Shower mates

In college, I lived on a floor that had more women than men. It was proposed because of this that we make all the bathrooms and showers co-ed. The men (including myself) voted “No”. We had gay men and gay women on our floor, and all the men shared the same shower rooms no matter what sexual orientation we were. 

What we were concerned about was the gender differences when it came to biology. In our minds, (either wrong or right), we thought women would be gross shower mates, you know with all that hair and periods and such. The reason why I bring this up is that there is a conversation going on about whether gay men should share the same shower rooms as straight men, and if so, why isn’t that the same as straight men showering with straight women? 

I have and I will share the same shower room as gay men, because taking a shower rarely has to do with sexuality. It is a nasty, dirty task, and I rather do it with people that share the same parts as me. I love women intensely, but I doubt I would get a rise out of seeing tons of them awkwardly scrubbing their parts just as I awkwardly scrub my parts, and I’m sure that is the same with gay men.

(Cross Posted on Facebook)

After Ebert – The need for multimedia/interactive/networked entertainment crictism

I’ll miss the shit out Roger Ebert. I remember growing up in upstate New York, waking up early Saturday morning to see “Siskel and Ebert”. Although I rarely went to see the movies they reviewed (mostly because of age), I still immensely enjoyed their banter and analysis of films of that time. Later on, when I was old enough and had my after-school job to fuel my fledgling movie going hobby, the film reviews of Roger Ebert became less of an adolescent curiosity and more of a serious research task. Ebert was my “go to guy” when knowing whether or not I should go see a flick. Not to say I followed his advice religiously. I went to see “Street Fighter” (not the good Anime, but the horrible live action film with Raul Julia and Jean-Claude Van Damme) despite his warnings, a decision I regret still. Of course there were films he hated that I liked, but still he was always there as this litmus test that I could rely on.

To say that Roger Ebert was the 20th century’s greatest film critic would not be a crazy premise. The man eared a Pulitzer prize in criticism for Pete’s sake.   But now that he is not with us, and without being disrespectful of the man’s legacy, I wonder if now is the time to start a conversation about the nature of criticism in the 21st century media landscape.

Ebert was always a geek. He embraced laser discs and VHS before everyone. And when DVD started to come to popularity, he was a big proponent of the format, citing the extra features and commentary that were included into various movie DVD releases. Even in the age of social networking, he was a prolific twitter user even before his health deteriorated, and after he loss the ability to speak he used twitter and became a  regular figure in our feeds.

But despite this, I still believe they Ebert was a member of the old guard, albeit a very innovative member. Although with some exceptions (“Avatar” and “Coraline“), Ebert generally hated contemporary 3D in films. He called it’s at best an unnecessary distraction and at it’s worse a money grabbing scheme by Hollywood. Now his arguments against 3D are vary valid (especially when your forking over $15 for a 3D movie when you can see the 2D version of the same title for four dollars less), but if 3D is just another tool for filmmakers to use, and can be argue that this is still (“the bronze age”) of modern 3D filmmaking, I wonder if Ebert was too quick to rub off a visual technique that is still maturing.

One piece of entertainment that Ebert completely didn’t get was video games. Although he seem to be “evolving” his opinion later on in his life, he vehemently placed film, as an art and literary form, far above even modern interactive games. Any gamer will scoff at this assertion, considering the depth and richness and many of the most popular games that have come out in the past several years.  The fact that Ebert ignored an form of entertainment that has dwarfed Hollywood in both money made and engagement is perhaps the strongest reason to say that Ebert was a bit old fashion. Ebert never played “Grand Theft Auto 3″ or “Mass Effect”.

But I can’t blame the man for this, I’m sure when (or rather if), I’m in my late 50′s and some newfangled form of entertainment came out that is all the rage with the kids, I doubt I’ll get it too. But with that said, perhaps now is the time  to take inspiration in Ebert’s intelligence and passion for good cinema, and apply it to the new forms of entertainment, which I’ll called multimedia/networked/interactive (or M/I/N entertainment).

What is M/I/N entertainment? It’s just a generic term for our current entertainment media landscape  It includes films both 2D and 3D, but it also includes video games. It includes viral videos and twitter commentary for reality TV shows, this whole vibrant stew of  both experience AND participatory engagement primarily via the Internet.

