November 18, 2010

Netflix Worthy: When You're Strange: The Doors

I had heard nothing about the documentary When You're Strange: The Doors directed by Tom DiCillo. Honestly, my knowledge of The Doors stops after a handful of their hits songs and Jim Morrison's name (I didn't even know that Kanye sampled "Five to One" for Jay-Z's "Takeover"). I appreciated the film's different approach of not including any interviews and depending strictly on Johny Depp's narration. The archival footage was amazing, the jem being the use of footage from the independent film HWY - The American Pastoral (1969) in which Morrison stars in.

November 11, 2010

Evil Monito feature by Terry Hwang

A couple months back my friend Terry Hwang was kind enough to write a feature on me for Evil Monito. It's one of the most insightful articles that have been written on me (like all three of them) and I know that Terry really spent a lot of time working on it. I went to school with her at UCLA and it's been inspiring to watch her chase her dreams as a writer. You can read the article here.

Full benefits for all Veterans

Today we celebrate Veteran's Day in a country that spends millions on TV commercials saluting veterans but denies most of them the health benefits that they need. Vets deserve better. Watch the congressional testimony by Sgt. Chuck Luther, wounded in Iraq and then tortured by his own until he signed paperwork saying his problems were caused by a personality disorder:

November 4, 2010

Inspiration of the Week: Jeff Chang

"Electoral politics is episodic, short-term, and transactional. Movement-building must be constant, long-term, and transformative. It is not a cyclical task. It is work that reaches toward the horizon."

I am on of the many young (well, not like young young) people that found themselves pretty uninvolved in Tuesdays elections but depressed by the results. As someone who feels pretty detached from state and national electoral politics, I'm always half concerned about election results because I know they will have direct impacts on me and people who I care about, and half indifferent because I feel I have no real control over their outcome. But reading Jeff Chang's recent interview in Colorlines really made me feel included in "the new cultural majority" and helped provide some location in the national progressive movement building process.

"Cultural change is often the dress-rehearsal for political change. Or put in another way, political change is the final manifestation of cultural shifts that have already occurred.

Sadly most progressives—whether they work in electoral politics or movement politics—have not yet figured culture into their theory of change. Unlike the right, they have no cultural strategy."

November 2, 2010

A Song For Ourselves at Minneapolis/St. Paul Asian Film Festival - 11/10

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A Song For Ourselves is coming to the land of Purple Rain! The first annual Minneapolis/St. Paul Asian Film Festival kicks off on Nov. 3rd and runs until the 13th. Song will be playing in the "Asian American Shorts Program" on 11/10 at 7pm. Much respect to all the organizers of the festival for making Asian American cinema a little more accessible to their communities!