Wednesday, May 26, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

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New fiction: "The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening"

Posted: 26 May 2010 02:56 AM PDT

Shareable.net has just kicked off a new fiction series, "Visions of a Shareable Future," with stories about a future in which sharing is part of the norm. I have the inaugural story, "The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening," which I wrote as a kind of run-up to getting to work on my next YA novel, Pirate Cinema, which will likely be a 2011 Tor Teens title. Both "Jammie Dodgers" and Pirate Cinema are the story of streetkids in London who remix movies and screen them in impromptu theaters -- the sides of derelict pubs, ancient graveyards, vaulted Victorian sewers -- and establish an alternative to the mainstream Hollywood industry.
You can fit eight Jammie Dodgers into a single-occupancy Leicester Square hotel room. Provided that they don't all try to breathe in at once. We breathe in shifts.

Cecil knelt at the window, phone on the sill, careful marks he'd made with a sharp pencil and his laser-pointer showing the precise angles to each mirror. He looked around at us all, his eyes shining. "This is it," he said. "My Leicester Square premier."

The monocle is already glued to the phone's back over the projector's eye. The phone's been fitted to a little movable tripod. And now, with a trembling fingertip, Cecil prods the screen. Then, quickly, nimbly, spinning the focus knob on the monocle. Then the hiss of air sucked over teeth and we all rush to the window to see, peering around the drapes.

He was much better on the focus this time, faster despite his trembling hand. There, on the marquee of the Odeon, Keith Kennenson as an eight year old, begging his mother to let him have a puppy, then a montage of shots of Kennenson with his different dogs, a mix of reality TV, feature films, dramas, comedies, the story of a life with dogs, the same character actors moving in and out of shot.

Shareable: The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening

(Image: Tilt and shift - Leicester Square at night, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivative-Works (2.0) image from rthakrar's photostream)

Why the absence of copyright is good for fashion

Posted: 26 May 2010 02:35 AM PDT

Here's Johanna Blakley from USC's Ready to Share project describing how the lack of copyright restrictions on fashion has improved the field -- everybody has to constantly invent, everybody can use anything from the fashion world as the basis for invention, and the result is a never-ending (and highly profitable) cycle of innovation.

Johanna Blakely: Lessons from fashion's free culture (via /.)



Pro-masturbation article from 1959

Posted: 26 May 2010 02:30 AM PDT


Here's a surprisingly progressive pro-masturbation article written by a minister for Sexology magazine in 1959:
Still another kind of experience is illustrated in the case of Harley Smith. Harley was initiated into the practice at an early age among a gang of boys. Curiosity then led him to experiment himself.

This learning of the practice took place in a group and therefore did not seem to him to be unusual or different. However, Harley soon heard the practice of self - gratification described as a "childish" one. Some of the reading and instruction which he had made him feel that continuing the habit is a sign that he is "immature."

As a result he is torn between his ambition to grow into a fully rounded and mature adult and his continuing desires for this form of sexual expression.

While most popular literature has gotten beyond the stage of predicting horrifying consequences of masturbation, much popular literature does condemn the practice by labeling it "immature" This arouses a somewhat different conflict, but in a way a more severe one, for the young person whose great ambition is to become a mature adult.

A Minister Discusses SELF-GRATIFICATION (Jan, 1959)


Mad World + Death Metal Scream = Eleanor Rigby

Posted: 26 May 2010 02:24 AM PDT

PeaceLove sez, "My friend Sean travels from a Gary Julesesque "Mad World" to a death metal roar "Imagine" to "Eleanor Rigby." I had always known he was talented but this one blew me away; his control throughout is astonishing and he's a pretty damn strong keyboardist as well."

Mad World Imagine Eleanor Rigby Numb (Thanks, PeaceLove!)



Keyboard shortcuts

Posted: 26 May 2010 12:10 AM PDT

Reminder! You can now jump between posts on the front door of Boing Boing by hitting J and K. It should work on most browsers. Any similar UI requests? Under consideration: L to go to the next 30 posts; and the Konami Code to trigger a unicorn invasion.

