Indiegogo.com

Launched in 2008, Indiegogo is a very popular crowdfunding site that was founded by three partners: Danae Ringelmann, Slava Rubin, and Eric Schell. Each of them bring different skills to the table in terms of finance, marketing, and IT. It has seen 3,500 projects uploaded from 100 different countries around the world. So, as long as you have a bank account, you will be able to participate.

Like the majority of crowdfunding sites online, Indiegogo is free to add your proejct to, and also like a majority of the sites online, Indiegogo takes a commission from the successful site. At the time of this writing, it’s a 4% fee, so when you’re deciding on how much money you need to complete your project, add that amount into your request.

Kickstarter.com

Another very popular crowdfunding site is Kickstarter. Unlike Indiegogo, your project on Kickstarter will have a particular deadline. You have only that amount of time to collect all of the donations you’re requesting, or the project fails and you get no money at all. The upside for contributors is that their credit cards won’t be charged. The upside for the project owner is that deadlines usually help people to take action faster.

And that’s a differentiation that Kickstarter makes plain. People who donate to your crowdfunding project are not investors. They have no say in how the project goes from the time you get the funding until it is complete. They don’t get their money back for any reason, and it’s up to the person who put the crowdfunding project up to fulfill on the promises made in return for donations.

On the other hand, your project will run on Kickstarter until the dealine you set for it to be fully funded. If your project is funded early, people can still donate and you’ll end up with more than you asked for. For example, a recent project for social marketing software asked for a mere $10,000 and came away with $181,535!

International members are permitted on Kickstarter as long as they have an Amazon Payments account. The fee for a successfully funded crowdfuning project on Kickstarted is 5%.

There are also specific crowdfunding sites for people who want to do specific things. SellaBand,com is for musicians, Quirky.com is for inventors, and CreateaFund.com is for people who want to create their own crowdfunding site.

You can participate in crowdfunding on many different levels and you can get funding for just about any project you want to get funded. To learn more about any of the issues involved with crowdfunding and how it works, visit us at http://90MinuteCashAdvance.com.

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There are actually purpose made children’s cameras coming from toy suppliers for example Vtech. They’re robust products and are fine for extremely young children and often will offer hours of delight. With respect to older kids, say around five or so, you might be much better choosing a different choice. You could be better off paying out your cash on an ‘adult’ type digital camera, right now you could get many first class bargains for well underneath $100-even more so if perhaps you take a second hand unit through eBay or similar.  The majority are fairly solidly made too and often will take a lot of maltreatment from young fingers without falling over. Some have lenses which retract into the camera body when not being used which means the camera lens is certainly less prone to harm.

Therefore you might be entertaining the idea of purchasing a all new digital childrens camera or possibly an even cheaper second-hand ‘adult’ unit to utilize as a children’s digital camera? In that case try to look for the basic low end digital cameras while searching for new, if taking a second-hand model just about anything goes in the event it’s cheap enough. Below are great tips when you shop for kids digital cameras.

Low-cost digital cameras abound. They’re also described as point and shoot cameras, showcasing precisely how hassle-free they are to use. With regards to children that’s very important, they are going to prefer to fire off as many photographs as they can without bothering about digital camera configuration settings. If you are unfamiliar with digital cameras or are intimidated by lots of technology, please don’t worry. Affordable digital cameras are certainly quick and simple to use. Honestly, all you have to do is aim at the item or individual you need a photo of, and push the shutter key, more or less what you had to do with your traditional film camera.

Whilst taking photos using inexpensive digital cameras are a snap, it’s with photograph storage that inexpensive digital cameras are such a substantial improvement over standard film cameras. For starters, as opposed to being limited to a roll of film that might have twenty four or thirty six exposures, digital cameras include small memory cards. Small being in size not in storage potential which often goes well into the hundreds, even with the the majority of reasonably priced digital cameras.