We are faced with an unprecedented amount of entertainment choices in a variety of intersecting and merging forms. But for this bounty, there are few people and places where a consumer can go to and get a rational analysis of not just whether something is “good” or not, but delving deeper into it’s social-literary context. To be sure there are some pioneers that are starting to tackle this (Tom Bissell, Ian Bogost, and Jane McGonigal come to mind), but still there is a deficit of such thought in both academia and in mainstream media. The bright spot in all this is the large amount of commentary and discussions that are going on with consumers themselves via social networks, which should not be ignored as a valid source of criticism, although peppered with an ample amount of flaming and trolling that one may need to be conscious of.

So, Mr. Ebert, sir, you will be missed. But with your passing, I urge all of use to turn a page on a chapter, and begin a new chapter of media thought and conversation that is forged in Ebert’s image, but modified and hacked to take on the torrent of  M/I/N entertainment that will be a part of our media lives for years to come.

 

Why I never use a handle when on online communities.

I’ve been asked recently why I never use a handle when I’m posting on an online community. Beyond the communities that pretty much force you to use you real name (Facebook, G+), my username for other networks are equally as bland. On twitter, I use “jwoody”, on reddit I use the more identifying ”jeromewoody”, and most blog and systems out there, I’ll just either identify myself as jwoody.

In the wilds of the web beyond the curated control of the major social networks, the idea of using your real name in online communities may seemed odd to people, or even a bit frightening. It’s been drilled into us by the media and popular culture that the Internet is filled with people who shouldn’t be allowed to know who you really are in real life. Perhaps another user or troll will take something you said online personal and tell you what he thinks face to face, or some cyber syndicate will use your name as a means to steal your entire identity. Many may just want to have the cloak of anonymity to say what they whatever they want.

My first online community that I was truly engaged in was back when I was a teen. I got an account on “The Well” back in 1996 after reading an article about the board system in Wired. It was at that time that I gained access to other systems and became more active in computing in general. On the well there was a general rule call “YOYOW”, or You Own Your Own Words. Coined by Well founder Steward Brand, the term has had many interpretations over the years but from what I took of it, it meant you were responsible for what you say in any forum. When I’m online posting a comment on either wired.com or slog (The Stranger’s Weblog), I want people to know that those comments were written by me, Jerome Woody, for I’m not going to communities to just drive by with some comment without a way to trace it back to me, I’m there because I committing myself to that community and want to participate in discussions, both deep and trivial.

I admit that without the cloak of a handle I do feel more exposed, and I tend to manage the way I am to other users online, and for the most part I believe that’s a good thing. I’ve always been one to freely give my opinion and haven’t turned away from a controversial subject, but I believe that using my name makes me a bit more considerate of other users comments. The urge to go all 4chan on a thread is gone completely since I don’t want to be known as “that asshole Jerome Woody” on reddit.

Although there are limits to this philosophy. As the web has deeply become a part of my public life, it has become a part of my private life as well. Like many people there are things that I do online that I would be embarrassing about if gotten out in the open, and in those occasions I will use some handle or attempt to mask my activity completely. But I believe that associating with most comment based communities is a public act, like going out to a public gathering or a bar. In real life, we don’t walk about among the masses with fake glasses and a mustache, we are who we are, and even without giving our names, our physical presence alone codify our identities.

On a web filled with flame wars, trolling and online bullying, I think if more of us decided to own our own words, to take responsibility to what we say and how we interact with others, we could have a web infused with more social respect and engagement.

But if you like your vanity name I respect that, it’s hard to be out there naked. You can just like to be known that online and I respect that too. But when you see my name on some anime forum or android mailing list, I’m not trying to be arrogant or naive. I’m just being me.

My Google Chrome Ecosystem

Two big things happen this week that pretty much solidified having a Google Chrome ecosystem, the premiere of Chrome Beta for the Android operating system, and the arrival of my newly purchased Samsung Chromebook.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. A little background : I’ve been using google chrome ever since I found out my favorite search engine was coming out with their browser. I’ve gleefully read and admired the Scott McCloud drawn Google Chrome comic, an innovated medium to explain an innovated idea of how to build web browsers. With cartoonified depictions of Google engineers describing concepts such as threaded tabs, sandboxing, and fast javascript rendering, it was a new idea of the web that had only started to dawn on me : the web itself as software.

As a web developer I was well aware of the increasing complexity and power of web technologies, but until that point the use for the web I knew it to be was as a repository of content, it was great for reading news and sharing information with people, but not for doing your taxes, or editing a music track.

Chrome changed that. Here was a browser built primary for Web Applications. Google boldly predicted that era of “The Showing Web” was drawing near to be replaced with “The Doing Web”, a web that computes and produces.

