This week, we’re joined by Paul’s wife Wendy, and talk about W00tstock Minneapolis!

Plugged:

• Celebration Generation Cakes

Promo:

• The Webcomic Beacon

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This episode, we have special guests Mark Savary and Fes Works of The Webcomic Beacon, and we talk about Webcomics (amongst other stuff)

Oh yes, and links galore!

• http://autumnlake.com – Autumn Lake by Mark Savary
• http://www.thewebcomiclist.com/ – The Webcomic List
• http://familywebcomics.com/ – Family Webcomics
• http://mediumlarge.wordpress.com/ – Medium Large by Francesco Marciuliano
• http://www.intrepidgirlbot.com/ – The Intrepid Girlbot by Diana Nock
• http://galaxioncomics.com/ – Galaxion by Tara Tallan
• http://mycardboardlife.com/ – My Cardboard Life by Philippa Rice
• http://lastplacecomics.com/ – Last Place Comics by Zack Cranor
• http://drmcninja.com/ – Dr. McNinja
• http://missmab.com/ – Dan and Mab’s Furry Adventures
• http://www.sandraandwoo.com/ – Sandra and Woo

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This week, Mike and Melissa were left to their own devices again, so they talk about:

• Bees swarm an accident scene on I-35W in Minnesota.  To be fair, it was their truck that got hit… (link)
• Happy Towel Day!  Do you know where yours is? (link)
• In honor of the ‘Lost’ series finale, we talk about other finales from the past, planned and otherwise.
• Okay, and a few tangents as well.

Promos:

• Geek Radio Daily
• The Geologic Podcast

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This week, the crew discusses:

• First, Mike has a brief announcement.  Apologies ahead of time.
• May is the 50th anniversary of the LASER (link)
• The Kids Are Alright: 2010 edition (link)
• Remember the old jokes about if Microsoft made cars? (link)
• Poor Sony can’t catch a break, but will 3D save the company?
• Foxconn reportedly looking for an exorcist to deal with suicides at factories

Promo:

• Geek Survival Guide

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So yeah, I’m going to apologize for the episode right now.  Things didn’t go as planned, which I explain at the beginning.

Also, no real notes for the second half.  Yeah, I know, I suck.  Anyways, hope you enjoy what’s there.

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This episode, the crew talks about:

Video releases

• Melissa’s trip to Ebertfest
• Big week for Microsoft Windows updates, go get ‘em
• New York Post claims Dept of Justice and Federal Trade commission negotiating on:
  • which will make inquiry re: Apple iPhone 4.0 ban on apps built using cross-platform tools
  • Does it harm competition
• Apple announced it sold 1 million iPads within 28 days of going on sale.
• Gizmodo reports Microsoft Courier project was killed and it hadn’t even been born yet.
• Windows Live Hotmail will get ActiveSync support his fall
• HTC licenses patents from Microsoft so they can sell Android phones. WTF?
• According to an  International Federation of the Phonographic Industry report, iTunes responsible for 1/4 of digital + retail US music sales. (link)
• Steam for Mac Beta, May 12

Promo:

• I Should Be Writing

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Part of the reason I didn’t go too deeply into information presented at the Q&As at Ebertfest is the fact that all of the Q&As were streamed live and recorded. You, too, can enjoy them! True, you don’t get the $1.50 move snacks or the ambiance of the beautiful Virginia Theatre, but you also don’t have to move from your computer. Click here to have your own Ebertfest experience. You will be ported to YouTube where the Charlie Kaufman and The Wall Q&As have already been posted. There is more to come.

The final day of Ebertfest consisted on one film, Song Sung Blue, which is a documentary about Neil Diamond cover duo Lightning & Thunder. Even if you aren’t the slightest bit interested in Neil Diamond, you should find this film and see it. The film is, at its core, a painstakingly rendered love story, starring a pair of Milwaukee musicians who struggled to live their dream. I recommend seeing the film without knowing much about Lightning & Thunder, as the story does take some truly astonishing turns.

The film itself is remarkable in the fact that the footage is incredibly candid. Director Greg Kohs and his team not only camped out in Lightning & Thunder’s home for long enough to catch the family in their darkest moments, they also discovered scores of videotapes in the home, where both sides of this married couple documented the most stressful points of their lives. The fact that the family allowed this frank footage to be tied together in a feature documentary is amazing.

