For better or worse, “Leap and the net will appear” is an adage I can live by naturally. Most recently, this took me to Chile with the intention of making a film about homeless dogs.
My inspiration for “Lost Dogs” came from a YouTube video that shows a dog on a busy Santiago highway as he risks his life to save another injured canine. The clip prompted my research into the estimated 250,000 dogs that live on the streets of Chile's capital city.
Once I had my concept – to look for the “hero dog” and while I was at it, film his 250,000 friends – it wasn't long before I took the plunge, arriving in Santiago with my Spanish vocabulary of five words, video and stills cameras, tripod, 50 hours of tape and clothes for any eventuality over the next two months. A couple of days behind me was Chris Mortimer, a photographer introduced to me only two weeks prior as someone crazy enough to accompany me.
Intern
Shot Down: Pools, burgers and failing to complete the BendFilm 72 Hour Shoot-Out
After handing over $10 and collecting his free t-shirt at the sign-up for the BendFilm 72 Hour Shoot Out, my boyfriend Guy wanted to go swimming. At the panel discussion the week before, we'd been warned that making a short film over one intense weekend warranted a case of Red Bull and a gang of helpers. Other filmmakers hustled away like they hadn't a minute to spare. But Guy had made well over 200 short movies before, and even some feature-lengths, in well under 72 hours (see youtube.com/guyjjackson). That was his method; putting his energy into writing rather than elaborate production, rarely using more than one actor and never a crew, wielding the camera like that cartoon Tasmanian Devil, and being happily surprised when he created entirely different movies at the editing stage than were originally conceived.
Dream On: The spawn of Saw resembles a broken nightmare
Here we have proof that no matter how cool a movie looks, how dazzling the photography, how mesmerizing the score, how nail biting the suspense, there is no masking a stupid story. The Collector is one of those movies, and here's why…
Arkin (Josh Stewart) has problems. His wife owes a vague yet sufficiently large amount of cash to loan sharks, and his handyman job doesn't pay enough to help. It does get him into homes, however, and being an ex-con in cahoots with a robbery ring, he decides to steal a huge gem from the house he's been casing. All looks well and good, but as soon as he breaks into the home he finds that someone has beaten him to it. A masked creep has been torturing the family, and has booby trapped the house to the hilt. The burglar is faced with the moral dilemma of stealing, fleeing or saving the family. Escape is not going to be fun.
Comedy Grows Up: Apatow and Sandler team up to add maturity to their hilarity
In Funny People we may have the delicious beginnings of a great collaborative team, Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow. The two, who were once roommates early in their respective careers, join forces here for the first time on the big screen (if you discount You Don't Mess With The Zohan, which Apatow evidently had some hand in writing) and the results are excellent.
This is the movie many fans of Sandler and costar Seth Rogan have been waiting for. Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Knocked Up were fun, uneven, and promising. And Zohan, of course, made Billy Madison look like high art. But both may be coming into a period of very good work. Funny People has higher goals than groin humor, though there's plenty of that if you're a south-of-the-border type. It seeks not only to tell a story, but the movie attempts to navigate some of life's more difficult regions like aging, facing death, and the issues surrounding the limits of friendship. And the movie dares to ask the question “What would you do if you got a second chance at life?”
Past Your Ears: Recordings you may have missed but need to hear
Tom Waits
Nighthawks at the Diner
Released 1975
What happens when you jam 30 people into a recording studio, decorate it like a nightclub, roll tape and fill it with unique American stories played to the sounds of lounge jazz? Well, you get Nighthawks at the Diner a record that captures the quintessential bar experience of the 1970s.
One of the best examples of this experience is “Putnam County.” This track staggers through a small town with a colorful description that's spot on. “The GMC's and the straight-eight Fords were coughing and wheezing and they percolated as they tossed the gravel underneath the fenders… you're grinding gears, shifting into first and that goddam tranny's just getting worse.”
The Long-Overdue OLCC Intervention
In an intervention, the friends and family of somebody who's addicted to booze, drugs, gambling or whatever get him in a room and grill him intensively to persuade him to clean up his act.
Last week, Gov. Ted Kulongoski's office staged an intervention with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. It was long overdue. And we sure as hell hope it works.
What prompted the intervention was a history of serious friction, going back years, between local bar, restaurant and event managers and OLCC Bend Regional Manager Jason Evers. The liquor dispensers accused Evers of acting like a banana republic dictator, enforcing OLCC rules arbitrarily, irrationally, inconsistently and in some cases vindictively.
