Alan Levine has been having terrible customer service with AllTell. Here’s a link to his original post, and he really hopes you forward this to everyone you know. This is not a joke.

On the insistence of my student teacher, my next film was Gone Baby Gone. I guess I was in a cardboard box behind Circle K or something, but I didn’t know what this was about either other than the mother character (Ryan) is up for a best supporting Oscar and Casey Affleck is in it. My student teacher said that at times he completely forgot that this character was not ben Affleck, and I agree. I also agree that when we forgot which Affleck it was, I found Casey much more compelling than Ben. This is obscenely surprising to me after hating The Assassination of Jesse James. I am relieved that Affleck was good in this one, because I could not stand his other role.

Minor SPOILERS ahead… Toward the beginning Baby felt like a simple detective story set up South Boston in present day, but then these twists and turns emerged and I began to enjoy it. I had read a review a few weeks ago about how the reviewer totally caught the end immediately, but I didn’t. Perhaps it was my grading while watching or my two year old having me pause it often to deal with her, but I never caught on to the end until I was among it. This all star cast of Affleck (yes, here I will say that), Ed Harris, and Morgan Freeman made this an enjoyable film, while Monaghan’s girlfriend character wasn’t fleshed out enough by director Ben Affleck (yes, you did read that correctly). When she eventually leaves him, I didn’t really care, and when C. Affleck voice-overed her pain of losing Amanda, I didn’t buy it for a second. The twists were just enough to enjoy the movie without getting lost, and B. Affleck’s adaptation from Lehane’s novel was well done, and perhaps some would concur that he was robbed of the adapted screenplay nomination nod.

Not to sure what to think of Michael Clayton before seeing it. I guess I thought he was some real guy, like McCarthy or Charlie Wilson, but I didn’t expect it to be a pseudo-legal thriller. Maybe I thought it was a historical biopic. Anyway, I watched it over a few evenings this week, and I actually did enjoy it. A friend really didn’t enjoy it and couldn’t stay awake, but I found the triumvirate of Swinton, Clooney, and Wilkinson well performed. To begin, I am still trying to wrap my mind around the frame of Clayton (Clooney) standing on the hillside with the three horses as if he’s the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse (the dark one even), and I enjoyed that he was this "ghost" that no one really knew. Albeit I found the narrative characters of his brother and sister’s husband as almost banal, needed plot carriers (the cop who helps him and the drunkard who saves him). Clooney was fine in the film, but I found his substory of owning the restaurant and owing the money almost detracting from the main story, and I wish I understood more about his son’s book in terms of Wilkinson’s character of Arthur. Moreover, the relationship Clooney had with his soon wasn’t fleshed out whatsoever, although I think I still liked the film.

SPOILER Coming….. Perhaps the two shining stars in an otherwise average film were Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton. Swinton’s lawyer begins the narrative obviously distraught about some thing (which it seems turns out to be ordering Wilkinson’s death), and concludes the narrative in a fetal ball of failure and despair, while Wilkinson’s overly neurotic, off medicated maniac was played well. These two characters kept Clooney’s Clayton in check, a Clooney whose pretty boy visage has begun to droop around the jowls. Over all, it was an amusing ride that I enjoyed a little less and less as I write this review. And what was with the guy upstate who’d hit someone with his car? Huh?

Wow. That was long. Too long. I don’t know what I expected but I sure didn’t think I would be so bummed out tonight. It was in several ways the second western I’ve watched and reviewed this week, but while I really enjoyed No Country for Old Men, I wonder why I wasted 2 1/2 hours of my life watching The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. As producer and title character, I don’t know why Brad Pitt was too much of a coward to write a really good story. Affleck’s dopey, wimp with his whiny, homoerotic, pasty undertones lent his performance to that of the film itself.

I sure didn’t vote for Affleck for Best Supporting Actor, but if I had a chance I wouldn’t've done so either. He just really annoyed me, and the Ford brothers did nothing more for me. Even the annoying voice over narration did not allow the viewer to be an educated participant, as it kept trying to narrate what hoped to see on screen. Skip this movie. I wish I had.