The result is a deeply touching tale about ordinary people struggling to be extraordinary. I hesitate to say more, as I found experiencing the film without knowing anything at the start was a supremely satisfying experience.

After the film, Thunder herself graced the stage of the Virginia Theatre with renditions of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” and ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”, the latter of which got the whole balcony dancing. (In the photo above, you can see Chaz and Roger Ebert watching Thunder from the wings.) It was a great feel-good close to the film festival.

L to R: Greg Kohs, Chaz Ebert, Thunder (aka Claire Sardina), Roger Ebert

After her songs, there was a good hour’s worth of Q&A from both Thunder and Greg Kohs, moderated by Steve Prokopy (aka Capone from Ain’t It Cool News). During the Q&A, Prokopy had a bit of a fan moment, when he showed Thunder that he still had the ticket from Summerfest where he saw Lightning & Thunder perform with Eddie Vedder. She happily autographed it for him.

After the close of the film festival, I was treated to a few fun moments at the theater while I waited for my ride to show. Not only did I meet Thunder, but I also ran into Vincent Falk, who I talked about in my previous post. I even wound up trading coats with Vincent, if only for a moment. How cool is that?

Click the thumbnails below to see these images and descriptions on Flickr.

And that, my friends, was my Ebertfest experience. Many thanks to Steve Prokopy, who kindly let me hang out with him in the balcony for a while on the last couple days. (It was great to see another Butt-Numb-a-Thoner outside Austin, TX!)

Also great big truckloads of thanks to Tom Rogers, who provided my crash space in Urbana, IL. If it weren’t for him, this trip would not have been possible at all. He was a fantastic guide to the Chambana area, too. I owe him many martinis.

Sorry it took me a couple days to get these last posts done about Ebertfest. The drive home on Sunday night wiped me out, and I’m only home three days before my next event (Penguicon).

Day 4 of Ebertfest for me started very slowly. Those gin & Squirts from the night before were the devil. Thus, I opted for breakfast over the first film of the day, I Capture the Castle. I generally don’t care much for Austenesque British drawing room dramas, planned guest Bill Nighy wasn’t there thanks to the volcano, and, well, I really needed breakfast. Thus, my friend Tom and I headed into Urbana and thoroughly enjoyed The Courier Cafe.

Sadly, I also have never seen the film before, so I can’t even make comments about it. I will try to see it within the next few weeks, so I can at least say I’ve seen all the films that played at Ebertfest this year.

I did make it back to the Virginia Theatre for Vincent: A Life in Color, which was the first of two new documentaries that played at this year’s Ebertfest.

Vincent: A Life in Color is about Vincent P. Falk, who is a bit hard to describe. If you’ve ever been in downtown Chicago and have seen a man wearing a blindingly bright-colored suit waving at the tour boats from the Michigan Avenue Bridge, you’ve seen Vincent. That’s what he does. He dresses in bright suits and waves his jacket at tour boats.

There is, of course, much more to Vincent than that. The documentary is downright fascinating. In fact, if you live in and/or love the city of Chicago, I’d say that Vincent: A Life in Color is required viewing, as the film is as much a love letter to Chicago as it is an analysis of a strange man who waves at people.

The film itself is very straightforward and simple, as it wisely lets its quirky subject take center stage. The film lets the information unfold like a mystery, so you get the sense that you continue to delve throughout the running time, and each morsel of information you find is a joy. There aren’t any big dark secrets here. This is a movie about how one man lives joyfully. It’s a feel-good movie.

I’d very much like to have a double-feature, pairing this film with Man on Wire. Both are about men who celebrate cities. Both men are colorful, odd, and perhaps slightly crazy. Both films are about joy. (Aside: if you haven’t yet seen Man on Wire, do it as soon as you can. It’s one of the best movies ever made. Note I said “movie”, not “documentary”. Yes, it is that good.)

After the showing of Vincent: A Life in Color, Vincent himself came on stage in an orange suit that could probably be seen from space. We got his trademark dance, and then a Q&A. Jennifer Burns, director of the documentary, joined him for the panel. It soon became clear that Vincent: A Life in Color was a labor of love, which is something you sense with every frame of the film. Jennifer Burns funded the film entirely on her own credit cards. It was perhaps not wise in a monetary sense, but at the end of it all, she has made a fine film.

