Eagle Crow Owl’s Caren McCaleb has posted her newest online video/vlog/experimental short and I am proud to announce that both Gus (my dog) and I were collaborators on this one (and yes, we’re in it!).
Caren’s work continues to mesmerize and challenge. This one is no exception and a new personal favorite!
Yes, it seems certain members of the conservative party have linked together two statements made by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayer to conclude that she believes the food she eats will help her decision-making process on the bench.
In a 2001 speech made by Sotomayer at U.C. Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, she stated:
“Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”
During that same speech, Sotomayor also claimed:
“For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir – rice, beans and pork – that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events… My Latina identity also includes, because of my particularly adventurous taste buds, morcilla, — pig intestines, patitas de cerdo con garbanzo — pigs’ feet with beans, and la lengua y orejas de cuchifrito, pigs’ tongue and ears.”
Apparently, as reported recently by Alexander Bolton in The Hill:
This has prompted some Republicans to muse privately about whether Sotomayor is suggesting that distinctive Puerto Rican cuisine such as patitas de cerdo con garbanzo — pigs’ tongue and ears — would somehow, in some small way influence her verdicts from the bench.
According to Brian Beutler over at TPMDC:
Slightly gobsmacked, I called Bolton earlier today and asked him whether this was for real–whether any conservatives were genuinely raising this issue. He confirmed, saying, “a source I spoke to said people were discussing that her [speech] had brought attention…she intimates that what she eats somehow helps her decide cases better.”
Bolton said the source was drawing, “a deductive link,” between Sotomayor’s thoughts on Puerto Rican food and her other statements. And I guess the chain goes something like this: 1). Sotomayor implied that her Latina identity informs her jurisprudence, 2). She also implied that Puerto Rican cuisine is a crucial part of her Latina identity, 3). Ergo, her gastronomical proclivities will be a non-negligible factor for her when she’s considering cases before the Supreme Court.
Got it? Good. This is the conservative opposition to Sotomayor.
Perhaps if Dick Cheney had done what George W. did and simply tried to disappear into the banality of ex-presidential “suburban” life, history may have been kinder to them than they deserve. Lord knows we’ve seen some truly despicable people walk away with their reputations “softened” by the passage of time and an economic upswing. As Cheney himself has pointed out, Nixon was a prime example.
But Cheney is doing both Democrats and history a favor: He’s not leaving well-enough alone. No, Cheney is still putting his foot in his mouth in glorious public fashion as if under some grand illusion that he is going to lead a movement and take back the country. And as he tries to rewrite history, he only manages to shine an even brighter light on the flaws, debacles and criminal acts that define his vice presidency and the Bush Administration itself. A fact which I’m certain must worry George W. and his family quite a bit.
But who knows, maybe Cheney will be able to prove himself to be the man behind the curtain and assume full blame for the 8 years that nearly destroyed America while Bushy gains some sympathy as no more than a well-meaning, but none-too-bright tool.
Only time will tell.
In the meantime, former CIA special agent Jack Rice spoke on MSNBC stating about Cheney’s recent speech following President Barack Obama’s address at the American Enterprise Institute, Cheney “wrap[ped] himself in the flag with the Constitution in tatters at his feet.” While MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell claimed Cheney’s speech was “as sleazy a presentation from a vice president as we’ve had since Spiro Agnew. It was a complete abomination.”
Go HERE to watch Cheney’s speech.
As a home theater geek, I thoroughly enjoyed this pic of the President and First Lady, staffers and friends, watching part of the Super Bowl broadcast in 3-D in the White House Theater (the First Theater?).
Most of you know about a film I wrote and directed titled THE PLAGUE. You also know that after struggling for 8 years to get the film made, it was taken away from us (“us” being the creative team) and completely re-cut from scratch into something VERY different from the intention of the film’s writers, director, actors and cinematographer.
Since the creative team was removed from the film in post-production, I (your humble narrator and the co-writer/director of THE PLAGUE) took it upon myself to complete the film to the best of my ability despite the fact that I had been removed from the project. In addition to completing the film, I started a public campaign to get the proper cut released. This cut has the full support of its cast and crew.
One of the results of this campaign was a petition asking Sony Pictures, the film’s current distributor, to release the proper cut of the film which is, unlike its re-cut, re-imagined counterpart, a statement on violence and fear in society and how it effects our youth.
THE PLAGUE: WRITERS & DIRECTOR’S CUT, as it is now known, has been getting hordes of attention from film fans across the globe. In part due to its behind-the scenes tale, in other part due to the fact that the film itself has garnered terrific reviews by those who have had the opportunity to see it.
Now the campaign to get the film released is asking people to email a copy of the ongoing petition to Sony in the hope that they will realize just how many people not only want to right the wrong that was done to this film and the filmmakers behind it, but actually want to see the film itself.
You can find out how to email the petition and who to email it to via a link on the spreadingtheplague.com web site. And while visiting the site, you can access all the articles that have been written about this film in several different languages. At the site you will also find interviews–written, video and radio–trailers, forums and the petition itself which could only benefit from more signatures.
Please take the time to have a look and forward the petition on to the folks at Sony. And please, be cordial when contacting Sony. We want to work WITH them, not against them.
I thank you.
For those of us early-adopters of Blu-ray, and we film-enthusiasts, the subject of what a film should look like has been at the forefront of many discussions, particularly in this new hi-def digital age. With some transfers showing up devoid of the very grain that makes film “film”, there have been many different opinions floating around as to artistic choice versus technological “improvements.” It is perhaps a more interesting argument than it may first appear since the future of how these films are seen and the history they reveal may be at stake.
Bill Hunt’s article, “A Few Words (of Common Sense) About Grain Reduction on Blu-ray” can be found on his Digital Bits web site HERE.
The ongoing campaign to get the Writer & Director’s Cut of THE PLAGUE released, produces yet another glowing review, thanks to the folks over at Buzzine.
You have to love a prez and vice prez who stop off at Ray’s Hell-Burger in Arlington, VA. for what the Washington Business Journal called a “quick working lunch.”
And, yes, they waited in line like everyone else…
We’ll miss you, Dom…
As always… Mesmerizing…
Dos Sueños
