TheWarrenReport Daily

TheWarrenReport Daily http://www.thewarrenreport.com/blog Opinions and views from the man himself.en Copyright 2008 The Warren Report. All Rights Reserved. 5/16/2008 5/16/2008 20 "It's Britney, B*tch" http://www.thewarrenreport.com/blog/default.asp?blogID=23 And so begins the latest audio fiasco from America's favorite trainwreck, Britney Spears. Moments after the first single from her new album was released, remixes, spin-offs, copycats, fans, YouTube, and countless others had already downloaded that one-second sound bite for personal gain. A Google search uncovers zealots and nay-sayers alike chiming in harmony "it's Britney, B*tch." Hi Reporters. Emily here. Certainly you didn't think Warren would chatter about the pop princess? Question: how many of you knew there was an "incident" (rumor: bomb threat) at Sea-Tac this week, resulting in a large airliner emptying out on the runway, and all incoming & outbound planes diverting and/or delaying? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Try Googling that. Or let me save you the time-- you won't find anything. Next question: how many know what's happening in Britney's custody battle? For the record, she lost the kids after courts declared her a habitual user of drugs and alcohol, and an unfit mother. Shocker. On the bright side, the New York Daily News came up with the moniker Unfitney, and it's rather catchy, no? Here's my point. I'm driving towards hourly parking at Sea-Tac and I see three helicopters hovering over the runways. Obviously not a good sign, as that is highly restricted airspace since long before 9/11. Hmmmm. I don't see any smoke (good). I don't hear any blaring sirens (good). So, I continue on my can't-be-bothered-by-news-helicopters way. Next, I'm waiting at baggage claim to pick up filmmaker Jay Jonroy (DAVID & LAYLA). A few of us start chatting because the Arrivals Board says "On Time," but never changes to "Arrived" even though 20 minutes after the scheduled arrival time have passed. Well, I actually don't have all day to wait around at the mercy of Airport Officials who are less and less concerned about accuracy and communication, and increasingly concerned with taking screaming infants away from their young mothers to make sure there isn't a bottle of pure, fresh, unopened H2o hiding under the woobie. A young lady waiting to pick up her Grandma says she just received a phone call and there was a bomb threat. Another woman chimes in that her daughter just landed, and asked why she saw an I-won't-name-it Airline plane disembarking halfway down the runway with "fire trucks and stuff?" I mention the helicopters. So, we pieced together that mystery, and went about waiting for our respective flights to arrive. No news is certainly good news in this airport situation. However, as far as news goes, isn't it still, you know, news news? Like, afternoon TV news, or something? And if not, that's fine. But why WHY WHY is Britney all over my news sources? Pick your flavor: CNN, Fox News, or BBC. BBC!!! I've got some news too, (cover your ears, Tom Cruise): Britney is suffering the most devastating case of postpartum ever recorded by the paparazzi. The poor girl is country corn-fed with an education beyond lacking, and now she's living in arguably the most vicious metropolis in America. She's on Forbes Top 20 for net-worth, sharing the title with the likes of Martha Stewart, J-Lo, Nicole Kidman, the Olson twins, and Oprah. She flat-out does not have the tools to handle the responsibility that kind of wealth brings, AND SHE'S STEEPED IN POSTPARTUM! Where is her support system? She's alienated her family and close friends, fired every nanny, gone through a divorce, hmmm. Check any definition of postpartum and you'll see facts like: withdrawal from friends and family (check!), decreased interest in things (like your kids? Or showering? Or performing sober at the VMA's? Check!), irritability (anyone see the umbrella incident? Check!), weight gain (and she'll never live it down. Check!) It's cruel and unusual to be as fascinated as we are with the preposterous downslide of Britney Spears. Shame on you, you, and you. And me, I'll admit it. We watch her pull anvils onto her own head like she's a cartoon character, not like a flesh-and-blood human who is clearly snapping beyond reason and control. It's sad! It's very, very sad. Save the whales! Free Tibet! Stop Genocide! Don't wear fur! Save whatever you can but turn your back on fame because those