Tastemaker

Thursday, South Africa officially became the 5th country in the world to legalize gay marriage. Let's hope this starts a trend. -HCS

New questions on the US Citizenship Test:

Why does the United States have three branches of government?
Name two rights that are only for US citizens
Name two cabinet-level positions
Name one important idea found in the Declaration of Independence
What does the Constitution do?

info from BBC World News

This list just left me doing my own rabid musings on what DOES the Constitution do? I'm personally of the belief that people and culture (and their needs) grow and change over time, and that the beliefs we hold dear also grow and change. I'm a believer in throwing off the bonds of tyranny, but does that mean we have to take the Old set of rules made by people who may or may not have actually held beliefs similar to our present-day beliefs, and kowtow to the Old forever? Puritans had no voice or land in England, they were disenfranchised by Charles I before cutting off his head, disenfranchised by Charles II during the restoration, they came here and created their own religious communities which were not so tolerant of dissidence. Whigs had no land, they came to America and grabbed land. James Stuart Duke of York needed money, he created the West India Company to import slaves, and Virginia ate them up. Don't you think it's time to base our current government on our current ideals??? My beliefs run concurrent with the thinking of many of the Royal Society members (some of whom were indeed Founders of this nation) - push the envelope, find out what things are made of, question the world as it exists, imagine the world as it could be. -HCS

Congratulations to Choking Man and averyone at GhostRobot for winning the Gotham Award for Best Film Never Seen In a Theatre Near You. Granted, a bit of a sting comes with this award, but it's still a mark of being recognized for excellent work by the industry! -HCS

Short summary of Choking Man on IMDB - The social anxiety of a morbidly shy Ecuadorian dishwasher working in a Queens diner provides the psychological engine that powers this blend of drama and magical realism.

Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers is the story of what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war.

Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed, and Uncovered) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of corporate greed in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private security companies making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so.

To learn more, or find another screening to attend, please visit:
http://iraqforsale.bravenewtheaters.com/

Screening of "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers"
Sunday, December 03 07:30 PM
Truth Film Series
32 Watts Street
NYC, New York 10013

HOSTED BY: greenback productions.
Tickets are FREE. RSVP required.

For more details and to RSVP, please visit: IraqForSale

The Sundance Film Festival Picks are in!!! Congratulations to Teeth (and producer Joyce Pierpoline and writer/director Mitchell Lictenstein) for their great work, we'll see Teeth in competition at the festival. Check out their pic and the article in NY Times You rock, you rock so hard.

For a full list of the 64 films accepted, go to Variety

Just in on Wonkette: Again with the military blocking Wonkette so our fighting forces won’t be exposed to inane exchanges from Late Night Shots. A Wonkette operative at a U.S. Army base in Europe sent us this shocking evidence. (Tastemaker Readers, click on the link to Wonkette to see a screen capture of the "Forbidden by Rating Check" notice that one soldier got when he tried to access the site) We asked the soldier to try some other political sites and report back, but he hasn’t answered because the Army killed him, probably.

Dear Pentagon IT Pricks: The election’s over, Iraq is lost and Rumsfeld’s out. Please let soldiers read websites so they can have some of those freedoms you people are always defending for Iraqis or whatever. Thanks.

Reported on AP:
QUINCY, Mass. - John Russo has been a victim of identity theft. So when he was asked to fork over a photo ID just to be seated at an IHOP pancake restaurant, he flipped.

"You want my license? I'm going for pancakes, I'm not buying the Hope diamond,' and they refused to seat us," Russo said, recounting his experience this week at the Quincy IHOP.

The restaurant now has agreed to reverse the policy of requiring customers to turn over their driver's licenses before they can order — a rule that was enacted to discourage "dine and dash" thefts.

-The article continues on, the most salient fact being that the restaurant was holding 40 drivers licenses hostage while their owners ate. -HCS

Congratulations to Flannel Pajamas for extending its run at the Angelika in NYC! Three weeks (so far) instead of one. You go, team! Here's what someone on IMDB had to say:

Julianne Nicholson gives that brave and tortured performance that every actor dreams of. Despite spending half the film in the nude that is not the reason why it is "brave" as some critics like to throw in when someone does spend screen time like that. It's what she does when she's clothed and unclothed and her expression of words, her facial transformations in an instance, and even more, giving Nicole a sensitivity and humanity of sheer velocity. In the coming years, I have a feeling we could be hearing Nicholson's name at some award ceremonies.

I happen to agree. Both Julianne and Justin are talented, subtle actors. Julianne also has a great heart, and it shines thru. Luminous, I believe, is the word. -HCS

From CNN:
CNN correspondent John Roberts, who recently returned from Iraq, says that U.S. television has been unable to convey the extent of the chaos that currently wracks that country. "The place is a mess. It's an absolute mess," Roberts told The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz on CNN's Reliable Sources. "There is nowhere you can go in the Baghdad area as a Western journalist without an escort, where you could feel safe from being kidnapped, shot at, whatever. The amount of death that's on the streets of Baghdad for U.S. forces and for the Iraqi people is at an astronomical level." Roberts said that he saw the results of an attack on a Humvee in which the U.S. soldier seated in the passenger seat was "disintegrated" by the projectile. He said he watched the driver die on the roadside. None of that could be shown on television, Roberts observed. "The pictures on television are sanitized compared to what they are on the ground. ... It's too raw for television. It's too personal for the families who were involved, because the fellow who I saw on the ground, Howie, he was ripped apart. And that's just not the sort of thing that you want a family to know."

And there's the rub: the REALITY is too horrible to bear, but in order to change what is real, we must be able to admit it is ACTUALLY HAPPENING. And we do that by being brave enough to bear witness, and by confronting our own feelings of helplessness as we watch our government smear our human rights reputation and our children's blood all over the sand. -HCS

EVERYONE, I am a huge fan of this writer-misician-performer, and here is an opportunity to see a workshop of his newest play for FREE! It's next monday, mark it on your calendar. -HCS

Monday, December 4, 8:00pm (FREE)
Galapagos Art Space (70 North 6th St. BKLN)
Off-Stage Fright Productions Presents:

WAITING FOR BARBARA

an upsetting new comedy by DAN FISHBACK
starring Dan Fishback & Max Steele, directed by Michael Schulman,
with a special guest appearance by Julie Lake.


The president's daughter loves her some gays. And they love her back! - especially Davenport Rosenfeld (Fishback) and Bryce Oliver Wilson (Steele). But when she's late to pick them up for a party celebrating the bombing of Bagdhad, our heroes begin to freak out. Will they destroy each other in a frenzy of queer vitriol and repressed Ivy League rage? - or will they do lots of coke, make out, and forget what happened the next morning? There's only one way to find out.

"Waiting For Barbara" is the latest in a string of queer political performances by playwright Dan Fishback, including last summer's "PLEASE LET ME LOVE YOU," about Michael Jackson and the war in Iraq. Also a high-powered secretary, Fishback based "Waiting For Barbara" on workday Myspace conversations with fellow receptionist and co-performer Max Steele.

This WORKSHOP PREMIERE will be followed by a talk-back, so stick around to help the artists develop their deranged comedy.