I tried to read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road about a year ago, but it’s lack of dialogue is not something I’ve ever been able to appreciate in any literature. I expect some external dialogue and would almost rather have all dialogue than none. Although I could not finish the book The Road, I will watch the movie when it’s released. And tonight I watched another McCarthy adaptation: No Country for Old Men by the Coen Brother’s whose  O’ Brother Where Art Thou? was absolutely not my favorite film. I liken No Country more to their Fargo (starring the wonderful Frances McDormand) with the subtly, mundane motif of fate pulling the puppet strings of humanity in the furthest reaches of Middle America.

Bardem’s buzz is dead on, and albeit I’ve not seen all Oscar nominated films, My God, this man’s already won his Oscar, and I would even contend that his hair should get its own statuette. Bardem plays a terminator-like assassin chockfull of actual emotions. His looping, frame play with the quarter of fate toyed with the idea that in the large scheme of things, everything is absolutely inconsequential and completely noncoincidental all-at-once. He fails to assassinate the first game’s player, while the second it’s understood he’s murdered her before he simply walks for her house as he checks for blood on his shoes.

Although I can barely consider anything Brolin’s ever been in, I think we can agree that Tommy Lee Jones is one of the most talented (and sometimes underrated) actors of his generation. His age, dropping wrinkles, and eyes just add watery charm to his Sheriff’s character who’s subtly torn between bringing home Brolin’s Llewellyn to his wife Carla Jean and retiring from the force. He eventually makes one decision that directly correlates to the other.

If you’re looking for a thinking man’s movie with a paucity of action then enjoy this film. It’s brief staccato violence only enhances our final ironically enigmatic scene with our antagonist, while Jones’ discussion with his wife about a dream in which his deceased father goes ahead of him over snowy mountains to make a fire and await his son’s arrival, truly suggests that the onset of Jones’ final adventure into retirement makes early 1980′s Texas no longer a country for old men, or at least for the men in this book as the screen turns black.

It’s been a long hard week, but I’ve finally been able to sit down to another Oscar contender. Wifey and I wanted to watch Atonement or Elizabeth: The Golden Age or I’m Not There, but we finally came down to Across the Universe. A student of mine had been bugging me to see this since before Christmas, and I finally had a chance tonight. I expected the film to refreshingly surprise me like a good Baz Luhrmann film, but it didn’t quite do that. Evan Rachel Wood’s Lucy looks a lot different than I remember her in Thirteen several years ago now, but she was endearing, while Joe Sturgess’ Jude played the Liverpudlian with aplomb. No one character stood out for me, albeit I loved Bono as Dr. Robert singing "I am the Walrus", the Jimi Hendrix-character, and the Janis Joplinesque singer.

The film has been nominated for Costume Design, and while I feel it was done well, I was surprised the film was not nominated for Art Direction. Perhaps some critics felt the psychedelic nature of the second half of the film detracted from a story line that I felt was universal and well done. Although my wife would argue that they should’ve used sang "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" earlier in the film, while I would assert that Taymor’s use of "Revolution" and "Dear, Prudence" were film highlights for me.

This is the kind of film I would’ve watched once with a case of beer, good friends, and cold pizza in the middle of a summer night when I wanted something fun & odd.

I knew absolutely nothing about Charlie Wilson before sitting down to watch and review this film today. I assumed he was a real person and I was about to immerse myself in some biopic. I had no frame of reference whatsoever and couldn’t even tell you what decade I was getting myself into. I just wanted to catch a good flick and here I found myself. I wonder if my uneducated background on Wilson’s fight for the Afghan’s in the 1980s allowed me to focus on the film itself without any expectations, and without those expectations and with very little information beyond the actual film, I didn’t feel convinced. Hank’s as Wilson wasn’t bad as a character, and the film begins with a flashback from him receiving the top award a citizen can ever received as if this one event was his most successful in life. The film then flashes back to a buffoon of a congressman from Texas sitting in a hot tub in Vegas with a couple of strippers and some Cocaine, but by the end of the film the viewer’s are supposed to believe Wilson’s quasi-altruistic motives were genuine. I don’t think I was convinced.