people knew what they were getting into and deserve whatever they get! And Stop Capital Punishment! It's a microcosm of what's wrong these days. Media coverage is a war of absurdity. The entertainment industry judges human value by the ability to land gossip magazine mentions. Meanwhile the truly entertaining or media worthy go by wholly overlooked. Everyone's a critic, and he who barks loud enough gets the syndicated column while the most educated and thought-provoking slide away into independent magazine obscurity. Warren and I meet a lot of amazingly passionate, talented, down-to-earth people. Gems of society. Pillars of art producing poetic, cultivated, visual treasures. Meanwhile, Big Budget Mind-Numbing Action Flick part 12 starring Us Weekly Cover Girl runs 10+ weeks in local theaters, turning once-normal folks into mush-minded zombies. For this b*tch, that's unfitney. Bah, Emily @thewarrenreport.com10/4/2007 8:02:06 PM THE FEARFUL CRITIC http://www.thewarrenreport.com/blog/default.asp?blogID=22 If everyone's a critic, it's only because the job has become so much easier. Reviewers no longer analyze, they summarize; they then lump apples with oranges, THE BRAVE ONE with DEATH WISH. This cinematic mash-up is incongruous and insulting. The two are not the same, yet every review I've read (or heard) insists they be judged on a similar scale. Lady Justice is blindfolded; movie critics have no such excuse for their lack of vision. THE BRAVE ONE was directed deliberately by Oscar®-winner Neil Jordan (THE CRYING GAME; THE BUTCHER BOY). DEATH WISH was manufactured generically by hack-master Michael Winner (THE STONE KILLER; SCREAM FOR HELP). DEATH WISH is a genre chestnut best tossed on an open fire. THE BRAVE ONE is an incisive indictment of vengeance best considered once it opens fire. Nevertheless, critics equate and rate the two, often dismissing THE BRAVE ONE due to its relative bloodlust-lessness. Sorry, chum, you've swallowed the bait. Having witnessed gratuitous brutality, Charles Bronson knocks heads and bangs gangs to incite the maddening crowds, then DEATH WISH offers the audience escape in its hero's vigilantic violence. Jodie Foster is similarly scarred, but far more tortured. Chuck shoots, he scores. She shoots, she's scared... even if her hands never shake, her soul quakes as she reckons the diminishing returns of revenge. THE BRAVE ONE is an intentional misnomer; the movie's heroine only such in a tragic sense. DEATH WISH was an antidote for apathetic urbanites too fearful to walk their city streets in the Seventies. THE BRAVE ONE is electro-shock for today's patriotic Americans who, reflexively, embrace bloodshed in the name of Justice. THE BRAVE ONE challenges our ignoble notions of morality within the story of a lone gun(wo)man, embedded in the supertext of war-mongering imperialism. THE BRAVE ONE may not be brilliant, but it is purposeful and potent. Critics needn't agree with me... or you... or each other, for that matter. However, they are obligated to dig deeper than the loglines provided in press releases and to look beyond superficial similarities on screen. Otherwise, why not compare THE BRAVE ONE to TURNER & HOOCH? They both feature dogs in peril, yes? If critics forego this minimal expecation for their occupation, they risk their work becoming as formulaic and irrelevant as the blockbuster films they choose to deride. Please, see THE BRAVE ONE. Write your own review. Yes, everyone's a critic, but only your opinion counts. Tea-totaling, not gun-toting, Warren9/21/2007 2:05:43 AM ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT http://www.thewarrenreport.com/blog/default.asp?blogID=21 Fast, cheap and good. Any knowledgeable contractor will tell you, two out of the three are possible when tackling a project; take your pick. Apparently indecisive, Hollywood suits don't even aim for the holy trinity, preferring to opt for "D," none of the above. Development execs retard the filmmaking process, tabloid bait bloat the budget and marketing visionaries dumb down content to the extent that the wisdom of 5th graders can be used as a barometer of audience intelligence and taste. Uh-huh. On the other end of the cinematic spectrum, the DIY movement surges. (Of course, sometimes surges are just that, a bolstering of numbers, not testament to any significant advancement.) Guerilla filmmakers, or, more accurately, inept videographers, show their "strength in numbers" in the exponential growth of 48-hour film challenges