iTunes Canada really pisses me off
Tuesday, 03 April 2007 21:07:16

As much as I love iTunes and my iPod, at times it can really piss me off. I can only get iTunes Canada since I live in Canada. And it's almost identical to the one in the States with one feature glaringly missing. The only video files we can get are Pixar shorts and music videos. We can't get the tv shows or movies that you guys get. Now this I can kind of live with. I don't have a video iPod, and I don't really want to watch stuff on something the size of a postage stamp. But today, I saw that an Alison Krauss album was available. Yeah, it's a greatest hits album, but I still like her. Anyone whose heard her voice on the OH BROTHER or COLD MOUNTAIN soundtracks can't not like her. I get a $50 dollar card to get her album and a few others. When I click to buy her album, it says "The item you tried to buy is no longer available. The availability of the item changed while you were using the store. The same item may be available with a different price or elsewhere on the store." What's the point of advertising a full album when even if you buy the individual songs (which I did) they are all not fully available? This just infuriates me. Now I gotta download a possibly corrupt version of it off of BitTorrents. Just something that bugs me is all. Any iTunes or downloading horror stories or anything like that?

Most emotionally tense class ever
Friday, 06 April 2007 01:05:11

Hey Blue (you've been the only consistent reader of my blogs, so I might as well address you) Yesterday was the day that I would show my first rough cut of my final project entitled THEOLOGY AND GROCERY (I've decided to drop the CROSSING BORDERS hyphen since it's become a bit of a stand alone film for the purpose of this class) to the class. I was nervous (it's gotten to the point where the film is almost out of my hands and has a life of its own) but at the same time excited. Yes there were some technical details that still need to be ironed out, but for the most part the film is what it is. I was hoping for some positive feedback and constructive criticism. What I end up getting was "The sound needs more work, you broke the 180 line, the Bono monologue lost me, there's no moment of weakness from Riley. But your actors were really good." So I new have to get my actors together again for an hour to do a poor man ADR and looping with the DAT recorders, which are actually outdated pieces of crap that we barely could get to work for us when we used them for an assignment. I guess it's just frustrating when you put so much of yourself into something that's been living in your head for nine months and work on for five days nonstop. But I guess I kind of knew that coming in, so I can't really say I was surprised. What I was surprised with was that the stress that we were all having with our projects started to spill over in full display. One guys project I worked on was compromised despite having two camera and a full lighting scheme because his "actors" weren't fully prepared and rehearsed. At the end of every take one of the actors burst out laughing. And this was a very beautiful but emotionally intense film they were doing, so it was affecting the final result. Fortunately, he still hadn't shot the majority of the film, so he still has that opportunity to make something great. But he said that after this, he was done with directing. He just wants to write from now on. Another guys project was a really edgy, irreverent comedy (the subtitle was "Guns, Violence and Intoxication" which is an inside joke for us) that our teacher actually got worked up over. It's all narration and it gets pretty funny on that ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT level, but it has a joke about pussies (both kinds) that's said to demonstrate how gutless the two characters were. Well she just ripped into it and said it was sexist and crude and just awful. She actually sent us all an e-mail talking about it. Hi Everyone, Upon further reflection after our conversation about blank's film yesterday, I realised we did not take the time to discuss the actual word "pussy." In the slang form that blank uses in his film, the word refers to a weak person with negative qualities. Thus, a weak person is equivalent to a woman's vagina, nicknamed pussy. The term gets extended to mean that women in general are weak and possess negative qualities. A degrading view of women; a horror for men to be compared to. Likely, in any person's life, the most courageous and deeply strong people they meet and know will be women. Also, what is weak or negative about growing a human being inside one's body, enduring the difficulty of that, and giving birth to her or him through that vagina which is regarded so negatively? It is clearly an act of strength, commitment and courage for a woman to have a child. We have all come from this positive place. The word "pussy" stems from antiquated patriarchal views of women that misconstrue the truth. This is just more propaganda blank.. it would be nice if you didn't spread it. Thanks, Blank You have to understand. This guy is not in any way crude, boisterous or sexist or any "ist" for that matter. In regular life he's pretty quiet and meek. When he's in front or behind the camera, he's incredibly funny. I call him our resident Mel Brooks. When the issue was brought up, I had made a suggestion that would have shortened the joke and made it less offensive, thus making it fun