Sharing your own pictures is just as simple as well. Connecting your digital camera to your computer is straightforward, typically just a USB connection. A couple of minutes in order to permit the driver software application (that allows the camera and the laptop or computer to “communicate) load, and there you are! Your magnificent pics have become photograph files on your desktop that you might look at, print or share with friends and family.

So how can you choose amongst all of the cost effective digital camera models. Truthfully, at the cost bracket which you are interested in, not one of the cameras is actually better when compared with another. They are all suitable for exactly what you are searching for – a basic and reliable digital camera this really is hassle-free to operate. On that basis, I would likely propose whichever digital camera you are most relaxed with, or with a distinct brand name that you have had great encounters with before. The well known manufacturers like Canon, Nikon and Kodak make some great cheap units that will make fine detail photos. Even low-cost digital camera models sport over ten megapixels these days even though there is certainly a lot more to photo quality than this its a first-rate signal that you will obtain good images. Should you consider Casio, Samsung as well as Fuji you can find even more competitive offers.

Inexpensive digital camerashave changed the act of photography and are here to stay. A matter of minutes, and your kids are going to be taking, saving and sharing great images of anything their heart desires!

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A year ago, the festival Jazz Britannia was such a success that the Barbican along with BBC Four are bringing to us this year, a 3 day festival which celebrates the evolution of British folk music from the end of the Second World War right up to its modern day revival. From the 2nd to 4th February ‘06, the Barbican holds a series of live events encompassing three themed concerts, free music, films and talks. Tying in with the event is BBC Four’s very special three-part documentary series of the same title that engages with the disparate and sometimes argumentative elements of the contemporary folk scene.

To kick off on Thursday 2nd February, Which Side Are You On? is a night that features two of the biggest names in folk music of the British Isles and will be hosted by the force that is, Billy Bragg. The monumental Scottish firebrand singer-songwriter Dick Gaughan, will take to the Barbican Hall stage alongside Martin Carthy, a mainstay of the English folk scene.

Daughters of Albion on Friday 3rd February brings together some of England’s finest female folk artists and singer-songwriters in a themed concert to sing songs of experience. The set list places ancient folk ballads alongside West Country trip hop and 21st Century R’n’B. All performances will be accompanied by an ensemble featuring ex-Pogue and master multi-instrumentalist David Coulter, guitarist Neil MacColl and Van Morrison’s drummer Liam Bradley, all arranged by MD Kate St John. Artists include June Tabor, Sheila Chandra and Norma Waterson.

The final night, Into The Mystic celebrates the current resurgence of interest in the psychedelic, mystical, neo-folk of the late 1960s and early 1070s. It explores how this renewed interest has been reflected on a new generation of artists today. It will feature artists from pioneer bands such as Pentangle, The Incredible String Band, Donovan and Vashti Bunyan.

Meanwhile, the BBC 4 series will be divided into three one hour episodes which chronicles how the music was coerced into a revolutionary soundtrack by the Left in the 50s, how the hippie generation bent it into progressive folk-rock in the 60s and 70s only for punks like The Pogues and Billy Bragg to bring things back to basics in the 80s and 90s. The story of folk will be told by a stellar cast of musicians, live performances and archive footage and the debates that arise in its argumentative world will be discussed.

www.barbican.org.uk/music

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Few masterpieces came out of that strand but vintage Serie B or Z movies completely outdated and so much visually enshrined in their time. The wacky special effects and the non-existent acting or dialogues were there to reinforce the feeling of uselessness those films carried throughout their non-glorious runs in theater. Although a mostly US phenomenon, Japan had its own version with the ‘Godzillas’ and only the maverick and young Turks of the late 70′s, 80′s with the likes of Lucas (Star Wars) Cameron (Terminator, Alien ) Ridley Scott ( Blade Runner, Alien) really took the genre seriously enough to invest the time and funds to create proper storyline and build new worlds…

