Good Reputation Sleeping

Best of Photojournalism 2008

Best of Photojournalism 2008
Originally uploaded by Burnt Pixel.

Just got back from a long week of judging the Best of Photojournalism contest. We were, again the guests of The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and again, we hardly had opportunity to take advantage of the Florida spring.

What we did see was more wonderful online journalism, over 900 unique urls this time around!

In case any of you have been under a rock for the last two years, web video is big and about to 'blow up'. And lest anyone be confused - the best web video bears little resemblance to spot news photography - it is film making, plain and simple.

Check out the top winners at BOP.

Weekend Guilty Pleasure, Tokyo-Ga

Weekend Guilty Pleasure
Originally uploaded by Burnt Pixel.

I am in love with the films of Wim Wenders!

While I am quite fond of Paris, Texas, and adore Wings of Desire; it was the film Tokyo-Ga which makes me swoon.

This 1985 doc is an homage to the great Japanese director Ozu Yasujiro, and it follows Wenders on a personal pilgrimage to Tokyo in search of Ozu's trail. It is visually and acoustically very effective at setting the mood for Wender's wanderings, and it foreshadows techniques that we see later in Wings of Desire and Buena Vista Social Club.

I had this film on 8-mm tape for a while and would watch it constantly; then my camera broke. I haven't looked at it in over 10 years as, with most of Wender's films, it has not been available on DVD. Imagine my surprise when I found it package with the Criterion Collection's release of Ozu's Late Spring. What a wonderful treat!

My weekend is now set!

A Spike Lee Joint

Voices of New Orleans -- Watching When the Levees Broke in New Orleans.

“New Orleans in the house!” Spike Lee shouted to the crowd at the New Orleans Arena Wednesday night, at the debut of his HBO documentary, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. “New Orleans in the hiz-ouse!”

That line earned the first laugh of the evening. In this Requiem in Four Acts, all four of which were shown Wednesday night, totaling just over four hours, there were plenty of laughs. They tended to be artfully interspersed in this necessarily heavy documentary. And yet, more importantly, these laughs showed something about the strength of the New Orleans character. This great humor, like the outcome of a jazz funeral, is part of a profound sense of life.

One woman discussed having her house picked up by the flood waters, then carried down the block to be left in Mr. John’s yard. When she told her mother about the fate of their house, the mother paused for a moment, then replied, “Well, Mr. John can’t say I never gave him anything.”

Be there; you might learn something.

Too Close To Home

I FINALLY saw V for Vendetta over the weekend on DVD.

Wow!

Now I understand why so many people (critics) had a problem with this movie.

Its not that its bad, its actually very, very good.

In these days of silence to the truth, however, it cuts way to close to the bone and makes people uncomfortable.

I think more people need to be uncomfortable about what is going on in the world today.

Keeping History Alive

Ted Leonsis Takes a Sharp Turn.

"Ted Leonsis was cruising the Caribbean on his yacht a couple of years ago, poring over old newspapers, when he noticed an obituary for Iris Chang, author of "The Rape of Nanking," the best-seller about the killing in 1937 of 300,000 Chinese by the Japanese army.

The story stuck with him, and after he read Chang's book his preoccupation with the tale grew. Then he pulled out his checkbook.

Two million dollars later, having pulled together a film crew and navigated the bureaucracy in China, Leonsis's documentary about the incident is nearing completion." Thomas Heath, TWP, Photo courtesy Ted Leonsis.

My biggest regret from my 2 years as Photography Director at AOL was not getting to work with Ted Leonsis. By then, 1997-1999, AOL was deep into the money making go-go internet boom and Ted and his experimental Greenhouse Studio had been moth-balled. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that innovation at AOL stopped and greed took over during those years.

I am happy to see AOL's real creative genius back in the game with something of substance, and not just attempting to find the internet's next 'sugar water'.

Gordon Parks, At Rest

'Life' Photographer And 'Shaft' Director Broke Color Barriers.

Gordon Parks, a photographer, filmmaker and poet whose pioneering chronicles of the black experience in America made him a revered elder and a cultural icon, died yesterday at his home in New York. He was 93.

His nephew, Charles Parks of Lawrence, Kan., said Parks had cancer and had been in failing health since 1993.

Parks, the son of a dirt farmer, rose from meager beginnings and above recurrent discrimination to walk through doors previously closed to African Americans. He was the first black person to work at Life magazine and Vogue, and the first to write, direct and score a Hollywood film, "The Learning Tree" (1969), which was based on a 1963 novel he wrote about his life as a farm boy in Kansas. He also was the director of the 1971 hit movie "Shaft," which opened the way for a host of other black-oriented films.

Elegant and aristocratic with a trademark mustache, his work traversed a vast landscape from poverty and crime to luxury and high fashion. He was a high school dropout turned award-winning photographer who traveled the world, using his camera with deftness and defiance.

"I didn't set out to do all that I did," Parks told an interviewer. "I think there was always fear -- fear of not being educated. All the things I did were done because of the fear of failure." - Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb, TWP; Photograph by Suzanne Plunkett, A.P.

Sci-Fi Tuesday!

Good News Sports Fans!

Two of the best sci-fi epics of the last few years debut on DVD this Tuesday before Christmas.

- Season 2.0 of Battlestar Galactica is out, just in time to catch you up before the start of the new season in January.

- Serenity, the movie based on the TV series Firefly is out too, making for a gift-giving double-threat!

Citizen Media - My First YouTube Video!

I tried to upload this video to Google Video but for some reason could not log in.
So I went to YouTube, where I had set up an account ages ago, just to see what it would do.

Nothing fancy here, just a rollercoaster ride at Disneyworld taken with my Canon SD 500. The video is re-sized and re-processed into Flash Video, which takes a while. The service is somewhat like flickr, although not nearly as well organized and the U.I. is pretty bad.

This service and Google Video are on the cutting edge, however, and with more and more people using digital cameras that take decent video, they will only get better and become more popular.

Rope Burns

Salon.com Books | The boxer.

"F.X. Toole never lived to see his best story, "Million Dollar Baby," made into a movie by Clint Eastwood. Wouldn't it have been nice if someone had thought to thank him on Oscar night?" - Allen Barra

I haven't seen the movie, but I have read the excellently emotional short story by F.X. Toole. The Salon article gives a look at this wonderful author's too brief career; NPR has 3 great pieces here.

Friday Night at the Movies

I spent part of late friday night revisiting my youth via the 1998 remake of the '60's classic, Lost in Space. While the movie was not great, it wasn't as campy as I remembered - there is some nice action and pretty good special effects, and, of course, the cameos by the '60's cast at the start of the film.
My newly discovered gem, however, is Penny Robinson's video diary. Looked at through 2004 eyes, her self-confessional teenage angst is clearly the first big screen take on blogging, done before they really took hold terrestrially. As an film representation of computer culture, this may actually be one of the most accurate and entertaining!