In the early hours of June 28, 1969, in the now world famous New York City’s Stonewall Inn, the gay civil rights movement as we know it was born.
Thank you to all those courageous gays, lesbians, transgendered, bisexual and, most of all, drag queens who stood up for their right to be free of police intimidation.
The moment when New York embraced marriage equality:
Ray and I watched it live and yet, I get goose bumps and my eyes still well up when I hear the screaming and cheering exploding right after the final tally is read.
And this is what the Empire State Building looked like Friday night, about an hour after the vote, just in time for Pride weekend:
Dreamy.
This is monumental.
Earth shattering.
Game changing.
There really aren’t labels too overblown that can be attached to what happened when finally, after two painful weeks of wrangling and two years after a stinging defeat, Friday evening, the New York Senate passed same-sex marriage equality.
Governor Andrew Cuomo, a staunch supporter of gay rights who threw his whole weight behind the passage of the bill, signed it later that same night, starting the clock on the 30 days before it officially becomes law.
The legalization of gay marriage also came right before the weekend celebrations for Gay Pride in the state where the gay rights movement was born with the Stonewall riots.
New York thus became the sixth and largest state in the country to end marriage discrimination. With this victory in New York, the number of Americans who live in states with the freedom to marry has now doubled.
A few pictures from that magical night from The New York Times.
The Governor’s signing:
The celebration in the Village and across New York:
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Two final important considerations that come out of this:
Peter Jackson is hard at work on the two movies that will take us back to the Tolkien’s universe, and has released a few precious stills, which make me long for the actual release dates...
LINK.
Peter Falk (1927–2011)
This movie and theater actor was primarily famous for his TV role of Detective Columbo on the successful series by the same name.
IMDb lists 107 titles in his filmography, but I have to say that apart from a couple minor movies (The Great Race and The In-Laws), I cannot recall him in anything else other than the iconic role of the smoking detective in his crumpled raincoat.
R.I.P.
I LOVE X-Men, even though I didn’t know it as a comic and only discovered it when the first movie was released. I’ve watched each installment since, and was slightly disappointed only by the third, the final chapter of the original trilogy.I’m a day late, so this is actually a Happy Belated Birthday, but it’s the thought that counts, and this video tribute to Meryl I found at The Film Experience is too good to pass up:
I don’t know the band Rage Against, but their latest video is a must see for the scores of gay and lesbian teenagers who are going through what’s likely the toughest parts of their lives:
The latest brainchild of the very prolific J.J. Abrams, Super 8 was high on my list of must-see movies for the summer, especially since it was also produced by the great Steven Spielberg.
Chile’s volcano Puyehue has been spewing ash into the atmosphere for a while now. This ash has travelled thousands of miles and colored sunsets all over the world, including in San MartÃn de Los Andes in Argentina, as viewed here.
The corrosive and obscuring volcanic ash has grounded airplanes all across South America and even in Australia, but the tiny dust and glass particles are also responsible for an optical effect that has lead to spectacular sunsets and sunrises filled with bright gold, fiery orange, and blood red hues around the globe.
"The wavelength of light coming from the sun is being diffracted differently, and that's what causes the visual effect that we see," explained Jay Miller, a volcanologist at Texas A&M University.
Morgan Spurlock, the documentarian who used himself as a test subject to prove that fast food is bad for you in the wildly successful Super Size Me, authored Don't Eat This Book to bring the same kind of awareness to the written page.
Coming on the heels of The Tudors, Showtime’s successful dramatization of King Henry VIII’s life, The Borgias had big shoes to fill, but it managed to establish itself as a legit heir rather quickly.
The Borgias tells the story of how Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, who successfully outmaneuvers every other Cardinal to be elected Pope Alexander, rules the Vatican in the 15th century and deals with the position’s demands and requirements.
This new Pope, however, is nothing like what we’re used to. He has two sons and a daughter who are either positioned or bartered in order to increase the power and influence of the Borgia family. The mother of his children lives in luxury while the Pope finds a new mistress. And all this is widely known both in Italy and abroad.
