Waiting for Corel, Movie Reviews and Free Software

Waiting for the UPS guy/gal on yet another frozen tundra day.  ( Humdrum of daily life follows . . . )

Started working though my new DVD collection.  The two Farscape units were up first.  Have the intro, first show and finale and all were nicely done.  Only bad side was that the premiere and first program (E.T.) were not in widescreen format.  

"Peaceful Warrior" was not all that great.  Seems to come with the territory of a "preachy" story.  Also it didn't seem like it knew if it wanted to be a fantasy or a reality show.  Or just a modernized knock-off of a "Kung Fu" television episode or two.  "Clear your mind, Grasshopper."

"Factory Girl" is the tragic story of Edie Sedgwick, a artist-model who hung with Andy Warhol and the whole NYC Factory scene in the 60s.  A poor little beautiful rich girl story that turns out badly.  Sienna Miller does a very nice job with the role, imo.  She's an attractive young woman but I wonder why she seems to get all these nudie scenes in her films.  (The recent "Alfie" re-do comes to mind here.)  Reminds me of Helen Mirren's early and not-so-early roles ("Excalibur" and "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover"). 

Is the product that bad that the DVD has to be plastered with "Sexy.  Uncut. Unrated."?   Maybe it was a way to make up for another poor effort by Hayden Christensen.  He lays yet another on-screen egg in this one.  He plays Bob Dylan only his name is not Bob Dylan in the film (legal issues I suspect).

The most interesting thing about this film is the "used or user" dynamic.  Using other folks as career enhancers and not as friends as such.  The attraction of fame and fortune in ways that turn out very destructive.  Of course, it was also a piece about the time.  Reminded me of the much grittier NYC of my youth.  I got the same feeling about SoCal society at times.  Maybe that's just part of a dynamic creative environment.  No time for serious relationships other than as they fuel one's own success.  Quite different in the much despised hinterlands where the converse seems to be true.

Pet or meat?

Finally a note on free software recently discovered.  For those non-technically minded folks who want to setup their own website using templates and a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) environment there is the new freebie download of NetObjects Fusion Essentials.  I'm looking forward to giving it a spin today.  In the world of 3D software, we have two items.  Antics 3D with it's free Antics v3 Basepack and Caligari's free trueSpace 3.2 which is an older version of its current offering.  The trueSpace seems useful enough but I've yet to download and fiddle with the Antics as of yet.

Waiting for Corel, Movie Reviews and Free Software

Waiting for the UPS guy/gal on yet another frozen tundra day.  ( Humdrum of daily life follows . . . )

Started working though my new DVD collection.  The two Farscape units were up first.  Have the intro, first show and finale and all were nicely done.  Only bad side was that the premiere and first program (E.T.) were not in widescreen format.  

"Peaceful Warrior" was not all that great.  Seems to come with the territory of a "preachy" story.  Also it didn't seem like it knew if it wanted to be a fantasy or a reality show.  Or just a modernized knock-off of a "Kung Fu" television episode or two.  "Clear your mind, Grasshopper."

"Factory Girl" is the tragic story of Edie Sedgwick, a artist-model who hung with Andy Warhol and the whole NYC Factory scene in the 60s.  A poor little beautiful rich girl story that turns out badly.  Sienna Miller does a very nice job with the role, imo.  She's an attractive young woman but I wonder why she seems to get all these nudie scenes in her films.  (The recent "Alfie" re-do comes to mind here.)  Reminds me of Helen Mirren's early and not-so-early roles ("Excalibur" and "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover"). 

Is the product that bad that the DVD has to be plastered with "Sexy.  Uncut. Unrated."?   Maybe it was a way to make up for another poor effort by Hayden Christensen.  He lays yet another on-screen egg in this one.  He plays Bob Dylan only his name is not Bob Dylan in the film (legal issues I suspect).

The most interesting thing about this film is the "used or user" dynamic.  Using other folks as career enhancers and not as friends as such.  The attraction of fame and fortune in ways that turn out very destructive.  Of course, it was also a piece about the time.  Reminded me of the much grittier NYC of my youth.  I got the same feeling about SoCal society at times.  Maybe that's just part of a dynamic creative environment.  No time for serious relationships other than as they fuel one's own success.  Quite different in the much despised hinterlands where the converse seems to be true.

Pet or meat?

Finally a note on free software recently discovered.  For those non-technically minded folks who want to setup their own website using templates and a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) environment there is the new freebie download of NetObjects Fusion Essentials.  I'm looking forward to giving it a spin today.  In the world of 3D software, we have two items.  Antics 3D with it's free Antics v3 Basepack and Caligari's free trueSpace 3.2 which is an older version of its current offering.  The trueSpace seems useful enough but I've yet to download and fiddle with the Antics as of yet.

Remembering Dave Dellinger and the Winooski 44

This one popped out originally as a response to tefl_on_sarah's musings on meeting Peter Tatchell.  I had to change a few items as my memory of these things is not the greatest (obviously).

