10 Minutes

This is a short from Bosnian director Ahmed Imamovic. Gives you an idea of how shitty the world can be. Just a little something to bum you out if you were having a good day.

From the YouTube description:

10 minutes by Ahmed Imamovic. 1994. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Rome, Italy. How many different things can happen for only 10 Minutes. The film won the award for the best European short film in 2002.

This short film, as its title indicates lasts only 10 minutes, but it tells a much longer story which unravels only in our imagination upon seeing the end of the film. While 10 minutes in someone’s life mean nothing, they can be fatal in another: a boy and his loving family, tragedy in a war-torn city, death and destruction. All in just ten minutes. The film follows two simultaneous story lines: one set in Rome, and one in Sarajevo, in 1994, the worst time of the war in Bosnia. Although the Rome part was not filmed on the original location, that does not take away anything from the quality of the film, it was just a symbolic element anyway. Cast is great, story is very compact and well written, direction dynamic and precise. There is nothing out of place in the film: well structured, stripped of false pathos, realistic, it is very straight forward. In other words, this is a jewel of a film, and it was not by chance that it won the award for the best European short film in 2002. 10 minutes for me is definitely one of the most moving and powerful films about wartime Sarajevo. Behind the scene: I read that the director Ahmed Imamovic, in search of Japanese for the role of the tourist, had to go to the Japanese Embassy in Sarajevo and ask one of the staff to perform in the film. Luckily for the director, the Embassy allowed one of their employees to star in the film.

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My inner geek is vindicated

Because cheesy internet-based quizzes do not lie!!!

You scored as Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica), You are leery of your surroundings, and with good reason. Anyone could be a cylon. But you have close friends and you know they would never hurt you. Now if only the damn XO would stop drinking.

Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica)
88%
Serenity (Firefly)
81%
Heart of Gold (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
81%
Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)
81%
Deep Space Nine (Star Trek)
81%
SG-1 (Stargate)
75%
Moya (Farscape)
75%
Bebop (Cowboy Bebop)
69%
Babylon 5 (Babylon 5)
63%
Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda)
50%
Enterprise D (Star Trek)
50%
Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix)
44%
FBI’s X-Files Division (The X-Files)
31%

Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in with? (pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as The Doctor, You are The Doctor, the last of the Time Lords. You regenerate if you ‘die’ and always travel with a companion.
The Doctor
56%
Neo
38%
Gen. Jack O’Neill
25%
Luke Skywalker
19%

Which Sci-Fi Hero Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as The Goa’uld, You are a Goa’uld, the evil race of symbiotic worms that take a human host and enslave them. You claim to be a god, bud aren’t
The Goa’uld
31%
The Master
31%
The Wraith
25%
Darth Vader
25%

Which Sci-Fi villain are you??
created with QuizFarm.com

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San Antonio, fuck yeah!

From the Spurs’ biggest fairweather fan, hell yeah! Another NBA Championship from the dullest team in the league. Here are two reasons why the Spurs kick ass:

1. Our MVP got to snog Eva Longoria at the end of the game (cause/effect?)

2. San Antonio can win a championship and somehow not immediately resort to widespread rioting (suck on it, Chicago!)

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So obvious, it just ain’t funny.

Humor is a difficult art–oftentimes it involves merely pointing out the truth of things in an unusual way. Last night marked the final actual premiere of “Lil’ Bush” on Comedy Central, where the prgramming is usually funny. Displaying W. and his cronies as a gang of playful scamps seems somehow…I don’t know…really frickin’ disrespectful to everything that has gone wrong in the world over the past six years, as well as not funny. Plus, portraying Cheney as an incoherent eater of live chickens (his speech is somewhere between Kenny and Boomhauer) might be taken as a compliment by the man himself at this point. Actually, the character reminds me a bit of Non from Superman 2 (Geek Hall of Fame!) Anyway, here’s a clip–admittedly, I stopped paying attention about halfway through (I think at the point when the elderly Barbara Bush seduces a prepubescent Cheney):

Is this the level to which our culture has sunk? Far be it for me to criticize lowbrow humor, for I usually love it so. I give this show about two more episodes–it’s not even as good as Comedy Central’s predecessor show.

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Hey, remember when "bad" actually meant "good"?

I just forced myself to actually sit through the MTV Movie Awards, thinking there would be some funny movie spoofs, like in past years. Instead, I basically got a 2+ hour commercial for “Transformers: The Less-Animated Movie than the 1985 version (hopefully with less cheesy music).”

Leaving aside how sucky the Transformers movie is likely to be (although there’s at least one scene I’m enjoying) and how excited I nevertheless am to see it despite the massive cultural guilt trip I will doubtless go through 10 seconds after the movie ends, I have a question about something Shia LaBoof (not even gonna try to spell it) said when accepting some award: “The movie’s gonna be sick.”

I guess I’m showing my un-hip age, but why is “sick” a good thing? For me it conjures images of phlegm and vomit, among other things. The Wiktionary entry for the word really didn’t help much, as it gave one possible definition as “(slang: excellent): cool, rad, wicked.”

Have I finally been completely passsed over by the younger generation (I’m 32, which ain’t that old), such that I will no longer be able to understand anything said by anyone born after, say, 1980? Or is something more sinister at work here???

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Up yours, George Lucas

Thanks to Atrios for reminding us that this exists: The Star Wars Holiday Special.

I was four years old when it aired for the first and only time ever, and for the longest time I couldn’t quite remember if I imagined the whole thing after drinking some bad juice as a child.

Then I found it on ebay (VHS, of course). It took about six non-consecutive days to watch the whole thing, because I could only handle 20 minutes at a time. I urge you strongly to watch the five-minute clip linked above–it pretty much shows you everything you need to see, and you HAVE to stick it out to the end, when Carrie Fisher sings.

George Lucas supposedly hoped that this never see the light of day after its one airing. While it has its fans, I must say that is one decision by George Lucas I wholeheartedly support, at least in principle.

On the plus side, the special gave us Boba Fett for the first time.

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Hungover on a Saturday morning

It’s times like these when a list of the 101 hottest tattooed women in the world seems fascinating. Somehow, though, putting Angelina Jolie as #1 doesn’t seem very creative anymore. Not that I disagree with the choice.

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