Today I watched a short film, 5 mins, about a filmmaker who left his camera equipment in a New York cab, and his adventures trying to get it back.
Wish I could describe it in further detail, but that's it. The guy leaves his bag in a cab, which is full of all his film stuff, a total of 13,000 dollars in equipment. He calls the cab company, tries to track down the driver, calls 311, tries to contact the cab station, just about everything he can do to get it back. In the process he interviews a few different cab drivers to see what they would do if they found that bag in their car, and what they do with lost belongings. Some say it's gone forever, some say they would return it, and one guy says all other taxi drivers are assholes. So it's a hung jury on that.
Eventually he makes contact with the driver, the driver still has his stuff, and he offers to return it. In exchange our thrilled narrator gives him 500 bucks reward, and that's that.
This story is supposed to make some kind of statement on the kindness of strangers, but all I could think was "how does a professional filmmaker forget all of his luggage in a cab?" Who does that?
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."Carl Sagan
Today I watched a National Geographic documentary about space, specifically the boundaries of the universe.
Yesterday, as most of the world knows, America's Mars Rover Curiosity landed on Mars. It wasn't the first time we've been to Mars, robotically speaking; NASA has sent 3 previous Rovers to the planet. But it's still a big deal.
So in honor of the space success, I watched this doc. about the limits of space. Space has been on my mind lately anyway. A few weeks ago I visited a Star Wars museum in Kansas- it was exactly what it sounds like. Costumes, lightsaber replicas, a build-your-own-droid station. While most of it was completely cheesetastic, there was a short documentary about the limits of space (narrated by Anthony Daniels AKA 3-CP0) that really kinda got to me. It talked about how much space there is that we've never even seen or observed, let alone visited. Like 99% of it. I was overwhelmed with feelings of insignificance in a way I have never experienced. I mean, I knew we were tiny specks of dust, but when you actually see the vastness of space, the amount of light years it would take to get out of our own solar system, then double that and triple that and so on and so on, you realize it.
So I watched this hoping to get the same effect. And for the most part I did. We are ferried off of Earth by our narrator Alec Baldwin to the furthest edges of space and time. We pass the knowns (our moon, the planets, our Sun) and the unkowns (dark matter, black holes, quasars).
The visuals are absolutely astounding. I've never been one to really notice special effects, but they are seriously stunning. The only setback is that my computer is crappy and can't handle watching it on HD. It was just too much for it to handle. It'd be fun to watch it on a big plasma screen tv.
It didn't hit as hard as the Star Wars one I watched. This one was brimming with human-centric optimism; "What will it be like when we finally master interstellar travel? What wonders await us?" It makes me want to see a space documentary that's more realistic, maybe even to the point of nihilism- "Here is somewhere humans will never see or visit. We would never get here, and we never will. Out here, no one has ever heard of humans, or Earth, or any of the things we think are so important. This is space." Bummer? Sure. But pretty true.
How I feel
So if you're a space nerd, I recommend this one. It doesn't get bogged down in slow overly technical details, it's full of stunning visuals, and you get Alec Baldwin's smooth voice to carry you through it.
And if you wanna check out what's going on over on Mars, check this out- Mars Panorama
Today I was supposed to go see Dave Chappelle do standup here in Chicago. I couldn't, so instead I watched Dave Chappelle's Block Party instead.
To make a long story short, I found a ticket last minute on Craigslist, was all set to buy it, then couldn't find anyone to cover my shift at work. I work at a gym, with like 20 other people, so it's usually really easy to get rid of shifts. So I gave away my ticket, and instead decided to pick up a shift interning after work at IO for someone. They had Lollapalooza tickets, and I thought I'd pay it forward so at least someone would get to do something fun today. Then my boss called, who is awesome, and offered to cover my shift at work if I was still looking. But I had just taken on this other dude's shift, so I couldn't, and I turned her down. THEN someone called me from IO and offered to pick up my intern shift. The guy selling Chappelle tickets told me he'd sell mine last in case I changed my mind, so I knew it was still there. By this point the show was gonna start in 20 minutes, so I figured it wasn't worth it calling in a favor from my boss just to pay 100 bucks to be late to the show.
Dave, as most people know, hardly ever does standup anymore. Since his show ended 6 years ago, he's just been popping up all over the country randomly doing shows. At one point he held the record for longest comedy set; 6 hours and 12 minutes. (The record was later broken by Dane Cooke, who did 7 hours. I would imagine Dane would run out of steam around 45 mins, so I don't know what the remaining 6 hours 15 mins were about).
ANYWAY. So I watched Chappelle's 2005 documentary about a free concert he threw in Brooklyn. He's joined by Mos Def, The Roots, Erykah Badu, and The Fugees and a whole bunch more of that ilk.
Did you know Mos Def changed his name to Yasiin Bey?
The film follows Dave as he travels around, collecting bands and audience members for his show. The film is directed by Michel Gondry, but you'd hardly notice; very little of Gondry's signature craziness comes out. Which is kinda cool cause it shows the width of his directing skills. He can go from heavily stylized music videos to something like Block Party.
There wasn't a single mummy in this documentary
More than anything, the movie lets you see a side of Dave you don't see on his show. He's smart, kind, and very interested in people. It's always rewarding to see my comedic idols turn out to be decent people. The more I learn about people like him and Louis Ck the more impressed I am. Same with when I watched his 'Inside the Actor's Studio' episode.
So, it wasn't as great as getting to see him live, but a pretty good substitute. I owned the dvd, so you'll have to hunt for it online. But here's a Fugees song from the movie:
Today I watched a short film about Olympian Gabby Douglas and her family.
