Adrenal Cancer, Bladder Cancer, Image-Guided Radiation Therapy, Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT), Metastatic Bone Disease, Metastatic Disease, Oligometastatic Disease, Penile Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Radiation Oncology, Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy, Testicular Cancer, Urethral Cancer ...read more
Research Interests: Radiosensitizers; Genetically engineered mouse models of disease; Epithelial Plasticity (Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition and Mesenchymal-Epithelial Transition)
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Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center
401 N. Broadway Baltimore, MD 21231
Phone: 410-614-6477 | Fax: 410-502-2821
The Johns Hopkins Hospital (Main Entrance)
1800 Orleans St. Sheikh Zayed Tower Baltimore, MD 21287
Dr. Phuoc T. Tran is an associate professor of radiation oncology and molecular radiation sciences, oncology and urology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Dr. Tran treats patients with cancers of the genitourinary system and uses stereotactic radiation techniques (such as SRS and SBRT/SABR) for the treatment of patients with oligometastatic disease. His research focuses on the improvement of clinical radiotherapy for the treatment of primarily prostate cancer, but also adrenal, bladder, urethral, testicular and penile cancer as well as patients with oligometastatic disease.
Dr. Tran completed his medical and graduate training at the Oregon Health & Sciences University in Portland. He conducted a residency in radiation oncology at the Stanford University School of Medicine in 2008 where he was an instructor of radiation oncology before then joining the staff of Johns Hopkins.
Dr. Tran has published more than 100 scholarly works in peer-reviewed journals, has received numerous awards for his research, and is a primary investigator on a number of clinical trials. He is a member and holds leadership positions in the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), NRG Oncology and the American Society for Radiology Oncology (ASTRO), and is board certified in radiation oncology by the American Board of Radiology. He is also a senior editor/editorial board member of Cancer Research and the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
- Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences
- Associate Professor of Oncology
- Associate Professor of Urology
Departments / Divisions
Centers & Institutes
- MD PhD, Oregon Health and Sciences University School of Medicine (2003)
- Stanford University School of Medicine / Radiation Oncology (2008)
Board Certifications
- American Board of Radiology / Radiation Oncology (2009)
Research & Publications
Research Summary
Dr. Tran's research focuses on the improvement of clinical radiotherapy for the treatment of primarily prostate, as well as adrenal, bladder, penile, testicular and urethral cancer. To learn how tumors arise, how they spread and why some cancers are resistant to treatment, he studies tumor cell epithelial plasticity - transitions of epithelial and mesenchymal cellular states.
Dr. Tran and his laboratory focus their studies on tumor cell epithelial plasticity - the transitions between epithelial and mesenchymal cellular states and the implications of these transitions for tumorigenesis, cancer treatment resistance and radiation-induced fibrosis. Their research utilizes a variety of inducible transgenic mouse models, non-invasive rodent imaging as well as more tradiational molecular, biochemical and cell biologic approaches. One of these transitions, known as epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), is a conserved developmental program that when inappropriately activated in post-natal life has been associated with organ fibrosis, tumorigenesis and metastasis.
A major focus of the laboratory is the use of inducible mouse models to simulate molecularly targeted therapies for malignancies and radiation induced late effects.
Another focus of the laboratory is the study of novel targeted agents as tumor selective radiosensitizers to increase the therapeutic ratio of clinical radiotherapy.
The Tran lab is committed to translating discoveries from the laboratory bench into novel cancer prevention, diagnostic and treatment approaches that can be tested in the clinic.
Lab Website: The Tran Lab
Technology Expertise Keywordsepithelial plasticity; epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT); genetically engineered mouse models (GEMMs)
Clinical Trial KeywordsProstate cancer, Radiation therapy, Oligometastasis, SBRT/SABR
Clinical Trials
Radiation and Androgen Ablation for Prostate Cancer
Phase II Randomized Observation Versus Stereotactic Ablative RadiatIOn for OLigometastatic Prostate CancEr (ORIOLE) Trial
Randomized Salvage Radiation Therapy Plus Enzalutamide Post Prostatectomy (SALV-ENZA)
Selected PublicationsView all on Pubmed
Phuoc T. Tran*, Pavan K. Bendapudi*, H. Jill Lin*, Peter Choi, Shan Koh, Joy Chen, George Horng, Nicholas P. Hughes, Lawrence H. Schwartz, Vincent A. Miller, Toshiyuki Kawashima, Toshio Kitamura, David Paik+ and Dean W. Felsher+. Survival and Death Signals Can Predict Tumor Response to Therapy After Oncogene Inactivation. Sci Transl Med 3 (2011) 103ra99**. PMID: 21974937; PMCID: PMC3966995.
