Thursday, October 30, 2003
Gus Van Sant's "Elephant"
The reaction from audience members to Gus Van Sant's new film Elephant was about as mixed as could be as I wandered out of the Angelica theater near NYU. I overheard one middle-aged women commenting that it was the worst movie she'd ever seen, and her friend agreed saying it absolutely bored her to death. My friend Dave simply muttered something like "holy shit", and I could tell he felt exactly the opposite. The last time I remember noticing such a conflicted response to a film was after Harmony Korine's Gummo at the same theater several years before. And I think I felt the same sense of being overwhelmed, like I had just experienced something completely different and something really, really important. With this film, Van Sant has basically thrown out many of the tenets of modern filmmaking while at the same time looking back to the masters with respect to camerawork and storytelling. Anyone cynical about American cinema should probably check out this movie.
In a film described as "self-assured, formally adroit, and profoundly illuminating," Elephant depicts the day leading up to a high school shooting. Van Sant has been interested in doing fictional accounts based on simple news stories, and he wanted to recreate the Columbine story, but without necessarily trying to answer 'why' but rather focusing on the actual experience.
Gus had the following comments on the film:
"We didn't have a screenplay, we shot in sequence, and we didn't cover shots from different angles. We really didn't know until the first day of filming what actually was going to happen. We only had single shots. I’m really going in a weird 'I-don’t-know-where' direction.
I think that there's a lot of things about not cutting that we don't really get from a lot of modern cinema, because everyone – fashionwise – is really into cutting like every half-second. The long pieces of film in Elephant are directly influenced by Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr and also other Eastern European filmmakers. Kubrick's a big influence. In Elephant we basically used no lights; If we shot you, you would be lit by this window and we wouldn't put anything on them. We were using a very non-contrasty film, so it would see into whites and blacks with many f-stops on each side. I think in the end it looks really beautiful, but in fact we weren't really aiming for beauty, we were aiming for reality. And we're basically shooting what's there; we're not trying to get like a kick-light off of somebody's head to make them look great.
I guess the most profound thing is that after watching the film, a friend told me that he thought the 'elephant' was the system, it was the high school, and it was the generation that you don't see, like the parents are the elephant. And, that's a different way than I sort of thought about the thing, but I do think that that sort of points to a very big part of the equation, in the sense that the students are actually living in a subculture that it dominated by the culture that's above it. The things that inform student culture are created and controlled by the unseen culture, the sociological aspects of our climbing culture, our "me" generation, our yuppie culture, our SUVs, or, you know, shopping culture, our war culture. I think all the kids have equal fears and hardships. I think they recognize the ‘answers’ as scapegoats and red herrings. They know that the answer is way more unpredictable than having a specific answer. These are the signs to look for – if you do so – it will be safe. If you look for these signs – than you can fix it before it happens. The teens in this country are smarter than that, they know that it is less curable. It requires more thinking than that in order to come up with a resolve. I think within the discussion you can find answers. Hopefully it will help find answers, I mean, that's sort of the purpose. "
article in Indiewire
The reaction from audience members to Gus Van Sant's new film Elephant was about as mixed as could be as I wandered out of the Angelica theater near NYU. I overheard one middle-aged women commenting that it was the worst movie she'd ever seen, and her friend agreed saying it absolutely bored her to death. My friend Dave simply muttered something like "holy shit", and I could tell he felt exactly the opposite. The last time I remember noticing such a conflicted response to a film was after Harmony Korine's Gummo at the same theater several years before. And I think I felt the same sense of being overwhelmed, like I had just experienced something completely different and something really, really important. With this film, Van Sant has basically thrown out many of the tenets of modern filmmaking while at the same time looking back to the masters with respect to camerawork and storytelling. Anyone cynical about American cinema should probably check out this movie.
In a film described as "self-assured, formally adroit, and profoundly illuminating," Elephant depicts the day leading up to a high school shooting. Van Sant has been interested in doing fictional accounts based on simple news stories, and he wanted to recreate the Columbine story, but without necessarily trying to answer 'why' but rather focusing on the actual experience.
Gus had the following comments on the film:
"We didn't have a screenplay, we shot in sequence, and we didn't cover shots from different angles. We really didn't know until the first day of filming what actually was going to happen. We only had single shots. I’m really going in a weird 'I-don’t-know-where' direction.
I think that there's a lot of things about not cutting that we don't really get from a lot of modern cinema, because everyone – fashionwise – is really into cutting like every half-second. The long pieces of film in Elephant are directly influenced by Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr and also other Eastern European filmmakers. Kubrick's a big influence. In Elephant we basically used no lights; If we shot you, you would be lit by this window and we wouldn't put anything on them. We were using a very non-contrasty film, so it would see into whites and blacks with many f-stops on each side. I think in the end it looks really beautiful, but in fact we weren't really aiming for beauty, we were aiming for reality. And we're basically shooting what's there; we're not trying to get like a kick-light off of somebody's head to make them look great.