As I've stated, the Olympics aren't really my thing. Just like regular sports, it's not that I don't like them, it's that it never holds my attention for more than five minutes at a time. But I do find certain aspects of it interesting. Gabby Douglas is not someone I knew, but I had heard her name thrown around a lot during this year's games. Seems like she's kicking ass.
So this is about her drive and determination to get to the Olympics, and what her family did to help make it happen. She decided she wanted to be trained by world famous Olympic trainer, so her family let her move across the country as a 16-year old to train. She stayed with a host family and probably trained her ass off. Now she's at the Olympics, where she's kicking ass.
The film is an ongoing series by Proctor and Gamble about Olympian mothers, and how much moms help their kids achieve their dreams, blah blah blah. Whenever large corporations start talking about how much they love and cherish families and how important it is to go after your dreams, my eyes start to glaze over. Companies like P&G don't give a shit about families. They care about money. They are saying nice, saccharine things to put you in a good mood so you'll buy more baby wipes, or whatever it is they sell.
That being said, it was a nice video and it put me in a good mood.
Today I watched a short lecture on laughter and how it affects the brain.
The video is from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, specifically Professor Sophie Scott. The video isn't very long, like 5 mins, but it feels more like an advertisement for UCL than on the topic of comedy and the brain.
It discusses how the brain reacts to laughter, why we find laughter to be contagious, and some broader exploration into what purposes laughter and comedy serve. But it felt like every other sentence started with "We here at UCL" or "Thanks to the hard work of our crack team of scientists, we've discovered...." blah blah blah. I was just hoping they'd dive into the topic more than they did.
I think I love thinking about comedy more than actually doing it; comedic theory is endlessly fascinating to me. Someone once said "laughter is the body's response to something it doesn't understand". That's why so many funny things revolve around surprise or the unexpected.
I expected this to be better than it was. You can watch it here:
Today I watched a very short and very funny film about a certain flight of stairs in NYC.
At the 36th subway station, there's one step in a flight of stairs that is slightly off in size by a fraction of an inch. The result? Everyone trips on that exact step, all the time. The film is just a collection of people tripping over the same step throughout the course of the day.
The first thing that came to mind after watching this was schadenfreude, which is a German word for taking pleasure in another's misfortune. It's amazing how often I find people, or myself, laughing at schadenfreude. 'America's Funniest Videos' is basically just syndicated schadenfreude, so is 'Jackass', 'Candid Camera', or 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' or 'The Office', relying on a form of social schadenfreude.
Is it morally wrong to laugh at other people's misfortune? If it is, why does the laughter come so easily, almost automatically? Can it be wrong if it's a natural response? Even when I see people I know get hurt I sometimes laugh (think about people slipping on ice).
I've been considering this new theory on schadenfreude that maybe we aren't laughing at them because they are hurt or embarrassed, or even laughing because we're thinking "glad it wasn't me". Personally I feel a sense of relief watching people make simple mistakes because I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who makes them. I mean, I know people make mistakes but seeing it actually happens make me feel more like a regular person. So watching strangers trip over a stair makes me feel better about myself.
What do you think? Why do we laugh at schadenfreude?
Today I watched an hour long round table discussion with some of television's leading comedic actresses.
Hollywood Reporter invited Zooey Deschanel, Christina Applegate, Julie Bowen, Laura Dern, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jane Lynch, and Martha Plimpton to sit down and discuss what it means to be a comedic actress in today's world.
Look how funny they are being
This is a great example of something being thought provoking, but still not very good. I'm not overly impressed with the whole thing, but it gave me a lot of questions about comedy and gender to ponder, so it was certainly worth my time.
First off, Hollywood Reporter spends a strange amount of time showing us footage of them being photographed. I know it was probably for the magazine, and they wanted video they could mix with the audio of the round table discussion, but I felt like waaaay too much of this was just shots of them looking pretty for the camera. If the goal of the discussion was "why aren't women taken more seriously comedy", cutting the interviews with shots of them posing and preening undermines the whole thing.
Also, I felt there are some major undertones of competition and jealously going on throughout the interview. Maybe it's a result of getting that many celebrities to interview each other, or because they are all technically competitors in their careers (didn't the Emmy's just happen?), but there's a part of me that just feels it is because they are women. Get a group of women together, no matter how powerful or assertive, and the same games seem to appear.
For one thing, I heard a lot of apologizing- people saying sorry for what they said, or for losing their train of thought, or saying something that could be potentially embarrassing or contrarian. It seemed to me the main goal was to keep the tone light and happy, more than to make a point or to express a strong opinion. Compare this to 'Talking Funny', which I watched a few months ago (here) where they had no problem calling each other out or flat out disagreeing on topics.
Also, a good amount of time was spent complimenting each other. Not that there is anything wrong with showing respect for your contemporaries, I just felt the motive behind most of these comments was less "I respect you" and more "we're cool, right?". If the interview was all men, I don't think they'd spend this much time talking each other up. It reminds me of a Cracked article that talks about why women take so long to say goodbye at parties:
"In research published by Daniel Balliet, Norman P. Li, Shane J. Macfarlan and Mark Van Vugt of the American Psychological Association in Psychological Bulletin, men cooperate better with other men than women cooperate with other women. Researchers reviewed 272 studies containing 31,642 participants in 18 countries. Each study contained one social dilemma. In a social dilemma experiment, two or more people must choose between short-term self-interest and long-term group interest. The research revealed that women were more likely to cooperate when men were involved and women were less cooperative than men in same-sex situations."
I don't know how well any of the women in this interview really know each other, but I got the feeling they wanted us to think they were all best friends.
For the record, I don't blame any of these women for their behavior. I think our gender roles and expectations are hard wired into our brains from a very early age, and those who choose to live in front of the cameras have to deal with them even more often than the average person. So I don't slight any of them for acting this way- it's a result of our gendered society.
