Dana Gould wonders: 'Is Obama literally Hitler?'

Dana Gould was on Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday and showed this clip in which he visits some town hall protesters and a Remote Area Medical station in Inglewood, CA. Compare and contrast:



In case that clip gets pulled you can watch it here as well.

There was so much 'Hitler'...And this one guy I was talking to, I said like 'Why Hitler?' and he goes 'Well Hitler also wanted to restrict medical care for people." But was that what he was the most known for though?

Oh and in case you didn't already know, Obama Is Literally Hitler.

Why everything sucks.

Auto-tUuUne (shortee!)

I know Auto-Tune in the News has been around the net now for a few months but this one is one of the best. Featuring the climate change bill, Sarah Palin's resignation and Michael Jackson "waking up dead."

Here's Neil deGrasse Tyson explaining how Auto-Tune works, and I'd also highly recommend the excellent music documentary Before The Music Dies featuring a segment on the use of Auto-Tune in pop stardom.

Jon Stewart on "socialized medicine"

"God forbid someone replace the health care plan I had before I was 32 and actually qualified for real health care, I believe it was called Excedrin PM and Colt 45."

Bill Maher on Californian ballot initiatives

"We votes yes on gain and no on pain. This is why America's founders established a representative democracy, because they knew if the average Joe had the chance he'd vote for a fantasy world with no taxes, free beer and vagina trees."

Real Time With Bill Maher, May 22, 2009

A priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into a bar...

...featuring Adam Carolla, Larry Miller, and Lenny Clarke.

Sarasota Film Festival 2009 Shorts 1 Reviews

Second Guessing Grandma (dir. Bob Giraldi)
This was about a young Jewish guy coming out to his family and focuses primarily on the reaction of his grandmother. The dialog is witty and comedic and story has some heart to it, but the scene cuts are fast and the camera is a bit too close up on the subjects with a lot of hand-held camera bobbing. ■■■□

Trece Años (dir. Topaz Adizes)
A very short story of a young man who returns to Cuba to visit his family after spending most of his life in New York and the familial conflict that surfaces. The presentation of both sides―struggle, tears and a mother's broken heart―is sincere and well done and the shots of Cuba are impressive, though the subject itself is depressing. ■■□□

Countertransference (dir. Madeleine Olnek)
A brilliantly-acted comic character study of Carla Carthrop, a fidgety and reserved woman trying to change her circumstances. We watch her personal battles against her domineering boss and totally insane therapist. I guess you would call this surreal absurdism. The dialog was weak in a few places leaving me to wonder how much was scripted versus improvised, but overall the short is hilarious and highly recommended. ■■■■

Nowhere Kids (dir. Eric Juhola)
Nowhere Kids follows a homeless teenage girl and her dog as she tracks down her mother. Along the way she falls in with a small group teens in the same situation and the audience gets a view of their grim existence with little hope and no real home or connection to the world, emotionally broken. With costuming a little too stylish and makeup a bit too gritty the realism gets hindered, but overall the storytelling is good and the acting and subject matter commendable and evocative. ■■■□

The New Yorkist (dir. Dana O'Keefe)
I'm not sure what to make of this short. It's what looks like an abstract first person delusion of grandeur. The story is told silent film-style as Alexander studies history, fights ants and eventually becomes Alexander the Great as he "conquers" Kyrgyzstan (represented with a disused airport terminal) by simply showing up. Strange stuff. ■□□□

I Am So Proud Of You (dir. Don Hertzfeld)
This new Don Hertzfeldt short was the main draw of the short film collection and didn't disappoint. For those who don't know, Hertzfeldt is known for his stick figure drawing style and his 2000 comic short Rejected. Over his past three short films he's been shifting from comedy to drama, or a kind of "dramedy". The second chapter in what Hertzfeldt has said will be a three part series follows Bill one year after his recovery from an undisclosed illness in Everything Will Be OK (trailer). The story starts with memories of Bill's childhood and a pastoral look at his (comically) mentally ill family's past. The funny and creative presentation works towards profound ruminations on time and death. Meanwhile Bill learns that at the same time he is improving, everything is not ok. The core of the story is the one certainty in life, "You will only get older."

Hertzfeldt has a real focus on sound and music in his short films, for example see the shot of sound files used in the 2005 short The Meaning of Life above. In Proud Of You you can hear this focus in the family history portion, and in the impact of Richard Wagner's "Vorspiel" near the end. As for animation he really surpassed himself. Hertzfeldt has always strictly limited his films to hand-drawn effects and animation with no computer assistance. In Everything Will Be OK he experimented with some animated photography and does even more here to great effect. There's a lot of humor and philosophy packed into this 22 minute short, most of it subtle but all of it pleasing and worth a look. ■■■■

James Carville

"Republicans just don't understand comedy...it's like me talking about nuclear physics, I mean I just don't have the background to talk about it; they just don't understand comedy. If they did they wouldn't put Dick Cheney out all the time."

on Real Time With Bill Maher, May 8, 2009

Dave Chappelle

"Every comic wants to be a musician. Every musician thinks they're funny. It's a very strange relationship that we have. Some musicians are funny. Some comedians can play. I'll give you an example: Mos Def, funny guy; Jamie Foxx, good singer and piano player. So you never know, you never know what kind of talent a person has. I'm mediocre at both, but I've managed to talk my way into a fortune!"

from Dave Chappelle's Block Party, 2005

Zach Galifianakis Between Two Ferns with Natalie Portman

I have never seen a celebrity this uncomfortable in my life...

I'm hearing this in an Austrian accent...

IRONMAN: Alcoholic destroys company, seduces coworker, commits war crimes.