Ploom review

Posted: 25 May 2010 09:23 PM PDT

modelone_hero.jpg Ploom is a wee butane-powered vaporizer that has a cigarette-esque form factor and produces enough smoke to make it feel like a smoke. So far, so good. Unfortunately, it requires proprietary pods, none of which contain weed, and parts of it get hot on the outside. It's an amazing little sci-fi gadget -- a bit like a fancy mechanical pencil -- though not really something I want inside of me. The smoke I found curiously unsatisfying, too, but I smoke cigars. So your mileage may vary. And it's just $30. Product Page

Joule iPad stand review

Posted: 25 May 2010 09:09 PM PDT

blockofmetal.jpg Element Case's Joule is a premium iPad stand. A heavy, polished block of metal that looks like a work of art — or perhaps a discarded industrial component — it comes with a detachable metal bar that can be adjusted three ways for different viewing angles. As far as designer iPad stands go, it's hard to imagine something fancier that is not completely absurd. As it is, this one is expensive enough: $130 solves your exceedingly first-world problem. It's gorgeous, but there's a flaw! There's no way to snake the charging cord into it, so it can't do charging duty. P.S. It strikes me is how this and, say, a $1 business card holder, each exemplify the two poles of 'minimalism.' Joule is the end that costs a lot, is beautiful, lasts forever, simplifies decisively, but carries a vague whiff of ubiquitous consumption in unnecessary places. The $1 business card holder seems more truthful in that it offers the bare minimum required to fulfill its function, but is actually a bit crap. All in all, it's easy to see why one would pay $30 for the one from Apple that actually charges the damned iPad. Element Case Joule

Aluratek Libre review

Posted: 25 May 2010 10:11 PM PDT

alurateklibre.jpgAluratek's Libre reader gets it: it's cheap — $150 list, $100 at Sears — and fills the long-form reading niche that brightly-screened tablets like the iPad can't serve, but which no-one is going to spend a lot of money on anymore. There are compromises: it's slow to flip pages and is not a pretty thing at all. Furthermore, the display doesn't seem as nice as other readers, either. Sony's superior Pocket Reader is also only a little more expensive. But it is more expensive, so if you're just looking for something quasi-disposable to replace airport paperbacks, here you go. It even comes with a free SD card, loaded with out-of-copyright classics. Amazon Link

Image: Derek Yu does Mario

Posted: 25 May 2010 02:30 PM PDT

derekmario.jpg Spelunky and Aquaria creator Derek Yu does big tribute to little Mario in this image for Giant Robot's 2008 Game Over show that's somehow slipped under my radar until now. Yu's also responsible for this wicked Doom tribute in this year's show, and more than a few other fantastic illustrations (including... Lady Gaga?). [via BigTig]
Previously:


BP: "The solution will not be televised" / UPDATED

Posted: 25 May 2010 05:01 PM PDT

Update: BP's official Twitter account just posted word that yes, the spew-surveillance internet video feed will continue during Wednesday's attempt to stop the flow. Not this account, maintained by pranksters, but the legit one. Though it's not like the presence of a live video feed in and of itself will make things any better, stop the destruction, or clean up what's already devastated. And for the record, I don't agree with Markey's outrage over a web video "blackout." After all, if the attempted fix doesn't work, I wish these bastards all the luck in the world trying to hide that...

(YouTube link). BP today announced that it plans to disable the happy-fun live internet video feed of oil spewing at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico while BP engineers try to stop up the well using a procedure they call "top kill." Rep. Edward Markey, chairman of the House subcommittee on energy and the environment, was not amused:
"It is outrageous that BP would kill the video feed for the top kill. This BP blackout will obscure a vital moment in this disaster," Markey said in a statement. "After more than a month of spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, BP is essentially saying to the American people the solution will not be televised."
And in related news, Federal government inspectors overseeing oil drilling in the Gulf "accepted meals and tickets to sporting events from companies they monitored," reported the Interior Department's inspector general.

Hurricane Katrina reduced levels of lead in New Orleans soil/children

Posted: 25 May 2010 02:59 PM PDT

When the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina receded from New Orleans, some of the city's dangerously high lead levels washed away, too. Prior to the Hurricane, 15 neighborhoods had soil lead levels higher than the federal standard. Tests done in the same places post-Katrina found only 6 neighborhoods exceeding the limit. Across 29 neighborhoods, lead levels dropped an average of 45% between 2000 and 2006—a change attributed to Katrina as the levels had sat, basically unchanged, between 1990 and 2000. The effect shows up in kids, as well as the yards they play in. On average, New Orleans' children under the age of six experienced a 30% drop in blood lead levels.

