FREEDOM WRITERS

Every generation has its Blackboard Jungle or Dangerous Minds or Stand and Deliver. Next up in this overly-clichéd genre is Hillary Swank as the inspiring teacher in Freedom Writers, the premiere of which I was invited to at the last-minute tonight by a pal of mine.

After muscling my way past will.i.am, Dave Foley, and Courtney Love to get to my seat (and deftly avoiding the throng of kiss-assery towering over producer Danny DeVito), I settled in an prepared for the worst. After all, these movies are cringe-inducing, right?

Actually, it totally didn't suck. Mainly, because the casting of the kids didn't suck. In particular, there's a central scene where one of the minor characters -- a latino kid, whose name I didn't catch -- reads from his journal about his not-so-great summer vacation. It's so totally honest and matter-of-fact -- the kid is definitely not an "actor", and I mean that in the most positive way possible -- and it caught me completely off-guard, leaving me in tears.

Yeah, it's mostly your average feel-good movie, and the story pretty much goes exactly where you think it will. But it's very honest, very earnest, and much better than I expected.

ATTENTION WEBHEADS

Attention web-headed pals: I've managed a bit of success, I think, in embedding my LiveJournal within my website, by putting the RSS Atom feed into an iframe HTML box.

However, it only seems to view in Safari on my Mac -- on Windows Internet Explorer, or in Mac/Win Firefox, it doesn't seem to work. Any ideas?

CREEPY CGI

Thanks to colicub for posting this... it's beautiful and disturbing, and totally gives me the willies in the best possible way; it's like a travelogue for a planet I wouldn't want to find myself on.

[Error: unknown template video]

BIRTHDAY

I ain't sayin'... I'm just sayin'...

FIGHT!

televisionism's talent always floors me. Check out this video he posted today. You should also see how he made it -- incredibly, without any digital compositing.

[Error: unknown template video]

TIM TAM SLAM

OMG. Cost Plus is now selling delicious TimTams here in the states!

They've always been available in the U.S. via mail-order (or through the kindness of visiting Aussie friends) -- but now they're readily stocked on shelves in multiple convenient Los Angeles locations. I'm doomed.

I made this discovery after a co-worker brought some in this afternoon -- and of course, I had to demonstrate to an office full of TimTam neophytes the proper way to do a Tim Tam Slam, captured here for your enjoyment on a co-worker's cameraphone.

(The audio is weirdly out of sync -- one of the things I hate about YouTube & Flash video -- but you can see the original .3g2 video by clicking here)

Watch on YouTube