Film Night: Girls Rock! and Hell on Wheels

My friend, Bryndis, from Meow Records [best independent record shop in Canada, according to the CBC... and we believe them] wanted to have a movie night to raise funds for her local attempt to start a women's rollerderby league. We hosted the event at Cinema CNC... the turnout was a little light, but the films were a lot of fun. Bryndis chose them, and I must say, I approve.

Girls Rock! follows the exploits of participants at a form-a-band camp for young women [8 to 18] that takes place annually in Portland, Oregon, and is hosted by a number of top-flight members of indie bands from around the Pacific Northwest of the USA. We closely follow four of the campers: Laura, a death-metal-loving, well-spoken, adopted, 15-year-old Korean-American with some serious self-loathing issues; Misty, a 18-year-old recent inmate of a secure, lock-down facility [for drugs and gang activities,it seems], who is also homeless and in need of a place to fit in; Palace, an 8-year-old already experiencing conflict between worrying about how she looks versus having self-knowledge and self-worth [she also possesses heavy metal chops, both her sneer and her howl are worthy of the genre]; and Amelia, a 10-year-old geek-girl with a strong sense of her musical identity [anarchic], but who has serious self-image issues [and is currently writing a 14 installment musical cycle about her chihuahua, Pippi].

The girls form bands [each of our subjects is in a different band], write songs, learn instruments [Misty had never touched a bass before, for instance], and perform for an audience of 750... after five days together! This is quite the experiment and quite the movie, too.

The core message of Girls Rock! is inspiring... the girls are surprisingly successful [no, not because they are girls, but because they have 5 days to do something that most of us would find pretty near impossible... don't get me into trouble, here], but the cruel realities of growing up female in North America come screaming through the narrative. One criticism I would have of this film is that some of this is pointed out a little too obviously in unnecessary statistical intertitling... let the women tell their stories; they are vitally interesting enough to carry the movie... also, let's hear a little from some of the cousellors... they seem really interesting and have almost no voice, here. A little bit of back-story about how some of these strong women succeeded in an environment hostile to women's success would serve to give modelling for the audience that the campers are, obviously given the results, privy to. One telling scene has power-punk, jazzy-rocker, LKN [she's a little hard to describe] giving a lunch-time concert, modelling for the campers the stance of a strong, loud woman who takes no shit from nobody... the looks on the young women's faces is priceless, and the influence that is shown in subsequent performances demonstrates how inspiring she is. It would be valuable to share more of this inspiration with the viewing audience. The bands involved are Sleater Kinney The Gossip Nun Factory Pocket Parade LKN Swan Island Pom Pom Meltdown The Wind Up Birds Backbone

Rather than have me prattle on about this film, I will just say, watch Girls Rock! ... it will educate you, entertain you, and convince you... let's start a camp around here...


The second film of the Rollergirls double-feature was Hell on Wheels. This film follows the development of a women-only rollerderby league in Austin, Texas. For those of you who weren't born long enough ago to have experienced the rollerderby on TV [we only had two channels where I grew up... and it was 40 below in the winter... you had to watch!... besides, it was a lot of fun: Skinny Minny and Rupert the Bear and all the characters], this was a chaotic pseudo-sport that grew up earlier in the 20th century and eventually died out in the mid-seventies. Its resurection might have begun in a somewhat exploitive fashion, but it quickly turned into something else. A collosal weasel named Dan got the ball rolling, but when he failed to follow through, the captains of the four teams carried the ball forward and rollerderby is re-born.

Beside the trip down memory lane for this reviewer, this film is fascinating for a couple of other reasons: human dynamics and politics... and it is hard to divide these two. The story arc follows some documentary conventions, but things get really interesting when things fall apart. What I particularly enjoyed was how much of the story was straight from the participants... including some dramatically ironic utterences. The audience gets to know significant information about some of the principals, including messages that I am pretty sure they aren't aware they are transmitting.