Handfish: Pretty much exactly what they sound like

Posted: 25 May 2010 02:44 PM PDT

pink handfish.jpg

Handfish are fish. They have fins that look an awful lot like hands. Instead of swimming, they walk on these fins. If you ever suspected that anything remotely approaching the status of "missing link" would end up looking patently ridiculous—congratulations, you're right. At that handfish's expense.

Above is a pink handfish, one of nine newly identified species of the handfish family. Only four specimens of pink handfish have ever been found. And nobody has spotted a living one since 1999. (The inevitable crushing self-esteem issues must be keeping them out of public view.) The line between different species, in this case, seems to be mostly drawn along physical differences, according to National Geographic, which has organized the wide array of handfish diversity into a fascinating slideshow.

Iraq: CIA's aborted psyops stunt to discredit Saddam? "Pedo-Hussein" sex tapes

Posted: 25 May 2010 03:09 PM PDT

saddam.jpg In the run-up to America's 2003 invasion of Iraq, a CIA team brainstormed ways to attack public perception of Saddam Hussein among Iraqis. One of the psyops plans was to "flood Iraq with videos" that depicted the dictator having sex with a teenage boy. The CIA hoax "hidden camera" videos were to be shot "very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session," according to a former official familiar with the plan.
The agency actually did make a video purporting to show Osama bin Laden and his cronies sitting around a campfire swigging bottles of liquor and savoring their conquests with boys, one of the former CIA officers recalled, chuckling at the memory. The actors were drawn from "some of us darker-skinned employees," he said.
Man oh man, my kingdom for a torrent. Anyway, just one problem with the CIA's man-boy-love-tape plans:

"Saddam playing with boys would have no resonance in the Middle East -- nobody cares," [said a] former CIA official with extensive experience in the region. "Trying to mount such a campaign would show a total misunderstanding of the target. We always mistake our own taboos as universal when, in fact, they are just our taboos."
CIA unit's wacky idea: Depict Saddam as gay (Washington Post)

Valve parody Apple's 1984 ad for Half-Life 2 Mac teaser

Posted: 25 May 2010 02:17 PM PDT

Taking their original Apple print ad parodies to the next logical level, Half Life and Portal creators Valve have just released (as in, minutes ago -- hold steady if the YouTube upload quality's still not the greatest) this teaser trailer for Half Life 2's release by giving Apple's classic 1984 ad the full City 17 treatment. The OSX version of the game will be coming tomorrow to their new Mac version of Steam.
Previously:


Mark on Twit.tv at 2pm Pacific time 5/25/2010

Posted: 25 May 2010 01:50 PM PDT

I'll be on Net@Night on Twit.tv with Leo Laporte and Amber Mac in a few minutes. I'll talk about Boing Boing, Make, and my new book, Made by Hand.

David Byrne sues FL gov over unauthorized use of "Road to Nowhere" in senate campaign ad

Posted: 25 May 2010 01:52 PM PDT

David Byrne is suing the Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, because Crist used the great Byrne/Talking Heads track "Road to Nowhere" in a campaign ad (Crist is now running for senate). Byrne writes:

Well, using a recording of a song, or even just using that song and not the original recording, in an advertisement without permission is illegal, unless the composition has gone into the public domain. It's not just illegal because one is supposed to pay for such use and not paying is, well, theft -- it's also illegal because one has to ask permission, and that permission can be turned down.

Besides being theft, use of the song and my voice in a campaign ad implies that I, as writer and singer of the song, might have granted Crist permission to use it, and that I therefore endorse him and/or the Republican Party, of which he was a member until very, very recently. The general public might also think I simply license the use of my songs to anyone who will pay the going rate, but that's not true either, as I have never licensed a song for use in an ad. I do license songs to commercial films and TV shows (if they pay the going rate), and to dance companies and student filmmakers mostly for free. But not to ads.

I'm a bit of a throwback that way, as I still believe songs occasionally mean something to people -- they obviously mean something personal to the writer, and often to the listener as well.

05.25.10: Yours Truly vs. the Governor of Florida (David Byrne's journal)

More about the lawsuit on Billboard.com.

Talking Heads: Little Creatures (album link @ Amazon)



7 Copyright Questions for Canada's DMCA Minister

Posted: 25 May 2010 12:51 PM PDT

Michael Geist sez,
With reports that a Canadian DMCA could be introduced this week, thousands of Canadians have been expressing concern with the government's plans, as there are mounting fears that the results from last summer's copyright consultation may be shelved in favour of a repeat of the much-criticized Bill C-61.