nationwide. Kudos. Never have so many worked so mightily to achieve so little. Having recently judged such a competition, I can assure that the hastily-assembled teams and more hastily-concocted shorts do reflect the contractor's creed: by design, they were completed quickly and they sure do look cheap. Good? Well, some might argue that taste is subjective. However, the evidence collected here suggests a more objective summation: Are you f*&$ing kidding me? Of course not. But don't blame the aspiring auteurs and half-witted hobbyists. The fault lie not in our untrained stars, but in ourselves. Consider the source, then the resources. The 48-hour conceit ought be re-christened, The Maculate Conception. In most of these challenges, teams are limited not only by the clock but by preposterous, mandatory conditionals: a character's name and occupation, an insipid line of dialogue and an innocuous prop. To what good end? Just to overcome these creative constraints, a filmmaker needs to be an artistic MacGyver, gerry-rigging script and shot selections just to produce their own lethal weapon. Maybe Danny Glover was right. Maybe I am getting too old for this sh*t. There are some filmmaking challenges that succeed. In those cases — such as Canada's Crazy 8s, the now-defunct 1 Reel Challenge (which I curated) or the initial years of Fly Filmmaking at the Seattle International Film Festival — the directors are carefully selected and the parameters given them are chosen to enhance their creativity, not derail it simply to suit the puerile, power-mad whims of the event organizers. When it comes to Film, as to any art, fast and cheap are negligible. Only quality counts. No one leaves a Clint Eastwood movie, applauding his on-set economy. Yes, studio executives and actors adore his first-take philosophy, but if you shell out ten bucks, all that matters is whether you like the movie or you don't. (Think PALE RIDER versus THE ROOKIE.) Never have I heard a critic commend Terrence Malick, then ponder what the director could have done had he shot THE NEW WORLD over the course of a weekend, forced to include a taxidermist, a George Foreman grill and the line: "Weezie, I'm coming to join you." All anyone wants at the movies is to see something... GOOD! Playtime's over, kids. Let the professionals make the movies... on their own time. Time is funny money, Warren 9/5/2007 2:01:55 PM Emily's Thursday Rumble http://www.thewarrenreport.com/blog/default.asp?blogID=19 I got to the office yesterday morning and nobody else was there. One inhabitant is at Burning Man for the umpteenth time. I journeyed to the Playa myself in 1998, had the most unforgettable experience. Won't ever go back. Anyhoo, one is at the festival, and the other office mate, also known as my boss Warren, was away from his desk. It was only me sitting at my antique dinner table of a desk, and basking in the slice of morning light that cuts across these old wood floors, lights up the exposed brick, and highlights a nasty moth struggling in a cobweb at the corner of my window. Gross. I sweep the windows a lot because they are deep and attract impressively dense cobwebs at lightning speed. Or, I'm anal. Either way, there is a lot of windowsill sweeping going on. I'm not keen on sweeping live bugs-- especially big bugs that fly at your face. Dead bugs I'll sweep all day, bring 'em on. Once you've been face-to-face with a dead Texas roach the size of your heart, all other dead bugs look like mites. But this live moth, rattling to a freedom he'd never know again, was grossing me out. I decided to make its day, free its foot from the web. You see, not only does the thought of sweeping the fluttering freak give me the willies, but ignoring the situation and turning towards my computer simply wasn't an option. It was really making a scene. For a moment I wished I could film it, and loop it back on a wall the next time we have a cocktail party in the office. I grabbed the closest two business cards (DRY Soda; and my own, The Warren Report Emily Resling Director of Affairs emily@thewarrenreport.com), and went about freeing the moth's foot. What I ended up doing was getting cobweb stuck on both business cards. And I pulled the foot off of the moth. He stopped moving immediately either because he was in shock or he died that fast. I put him in my tree plant so when he woke up he'd be in some nature. I wonder if I was hyper-sensitive about the moth situation-- to the extent that I'm actually writing my Thursday blog about it? Or if I'm more aware of the world around me because we're in the midst of our ACT NOW! film series. Tagline: Save the World, Save Yourself! Look for our posters up around town. If you spot one, tell me where it is and you'll get a prize in the mail...!! We're flattered by the stellar line-up of businesses who got on board to see this event through. Lights on, lights off, or last call, we're in great company. Thanks, to all of you. <a href="http://www.thewarrenreport.com/pdf/actnowposter.pdf" target="_blank">Here’s your poster.