Protected: Why I never call

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Final Fantasy covers Celine Dion

Seriously, Owen Pallett covers Dion’s The Power of Love.

This is for the Toronto launch of Carl Wilson’s book but it’s not the first time Owen’s rocked a cover.

Mariah Carey:

The future of publishing?

check this out: iUniverse

competition?!?

Juno

I wish I had seen it in the first week before all the hype. Despite that, it’s still a movie I’ll be buying when it’s released on DVD. The only question is: DVD, Blueray or HD??

Check out the trailer here.

Juno has sparked an obvious debate. On January 25th, the Boston Herald commented:

Conservatives didn’t like the movie’s casual, nonjudgmental attitude toward teen sex. Juno struggles telling her disappointed parents. And she hates waddling around high school. But that’s as horrible as her pregnancy gets.

Pro-choice advocates, such as The Nation’s Katha Pollitt, says, “A teen who saw this movie would definitely feel like a moral failure for choosing abortion.” When Juno goes to an abortion clinic, she recoils at its dinginess and decides against abortion (especially after running into a classmate who tells her unborn babies have fingernails).

Pollit points to a spate of recent movies – from “Knocked Up” to “Waitress” to “Bella” – in which the heroines all find themselves pregnant and all decide to give birth and everything’s swell. Yet in real life, 29 percent of pregnant teens do choose abortion and of the 57 percent who do give birth, less than 1 percent do what Juno did: give the baby up.

Reality aside, Juno was a great flick with awesome music. The soundtrack features The Velvet Underground, Belle & Sebastian, Cat Power, Kimya Dawson, Sonic Youth, The Kinks and plenty others. Plus, any reason to see Michael Cera do what he does best is a good reason. Best quote, “Juno: You’re like… the coolest person I’ve ever met and you don’t even have to try. Paulie: I try really hard actually.”

The Kite Runner

I can’t believe it took me so long to read The Kite Runner. What an unbelievably wonderful and sad book!

Watching the movie I felt rushed through the book again. I liked it if only as a reminder of how great reading the book was. But in terms of standing alone as a movie, it doesn’t.

The casting of the Hazara boys the best part of the movie. The kites in the sky were also great to watch – whomever was responsible for the kites: Well done!!

Protected: Welcome Family!

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Kids Compilation

We’re very thankful that good old Deaner took so many family vids!!! And that he funded my video editing pursuits. Thanks to Final Cut and several hundred dollars worth of external hardware devices, I present, in digital form, a montage of some old clips. The poor quality is due to the poor quality of the tapes. Something I cannot help. But at least it’s something. And it reminds us to keep filming!!!

Interactive Writing Assignment: Magazine websites analysis

gURL
gURL has had an online presence since 1995 and as such seems to be quite fluent in participatory multimedia. Immediately users are drawn into the site by an invitation to “connect” and join the community (for free). Users can also shop and enter contests. These features draw the user in to participate in the community rather than just read passively. Since gURL’s content is driven by user posts, it is essential to foster this community. A menu bar on the right-hand side urges users to enter polls, be seen and heard, get advice and play interactive games. There is also a newsletter available to subscribers (again, free). Despite all of this, gURL does not have an RSS feed option or bookmarking tools. The entire website functions as a blog by allowing users to fully interact, however, there is no formal blog- (columnist) type section.
New users are easily drawn into participating in the many areas of gURL while those familiar with the layout can easily manage by singing-in directly. Advertisers and publishers enjoy the benefit of knowing just how popular each section of the site is by how much users interact with it.

Salon
Salon’s homepage is an overload of content that can be very difficult for new users to navigate. There is an RSS feed that is located by performing a Find search. There is also an email newsletter and Salon mobile option. Salon has two online communities: Table Talk and The WELL that allow users to speak in a forum setting. There is a daily blog report that features blogs from the right and blogs from the left. Salon also offers TV podcasts. The content sites are updated daily or more frequently.
The placement of the participatory media that is available is difficult to find, being not in widget or gadget form. New users need to work hard to learn the ins and outs of this site.

Copyblogger
Copyblogger is a very clear and straightforward approach to participatory multimedia and thereby ups the value of these features. An RSS subscription feed is easily recognizable in the upper left-hand corner, directly under the logo. The orange RSS box sits just outside of the margin and is thereby set off graphically. There is also an email subscription option for updates. There is also an option to add Copyblogger to your Technorati favourites – not that I know what that is.
Other than these features, the site seems fairly flat in terms of listing articles by type of resource, archived by flag words or popularity. Each article, or post can be commented upon but the site urges users to take the advice and start their own website/blog, and not to interact necessarily with this one.

Oh Deaner!