I’ve rarely agreed with critics praise for Hanks and usually cannot forget it’s Tom Hanks playing an actor (Forrest Gump withstanding), and this film is exception. Hanks introduced as a womanizer, whiskey-guzzler from Texas was never forgotten by the viewer as he tramped around Afghanistan supposedly becoming affected by the warn torn (literally) children. But the only time I truly believed this was the purpose of Wilson’s quest was when he continually mentioned it to any congressman who had money as his disposal. 

A relatively elderly Ned Beatty looked withered and tired as if he were acting only for the check as a congressman dragged to Afghanistan with his wife. His performance was almost an afterthought that not even a Hilly Billy in West Virginia would remember, while Julia Robert’s Texan was played with similar banality. Her billing over Phillip Seymour Hoffman felt like a credit writer’s error.

And even though this film is up for a handful of Oscars and given Hoffman’s natural talents, I would argue that the two shining stars in this film were Hoffman as a CIA agent who claimed he only helped Wilson because he had nothing better to do, and Amy Adams who’s received more praise this year as a Disney princess thrust into the real world in Enchanted. Adams’ as the congressman’s administrative assistant finds herself in several questionable and not-so-questionable situations in the film from being surrounded by large breasted, small brained women working in Wilson’s office to traipsing about the Middle East with him. She added a sense of genuine dramatic artistry to the film, while Hoffman’s agent plays Hoffman as a relatively clandestine character as he so naturally and enjoyably does. So enjoyable he’s up for Best Supporting Actor in a tight race that’s focusing on Hal Holbrook’s 82 year-old under dog fighting against the larger than life Javier Bardem. But of the two, Adams’ steals the scene of supporting talent while finishing Julia Robert’s Joann’s martini while sitting with her two greyhounds while Hanks and Roberts strategically and sexually prepare to fund Charlie Wilson’s War.

Last week my wife turned 30 and she sent me an email that she wanted to see a couple movies sooner than later. Her number one pick was Juno. I had heard wonderful things about this film, and every year around this time I begin seeing as many Oscar nominated movies as I can. So her email was a good excuse to get out and see Juno, which is up for best Director, Original Screenplay, Actress, etc… So there we went. Off to see Juno today. Last year I began writing movie reviews for everything I see during Oscar season, and that begins with a wonderfully scripted film that the critics believe is an anti-abortion film. And so what if it may be? That’s not the point here.

What is the point is a fantastic small budget film that has exploded onto the silver screen. Diablo Cody, as writer, has created a refreshingly invigorating script that I could almost chomp down into my corporeal self. The dialogue’s originality was unlike most of what I’ve read or heard in recent months. Cody has emerged everywhere in the last several months from the screen to the columnist at the back of "Entertainment Weekly" sitting next to my commode.

Initially the opening song irked me, and I felt like the soundtrack may be almost overpowering for such a subtle film. I will admit I never forgot what I was hearing when a song came on screen, but by the finale of the film my wife and I both completely adored the music. We’d never heard of the Moldy Peaches or Antsy Pants before, but they sure are joining my iTunes play list tonight.

Even though the film editing and quirky cinematography (from the muddy runny shoes of Micheal Cera’s Bleeker and striped socks of Ellen Page’s title character in the hospital bed to the shot of Page driving into suburbia as the camera climbs into the sky above her minivan) reminded me of my love for the mere perfect camera shots of films like American Beauty, Diablo Cody’s script dialogue was phenomenal. For example, Allison Janney, as Juno’s step mother, told the x-ray technician "My five year-old daughter could do that, and let me tell you, she is not the brightest bulb in the tanning bed. So why don’t you go back to night school in Manteno and learn a real trade!" Witty banter, obscure allusions, and thinking man’s dialgoue is what really turned me on to this film, although the metaphors and symbols kissed my eyes like a soft summer rain or a cool afternoon. SPOILER COMING. STOP NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW. Ok, I’ve warned you. For example, after Juno discovers Mark is leaving Vanessa, she speeds off to stop alongside the highway, and the shot (once again above the minivan) shows she pulled off the side of the highway next to a half destroyed boat next to a canal running along side the highway, deep like the womb of hope and eventuality, while on the other side of the highways trains run along tracks in one direction without any hope of every getting off that path. The runners push against Juno as she walks down the street in the beginning of the movie, and her boyfriend, Bleeker, is a runner, but by the film’s end, the track team runs by, and he is now sitting by her side on the steps playing the brilliantly written "Anyone Else But You" by the Moldy Peaches. Page & Cera’s singing of the theme song at the end just is another example of this young woman’s talents.