The foundational principle behind C-61 was the primacy of digital locks. When a digital lock (often referred to as digital rights management or technological protection measure) is used - to control copying, access or stifle competition - the lock supersedes virtually all other rights. The fight over the issue has pitted the tech-savvy Industry Minister Tony Clement, who has reportedly argued for a flexible implementation, against Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore, who has adopted what many view as an out-of-touch approach that would bring back the digital lock provisions virtually unchanged.

Moore has declined to comment on his position, but his approach raises some difficult questions:

1. Moore has been an outspoken critic of the extension of the private copying levy to iPods, deriding it as the iTax. He is content to leave the levy on blank CDs in place, yet the forthcoming bill is likely to block personal copying of consumer purchased CDs that contain copy-controls onto blank CDs. Why does Moore believe it is acceptable for Canadians to pay twice - once for the CD and a second time for the levy on a blank CD - and still face the prospect of violating the law...

Seven Copyright Questions for Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore

Artificial butterfly for studying insect flight

Posted: 25 May 2010 12:57 PM PDT



The beautiful rubber band-powered artificial butterfly is helping researchers understand the flight of swallowtails. Hiroto Tanaka of Harvard University and Isao Shimoyama of the University of Tokyo built the balsa-wood machine, which boasts thin polymer film wings with "veins" made with a silicon-etching technique. The artificial butterfly enables them to control the flight mechanisms in ways they couldn't do with live butterflies. From Science News:
Fake Flier "We can't ask insects, like 'Hey, please just flap your wings at 10 hertz,'" Tanaka says... To mimic the way the butterflies might use their front and rear wings together, the researchers created one big wing for each side of the body...

With high-speed cameras, the researchers got enough images of the model's few seconds of flight for motion analysis. They conclude that by simply flapping its wings straight up and down, the machine recreated the bobbing flight of real butterflies. And by comparing fully veined with veinless wings, the researchers found that veins stiffened the wings and helped them achieve greater lift. The bobbing motion of the body also increased lift to help keep the flier aloft.
"Artificial butterfly mixes high, low tech"

Kid-made science kits

Posted: 25 May 2010 12:50 PM PDT

I met 15-year-old Connor at a signing in Raleigh-Durham. He asked great questions and was a fun audience member, but even so, he blew me away when he revealed after the talk that he's been making and selling science kits for kids since he was nine, and has built a modest and successful business out of this, and uses his proceeds and his profile to give talks about entrepreneurship at struggling schools without much science curriculum.

They're cool kits, and Connor's a fantastic kid.

Kits for Kids (Thanks, Connor!)



North Korea severs all ties with South Korea, both sides amp up propaganda

Posted: 25 May 2010 01:00 PM PDT

dprk.jpg The government of North Korea today announced it would sever all ties with South Korea, further exacerbating conflict over accusations that the North sank a warship belonging to the South. North Korea's state news agency said all communications between the countries would be cut, including a Red Cross border contact, and that various transportation links would also be blocked.

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is in the region, and said yesterday that the March 26th naval attack by Pyongyang, in which 46 sailors died, would not go "unanswered." The US and South Korea plan joint military exercises.

Snip from Guardian UK:

The South's military resumed propaganda radio broadcasts across the border this morning after a six-year hiatus, with programmes airing news, western music and comparisons of the political and economic situations on the two parts of the peninsula. The psychological warfare will enrage the North, which has warned it will fire at any propaganda facilities in the demilitarised zone.
(Image from the Official Website of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea)

Petri Dish Soap in the Boing Boing Bazaar

Posted: 25 May 2010 12:43 PM PDT

Images System Product Images 5836 Original 2 Images System Product Images 5835 Original 1
Images System Product Images 5933 Original 2 Images System Product Images 6488 Original 11
Cleaner Science handcrafts soap inside petri dishes! My favorite is the E. Coli Transformation (pearberry) that glows in the dark! They're $9.50 each in the Boing Boing Bazaar! Petri Dish Soaps

Report: Obama to send 1,200 troops to Mexico border for "intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance"

Posted: 25 May 2010 01:04 PM PDT

Reports are circulating that US president Barack Obama will deploy 1,200 National Guard troops to the Mexican border. AP:
Obama will also request $500 million for border protection and law enforcement activities, they said. The National Guard troops will work on intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and blocking drug trafficking.