Political intrigue is commonplace in Rome, littered with the purchasing of favors, assassinations, advancements, and the like. Furthermore, the Pope’s influence extends to the whole of Europe, given that he alone holds the power to crown and dethrone kings and queens, together with the unique power to excommunicate dissidents.
As Pope Alexander, the great Jeremy Irons is fantastic in a role that seems custom tailored for him, but the entire cast does a very good job. The writing is inspired and focused, and the first season felt fresh and rich, making me look forward to the next one.
The Bottom Line: a good show especially if you like “historical” reenactments.
Grade: 8
Another comic book hero I didn’t know anything about but an adaptation that I was looking forward to see because directed by Kenneth Branagh, whose work I appreciate. The fact that Thor starred the incredibly hot Chris Hemsworth certainly wasn’t a deterrent...
This Angelina Jolie vehicle is fairly entertaining overall, with good action sequences and a rather original plot.I just read that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, which governs how the Oscars are handed out, has once again revised the rules for the Best Picture nominations.
From The Film Experience:
Just when we were getting acclimated to the new system of ten best picture nominees, Oscar is changing up their rules again. Deadline reports that after carefully studying their voting data, the Academy's governing board has decided that that Ten Best Picture Nominees thing was perhaps a little too generous. 'Shouldn't there be some threshold of passion for a film to win that coveted "best picture" title' they asked themselves.
Their answer was "yes".
How much passion will be required exactly? The magic number is 5%. In short, a film will have to win at least 5% of #1 votes in the nomination balloting in order to join the Best Picture Lineup. There'll be no less than 5 Best Picture nominees in any given year and no more than 10. So one could say they're splitting the difference between the old system and the new.
[…]
“In studying the data, what stood out was that Academy members had regularly shown a strong admiration for more than five movies,” said Davis. “A Best Picture nomination should be an indication of extraordinary merit. If there are only eight pictures that truly earn that honor in a given year, we shouldn’t feel an obligation to round out the number.”
If this system had been in effect from 2001 to 2008 (before the expansion to a slate of 10), there would have been years that yielded 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 nominees.
Can’t say I disagree with not feeling obligated to rounding out the number, but I fear it might still let average titles in (like say An Education or Winter’s Bone). On the other hand, I don’t know how happy I’ll be in seeing a different number of Best Picture nominees every year.
There’s also this, which I’m not crazy about:
The number of Animated Features nominated will be more flexible too. Previously it was 3 or 5. Now it'll be 2 to 5 depending on the number of films released that are eligible and number of votes those films received.
Animated movies are so numerous nowadays, why only 2 nominees? And, can it possibly be that there were years when they had to round the number to 3 and let a less deserving title in?!
Following my last post and rant against early cancellations, here’s another small gripe I have. ABC canned V after 2 seasons, evidently too late for the producers to come up with a cogent ending, which left us with a fairly good cliffhanger and not much else.
V was one of my favorite series from the 80s, so I simply couldn’t pass up on the remake/follow up (I never understood which angle they were going for, and I don’t think they knew either), even though the new series was marred from the beginning.
For starters, the writing was poor and the show as a whole didn’t seem to have a good sense of direction. At first it seemed to hold back too much, so they remedied by increasing the action and heightening the mystery/conspiracy level, but one thing that worked against the show was the advances in technology that have occurred since the first series premiered. These made the visual effects cooler but also made us wonder why the rebels weren’t using a simple tool like the Internet to spread the word about the Visitors.
By the middle of season 2, the show had definitely gotten better, and by the end I was looking forward to each new episode, but it wasn’t meant to be. Honestly, part of me is glad that they put it out of its misery, because it really did feel like there was no one who knew what the whole picture looked like.
The casting was off too. While I loved Elizabeth Mitchell in Lost, I never bought her as the leader of the rebellion on V. I’m not saying she can’t play tough, since she did it when necessary on Lost, but I never saw her actually disappear into Erica Evans.