As with most earnestly-begun amateur enterprises, problems errupt, chiefly because of good old-fashioned power politics. The captains try to maintain control of all aspects of the rollerderby, seemingly exploiting the goodwill and pocketbooks of the skaters. There are a number of rancorous meetings, resulting, eventually, in a break-away league [I don't want to ruin the movie for you by describing all the interludes leading up to this... see for yourself].

What is particularly telling for this viewer is that two distinct models for the leagues emerge: one modelled on capitalistic principles; and one modelled on socialistic principles. As a real-life experiment in power dynamics, this is fascinating... and much more realistic for an audience made jaded by an abundance of so-called "reality" on television. And the message that comes from this experiment is, hopefully, obvious: socialism wins, socialism wins, socialism wins. I don't think that this is the intention of the filmmakers, but the model with the flatter management structure and more buy-in from the participants is more fun, more fun to watch, and more successful! Take that, Donald Trump, you bastard!

Watch this film; its a lot of fun... who knows, next thing, you'll be strapping on the skates, putting on the helmet, and jamming like a mad fiend.

Story of Stuff

Here's another great little show, called The Story of Stuff, where Annie Leonard gives a compelling account of... well ... STUFF! And, since my blog is called "stuff I am thinking", it seems appropriate that one finds out where all this stuff comes from.

Thank you to my and Bergman's friend, Val, for pointing out both this and the subject of the last post.

Her presentation is inspirational for two reasons: one, the content [watch it...]; and two, the way it is delivered. A lot of public speakers could learn a great deal by seeing her in action.

Homegrown Revolution

If you've been by our place, or seen the post about "big-ass veggies", you'll know that we have a fairly abundant garden... I am pretty sure that we produce our own oxygen, and then some.

We get quite a bit of production out of our yard... fruits, vegs, flowers, without trying especially hard. Of course, there is more that could be done; I'd like to build a greenhouse and some coldframes, for instance.

Here's a video, called Homegrown Revolution, about a family that made some radical changes, with great results. They have the advantage of living in Southern California [and the advantage of being a bit nutty, too!], but their example is inspiring. On a tenth of an acre, they manage to produce 6000 lbs. of fruits and vegetables each year!

Sandwiches and Proust

The CBC [Canadian Broadcorping Castration... whoops, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] has a show called "Sounds Like Canada" [which, if I heard Kevin Sylvester correctly, is going to be cancelled in the next couple of weeks!... what is up with these people... don't they know that, to quote a person close to me, "change is bad"?], and on that show messages from listeners are being played, detailing the sandwiches they consider delicious... after a few episodes traditional niceties were left behind, and now we are hearing about such delights as peanut butter and bologna, mustard and garlic, red onion and a variety of substances, et cetera, ad nauseum... but only because this listener is not the originator of the sandwich causing the slight rising of the bile. I am sure that, to each of the presenters, these concoctions are truly tasty and comforting [I must confess a liking for cheddar cheese and raspberry jam sandwiches, which, while mild on the disgust-o-meter, have elicited groans from others when offered as a dandy option]. One common denominator seems to be that, to a person, the peculiarly arranged alchemy of these productions was arrived at while still relatively young... bringing to mind the Proust maxim, "what is patriotism but the love of [I've also heard "memory of"] good things one ate in childhood." I'm not sure that an army could be mounted on the basis of a shared love of alfalfa sprouts and raisins on whole wheat [or even the simple madeleine, the biscuit of Proust's longing for temps perdu], but I do know that I will eat a great variety of foods I've been eating since young that, if I were introduced to them as an adult, I would find disgusting... or at least uninteresting. Most of these, for me, fit in the uninteresting category, macaroni and cheese [the packaged kind, of course] with a lot of Heinz's Ketchup on it, or wheat-puff chocolate squares... both of which I enjoy, but wouldn't eat now if I hadn't eaten them then... unless necessary for politeness' sake.

Review #3a

Melinda just reminded me of a great line in The House Bunny: "The eyes are the nipples of the face." You just think about that for a while.