The site PostmodernBarney has a huge list of Uncomfortable Plot Summaries. Some examples:

BATMAN: Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill.
CLERKS: Aimless loser remains in dead-end job, abusive “friendship.”
GROUNDHOG DAY: Misanthropic creep exploits space/time anomaly to stalk coworker.
JURASSIC PARK: Theme park’s grand opening pushed back.
SIGNS: Jesus trumps science.
THE EXORCIST: Jesus trumps science.
THE SHINING: Wife and son keep author from finishing his novel.

The last one is a whopper. Be sure to scan through the 200 or so comments for some gems including another potshot at Bill Murray:

LOST IN TRANSLATION: Unfocused holiday trip leaves two people in yearning depression.

Even more on MetaFilter. Have any to add?

Sarasota Film Festival 2009 Preview

The 2009 Sarasota Film Festival starts tomorrow, March 27 and runs through Sunday, April 5.  Here are the films and shorts I’m going to watch in the order I plan to see them:

	Shorts 1 (for “I Am So Proud of You”) : A lonely stick-figure, Bill, experiences life at its most bittersweet, humiliating, glorious, and sad. Directed by Don Hertzfeld, creator of “Everything is Going to Be OK”, “The Meaning of Life”, and “Rejected”. (reviews)
	Tokyo Sonata : The story of a family on the ropes; when Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) discovers his job has been outsourced to China, he begins an elaborate charade to keep up familial appearances. But he's not the only one with a secret; his young son Kenji (Kai Inowaki) wants to become a classical pianist. How can the family find peace and still keep all of their dreams alive? Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
	We Live in Public : Internet pioneer Josh Harris, founder of Pseudo.com, one of the first online media companies, never saw himself as a dot-com tycoon. Instead, Harris used his growing fortune to explore the artistic implications of emerging technology, creating two prescient projects that would come to shape the future of the Internet forever. Directed by Ondi Timoner.
	Shorts 5 (for “Treevenge”) : Fans of B horror films rejoice: the trees are angry, and they want revenge! Directed by Jason Eisener.
	Examined Life : How can philosophy answer the ethical concerns that dominate our times? Interviewing some of the most profound thinkers of our times, director Astra Taylor explores a wide range of issues, from the ethics of consumption and ecology to the questioning of the limitations of the physical body in determining our identities. Interviewees: Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Žižek, and Judith Butler.
	Treeless Mountain : Jin, a carefree elementary school student in Seoul, South Korea, is the older sister of Bin, a precocious toddler who follows her sister’s every cue and direction. When they and their mother are evicted from the family apartment, the girls are left with their reluctant aunt, a small town hustler whose resentment of the girls is matched only by her negligence. Directed by So Yong Kim.
	Trust Us, This is All Made Up : Hailing from Chicago and the famous Second City comedy theater, TJ Jagodowski and Dave Pasquesi create absolutely hilarious hour-long improvisational pieces that are almost too polished to believe. The film features one of their wild and hysterical New York performances from beginning to end, and they promise, it’s improv, so it’s all made up. Directed by Alex Karpovsky. (review) (site)

And here are other films playing I’m interested in but can’t attend for one reason or another:

Kimjongilia : North Korean émigrés uncover the harrowing secrets of a closed country in their own words, and discuss the painful and traumatic division between North and South after the Korean War. Using images from North Korean films and propaganda, this explosive documentary examines the workings of the powerful machine that is the North Korean dictatorship. (trailer) (review)

The Missing Person : In a pitch-perfect interpretation of the classic private detective, Academy-Award nominated actor Michael Shannon plays John Rosow, a struggling alcoholic who is hired to tail a man on a train from Chicago to Los Angeles. Before long, Rosow realizes that he’s been deceived about the job and the identity of the man who he is following, and the new evidence chillingly evokes some of Rosow’s own demons. (trailer)

Old Partner : Documentary about the final days of a long, happy friendship between a South Korean rice farmer named Mr. Lee and his faithful ox. Under the watchful eye of his ever-present wife, Mr. Lee embarks on a daily journey to his small patch of land in his ox cart. Soon, as age catches up with the animal, Mr. and Mrs. Lee must confront the issue of mortality head-on; how could they continue on without the partner who has served them so well? (trailer)

Sorry, Thanks : Kira (Kenya Miles) is in between jobs and in between boyfriends when she has a one-night stand with Max (Wiley Wiggins). Max, who has a steady job and a steady relationship, recognizes his moral digression but can’t help viewing Kira as a much-needed spark. Kira and Max realize that they are still figuring it all out when it comes to love, and to their dreams. (trailer)

Stingray Sam : Sci-fi western rock-and-roll musical, a journey into a world of space travel, male cloning and comedy that borrows equally from John Ford’s The Searchers and the classic Flash Gordon serials of the 1940’s and 50’s. Watch as Sam and his partner The Quasar Kid span the galaxy in search of a kidnapped child! Thrill as Sam and Quasar battle the evil forces of Fredward! (trailer)

Winnebago Man : In the world of viral video, “Winnebago Man” Jack Rebney is the height of celebrity. Rebney’s disintegration into a torrent of expletives during a Winnebago corporate marketing shoot became famous when this footage was released and duplicated onto VHS. Rebney became an underground celebrity whose fame only took off further with the advent of the internet. Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer set out to find the real Jack Rebney and discovers that this living internet star was surprisingly difficult to uncover. (review)

Authority.

"My boner's got weird old candybars!"

Premise: What if Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was a horror film?

(via /Film)

Real Time with Sarah Silverman

This is the first frank interview with Sarah Silverman I've seen. She talks about her finances and the economy, The Great Schlep, her show, divas, the Playboy Mansion, and the art of being a comedian.