Which does bring me back to the Lorings. The first quarter of the movie seems relatively light and fun (yes, even when Juno tells her father and step mother she’s pregnant), and then she meets the Loring’s. I sat back just waiting for some soft of conflict and eventually got it. Mark, played by Jason Bateman (whose squashed nose bugs me), is a likable guy who reminds me of Neal Pollack, and his high tension wife played poorly by the very non-sterile Mrs Affleck, Jennifer Garner) is the kind of character you want to hate. In the end I realized that Mark Loring is a total noob, while the audience is suppose to commiserate with Vanessa’s sterility and subsequent motherhood. No, I didn’t.

This movie felt very real to me. Researching a bit online to write this review (yeah, do you really think I remembered Janney’s quote verbatim? Nah…) I was pleasantly surprised by how many awards Cody’s won so far for this film. With that in mind, and while I am still high on a fun-loving film, I would say the former stripper devil girl as a good chance of winning gold come February, albeit Page’s got some stiff competition; her nomination may be her award, but hopefully she doesn’t get pregnant (for real) and fall into obscurity like Keisha Castle-Hughes.

"Growing Up Online", a program aired on Public Broadcast Systems
detailed the world in which we all now live. A world where our NetGen
has always had computers and has always been online. Is the Internet a
positive or negative place for this generation? How do we as adults
control this area, or do we? I missed this report on the television (my
personal, comfortable format for video) and had to watch it online. I
needed to remind myself that this generation watches more and more on
small screens of the monitors or even smaller of the iPods. This is
their life, and no matter how tech savvy I am, I am still only a
visitor here.

The
program pointed out that several kids have complete identities online,
and their parents know nothing about them. They live out of reach of
their parents, but why do they? And should the parents worry? Who
controls these lives? I would say no one really does, but they regulate
themselves. In the 21st century we’re moving to "Teenager 2.0" and they
are controlling the technology around them, instead of it controlling
them. We used computers as tools to teach, and then we humans began to
learn from computers and now we have begun to give up that control by
allowing the computers themselves to learn from us. Several of the
students interviewed for this article felt that the Internet is
"currency" and today’s teens fear being out of the loop. I understand
this feeling and agree that I cannot live without information at my
fingertips, but over my last 16+ years online I’ve fought to teach
myself to use that technology wisely.

The report focused on
Chatham high school in New Jersey where teachers realize that they need
to be more interactive with their students. The students today will not
learn anything from a monotone voice tethered to a piece of chalk. Some
teachers do podcast their classes like I would like to do. Teachers
know they need to be entertainers, and I know I do this daily in my own
classes, but I am searching for the HOW. I know a SmartBoard, in some
ways, would tether me to the front of the room, and I am one to move
throughout the room continually during my lesson. I think adding an
AirLiner would give me more freedom to better use technology to engage
my students. I know what’s like to be over exposed to immediate
responses and quickness when searching for information, and our current
students have grown up multitasking online, and we need to figure out
ways to better teach them to discern between that information.  For
example, I have always fought against Wikipedia, because I know how to
abuse it, but I came back from Christmas break recently and refused to
negate the importance of this site. My colleague even cited Wikipedia
in a paper and a test prep book for the AP Language and Composition
course I teach cites a cartoon from Wikipedia. Educators need to cut
through the "cloud of media" to capture the attention of the NetGen,
and I say we use that cloud to instruct them in our traditional content
and concepts. Don’t we (older generations, Gen X & Y, educators)
want future citizens who can find, borrow, reshape and synthesize
information in new, interesting, and original ways?