Although still tethered to Firefox due to needed development add-ins (which is no longer needed since the modern chrome browser now has the same tools), I quickly adopted Google chrome as my primary browser. It was satisfying to see this skinny, lean skeleton of a browser slowly, then quickly, gain market share during that first several months. It was definitely the constant presence on my computers at home.

If you ever read Masamune Shirow’s “Ghost in the Shell”, or watch any of the movies or TV show, chrome felt to me like the terminal interfaces you saw on the show, those floating, techno-spiked objects in a person’s HUD feeding them information. Chrome for me  feel like a primitive version of that in my life, these thin terminal frames housing my online world, allowing all the power to control my way through this universe, but hiding and folding everything into an interface that doesn’t get in the way of itself.

The announcement of Chrome OS made me skeptical however. At the time news came out that Google was going to create an operating system based on Chrome I was already knee deep in Android geekdom, already on my 2nd Android phone, rooted and modded like the first. I actually felt a bit betrayed as an Android fan. I was thinking to myself “why the fuck would Google do this, they have Android!”. Truly if Google wanted to create a desktop operating system, they would build it around Android.

But once again the idea of the “Doing Web” shook me out of my Android fixation and I realized that Chrome was pretty much my operation system already, or at least one of them. At that point most of the work I was doing was on the web, including that of building and managing websites. I mean I still had a text editor or some terminal opened on my Windows or Linux machine, but that would be it.

When Google decided to give out thousands of Chrome OS laptops for people volunteering to use them in a pilot program I was one of the early applicants, sending Google a request for one because I wanted to see how it would be to accomplished web development completely in the cloud, using IDEs, Database management tools, even image and graphic editing tools, all through the web.  A week later a box with a brand new CR-48 computer came with no warning on my front porch.

With the CR-48, I did work on freelance web projects using it as my primary computer. I did find web versions of web developer editors and tools that I usually can only get as a windows program, with varying results. But along the two years the tools have definitely improved to a point where one tool , ShiftEdit, has become my primary code editor.

So at this point this Chrome Ecosystem starts to form. I had two windows laptops running chrome, one of those laptops connected to my television via HDMI, so I can stream videos via a chrome browser. I had my trusty CR-48 although it was starting to show its short age, although still pretty reliable. Chrome was becoming a network within itself, with search queries, browsing histories and other web use related data and apps being synced among the Chrome equipped computers. I eventually replace that laptop tethered to the TV with a heavily discounted Logitech Review, the google TV set-top device with Chrome built-in. I also had an android tablet and android phone, both modded with Ice Cream Sandwich Mods, equipped with a very decent stock browser but no Chrome.

But after two years of heavy use, my CR-48 was starting to exhibit hardware issues. Nothing to prevent it from being used, but it was starting to become unhinged, and a good bump would power it off completely. So I decided I should put my money where my mouth is, and pay into this whole Chrome OS philosophy, and thus  my newly arrived Samsung Series 5 Chromebook.

So now here i am, a geek with a stable of seven devices that all have Chrome on them, two of them ONLY having Chrome on it. Usually ecosystems are defined as a constellation of devices able to easily share files and content pertaining to it’s user, usually sharing a common platform or brand. A week ago, I would of probably said I had more of a “Google” Ecosystem, with most of my devices running some kind of Google technology like Android and Chrome. But now with Chrome for Android, even my mobile devices have the same “Ghost in the Shell” web terminal, built to communicate with its siblings running my may laptops and my TV.

I look forward to seeing how this changes the way I work and entertain myself. I of course know that I’m yet to use Chrome in a vacuum, Windows Programs and Android Apps will still play an influential part of my digital life, but I know that the bulk of my online world will be looked at through a Google Chrome frame. From time to time, I’ll document life using that ecosystem on my blog, perhaps an insight or two will pop out of my observations.

Amazon Fire

Overall, I like what I see in this tablet. It has a lot of great features, I think Amazon silk may be a breakthrough in Android browsers. The fact that it’s $50 less than my Nook Color makes me not too guilty if I pick one up myself and give the nook color away (honestly I don’t know what Barnes and Noble’s is going to do now, they better pull a rabbit out of their hats to even compete with what Amazon is offering now). I like the fact that Amazon has a tablet because you can buy the device directly from Amazon, and you don’t have to go through a mobile company like AT&T and have to sign onto a wireless plan in order to get the unit subsidized, which would still be more expensive than the Kindle Fire.

