Links for the Day (October 8th, 2008)

1. Insert your favorite debate entry here (meaning in comments below).

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2. "Russia's First LGBT Film Festival Fights On Despite Government and Media Resistance": Basil Tsiokos reports from St. Petersburg for indieWIRE.

["In early January of this year, I was contacted by the organizers of Side By Side for advice on a lesbian and gay film festival they were planning in St. Petersburg, the first of its kind in Russia. Irina Sergeeva and Manny de Guerre conceived of Side By Side as a cultural LGBT event, an alternative to the secretive and underground gay bar scene in the conservative country, and as a means to spread understanding between the LGBT and mainstream communities."]

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3. "Krapp's Last Horse": At The Nation, Akiva Gottlieb on Sam Shepard, Paris, Texas, and other things elemental.

["Kicking a Dead Horse (Vintage, $11.95), the new Shepard play that had its US premiere in June at the Public Theater in New York and finished a two-week run in August at the Almeida Theatre in London, contains both. It's the playwright's most elemental (and pointedly unsubtle) discourse to date on what it takes to be a Marlboro Man--and whether it matters. Shepard's proxy is Hobart Struther, a Manhattan art dealer who made his millions collecting western murals and cow portraits from Wyoming saloons and selling them to the highest cosmopolitan bidders. By the time the play begins, Struther has ditched his bourgeois trappings and lit out for the West, only to find himself stranded on the Lone Prairie when his horse keels over. James Joyce sagely divined that "horseness is the whatness of allhorse," and Struther's crisis is nothing if not a horseless reckoning with his own whatlessness. "]

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4. "NYFF46": The third part of Jamie Stuart's New York Film Festival video series.

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5. Filmbrain makes Afterschool stay afterschool.

["Set in a prestigious private school somewhere north of New York City, Campos' debut feature plays out like an episode of Gossip Girl co-directed by Michael Haneke and Gus Van Sant. The film opens with a montage of viral clips -- baby laughing, cat piano-playing, Saddam hanging -- but wait, what's this? -- our anti-hero Robert (Ezra Miller) leaves the safe confines of YouTube for nastycumholes.com, where he gazes upon a bit of POV porn that goes from humiliation of its "amateur" actress to outright violence -- an act that has a powerful effect on young Robert, who trawls the web in search of things that feel real. Naturally, Robert will mimic this gesture in the real world, thereby giving proof to the adage that kids will repeat what they see in movies on tv on the Internets. "]

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Quote of the Day: Alexander A. Bogomoletz

"One must not lose desires. They are mighty stimulants to creativeness, to love, and to long life."

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Image of the Day (click to enlarge): A male Indri lemur, one of many wild mammals now facing extinction.



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Clip of the Day: Oh shit, the CGI meatballs with teeth are attacking!!!

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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.