It is hopefully the start of a wider campaign towards the recognition of sci-fi comic books, like Marvel, DC Comics… who can now command serious power in tinsel town, but have been overlooked by the art and literature establishment for decades. A good sci-fi movie is as good as his aliens or robots…should be the premise of any Do’s and Don’t of the Sci-fi rulebook. We had them in the top room with what seemed to be spaceship of a different order. Shinny made of metal pieces, jewellery and shinny artifacts…it does verge on the tacky but hey you are watching a spaceship here, so who is to say what is tackiness in the future? A wide range of artists, with the expected reference to Star wars and… Zapata…the Mexican revolutionary and his sidekick the under-commandant Marcos Downstairs… A few films, some paintings … a not homogeneous lot but a common thread that should enthuse a young and hip audience in search of space frisson. I recommend it if you are wandering towards the Mall on a dark afternoon. Just do not forget that laser beam of yours and those thigh-hugging Lycra pants.

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Written by David D’Alessandro, John Heffernan, Sheldon Turner, directed by David R. Ellis and starring Samuel L. Jackson. The film finished filming principal photography in September of 2005 including five days of additional re-shooting to raise the MPAA film rating system rating from a PG-13 to an R[1]. It is now unofficially the biggest buzzed film of all time with tremors going back as early, as the Blair Witch Project era in 99. Buzzed is the right word and for once, it is not down to cast, crew or script,…and has anyone approaching the phenomenon quite taken aback by the way it all started. SOAP, as it is now known, started as a quirky little film on a plane, post 9/11. It was difficult for any respectable producer to think about green lighting a high-profile project involving planes flying.

Sam was brought into the picture – ‘because of the title’ – and all of sudden, the producers (Craig Berenson, Gary Levinsohn and Don Granger), realized that they were sitting on a good film. The film’s working title was then changed to ‘Pacific Air flight 121′

Perceptive fans – Hollywood insiders? Outsiders? – picked up on this change of name and started writing poems, songs, bloggs, trailers,…to ‘protect’ the title? Revive it? It started a cult followed by many and like the great men once said ‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few’
How and why it started will remain a webmystery. However, the title has now became in Internet-lingo an explanation for fatalistic feelings ranging from ‘c’est la vie’ to “shit happens.” …

Here is one of those poem by SuperMatricks:

Snake On A Plane or SOAP…

Internet aphorism…
Sentence precluded of any serious meaning
If only the very serious…meaning of life….
Over-reaching the foremost tentacles
Down the deep end of the wide web
Cruising like the riding zeitgeist.

For this is the Google age, we enter a new page
Clicking away at every turning point.
We are mere mortals and should not be on a plane
For this is the moment when running from the joint

The only ghost moved on the femme fatale
She, bless her, decided to refuse the rascal

Fixing up and looking sharp
Holding the mirror like a true lady
I unleashed my lyrics in a welcoming park
I have your snake down in my plane.
I never said it would be so easy
Her smile made you feel alive
Is it possible for a snake to be on two different planes?
Was my opening chat-up line…
I could never see the reality sign
Will Hoxton ever, ever, ever be cool again?
And my head never felt so much pain
I could never, never, see, she was a real dame

And she replies: Are you always so sneaky?
Maybe cheeky, never monkey!

She smirked….almost…
Am I in?
At any cost
Magic grin…I am the boss
Think…positive like a butterfly

She gazes…Make a move?
She oozes…should I fade

I start campaigning…for my own party:
Word flowing like a proper arty..

You are the candidate, of my heart…
I’ll fly your colors to the other end of the earth
…..
.
It’s alright I’ll stay on the plane, for the rest of the flight.
She replied
Tough cookie I thought…
Browne sausage she replied
D’you know a Chinese bookie? I uttered
‘My favorite dish’ she smiled

Like I said, the snake was not for turning…hmmm just maybe for fuming
First the snake then the plane…how did it get sooo lame?
She asked.
My cover was blown ‘pff’ confetti-style…
My pride? Down the sink… ‘Sssh’ Linguini style
I’ve been plucking chicken like you all my life.
I’ve been staring at you all the flight
‘Get your snake out of here!’
The plane was still full …of other Snakes…
END.
As published on the official fanblogg: http://www.snakesonablog.com/Soooo.