The thing I always hated about the iPad was that it was too damn expensive. You have to understand that my expensive tolerance is fairly low (Over $300 is expensive for me, and I think for a growing swath of people in this country). But I think of Moore’s law like I think of similar concepts, like gravity, that technology will get cheaper and get into the hands of more people. Digital divide wise the more information technology is in the hands of more people, the better a society is, I firmly believe that. Amazon just opened the door for consumers of lesser means to have access to as much digital content as iPad users, and I think the Amazon Prime’s $80 a year is probably the cheapest all-you-can-eat plan out there ( Netflix average out to $95 a year, Hulu Plus around $115 a year, not much more but still more). And I’m sure it will be rootable so people who know what to do can put a modded android build on it, similar to what I did for my Nook Color.

Of course the dream, the true dream, is to get a $200 general purpose tablet of decent quality. The Kindle fire is not general purpose, it’s a multipurpose tablet focused, like a laser beam, on buying and consuming content from Amazon. It has apps, but not as much as the more open Android app store. Even rooted with a more general purpose android build on it, the hardware has is no gps, no bluetooth, no HDMI out. These types of features are more known to the now we can definitely say “high-end” android based tablets like the Motorola Xoom and the Galaxy Tab.  I want those features AND I want all the content options that Amazon Kindle Fire has. I just hope that at least other tablet manufactures take this in consideration and just start dropping their prices.

The Persistent Stream

Today, Wired posted an story about AT&T proposing a general data cap on thier DSL and UVerse Fiber networks, 150 GB a month for DSL and 250 GB a month for Uverse.

Now I can go on and on about how once again a telecommunications company is diluting services in the name of preventing network congestion, but only seem that it’s just to line their pockets. But I’m not, there will be plenty of consumer advocates and information activists that will be doing that Rather, I would like to argue the case that any cap can’t be justified, even with a high threshold.

Most domestic network users, when seeing the 150 and especially 250 GB data cap will say, “That’s a ridiculously high cap. Even at my heaviest internet use I would never surpass that in a month.”  And that may be true, at least today. But we are in the middle of a transition in which the bulk of both computing and media is being done through the network.

Think about what you do on the daily basis with a connected device. You may be watching HD video via Hulu or Netflix, talking to people on skype, or playing a multi-player game online via Xbox, Wii, or PS3. Even doing work can involve a great deal of network access. E-mail, writing up paperwork or working on various traditional desktop computer work can be doing entirely online at this point more and less, and the convenience of these web apps are growing. This type of internet access, one in which every aspect of computing is done with some amount of network access  is what I called “Persistent Streaming”.

The persistent stream is John Gage’s term “the network is the computer” finally taking shape in our daily lives. None of us can argue that the majority of the time we spend in front of a screen isn’t dedicated to sending and receiving bits to and from the ether. Network access has become so intertwined in the way software operates that it becomes invisible to us. Not only that, the network has ceased to be just a means in which data transferred to be processed on home desktops, but rather its being processed remotely and presented to us via  messages or fully interactive interfaces.

And similar to the way computer power can be quantified via CPU clock speed, the power of the persistent stream is directly contributed to the amount of bandwidth a connection has. The quality of a video stream, a VOIP call, connecting to some cloud based application, all of these services improve when done over a fast connection. And like desktop applications evolving to in a matter to require more cpu processing power over time, so will network based applications and services.

And that’s my point. An ISP now saying to you that you can only have 150 GB/Month now is like Intel in 1998 telling you that you were only need a 450 Mhz CPU to do what you need to do, with software being written three years that require over 1 Ghz of processing power in order to function. Eventually data and services on the network will require more bandwidth and that huge 150 GB a month will seem quite quaint in a couple of years. Unfortunately, unlike the PC hardware industry there is no competitive insentient  for ISPs like AT&T to create faster network infrastructure to keep in pace with evolving use of the network. Just the opposite in fact, ISPs are trying to tell it’s users that their use of the persistent stream is something that needs to be controlled, eliminating unlimited accesses and clocking it as some twisted conservation effort. But in fact, increasing bandwidth use is just another facet of Moore’s law playing it’s geometric course.

Finding out about Egypt

Like many Americans, up until this point Egypt was a country on the peripheral of my imagination. It was a country in which I remember in adventure films. Indiana Jones, The Mummy. Camels, sand and the pyramids. That’s it. Even in this post-9/11 age, Egypt was in the background. It was always portrait in the media as “the stable state”, “the Peace Holder” more because its peace treaty and diplomatic relations with Irael.

