A black teen (he) will take a white teen (he) as his date
to his first high school dance. He tries
to conceal it from his father, but the father winds up wanting to take a
picture.
Starring Tasha Smith, Charles Malik Whitfield, London
Curtis, and Owen D. Stone.
A very simple concept for short film. But it won't work again until we control the pandemic (despite being an Aug 2020 post).
Connor Barker presents “Bisexual” (2019).
In middle class London, Jonathan, a 19-year-old straight
student, has gone to a house party and woken up in bed with another man.
As he leaves for home, he tries to remember the
encounter. The film is sketchy and dark
as to details.
He gets home, and soon his girl friend, Amelia, lets herself
in. Jonathan finds he is reticent and
not in a hurry to go out with her but finally does.
There is music from FreeMusicWave (the song “Birdy”).
Picture: 17th St in Washington DC, recent
“Did We Just Detect Life on Venus?” Well, maybe.
Cool Worlds explains how Venus may have had water on
its surface until 750 million years ago.
Then some massive volcanic event resurfaced the planet, so this doesn’t
seem to have just been global warming. Since Venus doesn’t have plate tectonics,
it had no other way to vent its internal heat.
The announcement was based on the discovery of
phosphine gas in the high atmosphere, where bacteria (extremophiles, able to
deal with an acidic environment) had bubbled up billions of years ago.
National Geographic maintains that on rocky planets
phosphine is made naturally only by biological processes.
However phosphine is made deep in the atmospheres of
gas giants like Jupiter.
Picture: Venus near the horizon (Wikipedia embed, click for attribution)
“Capitalism and the American Pandemic Response”, from
Second Thought, on March 28, 2020, certainly pits the “ethics” of capitalism
against handling the coronavirus.
Toward the end, the speaker pits saving the lives of
the elderly against the financial stability for everyone else.
But lower income working people definite take contagion risks that white-collar work-from home "nerds" don't have to take, and the latter group still seems to have very little illness.
There is a lot here about the failures of our system
in health care. Insulin costs $300 here
and #32 in Canada. Truvalda costs $8 in
Australia and $2000 in the US (and related drugs might work against
coronavirus).
The top “0.1%” owns as much as the bottom 90%.
The speaker insists that workers organize and accept
the idea of class struggle and considers rentiers parasites and criminals.
He also says that landlords don’t “work” for a living.
“What Portland, Oregon Looks Like Right Now”, by NALF. He says he will do another video soon on the aftermath of the Oregon wildfires, dated Sept. 9, 2020.
This is an unedited tour of the barricades and homeless
camps, everywhere, after over 100 days of protests and rioting after George Floyd's death in Minneapolis. The protests seem to have stopped with the smoke and nearby wildfires.
One comment said that downtown Seattle looks the same.
Why did Portland’s and Oregon’s politicians allow this to happen?
I visited Portland in 1996 when I was researching my first
DADT book.
Picture: Wikipedia embed, protesters at Waterfront Park, click for attribution.,
Travis Bryant presents a new gay short film, “Unravel”.
He appears to play one of two gay men in a breakup of a
relationship which has gone on for some time but become stormy.
Music by Los Leo.
I think Travis plays the “smoother” man. I could lose the tattoos, as for the other
partner.
The film has the air of a Terrence Mallick meditation.
Ethan Lusby, an 18 year old adventurer, has a channel called “Van Life”, and the latest episode is “Escaping the Wildfires in Oregon: Vanlife Update”.
He woke up at 4:30 AM in a trailer park and could smell the
smoke, and drove away from Oregon, toward California, and got to safety. He had to get gas in a station running on a
generator without power.
It will be interesting to see if he reports further on the wildfire
catastrophe in northern California and the Pacific Northwest (which should have
some rain).
Ethan, in other videos says he is gay. Right now, he travels to outdoor areas alone
with his dog, and seems to be making YT a business. His speech manner is gentle. He is quite accomplished at outdoorsmanship and
backpacking, and at some athletic skills like diving and swimming in natural
environments. He is much better at this stuff than I was at his age (which would have been 1961) and that really matters to me now.
I hope Ethan can provide more reporting on the wildfire crisis!
Picture: Portland after during wildfires, unclear if the smoke will stop the protests for a while
.png)
“What Do We Know About T-Cells and COVID-19 Immunity?”
from SciShow, narrated by Hank Green.
The speaker explains that T-cell “immunity” refers to
the T-cell response, in directing memory B cells to make antibodies to a virus
similar to ones it has seen, and killing infected cells. It does not make one immune to COVID by itself.