* - these authors contributed equally; and + - corresponding authors
Phuoc T. Tran*+, Emelyn H. Shroff*, Timothy F. Burns*, Saravanan Thiyagarajan, Sandhya T. Das, Tahera Zabuawala, Joy Chen, Yoon-Jae Cho, Richard Luong, Pablo Tamayo, Tarek Salih, Khaled Aziz, Stacey J. Adam, Silvestre Vicent, Carsten H. Nielsen, Nadia Withofs, Alejandro Sweet-Cordero, Sanjiv S. Gambhir, Charles M. Rudin and Dean W. Felsher+. Twist1 suppresses senescence programs and thereby accelerates and maintains mutant Kras-induced lung tumorigenesis. PLoS Genet 8 (2012) e1002650. PMID: 22654667; PMCID: PMC3360067.
* - these authors contributed equally; and + - corresponding authors
Rajendra P. Gajula*, Sivarajan T. Chettiar*, Russell D. Williams, Saravanan Thiyagarajan, Yoshinori Kato, Khaled Aziz, Ruoqi Wang, Nishant Gandhi, Aaron T. Wild, Farhad Vesuna, Jinfang Ma, Tarek Salih, Jessica Cades, Elana Fertig, Shyam Biswal, Timothy F. Burns, Christine Chung, Charles M. Rudin, Joseph M. Herman, Russell K. Hales, Venu Raman, Steven An, Phuoc T. Tran. The twist box domain is required for Twist1-induced prostate cancer metastasis. Mol Cancer Res 11 (2013) 1387-1400**. PMID: 23982216. PMCID: PMC3833995.
* - these authors contributed equally
Reem Malek*, Hailun Wang*, Kekoa Taparra, Phuoc T. Tran. Therapeutic targeting of epithelial plasticity programs – Focus on the epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Cells Tissues Organs 203 (2017) 114-127. PMID: 28214899. PMCID: PMC5375029.
* - these authors contributed equally.
Jeffrey J. Tosoian, Michael A. Gorin, Ashley E. Ross, Kenneth J. Pienta, Phuoc T. Tran, Edward M. Schaeffer. Oligometastatic Prostate Cancer: Definitions, Clinical Outcomes, and Treatment Considerations. Nat Rev Urol 14 (2017) 15-25. PMID: 27725639.
Academic Affiliations & Courses
Graduate Program AffiliationGraduate Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine
Activities & Honors
- Fellow, Henry S. Kaplan Research, 2007
- Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society Alumni Award, Oregon Health & Sciences University Chapter, 2013
- Fellow, Parker B. Francis, 2008 - 2011
- Fellow, Radiological Society of North America Research, 2008
- John Muir College Caledonian Honor Society, University of California, 1995
- 1R01CA166348-01A1, National Cancer Institute, 2013 - 2018
- Sidney Kimmel Translational Scholar Award, 2013 - 2015
- Patrick C. Walsh Prostate Cancer Research Fund Award, 2013 - 2014
- Early Career Achievement Award, Oregon Health & Sciences University School of Medicine Alumni Association, 2013
- Research Scholar, American Cancer Society, 2012 - 2016
- Uniting Against Lung Cancer Award, 2012 - 2014
- Included among Top Doctors, Baltimore Magazine, 2012
- Educator of The Year, Association of Residents in Radiation Oncology (ARRO), 2012
- Prostate Cancer Physician Research Training Award, DoD, 2011 - 2016
- The Phyllis and Brian L. Harvey Scholar - Patrick C. Walsh Prostate Cancer Research Fund Award, 2011 - 2013
- Junior Faculty Career Research Training Award, ASTRO, 2009 - 2011
- Malcolm A. Bagshaw Award, 2007
- Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop Scholarship, ASCO/AACR, 2007
- Research Resident, Radiological Society of North America, 2006
- Roentgen Resident Research Award, Radiological Society of North America, 2006
- Deans Medical Student Research Award, OHSU, 2003
- Molecular Hematology Research Training Fellow, OHSU, 1998 - 2001
- Laurel Merit MD/PhD Scholar, OHSU, 1996 - 2003
- Graduated magna cum laude, University of California, 1996
- Regents Scholar, University of California, 1995 - 1996
- Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award, 2015
- ASCO Leadership Development Program, 2015
- Movember Foundation-PCF Challenge Award, 2015
- Johns Hopkins Discovery Award, 2016 - 2017
- 1R21CA223403-01-01, National Cancer Institute, 2018
- 1U01CA212007-01A1, National Cancer Institute, 2018
- 1U01CA231776-01, National Cancer Institute, 2018
- Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, 2013
- American Association for Cancer Research, 2007
- American College of Radiation Oncology, 2005
- American College of Radiology, 2004
- American Society for Radiation Oncology, 2004
- American Society of Clinical Oncology, 2007
- American Thoracic Society, 2008 - 2012
- Radiation Research Society, 2011
- Radiological Society of North America, 2004
- The EMT International Association, 2011
Patient Ratings & Comments
The Patient Rating score is an average of all responses to physician related questions on the national CG-CAHPS Medical Practice patient experience survey through Press Ganey. Responses are measured on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best score. Comments are also gathered from our CG-CAHPS Medical Practice Survey through Press Ganey and displayed in their entirety. Patients are de-identified for confidentiality and patient privacy.
