Yes, Johann, Armond White is your kind of guy. Mine too. I like Walter Chaw too. Chaw is another independent American film critic. You'll find him and several colleagues online at Film Freak Central. Not that White and Chaw are in any way similar, except in their outspokenness. In face, in Walter Chaw's 2012 Best Lists, he includes in the top ten six of the films Armond White condemns. I think they both dislike BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 01-14-2013 at 05:14 PM.
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R.I.P. AARON SWARTZ
News came to me today of the suicide in Brooklyn at age 26 of computer programming prodigy and internet freedom advocate Aaron Swartz. He was under threat of a big government suit, could have gone to jail for a long time for wire fraud and computer fraud (hacking JSTOR files via MIT, somewhat arbitrarily designated as a "felony"). He was also subject to depression. But mostly he was much beloved for his selflessness, kindness, and good character, and he fought hard for freedom of information and the freedom of the internet--from the age of 14! Worry over the impending trial and penalties and enormous cost of a defense probably contributed to his death. Aaron's family and business partner blame the government's aggressive stance (see article). JSTOR, the organization that he was alleged to have wronged against, withdrew charges and was sorry to have brought them. The President of MIT has written expressing deep sympathy and regret. His parents' statement includes the statement, "Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach." You can see the government's direction in the threats against Julian Assange and the treatment of Bradley Manning and the harsh silencing of other whistleblowers. From Wired: "The world is robbed of a half-century of all the things we can’t even imagine Aaron would have accomplished with the remainder of his life. . .When he was 14 years old, Aaron helped develop the RSS standard; he went on to found Infogami, which became part of Reddit. . . .Among countless causes, he worked with Larry Lessig at the launch of the Creative Commons, architected the Internet Archive’s free public catalog of books, OpenLibrary.org, and in 2010 founded Demand Progress, a non-profit group that helped drive successful grassroots opposition to SOPA last year." Aaron was a hero for many. He used his prodigious talents for the common good. The program Democracy Now broadcast this morning (13 Jan '13) a half-hour speech by him giving a lively account of the rise and fall of SOPA from his personal point of view. He was a vigorous, clear, and engaging speaker.
AARON SWARTZ (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013)
Photo by Sage Ross
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 01-14-2013 at 07:06 PM.
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I listened to his speech after I saw the post on Saturday. He was pursuing acknowledgment that the copyright laws on the internet had huge holes in them. I found the link to his speech embedded in this story on Huff post, but I'm not certain if it's still there. I can't begin to express my dismay and sorrow and anger over the prosecutorial handling of this case and the treatment of Aaron Swartz. My condolences if you knew him, Chris.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...ef=mostpopular
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I did not know him but I think we should all be sad. Even though he was only 26 he had had 12 years of activism. He is very widely admired and mourned.
Very tragic.
"Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd
Yes, it is. It is a case when one so young has already done so much and yet feels beaten down by the system and by the repressive forces he sought all his life to oppose, that he became overwhelmed with frustration, anguish, and grief. He still leaves a legacy that's remarkable.
His is the kind of story movies are made of.
Tragic wake-up call movies.
The system is a Serpent.
"Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd
It is worthy of a movie but how can you end this way?
From the Huffington Post Politics story, "Aaron Swartz, Internet Pioneer, Found Dead Amid Prosecutor 'Bullying' In Unconventional Case":
We do we crush the best and bravest people we have?We need a better sense of justice, and shame. For the outrageousness in this story is not just Aaron. It is also the absurdity of the prosecutor’s behavior," Lessig wrote. "[Aaron] was brilliant, and funny. A kid genius. A soul, a conscience, the source of a question I have asked myself a million times: What would Aaron think? That person is gone today, driven to the edge by what a decent society would only call bullying."
Swartz's friend Henry Farrell, a political scientist at George Washington University, also pointed at the DOJ. "His last two years were hard, thanks to the U.S. Department of Justice, which engaged in gross prosecutorial overreach on the basis of stretched interpretations of the law," he told HuffPost. "They sought felony convictions with decades of prison time for actions which, if they were illegal at all, were at most misdemeanors. Aaron struggled sometimes with depression, but it would have been hard not to be depressed in his circumstances. As Larry Lessig has rightly said, this should be a cause for great shame and anger."
It's great to see so much activity here at filmleaf as of late. I'm back to respond to CK's comment several posts earlier about the inability to "check out" films directed by Robbe-Grillet and Duras and indeed I should have known/mentioned that many (most) of their films have not been released on video in the US. Only Duras' impressive Nathalie Granger and Robbe-Grillet's not as impressive late films are available. Goes to show or evidence how many films are there waiting to be discovered! I mean, if a great French (Nouvelle Vague) film like L'immortelle (1963) is practically unknown in America, imagine how many films from other not-as-famous national cinemas, from other not-as-celebrated historical periods, are awaiting discovery...
I'm going to cop out of comparing Bunuel and Bergman or explaining why I prefer the former because the reasons have to do with personal sensibility rather than anything that would apply to anyone else.
That was what I thought; personal sensibility, or elective affinity. I had no intention of comparing Buñuel and Bergman. it's of no significance that I have happened recently to watch a lot of both. I'm aware that a lot of good French films are unknown over here and, correspondingly, unavailable.
I should have added that in a way EVERYTHING (I mean everything that was ever released on any video format anywhere in the world) is available for download and transfer to disc. But it can be very complicated and I don't know how to do this (I have a friend who does). There are people who sell these films that are "unavailable" on DVD-R to the public online. Here's one: http://www.ioffer.com/selling/tjbcmx44?page=5
Yeah, in a way. But you're getting into a complicated, tricky topic there. THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN EYES/LE VILLE AUX YEUX D'OR, which I mentioned recently, is available on French DVD and so are a lot of great French films we can't get here on US DVD.
I continue to catch up with the notable films of 2012 and today I finally watched the Cannes winner (film culture's biggest prize?) Amour. You list it 2nd best foreign film and call it masterpiece (which means something when the writer uses the term sparingly). Glad to find myself quite pleased, even overjoyed at such profound spectacle. The key moment of Amour for me is the decision to resuscitate Anne for the penultimate shot of the film because of the rhetorical and interpretative possibilities it creates. In such an austere film, as you rightly call it, the resonance of a moment like this one becomes amplified. By the way, I couldn't find an "Amour" thread, so I posted here. I'm going to watch Barbara this weekend, perhaps others.
It doesn't matter I guess, but the logical place to post on AMOUR would be the NYFF 2012 thread. where I just posted about the coming release of Garrone's REALITY -- because it was the one film I had expected to be in the NYFF (as AMOUR was) but didn't find there. What do you mean by: "The key moment of Amour for me is the decision to resuscitate Anne for the penultimate shot of the film because of the rhetorical and interpretative possibilities it creates"? How would that go in simple English?
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