I guess the most profound thing is that after watching the film, a friend told me that he thought the 'elephant' was the system, it was the high school, and it was the generation that you don't see, like the parents are the elephant. And, that's a different way than I sort of thought about the thing, but I do think that that sort of points to a very big part of the equation, in the sense that the students are actually living in a subculture that it dominated by the culture that's above it. The things that inform student culture are created and controlled by the unseen culture, the sociological aspects of our climbing culture, our "me" generation, our yuppie culture, our SUVs, or, you know, shopping culture, our war culture. I think all the kids have equal fears and hardships. I think they recognize the ‘answers’ as scapegoats and red herrings. They know that the answer is way more unpredictable than having a specific answer. These are the signs to look for – if you do so – it will be safe. If you look for these signs – than you can fix it before it happens. The teens in this country are smarter than that, they know that it is less curable. It requires more thinking than that in order to come up with a resolve. I think within the discussion you can find answers. Hopefully it will help find answers, I mean, that's sort of the purpose. "
article in Indiewire
Schoolboys took Viagra at lunch
read article
Thursday, October 23, 2003 Posted: 4:42 PM EDT (2042 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Six British schoolboys were rushed to the hospital
after taking the erection-enhancing drug Viagra at lunchtime for a dare, the school
said Thursday. Paramedics were called after a fellow student told teachers about the 13-year-olds' prank, a spokesperson for Forest School in Winnersh, in southern England, said. The local education authority said they think the student took the pills from home and brought them to the all-boys school where he shared them with five friends. The school has a no drugs policy and the students likely will face punishment, especially the student who brought the pills into school, the education authority said. Paramedics took the six squirming boys to the nearby Royal Berkshire Hospital, where they were monitored until the effects wore off. The effects of Viagra are typically felt for up to 4 hours, according to viagra.com.
Nikola Tesla - The Tesla Coil
Through the 1890s Nikola Tesla absorbed himself in work with x–rays, with high–frequency, high–voltage phenomena, and with radio. By 1899 he had built in Colorado Springs an isolated laboratory in which he could unleash power at unheard–of levels. His "magnifying transmitter," which included a 52–foot Tesla coil, reached 12 Mv in the secondary-the arcs thrown from its antenna mast sounded a man–made thunder for miles around. As satisfying as were such spectacles for their creator, and tantalizing to his searching mind, any possible commercial value in energy at this scale lay far, far over the horizon. Remarkable by any standard, Tesla's 111 patents illuminate only his most purposive, practical work. As he often lamented, there just wasn't enough time to tame the racing of ideas in his head; so much had to be left incomplete. Some of the projects–for achieving ultra-high vacuum, a rocket engine design, experiments in directed beams and solar power–simply don't fit into the early twentieth century.
Through the 1890s Nikola Tesla absorbed himself in work with x–rays, with high–frequency, high–voltage phenomena, and with radio. By 1899 he had built in Colorado Springs an isolated laboratory in which he could unleash power at unheard–of levels. His "magnifying transmitter," which included a 52–foot Tesla coil, reached 12 Mv in the secondary-the arcs thrown from its antenna mast sounded a man–made thunder for miles around. As satisfying as were such spectacles for their creator, and tantalizing to his searching mind, any possible commercial value in energy at this scale lay far, far over the horizon. Remarkable by any standard, Tesla's 111 patents illuminate only his most purposive, practical work. As he often lamented, there just wasn't enough time to tame the racing of ideas in his head; so much had to be left incomplete. Some of the projects–for achieving ultra-high vacuum, a rocket engine design, experiments in directed beams and solar power–simply don't fit into the early twentieth century.
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
AUTOPSY REPORTS
A Log of experiences as a Medical Examiner Intern
read autopsy report
We had a plane crash today. A small two-engine plane crashed into a pond killing three people inside. Three words: Blunt Force Trauma. The pilot's face was pretty much nonexistant, which is mostly due to the trauma. However, the investigators did have to fight the turtles in order to collect the body. They ate the eyes and were in the process of "giving kisses" to what was left of the face. Boy do I hate decomps. We had a case on Friday of a man that died in his house alone and rotted there for a couple of weeks. He was an alcoholic and apparently died at his kitchen table in front of a glass of scotch. The moral of the story here: if you are going to die, make sure that someone knows where you are so that your body can be found before it gets too far along in its decomposition. I noticed in one of the comments that people like that I don't go into the gore associated with the autopsies... I know that a lot of people get squeamish when they think about blood and guts... I've noticed that when I tell people about my experience, they are interested in the cases, but as soon as I start talking about blood, they lose their interest. The so-called blood and guts is what actually interests me. As a biology major, I am very much interested in what makes the body work. I don't really see the "blood and guts" as being gory or grotesque. I view the organs in much the same way a mechanic would view the parts of a car. They are necessary to make the body run, but there can be problems if one of the parts does not work correctly. It seems kind of insensitive to reduce the human body down to nothing but a collection of parts working together, but it is an effective way to practice medicine.
A Log of experiences as a Medical Examiner Intern
read autopsy report
We had a plane crash today. A small two-engine plane crashed into a pond killing three people inside. Three words: Blunt Force Trauma. The pilot's face was pretty much nonexistant, which is mostly due to the trauma. However, the investigators did have to fight the turtles in order to collect the body. They ate the eyes and were in the process of "giving kisses" to what was left of the face. Boy do I hate decomps. We had a case on Friday of a man that died in his house alone and rotted there for a couple of weeks. He was an alcoholic and apparently died at his kitchen table in front of a glass of scotch. The moral of the story here: if you are going to die, make sure that someone knows where you are so that your body can be found before it gets too far along in its decomposition. I noticed in one of the comments that people like that I don't go into the gore associated with the autopsies... I know that a lot of people get squeamish when they think about blood and guts... I've noticed that when I tell people about my experience, they are interested in the cases, but as soon as I start talking about blood, they lose their interest. The so-called blood and guts is what actually interests me. As a biology major, I am very much interested in what makes the body work. I don't really see the "blood and guts" as being gory or grotesque. I view the organs in much the same way a mechanic would view the parts of a car. They are necessary to make the body run, but there can be problems if one of the parts does not work correctly. It seems kind of insensitive to reduce the human body down to nothing but a collection of parts working together, but it is an effective way to practice medicine.
