Gessel On…

This is a great description of Homeopathy.  I have occasionally pointed out to (usually unreceptive friends) a few of the curious consequences of logic in Homeopathy, but this little cartoon is a far more entertaining analysis:

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Carolyn and I saw Carolyn and I saw the Miscreants of Taliwood at the Telluride Film Festival last September and had an opportunity to talk with the director, George Gittoes. We felt the movie was an important record, and George an important resource, for the people we work with in DC and arranged to have him come for a screening.

Miscreants is the only western film by the only western observer in the Tribal region of Pakistan along the Afghan border during the tumultuous period starting with the siege of the Red Mosque/Lal Masjid in June of 2007 and including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

This is a unique document, the sole direct, ground-level view of the geographic heart of Taliban ideology and a core operations center for Al Qaeda. Further, the opportunity to speak with Gittoes is particularly exceptional as his two years in the region were marked by extraordinary encounters that he was unable to incorporate into his documentary because “when people are pointing guns at you, taking out your camera gets you killed.”

We are screening it tonight, Wednesday, February 24th at 8pm at the Letelier Theater at 3251 Prospect Street, NW (upper courtyard – above Café Milano) Wash, DC 20007 202-338-5835. Admission is free Parking garage located between Café Milano and Café Peacock.

There will be a Q & A with George Gittoes immediately following the screening.

My favorite rental cars so far.

It’s a pretty nice rental car. Pure white seems to be a bird poop magnet, but the car is fast, comfortable, and quiet.

it ranks as one of the better rentals so far; below Volvo, Audi, and (of course) the Mercedes, but still quite nice.

Hertz gave me a lovely Mercedes E350 as a free upgrade in LA this trip: definitely the best upgrade so far.

It is quite a nice car, with plenty of trunk space, and extremely quiet interior, a powerful engine, and excellent handling. The interior is clean and well designed with a nice dash that’s easy to read. In fact the entire system was fairly intuitive. I had my phone paired with the in-car audio system, the voice recognition system figured out, the nav system programmed, climate set, and my favorite Sirius classical station on the radio in the 20 minute drive from LAX to Santa Monica. It was probably the first time I’ve made that trip and arrived a little disappointed it was so brief.

Most of the interaction with the Car’s computer is through voice prompts and the system is very effective: it never made a mistake in my use. One can also navigate the cars computer options with a fairly nice click wheel, which is reminiscent of the BMW system, but without the force feedback (alas).

The Nav system in the car is excellent. It works far better than the Hertz NeverLost system (which was, inexplicably, also installed). The Mercedes version is a lot easier to read and understand and is integrated with the audio system in the car (though the announcements were painfully loud and the one thing I didn’t figure out was how to turn them down).

The computer’s visual interface also serves as the backup camera. It seems a bit superfluous on a normal sized car, but it has a good down-view, so one can see if one is about to backup over a child’s favorite toy or limb, which I suppose has merit for people who haven’t realized that most children are the free byproduct of an otherwise pleasurable activity.

I was very impressed with the iPod integration. The in-glove-box cabling includes an analog headset port (female, for reasons I do not comprehend – it should be male) and an iPod connector.

The on-screen interface is a nice integration with basic iPod functionality and the click wheel emulates the iPod’s navigation mode in a very intuitive way, unlike the Audi interface.

Mercedes even manages to push their own logo to the iPod, which is pretty impressive.

All in all, an excellent rental I’d be glad to get again.

My standing with Hz LA must be improving…

Jennifer's Body Various

We saw Jennifer’s Body at TIFF09.  It is a fun fright fest, I mean how can you go wrong with a super hot high school girl turned human-flesh eating demon who seduces boys and then rips them to shreds.  Plus, as a bonus, there is the hottest lesbian kiss in mainstream media between Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried.

Alas, while Jennifer’s body (the physical corpus) is very much worth of the general public’s lust, there’s no gratuitous nudity, not even a single breast, despite many opportunities.  There’s a single distant shot of Fox swimming naked across a lake, but otherwise more about the blood than the boobies.

In the end, the omission of fleeting nudity is forgivable as the two stars more than make up for it with a light-hearted and funny screen presence and some very sexy moments.  It was an entirely enjoyable experience.  And it was nice to see Ash.

I saw Red Riding at the Telluride Film Festival. It is a three part story of a corrupt police force in Yorkshire over three different eras, each marked by murders. As the series goes on, the weight of the unsolved crimes accumulates until it reaches a breaking point in the third, 1983.

Each movie was done by a different director, and the first, 1974, was the best.  It had the strongest story line and the best acting.  Andrew Garfield as a reporter was particularly good.  1980, about the yorkshire ripper, seemed to stand somewhat apart from the trilogy, though it did advance certain aspects of the story of police corruption.  The last, 1983, brought the trilogy to a satisfying conclusion and was certainly a powerful bit of storytelling, but I found it somewhat burdened by flashback references to the earlier movies that proved a little confusing given the complex story line.

The series was well received at Telluride and many people thought it was one of the best in the festival.  I enjoyed it very much, though I was glad I watched the whole series through in one sitting.

Quite lovely, excellent view and an exceptionally helpful staff.