Morena Baccarin as Anna, the Visitors’ leader, also was at times good but often just all-right. On the contrary, when they brought Jane Badler (the original show’s V leader Diana) back to try and salvage the series, she owned every scene she was in.
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The same mediocrity plagued many of the other principal actors, so I think that when it comes down to it, the writers and producers are to blame. They weren’t clear on what they wanted to achieve and couldn’t make up their mind. The series was lackluster and wanting and that’s unfortunate, because they certainly squandered one of the best properties of the eighties and a show that offered countless possibilities in terms of plot development.
Too bad.
Grade: 5
The latest TV show I dedicated time to only to be disappointed and frustrated by an early cancellation on the part of NBC.
The Event was one of the many attempts to capitalize on the void left by the very successful Lost, and like pretty much all the others (the very cool concept of FlashForward comes to mind), it failed. Or rather, it wasn’t given enough time to succeed!
It’s true, it didn’t start out very well. It limped at first, was confusing, and a bit odd. This led to poor reviews and low-ish ratings, which led to a mid-season hiatus meant to retool and refocus the production. Once it returned, I found it had improved quite a bit and the story was certainly getting more interesting by the end, even though it’s many characters were still pretty much one-dimensional. But this type of show needs time to grow into its own. And the audience needs time to get used to it and understand its many facets.
Yes, there were many incongruences, some plot points didn’t hold much water, and others were hinted at and then abandoned. But the concept was intriguing and I was quite disappointed when I heard it had been pulled from the fall schedule.
At any rate, it hopefully launched the career of the very cute Jason Ritter and a few other actors that did a fine job, but for me the bottom line is, Why bother investing time into watching this type of show (which I really like) if there’s a good chance I’ll never find out what the mystery is all about?
Grade: 7
That’s the conclusion of a report by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) on processed meats:
The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) has just completed a detailed review of more than 7,000 clinical studies covering links between diet and cancer. Its conclusion is rocking the health world with startling bluntness: Processed meats are too dangerous for human consumption. Consumers should stop buying and eating all processed meat products for the rest of their lives.
Processed meats include bacon, sausage, hot dogs, sandwich meat, packaged ham, pepperoni, salami and virtually all red meat used in frozen prepared meals. They are usually manufactured with a carcinogenic ingredient known as sodium nitrite. This is used as a color fixer by meat companies to turn packaged meats a bright red color so they look fresh. Unfortunately, sodium nitrite also results in the formation of cancer-causing nitrosamines in the human body. And this leads to a sharp increase in cancer risk for those who eat them.
A 2005 University of Hawaii study found that processed meats increase the risk of pancreatic cancer by 67 percent. Another study revealed that every 50 grams of processed meat consumed daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 50 percent. These are alarming numbers. Note that these cancer risks do not come from eating fresh, non-processed meats. They only appear in people who regularly consume processed meat products containing sodium nitrite.
And for those of us living in the US:
If sodium nitrite is so dangerous to humans, why do the FDA and USDA continue to allow this cancer-causing chemical to be used? The answer, of course, is that food industry interests now dominate the actions by U.S. government regulators. The USDA, for example, tried to ban sodium nitrite in the late 1970’s but was overridden by the meat industry. It insisted the chemical was safe and accused the USDA of trying to “ban bacon.” Today, the corporations that dominate American food and agricultural interests hold tremendous influence over the FDA and USDA. Consumers are offered no real protection from dangerous chemicals intentionally added to foods, medicines and personal care products.
Just sickening.
Check out the whole article here for more.
“Just how many dead teenagers, driven to end their own lives, is it going to take for adults to stand up and say,What the hell is going on? There was a time when the words "Free to Be" embodied a hope that whatever a kid was, was good enough. But "freedom" doesn't describe the world of this generation. Or of their parents. [...] For all the walls we thought we'd broken down with Free to Be -- and all the stereotypes we thought we'd shattered -- children today are not free to be anything they want to be, nor anything they are, and they are dying for it. And no beautiful lyric can fix that.”