Many of our
NetGen are searching for places that they can call their OWN. Online
they can be whomever they want, and the profiles they create on Web 2.0
sites like Facebook are who they feel they really are or who they wish
they were. One young woman interviewed on this report was a 14-year-old
freshman in NJ who said she has over 2,194 friends on Facebook, but "I
am only best friends with like 50 people." Either she is being
hyperbolic, or the NetGeners have redefined concepts like "best friend"
for their own use.

A group of students from Morristown High
School pointed out that online relationships with teens differ from
real life (RL) relationships, in that there’s more freedom but fewer
restrictions. NetGeners are more comfortable being way more public than
in the past. As soon as 5 years ago I feared my online persona being
publicized as a public role model in RL, but now I feel a lot less
worried as more and more of my colleagues are all over the Internet
themselves (some feel they have to be, to better educate our students
and they are right) but it’s more commonplace to find your teacher on
Facebook or MySpace, to IM them at night or on the weekends, or to text
them on your way to Starbuck’s before school to get their order. At a
conference on Understanding Technology to Better Understand Our
Students today, my parting shot to the presenter was "Do you think we
will get to a point where we will just crawl into our computers?" His
remark was "No, I think they will crawl into us." A colleague of mine
has so many places she goes online, and so many accounts online, that
when she finds something new that may work for her classes, she just
types in her ID and password. She uses the same for them all and
doesn’t even try to keep a running list. The very public lives of these
kids and the immediacy of adolescence is fearful because employers and
universities search people out online, and as move further into this
millennium, we cannot divorce ourselves from our online selves.
NetGeners won’t begin to realize this on the large scale until a large
portion of them comes of age. Even last year when we went through a
hiring wave, my interview team Googled the applicants. We found very
little of the older candidates, and a little more of the
twenty-somethings. In 5 years, the online personas and RL identities
will have blurred so much more, that these searches can be detrimental
for some.

The Online Identities these people have created stem
from the idea that Sara an anorexic girl from the east coast who
frequents thinspiration.com has simply asserted as being more
comfortable being open about who she is if she’s more open online. Anne
Collier, author of MySpace Unraveled, agrees that this NetGen is more
comfortable as a public generation. As Jessica Hunter grew up, she felt
that her true self was in contrasting and conflicting opposite from her
outward appearance. She eventually developed the online persona of
"Autumn Edows" a sexualized, Goth model. Her parents never knew that
their 14-year-old daughter was strutting around as an 18 year old
online identity. More and more people took notice and this gave her a
sense of self worth that she did find in her RL communities and family.
She was online literally all day and loved every minute of it.
Eventually someone in her small town alerted her parents who
immediately made her delete everything without really trying to
understand why it was important to her. It wasn’t until much later that
her parents realized that Autumn Edows is who their daughter truly is,
and Mr. Hunter said, "I am glad the Internet is there". It’s given his
daughter a place to be herself, and she has successfully blurred her RL
and VL identities, but, in part, she succeeded because people believed
in her and understood her needs.

A NetGen report would not be
complete without perpetuating some fear through a discussion of sexual
predators, but I found one thing interesting. The only true Online
Predator study done so far was by the Dept of Justice, and it found
that only 1 in 7 children online have been sexually solicited, and
according to the report, some of the findings were from situations
where a 17-year-old girl was addressed with "Hey, baby" by an 18 or 19
year old boy. Gen Xers & Yers do not realize that these children
and students have always been online and have been educated in a way
that we will never understand They know not to reject unsolicited
advances or to give out information to people they do not know, and our
generations have to realize that these children grew up with keyboards
under their fingertips and the Internet surrounding them. Parents and
teachers tend to forget that the Internet IS their life, it is their
world. We’re visiting, but they have always been there. This native
generation is savvy in the way of predators, and predators lurk where
kids are. Be it a park afterschool in RL or in the virtual world of
cyberspace. That’s not going to end. Kids engage in risky behavior off
line as well as online, and many of the reports of this behavior online
were those NetGeners seeking out that kind of information &
interaction. We need to look at this generation less as victims and
more as participants, and then learn how to engage and educate them in
their own worlds. Most of the damage being done, they are doing to
themselves.

