Blog Simbarshe. (uncensored)

(this article has been syndicated from my column at www.starpulse.com)

What do the Nike swoosh, or the McDonald’s “M”, or the signature for Coca-Cola all have in common? They’re all among the most instantly recognizable brand logos in the world. You can go anywhere-from Times Square in New York to the Congo in Africa, and people will know these logos and be able to tell you with great certainty who they belong to. And yet, none of these logos have been reproduced or used throughout the world quite as extensively as the photograph of one man, who, even fifty years later continues to mean different things to different people.

“Chevolution” is such an essential documentary because it serves to satisfy the enigma of Che Guevara while at the same time providing a rich emersion into the history of the man, the icon, and the culture that seem to interweave and conflict with syncopation.

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(this article has been syndicated from my column at www.starpulse.com)

While the two week celebration that is the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival has just begun (April 23rd), I’ve had the opportunity to pre-screen a handful of films that will showcase at the festival when the red carpet rolls out for the filmmakers and stars alike. Are there films that will become buzzworthy by the time all is said and done? You betcha! But while there is ample enough time to tell you about some of the great films that will be gracing the screens starting next week, I wanted to share with you something about these past two weeks that I’ve just found fascinating.

The two weeks of pre-screenings that precede the actual festival are great, because it’s during this time that film critics from all over come out to see any and all of the films that screen, which are typically two a day. Sometimes, the film’s producers are on hand to watch the films with us to see how we receive it; sometimes, they approach you and strike up conversation because they want to get to know the people who are coming to watch their films. And if you didn’t already know, the movie critics are a family all to themselves. It’s great to see the diversity in this group; they come from different backgrounds and have different personalities. Some of them are good friends. Most of them know each other. It’s exciting though to sit with such a hush-proper group of people who ultimately get the reviews out before everyone else; much like local news teams who snap their necks for the “Breaking News Story”. Except there’s no necks to be snapped around here, since everything is so casual.

A funny thing happened today. I was on the train this afternoon, on my way home from a session of writing my novel entitled Veronasongs when I suddenly finished reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It’s a book that decided I should read when, on my last day in Los Angeles as I was taking some leftover items to my friend Messiah’s house, he was reading it and had told me that it was his third time after I inquired on whether he enjoyed it. The title reminded me of a drive Patricia and I took about four years ago from Arcata to Sacramento along the California coast, and she had said then that it was most beautifully book she had ever read. Well…

I  happened to notice that today (yesterday, technically) is 8th April, and I had acquired the book on the 7th of March. So it took me essentially thirty days to finish the book. But I also remember being so intrigued by the first twenty or so pages that I started writing Veronasongs that Sunday, on the 9th of March. And as of today, when I left the computer lab at the local community college to get on the train and essentially finish reading the book, I had completed everything up to the last chapter of Veronasongs, with a nag that I still wasn’t completely sure about how I was going to end the novel. It currently sits at 210 pages. With Saturdays thrown out (because I don’t write on Saturdays) along with the two days I spent on a term paper and two additional days I spent with my band, I basically blazed through about ten pages a day. My original goal was to do at least five pages a session. Sufficed to say, I’ve never written this many pages in such a short amount of time before. What’s even stranger still is the ending of Solitude, how for some reason I discovered that for me, the life and legacy of the Buendias was sort of a metaphor for the characters that live through my pen in Verona. I’ve already completed the sequel, years ago, but there is a finite closure that was felt in the meaning of those parchments. My Donica Pine is carried off by ants that I’ve created.

Explaining to your professor that you need to take the exam in the first hour because you have an exclusive pre-screening to attend at the Tribeca Film Festival… what I would call one of those good problems…

(© www.knittinglizzie.com)

So my editorial benefactors over at StarPulse are sending me to the Tribeca Film Festival to cover, well, whatever I want! Can you see the excitement oozing from my ears and mouth? You can’t?? Too bad!!! Honestly though, there are a few films I am dying to see, movies you’ve probably never heard about but definitely will (when I watch them). There will also be several conferences and Q&A sessions happening throughout the month, but the fun kicks off Monday 7th April with a week of prescreening madness. Count me in for a handful. While I’m not sure yet what I can and can’t post here on my blog, I will surely keep you abreast of everything going on through my StarPulse column. Let the movies begin!

John Edwards says today “NO” to the possibility of accepting a Vice Presidential Nomination from either Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama

CLICKY.