Green Light

You saw the movie…liked it? Enjoyed the theater or your home cinema…? Not yet! The only problem is you haven’t seen a single frame of the film so far. The problem is the film has started a bizarre internet fever never seen before in the Google age. The problem is chat rooms, news rooms, blogg, super-community website, fansites alike…are full of it. Full of stories about the filming, the press is at it, and the growing legions of fans as well…to the point where they’ve actually been able to reorder the shooting of a few scenes and the addition of dialogues of their choice to satisfy their browsing egos. To add to the insult, I will therefore write the first review of a movie I have never seen!

Before you asked yourself, is he mad? Remember that some even made a movie of how the audition was conducted, without being there! … So let me now do my mo#*#* fu#*#*#** review!

First let’s command the fine and subtle acting genius that is Samuel Lee Jackson the first, who in his inimitable fashion has been able to deliver a performance of the highest caliber for his legions of admiring fans. Second let us remember the premises of the film: There is a plane full of snake, Samuel Lee Jackson has to save the world, and will he do it? Sure he will, but before that he will have to deliver pin-point sharp one-liners, kick some a#*#* and stutter the sentence: Get the mo#*#*#* snakes out of my m#*#*# plane!
All in the name of poetry then….

What started as a movie made for popcorn lovers – The lead should have been younger; Think Fast and Furious – made in September 2005 in Canada, is now the biggest buzzed film of all time with tremors going back as early, as Blair Witch Project era in 99(post web 2.0 then) Sam was brought in and all of sudden, the producers (Craig Berenson, Gary Levinsohn and Don Granger), realized that they were sitting on a good film. The film’s working title was then changed to ‘Pacific Air flight 121′.

erceptive fans – Hollywood insiders? Outsiders? – picked up on this change of name and started writing poems, songs, bloggs, trailers,…to ‘protect’ the title? Revive it? It started a cult followed by many and like the great men once said ‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few’
How and why it started will remain a web-mystery. However, the title has now became in Internet-lingo an explanation speak for fatalistic sentiments that range from c’est la vie to “shit happens.”

Cut to the chase….
Sam is flying a key witness from Hawaii to LA on a plane. He is an FBI agent. Sam obviously enjoy playing law-enforcement character from Jedi knights, to SWAT team leader, to private eye, to simple cop,…His character is coming straight from the Die Hard book of widow and orphan rescuer, but where Nelville Flynn has the edge on John McLane it is in his ability to deliver badaaasss one-liners while remaining ultra-cool. A ‘tour-de-force’ done effortlessly thanks to the quiet and unassuming action-packed direction of David R. Ellis. D.R.E is known to be a surf enthusiast and was in a previous life stunt coordinator on ‘cult’ films like ‘Invasions of the body snatchers’ (1978) or action 2nd unit director on ‘Patriot games’ and ‘Clear and present danger’ (1994), both with Harrison Ford…

Have you said coincidence?
Woody Allen he ain’t. But that’s exactly the point, for he is well too aware of the danger of letting angst-ridden dialogues taking over the film’s subconscious message: ‘Kill all the muthaf#*#*#*#*# snakes’. A few additional characters complete the casting, sometimes as snakes-fodder like -Tyler (Kennan Thompson) and Ashley, a married couple; Cowboy Rick (David Koechner) from Texas; Cash Money, a gangsta rapper, his bodyguards Big Leroy (Keith Dallas) and Two-Ton; Mercedes, Rachel Blanchard as a Paris Hilton look-alike…some air hostesses, puppeteer (Adam Behr)…etc. And of course the snakes, stars of the films hissing their way through the cockpit with evocative names like Scarface or Hannibal with 20 foot long Kong stealing the show.
We leave you with a few lines dropped from the trailer and hope to hear from you soon:

Nelville Flynn: It’s my job to handle life and death situations on a daily basis. It’s what I do, and I’m very good at it. Now you can stand there and be the panicked, angry mob and blame him, me and the government for getting you into this, but if you want to survive tonight, you need to save your energy and start working together.
Or the most memorable one: I’ve had it with these mother fucking snakes on this mother fucking plane!