Above: Vincent Falk and Jennifer Burns at Ebertfest. Vincent is the one in orange, Jennifer is in green.

The next film on the schedule was a movie that has sadly yet to see proper distribution: Trucker. It’s a movie with a plot we all know from 1970′s low-budget working class dramas: loner adult gets saddled with the responsibilities of being a parent, and learns as much from the child as the child learns from them. However, there are several things about Trucker that make it more than worthwhile:

• James Mottern’s earthy script
• Gender swap of the main character (the loner is a woman here)
• Nathan Fillion’s natural charm
• Michelle Monaghan’s Oscar-level performance

Yes, the film is a showcase for the talents of Michelle Monaghan, who delivers a performance that should have garnered much more attention. Roger Ebert himself declared her work Oscar-worthy here, and I have to agree. Monaghan’s characterization work here feels like it’s the most natural thing in the world to her to play, yet it’s a role that is demanding in its transparency.

You’ll need to don your Lifetime Channel armor before watching this film, but you’ll be happy that you did.

The Q&A after the film featured both writer/director James Mottern (center right) and Michelle Monaghan (far right). They answered questions for a good hour or so, about everything from the charm of Nathan Fillion (“Watching him is like watching a country song.”) to Monaghan’s boots (borrowed from a Grand Canyon tour guide) to Monaghan’s inspiration for the role (wild Mustangs) to learning how to drive an 18-wheeler truck (yes, Monaghan got her Class C license as preparation for the film). Mottern and Monaghan were both so likable as people that I got the sense that the audience would have talked to them all night if they could.

The final film of the night was a film that was very nearly forgotten after the 1980′s: Barfly. This is sad, as it has a quirky charm that is hard to deny.

Barfly is a semi-autobiography, written by and about American poet Charles Bukowski. It isn’t a standard biopic, however. It covers only a few weeks of time, in which Bukowski met the love of his life, Jane Cooney Baker. The account is fictionalized, as evidenced by the fact that the characters don’t share their names with Bukowski or Baker, but the characters are so odd that they couldn’t come from anywhere except real life.

It takes a little while to get into Barfly. For the first few scenes, it looks like a random 1980′s trash drama, with overreaching performances and arch dialogue. However, after the characters develop a bit, Barfly turns into a real gem. Bukowski’s script, of course, reads like one of his stories: even though it seems at a glance to be bogged down in the grime of life, it often breaks open to reveal deep, elegant insights. It’s beautiful stuff.

However, Barfly would be nothing without its two leads, Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway. They both deliver larger-than-life performances, about two people who drink as a major part of their identities. You eventually get the sense that these are the only two actors big enough to fill the characters in Bukowski’s script.

The whole thing is reigned in by Barbet Schroeder, a great director who is often not remembered on lists of great directors. In watching Barfly, you marvel a bit that it doesn’t spin apart at the seams, but it works thanks to Schroeder’s deft hand.

Barfly has long been out-of-print on VHS and DVD, which made the Ebertfest showing that much more impressive. However, I am told that you can rent the film as a streaming video from Amazon.com, so if you want to see it, you are not entirely out of luck.

The Q&A after the film was wonderful. Barbet Schroeder (far left) told dozens of stories about making the film with Bukowski, many of which are touched upon in IMDB’s trivia section about Barfly. The best tale, of course, was the about how Schroeder convinced Cannon Films to put the movie on their production list. Schroeder injected his finger with novocaine, walked into the Cannon offices with a power saw, and threatened to cut off his finger until the producers said yes.

I think that story alone was worth the drive to Champaign, IL.

I have less than an hour to write this update, so I shall be quick about it. Today’s films start at 11 AM, and I still need to get to the theater.

The first film up on Friday was a Japanese film called Departures, perhaps better known to westerners as the film that Japan entered for Best Foreign Film candidacy for the 2009 Academy Awards. In Japan, I am told that movies like this are called “wet” movies, and after watching it, I know why. I tend not to seek out sentimental films, as they generally fall outside my interest zone and leave me cold. This one, however, rightfully had me weeping like a five-year-old with a skinned knee, and yet didn’t insult my intelligence by going for the cheap emotional hits.

Departures is a gorgeously-shot, charming, unabashedly sentimental film about a Japanese cellist who has to take a job as a mortician. Apparently, this is a job that is seen as “unclean” in Japan, so this poor guy winds up hiding his real profession from his wife, even though he soon learns that it is a vitally important career, one that he grows to love and even appreciate as an art form.