To just throw one thing out the window right away, we all know that Hillary Clinton will either choose Obama or her husband as her running mate if she wins the nod. But an Obama/Edwards ticket would have IMO been the safest one that Obama himself could navigate to the White House. So much for the great white hope!

(let’s all weep together at the passing of a great, great man who “never took any money from special interest groups”).

Quick! Somebody call Oprah!

Michael Dean, the moderator of the Freedom Train Online Forums posted this last night and well, it would just be a shame of me if I didn’t share this with you. Shut up and watch it or turn in your cool person card.

(this article was syndicated from my column at www.starpulse.com)

So, I couldn’t help but wait for Jim Sturgess, the dashing leading actor in 21, to break out into a full-fledged Beatles cover of “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” one of the several numbers he killed as the Paul McCartney equivalent in last year’s tour de ummmmm, Across the Universe. He settles down into a generally believable American accent, or totally believable if you don’t know he’s British, and cascades through the emotions of any young protagonist put to screen. ‘Yeah,’ I keep thinking, ‘but where’s The Beatles, man?’ Seriously though, with all jokes aside, 21 turns out to be if nothing else, an entertaining thriller turned in with stronger than usual performances by most of the cast.

21 is a based-on-the-true-story of six overachieving students from MIT who go to Las Vegas under the tutelage of their math professor by beating the system with an operation that’s more sophisticated than simply counting cards. If the one sentence summary makes you mildly interested, it’s because the premise is mildly interesting, and I don’t mean that in a bad way; The real fun is won in the execution of the plot. Sturgess plays Ben Campbell, an MIT whiz who’s been accepted to Harvard Med for graduate studies, only he can’t afford the $300k tab on tuition. His only realistic chance of attending is by winning the Robinson scholarship–a full ride–but school only give out one of those each academic year. Peddling around on an $8 makes his situation dire. But an opportunity presents itself when Professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey, in all of his American Beauty glory) pulls him aside into a dark Chemistry room one night to introduce him to a small team of students who practice a system they then use to go fly to Vegas every weekend to clean out Casinos. Campbell tussles with the idea, then he goes, then he says he’s only there to pay for his tuition, then he stays, you get the idea…

It’s the people in this film who mostly make this movie work the way it does. Campbell has two supremely nerdy friends who have no hopes of scoring with women, and they’re quite okay with that (Jonah Hill could certainly learn a thing or two about loser humor from Josh Cad, who plays Campbell’s “fat” friend with beautiful humilitya). Aaron Yoo (Disturbia) is also good comedy as Choi, one of Campbell’s Vegas teammates who takes nothing seriously and has an insatiable knack for stealing everything he can get his hands on. And Spacey is diabolic as a man with two faces but one agenda: bags of cash. He is as equally protective of his students as he is a threat to them. It’s really up to Kate Bosworth to fall flat as the only true unconvincing character in this film. If this were merely based on true events, I would say that everything here were plausible except for that romance to Campbell. It’s not completely her fault; the script was written (or the film edited) in such a way that basically drops her into Campbell’s lap; for all the nerd that he’s supposed to be, it’s perplexing to think that a lady of her caliber would’ve been even mildly attracted to him at all, let alone from the start. As for Laurence Fishbourne as the Casinos’ muscle for cheaters, let’s just say that it isn’t one of his best performances.

Still, the narration that Sturgess lends as Campbell as he interchanges between his Clark Kent and Superman identities in Boston and Vegas respectively is nothing short of awesome to follow, and the casino scenes play exciting, suspenseful, and sexy, everything you want for your ten dollars and your time. And despite the fact the fact that the film had several little issues it could’ve delve into further, like why Spacey’s professor would’ve pulled the plug on one bad night when his former protégé had been screwing around for a while, the film somehow manages to play just a few minutes too long. To be honest, that’s just me being nit-picky.

My Grade: B+

Rated PG-13, Running time 122 minutes
Starring: Kevin Spacey, Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, Laurence Fishbourne
Written by Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb, based on the novel “Bringing Down the House” by Ben Mezrich
Directed by Robert Luketic
Distributed by Sony Pictures

You should know by now that I get vested when people are all antsy-pantsy about racial stupidity.

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Well, not really. But he has been found giving away cars to doctors, tractors to farmers, basically buying votes without giving away money to common people. How is this not front page news? Oh, I forgot, we do the same thing here, too…

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If you’ve been reading my blogs lately you’ll understand.

The Heeb Magazine Interview