Filminute 2011 critics

Filminute is the International One-Minute Film Festival and for its 2011 edition, I’ve got a deal with them: writing twentyfive “short but tweet” sized reviews, one for each candidate.

I’ve watched all of them: the quality clearly increased since the previous edition. It has been hard to choose a candidate to vote for… and I suppose it’d be even harder to join them next year. :)

My rules to find my candidate are:

  1. Be humble: don’t try to do things your budget can’t afford.
  2. Be original: don’t use third-party works; plot/sound/music/dialogues/whatever must be yours.
  3. Be impressive: writing, directing and editing are the core of Filminute.
  4. (optional) Show me a bit of love: violence is not surprising anymore.

These are the reviews:

  • Adventure Girls III. It’s a great candidate but a lot of blood is not easy to get and, due to Sailor Moon, it failed my 2nd rule.
  • Aftermathematics. Perhaps it’s me but I didn’t get it and I didn’t like it either. The last take is too long too.
  • At the Opera. That one made me cry. Its music has a problem with my 2nd rule but I can close an eye. Two puns, sorry. :)
  • Bunny vs. The sweet iron cat. Did they really use Times New Roman? I’m too old for these 3D animations or the like. :)
  • Cara o Sello. The girls are pretty but the first take is too dark and the noise of the coin doesn’t follow its twisting.
  • Chit Chat: the more I watch it, the more I like it and that’s even true for its yin-yang brunette. :)
  • Dans l’ombre: frankly, I didn’t understand the reason of this French “hommage” to M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder.
  • Dot in the line is a funny short: there are joggers in the background at its 48th second… additional turtles there? :)
  • Evil weed: that’s what violence is… inseparable from civilization as we know it; we can even imagine it in plants.
  • Family portrait is the long take I like most: no dialogues, no music, just the saturated air of a daily horror. Great.
  • Foolproof has the best title and credits design. The light on the man is so different and the voice is a little too fast.
  • Garbage: after the well-known trunk shot, at its 38th second we have something closer to a… dumpster shot, indeed! :)
  • Grassy Knoll Edge: two dudes on a riverside are brainstorming about movies… until “pet porn” comes to their mind. Deal! :)
  • Hamburgz: a surreal story with a very interesting way of telling it. The music literally drives this filminute. Bravo. :)
  • Honfoglalas: I liked a couple of takes of the cars and their wheels but, unfortunately, that’s it.
  • Level 13. A monster lives in a UK multi-floor parking deck: is it a long-term drawback of a wrong-side driving country? :)
  • Loop has tricks of all kind: many of us think it’s the beast to beat. That’s for sure a Top 5 candidate.
  • Masks and mirrors is definitely a candidate that showed me some love, as I was asking for: we have a great Dad here.
  • Naufrago: a seashore wave puts on the sand a bottle of wine and a castaway with a corkscrew finds it. What a lucky day! :)
  • Never thought has an original location and I felt like him many times. Though its usage is against my 2nd rule, Bach rocks. :)
  • No man’s land has the greatest monologue of this edition and one of the best sound editing. The noise of a fly is a classy touch.
  • Oblivion has 30 takes if I’m not wrong. I still can’t find any mistakes and I should learn from its mid-part editing.
  • Rêverie. Very good idea. The smile of the girl at the 37th second is worth the filminute. I liked the little Ronaldinho too. :)
  • The days before that. I think they used old tapes… being sly as foxes. :) That is a good idea but it failed my 2nd rule.
  • The Fallen. Hat off. Its quality is something in between real movies and TV prods. Isn’t it closer to a trailer than a filminute?

My top 5 candidates, in alphabetic order, are:

  • Hamburgz
  • Loop
  • Masks & Mirrors
  • Oblivion
  • Rêverie

It has been very hard to choose my winner: I used a single round-robin tournament within my top eight favourite films and while waiting for the official winner, I can announce that my winner is Rêverie. Congratulations to Jaro Minne. :)

On Yeti Tracks

A summer ruled by blue mood is not the right thing to turn me into a hungry reader so “On Yeti Tracks” is the only short novel I can write a few lines about. What I liked most of this pleasant typical Chatwin story, with his unique mix of searching and telling, was the beginning: from Sydney, he called his wife up in Boston, asking her “to meet me in Nepal”. Who of us could have such a call? And who has a wife ready to accept it?