It’s a beautiful film, so beautiful that the rich images and carefully honed sounds alone will probably make you grab for the Kleenex. But it’s the characters and performances that really bring life into this movie. Every once in a while, you see a movie that is about good people trying to be good to each other, and it makes you feel good, too. This is one of those.

After the film, director Yojiro Takata went up to the stage for a Q&A, speaking to our audience through a translator. The most insightful thing he said was that he chose a cello as the musician’s instrument because it sounds most like a human voice, and because the motion of playing the cello mirrors many of the motions of the Japanese casketing ritual. That’s the sort of movie we are taking about here: very human, very rich, very beautiful.

The next film up was this year’s silent movie: Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera, accompanied live by the Alloy Orchestra.

I have seen a lot of cool things on the silver screen in my life. One of my favorite film experiences of my life was seeing Buster Keaton’s The General accompanied by a Dixieland band, while Peter Jackson sat behind me.

Was seeing Man with a Movie Camera accompanied by Alloy Orchestra cooler than that? Very nearly. It was jaw-dropping. The Alloy Orchestra has apparently been performing this particular film for ten years; if you ever get the chance to see them score it live, you should run, not walk, to get tickets. Sell limbs if you have to.

I’d seen Man with a Movie Camera before, back in the fog of time when I was a film student at the University of Minnesota. I hadn’t seen it since, but I’ve always loved it. The film is a movie about making movies, only it’s a stretch to call it a documentary. Essentially, the film is 68 minutes of a man running around Moscow with a movie camera, taking random shots of life and editing them together. The film doesn’t tell a story as much as it leaves a visual and rhythmic impression of Soviet life in 1929. The images themselves are highly experimental: double exposures, early split screen, cameras (and their operators) strapped to cars and underneath trains, freeze frames. We see film of the editor, cutting the film itself together; we see the camera itself, dwarfing the city in a trick shot that involved double exposure and mirrored screens.

The film itself is cool as hell. But the score provided by Alloy Orchestra made the experience the sort of thing that makes you want to leap to your feet and be alive. Alloy’s score is heavily percussive, at turns modern and classic, lyrical and cacophonous. It matches the film perfectly.

You can buy a DVD of the film with Alloy’s score at their web site. I will be buying a copy, certainly. You should, too. However, the real treat is to see them perform the film live. See it if you can.

(Also, I hear that they are RIGHT NOW flying to the Turner Classic Movies festival, to score the new complete cut of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. If you can, go. GO NOW. I’ll envy you forever.)

The last film of the night was Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, a movie that Roger Ebert has deemed “the film of the decade.” Charlie Kaufman himself was there to introduce and talk about the film. The theater sold out completely.

Guess what? I didn’t go.

I’ve seen Synecdoche, New York before. While I don’t agree that it’s the film of the decade, I do agree that it is one of the densest pieces of cinematic art I’ve ever seen. It’s the sort of film that people can write their doctoral thesis upon. There are parts of the film that blew my mind enough that my jaw literally dropped open in the theater. Other parts of the film leave me cold; those parts make art feel dead and humorless, and the characters are the types of characters I want to strangle.

Synecdoche, New York is the sort of movie that splits audiences down the middle. I know people who loathe the film. I know people who love it. I can see reasoning for both. My highest praise for the film is this: you should see it. You might not like it, but it will make you think and digest. The movie is not a waste of time, even if you hate it. As art that makes your brain chew, it is highly successful.

I would like to see the film again, and I would have loved to see Kaufman talk about his work. But it boils down to this: I’ve been sitting in a theater for three days. I’d hardly gotten a chance to see Champagne/Urbana. I’d hardly gotten a chance to hang out with my friend Tom, who is graciously providing me with crash space during the festival. As much as I love film, it doesn’t supplant real life.

The fact that I opted instead to go drink a heinous thing called a “gin & Squirt” at the local dive bar isn’t a condemnation of Synecdoche, New York. It was simply my way of reminding myself that even simple, ordinary life is grander than even the wildest things that can be put on a screen. Plus, the fact that I gave up my seat meant that someone else, who perhaps hadn’t seen the film before, got to see it.

So, in short: see the Synecdoche, New York, and don’t mix Squirt with gin. Seriously. It tastes like a chemical factory had a car accident with a spruce tree.