Evan Skinner, PTO president and mother, first came
on screen praying before dinner with her family during this segment as
if being online was a secular action that sent the surfer directly to
hell. With her crosses and white-bread attitude, she asks her son Cam
for his passwords in case anything ever happens to him. He answers with
a resounding NO. Her daughter Ashley tells FrontLine that she’d "rather
not use my family computer at all than give up my password. I can use
my friend’s computer." When I grew up, my house was the one with all
the kids because my mother knew if we were in the basement we were
safe. Taking away the NetGens connectivity only makes them smarter in
how to get around this. We need to ask ourselves why we try to block
them, and how to educate and better use the technology that to fight
against an awesome educational too that is not ever going to go away.

The
negative aspect of the predatory portion of this report regurgitates
what we always hear in our schools about how blogs, webmail tools,
online video sites like YouTube, and social sites like MySpace need to
be blocked all the time everywhere. But why? Give us good reasons or
drop the filters. People worry what our kids will see, but Gen X &
Y need to realize they see it anyway and it’s not just online, it’s in
our hallways and on our sidewalks daily.

The online predator
section segued into the final part of cyber bullying, which was the
most histrionic of the bunch. Don’t get me wrong, children are bullied
every day online and in our schools. I was bullied, too. But Ryan
Halligan’s and more recently Megan Meyer’s experiences with being
bullied led to their suicides. Ryan had been bullied in school before
it moved online, and eventually he killed himself after a rumor he was
gay and a prank by a pretty young girl pushed him over the edge. These
are two stories of cyberspace woe, and they are not the only ones, but
there are stories of successes too. As mentioned early, Autumn Edow’s
parents finally came to understand their daughter, Evan Skinner’s son
and daughter finally graduated (yes, escaped from their mother), and
Sara, the anorexic of our tale, finally saw a therapist (should’ve been
a Second Life therapist!). Little Ryan’s dad will never find peace and
Megan’s neighbor who pretended to be a young boy who hated her may
never go to jail. 

But what do we learn from all of this? Danah
Boyd from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society
reiterated that the Internet is NOT going away, and we (Gen X & Y)
have to learn how to use it and live with it. Even though the Internet
isn’t the cause of hurt, it can amplify pain felt in the real world,
according to this report. The owner of WiredSafety.org argued what I’ve
been saying all along: We need to teach online education. Teach NetGen
to use the Web 2.0 tools that they’ve developed in a way that couples
both of our generations’ ideas of pedagogy in a critical 21st century
situation.

Wow. Guess what I did? Something new for me. I know I know, I like to hear myself talk, and I do it all day long everyday of my life, but now I have another way to talk to people. I am podcasting! Now, you may say, "Devon, why are you adding one more thing to your schedule?" Or "Are you crazy? No one cares." And while the second comment may be true, the first I can address. At my community college job I’ve joined a faculty professional learning community that addresses the use of new and emerging technologies in education. Right up my alley! At our last meeting the facilitators challenged us all to choose a new medium with which are not comfortable to play with this year. I’ve been thinking of podcasting since summer time, and I’ve always listened to podcast but I’ve always been afraid of committing to publishing my own. Maybe because I sound like Kermit the Frog when I talk, or because I know if I start one I cannot just drop it. Well I finally did it. I bit the big one. Borrowed what may turn out to be a decent mic (great to know the IT people!) and recorded the other night. Now I am use to listening to podcasts between 25-45 minutes, and I figured 15 minutes would be a good goal. I wrote an outline first of talking points, and I sat down and began. I recorded about 18 minutes worth and then began editing. I worked for about 45 minutes taking out "um"s and pauses, and I still wasn’t finished when it was time to go to sleep. I will finish editing the podcast this weekend (thank God for fall breaks!) and I’ll post it on iTunes University where we’ll have a space through the community college. My colleague also began podcasting but she uses a service called gabcast, which records a phone call to an 800 number as the podcast then publishes it online for you. They are shorter, including the "um"s and are a little less clear, but it’s great to have these tools to use to get your thoughts down quickly and easily. Look for me on iTunes, and I will share my feed when I am ready!