The most amazing activist person I ever met was David Dellinger.  He was in an "affinity group" with a friend of mine from Vermont.  This was back when I also lived in Vermont.  One night, after a presentation by one of the "Winooski 44" witnesses at one of the Montpelier churches, we sat on the church stairs.  As I recall it, it felt a bit like you were hanging with Mahatma Gandhi.  I could see how he could provide a calming effect when things were getting out of hand at a demonstration.

The "Winooski 44" trial was one involving protesters who were arrested for sitting in at Senator Stafford's office in protest of the on-going Central American war activities of the USA.   At trial, the defendents were able to, for the first time in such a case, successfully use the "necessity defense" which allows you to violate the law if a worse outcome would have resulted by following it.  For example, breaking and entering to get a child out of a burning building.

Dellinger also did some evening readings at the Institute for Social Ecology when I was teaching renewable energy classes there.  He was working on his memoirs at the time and had an outstanding piece on his life as a state all-star football athlete.  His description of the often ignored higher mental dimensions of that sport were spot on. The flow and zen of the game if you will.  Unfortunately, that piece didn't make it into the final memoir.  And so it goes.

Green, But Not Peaceful (Interview with Peter Tatchell) - Buzzle.com (slight spelling edit added)

"CCTV [Closed Circuit Television] may be of interest to Tatchell because, as a notice on the door says, his flat is under constant surveillance. He has been fire-bombed three times, had dozens of bricks through the window, received a bullet through the post, been beaten up on hundreds of occasions. His enemies are innumerable: the far right, anti-gay groups, Mugabe supporters, Islamist fundamentalists, lovers of the type of homophobic, misogynistic rap that Tatchell calls 'murder music' ...

"He stuck with Labour throughout the 80s and 90s as it moved right in pursuit of power - 'the Blairite rebranding of Labour', as he calls it - but by 2000 had had enough. 'The final straws were the insulting 75p pension increase and the way Labour rigged the London mayoral selection to stop Ken Livingstone. Whether you support Livingstone or not, rigging a voting process to exclude a particular candidate is unforgivable. That brought home to me that not only was Labour no longer a socialist party, it wasn't even a democratic party."

He sees the Green Party, which he joined in 2004, as a red-green alliance of disaffected old Laborites and activists for whom green issues had always been central. 'The Green Party is not simply an environmental party,' he says. 'It's also a party of human rights, democracy, social justice. As Labour has shifted to the right, the Greens have shifted to the left. Nowadays the Greens occupy the space in British politics that Labour once held.'"

Remembering Dave Dellinger and the Winooski 44

This one popped out originally as a response to tefl_on_sarah's musings on meeting Peter Tatchell.  I had to change a few items as my memory of these things is not the greatest (obviously).

The most amazing activist person I ever met was David Dellinger.  He was in an "affinity group" with a friend of mine from Vermont.  This was back when I also lived in Vermont.  One night, after a presentation by one of the "Winooski 44" witnesses at one of the Montpelier churches, we sat on the church stairs.  As I recall it, it felt a bit like you were hanging with Mahatma Gandhi.  I could see how he could provide a calming effect when things were getting out of hand at a demonstration.

The "Winooski 44" trial was one involving protesters who were arrested for sitting in at Senator Stafford's office in protest of the on-going Central American war activities of the USA.   At trial, the defendents were able to, for the first time in such a case, successfully use the "necessity defense" which allows you to violate the law if a worse outcome would have resulted by following it.  For example, breaking and entering to get a child out of a burning building.

Dellinger also did some evening readings at the Institute for Social Ecology when I was teaching renewable energy classes there.  He was working on his memoirs at the time and had an outstanding piece on his life as a state all-star football athlete.  His description of the often ignored higher mental dimensions of that sport were spot on. The flow and zen of the game if you will.  Unfortunately, that piece didn't make it into the final memoir.  And so it goes.

Green, But Not Peaceful (Interview with Peter Tatchell) - Buzzle.com (slight spelling edit added)

"CCTV [Closed Circuit Television] may be of interest to Tatchell because, as a notice on the door says, his flat is under constant surveillance. He has been fire-bombed three times, had dozens of bricks through the window, received a bullet through the post, been beaten up on hundreds of occasions. His enemies are innumerable: the far right, anti-gay groups, Mugabe supporters, Islamist fundamentalists, lovers of the type of homophobic, misogynistic rap that Tatchell calls 'murder music' ...

"He stuck with Labour throughout the 80s and 90s as it moved right in pursuit of power - 'the Blairite rebranding of Labour', as he calls it - but by 2000 had had enough. 'The final straws were the insulting 75p pension increase and the way Labour rigged the London mayoral selection to stop Ken Livingstone. Whether you support Livingstone or not, rigging a voting process to exclude a particular candidate is unforgivable. That brought home to me that not only was Labour no longer a socialist party, it wasn't even a democratic party."

He sees the Green Party, which he joined in 2004, as a red-green alliance of disaffected old Laborites and activists for whom green issues had always been central. 'The Green Party is not simply an environmental party,' he says. 'It's also a party of human rights, democracy, social justice. As Labour has shifted to the right, the Greens have shifted to the left. Nowadays the Greens occupy the space in British politics that Labour once held.'"