In fact any real deep knowledge I have at all about Egypt was an Audiobook I purchased online entitled Dreams and Shadows : The Future of the Middle East by Robin Wright. In Dreams and Shadows Write gives a comprehensive and dense overview of every country in the middle east. It was an exciting read listen. What I remember about Egypt was that it was the birthplace of the Muslim Brotherhood and of the 30 year long state of “Emergency Law”. Once again a quick look into Wikipedia gave me a good recap on Egypt and Emergency Law.

Egyptians have been living under an Emergency Law (Law No. 162 of 1958) since 1967, except for an 18-month break in 1980. The emergency was imposed during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and reimposed following the assassination of President Anwar Sadat.

• Emergency Law in Egypt

I also looked into what happened in Tunisia, which pretty much was the inspiration for the Egyptian mass protests. I went back to reliable Wikipedia for that info (2010-2011 Tunisia uprising). Since what going on now in Egypt is going on now (at least at the time of this posting), there is alot, A LOT of real-time information out there, particularly on social networks. The mass media in this country latched on to the successful use of twitter and facebook in organizing the uprising, and this is true. However, as an outside observer, you’ll be accessing this information as a complete consumer, and there is a river of updates coming out, especially on twitter. Observing the hashtag #Egypt or #jan25 is pretty much is useless in realtime. When I searched for #Egypt on my Tweetdeck chrome webapp, it crashed my browser tab. I had to move to the desktop version in order too handle the load. Even with that it’s a stream of updates, like 10 a second. Now I’m a fast reader, but not that fast. If you intend on following the #Egypt hastag I suggess finding a client that can handle the load, particular a desktop based client. I suggest however to stick to single twitter sources for these updates, or lists.

When it comes to news coverage, I can’t stress this enough, Al Jazeera English! I’ve been having the stream on for days (and although I join Jeff Jarvis in his call for cable companies to add the Al Jazeera English channel, I’m fine with just watching it online, I hate cable). Although I am a progressive I don’t think Al Jazeera is a progressive station, or a station trying push an Islamic agenda as some folks on the right think they do. It reminds me more of like a BBC, but with a more international scope. They are like the only agencies that have consistently had people on the ground in Egypt during all this, US outlets have been using Al Jezeera’s footage as a base of their own coverage. The channel is smart, modern, and strangely tempered. I guess I’m just used to hearing talking heads and anchors scream at me on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. I remember an segment on NPR’s On the Media about the start of the English Al Jazeera channel.

As I lay sick on my couch (bit of a head cold), writing this it is midmorning in Cairo. I watching the Al Jazeera stream and reading the rapid popups of twitter posts ending with #Egypt and #Jan25. I think personally what captivates me about this drama is that I want people to feel and live a life with justice in it. I suppose that hope is embedded in my DNA. As an American, I think the story of people sticking up for themselves after a long period of repression is a universal theme in each of us.

Introducing “Realer than Real”, my on going series on Hyper-realism

Earlier today, I was listening to Howard Stern on Sirius/XM radio. A typical occurrence of the show is having adult film stars come in for a little chat with Howard, Robin and the usual crew. Today’s show was no exception, but the conversation between Stern and the porn stars made me pause from my work and listen. Here is a summary of what I heard.

Howard mentioned the guests they had coming up today and said that he’s having some porn girls in since so many people like that on the show. Howard said porn is ruining the country though. He said the girls are so vocal in the videos and then when you have sex yourself you feel you’re missing something. Howard said he’s had sex with several normal women who make you feel unloved. He said he’d give Robin an example…

… Howard said he was listening to the clips of the girls that are coming in today and they sound so sexy. He wants that in his personal life but he know he won’t have that. He played a clip of one of the girls getting banged and she’s moaning and making all kinds of noise as the guy is banging her. Howard said no regular woman sounds like that. Robin said women don’t want to hear that kind of stuff in a movie. Howard said that’s what men want. He said he’s been watching porn for years and this stuff is ruining lives. He said men expect this kind of thing during sex.

- Source: MarksFrigging.com (http://www.marksfriggin.com/news.htm, Obtained online 7/14/10)

What does this mean? Howard, with or without knowing it (probably the latter, the man is extremely intelligent, despite what my friends say), is referring to pornography, a manufactured product, being so real and stylistic that it can alter or even replace the sexual experience of it’s observer. This phenomenon is known as hyper-reallism , and it permeates throughout the modern world, in particularly in media, art and architecture .

What is hyper-realism?

There are allot of definitions of hyper-realism, the two I like are the standard dictionary entry, and the very detailed  Wikipedia entry. Here is the dictionary definition:

An artistic style characterized by highly realistic graphic representation.