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The EMD Cinema in Walthamstow was a celebrated building. It is acknowledged as one of London’s finest art deco cinemas and is scheduled by English Heritage as A Grade 2* Listed Building in recognition of its architectural significance. Built in the 1930s by Theodore Komisarjevsky, the renowned Russian stage designer, the EMD cinema is one of the only venues left in London that is designed both for live performances and film showings.

The cinema’s prominence is further made abundantly clear by the list of entertainment names that have passed into legendary status. Names such as The Beatles, Frank Sinatra, The Rolling Stones, John Coltrane and James Brown have all graced EMD Cinema’s beautiful Moorish/ Spanish interiors with their presence. However, the name most associated with the cinema is none other than film director Alfred Hitchcock who grew up in Waltham Forest.

Sadly, in 2002 the cinema had to be sold and this time the buyer hadn’t had the cinema’s rich entertainment background in mind for its use- The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) plan on converting the cinema into a conference centre and place of worship. This has sparked a debate between the McGuffin Film Society along with the residents of Walthamstow (whom without the cinema will be left as the only London borough deprived of one) and the UCKG on the future purposes of the cinema.

The debate has not been resolved despite Waltham Forest Council earmarking £1 million to assist with the redevelopment of the cinema. As EMD has been one of East London’s most significant arts venues for over 70 years, let’s hope that the decision can be made so that this pillar of our cultural heritage gets restored to its former glory.

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Paulo Gerbaudo looks at the parralels between film and war then and now Loin du Vietnam is both a failure and an inspiring experiment in war cinema. The film – a politically committed documentary dealing with the war in Vietnam – after its release in 1967 proved a commercial flop and was the victim of harsh critiques and early oblivion. One rare copy of the collaborative work of a number of great politically committed directors of the period such as the French Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais Claude Lelouch, Chris Marker, William Klein, Agnés Varda and the Netherland’s director Joris Ivens has been recently screened at Cine Lumiére of the Institut Francais.

The project of the film sprang out of the convulse atmosphere of 1967 during the escalation of military operation in Vietnam, and was the result of incipient ‘68 politics with their stress on participation, assemblies and direct democracy. The film, while dealing with a decisive political issue of the period, also aimed at questioning the French film industry and the one author canon to stress the importance of collaborative work of the film crew and of different directors. On the other hand the challenge was to realise an alternative representation of the war as seen in its multifaceted and often “distant” manifestations.

To do this Loin du Vietnam undertakes an expressive experiment in the documentary format by mixing together heterogeneous materials that compose an instable collage, notwithstanding the intelligent work of Chris Marker in the cutting room. In the film different inspirations and footage, documentary and fiction, converge. The long monologue scene by Godard about the political role of the cinematography in face of the war together with scenes from La Chinoise, interviews with Fidel Castro and Ho-chi Minh sided by brief visual clips and other cinematographic virtuosities. However some of the best moments of the film are the ones that stick more directly to documentary cinema, such as the war and everyday life in Hanoi under American bombings filmed by Joris Ivens and his wife, William Klein’s documentary footage about demonstrations in the United States and Lelouch’s sequences from an American carrier.

The film represents the war in Vietnam in the form of a historical tragedy staged on different scenes. Not only battlefields, but also North Vietnamese villages, American barracks, occupied cities, TV sets in living rooms, and demonstrations in the streets of Europe and America. Hence war emerges not as a simple military confrontation but rather as a mechanism of violence and conflict spreading its tentacles through supply lines, news programs, minds and hearts.

