This is the final scene in the silent Charlie Chaplin film "City Lights". Charlie Chaplin's character spends the movie struggling to support a blind woman he befriends and who believes that he is a rich man. In actuality he is homeless and spends his time doing odd jobs to try to pay for an operation to cure her blindness. When he finally gets her the money he is wrongly sent to prison for several months and the two lose contact. in this scene, the woman is cured but does not immediatly recognize chaplin whom she has never seen before, but then she recongnizes the feel of his hands as the scene fades out.

this scene is to me both sad and uplifting at the same time. it has great tension because although it is a happy ending it seems to be a small victory shared by people living lives of hardship. There is a very bleak desperate edge to this scene and indeed to the whole movie that i think captures something meaningful.

Dogville (2003)

Written and Directed by Lars von Trier (one of those former Dogma 95 guys) from Denmark.

With Nicole Kidman and Paul Bettany (Wimbledon, A Knights Tale), also James Caan, and our friend Jeremy Davies (Teknolust).

The film is set in a small town in Colorado in the 1930s. It is very didactic, and its cruety actually reminds me of old moral tales, legends, myths. There are gangsters and lots of achetypes. Timeless and firmly planted in reality. Somehow its unrealistic set design pushed it even more into realism.

I didn't know what to expect when I rented the film, Ben had recommended it and I honestly didn't even read the back cover before pushing play (not that it gives any indication of what the film is like). The prologue opens with a straight shot down on a white outline on a black floor delineating the buildings and streets of a tiny town (pictured above). The entire film takes place on this sparse set of minimal furniture, white lines on the ground, and blackness or whiteness, depending on the time of day. It immediately reminded me of a play I saw in high school, Our Town. That play takes place in the a small town called Grover's Corner and uses the same minimal style of set: imaginary doors to open, imaginary dogs that bark, etc. (interesting to note tha tthe set design that makes Our Town the play so famous was not used in the 1940s film version of the movie... it had a traditional set design.) Both Dogville and Our Town (play) show a dark side to small towns, however, Our Town gets existential about death toward the end whereas Dogville delves into blackmail and cruelty. The film was like watching an a play in the round. The lack of walls in the set makes for very interesting contrasts between actions. It is a very reveling movie. I recommend it.

I also like von Trier's Dancer in The Dark with Bjork... but I love depressing musicals; maybe thats just me.

40 inspirational speeches in 2 minutes

This reminded me of those YouTube collages we did in class, except this is absolutely seamless and has a really interesting rhetoric on the overlap of "inspirational speeches." I think this is genius.

Chauncey Strikes

After working with such bleak imagery all semester long, i thought i would post some stuff here that i've done in the past that was a little more light hearted. This is a cartoon i created in Adobe Flash for a previous class to illustrate the concept of emphasis. There are two versions in the video, the second version has been changed to be more intense. The dog in the cartoon is based on my father's long haired dachsund Chauncey, who actually did attack UPS delivery guys on several occasions.

Louis Armstrong: Satan?

This was one of those amazing things that you probably couldn't dream up if you tried. Years ago, a friend gave me this Louis Armstrong singing doll, but now the batteries have decayed so it sounds quite a lot like it is possessed by Satan. I am thinking about transforming it into some huge video project, although I kind of like it in its raw form...

Had to share. It was too wonderful to keep to myself.

The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist

I loved this song about 6 years ago, and it recently just came up on my playlist so I thought I'd check the video out. Awesome. Watch the lady playing the drums, she is such a contrast to the song and that makes it great!

Polygon Mona Lisa

So I ran into this website pretty randomly. Now keep in mind, I have NO knowledge of programing at all so for all I know this could be made up completely. Whether this is real or not it still brings up some interesting thoughts. The idea that a work of art of that prestige could be created by a computer with a few lines of code is bizarre. Obviously it lacks something that only a human touch could give it, but interesting nonetheless.