Hyper-realism is a concept you hear in artists and philosophical circles, but it’s not something that is a part of the lexicon on most people. I find this interesting, considering how much hyper-realism is a part of modern life. You experience it when going to Las Vegas, when seeing a 3D movie like “Avatar”, when playing games like “Halo” or “Second Life”. And with the proliferation of new and more vivid media technologies (Virtual Reality, High Definition video, etc), we, in my opinion, are moving towards a world in which the amount to time we spend observing hyper-reality would be equal if not more than the time we sense and observe “standard” reality. That leaves to all sorts of questions. What will that do to us as a society and a species? What will happen to the real reality that we are more and more distancing ourself from? Or even, is hyper-reality just an offshoot of standard reality, can hyper-reality even exist without standard reality to base itself on?

With that said, I’m going to start an ongoing series of blog, facebook and twitter postings on the subject. I have to disclose that I am not at all an expert on the subject matter, I’m just interested in it. Allot of the posting will be links to articles and books that discuss the topic in more detail that I could ever. However, I will be peppering much of this information with my own tidbits on the subject. I would rather have a conversation with like-minded people via various social networks I’m on and on this blog, so please join in with comments on this blog, retweets, direct messages, facebook wall posts, etc. This will probably be the only “formal” post on the subject as well, my future posts will be  more casual.

Finally, as for Stern’s conversation with the adult film stars, he asked them directly if how they act during the filming is actually how they have sex in real life. The two starlets admitted that although there are aspects of the performances are how they react to sex, they are definitely playing up for the camera and that their real sex lives are surprisingly tame. But they offered that they like the tame sex they have, saying “a lot of the stuff we do during filming we really don’t like”.

I look forward to exploring this topic and discussing it with people F2F and online. Look out to “RTR” tag in my various posts and tweets, which will identify that it is part of this series.

What if “Akira” was created by Americans

Ok, so I saw this post on Japan Probe and I thought it was hilliarious. It’s a parody of the upcoming american adaption of the classic masterpiece “Akira”. Initially, I was going to post this up on Facebook, but after watching the video and thinking about it, I decided that here is a millisecond of content in it that may offend some people so I decided to post it here with proper context.

This is a parody of  American teen films, but there is a slight moment when a black character in the video is shown. Although only a split second, the character is visually looks like the classic “Sambo” depiction of African Americans with a modern spin to it, along with the reference by one of the characters in the video as a “gang member”.

Obviously I noticed it and was concerned enough to post it on my personal blog instead so I can write this mini-disclaimer. However, I still posted the video, why?

1. The video is a parody of American teen films, which most are dominated by white characters and when they do have black characters they are depicted in a ghettoized gang context. I’m assuming that this is what the creators of this video was trying to accomplish.
2. I HATE, HATE, HATE the idea of an American live action version of  ”Akira”. Are you fucking kidding me?!? No way will this film be good, the very fact that it will not take place in Japan, in Neo-tokyo, is bad enough. I don’t care if they got the Hughes brothers to produce and direct it, it WILL BE TERRIBLE

Anyway, like I said usually I would just post in on Facebook and not give a fuck, but I don’t want friends and fam to see it and think immediately that I hating on my own. With that said, enjoy…

SIFF Review : Devil’s Town

Now that I’ve seen the film, I can say that it wasn’t what I expected. From the trailer I saw, I was expecting a european sex comedy where the characters got into wacky situations. But in truth, the movie is about the lives, passions, and tragedies of the citizens of post-war serbia.

I liked the length of the film (approx 80 minutes), it kept me intereted and the pacing was fast enough for me not to get impatient (something that happens to me a lot when watching a non asian foreign film).

And although the film was serving plenty of serbian skin, it was not done for the sake of just showing skin, but as a product of love and lust being a foundation of the movie’s plot. Indeed, there are various scenes in which I regret, along with the characters, the sexual behavior they just participated in.

The timing in the film is what really stood out. The way the director used the camera to introduce the relation of principle characters was well executed.

On a final note, I know little of Serbian outside of what I read in wikipedia and from pbs (which it more than most Americans I’m sure). One aspect of Serbia that the movie pointed out is that her people are obessed with tennis. It has to be the national past time there. That type of shit interest me, you know. It’s the little things, the little tints of culture that’s so close to my own, but not. Anyway, I gave it a 3 on my judging card.

I may skip the movie I had planned tommarrow, but I’m definitely going all out this weekend, especially if I can get a hold of a pass.