The two themes, evoked in the film’s title, Vietnam and distance, grasp a pair of great ideas which is what the film is all about. First of all, Vietnam within this film is not just a name for a particular country in South East Asia, 10 000 miles away from American shores, but also the name for a particular political, military, social and cultural conflict, characterised by harsh oppositions both in national and international politics. Thus the film represents Vietnam not only as a war between nations but also as a civil war, as any modern war has to be. In a long sequence by William Klein in front of Wall Street, during a huge peace demonstration in New York, a group of brokers shout “Bomb Hanoi! Bomb Hanoi!”. Demonstrants engage along the march path in harsh verbal confrontations with war supporters. New York appears kidnapped by a vibrant hysteria.

The film then slides along a theatre of operations that spans through the globe. Going from the streets of Paris crowded by demonstrants and policemen to a village in North Vietnam where people are assisting to a theatre show blaming Johnson and United States, to a paddy field where a unit of the National Liberation Army is training in hiding, to the mountains of Cuba. Distance, in turn, can be read as the description of the condition of civil populations in western country during such a war and its being exposed to a mediated war fought far away but capable, at the same time, of destabilising internal society and politics. As New Yorker reporter Michael Arlen put it, the Vietnam War, was a “living-room war”. Distance is also the principle that underlies the hypertechnological war machine deployed by the U.S. in Vietnam: a system controlling death and destruction from afar. The image that opens the film is a load of bombs being moved from a supply ship to a carrier. Lelouch’s camera follows those bombs while they are stored and eventually armed on the aircraft. In the middle of the ocean, far away from the dead bodies of the American bombings it enables, the carrier becomes a metaphor of a war machine that acts from afar. Distance thus emerges as instrumental to power. A removal of the horror of war through the media and thanks to its being out-of-sight. As one of the demonstrants appearing in the film says “Americans support the war because it is far away. Would they think the same, if their cities were attacked?”. The answer is as elusive today as it was then, best exemplified in the voting patterns of the American people post 9/11.

Notwithstanding the timely political rethorics that in some parts of the film tend to lean towards an apology to Vietnam, the work provides a vibrant description of the conflict in Vietnam and the social unrest that surrounded it. After the release the work was also criticised for its ‘easy ironies’, but it is actually through those ironies that the film shows the hypocritical goodwill justifying a distant war. This is also what the film does through the way it is cut. For example by joining a popular pro-war song with the reality of a Saigon populated by prostitutes, or by showing a speech of general Westmoreland through a damaged TV screen.

Viewing such a film today inspires a reflection about the similarities and differences between the media propagation of that war and of the current one, the war in Iraq in which the U.S. and its coalition are engaging in. Vietnam was a fortunate topic for cinema, and before that, it was extensively and crudely covered by television and newspapers. The American army had, at least initially, favoured the work of journalists and camera men on the front (much more than ever happened before and after that) for propaganda reasons. So Vietnam became the first televised war, and the war began losing consensus when too many dead corpses on the screen began to disgust the American public’s dinner time.

The Iraq war has undergone a more technically developed coverage that pretends to transmit battle images in real time (through embedded journalists) as if it were a football match and always jumps quickly to the site of an attack or a bombing. In this rapidity of news coverage something has been lost. The media war coverage of Iraq has not only censored the images of blood, tortures and body bags. It has also disminished the importance of other aspects of such a war: the conditions of the civil population in the occupied country and the unrest uniting millions of people across the world in the biggest anti-war protests ever. This erasure of such decisive aspects of war is what Au loin du Vietnam tries to overcome by following the many links that the war ties through conflicts and solidarities all around the globe.

