I just finished a film animation class at NYU. More to come, hopefully...

UCLA 102
LSU 75

Sorry Guys.

Come to this special video night at the National Museum of Women in the Arts
this Friday (March 31, 7pm).

An encore screening will be @ Johns Hopkins University, April 3, 3pm. BALTIMORE,
MD.
Details at: http://www.astriasuparak.com/dates.htm

Tell your friends!

- Astria Suparak


-----------------------------------------
"QUANTUM LEAPS"
A 60-minute screening of videos.
U.S. Tour, March 2006

Friday, March 31, 7pm
NMWA Theatre, 1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.
General admission $5; visitors 60 and over, members, students $4.

- Videos by : Daniel Barrow, Philippe Blanchard, Dearraindrop, Emily Vey Duke
and Cooper Battersby, Jim Finn, Caroline Koebel, J. Macdonell, Jim Munroe, Liz
Rosenfeld, Seth Price, Andy Puls.

- Prints and Magazines by : Celebrate People’s History, Lady Scientist, LTTR.

Quantum leap, a physics term deriving from the mid 1900s indicating
significant and swift advances (originally via a sudden shift in
energy within an atom), became the title of an early 1990s American
television series featuring a time travelling, body-swapping,
do-gooder scientist. In 2006 this inspirational screening of new
video follows suit, cataloguing heroes, compressing history, and
hallucinating futures.

We are in a hyperdated time populated by minor celebrity comebacks
and movie remakes, soundtracked by mash-ups and remixes, and
backdropped by vintage/old school/retro simulacra. Artists now are
as inspired by history they weren’t quite conscious for as by their
lived experiences. Here it is possible to amalgamate eras, to break
out of social and gender constraints, and to cobble together a
fantasy lineage. Many of the artists bypass ineffectual adoration
for social edification, by documenting communities, reincarnating
overlooked experimental films, sharing Communist souvenir
collections, assembling biographies of personal heroes, and
dispatching personal visions of history through the storytelling
tradition.

- Curated by Astria Suparak.


Details, images, press kit

The touring of this program has received support from the Canada Council for the
Arts.

Long grain Rice
2 cans consomme
I large can mushrooms (bits & pieces)
Baked chicken
Country Sausage
A little onion

Grease bottom of pot with butter and add a little chopped onion if you want. Heat 3 cups of consomme, water and mushroom juice in pot. When it boils, add 1.5 cups long grain rice and mushrooms. Bring mixture back to a boil then turn heat to low and cover. Next cook the sausage (sliced into chips) in skillet and drain on paper towel. Take one of those baked chickens you can buy at the supermarket and break off the dark meat. Save the white meat for a sandwich or something. After the rice has cooked for about 20 min, add chicken and sausage and cover and cook for about 10 more min or until the rice is thoroughly cooked and soft. Makes about 6-7 servings.

1. Find a good spot. This means guys that are on your level or better. You're not going to get any better by beating up on your little brother or sister. It's better to find a game in your neighborhood or gym.
2. Develop a game plan. Think about how you want to play. Do you want to penetrate, shoot, or just pass the ball around. It's good to think about this before hand.
3. You usually have to wait for "ups", your turn to play. Try to get on as good of a team as possible. There's always a guy who thinks he is Kobe Bryant, yet lacks the talent. Watch out.
4. Wear sensible shoes. Whatever feels good will work. In general, try to look cool and you will play better.
5. When your waiting for the game to start, don't try to impress people by attempting to dunk the ball or jumping up and grabbing the rim. Just spin the ball on your finger or watch to see what the guys playing have. Stretch or whatever. If you can dunk, do it in the game.
6. Mark a guy that you can hang with. If you're a skinny guy, watch out for dudes built like Barkley. You'll wind up getting pounded in the paint all night, which is not fun.
7. Take what the defense gives you. If he plays you tight, drive around him. Too loose, shoot on him. If he overplays you, find the open man.
8. Same thing on defense. If your guy can't shoot but likes to drive, step back and give up the shot. If he can't drive, step up. If he can only dribble to his right, make him go left.
9. Keep it simple. Learn how to make crisp passes with the proper rotation. Don't force anything. Don't throw behind the back passes that hit somebody in the face.
10. The best way to defend your guy is with a simple hand check. You can still watch the ball and basically make the dude go wherever you want, if you're strong enough.
11. Shoot correctly. Finger pad control, backspin, follow though. Keep you head square to the basket.
12. Use simple moves well. A good crossover dribble goes a lot further than trying to do what ever Iverson did last night.
13. Use your left. Shooting with your opposite hand, you have to raise the opposite knee. It takes time to learn but is effective.
14. Rebounds and outlet passes make the game better.
15. Keep playing when you're down big because comebacks are always possible. When you're up, play defense.

1. The Go-Betweens "Oceans Apart": I don't know the whole story about the Go-Betweens, and I don't care. But they remind me of what the Australian pyschedelic band the church could have evolved into. The chord changes are always interesting, the lyrics are mysterious but not total nonsense. There's a CD included of a live concert of some of their oldies which is basically garbage. The best tunes are "Darlinghurst Nights" and "This Nights for You".



2. Sufjan Stevens "Illinois"- I like this album because it pretends to be very deep, but it could be very shallow. The album cover is a folk art imitation of a Slick Rick album, the historical lyrics basically sound like they were gleened from google, the horns solos stick note for note to the melody, and the upbeat tunes sound like Gap commercials. But that's the way people from Illinois are, unsentimental.



3. Our New Orleans 2005- Benefit for the Gulf Coast: I used to play at the Maple Leaf Piano nights on Mondays when I was at LSU. Basically the only way you could learn to swing like those cats was to either go to New Orleans or to Berklee. It's something that I just could never ignore, throughout grunge, indy rock, whatever's next. Allen Touissant has a great minor-key version of Tipitina, and even the studied vaudevillianism of the Preservation Hall guys is kind of neat, the way they change up the lyrics so deftly.

My great uncle / foster dad has a good interview in this movie, The Ballad of Greenwich Village.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada works. Understated, simple, easy to digest- watching Tommy Lee Jones manhandle Barry Pepper is a treat. All the horseriding and cowboy stuff is elegant and well-done. The plot is straightforward; Pepper (a border patrolman) kills Jones's best friend Melquaides- so Jones kidnaps Pepper to bring him back to Mexico to bury Mel.

Jones' mentality is great. Instead of the good ol' boy he played in the other movie he directed (for TNT), Jones stays stern, angry and focused. It gets a little too heavy handed when Jones forces Pepper to live Mel's life verbatim though, but that's sort of the point of the film. More modest in scope and naked ambition than most of the movies out now, but worth it.

Syriana is really impressive. It manages to provide an explanation for the global oil market somewhat completely and without unnecessary sex or violence (a few questionable violent scenes, but not much). The story seems so much more believable than something Oliver Stone or somebody else could have sensationalized. The exposition is so logical and intriguing, it's very relaxing.

It's similar to "Traffic" in that there are three main locales- Texas, the Middle East and Washington. And of course the Soderbergh hand held camera effect. Unlike "Traffic" though, there's little melodrama attached to the characters, alll of the action is central to the plot which comes together like a puzzle. And since you-know-who is president, it's much more relevant, even if we are just fighting for democracy in Iraq (has bush ever mentioned oil?). The cast is great, all A-list actors, (Clooney, Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper), who conform strictly their roles in the film. Watching Syriana is a good workout. I couldn't grasp every nuance of the plot, but