captainsblog | Signal Boostings (Reply)

No new content here.... just things showing up after I wrote about them.

* The first of the Youtubings that I've seen of friends' films from last weekend. I can only embed one per entry, so more may follow. This one's directed by poet friend Umar, produced by theater friend Aimee and has her daughter Jess in the cast:

Watch on YouTube

* The local media has decided to sit up and take notice about my scoop on the discontinuing of Wegmans pop. The piece on Spectrum's site is probably free to read; the Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse versions are probably paywalled. None come right out and mention anything about the likely pre$$ure from Coke and Pepsi distributors to make more room for their own more expensive merch.

* Finally, on the subject of paywalls: one of my morning go-to sites for political and social commentary is called Digby's Hullabaloo. "Digby" is the nom de bloggue of a Californian of my generation named Heather Parton, a regular contributor to Salon dot com as well as writing and curating the mostly reposts of important things on her own site, with the regular assistance of guys like Tom Sullivan and Spocko's Brain. They often break paywalls of shit sites like WSJ and The Atlantic (which we did spring for, thankuvermush) to give us reposts of their content that they then comment on or add to.

But it's not all Sturm und Drang. Digby ends each workweek with a Friday Night Soother, usually of cute aminals being cute and aminal-like. Sunday mornings begin with another regular, Dennis Hartley, recapping some form of recorded entertainment such as songs, albums or, as this week, films. I've found many on these lists that I recognized from our own lovings of them, while others I've sought out on his recommendation that have, more often than not, turned out to be worthwhile selections. With back-to-school either here or just around the corner in the US, he did one this morning titled "From crayons to perfume: Top 10 school flicks." Some on here you'd expect, like Blackboard Jungle and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. But what comes in, right about halfway down this Top Ten List? Gregory's Girl, which I just finally relocated and watched and wrote about here last week.

My go-get-it on his list was the final one, which may turn out to be the final DVD we ever get shipped from Netflix next month:

Twenty-Four Eyes– This drama from Keisuke Kinoshita could be the ultimate “inspirational teacher” movie. Set in an isolated, sparsely populated village on the ruggedly beautiful coast of Japan’s Shodoshima Island, the story begins in 1928 and ends just after WW 2. It’s a simple yet deeply resonant tale about the long-term relationship that develops between a compassionate, nurturing teacher (Hideko Takamine) and her 12 students, from grade school through adulthood.

Many of the cast members are non-actors, but you would never guess it from the wonderful performances. Kinoshita enlisted sets of siblings to portray the students as they “age”, giving the story a heightened sense of realism. The film, originally released in 1954, was hugely popular in Japan; a revival years later introduced it to Western audiences, who warmed to its humanist stance and undercurrent of anti-war sentiment.

This will continue something of an unintentional Japanese film festival we've been running here between vampires and murders in buildings: Eleanor picked up a couple of Hirokazu Koreeda films from the library- Still Walking, which she watched while I was out somewhere, and Like Father Like Son that we have on the menu for tonight- while I independently Netflixed, and we just watched, his Our Little Sister film about four full-to-half female siblings, all of the same father, who come together through a fairly complex web of family connections and somehow form a family of their own by the end.

----

Poets today. Actual possible content here to follow.