Iraq wars have, until now, not been as fortunate as Vietnam in their representations within contemporary cinema. The only fiction titles deserving attention are David O. Russell’s Three Kings (1999), the recently released Jarhead (2005) by Sam Mendes both dealing with soldiers’ stories during the 1991 conflict in Kuwait when Iraq invaded. Also Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) and Robert Greenwalth’s Uncovered: The War On Iraq (2003), both documentary films, deal with the current war in Iraq even though focusing on its role in American politics. Moreover all these films and documentaries are somehow limited to an internal vision of war as seen through the individual experience of American soldiers, citizens and their nation’s destiny and fail in providing a radical representation of war in all its complexity.

With its real-time – as much tempestive as anaesthaetised – war representation, television has produced an overload of recurrent images about the war in Iraq, restraining any space for debate, comprehension and radical analysis. In this condition it is hard to develop a committed war cinema without getting lost in easy political pedagogy a là Michael Moore or in rank paternalism in Live 8 fashion. Au loin du Vietnam can, in contrast, be an inspiration for a cinema that intends to observe war and represent what the war in Iraq means not only in terms of military and political experiences and events, but also in everyday life’s impact, in London as in Baghdad. A cinema able to document its incumbence on western countries and its consequences on the civil population of Iraq. A cinema capable of seeing war at a distance.

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However, what I have to say was that some organizations like Ligali, who I want to stress, usually do a good job, were quick to do the intellectual jump stating that the author Sharon Foster had engineered the whole story to get a gig at the BBC. Or was implying that unless you are willing to portray your community in a negative way you will not find employment at the BBC. Some might have divergent views on those points but I actually disagree. You can not hijack an author’s work and lay all the sins of the world on her shoulders. Her track records show that she has always focused her work on the ills of her community and society at large via Babyfathers for example, undeservedly axed from BBC’s schedule a few years ago.

The Sopranos in the US, was lambasted by some intellectual circles in the Italian-American community as a piece of anti-Italian propaganda trying to portray all Italians as outfit-related. However, in most circles and those circles are called viewers who simply enjoy good drama, it is revered as one of the best TV shows ever. The Babyfathers series never got the opportunity of a deserved second season and it was a shame. It was probably down to bad scheduling and those rumors coming from the sidelines asking for the show to be axed. Most of the talent on display, luckily found opportunities on other shows.

Reading the available news dispatches about ‘Shoot the Messenger’ the same voices do seem to be at work again and are ready to bury the show and scare the schedulers by creating negative vibes around Sharon Foster’s last outing. One aspect worth noticing, is the absence of any mention of the plot, the acting, the art direction, etc..

I believe ‘The Crouches’ was just plain bad TV, and did not deserve to see the light of day. ‘Three non-blondes’ (BBC 3 or 2 sometimes) was good comedy with three talented comedians doing what they do best: entertain. In ‘Shoot the Messenger’ we end-up with just one amazing negative reaction focusing on representation or message sent to the rest of the world, as opposed to self-reflection on whether the program is depicting some existing reality or might be of any good value. Sure, I might agree with some that she has been courting controversy and is reaping what she sowed. As did the authors of Jerry Springer the Opera’, ‘The passion of Christ’, ‘Behzti’ (dishonour) …lately. Are we in danger of reaching a stage where ‘He who turns the camera against his community will end-up excommunicated’? I hope not.

The first question I want to be answered when reading a review on any show is: WAS IT A DAMN GOOD DRAMA? If yes, then it is worth talking about representation and the consequences or its impact on a community. If it is BAD DRAMA, then we shouldn’t bother giving the project, the column inches it doesn’t DESERVE.

Ref:
Coming up tv
Babyfather

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Director:
Sam Raimi

Trailers:
Spiderman3 trailer / teaser

Synopsis:
A specimen from the moon gives Spiderman new powers and a black suit, while Spiderman must battle the second Green Goblin, Sandman, Venom, and other dangers. Harry Osborn’s insanity drives him over the edge and transforms him into the Green Goblin. In an effort to destroy Peter Parker he hires Flint Marko to aid him in his quest. Meanwhile Peter must balance his relationship with Mary Jane and the arrival of a new love interest, Gwen Stacy. The final showdown then pits former best friends against each other as a new villain looms on the horizon.