Review #3 – The House Bunny

My first two reviews might have given the impression of a certain elitism in my movie selections, and this impression might, most of the time, be correct; however, while I love great movies and revel in the obscure and stylish, I will also watch pretty much anything.

I review films for our local CBC morning show and am limited to what is currently available in our one, six-screen cinema, which is treated by the programming lords as if it were a suburban mall cinema outside a major urban centre [with the implied choice for those who are interested to hop on public transit for a few minutes and go to an alternative screening] instead of the only game in town for a reasonably-sized small city [also ignoring the fact that people in outlying communities might be inclined to travel HERE for some greater options than they might find at home]... but I rant. 

Last week, the pickings were thin, because other reviews had already been done for the "better" films available, so I chose... The House Bunny. It sounds egregious in descriptions, but I thought, "how bad can it be?" and went, dragging along Melinda, who has a graduate degree in gender studies... you can see where this is going, can't you?

I will say, up front [or in the middle, as the case may be] that this film was both better and worse than I expected. Better, for the most part, because of the groans coming from the seat next to me... did I mention that she teaches Women's Studies? [a fine course, and there are still seats available for those who are looking to pick up some interesting college credits]... also better, because Anna Faris is relatively good and has some funny lines... of course, this is in comparison with the train wreck that is going on around her.

The House Bunny is worse than I expected, because I truly felt that there is room in the campus comedy and ditzy girl genres for something new, or at least subverting, or at least parodying [especially when Faris is most noted for her part in the Scary Movie franchise], and we don't find it here... yes, there is the message that being a smart girl is a good thing... BECAUSE IT WILL ATTRACT BOYS!... c'mon, folks, haven't we made it past this? And we get to this message after we have been subjected to the notion that the sorority Faris works to save is a sisterhood of losers because the women in it are all homely or funny-looking in some way... it doesn't ruin the movie for you to be told that their first victory [against the snooty, pretty girls] involves makeup, new outfits, and a lot of hairstyling action... uuuuuuuuunh!  

One gendered aspect of note is that almost all of the primary roles in this movie are women's roles, heroes, villains, old grumpy antagonist, etc., while the men's roles are primarily types: good boy, bad boy, sensitive  boy, etc. This reversal of the usual order is not, I am afraid, sufficient to redeem the effort. 

This notion of a central good effort in this movie is worth pondering; I felt that there were two authors of this movie [and it turns out on examination that two people did write it... we should hunt down the evil one and give her (both writers are women) a good shake]... it seemed like we could hear the voice alternating... on one side, the little angel saying, "let's have a movie where all the significant parts are played by women", and on the other shoulder, we find the one in the little red suit saying, "Yeah, and let's make sure they have some righteous tits on them! Yee haw! Party on! Whooo, whoo, whoo!" And from this description, you should be able to tell who got more attention [and secured more funding] for the project.

It is a challenge to filmmakers to make a movie primarily about women that doesn't have as central concerns a) attracting boys, b) personal appearance, and c) subverting other women's efforts to get ahead... all that, and make it a movie that we'd like to see... the challenge still remains, because it wasn't fulfilled in The House Bunny.

Bendito Machine

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom

re: Humans!

The author of this animation is also the author of my all-time favourite on Aniboom, called The Bendito Machine, which I will post next [above]. Check them out, in case anyone is wondering why Aniboom is on my Links list.

HUMANS!

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom

Gargoyles!

I was looking through the photos from my trip to Europe, trying to find some reason to show a few of them off... and then thought that perhaps somebody out there might be interested in the carved beings of Notre Dame Cathedral... so here are a few shots of our petrified friends:

Missed an important one

In trying to give Bergman some street cred, here's a dandy photo:

We went to Jasper

We went to Jasper for a little break... saw some sights, relaxed, ate good dinners, built a dogukshuk [like an inukshuk, only canine], went in an ice cave, and had some fun... see photos: