Word: amateurness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...together, and Paglen has a slight tendency towards stunts - holing up in a Las Vegas hotel in an attempt to track workers flying to and from a secret military installation, for example -and digressions, writing of the exploratory history of inner Nevada, or delving deep into the minutiae of amateur satellite hunting. That's not to suggest that those discussions aren't good reading, for they are - Paglen somehow manages to make the movements of a spy satellite riveting - but rather to say that many of his parts are more intriguing than a somewhat diffuse whole...
...their literature the old-fashioned way: carefully selected and edited, and presented in a bespoke, art-directed paper package. But below that there will be a vast continuum of other options: quickie print-on-demand editions and electronic editions for digital devices, with a corresponding hierarchy of professional and amateur editorial selectiveness. (Unpaid amateur editors have already hit the world of fan fiction, where they're called beta readers.) The wide bottom of the pyramid will consist of a vast loamy layer of free, unedited, Web-only fiction, rated and ranked YouTube-style by the anonymous reading masses...
...over the brutal New Years Day killing of 22-year old Oscar Grant III by transit officer Johannes Mehserle. Grant and a few friends were returning home from New Years Eve revelry, when they were stopped by Bay Area Rapid Transit Police for rowdy behavior. As documented by several amateur cell phone videos, Grant, who was unarmed, appeared to act cooperatively. Mehserle, however, threw him facedown onto the ground, and straddled his back while another officer squatted near Grant’s neck. Mehserle then drew his gun and fired into Grant’s back. The officer has resigned...
...this is not merely attention to visual and behavioral detail; it is a consummate film artist's conjuring of a world and its inhabitants. Reygadas elicits strong performances from his amateur cast of Mennonites, whose cowboy hats, plain speaking and ease in inhabiting their sagebrush environment give them the stature of western-movie archetypes. They support the filmmaker's genius for sanctifying each moment: the milking of cows and harvesting of grain, the children being washed in a stream, a rush through a cornfield for a sweetly illicit tryst, the sobbing of a woman in the forest in the rain...
...role in Pulp Fiction ... Filmed a role in [Terrence Malick's] The Thin Red Line that eventually got cut ... Walked off the set of Luck of the Draw when the producers refused to let him include his pet chihuahua in the movie." Instead, Rourke, who had been a serious amateur boxer as a teenager, went professional, submitting himself to the rigorous training, abuse and combat that would pay off in The Wrestler. The face he wears in the movie came from those years in the ring, plus some plastic surgery that didn't work out quite as Rourke had hoped...