Esegesi endomorfa

Il titolo del post dovrebbe essere ironico. :)

Uscito dall’Associazione Rientrodolce, per il suo Congresso telematico 2011 ho registrato il mio intervento in forma di audiovideo/screecast, nel quale discuto un mio post con alcune critiche a vari aspetti del pensiero di Zerzan e all’anarco-primitivismo in generale, rispetto a quanto appreso negli anni di studio in Rientrodolce.

Questo è il video su YouTube: chi ha l’occhio fine, noterà che lo screencast è stato registrato su Mac OS X; sono consapevole che Stallman potrebbe levarmi il saluto ma quella era la macchina disponibile al momento.

Perassi - RD2011

Closing the top posts list

After a few years of monthly updates, I stopped publishing the top posts list of this blog because it has been almost stable for many months so the following is the last one.

  1. Top ten Italian songs of all times
  2. Inserting raw HTML code in MediaWiki
  3. jQuery tabs and cookies
  4. Using AWK to remove file extensions
  5. A Dilbert Plugin for DokuWiki
  6. aggr
  7. Customising wp-comments-post.php
  8. Bright dawn
  9. Huawei E176 and Ubuntu
  10. Azure

Paesi visitabili con la Carta di Identità

Tempo di vacanze? Ecco la mappa dei Paesi visitabili con la sola Carta di Identità (un paio potrebbero richiedere qualche pratica extra ma l’elenco è questo).

Paesi visitabili

La lista l’ho ottenuta attraverso diverse pagine di Wikipedia, mentre per disegnarla, ho usato la libreria Geochart dei Google Chart Tools.
Il codice JavaScript, con l’elenco ordinato dei Paesi, l’ho lasciato su gist.

Brevi note sul primitivismo

La mia esperienza in Rientrodolce si è conclusa e queste note, con grande incoerenza, sono state abbozzate viaggiando verso due capitali: la prima in aereo e la seconda in treno.

L’analisi sulla civiltà che il primitivismo sviluppa è convincente, quantomeno nei suoi sommi capi sulla domesticazione, la violenza funzionale, l’imperialismo e l’impossibilità della sua riforma. Quel che manca è:

  • l’analisi sull’innesco della domesticazione;
  • l’analisi sistemica, dal punto di vista energetico, della Storia;
  • la violenza e il suo incremento, funzionali per il mantenimento della civiltà con il conseguente relativo monopolio da parte dello Stato, sono trattati senza escluderne chiaramente la necessità per la scomparsa della civiltà stessa e quindi non ci sono veri riferimenti strutturali con il nostro tempo: nella sua essenza, il primitivismo si sarebbe potuto sviluppare persino in epoca preindustriale;
  • fornisce degli obiettivi asintotici, senza accennare alla transizione che caratterizza l’epocale tragedia di questo secolo, ormai inevitabile indipendentemente dalla tecnologia: presenta quindi la decostruzione della civiltà come una scelta, ignorando completamente Olduvai.

Yet another c25k report :)

As stated on their website, C25K is

a fantastic program that’s been designed to get just about anyone from the couch to running 5 kilometers or 30 minutes in just 9 weeks.

I completed it in 6 weeks and 3 days but I was not a true potato couch, though. :)

I don’t have a stepcounter so I used a watch with chronometer function: doing the math, unfortunately I can’t say I run yet… I still jog (moving slower than 10 Km/h).

This is the compact version of their table I used during my training (the numbers are for the minutes).

F = Fast walking; R = running (or jogging); W = walk

1st workout 2nd workout 3rd workout
5F + 4 * (1R + 1.5W) same same
5F + 6 * (1.5R + 2W) same same
5F + 2 * (1.5R + 1.5W + 3R + 3W) same same
5F + 3R + 1.5W + 5R + 2.5W + 3R + 1.5W + 5R same same
5F + 5R + 3W + 5R + 3W + 5R 5F + 8R + 5W + 8R 5F + 20R
5F + 5R + 3W + 8R + 3W + 5R 5F + 10R + 3W + 10R 5F + 25R
5F + 25R same same
8.5F + 28R same same
5F + 30R same same