</a> (By the way, it's a huge file. I got a proper talking to by the web guy and it won't happen again.) And then, Warren Reporters, when you come across the noisy moth stuck in the cobweb, you too might decide to pull off its foot and lay it in a nature setting for a quick death, rather than leave it to the torturous, slow fate of the web. Remember: Spot a poster, win a prize! Cheer, Emily @thewarrenreport.com 8/30/2007 3:44:25 PM CLASS ACTs and just 'causes http://www.thewarrenreport.com/blog/default.asp?blogID=18 Nowadays, James Dean's REBEL is about the only one without a cause. The American public adopts causes as readily as Mia Farrow adopts third-world tots (otherwise known as future wives for Woody). Whether we're saving whales or spending pensioners' life savings, building habitats for humanity or deconstructing habitats for spotted owls, protecting our right to bear arms or protesting women's rights to not bear children, we'll march on Washington (D.C. or Isaiah) with a passion formerly reserved for the confines of our pied-a-terres. While I am inspired by America's renewed activism, I often wonder if our polarizing energies are misdirected. Perhaps we should spend less time trying to change others' beliefs and concentrate instead on simply teaching each other's children how to... think. (It may be too late for us adults. In a wondrous reworking of the United Negro College Fund slogan courtesy of the cockamamie Dan Quayle: "What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true is that?" Indeed.) The media gorges us on reports of our ever-expanding waistlines, but too few reporters expose the ever-shrinking capacity of our brains. If you don't believe we're getting dumber and dumberer than a Farrelly Brothers prequel, just check out this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww" target="_blank">"winning" answer</a> from the runner-up to the runner-up in the recent Miss Teen USA contest. Wow. The fact that Mario Lopez doesn't keel over laughing AND crying after the South Carolinan siren's, er, uncharted response may be be testament to his best performance ever; his career saved by the belle, I suppose. All of this is by way of my personal plea to get each and every one of you to attend the next installment of The Warren Report's <a href="http://seattle.thewarrenreport.com/default.asp?pageID=7" target="_blank">ACT NOW! series</a>, CLASS ACT. <a href="http://www.classactthemovie.com/" target="_blank">CLASS ACT</a> is a stirring reminder that Education ought be a greater priority than a new generation of missile shields or counting calories in the next bag of Mrs. Fields cookies. The Best Documentary Award winner (at the Rhode Island International Film Festival) profiles Jay W. Jensen, an extraordinary teacher who has dedicated half a century to the empowerment of his students via the Arts. (His loyal graduates include actor Andy Garcia, film director Brett Ratner, songwriter Desmond Child, music executive José Behar, Broadway producer Adam Epstein, casting director Debra Zane and sportscaster Roy Firestone, all of whom appear in the movie.) CLASS ACT tracks Mr. Jensen's successes and rallies around him and others nationwide as they demand that we serve our schools, salvage our Arts programs and, in turn, save our children. (Give a child a compliment and he will fish for more. Teach a child to fish and he will be able to manipulate others forever!) On Friday, September 7th, 2007, ACT NOW! will showcase CLASS ACT at The Seattle Art Museum. The screening will be followed immediately by a panel discussion with the movie's maker, Sara Sackner, and other experts concerning what's wrong with our schools and, more significantly, how to improve something more substantial than just WASL scores. So, please come. I'll give you a gold star and an A for Effort. And for those for whom positive reinforcement means nothing, a good paddling awaits. Just cause, Warren 8/28/2007 8:09:53 PM