Big Picture: Saturn and vicinity

Posted: 25 May 2010 12:08 PM PDT

Universal Site Graphics Blogs Bigpicture Cassini 05 21 S13 00143628
The Big Picture lovingly curated a magnificent selection of Saturn images snapped by the Cassini probe. Above, Saturn's moon Enceladus "continues to spew ice into space, seen by Cassini on October 14, 2009." For even more dazzling images and the backstory of Cassini's extended mission, check out Maggie Koerth-Baker's Boing Boing megafeature from March, "Cassini: Trip Reset."

Amityville Horror home for sale

Posted: 25 May 2010 12:11 PM PDT

Images Wikipedia Commons 9 95 Amityville House-1 Hauntedhouses Amityville Images Amityville-Horror-Haunted-H
This lovely five-bedroom home at 108 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York is now for sale for $1.15 million. Who cares? Well, 108 Ocean Avenue used to be 112 Ocean Avenue, where Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed his family in 1974 and, several years later, the Lutz family were traumatized by things that go bump in the night. The original Amityville Horror address, and spooky windows, were changed by previous owners to keep away creep-seekers. The real estate listing refers to it as a "legendary home" but does not mention flies, blood streaming from the walls, or a demon pig named Jodie. From Newsday:
James Cromarty, 77, bought the house in 1977. By that point, a bank had foreclosed on the house from the Lutzes, who have since died. DeFeo is at the upstate Green Haven Correctional Facility, serving 25 years to life for the murders.

"Nothing weird ever happened, except for people coming by because of the book and the movie," said Cromarty, who lived a decade in the house.

He and his wife, Barbara, sold the house in 1987 to Peter and Jeanne O'Neill. Reached Monday, Jeanne O'Neill said, "I loved it. It was a beautiful home." They sold the house in 1997 for $310,000 to the current owner, which records identify as Brian Wilson.

"It's one of the more beautifully redone houses in the neighborhood," said listing agent Laura Zambratto of Daniel Gale Sotheby's International Realty.

'Amityville Horror' house back on market, for $1.15M (Newsday)

The Amityville Files

Libraries of Flesh: The sorry state of human tissue storage

Posted: 25 May 2010 11:33 AM PDT

ff_biobanks_f.jpg

A must-read feature from Steve Silberman in this month's Wired:

State-of-the-art medical care and research are increasingly dependent on the storage of human cells and tissue in cryogenic facilities called biobanks. Located in universities, hospitals, and private institutions all over the world, these archives of the human organism are the biological back end of data-driven medicine.

Unfortunately, while the sciences that depend on biobanks have advanced by leaps and bounds in recent years (including genetic research, molecular drug design, and genomic medicine), the technology of biobanking itself is still stuck in the 1950s, resulting in a tragic shortage of human tissue for research.

Now the National Cancer Institute is leading a campaign to reform this crucial industry and launch a national tissue bank called caHUB to support cancer research.

Libraries of Flesh: video, images, and text. (Photo: Andrew Tingle)

Beware the hybrid bear

Posted: 25 May 2010 11:11 AM PDT

hybrid-bear-190.jpgBoing Boing reader Inuvik Phil says, "This soundslide from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation shows a hunter from Ulukhaktok, NWT (Population ~400) telling the story of killing a strange bear. Many hybrid bears have been found recently, with traits of both polar and grizzly bears."

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

Posted: 25 May 2010 10:14 AM PDT

☠

All cameras aimed at a grinning Johnny Knoxville—flanked by a bluegrass band—outside the theater where "The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia" made its Los Angeles debut. The "Jackass" star served as the film's executive producer, which might lead one to assume it's the same sort of death-cheating, stunt comedy stuff for which Knoxville is known.

There is plenty of death-cheating in "Whites," but it's no comedy.

The documentary, directed by Julien Nitzberg, follows the legacy of the White family of Boone County, West Virginia. Their most famous living member is Jesco White, star of the 1991 cult documentary hit "Dancing Outlaw" (on which Nitzberg was associate producer).

The Appalachian clan is notorious for criminal activity and reckless, larger-than-life characters. They tap-dance, shoot and stab people (including each other), and sell (and do) a lot of drugs. Think "Sopranos" meets "Coal Miner's Daughter."


