Culture

Moving… it's a video collector's nightmare. I am now in the process of
moving across town and in my day I bought out five, maybe six video
stores. That may sound outrageous, but I needed those movies to produce
Onslaughts.

What's an Onslaught, you ask? Well, I take lesser-known
movies and combine clips of action, gore, sex, bad dialogue, insane
rock music and schmaltzy TV themes to mind-numbingly fast edits that
blaze directly into your retinas. People have told me that it's like I
invented a new drug-after one Onslaught they have to have another. I
use my videos as an art form, so much so that at one point an art
gallery in San Francisco even had an Onslaught showing. Onslaughts
simultaneously. A cable TV station in Manhattan (MNN) showcased
27-minute Onslaughts for three years. I've made 26 two-hour Onslaughts
so far, each of which took 350 or more movies to make. You do the math.

Look God, no hands. Without reading anything about a film called The Pope's Toilet before
taking a look at it, I figured the title would be a metaphor, for what
I don't know. I had no idea what to expect. Of course, the title
conjures many ideas as to what it could be about. The title is not
metaphorical; the toilet is actually a toilet, it's literal.

The
Pope's Toilet takes place in Uruguay and leads up to Pope John Paul
II's May 8, 1988 visit to the country. This is just one of four films
being screened this weekend as part of the Latino Film Fiesta presented
by the Latino Community Association. The fiesta celebrates Latin
American culture and recognizes the artistic contributions of Latinos
in the form of narrative cinema.
Other films screening during
the festival include: Viva Cuba, a story in the vein of Romeo and
Juliet, Forbidden to Forbid, about an architecture student and a med
student and Madeinusa, a film focusing on a town that doesn't believe
in sin from Good Friday until Easter Sunday. The films span Latin
America, from Cuba to Uruguay to Peru, giving viewers various tastes of
Latin American culture.

The things they carried. An animated documentary with real life interviews in cartoon form,
Bashir dissects the Lebanese civil war that followed the assassination
of Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel. One might assume that taking an
animated approach to atrocities of war would risk trivializing the
tragedies, but for the most part Israeli writer/director Ari Folman
pulls it off.
The opening scene with wild dogs all fire-eyed
and snarling running through the streets in a dream sequence recounted
by Folman's pal is an effective set up. The dream jars the director's
vague recollection about his possible involvement in a
massacre/slaughter/battle/conflict, prompting him to regain his
repressed memory.

All Jack(man)ed Up
As someone who is averse to People magazine and
most other forms of 21st Century celebrity worship, I can honestly say
that I switched on my TV without any clue as to who would be hosting
Sunday night's Academy Awards. I know that I wasn't alone when I
breathed a small sigh of relief realizing that it was Hugh Jackman on
emcee duties. It's not that I'm a big Wolverine fan. But like many
other Americans, I'm still recovering from Whoopi Goldberg. Just out of
curiosity I checked to see how many times the Academy inflicted Whoopi
upon viewers like me. Surprisingly few, in fact. Whoopi hosted just
four times, but the punishment was spread out over nine years between
1993 and 2001. And I think that's what made it so difficult - the not
knowing. Pouring through the stats we determined that Billy Crystal was
the King of the Post-Reagan Era with seven hosting credits to his name.
But nobody can hold a candle to Bob Hope who hosted or co-hosted a
record 17 times between 1938 and 1977.
Jackman did a solid job
showing off his song and dance skills in some Old Timey choreographed
show tune sequences. But the Academy was clearly shooting for a
controversy-free host when it tapped one of its own to emcee. And
missing were the snappy one-liners and industry jabs provided by Jon
Stewart who hosted two of the past three Oscars.