Tribeca Rosie Media

OK, a roundup of the week, focusing basically on the past couple days: Yesterday I saw a film with VP at the Tribeca Film Festival, the first time I've ever been. I kinda like ">film festivals; it's just that I never really end up going to them. Come to think of it, I seldom end up going to anything unless someone invites me. Hmmm, I guess I'm a hermit-in-training.

Anyway, we went to see The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green, a movie I suggested since I remember reading the comic strip somewhere, maybe Tallahassee or Atlanta or somewheres. The movie lived up to its name: Mostly Unfabulous. To be sure, it had its moments, maybe 18 or so of them, but largely it was trite and predictable, like pretty much any romantic love story. It was also for the most part badly acted and cast (the guy who played the young sexpot who everyone's all about was, well, doughy). Prolly the best part of the movie was either Meredith Baxter or her hair. And, surprisingly, even though she had a good bit of camera time in the film, no one in the story was raped or forced to have an abortion or came down with severe mental illness. I thought those things just kinda happened around Meredith Baxter, and all those Lifetime movies were kinda demi-reality shows, where they put her in a situation and said, "Mer, just pretend to be this girl's mother," and then all hellz breaks loose. Imagine my surprise when the whole flick was tame.

Preceding the Ethan Green movie was a short called Billy's Dad is a Fudge-Packer. This film was lame. Basically, it's pretend 50s-style black-and-white educational film. Billy's dad works in a candy factory, supervising people who are literally packing fudge and other confections. The whole movie just relied on wordplay and visual innuendo, and tried very hard to be clever. It came off as something you'd see on a skit show, only a li'l better produced. The high and low point was an appearance by Alex Boorstein of Family Guy and MADTV--the high point cux it's Alex Boorstein(!) and the low point because Alex Boorstein took part in something like this. Anyway, if you're wondering what all the innuendos of the movie are trying to say or what the grand meaning you take from the flick is, here it is: Nothing. It was just a bunch of word and image play. In the beginning of the short, however, you get the sense that something is going to happen or be said, because Billy, the son, seems to be looking at everything that happens around him with a puzzled expression, as if he senses something going on under the surface and isn't sure how he feels about it yet. But by the end of the movie he's lost this expression and it's never given any kind of resolution. You're left wondering if the director changed his idea about where the movie was going about half way through.

So anyway, that was that. The films were really late last night, so I prolly should have picked something earlier, cux I'm real tired today. Alas!

I've made a new online discovery: Ourmedia.org. As I understand it, it's a site that offers you storage/archiving of all your media files--images, mp3s, videos, etc. It's designed to archive your own works, so you should be the copyright owner of anything you post. But the site claims that it's free permanent storage, forever. And you can link to your files. So that's pretty coolz. I uploaded my Bingle Jells Etude No. 2 ">mp3 and another file which hasn't yet been approved. I like the idea of the site. Hopefully one day soon I'll have some VIDEO to upload.

Lastly, I just find Rosie O'Donnell bizarre. From her blog where she posts bland poetry. (I largely think the definition of 'poetry' has gotten waaaaaaaay out of hand, to the point where the verbal equivalent of taking a crap, and not even a satisfactory one, is called poetry. It's kind of like the definition of 'bipolar'--once upon a time if you were bipolar it basically meant you were 'fucked,' but now anyone who has had more than one mood in hir lifetime calls hirself 'bipolar.' Some call it 'bracket creep'; often I call it 'horseshit.') On her flickr she posts aggressivly mediocre pictures. And yet, they often reference famous people or things related to celebrity ( eg., On her flickr are backstage shots from Access Hollywood). On the one hand, it strikes me as a little pathetic, like she's trying to hang on to shreds of the celebrity she once enjoyed. On the other hand, it's almost like she's purposefully trying to demystify the world of celebrity making it mundane, putting up these shittly-looking pix of her world and writing this insipid poetry. I look at the pix and wonder why she didn't retouch any of them, or at least take them on a good camera. And for the love of cod, WHY are they on a FREE account on flickr?! You know Rosie isn't bankrupt! ..is she? And this blog of hers: it just leaves an icky taste in my mouth. It's just uncomfortable for her to be striking this peculiar everyman position. I think she's trying to be a b9iatch or something. I dunno. It's odd to me; I'll have to process this Rosie O'Donnell concept some more.

And that's the beep for now.


Beep!
Ed Shepp

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