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The Central Connecticut men's soccer team blanked Northeast Conference in-state rival Sacred Heart 2-0 on Sunday afternoon. The Blue Devils improve to 5-1-1 in the conference and 7-6-2 overall. Sacred Heart drops to 3-4 in the NEC and 7-7 overall.
The Blue Devils entered Sunday's game tied for second in the conference with Monmouth (9-3-2, 4-1-1). The win against Sacred Heart now gives Central a total of 16 points.
Just minutes before the half, sophomore Stephen Walmsley put Central up 1-0 in the 33rd minute. Senior Reece Wilson fired a shot into the Sacred Heart goal but the shot was saved. Senior Thomas Obasi took the rebound and attempted another shot which was again saved. Walmsley took advantage of the vacant goal and rifled in a score off of the second consecutive rebound on the play. The goal was Walmsley's second of the season.
In the second period of play Wilson punched in his seventh goal of the season in the match's 68th minute. Junior Manny Nobre fed the pass from the left side into the middle of the box where Wilson beat the keeper to his right with the score giving the Blue Devils the 2-0 advantage.
Central has scored six combined goals in the last two home match's and have only given up one score. They now have a total of 24 goals on the season.
Senior Blue Devil goalkeeper Anthony Occhialini chalked-up his fourth shut-out of 2012. Occhialini stopped the only shot-on-goal that the Pioneers attempted and played every minute in the box for Central.
The Blue Devils are back on the road as they face LIU-Brooklyn on October 26th. They will then head to Quinnipiac to square off against the Bobcats on November 2nd then back home on November 4th to host Bryant.


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SHANGHAI -- At least 27 people died and more than 100 were injured Saturday when a group of knife-wielding assailants attacked a railway station in southern China, state-run media reported.
Gruesome photos of the scene in Kunming from a local TV news broadcast showed several people, their clothing soaked in blood, lying on a tile floor inside the station, and more people on the ground outside. State-run CCTV news said authorities had killed the attackers.
There was no immediate word on the identity of the assailants or their motives. Although stabbings by individuals are not uncommon in China, this type of deadly and apparently coordinated attack involving multiple assailants is extremely rare in China. Trains bound for the station were diverted, local TV station K6 said.
Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, is some 1,300 miles southwest of Beijing. The bloody incident comes just before two important gatherings are to be held in the capital this week, the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
The Oriental Morning Post cited a witness, Wang Dinggeng, as saying that he was resting outside the station shortly after 9 p.m. when he saw two men in masks and black clothing rushing into the ticketing office. Approximately five minutes later, he heard screams.
Another person claiming to be a witness posted an account online saying that sometime after 9:24 p.m. he was waiting at the ticket counter when chaos erupted. He wrote that he saw a man in a yellow jacket and woman in black clothing carrying out the attack, and that one had a knife approximately 2 feet long.
Dozens of ambulances and other emergency vehicles were dispatched to the scene, authorities said.
Last week, ahead of the two meetings in Beijing, authorities announced they were stepping up security in the far Western region of Xinjiang and four other northwestern areas: Gansu, Shaanxi and Qinghai provinces and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Police in those areas are also to receive anti-terrorism training, state-run media outlets reported.
However, those areas are not near Yunnan, which borders Vietnam, Laos and Burma.
In July 2009, riots in the Xinjiang city of Urumqi left nearly 200 people dead. Xinjiang has a large population of Uighurs, a Muslim minority group.
In October 2013, a jeep crashed in Tiananmen Square, killing its three occupants and two pedestrians, and injuring 40 people. The government said the incident was a terrorist attack carried out by members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a Muslim separatist group founded by Uighurs.
Twitter: @JulieMakLAT
Tommy Yang in the Times' Beijing bureau contributed to this report.


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A new Texas Tribune/University of Texas poll, released early Monday, showed that most Texans want to balance the budget by cutting spending. Except, when pollsters proposed spending cuts that the Legislature is currently considering, Texans didn't support a single one of them. Not a single proposed spending cut was supported by more than 40 percent of those polled.
"We really want to slash the budget, but not anything in it," pollster and UT professor Daron Shaw told the Texas Tribune.
Texans didn't seem to support the raising state revenues in a way that would significantly impact the state's current or structural deficit. While a majority of Texans support legalizing gambling and increasing the tax on alcohol to help pay for programs, neither one of those proposals would generate near enough revenue to close the budget hole. Proposals that would put a significant dint in the problem, such as creating a state income tax or raising the state sales tax, were supported by fewer than 15 percent of Texans apiece.
And while Gov. Rick Perry has insisted that the Rainy Day Fund not be touched as the Legislature attempts to balance the budget, Texans aren't so sanguine about the idea. Some 55 percent of Texans support spending some of that money to mitigate the budget shortfall; only 24 percent support not spending any of the money in the Rainy Day Fund. With numbers like that, expect discussions about using that money to pick up significantly at the Capitol.
Of note in the poll: 50 percent of Texans consider themselves to be evangelical and 36 percent of Texans believe they are "spirit-filled" or "charismatic"; only 40 percent of self-identified Christians in the poll believe that social justice is at the heart of the bible; 79 percent say that religion is a very important (48 percent) or somewhat important part of their lives; and while white only make up a plurality of Texans, they consisted of 65 percent of the survey's respondents, because of the likely voter screen.


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Bomber's Blog - The War on News - TONIGHT 10.30pm Sky 89 & Freeview 21
The War on News 2010 – NZ News Satire on Stratos Sky 89 10.30pm Tuesday & simulcast on Freeview 21. Replayed on Triangle TV 9.45pm Wednesday and posted online at Scoop.co.nz as their Weekend Watch.
It's just like 7 days on TV3 but with fewer dick jokes.
Facebook Group


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Minor Application Process
Instructions for Declaring a MAS Minor
- Complete an official SJSU Addition/Change of Minor Form. There are two versions of the form: one for students with fewer than 90 units and one for those with more than 90 units.
- Fill out the CCS Department Minor Form. In "Courses to Satisfy the Minor," indicate which courses you have completed, are in the process of completing, or those you plan to complete in order to satisfy the 18 units. Be sure to include the semester and year you took the class, the final grade and the course units.
If you are unsure of how to complete this section, please feel free to request an appointment with the Minor Advisor and bring your transcript(s) in order to fill in the appropriate information.
- Request an appointment with the Minor Advisor, Dr. Magdalena Barrera, to set up an appointment for review and signature. Please print an unofficial copy of your transcript and bring it with you to the meeting.
- If you are a graduating senior, the minor form must accompany your graduation packet.


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The team from Redmond is in the Valley right now, in fact, Kara Swisher says, and they're talking "how," not "if."
[M]any sources close to the situation on both sides said that the pair are coming ever closer to a search and advertising partnership deal.
Said one source: "It's closer than it has ever been…"
"It's meaningful," added another source. "The fact that there is even progress and engagement, after so many failed attempts between us, says a lot."
The good news is that the deal sounds cleaner and more coherent this time: Yahoo would focus on media and sell search and advertising, Microsoft would build the search and display-ad serving technology.
That's a deal that could work for both parties. The key for Yahoo is that it be able to fire Microsoft if Microsoft falls down on the job. As long as Yahoo can wave the threat of defecting to Google/DoubleClick over Microsoft's head, this would just be an outsourced technology deal, and Yahoo wouldn't be mortgaging its whole future for a couple of years of stronger earnings.
Who's doing the negotiating?
Both sides are using very small teams to discuss that possible partnership, mostly in Silicon Valley. Some of the Redmond, Wa.-based Microsoft team, in fact, is in the Bay area now.
Sources said those involved on the Microsoft side include: Digital head Qi Lu, a former Yahoo tech star; top M&A and strategy exec Charles Songhurst; Online Audience Business SVP Yusuf Mehdi; and several others.
On the Yahoo side: North America EVP Hilary Schneider, who leads the efforts; General Counsel Michael Callahan; top Yahoo ad operations techie Mark Morrissey, who was key to its revival of the Panama ad system and has recently been leading product development on its new ad platform; Finance SVP and Chief Treasury Officer Mike Gupta; and Products EVP and CTO Ari Balogh, although he is more in the background.
And Carol Bartz is a lot more straightforward to deal with than Jerry. Read Kara's whole article here >
Get the latest Microsoft stock price here.
Get the latest Yahoo stock price here.
Get the latest Google stock price here.


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The hyperlink for the assigned AP vendor invoices used to be linked to Vendor invoices assigned to me list page but is now linking to the Pending vendor invoices list page.
Changes in the hotfix will solve the reported issue as the fix is given to open vend invoice assigned to me list page when it is opened from role center worklist.
More information
Note This is a "FAST PUBLISH" article created directly from within the Microsoft support organization. The information contained here in is provided as-is in response to emerging issues. As a result of the speed in making it available, the materials may include typographical errors and may be revised at any time without notice. See Terms of Use for other considerations.


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HEBER CITY, Utah — Competing with more than 12,000 applicants, OK3 AIR was ranked number 28 on the list of 100 fastest growing companies in Utah.
The list recognizes companies for their significant contributions to the state and its economy. Rankings are based on revenue growth between 1998 and 2002. OK3 AIR is a full service FBO with locations at the Salt Lake City, Heber City and Ogden airports.


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Two weeks ago, AFP informed us that "Google, at age 10, is the official heart of the Internet. Born 10 years ago, the Google Internet search engine has grown into the electronic center of human knowledge by indexing billions of web pages as well as images, books and videos." That's true, except that Google is 9 years old. Even if Larry Page and Sergey Brin registered the google.com domain in 1997, Google was officially launched one year later.
"Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake," says Google's help center. You can read more about it directly from Google. In the recent years, Google's birthday has been celebrated on September 27th with a doodle displayed on the homepage. Happy birthday, Google!


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The Unnamed Asian Woman is a minor character in the Episodes from Liberty City.
Her first appearance is in The Lost and Damned during the mission, Buyer's Market, while attending Elizabeta Torres' party. She then later appears in the opening cutscene of the mission, Boulevard Baby, in The Ballad of Gay Tony in a black and pink diagonally striped dress, entering Maisonette 9 the same time as Luis Fernando Lopez. As Dessie checks her ID and allows her in, Luis notices her, and follows her inside. While she is sitting at the bar, Luis comes up to her and convinces her to follow him to the bathroom, prompting a rather explicit sex scene. The two emerge sometime later, she with her hair noticeably disturbed, and the two exchange numbers before a quick kiss. Later, she is seen dancing at Jerry Kapowitz's party at his mansion in The Ballad of Gay Tony's credits.
Mission Appearances
The Lost and Damned
The Ballad of Gay Tony
- Although she and Luis exchange numbers in the cutscene, the player cannot call her, as neither her name nor her number turn up in Luis' phonebook.
- She is mentioned in the The Ballad of Gay Tony's credits as "Girl in Bathroom".
- As heard during the sex scene, she speaks English, but has an Asian accent.
- During the mission Boulevard Baby, she can be seen in Bahama Mamas as a random pedestrian, although she is dressed differently. In the Maisonete, she is seen wearing a black and pink dress.
- Due to the loud music in the club, it can be hard to hear, but the only thing Luis says before the two go to the bathroom together is "My name's Luis. Wanna go have sex?".


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Kaut garners USILA Scholar All-American honor
Kaut garners USILA Scholar All-American honor
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Goalkeeper Austin Kaut (Morton, Pa.) was named a Scholar All-American by the United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association. Kaut is the eighth Nittany Lion to achieve the recognition and the third under head coach Jeff Tambroni in as many years.
Kaut, who became the first four-time All-CAA First Team honoree in Colonial Athletic Association history earlier this month, is one of 105 USILA Scholar All-Americans across all three divisions of college lacrosse. Kaut finished his senior campaign 13th nationally in goals-against average (8.65) and 16th in save percentage (.547).
During CAA play, Kaut dominated his opposition by leading the league in GAA (6.48), save percentage (.638) and saves per game (12.00). Now with the Boston Cannons of Major League Lacrosse following his collegiate career, Kaut was named CAA Defensive Player of the Year for the second straight season and also Penn State's CAA All-Academic Team Award winner.
Kaut joins Nick Dolik and Matthew Mackrides in Tambroni-coached student-athletes to receive the honor, and all have done so in successive years. The USILA Scholar All-America program began in 1989 and this year marks the 26th edition.
The USILA Scholar All-America program was established to recognize student-athletes from USILA member institutions who have distinguished themselves academically, athletically and as citizens for their communities. The USILA Selection Committee tabs an overall team representing Divisions I, II and III. The Scholar All-Americans will be recognized at the annual lacrosse All-America Banquet this weekend in Philadelphia. The USILA All-American Division I team will be announced later this week.


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Color: SILVER
Drive Train: FWD
Transmission: Automatic
Vin: KNDJN2A20E7700388
Engine: 1.6L
Mileage: 143,286
Stock #: 973
Land of Cars
4616 NW 39th St.
Oklahoma City,
I hereby consent to receive text messages from or on behalf of dealer at the mobile phone number I provided above. I understand that I am opting in to receive text messages from dealer or their employees. I include consent to receive phone calls at the mobile phone number I provided. I understand that message and data rates may apply.


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AGM Products Ltd
Unit 10, Dalby Court
Gadbrook Business Centre
Please note that the address shown above is our office/warehouse address. We do not have a showroom or retail shop, our business is strictly mail order only.
Company Number: 9219490
Registered Office: see above address
Telephone: 01606 331971 (9.30am-4.00pm Monday to Friday)
If we are unable to take your call, please leave a message and we will get back to you at the earliest opportunity. If you are unable to contact us by phone, drop us an email and we may be able to reply outside office hours.
E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
Please e-mail us if you have any questions, we aim to answer all enquiries within 24 hours.


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Review: Bad Education4.0
Now after more than a dozen films to his credit—from the punk-era gonzo comedy Pepi, Luci, Bom to the comatose rape dramedy Talk to Her—Pedro Almodóvar releases something of a greatest hits package: the spectacularly meta Bad Education, the story of two friends and their complicated love for one another and the cinema. For the first time in his career, Almodóvar has made a film that will appeal equally to fans of his anarchic screwballs (High Heels and Kika) and his more popular mainstream dramas (All About My Mother and Talk to Her). A giddy cinematic pastiche of film noir and high camp, Bad Education is about the shape-shifting artifice of dreams and the experience of going to the movies. If it isn't the best film of Almodóvar's career, it's certainly his best work since 1987's Law of Desire.
Ignacio Rodríguez (Gael García Bernal) walks into the office of film director Enrique Goded (Fele Martínez), who's flipping through newspapers looking for a gimmick for his latest screenplay. Fascinated by the story of a dead man riding a motorcycle and, much later, the hysterical account of a woman eaten alive by alligators, Enrique's writer's block suggests a form of memory deprivation. In love with Enrique when they were students at a Catholic school in the '60s, Ignacio reconnects the director with his past and suggests that he turn their experiences of abuse at the school into a film. But along with the film's aspect ratio, realities and identities frequently shift, and it becomes increasingly difficult to tell truth from fiction and the ruthless desire to love with the even more insatiable desire to create.
More so than Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers, Almodóvar's heartbreaking Pieta acknowledges cinema as an extension of the soul. Because it seems to touch on every theme and perversion seen throughout the director's illustrious 20-plus-year career, Bad Education truly evokes the sensation of a Jackson Pollock "action" painting: Almodóvar's canvas—like that of another hot-blooded drama queen, Federico García Lorca—is one of uncensored emotion and pure energy. There isn't a single person in the film (or film-within-a-film) whose life isn't fractured, states of unrest the director fabulously emphasizes by frequently situating actors before mosaic art or walls covered in paper decorated with jagged lines shooting in all sorts of directions.
Just as everyone remembers the silent film sequence from Talk to Her, no one will forget the "Moon River" scene from Bad Education. During a school retreat, a young Ignacio (Ignacio Pérez) is forced by Father Manolo (Daniel Giménez Cacho) to sing the Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer classic while the boy's buddies swim in a nearby spring. Unlike Talk to Her, Bad Education isn't gimmicky, but it is schematic; this is because Almodóvar scripts a complex interpretation of the world by conflating movie dreams and sexual awakening. This subversive sequence is at once funny and tender: Almodóvar tastefully and cleverly obscures Manolo's abuse of Ignacio at just the right moment ("Waiting 'round the bend," the boy sings), anticipating the masochistic role-reversal of their future relationship in the emotional back-and-forth of the song's lyrics, much in the same way the scenes of the swimming children prefigures the incredibly erotic pool sequence between the two leads later in life.
Like Talk to Her, Bad Education similarly touches on themes of unconscious desire, except its characters are always, well, conscious. But being conscious doesn't always mean being lucid, something embodied by Ignacio's sad relationship to Enrique. Like Eusebio Poncela's bond to Antonio Banderas in Law of Desire (and Naomi Watts's obsession with Laura Harring in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive), this power struggle is one part ego trip, one part wish fulfillment—a dangerous combination Almodóvar likens to our quasi-narcissistic relationship to movies. We respond most to films that reflect our deepest aesthetic and emotional passions and notions of the world. So when Enrique discovers—semi-spoiler alert—that Ignacio isn't who he says he is, he continues the relationship because it's easier on his conscience to accept that Ignacio turned into someone who looks like Gael García Bernal and not the ostensibly fictional junkie transvestite from The Visit. And if truth is stranger than fiction in Bad Education, Enrique hopes to make it sell.
An embarrassment of riches, Bad Education addresses the almost vampiric relationship between audiences and movies—a give-and-take that helps Ignacio and Enrique keep their memories alive. As children they jerk each other off inside a movie theater that plays the 1969 melodrama Esa Mujer starring Sara Montiel as a naughty nun. Before they reach orgasm, Montiel's face turns toward the camera and the children don't miss a beat. Almodóvar understands the rapture of going to the movies, and if he had his way the director would probably never stop making them. Throughout Bad Education, memories and images repeat, none more memorable than a young Enrique (Raúl García Forneiro) leaving two lovers behind. In both cases, a gate impacts their separation anxiety, and the ecstasy and pain of the moment is not unlike leaving a movie you never want to end.
Cast: Fele Martínez, Gael García Bernal, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lluís Homar, Javier Cámara, Petra Martínez, Nacho Pérez, Raúl García Forneiro Director: Pedro Almodóvar Screenwriter: Pedro Almodóvar Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics Running Time: 110 min Rating: NC-17 Year: 2004 Buy: Video, Soundtrack
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 Art of Self-Defense Totters Between Raw Ferocity and Lifeless Comedy
The dojo of this film is the ultimate unsafe space, a place of deadpan irony and appalling brutality.2
Writer–director Riley Stearns is a fan and practitioner of jiu-jitsu, which he's credited with making him healthier and less lazy. Yet the filmmaker's sophomore feature, The Art of Self-Defense, would seem to posit martial arts as the epitome of toxic masculinity. The dojo here is the ultimate unsafe space, a fight club stripped of Fincherian chic, which Stearns replaces with deadpan irony and appalling brutality.
The film centers on an accounts auditor, Casey Davies (Jesse Eisenberg), the platonic ideal of a hypomasculine twerp. He tells people his name like it's a question, and his favorite music is "adult contemporary." Even his pet dachshund reads as a loser: scrawny, with disproportionate features. Such meekness attracts the ire of bullies: his inanimate answering machine surreally berates him; French tourists in a coffee shop laugh at him (in French, which they don't realize he understands); and, most seriously, a motorcycle gang nearly beats him to death. He's just that kind of guy, so contemptibly inadequate that people want to hurt him.
Wandering the lonely streets of his unnamed city, Casey happens upon one of the film's few populated spaces: a karate studio where Anna (Imogen Poots) provides a group of children with the affirmation and social support system Casey so desperately craves. "I want to be," he says, "what intimidates me." When he joins the adult class, he gets something extra from the studio's sensei (Alessandro Nivola): a heaping side of male chauvinism. Soon, Casey is studying German—a manlier language than French, says the sensei—and listening to metal. He also stops petting his dog, so as not to coddle it, changes his desktop wallpaper at work to bare breasts, and punches his accommodating boss in the throat for being friendly.
Nivola dominates The Art of Self-Defense as his sensei does his loyal students, achieving alpha-male status with well-articulated arrogance, while Poots provides a valuable counter voice as Anna, calling attention to the preposterousness of that sexism as a talented and powerful woman, held back by the gender roles ingrained in this system of unarmed combat. (A scene in which Anna recounts an attempted sexual assault against her at the dojo, for which she was subsequently blamed and punished, is particularly affecting.) And Eisenberg's Casey is the easily influenced straight man caught between the two, drawn to the pride and confidence offered by the sensei but also to the compassionate strength embodied by Anna.
The whole cast, however, struggles with Stearns's overarching tone, and his screenplay's occasional wit is usually delivered by the actors in such a deadpan that it flatlines. The contrasting flashes of ultraviolence, on the mat and off, thus have no counterbalance, leaving The Art of Self-Defense tottering between raw ferocity and lifeless comedy.
Stearns's 2014 feature-length debut, Faults, was a tightly constructed and alluringly mysterious riff on similar issues, about the malleability of a man who lacks confidence. But it was unpredictable in its depiction of the slowly changing power dynamic between its characters; the film broke down and unmoored its audience along with its protagonist, a deprogrammer of cult members tricked into becoming one. In this film, though, the plot twists are telegraphed early. The hero is overly coded as pathetic, and we're invited to laugh at him with the French tourists, not only to shake our heads at his brief, incel-like transformation into an overcompensating bro, but finally to find comfort in his use of violence to depose his violent sensei. The stakes seem low: Casey rejects the manipulative madman, a blackmailer with a black belt, who harnessed karate's power for ill, but Steans is careful to vindicate karate itself, which might please its admirers but leave everyone else feeling indifferent.
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Alessandro Nivola, Imogen Poots, Phillip Andre Botello, David Zellner, Steve Terada Director: Riley Stearns Screenwriter: Riley Stearns Distributor: Bleecker Street Running Time: 104 min Rating: R Year: 2019
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: Rojo Is a Chilly Allegory for the Distance Between Classes
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
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text:
EDSA's Paladin(R) Live(TM) is first power analytics software program to automatically calculate and present power efficiency ratings, using standards published by The Green Grid
SAN DIEGO, Calif., Aug. 21, 2008 -- EDSA Corp., developers of the Paladin(R) platform of power analytics(TM) software, today announced the release of its Paladin(R) Live PUE-DCiE Advisor(TM) in support of the new electrical power efficiency standards developed by the global IT association, The Green Grid. The Green Grid is a collaborative organization of about 200 technology organizations, led by such firms as AT&T, Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and others for whom mission-critical computing and environmental responsibility are driving corporate priorities.
To embrace the organization's standards, EDSA's Paladin Live power systems diagnostics platform has been enhanced to automatically present users with The Green Grid's Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and data center infrastructure efficiency (DCiE) ratings in real-time. Used in conjunction with Paladin Live's new Paladin(R) BlackBoard(TM) option, users gain the valuable ability to take a baseline model of their operations, and - in real time -- allow them to make changes or propose "what if" scenarios, allowing them to project the future impact of those changes on the calculation of PUE or DCiE.
"Because Paladin Live analyzes and diagnoses data center power infrastructure in real time every second - and down to the smallest detail - it presents facility operators with a wealth of vital information about system health, reliability, capacity, and energy efficiency to guide facility planning," said Kevin Meagher, Chief Technology Officer for EDSA. "By pulling the data values needed to calculate energy utilization, and presenting that data in the manner specified by The Green Grid's PUE and DCiE requirements, Paladin Live is the first commercial software product to present this crucial operating information automatically and provides the ability to project or see how changes will effect these critical metrics."
One of the goals of The Green Grid's PUE and DCiE standards is to devise a commonly-applicable formula for data centers that is easy to understand - like MPG is for cars - to enable operators to quickly estimate the energy efficiency of their data centers, compare the results against other data centers, and determine if any energy efficiency improvements can be made.
PUE and DCiE are defined as:
* PUE is the ratio of a facility's total power to the power being drawn by IT equipment. The ratio is on an effective scale of 1.0 to 4.0 with a low score being most desirable; ideally, a facility's score should be lower than 2.0.
* DCiE is the percentage of IT equipment power to total facility power (e.g. a DCiE of 33% means the IT equipment consumes one-third of the power in the facility.) The bigger the percentage, the better, e.g. DCiE of 33% is better than 25%.
"PUE and DCiE create a common reference point that make it possible for data center operators to start making important assessments of their facilities, as well as their going-forward strategies for reducing energy usage," Meagher added. "Imagine trying to calculate the MPG for your car - or just knowing how many miles you have left before you run out of gas - without gauges to tell you how much gas you started with, how big your gas tank is, your speed, or how far you've driven. PUE and DCiE provide values for the variables that, until now, kept data center operators largely in the dark about their energy efficiency."
The Paladin Live PUE-DCiE Advisor feature attacks the problem of energy inefficiency in two ways: first, the Company's Paladin(r) DesignBase(TM) computer-aided design (CAD) modeler allows power systems engineers to design, simulate, and analyze the power systems model to optimize energy usage prior to construction. Once the facility is operational, EDSA's Paladin(R) Live(TM) platform continually diagnoses the facility's performance by benchmarking it back against the design model. This continual comparison of design specifications with actual operating parameters helps to ensure that anomalies are quickly identified, isolated, and resolved.
By presenting its findings in PUE and DCiE format, Paladin Live helps data center operators, for the first time, to make informed, real-time decisions about the energy efficiency of their facilities, and develop actionable strategies for ensuring that their operations are as failsafe and energy efficient as possible.
About EDSA Micro Corporation
About EDSA Micro Corporation
EDSA develops software solutions for the computer-aided design, modeling, real-time analysis, energy management, and preventative maintenance of complex electrical power systems. For more than 25 years, the Company's Paladin(r) software products have been used in thousands of commercial, industrial, governmental, and military applications worldwide, to protect more than $100 billion in customer assets, while reducing their energy consumption. Headquartered in San Diego, Calif., the Company maintains sales, distribution, and support offices around the world. For more information about EDSA and its products, visit www.edsa.com.
Note: EDSA, Paladin, and Power Analytics are trademarks of EDSA Micro Corporation.
Jim Neumann, Vice President
EDSA Micro Corporation
858-675-9211 ext. 212
Agency Contact:
PJ Jennings
Jennings & Associates Communications, Inc.


text:
State Highway 73 - Carrington Hut
A well-marked track (known as the BB trail) passes above bluffs to Turkey Flat by Jordan Stream
Time: 4-6 hour Distance:
Type: Tramping Track
Do not attempt to cross the river if it is high. Use the marked flood route up the true right instead. This is a steep, arduous route over bluffs and may also be impassable if the side streams are flooded after heavy rain.
Emma and Tempus share their journey: http://nztramper.blogspot.com/2008/03/carrington-hut-day-1.html