Trivia:
The release date for the film was set before Spiderman 2 (2004) was even released.

John Dykstra, who won an Oscar for his work as visual effects supervisor on Spiderman 2 (2004), had declined to work on the third film. Instead, Dykstra chose to work on Hot Wheels (2007). Scott Stokdyk took over as visual effects supervisor.

Topher Grace left “That ’70s Show” (1998) to star in this movie.

The over 600 latex “web” balloons in the celebration scene had to be hand-painted with a Sharpie marker.

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Exils or Exiles tells the spirited, energetic and heartfelt story of Naima (Lubna Azabal) and her lover Zano (Romain Duris) on their journey to the land of their fathers, Algeria. Lost in the perils of immigration, these two children of the Diaspora defiantly take to the road with music as their only belonging, or as Zano puts it “music is my religion.”

Tony Gatlif, himself an immigrant to France in the 1960′s has explored the theme of Diaspora, of returning to his roots, “from my yearning to consider my very wounds. It has taken me 43 years to return to the land of my childhood,” explains Gatlif.

Shot in a simple documentary style, Exils explores displacement and the emotional place of Second Generation immigrants in France at a timely juncture, shot before the riots of October last year, it captures the anger and frustrations felt by this generation, epitomised in the displacement both Zano and Naima face. “I’m an alien wherever I go,” states Naima, having been asked “where are you from.” Her Arabic looks and name allow her a certain acceptance in Algeria, but also allows hostilely targeted at her western clothes and lack of hijaab (head scarf) and burkha (long coat). When she finally dons it, she is unhappy with her appearance, “I look like a witch,” she declares and hurries to take it off, whilst justifying it with the explanation, “I need some air.” Gatlif is careful to avoid a long discourse into the place of women in Islam and the West’s opposition to it, but succeeds in showing Naimas predicament as a young girl brought up in the West and feeling the suffocation of an alien culture that she has long ago rejected. The story unfolds of Zano and Naimas wounds being healed through their physical and emotional journey played alongside the musical journey. This reaches its climax when they are invited to heal their wounds by a Sufi Mystic, through music and dance Naima and Zano reach a trance-like state and are able to escape themselves and gain enough strength to overcome their fears and frustrations.

Gatlifs own life is mirrored in the story of Zanos father, having left Algeria at the turn of the ‘60s he arrived empty handed in France and became a street kid, experiencing delinquency and juvenile correction homes. According to his press notes Gatlif decided to meet with the actor Michel Simon, who he idolised. Simon, it is reported wrote a letter of recommendation for his agent. Next came the acting classes and five years later Gatlif secured a part on the TNP stage and wrote his first script based on his experiences at the correction home. After a series of films based around ‘drop-out’ characters, Gatlif directed Pleure Pas My Love and then Gaspard et Robinson, a buddy-movie social comedy dealing with un-employment. Latcho Drom (Safe Journey) took the audience through a vivid musical journey and is a true tribute to Gypsy music, charting the route gypsy music may have taken, through Rajasthan, Andalucia, Egypt, Turkey, Romania, Hungary and France.

Gadjo Dillo (Crazy Foreigner) followed a foreigner (again played by Romain Duris) arriving in a gypsy village in Romania looking for a missing singer who is the missing link to his dead father. Again the music plays a heavy component to this film, and like Exils, the music helps release him from his wounds. Gatlif wrote the original score for Exils and is no doubt as passionate about music as he is about film.

Whilst dealing with serious social issues Exils manages only to scratch the surfaces of them, yet remains a charming, surprising, hilarious and touching tale.

Exils is currently showing on general release.

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