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Tag Archives: video
Poetry: Azeem
It’s National Poetry Month and here is my favorite poet of the month. Azeem. We see a lot of writing about cute poets with education credentials and then someone like this brilliant Azeem fellow comes along and says a few things into a camera and reminds everybody that poets can shoot word bullets. I watch this video and my heart starts pumping and I get fidgety and I want to leave my chair and get to know words as well as this guy knows them. I noticed Azeem because he is one of the few subscribers to my YouTube film channel and so I checked him out. I’m extremely impressed. You want people to be interested in poetry? Show them this guy and they’ll be interested in about 5 seconds flat. I think what makes most poets uninteresting to the American reading public is that they all secretly have an image of a bookshelf in mind. Bookshelves are fine if you are browsing for a book, but they are death for anyone who’s making something. Azeem is also working with some hugely talented filmmakers who make fantastic imagery and do it with ease. If he comes to Los Angeles, I want to know about it and go see him play.
Set a Blaze:
Yellow Plastic Raygun: Film Images
Images exported from my upcoming Yellow Plastic Raygun. Sometimes the picture isn’t in the main frame; it’s in between.
The first set of images is here.
Alpha City Double
Dream Road
Crosswalker
The Way Back Home
Tap That
Love Lights
Going Deep
Bang the Thing
Any Kind of Spaceship
Incoming
School Guy Brags About Watching Kids with Laptop Cameras
The show is called Digital Nation. This segment is called How Google Saved a School. Well, really? How did it? Come on now, Frontline. Let’s get real. There’s an assistant principal bragging on video about how he watches the students through their laptop cameras and finds out if they are using their computers inappropriately. Would it be inappropriate to stick one of his laptops straight up his smug geekster rear end? Because if I were one of these kids trying to learn in this nightmare of a prison school, that’s what I’d do and I’d just take the consequences as they came (that’s an insult, not an actual suggestion). But for now I’d recommend having a quick look at his hard drives to see exactly where he’s watching these kids. I’d certainly be curious. After all, he says the kids ‘use their laptops as a mirror,’ and that he watches them. Hmmm. Interesting, bud. How much time do you spend watching? There’s a school in Pennsylvania right now in all kinds of trouble with parents and the FBI because they are alleged to have been filming kids through laptop cameras in their own homes! That’s jail time, Ms. Principal lady. You spy on naked kids for any reason whatsoever and you get a free pass to the big house. No kidding.
These ‘educators’ are losing it in a bad way. If you’re watching a kid through a camera at school or in their home, you are one diseased nut-job and have no business being anywhere near children. Parents should not tolerate this sort of activity from a school or a school employee. They should call police in and create a very public stink. It is the job of a parent to very forcefully defend a child from this kind of surveillance.
Yellow Plastic Raygun: Film Images
For Only Your Eyes. These images are from my upcoming Yellow Plastic Raygun. Distilling single frame images is almost as much fun as making the film. What kind of a film does it seem like?
Traffic Flow
Wave Rider
Planetary Intersection
War Drive
Hairpin
Whatever You Do, Don’t Look Back
Telefog
Gun Sight
Vision Rays
Mourning Sun
Poetry Is? It’s a Stupid Question, That’s What.
In my poetic web adventures I went and found this big long movie by George Quasha about poets trying to tell everybody what poetry is. What is poetry? It’s not an unanswerable question. It’s a stupid question. But these poets do try to answer it. It’s a rather long movie and I always look for a bad guy in every movie. Without a bad guy, a movie just makes me hungry and I get up to go to the bathroom a lot. These poets are all so nice and content looking. So friendly and comfortable. I can’t find out which one is the bad one. Someone once asked me a really stupid question and I ran away with his camera and threw it in the river. Why aren’t any of these poets nasty and depressed? What makes them so pleasant? They all sound like their favorite piece of furniture is a podium.
Here’s a guy who if you ask him what poetry is will very likely give you a good reason to never ask that question again:
Get what I mean?
Videos From Haiti During and After Earthquake
This video shows shocking scenes of the carnage and death just after the earthquake in Haiti on Tuesday, January 12. It is extremely graphic. It shows dead and severely injured people. This is terrible and tragic news from a desperately poor nation that has no medical infrastructure to deal with the injured.
YouTube‘s CitizenTube Channel is maintaining an updating playlist of videos taken on the ground in Haiti just after the earthquake and during rescue attempts.
You can donate to the Red Cross International Response Fund. Also, giving blood is always one of the very best things you can do because it fills the blood banks and can be used almost anywhere.
You can also donate to Doctors Without Borders, which is putting medical personnel on the ground in Haiti to assist in saving lives.
One extra and disgusting note: on his Christian Broadcasting Network today, televangelist Pat Robertson told viewers:
And you know, Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it, they were under the heel of the French, uh, you know, Napoleon the third and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil, they said, we will serve you, if you get us free from the Prince, true story. And so the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free, and ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor. . . the Island of Hispaniola is one island cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti, on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is, is, prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty, same Islands, uh, they need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God. And out of this tragedy, I’m optimistic something good may come, but right now we’re helping the suffering people, and the suffering is unimaginable.
I’m going to be very clear about something. What this awful man is saying is truly disgusting and belongs back in the Middle Ages. This is deeply primitive and racist thinking which is an embarrassment to our nation. If you are watching this creep on television, please seriously reconsider what you are doing.
Animation: The TV Show
Sugimoto Kousuke animated this to the music of Takayuki Manabe. It is one of those free-moving explosions of anime that revel in media, electricity, gadgets, techno, and odd angles. It’s a riot of scenes that I can’t really fit together in any meaningful way, but it sure is a blast to watch.
Via Drawn
YouTube Launches Open-Source Application for Citizen Journalism
YouTube has built an open-source application called YouTube Direct that allows news organizations to request and accept uploaded videos from citizen journalists anywhere in the world. The idea is to give news organizations the ability to put out a call for videos on a specific news story and then review the direct uploads to select the ones they want to broadcast on their web sites or even over the air. The video creators get to keep their videos on YouTube for access just like any other video on the site. There’s more information available in their Citizen Tube information area.
The camera in the hands of the average citizen has proven to be an extraordinarily powerful tool for news-gathering over the past few years. Instances of police abuse, natural disasters, and political turmoil have been captured by cell phone cameras all over the world. This seems like a very smart move by YouTube that could have a profound effect on the news. I can see this as a major benefit to smaller start-up news organizations that mostly rely on the web.
It remains to be seen, however, if YouTube makes this widely available to small sites and creative outlets, or if they stick to a larger scale more corporate membership. That would be disappointing, but it would still broaden the availability of citizen journalism.
Happy Halloween!
Game Video: Red Dead Redemption
It’s always good to watch a western. Rockstar Games has released this trailer for their new game, Red Dead Redemption. The game sure looks good and if it’s anywhere near Grand Theft Auto it’ll be one to try.
Thru-You: Funky Musical Video Mashup
Kutiman posts video mashups on YouTube that make brand new music. He takes video clips that other people have uploaded and he cuts pieces out of the people playing their instruments and then edits them all together with just the right timing and layering to create a whole new musical mix. This one’s a nice little funk number and the filmmaker/musician creates a lively atmosphere out of his found musical clips.
Horror Movie: The Re-Gen Project
The Re-Gen Project movie recreates an experiment in raising the dead. May be too scary for children under 13. Watch with care.