Family patriarch D. Ray White, murdered in 1985, is a dancing legend and folk hero in these parts. He was profiled in the PBS documentary "Talking Feet," and was a master at inventing clever scams to counter "company town" corruption and poverty: he is said to have had his entire family declared mentally ill, to collect government aid funds.


Hank Williams III appears in "Whites" to back Jesco up on musical numbers, and celebrates the clan as "true rebels of the South." Director Nitzberg describes the film as "a portrait of American 'badassdom' at its best."


As the film unfolds, we meet more upstanding Boone County residents: attorneys, churchgoing folks with jobs. Through both what they do and do not say, we learn how the Whites have terrorized the town they dominate for decades.


Asked to comment on the reputation of the White family early in the film, Boone County evangelist Patricia Smith pauses, then says—"I'd really rather not comment on that." Who can blame her? These are deadly rednecks.


Jesco attended the film's Los Angeles premiere with his brawny sister Mamie, who boasts in the film of having stuffed enemies' bodies into abandoned mine shafts. After the screening and a little audience encouragement, Jesco agreed to tap-dance on stage while the bluegrass band plucked. He's a dark, charismatic figure on-screen and in person: covered in prison tattoos, he's part Elvis, part Johnny Cash, part Charles Manson, all enigma and black charm. He's the guy mothers beg their daughters to stay away from. He's the guy those daughters flock to, anyway.


The film careens from trainwreck to tragedy: an 85th birthday celebration for Jesco and Mamie's mother turns into a crazed coke rampage, while the elderly lady cowers and weeps. A young clan member speaks to us from prison, jailed for having shot his uncle multiple times in the face and sparking an armed police standoff—he presumes he's charmed the judge into granting an early release, but we soon learn he's wrong.


And in what is widely referred to as the film's most ethically troubling scene, Kirk, who stabbed her husband not long ago, has just given birth to a baby girl. She muses about the better life she hopes her daughter might lead. And moments later, mom's snorting powdered lines of contraband prescription narcotics on a hospital room nightstand, while the infant sleeps a few feet away.


Critics have asked Nitzberg how he could stand by and shoot in good conscience, while a child is so clearly endangered by the criminal acts of the adults responsible for her care. Those acts would happen anyway, the logic goes—it's just that Nitzberg's cameras happened to be on hand to document.


Those cameras continue to follow Kirk she loses custody of her newborn to the state. Then she's off to rehab, then we see her reunited with her children, but we wonder for how long?

A personal detour here: I was conceived in West Virginia, not far from the Whites' stomping grounds. To their credit, my parents got out as fast as possible. I thank them for it.

Most of the people I know from West Virginia talk about the state the way soldiers talk about Iraq: it's a place to get out of. The only people born there who stay there, the saying goes, are the ones too poor to escape. There are two archetypal forms of livelihood: coal miner, and an approximation of what the Whites are. Scary hillbillies.


I've spent much time there. I still know and love the meandering Appalachian trails. I have dined on hot, Velveeta-covered slices of Possum Holler Pizza, and remember the taste of sassafras root tea from childhood. I know the place and its people well enough to say that Nitzberg nailed it as few filmmakers do. "Whites" is an unlikely masterpiece. It entertains, morbidly, but the film is a bleak landscape. Trashed earth, trashed people, seemingly inescapable destiny.



West Virginia has something in common with oil-rich nations in West Africa: corporations based elsewhere profit from its mineral riches; most of the wealth ends up exported while the land goes to waste and the locals live in poverty.


The Whites are the product of an environment in which mountains are literally sawed off, sliced open like great stuffed cakes, to extract the coal they contain. These Appalachian hills haven't been so much mined as mowed.


Who survives this? What will remain when all the mountains are flattened, and all the coal's gone?

Probably, the Whites.


☠ ☠ ☠



THE WILD AND WONDERFUL WHITES OF WEST VIRGINIA

A film by Julien Nitzberg

shot in Boone County, West Virginia


Official Website | Facebook | Trailer | Available via download from Amazon, and as video-on-demand on most American cable television systems.


THEATRICAL RELEASE: Opens June 25th at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in Los Angeles. Denver Film Society, June 8th. At Cinemapolis in Ithaca, NY over the weekend of June 26-27. And in Austin, TX at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz July 13 and 14.


DVD (with extensive bonus features) out in October.


INTERVIEW with director Julien Nitzberg, by Richard Metzger: video link.



Photos courtesy Julien Nitzberg, and the archives of Mamie and Jesco White and family.
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