He notes a rather disturbing observations: strong T-cell response in females correlates
with a worse outcome, but in some men it has resulted in cytokine storms.
However, we’ve noticed that outdoor protesters (who use
masks sometimes but shout a lot) don’t seem to be getting severe COVID, and neither
do the journalists who cover them (male or female).
And there are numerous reports of severe illness even
in young women. What seems to be a common denominator may be size of exposure,
in a prolonged indoor event or in a large household.
Wikipedia embed: 3-D rendering of a T-cell, click for attribution
The Oscars have announced some diversity
representation rules for “Best Picture” Oscar, as explained in the New York
Times by Nicole Sperling.
The most visible provision might be at least one major
or major supporting role be not white.
But an alternative includes up to 30% of other characters from
underrepresented groups, which can include LGBTQ. But a cis white gay character probably would
not be perceived by audiences as meeting the standard because of being part of
the establishment. It would be
interesting to ponder “Call Me By Your Name” in this regard. It could be controversial when straight men
play gay characters, but maybe not “cis” characters. The full standards don’t take effect until
2024.
A sensitive issue occurs in a male LGBT film is a white
character is attracted only to other cis white males. There are anthropological reasons why this
happens.
PBS POV stations (although not in DC) aired a
52-minute film “Portraits and Dreams” on Sept. 7. 2020 (PBS Streaming Link).
This episode was advertised as a POV TV episode and
film both, and appears to be complete.
It is directed by Elizabeth Barrett, Wendy Ewald, and Robert Sayler.
The film examines some rural Kentucky families,
largely in the coal mining area (hint, probably Trump supporters in 2016) whose
grownup had, as kids, learned manual photography back in the 1970s and how to
develop their own pictures, in the time well before digital photography.
Some of the pictures are touching, as of a boy who
would commit suicide.
Another sequence describes a family that became
homeless and begged for places to stay and actually found neighbors to take
them in. But they had the pictures.
A lot of people are living in rural shacks or trailers
having lost jobs or fallen into ill health in coal country. Almost all are
white.
In those days, it was common for people to buy
cartridges of 27 frames at pharmacies and send them out for processing. That remained common until a few years ago,
and eventually pictures were usually put on CD’s.
But there were earlier cameras, like the Brownie Hawkeye,
of the 1950s.
There was one sequence that showed the scenery around
Cumberland Gap, which I visited in August 2016.
“The English Teacher”, posted in May 2020, 12 minutes,
is a new short film from (Vietnamese I think) director Blake Ridder.
Blake plays a young man who purports to need to learn
English to pass a citizenship exam in the UK.
He contacts a (white) widower Robert Brammel (Louis James) who offers
private English tutoring to immigrants.
When Brammel arrives at the immigrant’s flat, the
lesson goes well enough even if awkward.
There is a disquieting discussion about payment.
Later, at home, Louis gets a “.mov” file sent to him
on Microsoft one drive (which I have never used
to share videos privately, but it can be done – I am more used to Google
drive). The video is a “movie within a
movie”, an embed or backstory, and contains a confession.
There had been a hit-run bike accident that killed
Louis’s wife (Sophie Cardona). It is
even possible it was the cyclist’s “fault” (riding the wrong way, when drivers
don’t have time to see them at intersections).
There is a feature film from 2013 by Craig Zisk by
this title, reviewed here April 15, 2014. Let’s not forget Anthony Minghella’s “The
English Patient” (1996).
Camp shows a dilapidated barn in the background, as if
for a horror short. What comes to mind
if “The Blair Witch Project” (1999), which was shot in a state park in the Catoctin
Mountains not far from Frederick, MD, I thought.
His main idea is that you write your script inside
out, from the people (as characters) and locations available to you for no
money.
He does give a rundown of the minimal equipment you should have. This video reminds me of the way 48-hour film contests work.
A young woman whose face had been destroyed in
childhood by flesh eating bacteria has committed suicide (with her own arson of her mom's country house, probably in Canada).
But she left a Facebook video showing herself. A lonely hermit (man) clicks dislike on the
video, and her ghost from the afterlife starts to taunt him after a power
outage.
This film (11 min) has won a lot of horror film awards
(released March 2020).
“Bubble”, by Alyssa Lerner, presents a Filipina teenager
confronted on the front lawn by the sheriff foreclosing on her family’s house
and car, during the 2008 financial crisis, in California.
The officers ponder whether to approach the child
first or wait for the parents.
Filmed in a narrow aspect ratio, just released (17
min).
The teaser is shown, but the full film appears on Youtube, as well as a brief QA.
“Bubble” was also the name of a Steven Soderbergh
mystery in 2005, which was offered online and in theaters at the same time.