Take A Hike: Bill to the rescue, Touristas, the Apple conspiracy and more!
The author has been sent on the road to discover a lost country formerly known as America. He is now missing and most likely deported, on assignment for Or-Bust.com and The Source Weekly.
What Can't Bill Clinton Do?
When he isn't advising Hillary on foreign policy and interns on career paths, former President Bill Clinton is meeting with – What? Really? “Dear Supreme Leader” Kim Jong-Il in North Korea? Wait – Fact check! Oh ok, this makes sense: Clinton was in Pyongyang on Tuesday to try to free two CurrentTV “journalists” (Bill's VP Al Gore owns CurrentTV, enough said) who were sentenced to twelve years of hard labor after being arrested on the North Korea-China border earlier this year. Further clarification: Laura Ling and Euna Lee are getting so much attention because one of them is related to a celebrity, and hey, Bill digs babes. Regarding the unusual visit by the VIP, Asia analyst Mike Chinoy offered the obvious, “I suspect that it was made pretty clear in advance that Bill Clinton would be able to return with these two women; otherwise it would be a terrible loss of face for him.”
Oh So Pretty…: But 3D magic and an all-star cast doesn’t fully hold up G Force
The force is strong with this one. The 3D version of G Force may rightly be criticized
as mere eye candy, but if that's the case, then-somewhat surprisingly-it's
among the most opulent and luxurious eye candy we're likely to see this summer.
From the first technology-rich sequences, the 3D experience reminds us of what
it feels like to be a kid taking that first ride on Space Mountain: mouth
slightly agape, head tilted skyward and eyes fixed blissfully wide. And one
certainly gets the feeling this 3D pipeline is just getting started. But even
with our eyeballs having been dazzled, by the end of G Force, the magic
of this gimmick has worn off.
To get an idea of the landscape of G Force, think of
a Jason Bourne movie with guinea pigs as major characters. An affable human,
Ben, played with restraint by Zach (Hangover)
Galifianakis, heads an under-the-radar project employing guinea pigs and a
mole. I suspect that the opening sequence is riveting even without the 3D, but
with the effects it's positively mesmerizing.
Return to Sender: Not even gore can save the Orphan from its own gimmicks
She paints beautifully, Honey. And silly you thought she was trying to kill us!Opening with an over-the-top bloody delivery room dream sequence, Orphan shows some
promise. But soon, it quickly dissolves into the opening class session for
Formulaic Horror Moviemaking 101 with an insulting script destined to make you
roll your eyes about 50 times.
This insidious stab at the genre takes everything beyond
believability, losing any credibility almost immediately. A troubled wife (Vera
Farmiga) has demons to exorcise from her past revolving around the loss of her
daughter. With two kids already and the blessing of a worthless psychiatrist
(inadequately played by Margo Martindale), she and husband John (Peter
Sarsgaard) are off to an orphanage to pick smiling and lonely Esther (Isabelle
Fuhrman). Artistic, intelligent and world-savvy, Esther is no regular small
fry. Unconvincingly enamored, the couple takes the child home to ruin their
lives with one despicable act after another.
Stick With It: Fight Night delivers an easy TKO
A long ways from punch out. The shortest distance between two points is supposed to be a
straight line. But in boxing, as in life, things are rarely so direct. The
shortest distance between my fist at Point A and my foe's face at Point B might
occasionally be a simple jab. But it might also follow the curved path of a
hook, or the elbow bend of an uppercut. And all of these are woven into the
ducking and dodging of the fighters, tangling a simple line of attack into a
serpentine swarm.
In an attempt to mimic this dance of missed and mixed-up
connections, the controls in Fight Night Round 4 avoid the
direct simplicity of button-pushing. Every major punch is thrown with the
action of the right thumbstick. An angled snap forward throws a straight or a
jab. Swinging it out and then up delineates the action of a hook. Likewise,
down and around initiates and imitates the arc of an uppercut.
Blocks are controlled in the same way, using the same thumbstick
with the addition of a trigger being clutched. As a result, not only does the
action of the thumbstick correspond to the actual actions of the boxer's body,
but the use of one control for both offense and defense also recreates the same
dilemma that a fighter must confront: how to simultaneously attack and defend
with the same pair of fists.

